Hero Balancing and the OP Tempest

General GTG General Discussion
1

I just finished playing 10 games against Advanced Citizen Dawn.  They were 2 hero games, just to see if we could take her down.

I lost 9 of them, and won 1.

the heroes that I played were:

Expatriate and Bunker

Chrono Ranger and Haka

Mr. Fixer and Fanatic

Tachyon and Tempest

and various mixtures of the above characters, as I was trying to feel out their strengths and weaknesses.

Haka and Bunker and Tachyon and Fanatic teams each did well, dispite failing.  

Bunker had the hardest time of these 4, but still did alright compared to the others.

Expatriate and Chrono Ranger would fail as soon as the card that destroys on goings and equipment came out.

Chrono Ranger would also fail if he couldn't get out Bounties OR utilize the bounties.  Expatriate would fail if she couldn't get out guns.  Both would fail if Anvil and/or Truth came out.

Mr. Fixer and just failed horribly every game.  

Mr. Fixer has incredibly underwhelming damage and can't remove environment or ongoing cards.

The team that finally won?  Tachyon and Tempest.

I only used Tempest in the last game and was AMAZED at how he outshines almost everyone else!  He has armor.  He has auto-damage.  He has a 2pt team heal.  He has a core AoE attack, and high burst damage (and multi-target) One-Shots.  He can decimate environment and ongoing cards.  He can buff his damage against the highest HP villain.  He can bring cards back from the dead.  He can draw more cards.  He can change his damage type.  Basically, he's what most every hero wants to be!

Compared to him, Chrono Ranger, Expatriate, and Mr. Fixer are sad, sad pandas.

Bunker is also sad, but he has some amazing card draw and damage capabilities, and his own heal and armor that make him acceptably close enough to the awe that is Tempest.

I'm truly afraid to try to match Argent Adept in this comparison.  I don't know how his slow building setup would survive Citizen Dawn (advanced).

But it saddens me to see such interesting heroes fall so far behind the okay and amazing heroes.  Especially poor Mr. Fixer and his inability to stop ongoings and environments, and inability to do more than the occasional 8 damage around if he has enough time and is lucky enough to get the cards he needs (best average of 4 just through passives, normal average of 2).

Chrono Ranger and his lack of damage mitigation and reliance on Bounties does OKAY, unless damage reduction shows up.  But he doesn't have the sustainability to get enough powers up to overcome full enemy damage reduction before he gets slaughtered.  Sometimes all he can do is Temporal Grenade an ongoing for his ally.  At least he has that.

Expatriate has almost as aweful damage mitigation, but at least ammo boosts can help get her guns past Damage Reduction.  AND, unlike Chrono Ranger, she doesn't need to use a power to destroy environment or ongoing cards.

She still dies faster than she can get into power, though.

 

Has anyone else seen these same issues?  Is there a way to help these poor half-heroes reach a more balanced level of skill and playability?

 

I would suggest Chrono Rangers power be changed to: Get a Bounty from trash or from your deck and put it in your hand.

Add an ongoing called Quick Draw:  Whenever a Bounty is put into play, Chrono Ranger may deal 1 target 1 projectile damage.

 

Expatriate:  Load is great.  She just needs some one-shots that deal damage, or to be able to play ammo as a one shot OR onto a weapon.

 

Mr. Fixer:  He NEEDS to have some method of removing environment and/or ongoing cards.  Perhaps one of his irreducible damage stances could be changed to: If damage was dealt by Mr. Fixer this turn, destroy an ongoing/environment card.  Then his utility would skyrocket and his damage issue would be less debilitating.  And Damage Reduction would still be an issue for him.

What do you guys think?

 

2

These are all issues that have come up in the forums, but I would suggest playing against other villains before constructing hypotheses on how to improve heroes. Every villain is different and some heroes are more effective against certain villains. Fixer and Ex-Pat are a source of controversy on the forums, and I'm not going to go to deep into that. CR is pretty popular and even though most people agree that damage reduction can really shut him down, He can be quite a source of consistent damage and his bounties can help in other various ways. I would just suggest playing more games against other villains and toggle between advanced and basic. Even though Tempest is great, there are games where he gets overshadowed by heroes who are generally considered lower tier.

