Soul Gem Season Changes *Updated (6/27/17)

zodiac339

It could end up being easier to get sickening damage out of Venom's Lethal Protector than it is out of Cage's yellow. You could have a team built around fortified tiles to up the damage of Hero for Hire, or a team that can do enough damage once or twice a turn to spit out the enemy protects, and there are more strike and attack tile generators than there are fortifiers. Just having a 3* Iron Fist will do it.
I should modify that first sentence. In more cases, it will be easier to get sickening damage out of Lethal Protector.
The caveat: his Crash of Titans won't go as well with no strike/attack partner. Or was his Crash vs Carnage? Oh, no problem. GIve Alien Instincts a couple turns and you'll just have to gather a little yellow, wait a few turns, and nuke him down.

Warbringa

Jaedenkaal said:

Jaedenkaal said:

Warbringa said:

Yeah it depends on the damage for 3* Spidey.  Already his bonus damage is just worse than Cage since it only kicks in if you have defeated allies.  That is hands down inferior to Cages, which is allies still alive.  A scenario you encounter much more often than having downed allies.  At least in my experience, I rarely ever have a character go down, albeit they may get very close.  

Yeah the condition isn't stellar, as you say, but as we haven't seen the numbers yet, it's possible that it does ~6000 damage base at 166, plus bonus damage with downed allies, which would be a very reasonable 500 damage per AP, on par with Magnetized Projectiles, Righteous Uppercut, and A Little Off the Top. Even at 5000 damage base it would be in the same range as Optic Blasts or Colossal Punch, which are still pretty serviceable.

Called it.

Indeed you did!

His base damage is decent although his conditional damage is still pretty useless, for me at least, because I rarely have a character go down.  I would still take Cage nearly 99% of the time over Spidey (boosts etc aside) on an overall character basis but also just looking at a yellow damage power basis, but at least Spidey is now respectable and has a power that can cause damage!  He could work in the right team I suppose if you had a good purple user and didn't have a better use for a blue active.  I just wish they would have included more web tile functionality with the power re-work.

I doubt it would be useful to pair him with a weak 1* or 2* character just to get his yellow conditional to work as some have wondered earlier in the post.  

Jaedenkaal

Warbringa said:

His base damage is decent although his conditional damage is still pretty useless, for me at least, because I rarely have a character go down.  I would still take Cage nearly 99% of the time over Spidey (boosts etc aside) on an overall character basis but also just looking at a yellow damage power basis, but at least Spidey is now respectable and has a power that can cause damage!  He could work in the right team I suppose if you had a better purple user and didn't have a better use for a blue active.  I just wish they would have included more web tile functionality with the power re-work.

I doubt it would be useful to pair him with a weak 1* or 2* character just to get his yellow conditional to work as some have wondered earlier in the post.  

Yeah I don't disagree, although it's interesting how closely their powers now overlap: Yellow huge damage, passive protect tiles, and a cheap, short stun. 

I'd probably give Cage the edge here too, but probably only because A ) Jab,Jab, Cross does damage, and B ) 3* Iron Fist generates Black, and not Blue. If Spidey was boosted and Luke not, I'd take Spidey. 

I bet that's the first time anyone ever typed that last part.

If there was a Yellow or Blue battery in 3* land, I don't know if this would be as easy a pick.

@Brigby
I know this isn't a feedback thread, but just this once...
It would be really nice if All Tied Up could make Web tiles of any color, instead of only Yellow. There's a lot of tension (bad tension) between keeping Yellow Web tiles around to boost Spider Sense Protect tiles, and matching them away to get the 12 AP you need for When The Going's Tough. This was already an issue with Web Bandages, and I think it's worse now that it's a damage dealing power. Other Web tile creators make webs of many colors (1* Venom was even changed to do so) so I'm not asking for a major precedent here
Thank you for your consideration

Brigby

DrDevilDinosaur said:

Brigby

Just wondering if you can get some confirmation on Venom at rank 5 - the description shows that it sets the strength of enemy protect tiles to 1 (rather than reducing by a % like the other ranks). How does this interact with tile strength buffs?

For example,

enemy 4* Falcon drop some protect tiles - Venom sets them to strength 1

enemy Falcon starts matching blue to improve the strength - does Venom's passive keep them at 1 (at least while he is active) or does it only effect them at the time of creation?

Based off existing mechanics, I would assume that the tiles are buffed, but still only effectively strength 1 while Venom is active, however the wording of the ability at rank 5 is slightly different to what we have had before, so it would be nice to check.

@DrDevilDinosaur
Good question! I'll ask the developers, and relay their response when I hear back from them.

