*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

Unknown

I think doing a double nerf to Sentry on both high ap cost as well as 1 more turn count down is overblown, especially the extra count down, your forcing everyone to use hood/Sentry even more for hood's black.

12 ap for WR will stop sentry bombing alone, the added count down killed it and Sentry will no longer be viable. still a good character but no longer top tier

as for hood, his yellow is already debatable. Now it is completely useless and a wrong direction to a game that is lacking diversity and motivation to experiment with unique skills. A nerf for hood yes, but taking away a unique skill is a bad idea. That is not balancing the skill to make it interesting, it is completely removing a skill that dev fear will be exploited. A very reactive move imo.

wirius

The nerf to sentry was very well done by D3 for a few reasons I feel.

1. His offense is still amazing, and still a go to for shield hopping for the pay to win.

The big nerfs are World Rupture's cost went up to 12 ap and the countdown tiles are now 3 rounds instead of two rounds. So what? Use three boosts to get 6 ap at the start, have the hood to get that one yellow you need, and see if you can match two green, and a black. Yet, it doesn't feel too far ahead of black panther and a few other combos. He's still a tier 1 champ.

2. The nerfs to his red and yellow were love taps.

Supernova's damage at max level dropped by around 200. It still does about 1800 damage. Yellows strike tile damage dropped by about 103. Yeah, that's can add up over the fight, but its still incredibly absolutely amazing to have a 571 strike tile out for 7 ap and health that you don't really care about. This does not put him under other 3 characters, but leaves him very much tier one in his abilities.

3. They nerfed the REAL problem, his defense.

I know high level players have complained about the shield hopping, but the dirty little secret is that for a developing 3 roster, there was almost no scarier champ to face then Sentry/hood/daken. Why? Because denying 7 ap was a **** shoot. A bad cascade or the hood could make gaining 7 ap a cinch. And when you have to whittle through massive hp, it just becomes more likely to happen. Then world rupture, and sometimes his strike tile came out. Even if you survived, your team was devastated. There was no way to reasonably handle Sentry. 12 ap puts him squarely in the tank category, and its possible to reasonably deny him, while still having to whittle down his MASSIVE hp. He's still a tier 1 on defense, just not godly.

Conclusion:

Sentry is still a tier 1 offensive and defensive champion. Thus he can still be used for an expensive shield hop, and is still an excellent tank deterrent on defense. He'll still cause people to poor money for boosts and shield hops while lessening the overbearing threat to lower tier rosters who have to face him on defense. Agree? Disagree?

Unknown

Obviously I haven't read the whole thread cos it's already 9 pages. My personal opinion is Sentry isn't nerfed enough and I'm not sure Hood even needed one. I think Sacrifice is still a little too strong for its cost. I'm thinking of the future Hood+Lady Thor charged tile exploit could be the reason for nerfing him but I don't think the nerfed form of Twin Pistols is a real solution to that.

It sucks that I just got my 5th yellow Hood cover and I won't be using it much because I wasn't using it before due to it ending the turn at 4 covers. The damage bonus is kinda nice but playing the turn matters so much in Puzzle Quest, I don't think the damage even matters compared to that. I've already seen 3* players saying the damage is not good enough for its cost anyway.

simonsez wrote:

Now that Hood's yellow is going to do some serious damage, can we please have a moratorium on those PvE nodes where Muscle feeds yellow to Hood???

Yeah, that will be so exciting to play against those nodes now. Not

Unknown

I think they were scared to overnerf him like they did with Rags and Spidey and they didn't nerf him enough. Sacrifice is still too powerful and it's an important part of why he is so good. On the plus side (or another negative depending on how you look at it) the support won't get bogged down with so much tickets demanding refunds cos they spent cray dollars on Sentry.

GothicKratos

skydivearcher wrote:

The world rupture change, I'm not convinced it is a good idea to increase the damage on rank 5. Primarily because of Daken. Yes it takes more AP to fire off world rupture, it essentially means you need to potentially make two extra sets of green matches. Which means if there are the red tiles to support them, you are going to see more red strike tiles because of Daken, thereby actually increasing the damage of each world rupture countdown tile. Now if someone goes into a fight without AP boosts but with Daken, by the time you made the four green matches you need to fire off world rupture, you can potentially be looking at enough strike tiles to come close to matching what is given by sacrifice! Now if you couple that with Blade's green passive and or add in sacrifice as well, you could still be looking some rather large damage even if just a handful of those world rupture tiles actually resolve..

