*** Spider-Man (Classic) ***

Polares

Phaserhawk wrote:

I had made numerous posts months ago that the biggest issue for spidey was that his skills were tied to web tile creation. Which is why blue cost was so low as to actually create webtiles. This was going to be the issue with Spidey and D3 was warned by the community that just a straight up AP Nerf was going to kill him since it massively reduces his ability to create web-tiles and thus kills yellow and purple at the same time. What do they do? They nerf blue by increasing AP nerf the other skills but don't take into account that you essentially just increased the cost of creating a webtile by 250%. Now they did fix purple which was nice, but the only way Spidey can become viable is if they
A.) reduce some of the webtile requirement off of blue
B.) allow another way to creat a web tile
C.) allow blue to create 2 web tiles
D.) lower blue AP cost to 4

Of these four choices I do not see B or D happening. they have set their standard of nothing costing below 5, and allowing another webtile creation would be too much programing. That leaves us with choices A or C. both are functionally the same however A. is probably the most balanced approach as creating 2 webtiles per blue usage drastically increases the power levels of yellow and purple at the same time. So here is what the simplest to fix and most blanced version of blue should be

All Tied Up - Blue 5 AP
Spider-Man slings webs, stunning the enemy for 1 turn. He then adds a Yellow Web tile to the board.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: +1 turn of stun if 2 Web tiles exist
Level 3: +1 turn of stun if 1 Web tiles exist
Level 4: +1 turn of stun if 0 Web tile exists
Level 5: +1 or +2 turns of stun when 0 or 1 Web tiles exist.

althougth I actually think this is better

All Tied Up - Blue 5 AP
Spider-Man slings webs, stunning the enemy for 1 turn. He then adds 2 Yellow Web tiles to the board.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: +1 turn of stun if 3 Web tiles exist
Level 3: +1 turn of stun if 2 Web tiles exist
Level 4: +1 turn of stun if 1 Web tile exists
Level 5: +1 or +2 turns of stun when 1 or 2 Web tiles exist.

One can only hope

I think D is the best option to make Spiderman good. C would make a 5/3/5 spidey a good enough build to be in any roster (respec mandatory to everyone ). But I guess that D3 is going to do nothing and leave Spidey as it is right now and it is a pitty because Spidey should be a very good 3*, being one if no the most popular Marvel character.

Ronfar

You know, they don't actually have to do anything to Spidey himself to make him better; they just need to release a 3* LazyVenom or some other character that can make web tiles. And if they do make LazyVenom we can go all OM NOM NOM on enemy teams again!

Unknown

Return Spidey to original setup. Increase Level5Blue stun to 3 blue cost (strong character) or 4 blue cost (moderate character). +1AP cost for each less blue rank.

Done.



That's seriously all it would take to adequately balance this character.

This isn't brain surgery. There was no need to completely lobotomize Spidey.

Unknown

As I say so many times before, the thing i don't get is why they have to lower down a three stars character's skill worst than a two stars ones... (storm classic 11ap, hawkeye 10ap, captain 12ap (but return 10))
if now the rule is: no costs lower than 5AP, maybe D3 can improve the level 5 of the blue skill in other way..

Unknown

Polares wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

I had made numerous posts months ago that the biggest issue for spidey was that his skills were tied to web tile creation. Which is why blue cost was so low as to actually create webtiles. This was going to be the issue with Spidey and D3 was warned by the community that just a straight up AP Nerf was going to kill him since it massively reduces his ability to create web-tiles and thus kills yellow and purple at the same time. What do they do? They nerf blue by increasing AP nerf the other skills but don't take into account that you essentially just increased the cost of creating a webtile by 250%. Now they did fix purple which was nice, but the only way Spidey can become viable is if they
A.) reduce some of the webtile requirement off of blue
B.) allow another way to creat a web tile
C.) allow blue to create 2 web tiles
D.) lower blue AP cost to 4

Of these four choices I do not see B or D happening. they have set their standard of nothing costing below 5, and allowing another webtile creation would be too much programing. That leaves us with choices A or C. both are functionally the same however A. is probably the most balanced approach as creating 2 webtiles per blue usage drastically increases the power levels of yellow and purple at the same time. So here is what the simplest to fix and most blanced version of blue should be

