Nerf Okoye

Bad

The situation is hard to analize it but the main reason of the meta is okoye.
Not hulk because without her he cant destroy the other team. 
This meta will not be fixed with Ihulk counters because AI will not use them effectively. It is not posible to lock out a whole color(green) being the main reason the hyper fast boost that provides okoye and its not logical. 
And hulkoye teams will be always on top pvp because they are the fastest.
Plus they get hit less times than any other team.
Against a hulkoye team pick 2 on defense you can try to deny TU or green. But you cant play your game. Eventually the damage will be huge.
The only one who was an hindrance for them to a certain point was bishop. He was nerfed for not letting play.
And the main reason the meta is broken is because WF. It is a old skill wich perhaps was ok on the era when active powers were the rule.
Now its an era of powerful passives and a skill boosting them so fast without any significative tradeback is what alters the game and what players are exploiting.
Okoye can be left untouched and players will adapt.
But no one team on pvp pick 2 will be better on this game if so.
Also if hulkoye teams are dominant and take less hits, that means any non hulkoye team will take double the hits if hulkoye teams were easier to beat.

ThaRoadWarrior

Passive AOE that is boostable by Shared Strength and Wakanda Forever! is the new development that suddenly has this thread recalled to life. Somebody on the design team specifically excluded Juggern4ut's passive AOE from working with those kinds of powers, probably because it's too attainable for 5*players to quickly level a 4* up to problematic levels. Presumably the Hulk's buck wild "What Doesn't Kill Me..." self harm was seen to be an appropriate risk-reward for "Green Door..." to benefit from those powers. This interaction could be nerfed without nerfing Okoye proper by just also excluding Green Door's AOE damage from benefitting from those powers, but I kind of feel that doing so means Hulk is going into the dustbin because he creates self-damage 100% worse than Thano5 for 50% of the benefit, and it procs WAY more often. So without a damage booster or a self-harm avoider, he is worse than useless to bring to a fight.

As I see it from these responses, there is a general frustration with Hulkoye because:

1) it's a fast offensive team
2) It's an ai-proof defensive team - (it just kind of works regardless of what the AI does)
3) There aren't many reliable ways to attack it that don't require a drawn out fight
4) Some people are saying that there are VERY high leveled versions of this team in the wild, but nobody will confirm that they are actually seeing them

If you replace Hulk with any other character, would anyone in the "nerf okoye" camp be having this conversation?

These are the same complaints that 4* players used to have for medusa/rocket/g4mora when they came out, and then Kitty/Rocket once kitty came out. There are now tons of tools that can be used to combat those teams, and nobody was nerfed. Characters like Sabretooth and Polaris, and to a lesser extent Main Event Hulk and Th4nos, and to a great extent now Throg were able to break the back of those teams by directly combatting the mechanics in play with useful counter mechanics. If Polaris was a 5*, Hulkoye would be over already. 

If I need points, and those are the only teams that have any in PVP, and I'll attack them with Kitty/BRB and +2 to yellow/red and +2 to blue/purple, and as long as you target hulk first and get Clash of the Worthy out in the first turn or 2, you can win. If you're chasing them and they're worth 60+ points, even if you lose you'll only be down a few points. I don't play PVP with shields outside of hanging on to points at the end of an event to keep my season progression high, I just hang out at my float points and climb when it's convenient for me, so it can be done if you're not after very high placement. There are vintage tools to solve this problem, but if you don't have them you are in for a rough ride until you get them. 

I wasn't a 5* player in the Gambit reign of terror, but as best I can tell that character needed a nerf because the passive acceleration was too good, and the "nobody can use purple or red" attempt at risk/reward was not deterrent enough to matter.  

PiMacleod

HoundofShadow said:

Okoye is one of the reasons why it's a waste of development time to boost older 5*. The newer 5* match damage are much higher than older 5*; however, many of them are pretty much useless unless they are essentials or needed for niche situations. Look at the last two boosted 5*, Dr Ock and Archangel... I'm confident that as long as older 5* are not boosted closed to meta level, most of them are not going to be used after their boosts anyway. 

Once again, we are back to the same problem: reworked older 5* and  newer 5* don't "work" well enough to replace other meta characters or work well "effortlessly" with meta 5* like Okoye, Thor, Apocalypse and maybe Polaris/BRB; therefore they are slow and not useful.

