***** Elektra (Woman Without Fear) *****

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Comments

  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Warbringa said:
    Bad said:
    Apocalypse is one of the Three Damage Multipliers. Dot. That is the peak of this game. Nothing is better than to increase the damage of others so there is no better characters than apocalypse, okoye and SW.

    He is not the best on defense as AI will misuse his yellow. And a lot of new characters have their best power on yellow like elektra so both won't be compatibles. 
    Well, those facts don't make that apocalypse is still one of the best .
    SW is a slower damage multiplier but she is great defensively, more than apocalypse and okoye, so she is more popular. 
    Also SW boost more effectively godboosted characters. 
    And if another character multiplying damage appeared it will be another character which won't be compared with any other. 
    Shang-Chi has something to say about your premise there. He don't need no multiplying (or health packs for that matter) just feeders, leave the damage to him.  



    Damage scalers have been the meta since the end of gambit.  SC IS just a different kind of damage booster (he makes his own match damage so crazy high that even trivial cascades are deadly. There is a train he is generally only played with regards that do boardshake (or stun): those are the characters whose damage he can boost. that creates a premium on characters with boardshake (see the sighclops renaissance) By contrast, boosters like okoye and apoc only boost power damage, which puts a premium on passive damage ticks and multihit powers.  Kitty puts a premium on cheap strike generation. 
    But note that the unifying factor is the damage boosting character that leverages teammate abilities to do massive damage. That has been the mpq meta for ~4 years now.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    bbigler said:
    Because of my restart I think more about the latest 5*s than the established meta Classics.  Meaning, how good are the Latest and do they work together?  Most people I talk to about this game have champed all the meta Classic 5*s, but they’re certainly not representative of all players.  

    What about new players that just started champing 5*s? Or ones that have no 5* champs but a hoard instead?  Should they listen to our comments and skip Elektra because she’s not top 10?  I wouldn’t advise that.  Her yellow power alone makes her viable.  
    She’s certainly playable in my MMR.  She could be paired with Sersi to feed her yellow & red.  From the 4* tier, Clagger can constantly add yellow tiles.  Melinda could constantly feed her Red and provide a 2nd stun color too.  
    Can we have another character category of “Not bad as one of your first 5* champs”? 

    I usually say "X will probably be good for 5* transitioners. . ." To describe characters that are good first 5*s. But I don't know that Elektra is one of them.  DR is ok. And I think her yellow will be out in the board a lot. But until you face level 500+ enemies, most damage comes from unlucky enemy cascades (ans the powers fueled by the resulting ap). And elektra's yellow won't help as much against those because the traps will be plunked away first (compare this to SW's sir that ramps up when you really need it). So I would still recommend waiting for a good true healer as the ideal first leveled 5*.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,564 Chairperson of the Boards
    3 and 4* elektra traps still do their damage thing when matched, don't they? I would assume these would still do what they do if they are part of a match.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    3 and 4* elektra traps still do their damage thing when matched, don't they? I would assume these would still do what they do if they are part of a match.

    (1) no, if matched I think it disarms the trap before it procs, though if you have multiple traps *another* one will proc.
    (2) regardless of the above concern, a trap will go away after each damage event. I think it would apply to all ticks of a multihit power, but discrete events like matches and additional casts will cure through them quickly. So imagine you cast yellow and the do your turn chasing red. Next turn enemy makes one match and has a lucky cascade for 4 more matches.  All of your traps are gone and you may not have 6 yellow to recast, but the enemy has lots of AP. 
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,001 Chairperson of the Boards
    Warbringa said:
    I think they really do need to allow players to choose where most countdown tiles in this game go for most countdown creating powers.  The fact you need to wait for the countdown to occur is already a drawback for most powers and then random placement is just the topping of what else makes this power worse.  If it is a fortified tile then fine, let it be random but if it is unfortified, make it a tactical choice by the player.  Repeaters can stay random since in effect they can fire multiple times but even some of the weaker repeater tiles could be made player's placement choice.  This still wouldn't make countdown powers better than instant or passive powers but it would at least not make them, generally, clearly worse in the vast majority of cases.  
    I think high-variance powers are fine, as long as they're either cheap or crazy powerful or both.  If you put out an unfortified CD that's several turns, it better either win the game if it goes off, or be so cheap that if it gets destroyed you don't care.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    entrailbucket said:
    Warbringa said:
    I think they really do need to allow players to choose where most countdown tiles in this game go for most countdown creating powers.  The fact you need to wait for the countdown to occur is already a drawback for most powers and then random placement is just the topping of what else makes this power worse.  If it is a fortified tile then fine, let it be random but if it is unfortified, make it a tactical choice by the player.  Repeaters can stay random since in effect they can fire multiple times but even some of the weaker repeater tiles could be made player's placement choice.  This still wouldn't make countdown powers better than instant or passive powers but it would at least not make them, generally, clearly worse in the vast majority of cases.  
    I think high-variance powers are fine, as long as they're either cheap or crazy powerful or both.  If you put out an unfortified CD that's several turns, it better either win the game if it goes off, or be so cheap that if it gets destroyed you don't care.

