Maybe the issue with Fixer is that you don't build to something throughout the game?
Haka and Tachyon build to one-off big hits. Nightmist builds to having a lot of cards to power her effects. Bunker runs through the Modes. Argent Adept to having a couple of instruments and a few Melody/Performance/whatever options. Legacy builds to Lead from the Front/Next Evolution, enivronment protection, and Legacy Ring + second power. Wraith builds to her equipment explosion. Heck, even Ex-Pat builds to Unload. And so on.
Chrono-Ranger builds to putting out bounties and a lot of equipment to take advantage of them.
Along the way, they do stuff.
With Fixer, it seems like he doesn't build constantly throughout the game. He gets Toolbox (hopefully!), he gets that perfect Style/Tool combo. Until then, he can plink away with Strike, maybe using a secondary useful Tool/Style. But once he gets where he's going, he's there and he does the same thing over and over. The "build" seems too short (assuming he can get to the build via Toolbox), there's not much along the way, and the final result is a bit repetitive.
I keed! But seriously, this comparison with Chrono-Ranger has helped me understand exactly what people's beef with Mr. Fixer is. To me, they seemed equally underpowered. But I understand better now the argument about feeling like you can get to CR's goodies with more ease than Fixer's goodies. We've had a breakthrough here, people.
This thread confuses me. First off, Spiff - you say that Chrono-Ranger and Fixer are the same level of underpowered. To get to the bottom of this for people who don't hang around here as much as some of us, are you saying that neither are underpowered? You are a staunch supporter of Fixer. Are you trolling us? :)
I think Chrono-Ranger has a lot of powerful options, and it's very nice that he's allowed to search for them. He's an all-out offensive character, with few concessions to defense. Some here have said his utility is poor, but I don't see it. No Executions is great, for the reasons listed above. By Any Means is my go-to Bounty, even more than Ultimate Target, since it tends to result in more damage, group depending. Temporal Grenade is perhaps a little slow, but powerful and searchable. (Among the rest, only Unity is capable of searching directly for her Ongoing/Environment destruction, and she has to jump through more hoops.) This makes Displaced Armory a utility king, among all the other must-haves it can find, like Jim's Hat. Neuro-Toxin Dart Thrower fills another niche. If you think his base power is useless, well, he has others. DR is a problem, but he can get around it. Put out the bounties, especially the ones that themselves provide damage boosts, kill the things that provide DR, and play Hunter and Hunted. The Masadah doesn't even have to figure into it. He might die, but it will be glorious. I have no issues with this character.
Finally, PlatinumWarlock - about your order of operations for Nightmist. I think you're thinking about this in the wrong way. Every character has to, can, and does roll with the punches. Next time, try limiting yourself to two of her things, whichever two you have. Then play spells and focus on doing what needs doing.
Agreed. I think early complaints about Fixer were due to his low damage, but they later shifted to the more prominent frustration of not getting what you want. I know that I personally get quite frustrated when people try to explain to me how great Fixer is against a particular villain with a Style/Tool/Harmony combination. Yes, I get how great Alternating Tiger Claw and Jack Handle is against Voss and a couple of Gene Bound Guards. It's completely awesome. I wish I had a more reliable way of getting to it, because my group rarely seems to have the effect Fixer can bring to the table actually be brought to the table. Chrono definitely has his shortcomings, as most heroes do. But he can readily access his guns and effectively modify his one damage pings across all of his one-shots and his innate. If anything, people who love or hate aspects of Mister Fixer tend to agree on him most of the time. His modifications are excellent, assuming you actually draw them. Until then, you work with what you have.
And I definitely get where you're coming from, Platinum. I really do. And I do like Mister Fixer. He's a great character with interesting mechanics and a lot of his cards provide a new approach to the game. That doesn't mean I have to appreciate his lack of set-up or think of it as a fun design. I'll play games with Mister Fixer, and I even have a good time with him. We had a three man game with Fixer yesterday and beat Baron Blade by the skin of our teeth. We all enjoyed the game, but even with two Toolbox fueled draws, we didn't draw a Style until the 9th turn. That was a bummer. Just like it's a bummer when Bunker doesn't get a Flak Cannon or Expatriette doesn't get a Shotgun. Fixer always had something he could play (Salvage Yard is fantastic, and helped Wraith recover the four cards she blew up due to a Devious Disruption), but part of the appeal of his deck IS playing his Tools and Styles, and part of the appeal of this game as a whole is playing cards that boost your character (especially the Equipment-heavy ones). There are games where Chrono Ranger (and even an Equipment-hunting machine like The Wraith) have their options completely squashed by the Villain(s) or Environment. But that potential to recover with their respective search cards make it less horrible. With Fixer, it just stings a little more. My frustrations are out of a love for the character and a want for his unique design to be experienced. I'm not trying to get people to hate the guy, or never play him again.
