5-star Carol Nerf?

wymtime

i have to say bad form devs.  No announcement and you nerfed a character who finally found some use.  I really hope they announce a true rework of her soon so she can be usable going forward.  Polaris and BRB are the broken ones in the combo not CM and that’s why 4* Thanos still works

HoundofShadow

I find the healthpack angle weak because if they really want to increase healthpack sales, all they need to do is to increase the recovery timing from 36 mins to 60mins for every single player. Besides, healthpack is not even 10% of their revenue. 

Obviously, they are not going to kill winfinite team of Polaris/BRB(yet) because there are about 10 other characters that can do winfinite as well. Blackbolt is actually quite a good alternative because you don't need to have all ap above a certain level to destroy tiles. 10 green ap for 16 tiles destruction is good enough to guarantee winfinite. 

Logically, BRB should be the who got the nerf if they want to kill this winfinite. There's zero winfinite if he can't gain green (or blue ap) passively. 

The most likely reason is due to metrics. The time spent/reward gained ratio is too low for a certain group of players. Remember they shifted 4* cover down progression because it was too easy to achieve it? So, in order to tweak the numbers, C5rol was nerfed. 

Alternatively, it might not be about killing winfinite and it could be more than just metrics. The change is simply too abrupt. When was the last time the dev did such change to a 5* unannounced? Let's see what this week holds.

liminal_lad

This really is a new low for them. This also breaks her red passive. Just sort of incomprehensibly poorly thought out. I need to remember this the next time I want to spend money on a 5-star shard package and just say no.

Aweberman

I think the info on 5* Magneto's blue power points to the real reason for Carol's rebalancing.

DrDevilDinosaur

Now that 5* Magneto has been revealed, I'm trying to see if there's a killer combo.

 He deals damage when he returns from being airborne per yellow AP the team has (with no cap other than max 30 AP in storage). So if you've got a board full of friendly Strikes, then the old Danvers green would generate a tonne of yellow so that Mags could nuke the target. Magneto can send himself airborne with blue, but it would have been no big deal to use Carols own yellow if you were about to use her Green anyway.

That still requires a lot of board setup which would be best achieved by using none other than Polaris to spam out Strike tiles.

But that combo still requires a bunch of blue ap and doesn't include anything to accelerate it, so I don't really see it as being any faster or better than before 

Aweberman

8 yellow is all Carol needs to send somebody airborne.  For 10 blue, Mags can do it himself.  If you've been matching strikes as you go, then once Carol's (old) green is lit up, you pop Mags up, fire green, and generate a bunch of yellow.  With that many strikes on the board, he'll do 10k damage for every 3 yellow AP you have remaining.

If you'd fired Carol's green and hit a row with only, say, 2 strike tiles in it, then you'd get to clear 2 more rows (after Polaris pops out 6 more).  You could easily pick up a handful more strikes when those next two rows clear.  Let's say there were two in each.  That's 6 strikes for 12 free yellow AP or another 40k damage when Mags lands. 

Now pop him up in the air again with Carol's yellow -- even without using her green again -- and you're still doing tens of thousands more.

Still and all, though -- and as has been said before -- the real problem in that combo seems to be the 4* making so many strikes.  Bill and Polaris are the ones that need to be nerfed, not Carol, not even for Mags.  But the devs do highly value board shake.

BlackBoltRocks

Aweberman said:

8 yellow is all Carol needs to send somebody airborne.  For 10 blue, Mags can do it himself.  If you've been matching strikes as you go, then once Carol's (old) green is lit up, you pop Mags up, fire green, and generate a bunch of yellow.  With that many strikes on the board, he'll do 10k damage for every 3 yellow AP you have remaining.

If you'd fired Carol's green and hit a row with only, say, 2 strike tiles in it, then you'd get to clear 2 more rows (after Polaris pops out 6 more).  You could easily pick up a handful more strikes when those next two rows clear.  Let's say there were two in each.  That's 6 strikes for 12 free yellow AP or another 40k damage when Mags lands. 

Now pop him up in the air again with Carol's yellow -- even without using her green again -- and you're still doing tens of thousands more.

Still and all, though -- and as has been said before -- the real problem in that combo seems to be the 4* making so many strikes.  Bill and Polaris are the ones that need to be nerfed, not Carol, not even for Mags.  But the devs do highly value board shake.

From the wording, it seems Mags only does the damage if he sends himself Airborne via his own Blue. So it won't proc if someone else sends him Airborne, like Carol's Yellow, Heimdall's Yellow, Gwenpool's Black etc. Same as Heimdall's Yellow AP generation only proccing if Heimdall sends his allies Airborne via Bifrost Bridge. How often are you going to use a 10AP ability in a single match if there's no battery for it?