    Well, they might be fine in principle, but hardly anyone uses high variance powers except in low-value matches like ddq or the simulator. The freemium design elements of this game (limited healing, timed scoring, paid shields, etc) all make speed and reliability at least as important as raw power-ceiling.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,001 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx said:
    entrailbucket said:
    Warbringa said:
    I think they really do need to allow players to choose where most countdown tiles in this game go for most countdown creating powers.  The fact you need to wait for the countdown to occur is already a drawback for most powers and then random placement is just the topping of what else makes this power worse.  If it is a fortified tile then fine, let it be random but if it is unfortified, make it a tactical choice by the player.  Repeaters can stay random since in effect they can fire multiple times but even some of the weaker repeater tiles could be made player's placement choice.  This still wouldn't make countdown powers better than instant or passive powers but it would at least not make them, generally, clearly worse in the vast majority of cases.  
    I think high-variance powers are fine, as long as they're either cheap or crazy powerful or both.  If you put out an unfortified CD that's several turns, it better either win the game if it goes off, or be so cheap that if it gets destroyed you don't care.

    Well, they might be fine in principle, but hardly anyone uses high variance powers except in low-value matches like ddq or the simulator. The freemium design elements of this game (limited healing, timed scoring, paid shields, etc) all make speed and reliability at least as important as raw power-ceiling.
    The problem is that they give us high-variance powers that are also *bad*. 

    If somebody had a power that cost 12 and put out a 3-turn unfortified CD that did 100k AoE, that'd be fine.  High risk, high reward.

    Instead we get stuff that costs 10 and makes an unfortified CD for 30k, and that's just not a worthwhile tradeoff.  If I'm taking a risk, it has to offer a commensurate reward.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Hopefully, I'm not the one who said Abigail Brand is better than Apocalypse because that wasn't my point. I did say all characters released have the potential to be good, and by good, I meant in terms of synergy, rather than meta-ness. How good they are also depends on the available number of teammates at the time of release, and teammates released in future releases.

    Apocalypse is better than Elektra in terms of offensiveness. In terms of defensive ability, she's better. That's my point. It's just that conversations around forums related to new releases tend to steer towards speed or meta-ness of characters. I think there's not much fun in comparing with meta all the time because it's simply about one-upping one another based on speed in finishing matches. 

  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    Vhailorx said:
    entrailbucket said:
    Warbringa said:
    I think they really do need to allow players to choose where most countdown tiles in this game go for most countdown creating powers.  The fact you need to wait for the countdown to occur is already a drawback for most powers and then random placement is just the topping of what else makes this power worse.  If it is a fortified tile then fine, let it be random but if it is unfortified, make it a tactical choice by the player.  Repeaters can stay random since in effect they can fire multiple times but even some of the weaker repeater tiles could be made player's placement choice.  This still wouldn't make countdown powers better than instant or passive powers but it would at least not make them, generally, clearly worse in the vast majority of cases.  
    I think high-variance powers are fine, as long as they're either cheap or crazy powerful or both.  If you put out an unfortified CD that's several turns, it better either win the game if it goes off, or be so cheap that if it gets destroyed you don't care.

