Mind Gem Season Changes *Updated (7/25/17)

dokiy

Thanks to the RNG Gods I have a champed Riri and a 13/13 Mordo (at level 70 haha). So it will be a season of saving ISO to build up Mordo I guess. Good changes. 

zodiac339

mexus said:

New Mordo seems nice but the AI never store AP in the pool long enough to make it reach full potential. Will wait for the official damage numbers though.

You can exploit enemy teams that don't fully cover certain colors with actives. Also, look for teams built around Bl4de, and use Mordo's purple to shut down Bloodthirst, or Chulk/Wasp teams with no active blue and strategically cut down the blue AP. Cardusa teams also have a tendancy to be missing at least one active power. They can often end up building 2 pools up with nothing to use if for, so Mordo (probably at 3/5/5 with your own Medusa) can take advantage of that.

Khanwulf

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. 4-Star characters are usually added to packs the season after their Versus tournament occurs, however since the scheduling for Vulture's event happened to start just prior to the new season, the development team will be reviewing the decision on pack contents again on Monday.

I will be sure to update the post once I hear back from them.

Leaving Vulture out for a whole season is a questionable decision, especially as he's actually decent if he has all three covers... but black was only available to top placement performers. Very disappointing.

Mordo's reduced HP is significant and disappointing as he frequently tanks his colors and will be harder to keep up now. Stats on his purple damage would be helpful. As would stats on his black. Increasing blue damage wasn't necessary... but is welcome. Better would be more black charged tiles, however.

No comments on Riri except, of course, that inquiring minds want to know if airborne targets are removed for purposes of her remote gauntlets doing double damage....

--Khanwulf

revskip

I'm in the minority but am happy Vulture will be another season away.  I have all of the current magic 12 champed so an extra month to champ some of my vaulted characters will be very welcome.  Got to finally champ Iceman and 4Thor this season and now can turn my attention to Hulkbuster and maybe Deadpool or Moonknight.  

charmbots

mexus said:

New Mordo seems nice but the AI never store AP in the pool long enough to make it reach full potential. Will wait for the official damage numbers though.

Mordo's purple will be an interesting combo with Carol's green against any team with their strongest color on a passive ability. It's a very specific situation, but it does happen a bit.

max5esq

I wish they would post numbers when they post these things, I can't really tell if  some of these changes are positive or not without knowing damage numbers.

himatako

Khanwulf said:

No comments on Riri except, of course, that inquiring minds want to know if airborne targets are removed for purposes of her remote gauntlets doing double damage....

--Khanwulf

I think this is the case. Her powers seem to be designed to help them work together. Her blue helps accelerates her red and get rid of enemy special tiles, removing green's penalty of sending her airborne. Then use green to send all but one enemies airborne so you can double her red damage on the only target left. 

DesertTortoise

mexus said:

New Mordo seems nice but the AI never store AP in the pool long enough to make it reach full potential. Will wait for the official damage numbers though.

Mordo's purple was the only power that we were given any numbers on and it's around 750 damage per AP at 270 with 5 covers. That's pretty damn potent and efficient. I do argue that there are some cases where the AI has passives that it gathers a lot in a color with no outlet (Daken primarily, Ultron sentries are notable AP gatherers as well, wave nodes are good examples too). 

granne

He will make it riskier to run Medusa, Carol and Wasp. Not only do they have passive green, blue and red, but Medusa generates green and blue.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ubiquity of that team (and Blade instead of Wasp) was part of the reasoning behind the rework.

Anon

The cost of Mordo's Black was increased? Why though?

Jaedenkaal

mexus said:

Anon said:

The cost of Mordo's Black was increased? Why though?

Don't know. Looks like the AoE effect is gone as well.

That was always a garbage AOE, for the effort it took to get it going. Now it doesn't destroy the Black charged tiles so you can fire it off a few times and keep ramping up the damage, ala Smite.

DesertTortoise

The AoE on his black was great under the condition that you fired it with 5 black charged tiles out against 3 enemies as far as efficiency sake but the problem is that took so much work, and so much damage being dealt that there's no way you'd have three opponents to use it on unless it was a wave node. 

