Is Balance of Power similar to the 5* slog-fest?

Daredevil217

I’m just curious for those in the 5* game who say 40 wins is way too much to ask at that level, is Balance of Power similar to what you all experience?  High health, endless waves of the same two teams after a certain point?  Is it different in any way?

Low level 4* player here just curious. 

Doc L

It’s quite similar except one key difference - I have 100 characters to chose from who are all viable, rather than 3, so it costs me 0 health packs to grind out the wins. Notice the 5* also still have vastly superior match damage even in this system too, makes a massive difference.

PenniesForEveryone

No.  In BoP you get a lot more targets, and a lot more team variety - both in what you can use and what you are able to queue.

wymtime

I would say yes in this respect.  Longer matches and more difficult opponents to face.  No in the fact that you can use more of your roster and you can still find different teams.  In BoP you will still see more 3* and 4* over 2 championed 5*

Daiches

No, BOP is even worse.

Quebbster

I find the fivestar grind a bit easier as the Health pools in BoP seem to grow faster than the damage output of the Powers. That's just my general impression though.

The fact that PvP teams usually have a featured character with less Health also make things a Little easier.

broll

Daiches said:

No, BOP is even worse.

Really?  Then I'm gonna stop supporting that side of the argument so much because BOP hasn't been bad at all.  I'm at 33 wins now and it wasn't all that much harder than any other.  Now part of that could be due to having the abilty to build your own team vs being tied down to 1 3* and 2 others but still, BOP has not been bad at all from my experience, not all that much harder than any other (actually easier than the 3* Fist one...)

Copps

I'm pretty sure it all comes down to which five stars you have. For me bop was much easier. Trying to grind out 40 wins with bolt and widow is terrible. With gambolt or panthos it might not be as bad. 

Swish

Doc L said:

It’s quite similar except one key difference - I have 100 characters to chose from who are all viable, rather than 3, so it costs me 0 health packs to grind out the wins. Notice the 5* also still have vastly superior match damage even in this system too, makes a massive difference.

Exactly this. With 5* MMR, you are limited on the characters that you can use. I have 6 champed 5*, but in reality, I can only really use a couple of them because the others aren't strong enough or don't work nearly as well together. In BOP, I have almost my entire roster that I can use, which I absolutely cannot do in regular PVP (I have all 4* except Nightcrawler champed as well, and if I really wanted to, I can use some of my 3* in BOP as well).  

I use BOP as a time to have some fun with combinations that I never get to use unless I want to play around in pve.

halirin

BOP has been a breath of fresh air. First time I'm getting 40 wins since they started this. There are so many interesting, fun, fast team combos. And it's the perfect event for wins based because every team can be countered. 

Bryan Lambert

Yeah, I’m finding it way easier, because with a full roster to choose from, I can choose teams with synergy, instead of My Two Champd Fives Plus Featured.

With Gamora-Grocket-Medusa, I’m winning fights way faster and using way fewer health packs, as long as I avoid the somewhat startling synergy of Gambit and Spider-Gwen.

AlexxKats

Allow me to sum this up:

1. Yes, pretty similar. But for you to understand it better, you should try to focus on a single team to use (to reflect a normal 5* roster), that is not the best possible combination but can win when played manual, isn't necessarily good on defense (because some people have 5*hulk and captain america maybe), and add to that that MMR usually pits you against higher level oponents, at least a bit (because you have the advantage vs ai). And then try to get 40 wins with that team .

2. BOP has some pros i guess, you can pick anybode you want from your roster, so no need to use health packs. or you can use a cheesy team that will get boosted to 550 even if said character has only 5 covers and you would't survive 10 minutes unshielded if it was normal pvp. Also, the benefit that most of the competitive alliances don't really care about alliance placement during off season. So most players take a time out, or play super casually. Or even organize an alliance-wide free-for-all/king-of-the-hill fun party.

3. The bad part of BOP? Almost all of veterans have a nightmare team to use due to 4*s being way easier to acquire and build and 4* tier way more extensive in options (heck, some of them are even better than 50% or 5*s), so if you decide you're going for placement, your choices are horrible idea-to-fight-against-that to why-am-I-doing-that-to-myself

Punisher5784

What I like about BOP is I can finally use my 4*s that are missing a few covers. For instance, my Grocket is missing 1 cover at 2/5/4 but since everyone is 550 I can finally use the infamous Gamora, Medusa, Grocket team. 

Beer40

broll said:

Daiches said:

No, BOP is even worse.