    Well, they might be fine in principle, but hardly anyone uses high variance powers except in low-value matches like ddq or the simulator. The freemium design elements of this game (limited healing, timed scoring, paid shields, etc) all make speed and reliability at least as important as raw power-ceiling.
    The problem is that they give us high-variance powers that are also *bad*. 

    If somebody had a power that cost 12 and put out a 3-turn unfortified CD that did 100k AoE, that'd be fine.  High risk, high reward.

    Instead we get stuff that costs 10 and makes an unfortified CD for 30k, and that's just not a worthwhile tradeoff.  If I'm taking a risk, it has to offer a commensurate reward.

    Maybe, but would you use your hypothetical power in pvp?  Or pve when you want placement? When speed is important a high variance power very undesirable since it, by definition, includes some opportunity cost at a minimum.
    Also, in the modern game characters like SC or apoc can get pretty close to 10ap/100k damage without having to wait for a CD to resolve, so I think demi would need to make the upside a lot higher than even your wildest dreams to make a tempting power.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,001 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx said:
    entrailbucket said:
    Vhailorx said:
    entrailbucket said:
    Warbringa said:
    I think they really do need to allow players to choose where most countdown tiles in this game go for most countdown creating powers.  The fact you need to wait for the countdown to occur is already a drawback for most powers and then random placement is just the topping of what else makes this power worse.  If it is a fortified tile then fine, let it be random but if it is unfortified, make it a tactical choice by the player.  Repeaters can stay random since in effect they can fire multiple times but even some of the weaker repeater tiles could be made player's placement choice.  This still wouldn't make countdown powers better than instant or passive powers but it would at least not make them, generally, clearly worse in the vast majority of cases.  
    I think high-variance powers are fine, as long as they're either cheap or crazy powerful or both.  If you put out an unfortified CD that's several turns, it better either win the game if it goes off, or be so cheap that if it gets destroyed you don't care.

    Well, they might be fine in principle, but hardly anyone uses high variance powers except in low-value matches like ddq or the simulator. The freemium design elements of this game (limited healing, timed scoring, paid shields, etc) all make speed and reliability at least as important as raw power-ceiling.
    The problem is that they give us high-variance powers that are also *bad*. 

    If somebody had a power that cost 12 and put out a 3-turn unfortified CD that did 100k AoE, that'd be fine.  High risk, high reward.

    Instead we get stuff that costs 10 and makes an unfortified CD for 30k, and that's just not a worthwhile tradeoff.  If I'm taking a risk, it has to offer a commensurate reward.

    Maybe, but would you use your hypothetical power in pvp?  Or pve when you want placement? When speed is important a high variance power very undesirable since it, by definition, includes some opportunity cost at a minimum.
    Also, in the modern game characters like SC or apoc can get pretty close to 10ap/100k damage without having to wait for a CD to resolve, so I think demi would need to make the upside a lot higher than even your wildest dreams to make a tempting power.
    Eh, maybe.  At least it'd theoretically be useful?  Something like that is better than what we actually have, which is a bunch of high-variance stuff that's risky but never worth the reward.

    Alternatively you do it like Hawkeye, where the arrows are cheap enough that you don't care if they get blown up.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    If we keep comparing new characters with meta characters and expect them to do better, the only thing you get is power creep. I remember a lot of players lamenting about power creeps and how it makes older 5* useless. By releasing meta 5* more frequently, this will speed up the damage gap between characters. And rebalances have to be done even more frequently just to keep up with the damage gap.

    If the dev wants to create meta 5* more often, they already have a lot of prototypes like Okoye, Kitty, Apocalypse, Wanda, iHulk, Colossus or Polaris to work with. All they need to do is make them deal more damage, make it easier to trigger, repackage them into other tile effect types and you have new meta. 

    For example, if players want someone to replace Kitty as SAP buff and counter Colossus/Wanda, the dev could buff Ultron to make sure he can:

    1) strengthen/create SAP tile by at least 3500 damage every turn with no minimum criteria like needing at least one SAP tile.

    2) allow players to choose the type of SAP tile to create before battle start and here's your new SAP tile buff meta.

    3)  prevents friendly SAP from getting affected by damage reduction ability passively.

    You will see him in shield sim as frequently as Kitty/BRB/Polaris and Colossus/Wanda/Apocalypse. He might even replace them.

