Hero Balancing and the OP Tempest

I just finished playing 10 games against Advanced Citizen Dawn.  They were 2 hero games, just to see if we could take her down.

I lost 9 of them, and won 1.

the heroes that I played were:

Expatriate and Bunker

Chrono Ranger and Haka

Mr. Fixer and Fanatic

Tachyon and Tempest

and various mixtures of the above characters, as I was trying to feel out their strengths and weaknesses.

Haka and Bunker and Tachyon and Fanatic teams each did well, dispite failing.  

Bunker had the hardest time of these 4, but still did alright compared to the others.

Expatriate and Chrono Ranger would fail as soon as the card that destroys on goings and equipment came out.

Chrono Ranger would also fail if he couldn't get out Bounties OR utilize the bounties.  Expatriate would fail if she couldn't get out guns.  Both would fail if Anvil and/or Truth came out.

Mr. Fixer and just failed horribly every game.  

Mr. Fixer has incredibly underwhelming damage and can't remove environment or ongoing cards.

The team that finally won?  Tachyon and Tempest.

I only used Tempest in the last game and was AMAZED at how he outshines almost everyone else!  He has armor.  He has auto-damage.  He has a 2pt team heal.  He has a core AoE attack, and high burst damage (and multi-target) One-Shots.  He can decimate environment and ongoing cards.  He can buff his damage against the highest HP villain.  He can bring cards back from the dead.  He can draw more cards.  He can change his damage type.  Basically, he's what most every hero wants to be!

Compared to him, Chrono Ranger, Expatriate, and Mr. Fixer are sad, sad pandas.

Bunker is also sad, but he has some amazing card draw and damage capabilities, and his own heal and armor that make him acceptably close enough to the awe that is Tempest.

I'm truly afraid to try to match Argent Adept in this comparison.  I don't know how his slow building setup would survive Citizen Dawn (advanced).

But it saddens me to see such interesting heroes fall so far behind the okay and amazing heroes.  Especially poor Mr. Fixer and his inability to stop ongoings and environments, and inability to do more than the occasional 8 damage around if he has enough time and is lucky enough to get the cards he needs (best average of 4 just through passives, normal average of 2).

Chrono Ranger and his lack of damage mitigation and reliance on Bounties does OKAY, unless damage reduction shows up.  But he doesn't have the sustainability to get enough powers up to overcome full enemy damage reduction before he gets slaughtered.  Sometimes all he can do is Temporal Grenade an ongoing for his ally.  At least he has that.

Expatriate has almost as aweful damage mitigation, but at least ammo boosts can help get her guns past Damage Reduction.  AND, unlike Chrono Ranger, she doesn't need to use a power to destroy environment or ongoing cards.

She still dies faster than she can get into power, though.

Has anyone else seen these same issues?  Is there a way to help these poor half-heroes reach a more balanced level of skill and playability?

I would suggest Chrono Rangers power be changed to: Get a Bounty from trash or from your deck and put it in your hand.

Add an ongoing called Quick Draw:  Whenever a Bounty is put into play, Chrono Ranger may deal 1 target 1 projectile damage.

Expatriate:  Load is great.  She just needs some one-shots that deal damage, or to be able to play ammo as a one shot OR onto a weapon.

Mr. Fixer:  He NEEDS to have some method of removing environment and/or ongoing cards.  Perhaps one of his irreducible damage stances could be changed to: If damage was dealt by Mr. Fixer this turn, destroy an ongoing/environment card.  Then his utility would skyrocket and his damage issue would be less debilitating.  And Damage Reduction would still be an issue for him.

What do you guys think?

These are all issues that have come up in the forums, but I would suggest playing against other villains before constructing hypotheses on how to improve heroes. Every villain is different and some heroes are more effective against certain villains. Fixer and Ex-Pat are a source of controversy on the forums, and I'm not going to go to deep into that. CR is pretty popular and even though most people agree that damage reduction can really shut him down, He can be quite a source of consistent damage and his bounties can help in other various ways. I would just suggest playing more games against other villains and toggle between advanced and basic. Even though Tempest is great, there are games where he gets overshadowed by heroes who are generally considered lower tier.

Well, the game isn't meant to be played with 2 Heroes, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions from a game with 2 Heroes. My own experience with Tempest is that very often the cards you want to draw with him are nowhere to be found, and that he gets shut down by damage reduction. His deck is all over the place, which is great when you draw what you need, and terrible when you don't.

