Upcoming Character Changes - Falcon and Storm (Modern)

IceIX
IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,322 Site Admin
edited May 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
We've got more coming after this, but I wanted to get one upcoming batch in front of you so that there was more time to plan for any affected Agents:

Falcon: Inspiration
Old ability:
    Inspiration - Yellow Passive
    Falcon spreads his wings, motivating his teammates as he swoops into the fight. When the team makes a yellow match, Falcon improves the strength of 3 friendly Protect, Strike, or Attack tiles by 10 percent.
    Level Upgrades
      Level 2: Improves friendly tiles by 15 percent. Level 3: Improves friendly tiles by 20 percent. Level 4: Improves friendly tiles by 25 percent. Level 5: Improves friendly tiles by 30 percent.


    New ability:
      Inspiration - Yellow Passive
      Falcon spreads his wings, motivating his teammates as he swoops into the fight. When the team makes a yellow match, Falcon improves the strength of 2 friendly Protect, Strike, or Attack tiles by 7.
      Level Upgrades
        Level 2: Improves friendly tiles by 8. Level 3: Improves friendly tiles by 10. Level 4: Improves friendly tiles by 13. Level 5: Improves 3 friendly tiles by 13.
      Max Level: Improves 3 friendly tiles by 79.

      As announced earlier, this ability needs to go to a static increase instead of a percentage. The percentage works great for scaling but works horribly for the character himself since it means that keeping Falcon at lower levels so that he doesn't tank any of the tiles is advantageous. Percentages also have the disadvantage of being great for high powered Strike/Protect/Attack tiles but fairly useless on low powered ones such as Storm (Modern)'s Hailstorm. Making the increase static instead of a percentage fixes these issues by allowing the value to scale by Falcons level. This means that it's important to level Falcon up to get more advantage from this skill. It also creates a strong reason for players to use Falcon with other characters that use lower powered tile placements as opposed to having him be at his strongest when dealing only with characters like Doom or Magneto.

      And a minor tweak to Storm (Modern)'s Level 5 Lightning Strike:
      Old Ability:
        Lightning Strike - Green 10 AP
        Storm calls a blinding bolt of electricity from the heavens, shattering 8 tiles, doing damage and earning AP for each.
        Level Upgrades
          Level 2: Shatters 9 tiles. Level 3: Shatters 10 tiles. Level 4: Shatters 12 tiles. Level 5: Shatters 16 tiles.


        New Ability:
          Lightning Strike - Green 10 AP
          Storm calls a blinding bolt of electricity from the heavens, shattering 8 tiles, doing damage and earning AP for each.
          Level Upgrades
            Level 2: Shatters 9 tiles. Level 3: Shatters 10 tiles. Level 4: Shatters 12 tiles. Level 5: Shatters
          14 tiles.

          This little tweak came about as a result of her usage as AI in Simulators and her increasing usage in lower level Versus battles. While it still remains wholly effective, the loss of 2 AP per Lightning Strike (and associated fraction of a chance of a cascade as a result) keeps her from creating quite so much board destruction and repetitive turn over turn ability usage all at once.

          The plans are for these changes to roll out by the end of this week.
          «1345

          Comments

          • Ducky
            Ducky Posts: 2,255 Community Moderator
            IceIX wrote:
            New ability:
              Inspiration - Yellow Passive
              Falcon spreads his wings, motivating his teammates as he swoops into the fight. When the team makes a yellow match, Falcon improves the strength of 3 friendly Protect, Strike, or Attack tiles by 7.
              Level Upgrades
                Level 2: Improves friendly tiles by 8. Level 3: Improves friendly tiles by 10. Level 4: Improves friendly tiles by 13. Level 5: Improves 3 friendly tiles by 13.
              Max Level: Improves 3 friendly tiles by 79.

              I actually like this change as it can be beneficial for when we are stuck with sub-optimal characters, visa-vie Heroics.
            • Unknown
              Unknown
              No more percentages? Cool.
            • Unknown
              Unknown
              Good changes, but odd choice of characters.
            • Unknown
              Unknown
              DuckyV wrote:
              IceIX wrote:
              New ability:
                Inspiration - Yellow Passive
                Falcon spreads his wings, motivating his teammates as he swoops into the fight. When the team makes a yellow match, Falcon improves the strength of 3 friendly Protect, Strike, or Attack tiles by 7.
                Level Upgrades
                  Level 2: Improves friendly tiles by 8. Level 3: Improves friendly tiles by 10. Level 4: Improves friendly tiles by 13. Level 5: Improves 3 friendly tiles by 13.
                Max Level: Improves 3 friendly tiles by 79.

                I actually like this change as it can be beneficial for when we are stuck with sub-optimal characters, visa-vie Heroics.

                looks like a typo somewhere in there, level 5 is no different than level 4. looks like level 5 was intended to affect 4 tiles, or levels 1-4 was designed to affect 2.

                Typo at the top. It's 2 tiles at base, 3 tiles at Level 5. Sorry about that!
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                It seems as though peter parker is able to use his spidey senses to dodge the nerf-bat
              • IceIX
                IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,322 Site Admin
                qscxzawed wrote:
                It seems as though peter parker is able to use his spidey senses to dodge the nerf-bat
                Unfortunately for him, the nerf bat has Anti-Spider technology built in. He's not going to be dodging for much longer.
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                IceIX wrote:
                qscxzawed wrote:
                It seems as though peter parker is able to use his spidey senses to dodge the nerf-bat
                Unfortunately for him, the nerf bat has Anti-Spider technology built in. He's not going to be dodging for much longer.

                Well so long as he's having fun and keeping his keen sense of radioactively enhanced balance I'm sure he'll be fine...
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                Not that it will have any effect on me at all but how about 2* hawkeye. Want he on list?
                Also x-force wolvie and Loki seem in desperate need of attention.

