*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

Unknown

No nerf needed for Sentry. Plenty of counters are already in game. People just haven't figured it out yet.

Spideys protect tiles. Cmags protect tiles. Classic Storms yellow. Hulks anger. Bullseyes protect tiles. OBWs blue.

Any of those and World Rupture can either do next to no damage or can actually down his own team.

Yes if someone uses boosts they can down a team very fast but that can be said for a lot of characters.

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.

As other people have noted, this would make them identical to attack tiles (except that they wouldn't proc if you were matching environment tiles without any other source of damage that time).

But I wonder if it would make sense to have diminishing returns on each strike tile bonus after the first-- IE if each subsequent proc was at 70% of the strength of the first one. (IE if you have 100 damage worth of strike tiles, the first proc adds 100 damage, the second adds 70 damage, the third adds 49, and so on).

reckless442

kerravon wrote:

No nerf needed for Sentry. Plenty of counters are already in game. People just haven't figured it out yet.

Spideys protect tiles. Cmags protect tiles. Classic Storms yellow. Hulks anger. Bullseyes protect tiles. OBWs blue.

Any of those and World Rupture can either do next to no damage or can actually down his own team.

Yes if someone uses boosts they can down a team very fast but that can be said for a lot of characters.

Most of those counters don't solve the problem when Sentry's World Rupture is used in concert with Sacrifice. At max level, each countdown node does 148 normally, plus 575, or 723 points of damage. If 10 of 16 survive, that's 7230 damage. If 12 of 16 survive, that's 8676, of nearly the full health of Lazy Thor or Sentry.

Just to address the different counters you mention. Because each countdown is separate damage, that is not enough points to trigger Hulk's anger, assuming Hulk is medium-level or above. Classic Storm, with maximum of 3115 health is dead from five countdown tiles, so her yellow will never trigger. OBW's blue will delay the countdown, but she needs to get 11 blue to use that power. If the player makes his yellow and green matches on the first two turns, the powers will fire before OBW can collect enough blue to use that power.

As for protect tiles, they can be a nightmare to the player without Sacrifice, resulting in the player taking more damage than the opponent. However, with Sacrifice, the protect tiles only help lessen the damage from each countdown node to a point. At max level, each of Bullseye's protect tiles reduce damage by by 37, Magneto's by 59 points; and Spidey's by 104 (it's unlikely he could get protect tiles and get enough blue to generate web tiles to increase their strength in the time required). I would think, at best, you can get down 200 points of protect tiles before World Rupture goes off. So it would do only about 500 damage per node. That's still enough to down a lot of characters, and, with Sentry's red costing only 11 ap (remember, the boosted player is beginning with six), Supernova should eliminate the rest.

Unknown

I have used him as a lvl 115 he actually has alot of downside too. He is powerful only when you managed to get off WR + sacrifice. His limitations include-

1. Eating up your health pack fast (hard to do a long run- ok for shield hops)
2. fairly dependent on boost
3. to do a 'speed run' you need a very good board from the start to end game in 6 turns (able to match X2 green and X2 yellow even with boost- then wait 2 turns for WR to cast)
4. Protect tile and many random factors can stop the 'big' dmg.

Lets compare Sentry to LThor-

LThor basically only need 12 Yellow to feed into his Green, which will most likely win most fights once you get it.

If you start the fight with the same amount of boost (X3 green and yellow) He only needs to match X3 yellow and maybe 1X green to get his combo off (Thunder strike -> CtS) so thats 4 matches as well.

That is with the benefit of-

1.no dmg taken by the own team
2.no chance of combo getting spoiled if strike tile gets matched by opponent or cascades

I think Sentry is on the same level of power as LThor. WR+sacrifice can indeed do alot of dmg, however many conditions needed to be filled. I think defence wise LThor might be better than Sentry as it is much much easier for a player to ruin WR combo but you cannot really stop LThor. Having played sentry as long as your can deny his yellow his WR is pretty soft especially if you get some protect tiles out. The AI is also not smart enough to use WR+Sacrifice combo (at least the ones i fought against). On the other hand his supernooba is pretty annoying as it does big dmg.

Unknown

My take is Sentry is only overpowered for the (very) few who can abuse boosts, shields and health packs continuously. The character shouldn't be balanced for these people. For anyone else, he's a solid defensive character that can be used on offence but only in short bursts for shield hops at the top of the table.

Unknown

Those videos show just how powerful Sentry is, especially combined with a 5 black Hood (which I hadn't considered). I definitely want more covers for him now so I can max him out.

reckless442

Vanapak wrote:

I have used him as a lvl 115 he actually has alot of downside too. He is powerful only when you managed to get off WR + sacrifice. His limitations include-

1. Eating up your health pack fast (hard to do a long run- ok for shield hops)
2. fairly dependent on boost
3. to do a 'speed run' you need a very good board from the start to end game in 6 turns (able to match X2 green and X2 yellow even with boost- then wait 2 turns for WR to cast)
4. Protect tile and many random factors can stop the 'big' dmg.