All Tied Up - Blue 5 AP
Spider-Man slings webs, stunning the enemy for 1 turn. He then adds a Yellow Web tile to the board.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: +1 turn of stun if 2 Web tiles exist
Level 3: +1 turn of stun if 1 Web tiles exist
Level 4: +1 turn of stun if 0 Web tile exists
Level 5: +1 or +2 turns of stun when 0 or 1 Web tiles exist.

althougth I actually think this is better

All Tied Up - Blue 5 AP
Spider-Man slings webs, stunning the enemy for 1 turn. He then adds 2 Yellow Web tiles to the board.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: +1 turn of stun if 3 Web tiles exist
Level 3: +1 turn of stun if 2 Web tiles exist
Level 4: +1 turn of stun if 1 Web tile exists
Level 5: +1 or +2 turns of stun when 1 or 2 Web tiles exist.

One can only hope

I think D is the best option to make Spiderman good. C would make a 5/3/5 spidey a good enough build to be in any roster (respec mandatory to everyone ). But I guess that D3 is going to do nothing and leave Spidey as it is right now and it is a pitty because Spidey should be a very good 3*, being one if no the most popular Marvel character.

i totally agree with you.
other option is to lower Blue AP to 4

Unknown

Having given it some thought I think a good way to potentially make Spiderman useful without being imbalanced would be to completely remove his blue's dependence on web tiles and make it a generator of tiles with a fixed duration stun.

I was thinking something like

Creates a web tile, 1 turn stun, 6ap
level 2: -1 ap cost
level 3: + 1 turn stun duration
level 4: -1 ap cost
level 5: -1 ap cost

at 5 blue you would have a 2 turn stun for 3AP which would allow stun locking a target if you can make a match every other turn but doesn't let you stun a team up unless you have saved a lot of AP before hand. That places it as the best singe target stun by a small margin but nowhere near his previous stunning capabilities. It will also let you generate web tiles more reasonably for his other abilities.

Compared to MBW he does 2 turns total stunning for 3ap, she does 7 for 9 (slightly better) BUT on one target 5 for 9 (slightly worse and needing 60% of matches to be blue to lock rather than 50%)
Compared to current spiderman he starts out a lot better ofc, but after you've got 15 blue ap going the current spidey has a slightly better stun per ap (3 for 5) but from a practical standpoint trying to get half your matches as blue to lock is better than trying to get 2/3 of your matches with the occasional 3 turns off as the spare 1 AP adds up to a full stun.

I was thinking I might prefer him to start at 5ap and end at 3ap with +1 duration at level 3 but couldn't think of a decent alternative boost to put in there. Perhaps making an extra web tile at 5 or allowing you to place the tile rather than random at 5?

Don't think the above would be OP but I do think it would make him at least more useful than OBW as a support, which he isn't right now.

peanut_gallery

I was just in a PvP match where the AI Spidey had two web tiles out, and when he cast Web Bandages, the web tiles stayed on the board. Whenever I cast Web Bandages, the web tiles disappear.

Which way is it supposed to go? Either way, the AI is currently getting the better deal.

jojeda654

The web tiles are used only when there are more than two. See below.

Web Bandages - Yellow 12 AP
Spider-Man webs makeshift slings, healing his team for 142. If 3 or more Web tiles exist he converts them to bandages, healing his team for an additional 149.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Increases base healing to 199. Level 3: Increases base healing to 256. Level 4: Increases base healing to 312. Level 5: Increases base healing to 369.

Max level 141 5/5: Heals for 2314 with an additional 934 with 3 Web tiles.

Since web tiles are more expensive, it forces you to choose between the bonus healing, or continued stunning.

peanut_gallery

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. I'm still wrapping my head around the nuances of the new Spidey and haven't fully digested the new verbiage of how he works.

Phaserhawk

The AP cost ideas are great but D3 is removing all skills that cost less than 5AP, so that is not gonna happening. Which is why I suggested reducing the webtile requrirements on his blue or allowing him to create 2 web tiles on casting blue.

john1620b

Phaserhawk wrote:

The AP cost ideas are great but D3 is removing all skills that cost less than 5AP, so that is not gonna happening. Which is why I suggested reducing the webtile requrirements on his blue or allowing him to create 2 web tiles on casting blue.

