Sidewinder unannounced nerf

@dianetics said:
I don't know why people are trying to defend the old kit.
He was legit broken. The dev's knew it and the players knew it.
They did a baby nerf and it changed nothing...he was still broken and the players told the dev's he was still broken. He was still way to strong and EVERYBODY knew it.
Day 1
KGB "Gotta be some typos on that Yellow"
Chrynos1989 "the yellow sounds insane"
LavaManLee "This kit looks bonkers good in 5* land"
DAZ0273 "AP, Match damage and away shenanigans, thank god this guy wasn't a Support! Sounds like a new "kill on sight" character like Polaris."

Everybody knew this kit was stupid **** good.

When he went live I said "He’s stupid and broken"
Then the thread devolved into **** slinging.

Once he got established people knew he was bad for the game.

If he was good for the game the dev's would not changed him.

I bet the metrics showed he was probably the strongest character they ever released.

Anybody defending him and his kit deserve losing whatever they threw into him.
Sorry not sorry.

I'm glad that is your opinion. I have a different one. I agree his kit was broken. No argument there. Maybe they didn't have to hammer him so hard that he is essentially worthless. As I have mentioned twice now, they could have done EITHER the TU drain or the % reduction. Doing both at the same time was unnecessary.

@LavaManLee said:
I'm glad that is your opinion. I have a different one. I agree his kit was broken. No argument there. Maybe they didn't have to hammer him so hard that he is essentially worthless. As I have mentioned twice now, they could have done EITHER the TU drain or the % reduction. Doing both at the same time was unnecessary.

I gave you a team with supports that is competitive in PvE.
Noting speed and placement I will probably end up top 20 for this PvE event in the first slice with no boosted characters using this team.

His nerf isn't as bad as you are making it out to be. On any match of TU he gets an extra hit.
He is still giving up to 400% boost. On match 3 that can be 30-50k for unboosted matchers. For boosted matchers it is still stupid strong.

Use him with a team that synergizes with him and the correct supports.

Don't use him like before as a cudgel to bully whip whatever you are trying to destroy on turn 1. You can still win on turn 2.

@dianetics said:

@LavaManLee said:
I'm glad that is your opinion. I have a different one. I agree his kit was broken. No argument there. Maybe they didn't have to hammer him so hard that he is essentially worthless. As I have mentioned twice now, they could have done EITHER the TU drain or the % reduction. Doing both at the same time was unnecessary.

I gave you a team with supports that is competitive in PvE.
Noting speed and placement I will probably end up top 20 for this PvE event in the first slice with no boosted characters using this team.

His nerf isn't as bad as you are making it out to be. On any match of TU he gets an extra hit.
He is still giving up to 400% boost. On match 3 that can be 30-50k for unboosted matchers. For boosted matchers it is still stupid strong.

Use him with a team that synergizes with him and the correct supports.

Don't use him like before as a cudgel to bully whip whatever you are trying to destroy on turn 1. You can still win on turn 2.

Just tried it in PVP and not even close to working. When going up against other boosted toons with 200k+, it doesn't work one bit. At least for me. If you figured out it works for you, that is awesome. But definitely doesn't move the needle at all for me.

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
I'm fine with the change. It seemed obvious that he was a screwup, from the beginning, and they did say that.

I'm not at all fine with how they went about it. Why wasn't this change announced in advance? Or, like, announced at all? Why did they wait so long? I said it in another thread -- this guy was so good that you really kind of had to have him, for as long as he existed. So we ended up being forced to go after him without knowing how long he'd be around.

I'm sure this is not an intentional bait and switch, because I really don't believe they're capable of that. He was an accident that they took too long to fix. It sure looks like a bait and switch though! And it feeds all these weird conspiracy theories about their intentions.

