New Character - Sidewinder (Seth Voelker) 4*

Blackstone

@revskip said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Waddles_Pines said:
I feel like they gotta have a character like Leech in the works. Someone who disables passives...

They can't do this. They've talked about it before.

The problem has to do with how complicated some powers have gotten. There are active powers that put a thing on the board, with a passive component that does something if the thing exists. There are also detrimental passives like 5* Riri, where they're using the passive to put a downside on something, and disabling it creates even more problems.

Folks have been talking about this character forever, and it made sense when the problematic passives were, like, 3* Iron Fist (yes, people thought that passive was an issue!), but we're so far beyond that sort of thing now that I cannot see this ever happening.

That and the fact that such a character would immediately become THE META since it shuts down so many other things. It would be all but required in every match.

I don't think they'll make such a character but I'd like to play devil's advocate because I find the subject interesting...

Wouldn't three counter to that passive denier then be characters without passives? Which would create triangle of passive team vs non passive team vs anti passive vs passive team chain.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Waddles_Pines said:
I feel like they gotta have a character like Leech in the works. Someone who disables passives...

They can't do this. They've talked about it before.

The problem has to do with how complicated some powers have gotten. There are active powers that put a thing on the board, with a passive component that does something if the thing exists. There are also detrimental passives like 5* Riri, where they're using the passive to put a downside on something, and disabling it creates even more problems.

Folks have been talking about this character forever, and it made sense when the problematic passives were, like, 3* Iron Fist (yes, people thought that passive was an issue!), but we're so far beyond that sort of thing now that I cannot see this ever happening.

Also consider the fact that a stun effectively disables passives for 99% of the cases. So a character who disabled passives is technically weaker than a character who can just straight out stun an opponent (assuming a character who disabled passives could only disable 1 other character at a time). This is why stun lock teams are so prized (Polaris/BrB, Riri/MThor etc).

In a roundabout way they could emulate disabling passives via stuns. So Leech could 'randomly stun one opponent each turn' type thing to disable the passive for 1 turn.

Supports and passives on them are something else entirely. It would be cool to create a character who could strip a support off another character for that battle. That kind of thing should be do-able.

KGB

The final possibility is a bridge I've wondered about for awhile...what if they created super powerful but extremely narrow characters that just instakilled one particular problematic guy as soon as you start the fight? Like give us a guy with a passive that says, "if Chasm/m'Thor /M'baku/whoever is on the enemy team, down him at battle start."

I've wondered about the exact same thing (maybe it at least requires a match-4 to activate because if the defensive team had it you'd lose your mind if your character was downed instantly). I've been thinking it could be called 'arch-nemesis' and every character would have this as a tag. If so if you face your arch-nemesis you down them (or they down you) on a match-4. So say Wolverine-Sabretooth type thing.

KGB

You couldn't do that (or rather, you could...it just wouldn't work as a counter!) because this current set of teams wins before you even move the board.

Wins on offense or defense? I realize there are those who care about defensive wins/teams but I suspect 95% of us don't. So does it matter if it wins against your defensive team on turn 1? I say no. On the other hand, if it wins against you as the player on the AI turn 1 then that means yeah it doesn't work. But I wasn't aware of any 'auto loss' teams against the player, rather just annoying characters which this would solve.

KGB

entrailbucket

@Blackstone said:

@revskip said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Waddles_Pines said:
I feel like they gotta have a character like Leech in the works. Someone who disables passives...

They can't do this. They've talked about it before.

The problem has to do with how complicated some powers have gotten. There are active powers that put a thing on the board, with a passive component that does something if the thing exists. There are also detrimental passives like 5* Riri, where they're using the passive to put a downside on something, and disabling it creates even more problems.

Folks have been talking about this character forever, and it made sense when the problematic passives were, like, 3* Iron Fist (yes, people thought that passive was an issue!), but we're so far beyond that sort of thing now that I cannot see this ever happening.

That and the fact that such a character would immediately become THE META since it shuts down so many other things. It would be all but required in every match.

