April 2017 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[HomemLivre]

The Prisoner nerf is huge - but I agree something was needed. I think - as someone mentioned - saying he's a 4* character is right on the money.

But Homem - don't you see that if they didn't adjust Siege the AoP would just become the next Prisoner? Fair is fair

I think whatever the developers do we'll adapt. I have no problem with a Prisoner nerf (though was expecting something less extreme) but am glad they're adjusting the other toons that affect passives as well

Im figuring out that all the other changes were necessary to balance this change on the Prisoner.

As I said today I understand now that all this changes was to balance the game becouse of the changes on the Prisoner and Im ok now with this nerf on AoP, its sad but he will be benched.

It has been well established that the prisoner inbalance is not in defense. His OPness is when you are attacking and the prisoner can give you almost a 99% win. Which is not fair compared to people who don't have one.

And I completely agree with Carlos, hes OPness is on attack, as I mentioned before that I cant even care less with him on defenses (but Im getting bored to only use the same team agains prisoner teams, game deserves a change)

[Ubajoa]

Not even close to 99% Need alot more toons for that! Not everyone has rosters like Nicko's! Sry bud,just sayin

OK. You're right 99% is not only the prisoner but let's say 90%+. For example 1 thing most people complaint about is the taunt fest which prisoner teams are not part of, cause prisoner blocks siege so the whole team can use immunity talismans. Just to expose 1 case.

[Jofer16]

Sorry to bring wow again, but I think this would be great here. Back in early days in wow when a talent tree suffer critical changes they were full reset for free so people can choose talents again. That would be great here, I agree that skill shards shouldn't be removable always due to the rarity, but if a character suffer a huge nerf or buff (critical change) all the skill shards should be returned to the inventory so we can decide where to use them.

And please left the Angel of fear alone, no more nerf to him.

This is a great idea. Don't make shards removable, but in the event a character goes through a major retuning, shards should be reset and given back on said character. Would eliminate buyers remorse substantially.

[Silentknight]

OK. You're right 99% is not only the prisoner but let's say 90%+. For example 1 thing most people complaint about is the taunt fest which prisoner teams are not part of, cause prisoner blocks siege so the whole team can use immunity talismans. Just to expose 1 case.

At work,doing troopers,lmao! Quickly,immunitizing an entire team costs HP. Outside arena,as a collector,the prisoner just became alot less valuable! Not that I care but shards should be returned. Would love to know how people who just pulled him feel! Ugh!!! Not a 5*! Always thought the point of this game was to collect the elite toons. If this keeps going everyone will be able to beat everyone,which may sound good but then the game becomes even more Pay2Win! You need elite toons to give 'lucky' pull teams a chance. Gotta go!

[Silentknight]

This is a great idea. Don't make shards removable, but in the event a character goes through a major retuning, shards should be reset and given back on said character. Would eliminate buyers remorse substantially.

Been mentioned several times b4...deaf ears

[gmac]

Hi everybody

Prisoner and AoP nerfs
I'm ok with those, I think on offense devs wanted everybody to be able to use the new talismans, and on defense let them be able to have passives too, even when facing Prisoners teams. I will still use my AoP on offense, great against shields. (yes, fights will take longer I believe)

AoF
Please leave him alone! He is ok, already been nerfed and one of the best warriors to counter sentinel dominance. He is taking the blame from GRE slash being out of order!

Voids
They proc near 100% of the time, that's the real problem.

Skill shards
I think they should be removable, at least after each major update. But better if removable all time. Why?
1 - It would help sacrifice - at one point all players would have enough skill shards to play around, so we would add them to some toons to get greater essence value. It's hard to gather toons for a decent sacrifice. (last 2 tiers).
2 - It would make us try much more toons at the Arena, I would experiment a lot of different compositions. That is what this update is all about after all...
3 - It would make it easier to newer players to catch up.

