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

entrailbucket

Pantera236 said:

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 🤷‍♂️

Oh well, bad example.  Try with Ghost Rider!

HoundofShadow

I used Electro a lot when I got her champed and I love teaming her with 5* Storm or Onslaught and Domino or Thor. Yes, I have used her to beat Wanda/Colossus team multiple times. 

Even in the real world, the income gap between the rich and the non-rich is huge. The rich makes the non-rich looks like they are in a completely different tier as well. Or Einstein's intelligence makes majority of the human populations look like they are at a different tier even though he is also human. However, it doesn't mean all other humans at that different tier are not useful or good enough to contribute to this world. Every humans have their own strengths and weaknesses and they excel in certain areas.

Likewise, in many games, characters have their own strengths and weaknesses. It is through putting together teams that cover up allies' weaknesses and leveraging on their strengths or specialities that enable players to defeat harder enemies. This applies to MPQ characters as well. I think you are focusing on absolute strength rather than synergy to beat them. 

entrailbucket

How did this turn into "EB can't beat scarlet witch so he wants to nerf her?" I have no problem winning these fights unless something goes horribly wrong.

The problem is that the "meta" characters are really good unboosted and other characters are not.  The recent buffs don't change this at all.

If you go all-in on SW and Colossus, you can use them to win every fight forever against every single team.  All this talk about matchups is irrelevant because they don't have a bad matchup -- they're good against everything.

If you go all in on, say, Ultron, he's pretty good when he's boosted, and the rest of the time he rides the bench.  (Yes, I do know a player with a 550 Ultron, and this is true).

Pantera236

https://youtu.be/CA5c_LwjzBM

I realize using Polaris is a cheat. And doing these in pick 3 a cheat too but pick 2 it's 600+ BRBs as far as the eye can see for me.

HoundofShadow

How good a character is largely depends on one's filters/biases and the available number of synergistic team one has with that character.  Also, skill is a factor.

And isn't that how meta are defined at a quick glance? Non-meta characters are good in their own way unboosted and meta are really good unboosted. If non-meta characters are really good unboosted, which is the same as meta characters, then, does meta character exist? 

Also, do you want non-meta characters to be really good or good unboosted, compared to meta unboosted? I think the difference is huge. How do you define good and really good unboosted? I think it's more of a skill/strategy problem rather than good or really good unboosted issue.

entrailbucket

Are you saying that "Apocalypse is better than Wasp" is a statement which may be true or false based on one's biases and filters?  I think your argument has gotten a bit too philosophical for me to follow.


If our goal as a forum is to make Thanos or Green Goblin playable when boosted (but still remain unusable otherwise) then shouldn't our goal for Scarlet Witch be the same?  I don't see the difference.

Bad

entrailbucket said:

The problem is that the "meta" characters are really good unboosted and other characters are not.  The recent buffs don't change this at all.

... In a mode where you compete to be the faster and go away without no one making you losing points.
If there was a mode where you play to a number of wins and nobody making you lose points, or if you were fighting a player in real time, I bet things would change and some characters looking awful would change a lot his value.
So, yeah, in a mode where the decisive goal is speed and power vs dumb AI, those are the best characters and nothing can change that, and nothing will.
Perhaps what you are secretly wishing is a mode where those requirements would'nt be meeting, and the value of the meta characters won't be prevalent at last, or at least other characters suddenly appeared seeming better options.
Right now the only difference in characters rankings is on pve and pvp, and both modes work gaining more rewards the faster you play.
Without changing the equation statement, solution it's always the same, at least on Maths.

HoundofShadow

It depends on contexts. Largely, Apocalypse and other meta fit a certain requirements given a certain environments of the game. In the context of speed or damage/ap, Apocalypse is meta while Wasp isn't is a fact. However, when you change their environments, some of them turned from meta tier to the bottom tier. For example, the 1v1 pvp or even some Puzzle Gauntlet nodes are good examples. Some of the meta are useless when the environment changes.

