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

Dragon_Nexus

DarthDeVo said:

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.

Yeah, that appears to be how that works. I mis-read it at first, thinking it was 5x 783 or 3915, which sounded pretty lame. Then I re-read it destroys up to 5, but does damage for each AP in the pool...so that'll hit hard.

Honestly, I'm having trouble working out a build for him. Really I want him at 5/5/5. His black with 8 charged tiles could be a 10k hit. you kinda want his blue high to make charged tiles, especially with the damage increase. But as you say, his purple has the potential to hit the hardest. When he's boosted to 366 or higher, that thing hits for a potential max of 47,130.

I agree with you on Riri though. The benefit of her blue is to make charged red tiles. The benefit of her green is to send people airborne. The damage is kind of secondary. There's not enough damage difference between 4 blue and 5 to make it worth it, but it's absolutely worth going from 3 to 4 to get those charged tiles. Obviously you want 5 in red because that hits the hardest.

I'm not sure if the damage balance is quite fair though, splitting the max in two. Though I suppose it works kind of like how Punisher works. It's odd though, they added HP to make her tankier, but made her moves kind of weaker overall.

zodiac339

It's not odd that her powers became weaker. Her health was always an offset to her very high damage. At least red is capable of relatively the same damage. It's sad that green lost power since it was very good compared to other 8AP powers, but they weren't going to give her tankiness and let her be a massive damage-dealer. It's like 2* Storm; Wind Storm is monsterously strong with in her tier, so the low health is just fine.

Rick_OShay

Did we deal direct damage to Galactus during that event? If so, Mordo might be pretty useful if that event runs around again...

Really hope the new drawback to Ironheart's red can be straightened out in time. They need to make the red power hit at x2 strength when there is an airborne enemy and only 1 targeted enemy.

--> The only other thing, and I may be reading too much or too little into the description of her revised blue power - but it states that it moves basic OR enemy special tiles to the center - without stating that it specifically prioritizes the specials (as it does before the update).
Hopefully it does prioritize them, as in, if there are only 3 enemy specials out, Riri undoubtedly pulls those 3, plus 1 random basic to the center and converts them to charged red tiles. If there's 1, she pulls it etc. I'm concerned that it will be completely random tiles going forward.
Compare this to 3* Rocket & Groot green, it Can hit enemy specials at high cover levels, but it doesn't 'prioritize' them (same with SWitch green). Similar again to 3* Magneto's yellow, his protect tiles may overwrite enemy specials, but certainly does not target them.
If it will now be completely random tiles, enemy special or not, I suppose this side of getting nerfed is made up for by the newly added damage and red acceleration, but dang.

NewMcG

mexus said:

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? 

What Vulture decision thread do you refer to?
I see no desicion here.

The Vulture character discussion thread. I'll leave you guessing as to which forum to find it in.

NewMcG

TheRealJRad said:

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.

It could do that. Or it could send the barking dogs of the forum baying at the moon because we won't be allowed a month of a potentially broken character, and a chorus of "Why shouldn't we get to use him for a month just because someone messed up and made him abusably overpowered? That's not OUR fault!" rings out?

If a nerf happens, no matter the forewarning they give, it will be decried by the forums as another "slap in the face of the player base" or some other such bloviating, hyperbolic silliness.

DrDevilDinosaur

I think everyone knows that Vulture is getting a nerf by now, the only thing that's surprising is then decision to try and halt the release. It's the very definition of closing the gate after the horse has bolted.

Just release Vulture on schedule and push the character update out in the middle of the season. That way it's done and we can put this mess behind us.

Akari

Initial thoughts on new damage numbers:
Riri stays 355, her red needs to be 5 for massive damage, and her green, which already does lower damage, does even less at less than 5 covers. Blue is niche and the damage doesn't change enough to warrant more covers - red charged vs red basic doesn't seem important enough either, but I guess it could change depending on team composition.

