Upcoming Character Rebalances: 3* Doctor Octopus, 4* Dazzler, 5* Magneto

IceIX

End of the month, time for some more character rebalances! This month we've got an old favorite in 3-Star Doctor Octopus, a LONG time fan favorite in 4-Star Dazzler, and rounded out with an unfortunately underpeforming leader of future Mutants in 5-Star Magneto (Age of Apocalypse). These updates are planned to go Live by 3/31, so let's get to the changes!

Doctor Octopus (Otto Octavius)
Manipulation - 11 Blue AP
Swaps 16 pairs of tiles, destroying any swapped Attack/Protect/All SAP tiles and dealing damage for them.

• Updated to always destroy all swapped SAP tiles instead of needing levels to gain that ability.
• Increased damage per destroyed tile by ~20%.

This ability is decent for what it does, with some good board shake from the 32 tile swap, then some good damage from the swaps themselves. However, it was really only useful at level 5, making for pretty static builds for the ol' Doctor. It's still a bit expensive, but not overly so in 3-Star land.

Insult to Injury - Black PASSIVE
Creates 1/2 Black Attack tiles when the team matches enemy SAP tiles.

• Updated to create tiles when the team matches or destroys enemy SAP tiles.
• Increased the power of the Attack tiles by ~60%

This ability was super niche as it was, and the Attack tiles it created were very subpar. Fellow Doctor, Doom, is going around creating 6 190 Attack tiles every cast while Octopus does 2 139s in very specific situations. This change increases the usefulness by allowing for destruction, and making it REALLY dangerous to be using SAP tiles against him by having him create strong Attack tiles on match or destruction.

Armed and Dangerous - 12 Green AP
Previous: 12 AP Deals enemy team damage, Stuns a random enemy for 1/2 turns, Empowers a random SAP, steals 1/2 Green AP.
New: 10 AP Select 2 basic Black, Blue, Green, or Yellow tiles. For each Black, steal 1/2/3 Green AP. For each Blue, stun a random enemy for 1/2/3 turns. For each Green, deal enemy team damage. For each Yellow, Empower random SAP.

• Now steals 1/2/3 AP depending on level, up from 1/2.
• Now stuns enemies for 1/2/3 turns depending on levels, up from 1/2.
• Increased Empower by about 120%
• Kept the enemy team damage roughly the same, despite the AP reduction.

Wholesale update. Before it did a little bit of everything for a large AP cost. Now it's a choose your own power. You can double stun, steal a ton of Green AP, deal decent enemy team damage, or do some SAP Empowering, all at your decision.

Dazzler (Classic)
Survivor - Black PASSIVE
When taking a threshold of damage, for each 2 friendly SAPs, remove 1/2 enemy SAPs and stun the enemy for 1 turn.

• Updated the threshold to always be at 5% health instead of a decreasing amount topping out at about 12% health. This makes it proc more often in general.
• Added: Empower 4 friendly SAPs by 10-20%%

This ability is fairly niche in what it does, but was already decently powerful when you could get it to go off in that situation. Problem is, it usually took a pretty strong hit, and only really benefitted board control and didn't really do much to help win the match. By adding Empowering of friendly SAPs, it now does this more directly.

Dance Floor Queen - 10 Red AP
Create 3/4/5 Strike tiles plus 1/2/3 more Strike tiles for each 3 extra Red AP on cast.

• Reduced AP cost to 7.
• Updated so that it always creates 3 bonus Strike tiles per 3 extra Red AP.
• Kept created Attack tile strength the same.

With the old cost, it was difficult to get any of the bonus Strike tiles out, and the Strike tiles created were slightly weak for the AP cost anyway. With the lowered AP cost, the Strike tiles are now equivalently more powerful per AP, as well as providing a much better chance of having some extra AP to really pump out more Strikes.

Sounds of Light and Fury - 7 Green AP
Deals enemy team damage plus extra damage for each friendly SAP.

• Increased base damage by 100%.
• Increased bonus damage per friendly SAP by ~20%.

The ability was already decent enough for the cost, but just lacked punch. Combined with her stronger ability to put out Strikes, this ability is now not only a much more useful base enemy team nuke, but can quickly also start to gather a lot of bonus damage for a one two punch.

Magneto (Age of Apocalypse)
Overall: Update health and match damage to modern generation 5-Stars

• ~20% health increase (Equivalent to Kamala Khan)
• ~15% match damage increase (Equivalent to Kamala Khan)

Polar Coordination - 10 Blue AP
Previous: 10 AP - Convert Green tiles to Yellow and go Airborne. For every 3 Yellow AP when landing, deal a hit of damage (up to 8)
New: 7 AP - Select a pair of colors (Yellow/Black, Green/Purple, Red/Blue). Destroy all tiles in that color, gaining 1 AP in that color for every tile destroyed in that color over 12/11/10/9/8.

Complete rework. The old ability was expensive, did some very minor board manipulation, then did relatively low damage after taking Magneto out of the fight for multiple turns. Plenty of abilities do all these parts better without any of those downsides. Now the ability can still deal good damage (destroy Red/Blue and get the damage from Magneto's strong tile strengths in those colors), or have good selective board control. Plus, depending on the color depth, you can also get a bunch of bonus AP in selected colors along with the stuff that happens with board shake in general.

Eternal Induction - 6 Yellow AP
Previous: Convert 2/3/4 SAP tiles of a chosen color to Protect tiles. If they were friendly, Empower instead. PASSIVE: Protect tiles are 28-48% stronger for each X-Men on the team.
New: Create 3-6 Strength 80-120 Strike and Protect tiles, prioritizing whichever have less, then evenly afterward. PASSIVE: Protect tiles are 20-30% stronger for each X-Men on the team. Strike tiles are 20-30% stronger for each Brotherhood on the team.

Nearly complete rework. Before, this would kind of randomly either convert a few enemy SAPs or Empower a couple friendly tiles, but you'd often either not have enough tiles of a color to use successfully, or hoping to the RNG gods that the right ones were chosen. As a result, using this ability was mostly a roll of the dice. Now with the updates, it creates a number of fairly powerful Protect and Strike tiles, and adds a buff to Strikes for affiliated Brotherhood members. Which, to be fair, isn't plentiful in 5-Star land. For now.

Magnetic Inhibitor - 9 Red AP
Previous: 9 AP - Create 2 Strike tiles. Create 2 2-turn Purple Repeaters that convert 1 enemy SAP to a friendly Strike and deal damage.
New: 6 AP - Go Airborne for 2-4 turns. While Airborne, whenever an enemy creates a destructible non-basic tile, Magneto destroys it, dealing 100-250% match damage for that tile, up to 3 times per turn.

Complete rework again. The old ability was expensive, then slow for the conversion of enemy SAPs. Which meant that if you wanted to deal with them, you were better off using Eternal Induction. Except that was random, so... As well, the Strike tiles created by this didn't get more powerful on ability levels, which made it rough to decide to put 5 points into it. As a result, Magnetic Inhibitor was by FAR the most common 3 point ability.

As it stands now, it's completely different. Reminiscent of Thanos (Mad Titan)'s Purple, This essentially locks down the board from the creation of any new special tiles while it's active. Thanos would prevent their creation, while Magneto allows it, but then blows it up. However, Thanos is on the battlefield with increased match damage while Magneto is out flying around, so there's a downside. Still, being able to blow up any new SAP, Web, Abyss, etc. as they get created for a few turns can be super powerful and well worth losing the use of one of your team members for a bit.