*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

Unknown

nah.. don't worry man, they won't nerf sentry..it's bad for business.. bad!

over_clocked

tobi69 wrote:

nah.. don't worry man, they won't nerf sentry..it's bad for business.. bad!

Proofs that Sentry is a good business model?

Unknown

c101nguyen wrote:

Let's be honest here... What team will u see once sentry is nerfed? Chances r u will see a bunch of x-force/hood or daken teams monopolizing the game and upper 900+ pvp boards. This is going to be an endless cycle... People will then complain about x-force and so on and so forth...

See I think a constantly evolving meta is a great way for the game to work. If the meta becomes, do this one thing for wins, forever. Then that is a bad game mechanic and it should be changed. Change is good and keeps things fresh in games like these.

GrumpySmurf1002

c101nguyen wrote:

Let's be honest here... What team will u see once sentry is nerfed? Chances r u will see a bunch of x-force/hood or daken teams monopolizing the game and upper 900+ pvp boards. This is going to be an endless cycle... People will then complain about x-force and so on and so forth...

If you take Sentry out of the mix, then you're left with multiple teams that are fast. Yes, XF/Hood will still be considerably faster than a Hulk/Panther combo, but in an ideal world, the characters are balanced such that there are multiple combinations of "top speed," which then promotes the diversity you're looking for.

inEden

Ever since Sentry bombing I have really struggled to get top ten in events. I have a sentry with covers but no levels. I don't want to use him as I have other characters I prefer and thought Sentry would get nerf fairly quickly as he is distorting competition but it hasn't happened yet.

Should I sink precious precious ISO into him to compete or wait it out?

I have been waiting it out though and losing patience. To be honest though I could just be kicking myself for not levelling sentry a month earlier.

orbitalint

I was in the same situation a few months ago. I ended up sucking it and putting some iso into him. Mags nerf took six+ months? Felt like a year from when they first started talking about it, lol. And they seem to be better about announcing nerfs ahead of time.

Might as well enjoy the benefits while you can. Definitely gives me those last 80 pts in pvp before shielding. I don't hop so I need his speed at the end.

I'm also in the camp that believes he brings in money for d3 from boost all and round the clock shields for the top. So, I feel they will continue to drag their heels.

Unknown

So we know its taking time to balance sentry. And that lots of players (certainly the vets I know) are very bored of having to use him all the time to score and place well.

Many players have these great rosters that are never used and which become irrelevant. For example, not sure I gained any benefit last PvP of having a maxed blade rather than the loaner, and blade is stronger than many.

So as a quick fix to generate some variety how about increasing the featured character buff - say to 100% instead of 50? Maybe even smaller 50% buffs to some supporting ones too, e.g. Villains, avengers, 5 most recent characters (that last one sounds good for cover pack sales too!).

Just an idea, but ought to be quick to implement and would shake thimgs up and encourage players to fill out their roster. We might even find that sentry bombing stops becoming the dominant strategy in some PvPs

Unknown

You could not be more right. The PvP should be about the featured character. It's their turn to shine. They should not be overshadowed by the two support characters.

I'll go further, I think newer players would have more fun with a higher level loaner with more covers like the GT lightning rounds. It's not a game changer for ranking. It would just be a nice change for funzies. Most people won't have that character covered in a long while, let them have fun and show what they can have if they work hard to get/buy those covers.

Also. I agree they have all these great characters, but they won't let me genuinely use them. Sentry is part of the problem. But the defense team and retaliation point system are just as big or larger culprits. I'm too lazy to rehash my suggestions to fix those, and that's not what this thread is about any way.

But again, mpq spends all this time and resources on characters, please let us use them (except bagman and Yelena, not asking for miracles after all).

stryke

Great idea that. A selection of partially boosted characters like in the pve with the main character getting the full boost would make things a lot more interesting.

MarvelMan

I think a lvl 125 3/3/3 loaner, plus throwing in a few minor buffs (well thought out to synergize hopefully), would be great. I would enjoy the opportunity to play with multiple skills to see if I actually like the char.

Unknown

The problem with putting the buff to 100% is health pack. The featured character will tank at least 4 colors (his colors + TU) in almost any circumstance and most likely will get 5-6 out of 7. This eliminates any possiblity of using strategy to spread out damage, and since the relative power of characters are unchanged (249 vs 249 is the same as 332 vs 332) all this means is the featured character ends up needing a health pack almost every game against an equally strong team, and of course your support will probably get one shot by the feature character's move if he happens to be out at the wrong time.

So while this is a good idea there has to be some pretty significant changes to either the event structure or the health regen system of the game for this to work. I remember we had some Ares level X 3 event back in the past and it's pretty much one Rampage kills everyone that wasn't Ares, and that was fun but it sure wasn't fun on your health packs.

wymtime

Phantron wrote:

The problem with putting the buff to 100% is health pack. The featured character will tank at least 4 colors (his colors + TU) in almost any circumstance and most likely will get 5-6 out of 7. This eliminates any possiblity of using strategy to spread out damage, and since the relative power of characters are unchanged (249 vs 249 is the same as 332 vs 332) all this means is the featured character ends up needing a health pack almost every game against an equally strong team, and of course your support will probably get one shot by the feature character's move if he happens to be out at the wrong time.