If you had four green matches, daken will add about 392 worth of strike tile damage, combine that with sacrifice's 571, you are looking at over 1k damage per world rupture strike tile damage. Obviously it's highly unlikely but not impossible for you to get off all 16 world rupture countdown tiles, half of them will be close to 8k damage and that's enough to take out the vast majority of unbuffed characters all for a cool 20 (green and yellow) AP, even Grey Suit BW doesn't do that much damage with her 19AP green!

The world rupture change on its own looks ok, but as I pointed out when you combine it with someone like Daken all it means is we'll see a lot more Daken's replacing Hood....Now if you want to avoid that, I would recommend a colour change either for world rupture or the colouor that triggers daken's pheromone rage.

The point wasn't to take the damage away completely, it was to slow it down, effectively removing the viability of Sentrybombing.

loroku

So, Sentry goes from doing 13.5k to the enemy team to 12k to the enemy team. Still higher than the highest HP of anyone except dino. Granted, 3 turns vs. 2 is big, but thanks to Hood it can still be 2 turns. So really the biggest change is 7 AP to 12, which means two matches instead of 1. So... they'll be adding 2 turns to Sentry bombing. Not sure I see the point.

Unknown

Wow just wow D3, even when nerfing Sentry, after a million years of abuse, you still blow it.
Hood's yellow didnt need to be touched, but to make it worse it's now complete garbage. Standard dmg for a very high cost THAT ENDS THE TURN? ****!
Your improvisation with character balance is just a farce.
Sorry.

PS: Adding 2 turns to Sentry bombing won't really change anything, the yellow nerf is meaningless and adding dmg to rupture, yeah right. Don't come telling people that you actually care about diverse gameplay and balance.

Unknown

I mean, the biggest changes were to Green: Goes from 7 to 12, but more importantly, now takes 3 turns instead of 2!

Dragon_Nexus

No expert, me, but looking at it it does seem to do a good job of slowing him down a bit without making him completely useless. He's still a functional character, though I think you're better off pairing him with Black Panther if you want those yellow spend strike tiles.

Pwuz_

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

No expert, me, but looking at it it does seem to do a good job of slowing him down a bit without making him completely useless. He's still a functional character, though I think you're better off pairing him with Black Panther if you want those yellow spend strike tiles.

Given the choice at this point, 5/5/3 may become the better build. It's obvious the developers want us to value Supernova more since it got hit the softest in these nerfs.

wymtime

douk123 wrote:

Wow just wow D3, even when nerfing Sentry, after a million years of abuse, you still blow it.
Hood's yellow didnt need to be touched, but to make it worse it's now complete garbage. Standard dmg for a very high cost THAT ENDS THE TURN? ****!
Your improvisation with character balance is just a farce.
Sorry.

PS: Adding 2 turns to Sentry bombing won't really change anything, the yellow nerf is meaningless and adding dmg to rupture, yeah right. Don't come telling people that you actually care about diverse gameplay and balance.

The Sentry change is going to be fairly big. Right now you can use boost 2 green, 3 yellow, 2 to all and win with 1 match of green and yellow not using hood. Now the AI has a lot more opportunity to get powers off with cascades. If you boost you need 2 green matches, 1 yellow and you are boosting 3 to all. You also have to wait 3 turns of CD so many more can be matched before WR goes off. If enough WR tiles get wiped out the you will be out of AP and the AI will be ready to stomp you with either Sentry or X-force. I can see a lot more Sentry wipe outs while trying to shield hop. It might be better to use LThor to try and hop instead. 2 yellow matches with boosts for thunder strike then COTS. you will take out the main threat and then work on everyone else without taking the self damage of Sentry. X-force would be more ideal, but LThor is now a vary viable option.