Just wanted to say I like this idea -- I think it would make him viable, and wouldn't make keeping web tiles so difficult. They might have to tweak Venom's Devour, though, so he wouldn't be able to utilize the extra web tiles so easily.

akboyce

So now that the dust has settled, original outrage has died down a bit, and his purple is where it should have been I think we can look at his changes.

Yellow:
This was a "buff" for low web tile boards:
5 yellow:
@1 tile: 2314 versus 741
@2 tiles: 2314 versus 1482
@3 tiles: 3248 versus 2223

3 Yellow:
@1 tile: 1602 versus 741
@2 tiles: 1602 versus 1482
@3 tiles: 2534 versus 2223

It costs more now (12 versus 11 to 9) but you no longer have to save blue to maximize the heal. A downgrade for massive heals but an upgrade or side grade if you have something else you want to use blue for.

Blue:
No need to compare to old version here. A beating of a nerf. The only real question is where should it be now?

3 Blue: 5 AP = 1 turn 10 AP = 2 turns 15 AP = 4 turns
4 Blue: 5 AP = 1 turn 10 AP = 3 turns 15 AP = 5 turns
5 Blue: 5 AP = 1 turn 10 AP = 3 turns 15 AP = 6 turns

Personal opinion here (just theory crafting. Mine is at 5 still from the old days so I have not tested yet) is that 4 will be the way to go. 15 AP is rarely going to happen even spread out over 3 5 AP chunks thanks to random web tile placement. 10 AP or 2 5 AP chunks especially towards the end of fights seems likely to happen so the bonus stun there could be nice. I can also see going 3 but I would be hard pressed to say 5 since you only get a 1 turn bonus per 5 AP starting at 15.

Purple:
His purple was a beating of a nerf... until it was fixed. Now, like the yellow, it is buffed for 0 tile boards (104 versus 66 @ 5 Purple). Additionally (although it is incorrectly listed on the wiki and front page of this topic) his maximum protect tiles have been increased to 4 from 3 at level 4+. I think this is now his bread and butter. Bringing Spidey to a fight says I am not taking match 3 damage.

Since his purple passive is now a primary factor in bringing Spidey to a fight, his overall power is directly linked to how good active purples are. His best partners will be people who can use the purple he collects and bonus points for a strong blue since his is now more of an emergency pause button.

Purple Users:
Fury: Check back in a few months...
Grey Suit Widow: Strong green battery, undesirable HP, No Blue
Daredevil: Strong purple effect but unreliable, Blue but not a good one
Falcon: For all your protect tile needs, strong synergy with yellow, No active blue
Loki: Weaker purple, No 3rd skill
OG Widow: Lacks offensive power but good way to protect her as you gather purple, all the heals
Magneto (Now): Blue Battery
Magneto (Classic): HELLO! Strong offensive purple, perhaps best blue in the game.

So he was nerfed, but he still has a niche. He is a 3* Bullseye with a heal. This means he needs a partner that can take full advantage of collected purple. His blue is definitely lacking and I could see it getting a slight buff but even without one he is definitely not Bagman. Until he is also nerfed him and Magneto Classic can be BFFs. I think the new build is 4/4/5 or 5/3/5.

TL;DR
Friendly neighborhood Protect Tile Man
Magnto (classic)'s BFF
4/4/5 or 5/3/5
Not Bag-Man

Unknown

Nice summary Akboyce but disagree with the conclusion. His blue is total garbage, his heal is expensive bearing in mind it doesn't actually help you kill anyone and his purple is decent at match damage ASSUMING there are no strikes on the other side which reduces its relative effectiveness.

To do well in PvE you specifically don't want to be healing lots or you scale too hard
To do well in PvP you want to be able to sustain through early points (where spidey has a use, but no more so than OBW) then win quickly later on to try and get a net gain in points over shorter periods, something spidey is terrible at.
There is some value in having a team that will take time for the enemy to chew through because they might skip you for a quicker kill but spidey is pretty useless on defence. The ai will never get 12 yellow vs a player, easy to deny too many purple matches and his blue is completely valueless.

