*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

vudu3

Kelbris wrote:

Why the tinykitty should they have a different speed than ally WR?

Why the tinykitty is your signature so large? The maximum allowed height is 125 pixels.

Kelbris

vudu3 wrote:

Kelbris wrote:

Why the tinykitty should they have a different speed than ally WR?

Why the tinykitty is your signature so large? The maximum allowed height is 125 pixels.

Superior forum strategies.

simonsez

It's so you can yell "Nooooooooooo.... !!!" in slow motion as you watch the life draining out of your characters...

Kelbris

simonsez wrote:

It's so you can yell "Nooooooooooo.... !!!" in slow motion as you watch the life draining out of your characters...

I shredded all but four of them. Still seems like it took 20 minutes for them to go off

it's as if the game is thinking like an old school Gameboy game had to

Raffoon

Sentry/Hood/Daken/Patch/Magneto. Pretty much all of the top PVP teams included some combination of these. With Magneto nerfed, most top PVP teams will now consist of either Sentry/Daken/X or Sentry/Hood/X. There's really no other team that can consistently destroy the other team in as short an amount of time, which is essential for people who like to shield hop (read, everyone in the top 5 of a bracket). Sentry is certainly the outlier.

I like to score highly in PVP so the question becomes:

Should I start leveling up Sentry now because he'll continue to be the single best PVP character for the next 6+ months, completely dominating the top 10 because the Dev's are notoriously slow at any sort of balancing? Or are there plans in the immediate future to nerf Sentry as well? I could have sworn I read something about him being "looked at with a microscope" but that doesn't really mean anything if characters who have been actually confirmed to have changes on the way since the game released are only now seeing them take effect.

I think it would probably be a lot healthier for the game if Sentry was nerfed/reworked because it would open up a whole lot of options for diversity amongst the top teams. That said, if he's going to stay as the top character for the next 6 months to a year, then I suppose it's time to get on board the Sentry-train.

What I'd like here is some sort of confirmation from IceX or the dev's about whether Sentry has nerfs planned in his future and whether those nerfs are in the next 1-2 months or will take another year.

Unknown

They won't nerf Sentry until the top alliances stop mass shield-hopping with him. But I'm afraid that when the top alliances stop grinding so hard, it will mean that the game is on its last legs (hyperbole yes, but the trickle-down effect in PvP is real).

Unknown

Ice mentioned somewhere recently (probably in the "it's time" thread) that they are going to be looking at sentry with a "magnifying glass," whatever that means.

Personally I think mr. magoo could tell you from 1000 feet away that sentry is broken in half, but shrug.

Unknown

Better be. He needs it way more than lazy daken did, and now that cmags is gone he's way above everyone else.

john1620b

Good luck getting a response from the devs. I doubt they want to release that kind of information, because it could result in people not investing in Sentry.

I don't like to be negative, but given the history of how and when they nerf, my guess is that they won't do it until a certain percentage of the playerbase has maxed him. They'll have gotten the revenue from him that they wanted at that point, and then they'll nerf him and release another top-tier character. (Kind of like what happened with Ragnarok...and Thor...and Wolverine...and Spiderman...and Magneto...and Daken...)

Unknown

Nobody is nerfing $entry. Move along.

Houtro

Yes... When "The Void" comes out!

El_Dude

They will definitely nerf Sentry...as soon as I get all his covers and pour ISO into him.

Currently at 2/5/2, lvl 88.

Unknown

Considering how long it took them to nerf CMags, id say that players who choose to invest in their Sentry now will have at least a few months to play w him at full strength.

Im not worried, hell im considering leveling my cover maxxed Duplicate Sentry so that i dont have to waste health packs if a hop goes south on me.

max your sentry and join the party.

marc

Unknown

Raffoon wrote:

Sentry/Hood/Daken/Patch/Magneto. Pretty much all of the top PVP teams included some combination of these. With Magneto nerfed, most top PVP teams will now consist of either Sentry/Daken/X or Sentry/Hood/X. There's really no other team that can consistently destroy the other team in as short an amount of time, which is essential for people who like to shield hop (read, everyone in the top 5 of a bracket). Sentry is certainly the outlier.

First thing is Sentry doesn't really feature til people are up in shield hopping land unless the people in question enjoy spending a fortune on health packs for no good reason.