Every new character centres around them. And players continue to wonder why majority of 5* released are lacklustre. That's why a shift in mindset or criteria is needed. 

I'd contest that they didn't "rework" them good enough.  After all -- who's using them?!  No one.  Why?  Because they still don't do enough to warrant a slot on a team.

It's quite simple:  analyze what makes someone "meta" - the common-denominator between them all.  Then either provide a solution that would consistently help to stop at least ONE function of that "meta" component, OR, provide a NEW option to make a DIFFERENT "meta" somewhat more appealing.  You can't just slap a higher-damage number on a skill, or make a skill cost a couple less AP... that's not enough.  Extra HP and match strength isn't enough either (although it IS nice).

Rather, the speed of the game is all "passives" -- meaning, if you don't see the effect happen on MOST turns at least once, then it's more-than-likely not gonna be meta.  Players are willing to meet criteria such as tenderizing your own character down to half health just to increase their effectiveness (and speed) within the game.  And should we be surprised??  No, not one bit.  In fact, if someone presents a faster way to do something, most anyone would lean that direction.

@HoundofShadow, I do not believe "a shift in mindset or criteria" will EVER happen.  It's got the same chance as a pro-red/blue political post on Facebook actually convincing someone to change their view.  ...Maybe even LESS of a chance!  Why would I say this?  Because of efficiency.  Okoye makes things faster, just like Kitty, and Apoc.  Okoye just is easier to work with, because her passive works just by storing a type of AP -- that's the ONLY requirement.  Since she can keep herself TRULY healthy (not a burst healer), she can also do this without expending resources.  BUT these are all things you know and understand...  And I think you understand THIS as well -- How or WHY would you expect people's mindset to change to want something "less"?  Because if Okoye ever got that fabled 'nerf', this is what it would feel like -- we have something "less" than what we had before.

This isn't as simple as nerfing Bishop or Worthy, because those guys consistently undermined higher-tiered opponents just for simply existing.  Nerfing Okoye wouldn't do anything positive, because it would just get rid of a LOT of options people currently have.  A post-nerf-okoye environment would have a lot more Apocs and Kittys and BRBs, etc (and probably less players too!).  It wouldn't "allow for more teams", because players just wanna win fast.  It's why players just pick the better weapons in an RPG, a better gun in an FPS, a quicker option in whatever game you're playing.  Not necessarily stronger, but capable of more DPS than other options.

Once again, PROPERLY adjusting older 5*s (which can mean more than just adjusting numbers -- they could easily add "passives" to current existing abilities), or creating new 5*s that address the current meta OR introduce a new meta (Heimdall looks like he could be the start of something for fortifications, if he gets the teammates around him), is the way to go, simply because people get to KEEP their Okoye that they spent resources on, and yet, we'd have options to combat her or do something entirely different.

To combat a meta, they need to do more "onslaught-like" things.  A simple passive that has an option to disrupt what feeds that meta character... another meta-combat option could be someone that simply says something like "when matching red/yellow/purple tiles, the opponent loses 1 team up AP", or "at the start of your turn, drain 1 team up AP from the opponent for every color of AP you have more than them in", or an ACTIVE 0 AP ability "Select one basic tile and change it to purple".  (because yes, a 0-AP ACTIVE ability shouldn't be unheard of when passives exist in the game, plus things like this would bring good ol' Dr Strange back into the mix).

To create a new meta, they need to make something that gives similar value, but in a different flavor (much like Apoc).  Something along the lines of "increase your team's match damage by 500 for every fortified tile", or "whenever your team matches or destroys a charged tile, reduce a random enemy AP pool by 3 (will not target a pool that's at 0)", or "reduce all incoming damage by 1000 for every Locked tile on the board".

Either of the above statements would not affect the currently purchased and adored Okoye.  In fact, it would keep the status quo, allow people to still use Hulkoye and Thorkoye teams to their pleasure, but would ALSO allow people to answer them with a new solution, or fight them using something totally different.

I would concede that they have "dug their own grave" (but their pocketbooks aren't telling them that!).  By making characters like Okoye, Kitty, Apoc, BRB, they are feeding the "faster-is-better" frame of mind.  But by changing things that people have spent cash on, you're telling your customers that spending on their product could eventually yield entirely different results than what they originally bought.  Which can be read as "don't buy our stuff -- you'll never know when a nerf is around the corner".  Sure, this has happened with Gambit, OML, and others, but I'm willing to bet that the company doesn't wanna take those chances anymore.  M5rvel got stealth nerfed, but no one really spent on her... no huge loss in customer faith.  But if Okoye got that treatment??  or BRB??   or Kitty??  oooooo boy, that'd be ugly.  Not just players lost, but also reviews plummeting to 1 star status... yikes.

