New month, new batch of rebalances! This time we're going in for a 5-Star that has gotten a little attention in the past, but still needed a bit more love, along with two of our 4-Stars that were sitting at the bottom of the used rankings. They deserve better, and we'll give it to them! Nebula, M.O.D.O.K., and Silver Surfer, come on down!
These buffs will be coming very soon (as early as 10/27!) So let's get right in to it.
M.O.D.O.K. Doomsday Plan - CD timer reduced from 8 to 6 turns The ability is fine in concept and decent in execution, except that it requires too much wind-up and set up to get to actually use. The CD tile does a decent amount of damage, but is only really usable with other characters of low AP powers that ALSO don’t cause board shake that would then blow up the CD tile in the process. By changing this to 6 turns, it makes it into an ability that creates a decently strong 3 turn tile with one extra ability use, or an instantly damaging strong hit for characters that have low AP abilities.
Afterburner - Damage increased by ~100% In the words of M.O.D.O.K.: Works fine, fire's not hot enough. Let's increase the temperature, and thus, the damage, by approximately 100%. Should suffice till the next round of testing.
A Hammer For Every Nail - No change This ability works fine when it has the chance to move through its phases. With the increased damage from Doomsday Plan and Afterburner, this turns into a reasonable damage alternative instead of pretty much his only damaging ability.
Nebula Warped Enhancements - AP cost 9->6, increased healing by ~100% This ability has the same exact problem that Wolverine’s Recovery had before its recent buff. It’s a decent heal at all levels, but it never happens since it’s just too darned expensive. This makes the heal even more effective and turns her into a decent enough damage sponge at the cost of some Blue AP.
Galactic Rage - Increased all damage by ~50% In theory, this ability is very powerful when it’s able to be used at max effectiveness, which is what it was balanced against. However, this just doesn’t really happen in practice. Getting 10 Special tiles out there and having 10 Green AP ready to make use of isn’t something that occurs unless you’re specifically setting up for this, in which time you could have done something more impactful. As a result, we've rebalanced around a midpoint, where 5 tiles seems more reasonable, resulting in a ~50% across the board damage increase!
Grim Efficiency - Increased base damage by ~100% The obvious idea here is that the player is supposed to have 9-12 Green AP when this is used so that it immediately rolls into a usage of Galactic Rage with 6-8 Strike tiles on the board in order to use the latter move at a reasonable amount of damage. Which, in a slower, more deliberate world makes sense, but in anything even approaching the speed meta we have now means that you’d be waiting an absolute minimum of 7 turns of near perfect Red and Green matches to use this combo. Which we all know won’t happen because the matches simply won’t be there. So we've rebalanced the ability around being used more on its own, with the Strike tiles being a bonus that still synergizes with Galactic Rage.
Silver Surfer General - Match damage and health increased equivalent to current levels.
Perfect Being - AP cost 9->6, healing increased to remain equivalent to new health The charged tile generation at the new cost is pretty effective, although not on the level of the Mighty Doctor Thor. Meanwhile, with the reduced cost (as well as his increased health), his healing has essentially increased by staying the same percentage-wise to his health, while costing 33% less AP.
Cosmic Beam - Increased damage by ~75% This puts the ability on par with more current character's nukes, making for a simple ability that does what it says on the tin: Beams the enemy with the Power Cosmic.
Silver Singularity - Now downs the enemy on expiry, ignoring revival effects This ability now acts like what it is, a black hole created by the Power Cosmic. There is no escape. No avoidance. No revival (at least until the next comics run). When it goes off, the opponent is just.... gone.
Silver Surfer META!
Loving the Surfer boost. Brings him up to a solid B+ at least, and a check to the ChasmHulk teams running around. More anti-revival abilities please!
Silver Surfer became a hard counter to Chasm-iHulk meta. It will down target by the 8th turn if everything goes well perfectly. He can't be stunnedand he downs opponent with 12 black aps. I guess sometimes it's good to wait things out.
Surfer's Back power is going to hang like the sword of Damocles over every match. If he gets it out, a character is going to be downed unless he's downed before the CD expires.
It makes him way more of a threat on defense and very useful on offense against all the revive characters.
KGB
P.S. Nebula is a character I always forget exists. Partly because she's been the hardest for me to organically get covers for. Despite being in the game for years I barely have her over L300 because I just never seem to randomly pull her covers.