Second thing is Sentry requires boosts to do those super quick wins and with them being completely removed from drops it's a good sink for D3 both in ISO and HP.

Finally nerfing Sentry basically has the net effect of reducing PvP scores and really nothing else. It'll cost more to shield hop so the same spenders will come top but won't bother trying to get huge scores so the rest of us can't feed off those scores to more easily get 1100/1300 for progression.

Don't really see WHY anyone would particularly want Sentry nerfed. If you aren't willing to shield hop and commit boosts you won't suddenly win your bracket, you'll just score less.....

Raffoon

bonfire01 wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

Sentry/Hood/Daken/Patch/Magneto. Pretty much all of the top PVP teams included some combination of these. With Magneto nerfed, most top PVP teams will now consist of either Sentry/Daken/X or Sentry/Hood/X. There's really no other team that can consistently destroy the other team in as short an amount of time, which is essential for people who like to shield hop (read, everyone in the top 5 of a bracket). Sentry is certainly the outlier.

First thing is Sentry doesn't really feature til people are up in shield hopping land unless the people in question enjoy spending a fortune on health packs for no good reason.

Second thing is Sentry requires boosts to do those super quick wins and with them being completely removed from drops it's a good sink for D3 both in ISO and HP.

Finally nerfing Sentry basically has the net effect of reducing PvP scores and really nothing else. It'll cost more to shield hop so the same spenders will come top but won't bother trying to get huge scores so the rest of us can't feed off those scores to more easily get 1100/1300 for progression.

Don't really see WHY anyone would particularly want Sentry nerfed. If you aren't willing to shield hop and commit boosts you won't suddenly win your bracket, you'll just score less.....

Magneto required boosts to do quick wins too, but wasn't as good as sentry on defense. He's now nerfed, which means Sentry is the only game in town.

Even if you're willing to shield hop, if you don't have Sentry, you can't shield hop as quick as people that do have sentry and so they can and will score higher than you. That means having Sentry is essential in most cases to place first in a bracket.

Having one character be the supreme ruler of all PVP isn't very good for the game.

Unknown

Sentry is still faster than anyone else under any realistic situation. Getting 7g/8y is way easier than the typical big damage 4-5 match move (Call the Storm, Rage of the Panther) and none of them can possibly end a game against characters like Thor or Sentry. Boosts just makes it even easier by dropping the requirement down to 1 match each. IceIX already posted that making money off shields isn't their primary concern, because it doesn't make that much money to begin with compared to the other stuff they make money from. A character that discourages roster diversity cuts off their 3 biggest source of income: tokens, ability upgrades, and roster slots. Most people can't do math and way overestimate their skill which is why they think the self damage even matters, even though you end up taking way more damage having to fight your opponent for another 10 turns instead of doing a World Rupture combo unless you're running Magneto, and that won't even be an option anymore after R60. I guess after R60 you'd have some kind of balance between X Force emerging as the best 'big numbers dumb guy' over Thor, Daken being slightly weakened, and that most people simply don't understand the concept of opportunity cost you'll have some kind of barely balanced game in the non shield hopping realm. Most likely you end up with a triangle inequality like this:

Sentry > X Force > ignorance > Sentry

That is, Sentry is stronger than anyone else, but because people don't understand how to use him or how hard he is when attacking, it is possible an X Force scares people more than Sentry, and while Sentry is super strong on defense, the best defensive battles are the kind you never have to fight since defense is still thoroughly disadvantaged. Looking at the teams I see on the way until the shield hopping region, ignorance is likely to continue to dominate and it seems likely the ignorant will be afraid of X Force but not Sentry.

Or maybe you can just run X Force + Sentry too. That should be able to beat everything, even ignorance.

Unknown

Raffoon wrote:

Magneto required boosts to do quick wins too, but wasn't as good as sentry on defense. He's now nerfed, which means Sentry is the only game in town.

Even if you're willing to shield hop, if you don't have Sentry, you can't shield hop as quick as people that do have sentry and so they can and will score higher than you. That means having Sentry is essential in most cases to place first in a bracket.

Having one character be the supreme ruler of all PVP isn't very good for the game.

TWO things are essential to place first in a bracket. You need Sentry AND you need to be willing to spend more ISO and HP on boosts and shields than the guy who's going to come second.

