MPQ Developer Q&A April 2023 (ANSWERS)

DeNappa

@LavaManLee said:
I think the big difference between someone like Polaris and someone like Bishop is that Polaris is such an easy target on defense. You can't fight against other 5s and leave that team out as she is easy picking. Bishop was awful to play on defense especially with 5s. He was way more out of his league on defense than Polaris.

Mostly if you're looking at it from a 5* perspective. She is still a liability for especially 3* players and 3*-4* transitioners, when she starts to appear in PVP. Starting from 4* a bunch of counters become available but you can still run into an unlucky bad board causing her to become a health pack drain anyway (or even a loss).

Bowgentle

@DAZ0273 said:
Ha ha, c'mon guys, where's your sense of adventure!!!

Stop channeling Hound.

DAZ0273

@Bowgentle said:

@DAZ0273 said:
Ha ha, c'mon guys, where's your sense of adventure!!!

Stop channeling Hound.

EB can't be the only pantomime villain here! Even Bad is barely naughty anymore! Heh heh!

Bowgentle

Once you start using devil smilies, I'll report you.

DAZ0273

Ha ha ha, noted!

Bad

@DAZ0273 said:

@Bowgentle said:

@DAZ0273 said:
Ha ha, c'mon guys, where's your sense of adventure!!!

Stop channeling Hound.

EB can't be the only pantomime villain here! Even Bad is barely naughty anymore! Heh heh!

Tsk! I don't have anyone to fight anymore, except devs' decisions.
I'm losing my edge.

DAZ0273

@Bad said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@Bowgentle said:

@DAZ0273 said:
Ha ha, c'mon guys, where's your sense of adventure!!!

Stop channeling Hound.

EB can't be the only pantomime villain here! Even Bad is barely naughty anymore! Heh heh!

Tsk! I don't have anyone to fight anymore, except devs' decisions.
I'm losing my edge.

I heard that @turbomoose said you are good now and you have turned your back on being bad. Quick - go flame him!!!! You can't stand for that!

Edit: Oh and just in case anybody thinks I am deliberately inciting anything against an innocent forum member I would like to ensure you all that I have known Mr. Moose for 41 years in real life and he even was at my house on Easter Saturday where I provided him BBQ food! So I can give my personal assurance that a.) He deserves flaming and b.) he ate all the food. So the rules don't apply to him - he deserves this!

entrailbucket

@DeNappa said:

@LavaManLee said:
I think the big difference between someone like Polaris and someone like Bishop is that Polaris is such an easy target on defense. You can't fight against other 5s and leave that team out as she is easy picking. Bishop was awful to play on defense especially with 5s. He was way more out of his league on defense than Polaris.

Mostly if you're looking at it from a 5* perspective. She is still a liability for especially 3* players and 3*-4* transitioners, when she starts to appear in PVP. Starting from 4* a bunch of counters become available but you can still run into an unlucky bad board causing her to become a health pack drain anyway (or even a loss).

This is a fantastic point, that nobody has made yet because we're all stuck in our own high-level bubbles. Yeah, Polaris is a nobody for almost everyone here -- I can often kill her in one move. At lower tiers she's probably a Chasm-like scourge, though. I don't think we have any 3* players here (or any ACTUAL 4* players, for that matter), but I wonder what they think about her.

DAZ0273

I asked my Alliance about her - we have 5 players who are definitely 3* and a couple who are 4* who do have her rostered. Some of them have a few 5* characters with 3 or less covers so maybe that helps in PvP. They don't always say a lot (or anything!) but if I get feedback I will post it.

Histamiel

Hi all,

I am currently in late 3 star game and early 4 star game. I cannot say I am transitionning yet because I only have two 4-star champs Polaris and Grocket. I don't have any 5 star rostered yet.
I am not a big PvP player, but I don't see a lot of Polaris teams. I mostly see team with 2 low level 5 star. My team get crushed on defense. But I am able to beat those 2 five-star low level team fairly easily with my Polaris and Grocket. There are both at level 272.
I hope that gives another point of view about PvP.

Addenum : I ussually play in S1 slice. And I avoid playing against Chasm. But I don't see him a lot. I mostly face team with Wong, Magik, Shang Chi or Kang as 5 stars.
I also avoid playing against that specific team in Simulator Medusa, The Thing and Polaris. This team is a pain because it is difficult to target Polaris due to The Thing passive.