Jaedenkaal said:

-snip-

Brigby
I know this isn't a feedback thread, but just this once...
It would be really nice if All Tied Up could make Web tiles of any color, instead of only Yellow. There's a lot of tension (bad tension) between keeping Yellow Web tiles around to boost Spider Sense Protect tiles, and matching them away to get the 12 AP you need for When The Going's Tough. This was already an issue with Web Bandages, and I think it's worse now that it's a damage dealing power. Other Web tile creators make webs of many colors (1* Venom was even changed to do so) so I'm not asking for a major precedent here
Thank you for your consideration

@Jaedenkaal
Thanks for the feedback! I can't guarantee any changes will be made, but I'll be sure to relay your suggestion to them.

aa25

Brigby said:

Thanos said:

I'm pretty sure they just nerfed Venom. His green still sucks even with a slight damage boost, his black is still tinykitty and you now have to give the enemy 3 protect tiles before it'll do the same damage as before. Maybe Demiurge should let a different employee take a crack at Venom, maybe try the janitor, he can't do much worse.

@Thanos
 (Disclaimer: I'm not a designer/developer, so please consider my following comments as spoken by a fellow player)

His yellow does give the enemy protect tiles, but wouldn't that detail be practically negligible if at level 5 his black reduces them all to 1?

I think the problem of this type of mechanic is you are forced to set his black to 5 covers just to offset his yellow which doesn't bring much to the party to begin with. In my opinion, half of the reasons he was considered the worst 4* before this buff was due to the same reason. Pre-buffed 4* Venom brought an average nuke at best with drawback to the board along with a passive that hurt more than help your team.

In term of mechanics, if we compare this newly-buffed Venom to other 4* who brings a solid nuke that deals upto 1000 damage per ap without any condition or drawback, having to set his passive to 5 is just a straight drawback without any real benefit. Although, in practice, this new Venom drops pretty small protect tiles, so you can still set his black at 3 covers and ignore the protect tiles, but, fundamentally, this is not a good mechanic anyway.

Brigby

@DrDevilDinosaur
So it turns out that Venom's power works very similar to Spider-Man (Back in Black). So long as Venom is not disabled nor downed, all enemy Protect tiles remain at 1 strength and ignore any attempted buffs to them.

So in your example, Falcon would not be able to increase the strength of the Protect tile, unless Venom is stunned, sent airborne, or downed beforehand.

mega ghost

Spider-Man's re-work seems like a solid boost for people transitioning from 2* to 3*, and just in the 3* range in general — that's the last time I recall having character's routinely go down in matches. But past that, in the 4* transition? Well-leveled and champed 4* characters rarely go down, which means I'll only be using him when he's required. 

mega ghost

These were my suggestions back in January for a Spider-Man rework:

mega ghost said:

1) Spider-Man.

 Trash this ability. Spider-Man isn't a healer. It should be a simple, basic  attack. Maybe make it a cheaper, 5 AP version of Web Swing, also adding a non-color specific web tile to the board with each attack, with the damage getting more reliable boosts with each web tile on the board but capping it at some point so it doesn't become a top tier all-out nuke.

 Web tiles shouldn't be limited to yellow, they should appear on random colors.

 If you match purple, it should create a strike tile. If an enemy matches purple, it should create a protect tile. This ability should also have a secondary function of always keeping Spider-Man out of the front position (unless he's the only remaining character, of course.) His Spider-Sense should have him evading attacks!

The unaltered purple is the biggest sin. His Spider-Sense should arguably be his most unique, versatile power. Blue is mostly fine as-is but shouldn't limit the web tiles to yellow. And I still like the idea of having his attack (I recommended red, but keep it yellow, I have no problems with that) not only creating web tiles, but also having its cost reduced with web tiles.

The conditional of dealing more damage when there are fallen teammates seems out of place. Isn't Spider-Man more known for putting himself in harm's way to save others? I'd prefer something along this line, perhaps coming into play when a teammate is below a certain health percentage. Maybe Spider-Man can swing in and neutralize damage in exchange for taking a percentage himself or becoming stunned for a turn or two (at the cost of a web tile — if there are none, he takes some of the damage instead.) It could work like Deadpool's Life of the Party, but with no associated heal. I'd also make this a passive attached to his purple.

Skrofa

Well... carnage plus eddie will be very fun to fight against in Venom Bomb now...!

D4Ni13

mega ghost said:

Spider-Man's re-work seems like a solid boost for people transitioning from 2* to 3*, and just in the 3* range in general — that's the last time I recall having character's routinely go down in matches. But past that, in the 4* transition? Well-leveled and champed 4* characters rarely go down, which means I'll only be using him when he's required. 

