PSA: Devs joining in on the 200th Episode of the PW3 Podcast tonight

2

Comments

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,280 Chairperson of the Boards
    tiomono said:
    Ray did ask it in some capacity though, so I do appreciate him for asking it in a “cleaned up” manner. Of course, they aren’t going to do any “gotcha” questions, but I wish they would have offered a bit more insight than the fact that they didn’t see the Thokoye meta coming. I’m guessing they aren’t going to do anything to change it or fix it.
    I doubt they saw gritty either. As long as they can get something else strong too it's fine. The more strong "meta" teams we have the better. Gritty at least has a little bit more of a health pack drain than thorkoye. 
    To be fair quite a lot of the player base didn't see Gritty either although there were one or 2 who made the connection. You read the thread back and there were comments about how Kitty was not gonna move any needles. I think Gritty was a slow creep also, whereas Thorkoye pretty much stepped into place the minute Gambit was nerfed.
  • Falconfreak
    Falconfreak Posts: 119 Tile Toppler
    I'd like to see more bad guys added. Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Hobgoblin, Kang the Conqueror, Annihilus, etc. would all make for some great new characters.
  • jredd
    jredd Posts: 1,387 Chairperson of the Boards
    they aren’t going to do anything to change it or fix it.
    'it' pretty much applies to anything in this game...
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,280 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'd like to see more bad guys added. Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Hobgoblin, Kang the Conqueror, Annihilus, etc. would all make for some great new characters.
    Apocalypse is in game already as a boss, I guess they haven't ran that one recently though so you probably haven't come across it. Tis puzzle-y.
  • Falconfreak
    Falconfreak Posts: 119 Tile Toppler
    DAZ0273 said:
    I'd like to see more bad guys added. Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Hobgoblin, Kang the Conqueror, Annihilus, etc. would all make for some great new characters.
    Apocalypse is in game already as a boss, I guess they haven't ran that one recently though so you probably haven't come across it. Tis puzzle-y.

    But he's not playable? I have only been playing 2-3 months so I hope we get him playable at some point.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,280 Chairperson of the Boards
    DAZ0273 said:
    I'd like to see more bad guys added. Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Hobgoblin, Kang the Conqueror, Annihilus, etc. would all make for some great new characters.
    Apocalypse is in game already as a boss, I guess they haven't ran that one recently though so you probably haven't come across it. Tis puzzle-y.

    But he's not playable? I have only been playing 2-3 months so I hope we get him playable at some point.
    I wouldn't count on a playable version.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    DAZ0273 said:
    tiomono said:
    Ray did ask it in some capacity though, so I do appreciate him for asking it in a “cleaned up” manner. Of course, they aren’t going to do any “gotcha” questions, but I wish they would have offered a bit more insight than the fact that they didn’t see the Thokoye meta coming. I’m guessing they aren’t going to do anything to change it or fix it.
    I doubt they saw gritty either. As long as they can get something else strong too it's fine. The more strong "meta" teams we have the better. Gritty at least has a little bit more of a health pack drain than thorkoye. 
    To be fair quite a lot of the player base didn't see Gritty either although there were one or 2 who made the connection. You read the thread back and there were comments about how Kitty was not gonna move any needles. I think Gritty was a slow creep also, whereas Thorkoye pretty much stepped into place the minute Gambit was nerfed.
    This is not quite how I remember it. 

    When Gambit was announced, many people pointed out that he was stupidly powerful. 

    Thor was released shortly thereafter, and people kinda missed him at first.  The 5* meta was still reeling from Gambit, and lots of players didn't quite appreciate the ease of use of his green passive.  I remember posting that Thor would obviously be a top tier character if his passive kicked in at 75-90% health, but was dubious that playing him at half health would work (both because it was an atypical playstyle at the time, and also because his match damage was very high at the time, so it was a challenge to tank for him).  But in practice, running a half-Thor turned out to be quite manageable.  So by January of 2018 or so, it was clear that he was a super strong character.  It just didn't matter because Gambit.  When JJ came out I remember speculating that the post-gambit meta would be some combo of JJ and/or Thor.  Then okoye was released and thorkoye was clearly an excellent pairing.  It still didn't matter because Gambit was SO strong.  But as soon as the Gambit nerf was announced in summer of 2018 it was clear that thorkoye would be the new meta.