I don't think they'll make such a character but I'd like to play devil's advocate because I find the subject interesting...

Wouldn't three counter to that passive denier then be characters without passives? Which would create triangle of passive team vs non passive team vs anti passive vs passive team chain.

I honestly have no idea what a non passive team even looks like right now. There are very, very few all-active characters that see any play at all (672 1* Juggernaut, who else?).

Blackstone

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Waddles_Pines said:
I feel like they gotta have a character like Leech in the works. Someone who disables passives...

They can't do this. They've talked about it before.

The problem has to do with how complicated some powers have gotten. There are active powers that put a thing on the board, with a passive component that does something if the thing exists. There are also detrimental passives like 5* Riri, where they're using the passive to put a downside on something, and disabling it creates even more problems.

Folks have been talking about this character forever, and it made sense when the problematic passives were, like, 3* Iron Fist (yes, people thought that passive was an issue!), but we're so far beyond that sort of thing now that I cannot see this ever happening.

Also consider the fact that a stun effectively disables passives for 99% of the cases. So a character who disabled passives is technically weaker than a character who can just straight out stun an opponent (assuming a character who disabled passives could only disable 1 other character at a time). This is why stun lock teams are so prized (Polaris/BrB, Riri/MThor etc).

In a roundabout way they could emulate disabling passives via stuns. So Leech could 'randomly stun one opponent each turn' type thing to disable the passive for 1 turn.

Supports and passives on them are something else entirely. It would be cool to create a character who could strip a support off another character for that battle. That kind of thing should be do-able.

KGB

And...like...the character you describe is super strong but would have zero actual impact on a bunch of these teams, unless he managed to hit Chasm turn 0.

Even a guy who turned off passives would be worthless as a counter, because I just bring Chasm and stun everyone turn 0, or boost/support some other stun guy, which turns off the anti passive guy anyway. It's functionally the same reason we'll never get a "Polaris killer" -- she has a cheap 4 turn stun, so she can just knock out anybody who's messing with her.

The only way to create viable counters for these guys is to start putting stun immunity on guys, but that's not enough by itself, or we'd all be running Silver Surfer. You need super strong defensive passives + stun immunity, and that creates an entirely new class of problems.

Imagine some guy who reduced all incoming damage to 1 and had stun/away/airborne immunity -- what am I even supposed to do against that?

The final possibility is a bridge I've wondered about for awhile...what if they created super powerful but extremely narrow characters that just instakilled one particular problematic guy as soon as you start the fight? Like give us a guy with a passive that says, "if Chasm/m'Thor /M'baku/whoever is on the enemy team, down him at battle start."

Short of something like that there are no counters anymore.

Unless the passive denier prevented chasms stun.

There are several reasons this character won't be made, but the same could have been said about many characters we now have a year ago.

Several characters that were nerfed into oblivion because they were too strong wouldn't even be meta if they were reverted to their original kit.

Characters shutting down other specific characters is worth considering though.

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Waddles_Pines said:
I feel like they gotta have a character like Leech in the works. Someone who disables passives...

They can't do this. They've talked about it before.

The problem has to do with how complicated some powers have gotten. There are active powers that put a thing on the board, with a passive component that does something if the thing exists. There are also detrimental passives like 5* Riri, where they're using the passive to put a downside on something, and disabling it creates even more problems.

Folks have been talking about this character forever, and it made sense when the problematic passives were, like, 3* Iron Fist (yes, people thought that passive was an issue!), but we're so far beyond that sort of thing now that I cannot see this ever happening.

Also consider the fact that a stun effectively disables passives for 99% of the cases. So a character who disabled passives is technically weaker than a character who can just straight out stun an opponent (assuming a character who disabled passives could only disable 1 other character at a time). This is why stun lock teams are so prized (Polaris/BrB, Riri/MThor etc).

In a roundabout way they could emulate disabling passives via stuns. So Leech could 'randomly stun one opponent each turn' type thing to disable the passive for 1 turn.

