Nerf Bishop

TranscendGod

I'd also like to expand on Kitty Carnage, because most 5* players don't encounter this team (since it obviously works much less well in their meta).

Kitty Carnage is far worse than Gritty in the 4* meta, and has much less effective counters. You are nearly guaranteed to take massive amounts of damage. With a reasonable chance of straight up losing. In a normal PvP with featured characters that aren't particularly useful, this team is an auto skip. Here's why:

Unlike Gritty, this team does not automatically trigger bishop with matches (remember, we're talking about tinykitties that are mostly below level 400). So he doesn't do anything until Kitty starts boosting attack tiles to incredible amounts. At which point, his passive will often just trigger once per turn (instead of per match). By the time you can stun Kitty, you're looking at massive attack tiles scattered across the board that will devastate your team. Bishop dies quickly, Kitty becomes unstunned, and not only does she resume her insane tile pumping but her purple removes your attack tiles until dealing large amounts of damage.

The new character, Juggernaut, is going to be absolutely insane with Gritty in PvPs where you can choose 3 characters. TinyGritty Bishop can be reasonably countered by Bishop, Peggy, Deadpool (and a few variants). It generally costs one health pack and is a nice quick win. JuggerGritty is going to be far more devastating. Your entire team is almost guaranteed to get hit by massive AOEs by the second turn. Sure, bishop and deadpool will return the favor and the fight will end quickly. But you're also going to be using far more health packs (perhaps 3 per match instead of 1), and if JuggerGritty gets a good cascade you just lose. It'll be a few months before many of the active 4* players champ Juggernaut; many of us are already saving heroics for him. If not for Kitty, AOE counters like Quake could work decently. But Kitty enables low level characters to do damage like 550+ characters. That's why she's OP (at sub champ levels).

tiomono

TranscendGod said:

I'd also like to expand on Kitty Carnage, because most 5* players don't encounter this team (since it obviously works much less well in their meta).

Kitty Carnage is far worse than Gritty in the 4* meta, and has much less effective counters. You are nearly guaranteed to take massive amounts of damage. With a reasonable chance of straight up losing. In a normal PvP with featured characters that aren't particularly useful, this team is an auto skip. Here's why:

Unlike Gritty, this team does not automatically trigger bishop with matches (remember, we're talking about tinykitties that are mostly below level 400). So he doesn't do anything until Kitty starts boosting attack tiles to incredible amounts. At which point, his passive will often just trigger once per turn (instead of per match). By the time you can stun Kitty, you're looking at massive attack tiles scattered across the board that will devastate your team. Bishop dies quickly, Kitty becomes unstunned, and not only does she resume her insane tile pumping but her purple removes your attack tiles until dealing large amounts of damage.

The new character, Juggernaut, is going to be absolutely insane with Gritty in PvPs where you can choose 3 characters. TinyGritty Bishop can be reasonably countered by Bishop, Peggy, Deadpool (and a few variants). It generally costs one health pack and is a nice quick win. JuggerGritty is going to be far more devastating. Your entire team is almost guaranteed to get hit by massive AOEs by the second turn. Sure, bishop and deadpool will return the favor and the fight will end quickly. But you're also going to be using far more health packs (perhaps 3 per match instead of 1), and if JuggerGritty gets a good cascade you just lose. It'll be a few months before many of the active 4* players champ Juggernaut; many of us are already saving heroics for him. If not for Kitty, AOE counters like Quake could work decently. But Kitty enables low level characters to do damage like 550+ characters. That's why she's OP (at sub champ levels).

I would think medusa would love enemy teams with carnage. Free healing and extra ap nearly every turn both yours and theirs.

This is about bishop though. Not kitty or gritty or juggity unless they include bishop.

ThaRoadWarrior

I could field so many 4* counters to a team like that... dazzler, Medusa, Prowler, Vulture, invisible woman, elektra...

KGB

TranscendGod said:

The new character, Juggernaut, is going to be absolutely insane with Gritty in PvPs where you can choose 3 characters. TinyGritty Bishop can be reasonably countered by Bishop, Peggy, Deadpool (and a few variants). It generally costs one health pack and is a nice quick win. JuggerGritty is going to be far more devastating. Your entire team is almost guaranteed to get hit by massive AOEs by the second turn. Sure, bishop and deadpool will return the favor and the fight will end quickly. But you're also going to be using far more health packs (perhaps 3 per match instead of 1), and if JuggerGritty gets a good cascade you just lose. It'll be a few months before many of the active 4* players champ Juggernaut; many of us are already saving heroics for him. If not for Kitty, AOE counters like Quake could work decently. But Kitty enables low level characters to do damage like 550+ characters. That's why she's OP (at sub champ levels).

