The recently announced changes for Hood and Sentry have been received with a mixed response. Sentry’s nerf is really more about timing. I saw someone else say something to the effect of, “he’s still dangerous, he can still wipe teams; this only slows him, it doesn’t contain him” which pretty much sums it up. Hood’s changes, on the other hand, left most of us confused. The one ability that was mostly just incidental took a huge hit. The prospect of a Hood + Thor power couple that could generate unlimited AP. And rather than give Hood a different kind of support ability, he was blessed with a nuke.
Even now, there’s still debate about Hood’s build. The ability that’s actually powerful, Dormammu’s Aid, can still be used to rush 4* Thor, Sentry, X-Force, or whichever character the metagame delivers us to next.
But then this crazy idea kept on coming back to me: What if characters only had one build? What if 13 covers maxed out each ability? I think it could actually work.
I’ll believe that the devs put a lot of work into designing 3 “full” abilities. And then within hours, we as a community settle on the optimal build and that’s about the last time anyone gives much thought to it. Hood’s probably a good case study here, since Sentry gave a reason to take Intimidate to rank 5 when previously it was “known” that Hood was 5/5/3 and that was that.
In game terms, my idea is that characters would have 2 abilities and 1 “ultimate”. Each of their standard abilities has 5 ranks, and the ultimate has 3. Let’s take a look at some examples:
2/3* Thor. The current optimal build is 3/5/5. Under my proposed “5/5/3” single build, the Red and Yellow abilities would behave the same as rank 5 in each ability currently behaves; and the 3 ranks of his Ultimate would perhaps mirror the same as ranks 1, 3 and 5 currently do.
This should start to get a bit of a feel of a MOBA type game about it. Those standard abilities are each character’s bread and butter, but that ultimate? Well that’s their signature move. Thor’s swinging Mjolnir and slapping goons about, and that’s fine, but when he’s toe-to-toe with a gang of villains - that’s the time to Call the Storm. Thor’s obviously a good example, since his abilities already build, so you get that real “videogamey” feel to it. But even for someone like Daken with two passives as his “standard” abilities and then an activated Ultimate you get a sense of it being his “thing”. As the latest character, Mystique is almost made this way already.
Certainly some characters would need a bit of work to determine what their “ultimate” ability is, and to make it a little more ultimate (OBW? Falcon? Spider-Man?) and those that are already vaulted could at least make a glorious return with Ultimate abilities that really wow us.
Perhaps there’s some opposition to this? “No one will need to pay for respecs anymore, so devs will lose revenue”
To that, I say; if the devs are changing characters every few months to get a few coin purchases because they are relying on respec revenue to stay afloat, then we’re already doomed. By changing to a single build for each character, they’re firstly going to stop running into this same situation of giving out covers and then changing the hero once people have sold those covers. And when they do change abilities, there should be a much more obvious way in which the abilities are used and the characters role on a team.
Let’s finish with a look at Hood. Let’s keep him a little bit unique, and let him have a Passive Ultimate. So he gets Twin Pistols as a nuke, Intimidate to speed up friendly cooldowns, and then for his Ultimate, he’s draining the enemy AP every turn.