As for the second question, it depends on the goals/intentions. Those characters you mentioned were released more than 3 or 4 years ago. The intentions of the requests are mainly to:

1)  buff all these elder 5* match damage and health to be near today's standard.
2) decrease the ap cost of their powers and maybe increase their damage.

These are the driving forces behind to make sure that characters are "usable" when boosted. 

As for Wanda, she was released 9 months ago, not many years ago. Also, I don't think anyone are asking the dev to buff her damage or reduce the ap cost of her powers. As you can see, she doesn't "need" this rebalance because she doesn't belong to that group of characters thst you mentioned. So, the intentions are totally different.

sambrookjm

Pantera236 said:

I thought meta was an acronym. Most efficient/effective tool available? Think I heard that somewhere.

https://xkcd.com/917/

I'm so meta, even this acronym...

Sekilicious

entrailbucket said:

Pantera236 said:

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 🤷‍♂️

Oh well, bad example.  Try with Ghost Rider!

Looks like we identified the problem here. Try Ghostpool or BRB/Polaris. Robbie can do some stuff but with multiple hits per turn kind of falls into the meta that Wanda was designed to counter. You can exploit that by running Robbie with Ghostpool though. At my MMR most people just run BRB/Ghostpool this week and you rarely see Wanda so it seems effective 

Sekilicious

As nerf threads go this one is a massive failure. With Bishop people would stay up all night complaining until the thread was 20 to 30 pages long. I wasn’t around for Worthy. Maybe we should start a nerf Polaris or Okoye thread for old times sake. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I do think it's an interesting thought experiment in a Harrison Bergeron kind of way to take a character we all think is good and try to dial it down just enough without doing a scorched earth nerf. It does give one a bit of context for how your OMLs and Gambits happen on the design side. I'm not really advocating a dial down of Wanda myself, but I do think engaging with the premise of the thread is amusing.

Daredevil217

entrailbucket said:

Pantera236 said:

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 🤷‍♂️

Oh well, bad example.  Try with Ghost Rider!

This is hilarious to me. You say the “entire problem” is X can’t be done. More than one poster (throw me in there as well) says X can be done easily, and you move the goal posts.  Maybe this is the problem?  You’re speaking on stuff you either haven’t tried yourself (and thus don’t know what you’re talking about) or have tried and failed where many others have succeeded (in which case it might be a skill deficit and people could help you with that). 

You’re  not calling for a nerf just an inverse of the buff threads! (Isn’t the inverse of a buff a nerf?). Isn’t making a character usable in less situations a nerf?

If I remember correctly, when boosts first dropped you were like a kid on Christmas talking about how you were obliterating the meta with you boosted OMLs and Silver Surfers. And those are some bottom tier characters. Now they struggle to beat the meta? Which is it?

It’s a problem that your boosted characters are taking Ls to unboosted meta characters punching up, but Shang-Chi who can literally beat anything is good for the game!? Which is it?

I think I often struggle to follow what exactly you want because the goal posts shift so much. People are discussing buffs to old characters in multiple threads because that’s a stated goal of the developers as of recent. The inverse has not been stated as a goal. 

Tiger_Wong

Daredevil217 said:

entrailbucket said:

Pantera236 said:

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 🤷‍♂️

Oh well, bad example.  Try with Ghost Rider!

This is hilarious to me. You say the “entire problem” is X can’t be done. More than one poster (throw me in there as well) says X can be done easily, and you move the goal posts.  Maybe this is the problem?  You’re speaking on stuff you either haven’t tried yourself (and thus don’t know what you’re talking about) or have tried and failed where many others have succeeded (in which case it might be a skill deficit and people could help you with that). 

You’re  not calling for a nerf just an inverse of the buff threads! (Isn’t the inverse of a buff a nerf?). Isn’t making a character usable in less situations a nerf?

