I wrote a whole thing on the old forum about this but it got disappeared when they migrated.
If ascended 5 are real 5 (and they are, for matchmaking purposes, in terms of power level… basically in every way that matters) then they need to be boosted like “real” 5. Right now, the rotations are all messed up. Each tier has to wait for the rest of their tier to rotate through to get boosted again. This means that 4 (the biggest tier) get boosted like two weeks a year, and 1 (the smallest tier) get boosted every other week or so.
The fix is pretty easy. Count every character as their ascended tier rather than their original tier. Why does it matter that Hawkeye used to be a 1, or that Medusa used to be a 4? Once ascended, they’re 5 now!
You’d probably need to boost more characters at each tier to compensate. This means that 1 Hawkeye will be boosted every other week, as intended. But 1->5 Hawkeye will be boosted just as often as every other 5 is (it’d work out to once a year or something).
Honestly, that’s probably way more work than they’re able/willing to do. I once asked in the Q & A to just please not have a 4 or 5 star boosted the same week their 3 star counter part is featured in PvP and they basically told me that would be too much work to manually change the rotating boost lists and nah, we’re not gonna do that.
He was pretty useless, even at 550, before he was buffed. After the buff, he can do what he does without ever being ascended. He can spam crits infinitely at 1 star level, he just needs a partner to make use of them.
It’s a nice theory, but (1) probably a lot of dev time and (2) could throw some anomalies up like all boosted 5s actually being ascended 3s and 4s that 1% of players have and effectively rendering the week’s boost list DOA.
They’d have to expand the boost list, but it’s probably time for that anyway.
As for it being more work, we really don’t know. The game’s backend is a mess, and they have to do tons of stuff by hand. It’s entirely possible that right now somebody has to manually add each tier of Hawkeye to the boost list every time he’s boosted. My solution could be LESS work!
He doesn’t even need to be 1a5 to be honest. And the more I think about this, the more I think we are approaching this from the wrong angle - this would not be nerfing Hawkeye it would be undoing a terrible mistake which was foisted on IP2 by BCS, IP2 should have no guilt. He was flagged up immediately as an issue but the old Devs didn’t care by then. I’m a broken record on Ascension generally, we never got the careful monitoring of it as promised or adjustments as it became clear how gameplay was being affected. Once the pin has been pulled and the hand grenade thrown, just gotta wait for the boom!
There is a couple hundred CP in that vault - I pulled a 10, got 1a4 Hawk, 1a3 Hawk, some roster slots, 100CP, tokens etc. So I won’t pull again I doubt but it’s another good vault. As to Hawkeye, I dunno, if you are going to out and out troll your players then I guess this would be a good start!
He punches up really well and has several 4* partners who help him accelerate and has a few supports (chimi) that help him a lot
The devs have offered him almost more than any other toon in vaults and offers and CP stores so anyone who has stuck around long enough can build him
Many many players are told: Work on SC first. This may be slightly altered advice now (maybe Nova) but he’s a top level choice and anyone who started new after his release and picked him would be in good shape, so he’s going to be in the top 10 5s for any and every player who started after he released if they sought any advice as to who to build
Nerfing him because he’s used more (presumably the reason he’s a target) when that is a completely predicable from making him strong and selling/offering him to us because we want him - great, yeah, nothing is guaranteed etc etc etc.
But he’s not any sort of problem for players’ enjoyment. The ONLY reason is because the devs think, I guess, it’s bad for players to have reliable teams and not need new ones, possibly.
also: comparing 1HE to SC is like comparing a Corvette to a Ferrari. Both are fast and will smoke a lot of cars in a drag race, but the Ferrari is in the stratosphere. 1HE just goes immediately and is unstoppable because both of his powers give him AP to help him keep going no matter what color he matches. SC needs to seek out his specific colors, line up matches, etc etc. it’s not even a close comparison as to how much easier HE is to use and win every time, you need to basically try to lose or be really bad to not beat almost any team that isn’t vs Strange or Man Thing etc.
We don’t know, yet, what IP2 do or do not consider to be a problem. If Shang-Chi meets whatever their threshold is, they should hit him. But crucially, they need to articulate some vision of what their threshold or criteria ACTUALLY ARE. Tell us what constitutes a problem and why.
With Demiurge, up till Gambit, we had a pretty good sense of this. After that everything was random. I don’t believe BCS even had a vision for desired character power level.
Giving us their specific criteria, and then applying them consistently, will mean there are no more surprises when it comes to rebalances.
The real problem isn’t him being buffed. It’s the ascension mechanic. I believe the dev buffed him to help new comers having easier time winning matches, but sorely misread the more established rosters’ way of play and now he’s essentially making everyone trivial. 1HE at 5 has 5 match damage so he can do lots of damage. If he stuck at 1, I’d wager seeing him a lot less prominent on the scene, giving that the game limits 3 toons to join.
They had that list before they left. It was purely based on usage numbers. Shang was on it. So was Rocket until people were like, “you sure?” They did some updates that certainly did not make characters better like 4 Mr. Fantastic and there are quite a few 4 star characters that lose what made them decent when ascended from four to five. There were definitely more than a few last minute changes to fives to make them not OP that left them feeling mediocre, mostly they wouldn’t have been OP anyway if left as is. I’m sure someone could remember others.
There were some really widely used characters that they never talked about, though, and they didn’t really do anything until right before they left anyway.
Like I said, I don’t think they had a consistent set of criteria or a vision for where they wanted the metagame to be.
All I said was they had a list based on usage numbers. I would never accuse BCS of doing much of anything about that. When I see things like “nerf Shang” I wonder if that list is still floating around.
Confirmation that no one should buy these vaults or spend any money because they actively put characters in them they know players will pull for right before they pull the rug out from underneath them, leaving everyone who’s left after the Unity success with a minty fresh taste in their mouth!
Also laughable that 5sam is on the radar when he’s hardly a problem outside of being paired with Juggs or other AOE characters (See: Juggs). Overreacting and overcorrecting to satiate hidden stats and placate the vocal minority at its finest.
are real 5
