Are Carnage and Beta Ray friends?

HoundofShadow

It's unfortunate that he can't work in 5* MMR. At least he could be fun for those in 4* land when dealing with aggressive tile spammers. I'm looking forward to the next terror called iHulk in Challenge Node. He's going to 1HKO most of the baby champed 5* with his red at 650.

ThaRoadWarrior

I agree, iHulk is going to be a nightmare factory whenever we get him in a challenge node.

bluewolf

I really hope they never put iHulk in a CN. But if they do I'll just barely clear it or whatever. The rewards are hardly worth that pain to me.

Vhailorx

@jredd said:
i would say that brb is kinda broken. i love the toon, but he is. sorry. his blue should cost 12ap to fire with the self acceleration. 

I dunno, I think his blue is very good, without being broken on its own. It's clearly a top tier power. but it is only very indirect self-accel, and can be worked around at normal levels. I am not scared off by a BRB + a generic partner at 450-475. I respect him as a threat, but can handle that team in a variety of ways. It only becomes a problem when combined with other effects (like Kitty's yellow or Bishop to fuel it). And even those teams can be dealt with during shield hops. they only become an issue when they are so prevalent at lower scores that you have to climb off them, which becomes tedious.

And if BRB's blue cost 12 ap, would you ever play him at all? while some powers definintely are OP and need adjustment, I think we should also be wary of an "everything that's good needs to be nerfed" approach that just leads to a dull game.

bluewolf

@Vhailorx said:

@jredd said:
i would say that brb is kinda broken. i love the toon, but he is. sorry. his blue should cost 12ap to fire with the self acceleration. 

I dunno, I think his blue is very good, without being broken on its own. It's clearly a top tier power. but it is only very indirect self-accel, and can be worked around at normal levels. I am not scared off by a BRB + a generic partner at 450-475. I respect him as a threat, but can handle that team in a variety of ways. It only becomes a problem when combined with other effects (like Kitty's yellow or Bishop to fuel it). And even those teams can be dealt with during shield hops. they only become an issue when they are so prevalent at lower scores that you have to climb off them, which becomes tedious.

And if BRB's blue cost 12 ap, would you ever play him at all? while some powers definintely are OP and need adjustment, I think we should also be wary of an "everything that's good needs to be nerfed" approach that just leaves to a dull game.

I love how the choices here seem to be "tedious" or "dull".... I couldn't agree more about the BRB meta.

I do wish there was some sort of lockout or something on specific characters sometimes, like they sort-of tried several months ago.

I don't think 12 AP is the right cost but 6AP when you get one blue for each Protect that gets destroyed is probably a bit too cheap when combined with Kitty boosting them (making you really want to match them away, at least one), and of course the Bishop thing is way too much.

jredd

@Vhailorx said:

@jredd said:
i would say that brb is kinda broken. i love the toon, but he is. sorry. his blue should cost 12ap to fire with the self acceleration. 

I dunno, I think his blue is very good, without being broken on its own. It's clearly a top tier power. but it is only very indirect self-accel, and can be worked around at normal levels. I am not scared off by a BRB + a generic partner at 450-475. I respect him as a threat, but can handle that team in a variety of ways. It only becomes a problem when combined with other effects (like Kitty's yellow or Bishop to fuel it). And even those teams can be dealt with during shield hops. they only become an issue when they are so prevalent at lower scores that you have to climb off them, which becomes tedious.

And if BRB's blue cost 12 ap, would you ever play him at all? while some powers definintely are OP and need adjustment, I think we should also be wary of an "everything that's good needs to be nerfed" approach that just leads to a dull game.

i would play him because he would still make protect tiles that are boosted by kitty. and you'd still be firing blue often. just not on turn 2.
and you know what makes for a dull game? not being able to get progression in pvp because of an abundance of broken characters...

Vhailorx

@bluewolf said:

@Vhailorx said:

@jredd said:
i would say that brb is kinda broken. i love the toon, but he is. sorry. his blue should cost 12ap to fire with the self acceleration. 

