My ArchAngel Story and Request for Clarification

Hello Community and Mods,

I wanted to share my experience regarding AA and the recent "bug fix/nerf" and the consequences of this all as they pertain specifically to myself.

If anyone doesn't know, Archangel was recently bug fixed so that the stun applied from neurotoxins no longer functions as it once did. The various interactions are too numerous to list, but I think its fair to say that the top two concerns to anyone concerned about T2A's lost, was his ability to stun stun-immune nodes (most notably AW bosses), and his ability to stun LOL opponents through neurotoxins without decreasing the stun timer on that stun (LOL limber global node).

Further compounding this bug-fix is that previously, roughly 6 months ago, a kabam mod addressed a thread about the above behaviour, (stunning a stun immune opponent through neurotoxins) and said this was not a bug, and functioning as intended.

TLDR - Archangel has been significantly altered to no longer function as he once did in two popular game modes, modes that influence highly how T2A are spent, and a mod confirmed his old functionality was not a bug.

Now to my personal story...

I've had Archangel duped as a 5* for a long time now, and I resisted the upgrade to 4/55, I haven't been as enamoured with him as a lot of the community due to his drawbacks of having neutered damage against bleed/poison immunes, and I just never clicked with his combat flow. Also, I was pretty dang fortunate with featured 5* pulls for most of 2017, and I had characters that meant more to me to upgrade.

Recently I've retired for a spell from alliance life, mental health break after that AW Season 1 stress, and decided to spend my time focusing on solo things like fully exploring LOL and grinding arena for the units to do so. I had 4 T2As saved and took a good hard look at LOL and how I could potentially accomplish it for less units, I decided it was time to add Archangel to my 4/55 cabal. His ability to output great DPS in LOL and his future ability to be a part of my AW offence team when I step back up into top100 alliance life sold it for me. Now this part I'm gonna be called a liar on I would assume, but I specifically investigated these forums when I found out AA could stun AW bosses, and SPECIFICALLY read the mod comment at the time, and it 100% influenced my decision to rank up AA expecting this behaviour to continue into the future.

Then a little more then two weeks later...it's fix Archangel time thanks to 18.1

Would I have made this 4/55 ranked decision knowing he would not be functional in AW against stun immune? No I wouldn't have.

Would I have made this 4/55 ranked decision knowing he would have significantly less DPS in LOL now that your stun runs out super quick and he can't easily maintain his debuffs? No I most certainly wouldn't have as I have multiple other characters that now out DPS him in LOL (yes I tested) and cover heal block/ability reduction.

Now this is where my request for clarification comes in.

I think at this point I've made my case clear why I specifically would deserve a rank-down ticket for AA given how the champion functions has significantly changed for me and my intended uses, changed to a point where I wouldn't have made the rank-up, and made the rank-up in large part due to mod communication that has proven inaccurate.

HOWEVER, I am realistic, I know thats not how it works, and I don't expect any special treatment. What I would like to know is, this situation is the closest we've ever gotten to what the mods expressed would be the situation when rank-down tickets would be issued.

We have a champion who performs substantially differently at levels of the game where people have invested materials like T2As to have him perform, and the perform is now significantly worse. There's also the twist of people making this decision based on confirmation from a mod stating how the old way was how he was supposed to work which proved to be inaccurate. (Which is not the same as saying this was intentional, don't take that the wrong way, but fact is a fact.)

So to wrap up a way longer piece then I wanted to write, what exactly is the situation where a rank-down ticket would be issued? And how does the Archangel change situation differ from a situation where a ticket WOULD be given considering all of the above? What makes this NOT a rank-down situation? If possible comparing the two situations to draw a clear line of distinction would be great to help transparency and understanding.

Answering this questions thoroughly would at least help me live with this champion I barely wanted, and would definitely help the community digest this decision.

Thank you all for your time, whoever made it through this beast.

Comments

Solswerd

I liked the Archangel story in X-Factor better, it had Apocalypse in it.

shadow_lurker22

He is still useable champ to most so kabam doesn't see the need for rdts

MasterFlint

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

He is still useable champ to most so kabam doesn't see the need for rdts

He doesn't work the way he used to and doesn't have the same functionality now. Whether he is useable or not is irrelevant.

shadow_lurker22

MasterFlint wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

He is still useable champ to most so kabam doesn't see the need for rdts

He doesn't work the way he used to and doesn't have the same functionality now. Whether he is useable or not is irrelevant.

