Un-Nerf 3* Gambit

0_efx_0

Un-nerf 3* Gambit. Just don’t allow him to cheat anymore.

MarcusGraves

He would be fine w/o the stupid team self damage on black. If they really needed it to have a drawback since it's a 5 AP black, they could of just have it make a random color, weak enemy strike tile and be done with him.

Just irritates me because it reminds me of when they reworked Rag and gave him the awful damage, team self damaging green. I would rather have his old green back.

11121

I was just thinking this EXACT thing while walking to work this morn - i used to use him a great deal, but not the 0/0/5 that i read so much about, but as a proper character in himself.
I used him with characters who did not have red or purple actives - or in other words, how he was originally designed to be used.  (my Goonbuster squad was 3* Gambit, Dr Strange and Storm - there was no need to use Strange purple, as Gambit's would do the same)
Since the nerf, i've used him once, and that was because he was the essential.

talleman

It's sad how they ruined a fine 3* character. The fix for his battery abuse was simple, just make it so his team can't use red or purple powers as long as Gambits not downed and thats it. The active self damaging black power is not a good solution. The damage to the enemy v.s the self team damage isn't worth it. Thanos for example does a lot more damage plus damages the enemy team, not just the one character. Also Gambits purple power is to expensive without the AP regeneration.

Anon

I always figured the best solution would be to have him as the only member of the team who could use Purple and Red as long as he was still alive.

You would think it's a simple solution, but you know.

HoundofShadow

His black ability cost 5 ap, creates 3 charged tiles and does immediate team damage. The drawback is damage to his team, which is about 27% of what the opposing team will receive @ 5 covers.

While Thanos's green power does team damage, it has a drawback of being a 3 turn countdown tile which doesn't guarantee that it will a success. The cost of his green cost 12ap compared to Gambit's 5ap.

If we were to look at all the 3* with active team damage to enemy, they cost 12ap on average. 

If you want to have his ability with no self-team damage and also retain his charged tiles effect, then it will cost around 12ap and his damage will be lowered.

I think the self-team damage is a non-typical balance to his low cost team damage ability plus the ability to create 3 charged tiles. 

Generally speaking, the characteristics of team damage for 3* can be summarised as but not limited to: 

Positive effect + team damage = high ap, lower damage (She-Hulk, Dr. Ock)

Negative effect + team damage = high ap, high damage (Black Panther and maybe Thanos due to the risk involved of being a countdown tile)

No effect + team damage = high ap, high damage (Kamala Khan, Deadpool and maybe 3* Thor)

What kind of characteristics do you prefer his black ability to have? 

Lemminkäinen

People obsess way too much about the friendly team damage, I think. It doesn't really matter and removing it wouldn't make him fine. His Red and Purple suck (unless fed by a constant battery).

HoundofShadow

Basically, they want a 3* version of 5* Gambit minus the ability to destroy opponent's ap, so that they can destroy other 3* and we will see another 10 topics asking 3* Gambit to be nerfed again?

I think some of the players' expectations are pretty high. They prefer high damage, low cost ap and close to zero negative drawback for a character to be considered strong or useable. How boring can that be as far as long term interest is concerned?

0_efx_0

Retract 3* Gambit to the way he was, just do not allow his teammates to use the purple or red powers. He was fine, he was just exploited by cheaters.

HoundofShadow

Assuming no cascade and a match 3 only:

Turn 1: you gain 3 ap
Turn 2: opponent gains 3 ap
Turn 3: you gain a total of 6ap + 3 purple ap + 3 red ap. You can fire his red power @ 7 AP if you matched red for last two turns.
Turn 4: opponent gains 6ap

Total number of aps gained for opponent at this point is: 6 ap
Total number of aps gained for you is 12 AP.

Turn 5: you gain a total of 9ap + 6 purple ap + 6 red ap.
Turn 6: opponent gains 9ap
Turn 7: you gain 12ap + 9 purple ap + 9 red ap
Turn 8: opponent gains 12 ap

Total AP you gained at this point: 30 ap
Total AP opponents gained at this point: 12ap

The longer the match goes, the wider the ap gap will be. I think changing his ability back to the original ability plus a tightened up of his blocking of allies' red and purple power might not make things better and the issues of nerfing and un-nerfing of 3* Gambit might not end. Besides, if 3* Gambit is stunned, other allies can use red and purple power.

HoundofShadow

I have made a terrible mistake. I wasted some effort doing team damage comparison because of the comment about Thanos doing team damage.

My belief is that changing 3* Gambit back to his original abilities plus tightening up of his blocking of allies' red and purple will not solve these nerfing  and un-nerfing 3* Gambit topic, due to his ability to generate a total of 6ap passively.

0_efx_0

0_efx_0 said:

He was fine, he was just exploited by cheaters.

I never used or have Gambatt myself, but calling those who did as cheaters is wrong. We/they simply found a good way to utilise a character’s power, based on how it worked at the time.

Players who used 0/0/5 Gambit are cheaters. The character was broken because playing against him allowed his teammates to fire purple and red powers. 

They only had to fix his Stacked Deck ability to NOT ALLOW allies to fire red or purple, as it once stated. 

So instead of just fixing that they changed almost all of what made the character great.

