Upcoming Character Change to Wolverine (Old Man Logan)

Pants1000

I can understand why they're doing this, but it will hurt.

I admit I use him in almost every match. I don't have any 5's fully covered, but I do have a level 420 11-cover OML, and all of my others are still 255. All of my 4-star champs are 270-295, so OML is by far my highest level character.

If this must be done, PLEASE find a way to let people un-level him without selling. I don't want a weak level 420 character hurting my scaling, but I don't want to sell him either. I just want the option to take the ISO back out of him and use it elsewhere, until I'm truly ready to champ some 5's.

mega ghost

Will there be any character buffs happening alongside this for the new season? A favorable buff would certainly make this bitter pill easier to swallow.

Felonius

OML has been the only 5* I have with enough covers to make him useable. My older 5*, Silver Surfer, was 0/2/2 forever (finally got a blue recently, but he's still only 1/2/2), my next best 5* are Black Panther at 4/2/2 and Pheonix at 4/2/1. The rest are all 0s, 1s, and 2s and don't compare to my champed 4*. OML I got lucky right off the bat with several covers, and have continued to get more, to the point that he is 4/4/4. With a black cover coming from SHIELD Resupply in a couple months he was going to be my first fully covered 5*.

I do use him a lot, but mostly for low level nodes, and mostly just to speed through with his match damage, because again, he's the only worthy 5* I have. Any medium-to-real challenge, I am much better off using one of my many champed 4*.

So great, just like you did with my first max-covered/leveled 4*: X-Force Wolverine, you're taking the Nerf Bat to Old Man Logan. I doubt he'll survive the beating any better than XFW, who I so rarely use anymore, it's sad.

Another fail, guys. Another Epic Fail.

BatteryHorse

I'm really curious what the changes will be. The devs stated objective is to reduce players reliance on OML in matches. So either the nerf will be significant enough to make people not want to use him, the nerf is mild enough that it doesn't actually change player behaviour, or strike some perfect middle ground where OML is still useful but players still make other choices.

My faith that the developers can miraculously land on the third choice is low.

Vhailorx

Pants1000 wrote:

If this must be done, PLEASE find a way to let people un-level him without selling. I don't want a weak level 420 character hurting my scaling, but I don't want to sell him either. I just want the option to take the ISO back out of him and use it elsewhere, until I'm truly ready to champ some 5's.

Good luck with that. Every time i point out here that the sale prices for changes characrers are pretty terrible, and suggest that we should be able to extract iso from a nerfed characrer without selling all covers at tue same time, i am excoriated on the forums as a whiny, entitled millenial who just wants free stuff.

Ratvader

As usual Changes are made and we cant even be told what they are ahead of time. We are beta testers. Im so done with this game. The fundamental game dynamic is changing with this. Without oml's healing black bolt and thanos are unbeatable. Im asking for a refund and walking away.

Screw you D3.

JablesMc

zodiac339 wrote:

And here I was coming to post about how all the bugs were a clue that Spider Man (3) was getting a rebalance, thus getting rid of the bugs. Like a spider can.

Thank goodness I don't PVP with Logan. Hope this doesn't hurt his value on the trivial nodes in PVE with the Thanos nuke.

Pretty much this.

GrimSkald

This is something I posted on the other thread.

Reading through the announcement again makes me wonder if OML once again represents a shift in design philosophy. We've seen these before - for example, the 3* tier used to have powers that had both up and downsides to them. Look at the Hulk, Human Torch, and the original build of IM40. They discarded this notion pretty quickly.

When they first released 5*s their stated intention was that the 5* characters scaled more with levels than with covers. This was intended to make them useful when they were incomplete - both Surfer (at least the original pre-buff build,) and OML really show that. Every character since then has not fared so well - sure there are some builds that are useful at lower covers but nothing that even comes close to a 13 cover build. Some characters (I'm looking at you, Jean,) are next-to-useless without 4 or 5 in a particular color.

Their original idea was a nice one, really, but it's really hard to build into their system. I suspect it's at least fallen by the wayside, and probably has even been discarded entirely.

UNC_Samurai

I'm going to wait and see what kind of damage the devs do to OML, before I fly off the handle. But people have already address the issues of his heavy use, what with saving health packs and the fact that people managed to get him covered before the 5* pool got too big to effectively cover anyone.

