Playing Nico in SHIELD training was rough. She seems like she’ll be a great support character, but solo she has no offensive powers outside of making some strike/attack tiles. She even makes shield tiles that don’t apply to her.
Then I thought about MEHulk, who’s not so much bad solo, but just kinda MEH in general.
Then I thought about Nightcrawler who’s got two pretty under-powered move and one that can do a lot of damage in a really narrow scenario. He’s certainly more useful in a team that can set him up for bamf strings.
Then Rouge who’s undoubtedly really good.
If I had to rank the characters that have come out since SHIELD training came out I would rank them as such:
Rouge
Nico
Nightcrawler
MEHulk
But if I were to rank them on 1v1 it would change to:
Rouge
Nightcrawler
MEHulk
Nico
(Notice this is exactly release order)
Now it’s tin foil hat time. I’ve not been using any of the new boosts they started making when these set of characters came out. I think they’re dumb and I haven’t really felt a need to use them, until Nico’s SHIELD Training. It got me thinking. Have they been intentionally making characters worse at 1v1 to try and push people adopting/buying these new single character boosts? Are they trying to find a sweet spot for how bad a character can be at 1v1 to hit some certain sales point on these (and if they found it would they then make all new 4*s so weak at 1v1).
What do you guys think, is the tin foil cutting off air to my brain or am I on to something?
I don’t know another scenario outside of their crash where the toon specific boost will really matter. So for me; I’ve been using them for this exact purpose to win the 1v1 battles and get the cp from the node.
I would postulate that, as with most things, this was not necessarily their intended results to have weak 4s that need to be reliant on boosts. Also, once their featured status is gone, the boosts are retired and can no longer be acquired or purchased, so I really don’t see such a narrow-targeted cash grab scenario.
I’d say you were on to something if I thought the devs had any ability whatsoever to assess how strong any particular power set would be in a 1v1 situation…or any situation for that matter.
OP: the devs did not have a purchasable MEH for the beginning of Shield Training, where you need one at 209. Basic business sense fail.
Your scenario is far more complicated. What you are really seeing is just designers trying to find interesting and somewhat unique character mechanics and interactions.
To challenge the idea of a trend: Lockjaw would be tough to get through Shield Training too. Mockingbird is slightly better but you basically have 1 damage power. So this isn’t some overarching trend.
The difference on the Character Specific boosts is that it is ALL damage, so matches and abilities are boosted. The standard 20% boost is only on match damage.
Of course, with Nico, she doesn’t have any abilities that deal direct damage, so it is the same either way.
Anything before SHIELD Training/character boosts started is irrelevant. There would be no point in making weak characters in 1v1 to experiment with boosts, when there were no boosts…
On a serious note, I think letting us use team-ups on these nodes pretty much negates this theory. Just bring in a 270 nuke and you can clear through just about anything.
Um… you’ve glossed over the part where her one damage power only costs 9 Red, which she can generate using her other power if she has to, and does top-3 massive damage. And you might even get to fire it for free.
But anyways, I’m pretty sure 3 characters is hardly a pattern. We could come up with all sorts of reasons why the last 3 characters are the same.
A while back, the meta was ultra-powerful solo characters (i.e. red hulk, iceman, peggy). Now the meta is synergy (rocket+gamora+medusa=way greater than the sum of their parts). Designing/preventing power creep for the former is easy (increase/maintain/decrease the ratio of damage/ap spent). Designing/preventing power creep for the latter gets progressively harder with each new character release. The devs release Gambatt and suddenly Spider-Gwen is part of an infinite stun combo. This is going to keep happening. There are too many possible combinations of three characters in this game now for anyone to anticipate all of the twists and turns created by the characters they released in the last month, much less the characters they will release over the next six months.
I don’t want to attribute too much foresight to the devs. There’s little in the history of this game to make me think that such foresight exists, and with characters like Nico, it’s clear she’s horrible 1v1. What isn’t clear yet, is what her place is in the meta. I do believe the devs think they know what that place is, but I’m sure the players are better at defining that once they have a chance to champ her. I think you set the tinfoil hat aside for this one.
I have a decently leveled nico, and while I struggled mightily vs a level 50 moon knight in Shield training, I have to admit she synergizes with herself very well as a survivor. Since she’s guaranteed to get hit 1v1, throw her purple to get stuff on the board that gets stronger, then it makes her yellow even better with extra protect tiles for healing counter. The longer the match goes, the stronger she gets, with Trifecta buffing those tiles. So after almost wiping to Moon, I took her all the way to the JG match smoothly!
Ultimately, she’s a support character geared for long matches, and since the current meta favors speed over everything else, I don’t see her playing much of a role for now.
I thought it was supposed to be a nauseatingly twee nickname for her, like the godawful txtspeek or contractions that are thrown around. Not that I’m bothered by this at all.