Most 3* are less useful with 4* team mates. So no surprise there.

talleman

Still havent seen any changes to spidey and venom and gwenpool is still in packs. What time can i expect theese changes?

Alsmir

It's live on Steam.

I even managed to waste a LT pull on Sandman. Yay, for useless characters.

talleman

Alsmir said:

It's live on Steam.

I even managed to waste a LT pull on Sandman. Yay, for useless characters.  

Yeah its live for me now aswell. Pulled 3 LT got 2 5*s and ofcorse 1 sandman

(Got stuck in quote cause mobile phone)  [Fixed it for you -Dayv]

BoyWonder1914

Spidey's damage is nice, but I still probably won't be using him. As several people have pointed out, once you're firmly in 4-star land, its a rarity for a character to go down. Also, 12 Yellow AP is still more valuable going to an IM40 recharge, Agent Venom's Take Cover, or Righteous Uppercut. Hell, even Twin Pistols also contains board destruction. This will be more of one of those back-pocket powers the way my roster is set up, unless its a 3-star Essential node, or Spidey's PVP when you're in the oh so dreaded Spidey vs Spidey situation. 

mega ghost

D4Ni13 said:

mega ghost said:

Spider-Man's re-work seems like a solid boost for people transitioning from 2* to 3*, and just in the 3* range in general — that's the last time I recall having character's routinely go down in matches. But past that, in the 4* transition? Well-leveled and champed 4* characters rarely go down, which means I'll only be using him when he's required. 

Most 3* are less useful with 4* team mates. So no surprise there.

Yes, but enough still are because they either have great utility or work very well with certain 4* characters (Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Thanos, Blade, Kamala Khan, Iron Fist, Scarlet Witch, etc.) and that number increases quite a bit when they're boosted. But even boosted I wouldn't see myself bring Spider-Man along for the aforementioned reasons — he'll rarely meet the conditions required to do serious damage, and at 12 AP his decent damage won't hold a candle against plenty of better contenders.

sinnerjfl

Played a little bit with the new Venom, quite frankly his yellow has been nerfed for all intent and purposes.

You need to chase yellow to cast it and end up removing a lot of it off the board, you're lucky if you can keep 3 of the enemy protects in play before using it. So you end up with the same damage but you have to babysit the board and wait until you do enough damage to create the protects...  instead of having the fixed damage as before, bleh.

Change to black, +75% match damage is not even noticeable, green is basically the same.

I guess his new yellow is awesome vs protect tile creators (Bullseye, C4ge, Sam Wilson) but otherwise this is really dissapointing.

JHawkInc

I'm still kinda miffed that 3* Spidey's purple didn't change (and with everything indicating the next Spidey is a 5*, extra sour about the lack of a 4* Parker...), but man, I am having a lot of fun with the Venom changes. As one of the crazy people who already had him champed, he's GREAT fun in Nefarious Foes.

Another 4* successfully moved from "garbage" to "fun and usable". Now if only we could convince you guys to go back and re-evaluate all those 3*s that have been left in the dust....

Borstock

Does 3* Spidey's yellow power have no animation? Messed around with him a little in PvP and the screen just flashes when the DMG is dealt. 

Jaedenkaal

Maybe it's new and your device hasn't DLd the art yet? New abilities look weird the first few times for me, presumably for that reason. Haven't tried this one myself.

DarthDeVo

talleman said:

Alsmir said:

It's live on Steam.

I even managed to waste a LT pull on Sandman. Yay, for useless characters.  

Yeah its live for me now aswell. Pulled 3 LT got 2 5*s and ofcorse 1 sandman

(Got stuck in quote cause mobile phone)

I've noticed that when this happens on mobile, if you delete everything and reclick the "Quote" link, it will give you a clean slate with the cursor outside of the quote boxes.

BoyWonder1914 said:

Spidey's damage is nice, but I still probably won't be using him. As several people have pointed out, once you're firmly in 4-star land, its a rarity for a character to go down. Also, 12 Yellow AP is still more valuable going to an IM40 recharge, Agent Venom's Take Cover, or Righteous Uppercut. Hell, even Twin Pistols also contains board destruction. This will be more of one of those back-pocket powers the way my roster is set up, unless its a 3-star Essential node, or Spidey's PVP when you're in the oh so dreaded Spidey vs Spidey situation. 

This has happened to me on several occasions, so the yellow damage will be welcome in a situation like this. However, as much as I appreciate the buff, I'm working my way into 4* land, so don't use my 3*s very often, so not sure how much I'll actually end up using him outside of required events.