mThor dillemma.

Daredevil217

@Mr_F said:

@Godzillafan67 said:

@TheXMan said:
I think others have mentioned but OR/Colossus already is showing up more and more in PvP. I would much rather play against mThor than that.

Ditto. I'm routinely hitting an OR wall where he's paired with Chasm, Colossus, or iHulk.

OR is weak to Electro. And, cough, cough, mThor. And that is why so far I'm not scared by his presence. Yet.

I'll raise another question: Chasm seems pretty working against her in my test past few days but main concern is his AP drain. He autoshutdown my team with that. Sure, he so far has worked but I am forced to either use OR or Kang etc. with him leading to not what I want from mThor counter. I can slap Electro with another two and still defeat OR while Chasm limits my options here. Also he drain helath packs as he stays healhly only vs anotjer chasm (wchich requires things like OR to kill him).

In broader perspective, Chasm is meta counter here (slows Polaris before she can do the crazy stuff as he nullifies mThor and BRB round start) but she drains joy with AP. His so boring and limited with options. Only plus is that, with Kang I can finally use Gwenom here.

So can we say that Chasm is our answer and move on? IMO nope.

So you have a counter that is effective but just isn’t fun?

That I get. Part of the reason I hated the Chasm meta. It’s also why I think I see him everywhere in pick 3. He just isn’t fun to face with the first turn stun and AP drain.

LavaManLee

Chasm is still an excellent counter to any team in Simulator running MT/BRB/Polaris. Without the opening protects, that team is easily beatable.

Carnage1484

It’s not that Jane is necessarily “op”, its that she invalidates so many characters passively, which also is true for Polaris.

Anyone that relies on special tiles is Jane / Polaris fodder, charged tiles users feed Jane even more and CD tile users, even protected ones, simply cannot stand against her as they are wiped off the map after 1-2 turns at most. Just look at the most recent 5s…all of them are obliterated by unboosted Jane passively. Scarlet Storm? One use before it’s either wiped out or you drain it yourself…Phylla CD tiles which is 2/3 of her kit…gone on her turn immediately…X23 Scarlet Storm and Hexagone both dominated by Jane just existing and yeah X23 gets some heals but you have zero offense and defense for the AP use. Goose won’t create purple when Jane uses yellow but even firing it manually they don’t last at most 2 turns and her strike tiles about the same, and worse are surely met by Jane / Polaris to turn her own power into rocket fuel. Omega Red is the best 5 they’ve released in ages and even he can’t match up to Jane as he is reliant on the board being relatively stagnant.

Just a guess but those kinds of characters make up probably 75% of the entire roster and are completely useless in PvP against Jane, and Polaris as well. It’s the feeling of essentially helplessness when trying to use them I think is what aggravates many of us, and its done PASSIVELY by Jane, theres no “effort” needed to gain that state of play. Both Jane & Polaris need to be capped in order to allow other characters to gain significance.

That being said, Shaw absolutely dominates her and it was clearly the intent. She has no chance against him and once hes ascended if you’re using Jane against Shaw 1v1 may as well resign unless you have MBW in your pocket.

Mr_F

@Daredevil217 said:

So you have a counter that is effective but just isn’t fun?

That I get. Part of the reason I hated the Chasm meta. It’s also why I think I see him everywhere in pick 3. He just isn’t fun to face with the first turn stun and AP drain.

Looks like I have found it. And nobody has suggested him to me, desptite him being my 4th 5* champion (so having him before mThor meta has arised).

But:

One, overall: do we, as community, accept that he is the answer? That Shaw and Chasm is all we need here?

Two: He narrows my roster even further. I'd rather face OR teams. Out of curiosity I have chased OR/whatever in LR. Did some Wasp/Electro fights, used 10 health packs in the process but have won all fights. I picked Wasp to check if just Electro would be enough and needed something... less prominent but still usefull. Yep, she was.

That is the whole dillemma in the end. If Chasm is really the answer I was looking for, it's not the one I like but in the end. But, like I've said before, I'd rather endure what we have now than risk changing to something worse. Maybe, just maybe, Kang/Chasm/Whatever migt be that variety I was loking for? Still would like to have better solution. Chasm in my eyes does not solves the issues efinetly but is a solution I might accept.

Productive discussion in with gentle approach. Rarity in the net. Thanks guys.

bluewolf

An observation: Yesterday the Answers to the Q&A were posted, and one was about Gambit. Which led to reviewing the Gambit rebalance thread which includes this from the (then) devs:

---

Ragin' Cajun - This ability now only replaces basic, Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles with Countdown tiles, and the number of tiles it creates has been reduced.

