*** Ragnarok (Dark Avengers) ***

KrazyKeylime

also they made him after thor. Question on 2* and 3* thor: how many people follow his generation as planned? red to yellow to green.

when i play them i say f red, go green and yellow and if some chance i get 8 red in the process fuels yellow, maybe, 3 tiles doesn't help much.

Rags would of been way better if they left his red to make green i might of held on to him, then you might be able to double cast and get those charge tiles.

maybe they were planning to pair him with the new character hence the team damage cause of the healer? i hate when they make weird changes to heroes cause of potential interaction with character in the works, just change the character in the works.

Unknown

I honestly think the devs were coming from the right place but just kind of missed the mark in terms of execution. They upgraded him with a lot of new/infrequent mechanics (charged tiles, random column destruction, team damage, and self heal) in an effort to update him, but I think the biggest issue is that all of those mechanics are difficult to balance.

I generally like to draw the distinction between interesting and good when thinking about character design, and I think new Rags is very interesting but not necessarily good, and I think the key issue underlying that is the fact that it's challenging to balance many interesting or unique abilities. Charged tiles could be really dangerous if they match right away, but they could also just as easily be matched by the opponent, and then the mechanic becomes useless to the player and a liability.

Similarly, self-heal can be really useful, but it can also be broken. I think R&G is the prime example of this because his heal + TU wipe is obviously his premier ability, but if it was on someone like BP or Thor with their high direct damage abilities, it would be completely broken. And I think that's going to be the struggle with this suite of abilities: having a heal paired with team damage and trying to toe the line between nerfing him into uselessness and making him totally broken.

But fixing that would require a subtle touch and some relatively frequent adjustments, which this forum seems to strongly discourage based on the yelling I've seen. Probably the first step in that would be trying to drop Godlike Power to 12 . If that doesn't work, maybe the next step would be adjusting the amount of blue generated by Thunderclap, which might make him more like a decent battery with some teeth. Maybe the heal could be increased too, but that has a much larger possible range of values, whereas adjusting costs is a relatively rough adjustment (14-12 is a lot easier than 1400-1600 or more).

KrazyKeylime

Cammorak wrote:

I honestly think the devs were coming from the right place but just kind of missed the mark in terms of execution. They upgraded him with a lot of new/infrequent mechanics (charged tiles, random column destruction, team damage, and self heal) in an effort to update him, but I think the biggest issue is that all of those mechanics are difficult to balance.

I generally like to draw the distinction between interesting and good when thinking about character design, and I think new Rags is very interesting but not necessarily good, and I think the key issue underlying that is the fact that it's challenging to balance many interesting or unique abilities. Charged tiles could be really dangerous if they match right away, but they could also just as easily be matched by the opponent, and then the mechanic becomes useless to the player and a liability.

Similarly, self-heal can be really useful, but it can also be broken. I think R&G is the prime example of this because his heal + TU wipe is obviously his premier ability, but if it was on someone like BP or Thor with their high direct damage abilities, it would be completely broken. And I think that's going to be the struggle with this suite of abilities: having a heal paired with team damage and trying to toe the line between nerfing him into uselessness and making him totally broken.

But fixing that would require a subtle touch and some relatively frequent adjustments, which this forum seems to strongly discourage based on the yelling I've seen. Probably the first step in that would be trying to drop Godlike Power to 12 . If that doesn't work, maybe the next step would be adjusting the amount of blue generated by Thunderclap, which might make him more like a decent battery with some teeth. Maybe the heal could be increased too, but that has a much larger possible range of values, whereas adjusting costs is a relatively rough adjustment (14-12 is a lot easier than 1400-1600 or more).

change his red back to green, his green to 10 (optional, but recommended remove team damage) and have it generate a second column and have them hit the middle like previous skill
Hail Ragnarok the destructor

Unknown

He's such a non-factor that I prioritize everything else before him. That includes Moonstone and goons like Empiricists.

It's clear from his rework and 4hors nerf that the devs are overvaluing charged tiles a little bit. Otherwise it's hard to explain why they manage to come out with such good, non-overpowered characters like Luke Cage, Doom, even Daredevil, and then manage to release him in this state. Unless there are two character designers at work in the company.

evil panda

It's atotal nerf, but I'm not complaining one bit. It makes pve life a little more bearable, and I can freely sell him if I need another roster spot

TazFTW

Why does it have to be Bagnarok? Why can't he be Ragnabag?