Supports and passives on them are something else entirely. It would be cool to create a character who could strip a support off another character for that battle. That kind of thing should be do-able.

KGB

The final possibility is a bridge I've wondered about for awhile...what if they created super powerful but extremely narrow characters that just instakilled one particular problematic guy as soon as you start the fight? Like give us a guy with a passive that says, "if Chasm/m'Thor /M'baku/whoever is on the enemy team, down him at battle start."

I've wondered about the exact same thing (maybe it at least requires a match-4 to activate because if the defensive team had it you'd lose your mind if your character was downed instantly). I've been thinking it could be called 'arch-nemesis' and every character would have this as a tag. If so if you face your arch-nemesis you down them (or they down you) on a match-4. So say Wolverine-Sabretooth type thing.

KGB

You couldn't do that (or rather, you could...it just wouldn't work as a counter!) because this current set of teams wins before you even move the board.

Wins on offense or defense? I realize there are those who care about defensive wins/teams but I suspect 95% of us don't. So does it matter if it wins against your defensive team on turn 1? I say no. On the other hand, if it wins against you as the player on the AI turn 1 then that means yeah it doesn't work. But I wasn't aware of any 'auto loss' teams against the player, rather just annoying characters which this would solve.

KGB

There actually are pick-3 teams now that can beat you before you move the board. They rely on Chasm + match damage passives/cascade generator supports, but generally they require some minimal luck to beat you.

I don't particularly care about defensive wins either, but do you not see a problem with turn0 offensive teams existing in PvP? It is a competitive mode with a leaderboard...if some guy can beat me 5x before I beat him once, the only solution is for me to also use a turn0 team.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Waddles_Pines said:
I feel like they gotta have a character like Leech in the works. Someone who disables passives...

They can't do this. They've talked about it before.

The problem has to do with how complicated some powers have gotten. There are active powers that put a thing on the board, with a passive component that does something if the thing exists. There are also detrimental passives like 5* Riri, where they're using the passive to put a downside on something, and disabling it creates even more problems.

Folks have been talking about this character forever, and it made sense when the problematic passives were, like, 3* Iron Fist (yes, people thought that passive was an issue!), but we're so far beyond that sort of thing now that I cannot see this ever happening.

Also consider the fact that a stun effectively disables passives for 99% of the cases. So a character who disabled passives is technically weaker than a character who can just straight out stun an opponent (assuming a character who disabled passives could only disable 1 other character at a time). This is why stun lock teams are so prized (Polaris/BrB, Riri/MThor etc).

In a roundabout way they could emulate disabling passives via stuns. So Leech could 'randomly stun one opponent each turn' type thing to disable the passive for 1 turn.

Supports and passives on them are something else entirely. It would be cool to create a character who could strip a support off another character for that battle. That kind of thing should be do-able.

KGB

The final possibility is a bridge I've wondered about for awhile...what if they created super powerful but extremely narrow characters that just instakilled one particular problematic guy as soon as you start the fight? Like give us a guy with a passive that says, "if Chasm/m'Thor /M'baku/whoever is on the enemy team, down him at battle start."

I've wondered about the exact same thing (maybe it at least requires a match-4 to activate because if the defensive team had it you'd lose your mind if your character was downed instantly). I've been thinking it could be called 'arch-nemesis' and every character would have this as a tag. If so if you face your arch-nemesis you down them (or they down you) on a match-4. So say Wolverine-Sabretooth type thing.

KGB

You couldn't do that (or rather, you could...it just wouldn't work as a counter!) because this current set of teams wins before you even move the board.

Wins on offense or defense? I realize there are those who care about defensive wins/teams but I suspect 95% of us don't. So does it matter if it wins against your defensive team on turn 1? I say no. On the other hand, if it wins against you as the player on the AI turn 1 then that means yeah it doesn't work. But I wasn't aware of any 'auto loss' teams against the player, rather just annoying characters which this would solve.

KGB

There actually are pick-3 teams now that can beat you before you move the board. They rely on Chasm + match damage passives/cascade generator supports, but generally they require some minimal luck to beat you.

