*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

Unknown

It doesnt take a whole lot to frustrate sentry's world rupture. The exploit is to rush in before opponent can mount a proper defense.

I would like to propose a possible solution to many of the frustrations of exploits. The defending team recieves less damage by a percentage of their value. A 25 point team recieves 25 percent less damage. A 50 point team recieves 50 percent less damage.

Think about how that would change the metagame.

Unknown

Actually a much better solution that eliminates a host of abuses is this:

Strike tiles apply their bonus only once per turn.

Unknown

Nah the real solution is this:

Don't be lazy and repeat the design mistakes of the past

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

Actually a much better solution that eliminates a host of abuses is this:

Strike tiles apply their bonus only once per turn.

Then they would effectively become attack tiles, wouldnt they?

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

It doesnt take a whole lot to frustrate sentry's world rupture. The exploit is to rush in before opponent can mount a proper defense.

I would like to propose a possible solution to many of the frustrations of exploits. The defending team recieves less damage by a percentage of their value. A 25 point team recieves 25 percent less damage. A 50 point team recieves 50 percent less damage.

Think about how that would change the metagame.

There are very few viable characters in PvP that can defend effectively against World Rupture. It's pretty much Daken and Magneto and that's it. Daken is the only viable PvP character that can put a large number of special tiles, and Magneto is the only character with a board clearing move that costs less than World Rupture. Sure a Thunder Strike or Thunderous Clap will probably clear up World Rupture too, but both moves are more expensive than World Rapture to use so it's hardly a reliable defense.

And I don't think it's necessary to have a strong defense against World Rupture as long as you can't abuse strike tiles with it.

Unknown

reckless442 wrote:

clf_02 X3 wrote:

You can buy +3 boosts of two colors of 200 iso buy all three packs for 600 iso ands it's the same as 1 +3 all ap boost. So it's don't cost any hp if you have iso.

The play is to use red/yellow and green/black plus +3 all ap, so the match begins with 6 green and 6 yellow. To win, you only need to match one green and one yellow to play World Rupture and Sacrifice in concert. So the cost is 400 ISO every 2-3 matches, plus 100 HP every 3.33 matches.

To be fair, if you're going to be matching one green and one yellow, you'd probably want to run it as:
+3 Red/Yellow
+2 Green/Black
+2 All

You'd then start with 5 Yellow, 4 Green. This would be slightly more cost effective. 100HP every 5 matches, 200 ISO per match. A more efficient use of currencies.

I do boost for the last few fights, or when changing between shields. But man, no way would I want to spend that much in order to be competitive.

A quick and dirty fix would be as suggested by others - make all of his tiles go off at once, instead of staggered, and have their damage added up, then the strike tiles applied. You'd end up with a pretty brutal attack, BP rage style, but it's not a 1-shot to almost any team.

They certainly have the ability to have multiple tiles explode at once - Fury's traps, Storm's red...don't see why World Rupture would have to be different. Too open to abuse, and he'd still be quite powerful if they all went off at once.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Bugpop wrote:

It doesnt take a whole lot to frustrate sentry's world rupture. The exploit is to rush in before opponent can mount a proper defense.

I would like to propose a possible solution to many of the frustrations of exploits. The defending team recieves less damage by a percentage of their value. A 25 point team recieves 25 percent less damage. A 50 point team recieves 50 percent less damage.

Think about how that would change the metagame.

There are very few viable characters in PvP that can defend effectively against World Rupture. It's pretty much Daken and Magneto and that's it. Daken is the only viable PvP character that can put a large number of special tiles, and Magneto is the only character with a board clearing move that costs less than World Rupture. Sure a Thunder Strike or Thunderous Clap will probably clear up World Rupture too, but both moves are more expensive than World Rapture to use so it's hardly a reliable defense.

And I don't think it's necessary to have a strong defense against World Rupture as long as you can't abuse strike tiles with it.

Casting team's strike tiles increase damage dealt to casting team. (Hulk should be angry with sentry, not enemy team)

reckless442

Colognoisseur wrote:

Reckless you are going after the wrong target it is shields and boosts which cause this.

With boosts I have five lineups that win in a minute only two with Sentry. There are three other characters that show up on two should they all be nerfed?

When i absolutely have to win fast I can boost and shield until I hit my target. I don't care about hitting 1500 because it makes no sense to me but I understand it does to other players. The use of 75 Hp shields and 100hp boosts make this as easy as any given player wants it to be.

You want to fix the perceived problem shields need to be 300HP for 12 hours period no shorter or longer options and the cost of all +1 boosts needs to go up to 150-200HP. When it costs 500 HP to shield hop boosted it will take a shaikh to afford it.

