***** Kang (The Conqueror) *****

@Tony_Foot said:

@HoundofShadow said:
I think 5* Wasp is the counter.

They already said on discord that the rework is not a counter.

@entrailbucket said:

Kang is what players asked for: "give us counters, not nerfs!" Now we'll all get to find out if that's what they really wanted.

It’s just not that simple. Sometimes they are so broken and damaging to the game going forward they have little choice but be reworked. What next after this? Match 3 and win, but have a counter to that from one other release?

It completely trivialises CL10 for almost all rosters. What comes next a much harder CL10 when they rebalance it. CL10 hasn’t been a challenge for a long long while.

If they let this junk stay, I fear for the game going forwards. Or please release 6* if this is the best way they could find to counter chasm I have little faith in their ability going forward.

This is exactly what players asked for. They could (and should) have just fixed Chasm, plus several other guys, and we wouldn't be in this situation, which I agree is bad. This is the alternative to a nerf, and it's the alternative players said they wanted.

I disagree that he won't be useful in pick 2. Remember Chasm can't drain his AP, and they're fixing his interaction with the immortal guys. Get to 9 blue, send Chasm away and then kill a very low-HP Hulk using any other active power, or just Kang's own crazy nukes...seems pretty usable to me.

A few people on here wanted the overpowered guys fixed but the vast majority of players here, and certainly everywhere else, hate those fixes in all circumstances. In one fell swoop they've taken care of all the overpowered defensive characters, so this should make the "counters, not nerfs" crowd very happy. And the best part? 3* Kang is basically as good as the 5*, and he's available to everyone!

Unless...those players never actually wanted that, and they just felt entitled to win everything forever?

I don’t complain about Chasm. Other people complain about him, and all I ever said was iHulk/Chasm was the problem.

I don’t even have a real problem with iHulk/Chasm. I’m in the anti nerf crowd. Make counters not nerfs.

I will run iHulk/Chasm until it isn’t viable. I’m unapologetic about it. It’s in the game and until you are punished for using it I will use it.

I just know other players have a problem with the pair and I recognize it.

@entrailbucket said:
It's the actual counter for all the crazy overpowered defensive passives we've been getting, going back to when SW/Colossus was everywhere. 9ap kill a guy is absolutely a new level of power and it's something we've never seen, but how else do you make those guys beatable?

I’d say damage that cannot be reduced was the counter to those teams. Mechanics that got introduced with Gamora and Ultron, but they didn’t go far enough with it I think. I believe there was some fertile ground there but it was sort of forgotten about and everyone moved on to Chas anyway.

@entrailbucket said:

@dianetics said:
We’ll see how it shakes out in pvp. In PvE though, sure we finally have something different after 2+ years Warhulkoye.

Im not convinced this is the iHulk/Chasm counter though.

They did say they're working on fixing the interaction with the immortal guys. I guess we'll see.

I thought you too said you didn’t think Chas, even with Away working properly would counter the Hulkasm meta. Has that changed now that more videos are being released?

You are a 550 player though. So burn a tent pole down you have a ton of other poles to keep your tent up.

There are groups of players who are moving into the 5* tier saving for months if not years to make the jump.

This isn’t WoW where you can reroll the newest OP class in a week.

What about the players that finally make the jump to see their characters reverted to trash tier? It’s even crazier to think that you spend real money on a character only to see it nerfed after release.

There is another game I played where it was common practice to release OP characters and then nerf them a week or 2 before the next release. The game died because they ran large portions of their community away.

@dianetics said:
You are a 550 player though. So burn a tent pole down you have a ton of other poles to keep your tent up.

There are groups of players who are moving into the 5* tier saving for months if not years to make the jump.

This isn’t WoW where you can reroll the newest OP class in a week.

What about the players that finally make the jump to see their characters reverted to trash tier? It’s even crazier to think that you spend real money on a character only to see it nerfed after release.

There is another game I played where it was common practice to release OP characters and then nerf them a week or 2 before the next release. The game died because they ran large portions of their community away.