I dunno, I think his blue is very good, without being broken on its own. It's clearly a top tier power. but it is only very indirect self-accel, and can be worked around at normal levels. I am not scared off by a BRB + a generic partner at 450-475. I respect him as a threat, but can handle that team in a variety of ways. It only becomes a problem when combined with other effects (like Kitty's yellow or Bishop to fuel it). And even those teams can be dealt with during shield hops. they only become an issue when they are so prevalent at lower scores that you have to climb off them, which becomes tedious.

And if BRB's blue cost 12 ap, would you ever play him at all? while some powers definintely are OP and need adjustment, I think we should also be wary of an "everything that's good needs to be nerfed" approach that just leaves to a dull game.

I love how the choices here seem to be "tedious" or "dull".... I couldn't agree more about the BRB meta.

I do wish there was some sort of lockout or something on specific characters sometimes, like they sort-of tried several months ago.

I don't think 12 AP is the right cost but 6AP when you get one blue for each Protect that gets destroyed is probably a bit too cheap when combined with Kitty boosting them (making you really want to match them away, at least one), and of course the Bishop thing is way too much.

But you just slipped kitty into the discussion in the end there. And that's important. powerful 2 character combos are much less threatening to the meta that stand alones. That's why bishop is more of a problem than worthy, and why Gambit was more of a problem than thorkoye or panthos or any other two-character meta team.

If you are playing brb + kitty, then you are foregoing a lot of other synergies in pick-2 nodes. and by himself, BRB isn't OP. He is just a very good 5* (who extends matches to be sure, but that is a problem for extrinsic reasons like grinding or shield hopping). Add in someone like carnage or kitty and you suddenly have a board full of boosted specials and/or every match generating extra AP because of all those specials.

Jredd:

If you would still use him with kitty for her passive then he isn't the problem.

And it can't be that EVERY popular meta team is broken. There will always be a best team. So what is it about brbitty in particular that has everyone so grumpy? Because if it's not worse than the pre-existing stunner bro meta, what is the point of all this angst?

I haven't played much pvp this season, and almost never to 1k, but last season they didn't cause too much trouble for my he/worthy. At least not more than BRB/bishop or any other meta defensive teams that I see after breaking mmr. Is brbitty just especially good against regular climbing teams that I don't use often? Or is everyone suddenly playing brbitty from 0 points?

bluewolf

@Vhailorx

My personal take is that BRBitty is being used a lot earlier than before. Probably because....Carnage left, and a lot of people that were waiting jumped in to get BRB before he left. So I see them out very very early, basically I see that team as soon as seeds are gone but before I start skipping to find the poor souls who don't have/run meta teams and beat up on them.

It seems to me that more people are shifting from previously running Gritty to BRBitty, probably because they use less health packs, and are more annoying (float more easily) and hence need less shields to maintain your approximate score. The result for me is needing to eventually run BRBitty myself, which I don't greatly enjoy.

When you have a few lynchpin 5's (mostly Okoye and Kitty and probably Thor) it's hard to NOT evaluate every 5 in terms of how they interact with them. BRB isn't quite meta enough to build around, but obviously creates a very annoying team with Kitty. The blue's cheapness is a pretty big problem in that combo, IMO.

jredd

Jredd:

If you would still use him with kitty for her passive then he isn't the problem.

And it can't be that EVERY popular meta team is broken. There will always be a best team. So what is it about brbitty in particular that has everyone so grumpy? Because if it's not worse than the pre-existing stunner bro meta, what is the point of all this angst?

I haven't played much pvp this season, and almost never to 1k, but last season they didn't cause too much trouble for my he/worthy. At least not more than BRB/bishop or any other meta defensive teams that I see after breaking mmr. Is brbitty just especially good against regular climbing teams that I don't use often? Or is everyone suddenly playing brbitty from 0 points?

even without kitty, he can flood the board quickly with enough shield tiles that you are doing -1 damage. try to match them away and he makes more. and then it speeds him up more. it's a losing proposition from the start.

thorkoye was the perfect meta team, and maybe we got spoiled there. strong offence = quick matches. weak on defence = easily beaten. by pretty much any other pair of 5* and some of the stronger 4* too.

is brb worse than bishop & hammercap? no probably not. but it's not any better.

if you havn't played much pvp this season, and never to 1000, then your opinion comes from a different frame of reference. yes, everyone seems to be playing brbitty from the start.

