Fix (NOT nerf) Bishop

AtlasAxe

I'm deliberately starting a new thread, because this is not about a nerf. I'm not an advocate of nerfing, given the history here of poorly thought out character re-designs. 

Bishop is so much trouble because his powers don't behave as written, not because he needs a nerf. Here's the wording for my level 296 Bishop:
"If Bishop takes 498 or more damage, gain 5 Blue AP. If Bishop has 10 or more Blue AP, this power becomes Energy Conversion."

In actual play, I've seen Bishop gain up to 30 Blue AP in a single turn with cascades. Based on the above wording, that should never happen. The problem is that the switch to Energy conversion doesn't occur within the turn, like it should. This appears to be an order of operations issue. While this could be fixed with recoding the order, but that might be a large task. A simpler item might be to modify the wording slightly:

"If Bishop has fewer than 10 AP and takes 498 or more damage, gain 5 Blue AP. If Bishop has 10 or more Blue AP, this power becomes Energy Conversion."

If this is simpler, this simple change make Bishop behave correctly and match what is currently written. Of course, just fixing the order of ops would be acceptable too.

AtlasAxe

Oops, don't know where I got 296 from, my Bishop is 289. Doesn't change the point.

therightwaye

Any talk about "fixing" Bishop should involve fixing Captain Marvel Galactic Warrior. I suggest you take a little from Bishop and give it to Carol. 

AtlasAxe

therightwaye said:

Any talk about "fixing" Bishop should involve fixing Captain Marvel Galactic Warrior. I suggest you take a little from Bishop and give it to Carol. 

I know she's not very good, but do any of her powers not behave as written?

Kojubat

Based on the way Nico's "When Blood Is Shed..." works, I suspect there is something in the code that precludes state checking of a power more than once on an opponent's turn.

Step 1: Take action.

Step 2: Check if action triggers enemy powers.

Step 3: Does triggered enemy power have a state change?

Step 3a: Did this trigger a state change?

Step 3b: Record that this check was made and skip step 3 for the rest of this turn.

This would explain why "take damage, do something" powers work fine multiple times, but "take damage, if something, do something" only seem to trigger if it is the first triggering action that occurs in a turn.

I didn't do any sort of comprehensive examination, just observed behavior on my part. Not saying the Nico's situation is super critical, but it has been "broken" for over a year with no code change to resolve it.

therightwaye

AtlasAxe said:

therightwaye said:

Any talk about "fixing" Bishop should involve fixing Captain Marvel Galactic Warrior. I suggest you take a little from Bishop and give it to Carol. 

I know she's not very good, but do any of her powers not behave as written?

I just think to the core they have similar powers (character wise not specific to MPQ). She just sucks more than he does a lot. So why not take the opportunity to correct both. 


Also, I just now realized you were talking about the text of Bishop's character. I agree that is one way they can improve.  

tiomono

Any change to slow down how he works right now would be considered a nerf. Even though many people believe he is a broken character because of his strengths.

Borstock

The only problem with Bishop, IMO, is that he's a stun-lock threat. All they really have to do is make the power turn into something else when 1 enemy is stunned so he can't stun the entire team. Have the power turn into a heal, have him steal or destroy specials, have him fortify tiles, whatever you want.

He'd still be very dangerous.

He'd still be a legit counter to Gritty, since he can stun Kitty quickly.

He'd still be a good teammate for Gritty, since the other blue can go to Grockett.

Every use for him remains basically preserved, but you can actually play and try to beat him, instead of having to sit there and watch as you get picked apart.

JSP869

Every other character with a similar mechanic has a quantifier that makes them easy to work around.
Thing and 3Pool only jump in front if they have more health than their ally
Rogue only jumps in front if you match Red, Green, or Yellow. 
XPool doesn't jump in front but he only spawns X-Enforcer tiles IF you boop his allies.

Bishop generates Blue AP when you target him.
And if you target his allies, he jumps in front and generates Blue AP anyway.

One "fix" would be to add a Thing/3Pool qualifier to Overclocked where Bishop only jumps in front if the Ally has less health than him. That way you could chip away at Kitty until you can either Stun or nuke the **** out of Bishop.

Another "fix would be to raise Overclocked's threshold to something like 1.5 to 2k at 270. While that may be high, especially as it will only go higher the more you level him up, at least it wouldn't trigger from making a match 3 with a 5*, which is what it does now.

Overclocked is what makes Bishop broken.
Bishop doesn't need to be nerfed.
Overclock needs to be fixed.

Zeofar

JSP869 said:

Every other character with a similar mechanic has a quantifier that makes them easy to work around.

Which is why those abilities are barely functional. Even if you don't just stun them to address those effects, targeting the defender first is a totally trivial solution to the "problem" they pose. For all practical purposes, 3Pool and Thing only have two abilities; and XPool and Valkyrie are only functional on offense, and that's just because CDFW and Bounty Hunter are good effects, not because their defensive passives are typically useful. Rogue (Since it's paired with damage soak) and Bishop (because he can actually defend himself and teammates) have the only well-designed reactive abilities in the game.

In my opinion, Bishop is actually one of the best designs in the game because it takes how the game actually works into account. Reworking one of the only good takes on the interception mechanic into glorified flavor text would not improve the game. Fixing the clear problem case (Bishop generating way too much AP) and introducing more functional defenders would.

JSP869

Bishop would be great if you were only playing in 4-star land or lower.
When you're in 5-star Land, he's as broken as Humpty Dumpty.

Reducing the amount of AP he generates would be one fix.
Stopping him from generating Blue AP literally as soon as his team has 10 or more Blue AP would be a better fix. No more generating 25-30 Blue AP because he got hit by a cascade. As soon as his team has 10 Blue AP, General Reserves should stop generating AP.

