PvP broken mechanics

[Frost]

Start listing them here:

- Multiple hits are procing talisman effects in each hit.

- Marksman passive on Desert Marauder is making talisman procs to proc 100% for every toon. Seens to happen only with Desert Marauder, Pyro Soldier seens normal.

- Passive Agression has no counter. If your team don't go first, you will be cc'ed and lose 100% time.

[Sparton_LOTB]

Thanks for making this thread.

At some point either this week or next week, me and Kaz would like to have more formal threads investigating specific characters to help improve the balance of PVP. These threads will go into specifics for what kinds of nerfs (if any) we should do to characters, or if there are alternative solutions we can do to help improve the balance of PVP without directly reducing the power or capabilities of characters.

We will have some of our own thoughts for solutions, but if you (or others) have ideas for what a fair adjustment would be to solve any of the problems listed, definitely post that so everyone can have a discussion about what would be fair to do that doesn't make a character useless/not able to do it's primary job in a meaningful capacity.

[R1ck]

There is a problem with gunner corrupt rescuer, Eddies can't be revive by her (is it normal?), so when in a team there are two dead chars being one of them an Eddie, she tries to revive the Eddie and she can't so the turn to revive someone is lost.

Another thing to check is the rate paralize talismans stun, I notice freezzing talismans trigger more often. Maybe my perception is wrong.

[Frost]

Thanks for making this thread.

At some point either this week or next week, me and Kaz would like to have more formal threads investigating specific characters to help improve the balance of PVP. These threads will go into specifics for what kinds of nerfs (if any) we should do to characters, or if there are alternative solutions we can do to help improve the balance of PVP without directly reducing the power or capabilities of characters.

We will have some of our own thoughts for solutions, but if you (or others) have ideas for what a fair adjustment would be to solve any of the problems listed, definitely post that so everyone can have a discussion about what would be fair to do that doesn't make a character useless/not able to do it's primary job in a meaningful capacity.

I'm not a fan of nerfs AT ALL, but sometimes there's nothing else you can do.

There are a lot of ideas in my mind, but busy at work and my 1st daughter will be born soon so I have a lot else to think too! (No, I won't bring my daughter to the slaughter :P)

One thing I want o see that is both a fix and a nerf is talisman procs only procing once in multiple-hit toons. Yeah, people will cry, I myself will cry, but for the health of PvP this must be done.

Also, the procs are kind strange. Freeze and Paralize talismans have the same proc chance, but freeze procs a lot while paralize almost never procs. I'd triple check all the proc rates of all talismans. And also check Marksman passive both in Desert Marauder and Pyro Soldier, it seens to be working different in both and seen to have some glitch with Desert Marauder.


What is giving me the creeps is how we can tune Prisoner in PvP w/o destroying him and not making another toon too strong. Prisoner alone is fine, but when you combo him with another high proc toon like Gunner Golden Son or with a heavy defense toon like Warrior Troll or with a Marksman Desert Marauder he's simply too powerfull. The only counter to that combo is to have a Prisoner yourself and pray the aoe heavy CC enemy not to get a perfect hit.

The first thing that came to my mind is that Passive Agression could be changed to negate a passive from a random enemy every round instead of all passives. Or maybe it steal a random passive for your entire team.

[MrFreeze]

Somethings definitely not right with freeze/paralyze. I have freeze on my yellow golden son. Usually freezes 2-3 enemies minimum on perfect hits. I put paralyze on there and was lucky to get 1-2.

Your always gonna have some characters that are more desirable in pvp than others. You could make everyone fight with the same generic team, but that'd be stupid. For the maxed players who are running maxed out everything, it's gonna almost always come down to who goes first. That's the problem. You could change things about these characters but it'd have to be drastic to make much difference I think. Even if you follow Frost's suggestion about talisman procs, if you make a team with 3-4 freeze tali characters plus that perfect hit passive, it's gonna do the same thing. Nerf the prisoner and you still got the blue bat. I think there's gonna be strong teams no matter what. Making it hurt less (points lost) when you lose, might help. I think it's gonna always come down to who goes first when you've got a couple strong teams going against each other.

