The great days of Po(op)laris

HoundofShadow

Polaris alone can't defeat 5*. In a 1v1, most 5* would wipe out Polaris. It's the synergy that counts. This is the key ingredient that makes characters good or better.

You take away BRB, R4G, Carnage and the likes from her, and you get a slowpoke, unless you want to go +4 blue aps every match, and you better hope you can get enough blue matches to continue the stun. It's the same with Kitty and Okoye. You bring them to a 1v1 and they are terrible. Put them together in the right teams and they shine.

A boosted 1/1/1 Shangchi, Mystique, 2* Magneto can take down boosted champed 5*. 2* Storm, IM40 and Kamala Khan can take down most non-boosted champed 5*.
Should we take nerf them as well?  As you can see, it's about synergy.

There're pros and cons of using  characters below your current tier: you get beat up more easily. That's a tradeoff.

entrailbucket

Yeah, I mean, nobody ever loses on offense unless something goes terribly wrong.  There's no defense in this game and there never has been.  The AI is so bad that the human player basically has an insurmountable advantage.

I think the issue with Polaris has been stated multiple times in this thread by her defenders: she is the *only* character at the 4* tier who lets them do certain things (easily beat 5* opponents, clear cl10 fast, spend no health packs ever, whatever it is). 

That's a problem, because it suggests that you're not meant to be doing those things.  If there's 100 4* characters, and none of the other ones are good enough to do it, does it make sense that the best character at the tier is *that* much better than everyone else? 

A nerf is the devs admitting they made a mistake.  Is it more likely that those other 100 characters are  mistakes, or that the one amazingly good one is the mistake?

HoundofShadow

Fast is relative. When I first played the first SCL 10 as a 4* player, it was a slog. That was even before Polaris existed. 4 clears or 3 clears in 1.5-2 hours are not fast. Fast is clearing between 20-30 minutes, relatively to your roster strength and scl. 

Polaris is the "only" character that allows them do the above because she's heavily pushed by players. In reality, there are other teams that could do that as well.

When newer players asked which 4* characters to chase, Polaris/Juggernaut/R4G are heavily pushed. Give other answers and you likely to get crapped on. It's like a groupthink, but most players posting in forums are percieved to have one goal: do everything quuckly to get the best rewards, and maximise all resources. 

If one day the dev changed the entire pve format to be puzzle based like Puzzle Ops, this group of players is likely to be heavily affected. Because they are being taught to ignore other game mechanics, and "to play passively".

entrailbucket

This makes sense.  The "smart" players now want to spend as little time in the 4* tier as possible before they move up to the 5* tier.  (Why?  No idea, the game is the same, it's not any more fun, the rewards are better but you need the better rewards just to keep your spot in the hierarchy, and the competition is much more intense.)

Chasing one or two characters and completely ignoring everyone else is how you'd accomplish that in the most efficient way.  There are other characters and teams that would do the same thing, but getting them would require spending resources and is unnecessary.

dianetics

Polaris doesn't need a nerf. As others have already said there are plenty of effective counters to her. I like seeing her in pvp because you can take her out in a couple turns before she is able to get a stun off.
Yes she is one of the best 4* characters, but even boosted she is not too difficult to deal with.
Most of the characters that got nerfs were nearly impossible to counter and that's just not the case with Polaris. Her kit just works really well with many of the higher tier 5*'s.

Looking at potentially nerfing a character because they are boosted is pretty shortsighted.
A lot of characters are far more dangerous when they are boosted (Killmonger), but that doesn't mean they need a nerf.
The boosts make pve and pvp more interesting because people use are using a wider variety of their roster and some interesting teams are popping up.

HoundofShadow

And players wonder why they only see such teams in pvps. Because they are the "right" team, naturally, you will see a lot of them. And that's another problem that can be summarised as "it's boring to see the same meta team over and over again." On the other hand, chase those boring meta teams that you will see over and over again. 

Bad

In here we are talking about circumstances.
As a 3 years old player of course I chose to go directly into 5 * land: I felt players downloading the game years before had an advantage impossible to overcome.
As a 5* player now I'm covering 4* characters. 
If I was starting now without a doubt I would favorite polaris and grocket.
Now, developing further what I said before:
Polaris being a special tiles meta has the support/help/sinergy of: BRB, kitty 4* and5*, grocket, carnage 4* and 5*, Dbeast, odin, apocalypse, magneto 5* and 3*, yelena, knull, professor 4*,.magik, valkyrie, nico, medusa, gamora 4* and 3*, and a long etc...
She can be boosted by the 4 multipliers without no real issues. 
On the other hand, the destroying meta team has the sinergy of: morbius, mantis, sabretooth, and then thanos4*,medusa, elektra 4* and 3*,carnage 4* and 5*, possibly colossus , and a few others giving special tiles to enemy. 
Those 3 destroyers tiles can be boosted, however THEY CANNOT MULTIPLY ENEMY TILES and so their engine stops.

On these facts it is easy to notice all players will still chasing polaris as the destroying meta tiles is a good counter for her but not a solid option for players. 

entrailbucket

dianetics said:

.
Most of the characters that got nerfs were nearly impossible to counter and that's just not the case with Polaris. Her kit just works really well with many of the higher tier 5*'s.

