Character Rebalances - Emma (Astonishing), Wolverine (X-Force), Sentry

IceIX

It's time for a batch of character rebalances, just in time for Emma to join her 3 and 5 Star versions in their release, for Wolverine to enter Arcade's Murderworld, and for Sentry to pit his strength against the new psychic powerhouse of Emma Frost! These changes will be imminently available (planned for implementation on 9/30), so take a gander now to get used to what you'll be working with!

Let's get right in to it.

Emma Frost
Psychic Meddling - 10 Purple AP -> 8 Purple AP
Level 5 upgrades the AP destruction from 2->4

Adds a secondary function to the Repeater tile: While this tile is on the board, disable the selected enemy's abilities. This tile is destroyed if the selected enemy is Downed or Emma enters Diamond Form.

This adds a function similar to Spider-Man (OsCorp)'s ability to keep an opponent from using any abilities while it's available. However, since it goes away when the opponent is downed or Emma changes forms, it's not a *pure* lockdown. This should make the ability more generally useful and not as much of a pure niche SAP tile destructor.

Girl's Best Friend - 11 Black AP -> 7 Black AP
Will now Fortify friendly specials THEN basic tiles if none are available instead of ONLY fortifying specials and fizzling if none are available.

Diamond Form - PASSIVE -> 7 Black AP
Changes Diamond Form into a hybrid Active/Passive. It still works the same in that it increases her damage while disabling other abilities, but you can now use 7 Black again (or destroy the Fortified tiles) to return to normal form.

Adds: Cannot be stunned
Adds: Reduces incoming match and ability damage by 25/30/35/40/50% while in Diamond Form

These changes to these two abilities do a couple of things. First of all, it makes them cheaper and therefore more generally useable. Secondly, it provides a way to get OUT of Diamond Form that doesn't require getting rid of up to 6 specific Fortified tiles, which can be nigh impossible. Finally, it turns Emma into a true bruiser while in Diamond Form instead of making her more of a glass (hah) cannon.

Labor For Learning - 8 Yellow AP
Pretty simple change for this one: Doubled the strength of the created tiles as well as the improvement of the tile by the Repeater.

Simple but effective. This turns the ability into one that measures up to Rocket and Groot's Blue while keeping the number of created tiles relatively low while Rocket will soon fill the board with tiles and essentially max the strength available while Emma will keep up with improvement.


Wolverine (X-Force)
X-Force - 8 Green AP
Another simple but effective change to this one:
Increased damage for the base attack by 400%, and increased the damage for destroyed tiles to 3x tile damage.

This turns X-Force from a board shake into a real damage ability, and something that you don't want to see.

Surgical Strike - 11 Black AP
Increased damage per tile destroyed by ~20%
Added to Level 4: Reduces enemy AP in the destroyed color by 10.
Added to Level 5: Destroyed tiles now generate AP.

This restores its functionality roughly to what it was way back in the day. At the time, this ability was super powerful and the AP destruction/generation was worried to create winfinites or no-win scenarios. With more knowledge about how the game works and a changed meta, the old version of the ability makes a strong return.

Recovery - 9 Yellow AP -> 6 Yellow AP
Decreased AP cost from 9 to 6.
Reduced healing in-line with AP cost (still same healing/AP)
Increased damage dealt if the tile is matched by ~20%

By reducing the AP cost to a fairly low amount, it makes this a more reliable form of healing for Wolverine. As well, the increased damage per tile destroyed adds a bit more punch to the ability, making it something to really watch out for if you need to decide whether to let Wolverine heal or stop it by matching the tile away.


Sentry
Supernova - 11 Red AP
Removed "Ends the turn" on use
Added an in-battle function to show the number of Red tiles on the board.

At its tier, Supernova is already a strong nuke when enough tiles are on the board. Not so much a direct buff, but a couple mechanics changes to make the ability more generally useable.

World Rupture - 12 Green AP -> 6 Green AP
Reduced damage per tile slightly, but at the original 12 AP/damage. This is an overall damage buff as a result.
Added: Ignoring Strike tiles

This ability flipped between being alternately fairly useless to being massively OP depending on if Strike tiles were available, since each CD created would be affected by the Strike tiles. With this change, the ability is fairly "standard" in the amount of damage it will deal by ignoring Strikes, but with the reduced AP it means that Sentry will be using this ability FAR more often. In testing, this turned the ability into a nuke that the player needs to chase quickly, as it was often the case that between this and Supernova, Sentry could get another World Rupture out very quickly, making for more and more mounting damage.

