*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

HailMary

Raffoon wrote:

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.

Nope, I was consistently surpassing 850 before Sentry and before the X-Men point bonanza. Heck, I was hitting that range with a 2* team and zero shielding back when alliances first started, and I'm frankly too lazy to be an extremely savvy player. Nowadays, I see zero massive scorers below 700, and only occasionally below 800.

Unknown

The average points went way down immediately after the True Healing nerf and it picked back up since then, but I don't know if that's because Sentry has that much of an effect or whether there's just more players playing this game (which would always lead to higher scores). Sure, the 2XXX scores are solely due to Sentry, but the low 1K range can easily be explained by having more players. I don't know if that's the explanation, but it certainly can be that instead of Sentry.

yogi_

IceIX wrote:

- Sentry is going to be looked at with an electron microscope after this since he's obviously the second most popular niche strategy. He's still very low on the actual userbase usage rate, but we can't be sure how that will change once the Patch / Magneto situation changes.

Source - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14801&p=211280#p211276

So to answer the question, I don't know about next, but if it's not, it won't be much after.

Unknown

They'll make their $$$$$ off $entry for $ix month$, release some more characters for you to focus on (some overpowered) and then after people have invested 3-6 months building their $entry, they'll nerf him.

That's what was done with Storm, OBW, Ragnarok, Spidey & Magneto.

Their business plan is to rip you off. The ol' bait and switch. Don't be fooled and stop throwing $$$$ at this game.

Phaserhawk

When they determine that Sentry is hurting them because it's scaring away newer players from going into PvP and spending $ is when they will start changing him. However, within the last few months we have seen numerous character fixes and balances, I think the devs have finally figured this part of the game out. Also as a vetern of playing League of Legends, it took them a good year and a few months before they began focusing on game balance and not new characters. The logical reason for this is that you don't want to change an enviornment too much with prior characters when you are brining in new characters because they can sometimes balance and counter each other. This game isn't a year old yet so they appear to be on pace and I look to see more game changes and slightly less content in the near future, I mean look how much they have slowed on new characters, we use to get 2-3 a month, now it's more like 1 a month. Give them time, my gut tells me Sentry will be adjusted probably within the next 3-4 months if not sooner. Sentry is on their radar, which means they will be looking at him, and they will probably want to see what effect the C.Mags, X-Force, Daken, Hawkeye changes have on the game first before they start nerfing and buffing others.

Btw, good job on the changes so far minus the Magnetized Projectile not swapping yellow and red (needs to be changed) aside from that these were fair and very balanced changes. X-Force needed the buff, Daken needed a slight nerf, and C.Mags who was insane needed a rework and I feel they kept him close to what he was suppose to be, the Hawkeye changes are nice too, he's now a decent 2*.

Unknown

The guys who say Sentry makes them money so it won't be nerfed has the business model wrong. D3 is in the business of repeated sales. Their goal is to approach you and say, "Psst your roster looks like it can use the power of BEAST!" Right now Sentry (and a couple other guys) are so far above the average character in power that even a very stupid player won't be fooled by this. They'll just say no thanks I already got Sentry. If the balance was closer you'd have a much better chance of making such a pitch. And even though there will almost certainly be a top 5 team, if the balance is closer then it is indeed quite possible some oddball team plays very strongly to some of those top teams even if it's not top 5 calibur and that'll lead to more sales.

Unknown

I would be so easy to fix World rupture too. Double the damage on each countdown and give him half as many. Maybe spread them out across the board a little better so they are less clustered. Boom done, sentry instantly less insane because of 1/2 the amount of strike tile exploitation.

mouser

roippi wrote:

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.

So in other words they're planning to set him on fire?

Unknown

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)

Ouch!

How many of you remember PRE-Shields?

I remember being up @ 2 a.m. EST grinding away at PvP, getting hit and hitting back non-stop trying, yes trying to stay litterally 1 point ahead of the peron in 2nd place. I really wanted my 1st IW from a 1st place finish in PvP. I would say, this would be some time in November/December of last year.

There was NO WAY you were getting the top tier reward. Regardless of your roster - because there was no shields and no shield hopping. And top tier, was not 1300 points. Oh no. Top tier reward was 2400 points.

So, when they brought it down to 1300... It was already brought down to a "reasonable" level and than - they eventually added shields. Which makes achieving those rewards a lot easier.

Sandmaker

Phantron wrote:

The guys who say Sentry makes them money so it won't be nerfed has the business model wrong. D3 is in the business of repeated sales. Their goal is to approach you and say, "Psst your roster looks like it can use the power of BEAST!" Right now Sentry (and a couple other guys) are so far above the average character in power that even a very stupid player won't be fooled by this. They'll just say no thanks I already got Sentry. If the balance was closer you'd have a much better chance of making such a pitch. And even though there will almost certainly be a top 5 team, if the balance is closer then it is indeed quite possible some oddball team plays very strongly to some of those top teams even if it's not top 5 calibur and that'll lead to more sales.

This 100%.

Excluding whales, the typical person is not going to open their wallets just to have some more HP for shield hopping. They use what they've saved up, and will most likely stop if they run out. There is no impulse buy factor when it comes to shield hopping.

What does have that "I must buy that now" property is releasing a character with potential. If a character looks like it is competitive then people will buy covers and packs to try it out. But that's very hard to do when there's something like Sentry in the game. Every release looks lackluster and any motivation to buy the new character goes out the window. (What percent of players do you think bought a cover for Beast when they got him?)