If I remember correctly, when boosts first dropped you were like a kid on Christmas talking about how you were obliterating the meta with you boosted OMLs and Silver Surfers. And those are some bottom tier characters. Now they struggle to beat the meta? Which is it?

It’s a problem that your boosted characters are taking Ls to unboosted meta characters punching up, but Shang-Chi who can literally beat anything is good for the game!? Which is it?

I think I often struggle to follow what exactly you want because the goal posts shift so much. People are discussing buffs to old characters in multiple threads because that’s a stated goal of the developers as of recent. The inverse has not been stated as a goal. 

I want to marry this post. 

entrailbucket

Daredevil217 said:

entrailbucket said:

Pantera236 said:

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 🤷‍♂️

Oh well, bad example.  Try with Ghost Rider!

This is hilarious to me. You say the “entire problem” is X can’t be done. More than one poster (throw me in there as well) says X can be done easily, and you move the goal posts.  Maybe this is the problem?  You’re speaking on stuff you either haven’t tried yourself (and thus don’t know what you’re talking about) or have tried and failed where many others have succeeded (in which case it might be a skill deficit and people could help you with that). 

You’re  not calling for a nerf just an inverse of the buff threads! (Isn’t the inverse of a buff a nerf?). Isn’t making a character usable in less situations a nerf?

If I remember correctly, when boosts first dropped you were like a kid on Christmas talking about how you were obliterating the meta with you boosted OMLs and Silver Surfers. And those are some bottom tier characters. Now they struggle to beat the meta? Which is it?

It’s a problem that your boosted characters are taking Ls to unboosted meta characters punching up, but Shang-Chi who can literally beat anything is good for the game!? Which is it?

I think I often struggle to follow what exactly you want because the goal posts shift so much. People are discussing buffs to old characters in multiple threads because that’s a stated goal of the developers as of recent. The inverse has not been stated as a goal. 

Lol "skill deficit" ok.  If I recall correctly, you started this bizarre vendetta against me after I attacked you in PvP once, which is a little weird.


I'm not sure how I could be any more clear about what I want.

I'm talking about the metagame at the highest level.  This is the 1% of the 1%.  For a long time there was no benefit to going wide -- a tall, narrow roster was what you needed to win, and the other characters were never useful for anything.  5* boosts created a benefit for going wide but the tall, narrow rosters still win, because those characters are just way better than everyone, including all the boosted guys.

Anyway I guess I've learned my lesson.  We must never even consider what would happen if a character got worse.

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I do think it's an interesting thought experiment in a Harrison Bergeron kind of way to take a character we all think is good and try to dial it down just enough without doing a scorched earth nerf. It does give one a bit of context for how your OMLs and Gambits happen on the design side. I'm not really advocating a dial down of Wanda myself, but I do think engaging with the premise of the thread is amusing.

I think the problem is that people just have such a severe case of nerf PTSD that they can't handle anything that's even mildly nerf-adjacent. 

People immediately go to the same tired arguments they've used to attack anyone who's ever posted a "nerf thread" even though that is explicitly not what this is.

Anyway that PTSD is the devs' fault because of how they've handled balancing in the past.  They don't balance characters in the way that this thread suggests (still useful, just not overpowered anymore).  They go fully scorched-earth and destroy the character, so people can't even consider what a small adjustment would look like.

Daredevil217

I promise you I hold no vendetta about anything you may have done in game. If I went after everyone who attacked me in PVP, I’d be a very busy guy. I also attack everyone in PVP (alliance mates included) because I’m horrendous at looking at names- so no hard feelings if you did hit me. Make no mistake that everything I’m commenting on is a  direct reaction to what you yourself post here, and has zero to do with how you play in game.  If you want to continue to avoid my points/posts/questions that’s fine. But please don’t misrepresent me as having some personal vendetta as a way to do it.

