Psylocke BLUE cover reward flood

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Wolarsen
Wolarsen Posts: 326 Mover and Shaker
edited September 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
In just one week, we had 6 possible Psylocke rewards:
* 1 BLACK from gauntlet (edited, thanks Crooked)
* 1 BLUE from Hc DA
* 1 of each colour from player PvP Daken (but BLUE is top 100)
* 1 BLUE from alliance PvP Daken

So 3 out of 6 were blue, the worst colour by far, and the others are arguably much harder to get; seems unbalanced and unappealing, specially for HC DA. Any reason for this, David?
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Comments

  • CrookedKnight
    CrookedKnight Posts: 2,579 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I agree with your overall point, but the Psylocke reward in the gauntlet was black.

    Still, having the top-100 PvP prize be the same as the progression reward in the PvE is a bit of a **** move to begin with, but having it also be the character's worst power by far is just mean.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    Even better would be adjusting her Blue ability so that it was more useful.

    It makes no sense that Black Panthers Yellow ability was totally revised and improved, but countless other characters remain untouched.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    Black Panther's Yellow was revised because they switched from Environmental Tiles to TU tiles. It was a necessity for that change.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    I had 5/5/3 psylocke for a while since those were the covers I had found so gave 5 blue an honest try. So very situational it hurts. Maybe, if they let her be the first to steal white AP would the ability have something to get excited about, but 10 blue ap to wait 2-3 turns to steal a random color of ap. Way too many variables for it to be reliable at all. So often it is 10 ap to get matched away before going off, then it will often steal a color of AP that neither you nor you opponent uses so it is effectively worthless.

    It might even be worse than 2* Hawkeye's blue, that at least stuns and denies multiple colors for cheaper.

    Summary if bewilder cost 9 and always had a 2 turn cd tile it would be improved, if at 5 covers it gained a stun it would be quite good. If they need to tone down the sheer volume of AP it can steal to keep it more balanced, so be it.
    Making it steal 19 total AP from any colors available would make it deadly.
  • CrookedKnight
    CrookedKnight Posts: 2,579 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Or if you could pick which color it steals when you cast the power (or if they wanted to be really nice, when the CD goes off).
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    Kaigen wrote:
    Black Panther's Yellow was revised because they switched from Environmental Tiles to TU tiles. It was a necessity for that change.

    Ya got me there...... but god damn, Bewilder sux and BP's new Yellow has made him that much more useful/powerful.
  • FaerieMyst
    FaerieMyst Posts: 319 Mover and Shaker
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    Bewilder doesn't suck when it goes off. It is a powerful AP hit to the other team. However, it is variable as to whether it goes off. I'd rather have it cost more without a countdown. Then it would be more useful.
  • CrookedKnight
    CrookedKnight Posts: 2,579 Chairperson of the Boards
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    If Bewilder does go off and it hits a color that the AI can actually spend, instead of an off-color gathered incidentally or one that it only has passives for, Bewilder is pretty okay. If you can use the AP it steals too, it's pretty darn good. For all of that to happen at once is really darn rare, though.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    Happens more often if the CD is 2 and not 3.

    Really, I would be happy if they reduced the CD time for Bewilder to be 2 and 1 instead of 3 and 2. At 1 turn, so you can examine the enemy AP, reasonably predict an outcome, and then use Bewilder to achieve said outcome I would run Psy at 3/5/5. Her red is drowned out in a sea of better red anyway.
  • PuceMoose
    PuceMoose Posts: 1,445 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I'd be happy with it if they just let us target any tile for the skill instead of it being random; that way, we'd at least get *something* (1 tile removal) for our 10 AP, even if it was matched away before it finished. Also, it might create some interesting strategic options, as you might have to decide being targeting a tile color you needed/wanted to deny, vs. getting rid of a nasty enemy special tile in a hard to reach place. Plus it would be a bit nostalgic, and sort of feel like a double-cost, half-effect pre-nerf Classic Magneto Blue.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    With Black in the Gauntlet, Blue for at least Top 100 in PvP, they should have given Red, after all it's 120.000 points...
  • theshadeofopal
    theshadeofopal Posts: 93 Match Maker
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    replace 4 and 5 with
    4: reduce countdown to 2 turns
    5: steal up to 6 of second highest enemy ap
    makes it harder for a player to just give a frequently useless color like purple or blue.
  • Aidonis
    Aidonis Posts: 87 Match Maker
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    Fun fact for me, I've had Psylocke since she came out...still no red cover for me.