Nope. On offense, Kitty will tank at least 3 if not 4 of 7 colors so Juggs AOE won't trigger as often as if you just ran Juggs/Grocket/Gamora where it will trigger 100% of matches.

On defense the AI will never trigger it since you'll target Kitty first, Grocket 2nd and Juggs 3rd. His AOE won't proc till you put him in front by which time you'll have removed the strikes or you'll be long dead.

Also if you bring your own Bishop to such fights you'll have enough Blue on turn 2 / 3 to stun Juggs (or Kitty).

So if you are running Juggs with Kitty you'll will 100% switch to Bishop on your last fight for Gritty/Bishop over Gritty/Juggs.

KGB

jtsings

KGB said:

On defense the AI will never trigger it since you'll target Kitty first, Grocket 2nd and Juggs 3rd. His AOE won't proc till you put him in front by which time you'll have removed the strikes or you'll be long dead.

   If this is the way he is supposed to behave (i.e. Okoye Wakanda Forever), which would make sense, he needs to be adjusted. I tried using the strategy of leaving him till last in his PVP but several times his AOE got me when I had his other teammates in front. Even at low levels he was taking a big chunk out of all my team: supported of course by the Gritty's beefy strike tiles. Subsequently, I do think that when he was in front and any of Kitty's colors were matched by the AI, his AOE did not proc.  If he continues doing this when he's not in front, then I'm afraid both Gritty/Bishop and Gritty/Jugg are going to be two autoskip teams for us to deal with.

acescracked

Just nerf 'em all! I mean *all* characters!

Rod5

Warbringa said:

Rod5 said:

Ultimately, like I say if you remove base match damage from his passive threshold then he will still work against Kitty but not as pure Kryptonite to EVERY SINGLE 5* CHARACTER IN THE GAME.

I guess capital letters make every statement true?

I was just adopting the style of the guy trolling the thread.

In this case it is true though.

HoundofShadow

It's Bishop's Overclocked or red power that could use some increase in damage threshold and 5* players can still win against Bishop without him gaining a guaranteed +5 blue ap on turn 1. 

Think logically: if Bishop's Overclocked threshold is increased to 1905, level 450 champed 5* can still match-3 some of the colours against his teammates, and yet it won't trigger his Overclocked, which in turn triggers his General Reserve.

The reason for 1905 is because it's the lowest match damage of Iceman's core powers at level 450. Silver Surfer's, the first 5*, 5 highest match damage is 586. The threshold of 1905 will allow 5* players to match-3 majority of 5*characters without triggering Bishop's Overclocked. At the same time, players who relys on Gritty and Thorokoye teams will have to make use of other characters against Bishop teams. 

Let's compare the damage threshold for characters that jump in front or for characters whose passive power kick in based on damage to allies.

3* Deadpool at level 266: 1070

Champed 4* characters based on level 270:

Bishop: 902
Valkyrie: between 1234 and 1440
The Thing: between 1358 to 1629
XFDP: 1357

The increase in his Overworked damage threshold will allow 5* players to match-3 most the match without triggering him to the front, yet it could also helps against the meta 5* teams. This could increase the variety of 5* teams in versus mode.

LLohm

HoundofShadow said:

It's Bishop's Overclocked or red power that could use some increase in damage threshold and 5* players can still win against Bishop without him gaining a guaranteed +5 blue ap on turn 1. 

Think logically: if Bishop's Overclocked threshold is increased to 1905, level 450 champed 5* can still match-3 some of the colours against his teammates, and yet it won't trigger his Overclocked, which in turn triggers his General Reserve.

The reason for 1905 is because it's the lowest match damage of Iceman's core powers at level 450. Silver Surfer's, the first 5*, 5 highest match damage is 586. The threshold of 1905 will allow 5* players to match-3 majority of 5*characters without triggering Bishop's Overclocked. At the same time, players who relys on Gritty and Thorokoye teams will have to make use of other characters against Bishop teams. 

Let's compare the damage threshold for characters that jump in front or for characters whose passive power kick in based on damage to allies.

3* Deadpool at level 266: 1070

Champed 4* characters based on level 270:

Bishop: 902
Valkyrie: between 1234 and 1440
The Thing: between 1358 to 1629
XFDP: 1357

The increase in his Overworked damage threshold will allow 5* players to match-3 most the match without triggering him to the front, yet it could also helps against the meta 5* teams. This could increase the variety of 5* teams in versus mode.

