Character Updates - September 2020

IceIX

We’re going to be making changes to a number of characters coming up fairly soon. Our general plan is to have these changes in place during the coming offseason, after the next client update releases.

Which characters?

• Captain America (Worthy)

• Archangel

• The Thing

• Jubilee

• The Hulk (Totally Awesome)

• Bishop

That’s right, Bishop is going to be getting some gameplay changes! Without further ado, the upcoming changes are below.

Captain America (Worthy)

Heavy Hitter - 9 AP

Reduced the damage from the initial strike slightly, changed around the deltas between levels on the Charged tiles to make it a bit stronger at Levels 1-3, and raised the cap on bonus Charged tile damage to 9 max tiles (from 6).

The Wind Up - 6 AP

Increased the damage for both the Countdown tile and the Passive damage from enemy Charged tile matches.

American Hero - PASSIVE

Previous: Captain America jumped to the front if a certain amount of damage was given and reduced that damage. He’d then create multiple small Countdown tiles that converted Yellow tiles to Red or Blue basic tiles.

Now: Captain America jumps to the front if the enemy makes a Match 4 or greater, *negating* the damage from that attack. He then creates one Black Countdown tile that changes Yellow tiles into Red or Blue Charged tiles. Levels lower the Countdown tile timer and raise the number of Charged tiles created.

Essentially, this ability used to be one where Cap would constantly be jumping to the front and negating damage against pretty much every 5-Star enemy attack, then making tons of Red and Blue tiles through converting the Yellow tiles. This made him incredibly powerful against enemies higher than his power band, incidentally powering up his ability to stun those same opponents soon after. Now, he’s more  powerful against match-4s and any opponent that puts those out regardless of tier. Meanwhile, the Countdown tile is much more powerful when it goes off, but isn’t a sure gain, since it will now take multiple turns for one tile as opposed to single turns for multiple tiles.

Archangel (Classic)

Archangel has received a couple of minor but very useful updates to his abilities by lowering the AP cost of both Angle of Attack and Enemy Down. As well, he’s had his base stats raised.

Base Stats

13343 Health -> 16618 Health
Old 22 | 21 | 175 | 19 | 156 | 136 | 88 | 4.3x
New 28 | 26 | 218 | 23 | 194 | 170 | 110 | 4.3x

Angle of Attack - 11 AP -> 9 AP

No change to the ability, but AP cost has been reduced by 2.

Enemy Down - 10 AP -> 9 AP

No change to the ability, but AP cost has been reduced by 1.

The Thing (Classic)

The Thing has had his base health increased, as well as the damage on both It’s Clobberin’ Time! and Yancy Street Special increased.

Base Stats

4816 Health -> 5372 Health

It’s Clobberin’ Time! - 10 AP

Damage of this attack has been increased.

Yancy Street Special - 12 AP

Damage of this attack has been increased.

Jubilee (Uncanny X-Men)

Jubilee has also received some changes that raises her usefulness for her Passive Heart of the Team, as well as her gem color changing Light Show.

Heart of the Team - PASSIVE

Each level of this ability requires one less Charge tile to activate for her allies, now requiring only 2 Charged tiles on the board to activate at Level 5. As well, bonus damage has been increased.

Light Show - 12 AP -> 10 AP

No change to the ability, but AP cost has been reduced by 2.

The Hulk (Totally Awesome)

Amadeus Cho loses none of his ability to chomp down on delicious health restoring hot dogs during battle. He does, however, GAIN damage in his Mastermind Excello, as well as reduce the Countdown tile timer on his See the Math of It ability.

Mastermind Excello - 13 AP

This ability has had its damage increased by a large amount, as well as a minor tweak to levels 2 and 3. These levels now require one less Blue AP to activate for bonus damage (from 14 to 13).

See the Math of It - PASSIVE

The Countdown timer for Level 2-5 has been reduced by 1. This means that level 5 has a 2 turn Countdown tile.