I never felt like I "needed to go after him" beyond whatever I earned naturally (I think he's high 280s right now... par with other new release 4s). I didn't spend any resources swapping for him, because again, he's usable at 5 yellow and... THEY TOLD US THEY WERE GOING TO NERF HIM on March 7th before anyone had the ability to spend resources targeting him. I didn't fall massively behind playing him with 5 yellow and waiting to see what the nerf was. Anyone who hit the panic button and went all in or felt they "needed" this character at more than 5 covers to compete... I hope you enjoyed your month of dominance (if that? This was a pretty swift nerf).

If they knew on March 7th that he needed to be changed, then he should've been changed on March 8. Why wait at all? It just feeds the conspiracy theories.

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
I'm fine with the change. It seemed obvious that he was a screwup, from the beginning, and they did say that.

I'm not at all fine with how they went about it. Why wasn't this change announced in advance? Or, like, announced at all? Why did they wait so long? I said it in another thread -- this guy was so good that you really kind of had to have him, for as long as he existed. So we ended up being forced to go after him without knowing how long he'd be around.

I'm sure this is not an intentional bait and switch, because I really don't believe they're capable of that. He was an accident that they took too long to fix. It sure looks like a bait and switch though! And it feeds all these weird conspiracy theories about their intentions.

I never felt like I "needed to go after him" beyond whatever I earned naturally (I think he's high 280s right now... par with other new release 4s). I didn't spend any resources swapping for him, because again, he's usable at 5 yellow and... THEY TOLD US THEY WERE GOING TO NERF HIM on March 7th before anyone had the ability to spend resources targeting him. I didn't fall massively behind playing him with 5 yellow and waiting to see what the nerf was. Anyone who hit the panic button and went all in or felt they "needed" this character at more than 5 covers to compete... I hope you enjoyed your month of dominance (if that? This was a pretty swift nerf).

If they knew on March 7th that he needed to be changed, then he should've been changed on March 8. Why wait at all? It just feeds the conspiracy theories.

Probably they needed more time to gather data to decide how much of a nerf he needed. Is he just helping players win a bit too easy and he just needs another small nerf, or is he getting so many wins for players that he needs a large nerf?

Apparently it was the latter.

@BriMan2222 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
I'm fine with the change. It seemed obvious that he was a screwup, from the beginning, and they did say that.

I'm not at all fine with how they went about it. Why wasn't this change announced in advance? Or, like, announced at all? Why did they wait so long? I said it in another thread -- this guy was so good that you really kind of had to have him, for as long as he existed. So we ended up being forced to go after him without knowing how long he'd be around.

I'm sure this is not an intentional bait and switch, because I really don't believe they're capable of that. He was an accident that they took too long to fix. It sure looks like a bait and switch though! And it feeds all these weird conspiracy theories about their intentions.

I never felt like I "needed to go after him" beyond whatever I earned naturally (I think he's high 280s right now... par with other new release 4s). I didn't spend any resources swapping for him, because again, he's usable at 5 yellow and... THEY TOLD US THEY WERE GOING TO NERF HIM on March 7th before anyone had the ability to spend resources targeting him. I didn't fall massively behind playing him with 5 yellow and waiting to see what the nerf was. Anyone who hit the panic button and went all in or felt they "needed" this character at more than 5 covers to compete... I hope you enjoyed your month of dominance (if that? This was a pretty swift nerf).

If they knew on March 7th that he needed to be changed, then he should've been changed on March 8. Why wait at all? It just feeds the conspiracy theories.

Probably they needed more time to gather data to decide how much of a nerf he needed. Is he just helping players win a bit too easy and he just needs another small nerf, or is he getting so many wins for players that he needs a large nerf?

Apparently it was the latter.

That and the second nerf probably took longer to implement, test (lol) and code since it wasn't a numbers tweak only.

@Grizwald said:
For anyone that has Seth ascended, what are his yellow stats?

OP literally has a screenshot with the yellow stats on the 4a5 version 😅

@entrailbucket said:

@BriMan2222 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
I'm fine with the change. It seemed obvious that he was a screwup, from the beginning, and they did say that.

