***** Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes) ***** - Rebalance Details (10/26/21)

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  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    New Ghost Rider team: Cable/C4rol. Try and get some of Cable’s strikes out, and Hell Ride.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2021
    I know it sounds weird considering other broker characters like Okoye is still around. However, when you allow it to be a norm, GR will be the yardstick for tiles destruction damage and ap gains. Look at what Apocalypse, Okoye, Kitty, iHulk, Thor or BRB etc had done to all other 5* releases. They made them look unusable unless they are paired with the the meta.
  • St_Bernadus
    St_Bernadus Posts: 645 Critical Contributor
    Well I had fun climbing in his pvp. And I got my wins as well. 
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2021
    I used shang for to fast climbing, there were too many tough health bars. My GR's green is just level 2, still it was great for SC and GR another good partner for him now.
    And GR ghost repeater lasted for a lot of turns, so I would use it at level 5 if I had it.
  • LavaManLee
    LavaManLee Posts: 1,716 Chairperson of the Boards
    I made it to a little over 1000 points in his PVP and then shielded.  I really liked his boosted black.  When paired with 5*Storm, it was pretty easy to save up to fire black twice in a row, which could either take down or tear a huge chunk out of anybody.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    Focusing on his black turned out to be the move. I ran up to 1200 last night using Storm and then let it fall back without shielding. I was poking at it some today with Jessica Jones and C4rol today as a way to get decent strikes out quickly with some additional green generation when you stumble across those traps. It would be a lot better if she were also boosted, but I think JJ is still a solid 5* mechanically.
  • darkwatcherDEZ
    darkwatcherDEZ Posts: 114 Tile Toppler
    edited November 2021
    Given all the feedback and our own testing, the Robbie takeaways are an overall appreciation for the increased / rebalanced HP and match damage... and in general that the Devs took time to rework a classic 5*

    The changes to GREEN Hell Ride gets the mixed feelings. We do miss the AP generating repeaters, and the countdown is very fragile and too random. It does allow for play changes. We closed out the last PVP exploiting 5*Hawkeye's fortification and AP generation while keeping him behind  5* Iceman.

    In closing, and per an old adage, you can't please all the people all of the time. Meta chasers only care if the character changes feed into their Meta. Robbie may not do that, but all will appreciate come 5* boost rotation. In that case, he does provide an opportunity to change things up a bit. That and 4 to 5 transitioners get a "Hell of a Ride."
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    For me, Robbie now hits harder but fell out of his old niche pretty completely. I love his new health and damage, but here is the thing about Hell Ride:

    Regardless of the amount of damage it did or didn't do, it was an excellent green control power. It filled up 3 greens right away, and would then keep the board dry of it for essentially the remainder of the match from nibbling every turn. This gave you Thor and then hulk protection, though it was a little expensive to get out in time against Hulk. And the gathered AP fed his other powers, which is a big loss now.
  • Srheer0
    Srheer0 Posts: 510 Critical Contributor
    I ended up really enjoying the event once I switched from using ic5man as my third to St5rm.  

    Goal was to just use Wanda to get as many black aps as possible. St5rm making black tile charged each turn helped a lot with that goal.

    My ghostrider wasn't even champed, was at 12 covers. Will try him out in Sim to see if he is good unboosted. 
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,013 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    For me, Robbie now hits harder but fell out of his old niche pretty completely. I love his new health and damage, but here is the thing about Hell Ride:

    Regardless of the amount of damage it did or didn't do, it was an excellent green control power. It filled up 3 greens right away, and would then keep the board dry of it for essentially the remainder of the match from nibbling every turn. This gave you Thor and then hulk protection, though it was a little expensive to get out in time against Hulk. And the gathered AP fed his other powers, which is a big loss now.
    I think sometimes all of us (including me) lose sight of the point of the game, which is to kill the other guys.  (I also think the devs lose sight of this pretty often, but maybe not in this particular case).

    If they don't have a good idea for a power, I will always, always take "massive single target damage" over something like "create a 1-turn repeater that puts out one strike tile, buffs one protect tile, and makes a 3-turn countdown tile that sends an enemy airborne."

    "Spend x AP to do 100,000 damage" is boring, but it's effective, and powers like this are actually super rare now.  Look at how good Electro's black power played, vs what it looked like on paper.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2021
    Sure, his black is decidedly good now. Maybe his red is good too, but it’s just not the power of his I like I guess lol. Green was interesting before, and I guess it still is in a different way, but now for me he is tied to C4rol until a CD exploiter like Hawkeye but for black/green hits the 5* tier.

