November 12, 2012 Patch Notes

Characters
Dr. Strange Costume and Revamp * All versions of Dr. Strange have a new passive, Sorcerer Supreme
 * Grants a stack of Mystic Energy when any enemy attacks


 * Restores Stamina every turn
 * In addition, Bolts of Balthakk now generates one stack of Mystic Energy
 * When Dr. Strange has three stacks of Mystic Energy, he consumes all three to generate Power of the Principalities


 * Restores Stamina every turn
 * Makes the next Teresing Boost, Vapors of Valtorr, or Shield of the Seraphim a Quick Action
 * Dr. Strange may still collect Mystic Energy while he has Power of the Principalities
 * Dr. Strange will not generate Power of the Principalities while he already has one
 * Thus Dr. Strange can have one Power of the Principalities and three Mystic Energy, ready to be converted as soon as the Power of the Principalities is used
 * Bolts of Balthakk


 * Increased Stamina cost and damage
 * Modern Dr. Strange


 * Uniform passive: Defender
 * Dr. Strange and his allies have a chance to be shielded by the Light of the Seraphim before an enemy attack
 * Bolts of Balthakk and Vapors of Valtorr inflict Bane on a successful hit
 * Black Panther
 * Woven Vibranium can now trigger on counter-attacks
 * Panther Stance is now a Quick Action
 * Vibranium Daggers are now correctly tagged as Ranged
 * Captain America


 * Captain America now has a passive chance to block all attacks
 * Block no longer causes an attack to miss, but instead reduces damage significantly
 * Shield Guard no longer gives a chance to block
 * Lead the Charge removed
 * Inspiring Leadership will now be granted after the first character’s action, no matter who goes first
 * Deadpool


 * Healing factor thingie started kicking in again. Hate when that stops working.
 * No Holds Barred now actually removes debuffs
 * Fixed the number of hits displayed when using Happy to See You
 * Pretty Cool Guy no longer stacks. We get the idea, you really, really like them.
 * Chance to nerf self now greatly reduced. Of course, sometimes you are just too awesome
 * Emma Frost


 * Diamond Form and War Diamond no longer remove debuffs
 * Unlocked Potential and Cosmic Potential will still remove debuffs
 * Normalized damage from Mental Anguish
 * Characters with more health will not take more damage any more
 * All characters who remove mental anguish (by using a non-attack, non-quick action) gain Mental Scarring for 1 round
 * If Emma Frost counter-attacks a target that has Mental Scarring, Emma Frost will counter with War Diamond instead of Psychic Tap
 * Ghost Rider


 * Penance Stare will no longer remove Sin from enemies that are not targeted
 * Increased the amount of damage Penance Stare gains from each stack of Sin
 * Hercules


 * Blessing of Olympus now makes only Hercules’s own attacks guaranteed critical hits
 * Wound of Cerynitis now correctly decreases damage from Ranged attacks
 * Human Torch


 * Fixed an issue where Human Torch was gaining health when attacked on the first turn of combat, or extra health after activating Flame On!
 * Iron Fist


 * Heart of Shou-Lao is now a Quick Action and can only be activated once per round
 * Reduced the Stamina cost for Heart of Shou-Lao
 * Increased the bonus to all stats from Heart of Shou-Lao (buff)
 * Heart of Shou-Lao (buff) now stacks up to 10 times
 * Magik


 * Magik will no longer repeatedly summon demons after every attack and defense
 * Mockingbird


 * Mockingbird no longer gains Tactical Insight from counter-attacks
 * Tactical Insight can only grant one extra turn per round
 * Phoenix


 * Mind Link (protect status) now lasts 3 rounds
 * Phoenix Fire now causes Soulfire instead of Burning
 * Phoenix Fire no longer drains all Stamina when used
 * Quicksilver


 * Will no longer counter with Quickness when stunned
 * Fixed a display issue with the damage caused by Tag Team
 * Scarlet Witch


 * Probability Field will now have a chance to remove debuffs, but not make characters immune to debuffs
 * The PVP AI should no longer try to use Chaos Shield as the first move... most of the time
 * Spider-Man


 * Black Suit Spider-Man now correctly deals increased damage against Webbed targets
 * Spider-Woman


 * Fear Pheromones now has a 100% chance to hit
 * Reduced the Stamina cost of Fear Pheromones
 * Vengeance is now a Quick Action
 * Storm


 * Blizzard now only hits enemies and not allies
 * Thor


 * PVP AI will now prefer to attack when he has 2 stacks of Might of Mjolnir
 * War Machine

== Items ==
 * Minigun Barrage now starts off available instead of on cooldown


 * Grief
 * Damage reduced
 * No longer Stealthy
 * Can no longer be used multiple times in the same round
 * The unusually high damage of this weapon was caused by an oversight, which we have rectified. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused
 * Hotshot


 * Damage reduced
 * Stamina cost reduced
 * Fury


 * Damage increased
 * Stamina cost reduced
 * Chrono Overdrive


 * Increased Stamina cost
 * Reduced damage bonus
 * Chrono Overdrive’s damage bonus is now consumed on the next attack, and no longer removed if the Agent fails to attack immediately after using it (such as by recharging)
 * Quantum Jumper