[XcarecroW]

Nerfing multi hit chars to only proc once is bad idea, they are so common chars that easily everybody can have so everyone can do the same, and they usually dont have so much hp, so you want to make them useless? I see no problem here. Nerfing prisoner? Lots of people have it lately, i have one myself and i still lose many defenses, having him is not a win 100% everytime, i dont think he should be nerfed as well. There are many ways to counter teams, is not about crying like a child because you dont have those chars and want to nerf them. The people complainings is about who starts first usually wins, if you have a good team, it is almost a 100% win. And of course the bugs, paralisys talismans dont proc like freeze even with the same chance. Fix the desert marauder marksman to not proc the talismans 100% everytime, it seems ok in the assassin pyro soldier. And fix the thief talisman to not fill the fury bar with just one char perfect hit in the first round. Teams like Nicko's, that exploit all this things should not be permited, 2 tailgunners fury in 2 rounds? Are you kidding me? Even just one fury in the first round is enough to kill a team without a chance to do nothing, remember that tailgunners fury gives extra turn to the team if kills someone.
And if the devs still think that nerfing prisoner is a must, how about make him that he cant get affected by any status (stun, freeze, etc) and make his attack AOE.

[BillLion]

And if the devs still think that nerfing prisoner is a must, how about make him that he cant get affected by any status (stun, freeze, etc) and make his attack AOE.

If the Prisoner had to get nerfed then maybe a fair move would be to make his passive ability his power ability instead. Still gives him the powerful skill, but gives those who don't go first a fighting chance against an offensive onslaught.

[Frost]

Somethings definitely not right with freeze/paralyze. I have freeze on my yellow golden son. Usually freezes 2-3 enemies minimum on perfect hits. I put paralyze on there and was lucky to get 1-2.

Your always gonna have some characters that are more desirable in pvp than others. You could make everyone fight with the same generic team, but that'd be stupid. For the maxed players who are running maxed out everything, it's gonna almost always come down to who goes first. That's the problem. You could change things about these characters but it'd have to be drastic to make much difference I think. Even if you follow Frost's suggestion about talisman procs, if you make a team with 3-4 freeze tali characters plus that perfect hit passive, it's gonna do the same thing. Nerf the prisoner and you still got the blue bat. I think there's gonna be strong teams no matter what. Making it hurt less (points lost) when you lose, might help. I think it's gonna always come down to who goes first when you've got a couple strong teams going against each other.

I agree with some points, some teams and some toons are stronger than others, and end game players with everything maxed could go down to who strike first, but there's a difference between having a chance to win and having no chance to win. IMO having no chance to win is wrong.

The defeat and revenge mechanic is also really broken, as is the matchmaking. I dunno why high rank guys like Nicko, Pizzafryday, etc. keep attacking me, because they are 4000+ points and I'm 1300~ points. They never pop in my attack list, I wonder why I keep popping in their list. Shouldn't they also have the cap of ~1000 difference points like I have?

Also the endless attack/revenge cicle hurts a lot. Be attacked by the same player 5x times a day... The system is very strange. I think it should be like troopers: you can attack someone only once a day, and revenge only once. The beta playerbase is small? Ok, but I'd take it to have fewer people to attack/revenge every day than right now that I go to sleep and drop 300 points because high rank guys attack me multiple times.

Points system is also broken as I said. If I attack Nicko and win I get 24 points, but if he attacks me he also gets 24 points. If I attack someone with almost the same points I get only 10. Shouldn't we get less points the lower the rank the guy we attack? Like if I attack someone with 500 points I get 2, if I attack someone with 2000 points I get 24.

Again nothing personal against Nicko it's just he's a very good example to test things.

[Hypnos]

How about changing the prisoner's passive to: "disable random enemies' passives". In my opinion this is the perfect solution to this issue. Prisoner's passive still works, but luck is introduced for both teams and there is no certain winner every time.

[BillLion]

How about changing the prisoner's passive to: "disable random enemies' passives". In my opinion this is the perfect solution to this issue. Prisoner's passive still works, but luck is introduced for both teams and there is no certain winner every time.