The mechanics of Chrono-Ranger's deck were heavily debated in the playtesting forum. Considering how much larger the playtesting community is from Rook City to Shattered Timelines, there was a lot more playtesting put into the ST heroes than the IR heroes and even more than the RC heroes. Across the board, most people felt that the "theme" of Chrono Ranger was rarely compromised, even by DR. There were games where he was less effective, but he generally could access his bounties, pull out his equipment, and contribute to the team by buffing damage against a target, destroying Ongoing/Environment cards, providing Irreducible damage, filling up trash (through "Just Doin' My Job", helping Tachyon with her Bursts, Nightmist for her MFR, or even combo-ing with Fixer's Salvage Yard to get Equipment cards discarded back), and effectively obtaining nearly any of it quite quickly and effectively. You really "feel" like you're firing a few warning shots, then pulling a future-tech beam rifle out of Z-space and blasting the big bad you've been sent to "take care of." Fixer can do a lot of these things too, but it's that potential to get what you need when you need it that makes people less frustrated about Chrono Ranger, in my opinion. I get a much more consistent feel of being "heroic" with Chrono than I do with Fixer, and I wonder if others feel that way. If they do, my guess is his ability to effectively get what he needs in the moment is the reason behind that.
Thats silly since he has equipment search. One major reason for needing to "fix" Expat and Fixer is that they can't search worth a crap.
Secondly Chrono's total output capability is crazy awesome even without anyone else buffing him. Play him again any villain that doesn't have tons of minions and he will be absolutely dominating. Against minions, he may or may not be as awesome, but theres alway boss to wail on (except for dreamer).
Yeah, thats pretty much my thoughts. DR can really hurt CR but it can be worked around with effort. He feels really fun to play with so many different attacks each turn. I find he's often card, card bow, bow plus a bow, bow out of turn dut to hit "Ultimate Target" bounty. Now you are up to six sources of damage.
Yup cause consistency and being able to do what you want instead of just getting stuck with no good options makes for awesome fun.
I don't know about that, Wraith imediately comes to mind as someone that can or is darn close.
PlatinumWarlock wrote:
But CR is fragile, with not a single card that contributes to his defense,
I agree, he is very much a pure damage dealer, the bounty that heals him is his only defensive help and its is likely not as good as healing/damage canelation/damage redirection of the other pure damage characters (Ra, Expat, normal Tach)
Then again I think Fixer's great, as a non-damage character. I don't even mind his card draw capability.
Well, Fixer does have a "these are the card you want out" feel, it's just that he has more options.
Maybe the problem is that they all those options to the same place: hit opponents (in groups or singularly). Fixer isn't much of a team player. Junkyard is somewhat limited usefulness, and… that's it. he doesn't help against Ongongs or Environments. He's more the Batman-ish "dark loner" than Wraith, who has Grappling Hook and Mega-Computer (although the latter can be a mixed blessing). Ex-Patriette has the RPG Launcher.
IMO, Fixer just doesn't interact much with his teammates, except when they're helping him.
I would like to add that although skipping your turn to draw and extra card is a valid play choice and is no big deal once or twice a game. Starting a game by skipping your first three turns is horribly unfun. Starting to set up three turns behind everyone else isn't to great either. Thats why a power like Redeemer Fanatic is really good, its gets you that extra card but you can still play a card each turn to at least feel like you are doing something.
Mr. Fixer can (admittedly inconsistently) clear damage reduction with Riveting Crane, focus fire with Driving Mantis, and protect his team with Grease Gun and Hoist Chain. Oh, and he can heal Absolute Zero with Grease Monkey Fist. Salvage Yard is awesome for the likes of Bunker, Haka and Nightmist - anyone who uses cards as a resource and has equipment in their deck.