Just to agree with those two above, each hero has different strengths and weaknesses. Take Fixer for example; try him against Plague Rat, and you'll see what a beast he is. I agree that Tempest is a beast, but he isn't always the best there is. That's the wonder of this game: to a certain extent, all of the heroes are 'balanced', in that (I believe) they have a certain niche that they can fill beautifully, and so everyone really does have to work together to reach a common goal.

I would recommend trying 3-hero teams instead, as this would show much more balance. Given your current set up, even someone like Legacy (which, mind you, has ben brought up on this here forum for being overpowered) wouldn't really be able to shine :)

I can't help but note....the characters that tended to suffer the most in your examples are ones that use Ongoings and Equipment pretty exclusively, and you put them up against a villain with very notable (and painful) ongoing/equipment destruction...while the heroes that are "successful" in the test are the ones that have probably the best one shots in the game and don't rely heavily on either equipment or Ongoings.

There might just be some bias in your testing...

Quoting for truth. Was going to say the same thing just about word for word. 

Give Fixer more games. Honestly. He does not need house rules or anything, just a better understanding of what his "job" is within the team you bring. Finding cleaver uses for Driving Mantis is key. Redirection is a severely underrated ability and is infinitely better than static armor reduction and beastly when they are combined.

The game is meant for 3 to 5 heroes. A lot of the H effects don't work with H=2. If you only have 2 players use 4 heroes, just have each player use 2 heroes. I actually really enjoy doing that. Playing a 2 hero game is fine if you want to challenge yourself once in a while, but I wouldn't do so 10 times against advanced Dawn. She's already very hard for normal 3-5 hero teams.

Tempest is an above average hero, but there are heroes more OP than him. His cards don't really combo well with one another. As already mentioned, there is a lot of controversy over house ruling Fixer. I am in favor of house rules, but I don't like adding ongoing destruction to him. It only felt like he needed ongoing destruction to you because Dawn has so many ongoings.

Here is why Fixer is great. Irreducable Damage. And until Omnitron X came along he was the only one that could do it. Correct me if I am wrong.

Yeah, I know I'm echoing what a lot of others have said, but two heroes against Dawn isn't the best way to test each hero's viability. The game is very much balanced for 3-5 heroes, not only does H break down with 2, but a lot of the amazing, super-satisfying combos you would get with three or more disappear.

I'm just going to go to bad for Chrono Ranger - he's one of my favorite heroes to play and he can get stupid powerful with just a few damage bonuses. If he's teamed up with Legacy, or gets a good amount of bounties with Hunter and Hunted in play, he will start wrecking stuff. Think of it this way: Damage reduction hurts CR severely because he relies on a lot of 1-point instances, but the flip side is that damage bonuses give him an exponential benefit.

And yeah, conversations about Fixer and Expat's issues are all over the forums, I'm not even going to try to summarize. Suffice it to say, you're not alone in your viewpoint even if your methods tend to skew things toward more "independent" heroes.

This test was done because of 2 problems we encountered in our Saturday Night 4 and 5 player games:

1). We played versus advanced mode of all the villains and lost consistently unless certain heroes were ALWAYS included in the group.

2). It was difficult to separate who was doing tragically poorly from who needed just a little assistance roger the job done when 4 and 5 characters were involved.

We played TONS of these games over the month we've had it (with tons of playing during the weekas well because the game is so awesome!!!)

So I played 10 games against Citizen Dawn Advanced (a fairly standard, not too heavily anything kind of villain, whose H abilities work in favor of smaller teams).

If I wanted to really destroy my own 2 player team I could have put them against:  Iron Legacy, Cosmic Omnitron, the Matriach, the Chairman, Akash'Bhuta, Strife, or Apostate.  But I felt these villains were MORE deadly on average than Citizen Dawn, and more likely to destroy player cards or burst out huge damage right from the start.

If you think Dawn having Ongoings was my issues, note she normally only had 2 ongoings out at any one time.  One game she had 4 ongoings out, but that was against Tempest and Tachyon, who just blew them away soon after.

The idea is NOT that Mr. Fixer needed the ongoing/environment destruction to destroy Citizen Dawn more easily, but that he needed it to outshine a character at SOMETHING.  Even when DR was out, OTHER heroes could do more damage reduction without irreducible damage, consistently. His Hook Stance that would help his team requires him to get past the DR first, but he simply doesn't have the damage to do that without lots of outside help. 

I have no idea how all the HTML formatting suddenly appeared in that post.  Sorry guys!