ThaRoadWarrior

If his blue cost 12 like his green does, he'd be unplayable. I tend to never fire his green, because by the time I've got that much green AP i've fired his blue 2x times at least.

Vhailorx

@jredd said:

If you would still use him with kitty for her passive then he isn't the problem.

And it can't be that EVERY popular meta team is broken. There will always be a best team. So what is it about brbitty in particular that has everyone so grumpy? Because if it's not worse than the pre-existing stunner bro meta, what is the point of all this angst?

I haven't played much pvp this season, and almost never to 1k, but last season they didn't cause too much trouble for my he/worthy. At least not more than BRB/bishop or any other meta defensive teams that I see after breaking mmr. Is brbitty just especially good against regular climbing teams that I don't use often? Or is everyone suddenly playing brbitty from 0 points?

even without kitty, he can flood the board quickly with enough shield tiles that you are doing -1 damage. try to match them away and he makes more. and then it speeds him up more. it's a losing proposition from the start.

thorkoye was the perfect meta team, and maybe we got spoiled there. strong offence = quick matches. weak on defence = easily beaten. by pretty much any other pair of 5* and some of the stronger 4* too.

is brb worse than bishop & hammercap? no probably not. but it's not any better.

if you havn't played much pvp this season, and never to 1000, then your opinion comes from a different frame of reference. yes, everyone seems to be playing brbitty from the start.

I have said in the past that I think glass cannon meta teams are ideal (it's one of the things fight4 and I have sparred over repeatedly while discussing bishop).

As for BRBitty flooding the board with insurmountable protects: stun him! and it's not like there aren't a couple of viable meta 4*s with which to accomplish that.

And if there are a surfeit of annoying teams in PVP, that's nothing particularly new. It's kinda why I stopped playing PVP regularly back in 2018.

I guess my bottom line critique is that I get that BRBitty is annoying to fight against because they slow the match down. But there is always an annoying, meta defensive team in PVP that is not fun to fight against and is just about the only team you can find when you get past 500 or so. BRBitty is just the newest iteration of that. before that it was BRB/Carnage for a little while, and before that it was Gritty or a stunner bro combo. In a few weeks/months it might be some nasty combo of IH and whoever ends up playing best with him. Will that team also be OP? and the one after that?

I guess my bar for complaining about some team combo as OP is a bit different. Gambit was a problem because he was, singularly, the only game in town for PVP for almost a full year. nothing else in the game was close to him in terms of offensive and defensive strength and reliability (though some of the meta teams now might have been able to deal with him). The only tool suitable for defeating gambit was another gambit. Everything else a very high risk proposition (not good in MPQ's pvp scoring system). So nerfing him made sense to me (though nerfing him into the ground as demi did was a massive over-correction). Bishop is close to that status for me, since using him is basically unavoidable blue ap for your team (as well as some unavoidable passive damage that can also make countering him difficult. He does basically everything that you might want on his own: he generates ap automatically, and has a very long stun tied to his ap-gen. The only mitigating factor with him is his 4* status, which is also what makes him awesome (since if he were a 5*, he would have less problematic thresholds for his passives). I think it's a close call with him, but I probably would settle in the 'make a minor adjustment to him' camp.

I just don't see BRB as belonging in that category just yet, but I may update my opinion whenever I next play several PVPs in a row up to 750+.

jredd

@Vhailorx said:

@jredd said:

If you would still use him with kitty for her passive then he isn't the problem.

And it can't be that EVERY popular meta team is broken. There will always be a best team. So what is it about brbitty in particular that has everyone so grumpy? Because if it's not worse than the pre-existing stunner bro meta, what is the point of all this angst?