    Kitty is another character that people sort of overlooked at first.  I think I was more positive than most, and I only said that her tile boosting passive might be good with the right team, because Carol showed how strong good tile boosting can be. But I don't think it was until late 2018 that people really started to grasp just how viable gritty was.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,280 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx said:
    DAZ0273 said:
    tiomono said:
    Ray did ask it in some capacity though, so I do appreciate him for asking it in a “cleaned up” manner. Of course, they aren’t going to do any “gotcha” questions, but I wish they would have offered a bit more insight than the fact that they didn’t see the Thokoye meta coming. I’m guessing they aren’t going to do anything to change it or fix it.
    I doubt they saw gritty either. As long as they can get something else strong too it's fine. The more strong "meta" teams we have the better. Gritty at least has a little bit more of a health pack drain than thorkoye. 
    To be fair quite a lot of the player base didn't see Gritty either although there were one or 2 who made the connection. You read the thread back and there were comments about how Kitty was not gonna move any needles. I think Gritty was a slow creep also, whereas Thorkoye pretty much stepped into place the minute Gambit was nerfed.
    This is not quite how I remember it. 

    When Gambit was announced, many people pointed out that he was stupidly powerful. 

    Thor was released shortly thereafter, and people kinda missed him at first.  The 5* meta was still reeling from Gambit, and lots of players didn't quite appreciate the ease of use of his green passive.  I remember posting that Thor would obviously be a top tier character if his passive kicked in at 75-90% health, but was dubious that playing him at half health would work (both because it was an atypical playstyle at the time, and also because his match damage was very high at the time, so it was a challenge to tank for him).  But in practice, running a half-Thor turned out to be quite manageable.  So by January of 2018 or so, it was clear that he was a super strong character.  It just didn't matter because Gambit.  When JJ came out I remember speculating that the post-gambit meta would be some combo of JJ and/or Thor.  Then okoye was released and thorkoye was clearly an excellent pairing.  It still didn't matter because Gambit was SO strong.  But as soon as the Gambit nerf was announced in summer of 2018 it was clear that thorkoye would be the new meta.

    I think that is what I said isn't it?
  • UNC_Samurai
    UNC_Samurai Posts: 402 Mover and Shaker
    Anyone complaining about Thorkoye after the Gritty nightmare that was Blade's PvP, can slow their roll.
  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,208 Chairperson of the Boards
    Thorkoye isn't that bad to fight against. It takes time for them to get going. I actually always fight them as it's an easy win. I mean if you really wanted to Nerf this team just take away Thors AP generation or make it so he only gains AP at 25% health or something. The board shuffle can generate enough ap by itself with matches.

    Gritty starts hitting hard right out of the gate and can become super unmanageable with an unlucky board. If you can't down her in under 5 turns or clear the attack tiles forget about it. Lets be honest here, the simplest fix is reducing the number of grockets strike tiles he creates at the start but increasing there damage thus keeping the attack values the same but not allowing kitty to immediately take advantage of them. No need to over complicate anything or Nerf both of them to oblivion. 

    To be clear though I hate nerfing, I'd rather see small tweaks or buffs to under used characters. For example; Archangel should be able to target enemies and send them airborne. How many 5 stars can send people airborne? If he has 8 or more blue at the start of the turn target 1 random enemy and send them airborne for 2 turns. 


  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,975 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited July 2019
    Thorkoye isn't that bad to fight against. It takes time for them to get going. I actually always fight them as it's an easy win. I mean if you really wanted to Nerf this team just take away Thors AP generation or make it so he only gains AP at 25% health or something. The board shuffle can generate enough ap by itself with matches.
    The issue isn't whether Thor/Okoye is easy to beat. The issue is that due to their unique synergy, you have a team that is fast, can punch significantly beyond its weight class, and requires little to no health packs (depending on the player's team build). In terms of offensive capability, it's an outlier which means every other team is easy to beat, with a few exceptions. The vast majority of the 5* tier is left out of the picture when considering PvP. 

    Currently the only comparable team is Kitty and 4* Grocket but that team has significant drawbacks to balance out its high offensive and defensive power, mainly board luck (having tiles matched away early) and the required use of health packs since they lack a healing ability. Additionally, Black Suit Spider-Man, while not ideal due to his lack of presence on offense, is still a decent counter.

    To keep it simple, there is little reason to use most of the characters in the 5* tier, be they old or new, in PvP as long as Thor/Okoye is left unchecked. I recommended switching Okoye's yellow and black powers to slow down her ability to heal and produce TU tiles as it deals directly with the problem without directly nerfing either character. They would still be a strong pairing but not as fast and it would reduce the outcome of Okoye coming out of matches nearly fully healed.