A huge number of characters rely on special tiles to not just combat Gambit, but to do their own thing as well. 5-Stars like Ghost Rider are seen as weaker than we intended because they fare so poorly against Gambit, and the counter-play we've designed to combat Gambit are shut down by this power. So, to open up design space and refresh some existing 5-Stars, we're restricting the kinds of tiles Gambit can convert to Strike, Protect and Attack. He'll still convert Basic tiles, so don't worry if your opponent isn't making these tiles - you can still fire this power. Specific numbers are below, but this also allowed us to make the Countdown tiles themselves more powerful.

---

So basically, a character that could shut down pretty much everyone's specials (not repeaters though) was OP, so they made it so he could only cover some of them, and he maxes out at 3 when he gets 8 purple AP and uses his power. And of course they slowed down his AP gen....

Power creep sure is interesting. Thor will take out as many passively as possible as long as there's a charged tile next to it.

In a lot of ways, Thor is Gambit 3.0, but some parts were held back (free specific AP gen and AP drain) and they added in passive board shake to make it more fair while retaining the concept of (possibly) getting free AP so you can use your powers.

Countdown to the next 5* announcement....19 days if it's Monday.....

Mr_F

@Carnage_78
Anybody with working brain knew on spot that Polaris's kit is way too good. Jane was less obvious with Chasm released closely. For me both kits designs screams "unhealthly". It is so blantly obvious! Yet have slipped through all the development stages and have ended live...

Sometimes, when I see some designs (like some cards in Marvel Snap or abilities in LoL) I ask myself who wasn't brave enough to say "No! Those are bad ideas which should't be never released!" on the dev side... And right after that I ask myseld "Maybe I am wrong here?". Just in case.

bluewolf

3* May says hi, I boost everything passively. No problem there, right?

Hellblazer666

@Philbert101 said:
It’s not a dilemma. And she doesn’t need a nerf or soft counters. Just tweak her passive to not fire on its own every round. Just when she actively fires powers. It’s not as complicated as people are making it.
Captain Marvel has been quietly changed a few times. Shouldn’t be as big of deal as it’s being made.

this 100% this would work fine

dianetics

@entrailbucket said:
If she's not that good, then why are so many players using her? How many other characters can punch up 100+ levels?
Why are so many players so upset about the mere suggestion of a nerf?

Edit: Actually...I'll leave this here, but forget it. I'm not getting baited into this nonsense again where I'm debating 18 people all making different contradictory arguments.

Let me start with this, bro I love what you are saying and your insight to the higher tiers of the game.

I really enjoy reading your posts. No Cap. You went away for almost a year and your first post back I responded with "he's alive". I really truly enjoy seeing your POV.

But, from the outside, your approach is self serving now, because you probably have the fattest roster of anyone we know about. The most high level toons at a higher level then all other people we know.

So when you are calling for these nerfs you are trying to normalize all rosters, and because your roster is nominally high, then you become the winner.

Hey Yo

Every time a character is over represented you ask for a nerf. That toon catches the shot, then you move on to the next. The meta will always be a thing, and the most powerful characters will ALWAYS be overrepresented.

If we follow what you really want, then it is a downward spiral of nerfs until every character is exactly the same.
I don't want to play that game.

You are asking for variety but, but also trying to normalize (shrinking the power band) of the game at the same time.

Look I will say it right now, I would rather see 100+ SheThor teams than the previous ChasmiHulk teams.

At least SheThor gives me options to take her down.

Ask for balance and not normalization please.

DAZ0273

@Mr_F said:
@Carnage_78
Anybody with working brain knew on spot that Polaris's kit is way too good. Jane was less obvious with Chasm released closely. For me both kits designs screams "unhealthly". It is so blantly obvious! Yet have slipped through all the development stages and have ended live...

Sometimes, when I see some designs (like some cards in Marvel Snap or abilities in LoL) I ask myself who wasn't brave enough to say "No! Those are bad ideas which should't be never released!" on the dev side... And right after that I ask myseld "Maybe I am wrong here?". Just in case.

I thought Jane was obvious from day one - her loaner was super useful in her PvP it was obvious she was gonna be a winner.