Sacrifice - 8 Yellow AP
Added: Created tiles are Fortified
Increased the number of created tiles from 1->2
Increased self damage to ~25% of base health

These changes make Sacrifice MUCH more scary when used. Instead of a single randomly placed somewhat powerful tile on the board, there are now *2* *Fortified* tiles placed instead. This makes it so that when its used, it's a real power multiplier at the cost of Sentry's health. Ya know... a sacrifice.

mega ghost

I love these changes. Finally, a return to rebalances that actually improve the characters, alter mechanics, and make them contenders instead of just giving them a tiny bit more health and match damage and maybe shave off an AP here and there. And three at once!

nwahs086

OG X-Force is back!

Tiger_Wong

That Emma rebalance looks clean. 

I wasn’t around during Sentry and 4* Wolvie’s heyday so this will be cool to try out. 

Scorpion201

Great Changes all round, looking forward trying them out.

JimboJambo

Sentry's World Rupture boosted by Okoye already causes huge damage, I'm excited about the cost being lowered to 6AP. Will the wording be updated because at the moment it is extremely vague - 'creates Countdown tiles that deal...' - currently doesn't say how long the Countdown tiles last or how many.

HoundofShadow

I think X Wolverine could be awesome for some potential winfinites with the new ap gains. It made me think of my Echo+MODOK winfinite. If I'm playing against SC or Dr Thor, I'm going to make use of those red aps gained to create more black tiles with Echo. Then, those black aps can be used used to either create more red tiles or to destroy those red tiles. With the big increase in damage, I think I can expect something crazy happening.

Sentry can be great with Thorkoye with those cheap cds.

DeNappa

Wow, restoring XFW to its former glory? That's unexpected!

ThaRoadWarrior

These all seem like nice attempts. XFW in particular looks like a straight up win, and Sentry is probably going to make all the lvl650s we see in SCL10 hit a lot harder.

Frost I’m curious to play - her yellow  needed more than a number pump, it needed to have an on-fire effect and be shortened to a 1-turn as well. That repeater takes too long to do anything. You are 3 turns to fire assuming the yellow is available to you, 2 more turns to make some strikes, 2 more turns to buff some strikes. Even in 4* play that is too slow to be a factor in a battle.

Does the Diamond Form second fire do damage or just bust the fortifications and revert?

Sekilicious

Captain Marvel, Daken, and Sentry became a lot scarier.

CHRISJN

Thanks for the changes. Kudos. Now, can we request to unnerf 5* OML and Gambit? 

Vhailorx

Very exciting changes. I don't think new Emma will be good enough to crack the current meta, but she seems functional now rather than just a waste of space.

Sentry changes are actually a but of a pain since he is so common in pvp, but trying to fix him is fine since eh has been so comically bas since the nerf.

OG xfw is the real prize here. His nerf wasnt very timely as it hit just as the meta was passing him by (like OML), so it felt extra shifty as he was already on the way down and then got absolutely buried. Seems like it's back to 5/5/3 and I am looking forward to his next boost week.

If this restoration works out then I am really excited to see OG gambit.

MoosePrime

Sekilicious said:

Captain Marvel, Daken, and Sentry became a lot scarier.

Not as scary as it would be if World Rupture didn't now ignore strike tiles.

dianetics

X Force Wolverine is probably a top tier 4* again.
Surgical strike was always great in the Apoc boss events and now it’s even better. His yellow is scary now.
These changes may actually bring him into 5* PvP when he’s boosted.

Glockoma

Old School X-Force is BACK! This is freggin clutch!

Pantera236

So you guys/gals seem ok with some of the old meta coming back... now give me back my BISHOP!!!! 🙏🍻

BriMan2222

Pantera236 said:

So you guys/gals seem ok with some of the old meta coming back... now give me back my BISHOP!!!! 🙏🍻

No way! Bishop was already broken enough when he was perma stunning your team and feeding a near infinite amount of blue to brb.  Now add mighty thor into the mix and she will be infinitely blowing up charged tiles with her blue.

ThaRoadWarrior

I kind of want infini-blue for Shuma-Gorath, Ronan, or Mr Sinister myself

danielrandkai

Another beautiful series of changes. Hat tip and thanks to the devs and everyone at broken circle for doing so much work to breathe new life and excitement to the game. Amazing amazing effort. THANK YOU!

Pantera236

BriMan2222 said:

Pantera236 said:

So you guys/gals seem ok with some of the old meta coming back... now give me back my BISHOP!!!! 🙏🍻

No way! Bishop was already broken enough when he was perma stunning your team and feeding a near infinite amount of blue to brb.  Now add mighty thor into the mix and she will be infinitely blowing up charged tiles with her blue.

Not much different than the current stunning and resurrecting of chasm ihulk.

KGB

So many Sentry nodes in PvE are going to suddenly be a whole lot harder especially on CL10.  It used to be you could leave him to last knowing he did next to nothing.

X-Force got nerfed before I ever got him close to being covered. Will be interesting to see how he plays and whether that Black can be used often enough given how it still costs 11 in a game where 9 is expensive.

KGB