Even better

[slauki]

Nerfing multi hit chars to only proc once is bad idea, they are so common chars that easily everybody can have so everyone can do the same, and they usually dont have so much hp, so you want to make them useless? I see no problem here.

it's absolutly necessary IMO to nerf them so that only the first hit procs or not, where's the fun then the guys always freezes 2/4 or 3/4 of the team? that's absurd, and i feel that some chars are more broken than others. so the gunner golden son is more broken then the assassin or the possessed multihit rockets i feel. cannot prove this, but it seems so.



The defeat and revenge mechanic is also really broken, as is the matchmaking.

Also the endless attack/revenge cicle hurts a lot. Be attacked by the same player 5x times a day... The system is very strange.

Points system is also broken as I said. .

totally agree with this...

To the prisoner:
the prisoner is okay, i wouldn't nerf him the only problem is that his passive cannot be counterd. so we need a way to counter him.
it would be enough to add the passive to some more characters, that would do the job. even a corrupt ox cultist would be great with this passive, so
maybe that would be a good option. the prisoner would stay as powerfull as he is but the other team would have have the chance to block passives as well.


OR: change the prisoner, so that he also removes passives of the own team.... that would be probably easy to do and would also be an option. if you want to use this guy, you also have no passives...

[Frost]

Or maybe Passive Agression: All enemy passives also applyes to your entire team. You will have your passives (chance of surviving/winning) but they will also apply to your enemy, making him harder to beat. That would be very interesting, the more passives you have the stronger Prisoner becomes w/o removing your chance of winning.

[XcarecroW]

it's absolutly necessary IMO to nerf them so that only the first hit procs or not, where's the fun then the guys always freezes 2/4 or 3/4 of the team? that's absurd, and i feel that some chars are more broken than others. so the gunner golden son is more broken then the assassin or the possessed multihit rockets i feel. cannot prove this, but it seems so.

What is the point of a multi hit char then? Just make all chars one hit. Seriously, the golden sons are glass canons and the multi hit is one of their unique abilities. If you nerf that, you are damaging all burn and mark talismans too and make them useless. Come on, you almost all have been crying for all the nerfs and now you are asking for more? This is ridiculous.

Except Nicko and Pizzafriday all other players are really paired in points. It is going to be a pay to win in the end, like it or not.

[slauki]

What is the point of a multi hit char then? Just make all chars one hit. Seriously, the golden sons are glass canons and the multi hit is one of their unique abilities. If you nerf that, you are damaging all burn and mark talismans too and make them useless. Come on, you almost all have been crying for all the nerfs and now you are asking for more? This is ridiculous.

the point of using them, is their ultra hight damage. yeah they are glass cannons but did you see the thread where someone put 21+ burns on an enemy, that's ridiculously broken. you can burn down every enemy without a chance to counter. that's no nerf that's simply fixing a broken mechanic.

they can mutihit, that's perfectly okay, but they shouldn't abuse the talismans proc chance by doing that. that's the only point, and i bet this is not intended as well, it's simply a bug, like the multiple mark consume where you could do 108% damage to all enemies for 7 power....

[XcarecroW]

Slauki i understand your point man, but they are not super rare chars to get, and everyone can have them. Sometimes you will start first and you can use them in your own advantage, and against them in pvp, we all know that the AI doesnt usually make a lot of perfect hits. And if you talk about balanced game, think about players that are not high level and they can use them to fight a higher level, if you nerf them, low level players will be more screwed.

They should try to fix first, the system points reward and the infinite revenge thing. Those things is what usually people is complaining for.

[Aristo4]

Except Nicko and Pizzafriday all other players are really paired in points. .

By the way, why are you talking about pizzafriday in a 3rd person way?

[Nicko]

By the way, why are you talking about pizzafriday in a 3rd person way?

Nicko is enjoying this discussion

[Demoonchild]

Yeah, I think that multiple hitters needs a review...

When I use a Golden Son Assassin with a void shield that triggers almost 100% of the time, or a Gunner GS with Thief and Freezing talismans(same percent of triggering) I REALLY FEEL LIKE CHEATING....
The chars must not be nerfed, instead YOU MUST check the % of effect triggering, that what is wrong... Every hit must be taken as just one per enemy, for triggering % purposes, just like other AOE attacks.

