A Thought About Damage Threshold Abilities

JHawkInc

Okay, so we all know there are some weird problems with abilities that have a damage threshold, in a way that disadvantages higher tiered characters against characters from a tier below them. 5's have high match damage, and trigger 4's abilities more often, making it so that 5-stars have more trouble with these 4's than other 4's do, which results in a weird disparity of characters that are supposed to be better having a strict disadvantage.

So...

What if these thresholds were determined by the attacking character? Just a simple modifier based on character tier. The end goal would be that a character is just as likely to trigger the passive regardless of their tier (assuming normal matches and cascades and so on). For a 5-star attacking Bishop, the damage threshold would go up, so they are no longer triggering the passive 10x as often as their 4-star counterparts. Then, because the other stats of Bishop don't change (AP generated or damage dealt, or his HP), 5-star characters would retain their advantage over someone like Bishop simply due to being a higher tier character. Likewise, the damage threshold would go down for 3's, so they trigger the passive just as often as 4's and 5's, and no longer can skate under by doing less damage, which would give someone like Bishop a distinct advantage over the tier below him as well.

Thoughts? Obvious problems I don't see yet? I imagine cascades could get wonky (how does it determine if the passive fires if you make a match with a 5-star, and a cascade adds damage from a 4-star character, where would it set the threshold for a Bishop on defense?). I imagine the programming could get wonky as well. Just a thought that came to me while bored, and I wanted to see how intact the idea would be after bouncing it off other MPQ players.

bluewolf

Great.  Fantastic.  Love it.  Think I've seen it suggested somewhere before, but who knows if it was here.

Please, devs, do something.

I guess.  Or just keep doing nothing about Bishop.  it's getting harder and harder to care about what they're doing with the game.

Vhailorx

That solution would work for the original problem, but might be difficult to code or have unintended consequences for the reasons axp states below, and it would definitely be more difficult to communicate to the playerbase. 

It seems to me that an even easier solution is just preventing these mechanisms from proc'ing at all on pure match damage. Active powers, yes.  Passive powers, sure. Traps or CDs, fine.  Even match damage + strikes?  that would be ok too.  Just not from pure match damage alone.   

That would solve the 4*/5* imbalance created by the stunner bros, but would also preserve some value for those 4*s as counters to gritty and other teams that do fast, passive damage (e.g. okoye + Medusa).

AXP_isme

I can imagine there being problems of allocation. Do grocket’s strikes count as 4* damage when stacked on 5* match damage? Does kitty’s buff of strikes count as a 5* component of the 4* damage of the strikes once she starts buffing them? Who do attack tiles belong to? If I steal a tile from you who does it belong to? Does Medusa’s passive, enhanced by Okoye count as part 4* and part 5* damage? 

The possibilities seem pretty complicated. I also imagine it’s hard to explain to new players and hard to fit into an ability description. Imagine trying to keep below a threshold if that threshold is in fact multiple thresholds interacting with each other dynamically. Nice idea, and I definitely see where you’re coming from, but the implementation seems like it would add a lot of complexity to those characters that nobody else even comes close to. 

wymtime

I like the outside the box thinking.  When I think about these powers that the devs set up the question that I have is what was the devs intent with these powers to start with.  Was it to go off when a power was fired or was it meant to help with a major cascade or to help a team punch up a tier or a combination of the 3?  

The reason I pose this question is to understand the intent and how to adjust or improve these powers.  I have posted a lot on the 4* characters so I will focus on the 5* who have these powers in iceman and mr sinister.  Both have similar powers that prevent damage.  It feels like they are meant to reduce power damage done less so than match damage.  This makes them useful in a vacuum but allows you to match damage out the character so they are not broken.  The issue is this makes the powers fire very infrequently.  A passive that fires infrequently is looked down upon by the players.  If they lowered the amount of damage it took to fire these passives would the power become OP?  

These are interesting power and I like the effort I do think the change would be too complicated from a covering standpoint and an easier adjustment is to just nerf the OP ones and buff or leave the weak ones alone

Vhailorx

One quibble, wymtime,

I don't think players look down on passives that fire infrequently per se.  I think players look down on passives that are not useful.

Grocket has a passive that fires exactly once.  People love it. 