Really?  Then I'm gonna stop supporting that side of the argument so much because BOP hasn't been bad at all.  I'm at 33 wins now and it wasn't all that much harder than any other.  Now part of that could be due to having the abilty to build your own team vs being tied down to 1 3* and 2 others but still, BOP has not been bad at all from my experience, not all that much harder than any other (actually easier than the 3* Fist one...)

I would wager that the opinion you quoted is not the typical opinion, but I could be wrong. Here's a viewpoint from someone who only has 1 5* Champion.

Typical PVP: 5* Starlord, 3* required, boosted 4* from the boost list. The 3* required and the boosted 4* aren't always great with my only choice to run, Starlord. So you make due. Also, often the 3* required is 412, which is almost the same as my 5*!!! Plus many other wonderful facets of MMR, but I'm not going too in-depth here.

BoP: My 150 character roster all has 550's. I'm not under-manned anymore. With a diverse roster and my team being on equal footing with my opponents, the matches are typically the same, if not quicker, than a usual PVP even though everyone is a 550. Plus, I can knock them out in one chunk, if I choose, without spending a small fortune of HP on (the other) HP.

byc

Balance of Power and 2/3/4 are both really fun because of the variety.

There are a lot of combos out there that are not practical because 2*s can't go beyond level 144.  Balance of Power solves that.

broll

Beer40 said:

broll said:

Daiches said:

No, BOP is even worse.

Really?  Then I'm gonna stop supporting that side of the argument so much because BOP hasn't been bad at all.  I'm at 33 wins now and it wasn't all that much harder than any other.  Now part of that could be due to having the abilty to build your own team vs being tied down to 1 3* and 2 others but still, BOP has not been bad at all from my experience, not all that much harder than any other (actually easier than the 3* Fist one...)

I would wager that the opinion you quoted is not the typical opinion, but I could be wrong. Here's a viewpoint from someone who only has 1 5* Champion.

Typical PVP: 5* Starlord, 3* required, boosted 4* from the boost list. The 3* required and the boosted 4* aren't always great with my only choice to run, Starlord. So you make due. Also, often the 3* required is 412, which is almost the same as my 5*!!! Plus many other wonderful facets of MMR, but I'm not going too in-depth here.

BoP: My 150 character roster all has 550's. I'm not under-manned anymore. With a diverse roster and my team being on equal footing with my opponents, the matches are typically the same, if not quicker, than a usual PVP even though everyone is a 550. Plus, I can knock them out in one chunk, if I choose, without spending a small fortune of HP on (the other) HP.

Yeah I touched on that in my comments.  My first line was somewhat tongue in cheek at what seemed to be hyperbole on the hand of the person I quoted.  I get being fenced into playing bad teams and having to play lots or really tough teams with those bad teams would make it a lot more challenging.  I remember similar growing pains after i champed my first few 4*s and rarely had any boosted / ones that worked with the 4*, but you're in that boat for a much shorter window than the 5* transition, much shorter...

Also I hit 40 over lunch.  Mmmm Riri...

ZootSax

I think I'd like BoP more if everyone scaled down to Level 1 than up to Level 550.  Sure the reduced match damage/power damage might make matches seem similar, but at least the health totals would actually display at the beginning without needing to round to the nearest thousand.

veneretio

I feel like a lot of people that are critical of the Wins system haven't embraced the idea of just retreating over and over again. I find generally it's easy to get 20 wins... then I have to tank my score and do it all over again. That's the same deal with BoP.

AlexxKats

veneretio said:

I feel like a lot of people that are critical of the Wins system haven't embraced the idea of just retreating over and over again. I find generally it's easy to get 20 wins... then I have to tank my score and do it all over again. That's the same deal with BoP.

Thank you master of the obvious.

We do that when we want to stay low to hit for 75. When not in the mood to do that, we just want to finish the game part as soon as possible, not drag this one by entering an additional 40 fights (over the 25 extra we need under the new system) in order to retreat to drop our score.
[edit: for less the rewards than we used to get last 30+ seasons also]

Vhailorx

veneretio said:

I feel like a lot of people that are critical of the Wins system haven't embraced the idea of just retreating over and over again. I find generally it's easy to get 20 wins... then I have to tank my score and do it all over again. That's the same deal with BoP.

That is definitely a viable strategy for the new system.  But it still takes 2x as many matches as the old system.  What if i just dont want to pkay that many matches?

FokaiHI

If your goal is 40 wins without placement, then it’s the same. If your goal is to skip the gwenpool GamBat and hit grocket and co, then no it’s not the same. It’s way more tiresome. It’s like being in the sim in the 4* tier and everything is Peggy/ im40.