    There are, of course, other ways to deal with the issue, for instance, introducing hard counters. Hela seemed to be an attempt at this but the strategy to deal with Hela using Thor/Okoye is simple: target Hela first, chase red and TU tiles and have Okoye take the damage from her green passive or use a TU stun to avoid it.

    And that hits at the crux of the matter: As long as Okoye tanks, soaks up damage and heals it off from the yellow AP generated by Thor, any damage abilities that target the character in front will be rendered meaningless for competitive PvP, with the possible exception of one shot kill moves (obviously) or continuously stacking abilities like Gritty.

    In order to have a true counter to Thor/Okoye, the devs would need to release a character who passively converts TU tiles to normal tiles every turn to dry the board of TUs basically forcing the player to store up yellow AP.

    As for Gritty, I personally would like to see tweaks made to Black Suit Spider-Man and Daredevil so they could function as a fun, proper counter team. Specifically I would like to see Spidey's blue become a 2-turn fortified repeater that stunned and did damage to the target so they could shut down Kitty and slow her removal of DD's strike tiles. And his green should cost less.
  • Waddles_Pines
    Waddles_Pines Posts: 1,229 Chairperson of the Boards

    To be clear though I hate nerfing, I'd rather see small tweaks or buffs to under used characters. For example; Archangel should be able to target enemies and send them airborne. How many 5 stars can send people airborne? If he has 8 or more blue at the start of the turn target 1 random enemy and send them airborne for 2 turns. 


    Yeah it's weird that Archangel looks like a counter against Vulture.  A 5* shouldn't be designed to counter a 4*... To add onto your thought, 5* Wasp introduces Swarm tiles, but literally no other character uses them.  Besides the fact that the tiles do essentially nothing, it's silly that there's a specific special tile for her powers.  Instead it could use other special tiles such as fortified, a/s/d, countdowns, repeaters, etc. to trigger her "Call the Swarm" power.
  • AXP_isme
    AXP_isme Posts: 809 Critical Contributor
    I think you would need to change Archangel’s blue passive in that case. If he sends someone airborne for two turns and then slams them to earth on the next turn it seems a little pointless (it being two turns airborne, that is). It would give him a nice self-synergy air-superiority sort of feel though. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited July 2019
    Archangel and Lumbercap were both attempts to hard-counter Gambit, but I think most of us fixated on the weird unique thing each could do at the time (airborne counter and revivify):

    Archangel had one that could prevent AP gain on a certain color for the duration of a countdown that cost 7 black, which is not bad, but Gambit could overwrite CDs so it was super not helpful, particularly since at best you were 2 turns from using it without AP boosts, and Gambit started growing AP like a goon from the get go. The vulture hard-counter I seem to recall at the time was pretty legit though - lots of people crying about unstoppable vultures right after his release. It wasn't unlike how we're talking about your Bishops and 4ockets today.

    Lumbercap had one that could prevent a power being fired on a certain color for 6ap, which is a significant AP difference, but again an active power will always lose to passive AP generation. His Red power seems like it was designed to get rid of your half-health Thors and DareDevils with its 2-stage targeting model, and for 8AP that's not too bad. But given that you only really see half-health Thors when defending, it's difficult to assess how well that works, or how much, if at all, it is an actual deterrent to being attacked in the first place.

    Neither character is overly helpful against the current meta as they stand. Kitty doesn't need AP, and nobody is firing powers actively, so neither character can do anything about that. Lumbercap can work with GE Doom if you want to play the Suicide King game and let your Doom get killed up front and then revived I guess. Lumbercap probably does work offensively against Thorkoye teams, but any number of champed 5* teams can beat them when a player is running the show. I don't know of too many auto-pilot defense teams against them.
  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,208 Chairperson of the Boards
    Thorkoye isn't that bad to fight against. It takes time for them to get going. I actually always fight them as it's an easy win. I mean if you really wanted to Nerf this team just take away Thors AP generation or make it so he only gains AP at 25% health or something. The board shuffle can generate enough ap by itself with matches.
    .......

    To keep it simple, there is little reason to use most of the characters in the 5*, be they old or new, in PvP as long as Thor/Okoye is left unchecked. I recommended switching Okoye's yellow and black powers to slow down her ability to heal and produce TU tiles as it deals directly with the problem without directly nerfing either character. They would still be a strong pairing but not as fast and it would reduce the outcome of Okoye coming out of matches nearly fully healed.

