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

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

SuperCarrot

I am excited to try out the new changes! Great job Devs!

BriMan2222

Pantera236 said:

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.

Chasm stuns for 1 turn at the beginning and 1 turn if you let him revive.  Bishop was stunning you for 5 turns every single turn once he got rolling,  which didn't take long.  Very much different. 

Glockoma

KGB said:

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

Trust me when I say it’s worth every AP. Even in today’s market, likely a majority  of vets would agree that it can be exploited for a lot of fun and versatility. (pairings being much better now, his kit being overall boosted, etc).

I will also concede that nostalgia hits hard and I could be totally wrong lol

ThaRoadWarrior

You can get that black specifically pretty fast with somebody like 5* Storm 

Bergen

sentry boosts is solely to make pve harder because even with boost hardly anyone will use it (it is very effective @ 650)...

game changes lately demands ever more time investment (engagement score??), dont like this trend, if you say "play same get less/stay behind" then you are praying on vulnerable people, if you say play more than i have a life. [ref. to Comparing video game engagement measures as related to individual and relational well-being in a community sample of adult gamers]

 

After the critique, if  you are to continue on this path (making game more demanding) at least make a new "Bonfire" cover, you dont need a license for that...

leviticuschom

All three of these rebalances are a lot of heavy lifting. Emma and Sentry may not be meta, they certainly will have a role on their tier. XFW rebalance looks robust, cannot wait to try him out. On the other hand - I do not look forward to fighting a level 650 Sentry in some events. 

This news gets 5 morbs out 5.
I really, really, really want to call the swarm now!

Blackstone

As powerful as comic sentry is, it should be scary to see him. 

No, we'll never see another sentry meta (unless we get a higher tier version) but he should be feared when boosted. 

ironsmudgie

As someone who was around before XFW and Sentry were nerfed, this is exciting.  XFW was super fun when Surgical Strike generated AP before.  Can't wait to play with him again.

Zalasta

Looking forward to the OML restoration!

wymtime

Nice rebalances.  I want to try Sentry with Apocalypse.  Who cares about strike tiles when you have Okoye and Apocalypse boosting damage

marvel075

isnt the rebalance suppose to happen today?

jredd

flip OML and gambit back to their og builds and see what happens!

Bad

Domino can call black tiles and XFW can shake the board quite a bit. 
It seems a solid character for 4* tier now.
And emma now isn't the ugly duck in comparison with her 3* and 5* sisters.
And sentry... BCS is encouraging 3*characters use even for 5* players. 
Good job!

Pantera236

BriMan2222 said:

Pantera236 said:

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.

Chasm stuns for 1 turn at the beginning and 1 turn if you let him revive.  Bishop was stunning you for 5 turns every single turn once he got rolling,  which didn't take long.  Very much different. 

But he didn't revive every time you downed him, which was much easier with the lower health 

qandols

Update: His green rally stings now!
The changes are online now. Now all I need is a board that would provide me with enough green to check out that power. It has not happened yet.

jp1

I love the new direction the game is taking. So much cool stuff happening lately. Awesome work!

AlexR

wow. I can't tell you how excited I am. I love ALL OF THIS. Thank you!

I'm still going to wear my attempts at a team for pre-buff Emma as a badge of honor. But I'm super happy to try these three now in their newly improved versions.

All three of these characters really really needed it, badly. I keep my own personal tier list and the tier these three were in is titled "Realm of Lost Souls, please buff". Very happy to see residents of that bin move up in the world!

nerfedBishop definitely needs help as well, although not in the form he existed before his prior nerf.

Now excuse me, I need to go test drive them in Sim.

Edit after testing some: 

1) Wolvie has doubled down on his niche as a board destroy specialist. He doesn't really do anything too different to before, he just does it even better and with very respectable damage. Which is great, because it's a unique niche and that's all he needed.

Wolvie's best partners, as far as I can see, haven't changed: Polaris teams (Polaris loves board destroy in all forms) and 4* Deadpool/battery teams. (4* Deadpool's purple also works with board destroy and having great synergy with Wolvie's black.) Tried running 4* Deadpool/Wiccan, which actually played quite decently. (Wiccan collects AP in all colors to get a headstart, Wiccan's yellow when caught in a board destroy true-heals him. Wiccan forcibly tanks and when he takes a big hit, Deadpool hits back. DP/Wolvie synergy and Wolvie as the main damage dealer and dishing out board-destroy/cascades.)

Outside of his best partners - characters that directly benefit from board destroy - he also now can be used just as a green/black color option if you're missing those colors in a team. The damage and usability upgrade is that good. I'd put him equal to the likes of 4* Lady Thor and Ghost now: very solid, strong characters that are just a tad too slow to be regulars.

IMO, this buff made him rise from bottom of the barrel to what I'd essentially consider A- . That's stellar and I'm impressed. Really well done buff!

2) Emma. I can't tell you how much better she plays than before. Are all her issues gone? No. But that's fine; she was so badly broken design-wise in every single way that this is an extremely ambitious re-balance. And a thoughtful one, at that! This buff adresses both very obvious issues and many of her less obvious problems, too.

To quickly summarise how it improves her (because I could probably gush for 2k words discussing the changes...): Her purple is no longer pointless and does something useful, although comes with a few drawbacks. Her black has gone from "niche, vaguely helpful sometimes maybe" to "you will use this regularly". AND it opens up actual synergy with both fortify characters that she just didn't manage before and special tile characters that enjoy having their tiles fortified. And the supposed strategy of her kit-- getting yellow out, fortifying with black - is now both actually possible and her gameplan (Before, black was too slow and unwieldy). Which means as a result it's now usually possible to have yellow fortified, which also helps. Her Diamond form being better and more accessable also means she plays even better with strike tiles. And her yellow makes tiles of reasonable tile strength.

Emma has options now! Is she genuinely a good character now? No. She's still definitely low-tier and needs team support, imo. But... that too is an insane improvement to before, because before I was literally struggling to make her contribute in teams explicitly built around making her abilities shine. So, low tier Emma with synergy options is leagues and miles and galaxies beyond pre-buff Emma. She actually exists in the game now. Even though Emma will still see little play, I'm frankly even more impressed with this buff than Wolvie's.

Bowgentle

370 X-Force boosted does 32k on green in the boss event.
This will be NASTY in PVE.
I love it, thank you 🤣

Gymp28

XFW works brilliantly with JThor as she is amping the value of matches with her charge tiles and causing random cascades, meaning he can usually get his green or black to fire pretty quickly. As they only share yellow he normally fuels any of the other abilities substantially when firing black. 

I’m super hyped for this change, as I was about in the original days of XFW and have missed him being a force to reckon with. 

Excellent job BCS!