The Nerf Suggestion

OneLastGambit

OK whether we want it or not we are getting a nerf.

It's widely (and mostly correctly) speculated that at least part of the reason for the nerf is he is overused. The reason for this overuse is debated in another thread so I'm gonna make this post in the mindset of a dev.

Dev Mindset: OML is overused because he is too powerful - more specifically he's used all the time because of his staying power.

Keeping this perspective here's how I would 'nerf' him if...you know...I was forced to.

**nerf here means rebalance

The Heal - reduce the amount the he heals to be a flat figure at all times, levels and covers. Make the only element that changes with levels and covers to be the AOE. I would also leave it as a true heal...just a less significant one.

Why? Thematically speaking he should have the worst heal of all the 'verine family as in every representation of OML his heal is failing him. Also if this is the stated reason for his nerf to be required then this I think represents an acceptable nerf.

Claws out : This needs decreasing, lower the AP threshold and then people can start dealing damage quicker.

Why? The reason he is used so often is because of his ability to absorb damage. The reason he is used as a damage sponge is because it's hard to get him to cause damage. Change this and make him quicker to start ripping **** up and the heal is less necessary anyway.


The goal here is to find a compromise between what the player wants and what the devs want. A flat nerf to OML (in particular his heal) just makes him useless for the reasons stated above. Don't nerf....balance


Debate below - feel free to flame, I'm wearing my fire retardant underwear today.

firethorne

Yeah, I wonder how much of their 10% of OML and Thanos burning through seed teams and trivial PvE detritus. That isn't overpowered. That is just a bypass to otherwise annoying gameplay element of skipping half a dozen pages on the character select screen to find your other rubbish characters to give to Thanos as sacrifice.

broll

Nerf Suggestion: Don't

Nerfing should only be done in extreme cases where the character is so obviously broken and then it should be right after release when the mistake is realized. They should focus on buffing characters that don't meet a high bar not nerfing the good ones to a low bar.

astrp3

firethorne wrote:

Yeah, I wonder how much of their 10% of OML and Thanos burning through seed teams and trivial PvE detritus. That isn't overpowered. That is just bypass to otherwise annoying gameplay element of skipping half a dozen pages on the character select screen to find your other rubbish characters to give to Thanos as sacrifice.

Maybe, but I always enter LRs and PvPs at the start and do the seed teams and I see WAY more Thanos (3*/5*) than OML (in PvP that could well be because of my bracket and MMR, but I don't know if MMR affects LR). I would bet that 80-90%+ of teams in my queue after I finish the seed teams have Thanos, while less than 20% have OML. And this is despite the fact that Thanos is much newer than OML. After the seed rounds are over, I see a lot more OML than Thanos and of course I have no idea about PvE.

So if usage against seed teams was a major contributor to overall usage percentage on winning teams, I'd expect Thanos' to be comparable to OML, if not higher, but they said OML's was much higher than anyone else's.

Spudgutter

Maybe tie his healing into the living legend power? Like he only starts to heal once you trigger the power change? That would be an interesting aspect that they could change that I would be ok with, and would limit the number of people with 2* rosters using him with just 1 yellow cover.

OneLastGambit

broll wrote:

Nerf Suggestion: Don't

Nerfing should only be done in extreme cases where the character is so obviously broken and then it should be right after release when the mistake is realized. They should focus on buffing characters that don't meet a high bar not nerfing the good ones to a low bar.

Come on man. I did say right there in my post that I wouldn't nerf him given the choice. But we aren't being given that choice so the discussion then becomes "what is acceptable (as far as nerfs go)?"

Personally I wish everyone would use OML all the time in pvp he's super super easy to play against and I'd wager that my win % against him is above 85
Him being nerfed means people will start using characters that are actually good and difficult to fight against.

byc

firethorne wrote:

Yeah, I wonder how much of their 10% of OML and Thanos burning through seed teams and trivial PvE detritus. That isn't overpowered. That is just a bypass to otherwise annoying gameplay element of skipping half a dozen pages on the character select screen to find your other rubbish characters to give to Thanos as sacrifice.

That's pretty much what I do.

For lower level nodes, I use OML and 3* Thanos. Once it becomes higher level, I use 5* Thanos. Sometimes I use Daken, other time I just pick from my roster of level 70 4*s to die.

byc

Spudgutter wrote:

Maybe tie his healing into the living legend power? Like he only starts to heal once you trigger the power change? That would be an interesting aspect that they could change that I would be ok with, and would limit the number of people with 2* rosters using him with just 1 yellow cover.

I expect the nerf to be he just heals less per cover.

Aidonis

So, to counter the release of arguably the best 5 star (Thanos, I'd put him and BB at 1a and 1b), they celebrate by nerfing the pve god. Great.

I only use him in pve and for the lower portion of the pvp climb, other than that, I have better.

This is yet again a true healing issue. He is the best healer in the game, therefore everyone that can use him, does. My solution is simple. Take away the triggered portion of his transformation. Just make it a straight trigger once you hit a certain ap (let's say 7 ) You can do your best to avoid it, but eventually, you will hit it and it will be party time. To me, this is the best way to keep the theme of the character while allowing him to remain useful.

I could also see the 1 and 2 levels of the yellow power healing for less, so that he isn't so immediately viable. My 4 cover OML (3 , 1 ) is infinitely more useful than my 7 cover Phoenix (4 , 1 , 2 ) and that just shouldn't be.