    As for her blue, I think a solid change would be to leave it at three turns, and then every turn it counts down it steals 5 random AP. So unless it get immediately matched, you at least get something out of it.
  • wirius
    wirius Posts: 667
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    It must be nice to complain about cover rewards, as if its a walk in the park to get all 3.
  • DD-The-Mighty
    DD-The-Mighty Posts: 350 Mover and Shaker
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    Aidonis wrote:
    Fun fact for me, I've had Psylocke since she came out...still no red cover for me.

    As for her blue, I think a solid change would be to leave it at three turns, and then every turn it counts down it steals 5 random AP. So unless it get immediately matched, you at least get something out of it.
    Do you mean like Punisher's black or Black Panthers CD tiles? it steals ap at 0?
    Either way, fun idea. that would def make her a threat in term of utility. and also take some of the AP stealing pressure off of Hood. and seeing as how easy BPs def tiles get matched out that wouldn't be too OP.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    They need to just change her blue all together. Make it primarily a stun attack (three aren't many of those at the 3*+ level anyways) and/or remove CD ENTIRELY. By now it should be noted that expensive CD tiles are virtually a waste of resources and time. For how much blue it cost, and being a CD tiles, it needs to be a more effective drain the OBW, who with purple, that she also gets double damage on - can ramp up to 4 of each color w/o a CD involved. I understand wanting a 'character' balance, but it's not like her other two attacks are OP or anything. It would take ALOT for her to join the ranks of Sentry, Daken, Magneto, Patch, etc. As it stands - she's a barely functional (though that's better than most) 3*.
    -Unreall
  • Enoc99
    Enoc99 Posts: 141
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    Could take a cue from the X-Force Wolverine refactor.

    Keep her cooldown for her blue ability as is, but if someone matches it, they are stunned for 1 round (at 3 covers) or 2 rounds (at 5 covers). That way it makes opponents have to decide whether to lose AP or lose use of a character for a couple rounds.
  • GrimSkald
    GrimSkald Posts: 2,512 Chairperson of the Boards
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    These are all good suggestions - my own thought was to remove the CD, reduce the maximum steal to something like 6, and keep everything else the same. If it goes off immedietely it becomes much less situational - but the steal is too high in that case.
  • Wonko33
    Wonko33 Posts: 985 Critical Contributor
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    I've sold 3 Psy blue since Sunday

    and there will be a 4th one at the end of the PvE
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    Yeah, honestly, Psylocke's blue is just so bad that it's hard to even get your head around. At first, stealing up to 19AP seems decent. Hell, even attached to a 10-AP price tag and a 2-turn countdown. But let's think about it for a moment. Why is AP steal good? Well, it gives you resources, and it robs the enemy of resources. Two problems.

    1. Robbing the enemy of resources is meaningless if the enemy has no use for those resources. If I'm running Patch/Cap/Daken, for instance, and the opponent uses bewilder on me, 9/10 times it's going to hit purple. I don't care if I lose my purple with that team; it's AP I can never use anyways. She could have stolen my red AP or my blue AP or my Green AP... But by the time Bewilder comes online, I almost always have had time to, yanno, spend it. On skills I want to use. And if not, then there's hardly going to be enough there to justify stealing 19 of it.
    2. Giving me resources is meaningless if I have no use for those resources. This gets into the metagame a bit, but... The fact that I picked a team up there that has no active purple skill? Not a coincidence. The fact is that with almost any solid team you pick, purple is going to be a dead color. There are almost no active purple skills, and all of the characters with active purple skills are either somewhere between mediocre and terrible (Loki, Falcon, GSBW, Daredevil) or incredibly difficult to get (Deadpool, Fury). Name me a solid or top-tier 3* team, and the dead color is almost always going to be purple. And you're probably not running purple either, for exactly the same reason! Indeed, this is the paradox inherent in Bewilder - the more likely you are to snag a certain color, the less likely it is that anyone on your team can do anything with it. In the 2* range you at least mitigate this problem; there, the "rare color" is usually Black, and Psylocke has an awesome black. But in the 3* range, where you'll usually be using the character? No. This theory is borne out again and again in practice.

    This would make the skill hard to use even without the minimum 2-turn counter. With the countdown, the enemy can explicitly seek out purple, or any other color they think can protect their most important colors, to cockblock you. Almost every time I use the skill, I spend 10 AP and get nothing in return. Bewilder could be a decent skill. But the restriction of "color with most AP", which would seem to make it get the most bang for its buck, in reality just makes it completely unplayable on a fundamental level. And I don't just mean "bad now", I mean "bad regardless of what they do". Like, what if they add a whole bunch of really decent purple passives? Well, simple - the meta would shift, and suddenly yellow would be the "weak" color. The color that's rare. The color that most teams don't cover. There is no good way around this. Not without the balance between powers being far, far better than they are now.

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