Yeah, I was a little. But people rose to the challenge with polite, well-formed arguments about how CR differs from Fixer, and it helped me understand their problems with Fixer better, so I'm glad I did it. Plus, at the time, I'd only played CR a couple of times and had had a hard time doing more than onsey-twosey damage with him, so the comparison seemed more apt. Now that I've gotten more plays with CR under my belt, with lots of gun-slinging and bounty-posting, I'm even less serious about the comparison than I was.
For the record, I am a staunch supporter of Fixer. I'll put that in context though -- in every game my family and I play, my wife plays two heroes, my daughter plays two heroes, and I play one hero plus manage the villain and environment. So when I play Fixer, I'm not sitting around fuming about the cards I don't have, because I've got plenty of other stuff to do throughout the game. I can easily see how, if Fixer were the only thing you had to pay attention to, you'd be bummed about not being able to get ahold of the card you wish you had, and maybe not even being able to play anything at all if you've already got a pretty good stance and tool in play. So, I get it.
Also for the record, I play with my Stance Shifting Master alt Mr. Fixer variant (available on my site), and it makes him way more fun to play.
Here's something I remembered reading this. I haven't played a lot of deck building games in my life but for a while I really enjoyed the Vs. game. One reason that I liked it other than other games of that type was the amount of consistency you could get in your decks. I found that if a deck didn't work as intended (not necesarily win but do what it was designed to do) 90% of the time I would start looking for ways to sqeeze in more card draw or search. It was worth it to loose some potential to make sure it didn't ever flop (or at least very rarely). It sounds like this is the idea with Fixer and Expat. People have just had them "not work as intended" too many times and thats not fun so they want to squeezein more search and draw so that they don't flop so much. I know if this were a deck building game where the current decks were starter decks, thats the thing I would be looking to add to them.
It's alongside the others in the Oversized Hero HP Trackers download. But maybe that's not a good place for it if people don't know to look, so I'll pull it out and give it its own entry on the page.
I know Chrono can really be hurt by DR so this seems like it could clear give him trouble but I'm getting more and more confident about CR in this matchup.
First of all it should only take a few turns to flip Voss and get rid of the DR. Chrono will own Voss on his flipped side.
The main reason I feel this way though is in a recent game against Gloomy (I know I know Gloomy is the easiest boss ever but ) we hit two profane zealots early which reduce damage to villain targets by one. When one was out CR played a search for the +1 bounty and put it on him and did one damage from the search and then used Masadah for 2 more damage. The +1 damage helped the next hero finish the guy off. When the next one came out CR played the one-shot that puts a bounty from trash into play and it was essentially a repeat so he was the MVP even in dealing with DR.
Watching the way he played that game I'm pretty sure even if Voss stayed on his DR side Chrono could put out enough bounty's to let Masadah be effective. Yes it would make him much less effective, but if you are not giving the hero's any bonus damage a Masadah with 3 bounties would be at least as effective as Expat's shotgun and hair trigger does zero damage in that situation. Now maybe it wouldn't be as good as the Assault rifle, but again with no bonus damage thats only 1 damage to 3 targets where as Chrono can help by possibly giving others bonus damage or getting a free kill via "The Whole Gang".
EDIT: Plus Danny-Boy with three bounties is just as good and he still gives the benefits previously stated.
Also, I would like to point out that Chrono has a Bounty that heals him for 1 HP at the start of a turn. While he doesn't have DR, he DOES have a way of regaining HP on his own (which, as mentioned by Ameena on Flamethrower's Argent Adept strategy guide, is great against villains that can deal irreducible damage). Considering his nemesis is Plague Rat, I'm somewhat curious if that was intentional. Regardless, great job >G!
Oh yeah, have you tried him againsst PR? With his ultimate target bounty out he is a beast attacking on PR's turn as well as his own. Since PR has no DR the bow lets you hit for 3 (or more with nemesis, bounty and any other bonuses) twice on PR's turn. Then on Chrono's turn he can easily hit four times for 3 (or more). Getting all those 3s to be 4s isn't too hard and now you are talking 6 total shots of 4 for 24 every turn. Not just on one big turn, but every single turn. And yeah the life regain helps give him more survivabiliy since he's taking 1 irreducible damage every turn.