Flaptain has a passive that can fire every time you make a blue match, and people couldn't care less.

Damage absorbing passives that only work against active powers are not especially useful in mpq because most successful strategies involve preventing the enemy from using dangerous powers at all.  If you are taking many thousands of damage from enemy powers you are either running the rare true healer-based teams with characters like okoye/DD, or you are doing it wrong.  Either way, a damage reduction power like 5* ice or rogue isn't that helpful.

Conversely, every PvP match and most pve matches involve at least some match damage.  So powers that passively negate enemy match damage (e.g. OML's healing or Brb's protects) are reasonably useful.

So in terms of his overall utility, it really matters whether sinister's black will proc on match damage, or only against powers.  Or whether bishop will continue to dominate in 5* play.

abmoraz

The more simple answer: Make their "jump in front" mechanic work like Deadpool's and Thing's... They have to have more HP than the target.

Or make it like Rogue's: they only jump in front on certain colors.

HammerCap is even simpler: change his countdown tiles to 2 turns instead of 1.  I mean, is he really that much better than Loki, who's triggered passive takes 2 turns?

Vhailorx

abmoraz said:

The more simple answer: Make their "jump in front" mechanic work like Deadpool's and Thing's... They have to have more HP than the target.

Or make it like Rogue's: they only jump in front on certain colors.

HammerCap is even simpler: change his countdown tiles to 2 turns instead of 1.  I mean, is he really that much better than Loki, who's triggered passive takes 2 turns?

These solutions would solve the problem, but they would also make these characters useless.  That doesn't make people happy either (c.f., Gambit)

tiomono

wymtime said:

I like the outside the box thinking.  When I think about these powers that the devs set up the question that I have is what was the devs intent with these powers to start with.  Was it to go off when a power was fired or was it meant to help with a major cascade or to help a team punch up a tier or a combination of the 3?  

The reason I pose this question is to understand the intent and how to adjust or improve these powers.  I have posted a lot on the 4* characters so I will focus on the 5* who have these powers in iceman and mr sinister.  Both have similar powers that prevent damage.  It feels like they are meant to reduce power damage done less so than match damage.  This makes them useful in a vacuum but allows you to match damage out the character so they are not broken.  The issue is this makes the powers fire very infrequently.  A passive that fires infrequently is looked down upon by the players.  If they lowered the amount of damage it took to fire these passives would the power become OP?  

These are interesting power and I like the effort I do think the change would be too complicated from a covering standpoint and an easier adjustment is to just nerf the OP ones and buff or leave the weak ones alone

Iceman and sinister need to meet a 2nd threshold besides damage though. Iceman needs teamup and sinister needs black. Make bishop need teamup to protect his team and you could play around him. 

ZootSax

While I’m still in favor of making all jump-to-front abilities conditional on something (as all pre-Bishop ones were), I do like @JHawkInc’s creative solution.

One additional benefit it creates is that it would absolutely PUNISH the over-leveled Dark Avengers we fight in PVE, as 1*’s and 2*’s would scale to a lower minimum damage threshold to trigger a 4* ability, or even a 3* ability.  I would love it if 1* Juggs started triggering something like 4* Deadpool’s black purely on match damage.

sure it’s a pipe dream, but it’s a pleasant one

Kolence

I guess we could use a little more clarity with different types of damage done during a turn. Then see at what stage are these problematic abilities triggered.

Also, is this just about Hammer Cap and Bishop which can't be prevented (most of the time) from jumping in front to take the hit, or is it also about Deadpool, Thing, Valkyrie, Hulk, CM (I'm forgetting someone, I'm sure) problem of thresholds increasing too high when they're boosted (or simply leveled normally) to a much higher level than their opposition?

Anyway, there's match damage, there are powers (active or passive or tied to various special tiles and tile destruction), there are attack tiles, and then, there are strike tiles which are added to every instance of damage done in any way. There are also exceptions where a power will explicitly state whether the tiles destroyed count for damage or not or the like.

Now, if Bishop is meant to counter teams with strike tiles but not 5-stars, just give him damage resistance to tile damage part, high enough so 5-stars don't go over his threshold, while the strike tiles damage would go through normally.
Just tack on a passive part on one of his abilities that says "Bishop takes 10% of damage done from tiles destroyed by the enemy."