    With only 16% of new 5* releases being worth comparing with meta every year, why focus on comparing with meta when the dev are not interested in creating 5* meta more frequently? 
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    It depends on the role of each characters.
    To me:

    Odin: tank for allies, damage reduction, fortification, ap control, healing, buff damage with strong strike tiles

    Colossus: strong self-match damage buff, strong match-damage reduction for allies and self, hard hitting black power, special tile remover.

    Colossus is better than Odin for ease of use, but it doesn't mean that you can't use Odin with Colossus together. It depends on your goals and situations.

    What I meant is that the dev's goal is to focus on fun and interesting mechanics, rather than meta. They mentioned it in some Q&A 5 to 6 years ago, and their actions continue to support that view till now. The evidence is clear: 2 out of 12 releases per year in the last 4-5 years are meta, or 16.67% of releases are meta. If we really want to push it, maybe there might be 3 a year, depending on criteria. Out of 66 5* released, only 6-7 are meta and it represents 10.6% of the 5* population.

    On the other hand, the players' goal in forums revolves around speed or meta. They believe that all other players play for speed as well.

    If we were to look at at the above contradicting views between the devs and the players in forum, either the dev are out of touch or we are out of touch. 

    If we were to look at frequency of meta release from another angle, releasing fewers metas are better for majority of the players, especially for those who can't keep up.

    For those who can only pick and choose due to lack of resources, it's better to have fewer meta releases so that they won't be stuck in a "what if the next set of characters would be even better than this meta?" conundrum. It takes me about 3 months to hoard enough to champ 3 sets of 5*. However, for some other players, it could take them 5 to 10 months to gather enough resources to champ them. For the 0.01%, it takes them about 50 days to hoard enough to champ 3 sets of 5*, if they want to. Somehow, I think if the hardcore players can hoard for 550 even more quickly, we might see more 5* meta release.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,001 Chairperson of the Boards
    If they insist on releasing "good" and "bad" characters, which is *completely ridiculous*, then they need to make sure one out of every three releases is "good." (Feel free to substitute whatever word you prefer to good and bad -- meta or whatever)

    Otherwise they're completely screwing new players or low-information players.  Should a player really be required to read a bunch of stuff on a forum to figure out that some characters at the same rarity tier totally outclass other characters? 

    It is not at all obvious to a new player that some characters are effectively 6* and some are effectively 4*, when they're all rated at 5 stars.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Unless you can prove that all players are only interested in meta characters, then you can't say they are screwed. Majority of players don't even min-max and they play leisurely.

    Your criteria revolves around speed. Not all players' critieria revolve around speed. Majority of players play for fun or for leisure. If majority of players are min-max or focus on meta, at least 50% of pvp leaderboard will be a minimum of 2000 points in SCL 10. For SCL 9, at least 50% of the scores would be at least 1000-1200. In PvE, at least half of the players would be doing optimum clear. 

    Not all new players would be thinking about meta. Such players who think about meta all the time are used to playing meta in other games. Even before they play the game, they would have researched carefully. Players who don't care about meta won't bother about who is meta or not. They simply play the game. They are likely to focus on champing their favourite characters or champ whoever they can get hold of. That's where the inspiration for shards design come from. Majority of players are not interested in champing every characters. They would focus on their favourite characters. Meta characters can be someone's favourite but it doesn't mean that all players' favourite characters are meta characters.

    As long as players continue to impose what 5* MPQ power design should be like onto the dev, they will continue to be disappointed by the majority of 5* releases. If you really want to impose how game design should be in MPQ, a realistic option would be to apply for a job as a Design Lead with Demiurge. It's a much more practical option because imposing your own preferences on the game power design as an individual player or as a small group of player doesn't work. Players have been asking dev to stop creating DOA or bad characters for years, but they are still doing so. 

    If the dev are the one who's out of touch, they would have gone bust before 2016.  The fact that they can continue to release bad/non-meta characters and still survive kind of prove that they are doing something right that makes majority of the players happy, and it's definitely not focusing on releasing only meta characters.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    That reply wasn't meant for 5* acquistion. It was meant for metaness of characters.