If he is still useable in parts of the game it is very relevant all kabam did was change an ability that made no sense in the first place

SMiller80

This is an important question. If not for this, then when?

Btw, the stun makes prefect sense when it's under the label "passive".

DarthPhal

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

MasterFlint wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

He is still useable champ to most so kabam doesn't see the need for rdts

He doesn't work the way he used to and doesn't have the same functionality now. Whether he is useable or not is irrelevant.

If he is still useable in parts of the game it is very relevant all kabam did was change an ability that made no sense in the first place

Except that is not all that changed. The change is definitely a nerf when you take him into fights with a limber buff.

Diirx

SMiller80 wrote: »

This is an important question. If not for this, then when?

Btw, the stun makes prefect sense when it's under the label "passive".

This is exactly right. AA was among the first with passive abilities and while the stun related to neurotoxin Is not listed as passive it did work that way and was confirmed to be working correctly. Dorm’s degen is not listed as passive but it works that way. I totally understand that this change may have been needed but an expectation was set and confirmed. He is most definitely a useful champ and many may choose not to down rank him but the option should most assuredly be available.

SMiller80

The whole section about neurotoxins is under the heading "passive". In my mind, that means anything listed under it is passive.

Btw, I'm not ranking down anything, but I haven't duped my 5*, so he's not ranked to r4 right now anyway.

But the same then remains. It was stated as working as intended, and people made decisions accordingly. How any self respecting company would not reimburse hard earned resources is beyond me.

Diirx

SMiller80 wrote: »

The whole section about neurotoxins is under the heading "passive". In my mind, that means anything listed under it is passive.

Btw, I'm not ranking down anything, but I haven't duped my 5*, so he's not ranked to r4 right now anyway.

But the same then remains. It was stated as working as intended, and people made decisions accordingly. How any self respecting company would not reimburse hard earned resources is beyond me.

I had actually missed that the heading describes it as passive. The second line reads that neurotoxin is passive and the line about stun doesn’t say anything about being passive. So I took another look at Dorm and the heading for his degen does state that’s it’s passive

KhanMedina

The trickle down effect is the biggest problem for kabam here, but they don't know it yet.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of units are NOT being spent on Domino right now because people think she will be 'fixed' after everyone buys her and won't be given RDTs for it. It's not worth gambling on new champs anymore when they 'adjust' them arbitrarily.

mostlyharmlessn

SMiller80 wrote: »

The whole section about neurotoxins is under the heading "passive". In my mind, that means anything listed under it is passive.

Btw, I'm not ranking down anything, but I haven't duped my 5*, so he's not ranked to r4 right now anyway.

But the same then remains. It was stated as working as intended, and people made decisions accordingly. How any self respecting company would not reimburse hard earned resources is beyond me.

How much debuff can a passive debuff buff, if a passive debuff could de-buff buff....

When you say debuff really fast too many times it starts to not make too much sense as a word in general...

But in all seriousness AA being able to stun a stun immune makes sense because it a direct result of the Neurotoxin... it's not like JF or Roman where it's a direct effect or active debuff...

CoatHang3r

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

AA being able to stun a stun immune makes sense because it a direct result of the Neurotoxin... it's not like JF or Roman where it's a direct effect or active debuff...

It’s exactly like Yellow Jacket, how does he function again?

unknown

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DNA3000

MongooseSuicide wrote: »

So to wrap up a way longer piece then I wanted to write, what exactly is the situation where a rank-down ticket would be issued? And how does the Archangel change situation differ from a situation where a ticket WOULD be given considering all of the above? What makes this NOT a rank-down situation? If possible comparing the two situations to draw a clear line of distinction would be great to help transparency and understanding.

Only Kabam can really answer this question, and they won't ever do so directly for reasons I'll state later. But I can answer this question generally based on my general understanding of the game and my understanding of how things comparable to RDTs in other games are generally handled.

