Character Rebalance - Polaris (Lorna Dane) 4*

Polaris design was somewhat manageable in 4*. Then ascension totally destroyed the (delicate) balance. CheapThor just made the situation worst. Nuf said.

@GrimSkald said:
They also throttled her tile multiplication, to wit:

This ability will only trigger once per match/destruction

Previously it would multiply per tile destroyed, so it tended to feed itself a lot. Once you're destroying three tiles per match (and generating 9 more in return) it quickly spirals out of control. Now if you match three. If you destroy 5 (i.e. with MThor) you get 3.

It doesn't cripple her, but it does keep her from going off the rails. I think it's a reasonable thing.

I think she's pretty crippled. This, plus the fact that she doesn't start multiplying SAPs until you get 5 AP, mean that her main use of "spread SAPs all over the board" is basically nerfed by a signficant amount. For her core uses, I'd say she's 70% less powerful now.

If they just took away the damage on match, she'd still be useful. Or if she only made 2 SAP instead of 3. Or if they took away the stun.

But in this current form, I don't see myself using her anymore. Polaris with Grocket won't be fast enough. Polaris with BRB will have a hard time even getting going. Polaris with MThor will take at least a turn or two longer to get started, and it already didn't get started right away.

She's been slowed significantly down, probably closer to what she should have been on release, but I don't think she's used in top teams anymore.

And we haven't seen the MThor nerf yet, so people who invested in Polaris/MThor are going to be pretty upset.

Understandable, but annoying given the amount of resources I put into her.

When you all test new characters/powers, do you just do monte carlo trials using the PvP "AI"? If so, you should use something more cutthroat/brutal/like a human PvP player to test new characters for balance.

I've got Polaris at 550 and I really never use her unless shes' boosted or in shield sim I use her with good and wanda against 4Jugg and OR teams. It seems like she should still be good when boosted, and possibly still function in the goose/wanda team.

As someone who used to play PVP fairly seriously (probably pre-Polaris), has retired a few times, and mostly only does PVE now, here's my take.

This seems like an overcorrection to solve the continued problems with PVP. No one on the PVE side of things is likely complaining that Polaris is too overpowered.

Instanteously, this breaks how many combinations of teams? She is potentially the most useful combo teammate in the game.

She's also the 4* most veterans would advise a newbie to favorite and start building to accelerate growth in the game. For those of us with very developed rosters, this isn't the worst thing in the world, but I think it slows the growth for the newbies and the up and comers.

I would say that another way that she could have been changed was to put part of her kit into a support so that she would need the support to be Polaris as she currently stands. That limits the additional of another support on top of her kit.

Or, somehow limiting her use in PVP might not be a bad idea. Heck, maybe a good idea for PVP would be to limit the number of times you can use a character within a given event so that players are forced to use more of their roster.

As someone who has used Polaris to great effect outside of PVP, I think the changes make for a decently bad loss. And I think that pain is compounded for players who put the effort into earning more than 100 covers to see her ascended.

My two cents, find ways to fix PVP rather than damaging one of the more useful and fun characters in the game.

Combos I've enjoyed: Bill+(1* Jugg or 4* Carnage or Quake or 5* She-Hulk)
Rocket+5* Kamala
5* Capt Marvel+Mr. Negative.

@Omegased said:

@Bustapup said:

Is this a joke? Even running a full 5* team, even a non-ascended Polaris would rip right through teams.....

Dude. Polaris can be scary if you don't choose the right team to face her. My guess is she's powerful because people have either stretched their roster (3 characters high level, the rest under covered), OR people don't pay attention to the team you're fighting.

Non-acended Polaris has 25k health. You should be able to take that down with two turns with the right team.

Whenever I see MThor, Bill and Polaris I always run Shaw, Agatha and Morbius. It's the ONLY team I consistently have success with and even then I don't win all the time because if Polaris and Thor start cascading even that team will lose.

Who else do you counter her with effectively because if I ever try another team they lose

@allen_koholic said:
Why now? Why not years ago, before she was in every offer?

Because then they wouldn't have made as much money off of her.

No doubt she was on their nerf list already, but once she was overwhelming their precious new 6* in this weekend's Boss Event (and my Polaris isn't even ascended!!), it was clear she had to go NOW/first.

They've unleashed a host of counters for her, but they can't make people use them enough to taper her use. They couldn't beat her, so they had to cheat her.

Long live Queen Polaris!!

For pve I think this is very bad timing. I'm already unhappy because playing time got longer with the increased enemy levels. And with these changes it will take even more time.
Until now I switched between a Polaris and a non Polaris team depending on the situation. So maybe I will have to use the other team always, that is until one member of that team gets nerfed too.

@entrailbucket said:

@allen_koholic said:
Why now? Why not years ago, before she was in every offer?

Anyways, she'd fairly useless now. Her utility was flooding the board with SAPs. Locking that behind five AP is a gut punch. She basically has a 1 and a half abilities now.

I'm not convinced the devs play their own game.

They don't.

What's funny about their post is that it resolves some of the old conspiracy theories about her. I remember getting in fights with players who said Polaris was purposely created to give low tier players a way to win the hardest fights, punch up against endgame rosters, etc, and that she was proof the devs wanted players to do that.

Turns out, she was just an accident the whole time! She was "over-budgeted" since release, and her powers were never tested together.

The logical follow-up question is "how the hell didn't anyone figure out that she was over budget until like 5 years later!?!" and the related "who else is still over budget?"

Sometimes they do know. When Worthy Cap was released IceIX straight up admitted they might have to nerf him and they eventually did but not before we all champed him and chased Hawkeye etc. They knew Chasm was OP. And I suspect they knew Jane was too. I think they get caught out more often than not like Sam/Juggs but there is evidence they are not totally working in the dark. Not that I think this is some sort of plan or anything, they seem to like sowing chaos (much like Jane and Polaris).