What if we would un-nerf?

[Jaedenkaal]

The last of the “old guard” nerfs were to Hood and Sentry, together. They made PvP shield-hopping trivial since every match could be ended in 3 moves, if you brought proper boosts. You could bring 6AP worth of of every color at the time, and all you needed was 1 green to fire World Rupture, and 2 yellow for Sacrifice, and 3 black for Intimidate, and thanks to Dormmamu’s Aid, you could pick it all up by turn 3, or even turn 2 on a good board. It was enough to win the turn after, every time. Bringing both of them back now would just not be a big deal, because boosts don’t work like they used to, and their combo doesn’t apply in a world of triple-size health pools.

I think a 7 AP World Rupture, with 2-turn CDs, combined with 4* Carol, would obliterate the game. Heck, you don’t even need Carol if you just started the game with 4* Rocket and Groot. Or all three, for good measure.

[carrion_pigeons]

Okay, sure, that’s a 5-turn win under ideal circumstances. That’s certainly more powerful than I gave it credit for being.

[WelcomeDeath]

What’s wrong with Sentry? He’s great! He can be used with Carol to take down champed 5* teams. Just need to make sure you have green as your strongest color and you’re good to go. A single cover bolt or phoenix works for this. Like 150,000 aoe damage, enough to take down 550s.

[GrimSkald]

The very first big nerf was Loki. This was back when it took 60 covers or some nonsense to cover a character, before my time, but as far as I ever learned, he had an ability called Transmogrify instead of Illusions, which basically did was Thor’s Thunder Strike does now, except with no damage component and 16 purple tiles instead of 9 yellow. Not sure on the AP cost, but I suspect it was 5 purple, like Illusions is. So basically a self-fueling winfinite, and completely brainless.

Ragnarok has been buffed twice, including getting a complete redesign complete with a third ability, since his big nerf, which happened extremely early in the game’s life cycle, compared to the others people have mentioned. The original Rags was also 1-character winfinite: 2 red ap to turn 5 tiles of your choice to green, and a 6ap green nuke with board shake. Basically completely unrecognizable from how he is now. He could definitely beat 5*s once in a while if he went back to his old configuration, since there would be times when he just never needs to give the opponent a turn. It would take a long time though.

2* Wolverine was the meta for a good while after that, with his 3 AP green and a heal that was always on. Obviously that wouldn’t be a problem now. Honestly it wasn’t really a problem then, except that matches tended to take long enough that his heal was oppressive.

They then got rid of environment tiles, and with it, the 1* Storm winfinite. She used to have a red ability that interacted with the background, and if you were on a desert background then she could basically chain it forever. They could not bring her back at this point just because the game doesn’t support the mechanic anymore.

Spider-Man was the meta for like 4 months after that, (2AP 3-turn stun, woo) before he got nerfed. This was about a year after the game had come out. Viable like that now? Probably not. 2AP for a long stun is pretty insane.

After that, they nerfed true healing, which was primarily a nerf to OBW, who was being used to prologue heal entire teams. They could bring back true healing, but it wouldn’t make her more viable. It would just make the game more grindy.

Then they nerfed Magneto, the rearguard of the cheap self-feeding battery powers: 9 blue to make 2 blue tiles, and a red for 6AP to board shake. I still think this one was a mistake. At those costs, it was never sustainable for more than a few cycles, so it was never a winfinite like Rags or Loki were. It was just a fun, slightly-slower-but-more-sustainable alternative playstyle that happened to work super well with Patch. Bringing it back wouldn’t really mean anything in this era, since he wouldn’t even come close to the sustainability and speed of Dr. Strange. Although people might like him back just for nostalgia. He was super fun to play.

The last of the “old guard” nerfs were to Hood and Sentry, together. They made PvP shield-hopping trivial since every match could be ended in 3 moves, if you brought proper boosts. You could bring 6AP worth of of every color at the time, and all you needed was 1 green to fire World Rupture, and 2 yellow for Sacrifice, and 3 black for Intimidate, and thanks to Dormmamu’s Aid, you could pick it all up by turn 3, or even turn 2 on a good board. It was enough to win the turn after, every time. Bringing both of them back now would just not be a big deal, because boosts don’t work like they used to, and their combo doesn’t apply in a world of triple-size health pools.

I came into the game after the Rags and Wolvie nerf, before Mags’ change and the TU thing. I’ll add some of my own observations:

• I’m pretty sure the 1* Storm ability was still yellow - essentially it did what her yellow does now with Environment tiles instead of Team Ups. One of the environments (the desert) had a Environment ability that created a lot of green, so it made for a great combination. Speaking for myself, I never really got to the “winfinite” point, I may have lacked a good supporting character for it.

• Magneto’s big thing was that his blue (his old blue basically became his yellow, and his purple became his blue,) allowed you to place two blue protect tiles wherever you wanted. It followed an old model of powers, so it started at a certain cost and each cover you got reduced that cost by 1. As I recall, it went down to as little as 2 or 3 - so long as you could make a match with it, you could just keep doing it indefinitely. The other thing was his red - it did a bit of damage and destroyed 3 tiles - but again it went down to a ridiculously low minimum cost (again, I recall it being 2 or 3.) Combined with Patch, this was monstrous. I didn’t quite get him covered before the change, though. IMHO, the change was pretty good - it made him a different character but the original character was not really being used as the developers intended anyway (make protect tiles, smallish damage with board shake, big damage dependent on red and blue tiles.)

