***** Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes) ***** - Rebalance Details (10/26/21)

Sekilicious

Ultron would likely be fine if boosted with BRB and/or Knull

entrailbucket

OH MY GOD THEY GAVE HIM A MARIACHI COSTUME

HoundofShadow

I see his green as making an extra match damage with potential to gain aps each turn. You might compare it to Carbage, but there are times where Carbage passive match doesn't process. His cd is also not fortified, so there's a risk of failing. However,  every special tile has a potential to be removed from board. 

I wonder what's the goal of each rebalance? Should it be a layered goal?

If character A is unusable when boosted before rebalance, it's a success if it become usable when boosted.

If character A is usable when boosted before rebalance, will it still be a success if it remains in the same state (usable when boosted regardless of rebalance)?

If the bare minimum goal is actually to give those unusable 5* even when they are boosted an update to health and match damage, wouldn't this increase the difficulty in pve side of things, and probably pvp as well?

ThaRoadWarrior

$75?! All tricks no treats

entrailbucket

HoundofShadow said:

I see his green as making an extra match damage with potential to gain aps each turn. You might compare it to Carbage, but there are times where Carbage passive match doesn't process. His cd is also not fortified, so there's a risk of failing. However,  every special tile has a potential to be removed from board. 

I wonder what's the goal of each rebalance? Should it be a layered goal?

If character A is unusable when boosted before rebalance, it's a success if it become usable when boosted.

If character A is usable when boosted before rebalance, will it still be a success if it remains in the same state (usable when boosted regardless of rebalance)?

If the bare minimum goal is actually to give those unusable 5* even when they are boosted an update to health and match damage, wouldn't this increase the difficulty in pve side of things, and probably pvp as well?

They could very easily answer all of your questions, and it would help us to evaluate what they've done with this and what they might do in the future.

HoundofShadow

I think players should answer this question instead because this is what they consistently want.

Anyway, the GR costume is awesome. 600 5* shards cost ~7000 HP in this bundle actually. It's much cheaper than 16k to 32k from shard stores.

entrailbucket

Every player will have different answers based on how they play and their goals, which is what we've seen in this thread.  All of their answers are right.

St_Bernadus

I tried the new Robbie with Danvers and OML (as suggested earlier in the thread). It was in SSim so no one was boosted, though neither Logan nor Robbie are champed, both around 10 covers. It was pretty fun, I had little trouble with the green CD getting out and matched and I won a couple matches against non meta teams. It was pretty slow going though (even with max level Danvers boosting strikes).
Still I never used Ghost Rider much even when boosted so it is a step up in my book. Will see how he plays in his pvp.

Polares

I am happy they reworked him, and I hope they rework more old chars in the future. But I am also a bit sad they removed what made him special. There were ways of rebuilding him and keeping his identity like @Daredevil217 changes.

So all in all, I still think this is a good change and everybody that has him champed will be able to use him now when boosted so I hope we get more of these but I hope future reworks keep the identity of the chars reworked

Bad

entrailbucket said:

I wrote a really obnoxious long-winded thing in another thread about two kinds of MPQ players and how they don't understand each other and can't talk to each other, and this is just...that.

It's a perfect valid approach. 
However, if this game was a meta characters game, if there were characters so supreme, if the best meta characters in this game weren't those that help others, if the same strategy worked for all game modes, if this game wasn't a game about synergy and variety, like I said, then:
-Big time hoarders would unhoard happily without a doubt
-There wouldn't be people so angry at each new and meh release
-No one would pull for a character countering another
-And finally devs would focus on just releasing fast characters.

entrailbucket

Bad said:

entrailbucket said:

I wrote a really obnoxious long-winded thing in another thread about two kinds of MPQ players and how they don't understand each other and can't talk to each other, and this is just...that.

It's a perfect valid approach. 
However, if this game was a meta characters game, if there were characters so supreme, if the best meta characters in this game weren't those that help others, if the same strategy worked for all game modes, if this game wasn't a game about synergy and variety, like I said, then:
-Big time hoarders would unhoard happily without a doubt
-There wouldn't be people so angry at each new and meh release
-No one would pull for a character countering another
-And finally devs would focus on just releasing fast characters.

To a lot of players, all of these things are true.  Plenty of players target only the best, get them to very high level, and ignore everyone else.  To them variety is unimportant. 

If you look at the top of your PvE and PvP brackets you can see what their rosters look like.  Many will have their top 3 or 4 characters at 550 and an unchamped Robbie.

