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

fight4thedream

Woah, a lot to process here!

I am happy with the Magneto buff for starters. Considering this is the Age of Apocalypse version, I was really miffed that he had no abilities that actually countered Apocalypse. His red can definitely put the breaks on Apoc now and I feel this update brings him much more in line with the comics.

Also super intrigued by the Brotherhood name drop. There are a lot of variations of that team so I am curious who gets tapped for the affiliation. For example, the current team is being led by Storm and includes Cable and my personal favorite Arraki, Khora of the Burning Heart:

Possible future costume? I doubt 5* Wanda will make the cut since she is based on the MCU version but maybe her 3* counterpart and her brother will? Blob seems to be a shoo-in for sure and I guess we can expect Toad somewhere down the line. Fingers crossed for Exodus, too!

Finally, this gives me hope that Hela, Odin, Black Suit Spidey and God Emperor Doom have a chance at greatness. Keep up the awesome work @DevpoolMPQ_BCS and design team!

Daredevil217

Questions for the developers about Magneto (in case they pop back in):

Blue
1. Should it read “those colors” instead of “that color” since he is destroying two tile colors?

Yellow:
1. Does Magneto count himself for the passive buff?
2. Why was his passive tile buff nerfed? Was 48% deemed too powerful on the old version?

Red:
1. What is the definition of “indestructible” tiles? Any examples?
2. Will charged tiles get destroyed with this power?
3. If the enemy makes a tile on their turn and it immediately gets destroyed, do they get the cascades/AP for the destroyed tiles? Do they do damage to your team?
4. Does your team gather AP when the tiles are destroyed?
5. How does this power interact with Beta Ray Bill? If he creates a tile and I’d then dealt damage, he will create another. Will he just keep creating tiles and taking damage until he is dead?

Did I miss any?

entrailbucket

Yeah, thinking a bit more about that red power -- I don't think you will want to use this against Chasm.

Here's why:

Chasm always has the highest match damage in whatever team he's on, so every time they move the board, he creates at least two void tiles. If Magneto is airborne, he will immediately destroy those tiles, on the enemy's turn. Then Chasm will create 4 web tiles, which Magneto will also immediately destroy.

That's 6 random tiles getting destroyed every time the enemy team makes a match! On a small cascade it could be 18 or 24 tiles, and the enemy will be doing damage to you for every match made as a result of all that board shake.

The good thing is that Magneto will be airborne, so he won't be eating all that damage. The bad thing is that it's probably going to kill the rest of your team pretty quickly. I do think it will be useful against certain other spammers, but it almost definitely will be suicide against Chasm.

entrailbucket

I don't think new Magneto is terrible at all, btw, and he's about a million times better post-buff than he is now.

I just don't think he's the Chasm solution.

Alex502

These are amazing changes! I'm excited to see them all in action, even Doc Ock.

My favorite thing about this update: Magneto will counter Chasm's Abyss tiles. Is it a perfect counter? No, but its a GREAT one.

My favorite thing said in the OP, though? That "For now." line. Yes! Bring us a 5* Mystique! Let's get an Avalanche! Let's get a 5* Toad! I would thoroughly enjoy these additions. How about Pyro, too?? Exciting.

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:
Yeah, thinking a bit more about that red power -- I don't think you will want to use this against Chasm.

Here's why:

Chasm always has the highest match damage in whatever team he's on, so every time they move the board, he creates at least two void tiles. If Magneto is airborne, he will immediately destroy those tiles, on the enemy's turn. Then Chasm will create 4 web tiles, which Magneto will also immediately destroy.

That's 6 random tiles getting destroyed every time the enemy team makes a match! On a small cascade it could be 18 or 24 tiles, and the enemy will be doing damage to you for every match made as a result of all that board shake.

The good thing is that Magneto will be airborne, so he won't be eating all that damage. The bad thing is that it's probably going to kill the rest of your team pretty quickly. I do think it will be useful against certain other spammers, but it almost definitely will be suicide against Chasm.

That is what I am trying to figure out. Presumably, chasm would be the one taking the damage, because it says “Magneto destroys it, dealing 100-250% match damage for that tile”.

entrailbucket

When Magneto destroys those tiles, Chasm should take Magneto's tile damage for each one that's destroyed. But because it's happening when the enemy has control of the board, cascades/any additional matches as a result of that destruction will be done by Chasm, damaging whoever's in front on your team.