On other way, I like The Prisoner passive as it is(yes, I own one), since is the only feature that makes him "Special"... But I also like fight teams with him, just go with high HP chars, and focuse my attacks on the bastard. Once he's dead, all the passives are back.

[Frost]

What is the point of a multi hit char then? Just make all chars one hit. Seriously, the golden sons are glass canons and the multi hit is one of their unique abilities. If you nerf that, you are damaging all burn and mark talismans too and make them useless. Come on, you almost all have been crying for all the nerfs and now you are asking for more? This is ridiculous.

Except Nicko and Pizzafriday all other players are really paired in points. It is going to be a pay to win in the end, like it or not.

The problem is not with multi-hit per se, the problem is each hit procing talismans. The multi-hit is very cool and very powerfull, even w/o talismans it's a great mechanic. The problem is every hit procing talisman effects such as freeze.

In a one hit toon you have 12% chance of procing freeze per enemy unity. With a toon that hits 5 times it's 5 * 12%, it almost land 100% of times in all toons, wich might be a bug or a broken mechanic, only devs can say that.

Wil hurt burning teams? For sure. I built warrior golden son over burning talismans and can get at least 6 burning marks, paired with Desert Guardian or Pyro Soldier or Wickerman Eddie or Warrior Voidling is a ton of damage. But what hurts more is having no action AT ALL. I also feel sorry for my enemy when I use Horrow with GR Eddie and freeze entire team in first hit, it's a full win, but it's broken.

Also, I'm pretty sure the skill procs have something to do with talisman procs, might have a bug here too. CG is 100% chance to land magic debuff, might be why he freezes/stuns a lot more than any other toon.

Well, all in all, procs seen to be the broken mechanic here (alongside with Passive Aggression), so let's wait and see what Kaz and Sparton have to say about this mechanics, how they should work and what will be done about then.

Remember guys one thing that was too powerfull and changed before PvP came out: reflect shields. They were returning 50% of the damage done, now they are returning 25%. Immagine if they stayed the same...

[Frost]

I like The Prisoner passive as it is(yes, I own one), since is the only feature that makes him "Special"... But I also like fight teams with him, just go with high HP chars, and focuse my attacks on the bastard. Once he's dead, all the passives are back.

You can go full Sentinel team with maxed health talismans agains Nicko, if he goes first you'll lose no matter what.

Only way to counter his defense is having a Prisoner yourself and pray you go 1st round or pray he doesn't land perfect hit on golden son. Again Nicko's an example, but this can be done with a lot of heavy CC teams.

[zamasu]

@Sparton, @Kaz. Have you thought about lowering the damage for PvP purposes only? It is very discouraging that whoever goes first wins. The damage set up is too high. You shouldn't be able to murder 2-3 characters in one turn (Not even with class advantage). The team that goes second should be able to still win the match, by setting up shields/healing/debufs etc. I believe that PvP should be about strategy not about whoever goes first for the kill.

[Frost]

@Sparton, @Kaz. Have you thought about lowering the damage for PvP purposes only? It is very discouraging that whoever goes first wins. The damage set up is too high. You shouldn't be able to murder 2-3 characters in one turn (Not even with class advantage). The team that goes second should be able to still win the match, by setting up shields/healing/debufs etc. I believe that PvP should be about strategy not about whoever goes first for the kill.

Don't think it's needed, since you have a lot of means to mitigate damage (immunity, invincibility, block, vanish, heal).

Let's be real, the team that goes second loses because they are almost ever under hard CC (freeze/stun) and can't do anything. You can plan your team as clever as you can like Nicko, you go second you'll have at least 3 toons frozen or stunned or taunted. Yes, Nicko's pretty dead if he doesn't go first.

This means that hard CC is broken? Depends, I don't think so yet. Some toons procing hard CC 100% to all toons? Yes, that's broken as hell.