Chrono Rangef is one of my favorites as well.  The things he can do when he has tons of bounties out is AMAZING, and almost every card grants an attack.  But he HAS to be paired with Omnitron-X, Legacy, or someone who can take the damage focus off him due to lack of damage mitigation and his own penchant for increasing damage against himself.

In all our games, he did AMAZING damage (as long as DR wasn't involved), but died quickly from kill punishers, AoEs, and abilities that hit the hero with the lowest health.

If we compare him with The Wraith, she has Smokebomb to redirect and mitigate, and her card power, and she can boost her own attacks by 3 and consistently hit 3 enemies for 3 or 1 for 5, or get past 2 DR if she has to.  And if she loses ALL her cards, she can quickly get them back out, in an order that increases her chance of survival.

Or how about Haka?  Or Bunker?  Or Visionary who can make herself invulnerable for a time or give the team DR 3 against environment cards, or simply choose the villains next card?  Or Tempest, or Tachyon (who can stop all opponent damage or redirect damage of 3 or greater), or RA, or the Scholar?  Absolute Zero needs help to get up to snuff, so I don't think he does well either, but that's another story.

Fanatic has damages that heal her and more mitigation, and a nice 2pt passive or 3pt Relic that don't rely on any extra cards being stacked out there.

How many heroes are left that DON'T mitigate damage or get past DR 2 with less difficulty than Mr. Fixer and Chrono Ranger?  Argent Adept maybe?  He is a DEEP utility hero who deals very little damage . . . except when he makes his allies use their powers instead.  And he has nice healing.  He is DEFINITELY not a stand-alone hero, but his abilities are quite powerful, and can even make a single other hero seem like it is being played twice.

Mr.  Fixer is the character I most want to be effective.  I love matial artists.   But he does less damage with his base power than almost any other brawler character.  This means one point of DR shuts him down if he can't get pipewrench, dual crowbars, alternating tiger claw, or grease monkey fist out.  

And what stops him from gettin these?  Anything that destroys ongoing and/or equipment cards.

In most situations I find I get the perfect combo out just before it gets destroyed.  Then I can't ge it back.  There are only 2 harmonies in the deck and they require an equipment and an ongoing to help.  Hoist, tire iron, and jack handle do no damage boost.  DR shuts them down.  

Grease monkey fist and alternatin tiger claw are equivalent vs.  DR 1.  But if the DR target is destroyed (us priority 1), alternating tiger claw now does nothing.

Driving Mantis and pipe wrench are great for survivability.  But I can't get pipewrench out consistently and driving mantis doesn't boost damage.

It seems Mr. Fixer relies on too many combos of cards.  Hecan go defensive OR offensive OR add utility, but not all three.  No other hero is split this way.  For him to switch his build requires between two and three turns.

I haven't tried it yet, but I would guess that Tempest is bad against the Dreamer. Hitting Dreamer all the time seems bad. A lot of his cards just don't work against her, or are bad ideas. 

I find that Tempest is great against Villain's with a lot of targets, like Citizen Dawn, but is poor against Villains with only 1 target like Plague Rat or Spite. 

Mr Fixer outshines other Heros in a few areas, they just are not massive damage or ongoing/enviro control. These are important yes, but I feel the community tends to overvalue those abilities at the expense of seeing the forest for the trees so to speak. 

Redirection. Adaptability. Doesn't blink at equipment/ongoing destruction that cripples most others. Ground pound without the drawback. A stacking damage reducer. Did I mention redirection? I should mention it again it is such an awesome tool. I tend to play Fixer primarily as a Tank honestly and he is awesome at it.

I don't want to detail this into a Fixer defense thread, but he needs to be played to his strengths, not to mimic the strengths of others. 

So, I was playing a game with Mr. Fixer against Citizen Dawn (and I think it was one of the Google+ games too). I really did not have a good opening hand, and for a while, it was hard for me to do some damage. However, I did have driving mantis, which let me both tank, and contribute. Once I finally found my crowbars, it was just us and Dawn, and we had to finish it up quickly, too. So to increase DPR, I started hitting dawn with one bar and Wraith with the other. Wraith, having been set up with combat stance, hit me, which I redirected to Dawn. We won all in all. 

I say this because even if I don't feel like I contributed a lot, what I did was find a humorous story within the game, which I feel is the main point. I was just watching a review of SoTM on the Dice Tower (with guest reviewer Scott Fera), and he made a good point on the difficulty; in the superhero genre, the heros don't beat the villans every time; that would be boring. So use your imagination. Make a story. 

