Upcoming Rebalances - Kate Bishop, Jubilee, Magik (Phoenix 5)

IceIX

Hey all!

As some of you have spotted from the patch notes, there’s an update coming for Kate Bishop, along with a David Aja inspired costume for her! This is all planned to be available tomorrow, 5/25, so lets get into it!

Kate Bishop

Ruthless Precision - 12 Blue AP
This ability is decent for what it does, but it’s a bit overcosted for what it does. So we’ve added an additional effect to it to reflect the “Ruthless” part of Ruthless Precision. She’s just waiting for an opening.

Added: While this tile is on the board, enemies cannot gain health, and if the targeted enemy drops below 10/12/15/20/25% health, destroy this tile and down the targeted character.”

Looking For Trouble - 8 Black AP
Another ability that works pretty well for what it does, but actually was slightly undertuned due to its ability rank multipliers. After looking at the numbers, this ability has gained about a 9% damage buff at level 5, with the rest of the levels gaining a bit more of a buff to level it out.
Old
70: 1287 / 1880 / 2194 / 2843 / 3833
270: 2508 / 3663 / 4276 / 5539 / 7470

New
70: 1528 / 1956 / 2323 / 3041 / 4167
270: 2977 / 3811 / 4525 / 5924 / 8119

Because… Boomerangs - 10->8 Purple AP
A bit underpowered from the overall balancing numbers, we decided against giving it the same numbers treatment as Looking For Trouble, instead, we lowered the AP cost which accomplishes the same thing while making it more generally usable.



Jubilee

After her rebalance, she went under the radar for a while. Recently however, some players have discovered a bit of an overpowered use for her Heart of the Team that requires a bit of pulling in. The rest of her abilities remain unchanged.

Heart of the Team - Yellow PASSIVE

• Reduced percent bonus from 100/200/300/400/500 to 100/150/200/250/300. This was actually supposed to have been in with the original buff to bring it in line a little, but snuck through as it was.
• Changed comparison from “Whichever is greater” to “Whichever is lower”. This is the real piece of the puzzle that brings down the power of the combo a bit. It’ll still be a strong ability for most cases, but instead of a 500 (or 300) percent multiplier, it’ll now usually be a 3K flat increase at max Champ level.
  
  
  
  Magik (Phoenix Five)
  

On her release, she was deemed to be a bit too powerful after some balance checks, so she was brought into line via our internal balance numbers. Looks like this actually was a bit too low though, so we’ve manually upped some values so that she’s more of a threat.

Limbo on Earth - 7 Black AP
This one was the biggest reduction in that in our sims the Demon Repeaters were much more effective than they were out in the real world. While we know people would really want those demons to be 1 turn each, we decided to keep them to their 2 turn incarnations and increase stats to compensate.

Base Description
Magik pulls demons from Limbo to fight for her on Earth. Creates 2 2-turn Red Demon Repeater tile(s) that deal 443 damage to a random enemy. (Maximum 3, +2 each time this ability is used.)

(PASSIVE) At the start of the battle, Magik creates 1 2-turn Red Demon Repeater tile(s). For each of her Demons on the board, her Demon tiles deal 5% more damage. Whenever a Demon tile is matched, two more Demons rush in to replace it. (max level 1781 damage)

Old
Level 2: +3 max demons. Demons deal 7% more damage.
Level 3: Demons deal 465 damage. Demons deal 9% more damage. (max level 1870 damage)
Level 4: +4 max demons. Demons deal 13% more damage.
Level 5: Demons deal 576 damage. 4 max base demons. Demons deal 15% more damage. (max level 2315 damage)

New
Level 1: 443->565 damage. +3 max demons. Passive creates 2 tiles. (Max level 2270 damage)
Level 2: Demons deal 622 damage. Demons deal 8% more damage. (Max level 2497 damage)
Level 3: Demons deal 689 damage. +4 max demons. Demons deal 11% more damage. (max level 2769 damage)
Level 4: Demons deal 797 damage. 4 max base demons. Demons deal 15% more damage. (Max level 3201 damage)
Level 5: Creates 3 Repeaters. Demons deal 25% more damage. (max level 3201 damage)

Soul Sword - 6 Red AP
Here we moved some of the budget from the Repeater damage into the direct damage, as well as lowering the bonus match damage slightly to give budget elsewhere. Technically puts it a bit above our normal balance numbers, but feels a bunch better this way.