Plus, as those cascades happen, Chasm will be creating more void tiles, which will get blown up by Magneto and create more web tiles that get destroyed, on and on forever. It should be some pretty enjoyably infinite chaos, but I think it'll turn out worse for Magneto's team.

Borstock

If eb's description of Magneto v Chasm is actually what happens, that would be insanely fun to watch, win or lose.

GrimSkald

@Kolence said:
I understood "destructible" are any tiles that can be destroyed (even those that cannot be matched, like BB's inspire yellow). Only boss Apocalypse horsemen tiles or the like (don't think there are any other currently?) would be indestructible. So, anything that can be destroyed by powers that don't specify they only work on basic or some types of special tiles, or by line clear from a match-4.

That's more-or-less my take but I'm thinking the "destructible" type of tiles may also not include those types of tiles that cannot be matched, like the Strange's Eye of Agamotto, Silver Surfer's Black Hole, Black Bolt's yellow tile (forget what it's called,) etc, since they're not destructible through normal (i.e. matching) means.

Who knows, though? There's a lot of granularity of meaning there.

entrailbucket

@Borstock said:
If eb's description of Magneto v Chasm is actually what happens, that would be insanely fun to watch, win or lose.

The only thing I'm basing this on is Xforce's yellow tile, but I think that's the only way this power could work in practice, unless they've done some special coding for it.

When the enemy matches your Xforce yellow CD, your Xforce blows up random tiles and does damage for them, but then the enemy gets "credit" for any matches made as a result, because it's still their turn.

Maybe Magneto will wait until his turn to blow stuff up, which would solve this, but it doesn't sound like it from the power description.

Yepyep

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
Yeah, thinking a bit more about that red power -- I don't think you will want to use this against Chasm.

Here's why:

Chasm always has the highest match damage in whatever team he's on, so every time they move the board, he creates at least two void tiles. If Magneto is airborne, he will immediately destroy those tiles, on the enemy's turn. Then Chasm will create 4 web tiles, which Magneto will also immediately destroy.

That's 6 random tiles getting destroyed every time the enemy team makes a match! On a small cascade it could be 18 or 24 tiles, and the enemy will be doing damage to you for every match made as a result of all that board shake.

The good thing is that Magneto will be airborne, so he won't be eating all that damage. The bad thing is that it's probably going to kill the rest of your team pretty quickly. I do think it will be useful against certain other spammers, but it almost definitely will be suicide against Chasm.

That is what I am trying to figure out. Presumably, chasm would be the one taking the damage, because it says “Magneto destroys it, dealing 100-250% match damage for that tile”.

Just speculating, because it's fun: if he destroys abyss tiles AND web tiles, successively, doing 100-250% match damage for [those] tile[s], then he could take out Chasm quite quickly with this mechanic, potentially much more quickly than your ground-crew teammates get taken out (though they'd take some damage in the process).

Bad

Putting logic into it I'd bet it will happen as I said: magneto will destroy the abyss tiles and that's all, because the web tiles is something the player creates when destroying abyss, not chasm.
So there will be a web sea (instant webs for any abyss tiles created) which chasm will be happy to use to hyper regenerating until magneto comes back.

entrailbucket

@Bad said:
Putting logic into it I'd bet it will happen as I said: magneto will destroy the abyss tiles and that's all, because the web tiles is something the player creates when destroying abyss, not chasm.
So there will be a web sea (instant webs for any abyss tiles created) which chasm will be happy to use to hyper regenerating until magneto comes back.

From the description it sounds like Magneto will blow up those web tiles, because they are nonbasic tiles created by the enemy. I'm looking forward to testing it to see if this is the case.

Again, all the Chasm stuff here is kind of irrelevant. Magneto will get way, way better as a result of this, and he'll be very good against anybody else who makes any kind of tiles. I don't think he's a magic Chasm counter but that doesn't mean he's useless, or even that he's bad.

scottee

Uh, if I'm reading right, Magneto's blue for only 7 AP destroys all of TWO colors, and gain some AP back? That's going to enable a lot of winfinites.

5* Storm and Apocalypse come to mind. (5* Storm and 3* Kamala were already almost infinite, but Magneto puts them over the top.