And as for Tempest, I think he's pretty cool, but not overpowered. He certianly is one of the more well-rounded characters, and has everything, much like the Wraith, but the low hp will get you down more often than not against certain bosses.

Oh, and if you need a refresher that Mr. Fixer can do stuff, have him go against Apostate. He will be your main relic killer when the Runes go up.

Did you have Harmony out, or was there another reason you didn't just hit yourself with the Crowbars and redirect that damage to Dawn?

Yeah, Harmony was out. 

This brings me to an idea: What would be a properly scientific method to determine the balance and balance needs of the heroes in SotM?  We ALL love the game and want it to grow amazingly, and many of us see what we feel are some balance issues.  What can we do to help identify or dispel these views, in a scientific, reproducible by an independent study, fashion?

I propose this:

Choose 3, 4, or 5 player games, a specific villain, and a specific environment.  We can even use this forum to help determine which villain and environment would be least biased for or against our hero.

Play 20 of that style of game, 10 with the hero you are testing, 10 without, but with another hero instead.

Each of the 10 games WITH the hero should use preset duo partners who work well together.  Choose 5 duos that work WELL with your hero, and 5 that don't work so well with them.  Or choose 2 that work well with him, 2 that don't, and 1 that could go either way, and play each duo twice.

For the 10 WITHOUT our test hero, the 3rd syand in hero can be chosen randomly each game.

This is NOT meant to be exhaustive, but to give a good overall set of data to compare the champion on.  If more of us do this, it CAN become exhaustive.

For each game, Record the hands of each played and the villains/environments on the board (or changes to them) at each turn.

For example:  My heroes are:  Mr. Fixer (list his 4 cards), Legacy (list his 4 cards), and The Wraitb (list her 4 cards).

Villain is Citizen Dawn, with Citizen: Truth out.  My Environment is The Final Wasteland.

Her first turn, Dawn draws Citizen Summers, deals X to each player, and the Y to the player with the highest HP.

Mr. Fixer plays Crowbar and used power X to deal Y to Citizen Truth.  He draws Mantis Style.

Then any person can look back on the play, and tell you what moves they thought were bad choices or good choices, and independently recreate the whole match (even seeing how changing a play may affect the game given future draws by players and villains).

At the end, report how many rounds the game lasted, how much HP each card on the board had, and whether it was a victory or a loss.

What do you guys think?

To me, the tricky parts would be choosing the Duo Partners, the Villain, and the Environment.  We can work together on those.

Mr.  Fixer is adabtable.  But if have seen very few situations where it is better or equal to play him over other champions.

I think we should create a battery of tests for each hero to highlight their strengths and weaknesses.  Something like:

Tanking:

Single source strong:

one invulnerable target deals 1 damage the first round, two the next, then 3...until they deal 6 in one round and they reset to one for the next round.  Measure how long the target lasts.  To make it more interesting, wipe out all ongoing and equipment every two full cycles.

Double source med:

Two targets dealing 3 damage apiece (of different types).  Every eight rounds destroy all ongoing and equipment cards.  See how long the hero lasts.

Multiple source low:

Each round add one target that deals one damage.  Every eight rounds destroy all ongoing and equipment cards.  Sehow long the hero lasts.

Do similar for dps and for card destruction.  For deck manpulation we could have 12 cards where one says the ho loses.   One card is drawn a round.  See how long they lt.

These tests would need to be run maybe 100 times per he.  But they would give you a feel for how quickly they c react and recover from each situation.

The biggest problem here?

You can highlight every Heros strengths and weaknesses all you want. In a game that is predicated in "hero interaction", you miss a vital aspect of the game. None of the Heros function in a vacume. You win with cleaver uses of hero interaction. 

You over value tempest and similar 'independent' Heros while overlooking ways to create interesting team interactions with more support oriented Heros. And I'd argue Fixer is as much a support hero as Visionary and Nightmists. 

This game is deeper than just damage and ongoing destruction. I feel it's easy to lose sight of that and get locked into the "Ill never win if X is/isn't on my team" mindset

Invisible Monkey,

There is a Sentinels of the Multiverse statistics thread at:

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/the-best-heroes-a-statistical-community-effort-2798

It has over 2000 games. I'd take a look at that first to get a feel for how the heroes stack up against one another. Feel free to enter your games there, too. I understand your desire to remove variables to decide which heroes need balancing, but I think the statistics are the best way to look at it.