(Oh, one last thing, being able to look at other players rosters maybe ok, but at talismans selection and skill shard allocation... that is too much)

Cheers
Gmac

[surfingwithdje]

With that nerf (AoP and prisoner) every defense team will bring a red troll ... Is anybody think his reflect shield should be remove with the same update? (just for say, i have a troll, and sacrifice another one, but i think he will ruin the game in pvp)

Otherwise this character tuning can change the pvp playing, i'm not against this, let's see how that will works ....
But this is a massive nerf for those 2 characters and it make prejudice to players who have invested a lot of time and money in the game for getting skillshards, we just should be able to recover the skillshards invested in those 2 characters... (because they will become totally useless in pvp and pve)

My 2 cents...

[Jofer16]

(Oh, one last thing, being able to look at other players rosters maybe ok, but at talismans selection and skill shard allocation... that is too much)

Cheers
Gmac

This would be nice as well. I know since I found out Shaolin was posting screenshots of my account publicly, from whatever that other tools name was that took them, I've been scared to add new troopers and forum users to my list not knowing if they actually want to be buddies, or just to be sneaky backstabbers. One bad apple spoils the bunch.

I'm losing Trooper points because I'm sure at least 50% of my troopers aren't daily, but don't feel comfortable adding 30 new ones. I've had the same OGs since day 1 only replacing people when they go inactive for long periods of time, stick with who you came up with

[Tritium]

This is a great idea. Don't make shards removable, but in the event a character goes through a major retuning, shards should be reset and given back on said character. Would eliminate buyers remorse substantially.

I like this idea as well. It definitely would generate a lot more goodwill overall after nerfs are done.

Hi everybody

Prisoner and AoP nerfs
I'm ok with those, I think on offense devs wanted everybody to be able to use the new talismans, and on defense let them be able to have passives too, even when facing Prisoners teams. I will still use my AoP on offense, great against shields. (yes, fights will take longer I believe)

AoF
Please leave him alone! He is ok, already been nerfed and one of the best warriors to counter sentinel dominance. He is taking the blame from GRE slash being out of order!

Voids
They proc near 100% of the time, that's the real problem.

Skill shards
I think they should be removable, at least after each major update. But better if removable all time. Why?
1 - It would help sacrifice - at one point all players would have enough skill shards to play around, so we would add them to some toons to get greater essence value. It's hard to gather toons for a decent sacrifice. (last 2 tiers).
2 - It would make us try much more toons at the Arena, I would experiment a lot of different compositions. That is what this update is all about after all...
3 - It would make it easier to newer players to catch up.

(Oh, one last thing, being able to look at other players rosters maybe ok, but at talismans selection and skill shard allocation... that is too much)

Cheers
Gmac

I agree with your analysis on everything. If the devs are hesitant to consider making skill shards removable, they should definitely consider the refund after a nerf. Also, #saveAOF

With that nerf (AoP and prisoner) every defense team will bring a red troll ... Is anybody think his reflect shield should be remove with the same update? (just for say, i have a troll, and sacrifice another one, but i think he will ruin the game in pvp)

Otherwise this character tuning can change the pvp playing, i'm not against this, let's see how that will works ....
But this is a massive nerf for those 2 characters and it make prejudice to players who have invested a lot of time and money in the game for getting skillshards, we just should be able to recover the skillshards invested in those 2 characters... (because they will become totally useless in pvp and pve)

My 2 cents...

Yes! I'm glad someone else is on the same wavelength here. After reading through the posts, I was quickly coming to the same conclusion that you did ─ Troll shouldn't have a reflect shield, or any damage-inducing shield for that matter, due to the difficulty in countering him now. The devs should consider making the Troll a completely defensive character (which will still have a LOT of use), rather than a hybrid of the two where his passive can also wreck serious face. Get rid of his damage shields, but keep his defensive ones (maybe even buff the defensive ones ─ whatever makes him more balanced). Sounds like a good solution to me!

[Sparton_LOTB]

1. With the proposed changes to the prisoner, IMHO, you are making him a 4* toon. I really think if you go forward with these changes to him, he should be changed to 4*. Otherwise, if you want to keep him 5*, what you've proposed isn't the answer. I don't have him, just for the record.