Lets compare Sentry to LThor-

LThor basically only need 12 Yellow to feed into his Green, which will most likely win most fights once you get it.

If you start the fight with the same amount of boost (X3 green and yellow) He only needs to match X3 yellow and maybe 1X green to get his combo off (Thunder strike -> CtS) so thats 4 matches as well.

That is with the benefit of-

1.no dmg taken by the own team
2.no chance of combo getting spoiled if strike tile gets matched by opponent or cascades

I think Sentry is on the same level of power as LThor. WR+sacrifice can indeed do alot of dmg, however many conditions needed to be filled. I think defence wise LThor might be better than Sentry as it is much much easier for a player to ruin WR combo but you cannot really stop LThor. Having played sentry as long as your can deny his yellow his WR is pretty soft especially if you get some protect tiles out. The AI is also not smart enough to use WR+Sacrifice combo (at least the ones i fought against). On the other hand his supernooba is pretty annoying as it does big dmg.

Even assuming that Modern Thor's yellow will generate the 8 green ap required to use Call the Storm that quickly, max-level Modern Thor does significantly less damage than Sentry's World Rupture/Sacrifice. Call the Storm: 3854 to the main target and 1927 to the others. Thunder Strike: 2121 to one target. So at most, Modern Thor can do 5975 to a single target and 1917 to the others. So in those moves, he could take out one lower-health 3* (anyone with 5800 max health or under) and do decent damage to others. He could not kill another max-level Modern Thor, Sentry, Steve Rogers, or Black Panther. And there is no way that Modern Thor could kill more than one of three max-level 3* opponents, let alone defeat an entire team with those two powers.

That is a huge difference. Sentry's green/yellow combo does 723 per countdown node to each member of the opposing team. You only need five tiles to survive to do more damage than Grey Suit Black Widow's green (19 ap); Black Panther's black (12 ap), and IM40s blue (20 blue ap plus up to 3 from all other colors). Each countdown does 54 damage to Sentry and the team, so, with 10 surviving nodes, you would do 7230 to each opponent and 540 to your own team. Yes, it's some damage, but it's hardly game-changing damage.

Unknown

I don't think Sentry will ever be nerfed simply because he feeds so nicely into the developers pockets. If you want to abuse him, you will need a lot of HP to do so. You'll need to spend excessively on boosts to get the most out of him, and you'll also want to be buying health packs if you intend to run him for more than just 3-5 matches.

If you play Sentry "normally", without boosts, he is a top tier character for sure, but nowhere near as OP as he is if you use boosts all the time. The fact he damages himself and his team is a decent downside, simply because of the reliance on health packs (unless you have a large roster of high level characters to swap in, meaning you just have to heal Sentry).

Either way, I don't want him nerfed yet, at least not until I've had a chance to run him at 141 for a while (and I'm still several covers short of that).

over_clocked

Reckless, oBW needs only 9 blue to delay CD tiles (levels 3-5).
And 3115 is oBW's health, not cStorm's, cStorm has 2670.

Unknown

Absolutely, but it doesn't need to be anything that dramatic. As previously mentioned, I like the idea of increasing the cost of his green and yellow, or just reducing damage.

Unknown

Ok, i've used Sentry/Daken and Thor/Daken a fair bit in PvP and this is how I compare the two....

-Both win every time for me... haven't lost a PvP in ages but actually came closer with Sentry when a freak cascade killed his yellow strike.... that sucked.

-Sentry wins quicker (boosts or not) BUT the difference is MUCH bigger with boosts than without. Even limiting yourself to a +3 red/yellow can leave you waiting some time for the 2 green and yellow matches on an uncooperative board.

-Thor teams come out less damaged. Even though the fight lasts longer I generally get a lot more Thor/Daken matches out without using any health packs than Sentry/Daken. Especially since, with Thor, my featured hero rarely gets hit most of the time.

If you remove boosts from the equation entirely then I would say the major difference between the 2 is you exchange a moderate increase in speed for a moderate amount of extra damage taken. The trouble, IMO, is boosts allow Sentry to ramp up too quickly because of the cost of his powers. Having said that solutions like large flat increases in cost to everything or strikes only applying once to world rupture don't work at all.

