Captain Hammertime and his broken friends

Daredevil217

T_REZ5000 said:

BoyWonder1914 said:

I've been away from the game for a minute (again lol) so pardon my ignorance, but is Captain Hammertime Juggs or Worthy Cap? 
 
Because BRUH. 

I jumped into a Watch & Learn match against Clint/Worthy Cap without reading Cap's powers, and I lie to you not, the match was over after I made literally ONE move. There was a HFH deal I think a month ago now that featured 3 Shuri covers for $19.99, and needing precisely that to finish Okoye, I dropped that $20 like it was hot. The anniversary double iso finally allowed me to champ her, so I go into this PVP a freshly champed Taskmaster and brand-spanking new Thorkoye, thinking I'm all that and a bag of chips with my choices of dips and a soda. 

I select Cap and bring him to the front, thinking it's best to deal with the unknowns first. I make a match, and the board suddenly has 1-turn CDs popping up. They begin to resolve on the AIs turn, and I watch dumbfounded as Clint/Cap ability banners pop up on the screen one after another, and the red/blue ap reserves of the enemy team go up to ungodly levels. Realizing this isn't going to go well for me, I attempt to retreat. The button doesn't respond. I go, "Hmm, that's weird.....the game only doesn't let me do that when my entire team is about to die". My soul leaves my body as I watch my 50K health Thor just get pounded to oblivion, and I rage quit the app before I have to watch the rest of my team suffer the same fate. A great lesson in humility was learned this day. 

LOL, this is almost exactly what happened to me when I came back to the game like 2 months ago.  Gotta say I was quite surprised. 

 But nowhere near as surprised as I am seeing the same people who were outraged at Gambit generating 3 purple and 3 red per turn defend a pair of characters that can passively generate 30 red and 30 blue in one turn.

Thorkoye is a bad matchup for this team.  Thinking “I have Thorkoye so I can steamroll anything” was the first mistake.  This team has a certain synergy that has to be planned for. But it’s not broken. Bish to me is. The fact that Cap needs really two other characters to be effective (Hawk to generate AP and a third to get good use out of it) puts him a tier below to me. 

I’d say try a different team/strategy and see if you get different results. I am destroying every HammerCap team I see in Strange’s PvP right now. Strange is usually my antidote for this particular pairing (or broken Bishop, or Professor X or true healing 5s who can shrug off spam damage), due to their power-spammy nature. But boosted Strange fueled by boosted Grocket strikes? Yeah, keep spamming those 5AP powers Clint. See what happens. 

wymtime

For those defending these 2 characters or just defending one I truly feel like you are missing the point on what makes these characters bad for the game.

there are 2 passive powers.  One says if you take X amount of damage A happens.  The 2nd is if someone on your team takes Y amount of damage B happens.  The combination of these two passives is what is broken and both passives should not be on one character in the game.

look at Thing, DP, Rouge.  All have the passive if your team takes X damage Y occurs and none are broken because you can kill them first.  3* marvel has the opposite if she takes X damage Y occurs.  Again not a broken 3* because you save her for last.

making characters that do both passives should not be in the game.  If both characters only did one of the 2 they would be fine and still good.  Just don’t keep a combination of both powers which makes them defensive characters only placed out to deter players from attacking them.

Warbringa

I think I would make the next 5* have a passive that severely inhibits team match damage to specifically counter Bishop and Worthy and get most 5* initial match damage down to below their thresholds.  In addition, they would accelerate AP gain in some fashion.  As characters die, their passive is reversed and deals extremely strong damage via match damage.  So if someone in the 5* tier wants to use Bishop or Worthy, they will be smacked hard.  This allows a 5* team to gather AP and kill Bishop or Worthy, and then the passive team AP damage would begin to switch from a penalty to a bonus etc. In order to make this character a threat to non-Bishop/Worthy teams, I would make their third power a better version of 4* Ghost Rider black (ie you have to take this character out or you risk losing characters by letting them linger around).  I am thinking yellow (passive team damage power) /blue (AP acceleration power) /black (thorns active power). Another option to consider if they don't want to reproduce the Ghost Rider like power is does his passive impact both friendly and enemy teams and then his third power could be something completely different?