• Remember, Sentry’s nerf was before weekly buffed characters. So you brought Sentry and Hood into every fight (no real 4*s either, just the terrible original versions of IW and XFW,) boosted enough so that you could get “Sacrifice” and “World Rupture” off by the 3rd or 4rth Turn, then either use Hood’s black or delay enough that the 2-turn CDs resolved. Boom! 13k-ish damage to the enemy team, which was usually enough. If this was where you could bring a 3rd character, bring Daken.

Wouldn’t work now with boosted characters, but that still doesn’t mean they should bring back the original Sentry.

• XFW’s black was just too good - it did a bit less damage but destroyed AP in that color and gave you the AP from the tiles you destroyed. Sure, a 4* isn’t going to compete with the 5* meta, but that power will still stand head and shoulders above other 4* powers. I’d argue that the green nerf was unnecessary (it did over twice the damage.)

[carrion_pigeons]

@GrimSkald

I came into the game after the Rags and Wolvie nerf, before Mags’ change and the TU thing. I’ll add some of my own observations:

• I’m pretty sure the 1* Storm ability was still yellow - essentially it did what her yellow does now with Environment tiles instead of Team Ups. One of the environments (the desert) had a Environment ability that created a lot of green, so it made for a great combination. Speaking for myself, I never really got to the “winfinite” point, I may have lacked a good supporting character for it.
• Magneto’s big thing was that his blue (his old blue basically became his yellow, and his purple became his blue,) allowed you to place two blue protect tiles wherever you wanted. It followed an old model of powers, so it started at a certain cost and each cover you got reduced that cost by 1. As I recall, it went down to as little as 2 or 3 - so long as you could make a match with it, you could just keep doing it indefinitely. The other thing was his red - it did a bit of damage and destroyed 3 tiles - but again it went down to a ridiculously low minimum cost (again, I recall it being 2 or 3.) Combined with Patch, this was monstrous. I didn’t quite get him covered before the change, though. IMHO, the change was pretty good - it made him a different character but the original character was not really being used as the developers intended anyway (make protect tiles, smallish damage with board shake, big damage dependent on red and blue tiles.)
• Remember, Sentry’s nerf was before weekly buffed characters. So you brought Sentry and Hood into every fight (no real 4*s either, just the terrible original versions of IW and XFW,) boosted enough so that you could get “Sacrifice” and “World Rupture” off by the 3rd or 4rth Turn, then either use Hood’s black or delay enough that the 2-turn CDs resolved. Boom! 13k-ish damage to the enemy team, which was usually enough. If this was where you could bring a 3rd character, bring Daken.
  Wouldn’t work now with boosted characters, but that still doesn’t mean they should bring back the original Sentry.
• XFW’s black was just too good - it did a bit less damage but destroyed AP in that color and gave you the AP from the tiles you destroyed. Sure, a 4* isn’t going to compete with the 5* meta, but that power will still stand head and shoulders above other 4* powers. I’d argue that the green nerf was unnecessary (it did over twice the damage.)

1* Storm’s old ability was red, I promise. She was G/R/B.

Magneto’s blue ability went down to 5 AP. I had misremembered that. Regardless, it still wasn’t infinitely sustainable like Ragnarok was. You had to bring Patch or Punisher or someone in order to make Mags’ abilities do enough damage to actually end a match.

Sentry was definitely around after weekly buffed characters. Even if my memory were lying to me, you can still find videos of people Sentry bombing and prove it to yourself. The reason it wouldn’t work now like it did then is because the 4* tier wasn’t a serious endgame at the time, so HP totals were much lower.

[Jaedenkaal]

Magneto’s blue ability went down to 5 AP. I had misremembered that. Regardless, it still wasn’t infinitely sustainable like Ragnarok was. You had to bring Patch or Punisher or someone in order to make Mags’ abilities do enough damage to actually end a match.

You could, though, stack AP boosts up to… 5 each? 10 total in two to four colours of your choice?

[Bowgentle]

@Jaedenkaal

Magneto’s blue ability went down to 5 AP. I had misremembered that. Regardless, it still wasn’t infinitely sustainable like Ragnarok was. You had to bring Patch or Punisher or someone in order to make Mags’ abilities do enough damage to actually end a match.

You could, though, stack AP boosts up to… 5 each? 10 total in two to four colours of your choice?

3 per colour plus rainbow, so 6 in one colour.

Cmags was totally sustainable - a blue match 5 gave you enough for another cast.
He never was FAST though so mostly he was used, like OG Spidey, to beat over scaled PVE nodes.

[farlus]

1* Storm’s old ability was red, I promise. She was G/R/B.

Yep, 1* Storm’s color scheme was changed shortly after Mohawk came out so that they were both the same set of colors.

Thanks for the nerf summary post carrion, it was a nice trip down memory lane.

[j0nats]

imma just gonna address the elephant in the room and say un nerf OML… 5thanos needs a counter.

[Phillipes]

Yes, 1* Storm was red.. I used her practicly every match in PVP with desert environment… Good times..

[Spoit]

@Bowgentle

@Jaedenkaal

Magneto’s blue ability went down to 5 AP. I had misremembered that. Regardless, it still wasn’t infinitely sustainable like Ragnarok was. You had to bring Patch or Punisher or someone in order to make Mags’ abilities do enough damage to actually end a match.

You could, though, stack AP boosts up to… 5 each? 10 total in two to four colours of your choice?

3 per colour plus rainbow, so 6 in one colour.

Cmags was totally sustainable - a blue match 5 gave you enough for another cast.
He never was FAST though so mostly he was used, like OG Spidey, to beat over scaled PVE nodes.

Exactly. Spidey was already on the way out before he was nerfed, since he was pretty glacial. At least with cmags you could use the crits to gather incidental AP to cast other skills, and use someone like punisher with the increased crit ratio to get some bonus match damage in