Or Shang Chi and Jane Foster become much more reliable on offense.

Or pair with 4* Nightcrawler and 5* Prof X.

This is going to be as powerful as original 3* Magneto.

Bzhai

@scottee said:
Uh, if I'm reading right, Magneto's blue for only 7 AP destroys all of TWO colors, and gain some AP back? That's going to enable a lot of winfinites.

5* Storm and Apocalypse come to mind. (5* Storm and 3* Kamala were already almost infinite, but Magneto puts them over the top.

Or Shang Chi and Jane Foster become much more reliable on offense.

Or pair with 4* Nightcrawler and 5* Prof X.

This is going to be as powerful as original 3* Magneto.

Or Sersi, he can keep feeding her green and she'll flood the board with blue.

Omegased

Super keen to see Mags in action. I think everyone is talking up how much his AP gain will be, but it's certainly going to be fun to play with.

To me, it sounds like a pretty powerful character on offense, but not a huge challenge on defense. Which is perfectly fine with me.

KGB

@GrimSkald said:

@Kolence said:
I understood "destructible" are any tiles that can be destroyed (even those that cannot be matched, like BB's inspire yellow). Only boss Apocalypse horsemen tiles or the like (don't think there are any other currently?) would be indestructible. So, anything that can be destroyed by powers that don't specify they only work on basic or some types of special tiles, or by line clear from a match-4.

That's more-or-less my take but I'm thinking the "destructible" type of tiles may also not include those types of tiles that cannot be matched, like the Strange's Eye of Agamotto, Silver Surfer's Black Hole, Black Bolt's yellow tile (forget what it's called,) etc, since they're not destructible through normal (i.e. matching) means.

Who knows, though? There's a lot of granularity of meaning there.

As I posted on page 1, I think it also means he doesn't destroy fortified tiles since they aren't destructible (if you match or destroy the tile via powers it just removes the fortification and the tile still remains). If that's true it means characters who place fortified special tiles (CDs, SAPs etc) would be immune to his Red and that would make sense.

KGB

Daredevil217

I’m super excited to try him out. I think there are quite a few devastating combos to be discovered (and am sure someone will break him). I’m thinking the fact that all of his powers are active (except the tile buff) might reign him in a bit. Since all his damage is match damage or tile damage, I wonder if he's boostable by Okoye/Emma/Apoc (add that to my list of questions). Alot of the people I want to run him with have overlap on their best colors unfortunately (like Thoress/Riri). People I think would be fun to try in the tier:

Colossus
Big Wheel
Daredevil
Electro
Jean Grey
Kamala Khan
Kitty Pryde
Loki
Moon Knight
Onslaught
Professor X
Sersi
Shang-Chi
Star-Lord
Storm
The Hulk (Banner)
Yelena Belova

Seph1roth5

@BoyWonder1914 said:
@Seph1roth5 said:

Storm's a girl silly, she can't be in the brotherhood. I guess she can do laundry or something.

Seriously?

It was a joke. Any time you give me that look, it's a joke.

But seriously, his destruction only gives AP for each tile over 8 at best, so unless you combo with someone else to fill up the board with one color (puzzle ops?) I think it's really good, but not crazy OP.

entrailbucket

@Daredevil217 said:
I’m super excited to try him out. I think there are quite a few devastating combos to be discovered (and am sure someone will break him). I’m thinking the fact that all of his powers are active (except the tile buff) might reign him in a bit. Since all his damage is match damage or tile damage, I wonder if he's boostable by Okoye/Emma/Apoc (add that to my list of questions). Alot of the people I want to run him with have overlap on their best colors unfortunately (like Thoress/Riri). People I think would be fun to try in the tier:

Colossus
Big Wheel
Daredevil
Electro
Jean Grey
Kamala Khan
Kitty Pryde
Loki
Moon Knight
Onslaught
Professor X
Sersi
Shang-Chi
Star-Lord
Storm
The Hulk (Banner)
Yelena Belova

I agree. I actually wish they'd stop trying to cram bad Chasm counters into every single new character. Adding that stuff about webs and voids to his red just serves to distract from what's a really pretty good rework. People will try him against Chasm and he'll either not work at all or fail spectacularly, then they'll dismiss him as trash. We want one good Chasm counter, not 1000 terrible ones.