Quite frankly would rather them just come up with a counter as their history of nerfing will simply just make Worthy/Bishop useless, or make them a problem for the 4* tier in place of the 5* tier etc.  I have no faith in the devs ability to nerf. 

fight4thedream

wymtime said:

Just don’t keep a combination of both powers which makes them defensive characters only placed out to deter players from attacking them.

Any good defensive character or team combination by definition should be a deterrent towards being attacked. The problem isn't the combination of their passive mechanics; it's simply there is a lack of proper counter solutions. And let's be clear here: these two characters are problematic for a specific subset of the player population. They are not a systemic problem. 

If the dev team were to introduce a new good 5* character with a passive that effectively either neutralized or punished the jump-in-front mechanic or stun ability it would effectively alleviate the frustration felt by those who find fighting against such characters "unenjoyable". Currently we have Silver Surfer with his stun immunity, but I will be the first to admit he is not the ideal solution. There are also other solutions with varying levels of success but no real "silver bullet" if that's what you are looking for.

You mentioned Thing, DP and Rogue as examples of not being "broken". How much difficulty do you have facing them? Do you consider them to be an effective defensive deterrent? I don't. Rogue can be a bit tricky if you are not careful but usually the easiest solution is to simply stun her and take her out first if things get out of hand. 

But my point is that if the dev team simply introduced better solutions to the jump-in-front mechanic and/or stun ability then what need would there be for a nerf? None. Yes, the current state of the meta is frustrating for those that lack the means of dealing with the stun brothers but asking for nerf seems a bit short-sighted to me. It is my hope that dev team is working towards building a more diverse meta than the simple "One team to rule them all" that has traditionally been the meta we have lived under. 

And from my observations, we are moving towards this goal. Teams a player can effectively compete with at the highest tier of regular PvP play include:

Hawkeye/Worthy Cap
JJ/Bishop
JJ/Prof X
Kitty/Grocket
Okoye/Thor
Prof X/Iceman

I even saw an old mate of mine hopping with a high level Beta/5* Carnage and asked him about it. He said that while slow, it was a good defensive deterrent and effective against Kitty/Grocket teams. 

Add a character with a great tool kit and a passive that counters Bishop and Worthy and you add another layer to that expanding meta. 

sinnerjfl

Counters do not work when a character is as broken as Bishop or Worthy Cap.

Remember Gambit? Remember Archangel & CW Cap that were supposed to be counters to him? 

Captain_Carlman

sinnerjfl said:

Counters do not work when a character is as broken as Bishop or Worthy Cap.

Remember Gambit? Remember Archangel & CW Cap that were supposed to be counters to him? 

For real.  If they introduced a hard counter to those characters that was only useful against them, but left Bishop and WC the same, do we really think that would change anything?  

Not sure about Worthy Cap, since I don't have him at a high enough level and any PVP I've fought him in hasn't been too terrible, but I do think Bishop does need to be tweaked.  The idea of his stun firing off after damage from powers is an extremely fair compromise.

bluewolf

Ask yourself if the following is true:

1.  Was Bishop recognized as a problem almost immediately?   (debuted 11/15/18)

2.  Would it be good game design to have a counter to a problem in a puzzle game?

3.  How many characters have been introduced since Bishop debuted?  (it's 28)

So.....

Assuming the devs feel like maybe something should be done.....and there is a demand for a character that would effectively counter him ($$$).....don't you think they would have introduced said counter by now if they could effectively design that counter?

Nero

I play with 4* and 3*.
For me the R4coon is much more problematic. Starting the game with 7 assault titles on the board and no one malus...  Reduce them to 3 and many problem are solved. 95% of the teams i facing  are with this thing. It's a pain.
I see a R4coon, i skip.

Bishop is hard to confront but more interresting and tactical to fight in my 270lvl range . A little rebalance and he will be fine

I have no problem with Wcap. I dont know the combo with the 5*.

Daredevil217

sinnerjfl said:

Counters do not work when a character is as broken as Bishop or Worthy Cap.

Remember Gambit? Remember Archangel & CW Cap that were supposed to be counters to him? 

wymtime said:

look at Thing, DP, Rouge.  All have the passive if your team takes X damage Y occurs and none are broken because you can kill them first. 

