***** Magik (Phoenix Five) *****

entrailbucket

Is Okoye boosting the part of Magik's match damage that does permanent damage? Or does she only boost the repeaters/active power damage? Sometimes Okoye boosts match-damage powers like that and sometimes she doesn't.

Tiger_Wong

Okoye boosts the extra permanent damage tacked on and of course she boosts damage of each demon.

Every magik match is a 2-hitter with Okoye pumping the 2nd hit.

entrailbucket

Ah, ok -- that makes her MUCH stronger. I wish they were more consistent with powers like that though.

Glockoma

Funny story: I was hitting grills climbing s1 in pvp. Used my Chasm/iHulk (L500/480 respectively). Wiped to a 550 Okoye/Mid-range Magik/Chavez because I refused to take the focus off the Okoye. They had a nice set of cascades that allowed Magik to fire off purple twice boosted by ~10 teamup AP.

Learned my lesson 🤦‍♂️

IrisRyu

Matching Magik‘s repeater tiles triggers KK’s damage boost. Add in Apocalypse and the incremental damage really adds up. Slowly.

entrailbucket

So, that's kind of weird. I guess it makes sense that they changed Magik because of her interaction with power boosters. But...some of the match-damage type passives don't get boosted at all. Like, Okoye doesn't boost 4* Juggernaut's passive or OBW (I think). She certainly doesn't boost Colossus.

Why not change the power so it can't be boosted instead of nerfing it? As it stands, it sort of requires you to pair Magik with a power boosters to make her good/usable. It's too bad they had to scale her so far back because of other characters.

dianetics

Anybody else try to run her with Okoye and Emma?
Sure would be nice to have a training dummy to test this out.

With a 111 loaner I was getting 12k damage ticks pretty quickly.

She is still going to get destroyed by Thor and neutered by Chasm though.

IrisRyu

It looks like Emma boosts the base strength of Magik’s repeaters and then Okoye’s boost gets added to that. The repeaters are nice, but the boosted permanent match damage is where it’s at for me.

I have no idea how the boosts were getting applied, but Magik was doing something like 50k+ in boosted passive match damage. I never got more than 10 TUs, but I imagine her damage ceiling will be quite high if she’s tanking (and boosted). Kang/Okoye/Magik should do the trick.

Vhailorx

@entrailbucket said:
So, that's kind of weird. I guess it makes sense that they changed Magik because of her interaction with power boosters. But...some of the match-damage type passives don't get boosted at all. Like, Okoye doesn't boost 4* Juggernaut's passive or OBW (I think). She certainly doesn't boost Colossus.

Why not change the power so it can't be boosted instead of nerfing it? As it stands, it sort of requires you to pair Magik with a power boosters to make her good/usable. It's too bad they had to scale her so far back because of other characters.

It must have been coded as a "deal X damage" power, rather than "boost match damage by X" power. The former is generally affected by damage boosters (with 4*s juggs being a hard-coded exception) and the latter generally doesn't (hence colossus and SC don't benefit from okoye).

It is interesting that they have nerfed her explicitly because of her interactions with damage boosters. It reminds of the old days with demi where every new character that had an AOE or multi-hit power did ~150 damage because they were so scared of the okoye interactions.

In the larger scheme of things, I really do want to get a community consensus on magik. if she is bad (or REALLY bad) and the devs nevertheless think (not fib to preserve pre-release hype, but actually believe) that she is a "top contender" then there are serious problems on the way. I'm not saying anything specific about what happened in this instance, just observing that a vast gulf between dev and community perceptions of character strength is not healthy for the game.

HoundofShadow

For Magik, all you need is to apply the mathematical equation to find out whether she's good or bad. "Pre-nerf", she could deal ~180k damage every 2 turns with 10 red aps and 7 Limbo Demon out. And it's a 450 Magik doing that. 550 Magik would be doing ~360k damage every 2 turns. "Post-nerf", she's doing lesser, but more or less in line with Riri or whoever deals 30k-40k damage for 7 aps.