I don't particularly care about defensive wins either, but do you not see a problem with turn0 offensive teams existing in PvP? It is a competitive mode with a leaderboard...if some guy can beat me 5x before I beat him once, the only solution is for me to also use a turn0 team.

If you say turn 0 is a problem then what about turn 1 or turn 2? It's a slippery slope because as soon as turn 0 is prevented then it's all about turn 1 and so on. For what it's worth, I don't think turn 0 or turn 1 etc are particularly great (I'm not at a level where I have that unless I get a very lucky cascade) either.

Going back to what you wrote a couple posts back about 'auto downing a certain character if they are on the enemy team'. If it ever came to that it's the equivalent of saying this character needs a nerf because it can't be allowed in battle (that's what auto downing means). Then we are back to the whole X number of characters need a rebalance and it would be best to do them all at once.

About the PvP leaderboard. There is an unfortunate issue with this game in that where you are, there just aren't enough players. So in a couple of skips they find you again and again. That obviously happens WAY less at lower levels of the game where there are more opponents and it takes a lot of skips to find the same player again (if you even can). There's also no easy fix for this problem until the end game has a lot more players. So yeah competitive players at your level must use the fastest team if you care about score.

KGB

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Waddles_Pines said:
I feel like they gotta have a character like Leech in the works. Someone who disables passives...

They can't do this. They've talked about it before.

The problem has to do with how complicated some powers have gotten. There are active powers that put a thing on the board, with a passive component that does something if the thing exists. There are also detrimental passives like 5* Riri, where they're using the passive to put a downside on something, and disabling it creates even more problems.

Folks have been talking about this character forever, and it made sense when the problematic passives were, like, 3* Iron Fist (yes, people thought that passive was an issue!), but we're so far beyond that sort of thing now that I cannot see this ever happening.

Also consider the fact that a stun effectively disables passives for 99% of the cases. So a character who disabled passives is technically weaker than a character who can just straight out stun an opponent (assuming a character who disabled passives could only disable 1 other character at a time). This is why stun lock teams are so prized (Polaris/BrB, Riri/MThor etc).

In a roundabout way they could emulate disabling passives via stuns. So Leech could 'randomly stun one opponent each turn' type thing to disable the passive for 1 turn.

Supports and passives on them are something else entirely. It would be cool to create a character who could strip a support off another character for that battle. That kind of thing should be do-able.

KGB

The final possibility is a bridge I've wondered about for awhile...what if they created super powerful but extremely narrow characters that just instakilled one particular problematic guy as soon as you start the fight? Like give us a guy with a passive that says, "if Chasm/m'Thor /M'baku/whoever is on the enemy team, down him at battle start."

I've wondered about the exact same thing (maybe it at least requires a match-4 to activate because if the defensive team had it you'd lose your mind if your character was downed instantly). I've been thinking it could be called 'arch-nemesis' and every character would have this as a tag. If so if you face your arch-nemesis you down them (or they down you) on a match-4. So say Wolverine-Sabretooth type thing.

KGB

You couldn't do that (or rather, you could...it just wouldn't work as a counter!) because this current set of teams wins before you even move the board.

Wins on offense or defense? I realize there are those who care about defensive wins/teams but I suspect 95% of us don't. So does it matter if it wins against your defensive team on turn 1? I say no. On the other hand, if it wins against you as the player on the AI turn 1 then that means yeah it doesn't work. But I wasn't aware of any 'auto loss' teams against the player, rather just annoying characters which this would solve.

KGB

There actually are pick-3 teams now that can beat you before you move the board. They rely on Chasm + match damage passives/cascade generator supports, but generally they require some minimal luck to beat you.

I don't particularly care about defensive wins either, but do you not see a problem with turn0 offensive teams existing in PvP? It is a competitive mode with a leaderboard...if some guy can beat me 5x before I beat him once, the only solution is for me to also use a turn0 team.