You don't have to agree with them, because you may not share their goals.   I certainly don't.  But you can't say they're wrong.  Different people play for different reasons.

Do the devs approve of their strategy or yours?  What is the game meant to be?  I don't know and neither do you, nor does any other player.  We can guess, but that's all.

Bad

After seeing in play, GR's green is a lot more threatening now as destroys 5 tiles no matter the color making it a power dangerous and unpredictable in offense and being able to create cascades, plus more damage if they are red green black.

Sekilicious

In his PvP, I ran him with Polaris switching between BRB, Grocket, and Sabertooth as one does in 4* land. Hell Ride is so much fun if you like cascades. Chain Whip is good (It would be insane boosted by Okoye or otherwise) against a single target but I don’t like that it stuns the character the countdown targets. I fired Damnation once and haven’t got to 14 red ap for Judgement Day. Maybe someday I will. 

sinnerjfl

Polares said:

I am happy they reworked him, and I hope they rework more old chars in the future. But I am also a bit sad they removed what made him special. There were ways of rebuilding him and keeping his identity like @Daredevil217 changes.

The part that I dislike with these reworks is exactly what you're pointing out, they're removing special unique mechanics for something that's arguably worse. Doc Ock's black had the same treatment and it is just baffling, I wish they took more time or carefulness when reworking those old special abilities, even if they're not perfect maybe you don't need to entirely scrap what made them fun.

Remember old Mr. Fantastic? They made him so much worse.

Im not so sure more rebalances are actually a good thing anymore, they rarely get it right. If they'd just stick to upping health/match damage and numbers in the abilities, that'd be fine in my book.

If they truly want to improve some of those old special mechanics, they should at least keep the original concept and improve on it, not change it entirely. 

The old ability was rather reliable when you used it (you knew it would spawn on a certain color), that'd you get some AP from using it, good damage but it was gonna **** out after 4 or 5 turns. It was not amazing but I remember it hit hard enough to consider using it.

This new version spawns randomly on cast, does not generate AP, does low damage. respawns randomly and is way too easy to remove (by yourself or the enemy team).

I don't get the reasoning with the change. Its not better.

JHawkInc

As someone in my alliance pointed out, this was more about pushing a new $75 costume than anything else.

ThaRoadWarrior

that costume is pretty dope, but my F2P ways mean that my Robbie will never get to look like Antonio Banderas

entrailbucket

sinnerjfl said:

Polares said:

I am happy they reworked him, and I hope they rework more old chars in the future. But I am also a bit sad they removed what made him special. There were ways of rebuilding him and keeping his identity like @Daredevil217 changes.

The part that I dislike with these reworks is exactly what you're pointing out, they're removing special unique mechanics for something that's arguably worse. Doc Ock's black had the same treatment and it is just baffling, I wish they took more time or carefulness when reworking those old special abilities, even if they're not perfect maybe you don't need to entirely scrap what made them fun.

Remember old Mr. Fantastic? They made him so much worse.

Im not so sure more rebalances are actually a good thing anymore, they rarely get it right. If they'd just stick to upping health/match damage and numbers in the abilities, that'd be fine in my book.

If they truly want to improve some of those old special mechanics, they should at least keep the original concept and improve on it, not change it entirely. 

The old ability was rather reliable when you used it (you knew it would spawn on a certain color), that'd you get some AP from using it, good damage but it was gonna **** out after 4 or 5 turns. It was not amazing but I remember it hit hard enough to consider using it.

This new version spawns randomly on cast, does not generate AP, does low damage. respawns randomly and is way too easy to remove (by yourself or the enemy team).

I don't get the reasoning with the change. Its not better.

They gave us their reasoning for the changes...the conflict here is that they disagree with your assessment of his old/new green power.


I think the real problem is that they knew GR wasn't being used (via the metrics) but they didn't know *why*, so they weren't sure what to do to make him better. 

So they guessed, and mostly guessed right (modern match/power damage and AP cost) and partially guessed wrong (his repeaters falling to the bottom).

ThaRoadWarrior

I super wish he still had his old green, but with the rest of these changes intact personally. Or left in the AP gather - that was the lynchpin to the whole remainder of his kit. 

HoundofShadow

It's probably be broken with his increased match damage, which will be even higher than Colossus. Assuming 3 repeaters with new match damage, his highest damage possible is (968 x 3 (triple match damage)) x 3 tiles destroyed x 3 repeaters = 26,541 per turn.

ThaRoadWarrior

Go on…

lol