So, while the intent in nerfing Okoye (or any meta character) is for the "health" of the game, I think the game's health would flail without a player base to support it.  Introduce BETTER changes to old characters, comparable to what the current meta shows.  ...or, just keep doing what you're doing, because you're still making money with a very loyal playerbase. 

Jacklag

shardwick said:

Honestly this thread should get nerfed.

Agreed. 14 pages response to a 6 words post. If that isn't trolling, it's at least an Uruk-hai.

jp1

I’m bored with all the nerf (placeholder) threads. Someone has to be the best. The meta is more varied than it has ever been. There are options to win against all teams if you have a wide and varied roster (as it should be). 

It really just boils down to this from my point of view...” This is inconvenient for MY game, do away with it at the expense of everyone else so I can have more fun.”

I have always been of the opinion that all 5s should present a threat. I’d be happy if they were all buffed to be just as dangerous as the meta. Since that won’t happen, we should keep what good and powerful few we can. Otherwise we might as well be playing candy crush. I mean these are SUPER heroes/villains right? Why would I want to play a game with a full roster of milk toast toons?

fight4thedream

ThaRoadWarrior said:

@fight4thedream are you facing PvP teams with “hyper leveled” Okoye, or are you losing placement to players who have them? I still say those are two different problems.

the reason I keep framing the question this way is because I am a player with 27 5* champs between 450-462, and I don’t get put up against 500+ enemies in PVP outside of retals. I don’t chase placement in PVE though, so I don’t have an opinion on relative leveling over there. 

I don’t really understand why the dev team seems unwilling to go far enough with counter characters to actually make them effective, but we have seen them try a couple times here. If an X-Man who did start of battle protect tile stuff like BrB came out, maybe then Magneto would work as implemented. Or who did OML stuff on green rather than red. Or if 5* Daken had just been a scaled up version of 3* Daken, it would have been problem solved.

I have four maxed champed 5 star characters, including Okoye, so "hyper leveled" is pretty much par for the course. I don't have a problem placing well because of her. 

To be clear, I have no interest in seeing Okoye nerfed. My issue is that for almost the last three years, the vast majority of my PvP matches have featured her.  It's one of the reasons I was so adamantly against nerfing Bishop; he fulfilled the role of keeping Okoye in check in the PvP meta. I know it's an unpopular opinion and I understand why to some degree since there was a lack of good counter characters but I think it's really a shame the dev team didn't hold off on nerfing him because it would have made Apocalypse/Onslaught or Onslaught/Prof X much more competitively viable and would have discouraged the practice of under leveling iHulk. 

My main concern is that the meta has simply become: use 1 hyper level boost character (Okoye, Kitty, Apocalypse)  + exploitable skill set character (iHulk, BRB).  I am fine with that for PvE since that is just grinding for the most part but I would prefer PvP be something a bit different. I really would like to see a good stun character in the 5* tier, a character that punishes true healers, a character that nullifies passive boosts and so on to help diversify game play. 

For so long people complained that every version of the Hulk missed the mark (although I think Main Event was pretty close) and then when we finally get a Hulk that actually gets it right, people complain that he is too strong or matches against him are too difficult. The problem isn't Immortal Hulk; it's the interaction he has with Okoye. If Okoye isn't in the equation, Beta Ray Bill works effectively against him (with or without Kitty). 

The reason this interaction is a problem, in my opinion, is that there currently isn't a character that hard checks Okoye's skill set. The closest we currently have is Onslaught's Know His Name and Adam's Cosmic Skein but neither really seems to go far enough. 

Obviously, this isn't a deal breaker issue for me. I just find it disingenuous to argue for an iHulk nerf when we will just run into the same issue again when they release another character with a passive damage ability or cheap multiple attack skill set if Okoye is left unchecked.  

Bad

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Passive AOE that is boostable by Shared Strength and Wakanda Forever! is the new development that suddenly has this thread recalled to life. Somebody on the design team specifically excluded Juggern4ut's passive AOE from working with those kinds of powers, probably because it's too attainable for 5*players to quickly level a 4* up to problematic levels.