    Some have been trying to impose their views on how MPQ should be but they have been failing all these years. Because they couldn't deal with such failure, they decided that it is the dev who fails at their job by saying they don't know how to do their jobs or they don't know how to design characters, or they are out of touch. I apologise for missing out "trying to".

    Like I said, it depends on the players' goals. If you still don't believe that majority of players play casually, go join a top 5k to 10k alliance. Even a T100 alliance requirement is pretty low. Look at their scores for the next 3 months and you'll see what I'm saying. You caa preach about how to play the game "effectively" for the next few months in the chat and most of them won't even bother with your advice.

    If very casual players expect to hoard 200 LTs as quick as competitive players, they are being unrealistic. They should not be setting a goals meant for competitive players. Look, we have shards now. If they want to build meta characters faster, they can do so. In reddit, some player champed Apocalypse with the use of shards, feeders and pulls within 300 days and he's not even a whale.

    Saying that it's difficult to build meta characters are becoming more of a myth, with the introduction of shards, feeders, milestone rewards. Besides, there are 2 meta a year, and meta stores are held 3-4 times a year. So, there are plenty of opportunities to cover meta.

    The important point is all types of players exists. Just because winning matches quickly is the best way doesn't mean that it is the only way. For players who play for speed, winning matches quickly is important, but they consist of only 1 subset of the entire playerbase. Because they are many subsets of players, it's only right that the dev release characters that makes as many subsets of players as possible. Since competitive players remain a minority; therefore, 16% of 5* releases are for you. The rest is for non-meta chasing players.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,001 Chairperson of the Boards
    Aren't you also trying to impose your views on MPQ?  Who are you to say that competitive players' ideas are wrong or that they deserve only a certain percentage of characters?  If all views are valid, why are they wrong for advocating for their views?
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    I have never said anyone's point of view is wrong. What I emphasise is that there are many subsets of players, and therefore many different viewpoints. So, the dev creates different mechanics or playstyles to make as many players happy as possible.

    What's happening is that meta or speed chasing players  want to increase the number of "good" or meta characters released by suggesting a certain minimum type of mechanics criteria, for example cds and repeaters must be fortified or must be 1-turn. 

    Statistically speaking, meta chasing players will be unhappy with ~85% of the time with new 5* releases. Why isn't meta released 50% of the time to make this subset of players happier? Is it because the dev don't know how to design or play their games, or is it due to other reasons? 



  • bbigler
    bbigler Posts: 2,179 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx said:
    bbigler said:
    Because of my restart I think more about the latest 5*s than the established meta Classics.  Meaning, how good are the Latest and do they work together?  Most people I talk to about this game have champed all the meta Classic 5*s, but they’re certainly not representative of all players.  

    What about new players that just started champing 5*s? Or ones that have no 5* champs but a hoard instead?  Should they listen to our comments and skip Elektra because she’s not top 10?  I wouldn’t advise that.  Her yellow power alone makes her viable.  
    She’s certainly playable in my MMR.  She could be paired with Sersi to feed her yellow & red.  From the 4* tier, Clagger can constantly add yellow tiles.  Melinda could constantly feed her Red and provide a 2nd stun color too.  
    Can we have another character category of “Not bad as one of your first 5* champs”? 

    I usually say "X will probably be good for 5* transitioners. . ." To describe characters that are good first 5*s. But I don't know that Elektra is one of them.  DR is ok. And I think her yellow will be out in the board a lot. But until you face level 500+ enemies, most damage comes from unlucky enemy cascades (ans the powers fueled by the resulting ap). And elektra's yellow won't help as much against those because the traps will be plunked away first (compare this to SW's sir that ramps up when you really need it). So I would still recommend waiting for a good true healer as the ideal first leveled 5*.
    Well, a 5* transitioner doesn’t have to fight level 500+ characters, they can easily skip those matches and fight someone their own size.  There’s plenty of people in that MMR.  

    Even if they wanted to fight boosted 5*s with Elektra, they just need to bring either Clagger or Melinda along to fuel her yellow or red every turn.  Either have constant trap tile protection or constant stuns.  If they had Sersi champed, she could choke out enemy colors like Black, Blue, Purple and provide strong SAP tiles as well, then feed yellow using green.  So, I believe you can play 5* PVP with her until you get something better. 

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