    I mean switching her yellow and black power in theory may work but wouldn't that just make her more compatible with other characters? If you switch power colors would her strongest match color remain Black or be swapped to yellow? If black remains the strongest then pairing her with JJ would be a nightmare if JJ is under Okoye's level as her damning evidence would fuel black, now her heal. Also if you put her with Valk, she will be healing non-stop. She'll be even better with Robbie as his green would fuel her healing much easier.

    Its almost like she needs to have her colors completely changed. How many times in the past have we seen a character get nerfed just for another one to become more powerful as a indirect result of the nerf.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards

    Its almost like she needs to have her colors completely changed. How many times in the past have we seen a character get nerfed just for another one to become more powerful as a indirect result of the nerf.
    I think that's what happened to Thor when Gambit got nerfed. He was the Bob Burnquist to Gambit's Tony Hawk
  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,975 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited July 2019
    Thorkoye isn't that bad to fight against. It takes time for them to get going. I actually always fight them as it's an easy win. I mean if you really wanted to Nerf this team just take away Thors AP generation or make it so he only gains AP at 25% health or something. The board shuffle can generate enough ap by itself with matches.
    .......

    To keep it simple, there is little reason to use most of the characters in the 5*, be they old or new, in PvP as long as Thor/Okoye is left unchecked. I recommended switching Okoye's yellow and black powers to slow down her ability to heal and produce TU tiles as it deals directly with the problem without directly nerfing either character. They would still be a strong pairing but not as fast and it would reduce the outcome of Okoye coming out of matches nearly fully healed.

    I mean switching her yellow and black power in theory may work but wouldn't that just make her more compatible with other characters? If you switch power colors would her strongest match color remain Black or be swapped to yellow? If black remains the strongest then pairing her with JJ would be a nightmare if JJ is under Okoye's level as her damning evidence would fuel black, now her heal. Also if you put her with Valk, she will be healing non-stop. She'll be even better with Robbie as his green would fuel her healing much easier.

    Its almost like she needs to have her colors completely changed. How many times in the past have we seen a character get nerfed just for another one to become more powerful as a indirect result of the nerf.
    I'm not sure I am following your train of thought here so let me start from what I understand.

    There is a significant difference between JJ vs Thor:

    First and foremost, Thor has an AoE which is probably what most players use to wipe out 2/3 of opponents on the enemy team when combo'd with Okoye's Wakanda Forever! and then his Asgardian Tactics or her Piercing Throw to finish off the remaining opponent.

    Additionally, 50% Thor reliably generates AP for his own powers and for Okoye's Indomitable Spirit. 

    JJ's Damning evidence is not a sure thing. A player has to find the trap tiles. Sometimes they will find them early, sometimes they won't.  It's highly unlikely that a JJ/Okoye pairing would approach the same speed and consistency as Thor/Okoye. If it did, we would see more players running that sort of team.

    Furthermore, as I previously mentioned, this pairing would certainly increase the value of God Emperor Doom as his Render Unto Doom would slow down Okoye's ability to get black and fuel his own nuke, potentially knocking her out.  Now that I think about it, the meta would be far more interesting if it worked out to a Thor/Doom vs  JJ/Okoye  vs Gritty although I suspect even with my proposed change it wouldn't work out so neatly. 

    To be honest, most players will still probably stick to Okoye/Thor even with my proposed change because it will still be a strong team and a lot of people passed over Doom. But my goal is not to nerf Thor/Okoye into oblivion but to slow them down enough so that: 1. players won't over rely on them as we currently are and 2. to increase the value of other 5* characters.

    If such a change ends up shifting things so that more characters become viable, such as your Valkyrie example, I think that would be a good thing no? 

    People assume that there will always be one dominant team since it has always been that way but that's simply not true anymore: we currently have 2 A tier level teams, Thor/Okoye and Gritty. It is my hope that by switching her yellow and black abilities it would allow for a few more top tier pairings. 

    And, as you suggest, if it really does become a problem that her black is her strongest match color than of course change it to yellow. 

    Finally, I am not sure I understand what you are saying about Robbie. His Hell Ride ability doesn't generate black tiles but it destroys them. While it would be great if Okoye made him better, it seems rather unlikely due to the color overlap and his green destroying the colors they need.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited July 2019
    Robbie collects the tiles that get destroyed by Hell Ride, same as Thor collects the tiles he destroys. If Hell Ride took advantage of Wakanda Forever, he'd be way better regarded than he is I think.

    Since Hell Ride nibbles 2 of the 3 colors Damning Evidence appears on, having it on the board actually makes those traps way easier to find since most of what's left ends up being blue. So even though the are 2/3 overlap, GRRR and JJ pair up decently.