Bishop (Classic)

Bishop has had an overall rework to his Overclocked and General Reserves abilities, as these are the ones that had major effects across power bands . Overall, Bishop keeps his ability to protect teammates, deal damage to his opponents, and create Blue AP while doing it, but the methods by which he does so change from direct incoming damage to something more directed actively by the player using Bishop.

Overclocked - PASSIVE - > 6 AP

This ability has been updated in a large way. Instead of being Passive, it is now an active ability, and functions a little more broadly than before as a result. The new ability is as follows:

Bishop absorbs his enemy’s attacks, storing them up for an explosive blast. Create a 3-turn Fortified Black countdown tile. While this tile is on the board and one of Bishop’s teammates would take damage, Bishop jumps to the front. When this countdown expires, Bishop deals 55% of the damage he took while the countdown was on the board to the target.

• Level 2: Deals 75% of the damage taken when the countdown expires.

• Level 3: Deals 100% of the damage taken when the countdown expires.

• Level 4: Deals 140% of the damage taken when the countdown expires.

• Level 5: Deals 225% of the damage taken when the countdown expires.

General Reserves / Energy Conversion - PASSIVE / 10 AP -> PASSIVE / 8 AP

Along with jumping to the front and dealing damage to everyone with Overclocked, Bishop also acted as a large Blue AP battery with his General Reserves by creating AP at relatively low levels of incoming damage. This ability has now been changed so that he still creates AP, but by being in front, not by taking damage, as well as reducing the gained AP. Additional changes are an AP reduction for Energy Conversion and an additional effect that he will create Green Protect tiles on triggering General Reserves. The new abilities read as follows:

General Reserves - PASSIVE

With every injury, Bishop grows stronger. At the start of your turn, if Bishop is in front, gain 1 Blue AP and creates a strength 11 Green Protect tile. (max level strength 22 tile)

(PASSIVE) If Bishop has 8 or more Blue AP, this power becomes Energy Conversion.

• Level 2: Creates a 15 strength Protect tile. (max level strength 31 tile)

• Level 3: Creates a 20 strength Protect tile. (max level strength 40 tile)

• Level 4: Creates a 29 strength Protect tile. (max level strength 57 tile)

• Level 5: Creates a 46 strength Protect tile. (max level strength 92 tile)

Energy Conversion - 8 AP

Bishop focuses the energy he’s stored into a powerful blow, disabling his enemy. Deal 46 damage to the target and stun them for 1 turn(s). (max level 90 damage).

(PASSIVE) If Bishop has less than 8 Blue AP, this power becomes General Reserves.

• Level 2: Deals 92 damage. (max level 180 damage).

• Level 3: Deals 202 damage. (max level 396 damage).

• Level 4: Deals 506 damage. (max level 990 damage).

• Level 5: Deals 635 damage to the target then stuns them for 2 turns. (max level 1242 damage).

With these character changes, we will be offering increased sellback prices for Captain America and Bishop as per usual for these style of changes/reworks. These are planned to last until October 1st. However, given that the changes to Archangel, Hulk, Jubilee and Thing are purely increases, we are not planning on increasing sellback prices for those characters.

What do you all think?

scottee

Yes! Thank you! I don't even really care what they end up like later. Just happy they won't be broken at 5* tier.

waywreth

Glad for the changes to Bishop and Worthy (although I see the sledgehammer theory was applied similar to past nerfs).  Thank you for addressing the issue.

supergarv

Thanks for gutting Bishop.

Killing Cap is good for PVP/Sim, but really hurts us for those annoying many clears of the CL10 challenge node. Polaris says Hi for that to take over until she is speednerfed.

I kinda laughed at the Changes to Thing and Jubilee. Strange picks to rework so small. Wonder whats the reasoning for those specific chars, its hard to imagine they get much playtime - the buff doesnt really incentivize to go for them now, too.

