The great days of Po(op)laris

Sekilicious

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Ok, in the Daredevil lighting round I arranged it to have a full board of specials and a freshly stunned BRB, and you get the message that says “No status change, this power will have no effect” and it won’t allow it to be fired. So if you have a character already 3-turn stunned and nowhere for the specials to land, you are indeed prevented from firing the power, but if they have less than 3 turns or there is room, it can be fired. This is good and desirable behavior, otherwise you are just throwing 7 blue AP in the trash.

Oh yeah this was happening to me in the Unstable ISO-8 and Infinite Pursuit events. I did not know it was new behaviour.

ThaRoadWarrior

I don’t think it is

Anon

I say nerf every 4* until they're as bad as Talos.

Then nerf Talos.

Akoni

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Who were you fighting against? Was it in the hydra stomper PVp?

It was during the Black Widow PvP. I've used her throughout the event against multiple opponents. The enemy was not stunned, nor was the enemy immune to stun. The board was full of SAP tiles and Team-Up tiles. There were no other special tiles. When attempting to fire her blue I got the same message you mentioned: “No status change, this power will have no effect." 

Like I said, it might have been a bug. If you guys tried it and were able to fire it, then it must be a bug. With that said, I've run into that bug several times now. I'm not complaining, though. Almost every match I play with Polaris ends before I get to that point. It only affects me when I'm attempting to use a Polaris stun-lock which is only occasional.

entrailbucket

Anon said:

I say nerf every 4* until they're as bad as Talos.

Then nerf Talos.

Isn't this exactly the same as "buff every 4* until they're as good as Polaris?  Shouldn't that outcome be what we want?

Anon

That should be what we want, but knowing the forum, there will be calls to nerf all of those characters. Let's just cut out the middle man and make everyone terrible.

entrailbucket

I've been thinking about the whole thing, and players always say they hate nerfs but love counter-play.  The problem with counters is that if you're countering an overpowered character, an effective counter will also be overpowered. 

Like SW completely shuts down Hulk to the point where he's no longer usable, which I assume was her goal.  She's effective at that, but the effect is too wide.  She also shuts down every single other character in the game.

They've been trying to give 4* players a Polaris counter for months and none of them have been effective at all because they're too weak.  I understand why Polaris hasn't gotten her SW yet -- that character would immediately take over the game.  But why not move to a different strategy entirely?

What if a new character had a passive that said, "if Polaris is on the enemy team at the start of the match, kill her instantly." They could create one of these for all of the "problem" characters.

This solves all the problems at once.  The counter is 100% effective, but so narrow that you're not creating a different problem by introducing another overpowered character into the game.

ThaRoadWarrior

I wonder if Ronan’s Uncompromising Power is why Danver5 got nerfed…as I think about it, that combo would be outrageous if each repeater factors in all the others when destroyed…I’ll have to test it with Loki when puzzle gauntlet comes around next week.

HoundofShadow

I find that theory interesting so I went to try it out against Polaris using Ronan and Wiccan. What happened was Ronan's UP triggered once each time a column was destroyed by Wiccan's Chain Lightning. So, 5* Carol should work similarly if she destroys those rows individually, instead of concurrently.

ThaRoadWarrior

I went into Simulator and ran him with Human Torch, and using Torch’s red after a decent number of repeaters were on the board and fortified did some pretty impressive damage. 

HoundofShadow

If you have 50 out, the number is huge. Assuming you destroyed 50 fortified repeater tiles using Torch, did you also gain 50 aps?

Sekilicious

Thankfully Polaris week is over. See y’all next time she boosted.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

entrailbucket said:

I've been thinking about the whole thing, and players always say they hate nerfs but love counter-play.  The problem with counters is that if you're countering an overpowered character, an effective counter will also be overpowered. 

Like SW completely shuts down Hulk to the point where he's no longer usable, which I assume was her goal.  She's effective at that, but the effect is too wide.  She also shuts down every single other character in the game.

They've been trying to give 4* players a Polaris counter for months and none of them have been effective at all because they're too weak.  I understand why Polaris hasn't gotten her SW yet -- that character would immediately take over the game.  But why not move to a different strategy entirely?

What if a new character had a passive that said, "if Polaris is on the enemy team at the start of the match, kill her instantly." They could create one of these for all of the "problem" characters.

This solves all the problems at once.  The counter is 100% effective, but so narrow that you're not creating a different problem by introducing another overpowered character into the game.

I think an anti mutant power character like Master Mold , Leech, or even Nimrod with the passive of “ All characters in Mutant class have powers nullified “ . You could soften it to an active power with a CD of X turns  as well . There’s your Kitty killer and Polaris pulverizer

entrailbucket

For years I've wanted a character that has a passive that turns off all (other) passives, but the problem now is every decent character generates all their value with one or more passives.  The passive nullifier guy just completely breaks the game. 

I could maybe see him being a boss fight, but players would complain so much about that, I don't think they'd ever do it. 

Players hate PvE fights that are remotely difficult or that require any thought -- if you can't trivially faceroll the fight with Okoye or Polaris or whatever while you watch tv, it's literally offensive to the loudest group of players.

ThaRoadWarrior

Whenever that power is suggested, I would continue to propose that 5* Thanos's purple be a battle-start passive, either as a countdown,repeater, or unique infinity gauntlet tile like boss-thanos has that once cleared don't come back.

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Whenever that power is suggested, I would continue to propose that 5* Thanos's purple be a battle-start passive, either as a countdown,repeater, or unique infinity gauntlet tile like boss-thanos has that once cleared don't come back.

I don't think they can just stick that on Thanos because he's already good -- I think he'd be too good.  Ideally it'd be on some trash character who does nothing else useful.

