Based on additional internal testing of our upcoming balance changes to Gambit (Classic), we’ve decided to make the following adjustments to what we announced:
At the announced cost of 10 AP, it was too hard to get the bonus damage and AP from destroying Charged tiles, since the enemy had some extra time to match those Charged tiles away. To help get that Charged tile damage more often, the power’s cost was reduced to 8, and it now creates 3 Charged tiles when fired, up from 2.
As a nice bonus, I’m very happy with the poetry of a power specifically called Aces & Eights costing eight.
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The repeater tile is a key part of the new, rebalanced Gambit, but ‘at the start of your turn’ doesn’t include the start of battle, giving you a turn without the Stacked Deck tile.
After further testing, we determined that Gambit could start generating AP more quickly and still have a balanced power. So now Gambit will make that tile for you at the start of the fight.
These are the changes that will go live with the new season. We hope you enjoy playing with and against this updated version of Gambit (Classic).
Can we get a few more “at start of turn” abilities tweaked to trigger at start of battle? Like why does the AI SWitch get her countdown out before mine? Etc.
Seems like a pretty trivial QOL enhancement that could be applied to lots of those semi-active-passive abilities.
personally, i think you hit pretty close to the sweet spot with this update. in fact, i think i suggested red costing 8 instead of 10 in the previous update thread…
in any case, he is no longer nerfed to mid-bottom tier, but to mid-high, which is the best we could expect, really. and most importantly - he is no longer essential for pvp, and you can beat gambit with something other than gambit
I am going to miss the ability to take out countdown tiles. I think that this purple power could have been weakened but still allow some countdown tiles to be removed. Besides maybe 4Starlord, there is no really reliable way to take out mulitple countdowns. This was something special that this particular character did, much like IM40’s yellow generating AP, SW’s countdown generating purple or R&G putting out strike tiles. Those are the key powers that made the characters popular. I agree that he was too powerful “as is”. He was sort of a Swiss Army knife of damage, with way too many options to take out opponents. But this change makes him sort of a generic good character without that special power that makes him stand out.
On paper this seems like a welcome adjustment to the previously announced changes that IMO went a little too far. The proof will be in seeing how he plays, but it is encouraging that it seems they took him out for a spin and further tweaked his charge tile creation and initial repeater creation in response to how he performs in an actual match. I appreciate the effort here.
He still might be worth selling, honestly, but I understand this one a little more. I’m guessing that the main reason he can’t overwrite CDs is because they don’t want people to feel like they have to bring their own Gambit to fend off that one power. That’s reasonable to a degree, but I think the better nerf in that case would have been to lessen the dmg it does, not take away it’s versatility.
So, I’m still not a fan of the changes, but this is a positive walk-back.
Oh stop, this is a game designer, you’re talking about it like it was an architect that designed a billion dollar bridge that collapsed and killed people. I’d rather they experiment with abilities and then have to go back in and make some adjustments one way or the other than play it safe every time and produce boring characters. Besides, if it was in fact the same designer chances are they’ve learned some valuable lessons to build from in the future.
Half of the problem with Gambit was that there was an exploit right after his release and countless people were able to get fully-covered Gambits from the get-go. So many people pumped resources into the character that they couldn’t just go ahead and rebalance him right away, they had to try other methods first (i.e. other characters.) I’m sure the fact that the very people using Gambit had grown sick of his dominance made it easier to go ahead and nerf him.
As for character designs, I believe Marvel somehow plays a part too.
I guess the reason why some wants the devs to remove the restriction on allies firing red or purple power is because they want Gambit to be a free ap battery for them, without needing to collect any aps. It seems like it’s not happening.
I think Gambit is pretty okay now. The main conplaints previously were his red and his blocking of allies’ purple and red powers.
@Brigby the previous nerf post mentioned a health boost for gambit. Based on the revisions described in the post should we still expect to see a health boost to gambit when these changes are implemented? If so, can you provide any information on the new health specs?