Daredevil217

Very very happy about Bishop. No complaints there. 

I didn’t see Worthy as a problem and feel since he needed two characters to work, he wasn’t truly broken (unlike Bishop). But since I rarely ever ran him I’m fine with his nerf. 

As a 5* player, Angel is the only character I really looked at aside from the stun bro’s. I feel like these tweaks don’t make him any more playable than he was before the rework. That said, I’m hoping that doing straight numbers tweaks like this does not take a ton of development time and are things you can implement on a lot of old classics that have good kits but show their age with their numbers. Rescue, Daredevil, Widow, Jean, Logan, Star-Lord, Surfer, etc. are some great examples of characters that could use simple numbers buffs. If we get even one 5* a season that’d be cool! Thank you!!

Waddles_Pines

Since Bishop is the big ticket item here, I'll just comment on the other changes 

Worthy - he allowed 4* ppl to punch above their weight class in pve, so not liking this change at all.

Archangel - his powers are still too high cost/too low in power, not sure why changing him was a priority.  I don't think I've seen any Archangels in the wild, so this change baffles me.

Thing - good changes to damage, but doesn't address the biggest complaint about him.  That he has to take big damage to generate shields and that there's no damage mitigation.

Jubilation - no big change at all.

Chulk - good changes on damage, but green still costs too much and blue required for bonus damage is still too high.

Mrcl25

I'm disappointed by the Bishop nerf as I really liked using him. Archangel buff is nice, hopefully it's just the first for the classic 5*s. And any other reworks to make weaker characters stronger are welcome.

ursopro

oh no no no Bishop bros, we got to cocky

jackstar0

Slightly sad for the Hawkeye nerf, but overall positive changes.

Glockoma

@IceIX

I can’t even muster the amount of times I have voiced my support for rebalances. Nearly all of my posts in 6 years have solely been about this. Thank you, and please, keep them coming. This should be as regular to the game as the season itself is. 

2020....what a year..

ThaRoadWarrior

Wow, Bishop and WCap seem to be properly steamrolled. I kind of fall into the @Daredevil217 camp on this one regarding WCap being mostly fine since he needs a buddy to shine, so I'm sorry to see him go. The other character changes are incremental and that's good even if they won't be super useful to me even still; Archangel's numbers seem like a negligible increase in the face of current 5* match damage - I assume those are his numbers at 255 ? How do they scale to 450?

*edit - just compared his new numbers - he has slightly worse stats than Samurai Daken with match damage now (relative to their "good" colors) at 255:
Archangel New                       28 | 26 |  218 |  23 |  194 |  170 |  110 |  4.3x
Wolverine (Samurai Daken) 25 | 225 |  27 |  29 |  175 |  200 |  111 |  3.5x

TriSentinel

I love all these changes.

wymtime

Thanks for the balance changes.  From the nerds to Bishop and Hammer Cap they don’t look like they will kill the characters but will reduce their power.

i also like the simple approach to reducing the cost but not the power can make him much better.  I don’t know if he will suddenly become Meta but he was never a bad character and now he will be better.

i look forward to more balance changes in the 5* tier hopefully this year

bluewolf

Sooooooo happy!

Oh no.....what will players complain about now?  Polaris isn't even good on defense!

Oh, Support distribution, I guess......maybe that'll be fixed next week.  

Thank you for the attention to balance and the game as a whole.  The last few months have seen lots of improvements.

BigSoftieFF

I’m.....

jackstar0

If this could be a lead-in to an Anniversary of Classic 5* boosts, that would be welcome... just sayin'.

BigSoftieFF

So.....

BigSoftieFF

Happy....

BigSoftieFF

😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

killahKlown

bluewolf said:

Sooooooo happy!

Oh no.....what will players complain about now?  

I'm starting a petition against invincible hulk next.  Join me!

fmftint

Not that anyone cares but too long to bring me back, my MPQ days are long past