Base Description
Magik swings her sword infused with the energy of the Phoenix. Deals 1107 permanent damage, ignoring enemy Protect tiles and destroys 1 enemy Special tiles. Then creates a 2-turn Repeater tile that deals 433 permanent damage.

(PASSIVE) Magik’s matches deal 10% extra permanent damage. (Max level 4451/1781 damage)

Old
Level 2: Destroys 2 tiles. Repeater deals 665 damage. Matches deal 15% damage. (Max level 4451/2672 damage)
Level 3: Repeater deals 886 damage. Matches deal 20% damage. (Max level 4451/3562 damage)
Level 4: Deals 1417 damage. Destroys 3 tiles. Repeater deals 1108 damage. Matches deal 25% damage. (Max level 5697/4453 damage)
Level 5: Repeater deals 1329 damage. Matches deal 35% damage. (Max level 5697/5343 damage)

New
Level 1: Deals 1418 damage. Destroys 2 tiles. Repeater deals 473 damage. Matches deal 15% damage. (Max level 5698/1900 damage)
Level 2: Deals 1602 damage. Repeater deals 534 damage. Matches deal 18% damage. (Max level 6439/2147 damage)
Level 3: Deals 1773 damage. Repeater deals 591. Matches deal 21% damage. (Max level 7123/2375 damage)
Level 4: Destroys 3 tiles. Matches deal 25% damage. (Max level 7123/2375 damage)
Level 5: Deals 2396 damage. Repeater deals 799 damage. Matches deal 30% damage. (Max level 9630/3211 damage)

Phoenix Claws - 6 Purple AP
Pretty basic change here, we pushed the damage up across the board.

Level 255: 709 / 766 / 844 / 978 / 1255 -> 886 / 975 / 1063 / 1240 / 1595 damage
Level 450: 2849 / 3077 / 3390 / 3932 / 5043 -> 3561 / 3917 / 4273 / 4985 / 6410 damage



Chasm - Coming Soon
Some players may have noticed a change in his abilities today that was quickly reverted. This was one part of an upcoming rebalance for him that was accidentally applied. We’re still working out specific numbers and changes here, as our last round of changes wasn’t quite enough to get him into a good place. It’s coming though.

KGB

I presume that if the target has <25% (or whatever number it is for her Blue covers) health when her Blue is fired that it immediately downs the target. If so, that at least makes it a kill shot power.

Too bad about Jubilee. The max 3K cap means she can't sneak onto dual 5* teams for PvE when you need to do a ton of match damage in CL10. It was fun while it lasted.

Be interested to see what the 5* players think about Magik and whether it makes any real difference.

KGB

Mrcl25

@BlackBoltRocks said:
Thanks for the Magik buff! Hopefully this puts her back into upper-midtier.

I doubt it will. She will probably remain as a pve-only usable when boosted character.

Eirikr56

Thanks for revisiting Magik so soon after release. Shows humility and commitment.

justsing

Thanks for fixing Jubilee! Looking forward to that Chasm rebalance.

pepitedechocolat

Tuning changes I do like this. I not expecting magik revisit so soon so it is nice. Have you made an update on her left tigh too ?

seems update is live, no thigh update, but undocumented change : she creates 2 demons at start of game which is huge !
Her black may actually punch some holes now.

Scorpion201

Well its fine and dandy it would of been nice to lower kate's blue lower, still expensive though.

fight4thedream

This change to Magik should certainly make for an interesting case study in determining how accurately the dev team's current test model is able to assess the meta and player behavior. According to their balance numbers, she should be at the high end of the spectrum. But with two popular meta characters, namely Chasm and Mighty Thor, hard countering her black passive it remains to be seen whether these number tweaks will bear fruit.