If you want to find out whether a character is a true top contender, one hint to look out for is whether (top) players are asking the dev to nerf top contender who are glass cannon. And I'm talking about Kang. There are already (top) players out there asking the dev to nerf Kang's blue. And the reason is probably he threatens their T5 or T10 placements.

Tiger_Wong

My Ph5 Magik is 4/2/2. Like I said before, I dig her with damage boosters and those props of boosted damage add up quick.

I don’t really fear FosThor as much as normal. It becomes a race to kill her with boosted match permanent-damage before she starts firing her powers and getting RNG cascades. If you start with +2 TUP with Okoye, you can take her out really fast with a little luck. And my Magik’s match perm damage is only at 15%. Im gonna make a run at her store with Collossus and see if I can champ her or get her red more covers. Then I’ll start cracking at chasm and IHulk and see what’s what.

2* BW’s extra hit of damage is boostable in the same vein as Magik iirc.

Bad

Her extra damage should'nt be boostable as it's a % of her match damage. Crystal's passive is boostable but it's only on red and it's a settled amount.
Magik is full of damaging passives so she paires well with a damage booster. Still on pvp damage boosters aren't tops anymore and pretty easy to deal with.

Vhailorx

@Bad said:
Her extra damage should'nt be boostable as it's a % of her match damage. Crystal's passive is boostable but it's only on red and it's a settled amount.
Magik is full of damaging passives so she paires well with a damage booster. Still on pvp damage boosters aren't tops anymore and pretty easy to deal with.

it's a percentage of her match damage, but if it's being boosting then it would seem to be coded as "deal X damage" where X is a percentage of her match damage. It's not "deal 115% match damage." It works the same way as 2* OBW or 5* DD's purple passive. it's dealing a separate tick of damage with each match, rather than adding on to the match damage tick. It makes sense from a data hygiene perspective since the extra tick of damage here is qualitatively different from her match damage. I can see why they would want to create a separate instance of damage to avoid a potential bug where all of her match damage became permanent.

fight4thedream

Wait what? Am I reading that right? Her match damage can be boosted using booster type characters like Apocalypse, Emma and Okoye??

That certainly changes things. You'll definitely need to pair her with a booster, but I think it could potentially put her on par with Mighty Thor. As @Tiger_Wong noted, you are going to want to target Mighty Thor first, but with boosted match damage and the double edged sword that is charged tiles that should be doable. Still not certain how she will hold up against iHulk/Chasm teams in pick-2 but she should be able to take them down in pick-3. And it definitely makes it much clearer why the dev team felt the need tone her power set down.

@Vhailorx said:

@entrailbucket said:
So, that's kind of weird. I guess it makes sense that they changed Magik because of her interaction with power boosters. But...some of the match-damage type passives don't get boosted at all. Like, Okoye doesn't boost 4* Juggernaut's passive or OBW (I think). She certainly doesn't boost Colossus.

Why not change the power so it can't be boosted instead of nerfing it? As it stands, it sort of requires you to pair Magik with a power boosters to make her good/usable. It's too bad they had to scale her so far back because of other characters.

It must have been coded as a "deal X damage" power, rather than "boost match damage by X" power. The former is generally affected by damage boosters (with 4*s juggs being a hard-coded exception) and the latter generally doesn't (hence colossus and SC don't benefit from okoye).

It is interesting that they have nerfed her explicitly because of her interactions with damage boosters. It reminds of the old days with demi where every new character that had an AOE or multi-hit power did ~150 damage because they were so scared of the okoye interactions.

In the larger scheme of things, I really do want to get a community consensus on magik. if she is bad (or REALLY bad) and the devs nevertheless think (not fib to preserve pre-release hype, but actually believe) that she is a "top contender" then there are serious problems on the way. I'm not saying anything specific about what happened in this instance, just observing that a vast gulf between dev and community perceptions of character strength is not healthy for the game.