[Silentknight]

Maybe if they made all characters equal everyone would be happy. If devs keep nerfing characters that will be the end result! Biggest problem with arena is who goes 1st! 2 out of 3 would make more sense. With the 3rd match,if necessary decided by fewest turns, most damage dealt,least damage taken etc.
Also haven't spent a dime on this game except $6.99 on 700 ironite sale to buy rare soul megapack. Not even real money, Google Opinion Reward Program. That's what I spend all ironite on, collecting characters. Have not & will not use refresh in arena.
Usually rank between 10th & 20th & 3 of 4 members of my team do not have maxed talismans so....
Sry,should've posted in pvp feedback

[zamasu]

Don't think it's needed, since you have a lot of means to mitigate damage (immunity, invincibility, block, vanish, heal).

Let's be real, the team that goes second loses because they are almost ever under hard CC (freeze/stun) and can't do anything. You can plan your team as clever as you can like Nicko, you go second you'll have at least 3 toons frozen or stunned or taunted. Yes, Nicko's pretty dead if he doesn't go first.

This means that hard CC is broken? Depends, I don't think so yet. Some toons procing hard CC 100% to all toons? Yes, that's broken as hell.

This is not necessarily true. for example, you can have a [insert gunner character] with 6 health talismans (if possible) but once he gets hit by an assassin toon [golden son for example] he will be dead no matter what. A character should not be able to kill a fully maxed character in one hit or a team should not be downsized to a one character after the first turn.

and it is true you have means to mitigate damage but most of them require for you to cast them, and how are you going to be able to cast them if your characters are dead? It would make more sense to lower the damage until a point where a team cannot be destroyed in the first round and then the team that goes second can at least use their abilities and still have a possibility to win the battle.
I am not saying that the team that goes first should not have the advantage, but this advantage should not be the one that decides who wins 99% of the time.

And yes CC (idk what that stands for, but I know what you are referring to) needs to be revised and/or we need characters that are able to counter those abilities and that are not hard as hell to get as it is right now.

[Frost]

Maybe if they made all characters equal everyone would be happy. If devs keep nerfing characters that will be the end result! Biggest problem with arena is who goes 1st! 2 out of 3 would make more sense. With the 3rd match,if necessary decided by fewest turns, most damage dealt,least damage taken etc.
Also haven't spent a dime on this game except $6.99 on 700 ironite sale to buy rare soul megapack. Not even real money, Google Opinion Reward Program. That's what I spend all ironite on, collecting characters. Have not & will not use refresh in arena.
Usually rank between 10th & 20th & 3 of 4 members of my team do not have maxed talismans so....

Nerfing is way different from fixing a broken mechanic. Multiple hits, high damage, CC, all fine. Talisman procing 100% times? Broken.

[Frost]

This is not necessarily true. for example, you can have a [insert gunner character] with 6 health talismans (if possible) but once he gets hit by an assassin toon [golden son for example] he will be dead no matter what. A character should not be able to kill a fully maxed character in one hit or a team should not be downsized to a one character after the first turn.

and it is true you have means to mitigate damage but most of them require for you to cast them, and how are you going to be able to cast them if your characters are dead? It would make more sense to lower the damage until a point where a team cannot be destroyed in the first round and then the team that goes second can at least use their abilities and still have a possibility to win the battle.
I am not saying that the team that goes first should not have the advantage, but this advantage should not be the one that decides who wins 99% of the time.

And yes CC (idk what that stands for, but I know what you are referring to) needs to be revised and/or we need characters that are able to counter those abilities and that are not hard as hell to get as it is right now.

That's where passives go. You have shield passives, heal/cleanse passives, immunity passives, block passives, etc. You don't need to cast to mitigate damage, just build your team differently.

Kill entire team in one hit? Well a fully maxed Assassin golden son against a fully maxed gunner team will be a one hit, yes, that's because of affinity and true damage. Try that with a sentinel team or some team with a Green Bat. One toon will always die no matter you do.

The problem is not damage, the problem is broken mechanics.

[zamasu]

That's where passives go. You have shield passives, heal/cleanse passives, immunity passives, block passives, etc. You don't need to cast to mitigate damage, just build your team differently.