There are ways to do this, I just sadly don't trust d3 with this, as their nerf track record is pretty dismal.

FaustianDeal

I'm curious what the perception would be if they just changed yellow to be 'burst health' rather than 'true healing'. He might get stronger throughout the match, but he is doing to limp into the next fight every time. One of 2 things happen:
* health pack use ticks up slightly
or
* people use other characters because they don't want to buy packs and OML is too weak to start another fight

mission accomplished.

beyonderbub

astrp3 wrote:

So if usage against seed teams was a major contributor to overall usage percentage on winning teams, I'd expect Thanos' to be comparable to OML, if not higher, but they said OML's was much higher than anyone else's.

The other major contributor of OML usage probably comes from all the OML/PHX lvl 425+ combos you see at higher end PVP.

LordXberk

Agree that this is short-sighted and the Devs are missing the point about OML's early release vs. other 5*s and the bigger problem w/ his overuse is not that he's overpowered, but that there is a MASSIVE problem w/ classic LT dilution.

But, I like Aidonis's suggestion before about a triggering of the transformation once you achieve a certain threshold of yellow AP w/o actually using it and at a lower level. I also would love to see his damage increased once the transformation happens. Just do something that offsets the true healing nerf you're obviously going to do. You said it's a balance, so make is a bloody balance.

Also, there are a million other things to fix before this! Why not come up w/ a better gameplay metric that doesn't just reward grinding, or fix the bugs, fix Court Death, fix scaling, fix the CL8 reward mistake, release CL9, work on a better 5* distribution system, implement some sort of fix for classic LT dilution, or anything else before you de-claw OML?

therightwaye

firethorne wrote:

Yeah, I wonder how much of their 10% of OML and Thanos burning through seed teams and trivial PvE detritus. That isn't overpowered. That is just a bypass to otherwise annoying gameplay element of skipping half a dozen pages on the character select screen to find your other rubbish characters to give to Thanos as sacrifice.

I think this is a very important question. I've recently been privileged with playing against people with multiple champed 5 and I agree I see a lot more Thanos now. And surprisingly a lot more Silver Surfer.

I think the best way to consider who is actually played frequently is looking at the last half of Shield Simulator. When I do that, I don't see a high frequency of OML. More notable is the lack of characters I never see: Venom, Ant-Man, Elektra, X-Force, War Machine, Thing, Sam Wilson, Jessica Drew, Winter Solider, Quake... to name a few.

To me this move is the dumbest. OML is not the best defensive player (He is good, but I always leave him for last because I can deal with his strike creation). I can assume that he is played as frequently as he is because he speeds up battles. And who wants to slow this game down? I don't.


But hey, this doesn't bother me. I await your nerfing of the next best 5

Warbringa

Well, it won't impact me because while I have 8 covers for him, I don't have a single yellow cover and he is absolutely useless without the yellow cover. The issue, as pointed out above by another poster, isn't that he is too powerful, it is that he is too utilitarian. His heal is so good, the developers see two major issues with it. First, health packs are a potential income producer for them (my guess is it isn't huge but still revenue). OML (with yellow covers) basically reduces the need for health packs dramatically. Secondly, once again due to his healing, you can really punch way above your weight with a few yellow covers in PvE (but also PvP to a lesser degree). It reduces the need for a diversified roster, which reduces the need for roster slots, iso and 4* covers. All of these are revenue potential for the game.

I think his powers should be re-worked with a lesser heal but his other skills need to be better. He is going to be nerfed because his one great ability is too unique and useful compared to the other 5* (or lesser options). He is too unique in that his primary usefulness is based on healing, something other than damage or AP manipulation or tile generation (although he does generate tiles). Perhaps that is an indictment against the devs as there should be more characters with better healing options, but that is where he currently stands. There is probably a bias though that I hope the devs are also looking at, OML is one of the oldest 5* so of course he will see more play compared to other 5* since people will have more covers of him than most 5*.

therightwaye

Did the Devs compare his number of covers to covers of other 5 ? Is it possible people just have more covers of him because well we all know how well statistically averages work in this Universe. Am I right @moss?

veny

Well, since it is a nerf, i think sell price should be increased even more than for buffed characters.

80-100% ISO invested and 1000-1500HP per card invested depending on how drastic the nerf will be.

LordXberk

veny wrote:

Well, since it is a nerf, i think sell price should be increased even more than for buffed characters.

80-100% ISO invested and 1000-1500HP per card invested depending on how drastic the nerf will be.

Increased HP is a freakin' joke for a 5*. What good is 13-20k ISO gonna do? Buy 1 40-pack?!?!? Players spent 18mos and/or hundreds if not thousands of dollars trying to cover / champ OML. I'm fine w/ the 80-100% ISO range (bcs you did get to use OML for a while), but they should exchange OML covers for other 5* covers, TBH.

Jaedenkaal

broll wrote:

Nerf Suggestion: Don't

Nerfing should only be done in extreme cases where the character is so obviously broken and then it should be right after release when the mistake is realized. They should focus on buffing characters that don't meet a high bar not nerfing the good ones to a low bar.

Well since the current design team wasn't even around when OML was released, that's hardly fair. And they can hardly buff everyone up forever for the same reason that your boss can't just give everyone raises if he finds out that one of his staff is overpaid.

carrion_pigeons

I kinda wonder how much OML would go down in usage if they reduced the amount of pointless, boring, redundant grinding required in PvE.