Mordo now 355. His new purple is crazy and absolutely worthless at 3/4 covers. His black is so weak regardless of cover level that I'd swap him to 355 and abandon it - unless you're pairing him with Surfer or Bolt or someone else that makes charged tiles.

Sm0keyJ0e

After using a champed Vulture extensively during his PVP run, I do not think he is overpowered at all. Even once airborne, you just nuke and/or stun once he lands. He helps with AP generation and is a kill first toon in most instances but he's far from OP in the current meta. IM40 is far more deadly in the 3* tier than Vulture is in the 4* tier.

DesertTortoise

As someone who thought both were a bit underrated beforehand my first impressions:

• Riri's blue should be interesting in practice and I don't want to speculate too much about how good of a red AP generator it ends up being but it looks like it has a ton of potential. If there's a red tile or two bordering the middle 2x2 you could get a match 5 pretty easily, deal damage, remove enemy special tiles and get plenty of AP for a potent red. If she's your only blue, red and green user this power will probably still be useful at 3 covers, which is a nice surprise. 
• Riri's red is like a weird take on Punisher's green. It should be a fine return against one or three enemies but a waste against two. Those boosted numbers will be great on carving up teams early and her ability to feed herself red makes up the gap between the old damage and new numbers.
• Green lost a lot of it's punch, but it's still got some use. 3 turns of CC for 8 AP and non-terrible damage is nice. When boosted it's still over 1K dam/AP so that's nice.
• Overall, she can probably be run at 3/5/5, 5/5/3 or 5/3/5 (green outlet, blue -> red battery for someone else) so her utility went up greatly. The health going up 50% also gives her a lot more value.
• Mordo's black seems really bad now. It takes a lot to get going before it approaches a mediocre dam/ap number. 5 tiles out is a 854 dam/ap which is solid, but anything less than that is used strictly to get tiles on the board to keep it going. Raising the cost on it is a strange choice, but now that it generates 4 charged tiles I'll wait to see it in action since it might end up being faster than it looks on paper. 
• Mordo's blue was good and got better. No complaints.
• Mordo's purple stands on its own as a really good power. Anything above 9 AP at 5 covers is a decent return and it burns AP on top of that. I'm looking forward to how useful it is in action but it seems like a winner and will make him harder to spec around his charged tile creation. 
• 3/5/5 for a better black user is probably going to be a popular build. 5/5/3 really depends on how his black functions in practice and having a better purple user. If he was the sole blue/black/purple user I think a non horrible argument could be made for 5/3/5 if his black ends up being anywhere near decent. 

Straycat

One thing I didn't see anyone mention, Riri can target countdown tiles now. Her blue is not only useful with a basic board, its useful in pve. I think her changes were great. Still have to see how it all plays out, her red being only a starter or finisher is a little troubling, but much less of a draw back than her blue was previously. I'll probably go 4/5/4, was never too impressed by her green. I like that its a much more straightforward power, instead of always awkwardly making yourself airborne the same amount unless at 5 covers.

Mordo's base damage decrease is disappointing. His blue and purple are now much better than base black. Black is completely useless at less than 5 covers. It does so much less damage, but also creates less tiles so it can never reach the threshold to do more. Can't really find a 4/4/5 sort of best of both build. Probably gonna try him out at 5/3/5, then maybe default him to 3/5/5.

zodiac339

mexus said:

DrDevilDinosaur said:

I think everyone knows that Vulture is getting a nerf by now, the only thing that's surprising is then decision to try and halt the release. It's the very definition of closing the gate after the horse has bolted.

Just release Vulture on schedule and push the character update out in the middle of the season. That way it's done and we can put this mess behind us.

Word. Release the Vulture.
But I mean, is he really overpowered?
He's got a meh nuke, another meh nuke that could turn into a good AoE and he goes airborne all the time to generate AP. What part of him is OP / nerfable? Maybe he shouldn't generate black AP, at least not that many black AP but other than that I can't see how he's OP.