At the moment his only role outside of prologue healing which may well be for the chop is that early points push in PvP where you don't get retaliated against or attacked as much so can take your time. Having said that I think OBW is as good, if not better for the job. While protect tiles help vs match damage they make a modest at best dent on the impact abilities of commonly used 3* heroes, whereas AP stealing by OBW can stop them ever firing.

Finally... Spidey + C.Mags doesn't really work unless your featured hero does a LOT of damage and ideally makes strike tiles. You'll have a damaging purple off C.Mags and that's about it. His red and blue don't do much without strike tiles with the exception of crit matches from the blue I guess and spiderman offers zero damage.

I have a decent level, decent covers spiderman (4/5/4 lvl 100) and never use him post nerf except to suicide him tanking (and I have a decent C.Mags (lvl 105 5/4/4), so if it made a good pairing i'd go for it... just doesn't).

I'm afraid he is a gold bagman, no way around it..

akboyce

Excellent response bonfire01.

While I agree with some of your points I think you may have misunderstood my intent. I am definitely not arguing that Spidey is "good." I am saying that with the changes made he still has a role. As you pointed out though, the value of that role is greatly diminished by the current set up of the game itself. However these problems already plagued Spider Man even before the nerfs, his blue was just so broken it could be ignored.

PVE:
You are not allowed to heal in PVE right now because you will be punished in the long run for it. Pre nerf spidey suffered from this as well but his stun was strong enough to ignore the effect. Current Spider Man COULD be used in PVE for sustained grinding if sustained grinding was not punished by scaling. This is more a problem with the scaling system than Spider Man's ability to heal and mitigate damage.

PVP:
As you say Spider Man suffers in PVP due to a slow kill speed and the fact ending with high health is not as rewarding as quick kills. However this was mostly true for pre nerf Spidey too. He was rarely used at the top levels of PVP due to a lack of speed and how badly getting attacked could ruin a run. Maybe in a world where while fighting to win 20 points you could not lose 150 there would be some value in ending fights with full HP but that is not the world of MPQ right now. But this was a problem for Spider Man before the nerfs not one that is here because of the nerfs.

Spider Man lost his stun but is still good at healing and damage mitigation. Unfortunately those skills are not valuable anywhere but the first 500 points of a PVP climb. However this is MOSTLY a result of the way the game is structured and not a result of the recent changes. New Spider Man has a role... it is just not one that has much value in the current environment.

I stand by the fact he not Bag Man. Bag Man is bad at the things he is good at. Spider Man is good at making protect tiles and healing... those skills just lack value with how things are structured. I will concede that his blue and his stunning are probably Bag-Maned though. The problem with Spider Man is more a factor of his environment rather than these nerfs. Bag Man is Bag Man in any environment.

As for Spider Man and Magneto I think you are under valuing the freeness of the protect tiles. With OBW you have to use the purple to mitigate the damage. With Spider Man and Magneto the purple provides protection then flat out kills one enemy. Magneto really benefits from someone who can collect purple for him. Spider Man can fill that roll while minimizing the damage you take. Now I will accept that since the game does not put much value on damage mitigation and since Magneto loves strike tiles that Daken is probably the superior partner for him. BUT if you are going to use Spider Man (because you like him, need to heal, or he is required for an event) Magneto makes an excellent dance partner.

TL;DR
The nerfs are not what is hurting Spider Man the most. Its the high speed PVP and scaling PVE.
I still think if you are going to use Spidey, Mags is a good partner.

Unknown

akboyce wrote:

Excellent response bonfire01.

While I agree with some of your points I think you may have misunderstood my intent. I am definitely not arguing that Spidey is "good." I am saying that with the changes made he still has a role. As you pointed out though, the value of that role is greatly diminished by the current set up of the game itself. However these problems already plagued Spider Man even before the nerfs, his blue was just so broken it could be ignored.

PVE:
You are not allowed to heal in PVE right now because you will be punished in the long run for it. Pre nerf spidey suffered from this as well but his stun was strong enough to ignore the effect. Current Spider Man COULD be used in PVE for sustained grinding if sustained grinding was not punished by scaling. This is more a problem with the scaling system than Spider Man's ability to heal and mitigate damage.