GothicKratos

I can't fathom how he was "nerfed", but he's certainly not moved up any tiers. It was definitely a lateral move from sub-par to sub-par.

His green is nothing to write home about, but I think he might be interesting to use with Kamala (since she can heal away the team damage and also feed him green, but her Green does more damage so...really only if you specced her to max heal and tile generation). The random row/column destruction is just a gimmick, especially since it's random and doesn't generate AP, and I feel like it way far overvalued when they were designing the ability. I don't mind the team damage, but it should be worth it - make the ability cost the same as CotS and do more damage, but make it also damage the team. Ultimately, making it cost less and do less damage would have been fine, and would have told their story perfectly.

His new Blue ability is pretty lackluster. It looks pretty decent on paper, but I don't really like it. Similar to the Green, the temp heal is just gimmicky and feels slapped on, as the ability stands right now. If they wanted to give him Charged Tiles, they should have gave him Charged Tiles, and just made that the standing point. If they wanted to give him survivability, they should have just stuck with a decent True Heal. Right now it feels like a **** version of two abilities shoved together.

I really like his new Red, especially with Magneto's recent tweaking, but its nothing necessarily worth writing home about either. I heard some people were using him as a Fury battery, which seems decent enough. Certainly doesn't make him top tier, but I'd say that places him slightly above "bag status". I can see him playing well with the likes of Daken - something like Daken/Rag/Falcon or Daken/Rags/Kamala - so you can make those Green matches for your Strike Tiles and be able to play them into something, and then Rags can also generate Blue for Chemical Reaction. I will concede that 6 Red for 4 Blue isn't amazing (and the damage is, again just tacked on), but it's probably undervalued some by the masses.

Ultimately, I feel like Ragnarok got the ole Doc Ock treatment - they tried to have him to do many things at once and he's average at all of them.

hex706f726368

Just my $0.02, but I feel like the rag change was a buff for the players. He's much easier to play against now.

Unknown

I'm not sure if I feel like they've nerfed him again... but as I said in our alliance chat recently, it feels like they sent him away to a boarding school for vaccuums. He's back and he's learned to suck in a different way.

Much like I don't think iMags got a nerf as much as had powers move in a lateral way and he's still useful, I don't think Rags got a nerf, since he wasn't good in the first place. He's just a different flavor of terrible now.

Unknown

Tripwire wrote:

He's such a non-factor that I prioritize everything else before him. That includes Moonstone and goons like Empiricists.

It's clear from his rework and 4hors nerf that the devs are overvaluing charged tiles a little bit. Otherwise it's hard to explain why they manage to come out with such good, non-overpowered characters like Luke Cage, Doom, even Daredevil, and then manage to release him in this state. Unless there are two character designers at work in the company.

Actually, today I came to the conclusion that maybe charged tiles AREN'T being overvalued, or at least not by much. Matching one charged tile gives you 2 AP and a couple hundred damage for "free" and making 4 of them offers a fair chance you'll get one, so 4 charged tiles can fairly be costed at 3 AP. I don't buy the argument that "it could help the opponent" because I get first dibs, I'm more likely to match them, and I'm more likely to be able to use the AP effectively when I do match them. That philosophy makes 4hor's blue and red pretty balanced and Rags's blue still sucks (because d3p way overvalues fake healing)

I think d3p really blew it by debuting charge tiles with Smite so everyone's thinking of them as like web tiles that fuel Smite instead of what they are. And because of Smite the window in which charge tiles can be good but not unfair is really narrow so they were never able to experiment with costing the effect for what it is instead of Smite fuel.

Unknown

Tripwire wrote:

I don't mind if he stays like this, because of the many times he appears in PvE. I'll never use him and he's now someone I can leave for last in PvE. Old Ragnarok was someone I would prioritize because of his cheap powers and the cascades he could cause. Now he's not even a minor annoyance and his charged tiles usually help me instead of his team.

This carries weight with me. Nerfing Ragnarok unintentionally does have merit, maybe more than if they were to have buffed him, since now, at least my PVE experience is substantially less miserable. I still have to suffer the 2* Chemical Reactions to the face every 2-3 turns, and the Venom Snares, and Moonstone Gravity Warps, but at LEAST I can save mobile phone battery power now not having to wait for Rags Godless **** cascade chains to finish.