Tempest is above average, but Dark Visionary, Legacy, Team Leader Tachyon, and Omnitron-X outperform him. You are correct that Fixer is in the bottom of the list of effective heroes. My house rule is:

Strike: You may discard a card. If you do Mr. Fixer deals one target 2 melee damage. If you don't Mr. Fixer deals one target 1 melee damage.

Spiff has a good one on his site, too. I disagree with you that Fixer doesn't outshine anyone. He is the most flexible character with the best damage shutdown combo (Grease Gun followed by a Salvage Yard to return Grease Gun).

On the topic of balancing, I am a big advocate for a balanced game because those ones are the most fun. However, that is not what the designers intended. They made a game that tells a story. In comic books the fights are not always balanced. The heroes don't mill around saying, "I'm not going to fight Galactus since I am not as strong as some of the other heroes." No, when the world is threatened they fight and try their best with what they've got.

That said, the designers didn't make a comic (well, they did, but...) they made a co-op game. And co-op games are most fun when you feel like you've helped so I understand your need to balance. That's why I use house rules.

Foote, you misunderstand, I think. The FUN in the game is figuring out those awesome interactions.  I would never deny that!  But when a hero consistently performs worse than almost any other hero in their place, it should be investigated to see if:

A) the players were just not creative, or

B) he really did have an issue in those matches.  

The idea is to create a body of data we can use, instead of relying on conjecture and none-analytical anecdotes.

the method I propose would allow not only independent review of the games and data, but a method to analyze the PLAYER'S methods to see if optimum choices were made for each circumstance presented, thus diminishing (or at least quantifying for future correction) play style's effect on the analysis.

the 3 man teams I suggest would account for interactions, as we would specifically choose heroes to maximize and minimize interactions with our test subject.

EDIT: Made sure Foote knew this was a partial response to them.

Invisible Monkey, are you following the stats project? The community is collecting pretty much everything you describe, and there's talk of converting the data into a format that's a little easier to manipulate. But as it stands, what you're proposing is *kind of* happening (you could make a local copy of the running spreadsheet that everything is appended to and sift out near-identical games), however the biggest problem is scale. Since the game relies so heavily on the randomness of the cards, you need a lot of games to be able to draw solid conclusions.

I, too, have thought of ways to evaluate an individual hero, but with the way the game works, it's just impossible. Because while two heroes may play a similar role (Expat and Chrono both deal lots of damage), they interact with other heroes differently. I think the current project is the way to go, as the sheer volume of games collected will eventually produce reliable data.

I've checked the statistics, and they are quite awesome. They are part of the reason I decided a more in-depth analysis was needed.  

As for telling a story, I'm all for that as well!  But for some heroes, the story seems to consistently be: The Worlds Most One Sided Fist Fights (in the villain's favor).  

My goal is not to get rid of heroes losing, or tell a bad story, but to increase the variety of story you would get with champions that at this time seem to embody the narrative of the Tragic Hero, Destined to lose despite his greatest efforts; a GREAT story if you find hope that he CAN win, but very boring if he is outclassed every step of the way.

Stories need variety, but some heroes lack the ability to produce that variety with any consistency.

I have played many, MANY losing games against Advanced villains, and I have enjoyed them as much as the winning games.  I'm not here to avoid losses.  The game would be too easy and less enjoyable.  I'm here to help bring characters to a more full-bodied existence.  I hate seeing players AVOID a hero who they think doesn't perform well or isn't fun to play.  This may just be their opinion, though.  But when their choice is justified by the statistics, then I feel this is something we can resolve by improving the hero.  Is that a bad thing?  Are we so set on the current capabilities of a hero that we wouldn't improve them to reduce the discrepancy between them and their allies?  

The discrepancy is not, statistically, significant, or at least it wasn't when I ran the numbers. If you feel a hero is underpowered, then feel free to house-rule, but if you can't beat advanced villains without certain heroes then I'd suggest that you just need a bit more experience playing the 'underpowered' heroes; chances are you just haven't got the hang of playing them.

(Before anyone mentions Expat or Fixer: I don't own Rook City, so I can't comment on them, but two heroes being debatably slightly underpowered is very much not the same as villains being unbeatable without hero X.)