I am definitely happy that they seem keen to make her relevant and appreciate the numbers boost. With that said, I do think they need to re-evaluate the viability of permanent damage. In its current form, it feels mostly useless at the 5* tier. Considering that healing seems to be a popular mechanic in meta team compositions (Okoye, Shang-Chi, Chasm, etc) , it should be a viable solution against healing but for the most part it falls flat.

As I have stated before, the main issue with permanent damage is that it doesn't start from the opponent's current health pool but rather the original base health. If they changed it to account for current opponent health, it would be a significant boost to not only Magik but Crystal, High Evolutionary, Knull and Samurai Daken. It would help balance out the meta by adding one more element of strategy that effectively deals with the rampant healing mechanics that are favored by the current meta and buff a handful of characters, some of which are notably underused. But that's just my Bugle Pittance on the matter.

pepitedechocolat

noob question here but : what you mean by " it doesn't start from the opponent's current health pool but rather the original base health" ?
I was under the impression permanent damage was both lowering opponent current and max health as one would expect? So if the toon hit was to heal it could not heal the "permanent damage" as max health was reduced by the perm damage amount.
Or did I miss something?

Bad

Magik rebalance is nice, trying to make it worth her adquisition. However it's a big miss in order to make her a character less desperately slow.
2 turns are too much, given that she needs to matching red for continue dealing greater damage, plus characters destroying repeaters or simply a match 4 can stop her mechanics.
It's not that many of us wanted those repeaters to be 1 turn, actually it's that the game that you are developing just requires those repeaters to be 1 turn.
The sooner you understand this, the better characters you will design.

DAZ0273

@pepitedechocolat said:
noob question here but : what you mean by " it doesn't start from the opponent's current health pool but rather the original base health" ?
I was under the impression permanent damage was both lowering opponent current and max health as one would expect? So if the toon hit was to heal it could not heal the "permanent damage" as max health was reduced by the perm damage amount.
Or did I miss something?

He means (I think) that if the character was at half health and then gets hit by the permanent damage that is where the red line is drawn and you can't go above that. I think.

pepitedechocolat

@Bad said:
Magik rebalance is nice, trying to make it worth her adquisition. However it's a big miss in order to make her a character less desperately slow.
2 turns are too much, given that she needs to matching red for continue dealing greater damage, plus characters destroying repeaters or simply a match 4 can stop her mechanics.
It's not that many of us wanted those repeaters to be 1 turn, actually it's that the game that you are developing just requires those repeaters to be 1 turn.
The sooner you understand this, the better characters you will design.

They fixed most of the "match 4" problem by having 2 repeaters at start of game, which, while not 100%, makes multiplying demon more consistent.

Right now you have tradeoff, both with and against Magik, to match demon tiles.
With 1 turn, it means matching demon tile is always bad against and good with Magik, so less interesting. It also means "do damage all time" which, for balance purpose, mean they will probably need to reduce damage drastically, basically make demon just useless chip damage. I for one prefer slower repeaters.

@DAZ0273 said:

@pepitedechocolat said:
noob question here but : what you mean by " it doesn't start from the opponent's current health pool but rather the original base health" ?
I was under the impression permanent damage was both lowering opponent current and max health as one would expect? So if the toon hit was to heal it could not heal the "permanent damage" as max health was reduced by the perm damage amount.
Or did I miss something?

He means (I think) that if the character was at half health and then gets hit by the permanent damage that is where the red line is drawn and you can't go above that. I think.

so if a guy is at 20% health and take 1% perma damage, he cannot go above 19% health? That would be so op

Bowgentle

Thank you, I never understood his point in his wall of text posts before, I thought I was alone in that.

fight4thedream

@pepitedechocolat said:
noob question here but : what you mean by " it doesn't start from the opponent's current health pool but rather the original base health" ?
I was under the impression permanent damage was both lowering opponent current and max health as one would expect? So if the toon hit was to heal it could not heal the "permanent damage" as max health was reduced by the perm damage amount.
Or did I miss something?