Kill entire team in one hit? Well a fully maxed Assassin golden son against a fully maxed gunner team will be a one hit, yes, that's because of affinity and true damage. Try that with a sentinel team or some team with a Green Bat. One toon will always die no matter you do.

The problem is not damage, the problem is broken mechanics.

But how many characters do you have out there with those passives? I can count just a handful. and I agree that that's where the passives come to play but, like I said, we only have a handful of them and they are really hard to get at the moment. that's why we need more characters with such abilities. But with the way the game is built at the moment high damage is a huge problem.

Killing an entire team just because of class advantage shouldn't doesn't make sense. There should be and advantage but not as high as it is right now. Once again, killing a whole team in one turn doesn't make sense at all.

[MrFreeze]

Maybe this is too far off topic, but what about introducing things like immunity, perfect hit and maybe even the prisoners passive on a talisman set. It wouldn't be an immediate fix, but it would open up options for countering some of these things down the road. Another really lame option to even things up would be to have both teams run on auto. Please don't do that though. It would really suck in my opinion.

[slauki]

If we reduce the damage one thing will change: Not the team with first hit wins (not sure if that's true anyway), the human control team would win 98% of the time. that would be bad for every defense, since the AI would use the wrong moves at the wrong time. The longer the match lasts the bigger is this disadvantage for AI. More damage and early decisions are better for the defending team.

BTW: maybe my defense is complete shit, but my team doesn't always win when they get first. i think many don't win automaticly, only the teams wich exploit
the broken mechanics to their favour have a big advantage. so maybe not so many changes are needed TBH, let's fix the broken things mentioned here and let's take a look what comes up next. that's how things get better....

[BillLion]

so maybe not so many changes are needed TBH, let's fix the broken things mentioned here and let's take a look what comes up next. that's how things get better....

I agree. And I think damage reduction is a really bad idea. Especially since there are some obvious mechanics that can be tweaked for balance before going to such drastic measures that will have everyone chasing the devs with torches and pitchforks

[Sparton_LOTB]

This is probably going to be a pretty large thread, so I won't be responding to everything, but there is a few things I want to touch on that I won't end up covering in eventual character-specific discussions.


The defeat and revenge mechanic is also really broken, as is the matchmaking. I dunno why high rank guys like Nicko, Pizzafryday, etc. keep attacking me, because they are 4000+ points and I'm 1300~ points. They never pop in my attack list, I wonder why I keep popping in their list. Shouldn't they also have the cap of ~1000 difference points like I have?

The most common complaint we've seen about matchmaking is seeing the same people over and over. The reason people at the top can see people way below them is if it was something like only seeing people within 1000 points of them, some of them would literally only see 1 other person, or in the case of ranks 3-10 of this writing only seeing 10-20 people (and if that's all you see and are consistently winning... you'll be pushing a lot of what you see below you, seeing even less people).

It's annoying, but it's largely a product of this being in beta and there being a limited pool of our playerbase having access to PVP. Once we have the full player base at it this'll be a bit more constrained, but there's not much we can do about that with a limited player pool, sadly.


Also the endless attack/revenge cicle hurts a lot. Be attacked by the same player 5x times a day... The system is very strange. I think it should be like troopers: you can attack someone only once a day, and revenge only once. The beta playerbase is small? Ok, but I'd take it to have fewer people to attack/revenge every day than right now that I go to sleep and drop 300 points because high rank guys attack me multiple times.

Basically the same answer as above; even though most people aren't attacking 100+ people a day, it'd start discouraging people from playing as they either only start matchmaking people way above them (punishing and asking for a loss) or matchmaking people way below them (basically bullying people who are weaker/not engaging as much).

(There's still the subject of the game encouraging people to revenge more than we expected people would; that's still on our radar as something to better constrain/discourage.)


Points system is also broken as I said. If I attack Nicko and win I get 24 points, but if he attacks me he also gets 24 points. If I attack someone with almost the same points I get only 10. Shouldn't we get less points the lower the rank the guy we attack? Like if I attack someone with 500 points I get 2, if I attack someone with 2000 points I get 24.