I feel there is a lot of thought that went into this but generally, limited by the idea that 5* only goes to 450 and not beyond. 

I like the premise but perhaps you may want to work on a much higher threshold. Punish match 4s are fine but raise the match 3 threshold far higher to accommodate up to 550 5* match damage.

_Vitto

I feel like characters that give you an unfair advantage at (almost) zero cost are to be reviewed.

Kitty does not give you any advantage without special tiles on the board. 
Grocket gives you 7 strike tiles at turn 0 at 0 cost. I think it would be reasonable if those strike tiles increase turn by turn (see 5* DD mechanics). 
Bishop gives you a retaliation damage and 5 and possibly more blue AP with a single enemy match 3. That's insane.

Reduce the ap generation and raise the damage to trigger his jump-to-the-front ability. 4*s should not be this dominant in 5* land - I'm referring to Grocket as well.

HoundofShadow

I think majority of the players won't have more than 3-5 champed 5* that goes beyond level 460, given that it's impossible to cover classic and/or latest 5*.

550 5* match-3 damage ranges between 4500 to 5100 (rough gauge). So, the threshold is pretty high for a 4* character.

For those higher leveled players, they can attack players who used other 5* characters to defeat those Bishop teams.

It becomes like a flow of paper/scissor/rock.

_Vitto

HoundofShadow said:

For those higher leveled players, they can attack players who used other 5* characters to defeat those Bishop teams.

It becomes like a flow of paper/scissor/rock.

And it should not be. A 550 roster should be beatable by 500+ rosters. Not by a 4*.

ThaRoadWarrior

I really don't think Bishop's retal damage is the problem. It's that he's accruing pre-nerf gambit levels of blue AP every time he does it, which can be many times per turn, that allows him to stun-lock your team by himself. His clap back damage is just 4* Strange-like; to me that's it's own thing that can be worked around, same as avoiding match-5s against Teen Jean or strongest color matches vs C4rol teams. He's not going to be retaliating lvl550 5* teams to death without that AP generation.

There's nobody out there calling for an XFDP nerf, who just does the retal damage. My 280-ish XFDP starts dropping countdowns within the match damage numbers of my 452 Ghost Rider: RR on all 3 of his strongest colors and all 3 of my 450 GE Doom's basic matches. Possibly that's because he comes with the limitation that he doesn't do it when he's being attacked directly? or it could be because doing it doesn't result in your whole team getting shut down? Hard to say. But Gritty/Bishop really does feel like the Spider-Gwen/Thing/0/0/5 Gambit team of the old days to me when I face it.

HoundofShadow

I'm not calling for a nerf, just pointing out that his damage threshold for Overclocked is lower than his 4* counterparts. 

Even in 4* land, I won't attack Bishop first because there's a good chance of triggering his General Reserve, like lucking into a cascade or critical. So, I would attack his teammates and use the ap gained to stun him or one shot him.

In 5* land, even if you attack his teammates using a match-3, it will trigger his Overclocked, followed by General Reserves. However if 5* can do match-3 against his teammate and yet not trigger his Overclocked, it would then not trigger his General Reserve. Then, he won't gain ap and stun the team within 1 or 2 turns.

How about making his damage threshold for his Overclocked trigger based on a % of teammate full health, like Hulk's ability? Typical 4* has about 13k-15k HP at level 270 unboosted. 30% would be about 3900 damage.  Level 370 R4G hp is 28659.

tiomono

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I really don't think Bishop's retal damage is the problem. It's that he's accruing pre-nerf gambit levels of blue AP every time he does it, which can be many times per turn, that allows him to stun-lock your team by himself. His clap back damage is just 4* Strange-like; to me that's it's own thing that can be worked around, same as avoiding match-5s against Teen Jean or strongest color matches vs C4rol teams. He's not going to be retaliating lvl550 5* teams to death without that AP generation.

There's nobody out there calling for an XFDP nerf, who just does the retal damage. My 280-ish XFDP starts dropping countdowns within the match damage numbers of my 452 Ghost Rider: RR on all 3 of his strongest colors and all 3 of my 450 GE Doom's basic matches. Possibly that's because he comes with the limitation that he doesn't do it when he's being attacked directly? or it could be because doing it doesn't result in your whole team getting shut down? Hard to say. But Gritty/Bishop really does feel like the Spider-Gwen/Thing/0/0/5 Gambit team of the old days to me when I face it.

But strange is on power fire. And deadpool is when his ally takes a hit. You get around deadpool by targeting him. You cannot do that with bishop. If you target him your still getting dumped on while he is gaining 5 blue every time he hits you. 