Zeofar

JSP869 said:

Reducing the amount of AP he generates would be one fix.
Stopping him from generating Blue AP literally as soon as his team has 10 or more Blue AP would be a better fix. No more generating 25-30 Blue AP because he got hit by a cascade. As soon as his team has 10 Blue AP, General Reserves should stop generating AP.

Yes, that's the original notion presented by the OP, which your "Overlocked is what makes Bishop broken" post seems to disagree with. I can't make out whether this is somehow meant to be supplementary or is a new position entirely.

jp1

I heart Bishop.

#Nonerfs

acescracked

Zeofar said:

JSP869 said:

Every other character with a similar mechanic has a quantifier that makes them easy to work around.

Which is why those abilities are barely functional. Even if you don't just stun them to address those effects, targeting the defender first is a totally trivial solution to the "problem" they pose. For all practical purposes, 3Pool and Thing only have two abilities; and XPool and Valkyrie are only functional on offense, and that's just because CDFW and Bounty Hunter are good effects, not because their defensive passives are typically useful. Rogue (Since it's paired with damage soak) and Bishop (because he can actually defend himself and teammates) have the only well-designed reactive abilities in the game.

In my opinion, Bishop is actually one of the best designs in the game because it takes how the game actually works into account. Reworking one of the only good takes on the interception mechanic into glorified flavor text would not improve the game. Fixing the clear problem case (Bishop generating way too much AP) and introducing more functional defenders would.

 #savebishop

HoundofShadow

I think it's the way the codes are run that allows him to gain more than 10 blue ap in a cascade. 

You make a match and a cascade happens. It all happens in 1 turn. After that match, he checks whether he has 10 blue aps.

I think playing against him might see some lag because the game have to intercept during your cascades to run a check for each match if the check is perfomed.

I read here by one of the posters that the devs mentioned Bishop was designed to counter America Chavez and R4G immediately. So, these workarounds or nerfs won't be able to fulfill the intended purpose of Bishop.

I think 5* players will have to wait for the next 5* to be released to counter Bishop's AP gain or AP gain ability like 5* Thor.

5* Iceman's blue cd works even when Iceman is stunned, based on report by one of thr poster.

ThaRoadWarrior

Cascades seem to be problematic for quite a few powers. The Nico example mentioned above has bothered me for quite awhile. (that being if her blue CD gets matched, and then she takes subsequent damage on a turn, she doesn't create a new CD on that same turn even though the power wording would suggest that she would).

The problem with Bishop is the AP gain, straight up. If you made changes to his stun, people would just bring him with G4mora and Kitty instead I think, since she can get specials on the board by stunning enemies and is probably the more dangerous stunner anyway.

Omegased

I agree that he generates too much Blue. if you have your own bishop, he can generate 10blue AP on YOUR FIRST turn, meaning you're team is stuffed. He'll stun someone, and any momentum you may get is instantly gone. if you're going to keep the amount of AP he generates the same, his stun needs to be more expensive (12, 14 ap?), or there needs to be another part of his stun (maybe removing 4 of his teams attack/strike/shield tiles)? he already removes shield tiles with his yellow, so it would make sense his blue stun removes strike tiles. that would completely stop gritty/bishop teams, but bishop will still be a powerhouse.

justsing

JSP869 said:

Every other character with a similar mechanic has a quantifier that makes them easy to work around.
Thing and 3Pool only jump in front if they have more health than their ally
Rogue only jumps in front if you match Red, Green, or Yellow. 
XPool doesn't jump in front but he only spawns X-Enforcer tiles IF you boop his allies.

Bishop generates Blue AP when you target him.
And if you target his allies, he jumps in front and generates Blue AP anyway.

One "fix" would be to add a Thing/3Pool qualifier to Overclocked where Bishop only jumps in front if the Ally has less health than him. That way you could chip away at Kitty until you can either Stun or nuke the tinykitty out of Bishop.

Another "fix would be to raise Overclocked's threshold to something like 1.5 to 2k at 270. While that may be high, especially as it will only go higher the more you level him up, at least it wouldn't trigger from making a match 3 with a 5*, which is what it does now.

Overclocked is what makes Bishop broken.
Bishop doesn't need to be nerfed.
Overclock needs to be fixed.

The "fixes" you're proposing are technically still nerfs

Daredevil217

Yes. Every “fix” from the OP on are just nerfs that we are calling a “fix”. Same as when Scarlet Witch’s purple no longer overwrote team-up tiles. They just “fixed” her so what she did was consistent with wording. It was still a nerf to that character.

Any change to how Bishop functions that makes him no longer broken would be considered a nerf by the players, and rightfully so. Every suggestion in here on how to fix him would be a nerf. That said, there’s nothing wrong with that because he NEEDS to be nerfed for the health of the end game. If you want to use different language, that’s fine, but it’s really no different then the billion-page “nerf Bishop” thread we have going. 

jamesh

I posted the about the same variation between how the power is described and how it actually works on the bugs sub-forum:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/79208/bishops-general-reserves-power-can-generate-far-more-than-14-blue-ap-investigating/p1

The original response was that this wasn't a bug, but changed to "[Investigating]".  But given how many bugs remain under investigation without being fixed, I wouldn't hold my breath for a change.

Polares

Yeah, don't nerf him, just remove him from the game completely. He is a Time Traveler so let's just delete his timeline completely so he never existed in the first place. Nuke him to the moon!!!!

PS: Bishop power MUST not trigger with such a low value. His trigger level should be the same as DP or Thing, not three times lower. He will ever be broken as long as a simple match 3 of a 5 triggers him. So as I said, nerf him into oblivion.