5-star Carol Nerf?

SnowcaTT

ThaRoadWarrior said:

TH4nos seems unchanged.

Uh-oh. Someone should tell D3 there is still a rampant crazy combo where 4*'s can beat anything.

DrDevilDinosaur

As many have already said, Carol was not the key component of winfinite - there are a number of other options, and at least one of those (Th4nos) is considered equally good in the role that she fulfilled.

What Carol provided, that others could not, was:

1. Better damage per cycle

2. Higher health pool

She effectively helped mitigate the effect of getting a "bad board", since she could afford to spend a few extra turns and take a few more hits.

I suspect that she was allowing players to conserve health packs (as we know, this is the one truly mortal sin for which there can be no forgiveness). The BRB/Polaris/Thanos team still works, but I find that it's much more susceptible to attrition from even a few rounds of board moving. At least one attempt in the latest sub (Deepest Space), I had champed Thanos KO'd in a single round thanks to a bad cascade which included at least one critical match.

So, I suspect that this team still results in people spending health packs or perhaps spending AP boosts (to try and offset the lower health by starting the combo earlier).

It's still bad optics to push a hotfix like this. Bad communication to have not brought it up before now. And bad design to remove the internal synergy that Carol relied on.

shardwick

ThaRoadWarrior said:

TH4nos seems unchanged.

Yeah, I just used him and he's fine.

Mr_F

Loosie said:

Mr_F said:

justsing said:

It’s annoying that they took away a tool that people could use to help them through CL10 PVE, but it’s not surprising they’d do that.

What is surprising and unacceptable is nerfing without notice. Way to disrespect your player base. Why should any of us spend money on this game if they’re going to just nerf characters without any announcement?

 More. The Source problem is not Carol. Its Polaris. Which basically is same as saying that its dev's fault. And instead if saying "we are sorry" they keep her the way she is and nerf Carol.

It was SO OBVIOUS that she is/would be "a new Bishop".

Polaris is a force for the offensive team, but is not a great defensive team. Her low health makes her very squishy. You can usually get rid of her before she causes too many problems, lucky cascades/tile placement aside.

Bishop was very different being able to gain blue, jump to front, deal damage and stun more or less from one turn against.

Oh really? Tell it to mine Juggernaut. Tell it to all that health packs I am forced to use because of her abudance in Simulator. Tell it to my PVP teams to which I had to say "Sayounara" cause Polaris abudance makes impossoble to run almost anything which is not Cardusa or Polaris/Whatever combo.

Before Polaris I could run 10 different teams (30 different characters!) and do 5 wins at morning and 5 wins at evening. Now I have to carefully juggle Health packs to be able to do 5 wins.

And yes. She got that crazy from ONE strike tile. Polaris to me is like Pre-Nerf Gambit. Bring own.

Back on topic: Pre-Polaris BRB/Carol was not existant. The problem of Carol nerf started with Polaris appereance. Period.

Blackstone

I just need to say that Carol is my only champed 5* (rng didn't like me but gave me Carol like she was on clearance) and she was finally useful...

Then they make her less useful with no notice...
Because her green paired well with a 4* that is better then her?

Sometimes I wonder why I still play this game.

Rant complete.

Colognoisseur

I wonder why there hasn’t even been an in-game announcement yet. Something seems odd beyond their usual level of carelessness. 

LavaManLee

I wonder if it wasn't supposed to come out yet?  They had a similar issue with the tiles where they pushed out how the tiles dropped in animation (Tile Physics, or something like that) as a feature and then pulled it back.  I think that happened a week or so ago.

Maybe this nerf was pushed out early?

Rod5

I’m just staggered the snuck it in under the radar. They obviously knew loads were using it, just address the issue and tell people why you are doing it. 

No comms, not even a freaking in-game message. Very, very poor.

fnedude

So great that this was jumped on (the perceived problem of Polaris+5CM) and not any problem w/ Bishop+BRB in PVP.

  

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm still just laughing to myself that the weakest link got the nerf; maybe this is like that one time some dev experiment alternate captain america got pushed out, and will get retracted?

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/78040/incorrect-bonus-hero-cover-reimbursement-4-12-19

MackDan1

Haven't tried it since Polaris was introduced but I've seen a winfinite video with Venom instead of 5Carol. Going the Th4nos route myself.

Rod5

Note to devs - I’d happily go for a Gambit-style 1 for 1 cover swap on Carol now.

MrPlow

No surprise that the devs stay silent after a stealth reduction/nerf.  They pretend it never happened.

UNC_Samurai

The nerf is pants-on-head idiotic to begin with.  Not saying anything about it beforehand, people are entirely justified in quitting.

D3, you have had terrible problems with customer comunication ever since Brigby left.  Do something about, for the love of the gods and your wavering playerbase.

Taganov

Completely baffling. First, why no communication? Second, the winfinite in any of its forms is about as much threat as Thorkoye. Why use resources to fix this when so many other balancing issues are unaddressed? Then to nerf Danver5, who had against all odds/bad design managed to somehow become relevant. I'm so confused.

marshall

So shady. And pointless. Few people had this character champed.

I love it how suddenly, when it's convenient, balances can be sudden and without concern for community backlash. Why don't old characters get balanced then?

zonatahunt

I know absolutely nothing about computer programming, so if my next question is a dumb one I apologize in advance.  Could this be a bug or error in the programming that came with today’s push?  Probably not, but thought it might be worth asking.

ThaRoadWarrior

The text has been changed to match, this was intentional at some level.

it’s possible this was from someone’s test version that went live on a bad merge, but it’s a change with consistent power description.

Vhailorx

SnowcaTT said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

TH4nos seems unchanged.

Uh-oh. Someone should tell D3 there is still a rampant crazy combo where 4*'s can beat anything.

You original post was mostly right, of course, SnowcaTT, but doesn't your experience in Infinite Pursuit today kind of prove the point that everyone is trying to make.  If BRB (or carol, who has less health) can be dropped in 1 round in the harder cl10 challenge nodes, then whether you are using thanos of carol for board destruction is irrelevant, you need to back out either way.  More over, both teams effectively play the same game as HE/Coulson/Gamora in that they are absolutely invincible (but a bit slow) when they get going, so the only risk is enemy match/passive damage dropping a team member before the engine starts.  The most difficult CNs can easily do 30k unavoidable damage per turn right from the start of a match (gritty, carnage + kraven, JJ, Prof $ etc), and that is enough that even a little bit of bad luck is enough to drop a baby 5* champ (except maybe 5* champ). 

So I guess the real question is whether the extra damage that Carol does (relative to thanos or the stunlock teams) translated to a real speed advantage over the other options.  I don't have a champed carol, so I can't comment on this, but Demi's quick response to just one character suggests they saw something in their data they didn't like.  Were the top 25 of every single leaderboard relying on this team for optimal clearing?  Having only 1 competitive team in PVE is pretty much the one unforgivable sin. 

dingo

I'm not shocked, honestly, but I really cant believe there is no communication from the dev's on this. All day... nothing. Seriously d3...?