I've been collecting 5*s since they came out, and I finally bit the bullet and spent 720 CP to finish covering him last month. Finally, a year and a half after they were introduced, I got my first completed and maxed 5*. And now he's getting nerfed.

Maybe I wouldn't have to use him so much if 5*s didn't skew the PvE scale so much. Maybe I wouldn't have to use OML/PHX all the time in PvP if I could fight more than the occasional opponent who didn't have multiple champed 5*s (which was a problem even when my OML & PHX were in the 420-435 range).

I renewed my VIP last week, even after debating whether it was worth it. This does nothing to encourage me to do so again.

Daredevil217

Demiurge Lead Designer wrote:

As you recall, we’ve been focusing on character updates that increase the power of those characters, and monitoring how well that’s impacted team diversity and the competitive experience. Over time, we’ve seen that 4-star character positive rebalances have significantly improved those characters’ usability and ability to win battles. However, the same has not been true of improvements to 5-stars such as Silver Surfer (Skyrider) and Steve Rogers (First Avengers)

Does this mean 4* like Peggy and Carol are safe? The way it's written it sounds like the 4* buffs have been enough to promote diversity at the 4* tier.

I would like to know before I invest in them.

Brigby?

Hendross

djpt05 wrote:

Anyone else appreciate that it's happening during the Power season?

Rest assured, the irony is not lost on me.

Akari

If this nerf hits lower covered OMLs but goes away with more levels and covers, I'm all for it. If the nerf hits champed OML, then it's a huge hit to most PvP at 5* level and personally, I'd be completely screwed for PvE because I don't have the other PvE powerhouses like PHX, Bolt, or Thanos covered.

The problem is that we already know that Demi has 0 player experience at the top level, so I'm really worried that they're willing to shake up the top end so severely without any input from the people that it may seriously affect.

Polares

And here it is, OML's nerf, let's see how big the nerf is, but this can basically destroy all those people that started the 4-5 transition with OML. The scaling and MMR with a nerfed OML is going to be great.

The only good thing of nerfing OML now is that most of the people that have him champed has other 5s champed now.

And I think this is the first nerf to somebody that is basically good tier or doesn't have a winfinite type ability. OML is NOT top tier in 5 land, he is much more useful for transitioners than for people with 5-8 champed 5s. So at least this time... I don't care! It won't affect me at all! This is new! I don't need to go after another char to max him as fast as possible! I already have the best 5s champed!

But yeah it is going to be 'fun' for a lot of people.

PS: what it is obviously true is that he was one of the most used chars in the game, but I don't know if this is enough of a reason to nerf anybody...

Tretas

At least we cant complain about them having their priorities wrong.
This was more important that the cd tile bug, SL 9/10, outdated pve and testing the game for exploits.

dbfclark

I have a maxed OML and use him in every fight I can. How does this come about?

OML is one of the early 5*s, and accordingly I started gathering covers for him when he was released, about 3 months before I got my first maxed 4*. Pulling latests until after GG's release and classics to start building out a 4* stable meant mostly getting OML/surfer/phx covers at a decent rate until last summer, and an OML who was getting close to max level. Around August I started hoarding Latests, and after pulling my 13th OML in October I started hoarding CP, since this is the only plausible way to advance.

Today I've got a little over 200 latest pulls stored between tokens and CP, which means I should hit the ~350-400 required to ensure 3 covered 5*s around the same time I get the ~6mm ISO required to champ the 4*s and 5*s the eventual pull-fest will generate -- six months on the inside. My next highest 5* is PHX at 2/4/4, which would require about 400 classic pulls (meaning CP only) to champ, which is much farther away than six months. What this means is that not only is OML my only maxed 5*, but he's likely to have been so for at least a year before I get a second, as no other 5* is even a plausible candidate for maxing if I poured all my resources into it today.

This is unlikely to be an uncommon story -- it's just what happens when you pull what you get until that stops being a reasonable way to advance. One maxed 5* is probably OML, having two (particularly two other than OML/PHX) is unlikely and getting unlikelier.

How will a nerf of OML impact my usage?