If you don't use boosts Sentry is really not that much more impressive than other top tier heroes, if at all. So significantly increasing his powers' costs JUST to deal with the interaction with boosts, including HP spend per match is way over the top. If you're killing yourself (and your team) for every power you can't start balancing AP costs on a pure damage per AP basis and just ignore the self damage as a factor. In fact, for world rupture, you also need to take into account it's a CD tile power which generally gets a big boost in effect.

eg. the much maligned Modern Hawkeye... His electric arrow does 2456 damage @ lvl 85 5 covers AND a 4 turn stun. Astonishing Wolvie does 2884 for 12 with adamantine slash. So Hawkeye does MORE damage per ap AND gets a stun all because it's tied to a CD tile (and ppl claim he's ****....). So there is a value attached to your ability being on a CD although I will admit it's much easier to clear one CD tile than 10+.

As for only applying strikes once to world rupture... ****? So @141 5 covers if somehow all tiles are made AND survive to fire that's 2.8k AoE damage for 800 AoE to yourself which seems ok but what if they have a single 104 protect tile from a spidey match say? Then we're losing 1664 damage and now doing 1.2k for 800 returned.. so I can do so-so damage for self damage NO-ONE wants to take in that exchange because I have to heal it up. You could make protect tiles only apply once but then anyone playing offence vs a Sentry loses the best way of dealing with world rupture by putting some protects out.

Best idea on here is to nerf sacrifice somewhat IMO. Less strike tile damage for less self damage would solve the problem of insta-wins there and then. Maybe halve both? Alternatively you could change world rupture's progression through covers to increase damage by more and number of tiles by less. If it topped out at 10 tiles (and you'd expect to get less formed due to env tiles and special tiles and some to go to matches) then the effect of strikes is less marked.

Also worth noting Sentry+1 is BY NO MEANS the only pairing that can win a game VERY quickly if you are willing to use a +3 to all and 2 lots of +3 to 2 colours. Simply hammering him won't have as massive of an impact as ppl are implying on the ability to shield hop to big scores. The game is fundamentally P2W and I doubt that'll change.

Unknown

IMO, the only thing that needs nerfed is threads calling for the nerfing of characters... I do not use Sentry and never will as I don't like the damage he causes to the team, but just because I don't like him, and get beat up sometimes by the LDaken/Sentry combo doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed. You can find a strategy to beat ANY team if you put some thought into it, instead people continue to post threads calling for the nerfing of So and So every week because they would rather complain then come up with a strategy to beat that specific character...

Unknown

WilliamK99 wrote:

IMO, the only thing that needs nerfed is threads calling for the nerfing of characters... I do not use Sentry and never will as I don't like the damage he causes to the team, but just because I don't like him, and get beat up sometimes by the LDaken/Sentry combo doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed. You can find a strategy to beat ANY team if you put some thought into it, instead people continue to post threads calling for the nerfing of So and So every week because they would rather complain then come up with a strategy to beat that specific character...

I think you're misinterpreting. People aren't complaining about winning vs Senty+1, the question is does he win games too quickly. Is he so fast at winning that, with the current shield hopping meta, you have to play him to be competitive because you can get an extra attack in between shields over EVERY other pairing.

I think probably yes but the degree of nerf some ppl are sugesting is a bit extreme. Also I agree with you about self damage. I'll use sentry but not routinely.

Unknown

One way to slow down fast kills is limit the amount of color boosts you can use to only have plus 3. So either use the hp one 3 times. Or use the plus 1s 3x3. No combining. That way you never start with more than 3 of any color

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

WilliamK99 wrote:

IMO, the only thing that needs nerfed is threads calling for the nerfing of characters... I do not use Sentry and never will as I don't like the damage he causes to the team, but just because I don't like him, and get beat up sometimes by the LDaken/Sentry combo doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed. You can find a strategy to beat ANY team if you put some thought into it, instead people continue to post threads calling for the nerfing of So and So every week because they would rather complain then come up with a strategy to beat that specific character...

I think you're misinterpreting. People aren't complaining about winning vs Senty+1, the question is does he win games too quickly. Is he so fast at winning that, with the current shield hopping meta, you have to play him to be competitive because you can get an extra attack in between shields over EVERY other pairing.

I think probably yes but the degree of nerf some ppl are sugesting is a bit extreme. Also I agree with you about self damage. I'll use sentry but not routinely.

My complaint isn't just about this thread, it's basically every thread that opens up almost weekly calling for the nerfing of a character. I honestly don't see what the big deal is as if you feel someone is using Sentry to gain an advantage, level yours up and join in the fun, I will continue to use my Patch/LDaken combo and win games in about the same amount of time until someone tries to get that nerfed next...

