The ChaHulk meta

Timemachinego

@HoundofShadow said:
Or we can use the dev's data which shows that at that point in time, that Chasm/iHulk is not as prevalent as it seems, except for certain circle. Do we trust objective data or trust emotional data? And this data points probably have at least a few thousand players, compared to ~10, unless all these ~10 players happen to be in that circle.

Anyway, @Timemachinego I've a single champed 5* mmr account and I saw your defense team and I beat it with SC and undercovered Deathlok. I post a video of the teams I see later and I want to say there's only one iHulk/Chasm team after skipping for 30 seconds.

Here's the video of single champed 5* MMR in Slice 1:

https://streamable.com/7nubko

Uh, thanks? All your video shows is that you can punch down from #1 and they're all worth more than they should be because nobody wants to climb high in the current meta. You're showing us seals that are worth 30-40 instead of 10 or under.

HoundofShadow

This is normal. I don't see anything wrong with it. I'm not sure why you are surprised. There's still another 1 day 4 hours before pvp ends, as of now. Of course points are not that high yet. If you do the maths, 761/15 = 50.7 points per match. That video was taken with 1 day 8 hour left. People who want to shield once will wait between <24 to >~6 hour left to come out of their hidings. I climbed from 0 to 761 and I see only 3 Chasm/iHulk team at best. In case you're not aware, every players in the same slice have the opportunity to see one another, regardless of which scl they are. I think players need to take control of their emotions and not let their hate of Chasm/iHulk blind their judgements.

My multiple champed 5* account hitting 1200 in 19-22 wins and I've a video a few pages back. Work that out and that's 54-63 points per match.

Captain_Trips88

Did they not confirm that their data does NOT show teams skipped? If so, the data is useless. If a high percentage of players are skipping chasm teams a high percentage of times then clearly that team is a big issue for a lot of the community.

My two cents - I don't enjoy matches against Chasm because I enjoy the core mechanics of the game. Make matches, gain AP, fire powers. Chasm makes this a much more challenging prospect and its all achieved through unconditional passives. Characters who just do things without any conditions being met are the opposite of what the game should be, it was the problem I had when 5* Colossus was released. Why should match damage take such a hit straight from the off without anything happening first.
Now before anyone jumps up and says 'but they aren't conditional, you need abyss tiles', these tiles generate at such a rate that the AP drain is happening instantly because of that opening team stun.
Is it beatable? Yup, especially in pick 3 it isn't a huge problem with a large roster. Is it fun? The first few times there was a sense of achievement at finding a way to take it down. But that soon grows old. I prefer to skip Chasm when I see him and I'm just playing for 25 wins at a leisurely pace, I imagine a lot of the wider player base are doing the same.
What I am hoping for though is that we get hit monkey and that's it for Chasm counters. We don't need the next 3 or 4 characters released to all be designed to counter one meta, or if they do then let them focus on one of the other aspects of Chasm's kit, mainly the AP drain.

Timemachinego

@HoundofShadow said:
This is normal. I don't see anything wrong with it. I'm not sure why you are surprised. There's still another 1 day 4 hours before pvp ends, as of now. Of course points are not that high yet. If you do the maths, 761/15 = 50.7 points per match. That video was taken with 1 day 8 hour left. People who want to shield once will wait between <24 to >~6 hour left to come out of their hidings. I climbed from 0 to 761 and I see only 3 Chasm/iHulk team at best. In case you're not aware, every players in the same slice have the opportunity to see one another, regardless of which scl they are. I think players need to take control of their emotions and not let their hate of Chasm/iHulk blind their judgements.

My multiple champed 5* account hitting 1200 in 19-22 wins and I've a video a few pages back. Work that out and that's 54-63 points per match.

Actually, I did the math for you. Your MMR is 346 which is... kind of an odd one. I successfully hid out there for a while myself, you're visible to next to no one. I've never seen you a single time until now when you climbed as high as you could and started looking around. Not seals for you, most of who you are seeing are the next rung up MMR wise and that's why they're still worth something. They're also the bottom of who I see at my mmr and who aren't worth more than 25~ or so generally.

Tony_Foot

Yeah that clip is what it looks like when I break MMR from position 1. Not a true reflection of all my skips to get there or what I had before. Again, I don't care either way about Chasm but I do use a lot of skips but still feel it was early going to bring down his meta.

Start an event and show the complete climb as a video, that is the only way to really show what you're getting and beating because I can get to no1 easily and beat MMR without fighting a single chasm but as people stated, it doesn't show my skips!