It is very clearly in both the company's and the player's interest to have a balanced game field.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The guys who say Sentry makes them money so it won't be nerfed has the business model wrong. D3 is in the business of repeated sales. Their goal is to approach you and say, "Psst your roster looks like it can use the power of BEAST!" Right now Sentry (and a couple other guys) are so far above the average character in power that even a very stupid player won't be fooled by this. They'll just say no thanks I already got Sentry. If the balance was closer you'd have a much better chance of making such a pitch. And even though there will almost certainly be a top 5 team, if the balance is closer then it is indeed quite possible some oddball team plays very strongly to some of those top teams even if it's not top 5 calibur and that'll lead to more sales.

This 100%.

Excluding whales, the typical person is not going to open their wallets just to have some more HP for shield hopping. They use what they've saved up, and will most likely stop if they run out. There is no impulse buy factor when it comes to shield hopping.

What does have that "I must buy that now" property is releasing a character with potential. If a character looks like it is competitive then people will buy covers and packs to try it out. But that's very hard to do when there's something like Sentry in the game. Every release looks lackluster and any motivation to buy the new character goes out the window. (What percent of players do you think bought a cover for Beast when they got him?)

It is very clearly in both the company's and the player's interest to have a balanced game field.

I think the number is 1. Not % though. 1 player

Unknown

The AI's World Rupture killed off my team before it killed the AI's Sentry, and I was still awarded the Victory.

I thought it was whoever died last that lost? Or is it always in favor to the player?

Unknown

The player wins on all draws.

mags1587

I once played a match where Sentry was the last man standing, used Supernova to kill my team, then used Sacrifice to kill himself and give me the win.

SunCrusher

I've had Juggernaut Headbutt my last man standing to his Death and it also wiped him out, too. Same with Ares' Sunder. In both cases, I won even though I died.

Unknown

People complain about the whole AI "I'm going to use 5 moves on your team's dead bodies" but without it, you wouldn't be able to get a scenario where the AI already killed your team but still decided to fire off another move that killed themselves!

Dauthi

What I got from this thread:

Whales can abuse Sentry so he needs to be nerfed.

Seriously, try using Sentry offensively before complaining about him. He hurts and things can go wrong (as always with RNG based games). When you play MPQ sometimes you do great (this escalates with being able to see combo matches easier) and sometimes you don't. When you use Sentry you are basically forgoing any good luck (and skill in seeing combo matches) by taking an even amount of team damage to end the battle faster (dependent on how fast you can get 7 green ap of course).

Unknown

I took the bait and purchased $99 to upgrade first Ldaken and after Sentry, now I know the way D3 manages things I will never fall again.. at least it serves as warnings for others.. D3 makes traps worse than fury..

CrookedKnight

Just a collection of thoughts on how to break up the monotony of Sentry+strike tiles high-level PvP. Centered on World Rupture because, let's face it, that's the big deal here. People aren't blitzing PvPs to earn 2000+ points with Supernova spam.

1) Instead of creating X countdown tiles that deal Y damage to enemies and Y/3 (or whatever) to allies, the power creates one countdown tile and converts X other tiles into Rupture tiles. When the countdown expires or is matched, all Rupture tiles are destroyed, dealing Y damage to enemies and Y/3 to allies for each tile.
Pros:[list=2]
[*]Since tiles are destroyed simultaneously instead of sequentially, strike tile bonuses are no longer multiplied. [/*]
[*]Retains board-shaking potential. [/*][/list]
Cons:[list=3]
[*]Applying strike tile damage just once probably weakens the move too much. Base damage would need to be buffed.[/*]
[*]Under current game mechanics, if the enemy matches the tile they get the benefit of the board-shake.[/*]
[*]Possible to cancel the entire move by destroying or overwriting a single countdown tile. Falcon and Cap become hard counters to Sentry.[/*][/list]

2) Double base damage per tile and cut the number of tiles in half. (Or use some other figure, that's just an easy round number)
Pros:
[list=3][*]Strike tile damage is still multiplied, but multiplied far less. [/*]
[*]Retains the basic advantages and disadvantages of the move.[/*]
[*]Can be countered more meaningfully by matching/destroying the countdown tiles. [/*][/list]

Cons:
[list=2][*]Even half the strike tile damage may still be crazy good. [/*]
[*]Following on from the above, by the time you cut the number of countdowns to the point where strike tile damage is sane, there may be so few that they're too easy to eliminate.[/*][/list]

3) Instead of calculating the damage to enemies and the damage to allies separately, damage to allies is some fraction of the final damage dealt to the enemy party.
Pros:

1. Blowback damage is now increased by your strike tiles (and decreased by enemy protect tiles, for whatever that's worth). The power combo now deals severe damage to both sides, changing the cost/benefit equation and potentially making World Rupture less spammable.

Cons:
[list=3][*]It still deals ridiculous damage to the enemy team.[/*]
[*]Even if the blowback damage kills everybody on the field, ties still go to the human player. [/*]
[*]Because of those two factors, people willing to spend more on health packs could ignore the nerf. The rich get richer. [/*][/list]

Thoughts?

Unknown

I like your first idea, but instead of making new "rupture tiles" I'd like it if it just blew up an equal number of random tiles. That way, if the countdown is matched, they dont keep a bunch of tiles on the board that would make it do double damage next time they use it. If it had 2 countdowns to activate it would also greatly reduce your most important con.