How much of a change would 5* Scarlet Witch need to *only* be viable when boosted?

entrailbucket

I'm not sure you'd have to remove it entirely.  You could actually buff the damage.  What if you made it AoE, and made dumping the charges a cheap active green power?

ThaRoadWarrior

Got to say, it doesn't feel that great to think of ways to add mediocrity to the game.

entrailbucket

I still don't really understand everyone else's attitude about this. 

I feel like every 5* should either be usable unboosted, like SW Colossus Apocalypse etc, or only usable when boosted (post-buff Ghost Rider, Phoenix, literally everyone else).

Why do people want this divide to stay?  I know why the hoarders do...it's because they have the good characters maxed out and literally nobody else on their roster.  Why would a normal player want it to be this way?

Sekilicious

To turn it around, I don’t know why anyone would want every character to be unplayable unless boosted. A few 5*s being better on more teams means players can target those characters and reduce the grind for getting to progression in both modes. All 5* being unplayable unless boosted would benefit a few players, but would remove progression in every event for the players with less than 20 or so 5* champs. 

entrailbucket

What if every character was usable unboosted?

HoundofShadow

Usable is subjective. I find 98% of the 5* in the game usable, while others might find only 20% or 50% of the 5* usable. Usable to me means that I can find other characters that synergises with this character well in pick-2 or pick-3. What's your definition of usable? What's the definition of usable for others? 

These are the 5* characters released in 2021. How many of them are usable to you unboosted? How of them are usable only when boosted? Please don't bother with Colossus, SW and Shang Chi. 

5* Release Date for 2021

14 Jan - Yellow Jacket

11 Feb - Cyclops (Phoenix Force)

11 Mar - Colossus (Phoenix Force)

8 Apr - Scarlet Witch (WandaVision)

6 May - Knull (King In Black)

3 Jun - Ronan (The Accuser)

1 Jul - Electro (Francine Frye)

29 Jul - Odin (All-Father)

26 Aug - Shang-Chi (Origin)

23 Sep - Ultron (Age of Ultron)

21 Oct - Gamora (Deadliest Woman)

18 Nov - Sersi (Eternals)

16 Dec - Big Wheel (Jackson Weele)

Sekilicious

entrailbucket said:

What if every character was usable unboosted?

That probably isn’t possible. Characters being good or bad depends on their synergies with each other. Not every character has synergy in Pick 3 and fewer in Pick 2. Wanda is pretty mediocre without iHulk in the game. I target her whenever I can, stun her, then wipe her from the board. If I lose it is because Apocalypse or Colossus got a lucky cascade. 

entrailbucket

Of that group, the only characters that I see unboosted in PvP are SW and Colossus.

I have all of them championed and I've used all of them to varying degrees (except Big Wheel, I don't have him yet!).  At this stage I only use the boosted characters, though (except Shang-Chi, who I use unboosted all the time because he's so fun).

entrailbucket

Sekilicious said:

entrailbucket said:

What if every character was usable unboosted?

That probably isn’t possible. Characters being good or bad depends on their synergies with each other. Not every character has synergy in Pick 3 and fewer in Pick 2. Wanda is pretty mediocre without iHulk in the game. I target her whenever I can, stun her, then wipe her from the board. If I lose it is because Apocalypse or Colossus got a lucky cascade. 

It sounds like your experience is significantly different than mine, which probably explains a lot. 

The Wanda I see has 120,000 health unboosted and frequently hits back for 15,000 or 25,000 every turn.  Apocalypse boosts this by 20,000 or so as well as doing 100,000 damage on his red.  Colossus has 175,000 health and easily does 100,000 damage on cascades.  Boosted characters don't always have a stun to deal with them.

Yes, boosted characters at lvl600 like Ghost Rider can hit pretty hard and have a lot of health, but they don't reduce incoming damage at all and they still have to match tiles and cast stuff to do damage.

HoundofShadow

A 550 Wanda deals 4258 damage per charge stored. If she's dealing 15,000 to 25,000 damage every turn, it means you are hitting her 3-5 times per turn. I wonder what teams you are using to hit her so many times per turn frequently.

As for 550 Colossus dealing 100,000 damage per cascade, his yellow match-3 deals 13845, and each subsequent match from cascade deals lesser and lesser damage. The second match deals 24.5% lesser damage and the third deals 43.7% lesser damage. In order to hit 100,000 damage, he's either hitting match-5 which turns into critical matches consistently or he cascades into over 20-matches. 

  

entrailbucket

Hitting the enemy 3-5 times per turn is pretty normal...how often do you do damage?  As far as cascades, you clearly haven't played against a maxed out Colossus's AI.

So how many characters do you think would be usable if you were fighting these enemies every single match?

HoundofShadow

I pulled those data from other players' 550 rosters who have both at 550.

When I play against Wanda, I use characters who can match away or remove her repeater, or someone who can stun her. I also try not to create cascades by making careful matches. On top of that, I fire power after I clear her repeater from the board or while she is stunned. If you are firing power(s) while her repeater is on the board and she is not inactive, then it's more of a strategy issue.