                I hope all the changes roll out ASAP! Ready to see what happens and try out new version of every1!
              • IceIX
                IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,322 Site Admin
                Psykopathic wrote:
                Not that it will have any effect on me at all but how about 2* hawkeye. Want he on list?
                Also x-force wolvie and Loki seem in desperate need of attention.

                I hope all the changes roll out ASAP! Ready to see what happens and try out new version of every1!
                Yep, Hawkeye (Modern) is still on the list. Storm just slipped out there early since it was a quick and easy single digit change. Loki's in a *little* better shape than Wolverine (X-Force), so he's further down on the list for eventual design lovin'.
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                IceIX wrote:
                Psykopathic wrote:
                Not that it will have any effect on me at all but how about 2* hawkeye. Want he on list?
                Also x-force wolvie and Loki seem in desperate need of attention.

                I hope all the changes roll out ASAP! Ready to see what happens and try out new version of every1!
                Yep, Hawkeye (Modern) is still on the list. Storm just slipped out there early since it was a quick and easy single digit change. Loki's in a *little* better shape than Wolverine (X-Force), so he's further down on the list for eventual design lovin'.


                Thank ya thank ya.
                Any1 else I'm forgetting about that might be pretty high on the list?
                Getting excited now that changes are so close.
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                edited May 2014
                Dakan + falcon for days now. Kinda wish it stayed a % to be honest, but I understand why they changed it. Still, that's pretty ridiculous with dakan.

                Storm change is *shrug*. It will affect low lvl players only really, but not to an extent where it dramatically changes anything.

                Hopefully mags and spidey don't get tinykittied in the tinykitty hole as some suggest but get edged into a better territory. 6 blue for magneto, 6 red for magneto, and a new function for spidey's blue. *fingers crossed*

                Xforce better get buffed before any of that happens though....

                @psycho nerfing aoe moves like thor and bp? Lol
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                Very cool, thanks for the heads up. I like the change to make leveling Falcon a good thing. Can't wait to see the spidey changes.
              • NorthernPolarity
                NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
                Is it just me, or does that Falcon change seem very very strong? Throw up 3 punpun tiles for 9 green, and every yellow match after is 2/3rds of a judgement, without spending the yellow AP to boot. I would have expected +50 per tile or something like that, but +80 seems really really good.
              • Nemek
                Nemek Posts: 1,511
                NorthernPolarity wrote:
                Is it just me, or does that Falcon change seem very very strong? Throw up 3 punpun tiles for 9 green, and every yellow match after is 2/3rds of a judgement, without spending the yellow AP to boot. I would have expected +50 per tile or something like that, but +80 seems really really good.

                It's certainly strong in some cases, but decidedly weak in others, which makes for an interesting balance. It synergizes well with Punisher, but not particularly well with Nick Fury for strike tiles. It's not entirely great for most attack tiles, except maybe Doom. Not great with IW protect tiles, but good for Falcon's. It may even be the case that you would consider the additions on protect/attack tiles are wasteful if you also have strike tiles out. *shrug* we'll just have to see how it all plays out. I don't really anticipate falcon to become a mainstay of rosters just yet.
              • NorthernPolarity
                NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
                Nemek wrote:
                NorthernPolarity wrote:
                Is it just me, or does that Falcon change seem very very strong? Throw up 3 punpun tiles for 9 green, and every yellow match after is 2/3rds of a judgement, without spending the yellow AP to boot. I would have expected +50 per tile or something like that, but +80 seems really really good.

                It's certainly strong in some cases, but decidedly weak in others, which makes for an interesting balance. It synergizes well with Punisher, but not particularly well with Nick Fury for strike tiles. It's not entirely great for most attack tiles, except maybe Doom. Not great with IW protect tiles, but good for Falcon's. It may even be the case that you would consider the additions on protect/attack tiles are wasteful if you also have strike tiles out. *shrug* we'll just have to see how it all plays out. I don't really anticipate falcon to become a mainstay of rosters just yet.

                Yeah, I was only thinking of the changes with respect to Punisher. I think that it will probably end up just okay with the non-spammable strike tile characters, but I expect it to be slightly ridiculous with Punisher/LazyDaken.
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                I do not look forward to high level Falcon and MStorm teams in PVE with that change to falcon.
              • Unknown
                Unknown
                So if spidey is nerfed , should the scaling get nerfed too ? So that healing is no longer a sin ?
              • Spoit
                Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
                Grazzt wrote:
                So if spidey is nerfed , should the scaling get nerfed too ? So that healing is no longer a sin ?
                Nah, people still got hit with obscene scaling in heroics
              • Nonce Equitaur 2
                Nonce Equitaur 2 Posts: 2,269 Chairperson of the Boards
                IceIX wrote:
                qscxzawed wrote:
                It seems as though peter parker is able to use his spidey senses to dodge the nerf-bat
                Unfortunately for him, the nerf bat has Anti-Spider technology built in. He's not going to be dodging for much longer.

                I hope that he's made more fun to play. And changed in a way so that I won't see him on 75% of the PVP teams I see.
              • NorthernPolarity
                NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
                Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:
                IceIX wrote:
                qscxzawed wrote:
                It seems as though peter parker is able to use his spidey senses to dodge the nerf-bat
                Unfortunately for him, the nerf bat has Anti-Spider technology built in. He's not going to be dodging for much longer.

                I hope that he's made more fun to play. And changed in a way so that I won't see him on 75% of the PVP teams I see.

                I see him on a decent number of PvP teams, but I don't think that he's really been that much of a PvP menace: high-end PvP teams seem to have moved away from him completely in favor of more offensive/tankier oriented teams.

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