The points do scale based on how different your points are from your opponent already; if you can get 24 points against him, he's certainly getting less than the baseline 19 points from beating you. The reason the scaling isn't more aggressive is it would otherwise make it near impossible for people who more consistently win and climb higher to not immediately lose all that progress (since they have far fewer/no people with similar or better points than them). Obviously losing most of your progress from one day to the next is disheartening and also a problem we need to solve, but I don't think making it so top-ranked players cannot keep slowly climbing if they're investing in it will help people in the 1100-1800 VP range.


the point of using them, is their ultra hight damage. yeah they are glass cannons but did you see the thread where someone put 21+ burns on an enemy, that's ridiculously broken. you can burn down every enemy without a chance to counter. that's no nerf that's simply fixing a broken mechanic.

they can mutihit, that's perfectly okay, but they shouldn't abuse the talismans proc chance by doing that. that's the only point, and i bet this is not intended as well, it's simply a bug, like the multiple mark consume where you could do 108% damage to all enemies for 7 power....

This is basically the stance of the designers at Nodding Frog; multi-hit having multiple chances to proc talismans was never the intent. We will be fixing this in advance of PVP going live, because it's becoming increasingly clear that this one of the biggest factors that pushes the game too far into "go first and win" territory, which is inherently anti-competitive.


@Sparton, @Kaz. Have you thought about lowering the damage for PvP purposes only? It is very discouraging that whoever goes first wins. The damage set up is too high. You shouldn't be able to murder 2-3 characters in one turn (Not even with class advantage). The team that goes second should be able to still win the match, by setting up shields/healing/debufs etc. I believe that PvP should be about strategy not about whoever goes first for the kill.

It's something we're considering, but it's a fine balance to strike. If the damage reduction is too strong, durable Sentinels and damage shield status effects (Reflect Shields, Damage Reduction Shields, Magma Shields, etc) start to become way too powerful, making certain characters unkillable machines (there's one character in particular that we have concerns about, much to my chagrin). We want to look into options that could allow players to do this if they sacrifice other opportunities, but are not sure how long it would take to implement such ideas, which may instead come out around or after PVP goes worldwide.

For the most part, the most likely case we've anecdotally seen with people having teams 50-75% crushed in turn 1 usually boils down to one or both sides having glass cannon teams (which works well in PVE when you're just strong enough to do that to enemies, but is a lot less consistent in PVP) or is fighting at a rank well below where someone should naturally be. We're still gathering and analyzing data to see how widespread this is at various divisions and to help us guide VP point gains and losses to help naturally push people into ranges of points that best fit their power and skill levels.

[BillLion]

Obviously losing most of your progress from one day to the next is disheartening and also a problem we need to solve, but I don't think making it so top-ranked players cannot keep slowly climbing if they're investing in it will help people in the 1100-1800 VP range.

Thanks for the replies, Sparton. This is my greatest frustration right now -the Sisyphus factor. In Greek mythology Sisyphus was punished by having to roll a large boulder up a hill every day only to watch it fall back down the hill. He had to repeat this eternally. This is the current iteration of PVP -even after I spent some ironite after all.

I still love my suggestion to cut defensive trophy losses in 1/2. :)

[MrFreeze]

About the golden son and freeze talismans. I've got one, and I use it in my defense. Maxed talismans and skills and all. My defense only wins when I get really lucky. Without the perfect hit passive it's not all that great. My defense percentage is pretty sad.

[Zapathusara]

CC stands for CrowdControl, ie, Freeze/Stun/Taunt

@Prisioner: I believe making its Passive "steals" others passives leads to bugs. Made him disable a random passive, or better, disable all passives from all teams. This may leads to teams w different toons.

@MultHit: I agree its proc are messed up

Now, Sparton add a thing Im thinking recently. My team used to be a glass cannon army in first week. My GR had +3k magic w Ignore MR. Was a OHKO most of time. I notice that was overkill and started to add a sort of Health Talismans to all my main toons, wothout losing too many dmg output. And then I started to win even when I go second. I dont think I abbuse CC, despite having 5 full 50 sets of talismans in my rotating main attack. Ok, sometimes I buff Accuracy, but nothing like the broken mechanics. PvP demands more health. +2k attk/magic is enough most of time.