Brigby

mexus said:

Anon said:

The cost of Mordo's Black was increased? Why though?

Don't know. Looks like the AoE effect is gone as well.

Also, Brigby - any news on Vulture?

@mexus We're currently waiting for a response from one of the developers for more insight into Vulture not being in tokens.

On an unrelated note, when it comes to Riri's new Remote Control Gauntlets, here is what the developers had to say about its functionality:

"this power is better when there are 3 enemies or just one. If one enemy is downed, the gauntlet will only hit the back one for normal damage."

As of right now, if one enemy is downed and the other is airborne, then this ability is not able to be activated. Having said that though, we are waiting for the character designer's response as to whether this behavior is expected or not.

zodiac339

Brigby said:

mexus said:

Anon said:

The cost of Mordo's Black was increased? Why though?

Don't know. Looks like the AoE effect is gone as well.

Also, Brigby - any news on Vulture?

@mexus We're currently waiting for a response from one of the developers for more insight into Vulture not being in tokens.

On an unrelated note, when it comes to Riri's new Remote Control Gauntlets, here is what the developers had to say about its functionality:

"this power is better when there are 3 enemies or just one. If one enemy is downed, the gauntlet will only hit the back one for normal damage."

As of right now, if one enemy is downed and the other is airborne, then this ability is not able to be activated. Having said that though, we are waiting for the character designer's response as to whether this behavior is expected or not.

I hope that's not expected. Considering one of her functions is to send an enemy airborne, the design puts her into a self-defeating situation.

NewMcG

After seeing the Vulture discussion thread (and seeing some of the ways Vulture could be a possible terror as a solo hit-and-run character), I wonder if the devs are a little gunshy about knowingly putting a potentially overpowered character into the pool if they may need to balance him out before long? 

DarthDeVo

Looks like I'll probably readjust Riri to 4/5/4 at the very least. 

And am I understanding Mordo's purple correctly this way? Say you're playing against C4rol, Medusa and Wasp. They don't have active ways to discharge red, green or blue AP, so say they get to 30 in one of them. If I use Mordo's purple and it does 783 damage per AP in their highest pool, that should be 23,490 damage, right?

I mean, once Medusa/C4rol/Wasp gets rolling, matches end pretty quickly so they might not get to 30 AP, but in theory this could happen, right? If so, I may have to reconsider Mordo' s build too, if only against teams with a passive and no way to discharge that particular AP.

TheRealJRad

New McG said:

After seeing the Vulture discussion thread (and seeing some of the ways Vulture could be a possible terror as a solo hit-and-run character), I wonder if the devs are a little gunshy about knowingly putting a potentially overpowered character into the pool if they may need to balance him out before long? 

Easy fix - "We apologize for the delay in releasing Vulture to packs. The release version of the character was more powerful than we intended, and for this reason, we will be keeping him out of packs while we rework him. We apologize for the inconvenience."

-Stops all this speculation
-Prepares people for a nerf before they get too attached to the character
-Reduces the number of people who won't be happy they saved all season for the character to get nerfed 
 -Alternatively, reduces the number of people who are really not happy when they blow their hoard for him and he gets nerfed

Transparency goes a long way towards trust. Letting the community know you messed up isn't a bad thing - it makes mistakes easier to overlook, since you know they were mistakes and not a lack of transparency.

At any rate, the current vault is now stale. 2/3 of the 5* are mostly undesirable, and the 4* have been out long enough to be pretty well covered by most (except Sandman, but it's Sandman). More people hoarding = less people incentivized to spend money. If you're going to vault, you have to be prepared to rotate characters as often as possible.

waywreth

Conspiracy theories abound, I think it was just the dev who would've done it was on vacation last week.

Player1575

Good to see d3 can't make up their minds about anything. Sandman was the last event last season and was added, yet vulture is the last event this season and isn't added. You guys should have changed this and just admitted you messed up by not initially saying he was being added. 

DyingLegend

Seriously no vulture next season? One of the coolest looking and animated characters along with a great toolkit is being left out for another season? Kinda lame.... Maybe they need to release characters that deal with airborne foes first.