Is this really a problem for the top 1% of the 1% or just you? I think you discussed in the past that conventional wisdom was to hoard for the best characters in the game, 550 them and dominate.  If I recall you were pretty happy at the prospect of “conventional wisdom” changing (I remember saying something to the affect that those on top would stay on top and these boosts would effect very little). You talk a lot about being the only person to go “all-in on classics”. So my guess if the top of the top are a bunch of folks who hoarded and unloaded on 550 meta characters, they are still dominating and thus probably happy (as happy as that jaded group of players can be).

The top meta characters being more powerful than the rest of the characters only seems to be problematic for the person who went “all in on classics”. i don’t see them doing widespread nerfs to top meta characters to make that extremely small (but equally vocal) minority happy. It’d have to have a Bishop level impact to gain traction.

Seems like the optimal strategy is still to chase the best characters (despite god boosts), and I get why you think that’d be a problem and why it would hinder your gaming experience. I’m sorry boosts didn’t quite work out the way you’d hoped when they first dropped and conventional strategy didn’t seem to change much for the tippy top players. This is actually good business because if everyone is equal then there’s no incentive to keep chasing better characters. 

The baby champ meta seems to be as diverse as it has ever been in my time as a 5* player, as rotating boosts really set the tone for what the meta is that week.  Seems to be working as intended at my level.

Finally, I’m glad you learned a lesson. But we don’t have to wonder what the game would be like if they nerfed Switch. Hulkoye would be running rampant. Or some other meta would be used ad nauseum. We’ve already experienced a world without her. And I’m sure one day a new best team will emerge to supplant her and Colossus. That’s the nature of the game. There’s always been a best and the one thing you learn about MPQ is that you have to learn to adapt. 

DAZ0273

entrailbucket said:

Daredevil217 said:

entrailbucket said:

Pantera236 said:

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 🤷‍♂️

Oh well, bad example.  Try with Ghost Rider!

This is hilarious to me. You say the “entire problem” is X can’t be done. More than one poster (throw me in there as well) says X can be done easily, and you move the goal posts.  Maybe this is the problem?  You’re speaking on stuff you either haven’t tried yourself (and thus don’t know what you’re talking about) or have tried and failed where many others have succeeded (in which case it might be a skill deficit and people could help you with that). 

You’re  not calling for a nerf just an inverse of the buff threads! (Isn’t the inverse of a buff a nerf?). Isn’t making a character usable in less situations a nerf?

If I remember correctly, when boosts first dropped you were like a kid on Christmas talking about how you were obliterating the meta with you boosted OMLs and Silver Surfers. And those are some bottom tier characters. Now they struggle to beat the meta? Which is it?

It’s a problem that your boosted characters are taking Ls to unboosted meta characters punching up, but Shang-Chi who can literally beat anything is good for the game!? Which is it?

I think I often struggle to follow what exactly you want because the goal posts shift so much. People are discussing buffs to old characters in multiple threads because that’s a stated goal of the developers as of recent. The inverse has not been stated as a goal. 

Lol "skill deficit" ok.  If I recall correctly, you started this bizarre vendetta against me after I attacked you in PvP once, which is a little weird.


I'm not sure how I could be any more clear about what I want.

I'm talking about the metagame at the highest level.  This is the 1% of the 1%.  For a long time there was no benefit to going wide -- a tall, narrow roster was what you needed to win, and the other characters were never useful for anything.  5* boosts created a benefit for going wide but the tall, narrow rosters still win, because those characters are just way better than everyone, including all the boosted guys.

Anyway I guess I've learned my lesson.  We must never even consider what would happen if a character got worse.

It might not be a good idea to use terms like "vendetta" - the Mods don't tend to take kindly to such talk and this place would be less lively without all these interesting discussions if they devolve into something personal.

I thought you didn't want us to use terms like meta? Not trying to be a twat, just it seems you do flip flop a little bit sometimes.

And you have to admit that Pantera236 pretty effectively proved you wrong about how invincible 450 Switch is. Maybe it doesn't scale up that way but I just cannot see how you can say she is a problem that needs a levelling effect. She is a good to great character and lots have her but we saw in the second video that any character with an effective stun can handle her. Maybe we should be asking for stuns to be made less effective as they are clearly OP?!?!?