Mr_F

@DAZ0273 I was one of those not working brains who did not realised that on spot. Hence, I wrote what I wrote. If I remember correctly, I came back to the game after her PVP. Let me check... I came back 17 sepmtember 2022 and she was released June/July. So yep.

LavaManLee

I have tried to stay out of this but just can't. Here is the essential problem with MT (and the same problem with Chasm and with Bishop). She is so easy to handle by the AI on defense. There really is nothing to her, just like there was nothing with Chasm or Bishop or 5Gambit back in the day, for the AI to worry about.

The problem really is that some of the more powerful characters rely on us (the humans) to know when to fire something or do something in a specific order. With the characters above, there isn't much to worry about. Have enough colors to fire MT? Yay, than just do it? Don't have to worry about colors but just let Chasm or Bishop do their thing? Yay!

SC, for example, is way more overpowered than MT or almost anyone else in MPQ. However, it requires a bit of finesse to know not only when to fire his powers but where to place his powers. That is something AI can't handle.

Anyways, just popping in to say that the problem isn't MT per se. It is that she is so easily handled by AI on defense.

dianetics

@LavaManLee said:
Here is the essential problem with MT (and the same problem with Chasm and with Bishop).

Everyone who was around knows it is not the same at all.

Chasm forced you to bring very specific teams in order to deal with him. These resulted in long matches with little to no benefit. Hell if you mirrored Chasm you had no chance to win at all since the match would just go on forever.

SheThor gives nothing close to that. Have you ever had a 10 minute match with SheThor?
I have with the pre-nerf Chasm before I just ran away from time invested.

You can bring any number of teams and target her first, kill, then win. This wasn't a thing with Chasm. During Chasms reign I used him often because it gave me an advantage. Right now I almost never use SheThor, and I never use her in PvP.

She does not force me to use her like Chasm did. I like to see her so I can punch someone in the mouth with little consequence.

entrailbucket

@dianetics I appreciate you saying that stuff, but that's...like... explicitly not at all what I want. Variety doesn't require that everybody is the same, and making everyone the same is impossible anyway.

What I want is for a few characters to not totally outclass the rest of them, such that they can trivially punch up by 100+ levels. Is that really too much to ask? Is that impossible?

Characters can be better than others. Nobody wants a game where everyone is exactly the same, that's boring. But what part of ANY game's design requires that certain characters or strategies are SO strong that they completely outclass every other character or strategy?

Why do we want 296 of the 300 characters in MPQ to be B-tier losers, only usable when their week shows up, while 4 or 5 guys are SO much stronger that they're year-round options? How does that make sense? Do other games work that way?

dianetics

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics I appreciate you saying that stuff, but that's...like... explicitly not at all what I want. Variety doesn't require that everybody is the same, and making everyone the same is impossible anyway.

What I want is for a few characters to not totally outclass the rest of them, such that they can trivially punch up by 100+ levels. Is that really too much to ask? Is that impossible?

Characters can be better than others. Nobody wants a game where everyone is exactly the same, that's boring. But what part of ANY game's design requires that certain characters or strategies are SO strong that they completely outclass every other character or strategy?

Why do we want 296 of the 300 characters in MPQ to be B-tier losers, only usable when their week shows up, while 4 or 5 guys are SO much stronger that they're year-round options? How does that make sense? Do other games work that way?

Truthfully other game do actually work that way, but they are much worse at it. They tease new heroes and they are very strong people spend, then get nerfed a few months after release. Then the new hot dance comes out and people spend again.
It is a whole business model in these gatcha style games.

Or you have games that live balanced which is also not fun. I quit LoL years ago because they tweaked things too often that you could not plan for the weekend.

What I see in PvP here right now, is the most variety I have seen since I champed my first 5. I get that is only 3 years, but still from what others have mentioned not much has changed. It is far better now than even a year ago and I trust the devs to continue to provide options and give us strong characters in the future.

I think you are exaggerating her power scale a bit though. She is good, but she is certainly not some god tier character that gives you an automatic win.

BriMan2222

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics I appreciate you saying that stuff, but that's...like... explicitly not at all what I want. Variety doesn't require that everybody is the same, and making everyone the same is impossible anyway.

What I want is for a few characters to not totally outclass the rest of them, such that they can trivially punch up by 100+ levels. Is that really too much to ask? Is that impossible?

Characters can be better than others. Nobody wants a game where everyone is exactly the same, that's boring. But what part of ANY game's design requires that certain characters or strategies are SO strong that they completely outclass every other character or strategy?