    I think it is a good rule of thumb to make sure every character has at least one good thing they can do, and one interesting thing. 
  • Sekilicious
    Sekilicious Posts: 1,766 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    Sure, his black is decidedly good now. Maybe his red is good too, but it’s just not the power of his I like I guess lol. Green was interesting before, and I guess it still is in a different way, but now for me he is tied to C4rol until a CD exploiter like Hawkeye but for black/green hits the 5* tier.

    I think it is a good rule of thumb to make sure every character has at least one good thing they can do, and one interesting thing. 
    Ideally, that interesting thing would be thematic of the character as well. There are a few characters that would be cooler if they did something more in line with the comic/cinema version, like if Ultron creating sentry bots that eventually enveloped the board (like Ronan's blue) or something similar. I like Electro, but also think it was a missed opportunity that she creates strikes instead of does something with charged tiles. I'm sure other characters powers could be used as examples as well. 
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,013 Chairperson of the Boards
    "Good vs interesting" or "good vs thematic" is another thing that exposes the fault lines among different kinds of players.  The best characters would ideally be good, interesting, and thematic. 

    But, I bet if you really press people, what matters is that characters are good.  Players will value different stuff, but if a guy does nothing good, nobody will ever use them.

    Look at someone like 5* Kingpin, who's definitely thematic/flavorful and really interesting, but is laugh-out-loud terrible.  Nobody uses him.  Banner is pretty flavorful!

    Maybe there's a group of hardcore MPQ roleplayers that I'm not aware of who pretend the characters are talking during matches and act out their powers or something, and for them, flavorful would be the top priority.


    One last somewhat related thing: when new characters show up, we generally evaluate them based on whatever thing they do that's interesting.  When we miss on guys it's almost always because we focus on that interesting thing, vs whatever stuff they do that's good.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    That's true, we do tend to latch on to what seems like their unique bit. I would say a recent "all interesting, no efficacy" release was probably Odin. I don't know, I probably just have more nostalgia goggles on for Ghost Rider than actual complaints. It just seemed to me like his old green was thematic, interesting, and good, and now it's less of all of those qualities to my eye.
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    What devs do is really good on designing and on thematics, and also on rebalancing with the other characters. 
    However when you have a character who destroys 5 tiles adding AP each turn totally for free, and you have another one who ridiculously increases damage on others powers with just 1 TU, those 2 can change the perception on how good is a new release, even some people can be deceived on this game being a meta characters game.

    Obviously those 2 seem to be untochable due to their popularity, and each new release must be changed having in mind them.
    For a balanced game those 2 should act different however their powers are not so obvious as one character crushing/stunning players on defense.
    Imo devs have been on different stages on creating OPs or balanced characters, and personally I think they are quite right on the current design process.
  • Glockoma
    Glockoma Posts: 555 Critical Contributor
    @IceIX I really tried to enjoy the GRRR rework, and for the most part I did. Solid overall.

    However, his green is just glaring to me. Especially after a boosted week in tandem with his much better half. 
    Without having him champed prior to his rebalance, it’s hard for me to fully realize the “nerf” to this power. I’ve read plenty of complaints about it since his release, (I don’t think I need to go into details here), and that’s about the long and short of that.

    The fact that it evolved to the sorely missed 1-turn cd tile (still hurts thinking about 3* Blade and 4* Marvel team…loved it) feels like an intentional setup for some team options to enterprise on this rather unique skill nowadays. It just misses the mark with it’s cost (9 AP) or lack of being able to be fortified effectively (Hawkeye, Green Goblin do not fortify the respawned tile even after order of operations by placing him in “the back” [right side of team]).

    To disclaim: I’m slightly focused on pick-2 style gameplay given it’s the minimum in team mechanics and quite prevalent. 
    I really wanted this to work, but it’s just not jiving. It’s too fragile and or one will never see the AP in some matches. This should have been a cheap spammy skill in practice. I was hoping for a 5* Hawkeye/GRRR duo, but it’s not really effective at all. Otherwise, the other Ghost Rider in the tier (Deadpool) pretty much outshines this one. 
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    What I noticed about order of operations is this:

    Step 1) trigger all powers of characters once only at the start of turn , unless specified otherwise.
    Step 2) trigger all cds and repeaters from top to bottom, left to right. 

    Because his cd triggers after step 1, it didn't get fortified. The only way is to recode the game such that step 2 switches priority with step 1.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    That it no longer collects AP for his other two powers is the biggest sin in my opinion - that was his whole build concept in original form. Hell Rid would go out and clog all the green, and accrue green/red/black for 300% match damage so you could do his other stuff faster. He used to be a great Sighclops partner because that multiplier went on his base damage, and now he is a great C4rol partner assuming you can bring a third that makes strikes faster than she does.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,506 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think we might have to accept that these rebalances are going to be hit and miss and guided from a Dev point of view rather than a player one. The last thing we need is rebalancing rebalances because that will just get us nowhere.

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