Ya'll are amazing. I love this dev team, they are taking big swings. Big big swings. I spent more money this anniversary than I have in the past because of it. Keep up the amazing work!
This is an excellent round of rebalances, way to go devs!
I've been thoroughly enjoying the Chasm/iHulk meta and I'm glad to see that there is a counter now, makes for a much more challenging and fair meta all around.
Keep up the great work, you're breathing new life into this game.
Black Hole remains and count downs to zero even if Silver Surfer is downed. So, it's guaranteed to down the target unless they can destroy it.
In theory, this ability is very powerful when it’s able to be used at max effectiveness, which is what it was balanced against. However, this just doesn’t really happen in practice. Getting 10 Special tiles out there and having 10 Green AP ready to make use of isn’t something that occurs unless you’re specifically setting up for this, in which time you could have done something more impactful. As a result, we've rebalanced around a midpoint, where 5 tiles seems more reasonable, resulting in a ~50% across the board damage increase!
Can I just say I adore your approach to balancing abilities to how they end up working in practise rather than best case? Because that reasoning is very true. Also, much love for the regular rebalances! It's such a boost in motivation for me, because I know even when a character is/was released who ends up on the weak side or suffers from major design problems, that with rebalances they still have a chance to overcome that. When character rebalances stopped in the past, any bad character releases were quite disheartening imo, because you knew they were stuck like that.
Just thought of a question regarding his Black power.
Does it kill characters that normally can't be killed via regular damage (Kacelius for example and nodes that require unique victory conditions in Puzzle Gauntlet). If so, that opens up new ways to win those too.
I think it depends on whether they code it correctly. I remember players using 4* Gamora to bypass unique victory conditions for Puzzle Gauntlet, and I believe it has been fixed. I've never used this technique before, so those who used 4* Gamora to bypass unique conditions can shed some light.
@HoundofShadow said: I think it depends on whether they code it correctly. I remember players using 4* Gamora to bypass unique victory conditions for Puzzle Gauntlet, and I believe it has been fixed. I've never used this technique before, so those who used 4* Gamora to bypass unique conditions can shed some light.
It has been fixed. I used to love using Gamora's "deadliest woman" ability to bypass those conditions, and was mildly bummed when it was "fixed."
They said that it currently does down bosses, but unsure if they'll keep it that way
Gamora’s “fix” comes and goes in Puzzle Gauntlet. I haven’t tried it on Kaecilius but I suspect it won’t work. I don’t know how Black Hole is coded, but most of those instant death abilities actually do some massive amount of damage under the hood - like Whales or old Doc Ock’s final stage green. We’ll have to test this out and see I guess.
Can a black holed character be revived by Lumbercap?
@ThaRoadWarrior said: Can a black holed character be revived by Lumbercap?
@ThaRoadWarrior said:
I was wondering this too. And also how the Black Hole will interact with Phoenix's countdown and Loki's trap.
stay killin it
That's going to be interesting, trying to keep enough black AP to use Surfer's power against Chasm. Nice that he becomes relevant again, hopefully possible against Chasm but not so OP as to make Chasm irrelevant right after his release.
Thanks for sharing the Gamora experience.
Talking about Lumbercap's ally revive, it will be interesting to know how many times it has been used since its existence. I think it costs 17 or 19 yellow aps. Personally, I don't think I have used this ability more than 5 times.
Elektro, 5* Storm and Silver Surfer should be good. Elektro feeds Storm's yellow and Storm's yellow feeds Surfer's black. Surfer's going to tank red/blue/black and he has a powered up true heal.
Yeah it only works in PG on the ones that have some conditional damage dealing problem, not the ones where you have to get like 20 charged tiles. Like it will kill those characters, but that won’t necessarily mean you’ll win.
I haven’t used On Your Feet, Soldier too many more times than that either probably, but I’m still curious if it works or not.
Three characters' worth of straight buffs? Silver Surfer buff with a rad as hell extra effect on the Singularity?
This is the trick or treat equivalent of finding the house that gives out full-sized candy bars, isn't it?
From Jan 2021 to May 2022 (17 months), the ex-dev did 6 buffs/rebalances.
The new dev team has already hit 8 buffs/rebalances (including this) within 5 months. I'm not sure if this is good enough to prove that they are committed to gameplay balances.