 * Quantum Jumper no longer grants an extra turn to the Agent that uses it
 * Sinister Sceptre


 * Astral Form (Phased buff) now grants a bonus to damage on the next attack
 * Astral Form is removed after the next attack
 * Sinister Sceptre now has a 100% chance to apply Astral Form
 * Power of Four


 * Now begins with a 1 round cooldown
 * Increased Stamina cost
 * Ruby Quartz Rifle


 * Now correctly tagged as a Ranged attack
 * M1911 Patriot


 * Now correctly tagged as a Ranged attack

General

 *   Bonus damage for actions with Paragon Exploiter reduced
 * Other Exploit effects still do the same damage
 * Multiple instances of Reactor Overload (from the Arc Reactor Charge) and Slow Recharge will not visibly stack
 * Bane no longer stacks

End of Tournament Season 1
We would like to extend a warm and genuine thank you to all of our players who participated in this first PVP tournament. There were many challenges and triumphs, but more than anything, you, the players, have far exceeded our expectations. We had over 1.4 million players participating in this PVP tournament, with a furious fever at the end of the tournament as players scrambled to secure their prize.

Just as we learned a lot from our first Spec Op that we channeled into making a great Spec Op 2, we plan to take the lessons we learned and turn them back toward making an even better experience for Tournament 2.

Win Cable!
You heard it right, the prize for our fiercest, grittiest S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents is early access to Cable, who has traveled back from a month into the future to join your strike team, free of charge. Cable is a very unique hero, with access to a powerful futuristic arsenal, as well as a host of psychic abilities that he must suppress to prevent the Techno-Organic virus from rampaging through his body. Cable can, at times, unlock access to these abilities, but at a price. Check back later when we release more information about Cable and how to unlock these mysterious powers.

More Prizes! More Winners!
Because we underestimated just how popular Tournament Season 1 would be, we feel in hindsight that the availability of Deadpool was too limited. We don’t want to take away the amazing achievement of our top 1000 players, but for those of you who didn’t quite make it (many of the MAA team included), Tournament Season 2 will increase the number of players who can win each of the tiers, including Adamantium League. Our new prize structure looks like the following: Better Matchmaking Players will notice several improvements to matchmaking over the course of the next Tournament. Players should face opponents that are closer in Rating as well as closer to their level, unless there are few suitable opponents. Additional improvements to the way Rating is calculated and matchmaking are coming soon.
 * Silver League: All participants!
 * Gold League: Top 35% (up from 30%)
 * Diamond League: Top 15% (up from 10%)
 * Vibranium League: Top 3% (up from 1%)
 * Adamantium League: Top 0.5% (Several thousand players, up from 1000)

Tracking Fights Initiated Players will be able to see on the PVP landing page exactly how many fights they initiated. This should help when you are trying to see if you qualify for a given league or not yet. Fights initiated will also be listed on the player profile page and in the Ladder page.

Scaling PVP Armory Bonus Currently, the amount of bonus that you gain from an item in the PVP Armory is fixed by the item regardless of Agent level. This leads to problems where very low-level players can attain a huge bonus, making hero ownership less meaningful. By the same token, very high-level players don’t get as much benefit out of PVP Armory as low level players.

To address this, a future update will normalize the bonus granted by the PVP Armory. This will make the bonus from placing items in the Armory equally important for high level players as it is for low-level players. The numbers displayed on items will not change, only how those numbers translate into total stat gain during PVP combats.

More Health, Less Stamina Stamina is problematic in PVP because even if heroes have more Stamina to use expensive moves, their moves don’t cost any more Stamina to activate. For this reason, we are reducing the amount of bonus stamina granted from PVP armory bonus and heroes. Extra stamina gained from Iso-8 and other means is unchanged. This should make players consider Stamina costs as a strategic decision more in PVP.

At the same time, we feel the current metagame relies too heavily on one-shotting heroes and agents, and there is little recourse for a player against such strategies. For this reason, we are increasing the amount of bonus health gained from PVP armory bonus and heroes. This should allow players who wish to make defensive builds to create a more viable team and increase the value of having a high Defensive armory bonus.

Minimizing Balance Changes During Tournaments Some players were frustrated by changes to the PVP landscape caused by introducing new weapons and heroes during the Tournament, including Beast and Spec Op 4. It would be a poor experience for everyone if we only released new content during the breaks between seasons, particularly for those players who aren’t interested in PVP. However, we are aware that some players found the rapidly changing landscape problematic.

We were aware after it was released that there were issues with the Grief that were potentially upsetting. However, putting in a change to fix that weapon (essentially a nerf) would be unfair for those players who worked hard to acquire one of these weapons before the end of the Tournament. We are working hard to make sure a problem like this does not occur again so we do not have to make the difficult choice of allowing a known issue to remain in the game or to cause frustration by fixing something so close to the end of a season.

At the same time, there were a number of balancing tweaks that were collected during the Tournament. Instead of rolling out these changes and possibly upsetting the balance of PVP, we withheld these changes until the end of the Tournament. We are constantly working to improve the game in a way that has the most positive impact, and timing is an important part of that.

Reference

 * Forum Playdom 11-12-12 Patch Notes