ThaRoadWarrior

I guess; he has definitely survived into the modern game WAY better than most of his peers, but his active powers are crazy expensive, he exists to Court Death pretty exclusively.

entrailbucket

His active powers were always bad, even back when he was released.  Nobody ever cast them.

Court Death is just so good that they balanced it by not giving him anything else of use. 

That was back when they cared about character balance.  Today they'd give him Court Death + a power booster ability that also reduces damage + an 8-turn stun that cost 6.

Daredevil217

entrailbucket said:

I've been thinking about the whole thing, and players always say they hate nerfs but love counter-play.  The problem with counters is that if you're countering an overpowered character, an effective counter will also be overpowered. 

Like SW completely shuts down Hulk to the point where he's no longer usable, which I assume was her goal.  She's effective at that, but the effect is too wide.  She also shuts down every single other character in the game.

They've been trying to give 4* players a Polaris counter for months and none of them have been effective at all because they're too weak.  I understand why Polaris hasn't gotten her SW yet -- that character would immediately take over the game.  But why not move to a different strategy entirely?

What if a new character had a passive that said, "if Polaris is on the enemy team at the start of the match, kill her instantly." They could create one of these for all of the "problem" characters.

This solves all the problems at once.  The counter is 100% effective, but so narrow that you're not creating a different problem by introducing another overpowered character into the game.

I’m sorry, but this just isn’t true. 

BSSM hard counters Grocket and isn’t OP. 

Electro hard counters iHulk and isn’t OP. 

Morbius hard counters Polaris and isn’t OP. 

It is absolutely possible for a character to counter an OP character and not be broken themselves. 

The real problem is that If the character is weak on defense or slow on offense, you put yourself at risk playing the counter. So even your Polaris “insta-kill” character wouldn’t get played if the rest of the kit was slow or weak on defense. Because Morbius is as close to that as possible. 

The issue isn’t Polaris. It’s that the game is built on speed and defense (the latter in PVP only). You don’t have one or both, you likely don’t get played.  You have one or both (and Polaris is blazing fast), you do get played. 

This is why 5* character boosts were the best thing to happen to the tier in a long time. Having a different “fastest” that is shaken up week by week is the best way to have an ever shifting meta and to incentivize those who skip mediocre 5* because they can rest on the 1-2 meta characters released each year. 

entrailbucket

Daredevil217 said:

entrailbucket said:

I've been thinking about the whole thing, and players always say they hate nerfs but love counter-play.  The problem with counters is that if you're countering an overpowered character, an effective counter will also be overpowered. 

Like SW completely shuts down Hulk to the point where he's no longer usable, which I assume was her goal.  She's effective at that, but the effect is too wide.  She also shuts down every single other character in the game.

They've been trying to give 4* players a Polaris counter for months and none of them have been effective at all because they're too weak.  I understand why Polaris hasn't gotten her SW yet -- that character would immediately take over the game.  But why not move to a different strategy entirely?

What if a new character had a passive that said, "if Polaris is on the enemy team at the start of the match, kill her instantly." They could create one of these for all of the "problem" characters.

This solves all the problems at once.  The counter is 100% effective, but so narrow that you're not creating a different problem by introducing another overpowered character into the game.

I’m sorry, but this just isn’t true. 

BSSM hard counters Grocket and isn’t OP. 

Electro hard counters iHulk and isn’t OP. 

Morbius hard counters Polaris and isn’t OP. 

It is absolutely possible for a character to counter an OP character and not be broken themselves. 

The real problem is that If the character is weak on defense or slow on offense, you put yourself at risk playing the counter. So even your Polaris “insta-kill” character wouldn’t get played if the rest of the kit was slow or weak on defense. Because Morbius is as close to that as possible. 

The issue isn’t Polaris. It’s that the game is built on speed and defense (the latter in PVP only). You don’t have one or both, you likely don’t get played.  You have one or both (and Polaris is blazing fast), you do get played. 

This is why 5* character boosts were the best thing to happen to the tier in a long time. Having a different “fastest” that is shaken up week by week is the best way to have an ever shifting meta and to incentivize those who skip mediocre 5* because they can rest on the 1-2 meta characters released each year. 

I guess I have a different definition of "counter." (I think we've talked about this before).  To me, a counter that only beats a guy on offense isn't a counter at all. 

*Every* character can beat an enemy Polaris when I'm fighting her.  I don't need any special help to do it.  A counter is a character that an offensive player's Polaris cannot beat on defense. 

These are rare in MPQ but becoming more frequent.  An offensive Thor often cannot beat an enemy Hulk.  Thus Thor disappears from the meta. An offensive Hulk literally cannot beat an enemy SW.  Hulk goes from 100% used to 0% overnight.  These counter characters have the effect of a nerf without actually doing a nerf, which is what players want...counterplay, not nerfs!

I hear about rock/paper/scissors all the time but they've never managed to do this.  Right now, on offense you can just throw rock every time and win every time.  They're close though...they could accomplish it by, say, changing Thor so that he always beats SW, on offense and defense. (Please don't buff Thor, this is theoretical).

It'd set up like:

Hulk always beats Thor (and Thor cannot ever beat Hulk)
SW always beats Hulk (and Hulk cannot ever beat SW)
Thor always beats SW (and SW cannot ever beat Thor)

Lesser counters like Electro, BSS, Morbius, etc, have a place but they don't affect the meta in the same way.  If you can't beat Polaris, or Rocket, or whoever, when you're on offense, then those guys will be important or useful.  But they're never going to force a character completely out of the meta because they're ineffective counters on defense.

I agree that the boosts have massively improved things, but the meta characters (unfortunately) are still dominant, because the meta characters are generally +100 levels or more better than everyone else.  Putting 100 levels on a mid-tier character like Deadpool makes him competitive with Okoye, which is good, but ultimately pretty ridiculous.