Butterfly jump with flight

[Maniacal_cackle]

9 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Any master may be played after getting nerfed, but it will be just worse; and that's not great for a master that wasn't doing well.

If you go to ARC and remove attuned from Soulstone Cache, Marcus will notice it as we did with this IR change. Would that be the end of ARC Marcus?  No. Would it be a significantly wose master in ARC that will be overshadowed by more competitve options? Most likely yes. Upgrades are huge for masters relying on minions/enforcers.

Although note the context has changed as well.

The best mobile units in the most powerful factions were all nerfed. So now while Marcus has less mobility through IR, his need for defensive mobility is also decreased.

And of course there is an entirely new strat/scheme context. So you can't just take a single nerf in isolation.

[Ogid]

We'll see... the top dogs were adjusted; but the rest of the masters are in the same place.

He wasn't a top dog, but a master on the curve or slightly below the curve that got hit by 2 different nerfs. I don't see him being more competitive now, nor being a better option than our other masters that aren't affected by the charge change or less affected by the IR one.

[Adran]

12 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Any master may be played after getting nerfed, but it will be just worse; and that's not great for a master that wasn't doing well.

Sometimes you will find that it isn't the case, partially because it can force you to re-think what you do, and that can improve your game. And whilst scamper is generally a less good ability than Butterfly jump for protecting a model from multiple attacks, there are certainly times it might be stronger. (Such as wanting to move a model outside of its activation  to try and maximise aura use).

 

[Ogid]

Adapting to new scenarios is good to improve as a player, that's true. But adapting it's not the problem, is the lack of what I think it's an important defensive tech for the faction in a faction with not a lot of defensive options besides that. The extra mobility is cute, but the extra defense is much more needed than situational mobility in models that will die now when attacked. Also NVB is a kill first, scheme later faction for the most part, a few extra pushes won`t change that. Weakening the main defensive upgrade for a faction like this one is huge.

Maybe you are right and the faction could do fine without it, we'll see. But I have serious concerns, specially about certains keywords and models that had a hard time competing before. I'll keep an eye on tournaments reports.

[Nagi21]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

And whilst scamper is generally a less good ability than Butterfly jump for protecting a model from multiple attacks, there are certainly times it might be stronger. (Such as wanting to move a model outside of its activation  to try and maximise aura use).

It is good for that, which is why one of the main takeaways is that models with terrifying and aura's are going to love this, i.e. Pandora and Dreamer.  The issue is, those two crews were already in a good spot prior to this, so Wyrd has taken the odd step of buffing the already strong crews, at the cost of all the crews that were already having issues...

[santaclaws01]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Sometimes you will find that it isn't the case, partially because it can force you to re-think what you do, and that can improve your game. And whilst scamper is generally a less good ability than Butterfly jump for protecting a model from multiple attacks, there are certainly times it might be stronger. (Such as wanting to move a model outside of its activation  to try and maximise aura use).

 

Also, Marcus still has access to butterfly jump. Marcus still has some of the best mobility in a scheme pool that seems to heavily favor it. His ability to kill definitely took a hit, but that's it. 

[Morgan Vening]

1 hour ago, Ogid said:

Adapting to new scenarios is good to improve as a player, that's true. But adapting it's not the problem, is the lack of what I think it's an important defensive tech for the faction in a faction with not a lot of defensive options besides that. The extra mobility is cute, but the extra defense is much more needed than situational mobility in models that will die now when attacked. Also NVB is a kill first, scheme later faction for the most part, a few extra pushes won`t change that. Weakening the main defensive upgrade for a faction like this one is huge.

Maybe you are right and the faction could do fine without it, we'll see. But I have serious concerns, specially about certains keywords and models that had a hard time competing before. I'll keep an eye on tournaments reports.

While it may be true that the Neverborn underperform without Butterfly Jump, I'd much rather that the faction is evaluated from a defensive perspective without it being a crutch. If Nekima or another Master/Crew needs a boost, then they should get one.

But it's an issue for the game IMO for an Upgrade to be 'stapled to the card', and it also hurts further design. Same reason that Agent 46 got whacked. Every Guild and Neverborn attack had to be designed through the filter of "How will this be if 46 copies it?". Same with Reflexes being changed.

So, even if it's found that NB have been whacked too hard, I'm hoping they address the issue with those models as needed, rather than just reinstitute Butterfly Jump, and make it all but a requirement/tax again.

[Ogid]

2 hours ago, Morgan Vening said:

While it may be true that the Neverborn underperform without Butterfly Jump, I'd much rather that the faction is evaluated from a defensive perspective without it being a crutch. If Nekima or another Master/Crew needs a boost, then they should get one.

But it's an issue for the game IMO for an Upgrade to be 'stapled to the card', and it also hurts further design. Same reason that Agent 46 got whacked. Every Guild and Neverborn attack had to be designed through the filter of "How will this be if 46 copies it?". Same with Reflexes being changed.

So, even if it's found that NB have been whacked too hard, I'm hoping they address the issue with those models as needed, rather than just reinstitute Butterfly Jump, and make it all but a requirement/tax again.

Oh totally, from a design point of view some changes like the Agent one are good; IP and Mimic together were a bit over the top (tho after that the agent could had gotten an small buff elsewhere); I said it in other thread, I like the general direction of the changes in the errata (even if there are some changes which I disagree like this one).

However I'm not sure butterfly jump were in that same category; It's not like NVB were the only faction with defensive tech in the upgrades. Also IR wasn't an autoinclude, but it was important versus certain masters and for some models (exactly as happens with the defensive tech in other factions). Now NVB has very little options to tech when more defense is needed. Scamper is terrible as defensive tech with how unreliable it is.

Removing butterfly jump is not really the problem; the problem is doing it like this, with no buffs, nor alternative legit defensive tech. A change as big as this one was going to affect to a lot of things and needed a bit more care imo.