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

ThaRoadWarrior

He was only used when boosted

HoundofShadow

With that in mind, it doesn't seem to be a big deal. 

ThaRoadWarrior

The current mega-boost 5* game is very reminiscent of the state of the 4* game when I transitioned to 4* play tbh. If you have them, you're using the boosted characters with whatever synergy you can muster, if you don't have them you're definitely not feeling too cool about hanging on to points unshielded lol. Back then, it was pretty difficult to cover older 4*s like Kingpin and C4ge, who seemed so hard-hitting to me on boost weeks. I was doing things like trying to figure out if certain characters were boosted more frequently than others so I could make sure I had at least one boosted character every week, stuff like that. I never figured out that pattern if there was one. I think there must be players doing that now with the 5* boost weeks.

I had KP set as my bonus hero target for ages with no luck at all for the longest time. Then by the time I had him, this change went into effect, and he was like...not good really. It's fine, he wasn't key to anything I was doing, but it's not unlike the Danver5 situation for me where I spent something like 3 months finishing her up and then only had her for a month before the silent nerf went into effect. Only difference is that we got a whole announcement and explanation thread for Kingpin, and i think they ran System Reboot along with it to give everyone a cover. 

entrailbucket

I can only speak from my personal experience of actually using 4* Kingpin competitively during a time when 4* were the top of the metagame.

Kingpin was a damage dealer.  His yellow was quite bad but self-fed so it was castable.  Also at this time there was very little of value to do with yellow AP so there wasn't much use as a feeder.  You'd cast purple then yellow, then use his black to blow up those CD tiles for good cheap damage.

I do remember using him with Deadpool.  I don't remember using him with Medusa.  I think by the time Medusa showed up, we'd moved to a 5* metagame.  Deadpool and Kingpin are both quite old.

He was actually a pretty solid, internally consistent design.  I have no idea why he was nerfed.  By the time that happened I wasn't using him for anything.

ThaRoadWarrior

I mean, he wasn't "nerfed" because we were using him for anything, he was "rebalanced" to be a better leader of goons in PVE. That may have coincided with SCL9 or 10 launching, and they may have wanted that for difficulty? I can't recall that clearly when that was in relation to those things. He is definitely a better opponent now though.

entrailbucket

That's probably why.  All the changes they made make him better when he's paired with goons and worse for us to use.  Remember the maggia hat guy feeds him black too, so the increased cost actually makes that power better -- by the time that guy feeds him enough black to cast it, the other goons have already spammed a bunch of nonsense to blow up.

entrailbucket

Sometimes when they rework a character that was pretty complex, you can tell that they just sort of ran out of good thematic ideas, so they give them a monster nuke and head home for the day.  It usually works!

I always point to Invisible Woman's last rework (out of about 12 she's had overall).  She has to keep the bubbles for whatever reason -- that was probably a lot of work to code in 2014? -- but instead of doing weird bubble stuff now they just stapled on a crazy big nuke (for a 4*) on her green.


Robbie's green is just bad now.  I used him a lot these last few events and never bothered with it.  But his black is nuts!  For me it was hitting for like 110,000 on the conditional.  It's a good rework because he got better, but he is less interesting now.