I hope that the developer can at least let 5* Gambit be a essential in a PVE before the change to let us enjoy him in all his current glory one last time.
The AP burn “nerf” is what really put him over the top imo, before that it was just his red hit to hard and he got the AP to quick combined with blackbolt and there were NO 5’s teams to challenge them at all.
With the AP burn “nerf” it became more of a toss up, if you came in with AP it wasn’t bad or if you got a 4 match, otherwise gambit would deny you until he matched some red or purple and that was a wrap most of the time unless you were thor or maybe daredevil. At that point it was best to take a gambit to fight a gambit.
If they would have just reduced the AP gen by 1, and reduced the red damage by 12 percent or so he would have been perfect. If they wanted him to be nerfed in pve then the changes to his purple like they just did would have been fine also.
No clue why they completely butchering the character tho.
The Marvel Legends store contains only the following 5-star characters:
This hasn’t been addressed yet, has it?
The Old Man Logan tokens (from when he was nerfed) basically gave you a shot at anyone but him.
The Gambit tokens give you a shot at anyone but him… or Doc Ock? Is there a reason for that? It feels weird.
Further:
5-Star Gambit can be sold for increased Iso-8, as well as special Legendary tokens. The number of tokens you’ll receive is based on Gambit’s character level, including Champion levels. These tokens can be redeemed in a new Marvel Legends Legendary cover store.
Could we get some specifics on this? How many tokens for how many levels, what champ level, etc? Are we talking 1 to 1, 13 if he’s champed, +1 for each Champ level? Or is there a demonic hidden 5:1 ratio or some nonsense that ruins the value of selling him?
I have Gambit fully covered but never champed him or put iso into him, so this is little more than a minor inconvenience. The collector in me cringes whenever they make these offers of “sell your 5-star in exchange for LLs”. With the amount of time, effort, and RnG that goes into getting a 5-star fully covered, no amount of tokens in exchange is going to make up for that. When they did this to OML I saw people give away Lv. 455 OMLs to get like 10 tokens…whyyyyyy??? I have a 3/5/5 Black Suit Spider-Man that I am by no means proud of, but I’ll be damned if I sell him and start from scratch. 
He’s been balanced. Still very usable.
While this is true, they sure did respond quickly to the people wanting the cover bank shortened. Took them a whole three days to respond to that feedback. Record breaking response time in fact (though that one hurts the players and benefits “the house” in the long run).
They said they are trying to be quicker so why not shoot our shot? Even if it has a small chance of going in, gotta try.
I’m going to leave the topic of Gambit as it is. I still think that calling the changes made to Gambit is equivalent to him getting gutted is exaggerated. Obviously, the vets’ ideas of balance is almost always always different from the devs’ idea of balance, despite the devs explaining the reasons and I’m sure that some of the changes made was based on players’ feedbacks.
Can we get a comment on the decision process behind who to include in the compensation vault? This is the second such vault in a row where every 5* in the game except Gambit (for obvious reasons) and Doctor Octopus are included. Was Ock deliberately left out because he is widely considered to be useless and therefore undesirable as compensation for selling off a 5*? This seems like a strange decision given that Banner is included and is perceived similarly to Ock.
Maybe we could drop some additional dead weight from the compensation vault. BSSM, PHX, OML I’m looking in your general direction…
On a more serious note, I would also like some actual clarity on the token/level exchange. I assumed that we’re doing 1:1, so 13 for a fully covered Gambit plus one for every champ level. If I recall correctly, that was the offer the first nerf, whereas the OML nerf was more like 1:2 for champ levels and I don’t think you got a full 13 for him being maxed. Brigby, any insight would be greatly appreciated since this will likely be a determining factor for many contemplating the sell-back option.
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I understand many people feel passionately about this change but please remember to keep comments civil and on topic. Thank you.
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Why leave Ock out of the tokens? My possibilities:
- As stated, perhaps he is just that bad.
- A rework is planned and it would be better to have less of him “in the wild”. They won’t tell us that up front.
Anything else is wild speculation, like vaulting/retiring a 5 to cap the tier and try to control dilution.
1/5 the damage = 20%, meaning 80% is gone
I understand what 1/5th is. You are not correct, however; the damage is not 80% lower, it’s only about 25% lower.
My Lv. 255 Gambit at 3/5/5 does 1887 per charged tile with his red. With the nerf, it will be 1345.
1345/1887 = 71.27%. It costs 3 more AP to do essentially 30% less damage. I suppose it could be worse, and maybe it is at higher levels. I don’t know what a Lv. 450 Gambit at 5 red covers does currently.
You have to include the damage for the charged tiles themselves, though, which hasn’t changed. It’s about 234 (on average) for a 255 gambit, and 916 (on average) for a 450 Gambit. So the actual damage change is
(1345+234)/(1887+234) = 74.4%
5* power damage and tile damage scale at essentially the same rate, so this is roughly true at 450 as well.
Interesting replies and reactions so far. I would like to point out that the same people that threatened to quit and stop spending on this game when OML was nerfed are the same people that did NOT quit playing and kept spending on Gambit. Which are also the same people making the same “threats” again on this thread. Maybe those players need to stop the empty “threats” and actually start taking action.
Out of curiosity, do you have a deep 5* bench?
While gambit might be usable in the way that just about any 5* champ is useful to a 4* roster, I would be very surprised if he ends up being particularly useful in true 5* play. I have a small-to-med 5* roster with 7 champs and several more at 10+ covers. Gambit will go from far ajd away my best option for any node to “used only as a meatshield when I need extra bodies for a 5* essential node or early PvP climb and don’t want to use a healthpack.” I think he will be too slow to use in any really challenging situation.
To be fair, Gambit nerfed down to the low tier (which is, I think, what’s going to happen,) is much better for the long-term health of the game than leaving him God-Tier. As many of us have stated, and is stated in the OP - he became required for PVP. Not having Gambit is a huge disadvantage - something that no other character in this game does at this time. That’s not a sustainable model - new players cannot reliably get Gambit, so for all intents and purposes they can’t compete.
Sure, there are plenty of 5* characters who are unsuitable for PVP, and Gambit will almost certainly join them. That’s a pity, though - it would be nice if the difference between characters were fine enough that all of them are at least relatively useful in PVP.
I don’t understand why you had to go all in with changing all of his powers. Why not tweak him by making a small change (increase the cost of his red, decrease the damage, reduce his countdown overwrite, reduce his AP generated) - and I mean ONE of those changes, then check the stats and see if people use him less or are less effective? There is nothing wrong with saying that you will keep tweaking until he appears to be more balanced, but this wasn’t a tweak.
Isn’t that the way you do your development anyway (agile / scrum development encourages small changes to see what happens instead of massive changes)? Aren’t the massive changes you have done often proved to not have been well received anyway?
Ooh! A shiny Thing? Those are harder to catch than regular Things…wait, wrong game.