If you say turn 0 is a problem then what about turn 1 or turn 2? It's a slippery slope because as soon as turn 0 is prevented then it's all about turn 1 and so on. For what it's worth, I don't think turn 0 or turn 1 etc are particularly great (I'm not at a level where I have that unless I get a very lucky cascade) either.

Going back to what you wrote a couple posts back about 'auto downing a certain character if they are on the enemy team'. If it ever came to that it's the equivalent of saying this character needs a nerf because it can't be allowed in battle (that's what auto downing means). Then we are back to the whole X number of characters need a rebalance and it would be best to do them all at once.

About the PvP leaderboard. There is an unfortunate issue with this game in that where you are, there just aren't enough players. So in a couple of skips they find you again and again. That obviously happens WAY less at lower levels of the game where there are more opponents and it takes a lot of skips to find the same player again (if you even can). There's also no easy fix for this problem until the end game has a lot more players. So yeah competitive players at your level must use the fastest team if you care about score.

KGB

I think the increase in speed of matches is a problem, it's accelerating, and matches at my level were pretty fast before all this nonsense anyway. Like when I was competing in PvE it was 20 minutes or so on either side, and now that's not anywhere near fast enough. In PvP I'm accustomed to fights taking 1-2 minutes at most.

The "archenemy" passive is, in fact, just a way to secretly nerf an overpowered character. This community is so adamantly opposed to changing any character for any reason, that making a character even a tiny bit worse is a total nonstarter. When you bring it up, the response you get is "give us counters instead!"

Well, what's a realistic way to counter a team that wins all its fights before anybody moves the board? I haven't seen suggestions, but I'd love to hear them!

Respectfully, I've been playing competitive MPQ PvP at the highest levels for 11 years. I know exactly how matchmaking works. With boosted 5* I can run a much wider variety of teams and do just fine -- I am not locked into using broken ultrafast combos or "meta" characters at. all.

If these characters keep getting faster, though, I will be. Most of the boosted characters cannot beat dual 672s on turn0, but some of these new characters get very close or clear that bar. PvP will turn into PvE -- use the fastest combo all the time, or lose.

LennoxHC

In Sidewinder's PvP, I had some fun with his blue passive going against ascended M'Baku equipped with Fantasticar. With the far right character tanking after my first turn, M'Baku would cascade matches and Sidewinder would teleport each character away until I had no one left. The M'Baku Fantasticar cascades would keep going and hit nothing but air.

I learned this after a couple of matches where the far left character got sent away first. Sidewinder was next in line, and the character on the right would then stick around to eat all of those M'Baku Fantasticar matches.

entrailbucket

Ok so like, ignore all 25,000 words of that dissertation -- I just finished this guy's PvP, and he's bugged or something, right?

He appears to stack with everything (I was running 672 Ronan and was seeing match damage numbers at 200 or 300k without trying to chase TU), and it's pretty trivial to run his bonus up to insanity.

They copied a number wrong here or something, yes? It was supposed to be 150% and it's 1500% by accident? This can't be on purpose.

ThisisClemFandango

Nothing happens in this game by accident, come on you know that by now.
Still interested why worthy Peggy is so beyond useless but it must be Canon or something

Timemachinego

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Nothing happens in this game by accident, come on you know that by now.
Still interested why worthy Peggy is so beyond useless but it must be Canon or something

Only thing she's "Worthy" of is being easily forgotten. I entirely forget she (and her 3) exist at all until someone mentions them.

Borstock

PvP, I repeat, is awful now. This guy is just gonna make it even worse.

LavaManLee

Sidewinder also makes the FU node pretty trivial. Yes, you have to match vs winning on Turn 0 but pairing him with 4Juggs/M'Baku makes it a quick three/four match trivial event. Bring some Team Up Boosts and it is over fast.

KGB

Like everyone else here, I just rocketed to 25 wins in a heartbeat.