DAZ0273

I never got the extra black covers to try it myself so I can’t say whether I would have used it or not but I don’t consider Gambatt cheating.  If a player finds something occurring in game that they can use to their advantage, then the onus is on the game developer to fix or close that if it results in undesired gameplay or distorted results.

The reason Gambatt could be justified by the Devs as having to go was because it contradicted the Dev’s stated intentions for this game – i.e. players should acquire covers and level up characters. This means all covers.  Especially in the 3* tier where rarity is not an issue. This is also probably the reason that Gambit slipped through any playtesting that was carried out because the Dev’s wouldn’t have considered the effects of playing the character with just one colour. It goes against their intentions for the game.

wingX

Maybe the Devs should buff his red and purple at the same time when they nerf his black so to make it more balance. There is a reason why his red and purple are not that good in the first place to compensate his extreme powerful black ability.

Dormammu

The truth is, the developers made a mistake with 3-star Gambit's re-adjustment. With the release of Rogue and Gambit they had generated more excitement for MPQ than any other character launch in this game's history. To top it off, they released Nightcrawler next. Not only were they highly requested as fan-favorite characters, the developers did a great job of making them both unique and highly playable. The buzz was palpable, in-game and on these forums.

Then they buzz-killed the whole thing by spoiling 3-star Gambit. Yeah, the 5-star was still cool, but for the rest of us mere mortals it was a slap in the face. Was Gambit broken? Yes. Not overpowered - broken. He needed to be fixed, but in doing so the developers battered him so hard that none of us have used him since. He now wallows at the fungal bottom of the 3-star tier among the other unused refuse.

For those of us that didn't partake in exploiting the 0/0/5 build and used him at 13 covers, the only reason to use his red and purple, over far better reds and purples in the tier, was because we had to. But at least Gambit self-fueled those powers. Yes, his red was/is cheap, but it also hits like a declawed kitten. Yes, his purple was damaging, but it was pretty hard to protect those countdowns and get its full brunt. In other words, they're effectiveness was already balanced. So it was black that was the problem, and not even his black on a 13 cover Gambit; just on a 5 cover Gambit.

So what did the developers do? They completely changed it and added self-team damage.
*slap*
Ouch. Evidently the developers are not aware that there is nothing more foul-tasting to a player than damaging their own characters. Did they not see what happened to Ragnarok's usage after adding self-team damage? We take enough damage from our enemies, we don't want to be doing it to ourselves.

Okay, Okay, I know what you're thinking - What about Thanos? Everyone loves Thanos!
I don't know about you, but I tend to pair Thanos with throw-away characters to quickly clear out low-level PvE enemies. I don't use 3-star Thanos in PvP and I certainly don't use him against high-level PvE opponents. Why? Because I hate damaging my own team. But however you use Thanos, there's tremendous upside to eating that self-damage.

What's the upside to 3-star Gambit anymore?

wingX

What do you all think if they just change Gambit's black to active (5 black AP for 3 Red and 3 Purple at 5 cover, or something along that line) just like Carnage on his 1st balance (even though it turn out to be a disaster for Carnage). Will this work better than his active black now?

broll

Dormammu said:

Then they buzz-killed the whole thing by spoiling 3-star Gambit. Yeah, the 5-star was still cool, but for the rest of us mere mortals it was a slap in the face. Was Gambit broken? Yes. Not overpowered - broken. He needed to be fixed, but in doing so the developers battered him so hard that none of us have used him since. He now wallows at the fungal bottom of the 3-star tier among the other unused refuse.

Wait, Dormammu is a mere mortal?  He hides it well.

ursopro

Just rollback the nerf, don't let any teammate fire purple or red power while hes alive, reduce the ap gain to 2 purple and 2 red per turn and add "destroy 2 random enemy ap per turn".

That sounds like a sensible compromise.

0_efx_0

“Make America...I mean...3* Gambit great again!”

Straycat

Dormammu said:

What's the upside to 3-star Gambit anymore?

Upside now is he doesn't lock out teammates active powers, he has 2 cheap powers and makes some use of charge tiles.

I think he's not good now, but how useful was he champed before? Maybe just to feed Bl4de, but that still basically misused his passive ap gen.
They need to get more creative than just lazy 5* Gambit to be relevant to 4* players, since his damage output is so low. If they want to keep black active, then I would lower the cost for purple and red. Self damage is whatever. Or maybe change his black to a weaker passive that only activates when there are charge tiles on the board.

Daredevil217

HoundofShadow said:

I have made a terrible mistake. I wasted some effort doing team damage comparison because of the comment about Thanos doing team damage.

My belief is that changing 3* Gambit back to his original abilities plus tightening up of his blocking of allies' red and purple will not solve these nerfing  and un-nerfing 3* Gambit topic, due to his ability to generate a total of 6ap passively.

Except you can only use that AP on his weak red/purple powers.  That’s absolutely what made him a well-balanced character. He has **** powers but they self-fueled. Most who had a G-battery also had a champed Gambit as well. I’ve not heard of a single complaint that a champed Gambit was OP at the 3* tier or any other tier what-so-ever and comparing him to the 5* in that regard is laughable (not you, someone else did in the thread).