Progress.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

Completely agree. The person I was answering to was actually advocating for a Thor's nerf. Hyperbole was merited.

Not really, because Thor merits a nerf

Unknown

His godlike power is the worst green in the game. 14 ap is already a monstrous amount to collect. You can get there quicker if you're lucky enough to connect any of your charged tiles. On top of the mountain of ap is the team damage. Team/self damage is considered part of the cost of the ability. The damage output is no where near where it should be for the ap and health.

Ease take him back to the drawing board.

Unknown

camichan wrote:

Tripwire wrote:

I don't mind if he stays like this, because of the many times he appears in PvE. I'll never use him and he's now someone I can leave for last in PvE. Old Ragnarok was someone I would prioritize because of his cheap powers and the cascades he could cause. Now he's not even a minor annoyance and his charged tiles usually help me instead of his team.

This carries weight with me. Nerfing Ragnarok unintentionally does have merit, maybe more than if they were to have buffed him, since now, at least my PVE experience is substantially less miserable. I still have to suffer the 2* Chemical Reactions to the face every 2-3 turns, and the Venom Snares, and Moonstone Gravity Warps, but at LEAST I can save mobile phone battery power now not having to wait for Rags Godless **** cascade chains to finish.

Progress.

This makes no sense to me. If you want a character balanced as a PvE villain only, keep him out of our hands like Gorgon. If you expect him to be "playable" then he needs to actually be, ya know, playable.

Bagnarok's green is easily bottom 10 powers in the entire game right now, with so many better choices out there for green AP. Without substantial change, if it's cost was reduced to 10 at least it would be playable and more in line with Thor's damage. Lightning Rod should be a True Heal. No reason for it not to be, self targeting marginal heal to a character with 10,200 health. And as a PvE villain it's true heal anyway because he exists only for a single fight. I like the red to blue conversion but that's like literally his only function now.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Completely agree. The person I was answering to was actually advocating for a Thor's nerf. Hyperbole was merited.

Not really, because Thor merits a nerf

Not really. He's great as a boosted character but outside of that he's just too slow to matter much in pvp.

Unknown

BubBLeB0y1977 wrote:

His godlike power is the worst green in the game.

Lerysh wrote:

Bagnarok's green is easily bottom 10 powers in the entire game right now,

I'm going to lock you two in a room with Beast, Doc Ock, and Invisible Woman to remind you how bad powers really get

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

gamar wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Completely agree. The person I was answering to was actually advocating for a Thor's nerf. Hyperbole was merited.

Not really, because Thor merits a nerf

Not really. He's great as a boosted character but outside of that he's just too slow to matter much in pvp.

Only because X-Force merits a nerf

Loftus

It makes me wonder if they're planning on changing charged tiles soon? Otherwise it's a definite nerf. He was dangerous before because of his speed for sure. He would end up being priority target quite often just because he fired off abilities so quick that could really mess up your plans. Now he's slow and as others have mentioned targets blue, which only gives him heal and places charged tiles which you can then use against him.

I'm hoping/assuming charged tiles will be reworked. If nothing else make them charged for the team that creates them, just like you have friendly/enemy attack tiles have friendly/enemy charged tiles.

His heal isn't even a true heal i mean come on

Unknown

Will never use. Will never use roster spot for him, will never use covers for him, will never put ISO into him, will never put HP into him, will never spend Health Packs on him.

Unknown

He competes with Beast and Doc Oc for "Worst 3 star"

The only thing that makes him slightly better than those 2 is his health, which is a nice 10.2k.

His Red is still good for spammable damage. Unfortunately, now it leads into nothing, rather than a meh green.

His Green is stupid and outclassed, but it isn't....awful damage...I mean, it is. But it's not Sentry Green bad.

And then his blue....awful. Horrendous. Terrifyingly embarrassing.

You literally can't overexaggerate how bad that ability is. A **** burst heal that makes a hand full of charge tiles that are just as likely to never be matched as they are to be matched by the enemy.

It's a shame because, even though he was totally outclassed in every single way, his old version was at least usable. This Ragnarok is just useless beyond all comprehension.

This is a whole new level of nerfing.

Nerfing a character into uselessness used to be called pulling a Sentry.

But from this point on, it will be known as Bagnaroking.