Character Rebalance - **** War Machine (James Rhodes) ****

135

Comments

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    Would have been a perfect opportunity to give Flaptain the ability to decrement a repeater passively like I’ve always wanted. He needs his AP coats lowered in the worst way.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    Flaptain decreasing repeater would be cool even if it's only one random repeater per turn. Has any one use Flaptain with Polaris/BRB? At level 270, his red deals 7346 + 1109 per friendly protect tiles. I don't think BRB/Polaris have problem hitting 50 protect tiles. That's easily 62796 damage for 14 red aps with Flaptain.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    This new green is effectively a less good version of Blob’s green for what you want it to do. Power comparisons are always so interesting. Rhodey probably plays alright at 5/5/3 with Blob, and you’ll just fire Blob’s green to get a more effective attack tile drop (12 basics destroyed all in the bottom rows for the same 8 green)
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    I used to use Flaptain between Shuri and P4nther, that could do impressive damage. I’d imagine by the time you had 14 red AP saved up for his nuke, Polaris and BRB would have already melted down most opponents that two 4* characters could last against.
  • Blackstone
    Blackstone Posts: 603 Critical Contributor
    I'll be honest, I've never played WM unless the game picked him for me.

    He's champed, I've just never thought "this is a job for War Machine" over any other character.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    Invis never really took off as a meta, and that’s really the only niche he sort of fills. But since AOE punches through it too, and most of those powers hit harder, odds are good you have better options for all his powers.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I was thinking that he could be helpful in other nodes in SCL 10 since I believe many relying on Polaris/BRB would go for stun-lock and they have no use for red aps. That amount of damage could one-shot some goons at 4th clear, or it could deal 1/5 to 1/6 of the highest hp enemies, which is pretty impressive. Pre-Polaris, it's difficult to achieve this amount of damage with his red.

    As for Blob, I run him at 3/5/5, so he destroys only 6 tiles instead of 12. For WM, it's 5/3/5. I think WM synergises well with Blob, since he could make use of those attack tiles to convert into damage. Maybe throw in Coulson for crazy ap gains.
  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,495 Chairperson of the Boards
    Blackstone said:
    I'll be honest, I've never played WM unless the game picked him for me.

    He's champed, I've just never thought "this is a job for War Machine" over any other character.
    He's invaluable against Spider Ham.  After iHulk AoE, War Machine Blue is the next best tool to counter a fast invisible caster.
  • wingX
    wingX Posts: 253 Mover and Shaker
    With this rebalance, I think I might use him even less. I use him mostly for his creation of countdown tiles which work well with 4* Carol and Agent Coulson or even 4*Starlord.
    As for using green power to destroy tiles, there are just so many green abilities out there that do the same things or even better.
    Now he seem to be good against invisible enemies and protect tiles creator but his blue is still expensive and there are now characters that can goes invisible without using invisible tiles. Maybe his blue will be better if he can also target those characters and remove them from invisibility (e.g Yellowjacket and Alligator Loki).


  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    Invis never really took off as a meta, and that’s really the only niche he sort of fills. But since AOE punches through it too, and most of those powers hit harder, odds are good you have better options for all his powers.

    Elsa for 7ap stuns invisible + damages and can target airbourne too and her other two powers are probably better than WM's.
  • MoosePrime
    MoosePrime Posts: 969 Critical Contributor
    Phumade said:
    Blackstone said:
    I'll be honest, I've never played WM unless the game picked him for me.

    He's champed, I've just never thought "this is a job for War Machine" over any other character.
    He's invaluable against Spider Ham.  After iHulk AoE, War Machine Blue is the next best tool to counter a fast invisible caster.
    Does Spider-Ham go invisible?  Or are you thinking of Howard the Duck?
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    Ham goes airborne, and surely that is irony because what mode is this spider-ham reign of terror happening?
  • Blackstone
    Blackstone Posts: 603 Critical Contributor
    Phumade said:
    Blackstone said:
    I'll be honest, I've never played WM unless the game picked him for me.

    He's champed, I've just never thought "this is a job for War Machine" over any other character.
    He's invaluable against Spider Ham.  After iHulk AoE, War Machine Blue is the next best tool to counter a fast invisible caster.
    I'm assuming there's a typo in there somewhere.

    Regardless: WM blue costs 11. It's not dealing with any fast characters at all.

    Especially with so many cheap stuns on the same color that could prevent the enemy from hiding in the first place.

    I'm willing to listen if you care to elaborate on what circumstance WM would be "invaluable", but I have my doubts that circumstance exists.
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,177 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    Clearly chosen because of Black History month. We may still get a Flaptain re-balance too since there are still 3 weeks to go.
    As for the changes - whatever. What's done here is essentially what was done to Lockjaw. He's slightly better now mostly because of his green change (shocked at some of the above comments saying they liked the old green better when it was clearly inferior unless you faced non-tile moving goons and could ensure the CD's all resolved) so at least 2 of his powers resolve instantly.
    But in the grand scheme of things, he went from the 100th or so best 4* to the 90th? In other words he's still not usable even when boosted because just about every other boosted 4* that week will be better. A comparison of him after his re-work to say Riri after her re-work a couple years back is just devastating (she has 3 actives on the same 3 colors and all 3 of hers are better than all 3 of his for the same costs) and I like Riri but with the depth of 4* land now she's probably no longer a T20 character so imagine just how far down he is at 90th. Just to illustrate how big the gap is, they should change his crash from Thanos to Riri so we can see it first hand.
    KGB
  • dokiy
    dokiy Posts: 238 Tile Toppler
    I think we're all missing the lede, that MPQ has data on what powers are used/not used. So WM Green is one of the least used powers in the game? Fascinating to me! Be curious in the 4 star tier which powers are are the bottom 3. Show us the data! 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    that data is the "what," but it doesn't really tell you the "why." Always fascinating to ponder on. I'd like to see that data as well lol
  • bbigler
    bbigler Posts: 2,111 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    I’ll make just 1 comment on this: rebalances are supposed to increase the character’s usage and these improvements are so minor that I don’t see that happening, especially given the negative feedback here.

    Dear devs, next time make these improvements far more significant and it could breathe life into old unused characters.  

    The next MPQ poll should be on how to rebalance X character.  I bet players could show you many ways to improve someone without making them OP
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,622 Chairperson of the Boards
    bbigler said:
    I’ll make just 1 comment on this: rebalances are supposed to increase the character’s usage and these improvements are so minor that I don’t see that happening, especially given the negative feedback here.

    Dear devs, next time make these improvements far more significant and it could breathe life into old unused characters.  

    The next MPQ poll should be on how to rebalance X character.  I bet players could show you many ways to improve someone without making them OP
    With so many existing overpowered characters in the game, why *shouldn't* they buff these guys to overpowered status?  Like, why should they have to set their sights on "mediocre?" If War Machine was as good as Polaris who does that hurt?
  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,202 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'd rather see older 5 stars get some reworks than war machine. I'm sure his usage will go up .0002% though 
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,604 Chairperson of the Boards
    Buff is overall good, but I kinda wish they'd improved the green so it had *better* synergy with 4* Captain Marvel, rather than removing the only part that provided synergy in the first place. Some controlled board destruction is good, I guess. But I would have gone for something like a passive power that fires a countdown or two every turn so long as you have enough AP (like Wasp's black). Could have kept the countdowns, the random board destruction, the synergy with Carol, but it would have been less likely to be a power that goes to waste when the countdowns go away (as it would just keep making more of them).

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