Spoit

GothicKratos wrote:

skydivearcher wrote:

The world rupture change, I'm not convinced it is a good idea to increase the damage on rank 5. Primarily because of Daken. Yes it takes more AP to fire off world rupture, it essentially means you need to potentially make two extra sets of green matches. Which means if there are the red tiles to support them, you are going to see more red strike tiles because of Daken, thereby actually increasing the damage of each world rupture countdown tile. Now if someone goes into a fight without AP boosts but with Daken, by the time you made the four green matches you need to fire off world rupture, you can potentially be looking at enough strike tiles to come close to matching what is given by sacrifice! Now if you couple that with Blade's green passive and or add in sacrifice as well, you could still be looking some rather large damage even if just a handful of those world rupture tiles actually resolve..

If you had four green matches, daken will add about 392 worth of strike tile damage, combine that with sacrifice's 571, you are looking at over 1k damage per world rupture strike tile damage. Obviously it's highly unlikely but not impossible for you to get off all 16 world rupture countdown tiles, half of them will be close to 8k damage and that's enough to take out the vast majority of unbuffed characters all for a cool 20 (green and yellow) AP, even Grey Suit BW doesn't do that much damage with her 19AP green!

The world rupture change on its own looks ok, but as I pointed out when you combine it with someone like Daken all it means is we'll see a lot more Daken's replacing Hood....Now if you want to avoid that, I would recommend a colour change either for world rupture or the colouor that triggers daken's pheromone rage.

The point wasn't to take the damage away completely, it was to slow it down, effectively removing the viability of Sentrybombing.

And honestly, since the lion's share of the damage comes from the strike double dipping, it would still be 99% as effective if it only did 1 damage per cooldown tile

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

skydivearcher wrote:

*snip*

The point wasn't to take the damage away completely, it was to slow it down, effectively removing the viability of Sentrybombing.

Yea but if you look carefully at what I'm saying, it's not. Indirectly by increasing the amount of green AP you need and specifically using Daken instead of Hood, you are actually increasing his viability because with this combo you are generating extra strike tiles thereby increasing its damage! Before the hood/sentry combo became well known I was using Daken with Sentry to take out lvl 395 story mode teams, this was before the Daken "nerf" and it was a very effective way of bumping up the damage to opposing teams and near enough wiping them all out unless it had a lvl 300+ venom and/or juggernaut.

That's why I am saying that either Sentry's world rupture or Daken's pheromone rage will also need a colour tile change if you want to lower the impact of world rupture. Cause under the current proposals, all you will see is people swapping out their hoods for daken's. And using hood to slow down the green ap generation for a sentry/daken team would be a bad thing, as he would need to make more green matches and potentially means more strike tiles (thus potentially bigger world ruptures).

It's great that D3 is taking balancing issues seriously but some of their changes are not thoroughly thought out. At least that's what it seems without further comments from them...

Most other strike tile generation doesn't matter unless it's generated passively like Daken's and the only other one I can think of is Blade but he doesn't require you to match green

Unknown

Pwuz_ wrote:

Given the choice at this point, 5/5/3 may become the better build. It's obvious the developers want us to value Supernova more since it got hit the softest in these nerfs.

Turn ending skills that cause cascades are never going to get a focus from me, since they're incredibly risky. They'll get used at most once per match (at the end), and, especially in Supernova's case, only reluctantly then (due to self-damage). I see Sentry as an automatic 3/5/5 unless his powers get completely revamped. The nerfing does nothing to change it for me. Supernova has just too many downsides to consider it anything other than a weak third power. It's a desperation-only move.

Pwuz_

Ben Grimm wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

Given the choice at this point, 5/5/3 may become the better build. It's obvious the developers want us to value Supernova more since it got hit the softest in these nerfs.

Turn ending skills that cause cascades are never going to get a focus from me, since they're incredibly risky. They'll get used at most once per match (at the end), and, especially in Supernova's case, only reluctantly then (due to self-damage). I see Sentry as an automatic 3/5/5 unless his powers get completely revamped. The nerfing does nothing to change it for me. Supernova has just too many downsides to consider it anything other than a weak third power. It's a desperation-only move.

I think you are under valuing Supernova on defense.

I agree that Turn Ending moves in general are a poor choice, however, more than once I've been put in a situation where the ONLY available move is something that lines up a beautiful match 5 cascade for the AI to smash me with. I'd rather take my chances with Supernova (or the new Twin Pistols) rather than knowingly walk into a situation that gives the AI a match 5.

NorthernPolarity

skydivearcher wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

skydivearcher wrote:

*snip*

The point wasn't to take the damage away completely, it was to slow it down, effectively removing the viability of Sentrybombing.