KGB

@Histamiel said:
Hi all,

I am currently in late 3 star game and early 4 star game. I cannot say I am transitionning yet becaus I only have two 4-star champs Polaris and Grocket. I don't have any 5 star rostered yet.
I am not a big PvP player, but I don't see a lot of Polaris teams. I mostly see team with 2 low level 5 star.

This makes perfect logical sense and it's what I said about the 4* PvP experience.

The only PvP experience now is just 5 star PVP. The only difference is what level and how many covers they have.

Think about it like this:

To get a pair of 4* champs (Polaris/Gocket) you need to acquire 13 covers of each in a diluted pool of 140+ 4 star characters. The only realistic way is feeders and shards. It's going to take hundreds (26 LTs per 4* cover so figure 300 LTs) of pulls of heroic/legendary tokens to get those 26 covers. Then you need ~500K ISO to level them both to L270.
OR
You get a single 5 star cover for 2 characters (which if you are in a good alliance you might get very easily) which takes ~14 legendary tokens. Then a few thousand ISO and you have them at L270. Rinse and repeat to collect a whole bunch of 1-2 cover 5 star characters at L270.

Modern 5* match damage is off the charts good (~1000) compared to 5* of years ago (~500) so all you need to do is match damage some champed 4* to death in a handful of moves or a lucky cascade.

Finally, when you've got say 10 5 star characters at 1-2 covers each, you are probably getting at least 1 of them boosted 100 levels to 370 each week when the guy who has only a pair of 4* champs will be lucky if his are boosted twice a year.

Why would any new player invest in 4 star PvP or even 3* PvP for that matter.

KGB

DAZ0273

Crikey I have just seen one of my guys levelled his 3 cover Kang to 300 whilst his highest 3* is only 208 (no 4*) - it really is past time they put something in game advising against that and I don't have the heart to say anything. I will have to peak at who is doing what in PvP, maybe they are a PvE player only and it doesn't matter.

I can also say with pretty good authority that it looks like our 3* guys all obtained their 5* thanks to Alliance events with us by seeing who they have so the advent of 5* covers at the 3* level is being heavily influenced by that change made by BCS.

So whilst nobody has yet given feedback in words I can see what the above two posts above are saying looks to have some real basis just by looking at my own Alliance.

Edit - They are playing PvP!! Good for them they have 4th highest score! I am glad some bugger on my Alliance is!

Seph1roth5

That'd be a cool boss battle. Alternate dimension bishop, magik, gambit, etc.

entrailbucket

@KGB earlier you said that I saw Polaris teams in PvP because that was the only way those teams could score enough points. Also you said that Polaris was the only way players could do CL10. If this is true, then she's definitely overpowered, since no other character can do these things (by your admission), and a nerf would stop players from doing them.

Now it seems like the argument has changed, and that she's not all that good/unique -- that nobody needs her after all. In this case, a nerf would be fine, since players can get by using (for example) all the low-cover boosted 5* that they have.

So from what I can see, either a nerf would be good because the tier is so incredibly unbalanced that Polaris invalidates everyone else, or a nerf would be fine because Polaris is a crutch that nobody really needs, and barely uses anyway.

Which is it?

entrailbucket

@DAZ0273 said:
Crikey I have just seen one of my guys levelled his 3 cover Kang to 300 whilst his highest 3* is only 208 (no 4*) - it really is past time they put something in game advising against that and I don't have the heart to say anything. I will have to peak at who is doing what in PvP, maybe they are a PvE player only and it doesn't matter.

The "don't ever level your 5*!!!" bit of advice/trope is so hopelessly overexaggerated and blown out of proportion at this point that it's become comical. This player is probably doing just fine, especially because he's picked one of the best characters in the game.

Level your 5*. Really. You won't die. It'll be ok.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@DAZ0273 said:
Crikey I have just seen one of my guys levelled his 3 cover Kang to 300 whilst his highest 3* is only 208 (no 4*) - it really is past time they put something in game advising against that and I don't have the heart to say anything. I will have to peak at who is doing what in PvP, maybe they are a PvE player only and it doesn't matter.

