The ChaHulk meta

Bad

Right now, first slice, scored 160 points and I'm t27, 28 hours left.
Why am I going to play more, if everyone is going to hit me if I don't use chahulk?
Why am I going to struggle to get 1200 points if nobody is playing pvp, compared with before the chahulk meta?

Bowgentle

It's off season, scores are low.

Sekilicious

Like Bow says it’s off-season. Even in Slice 1 no one pushes much past 1200, but most just take it off. It doesn’t help that there are two events, puzzles, and people are pushing the Simulator the last day.

Bad

Before the chahulk meta it was impossible to get t100 with 550 points, off season or in season.
And I'm doing it already 3 times.

HoundofShadow

Is this another reason to nerf Chasm?

In slice 1, but I seldom see Chasm/iHulk as of now.

Edit 2: Once you get higher, it's mostly Chasm/Hulk.

Borstock

@HoundofShadow said:
If you use logic, it's not a coin flip. I've put it into practice and it was how I downed Chasm/iHulk in 5 out of 6 matches. Of course, higher MMR might require different strategies. The highest levelled Chasm I could find was 49X, so it has worked for those levels of enemies.

It really is not just logic. You have the RNG of iHulk if he has enough green. If he doesn't, you can still get nicked with the added green tile. You have to make sure iHulk doesn't accidentally kill himself first. And most of the time, because of the AP destruction, you have to have multiple hits available through a single match at just the right turn or you end up downing one and not the other.

This is all not to mention that deliberately keeping both alive means you're taking a bunch of damage as you try to position them just right.

I maintain that if it was as easy as you're suggesting, you wouldn't be seeing ChaHulk teams literally floating at over 1200 in the last 24 hours. And in pick3, you couldn't float with them and She-Hulk at t50. I don't even get the retals. But if I change to ANY other teams, I get absolutely destroyed by players looking for any other team to hit.

HoundofShadow

First of all, it depends on the level of iHulk and Chasm. And I'm limiting the discussion to the current boost week of JJ/YellowJacket/Hela/Cable because the original discussion was due to my mentioning of matching match-3 with her trap tile to down both of them.

If iHulk is not tanking, then his AoE will hardly process, and he will hardly kill himself because he doesn't make matches. The only way, at least for my mmr now in the current pvp, is that I down him multiple times and their level differences aren't a lot, like 460 Chasm and 450 iHulk.

As mentioned, you need to keep one at 3-3-6000 hp and the other at <25k, subjected to your JJ's levels. I'm using 450 JJ as a guide so you can change those numbers accordingly.

Meta floating past 1200 is not something new. It has happened for years already. It's just that Chasm/iHulk is the new flavour of 2022.

revskip

I'm enjoying the Chasm/iHulk meta. Matches are slightly longer most of the time with the occasional "wow did that take 10 minutes" match thrown in. I even like the mirror matches, although it took a few matches to get a feel for how to switch back and forth between targets to get their Chasm down low enough just as yours is revived.

Saw a couple of interesting teams up pretty high, Fury, Electro & Colossus wiped me the first time I faced it. Dr. Thor, Riri, Shang-Chi got me once too. I found mirror matches to be quicker than Apoc, Colossus, Electro also. That team can really stall things out if Electro doesn't go down by turn 2.

Timemachinego

I've tried to not weigh in on the "nerf now!" threads for a while after we EVENTUALLY saw an answer to Hulkoye, but a relatively weak boosted week sure points out how unfun ChaHulk are. Yeah yeah yeah, it's off-season so points are low and all of that, but I couldn't get above 950 (in s1, still the king of high point slices) with any of the boosted teams or my fast climb Shangvez without staring at an inevitable infinitude of ChaHulk at the top of things no matter when I tried to move. There has been SOME variety when the boost list was better, but ChaHulk have warped and dominated the meta in a bad way.

Nibby

I really don't want nerfs, but in this case I think that an easy fix might be to make stunned characters unable to be revived.
If a stunned character gets downed,it should stay dead.
This way the revivable characters don't lose any powers and those fighting against them get an opening to defeat them.

Bowgentle

Yeah, no.
This would completely murder every revive character, because you could kill them all with a MBW team-up.
Easy fix, sure, but one of those nerfs that make those characters unusable.