3

Well, the game isn't meant to be played with 2 Heroes, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions from a game with 2 Heroes. My own experience with Tempest is that very often the cards you want to draw with him are nowhere to be found, and that he gets shut down by damage reduction. His deck is all over the place, which is great when you draw what you need, and terrible when you don't.

4

Just to agree with those two above, each hero has different strengths and weaknesses. Take Fixer for example; try him against Plague Rat, and you'll see what a beast he is. I agree that Tempest is a beast, but he isn't always the best there is. That's the wonder of this game: to a certain extent, all of the heroes are 'balanced', in that (I believe) they have a certain niche that they can fill beautifully, and so everyone really does have to work together to reach a common goal.

I would recommend trying 3-hero teams instead, as this would show much more balance. Given your current set up, even someone like Legacy (which, mind you, has ben brought up on this here forum for being overpowered) wouldn't really be able to shine :)

5

 

I can't help but note....the characters that tended to suffer the most in your examples are ones that use Ongoings and Equipment pretty exclusively, and you put them up against a villain with very notable (and painful) ongoing/equipment destruction...while the heroes that are "successful" in the test are the ones that have probably the best one shots in the game and don't rely heavily on either equipment or Ongoings.

There might just be some bias in your testing...

6

Quoting for truth. Was going to say the same thing just about word for word. 

Give Fixer more games. Honestly. He does not need house rules or anything, just a better understanding of what his "job" is within the team you bring. Finding cleaver uses for Driving Mantis is key. Redirection is a severely underrated ability and is infinitely better than static armor reduction and beastly when they are combined.

7

The game is meant for 3 to 5 heroes. A lot of the H effects don't work with H=2. If you only have 2 players use 4 heroes, just have each player use 2 heroes. I actually really enjoy doing that. Playing a 2 hero game is fine if you want to challenge yourself once in a while, but I wouldn't do so 10 times against advanced Dawn. She's already very hard for normal 3-5 hero teams.

Tempest is an above average hero, but there are heroes more OP than him. His cards don't really combo well with one another. As already mentioned, there is a lot of controversy over house ruling Fixer. I am in favor of house rules, but I don't like adding ongoing destruction to him. It only felt like he needed ongoing destruction to you because Dawn has so many ongoings.

8

Here is why Fixer is great. Irreducable Damage. And until Omnitron X came along he was the only one that could do it. Correct me if I am wrong.

9

Yeah, I know I'm echoing what a lot of others have said, but two heroes against Dawn isn't the best way to test each hero's viability. The game is very much balanced for 3-5 heroes, not only does H break down with 2, but a lot of the amazing, super-satisfying combos you would get with three or more disappear.

I'm just going to go to bad for Chrono Ranger - he's one of my favorite heroes to play and he can get stupid powerful with just a few damage bonuses. If he's teamed up with Legacy, or gets a good amount of bounties with Hunter and Hunted in play, he will start wrecking stuff. Think of it this way: Damage reduction hurts CR severely because he relies on a lot of 1-point instances, but the flip side is that damage bonuses give him an exponential benefit.

And yeah, conversations about Fixer and Expat's issues are all over the forums, I'm not even going to try to summarize. Suffice it to say, you're not alone in your viewpoint even if your methods tend to skew things toward more "independent" heroes.

10

This test was done because of 2 problems we encountered in our Saturday Night 4 and 5 player games:

1). We played versus advanced mode of all the villains and lost consistently unless certain heroes were ALWAYS included in the group.

2). It was difficult to separate who was doing tragically poorly from who needed just a little assistance roger the job done when 4 and 5 characters were involved.

We played TONS of these games over the month we've had it (with tons of playing during the weekas well because the game is so awesome!!!)

So I played 10 games against Citizen Dawn Advanced (a fairly standard, not too heavily anything kind of villain, whose H abilities work in favor of smaller teams).

If I wanted to really destroy my own 2 player team I could have put them against:  Iron Legacy, Cosmic Omnitron, the Matriach, the Chairman, Akash'Bhuta, Strife, or Apostate.  But I felt these villains were MORE deadly on average than Citizen Dawn, and more likely to destroy player cards or burst out huge damage right from the start.

If you think Dawn having Ongoings was my issues, note she normally only had 2 ongoings out at any one time.  One game she had 4 ongoings out, but that was against Tempest and Tachyon, who just blew them away soon after.