It depends how hard, of course. I've champed the top 15 or so 4*s; since progression for me basically means getting more 5*s, I'm unlikely to champ any more until the end of the hoard. This doesn't quite ensure 2 boosted 4*s every week -- most weeks it's more like 1 (and that one is sometimes a support rather than a tank), some weeks it's 0. I usually use PHX (at 405) over an unbooosted 4* and sometimes over a boosted 4*. Nerfing OML will only make me use him less if it's hard enough to make a max-level OML less good than a 405 PHX; unless it's hard enough to make champ OML worse than a boosted 4* this only moves the problem to PHX. And my scaling problem won't go away. And the only solution is to keep muscling through the hoard -- the only way to get stronger is *still* to pull 400 latests at the same time.

I suppose there is one bright spot for d3: champing OML made my average cost of shielding per PVP event go way down. If I and other maxed OML players can no longer semi-reliably two-hop to 1200, that would meaningfully increase my HP outflow. That would at least be a coherent motive for a nerf to max-level OML. Of course, making it that much more unpleasant to get the resources required to progress without giving me a reason to change my play style more than a little at a time when I'm looking at 6 months of hoarding before I can materially improve my roster might well have a different side effect than intended.

alaeth

This news is extremely disappointing. It shows a lack on connection between the designers and the players.

Others have said it here already - the problem isn't OML, the problem is the basic mechanics of the game FORCE players to grind nodes to dust to make progression.

The limiting factor is health pools - of course true healers (and OML being the only 5* one) will stand out!

I use this as well, but not being blessed with any yellow covers for Logan, I'm forced to use X-23 and Daken/Patches with my Thanos for "seed teams".



Data filtering - re-run the numbers:

* exclude "seed teams"
* take into account defensive wins...
* take into account the _age_ of OML - one if the first 5* introduced.


This nerf really doesn't hit me directly, but the data-mining shortsightedness is truly alarming. Based on the "10% win" metric, Thanos is next as he is heavily favored for Lightning Rounds and seed teams...

ZootSax

Akari wrote:

If this nerf hits lower covered OMLs but goes away with more levels and covers, I'm all for it. If the nerf hits champed OML, then it's a huge hit to most PvP at 5* level and personally, I'd be completely screwed for PvE because I don't have the other PvE powerhouses like PHX, Bolt, or Thanos covered.

This seems like a reasonable way for them to do it to me. That being said, I don't really have a stake in this argument, as personally, my Logan is only 2/1/0 and I really don't use him outside of lightning round seed teams (where any of my other poorly-covered 5*'s would pair with Thanos just as well).

They did well enough with recent 4* buffs that I'm cautiously optimistic that they could get it right. Honestly, toning down the self-heal at 1-3 covers (more at 1 cover than at 3, obviously) while not substantially changing anything else would probably get their desired result without fundamentally altering the character or impacting high-tier play. We shall see...

mr_X

I agree. A clear indicator that d3 are totally detatched from the reality of those who play the game. Boss rush showed this. I really hope d3 reconcider this. Maybe a nerf too far for me.

Leugenesmiff

IMO, and I'm just speculating, this is just going to hurt the mid-tier players ( the long time FTPers like me and the newer players who spend a moderate amount of money) in hopes to get those at a comfortable position to spend a bit more. If OML and Thanos had been released in reverse order this would be a Thanos nerf and quite possibly there never would be an OML nerf.
What sucks for FTPers like me for whom OML is our only playable 5* is that if they nerf him down to where he isn't worth playing at a handful of covers then, unless this nerf is accompanied by matchmaking changes, those of us who've leveled him up will be stuck at a level where we no longer have the power to compete.
Wait and see I guess. For now, like I said, I'm just speculating, but it doesn't sound good to me.

That said, they've still allowed me to enjoy a fantastic game for free all of these years, so no matter what happens I can't be all that upset. Doesn't mean I have to like it though.

NewMcG

Akari wrote:

The problem is that we already know that Demi has 0 player experience at the top level, so I'm really worried that they're willing to shake up the top end so severely without any input from the people that it may seriously affect.

While the first part is shown to probably be true, can you really take a look at the response in this particular thread (and the others related to it) and say that they'd get ANY useful feedback if they ran this by this forum crowd, even as a theoretical suggestion? (Since I presume this particular group represents the "seriously affected" you're referring to?)