In regards to the difference in character strength perception, there are a few things to consider in this particular case:

1. I think a lot of forum members have stricter criteria in terms of tiering: basically, for them there are only two tiers: "meta" or not. On the other hand, the dev team probably takes a more holistic approach to their analysis of a character. I don't think anyone would deny that Magik is better than the majority of 5* characters. But the question on a lot of competitive players minds is "Is she better than the current meta"? or "What does she bring to the meta?" which you can't really blame them for since their main interests are being able to compete successfully.

2. Her boosts apparently can stack with other boosts, including her match boost. This is something the forum community wasn't aware of when making their initial assessment but the dev team took into consideration when doing their analysis. Traditionally, boost abilities don't normally stack together: the higher boosted power is defaulted to, ignoring the other boost. But it seems Magik's boost operates differently.

3. So without knowing the potential of her match damage being boosted, on paper it seemed pretty clear she is hard countered by Chasm and Mighty Thor which led to the initial assessment that she would be useless in PvP since for many playing in the highest competitive tier the majority of their matches include those two characters.

However, now that we know that her match damage can be boosted, she has much better footing facing those teams. I can see now why the dev team feels she is top tier.

In her original state, she would have been crazy strong. Now, with the right partner, she can compete against those teams. How successfully she is taking those kinds of teams down is still up in the air and will require some testing but the potential is there.

I guess now the question I am most interested in trying to figure out is who her best partner for pick-2 will be: Apocalypse, Okoye, or Emma?

Bad

Yeah but also her boosts shouldn't stack up. Why some characters don't and this one does it? It's a code problem or it was intended? Will be it this the new rule?
The repeaters should take just the best% like it has been working until now.

dianetics

Her boosts are percenage based, and other boosts are flat damage based. Apoc and Wanda stack on Crystal. Her red repeaters boost appears to be addative to Emma and or Okoye/Apoc.

Tiger_Wong

There are a number of % boosts that stack and/or are match damage based. Like ph5 colossus and Killmonger. Or ph5 Emma and Adam warlock. I don’t know why you guys just don’t TRY stuff out and see for yourself. ESPECIALLY since BCS has taken over.

That’s why I get annoyed with all the “this character blows” literally 5 seconds after being released WITHOUT EVEN TRYING ANYTHING. So just take a step back, re-evaluate what the powers are and how they work and how they could connect with other powers and other characters. Just look at all the sneaky buffs and changes done to some of the older characters and powers. Look at the new characters and powers since BCS has taken over.

You’re not in Kansas anymore.

dianetics

I did try it out with okoye and Emma and it looks like ALL their boosts stack.

Okoyes flat damage, Emma’s percentage, and Magiks per tile boost. Percentage boosts are generally additive and flat damage boosts choose which is higher.

HoundofShadow

I finally found the formula that was posted in reddit, which was supposedly revealed by Demiurge two years ago:

"As explained by a dev, the formula is (base + % boost) + flat boost + strikes"

With BCS in charge, it's better to start questioning and be more curious or keep an open-mind about how certain powers work together.

And keep more ideas flowing.

entrailbucket

@dianetics said:
I did try it out with okoye and Emma and it looks like ALL their boosts stack.

Okoyes flat damage, Emma’s percentage, and Magiks per tile boost. Percentage boosts are generally additive and flat damage boosts choose which is higher.

Ok, so then the question becomes "is any of this intentional?"

We have tons of precedent for boosts NOT stacking, and for match damage not being boost-able, so it's fair to make those assumptions unless that stuff is specifically stated in the character descriptions.

Magik appears to be an exception to a bunch of these rules -- maybe she was done differently on purpose, or maybe all these interactions are bugged. The power descriptions don't indicate any of that. If these are unintentional, when the fixes show up it will hurt her significantly.