Also, Carol's Red passive only procs when you destroy Strikes other than matching them. Which means even old Carol would have been a very unreliable fuel for Mags. Let's say you bring along Polaris. She only creates Strike tiles after spending 7 Blue, which means you need to get another 10 if you want to use Mag's Blue (and why would you ever want to? Polaris' Blue is a million times better). And even then it's only three Strikes, unless you manage to match or destroy them. Carol's Red is even worse at creating Strikes, and clashes with Mag's own Red.

TLDR: Carol before and after her nerf wouldn't have been a good partner for Mags. So it's clear she was nerfed to stop the winfinite with PolarBill.

ThaRoadWarrior

Polaris creates a strike passively if she starts a turn with no other specials present - you don’t have to wait fire her blue actively. Magneto makes his own strikes all kinds of ways; I’ll be curious to see him in action actually.

HoundofShadow

Based on experience, it's difficult to match that one strike tile. You will need about 5 turns on average to match and multiply that one strike tiles, unless you are really lucky. It's an entire different story in pves if you have supports that create strike tiles based on a certain % per match.

sinnerjfl

This change has nothing to do with 5* Magneto, even if the timing could lead you to believe that. Carol's passive is very bad at generating yellow anyway, it happened sometimes but seriously, it is so not reliable.

They changed it because they don't like it when we find a team that can clear content too easily, Polaris/BRB/Carol is pretty broken and they trivialized the Challenge Node that we must suffer through because... reasons.

Personally, I was very happy with that team because I hate the Challenge Node and I feel its one of the biggest waste of time in this game. Its required for progression in CL10 and I hate it (no I dont want to do 4 clears of the other nodes either). Back to Gamora stun squad I suppose...  4* Thanos is too slow as a replacement for Carol imho.

HoundofShadow

What I understand is that Challenge Node is not needed for full progression. I think some vet confirmed it before. I think it was bluewolf?

MegaBee

HoundofShadow said:

What I understand is that Challenge Node is not needed for full progression. I think some vet confirmed it before. I think it was bluewolf?

It's not needed for full progression, but it's nice loot and a good buffer in case one wipes on the 5-star essential node.

DAZ0273

Looks like they chose the path of least resistance by neutering the part that probably affects the least players and so minimises the fuss. C5rol was lowest hanging fruit.

Polares

****!?!?! Are they serious?!?!? C5rol was useless until we came up with this team, and now it is useless again!!! They needed two years to nerf Bishop/Gambit and they nerfed Carol in a couple of months ?!?!?! SERIOUSLY?!?!?! Of course now that this benefits all players they are fast as a speeding train to nerf her. Great.

Man I am super pissed. These guys are the fricking worst. Stop annoying your players!

MegaBee

Carol, you played a good game, but you're done. Get back to the dugout.
Thanos, you're up!

HoundofShadow

Why isn't Blackbolt being considered? Poor guy!

ThaRoadWarrior

Again - you have to ensure there are enough protects in the center 2 rows to generate the green you need, and it can take an indeterminate number of turns to arrange that. You’re better off using juggernaut’s targeted blue than Bolt for reliability I think.

HoundofShadow

You trade in 1 protect tile for 3 more on the board. You will likely chase blue and use BRB's blue ability first to flood the board with protect tiles.

Since he destroys the middle two rows, the two rows above will simply move down. Also, I remember that if a chunk of tiles (grouped together) are destroyed, the probability of same coloured tiles falling also increases.  This means cascades happen more frequently. On top of that, he deals at least 28000 AoE or a total of 84000 damage for three opponents with his green power once you have 5ap in all colours, which isn't difficult because the opponents will be stunned anyway. After the entire board destruction, you will get back 30 blue and 30 green ap, plus any cascades.

MegaBee

It's probably confirmation bias, but it feels like I'm running into PvE teams with the Gamma Siphon team-up a lot.

MegaBee

Michael1957 said:

I actually like this move . First off , none of you used her until Polaris so you all hated her .  It’s like you liking someone now because they have a new car or toy that benefits you . ( I never rostered her in the first place because if you’re useless to me by yourself primarily , how you play with others is irrelevant).  As far as doing it unannounced, it’s a smart move because most people come here to complain how much they hate this game and this is just giving dozens of players the opportunity to do what they enjoy most on the boards . Four pages of vitriol in one day is like an all-you-can-eat buffet . Kudos devs .

Not a word of that makes sense.