You are correct, that is how permanent damage currently works but my point is that it often ends up not being a factor at all against most healing type characters. A player is better off simply using a high damage combo (Shang-Chi and Mighty Thor, Apoc/Brb, Okoye and iHulk, etc) than trying to rely on permanent damage abilities to effectively deal with healing type characters.

The fact of the matter is healing abilities are useful in most situations against all types of characters while permanent damage is only useful against healing and reviving abilities. As such, I argue it should be more effective considering its limited usefulness.

Ideally, a player using Chasm, Shang-Chi or Okoye should feel reluctant to go up against a team featuring a character with a good permanent damage ability the same way players running Beta Ray Bill or Rocket and Groot are reluctant to fight a team featuring Chasm or Gorr. Unfortunately, based on my experience that just isn't the case.

You may feel differently, which is fine. But it begs the question of what a good hard counter to healing type abilities would be because permanent damage doesn't seem to be it.

DAZ0273

@pepitedechocolat said:

@Bad said:
Magik rebalance is nice, trying to make it worth her adquisition. However it's a big miss in order to make her a character less desperately slow.
2 turns are too much, given that she needs to matching red for continue dealing greater damage, plus characters destroying repeaters or simply a match 4 can stop her mechanics.
It's not that many of us wanted those repeaters to be 1 turn, actually it's that the game that you are developing just requires those repeaters to be 1 turn.
The sooner you understand this, the better characters you will design.

They fixed most of the "match 4" problem by having 2 repeaters at start of game, which, while not 100%, makes multiplying demon more consistent.

Right now you have tradeoff, both with and against Magik, to match demon tiles.
With 1 turn, it means matching demon tile is always bad against and good with Magik, so less interesting. It also means "do damage all time" which, for balance purpose, mean they will probably need to reduce damage drastically, basically make demon just useless chip damage. I for one prefer slower repeaters.

@DAZ0273 said:

@pepitedechocolat said:
noob question here but : what you mean by " it doesn't start from the opponent's current health pool but rather the original base health" ?
I was under the impression permanent damage was both lowering opponent current and max health as one would expect? So if the toon hit was to heal it could not heal the "permanent damage" as max health was reduced by the perm damage amount.
Or did I miss something?

He means (I think) that if the character was at half health and then gets hit by the permanent damage that is where the red line is drawn and you can't go above that. I think.

so if a guy is at 20% health and take 1% perma damage, he cannot go above 19% health? That would be so op

Well I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense with the concept of "permanent damage". If you get your arm chopped off you don't go back to nearly fully being well even as you continue to do battle. At the moment "Tis but a scratch" is actually true.

Of course...that is just my guess. He might mean something else entirely in which case, does anybody need a spare arm as I have one lying around here somewhere...

fight4thedream

@DAZ0273 said:

@pepitedechocolat said:

@Bad said:
Magik rebalance is nice, trying to make it worth her adquisition. However it's a big miss in order to make her a character less desperately slow.
2 turns are too much, given that she needs to matching red for continue dealing greater damage, plus characters destroying repeaters or simply a match 4 can stop her mechanics.
It's not that many of us wanted those repeaters to be 1 turn, actually it's that the game that you are developing just requires those repeaters to be 1 turn.
The sooner you understand this, the better characters you will design.

They fixed most of the "match 4" problem by having 2 repeaters at start of game, which, while not 100%, makes multiplying demon more consistent.

Right now you have tradeoff, both with and against Magik, to match demon tiles.
With 1 turn, it means matching demon tile is always bad against and good with Magik, so less interesting. It also means "do damage all time" which, for balance purpose, mean they will probably need to reduce damage drastically, basically make demon just useless chip damage. I for one prefer slower repeaters.

@DAZ0273 said:

@pepitedechocolat said:
noob question here but : what you mean by " it doesn't start from the opponent's current health pool but rather the original base health" ?
I was under the impression permanent damage was both lowering opponent current and max health as one would expect? So if the toon hit was to heal it could not heal the "permanent damage" as max health was reduced by the perm damage amount.
Or did I miss something?