Name the lineups without Sentry that can take out a team with characters over 8000 health by making just two matches? Nobody has that much firepower. Yes there are teams that can go into battle with 6 ap of four colors and get quick wins. I don't disagree. But if they do win in less than a minute, it's because the board fell just right for them to trigger multiple powers in succession. For instance, LT/BP had do a lot of damage, but you need to get four more black for Rage of the Panther and enough green through other means to get 14 green for Call of the Storm. And even that, total, doesn't equal 8700 damage for an opposing LT or Sentry. Similarly, Patch/Mags does huge damage once you get Patch's 9 green if you have a lot of red. But to take out teams with 8700 (Sentry/LT), 6900 (buffed feature character), and 5800, you need to pick up more reds or purple or have a third character who can do damage. In both instances, there are a lot more steps than: match green, cast World Rupture, match yellow, cast Sacrifice, watch countdown tiles go off, game over.

Increasing the costs of shields and making all +1 boosts coast HP would be a disaster and would tilt the power even more to the P2W and the cheats using HP hacks. They would be above the fray while the end of PVPs would be bloodbaths. And woe to the European who isn't able to play in the last few hours.

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Bugpop wrote:

It doesnt take a whole lot to frustrate sentry's world rupture. The exploit is to rush in before opponent can mount a proper defense.

I would like to propose a possible solution to many of the frustrations of exploits. The defending team recieves less damage by a percentage of their value. A 25 point team recieves 25 percent less damage. A 50 point team recieves 50 percent less damage.

Think about how that would change the metagame.

There are very few viable characters in PvP that can defend effectively against World Rupture. It's pretty much Daken and Magneto and that's it. Daken is the only viable PvP character that can put a large number of special tiles, and Magneto is the only character with a board clearing move that costs less than World Rupture. Sure a Thunder Strike or Thunderous Clap will probably clear up World Rupture too, but both moves are more expensive than World Rapture to use so it's hardly a reliable defense.

And I don't think it's necessary to have a strong defense against World Rupture as long as you can't abuse strike tiles with it.

Casting team's strike tiles increase damage dealt to casting team. (Hulk should be angry with sentry, not enemy team)

You mean strike damage increases self damage as a change? That'd be a pretty significant change to the game itself. It'd certainly work but could have rather significant impact to other characters too.

reckless442

Phantron wrote:

Bugpop wrote:

It doesnt take a whole lot to frustrate sentry's world rupture. The exploit is to rush in before opponent can mount a proper defense.

I would like to propose a possible solution to many of the frustrations of exploits. The defending team recieves less damage by a percentage of their value. A 25 point team recieves 25 percent less damage. A 50 point team recieves 50 percent less damage.

Think about how that would change the metagame.

There are very few viable characters in PvP that can defend effectively against World Rupture. It's pretty much Daken and Magneto and that's it. Daken is the only viable PvP character that can put a large number of special tiles, and Magneto is the only character with a board clearing move that costs less than World Rupture. Sure a Thunder Strike or Thunderous Clap will probably clear up World Rupture too, but both moves are more expensive than World Rapture to use so it's hardly a reliable defense.

And I don't think it's necessary to have a strong defense against World Rupture as long as you can't abuse strike tiles with it.

Actually, without the yellow Sacrifice tile, there are a lot of effective counters to World Rupture. Protect tiles from Magento's blue, Bullseye's purple, and Spidey's purple have left my characters taking more damage per countdown explosion than my enemy. That's when the enemy takes out the yellow strike tile, but even without doing so, the hardest teams I found to kill in Webslinger were Spidey/Mags because they put out protect tiles so that when World Rupture triggered, it still left the opponent with some health. Of course, that's with Spidey boosted to 212. In a normal fight, his purple would not be so effective and in a non-Spidey PVP, players are rarely going have Spidey and Magneto on the same team.

Unknown

My take on this:

about Sentry, either raise the ap cost for green and yellow or nerf his yellow.

about speed, remove boost altogether because using boosts, imo, making things way easier than it should be.

kensterr

There's a lazier answer to this than nerfing Sentry, removing boosts or changing the structure and costs of shields. Have those who go over 1200 or 1300 frequently to be in a league of their own. Once there they will remain for a few months or even for a few seasons, where their godlike scores won't affect others.

HairyDave

kensterr wrote:

There's a lazier answer to this than nerfing Sentry, removing boosts or changing the structure and costs of shields. Have those who go over 1200 or 1300 frequently to be in a league of their own. Once there they will remain for a few months or even for a few seasons, where their godlike scores won't affect others.

A sandbox if you will...

kensterr

no no, not a sandbox - that would mean that they cheated, which isn't true. i'm proposing an elite PVP season for those who have the HP to spend and also the time to coordinate their attacks. There's no point for me to compete top spot for the 4* covers with them if they keep posting high scores which is unattainable without hard work and dedication. I have a full time job and also a family to attend to.

Unknown

As long as Nick Fury isn't offered as a prize for finishing first I don't think these ultra high scores have much of an impact. Now if they do offer Nick Fury for finishing 1st in PvP on regular events, that'd have some serious issues.

kensterr

Phantron wrote:

As long as Nick Fury isn't offered as a prize for finishing first I don't think these ultra high scores have much of an impact. Now if they do offer Nick Fury for finishing 1st in PvP on regular events, that'd have some serious issues.