Nerf Sentry and the people not coming first will STILL not be coming first because they will still lose to the guy who's willing to spend more ISO/HP on boosts and shields. The main difference will be the first placed guys will be scoring less, meaning less points to win for everyone else and lower scores overall.

The people not coming first will now also not be getting as much in the way of progression rewards.

I never claimed Sentry wasn't somewhat overpowered, particularly when it comes to shield hopping BUT people need to be realistic on the net impact of nerfing his ability to do so and it is NOT some utopia of roster diverity, rainbows and cuddles where everyone competes for those first place prizes. It's the same ppl coming first and everyone else getting less points and less progression rewards.

Raffoon

TWO things are essential to place first in a bracket. You need Sentry AND you need to be willing to spend more ISO and HP on boosts and shields than the guy who's going to come second.

Right, so we agree here.

Nerf Sentry and the people not coming first will STILL not be coming first because they will still lose to the guy who's willing to spend more ISO/HP on boosts and shields.

OK, so either way, the people who spend more shield hopping and boosting will be more successful than those who don't. Sure, I agree here too. That doesn't change the fact that given equal spending, Sentry will still net you a massive advantage.

The people not coming first will now also not be getting as much in the way of progression rewards.

That is a bad side effect. To compensate, D3 should change the rewards structure to more closely match what people's scores will be when they're not over-inflated. Make some tiers of reward 50 points apart instead of 100 so that the rewards top out in the 750-850 range instead? Problem fixed! (And I know that the Dev's like to say how limited their resources are, but I'm confident that going into the code and changing the values that people get rewarded at from "100 ,200, 300" to "50, 100, 150" and so forth could be done in quite literally 5 minutes)

I never claimed Sentry wasn't somewhat overpowered, particularly when it comes to shield hopping BUT people need to be realistic on the net impact of nerfing his ability to do so and it is NOT some utopia of roster diverity, rainbows and cuddles where everyone competes for those first place prizes. It's the same ppl coming first and everyone else getting less points and less progression rewards.

We do agree on a lot, but here is where we differ. I just don't agree about the point that it would be the same people winning. Currently, Sentry + money wins. With Sentry not as the clear top-dog, a wider variety of characters + money can win.

Shadow

Raffoon wrote:

That is a bad side effect. To compensate, D3 should change the rewards structure to more closely match what people's scores will be when they're not over-inflated. Make some tiers of reward 50 points apart instead of 100 so that the rewards top out in the 750-850 range instead? Problem fixed! (And I know that the Dev's like to say how limited their resources are, but I'm confident that going into the code and changing the values that people get rewarded at from "100 ,200, 300" to "50, 100, 150" and so forth could be done in quite literally 5 minutes)

Really? Top out at 850? I can easily get past that without shielding and without using Sentry or Magneto. What you're basically saying is, dish out 3* and 4* covers for people to get really easily whilst pocketing all the HP on the way there as well. That's 300HP, 3* progression reward, 4* progression reward all within easy reach. Definitely disagree on this.

Raffoon

Shadow wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

That is a bad side effect. To compensate, D3 should change the rewards structure to more closely match what people's scores will be when they're not over-inflated. Make some tiers of reward 50 points apart instead of 100 so that the rewards top out in the 750-850 range instead? Problem fixed! (And I know that the Dev's like to say how limited their resources are, but I'm confident that going into the code and changing the values that people get rewarded at from "100 ,200, 300" to "50, 100, 150" and so forth could be done in quite literally 5 minutes)

Really? Top out at 850? I can easily get past that without shielding and without using Sentry or Magneto. What you're basically saying is, dish out 3* and 4* covers for people to get really easily whilst pocketing all the HP on the way there as well. That's 300HP, 3* progression reward, 4* progression reward all within easy reach. Definitely disagree on this.

The reason you can easily get to those numbers now is that the top level players are going into the 1300-1700 range from frequent shield hopping with sentry. This means there are consistently 30+ point nodes to hit. If Sentry were nerfed, the overall level of points would be lower and 850 would not be as easy to achieve. You would be attacked much more in the 550-750 range than currently.

Come to think of it, another positive side effect of compressing scores down would be less grinding up to high scores in order to be competitive.