4 * character rebalances

ThisisClemFandango

I was going to ask this at the next question session but I figured I would go over the 250 character limit.
What I want to know is how is the character chosen for redesign? Is it lack of use of said character?
I ask because having played today's clash of the titans I have gone through my roster of 4's and dear god, there are so many more deserving of some attention than the the ones chosen, i've given up on the clash as it's maddening to have such an ineffective character.
I know once you get to a certain stage of this game the new characters become less important as we all have our go to teams but I wish there was some consultation on what characters they are going to redesign and then we, the player base, or at least, the 17 of us who post here can have a say as neither Kate Bishop or dark beast warranted a change when there's so many glaringly useless characters.
It's no secret I want Mysterio to be changed so who else do you guys want looking at?

fnedude

This Crash of Titans (Flaptain vs. 3Capt.Marvel) is really easy. Horde/chase Red+Yellow then cast yellow and then red and nuke her dead.

Yes her black is annoying as you get stunned, but hopefully you have enough HP to outlast her and then the nuke drop.

Yes I imagine it would be frustrating w/o a fully covered Flaptain, but something for you to look forward too once you achieve it.

ThaRoadWarrior

Flaptain hits so hard between 4* Panther and Shuri - his red is uncapped on protect tiles. He is almost a great partner for Ronan since blue matches reduce countdown timers passively and then Ronan can use it to put down his repeaters. If that passive could reduce repeaters he’d be even better.

entrailbucket

Spider-Woman.

Anti-venom, Cloak and Dagger, Elektra, Gwenpool, Kraven, Mockingbird, Mysterio, Nebula, Nova, X-23, and all 3 of the "joke" limited characters.

There's a bunch of fun Flaptain teams based around 3* Scarlet Witch -- in the very old days, Flaptain/SW/Phoenix was a really fast PvE team.

KGB

The problem in the 4* tier is that it's SO big now with 130+ characters that it's almost impossible to rebalance without essentially duplicating what another character in the tier is already doing,

Some of these characters listed above don't need anything done to them (for example I use Cloak and Dagger all the time because of the unique skill to passively generate Black and Yellow tiles and ability to remove enemy specials etc so I'd hate for anything to be done to them and Gwenpool has Sploits etc) or next to nothing needs to be done (Nova for example already has 3 super cheap powers so what else can be done).

The ones who need it most are the ones with powers costing more than 10 AP (Flaptain, Spiderwoman) or who don't have any powers that can do any damage (Talos, Puck).

KGB

DAZ0273

If we are going to bother rebalancing 4* in an MPQ world where many of them are irrelevant, then we might as well do so by category by my thinking (and I will no doubt forget loads).

Overcosted powers - pretty simple - these powers cost too much even if they are OK

Spider Woman - Red & actually all of them, the purple is useless half the time anyway
Luke Cage - red
Hulk (Main Event) - purple (it is a good power but boy does it take along time getting there) and yellow is a bit much for what it does at random

Overcosted with a condition - we have to jump through hoops and pay a high cost to use even if they can hit very hard

Flaptain - red - he already has a shield - the BEST shield! He doesn't need all the other ones to divebomb! I would be happy if they removed that and instead made this more of a spam power at a much reduced cost and reduced damage - that makes sense with his swooping in and out style
Spider-Man (Infinity War) - red - I get it, Spidey, webs but too costly even if it can hit big

Characters who do what exactly?

Lizard
Rhino
Monica
Abomination

What is it they do exactly? I honestly have no idea what happens when the repeaters get to the top or the bottom or whether they do. Why don't power characters like Rhino or Abomination hit like a truck? I can't think of any reason to use these and when I do I genuinely have no plan what to do with them, such is the utterly blandness of them.

Characters who it is barely worth firing their powers:

Karolina (that green sucks)
Puck (ugh...just...ugh)
Hydra Stomper (Stomps like a feather)
Devil Dinosaur (Grahh, chomp, chomp, gurgle...but I'm still alive and barely lost a fingernail!!)
Nebula (She needs to be made GotG 3 levels of extremely cool)
Black Knight - look he has a magic sword, that is his big thing - magic sword - why don't we make him about that magic sword with big stabby damage instead of all this Dane from above and the other 167 things he does that do nothing

Characters who need a MAJOR nuke damage update to be relevant:

Hulkbuster - You spend all that red you had better be getting something for it
Red Hulk - 18(!) Green just to hit with a mildly OK aoe...

