No. 8
Brother Voodoo

He survived the first Watch List intact because its changes affected him. However, he’s still such a good piece and priced so cheaply that he’s almost an auto-pick for any competitive team today. And whenever any element is an auto-pick, there’s likely a game balancing issue.

The trouble with BV is that he can use Mind Control, an expensive power, for free every turn of the game with ease while not paying the full cost of this MC ability because it’s essentially absent from his dial when he doesn’t have exactly 1 action token — thus getting around the point formula, which normally bloats the cost of multiple MC clicks. This MC is also BETTER than normal MC — again, for less cost.

The token requirement was intended as a limiter, but it’s actually worked out to be the opposite. So here’s Heroclixin’s suggestion for the No. 8 Needed Change, a rewrite for Brother Voodoo’s trait:

“MY SPIRIT BROTHER POSSESSES YOU: When Brother Voodoo gains an exactly one action token, he can immediately use Mind Control as a free action. He takes no damage from this use of Mind Control and he and his target modify their attack values by +1 this turn.”

Heroclixin’ thinks this is the most streamlined change. It puts a little more risk into consecutive uses of the power by effectively making it a push, but maintains BV’s power level.

No.7
Tellus

Here’s more of that positioning-free play that concerned Heroclixin’ in the No. 9 entry.

“LINK TELEPATHICALLY: Friendly characters within 4 squares can draw lines of fire and count range and squares from the square of any one friendly character within 4 squares of Tellus.”

Granting any ally an extra eight squares to shoot or whatever is too much, especially given certain unintended game effect consequences like 250-pt Enchantress being able to super-Poison from that distance (because her SP treats those squares she counts as adjacent). And it’s not comic accurate: Tellus only works with Legionnaires anyway. So Heroclixin’s No. 8 Needed Change is either this rewrite:

LINK TELEPATHICALLY: Friendly characters within 4 squares that share a keyword with Tellus can draw lines of fire and count range and squares from the square of any one friendly character within 4 squares of Tellus.

or this one:

LINK TELEPATHICALLY: Friendly characters within 4 squares can draw lines of fire from the square of any one friendly character within 4 squares of Tellus, but range is counted normally from the character drawing line of fire.

So a 4-range character could still only see 4 squares out, instead of the 12 that Tellus’ trait currently allows. Again, it’s more than enough to be able to see around corners or past characters this way without the warping effect on range.

____

Next: Something new, something old, and…?