There's a (quite passionate) discussion that touches on this very point in the Expatriette Fix thread. There are people who defend Expat as fun to play because they enjoy how she plays, while there are others trying to improve their own enjoyment because she just doesn't win as much. Likewise for Fixer (I love playing Fixer), the stats speak for themselves, while I think there's nothing wrong with him. Though to be fair, as a Fixer apologist, I would not be shocked if Fixer's stats improve as people learn how to play him

Agreed, when (lets just say) a citizen attacks Fixer or everyone for damage he takes none, AND a target that you want to take damage is hit.  That is essentially negating an attack and getting a free attack all wrapped up in one awesome package.  I've seen Fixer really excel, but it usually involves Mantis and being a target for attacks rather than doing his own damage.

I think Fixer's fine performance wise, but if I could redesign a hero to play differently I would choose him.  Making mantis part of his base power and giving him some one shots would be the start.

Invisible Monkey, I totally see where you are coming from. 

But consider what "balance" is to game design and how it differs from "symmetry"

All Heros performing at similar win rates for all villains sounds like what you want to accomplish. It also sounds like symmetry to me. 

Just food for thought.

but if you can't beat advanced villains without certain heroes then I'd suggest that you just need a bit more experience playing the 'underpowered' heroes;

This is the stigma my method seeks to avoid.  ANY person could see the cards played and held each round, recreate the game up to any point, and see whether the hero was just played poorly or was played well and performed poorly.

The L2Play stigma (not that you meant it like that, BlueHairedMeetkat.  It's just a popular argument) is never backed with data, so it is just an opinion without basis, and therefore must be either proven correct or ignored.  It CANNOT be proven correct without evidence.  Here, we will GATHER the evidence, and we and the readers can then learn from others the new ways to play that they never realized before, or the players will be found justified in their cries of a poor performing hero.

I don't know WHY we would ever be against gathering this type of data.  It's just data.  We could learn a lot from it, and perhaps make SotM an even stronger game for our hard work!

I know sometimes "improvements" and "balancing" can ruin a game.  I don't want that kind of improvement.  WoW tried to make each class closer to the playstyle and capabilities of the other classes, and this made the game bland.  But what if improvements went the other way?  Give each hero their own individual strength; an area they play MUCH better than any other hero?  I think SotM does a great job of this with Legacy, Haka, Visionary, The Wraith, and many more.  But I feel some heroes, like Fixer and Chrono could use a little boost to strengthen their niche, and enhance their flavor.

Opinion aside, it is data that can be used to provide useful information about the game, in detail and in statistical broad strokes.

I will start collecting data on my games in the format I propose, and you guys can rip at my playstyle or compliment my creativity, and determine for yourselves if:

A) The data is worthwhile.

B) My and others' opinions on the heroes is justified or unjustified.

Who would you recommend I play as a villain, in which environment, for Mr. Fixer's first set of 20 tests? (10 with him, 10 without).

What duo pairs should be teamed with (and without) him?

For Fixer? Put him up against the Rat. Lets see how underpowered he looks then! MWAHAHAHAHA

For low damage/multi-ping characters like Fixer and Chrono, damage multipliers are absolutley king since they benifit from them exponentially. Legacy, Ra, Visionary, Argent can make a good fits there.

Fixer also lacks ways to quickly dispatch ongoing/environment targets. Argents and OmiX have power based destruction which is quite handy. A number of others can help here too.

Any hero who's very equipment dependant (looking at you OmiX and Wraith) love Salvage Yard after a board wipe.

If Fixer does not have a Legacy type boost damage, then you will benifit from someone who can dole out the hurting when needed.

Since Fixer is one of the fastest heros in game (only needing 2 turns to set up potentialy for the rest of the game) frees him up to work very well with slow build heros like AbZ. Try smaking AbZ with some Grease Monkey loving and see the damage/healing fly.

Fixer works best when used as an offtank type. Dont pair him with others like that.

Technically Fanatic has her One-Shot that deals up to three targets 1 Irreducible Radiant damage and redirects all damage they deal to her, but your point still stands.  Also Chrono Ranger has The Masadah now, so both ST heroes have ways to deal Irreducible damage.

Tempest was the first hero I played with, and I absolutely love him.  I've rarely had a game where he was ineffectual.  I've rarely played him against The Dreamer, however, as quite a few of his cards aren't terribly helpful against her.  Try him out against her and get back to me.  I understand where a lot of your criticisms are coming from, Invisible Monkey, but I think you might want to do a bit more testing.  I've rarely had a problem with DR or equipment destruction with Chrono Ranger, and Expat/Fixer have their merits (even if I have my own criticisms about them).  Generally, if you can actually get the cards you need, the Rook City heroes can really pack a punch.  I do often find, however, that they need other heroes to hold their hands when it comes to actually obtaining those cards.