Characters with baffling/self defeating powers:

Red Guardian (why doesn't he create any enemy shields?) and what is the purpose of the stun?
Talos - his shapeshifting power is just ridiculous and counter productive. Also - give him a laser gun or something for crikey sake!
Punisher Max - I get the idea but it doesn't really help him to stun his team mates and might be why he was once the least used 4* (source: IceIX (I think?) these boards, ages ago)
Kingpin - Look thematically I get it but actually his yellow power is pretty decent - I want those countdowns to go off and not get sacrificed! His black power is counter productive.
Spider-Ham - His purple could be pretty good if we could just remove the "minion" bit
Anti-Venom - Too confusing, powers too inconsistent

Of course - we should also be careful for what we ask for as some of these guys are opponents in PvE and if they get too good then we suffer - witness 5* Kingpin

ThaRoadWarrior

Punisher Max is one of the few characters who can trigger 5* Black Panther's Move or Be Moved on player command, but that is of pretty limited utility in the modern game. Agent Venom is another, as is Invisible Woman and 5* Thanos. There may be a couple others who can do targeted inviz; 5* Wasp? That feels right.

4* Kingpin could probably stand to get reverted to his original flavor - the buff(?) he got really only buffed him as an opponent when flanked by goons so that his black will always be viable. On a player team it was a decided nerf.

Spider-Ham to me is the least well designed character in the game. nothing he does is useful or synergizes with either himself or others. I would love it if the Limited characters were either made VERY good, such that their slow growth rates balanced it out, or their champion rewards were made MASSIVELY better than their tier peers so that it was worth having them on the roster. Only Bag-Man has a better reward with his LT at the top of his growth tree.

Namor still has some of the best flavor text in the game, but some of the most nothing-burger powers in my opinion.

Bishop was turbo-nerfed by the previous team into an unusable benchwarmer; There are a lot of characters now who want that massive blue generation back.

I agree Anti-Venom seems to do mostly nothing of value. I think the gimmick is that self heal hurts opponents, but it doesn't really do anything in practice in my experience.

For Karolina, I really don't understand the intent of giving her the Runaways synergy she got - she creates additional protect tiles, but since the only other Runaway in the game is Nico who is immune from being protected by such tiles, what even is that?

I wish that Maria Hill would go airborne on the jetpack and have her CD still decriment rather than going inviz. I'll still never understand how Spider-Ham can do it, and he was released weeks or at worst months before she was and the answer for why not was "the code is too hard to implement."

DAZ0273

Gertrude is also a Runaway but her schtick is strike tiles I think so it also has zero synergy with Karolina.

DAZ0273

Speaking of the limited characters - I do wonder why they remain limited. To me it would make more sense to have a limited character once in a while be made available in packs and then have a new limited one at Anniversary or something if you were still absolutely married to the concept. I dunno - Taskmaster is OK but the other 3 don't really do a huge lot of things to deserve to be limited and I always hoped that Taskmaster would be updated with new powers to learn every once in a while keeping him special.

ThaRoadWarrior

Hard lol at completely forgetting Gert existed.

Howard and Taskmaster are damage-number tweaks from being Good Actually in my opinion. Dino could maybe get there with number tweaks, but I seem to recall at release that his gimmic was that his powers were 5* riri cheap to cast and that was "fixed" at some point. Ham is a straight up mess to me, I would take him back to the drawing board if anything is getting done. He kind of is the hardest to get though for most alliances since his node only shows up in a largely un-attainable to most round 8 of a boss event, so I would hope that would mean he'd be worth it. I guess Taskmaster is really only end-of-year-vault available.

DAZ0273

Yeah...or maybe her thing is trap tiles? Or both? Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to help with deciding to have a Runaways team up.

DAZ0273

Tasky is winnable in Operation Spider Silk, so Ham is definitely the worst offender.

BoyWonder1914

Directly tagged Ice in the Dark Beast update thread with the same question and got no response. Not sure what it hurts to give us some insight into who they choose for rebalances, and when. I legit wouldn't be surprised to learn they just pull names out of a hat.

DrClever

Spider Ham's support synergy perk with SP//DR is good, so there's that.

ThisisClemFandango

@BoyWonder1914 said:
Directly tagged Ice in the Dark Beast update thread with the same question and got no response. Not sure what it hurts to give us some insight into who they choose for rebalances, and when. I legit wouldn't be surprised to learn they just pull names out of a hat.

It's bizarre, the explanation of no other brotherhood uses charged tiles sort of make sense but DB makes charged tiles for his other powers, which not only made him a force to be reckoned but also fit him thematically.

KGB

As I continue to read the list of 4 star characters needing updates it strikes me that we are the equivalent really rich people who have a 10+ car garage over flowing with vehicles.