We have no plans to change the rarity of characters.

2. Question. With the DDog changes being proposed, does anything counter the passive? If one has immunity or invisibility active, does that counter the remove beneficial effects passive from applying to those toons? If the whole team is invisible, will it still remove all beneficial effects on up to 2 toons?

The only real answer right now (other than killing it) is the Prisoner, because nothing else has Passive Block.

3. Like many others have suggested, please be gentle on the AoF. He's been nerfed hard already, and while he is present on some teams, he isn't widely used. For full disclosure, I currently use him on my defense, but I never went tauntfest. I refused to shard the SSD.

You're not accounting for attack team usage, but even if you only account for defense team usage, he's still the go-to Warrior to the exclusion of nearly every other non-Eddie Warrior in the game.

Ultimately, the adjustment here to his Attack is not that substantial; he's going from effectively tied for best maxed out Attack in the game to being higher Attack than every character that isn't basically tied for highest Attack in the game (from approx 1750 to approx 1500 at 5 star level 100). We really are just trying to give other high-Attack-focused characters a bit more of an edge without power creeping everyone else above him.

4. While I like that your enhancing the nomad, in his current state still very risky. You'd have to use mirage last and hope to get invisibility active on toons. One way to get him more into arena is to ensure that after you use mirage, invisibility won't go away if a toon attacks that SAME round. Otherwise it's a big gamble and not worth the risk.

We definitely don't want to change Invisibility in that manner, as there's a high risk of something unintended going through (either a bug which causes more problems or a possible OP combo when trying to abuse Extra Turns). He can be a bit unreliable on defense, but we nonetheless would like to see him more on offense and defense, and these changes we think will help push him in that direction.

However, I must say that it looks like you're turning PvP from a tauntfest into a trollfest. Unless there's something I'm missing, the troll will be in everyone's defense team since siege and passive aggression are being nerfed. This simply is not a viable solution. It will put those without a troll at a huge disadvantage before the battle has even begun.

We definitely expect him to still be a popular character, but the reduction of free damage from his shields will mean he's a more passive and defensive character, and the increased reliability of other passives means we hope to see other defensive options be potentially more synergistic with your team depending on what characters you're planning to use.

Also, in the preliminary notes under skill changes, one entry states "wickerman dog". I'm guessing that should read "wickerdog of night" since he's the only wickerdog I know with the heal skill, right?

Whoops, good catch. We'll make sure that's correct in the release patch notes.

Voids
They proc near 100% of the time, that's the real problem.

There's definitely a bug where augments like Void Shields are proccing more than we should, and we aim to fix that as soon as possible, but it's a tech issue, so I can't make any guarantees.

That said, we feel that even if that were in order the real threat of Void Shields is it's removal powers while also reducing damage to your characters, so we feel that softening the reflected damage is an appropriate action to encourage use of other purple talismans.

With that nerf (AoP and prisoner) every defense team will bring a red troll ... Is anybody think his reflect shield should be remove with the same update? (just for say, i have a troll, and sacrifice another one, but i think he will ruin the game in pvp)

Yes! I'm glad someone else is on the same wavelength here. After reading through the posts, I was quickly coming to the same conclusion that you did ─ Troll shouldn't have a reflect shield, or any damage-inducing shield for that matter, due to the difficulty in countering him now. The devs should consider making the Troll a completely defensive character (which will still have a LOT of use), rather than a hybrid of the two where his passive can also wreck serious face. Get rid of his damage shields, but keep his defensive ones (maybe even buff the defensive ones ─ whatever makes him more balanced). Sounds like a good solution to me!

Removing his Reflect Shield as well was definitely considered, but realistically, damage from Magma Shields on characters who survived was way outstripping the damage that reflect shields could ever hope to do. We feel the random allocation of 1/3 of the time having a damaging shield instead of 2/3 is a fine place for him to be in.