Colossus' highest match-3, yellow, deals 13,845 damage. You don't need to play against him to calculate the frequency of 100k match damage from cascade. As mentioned, first match damage deals 100% strength, the second 75.4% and the third 56.3%. Therefore, his first three yellow match-3 damage in a cascade is 13845+10439+7795=32,079 damage. In order to hit 100k damage, it's a minimum of 10 cascades or cascades with critical match. Besides, you didn't mention how his 100k damage from cascades came from. Even if it happens, it's a rare occurence.

entrailbucket

Criticals are indeed how that would happen.

You didn't mention which characters you think would be able to stand up to approximately 20,000 damage per turn, chewing through 300,000 health whilst doing 40-80% less on most sources of damage and 83% less match damage.

Can you see how that might limit one's team options?  An unboosted character like Electro is literally unusable in this situation -- she's dead before doing any damage at all.

HoundofShadow

Characters who can true heal, burst heal, reduce damage, winfinite, stun can deal with this. Of course, synergy is important. You just can't pick any 2 characters randomly to beat them. 

If we are talking about a 550 Electro, I don't see why she can't beat meta team with the right team. 

Given that the game scales with each level increase, the situation you are facing is no different from 450 players who are playing against another 450 Colossus/Wanda.  If 450 Electro can beat 450 Colossus, a 550 Electro can also beat 550 Colossus. The scale from 450 to 550 is multiplied by ~2.16.

entrailbucket

HoundofShadow said:

Characters who can true heal, burst heal, reduce damage, winfinite, stun can deal with this. Of course, synergy is important. You just can't pick any 2 characters randomly to beat them. 

If we are talking about a 550 Electro, I don't see why she can't beat meta team with the right team. 

Given that the game scales with each level increase, the situation you are facing is no different from 450 players who are playing against another 450 Colossus/Wanda.  If 450 Electro can beat 450 Colossus, a 550 Electro can also beat 550 Colossus. The scale from 450 to 550 is multiplied by ~2.16.

Do you really think 450 Electro can beat 450 SW/Colossus?  Have you tried this?

She can't. She should be able to, easily. That's the entire problem.

Daredevil217

I’ve been agreeing with Hound more and more lately (end of days!?). Everything he’s saying is spot-on, and he even used some nice match damage math to counter the hyperbole. Well done!

To add to this, I’ll just say that it’s not possible for all characters to be usable unboosted based on the definition I THINK EB is using. I think he wants all characters to be equally good, which just isn’t the case in a game with obvious power creep and with this many characters. If all you see is Wanda/Apoc/Colossus, it’s because they are the best characters in the game. Before them all I’d see was Hulkoye. Before them BRB/Kitty, Thorkoye, Gambolt, etc.

The fact that 70% of my queues featured the same team did not mean other characters weren’t usable. It meant that people chose to use the most effective tool available (see what I did there?). Currently in unboosted events it’s Switchlosus. Nerf the witch and it goes back to Hulkoye. I agree with Hound that pretty much all the new school toons are usable (save maybe Abby… jury is still out) and the the developers are slowly working to bring the older toons up to snuff (yay!). Now are people actually using them over better options in high end play? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be used.  But there will always be a best character.  We can’t really give you advice because we don’t have boosted 600+ level characters to work with, nor are we getting hit with 25 match cascades with any regularity. Maybe try some of the strategies Hound suggested? Those are the same tactics I use to deal with her. 

ThaRoadWarrior

For my part, it’s more fun to bootstrap up the losers than to put throttle restrictors on the front runners is all. 

entrailbucket

There will always be a best character/team.  That is not now and has never been a problem. 

People will always use the best character/team.  That is not now and has never been a problem. 

Neither of those things will ever change.

The problem occurs when one strategy or team is so much more effective than any other one that it forces everything else out.  There aren't going to be 100 viable options at the top of the game, and that's fine.  But the gap between the best and everyone else should not be so big that there are only 2 or 3 viable options.

The buffs they're doing are welcome, but they're not making these characters competitive with the best options.


I do recognize that SW is the bulwark currently standing between us and a metagame that's 100% Okoye/Hulk, or Apocalypse/Thor, or whatever booster + AoE guy that people would use.  They chose to fix one problem by creating a different one, which is certainly a decision. 

I probably should've picked someone else, because this isn't about her specifically.  It's about the 5 or 6 characters that are so far ahead of everyone else in the game that they make everyone else look like they're at a completely different tier.

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

For my part, it’s more fun to bootstrap up the losers than to put throttle restrictors on the front runners is all. 

That's fine!!!  The end result is the same, it just takes several more years to get there.

Pantera236

https://youtu.be/WprUCQgP8Rw

Do you really think 450 Electro can beat 450 SW/Colossus?  Have you tried this?

She can't. She should be able to, easily. That's the entire problem.

Seems possible 🤷‍♂️