Why do we want 296 of the 300 characters in MPQ to be B-tier losers, only usable when their week shows up, while 4 or 5 guys are SO much stronger that they're year-round options? How does that make sense? Do other games work that way?

I know of at least one other mobile game that is waaaaaaaaay worse than this. My wife plays a Disney turn based RPG that I occasionally play her account for her. The power creep is so insane that characters that were the most OP thing in the game ever, are underpowered and unused just months later. They keep cranking out “Legendary” characters that keep having more and more absurd passives that never allow you to get a turn.

The worst part about this is that their PVP is real pvp against a real player in real time, so it’s basically whoever has the fastest team and gets rolling first wins. In the 5 years she’s been playing this game no legendary character has EVER been nerfed. They just keep ramping up with more powerful legendaries that also require you build up a bunch of new characters from their movie franchise to unlock them, which requires months of grinding or you can conveniently pay hundreds of dollars to insta build those characters. I’ve never seen a game that is such a broken and obvious cash grab and I’m glad that MPQ is nowhere near this level of pay to win.

entrailbucket

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics I appreciate you saying that stuff, but that's...like... explicitly not at all what I want. Variety doesn't require that everybody is the same, and making everyone the same is impossible anyway.

What I want is for a few characters to not totally outclass the rest of them, such that they can trivially punch up by 100+ levels. Is that really too much to ask? Is that impossible?

Characters can be better than others. Nobody wants a game where everyone is exactly the same, that's boring. But what part of ANY game's design requires that certain characters or strategies are SO strong that they completely outclass every other character or strategy?

Why do we want 296 of the 300 characters in MPQ to be B-tier losers, only usable when their week shows up, while 4 or 5 guys are SO much stronger that they're year-round options? How does that make sense? Do other games work that way?

I think you are exaggerating her power scale a bit though. She is good, but she is certainly not some god tier character that gives you an automatic win.

So, I'm in a different position than most of you guys (and probably a different position from... everybody) but I'm not exaggerating her power level. Most events I'm running dual 672s plus an ascended essential character -- it's often over a million total HP, with 10k+ match damage on 4 or 5 colors. What beats that?

m'Thor beats that. Regularly, quickly, and consistently. Not boosted characters. Not Omega Red. Not Kang teams, or insta win shenanigans. Just m'Thor/x. (And before somebody goes "sour grapes!", I don't really care. I'll beat these guys up because it's fun, and then I'll put them on my mental list of people to keep beating up every time I see them, and I'll enjoy that too).

Why? Well, she immediately nerfs any character who needs to put something on the board, which is a lot of characters. But also, she goes infinite easily AND does massive damage. Most characters that can go infinite are peashooters. You can win eventually, but it'll take forever. m'Thor is firing off red for 100k at 6ap, and feeding herself AP while she does it.

Who cares, you say? I'm the .0000001%, losing to the .001%. That's valid. But put yourself in my position. If you're a 450ish player, imagine they release a 4* that trivially stomps all over your best team. How would you feel about that?

In a roster building game, what's the point of building up a roster when one character just totally outclasses everybody else? Why level up your 5* when you can get smoked by some overpowered 4*? It makes the entire thing meaningless.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics I appreciate you saying that stuff, but that's...like... explicitly not at all what I want. Variety doesn't require that everybody is the same, and making everyone the same is impossible anyway.

What I want is for a few characters to not totally outclass the rest of them, such that they can trivially punch up by 100+ levels. Is that really too much to ask? Is that impossible?

Characters can be better than others. Nobody wants a game where everyone is exactly the same, that's boring. But what part of ANY game's design requires that certain characters or strategies are SO strong that they completely outclass every other character or strategy?

Why do we want 296 of the 300 characters in MPQ to be B-tier losers, only usable when their week shows up, while 4 or 5 guys are SO much stronger that they're year-round options? How does that make sense? Do other games work that way?

I think you are exaggerating her power scale a bit though. She is good, but she is certainly not some god tier character that gives you an automatic win.

So, I'm in a different position than most of you guys (and probably a different position from... everybody) but I'm not exaggerating her power level. Most events I'm running dual 672s plus an ascended essential character -- it's often over a million total HP, with 10k+ match damage on 4 or 5 colors. What beats that?

m'Thor beats that. Regularly, quickly, and consistently. Not boosted characters. Not Omega Red. Not Kang teams, or insta win shenanigans. Just m'Thor/x. (And before somebody goes "sour grapes!", I don't really care. I'll beat these guys up because it's fun, and then I'll put them on my mental list of people to keep beating up every time I see them, and I'll enjoy that too).