Sorry but you are the one that is bringing back over and over shared strenght. This is a post where nobody is complaining about shared strenght.  Like I said apocalypse needs 7 AP and fire it. It will be on turn 5, if its a good board. It can be on turn 10 perfectly.
You can bring thor but you will be hitted as he is pretty easy to handle.
Nobody is complaining about thorapoc teams because they let a looot of time to reaction, unlike hulkoye teams. 
Jugs was changed because of okoye. I wonder how many characters will be changed for not making okoye less OP.

ammenell

man, you hate okoye more than anybody hated bishop... 

ThaRoadWarrior

Bad said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Passive AOE that is boostable by Shared Strength and Wakanda Forever! is the new development that suddenly has this thread recalled to life. Somebody on the design team specifically excluded Juggern4ut's passive AOE from working with those kinds of powers, probably because it's too attainable for 5*players to quickly level a 4* up to problematic levels.

Sorry but you are the one that is bringing back over and over shared strenght. This is a post where nobody is complaining about shared strenght.  Like I said apocalypse needs 7 AP and fire it. It will be on turn 5, if its a good board. It can be on turn 10 perfectly.
You can bring thor but you will be hitted as he is pretty easy to handle.
Nobody is complaining about thorapoc teams because they let a looot of time to reaction, unlike hulkoye teams. 
Jugs was changed because of okoye. I wonder how many characters will be changed for not making okoye less OP.

Juggernaut wasn't changed, he was launched like that. Also I bring up Shared Strength because whatever chunk of code it is using to decide what it does or doesn't add damage to appears to be the same as what Wakanda Forever! is using to do the same, so a nerf to one of those interactions will affect the other.

Also if you go in with Thor and +2 to yellow, it absolutely does not take 10 turns to fire Shared Strength. It's not an unassailable defense team, but it is super reliable and fast to climb offensively. Because Survival of the Fittest is a multi-hit power that moves on when it finishes somebody off, it's WAY more effective than it appears on paper. 

Your arguments for an Okoye nerf seem to be waffling back and forth between "hulkoye is too strong offensively, I can't compete or fight them" to "Well, I can beat them, but the counter team is weak defensively so I don't like to beat them." 

For awhile, I couldn't beat Bishop teams, I just didn't have the tools to do it, and my MMR was such that i was seeing BRB and a lvl 370 Bishop. Before that, I really didn't have the tools to defeat Gritty teams, because my MMR was such that I was seeing only Kitty with lvl 370 Rocket. Like I can relate to not having a counter, but counters do exist, and once Throg hits tokens both counter characters will have feeders. Also the good news, at least in this case, is that the counters are themselves actually good characters, rather than bishop's counter in Silver Surfer and Rocket's counter in Black Suit Spider Man (BSSM counters rocket's strikes, not kitty's boost, while we are examining counter mechanisms).

ThaRoadWarrior

There are a ton of slight rebalances that could be implemented that would give you tools to fight Okoye and iHulk that wouldn't really break the game at all:

1) 5* yelena's red can also target Team Up ap - applies a hard upper bound to Okoye's boost and makes it so there are very few ways to burn that pool of AP down actively as an Okoye player
2) Change OML's passive strikes to land on Green instead of Red
3) Make Thano5's purple cost 3-5 ap or make it a passive.
4) Change Hela's green passive to something that trims green off the board rather than something that targets the green AP pool
5) Instead of adding green to the board, have Banner Hulk nibble green off the board like Thor does passive
6) Spider-Man: Peter Parker's red passive puts webs on green
7)Magneto - blue keeps converting green->yellow every turn he is airborne
8) Ghost Rider: Robbie Reyes - reduce the cost of Hell Ride to 6 or 7, it'll sweep the board of green very quickly and clog up the ones that are still there with repeaters
9) Cable - modify Cyborg Strategist so it's charging green tiles passively (passive stun is probably too good)

Bzhai

ThaRoadWarrior said:

There are a ton of slight rebalances that could be implemented that would give you tools to fight Okoye and iHulk that wouldn't really break the game at all:

1) 5* yelena's red can also target Team Up ap - applies a hard upper bound to Okoye's boost and makes it so there are very few ways to burn that pool of AP down actively as an Okoye player
2) Change OML's passive strikes to land on Green instead of Red
3) Make Thano5's purple cost 3-5 ap or make it a passive.
4) Change Hela's green passive to something that trims green off the board rather than something that targets the green AP pool
5) Instead of adding green to the board, have Banner Hulk nibble green off the board like Thor does passive
6) Spider-Man: Peter Parker's red passive puts webs on green
7)Magneto - blue keeps converting green->yellow every turn he is airborne
8) Ghost Rider: Robbie Reyes - reduce the cost of Hell Ride to 6 or 7, it'll sweep the board of green very quickly and clog up the ones that are still there with repeaters
9) Cable - modify Cyborg Strategist so it's charging green tiles passively (passive stun is probably too good)

Honestly as good as these suggestions are it won´t stop the haters until the total destruction of this character.

Then they´ll move on to complaining about another character.

PiMacleod

ThaRoadWarrior said:

There are a ton of slight rebalances that could be implemented that would give you tools to fight Okoye and iHulk that wouldn't really break the game at all:

1) 5* yelena's red can also target Team Up ap - applies a hard upper bound to Okoye's boost and makes it so there are very few ways to burn that pool of AP down actively as an Okoye player
2) Change OML's passive strikes to land on Green instead of Red
3) Make Thano5's purple cost 3-5 ap or make it a passive.
4) Change Hela's green passive to something that trims green off the board rather than something that targets the green AP pool
5) Instead of adding green to the board, have Banner Hulk nibble green off the board like Thor does passive
6) Spider-Man: Peter Parker's red passive puts webs on green
7)Magneto - blue keeps converting green->yellow every turn he is airborne
8) Ghost Rider: Robbie Reyes - reduce the cost of Hell Ride to 6 or 7, it'll sweep the board of green very quickly and clog up the ones that are still there with repeaters
9) Cable - modify Cyborg Strategist so it's charging green tiles passively (passive stun is probably too good)

I'd agree to a few of them.  Yelena's and Magneto's should be in there already.  Hela's and Banner's sound very similar -- I would assume Hela would just "destroy" them, whereas Banner would actually gain the green for them. 

Some of them should do what you're suggesting AND what they do now... OML could target green AND red (that way, you can't run out of target tiles), and Spider-Man could maybe prioritize certain colors in order (i.e. green, blue, red... something that matches his color scheme)

The rest of them would be straight up buffs to those characters in more than just Okoye/iHulk hating ways.  Thanos' would be great at stopping a lot of things.  Ghost Rider's would make it quicker to fire all around.  Cable's would allow him to join a charge-tile meta (because as of now, he doesn't make them fast enough to qualify).

I do notice that most of your suggestions are based around green tiles, whereas most of mine suggested ways to eliminate or drain TU AP from the opponent, or even block damage.  Just a fun observation. 

ThaRoadWarrior

PiMacleod said:

I do notice that most of your suggestions are based around green tiles, whereas most of mine suggested ways to eliminate or drain TU AP from the opponent, or even block damage.  Just a fun observation. 

That's mostly just because I don't find Okoye to be the problem at my tier of play, it's Okoye + Hulk specifically. 

Hela's and Banner's are kind of similar, but I was really just looking for powers that already kind of do something to a green threshold, and then pivot it a little bit. An alternative to banner nibbling green would be to have him charge the green that's on the board passively, which speeds up his transformation and feels about right for "gamma ray experiment"

Honestly, I kind of wish Killmonger had been a hard counter to Okoye thematically, though I'm not sure exactly what mechanism I would like to have seen that take. It would have needed to be messing with her team up pool regularly for it to matter, so the match-5 lockout thing isn't it.

PiMacleod

ThaRoadWarrior said:

PiMacleod said:

I do notice that most of your suggestions are based around green tiles, whereas most of mine suggested ways to eliminate or drain TU AP from the opponent, or even block damage.  Just a fun observation. 

That's mostly just because I don't find Okoye to be the problem at my tier of play, it's Okoye + Hulk specifically. 

Hela's and Banner's are kind of similar, but I was really just looking for powers that already kind of do something to a green threshold, and then pivot it a little bit.

Honestly, I kind of wish Killmonger had been a hard counter to Okoye thematically, though I'm not sure exactly what mechanism I would like to have seen that take. It would have needed to be messing with her team up pool regularly for it to matter, so the match-5 lockout thing isn't it.

i hear ya on all points.  I don't find Okoye to be so much of a "problem" either, but I also believe that for every build, there should be a counter.  What's Paper without Scissors??    So, when people want a nerf, I just like to remind them that it's not only a bad idea (IMO), but that many other things can be done that wouldn't break the game, and could heavily affect opposing Okoyes (and others).

