What if we would un-nerf?

Magic

What if we could un-nerf the characters that got whipped buy the nerf into oblivion? Would that change the meta in any way with the current power creep and passive-heavy approach?

I am not looking at the nerfs of first months (Ragnarok or Spiderman) as I was not even here yet to witness the crazy power. But maybe starting with poor Sentry?

If Sentry was back to his glory days would he have a place in the 4* and 5* heavy environment? Who would benefit the most? (I believe Carol D., 4*Grocket come up quickly to mind). Same questions go to Thoress, X-Force and anybody else you feel could be mentioned here.

Beer40

I mentioned this idea in another thread so I am on board with it. The "What would make the game more enjoyable for you?" one. My thought was un-nerf everyone for 1 season and see how they play out. Then, if re-works are needed, since recent re-works have been pretty good, they could take the offseason and, if necessary, the following season to implement them. Then roll them out re-worked as soon as they are ready.

Basically, anyone who's un-nerf caused them to still be way too over powered would get free reign for 2 seasons and 1 offseason at MOST. Its very likely that most would not be over powered in today's game so (I'm guessing here) all re-works, if any are even needed, could be done in that first offseason.

Chrono_Tata

Sentry was way too powerful as he was but he was severely overnerfed because the devs had no idea what they were doing. Still hoping the current devs will unroll his nerf a little bit (making his CD back to 2 turns and unnerf yellow would be good).

If he came back as he was he definitely could take on 4 and 5 star with the right partners that can create powerful strike tiles. His green was just that fast.

Magic

Sentry was very powerful and he would do great with Carol or Grocket today but taking 5* is a bit too much. Sheer match damage would kill him. Plus he was so good because he was getting the green from Hood. But in the 4-5* meta there is no room for 3 3* (in PvP) so there would be no way to boost his green. 

But I agree - unnerfing him would allow a quicker hops (that could actually lead to more people using HP on shields, who knows). 

What about others?

Wolverine with his black at full power (so gaining AP) - that might rock the meta a bit but probably not to a level he was.

Bowgentle

Magic said:

Sentry was very powerful and he would do great with Carol or Grocket today but taking 5* is a bit too much. Sheer match damage would kill him. Plus he was so good because he was getting the green from Hood. But in the 4-5* meta there is no room for 3 3* (in PvP) so there would be no way to boost his green. 

But I agree - unnerfing him would allow a quicker hops (that could actually lead to more people using HP on shields, who knows). 

What about others?

Wolverine with his black at full power (so gaining AP) - that might rock the meta a bit but probably not to a level he was.

You can't bring Hood on hops with today's meta.
You'd get murdered on one fight hops.
Sentry on his own would be too slow with Carol.

Magic

Agreed (i've actually said the same thing). So un-nerfing him would not change the meta but would give one more fun combo to the game. Somewhat nostalgic combo that some veterans would use to reminisce in the good old days ;-)

Dragon_Nexus

Just as long as we never bring back the 2AP red moves of Magneto and Ragnarok. Nothing like seeing them fire their animation off that causes destruction, damage and cascades *every turn*.

Jarvind

The only character I've ever seen nerfed with my own eyes was Old Man Logan - the last nerf before that must've been at least a couple years ago, since I'm on day 700-something. 

Based on what I've heard, reviving XF Wolverine's old incarnation would probably be pretty reasonable now. It was stupid OP for the time, but would probably put him in the middle of the pack now with characters like Carol, Medusa and Blade around.

Wonko33

I was thinking just that this morning. I think the pre-nerf She-thor and Xforce would not be OP with the level of power of the newer 4*s.

Man these 2 had a great run a while back -

JablesMc

aesthetocyst said:

D3:  "By popular demand, we rolled back X-Force Wolverine!"

Noobs:  "Kewwwwwwl! .... Hey wait, what's this red power do?"

Vets:  "Red powe .... ? Ohhhhhhh, tiiiiiinyyyykiddddddddeeeeeeeee........"

Now I wanna know what his red power was...

carrion_pigeons

I would pay to get 3* Magneto unnerfed. His old blue was so much fun.

Bowgentle said:

Magic said:

Sentry was very powerful and he would do great with Carol or Grocket today but taking 5* is a bit too much. Sheer match damage would kill him. Plus he was so good because he was getting the green from Hood. But in the 4-5* meta there is no room for 3 3* (in PvP) so there would be no way to boost his green. 

But I agree - unnerfing him would allow a quicker hops (that could actually lead to more people using HP on shields, who knows). 

What about others?

Wolverine with his black at full power (so gaining AP) - that might rock the meta a bit but probably not to a level he was.

You can't bring Hood on hops with today's meta.
You'd get murdered on one fight hops.
Sentry on his own would be too slow with Carol.

