Character Rebalance - Polaris (Lorna Dane) 4*

S0kun

As part of our upcoming plans to do batched rebalances of characters, we’ll be providing deep dives into the characters who are receiving nerfs so you can get a full understanding of the design process and considerations we put into the rebalances to even the playing field in the MPQ meta for all players.

Here's a breakdown from our very own IceIX on how Polaris is getting a much needed rebalance.

Overview
Polaris’s general overpoweredness comes mostly from the fact that she’s a jack of all trades, AND a master of those trades. She gives Wolverine a master class in being the “best there is at what they do.” She stuns, she deals damage, she proliferates all kinds of SAP tiles which THEN increase her damage and the damage of her proliferation. It’s not the fact that her kit allows her to do all these things. It’s that it allows her to do everything at full power all the time.

Rebalance Reasons
Quite frankly, she was improperly balanced at the time of her launch. This was mostly due to not accounting for the internal balance of each of her abilities building off one another. In a vacuum, each ability is balanced. When taken as a whole, each ability amplifies the others, making each one FAR more powerful. This compounding effect is the main reasonPolaris needs a bit of a push into a more balanced territory while giving players that have relied on her the opportunity to keep a good portion of that power.

To that end, we decided on a somewhat different kind of rebalance. Less outright nerf or rework of all her abilities that would make her into a differently playing character. More of a shifting of how her abilities interact so that while she has most of the power she had before (and more in a couple cases), she is now not able to bring ALL that power to bear at once.

HP / Match Damage: Unchanged

We didn’t really see a need to update any of her base stats, so they were left as-is.

Ability 1 - Iron Proficiency
Cost - 7 Blue AP
Ability description: Unchanged
Polaris seizes control of the iron in her enemy’s blood, stopping them dead in their tracks. Stuns the target for X turns. Creates 4 friendly strength Y Strike tiles and 4 enemy strength Z Strike tiles.

This ability was only lightly updated, increasing the strength of her generated friendly Strike tiles at the 4-Star rarity. 5-Star rarity is actually a bit over budgeted, so technically it should have been reduced slightly, but instead we left the values as-is. It’s very powerful for what it is as a relatively cheap multi-turn stun, but the generated enemy Strike tiles help greatly in keeping the ability itself pretty balanced.

Ability 2 OLD - Electromagnetic Resonance
Cost - Purple PASSIVE

(PASSIVE) Polaris harnesses the electromagnetic energy and metal around her. Whenever your team matches or destroys a Strike, Attack, or Protect tile, deal X damage and create Y friendly special tiles of that tile’s type, each with strength Z.

This ability has been shifted over to Green, and is a partner ability to Particle Accelerator. It has been replaced by Dipolar Balance.

Ability 2 NEW - Dipolar Balance
Cost - 5 Purple AP / PASSIVE

Polaris alters her plans as the battle progresses. If Electromagnetic Resonance is in use, it becomes Particle Accelerator. If Particle Accelerator is in use, it becomes Electromagnetic Resonance.

(PASSIVE) If Polaris is using Electromagnetic Resonance: At start of turn, create a random strength X Strike, Attack, or Protect tile on a Blue, Purple, or Green tile if none exist on those tile colors. If using Particle Accelerator: whenever an ally matches or destroys a friendly Strike, Attack, or Protect tile, create a strength Y Strike, Attack or Protect tile of the same color. This ability will only trigger once per match/destruction. Polaris's Green ability is always unlocked.

If you’re reading this in linear order instead of skipping ahead to the other ability on the list, this looks strange. It looks a bit like a piece of the old Electromagnetic Resonance and a bit of Particle Accelerator. Which it is! But when you realize what that means, it comes into focus. Instead of always having Electromagnetic Resonance active, which when combined with Particle Accelerator instantly generating a proliferating per turn source of damage and dealing damage for all matches and destruction of friendly AND enemy SAP tiles, players now have a choice.

Players will now start with a largely unchanged Particle Accelerator active as her Green, but have the ability to swap that into Electromagnetic Resonance. So they’ll have to choose between per turn damage or full tile proliferation, and they have to buy into the latter for a bit of AP. However, if we simply split out the two abilities and made them both selectable, she’d be losing a large amount of versatility and power. So instead, we created this new ability that grants her a portion of both of the Green abilities, allowing her to still do all the things she did before, while now having to choose a specialty instead of doing it all, all the time.

Ability 3 - Particle Accelerator
Cost - Green PASSIVE

(PASSIVE) Polaris unleashes high velocity energy projectiles on her enemy. At the start of Polaris's turn she deals X damage for each special tile on the board. If none exist, create a friendly strength Y Strike tile.

This ability by itself is unchanged. Due to the fact that Electromagnetic Resonance is no longer always multiplying its power every turn, it works pretty well as it is. We decided to leave it alone due to the fact that players aren’t going to be using the ability full time, as they’re likely to swap off to its partner Electromagnetic Resonance.

Ability 3 NEW - Electromagnetic Resonance
Cost - Green PASSIVE

(PASSIVE) Polaris harnesses the electromagnetic energy and metal around her. Whenever your team matches or destroys a Strike, Attack, or Protect tile, deal %numDamage and create %numTiles friendly special tiles of that tile's type, each with strength %numStrength.

Unfortunately for everyone, THIS ability couldn’t make it through unscathed. After accounting for other abilities magnifying it, as well as the existence of outside abilities such as Rocket & Groot and some Supports boosting this far past its initial strength, the ability had to be brought down to earth.

As a little bit of inside baseball, the original balance called for an average of 3 tiles a turn over the course of 10 turns (with some of those tiles being destroyed for proliferation). In actuality, with cascades and real world use, players would have been averaging about 65 tiles over 10 turns. Which never happened since enemies would die well before then. In its new form, she still comes out overbudgeted, but not by much when the fact that players need 5 Purple AP to bring her into this form, and losing the damage that Electromagnetic Resonance would bring into the bargain.

So while we certainly acknowledge that this is a nerf to this ability in particular, it still packs more of a punch than most other Passive abilities. As a bit of a bonus to her Ascended version, we left the overall balance numbers of her pre-change form, while simply reducing the number of tiles she proliferates. This leaves the ability much stronger than it really should be, but at the 5-Star tier, there are also more tools to deal with her power, so we figure it should work out in the long run.