This is completely untrue.  Most of the characters the mpq devs have nerfed were nerfed because they were too good.  The recent changes to Bishop and 4* Cap were made because they were overpowered on defense.  They are outliers.  Almost every other character has been changed because they were the best at that time, and players were forced to use them.

dianetics

entrailbucket said:

This is completely untrue.  Most of the characters the mpq devs have nerfed were nerfed because they were too good.  The recent changes to Bishop and 4* Cap were made because they were overpowered on defense.  They are outliers.  Almost every other character has been changed because they were the best at that time, and players were forced to use them.

People aren't being forced to use her though. She isn't a necessity to progress in pve or pvp.
Most of the teams I see her paired with I just walk right over in pvp. I always take the fight because she is too easy to dispatch.
I don't even have an amazing roster.

HoundofShadow

I think majority of the nerfs happened early in the game where devs are still figuring out the "right" formula. It's not unique to MPQ. It's the same for many such games. Nerfs and changes are common in the early part of the games.

The last 5 nerfs we had were:

1) 5* Captain Marvel -Nov 2020. This nerf is debatable because there are a lot of 5* Carol's replacements available, and the nerf didn't kill the infinity chain of Polaris and BRB. When nerf happens, characters get killed.

2) 4* Bishop - Sep 2020

3) 4* Worthy Cap - Sep 2020

4) 5* Gambit - Jul 2018 (Final nerf)

5) 5* Gambit - Dec 2017

6) 3* Gambit - Dec 2017

As you can see, nerfs are pretty rare (in terms of occurrence) compared to the early days of MPQ. Almost all the above are problematics in certain ways.

Jimsta_rooney

Jesus christ another one?

Srheer0

Standard counters to Polaris are:
Sabretooth, Morbius, Medusa, 3* Hulk.

Th4no, Riri, America Chavez+ Juggernaut, Mr Fantastic, Throg,  4* Deadpool, Dazzler, Kraven, Mantis are some other alternatives. There are more but, it really depends on how familiar one is with existing characters.

I agree with what was posted on page 2.  

Polaris is great and she is always the first or second 4star I recommend people get when moving from 3star to 4star land. (R4g is the other).  

She's strong, and has unparalleled synergy with BrB due to his blue and green ap generation on friendly protect tile matching or destroying.  

Maybe if D3 do feel like she needs a nerf, they can implement the match scaling thing they have to her passive. So say you get a big cascade, you notice the match damage goes down? Do that with her matching special tiles passive.  Maybe make her blue cost 9AP. Those are respectable nerfs that don't ruin her, but weaken her a tiny bit.  

I've also lost one or two times vs a 4rog who turned the whole board into charged tiles with one green firing. Purely because of Polaris. Was a sight to behold.  

TLDR, don't nerf her. We love her how she is.

Bad

Like I said the special tiles meta is wildly developed.
For to balance things and for to actually start talking about a destroying tiles meta(because the only one giving for free enemy tiles is carnage and it does it with limitations at 4* and 5*), it would be great to release a 4* with a toolkit like that:
-passive if a enemy special tile is matched of destroyed he deals damage and creates 2 same enemy special tiles with less strenght 
- cheap power creating enemy special tiles and dealing damage 
- power creating enemy special tiles and dealing extra AoE per enemy  tile ignoring protects.
And after that slowly developing the anti meta destroying special tiles.

ThaRoadWarrior

Been awhile since we've had a good "nerf _____" thread. I STILL want to know what the deal was with Danver5. She was so obviously designed to destroy her own strikes. Anybody notice that Hdrya Stomper's green doesn't destroy friendly specials so he can't be used in the Polaris/BRB winfinite engine?

HoundofShadow

Another way to look at this is that they excluded friendly special tiles so that his cd tiles won't get destroyed by his own green power? You might say they could exclude friendly cd tiles and protect tiles?

ThaRoadWarrior

That’s a weird power, it really wants to be fired twice sequentially if possible.

entrailbucket

I didn't notice that either.  It's interesting that they decided to do that with him, while leaving the 3,000 other characters who can enable it in place.

ThaRoadWarrior

Yeah, this is the perfect power to leave it in for too since it does next to no damage. It would make the match stretch out forever.

cpeyton3535

IMHO nerfs are the wrong approach.  They tend to be an answer to a stagnation in PVP and wind up making the nerfed character useless.  Just ban over-powered, over-used chars from PVP.  That way we can still actually use them in PVE.

HoundofShadow

I don't thinking banning those characters is a solution. The best solution is one that is fluid and adaptable to various contexts. This includes self-analysis and brainstorming counters with other players. If players take a scientific approach to tackling meta teams, I think overpowered characters won't be too much of an issue.

Through brainstorming session and sharing contextual experiences, players will be able to accumulate a wealth of experience and knowledge that they can tap on. Instead of having only 1 or 2 counters, they will have many counters on hand.

Alternatively, the dev can create more themed pvps like Evergreen, Combined Arms to tilt the advantage to certain characters or to lock them out of that pvp.