You could do Sentry/Wasp.

Actually, if we were unnerfing, Hood would get his original HP total restored.  He wouldn't be as easily murderable then.

I mean, yeah, plenty of teams can kill you without ever worrying about AP drain, but Hood is one of the hardest-nerfed characters around.

Blindman13

I did't remember this one, so I looked it up:

"Enraged Slash - Red 15 AP
Wolverine slashes the enemy, dealing 420 to the current target and shredding the selected tile's row.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: +25% damage Level 3: Slashes rows above and below the selected tile instead of one row. Level 4: +25% damage Level 5: Slashes three rows centered on the selected tile.Max Level: 2313 damage
Interesting effect, but 15 AP??

Jaedenkaal

Jarvind said:

The only character I've ever seen nerfed with my own eyes was Old Man Logan - the last nerf before that must've been at least a couple years ago, since I'm on day 700-something. 

Based on what I've heard, reviving XF Wolverine's old incarnation would probably be pretty reasonable now. It was stupid OP for the time, but would probably put him in the middle of the pack now with characters like Carol, Medusa and Blade around.

3* Iron Fist was nerfed a few weeks after his release (to make fewer Black tiles I think?) Maybe that was more than 700 days ago.

Star Lord was 'nerfed' shortly after his rework.

broll

Jaedenkaal said:

Jarvind said:

The only character I've ever seen nerfed with my own eyes was Old Man Logan - the last nerf before that must've been at least a couple years ago, since I'm on day 700-something. 

Based on what I've heard, reviving XF Wolverine's old incarnation would probably be pretty reasonable now. It was stupid OP for the time, but would probably put him in the middle of the pack now with characters like Carol, Medusa and Blade around.

3* Iron Fist was nerfed a few weeks after his release (to make fewer Black tiles I think?) Maybe that was more than 700 days ago.

Star Lord was 'nerfed' shortly after his rework.

It's maybe splitting hairs but a change that quick out of the gate seems more like a bug fix / balance after we beta tested it than a nerf.

Dormammu

Three of the hardest nerfs in this game were pretty early in its history - 3-star Magneto, Ragnarok, and 3-star Spider-Man. While controversial and unpopular at the time, each one of those nerfs were absolutely justified. Two of them they nerfed too hard - Spidey and Rags. Spidey was corrected recently (about time!), Rags is still in the doghouse (and probably will remain there because nobody cares about him as a character anyway). With Magneto the developers actually found a good balance.

Probably the two biggest nerfs were to Sentry and 4-star Wolverine. Again, unpopular but justified. And again, they went too far. I wouldn't want to see Sentry returned, but he could be more balanced. XFW needs something to make him less irrelevant. A return to his prior self? Sure, why not.

As far as whining and crying, I've never seen anything on the level of OML's nerf. Three-hundred page complaint threads, rage quits, and weeks of debate was the fallout on that one. Yikes! I don't think he needed a nerf - I believe the truth is the developers wanted to sell more health packs. I'm glad it happened though, I was tired of seeing him on everyone's PvP roster (it didn't matter if they were a 2-star player or a 5-star player), so I don't think I'd like his nerf rolled back.

Jarvind

Dormammu said:

As far as whining and crying, I've never seen anything on the level of OML's nerf. Three-hundred page complaint threads, rage quits, and weeks of debate was the fallout on that one. Yikes! I don't think he needed a nerf - I believe the truth is the developers wanted to sell more health packs. I'm glad it happened though, I was tired of seeing him on everyone's PvP roster (it didn't matter if they were a 2-star player or a 5-star player), so I don't think I'd like his nerf rolled back.

He's actually better in terms of damage output now - two yellows after he transforms is nuts. I don't really understand the point of nerfing his post-transform black damage, but I doubt it got used a ton anyway, so whatever.

I think they went a little too far with his healing, though. I agree that it was dumb how universal he was (kinda like Thanos now), but now he can barely even keep up with match damage in his own tier, which hurts him a lot.

Jaedenkaal

Dormammu said:

Three of the hardest nerfs in this game were pretty early in its history - 3-star Magneto, Ragnarok, and 3-star Spider-Man. While controversial and unpopular at the time, each one of those nerfs were absolutely justified. Two of them they nerfed too hard - Spidey and Rags. Spidey was corrected recently (about time!), Rags is still in the doghouse (and probably will remain there because nobody cares about him as a character anyway). With Magneto the developers actually found a good balance.

2 AP powers were justifiably removed, and you couldn't really bring them back in today's game. You could probably run 3* spidey on a 5* team (or against one, certainly) with a (multi-turn?) stun for 2 blue ap.