I by no means want to derail or discourage this discussion as it is definitely super interesting! I do, however, want to put in my $0.02. I think that much of this discussion, as Foote pointed out, hinges on what one means by "balance". From my perspective, since SotM is a cooperative game, balance should not imply power symetry, like it would in a PvP game. Instead, it should imply "fun symetry", i.e., if, in the overall fan community, roughly the same number of people consider playing each of the characters to be "fun", then the characters are balanced (I also care about the intensity of the enjoyment; for example, if one character is generally enjoyed by a large number of people, and another is very intensely enjoyed by a smaller number, I would still consider them balanced).

Now, this sort of balance is certainly not going to be achieved in any given small group; one group may derive their fun from the character interactions, and another from optimizing the power of any given team. However, judging both by conversations on this forum and with fans in-person, I consider the game to be quite balanced indeed for the Sentinels fan community as a whole.

I'm inclined to agree.  I have my frustrations with certain decks, don't get me wrong.  But my group hasn't straight up outlawed any decks in our games or felt the need to house rule anything.  We have had some games be more tedious than we have liked, and a few decks provide us with less enjoyment than others, but this is still one of my favorite games.

Like, ever.

Your methodology is trying to single out player skill as a potential reason for poor performance, but the deck is still random. You give any hero (other than Team Leader Tachyon, Dark Visionary, and Grandpappy Legacy [maaaaybe the other two Legacies as well]) an awful initial draw and an unluckily shuffled deck, and they're going to hold the team back.

I'm not saying that documenting every move of every game would give us bad data, I'm saying that it wouldn't give us enough data. And even if enough people provided enough data points to draw conclusions, the amount of work to analyze each of those to say whether it should be trusted or not based on player skill would be astronomical.

Your methodology is trying to single out player skill as a potential reason for poor performance, but the deck is still random. You give any hero (other than Team Leader Tachyon, Dark Visionary, and Grandpappy Legacy [maaaaybe the other two Legacies as well]) an awful initial draw and an unluckily shuffled deck, and they're going to hold the team back.

Of course your hand will have an affect on the game.  So if I only played 1 game with this hero, I could expect it to NOT be a good representation of how well the hero plays.  If I play 10 games, however, now I have a backdrop 10x larger which can present a much more accurate picture of how well this hero plays.  If I play another 10 games WITHOUT that hero, then I have a "base line" at which games are played without our test subject.  And with all statistical measurements, the more times I test, play, and record, the more representative of the whole my statistical data becomes.

What this method has OVER pure statistics is the ability to do an in-depth analysis of each game play, with card draw %s, how much damage each hero dealt, how much they took, how much they resisted, how many cards they moved or destroyed, and how they interacted with their teammates.  It even opens itself up to playstyle criticisms to point out the flaws in the tester's strategies and understandings, so that future tests can be more optimum.

EDIT: Also, with the limited nature of beginning hand sizes, I think analyzing the play style will be easier and more intuitive than one might think.  We each analyze our next move every game already.  We would just do the same with these games, as if the cards were our current hand, not a full run game that has already been recorded.

ALSO, since Plague Rat was suggested with quite a few Duo Partners, the first tests will be against him.

EDIT EDIT:  Also, I don't want anyone to think I dislike this game in any way!  This is one of the best games I've played in a LONG time!  I'm simply trying to find solutions to my players' concerns that I see echoed in the statistics page on this forum.  I would NEVER reject a hero deck in this game!  They all have such awesome styles and stories!  But I would like to see those that do poorly fare better, for the sake of variety.  I don't want my players to stagnate into certain heros they won't play with certain allies, just because that hero doesn't do well without hand holding.  I want their personal enjoyment to overshadow the hero's capabilities and deficiencies, not the other way around.

One of the things you can do then is randomize your team. Spiff has a randomizer on his website. This can encourage players to find new, interesting combinations they hadn't thought of, and at the same time possibly discourage players from playing the same hero over and over.

What I'm trying to convey is that I don't think 10 games is enough to form a baseline. Maybe if you did 10 identical games where you only shuffled the decks, but you wrote earlier of mixing up the teams. The more changes you add to the test, the more instances you need for reliability. And 10 even sounds low to me, considering 40-card hero decks (though I readily admit I'm not real stats guy; I flew through the one I needed to take in undergrad, but that was a long time ago [in a galaxy far, far away]; 10 identical matches may well be enough to draw conclusions from for the specific situation involved).