I was just about to the post this. We don’t trust the developers to nerf, but we trust them to develop effective counters to broken characters? They LEGIT thought that ARCHANGEL would be the hero we needed to stop Gambit. Let that sink in. Actually, it’s best not to think about it too long.

I honestly don’t care if they obliterate Bishop with the nerf bat until he’s Talos status.  There are over 90 4* characters in the game. There are beyond an abundance of other awesome character combos for 4* players. 

SnowcaTT

LLohm said:

Since Worthy Cap and Bishop are allowing simple setups which can take down 550 5* with relative ease, does chasing 5* hard even make sense anymore or should people stop at just champed 5* status?

This has seemed to be the case since the introduction of Kitty, imo. I see plenty of players that BH Kitty only (and/or spend only on vaults that have her), get to 450 Kitty and that's the only 5* you need.

4*'s are the way to beat both Bishop and Cap (as OJSP found above) - so why get other 5*.

I'm with everyone that gets hit all the time by tiny Kitty's (double meaning always meant), as well as Bishop/Cap, and have had the same question that Llohm brings up here - is the intention for devs to make rock-paper-scissors include 4* options over 5* ones? Why bother trying to get every character at all if this is the case - much less every character at the highest level possible?

That said, most of these teams aren't extremely fast (intentional or not) and if I was trying to play the "bunny game" that Jryuart refers to, I wouldn't worry too much about those teams. My bigger issue with them as a 5* player is they are able to both obtain high points and remain there without threat of hits in large part because they hide/escape through the cracks in the MMR system.

Vhailorx

Fight4,

I agree that bishop/worthy are only a problem for the specific subset of the population.  But that subset has almost perfect overlap with the highest, trophy tier of play that everyone is theoretically chasing.  That is bad for the game as it would seem to provide a rather compelling incentive against leveling up your roster.

wymtime

fight4thedream said:

wymtime said:

Just don’t keep a combination of both powers which makes them defensive characters only placed out to deter players from attacking them.

Any good defensive character or team combination by definition should be a deterrent towards being attacked. The problem isn't the combination of their passive mechanics; it's simply there is a lack of proper counter solutions. And let's be clear here: these two characters are problematic for a specific subset of the player population. They are not a systemic problem. 

If the dev team were to introduce a new good 5* character with a passive that effectively either neutralized or punished the jump-in-front mechanic or stun ability it would effectively alleviate the frustration felt by those who find fighting against such characters "unenjoyable". Currently we have Silver Surfer with his stun immunity, but I will be the first to admit he is not the ideal solution. There are also other solutions with varying levels of success but no real "silver bullet" if that's what you are looking for.

You mentioned Thing, DP and Rogue as examples of not being "broken". How much difficulty do you have facing them? Do you consider them to be an effective defensive deterrent? I don't. Rogue can be a bit tricky if you are not careful but usually the easiest solution is to simply stun her and take her out first if things get out of hand. 

But my point is that if the dev team simply introduced better solutions to the jump-in-front mechanic and/or stun ability then what need would there be for a nerf? None. Yes, the current state of the meta is frustrating for those that lack the means of dealing with the stun brothers but asking for nerf seems a bit short-sighted to me. It is my hope that dev team is working towards building a more diverse meta than the simple "One team to rule them all" that has traditionally been the meta we have lived under. 

And from my observations, we are moving towards this goal. Teams a player can effectively compete with at the highest tier of regular PvP play include:

Hawkeye/Worthy Cap
JJ/Bishop
JJ/Prof X
Kitty/Grocket
Okoye/Thor
Prof X/Iceman

I even saw an old mate of mine hopping with a high level Beta/5* Carnage and asked him about it. He said that while slow, it was a good defensive deterrent and effective against Kitty/Grocket teams. 

Add a character with a great tool kit and a passive that counters Bishop and Worthy and you add another layer to that expanding meta. 