HoundofShadow

@Timemachinego my top 3 highest level average is 361 while top 5 is 337. Let me increase my mmr to 360 and I'll try again.

Edit: I've increased my top 5 average mmr to 366 now and these are my opponents after skipping for 50 seconds.

https://streamable.com/y2l9k1

@Tony_Foot

If I were to do that, the video will be ~45 minutes long. Maybe if I decide to jump into multiple champed 5* MMR with my second account, then I'd do that.

acescracked

@Bad said:
The one where players are bored of chasm.

Can you stop posting as if you were nominated as spokesperson for all players?

Your opinion that Chasm is not good is just that... Your opinion. It's not a fact.

I enjoy not getting hit by every random player using shang cheese & Valkyrie. And when the boost list is good you don't see chasm. It's a shame your PVP experience is diminished. Please understand for many of us it's not.

Bowgentle

The thread that keeps on giving.
Now we successfully went from discussing whether Chasm is a problem (who knows, maybe?) to discussing softcapping and how to manipulate your PVP MMR.
Glorious.

Bowgentle

@acescracked said:

@Bad said:
The one where players are bored of chasm.

Can you stop posting as if you were nominated as spokesperson for all players?

Your opinion that Chasm is not good is just that... Your opinion. It's not a fact.

I enjoy not getting hit by every random player using shang cheese & Valkyrie. And when the boost list is good you don't see chasm. It's a shame your PVP experience is diminished. Please understand for many of us it's not.

Also, that.

Timemachinego

@HoundofShadow said:
@Timemachinego my top 3 highest level average is 361 while top 5 is 337. Let me increase my mmr to 360 and I'll try again.

Edit: I've increased my top 5 average mmr to 366 now and these are my opponents after skipping for 50 seconds.

https://streamable.com/y2l9k1

Well, I have to give you credit for that. I don't know how you're dodging all the chasms (and various hulk) I see, but good on you for doing the science. My MMR is around 385 and I do see a few of those players regularly so I know we're dealing with the same sample at least.

HoundofShadow

I already have an account with over 50 5* champed, so it's pointless to have another account with multiple champed 5* mmr. It's not a case where this single champed 5* mmr is my main.

Daredevil217

Some random thoughts.

First, the “take your emotions out of it“ argument is hilarious to me, because this is first and foremost a game. You’re not winning any lifetime achievement awards, or getting advanced placement for beating chasm. Your only reward is yet another match with chasm. The game is about enjoyment, or one’s emotional experience. I know that can be a hard concept to grasp , but if people are subjectively
not enjoying a form of entertainment, that is problematic. So I would encourage people when talking about chasm to absolutely put their emotion into it.

Who are the players who are asking for “plug and play” characters? Again, chasm is the definition of plug and play, and he is getting lots of moans and groans (I get not everyone hates him, but many do). Shang Chi is the opposite of plug and play. He actually requires thought to use unlike chasm. And guess what, he is almost universally loved (again, there are a few who hate him as well). This leads me to believe that most players don’t actually want mindless plug and play characters and actually want characters that require thought to use. I imagine this is why people who don’t like chasm from a gameplay perspective. 1) he requires, no thought to use and 2) he nerfs the active portion of the game which creates a subjectively unfun experience for people who don’t want to just run passive characters all day.

Finally, I am interested in the developers data. When looking at chasm/hulk win/loss record, is it just players or the AI that they look at? Because many people are hitting that team with a mirror, and so obviously the win loss record will be around 50% in all of those matches, perhaps skewing the data. Does the data look at skips and float points? Does the data look at diversity in the meta? Does the data encompass all players or is it broken down by MMR? I think it was reported that chasm is a “problem” for a small circle of players. How small is the circle? Is it mostly 5/endgame players? That would make sense as they are the smallest percentage of players in the game, and are those most likely to be affected since he is an endgame/5 character. I think it is important to define what they are calling “a problem”. Is it that players struggle to beat chasm, that they don’t enjoy playing/facing chasm, is it that at a certain point all they see is chasm in their queues, or something else entirely? All of these “problems” would look at different data to see if these are in fact, problems, and whether or not a solution is necessary. I think the arrival of Hit Monkey and Riri so soon is an indication of how prevalent and dominant this meta is. I’m glad that they are looking at counters. With our past developers, they always look at counters before nerfs. That is the right way to do it. Hopefully, these characters will be enough to shake up the meta bring diversity back (at least in my small circle). If not, maybe nerfs will be back on the table. Too soon to tell.