So while this is a good idea there has to be some pretty significant changes to either the event structure or the health regen system of the game for this to work. I remember we had some Ares level X 3 event back in the past and it's pretty much one Rampage kills everyone that wasn't Ares, and that was fun but it sure wasn't fun on your health packs.

I agree that a 100% buff is too much. The buff they put on 3* characters is just about right currently. I think they could be more creative though. Give the loaner character level 100 3,3,3. This way you have a usable 3* instead of a usless piece of meat. This would also make defense and seed teams much more interesting.
Another idea is to also buff a 2* character in each PVP. This would bring a new demension to the game as 2* and transitioning players could try and take on bigger opponents. a level 125 Ares/Thor/Wolvie could do some preety decent damage. It would not let people score 1300 points but would help the transition players to 800+ which would get them HP for roster slots and possibly get into the top 25 instead of sitting in the top 100. I am not a big fan of buffing a lot of characters like Son of Atom and the Avergers PVP as it creates too many buffed characters and it comes down to haves and have nots. I also don't want to take on buffed X-Force. That is just suicide if you don't have him as well.

Unknown

point reduction when sentry bomb is used to win?

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The problem with putting the buff to 100% is health pack. The featured character will tank at least 4 colors (his colors + TU) in almost any circumstance and most likely will get 5-6 out of 7. This eliminates any possiblity of using strategy to spread out damage, and since the relative power of characters are unchanged (249 vs 249 is the same as 332 vs 332) all this means is the featured character ends up needing a health pack almost every game against an equally strong team, and of course your support will probably get one shot by the feature character's move if he happens to be out at the wrong time.

So while this is a good idea there has to be some pretty significant changes to either the event structure or the health regen system of the game for this to work. I remember we had some Ares level X 3 event back in the past and it's pretty much one Rampage kills everyone that wasn't Ares, and that was fun but it sure wasn't fun on your health packs.

I agree that a 100% buff is too much. The buff they put on 3* characters is just about right currently. I think they could be more creative though. Give the loaner character level 100 3,3,3. This way you have a usable 3* instead of a usless piece of meat. This would also make defense and seed teams much more interesting.
Another idea is to also buff a 2* character in each PVP. This would bring a new demension to the game as 2* and transitioning players could try and take on bigger opponents. a level 125 Ares/Thor/Wolvie could do some preety decent damage. It would not let people score 1300 points but would help the transition players to 800+ which would get them HP for roster slots and possibly get into the top 25 instead of sitting in the top 100. I am not a big fan of buffing a lot of characters like Son of Atom and the Avergers PVP as it creates too many buffed characters and it comes down to haves and have nots. I also don't want to take on buffed X-Force. That is just suicide if you don't have him as well.

No I do think 100% is about right because 50% isn't enough to make the featured character that important, but they have to think about what happens when the featured character is indeed relevent. In an event like Unholy Outlaw, if you're not Sentry bombing you'll be severely limited by The Hood often tanking 5 or 6 colors while being in no shape to possibly do that and that's just not very fun when you accumulate enough match damage to require a health pack every fight because The Hood is tanking everything. A 100% buff will just make this issue more prevalent since you only need to be at around level 200 or so to own all the colors besides the your weak colors that are also someone else's strong colors, and at 50% that's around level 133 but at 100% that's only level 100.

MarvelMan

Phantron wrote:

A 100% buff will just make this issue more prevalent since you only need to be at around level 200 or so to own all the colors besides the your weak colors that are also someone else's strong colors, and at 50% that's around level 133 but at 100% that's only level 100.

That could also cause some disruption for a transitioning player that has 8-11 covers and has soft capped the featured, particularly if their covers are in the "weaker" skills. More health to get through with a still weakish char equates to more health pack usage.



Definitely like the idea of a second featured, who happens to be a 2*.

TheHueyFreeman

It's obvious that Sentry bombing has a looming impact on the high scores of PvP (not to mention difficult PvE). I was having a conversation with someone which brought up an interesting question:

What affect (if any) would an un-nerfed Spider-Man have on Sentry bombing?

There's a thought that people would use his purple to limit the effectiveness of World Rupture. Theres also the stun-lock aspect that would endanger the sacrifice tile and lengthen the match. Finally, there's a possibility that it would be worse as people stun the other team into guaranteeing a successful bombing.

Thoughts?

Sandmaker

It will have almost no impact on the high scores in PvP. Stunlocking was OP, but it was also extremely slow. Nobody will use it over Sentry to shield hop.

Spoit

Sandmaker wrote:

It will have almost no impact on the high scores in PvP. Stunlocking was OP, but it was also extremely slow. Nobody will use it over Sentry to shield hop.

Exactly, it had fallen out of favor in pvp for MONTHS before it was actually fixed, since you would be hit like at least 3 times in the time it took to complete one spidey match.

Unknown

Pre nerf magneto was around and people still didn't use him in pvp because it didn't prevent shield hopping. And he was about a thousand times more effective at spitting out shields than spider.

Unknown

I could see him being used on D a lot actually if he was reverted. I would at least consider testing him over hood on hops just to leave on D. on a bad board it would easily cause teams to retreat after a couple of minutes of ****.