The blue nuke isn't meh. Its damage is quite good at 6586 for 10AP, but the kicker is that it destroys special tiles and gets AP for it! There are very few powers that let you generate AP from destroyed tiles. I believe he's the first in 4* land. It may be that generating AP from it was something they forgot to take away, and they have to fix it before he's gererally available.
6641 targeted from a CD is kind of meh (especially considering Carol's massive 10K for 1 AP less with strike tiles too), so naturally, that will take proper use, but proper use means an AOE that's double the damage of similar costed AOE powers, along with being able to stack the CDs before taking off, leading to a game-ending landing.

CrookedKnight

Technically he's the second 4* character with that trick, the first being post-buff pre-nerf X-Force Wolverine, back when Surgical Strike was the unquestioned best move in the game. 

CrookedKnight

I'm not OCD but I'd like some assurance that I won't end up holding on to my 4* tokens for upwards of two months waiting for a worthwhile character to show up in the pool. 

JHawkInc

mexus said:

Any Vulture news, @Brigby? I don't wanna nag but now I'm nagging, not knowing what to expect and how to plan my roster tickle my worst OCD nerves.

I don't want to nag Brigby because he does the best he can for us to keep the line of communication open, but I sure as hell want to nag the devs for changing the character release rules, that have functioned the same way for years, with zero warning whatsoever.

I swear they must have a guy on staff to just sit there and say things like "Sinister Six seems to be well accepted, we better screw with something they're familiar with so they don't start thinking we're getting good at this."

DCUDCU

I have a feeling that there is possibly a change in the works for the vault and that's why Vulture isn't entering yet. I have zero inside information, just a hunch I've had for awhile that maybe we will see an expanded set of 4* available from tokens.

One one hand, no vault, for a new character, 1 out of 51 4* plus 1 in 3 odds of a certain color, could take forever to max a newer 4*.

On the other hand, only 12 of 51 limits things.

My guess is the available characters gets changed to 16-20.

Rick_OShay

This thought recently occurred to me, 
What if the potential delay of adding the new 4 star to packs - for a whole season - had happened with Sand-man instead of Vulture?
Everyone be like.. delayed a season? Ok sounds good.

Rick_OShay

@Straycat said:

One thing I didn't see anyone mention, Riri can target countdown tiles now. Her blue is not only useful with a basic board, its useful in pve. I think her changes were great. Still have to see how it all plays out...

As much as i hope you are correct, if you reread the description again, nothing says she will now 'target' or 'prioritize' any kind of special, CD or otherwise.
It now simply states 'basic or special, as if it's completely random which get chosen from the entire board.

Again, i hope you are right, but see my previous post for further thought/confusion/concern.

zodiac339

Rick OShay said:

This thought recently occurred to me, 
What if the potential delay of adding the new 4 star to packs - for a whole season - had happened with Sand-man instead of Vulture?
Everyone be like.. delayed a season? Ok sounds good.

Three months later, you notice the Sandman in your roster. "They never added you to packs, did they? I hadn't even noticed."

shardwick

DCUDCU said:

I have a feeling that there is possibly a change in the works for the vault and that's why Vulture isn't entering yet. I have zero inside information, just a hunch I've had for awhile that maybe we will see an expanded set of 4* available from tokens.

One one hand, no vault, for a new character, 1 out of 51 4* plus 1 in 3 odds of a certain color, could take forever to max a newer 4*.

On the other hand, only 12 of 51 limits things.

My guess is the available characters gets changed to 16-20.

I'm hoping to see custom packs so you would still have the latest 6-8 characters then the rest would be made up of random ones from the vault along with some that you can add. Or even just the latest eight and then you can add four from the vault.

DarthDeVo

The way I read Riri's blue is that it will draw special tiles, or basic if no special tiles exist, and a mix if there are fewer than 4 special tiles.

Pre-buff, if there weren't any special tiles, you simply couldn't use the power; you would get the "there aren't enough required tiles to use this power" message, however it's worded. 

It could be my wishful thinking, but I was figuring it would prioritize special tiles, but pull in basic as well if no special or fewer than 4 special  tiles exist.