It should not be to make counters to strong characters.  The devs goal should be to make a balanced game.  The fact is they should not have made these 2 passives on the same character not once but twice.  They should have one of the passives not both and they should not be looking to create a character to counter them.  Creating a balanced game mechanics should be the goal period.  Others have posted how Infinity war cap and AA were suppose to counter Gambit which failed miserably.  Trying to create power to counter a broken mechanic is too difficult.  Reworking Bishop and Hammer Cap to have only one of their passives is the better solution.

HoundofShadow

Isn't Scissor, Paper and Stone concept in many RPGs considered a strategy to create a balanced game?

How do you define "balanced"?

Daredevil217

HoundofShadow said:

Isn't Scissor, Paper and Stone concept in many RPGs considered a strategy to create a balanced game?

How do you define "balanced"?

Where any character can win or lose to any other character and you don’t need one specific (or a handful in some cases) counter character to beat them.

HoundofShadow

That's a pretty wide definition of "balanced" because I doubt any characters from 1-star to 3-star tier can beat a 5-star character. They will get match-damaged into defeat. I think that definition need to be tightened up.

ThaRoadWarrior

It's an interesting situation for sure that these characters become harder to overcome as my roster level increases. I'm at that point in this simulator season where i'm basically only seeing Hawkeye/Jessica Jones/WCap teams, and they are all at a level where just taking in 4*s of my own is a recipe for one of them to get 1-shot defenestrated. It would be one thing if I could drop back and just play them on their terms, but MMR being what it is, I'm not seeing any teams with "reasonable" to beat components on it, just teams with those characters that are competitive to my 6 5* champions.

I would propose that the situation as we have it today is not balanced very well. A row-sham-bow counter to that team I suppose exists in the form of Silver Surfer, but since mine is 2/1/3 I don't believe he is any better than taking a 4* into battle. I need 68 more Mr. F covers to get 5 more Silver Surfer covers. Given my tracking since shards went live puts me at 1 4* cover ~week from shards, and 1 5* cover from direct shards every ~63 days, I could spend the next 1.2 years trying to champ Silver Surfer to claw out of this meta, but I don't really feel like that is worth my commitment tbh.

Daredevil217

HoundofShadow said:

That's a pretty wide definition of "balanced" because I doubt any characters from 1-star to 3-star tier can beat a 5-star character. They will get match-damaged into defeat. I think that definition need to be tightened up.

Not right now. Because they’re not balanced. That’s sort of the point. I obviously don’t expect a 1* to beat a 5*  because in a game like this there should be balance WITHIN tiers but imbalance by design BETWEEN tiers, rewarding and incentivizing players as they move up the ranks. 

I have people in my very large alliance family with some very strong, fun 5*s who just stay (or stayed) in 4* land because they know they would get massacred if they transitioned with the “wrong” (ie not the best of the best) characters. And I don’t blame them. I did the same thing. 

We hear story after story of people who finally champ their first pair of 5s, only to regret it because the game gets harder. They get punished. “I hit the Bishop wall!” Just play Surfer; it’s not that hard. “I hit the Gritty wall!!” Just play Blacksuit or Thorkoye. “I hit the WorthyCap wall!” Just play Strange. Don’t have the handful of characters that allow you to be part of the wall? Enjoy climbing half as high or getting hit twice as much! At least you could run down the Thorkoye wall with just about any other 5*s. 

Games like Street Fighter or Diablo or most RPGs where you pick a “class” seem to do a much better job where characters have strengths and weaknesses but are more less at the same level.  There’s a trade off for choosing one character over another. 

To me a game that punishes you for advancing is not balanced. A game where in the ultimate tier, “paper” in the tier below beats everything, but “that’s okay because Silver Surfer sometimes beats paper” is not balanced game design.  Heck, it’s barely Rock Paper Scissors. But YMMV. 

DAZ0273

Well there should be a qualification here because we are talking about Versus and not Story Mode. Levelling/Champing your 5's for Story Mode is now a win ever since SCL were introduced, reducing play time and allowing for serious chances of placement rewards - it of course used to be the opposite with personal scaling. So it depends on whether you are a player who only plays half this game. Until recently when I decided my Alliance was wasting it's talent by not even playing low level PVP I hadn't realised how many people simply don't appear to bother with the Versus mode. So I instigated a little experiment and the results are startling: to the extent where we have gone from sometimes not even being top 750 to on the brink of being a Top 100 Alliance just by engagement at low level PvP! I am not even talking about asking people t go to 575. Over the space of 3 completed events we have climbed 500+ places! However PvE is a closed shop for Alliances from what I can see unless you have access to good 5* rosters in your Alliance.