I enjoy her boost, as do most people that have her at a usable level.  But I also see the need for an answer.  With enough of our posts on the forums, maybe the devs will implement one of these ideas into a character someday.  ...or not.  :P

Bad

Now I think I finally exposed all my ideas so there is no need for me to say nothing more on this thread.
Except on this theme there is no one who can talk on a totally partial position. 
Before some guys without exposing valid arguments start talking about haters and noble defenders, this thread could be closed, and I hope devs do something about the issue, in one way or in another. 

Polares

Sincerely, If they nerf her after adding that offer for 30$, the cheapest I have ever seen for a 5 ... Well, I would delete the game IMMEDIATELY, and no turning back ever again. That would be basically stealing in my book.

jp1

Polares said:

Sincerely, If they nerf her after adding that offer for 30$, the cheapest I have ever seen for a 5 ... Well, I would delete the game IMMEDIATELY, and no turning back ever again. That would be basically stealing in my book.

It’s always stealing. People just accept it. The “compensation” of a ridiculous sell back rate is supposed to offset that, which would be fair if it were anywhere near what it took to attain/champ the character in the first place.

CharlieCroker

I’ve read this thread for a while now with a mixture of interest and disbelief, but now it has got a little more heated lately so I thought it time to jump in with my thoughts.

I fully agree with those that have stated Okoye is pretty much the endgame - the one character that improves the rest of your roster, is normally the number one pick when putting together a team, and you want to get as high as possible (to benefit from the boost in health and damage, and to tank for her partners - most often but not exclusively Ihulk and Thor).

However if Okoye was nerfed into the ground, ala Gambit and others before him, then Apocalyse would like take her place in the meta.  In my opinion he does everything that Okoye does except healing, and whilst his yellow boost is not quite as good as Okoye’s (and obviously Okoye’s can be much better as she accumulates team up ap) this is made up for by his higher healthpool and much superior use of both red and black ap.

It is only really partnered with Ihulk that Okoye is greatly superior to Apocalypse, primarily due to being able to boost his passive immediately both on offense (via boosts or focusing team up ap) and defense (with the AI seeming to prioritise team ups and cascading into them).

I think we could have a fairly diverse meta if a hard counter to Ihulk was introduced, ideally a 5* version of Quake’s yellow reducing AOE damage to 1 at 5 covers - provided this 5* also packs some offensive punch.  There is already some diversity up to around 800 in PvP but after that it is almost exclusively Okoye/Ihulk - after 800 that’s pretty much the only 5* team you regularly see as all other teams will quickly get targeted by all the Okoye/Ihulk teams AND all the players who won’t or can’t hit Okoye/Ihulk teams.

With a hard counter out there, people would be almost forced to use other teams against the new 5* - I say almost as even without his AOE Ihulk packs some punch with his red (32k for 7ap at 450) and capacity to generate cascades.  That would in turn make it much easier for those without Okoye/Ihulk to climb and find more teams they can reliably beat.

freakygeek

Since we are all starting to talk big picture, here is a thinker. 

I don't think the problem is necessarily OP or **** characters but 0 synergies besides the ones we all exploit.  I would like to see built it affinity based synergies.  If building an inhumans, avengers, mutant team etc. guaranteed certain synergies that were unavailable otherwise I think lots of underused characters would be able to come out and play.  Because the meta is built around individual characters we continue to have this happen over and over no matter how may nerfs or buffs that are applied. There will always be king of the hill characters and a 2nd for them that boosts them into the stratosphere. 

Imagine if a Cyclops event meant that winning would require using other mutants and bringing out something like a HulkOye would be like busting out a Thorkoye in the current meta.  Maybe even 5* Phoenix having an extra perk playing with Cyclops or fastball special only works with Wolverine and Colossus on the team.  You could climb without a team affinity but not get to terribly high unless you were a whale.

Every so often D3 makes a stab at this (see Powerman and IF or 5* IM's red power) but they only do it half heartedly.  They label characters with affiliations but only use it to restrict options on certain event nodes.  If they would really commit to it that would force a lot more variety into the gameplay.

ThaRoadWarrior

X-Men affiliation seems to be the most useful by far, I too wish that feature meant more than it does.