10 games may be enough to form a reasonable base for those exact circumstances. The problem becomes that those exact circumstances are only as likely to happen again as you make them, and a randomizer has a very small chance of that exact combination. Changing even one deck has a large effect on what the whole point is of collecting this info; how "well' each hero does. So, in order to collect any amount of accurate and useful information, you would have to play so many games. Probably in the 100,000s +. Then all of that information has to be compiled and analyzed and so on. Adding decks to the game (as they will be doing) will only add more time required. 

For one hero, you would have to play every (or atleast a vast majority) set of circumstances 10 times (which is low, imo but your number) each. Do you know how many combinations of circumstances this game has if everything but 1 hero is variable?

What constitutes a good baseline can be fairly subjective.  This is statistics, where nothing is perfect, and yet sometimes people won't settle for less than perfect.

The idea here is NOT to create the perfect set of statistical values representing the hero in question.  It is to create a comfortable base that we can use to analyze and design and perform future, better tests AND a better understanding of the hero in question.

If I showed you 10 games where 9 out of 10 games a hero contributed the least damage, the least damage mitigation, the least card removals and the least card recoveries, it would be safe for most people to conclude that the hero in question was not holding up their end of the battle.

20 or 30 games would increase our confidence in the data, but would be unlikely to change the results (but it COULD happen, hence the confidence value).

If of those 10 games, the hero performed average every game, we could conclude that this hero is consistent, but not over or under whelming.

If of the 10 games, the hero was all over the place, then we could conclude that a MUCH larger baseline of games would be needed to get a strong statistical view of this hero's standing.

The number of games need only be increased if the data is inconsistent.  So we start with 10 with, 10 without, and check the consistency of that hero's contributions.

In my opinion, it doesn't  really make sense to make judgements based on 2 hero teams. The game was designed to be played with 3 to 5 heros. Every hero plays a role that contributes towards the teams performance. Two hero games are going to be super biased against heros who fill certain niche roles and heros who performance is enhanced when other heros are covering their weaknesses. This is after all, a team game..

It would be like judging the  bishop and knights worth in chess, by playing a game where you only use 5 bishops, and a game where you use only 5 knights. That is not how chess is meant to be played, and would be in no way indicative of the worth of those pieces. They both shine in different scenarios, when working together with other pieces as part of a team. 

I just don't think it makes sense to perform tests based on a style of play (2 hero teams) that the game was not designed for, and then using those results to judge a heros worth. 

Mostly you have to keep in mind that even with a 2 man team H still equals 3.

The tests are with 3 Hero teams.  The Duos are just set pairs of heroes that we will pair with the main hero we are testing:  Duo+Test Hero = 3 total.  Sorry for any confusion there.

Nobody will stop you from doing this, of course.  We're just not sure how useful it is as an exercise.  It sounds terrifically boring, but do let us know how it goes if you try it.  We may all learn something!

As far as who to use, I recommend mid-difficulty villains who offer a lot of chances for everybody's skills to come into play.  Citizen Dawn indeed does that.  La Capitan would work well too, I think.  What these villains share is a need to strike a balance between attacking minions and attacking the boss, and they require hero finesse in managing their flip conditions. 

As an environment, I would choose somewhere fairly neutral that doesn't take over the game.  Insula Primalis is a decent default choice.  Final Wasteland, Time Cataclysm, or Realm of Discord may work well. 

Heroes: I would go with partners that I've rarely heard people complain about one way or the other.  Some combination of Tachyon (original), Ra, Fanatic, and Haka would probably do well for you.  (Don't use Ra with Insula Primalis, though.) 

Alright!  Good idea!  We'll do the Plague Rat test first, then back to Citizen Dawn and La Capitan.  It SOUNDS boring if I ever found myself bored by the game :D. Luckily, it hasn't happened yet.  Hopefully these tests don't burn me out :D

10 is way to small of sample. The standard deviation would be around 15%. The difference between in Fixer and Legacy is only 14% in the stats project.

Now if you played 100 games then you would have about a 5% error which would allow you to distinguish between the best and the worst heroes at a statistically small level.

Two thoughts:

1) I don't believe that all the heroes need to be or can be balanced. It is impossible.

2) I believe that random teams is the best way to measure balance, from a statistical perspective.  

Oy!  Just played a few game today with Mr. Fixer (not vs. plague rat) and he managed to make the bosses cry!  I don't know what is different, but I can't complain about him anymore.