The idea is NOT that Mr. Fixer needed the ongoing/environment destruction to destroy Citizen Dawn more easily, but that he needed it to outshine a character at SOMETHING.  Even when DR was out, OTHER heroes could do more damage reduction without irreducible damage, consistently. His Hook Stance that would help his team requires him to get past the DR first, but he simply doesn't have the damage to do that without lots of outside help. 

 

 

 

11

I have no idea how all the HTML formatting suddenly appeared in that post.  Sorry guys!

12

Chrono Rangef is one of my favorites as well.  The things he can do when he has tons of bounties out is AMAZING, and almost every card grants an attack.  But he HAS to be paired with Omnitron-X, Legacy, or someone who can take the damage focus off him due to lack of damage mitigation and his own penchant for increasing damage against himself.

In all our games, he did AMAZING damage (as long as DR wasn't involved), but died quickly from kill punishers, AoEs, and abilities that hit the hero with the lowest health.

If we compare him with The Wraith, she has Smokebomb to redirect and mitigate, and her card power, and she can boost her own attacks by 3 and consistently hit 3 enemies for 3 or 1 for 5, or get past 2 DR if she has to.  And if she loses ALL her cards, she can quickly get them back out, in an order that increases her chance of survival.

Or how about Haka?  Or Bunker?  Or Visionary who can make herself invulnerable for a time or give the team DR 3 against environment cards, or simply choose the villains next card?  Or Tempest, or Tachyon (who can stop all opponent damage or redirect damage of 3 or greater), or RA, or the Scholar?  Absolute Zero needs help to get up to snuff, so I don't think he does well either, but that's another story.

Fanatic has damages that heal her and more mitigation, and a nice 2pt passive or 3pt Relic that don't rely on any extra cards being stacked out there.

How many heroes are left that DON'T mitigate damage or get past DR 2 with less difficulty than Mr. Fixer and Chrono Ranger?  Argent Adept maybe?  He is a DEEP utility hero who deals very little damage . . . except when he makes his allies use their powers instead.  And he has nice healing.  He is DEFINITELY not a stand-alone hero, but his abilities are quite powerful, and can even make a single other hero seem like it is being played twice.

 

 

 

13

Mr.  Fixer is the character I most want to be effective.  I love matial artists.   But he does less damage with his base power than almost any other brawler character.  This means one point of DR shuts him down if he can't get pipewrench, dual crowbars, alternating tiger claw, or grease monkey fist out.  

 

And what stops him from gettin these?  Anything that destroys ongoing and/or equipment cards.

 

In most situations I find I get the perfect combo out just before it gets destroyed.  Then I can't ge it back.  There are only 2 harmonies in the deck and they require an equipment and an ongoing to help.  Hoist, tire iron, and jack handle do no damage boost.  DR shuts them down.  

Grease monkey fist and alternatin tiger claw are equivalent vs.  DR 1.  But if the DR target is destroyed (us priority 1), alternating tiger claw now does nothing.

 

Driving Mantis and pipe wrench are great for survivability.  But I can't get pipewrench out consistently and driving mantis doesn't boost damage.

 

It seems Mr. Fixer relies on too many combos of cards.  Hecan go defensive OR offensive OR add utility, but not all three.  No other hero is split this way.  For him to switch his build requires between two and three turns.

 

14

I haven't tried it yet, but I would guess that Tempest is bad against the Dreamer. Hitting Dreamer all the time seems bad. A lot of his cards just don't work against her, or are bad ideas. 

 

I find that Tempest is great against Villain's with a lot of targets, like Citizen Dawn, but is poor against Villains with only 1 target like Plague Rat or Spite. 

15

Mr Fixer outshines other Heros in a few areas, they just are not massive damage or ongoing/enviro control. These are important yes, but I feel the community tends to overvalue those abilities at the expense of seeing the forest for the trees so to speak. 

Redirection. Adaptability. Doesn't blink at equipment/ongoing destruction that cripples most others. Ground pound without the drawback. A stacking damage reducer. Did I mention redirection? I should mention it again it is such an awesome tool. I tend to play Fixer primarily as a Tank honestly and he is awesome at it.

I don't want to detail this into a Fixer defense thread, but he needs to be played to his strengths, not to mimic the strengths of others. 