I haven't played much pvp this season, and almost never to 1k, but last season they didn't cause too much trouble for my he/worthy. At least not more than BRB/bishop or any other meta defensive teams that I see after breaking mmr. Is brbitty just especially good against regular climbing teams that I don't use often? Or is everyone suddenly playing brbitty from 0 points?

even without kitty, he can flood the board quickly with enough shield tiles that you are doing -1 damage. try to match them away and he makes more. and then it speeds him up more. it's a losing proposition from the start.

thorkoye was the perfect meta team, and maybe we got spoiled there. strong offence = quick matches. weak on defence = easily beaten. by pretty much any other pair of 5* and some of the stronger 4* too.

is brb worse than bishop & hammercap? no probably not. but it's not any better.

if you havn't played much pvp this season, and never to 1000, then your opinion comes from a different frame of reference. yes, everyone seems to be playing brbitty from the start.

I have said in the past that I think glass cannon meta teams are ideal (it's one of the things fight4 and I have sparred over repeatedly while discussing bishop).

As for BRBitty flooding the board with insurmountable protects: stun him! and it's not like there aren't a couple of viable meta 4*s with which to accomplish that.

And if there are a surfeit of annoying teams in PVP, that's nothing particularly new. It's kinda why I stopped playing PVP regularly back in 2018.

I guess my bottom line critique is that I get that BRBitty is annoying to fight against because they slow the match down. But there is always an annoying, meta defensive team in PVP that is not fun to fight against and is just about the only team you can find when you get past 500 or so. BRBitty is just the newest iteration of that. before that it was BRB/Carnage for a little while, and before that it was Gritty or a stunner bro combo. In a few weeks/months it might be some nasty combo of IH and whoever ends up playing best with him. Will that team also be OP? and the one after that?

I guess my bar for complaining about some team combo as OP is a bit different. Gambit was a problem because he was, singularly, the only game in town for PVP for almost a full year. nothing else in the game was close to him in terms of offensive and defensive strength and reliability (though some of the meta teams now might have been able to deal with him). The only tool suitable for defeating gambit was another gambit. Everything else a very high risk proposition (not good in MPQ's pvp scoring system). So nerfing him made sense to me (though nerfing him into the ground as demi did was a massive over-correction). Bishop is close to that status for me, since using him is basically unavoidable blue ap for your team (as well as some unavoidable passive damage that can also make countering him difficult. He does basically everything that you might want on his own: he generates ap automatically, and has a very long stun tied to his ap-gen. The only mitigating factor with him is his 4* status, which is also what makes him awesome (since if he were a 5*, he would have less problematic thresholds for his passives). I think it's a close call with him, but I probably would settle in the 'make a minor adjustment to him' camp.

I just don't see BRB as belonging in that category just yet, but I may update my opinion whenever I next play several PVPs in a row up to 750+.

i'd like to see how gambit 2.0 and original oml would fit now. couldn't hurt to switch them back and see how it goes.

Vhailorx

@jredd said:

i'd like to see how gambit 2.0 and original oml would fit now. couldn't hurt to switch them back and see how it goes.

OML should never have been nerfed to begin with and should be restored immediately.

Gambit is trickier. I too would like to see how his pre-nerf self plays now since I think that teams passivePQ teams like gritty could handle him much better than anything available in his prime. But it's possible that he would still be too strong, since he can gain all the ap he needs by himself regardless of the board, overwrites any dangerous tiles, and does solid damage for cheap. I would either revert his change temporarily and see how it goes, or at stuff back in piecemeal (e.g. add special overwrite back, then increase the red damage efficiency, and finally add in the true passive ap gen). But that would be very dev resource intensive, so I would never expect it to happen.

But yes, as is often the case, nerfs often look bad in hindsight because of powercreep. And what could have been a viable member of the current meta is left in the trash tier for lack dev time to undo old nerfs. c.f. sentry, xfw, OML, gambit, etc.

bowla33

The easy fix to BRB would be to only allow 1 blue countxown tile at a time. That's part of what slows everything down so much.