The answer to this is to build out a diverse roster instead of going all-in on the good characters. Players saving up for years are doing it to take 3 5* to 550, not to reach 450.

@dianetics said:
Of course the pragmatic approach is best. I totally 100% agree.

But not everyone operates that way. I didn’t jump for a meta character, but there are plenty of people who do.

They took a risk doing that and it didn't pay off. There has to be some downside to going all-in, you're essentially gambling that those characters will be useful forever. It's been the case for awhile now but it hasn't always been so, and players aren't in control of the game. You're putting your fate in the hands of the devs when you do that -- there's nothing stopping them from screwing you over at any time.

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
It's the actual counter for all the crazy overpowered defensive passives we've been getting, going back to when SW/Colossus was everywhere. 9ap kill a guy is absolutely a new level of power and it's something we've never seen, but how else do you make those guys beatable?

I’d say damage that cannot be reduced was the counter to those teams. Mechanics that got introduced with Gamora and Ultron, but they didn’t go far enough with it I think. I believe there was some fertile ground there but it was sort of forgotten about and everyone moved on to Chas anyway.

@entrailbucket said:

@dianetics said:
We’ll see how it shakes out in pvp. In PvE though, sure we finally have something different after 2+ years Warhulkoye.

Im not convinced this is the iHulk/Chasm counter though.

They did say they're working on fixing the interaction with the immortal guys. I guess we'll see.

I thought you too said you didn’t think Chas, even with Away working properly would counter the Hulkasm meta. Has that changed now that more videos are being released?

I think I somehow underestimated the power of "9ap kill a guy," but I do still think we're going to see a Chasm wall, at least for a little while.

Kang is pretty awful on defense, so it's probably going to end up in a situation where you climb against Chasm teams using Kang, then switch to Chasm to float. Players with Kang will beat you, but others won't be able to -- until Kang becomes more widespread.

I don't know what it will look like then. And it may not take very long to hit that state, but it's impossible to predict that. The thing is, Chasm/Hulk is really not a great offensive team -- it's slow. People are using it for defensive value, and it was very good at that. Once Kang essentially removes defense from the game I'm not sure there will be much incentive to use Chasm over a full-bore offensive team.

I'd say the main reason that Chasm/Hulk is the meta is because they're good offensively against virtually all teams (we'll see if Kang proves the exception to this since he negates the AP drain,) though not fast against any, they're at least "good" defensively against almost all teams, and mirror matches (the safest best for any meta) are downright horrible. I swear, I have never come closer to quitting the game completely in my SIM Mirror matches against Chasm/Hulk. They're absolutely miserable to play -- even when they go okay they're boring as tinykitty.

Anyway, back on point (and to not devolve into the "nerf Chasm" topic again, since we have our own threads for that,) I guess we'll see if Kang budges the meta - he has two things working for him there -- the negation of Chasm's most annoying attribute and tactically sending character's "Away." Even if they don't equate "Away" with "Downed" (and, for example, iHulk specifically indicates he resurrects if he has "Non-Downed" allies,) it will still be useful to stop Chasm from spamming his web tiles or iHulk from damaging your team.

I strongly suspect it probably won't, though. He'll be great when boosted, but at this point there are a number of teams that are good against Hulk/Chasm when boosted. That's not the real overall problem...

@Tony_Foot said:

@entrailbucket said:
Oh, I also love that all the "meta" characters people have heavily pulled for are either easily countered by Kang or totally useless when paired with him.

People with 550 Okoyes and Apocalypses about to get smashed in PvE by 2 3* and Hawkeye! It's delightful!

Easily? You will still take a ton of damage in pick 2. I still ran ihulk and okoye in pve because it’s still faster in all but the CN. I also take no damage or can heal it up for free. I also can rip through the pick 2 nodes.

You will get smashed back in pvp every time you use him as it’s zero risk to take him on. Thor and Shang would scare me more.

So what's the problem, then? Sounds like Kang won't change anything at all!