I'm not at all fine with how they went about it. Why wasn't this change announced in advance? Or, like, announced at all? Why did they wait so long? I said it in another thread -- this guy was so good that you really kind of had to have him, for as long as he existed. So we ended up being forced to go after him without knowing how long he'd be around.

I'm sure this is not an intentional bait and switch, because I really don't believe they're capable of that. He was an accident that they took too long to fix. It sure looks like a bait and switch though! And it feeds all these weird conspiracy theories about their intentions.

I never felt like I "needed to go after him" beyond whatever I earned naturally (I think he's high 280s right now... par with other new release 4s). I didn't spend any resources swapping for him, because again, he's usable at 5 yellow and... THEY TOLD US THEY WERE GOING TO NERF HIM on March 7th before anyone had the ability to spend resources targeting him. I didn't fall massively behind playing him with 5 yellow and waiting to see what the nerf was. Anyone who hit the panic button and went all in or felt they "needed" this character at more than 5 covers to compete... I hope you enjoyed your month of dominance (if that? This was a pretty swift nerf).

If they knew on March 7th that he needed to be changed, then he should've been changed on March 8. Why wait at all? It just feeds the conspiracy theories.

Probably they needed more time to gather data to decide how much of a nerf he needed. Is he just helping players win a bit too easy and he just needs another small nerf, or is he getting so many wins for players that he needs a large nerf?

Apparently it was the latter.

I mean, listen: I love nerfs. I love THIS nerf. Anybody who invested in this obviously broken character deserves whatever they get. He was bad for the game and made it less fun to play, and nerfing him into the ground was the right thing to do.

But nobody is seriously defending an unannounced nerf that dropped with no particular warning and no details, right? Yeah they said they were looking at him, but they said they were looking at Chasm, then let him dominate the game for 6 more months. Why would anybody expect less for Sidewinder? And Chasm's nerf was announced in advance, not just dropped in the middle of the night.

They're just so, so bad at communication. There's still no official post for this!

According to Sokun on discord, they did intend to notify us first but they accidentally made the nerf live before they could announce it.

@BlackBoltRocks said:
It wasn't unannounced. They already said they'd be revisiting his Yellow after his boost had ended.

Many thanks to the devs for fixing him. Better late than never.

It wasn't announced when it happened. Not game ending but it definitely cost me a clear in the PvE that it first happened in. He worked fine one day and then all of a sudden that team up AP was disappearing. Pretty piss poor communication in the moment.

Not the end of the world by any means but also not at all the way a good developer does things. Nerfs are fine. Saying you are going to nerf a character in the future is fine. Doing it without actually posting it anywhere in game, on forum, on Discord etc less than optimal. Bad look.

@Scofie said:

@revskip said:

@BlackBoltRocks said:
It wasn't unannounced. They already said they'd be revisiting his Yellow after his boost had ended.

Many thanks to the devs for fixing him. Better late than never.

It wasn't announced when it happened. Not game ending but it definitely cost me a clear in the PvE that it first happened in. He worked fine one day and then all of a sudden that team up AP was disappearing. Pretty piss poor communication in the moment.

Not the end of the world by any means but also not at all the way a good developer does things. Nerfs are fine. Saying you are going to nerf a character in the future is fine. Doing it without actually posting it anywhere in game, on forum, on Discord etc less than optimal. Bad look.

The previous page shows that the change was implemented ahead of schedule and that comms were planned. As soon as the details were available they were posted. Mistakes happen. It's not like any individual was specifically disadvantaged because it was a surprise to everyone.

You are actually wrong about the disadvantaged part. Basically, anyone using Sidewinder in the final clear for that first PVE (before the nerf was "announced") was disadvantaged. I know that I was. Went from a T10 to a T50 in no time because I couldn't finish those final clears of the FU node and couldn't figure out what was going on. If one wasn't using him, it didn't matter. But for those who time their clears and know how long they should take, there was a definite disadvantage because of the unannounced nerf. To say that nobody was disadvantaged is simply not true.