Yea but if you look carefully at what I'm saying, it's not. Indirectly by increasing the amount of green AP you need and specifically using Daken instead of Hood, you are actually increasing his viability because with this combo you are generating extra strike tiles thereby increasing its damage! Before the hood/sentry combo became well known I was using Daken with Sentry to take out lvl 395 story mode teams, this was before the Daken "nerf" and it was a very effective way of bumping up the damage to opposing teams and near enough wiping them all out unless it had a lvl 300+ venom and/or juggernaut.

That's why I am saying that either Sentry's world rupture or Daken's pheromone rage will also need a colour tile change if you want to lower the impact of world rupture. Cause under the current proposals, all you will see is people swapping out their hoods for daken's. And using hood to slow down the green ap generation for a sentry/daken team would be a bad thing, as he would need to make more green matches and potentially means more strike tiles (thus potentially bigger world ruptures).

It's great that D3 is taking balancing issues seriously but some of their changes are not thoroughly thought out. At least that's what it seems without further comments from them...

Most other strike tile generation doesn't matter unless it's generated passively like Daken's and the only other one I can think of is Blade but he doesn't require you to match green

I actually think the Sentry changes are very well done. You seem to think that the WR / CD tile mechanic needs to be completely removed from the game, but it doesn't need to be. Think about it this way: Sentry's MAIN mechanic is that he's powerful at the cost of sustainability. If you overnerf Sentry to the point where he's say, as powerful as lazythor, then he's a terrible character because who would use Sentry when you can use LazyThor instead?

The reason why Sentry is broken right now is because he wins the games in 3-6 turns. These nerfs DOUBLE the amount of time needed for Sentry bombing to work (at least 3 turns from the +1CD and 7->12 AP), which makes bombing twice as slow two minutes?) and a lot more inconsistent. Slowing it down by this much makes him much more reasonable, possibly even balanced. Just let the changes happen and see how it goes: I'm sure the results are much better than you expect them to be.

Unknown

Who are Sentry's best partners now?

rixmith

I'm okay with Hood's Yellow being changed to damage instead of AP gain. It gives a major incentive to level him to gain the extra damage. At 5K+ he can finish off a lot of characters either as a desperation move to prevent a large ability from firing off or to end the game. I'm not fond of it ending the turn, but I guess I'll have to live with that.

As for Sentry, I think his biggest broken feature is the ability to wait until the last minute to use Sacrifice (and then use Intimidate to give no chance for it to be matched away). I'd like to see Sacrifice turned into an ability that allows the player to place a 4 turn yellow countdown tile that each turn damages Sentry and places a strike tile (both could be roughly a quarter of the present values, though the damage could be a bit lower). This would really give the opponent a chance to survive and reduce Intimidation abuse.

HailMary

skydivearcher wrote:

Yea but if you look carefully at what I'm saying, it's not. Indirectly by increasing the amount of green AP you need and specifically using Daken instead of Hood, you are actually increasing his viability because with this combo you are generating extra strike tiles thereby increasing its damage! Before the hood/sentry combo became well known I was using Daken with Sentry to take out lvl 395 story mode teams, this was before the Daken "nerf" and it was a very effective way of bumping up the damage to opposing teams and near enough wiping them all out unless it had a lvl 300+ venom and/or juggernaut.

This argument makes absolutely no sense.

What you're essentially saying is "making WR more expensive makes it more viable with Daken, because it lets you get more PRage strikes." You do realize that, even with the current WR, you don't have to cast WR at the earliest opportunity, and already have the ability to cast WR after you get more PRage strikes, right? You can currently match even more green after casting WR, while you wait for its CDs to count down.

With regard to Daken synergy, the Sentry nerf delays WR's activation by 2+ turns. Instead of having the option to wait for more green matches, the nerf forces you to wait for those extra green matches (and the extra turn on top of that). There is no synergistic upside whatsoever.

Unknown

Pwuz_ wrote:

I think you are under valuing Supernova on defense.

Supernova's good enough at 3 on defense, plus Sentry is simply not going to be a defensive character much for me, because I only use him for shield hops or very high point value targets, and in both cases I'm almost never going to get a retaliation. The way I use Sentry, his defense is almost irrelevant.