We've got our favorite pickup truck for hauling stuff, our favorite sports car for cruising with the top down, our favorite SUV for hauling around the family, our favorite luxury sedan for attending nice events/dinners etc.

One day we realize not all the cars we have fit in the garage and so we take a long look and see that we have a 2nd pickup truck that runs on diesel instead of gas that we never use and now an electric pickup is coming out and wonder why friends are suggesting/pushing us to get one. Plus the significant other has their eye on a Ferrari and yet we already have a Porsche and Lamborghini etc.

In other words, unless we are a collector of cars who doesn't really care if they drive them that often (if ever) all we are going to do is complain that we have all these cars we never drive and why can't they make / update one so that we really want (need) to drive it.

KGB

P.S. Daz asked about Rhino. He's basically the same thing as Juggs (both in the comics and the game). He truly never should have been released as a 4 since Juggs already existed (ie there is no reason for GM to release mid size SUV under GM, Buick and Chevy brands). He should have been a 3/5 release since there is no character like that in those tiers.

entrailbucket

This is the correct take.

The problem is that there are thousands of players who still have to take the bus, who know absolutely nothing about vehicles. Unless they do extensive research, they might end up being randomly assigned a golf cart or a unicycle as their first vehicle, while others get an F1 car.

If the distribution remains random, then all the vehicles need to be roughly equivalent -- otherwise you're forcing players to do research, for what's meant to be a casual phone game.

DAZ0273

Rebalancing an old character rarely ever benefits anybody apart from the hardcore Vet. If we want the newer 4* player to evolve beyond the ridiculous 130+ baggage then every new 4* needs to be Polaris or equally useful. I have misunderstood this whole thread if it was meant to be anything other than preaching to the choir. None of these changes are going to change anything for me - I assumed this was a messing around vanity project rather than a serious attempt to apply to the unwashed.

DAZ0273

That applies to 5* also - rebalancing Banner made Entrailbucket happy but did little for me. One day I might champ him, it is possible with the covers I have but any discussion about why he deserves a boost is just two fingers in my direction in terms of relativity. So I either roll with that or get involved or don't. shrugs

entrailbucket

@DAZ0273 said:
That applies to 5* also - rebalancing Banner made Entrailbucket happy but did little for me. One day I might champ him, it is possible with the covers I have but any discussion about why he deserves a boost is just two fingers in my direction in terms of relativity. So I either roll with that or get involved or don't. shrugs

Sorta?

Here's the thing -- they still give out Banner in rewards, and he's still available in tokens, and (most importantly) he's marked with five stars. Look at the rosters of ACTUAL casual players, not the "I only place top 10, I'm causual now!" folks, and you'll see lots of one, two, and three cover 5*. They USE those guys for stuff, and they accumulated them randomly.

So yes, a Banner buff helps me, and doesn't affect you at all. But it has a MASSIVE effect on those unlucky folks who managed to accidentally grab and roster a few Banner covers, and he's their biggest character. And they have those covers because he's still in the token pool and he's still given out as a reward.

If they were to completely remove him from all rewards, then there's no point in doing these buffs. Until then, there definitely is, because not everybody is manipulating RNG in the way that all the vets are, and rewards are mostly random.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@DAZ0273 said:
That applies to 5* also - rebalancing Banner made Entrailbucket happy but did little for me. One day I might champ him, it is possible with the covers I have but any discussion about why he deserves a boost is just two fingers in my direction in terms of relativity. So I either roll with that or get involved or don't. shrugs

Sorta?

Here's the thing -- they still give out Banner in rewards, and he's still available in tokens, and (most importantly) he's marked with five stars. Look at the rosters of ACTUAL casual players, not the "I only place top 10, I'm causual now!" folks, and you'll see lots of one, two, and three cover 5*. They USE those guys for stuff, and they accumulated them randomly.

So yes, a Banner buff helps me, and doesn't affect you at all. But it has a MASSIVE effect on those unlucky folks who managed to accidentally grab and roster a few Banner covers, and he's their biggest character. And they have those covers because he's still in the token pool and he's still given out as a reward.

If they were to completely remove him from all rewards, then there's no point in doing these buffs. Until then, there definitely is, because not everybody is manipulating RNG in the way that all the vets are, and rewards are mostly random.

I never said there isn't any point in doing these buffs. KGB was talking about Ferrari etc and I was just saying that as a non Ferrari owner in the Banner case I can either ignore the conversation, get involved with actually a relevant point or theory craft. I am theory crafting in this thread about the other cars I don't need to drive because unless giving Hulkbuster a red power that oneshots 5* the conversation has passed me by in actual relevance and so now I am just thinking out loud about what could be done.