16

So, I was playing a game with Mr. Fixer against Citizen Dawn (and I think it was one of the Google+ games too). I really did not have a good opening hand, and for a while, it was hard for me to do some damage. However, I did have driving mantis, which let me both tank, and contribute. Once I finally found my crowbars, it was just us and Dawn, and we had to finish it up quickly, too. So to increase DPR, I started hitting dawn with one bar and Wraith with the other. Wraith, having been set up with combat stance, hit me, which I redirected to Dawn. We won all in all. 

I say this because even if I don't feel like I contributed a lot, what I did was find a humorous story within the game, which I feel is the main point. I was just watching a review of SoTM on the Dice Tower (with guest reviewer Scott Fera), and he made a good point on the difficulty; in the superhero genre, the heros don't beat the villans every time; that would be boring. So use your imagination. Make a story. 

And as for Tempest, I think he's pretty cool, but not overpowered. He certianly is one of the more well-rounded characters, and has everything, much like the Wraith, but the low hp will get you down more often than not against certain bosses.

Oh, and if you need a refresher that Mr. Fixer can do stuff, have him go against Apostate. He will be your main relic killer when the Runes go up.

 

 

17

Did you have Harmony out, or was there another reason you didn't just hit yourself with the Crowbars and redirect that damage to Dawn?

18

Yeah, Harmony was out. 

19

This brings me to an idea: What would be a properly scientific method to determine the balance and balance needs of the heroes in SotM?  We ALL love the game and want it to grow amazingly, and many of us see what we feel are some balance issues.  What can we do to help identify or dispel these views, in a scientific, reproducible by an independent study, fashion?

I propose this:

Choose 3, 4, or 5 player games, a specific villain, and a specific environment.  We can even use this forum to help determine which villain and environment would be least biased for or against our hero.

Play 20 of that style of game, 10 with the hero you are testing, 10 without, but with another hero instead.

Each of the 10 games WITH the hero should use preset duo partners who work well together.  Choose 5 duos that work WELL with your hero, and 5 that don't work so well with them.  Or choose 2 that work well with him, 2 that don't, and 1 that could go either way, and play each duo twice.

For the 10 WITHOUT our test hero, the 3rd syand in hero can be chosen randomly each game.

This is NOT meant to be exhaustive, but to give a good overall set of data to compare the champion on.  If more of us do this, it CAN become exhaustive.

For each game, Record the hands of each played and the villains/environments on the board (or changes to them) at each turn.

For example:  My heroes are:  Mr. Fixer (list his 4 cards), Legacy (list his 4 cards), and The Wraitb (list her 4 cards).

Villain is Citizen Dawn, with Citizen: Truth out.  My Environment is The Final Wasteland.

Her first turn, Dawn draws Citizen Summers, deals X to each player, and the Y to the player with the highest HP.

Mr. Fixer plays Crowbar and used power X to deal Y to Citizen Truth.  He draws Mantis Style.

Then any person can look back on the play, and tell you what moves they thought were bad choices or good choices, and independently recreate the whole match (even seeing how changing a play may affect the game given future draws by players and villains).

At the end, report how many rounds the game lasted, how much HP each card on the board had, and whether it was a victory or a loss.

What do you guys think?

To me, the tricky parts would be choosing the Duo Partners, the Villain, and the Environment.  We can work together on those.

20

Mr.  Fixer is adabtable.  But if have seen very few situations where it is better or equal to play him over other champions.

I think we should create a battery of tests for each hero to highlight their strengths and weaknesses.  Something like:

Tanking:

Single source strong:

one invulnerable target deals 1 damage the first round, two the next, then 3...until they deal 6 in one round and they reset to one for the next round.  Measure how long the target lasts.  To make it more interesting, wipe out all ongoing and equipment every two full cycles.

Double source med:

Two targets dealing 3 damage apiece (of different types).  Every eight rounds destroy all ongoing and equipment cards.  See how long the hero lasts.

Multiple source low:

Each round add one target that deals one damage.  Every eight rounds destroy all ongoing and equipment cards.  Sehow long the hero lasts.

Do similar for dps and for card destruction.  For deck manpulation we could have 12 cards where one says the ho loses.   One card is drawn a round.  See how long they lt.

These tests would need to be run maybe 100 times per he.  But they would give you a feel for how quickly they c react and recover from each situation.