Sekilicious

There was a recommendation in my Alliance (from Line) that mThor/Riri/Onslaught (or Electro) was a great way to kill off Chasm before he get enough Abyss tiles in the Simulator. You don’t need a champed Riri to make it work. Just 1 green cover and lots of green on board. Terrible on defense though. I personally wonder what mThor/halfThor/Riri would be like. Someday I will have a champed halfThor and Riri to try it hopefully.

HoundofShadow

All other revive characters will be made useless: Ikaris, Sersi, She-Hulk, Jean Grey, Banner, Loki, CAIW. 7 collateral damage will be involved just to help players not deal with Chasm/iHulk.

Crystal could be a third and you can switch to creating charged tiles for every yellow match.

Emma could be good to speed up your damage by at least 70%, which can be significant. On top of that, she can reduce all enemies' power levels by 3 with 9 purple.

Others would be Sersi, SC, Iceman, Moon Knight, Black Panther (focus yellow passive), Peter Parker, Daredevil (green cd), Havok for green<->red ap conversion.

Bad

The threshold to t50 was 850 points.
Before the chahulk meta never was lower than 1350.
That means that, exactly like me, there are thousands of players who don't even try to get all rewards and are losing a lot of resources because this meta is repetitive, boring, and exclusive.
It's needed a character hard countering chasm in the same way that SW hard countered Ihulk, and it must be a character good who could do something on defense (not some ridiculous 4* or a ridiculously old 5* losing more points that the ones which could be earned trying to beat chahulk teams).
And this hard counter character is needed since 2 months ago. Each day passing without him pvp gets worse.

Bowgentle

Nobody is "losing out", there's still 25 people getting t25 rewards.
Maybe YOU are missing out because you can't snipe A teams on hops anymore, but it's still 25 people in t25.
It's the same number of brackets.

HoundofShadow

Players want meta counters that are also good on defense. Every players who play optimally started using that counter. Shield SIM or pvps are filled with those counters. Players complain about how all those meta counters are causing increased healthpack usage and increased playtime due to them slowing down matches. Also, shield sim are boring because they see only those meta counters most of the time. Players want a counter to that meta counter, and that counter to that meta counters must be good on defense. Players started using counter to that meta counters, which is also good on defense. Matches were slow because that counter to meta counters is good on defense.

My question is, will players ever get out of this loop? No. Never. As long as you expect counter to be good on defense, you'll be stuck in this loop forever. For the rest of your MPQ life, you'll be complaining about how matches are slow, how you are using healthpacks and how you are forced to use counter that is also good on defense.

Nibby

@Bowgentle said:
Yeah, no.
This would completely murder every revive character, because you could kill them all with a MBW team-up.
Easy fix, sure, but one of those nerfs that make those characters unusable.

Why would it murder those characters? They still have all their powers without restrictions, but people get a chance to defeat them more easily, if they manage to stun them in the right moment. Thus we will see more variety in the meta.

But maybe there are better solutions. What would be a better option that does not create a new annoying meta, we need a fix for in a few weeks?

Bad

@Bowgentle said:
Nobody is "losing out", there's still 25 people getting t25 rewards.
Maybe YOU are missing out because you can't snipe A teams on hops anymore, but it's still 25 people in t25.
It's the same number of brackets.

To get 20 shards for a old 5* and a 4* cover is nothing compared with 18 cps a 4* cover and shards
People playing pvp are missing.
Variety on pvp is missing.
Just because this meta benefits you I think no one objectively can say that it benefits the game.

Sekilicious

So I think things are still at the respectful disagreement stage but let’s not escalate.

BriMan2222

@Nibby said:
I really don't want nerfs, but in this case I think that an easy fix might be to make stunned characters unable to be revived.
If a stunned character gets downed,it should stay dead.
This way the revivable characters don't lose any powers and those fighting against them get an opening to defeat them.

I had the same idea. Other mobile games I play with characters that revive or do something else when they die don't have those effects happen if you stun them. It's not a guarantee as you have to have a character that can stun on your team, stun the right character when they are close to death and without them having another character taunting and eating the stun instead, but it is at least a possibility to get around it.