Milk Jugz

I'm curious as to what Sentry was like before being nerfed? Before my time in the game.....

tanis3303

Essentially, you would take in some boosts and win on turn 4, every game. His powers used to cost (memory is hazy here) 6 for yellow and 7 for green, and the green used to do a TON of AoE damage. The goal was to get enough AP to fire green with an available yellow match, take the yellow match, then fire yellow next turn, and the resulting countdowns and cascades would literally wipe out the entire opposing team. If you took in +4 green and +3 yellow and had a cooperative board, it went turn 1 green match, turn 2 fire green, make a yellow match, turn 3 fire yellow, turn 4 good game. Did I mention that AP boosts granted +3 instead of +2? Cuz that was a thing...ah, the glory days.

This would never hold up in today's world I don't think, even if they took him back to his original state. At best characters had like 10K health in those days...you'd barely get thru 1/3 of a team with it today.

carrion_pigeons

The very first big nerf was Loki.  This was back when it took 60 covers or some nonsense to cover a character, before my time, but as far as I ever learned, he had an ability called Transmogrify instead of Illusions, which basically did was Thor's Thunder Strike does now, except with no damage component and 16 purple tiles instead of 9 yellow.  Not sure on the AP cost, but I suspect it was 5 purple, like Illusions is.  So basically a self-fueling winfinite, and completely brainless.

Ragnarok has been buffed twice, including getting a complete redesign complete with a third ability, since his big nerf, which happened *extremely* early in the game's life cycle, compared to the others people have mentioned.  The original Rags was also 1-character winfinite: 2 red ap to turn 5 tiles of your choice to green, and a 6ap green nuke with board shake.  Basically completely unrecognizable from how he is now.  He could definitely beat 5*s once in a while if he went back to his old configuration, since there would be times when he just never needs to give the opponent a turn.  It would take a long time though.

2* Wolverine was the meta for a good while after that, with his 3 AP green and a heal that was always on.  Obviously that wouldn't be a problem now.  Honestly it wasn't really a problem then, except that matches tended to take long enough that his heal was oppressive.

They then got rid of environment tiles, and with it, the 1* Storm winfinite.  She used to have a red ability that interacted with the background, and if you were on a desert background then she could basically chain it forever.  They could not bring her back at this point just because the game doesn't support the mechanic anymore.

Spider-Man was the meta for like 4 months after that, (2AP 3-turn stun, woo) before he got nerfed.  This was about a year after the game had come out.  Viable like that now?  Probably not.  2AP for a long stun is pretty insane.

After that, they nerfed true healing, which was primarily a nerf to OBW, who was being used to prologue heal entire teams.  They could bring back true healing, but it wouldn't make her more viable.  It would just make the game more grindy.

Then they nerfed Magneto, the rearguard of the cheap self-feeding battery powers: 9 blue to make 2 blue tiles, and a red for 6AP to board shake.  I *still* think this one was a mistake.  At those costs, it was never sustainable for more than a few cycles, so it was never a winfinite like Rags or Loki were.  It was just a fun, slightly-slower-but-more-sustainable alternative playstyle that happened to work super well with Patch.  Bringing it back wouldn't really mean anything in this era, since he wouldn't even come close to the sustainability and speed of Dr. Strange.  Although people might like him back just for nostalgia.  He was super fun to play.

The last of the "old guard" nerfs were to Hood and Sentry, together.  They made PvP shield-hopping trivial since every match could be ended in 3 moves, if you brought proper boosts.  You could bring 6AP worth of of every color at the time, and all you needed was 1 green to fire World Rupture, and 2 yellow for Sacrifice, and 3 black for Intimidate, and thanks to Dormmamu's Aid, you could pick it all up by turn 3, or even turn 2 on a good board.  It was enough to win the turn after, every time.  Bringing both of them back now would just not be a big deal, because boosts don't work like they used to, and their combo doesn't apply in a world of triple-size health pools.

Jaedenkaal

carrion pigeons said:

The last of the "old guard" nerfs were to Hood and Sentry, together.  They made PvP shield-hopping trivial since every match could be ended in 3 moves, if you brought proper boosts.  You could bring 6AP worth of of every color at the time, and all you needed was 1 green to fire World Rupture, and 2 yellow for Sacrifice, and 3 black for Intimidate, and thanks to Dormmamu's Aid, you could pick it all up by turn 3, or even turn 2 on a good board.  It was enough to win the turn after, every time.  Bringing both of them back now would just not be a big deal, because boosts don't work like they used to, and their combo doesn't apply in a world of triple-size health pools.

I think a 7 AP World Rupture, with 2-turn CDs, combined with 4* Carol, would obliterate the game. Heck, you don't even need Carol if you just started the game with 4* Rocket and Groot. Or all three, for good measure.