***** Crystal (Crystalia Amaquelin) *****

turbomoose

Any sign of the crystal 5* legendary store 🤔

MoosePrime

turbomoose said:

Any sign of the crystal 5* legendary store 🤔

It's available now.

TheRiddler

Any updated opinions now that the store is out and people potentially could have her champed at the moment?

Bad

There were too many great stores so it's unlikely many people champing her.
Usually I don't pull on special stores because I don't have enough cps without tokens help, and I'm not interested in classics.
But finally I will pull for her together with abigail and possibly I will record a video.

SuperCarrot

TheRiddler said:

Any updated opinions now that the store is out and people potentially could have her champed at the moment?

I am also curious about this. The opinions seem split currently.

HoundofShadow

She'll be irritating on the right defensive teams. If you are looking for Apocalypse, Colossus or Shang-Chi type of teambuild, you can skip champing her. Based on last two years' trend, our meta characters were released between March to May. So, April and May could be the month of meta character releases.

Vhailorx

Umm, wasn't SC released alongside his movie in September? Your trend seems to overlook the most recent meta release.

HoundofShadow

He's meta offensively, but SC-team doesn't have some newer qualities of meta on defense in pvps, and they are:

1) AI-proof
2) not a glass cannon

He fits the meta of the Thorokoye era back in 2018 but since then, the qualities of meta have become stronger. Here are some pairs:

Kitty/BRB
IHulkoye
Apocalypse/BRB
Colossus/Wanda

If SC were to be included in the meta, we might need to wait until August/September for our meta. There wasn't any meta released in Jan-Feb, Jun-Jul and Oct-Nov since 2018.
In 2018 and 2019, meta were released with about 4 months apart between their releases. In 2020 and 2021, meta were released with only 1-2 months between their release.

Even though SC, to me, is an outlier, but he was released in August 2021.

Anyway, these are just something fun (to me) I look at.

Vhailorx

This seems a bit like numerology to me in that you are looking for patterns in what is largely random data.  I don't think demi knows exactly how strong each character is at release. I think they have some idea, but the variance is pretty high. I think demi probably does target strength ranges as they design characters, but the science isn't exact. For example: assume characters can be ranked by strength from 1 (weak) to 100 (strong). Even if demi targets a particular number when designing each new release, I think their variance is quite high, say +/- 20 with each release (ie, if they target an 80 strength, they might just as easily end up releasing a 60 or 100). I think it is hard to anticipate all possible synergies with 200+ characters in the game, and as discussed extensively in other threads, demi doesn't seem to have a lot of practical experience with elder game play, so assuming that they can perfectly calibrate each release seems like a mistake to me.

On the other hand, once released demi can quickly get a sense of who turned out to be good based on spending and usage rates (assuming they can read their own data and account for extrinsic factors like when lots of players have large cp hoards). So I think it makes a lot more sense to look at post-release decisions like direct buy offers and specialty stores for deliberate patterns.

As for SC not being meta, I think that's a pretty flimsy argument. He is super-strong on offense and relatively fast. That's an extremely desirable combination in MPQ, and lots of people rely on him to beat challenge nodes or climb fast, even if he isn't as visible as more defensive options that shown up all the time in pvp.

Finally, re: crystal, I am thinking more and more that she will be the 5* c&d equivalent.  Rarely bad to have on your team and able to do lots of useful stuff, but not quite meta due to slowness and complexity.

Borstock

When I think of "meta", I primarily think of the teams left out on defense in PvP. Shang-Chi, while very useful in other aspects of the game, is a glass cannon. 

You're all free to define it your own way, but that's how I do it.

Bad

Meta is the character who always appears, and SC always appears in every pvp many times.
Imo it doesn't matters if he is a glass cannon as long as he can finish battles faster than a lot of teams targeting him.
Okoye and chavez are glass cannons and they are meta without a doubt and I see them in all pvps.
On the other hand on pve it's not possible to know which team players are using and SC surely willbe meta in there too.

Borstock

You and I simply define the word differently. We also apparently see very different teams in PvP. SC and Chavez show up, but it's usually only one or two specific teams out of like 50, and they never finish near the top placement wise. I can't put the "meta" respect on that.

HoundofShadow

Using the past few meta characters' attributes over the years, one can actually map out a checklist of whether a character is meta. SC fails at being the kind of meta that I listed out due to him not being AI-proof (AI SC doesn't know how to create matches using his red or to place his critical tile properly) and is a glass cannon.

As for SC being all over in pvps, I rarely see him as well. At the top, and I mean the top, it's still these few like Apocalypse & Wanda/BRB, Okoye/Wanda or Colossus/Wanda. No one going for high points is going to field SC as defense.

Anyway, Crystal hits the many attributes of my meta checklist, but she's a support character. If the dev releases a 5* that can leverage on her healing and turn it into some form of damage or damage shield, she could be meta. My idea of damage shield is that any excess healing amount will be tranferred into a counter that holds it permanently. The damage shield will reduce x damage depending on how much excess healing it holds. The stored healing amount will continue to increase or decrease each turn and doesn't reset.

Vhailorx

I don't find boosted crystal to be especially dangerous in pick2 pvp,  but so far she has been a real defensive winner in riri's event.  A basic climbing combo of crystal/Valk has been getting me handfuls of defensive wins all day long.

I would expect crystal to be somewhat useful as a scarecrow with <8 hours left,  just because her healing extends matches, but with almost 12 hours left match time is not really an issue. 

Maybe people just aren't used to fighting her yet?   Or maybe my team is just marginally more attractive than boosted crystal + boosted sersi so I am getting more attacks?

What is everyone else's boosted-crystal-in-pvp experience?  Fwiw, crystal is pretty sustainable, which I like, but doesn't quite have enough offense for me to feel great fighting the most challenging opponents.  She is very much a 1b meta character imo. She is good enough to use but doesn't match the current top tier. And if the current top dogs get nerfed she will be one of the next in line.

Bad

I'm running Crystal and sersi and I'm getting A LOT of defenses. I don't know if it's because of one or the other as actually they have a good sinergy. Sersi helps cascades and Crystal penalizes them (fighting Crystal a made a fine 3 or 4 match cascade and she totally healed an almost downed max boosted riri). Her godboosted AoE really hurts too.
Sadly her default red gets reduced by SW, and it should'nt be that way.
As many had pointed, her air elemental can help Jhor sustantially, and that fact actually can help to increase her popularity most than anything on the future, being Crystal a really versatile character.