Mine is 1/1/5 (went from 1/1/3 to 1/1/5 during the PvP as I collected shards) at L70. I put Leapfrog on him so that opponents can't target him (helps with retals). Teamed him with 370 Juggs (Pocket Radio which boosts Juggs match damage that Sidewinder then multiplies by up to 15x more) and a 6 cover 5 star Sam Wilson (Eros Arrow).

Boosted 2 TU for all my battles. If I could match 2 TU on turn 1 did so. After that, Juggs was doing ~25K or more damage on Green/Red and Sam was doing similar on Blue/Yellow. I just melted enemy teams health from pure match damage (never fired a single power in 25 battles). Didn't have to avoid any teams really because you can match them to death quickly.

KGB

Timemachinego

@LavaManLee said:
Sidewinder also makes the FU node pretty trivial. Yes, you have to match vs winning on Turn 0 but pairing him with 4Juggs/M'Baku makes it a quick three/four match trivial event. Bring some Team Up Boosts and it is over fast.

That's no quicker than Kanging the CN, so it's almost exactly on the PVE curve. I think it's interesting that some of our newest additions have done things that could drastically speed up PVP. I know at this point our expectations are that BC accidentally made an OP PVE character but maybe they do actually want to speed up PVP? For what purposes, I'm not sure, these things are always top heavy...

entrailbucket

@Timemachinego said:

@LavaManLee said:
Sidewinder also makes the FU node pretty trivial. Yes, you have to match vs winning on Turn 0 but pairing him with 4Juggs/M'Baku makes it a quick three/four match trivial event. Bring some Team Up Boosts and it is over fast.

That's no quicker than Kanging the CN, so it's almost exactly on the PVE curve. I think it's interesting that some of our newest additions have done things that could drastically speed up PVP. I know at this point our expectations are that BC accidentally made an OP PVE character but maybe they do actually want to speed up PVP? For what purposes, I'm not sure, these things are always top heavy...

Yeah, I made the same mistake recently and got some excellent education on modern PvE from some forumites (and others!). PvE teams are already so fast that I don't think this guy will make a real impact there.

I still think he's an accident, and the boost was meant to be 150% or something. Even considering some of the bonkers stuff they've done recently, this character is an outlier.

Codex

I > @Borstock said:

PvP, I repeat, is awful now. This guy is just gonna make it even worse.

I agree with this!! This guy feels toxic and I am already skipping teams with him on it in pvp. Maybe, he becomes tolerable if no supports in shield sim. But so many people are running leap frog on all their teams that I just don't want to deal with them together.

BriMan2222

@Codex said:
I > @Borstock said:

PvP, I repeat, is awful now. This guy is just gonna make it even worse.

I agree with this!! This guy feels toxic and I am already skipping teams with him on it in pvp. Maybe, he becomes tolerable if no supports in shield sim. But so many people are running leap frog on all their teams that I just don't want to deal with them together.

Kang/Veil. Between Veil's passive sending enemies away and enemy sidewinder sending his own team mates away you'll win even faster than Kang/veil would normally win. Bonus points for leapfrog sending an enemy away.

dianetics

@Codex said:
I > @Borstock said:

PvP, I repeat, is awful now. This guy is just gonna make it even worse.

I agree with this!! This guy feels toxic and I am already skipping teams with him on it in pvp. Maybe, he becomes tolerable if no supports in shield sim. But so many people are running leap frog on all their teams that I just don't want to deal with them together.

A chuck of the forums complained when they announced supports in PvP.
I hate it. I am so turned off of it that I am questioning the reason to play the game.

Characters like this take all of the interesting elements of the game out of it for me.
This isn't fun anymore. I am waiting for the engine update, but I doubt I'll be here much after 3743 days played, because this is **** stupid. It is so braindead you don't have to do anything but make a match then win...

The turn 0 - turn 2 match wins are lame. Supports in PvP suck. You can't even play as your favorite characters because they are so slow compared the the rest of the game.

If this doesn't change there is no shot I will be playing this game at the end of the year. And, that sucks because I love the game and I have played it for so long.

DAZ0273

I said when Kang was released that all this away stuff was going to be a very bad idea at some point, appears that point has arrived.