My hope is since hulk/chasm are not a fun team to play on offense, the fact that there is a character that can cut through the revive, will make it harder to float, and people will move on to other teams. But, I can see it going either way.

Bad

@acescracked said:

@Bad said:
The one where players are bored of chasm.

Can you stop posting as if you were nominated as spokesperson for all players?

Your opinion that Chasm is not good is just that... Your opinion. It's not a fact.

I enjoy not getting hit by every random player using shang cheese & Valkyrie. And when the boost list is good you don't see chasm. It's a shame your PVP experience is diminished. Please understand for many of us it's not.

As I said before on this thread there are clearly 10 players against chasm. If you are defending him that would be 10 vs 4.
That's a fact.
I think nobody nominated me as a spokesperson. It happened to you?

Borstock

The ChaHulk meta is so prevalent in Sim, I had to dump 300 points just to queue up some non-ChaHulk teams. And I was floating at 1860 and 44 wins with my She-ChaHulk team that no one ever attacks.

entrailbucket

Passive, repeatable AP drain is just a terrible idea in a game like this. (It's why they had to change Gambit years ago.) Active abilities are already so far behind passives in the metagame that competitive players rarely cast anything at all. All the most used characters have very strong passive damage abilities, and it's pretty obvious why -- why would I save up 10ap of some color to do 20,000 damage once, when there are characters who can do 20,000 damage every turn for free?

Chasm just pushes the metagame even further toward passive damage, which is a strange choice in a metagame that was already totally dominated by passive damage. He'd actually be a fun counter if all the top characters had to accumulate AP and cast stuff to win. Sadly, MPQ hasn't been that game for many, many years, so I'm not sure why the designers thought we needed him.

helix72

After taking 25 minutes to lose all 3 of the Chasm/iHulk mirror match fights I tried in Sim and being unable to climb past 1700 with anything other than Chasm/iHulk teams to fight, this is the first time I can remember that I will not be hitting progression in Sim. Yes, they're beatable, but at 8 minutes a fight I'm not going to spend the 136 minutes I need to win 17 more matches with a team that is going to get destroyed as I go.

So I guess if the intent of Chasm was to get me to like the game less and play it less, mission accomplished. At least I got lots of shards this year to go with this lump of coal.

Bad

@helix72 exactly the same as me.
Everything is chahulk with Shulk awarding 50 points to the very most.
If I go with a hit monkey team trying to get ~8 teams someone happily will hit me.
If I go with a mirror match... the agony won't end soon. Let's say that a 4* cover doesn't worth all that effort.
So for the second time after winning always all progression on SIM, I will let it go.
Still waiting for a character hard countering 6* chasm, the character who counters all, the character who drains all AP on first power, and if there is zero on first power drains on second or on third, while negates AP matched with his tiles. Great idea!
There is no more broken character right now.

mani82

This thread just keeps on giving ,monkey or not lol 😂

acescracked

@Borstock said:
The ChaHulk meta is so prevalent in Sim, I had to dump 300 points just to queue up some non-ChaHulk teams. And I was floating at 1860 and 44 wins with my She-ChaHulk team that no one ever attacks.

I climbed to 2040/31 wins (then floated) with 12 hours left got hit 9* (updated) times

acescracked

@helix72 said:
After taking 25 minutes to lose all 3 of the Chasm/iHulk mirror match fights I tried in Sim and being unable to climb past 1700 with anything other than Chasm/iHulk teams to fight, this is the first time I can remember that I will not be hitting progression in Sim. Yes, they're beatable, but at 8 minutes a fight I'm not going to spend the 136 minutes I need to win 17 more matches with a team that is going to get destroyed as I go.

So I guess if the intent of Chasm was to get me to like the game less and play it less, mission accomplished. At least I got lots of shards this year to go with this lump of coal.

I did the same exact climb to 2k. Went in with a slightly wounded chasm. Loaded black/green, blue/purple damage boosts & always brought a 5* prof x tu. Had to use the team up 3 matches.

People are used to match strong color, match strong color, fire power, win. Win 99.9% of the time. Chasm/ihulk doesn't let you watch TV and barely watch the sim match. Have to manage your and AI chasm health and watch what you do.

edit: didn't time my matches but apoc/colossus/Wanda sim matches were always dreadfully slow unless I burned an MBW tu.