He means (I think) that if the character was at half health and then gets hit by the permanent damage that is where the red line is drawn and you can't go above that. I think.

so if a guy is at 20% health and take 1% perma damage, he cannot go above 19% health? That would be so op

Well I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense with the concept of "permanent damage". If you get your arm chopped off you don't go back to nearly fully being well even as you continue to do battle. At the moment "Tis but a scratch" is actually true.

Of course...that is just my guess. He might mean something else entirely in which case, does anybody need a spare arm as I have one lying around here somewhere...

Haha this! Thank you DAZ, you illustrated my point most magnificently!

Bad

The problem with perma is that it's overvalued and usually deals chip damage and then the health red mark nevers moves a needle. For to be useful, it should have 2 separate damages, the chip damage, and the perma damage pretty increased. Then characters fully healing or reviving would really notice the perma damage, not like happens now.
@pepitedechocolat , no matters at all if the repeaters deal less damage, if at least they are useful.
In 4 tier you have gorr, torch, polaris herself or even doop. In 5 tier you have Ihulk.
Now try to make these characters do their thing each 2 turns and see what would happen.

pepitedechocolat

Ok I get your point, it is not that perma damage is not doing what it seems, but it is not having expected impact as healing counter. Then maybe adding an effect like "after suffering permanent damage, character cannot be healed for 1/2 turn" could be a nice solution without going all out making all cumulated damage permanent.

(it would also instantly make magik a perma anti heal and so much stronger)

DeNappa

@Bad said:
The problem with perma is that it's overvalued and usually deals chip damage and then the health red mark nevers moves a needle. For to be useful, it should have 2 separate damages, the chip damage, and the perma damage pretty increased. Then characters fully healing or reviving would really notice the perma damage, not like happens now.
@pepitedechocolat , no matters at all if the repeaters deal less damage, if at least they are useful.
In 4 tier you have gorr, torch, polaris herself or even doop. In 5 tier you have Ihulk.
Now try to make these characters do their thing each 2 turns and see what would happen.

I don't recall ever having played a match where either myself or the opponent got hit with a "permanent damage" attack and actually healed back to the (reduced) cap. I suppose there are some instances where it CAN happen, but in practice it's just super rare.

fight4thedream

@pepitedechocolat said:
Ok I get your point, it is not that perma damage is not doing what it seems, but it is not having expected impact as healing counter. Then maybe adding an effect like "after suffering permanent damage, character cannot be healed for 1/2 turn" could be a nice solution without going all out making all cumulated damage permanent.

(it would also instantly make magik a perma anti heal and so much stronger)

Cool, I appreciate you asking for clarification. Apparently I wasn't getting my point across well. (and thanks @DAZ0273 for the assist).

I am curious about your reluctance to hard counter healing abilities with permanent damage. There are abilities that completely neutralize strike tiles, completely ignore protect tiles, strong stun counters, some of them are passive abilities that require no AP. In such instances, the solution is simply to use a different team of characters or bring someone that can neutralize the counter effect. Why should things work differently against healing abilities?

As things currently stand, almost all of my matches against healing/reviving types end up something like this:

Some things I think worth pointing out:

1. While my team emerged victorious, it would be too big of a risk to run it again without using health packs on all of three members of my team. Conversely, I can't say it would be the same for the enemy player if they decided to retaliate.

2. This match took significantly longer to fight than it would for the opposing team to fight my team.

3. Magik's permanent damage was a non-factor. Additionally, her demon tiles were also a non-factor. With that said, her extra damage boosted by Wong's strike tiles proved key to downing both iHulk and Chasm in one go.

If permanent damage is intended to be a good counter against healing/reviving types, it's not very effective. It was a non-factor in this win and such has been my experience in most cases.

purplemur

Is David Aja getting any royalties from this costume or more IP theft from Disney?
Inspired= stolen. Watch us pay more for this one too.
A nothing burger for Kate
A nerf for jubilee
And an almost restore for magik.
But Chasm nerf confirmed! So let the haters rejoice!