Unknown

I dont think he needs to be nerfed
Sure he is quick with boosts, but you HAVE TO heal him and other team members every 3 or 4 fights. It's a huge limit.
Lthor has the same health, and with boosts he is nearly as fast as sentry, without any downside.

user311

I have seen the videos. I can see how devastating this whole Boosted AP+Sentry can be. But I think the issue is with the boost and not the character. There are several character combos that can equally guarantee wins with a bonus 6AP (including infinite turning M.Storm|GSBW; CMags|Patch/Pun) it just depends on how long you want to play. I practically lived off of the infinite turn before the last Boost nerf. Then I found other ways to play. Winning under a minute is doable with others but its take more skill. I think its the AP boost that need revised or removed from Versus play. On a level playing field Sentry is a huge gamble as a board void of greens is insta-death as well as a fight with OBW who can just as easily increase your timer countdowns.

Unknown

Sentry defenitely needs adjustment but the real culprit is boosts and shields. The problem is anything D3 can sell for money they won't remove.

The original intent for shields (I'm deciding this for the developers unless they say otherwise) is that because of the ending times and time zones there was a need to balance it out. What happened first is all the scores sky-rocketed from people bouncing off each of the shielding people with no fear of retaliation and scores not dropping as much as they were going up. So they made shielded people invisible. This meant for every 50 then 100 then 75 HP you could just kill a few people at the high end and hide until the sharks went away then rinse and repeat. Without a cap on the number of shields or a time requirement between reshielding, this ultimately meant P2W. The more shields you had, the more point you get. Takes 0 talent to win 1 or 2 fast matches and reshield but that's what people decided. Rather than play to earn covers/iso/hp etc, people played for their fictional ranking which ultimately means nothing since you're not getting a reward anywhere close to worth that effort. To fix the system, people need to come up with an idea that will not strip D3 of a big money maker while at the same time limiting the P2W function the shields serve at the moment. Reckless idea of making shields cost more and last 12 hours isn't a bad one. Another could be limiting the total number of shields per event. Yet another could be putting a countdown timer from the time you unshield or the time you you last shielded so it would function more as originally intended. Everyone who played in the elite tournaments prior to the LR version of the elite tournament can attest to the fact that it was several days of shield hopping which is no fun and made everyone game the mechanics. Not a meta game for most people so many, myself included, sat out.

The second thing that has to be nerfed are the pre-buffs. I'm sure D3 makes alot of money off of selling these too so they probably won't go away. The problem which is completely contrary to their 'make matches longer' direction is that they trivialize all combat. You can basically just knock 6 off the cost of any ability and then you get the end-game cost. Maybe 3 slots is as much a problem selling the boosts. Perhaps if you could use 1 slot of boost up to 3 (or 5) stacks then we wouldn't have such a fast end-game. Perhaps stacking the buffs is the problem and we should limit to +1 in any one slot. That would slow down the end game a lot but people would still buy buffs, maybe just different ones. The character testing clearly doesn't take into account pre-buffs or they would never release a character who could do 10k damage on his own in 5 turns to the entire other team.

The irony is that Black Panther who would take at the minimum 2 matches as well, has less health, and 2 pretty weak secondary skills had to be nerfed because his black did 'way too much damage' because he could nearly kill 5k characters on his own while giving the team 5 of their strongest color. Rags was nerfed because he could roll his red and green for a dozen or more turns until the other team was finally dead. This would take a while but man it was so strong. . . . . Yet a toon who can end a match solo in 5 turns couldn't possibly be OP?? Well he's clearly not OP until enough people buy his covers.

I was ready to say there was a clear D3 formula here: Release severely OP character. Everyone buys character. Month or 2 later, neuter said character and release an even better one. Unfortunately the bump in the road called Storm happened so maybe that's just to throw us off. But anyone who thinks Sentry isn't too fast is completely delusional. But the real problem isn't the character or any of them rather the fact that you can pre-buff just about any skill to being 1-2 turns from using right at the start. And that you can do this repeatedly over and over if you are willing to buy the win and shield up.

So, Need to be nerfed? Probably. Likelihood that he be nerfed? Very. Does it matter in the end? No Because they'll just release another sentry with piss-poor pre-release testing. But the feeling that he's OP would diminish if he couldn't start every match 90% on his way to getting off his abilities.

Unknown

LoreNYC wrote:

So, Need to be nerfed? Probably. Likelihood that he be nerfed? Very. Does it matter in the end? No Because they'll just release another sentry with piss-poor pre-release testing. But the feeling that he's OP would diminish if he couldn't start every match 90% on his way to getting off his abilities.

It'll matter to Flo98. Sentry's the only play that muppet's got.

Unknown

JessyC01 wrote:

Absolutely, but it doesn't need to be anything that dramatic. As previously mentioned, I like the idea of increasing the cost of his green and yellow, or just reducing damage.

The problem with these devs is they go straight for the jugular, crippling characters that only needed minor adjustments...I have no confidence that they will do anything but destroy sentry... Those calling for a nerf just remember this when the next released character is OPed then nerfed, and then the next, and the next after that....