I would probably complain about deadpool if he did damage and gained 4 or 5 red every time he retals. But we have ways around him.

And bishop is not being built undercovered to do his craziness. A 5 yellow with 0 purple or red kitty will get destroyed by 5* teams. Nobody in the gritty bishop team is being built odd on purpose to be better.

ThaRoadWarrior

My comparison to that legendary troll team is the turn-2 stun lock due to auto-AP generation being effectively unbeatable.

5*s have high health pools, if all they were doing is eating some health on the way to a nuke, there are options there with heals. My 450 GE Doom can 1-shot a baby champ bishop, and with Okoye in the mix, can punch up to a well-champed example. Those two characters can true-heal, so i'll take a few lumps with them and not mind if that's all it was. But bishop's AP gen means stun lock, which means game over. 

Warbringa

Perhaps simply changing Bishop's blue power to read like IMHB red or RedHulk green where you must spend all of your Blue AP to stun a character?  Say at 10 AP it starts at a 3 turn stun but goes up to 1 turn for every 6 AP in addition to the base 10 needed to fire?  In addition you could tier the AP drain as well in a similar fashion?

He would still be an effective blue AP generator and could really lock down one character for an extended time but team stun lock would be much more difficult for him?  In order to not nerf him so much, I would probably actually increase his overclock damage significantly since he will be targeted so fast by 5*.  This would at least still give pause that yes you can take Bishop out early but he is going to do a bunch of damage to you.  

I think this still would make him a pain to fight and possible defensive deterrent but still beatable and fix the team stun lock issue which appears to be the biggest issue people have.  

A_Wise_Man

KGB said:

TranscendGod said:

The new character, Juggernaut, is going to be absolutely insane with Gritty in PvPs where you can choose 3 characters. TinyGritty Bishop can be reasonably countered by Bishop, Peggy, Deadpool (and a few variants). It generally costs one health pack and is a nice quick win. JuggerGritty is going to be far more devastating. Your entire team is almost guaranteed to get hit by massive AOEs by the second turn. Sure, bishop and deadpool will return the favor and the fight will end quickly. But you're also going to be using far more health packs (perhaps 3 per match instead of 1), and if JuggerGritty gets a good cascade you just lose. It'll be a few months before many of the active 4* players champ Juggernaut; many of us are already saving heroics for him. If not for Kitty, AOE counters like Quake could work decently. But Kitty enables low level characters to do damage like 550+ characters. That's why she's OP (at sub champ levels).

Nope. On offense, Kitty will tank at least 3 if not 4 of 7 colors so Juggs AOE won't trigger as often as if you just ran Juggs/Grocket/Gamora where it will trigger 100% of matches.

On defense the AI will never trigger it since you'll target Kitty first, Grocket 2nd and Juggs 3rd. His AOE won't proc till you put him in front by which time you'll have removed the strikes or you'll be long dead.

Also if you bring your own Bishop to such fights you'll have enough Blue on turn 2 / 3 to stun Juggs (or Kitty).

So if you are running Juggs with Kitty you'll will 100% switch to Bishop on your last fight for Gritty/Bishop over Gritty/Juggs.

KGB

This is not the way tanking works for the AI.  Regardless of who is in front, the match damage and effect go to whoever has the color as their strongest color.  If you're fighting a 5 star team in a regular pvp, you dont get hit by 3 star match damage because the 3 star is in the front.  You get the 5 star match damage cause they have the strongest damage in those colors.  Saving juggs for last would just mean eventually *every* match would be AOE damage.  Hes kill first on this team, even before kitty.  Eve if you kill just kitty he will tank 90% of the matches and you will die.

tiomono

ThaRoadWarrior said:

My comparison to that legendary troll team is the turn-2 stun lock due to auto-AP generation being effectively unbeatable.

5*s have high health pools, if all they were doing is eating some health on the way to a nuke, there are options there with heals. My 450 GE Doom can 1-shot a baby champ bishop, and with Okoye in the mix, can punch up to a well-champed example. Those two characters can true-heal, so i'll take a few lumps with them and not mind if that's all it was. But bishop's AP gen means stun lock, which means game over. 

They are still beatable though, gwen thing gambit was a way over the top exploit that really did not take too long to get changed. Which makes me think that neither kitty or bishop are at that level. 

Once in awhile rocket fires blue instead of bishop. But yeah the ap gen is bonkers. His damage is icing on his evil cake.

ThaRoadWarrior

If y’all think he’s bad now, wait till Big Icemans start landing in the wild. Iceman is another 1-cover Legend as long as that cover is blue. My 1/0/1 can hang in my dual 5* MMR already.