Why? Well, she immediately nerfs any character who needs to put something on the board, which is a lot of characters. But also, she goes infinite easily AND does massive damage. Most characters that can go infinite are peashooters. You can win eventually, but it'll take forever. m'Thor is firing off red for 100k at 6ap, and feeding herself AP while she does it.

Who cares, you say? I'm the .0000001%, losing to the .001%. That's valid. But put yourself in my position. **If you're a 450ish player, imagine they release a 4* that trivially stomps all over your best team. How would you feel about that? **

In a roster building game, what's the point of building up a roster when one character just totally outclasses everybody else? Why level up your 5* when you can get smoked by some overpowered 4*? It makes the entire thing meaningless.

Interestingly this was the very argument back in the day that 5* players could never understand applied to 4* players and Kitty Pryde. If you couldn't stop her tile buffing then your team was dead and having Bishop at that time was the only effective defence you had because he could shut her down. Of course the Kitty users couldn't understand this experience because to them she wasn't OP at all and their teams were not getting stomped by cheap Grockitty teams. Just like you are being told that Jane is not a problem, 4* players were told that Kitty is not a problem although the 5* players had not had the experience the 4* players were having and really struggled to put themselves in others shoes. We also know that Jane cause problems down the food chain which Shaw might fix which makes her on the Devs radar.

Having had that experience I can sympathise but as you have yourself said in the past the Devs should cater to the masses not the elite so we will have to wait and see whether they align the problems with her that you see or not.

Unfortunately in the vast range of MPQ players, somebody is always a loser in these things.

entrailbucket

@DAZ0273 I really don't want them to cater to me. I'm using me as an example.

The problem is not that m'Thor beats my teams and I'm mad about it.

The problem is that m'Thor beats literally any team of any level. I think that's not terribly great for a game that has 300 characters or whatever and keeps releasing new ones. They can't tell us those new guys matter when one character can dominate like she does.

Daredevil217

@LavaManLee said:
I have tried to stay out of this but just can't. Here is the essential problem with MT (and the same problem with Chasm and with Bishop). She is so easy to handle by the AI on defense. There really is nothing to her, just like there was nothing with Chasm or Bishop or 5Gambit back in the day, for the AI to worry about.

The problem really is that some of the more powerful characters rely on us (the humans) to know when to fire something or do something in a specific order. With the characters above, there isn't much to worry about. Have enough colors to fire MT? Yay, than just do it? Don't have to worry about colors but just let Chasm or Bishop do their thing? Yay!

SC, for example, is way more overpowered than MT or almost anyone else in MPQ. However, it requires a bit of finesse to know not only when to fire his powers but where to place his powers. That is something AI can't handle.

Anyways, just popping in to say that the problem isn't MT per se. It is that she is so easily handled by AI on defense.

This is absolutely right and what I was alluding to in my previous post when I said why are Shang, Kang, Okoye not getting flack. They can all punch up 100 levels as well. I see Shang just as much as I see Thor. They are essentially attached at the hip. But Thor gets the “nerf!” cries (again a pretty small minority, but still) and I believe it’s because she’s much more difficult to face defensively. If it was just about PvP variety you’d be seeing calls for Shang nerfs as well. Basically we've seen the following arguments (and when you counter one you get, that’s not my actual problem this is the real problem… and round and round you go)-

Too good on offense (punches up 100 levels) which quite a few characters can do and some much faster.

Too good on defense (her cascades can wreck you and she fires her powers too easy). Some people argue we don’t need a counter because she is a trivially stomped glass cannon and others say that she is really difficult to face and would like a counter or two.

Too present in queues even unboosted (again, Shang is there with her too but doesn't get backlash. Others have said they see omega/Colossus MORE than Thor as well. So this is YMMV).

It’s unfair that lower rosters can beat me (this is kind of a variation of point 1- punching up too much). But historically, this has always been the case dating back to Thorkoye. These characters also seem good for business as they promote them heavily in stores and vaults. And the game has been around a decade, which is crazy given it’s a mobile game.

She counters too many things/makes characters obsolete. This one I think is fair. I think Chasm is very similar in that his beginning turn stun and AP drain are super suppressive, but that’s sort of his “thing”. You get rid of the special tile removal and she becomes a boring damage stick just like half the characters in the game. Make other characters more interesting rather than make Thor less interesting.