HoundofShadow

Players have been preferring counters over nerfs since many years back when dev were doing surveys on this. The last time they did a similar survey were one or two years back. The last two major nerfs we had were in Sep 2020 (Bishop/WorthyCap) and Jul 2018 (Gambit).  Based on the dev's past recent actions, they are trying to avoid nerf if possible.

Gambit had counters released, but it was not effective enough so they decided to nerf him.

When BRB/Kitty was slowing the game down, I believe more 5* characters whose powers ignore protect tiles were released. 

Bishop/WorthyCap got nerfed instead of counters because it was a problem mainly for 5* players.

Polaris was the top candidate for nerf. What happened? Players got flooded with a lot of counters.

iHulkoye also got two counters to boot: Electro and Wanda. 

Likewise, the dev has released two counters to the anti-defensive meta: Ultron and Gamora. If you think they aren't good enough, stun is always the default cheat code.

I think what you want to see in the game is that any character can beat any character easily, whichever way you define "easily". To me, that's as good as saying that If water deals 1.5x damage to fire, fire should not be penalised by dealing only 0.5x or 0.25x damage to water even though that is its weakness. It should be able to deal 1.5x damage to water as well. 

entrailbucket

Daredevil217 said:

I promise you I hold no vendetta about anything you may have done in game. If I went after everyone who attacked me in PVP, I’d be a very busy guy. I also attack everyone in PVP (alliance mates included) because I’m horrendous at looking at names- so no hard feelings if you did hit me. Make no mistake that everything I’m commenting on is a  direct reaction to what you yourself post here, and has zero to do with how you play in game.  If you want to continue to avoid my points/posts/questions that’s fine. But please don’t misrepresent me as having some personal vendetta as a way to do it.

Is this really a problem for the top 1% of the 1% or just you? I think you discussed in the past that conventional wisdom was to hoard for the best characters in the game, 550 them and dominate.  If I recall you were pretty happy at the prospect of “conventional wisdom” changing (I remember saying something to the affect that those on top would stay on top and these boosts would effect very little). You talk a lot about being the only person to go “all-in on classics”. So my guess if the top of the top are a bunch of folks who hoarded and unloaded on 550 meta characters, they are still dominating and thus probably happy (as happy as that jaded group of players can be).

The top meta characters being more powerful than the rest of the characters only seems to be problematic for the person who went “all in on classics”. i don’t see them doing widespread nerfs to top meta characters to make that extremely small (but equally vocal) minority happy. It’d have to have a Bishop level impact to gain traction.

Seems like the optimal strategy is still to chase the best characters (despite god boosts), and I get why you think that’d be a problem and why it would hinder your gaming experience. I’m sorry boosts didn’t quite work out the way you’d hoped when they first dropped and conventional strategy didn’t seem to change much for the tippy top players. This is actually good business because if everyone is equal then there’s no incentive to keep chasing better characters. 

The baby champ meta seems to be as diverse as it has ever been in my time as a 5* player, as rotating boosts really set the tone for what the meta is that week.  Seems to be working as intended at my level.

Finally, I’m glad you learned a lesson. But we don’t have to wonder what the game would be like if they nerfed Switch. Hulkoye would be running rampant. Or some other meta would be used ad nauseum. We’ve already experienced a world without her. And I’m sure one day a new best team will emerge to supplant her and Colossus. That’s the nature of the game. There’s always been a best and the one thing you learn about MPQ is that you have to learn to adapt. 

No one's avoiding anything.  I'm actually unclear about why you're having such a strong reaction to this innocuous post if it's not about me personally.  You're also continuing to make this about me personally and my roster, so yeah, I'm a little bit suspicious.

I'm glad things are diverse at your level.  If some of the top characters got a little worse, would that impact you at all?  If you're not seeing or using these characters, why do you care so much about how strong they are?