It is a shame that Story and Versus seem to work against each other instead of hand-in-hand.

ThaRoadWarrior

It may be worth revisiting some of the discussion about Gambit's rebalance as we talk about WCap and Bishop, and why they are so problematic. Here is the thread from the (6/26/2018) rebalance of Gambit (the real nerf), with a lengthy description from then-lead designer Casey Malone:
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/73603/gambit-character-update-details-6-26-18/p1

"Unfortunately, this clearly wasn’t enough, and Gambit is now seen as a more or less mandatory inclusion for players’ teams. Variety is hugely important in any game, and Marvel Puzzle Quest is no exception. When you're forced to play with or against a character over and over again, things get stale. So we're making additional changes to Gambit (Classic)."

"Here is the big one. Gambit's Stacked Deck power sped up every match he was a part of, and the drawback of blocking ally Powers was not strong enough to make up for the huge gains it provided. In addition, this AP gain being purely passive means there's no opportunity for opponents to interact with Gambit's power." (emphasis added)

Here is another thread from the earlier nerf where Gambattery was addressed. (it was much harder to find)
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/69419/soul-gem-season-updates-updated-12-13-17/p1

"After looking though at Versus win rates (on both offense and defense), character usage rates (relative to ownership), and outcomes in Story missions, we had enough data telling us we needed to change both 3-Star and 5-Star Gambit sooner, rather than later.

There are three key issues with Gambit that we want to address:

• There are times when a Gambit with no Red or Purple covers is better than a Gambit with them. Using covers to train a character should always make them better.
• The AP generation of Stacked Deck is too strong, without any good way to play against it.
• A large number of players use 3-Star Gambit with only Black covers to fuel 5-Star teams. 3-Stars are an integral part of the game, but we never want your opponent's 3-Star character to trump your 5-Star.

Ragin' Cajun and Aces & Eights are also strong powers in the right circumstances, but we believe that there is plenty of space in the game for characters to have awesome, exciting powers, as long as they're good counter-play available against them. That's not the case for Stacked Deck."

I think it's just a shade of grey to pivot those bullet points about Stacked Deck to any number of problematic powers that we're discussing today. Especially since most of those exploiting Gambattery were doing so with a Thing/Spider-Gwen/0/0/5 Gambit that would present opponents with an unbeatable turn 2 stunlock, which is exactly what we find ourselves complaining about now with WCap and Bishop, though the ability to create and apply the rampant AP gain-to-Stunlock condition now all resides within a single character. So I guess make of that what you will.

Daredevil217

DAZ0273 said:

Well there should be a qualification here because we are talking about Versus and not Story Mode. Levelling/Champing your 5's for Story Mode is now a win ever since SCL were introduced, reducing play time and allowing for serious chances of placement rewards - it of course used to be the opposite with personal scaling. So it depends on whether you are a player who only plays half this game. Until recently when I decided my Alliance was wasting it's talent by not even playing low level PVP I hadn't realised how many people simply don't appear to bother with the Versus mode. So I instigated a little experiment and the results are startling: to the extent where we have gone from sometimes not even being top 750 to on the brink of being a Top 100 Alliance just by engagement at low level PvP! I am not even talking about asking people t go to 575. Over the space of 3 completed events we have climbed 500+ places! However PvE is a closed shop for Alliances from what I can see unless you have access to good 5* rosters in your Alliance.

It is a shame that Story and Versus seem to work against each other instead of hand-in-hand.

Well even that I’m not so sure of. If you don’t have the 5E, Thanos, Thorkoye (for tough 5E nodes) and/or can’t clear optimally, you probably aren’t placing significantly higher. I have 26 5*s champed- including all the meta- but when I drop down to CL7-CL8, I run all 4s most to all of the event (Juggs/Guardians).

I know plenty of 4* players who place T5/T10. I think Hound is one of them. I doubt champing Captain Marvel/Wasp are helping those players significantly.