The first thing to consider is that every progressional game like MCOC has to deal with a fundamental question. How do you ensure that the resources in the game have sufficient value so that players continue to pursue them indefinitely? In an open-ended progressional game there's no "end" to the game, so the game must be designed in such a way that players always have things to acquire, even if they achieve their own personal content completion goals. And the answer almost every game comes to, to varying degrees, is: resources consumed are permanently consumed. You cannot simply recycle resources used today to achieve something different tomorrow.

Different games do this to different degrees: some have *some* ways to reuse stuff, while others have very few ways to do that. Regardless, in MCOC the rule clearly is: rank up resources spent are spent forever.

Many players believe this is wrong for a simple reason: the game is always changing. So the resources you spend today for a specific purpose might no longer serve that purpose later. So the thinking goes, if the game changes, then I should have the right to change my decisions to match. However, the vast overwhelming majority of games aren't designed to honor that belief. Instead, most games explicitly state that players have a responsibility to understand that when they make decisions regarding spending resources, they cannot presume the entire state of the game will remain constant after they make that decision. They have to make decisions *knowing* those decisions may not be the optimal ones in the future.

This is important to understanding when RDTs are likely to be considered warranted. A lot of people have the presumption that RDTs are always warranted whenever something they rank up changes *unless* there's a good reason they aren't. In other words, the default is they are warranted. That's a false assumption. The default is that they are not warranted, because saying something changed, and saying if I had known it would have changed I would have done something different says nothing. That is immaterial. That's always going to happen to players eventually, and it is considered part of the nature of the game. Players who try to explain that they would have done something different are essentially barking up the wrong tree.

So when are they warranted? Well, an RDT does two things. It allows a player to reverse a rank up decision for a champion, and it allows them to respent rank up resources they previously spent. So the short answer is: RDTs are warranted when the developers believe the situation is extraordinary enough that they want players to be able to do both those things, which ordinarily they never want players to be able to do.

"Extraordinary" is difficult to define. Even two different developers will likely disagree on what that is. Because this is a matter of judgment, Kabam cannot and likely will not articulate precisely under what conditions they will issue them. What I can say is this: in the absence of the originally incorrect information posted about Archangel, the change to Archangel itself would almost certainly not warrant them. That change doesn't fall into what I believe Kabam would consider an extraordinary change. It was a bug fix to something behaving contrary to the normal game rules, and no matter how much players liked it or made decisions based on it, this falls into the normal principle that players have no reasonable expectation that the game won't change based on the design or balance requirements of the developers.

The only thing about the change that opens the door to questioning whether the change was an extraordinary change or not is the fact that the *reason* it is being changed was explicitly stated by a Kabam representative to be working as intended. To me, that's extraordinary. But whether it is extraordinary enough to warrant RDTs is a question only the developers can answer, and they currently appear to be answering in the negative.

mostlyharmlessn

CoatHang3r wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

AA being able to stun a stun immune makes sense because it a direct result of the Neurotoxin... it's not like JF or Roman where it's a direct effect or active debuff...

It’s exactly like Yellow Jacket, how does he function again?

I don't remember ever using YJ against a stun immune champ that didn't fire off a special while stung...

Kobster84

I think it’s really bad I think people with archangel ranked up should be given rank down tickets if that’s the reason you ranked him up then you just wasted tons of gold tons of catalysts and a decent amount of iso

shadow_lurker22

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

Mr_Otter

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

They called him “working as intended” when he was new

shadow_lurker22

Mr_Otter wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

They called him “working as intended” when he was new

That's not my argument my argument is the ability made no sense

MongooseSuicide

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

Mr_Otter wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

They called him “working as intended” when he was new

That's not my argument my argument is the ability made no sense

You’re not wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is irrelevant, which isn’t meant to sound harsh.

Many things in this game don’t make logical sense.

The fact is when this arose, the community recognized it was “one of those weird things” and sought clarification.

That clarification directly led to decisions being made one way over the other by at least some of the community.

Which is why I’d really like some clarification on how and why this situation isn’t what they described as a rank down ticket situation previously.

Btw DNA3000 that was a well articulated post.

If a mod has read this thread, I would really like some feedback directly from the source if you will.