The "don't ever level your 5*!!!" bit of advice/trope is so hopelessly overexaggerated and blown out of proportion at this point that it's become comical. This player is probably doing just fine, especially because he's picked one of the best characters in the game.

Level your 5*. Really. You won't die. It'll be ok.

He/she/they has/have 3 5* so yeah he seems like he is getting along. But I suspect he/etc didn't pick to have Kang, I suspect that Apoc being screwed up first time gave them 2 covers for minimal effort. So a bit of luck involved and playing for us at the start of that event.

DAZ0273

Also to say that - yeah maybe you are right about leveling 5*. I won't pretend to know what MMR is like at those low levels these days. I followed the old fashioned path which is why I have 136 champed 4* and crawled along. That stuff about going up through the tiers appears hopelessly out of date with 5* modern health and match damage and how you can get covers just by being in an OK Alliance. Kang with blue seems infinitely more useful than a 4*.

Polaris - Of course pick 2 PvP is only one side of the coin and I refuse to believe that Polaris is not all over Shield SIM.

entrailbucket

I'm not an expert on the 5* transition or lower-roster strategies or how to move up tiers or whatever, since I did all that so long ago. But here's the thing -- most of the MPQ "conventional wisdom" comes from players who have been playing nearly as long as I have! They don't know anything either!

BCS has changed so many things, big and small, that a lot of the old advice is worthless or even detrimental in today's game.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:
@KGB earlier you said that I saw Polaris teams in PvP because that was the only way those teams could score enough points. Also you said that Polaris was the only way players could do CL10. If this is true, then she's definitely overpowered, since no other character can do these things (by your admission), and a nerf would stop players from doing them.

Now it seems like the argument has changed, and that she's not all that good/unique -- that nobody needs her after all. In this case, a nerf would be fine, since players can get by using (for example) all the low-cover boosted 5* that they have.

So from what I can see, either a nerf would be good because the tier is so incredibly unbalanced that Polaris invalidates everyone else, or a nerf would be fine because Polaris is a crutch that nobody really needs, and barely uses anyway.

Let me try to clarify things a bit better here:

CL10 PVE:
She's not a must to complete the nodes. In fact to do the Guardians quests, I haven't used her in order to use specific Guardians to fire their powers. I had to do a lot more retreats because a Thug (3 turn CD) doing 17-30K damage will down most of my characters so I retreat and re-do. But I did need her/BRB (or the Kang/Im40/Hawkeye team) to do the challenge node. Of course the current PvE isn't a hard one but then I was using less optimal teams too. But what she absolutely does do is cut your initial clear time down from probably 90 minutes-2 hrs to 45 minutes. In that regard, she is a must have for PvE because hardly anyone can devote that kind of time to PvE.

PvP:
I do not believe anyone can climb beyond 300-400 points using JUST dual boosted 4 stars (other than a boosted Polaris / Grocket combo). I say that because I just never see dual boosted 4 stars at all anymore in PvP (and when I do, I always hit them because they are trivial to beat). I only see dual 5 stars or a 4 and 5 hybrid.
The 4 and 5 hybrid teams that can climb to 900ish are the meta / synergy ones like Polaris/BRB, AC/Shang, Valk/Shang. When certain 4 stars are boosted like say Karnak then he too can team up with someone like Shang to make the climb. Or if one of the web tile creators is boosted they can team with Chasm etc.
Dual boosted 5 stars are the most common thing I encounter when I get close to 900. When one of the Meta 5 stars is boosted it really tends to dominate the queues.

So you don't need Polaris for PvP if you have a decent number of 5s so that you have 2-3 boosted every week. You just use the boosted 5s that will be in the 400-450 range when boosted and you'll be fine to climb. If you don't have enough 5 stars to have several boosted then you use Polaris as your fall back. This is why I said all PvP is essentially 5 star PvP. The 100 level boost combined with modern match damage makes them the best bang for the buck for players at lower tiers.

If you are interested, I can try and capture a video of me skipping 40 or 50 teams in PvP so you can see what I queue up.

KGB

Bad

I champed and leveled kingping 5* prerebalanced as my only 5*.
I think there is no need to explain anymore.
Repeating: I champed and leveled kingping 5*.
So excuse me if I lol everytime I read never level your 5*s.