PVP:
As you say Spider Man suffers in PVP due to a slow kill speed and the fact ending with high health is not as rewarding as quick kills. However this was mostly true for pre nerf Spidey too. He was rarely used at the top levels of PVP due to a lack of speed and how badly getting attacked could ruin a run. Maybe in a world where while fighting to win 20 points you could not lose 150 there would be some value in ending fights with full HP but that is not the world of MPQ right now. But this was a problem for Spider Man before the nerfs not one that is here because of the nerfs.

Spider Man lost his stun but is still good at healing and damage mitigation. Unfortunately those skills are not valuable anywhere but the first 500 points of a PVP climb. However this is MOSTLY a result of the way the game is structured and not a result of the recent changes. New Spider Man has a role... it is just not one that has much value in the current environment.

I stand by the fact he not Bag Man. Bag Man is bad at the things he is good at. Spider Man is good at making protect tiles and healing... those skills just lack value with how things are structured. I will concede that his blue and his stunning are probably Bag-Maned though. The problem with Spider Man is more a factor of his environment rather than these nerfs. Bag Man is Bag Man in any environment.

As for Spider Man and Magneto I think you are under valuing the freeness of the protect tiles. With OBW you have to use the purple to mitigate the damage. With Spider Man and Magneto the purple provides protection then flat out kills one enemy. Magneto really benefits from someone who can collect purple for him. Spider Man can fill that roll while minimizing the damage you take. Now I will accept that since the game does not put much value on damage mitigation and since Magneto loves strike tiles that Daken is probably the superior partner for him. BUT if you are going to use Spider Man (because you like him, need to heal, or he is required for an event) Magneto makes an excellent dance partner.

TL;DR
The nerfs are not what is hurting Spider Man the most. Its the high speed PVP and scaling PVE.
I still think if you are going to use Spidey, Mags is a good partner.

I woudl agree that Mags was an excellent partner for Spidey. I was one of the few high levels still using him (as a primary, no less, not a sub) and by using CMags and Patch I could still win fast enough to be viable. Prior to that, I used MNMags as a blue generator when my CMags was still low level. Spidey *played* very well together with these two. Past tense.

I would disagree with your point that Spidey still has a role, however. He doesn't; I've tried.

Spidey's real advantage in PvP was he was both a match deterrent and a viable offensive tactic at high level play. On defense, similar to Hulk, he would reduce the number of mid-level players that attacked you for fear of dragging the match out or getting sucked into stun-lock. For offense, if you could deal enough damage from other sources he could potentially lock the board down and negate double-edged swords like Patch.

But now:

Stunning: LazyCap, MStorm, and... sigh... MWidow are more viable. Spidey's about on a par with IM40, Daredevil or Venom in terms of practicality.
Healing: OBW steals and contributes to her own pile. Spidey requires 12Y. Not even close.
Shielding: Spidey shines here, but who the hell wants to be shielding? Shielding does not work as a viable strategy in any situation, for the reasons listed by Bonfire01.

Spidey's not even useful in prologue healing--at this point, I use OBW instead. In prologue healing, same as anything else, you want to be in and out as quickly as possible. 12Y is a slog and a crapshoot.

New Spidey=Lazy Bagman.

Unknown

Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can
Stunning webs, any size,
Oh no wait, I'm telling lies
Look Out!
They nerfed the Spiderman.

Is he strong?
Listen bud,
HA HA ha-ha-ha-ha-ha *thud*
Can he swing from a thread
Past turn two? No, he's dead
Hey, there
There goes my Spiderman.

At 5 blue to stun
He's the worst choice there is
And 12 gold to heal
Are you taking the piss?

Spiderman, Spiderman
Go invest in Hood instead
Used to be
The best three star
Now he sucks
Logan's cigar

To him, life isn't worth a jag, man
Almost as bad as Bagman
So much for Spider man

over_clocked

For all the Spidey bashing, I *still* get attacked by Spidey teams in PvP plenty.
The usual suspects are Magneto/Spidey, Punisher/Spidey, Hulk/Spidey (weird). Got the classic MMN/Spidey today, too.

Glad some people still find use for him

Der_Lex

Great minds think alike...

viewtopic.php?p=142112#p142112

Unknown

So will remain useless spidey?

Unknown

I'd say go with a 5/3/5 build. His purple is his best ability.