Kobster84

Shadow lurker I understand you but if they said it was working as intended then that might have lead people to ranking him for that reason

Diirx

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

Safeguard states you can NOT deal more then X% damage on a single hit and yet there are many champs that can bypass this node. Does this mean every champ that can negate this node, or even slightly do more then X% damaged, need to be fixed?

Diirx

The AA change was not a bad change and was probably needed. And while I don’t think down rank tickets are good for the game as a whole, this is a unique situation. He was stated as working properly and for months no one at Kabam corrected this statement. Even when they knew they would fix it they still said nothing.

SMiller80

Diirx wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

Safeguard states you can NOT deal more then X% damage on a single hit and yet there are many champs that can bypass this node. Does this mean every champ that can negate this node, or even slightly do more then X% damaged, need to be fixed?

Also All or Nothing nodes that Starky can taunt into throwing specials. To my knowledge, he's the only one who can do that. It's no different.

DarthPhal

SMiller80 wrote: »

Diirx wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

Safeguard states you can NOT deal more then X% damage on a single hit and yet there are many champs that can bypass this node. Does this mean every champ that can negate this node, or even slightly do more then X% damaged, need to be fixed?

Also All or Nothing nodes that Starky can taunt into throwing specials. To my knowledge, he's the only one who can do that. It's no different.

Shhhhhhhhh

MongooseSuicide

Thank you all for keeping this thread relatively constructive, some good points raised.

Post has been up for most of the day so hopefully the mod response is being well informed.

SMiller80

MongooseSuicide wrote: »

Thank you all for keeping this thread relatively constructive, some good points raised.

Post has been up for most of the day so hopefully the mod response is being well informed.

Agree, @MongooseSuicide. Your post shows that you and others like you are exactly the kind of people I think they need to consider. I wouldn't rank down my AA, but some need that option.

unknown

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DNA3000

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

Mr_Otter wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

They called him “working as intended” when he was new

That's not my argument my argument is the ability made no sense

It doesn't make sense, but the argument for why it doesn't make sense is one that I think only game designers with significant experience in designing ability systems would understand. It is not as simple as you suggest, because as @Diirx points out there are many other parts of the game where the English description of an ability contradicts another in a way that it is not obvious which should supercede the other.

The technical rule you have to understand is that when an ability that confers protection has ability accuracy, that ability can be thwarted by other abilities that affect ability accuracy. But it isn't obvious when this is true except through experience. For example, Ultron's heal has no stated ability accuracy. He is just stated to be able to heal. But we know that ability has a base 100% ability accuracy because experience tells us that defensive ability accuracy debuffs can prevent the heal from triggering. As @Diirx mentions, Safeguard supposedly prevents more than a certain amount of damage from being dealt with any hit, but because Safeguard has (hidden) ability accuracy, it can itself be blocked or bypassed.

Immunities do not have ability accuracy in general. But the only way to know that is through experience. Nowhere in the game are players given information that would allow them to draw that conclusion. That's the difference between Safeguard and Stun immunity. But I doubt more than a busload of players in the whole world could properly describe those mechanics.

What a player would need to know to understand that AA's mechanics were objectively broken was a fundamental rule of content creation. When it comes to abilities you put into a game, there are offensive abilities and defensive ones. Sometimes defense can resist offense. Sometimes offense can irresistably work through defense. But when you stack those effects one on top of the other, sitting at the very top must be unbreakable immunity, not unresistable effect, at least when it comes to effects players are allowed to possess. Defense always has to ultimately win, or your content creators will have unresolvable issues when your strongest players start to steam roll over all your content.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect that more than one in a million players would know this.

shadow_lurker22

Diirx wrote: »

shadow_lurker22 wrote: »

What part of stun immune do you not get it's not called stun immune unless passive it is callled stun immune so it doesn't make sense it's literal description is immune to effect of stun not immune to effect of stun unless it's Archangel don't care if it is passive or not it was bs

Safeguard states you can NOT deal more then X% damage on a single hit and yet there are many champs that can bypass this node. Does this mean every champ that can negate this node, or even slightly do more then X% damaged, need to be fixed?

As far as my knowledge goes debuff over time effects pass this but dots aren't considered hits