Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly romp through the hottest topics in Marvel Snap! This week we're talking all about the recent OTA balance changes with a dash of Character Mastery talk!
1) Is the Doom 2099 nerf consequential?
It's honestly the slightest possible nerf they could have hit the card with. Sure the bots have less power, but both Red Guardian and Lady Deathstrike are less effective as counters now. It's a nerf, but barely. Doom 2099 simply has too much power built in, regardless of his win rate, so I'm glad to see him hit. If you're a Doom 2099 fan, you've got to be pumping your fist that he took the smallest hit possible and is unlikely to be significantly impacted.
Several of the changes in this OTA were exceptionally slight. The change to Surtur is definitely a nerf, but very little actually changes for that deck other than having to occasionally compete for the Surtur lane more often. The Scorpion buff may be as big a hit to the deck than the Surtur change. The +1 Sunspot and Sera received were needed, but unlikely to lead to massive changes.
2) Is Adam Warlock actually good now?
He's certainly better with Bast and Agent Venom now, but doesn't he quite rise to the level of generically good. Still, this is a great change because there was a vocal minority that enjoyed 2/0 Adam and now they get him back with extra upside. This is probably the most intriguing change in the OTA, but I don't expect Adam to be playable outside of a couple decks. However, that's a lot more than previously and Adam finally has a real home and a place in the game.
3) What are the best and worst reaction sets from Character Mastery?
Mysterio is my personal favorite. Miek, Cerebro, and Phoenix Force are also pretty nice. Generally, the design team seems to have nailed the non-human sets best.
However, I'm pretty sure I know which set is the worst. Kitty Pryde, like several other characters, looks just like a generic person and is hardly identifiable. Kitty is worse than others like White Widow though, since she has several iconic masked looks they could have drawn from, including her Shadowkat costume or her classic yellow and black X-Men uniform. Even if they didn't want to go with a masked look, they could have at least given her the ponytail she has often sported in the comics instead of this weird Dorothy Hamill-esque mom-bob that she's never had. Add on the problematic aspect of giving a hazel-eyed Jewish girl blue eyes and this reaction set is a major miss.
Now let's go over to the ask-the-team channel on the official Marvel Snap discord and take a look at some developer answers.
4) Q: Wiccan nerfed for being too diverse? I have truly never been more confused by a nerf justification in all my time playing Marvel Snap since the first couple weeks of beta. Wiccan deserved a nerf simply for being played a lot? For being such an awesome design that a ton of your playerbase experiments with him in a wide variety of shells? What kind of nerf justification is this? I am completely baffled and disappointed, can you elaborate on why this was determined to be a good decision.
A: The purpose of our balance updates is to maintain a diverse and healthy metagame, not explicitly to reduce strength. We softened Wiccan for the same reason we buff weak cards, to encourage that diversity. It's also not the first time we've made such an adjustment--Arishem was another notable example.
-Glenn
Author's note:
As someone who was playing Wiccan in most of their decks and relying on him like a well-worn crutch, I can personally confirm that Wiccan was pretty strong. I'm not sure he needed to eat a nerf, but thankfully, the loss of one point isn't likely to make a huge difference and he wasn't being played for his power. He's notably worse in games when you don't activate him, though.
5) Q: A lot of people have different feelings on Character Mastery. I was wondering once you've had time to collect feedback through data/anecdotal will the team talk about what they learned and may or may not change?
Personally for me I'm not a fan of 90% of the new cosmetics and it feels like it suppresses the odds of what I want, yet some other people are loving full spiral decks so there doesn't seem to be a consensus that I can find. Would love to hear what the team learned when appropriate (would that be in a month or so?)
A: We realize that major changes to a system can cause some waves. We'll monitor the data and player feedback to continue to make the system better.
-Griffin
Author's note:
There are some legitimate concerns with how Character Mastery has made legacy splits like Gold and Ink relatively harder to get. The team built in extra protection for Ink/Gold + Krackle flare, which is nice. However, the original poster hits the nail on the head. The majority of the new effects don't look very good. Snap went from one of the best-looking games around to… not that. If the team can dramatically improve the visual appeal of Character Mastery, it would go a long way towards assuaging any negative feelings towards the new feature. And for heaven's sake, can we please see fewer bananas? Luckily Griffin had this to say about the future of character mastery. Hopefully aesthetic improvements are in the way.
That's it for this week! Come find me on Bluesky (@scosco) for decklists, comic talk, and Snap news!