I see this as a possibility for Season 4.

Unknown

Please don't nerf Sentry until I get a chance to abuse him. I need a fallback once Cmags gets nerfed.

I can't face the idea of actually having to play MPQ w/o a broken character. It's all I've ever known.

Unknown

reckless442 wrote:

Anyone who has followed my posts on the nerfing of characters knows that I am generally against it. I was pretty furious when Ragnarok got nerfed. I had not used the character during most of the pre-nert period, but after finally getting tired of losing to him in PVP, spent a bunch of HP to get his covers and then more HP and ISO to build him to 5/5 -- the day before he was nerfed. I've also argued against the nerfs to Spidey and Magneto. So it isn't lightly that I ask if Sentry needs to be nerfed.

If we believe the explanation for the current scores, max-Sentry's green and yellow, in combination with boosts, can effectively end any match in under a minute. All you need is to match one yellow and one green. 3* Daken really is not essential to that win; other combinations will result in equally speedy matches (Sentry/Psylocke; Sentry/Hood, Sentry/2* Daken). So if this explanation is true, it raises a few major issues.

First, for this combination to work as claimed, the player must use the +3 ap boost, which costs 100 HP for 10. That translates to spending 100 HP every 3.33 matches in a PVP. If you only used Sentry between 500 and 1300, and averaged 30 points per match (a very conservative figure), that amounts to 800 HP spent on +3 ap boosts.

Second, with players using this speed-win method, how do other players cope? If you are trying to reach a high score, you already are vulnerable to attacks that can lose 40+ points in a single hit. But now those attacks can take less than one minute. Previously, players avoided being attacked by shield-hopping, but how can you really do that if you can lose points so quickly? There really are only two options: (1) play the same Sentry/X team between shields at considerable cost; or (2) only do one match at a time between shields, but even then anticipate that, while you're Modern Thor- or Patch-led team is winning in 3-5 minutes, you could be losing numerous matches to opponents using Sentry.

This seems like a major turning point for the game, because I think this is the most significant instance of a P2W option being game-changing. People complained that shields were P2W, but it has been possible to reach high scores without burning through massive HP on shields. Currently, a top-10 individual placement and a top-50 alliance gets you a total of 300 HP (100 from progressives, 100 from individual, and 100 from alliance). That's enough for four 3-hr shields. While it may not cover the full cost of hopping to 1300, it probably covers most of the cost. Moreover, shielding, unlike the Sentry + boosts strategy, does not confer a massive advantage -- speed in attacks -- that adversely reduces the scores of players not using the same expensive strategy.

Obviously, some players are happy to spend that amount, along with the HP for shields, to achieve scores in the 1300s-1500s for each PVP. But this may be the biggest advantage yet that spending HP on boosts provides, and seems to create a situation where players will be forced to use the same approach if they want to remain competitive. Or players may quit, deciding they don't want to spend several hundred extra HP per game so they can compete against players with the massive advantage that apparently exists for players using boosted Sentry. Still others will turn to the HP cheats that allow them to get HP without paying for it. I think we all agree that is not a good result for the game.

I can think of three possible modifications that could avoid this problem.

One option is to remove Sentry's yellow. Green on its own could be okay, even with Daken's or Psylocke's strike tiles, if 10 green countdown nodes survive, exploding would only do in the mid-3000s damage.

A second option is to have strike tile value added once all the countdown tiles exploded, so that you don't get the 575 from the yellow for each exploding node. For seven ap, Sentry's green with 10 exploding nodes plus yellow would still do nearly 2000 damage to the entire opposing team.

Third, the costs for Sentry's powers could be increased. Make green and yellow cost at least 10 ap and red 15. That means, even with full boosts, the player would need two green and two yellow matches (or match-4s), and would slow down those matches somewhat. The red cost may seem high, but it would be consistent with powers that damage entire opposing teams. Black Panther does 3162 max damage for 12 black ap, but that is his only major power. Max-level Punisher at 7 black only does 663 to all opponents. Black Widow (Grey Suit) can do 3336 to all opponents, but for 19 green, IM40 does 2669 to all opponents for 20 blue, while sapping 3 ap from every other color. Sentry, with 9 red tiles on the board, currently does 3525 damage for only 11 red.

As usual you make good points!
I think the easiest fix for sentry is make world rupture not get any effect from strike tiles. same everything else. solves his problems
Then again I've always said easy fix to xforce is make red generate AP (but that has never gained traction)
also I think cmag will not get nerfed anymore. he is usless on defense & is not super op on offense anymore just regular op lol

Unknown

Pucco wrote:

My take on this:

about Sentry, either raise the ap cost for green and yellow or nerf his yellow.

about speed, remove boost altogether because using boosts, imo, making things way easier than it should be.

I think this is on the right track if there was to be a change. Cut strike tile strength down by like 35% and reduce damage inflicted to self by like 50%

Unknown

Multi color boosts should probably have purchase option removed
or maybe make it be 1000 iso for 10
multi color boosts make things happen fast