But I agree about the broken team ups / setups. Going second hurts a lot, but in a fair-normal match, u can turn over in attacks. In defenses, tanky sometimes work, but I basicly give up defenses teams for now.

(A bleed/permadeath 3 set-talisman would be nice)

[Nicko]

Certainly a Talisman adjustment is in order, though I will be sad to see that day :p

I kid! (Sort of ;)) But I get it. It's fair.

As far as nerfs, the Prisoners passive, etc there is one more option everyone has to them - be smart about who you attack or revenge. A level 87 player attacked me five times in a row today. Lost every single time.

I think Killhouse wrote an excellent analysis of his rise to the top that first week, and an important part of that was knowing who to attack and who to avoid. He has no Prisoner. He had no Dessert Maurader. He was the top player

I'm not saying some minor adjustments aren't needed. I cried a bit about the Corrupt General nerf before I played PvP and now see its importance. But how far do we take this?

I'm going to cite an example of my own stupidity and that's GMACs defense. Two maxed Angels, a Corrupt General, and Grim Reaper

No Maurader. No Prisoner. But if he goes first? He usually wipes me out because the Angels and Grim Reaper have no issues doing 15k + of damage AND stunning


I'd love to have a Troll. It would really help me in this situation - but I don't. My bad decision to attack him without a Troll or shield - but I get tempted and cocky - and often slaughtered:D

If this was pure strategy, like chess, we'd all have the same characters. But this isn't chess. Some of us have put a lot of time - and some money - into building teams that include rare or more powerful characters. Neutralize that and the specialness is gone.

So certainly some minor rebalancing is in order. I think Slauki has had some great comments - fix the "broken" mechanics, but not over tinker with damage adjustments, nerfs, etc

I personally feel that the win/loss point system is the most critical isssue affecting every player in the game. Couldn't imagine if this were live and there were thousands of people out there gunning after high ranked players like me and Pizza Friday - we'd be in the negative by morning!

[Nicko]

Now, Sparton add a thing Im thinking recently. My team used to be a glass cannon army in first week. My GR had +3k magic w Ignore MR. Was a OHKO most of time. I notice that was overkill and started to add a sort of Health Talismans to all my main toons, wothout losing too many dmg output. And then I started to win even when I go second. I dont think I abbuse CC, despite having 5 full 50 sets of talismans in my rotating main attack. Ok, sometimes I buff Accuracy, but nothing like the broken mechanics. PvP demands more health. +2k attk/magic is enough most of time.


This. I win going second on a very consistent basis - including most Prisoner teams - by choosing which teams to attack, character selection, and then building those characters talismans accordingly.

Aur0ra85 had been saying for a long time - before PvP - the poor drop rate of green runes was a killer because most toons ultimately could use at least one green talisman for health. Yes, you sacrifice some damage, but what good is damage if you're wiped out with two hits?

Great example of a strategy that is open to everyone - one that can make a huge difference - yet many overlook it

[zamasu]

It's something we're considering, but it's a fine balance to strike. If the damage reduction is too strong, durable Sentinels and damage shield status effects (Reflect Shields, Damage Reduction Shields, Magma Shields, etc) start to become way too powerful, making certain characters unkillable machines (there's one character in particular that we have concerns about, much to my chagrin). We want to look into options that could allow players to do this if they sacrifice other opportunities, but are not sure how long it would take to implement such ideas, which may instead come out around or after PVP goes worldwide.

For the most part, the most likely case we've anecdotally seen with people having teams 50-75% crushed in turn 1 usually boils down to one or both sides having glass cannon teams (which works well in PVE when you're just strong enough to do that to enemies, but is a lot less consistent in PVP) or is fighting at a rank well below where someone should naturally be. We're still gathering and analyzing data to see how widespread this is at various divisions and to help us guide VP point gains and losses to help naturally push people into ranges of points that best fit their power and skill levels.

I can see where you are coming from. But I def think that it needs a small tweak, maybe take a look a class advantages, I have seen a full HP built AG been murdered with one warrior hit and I don't think that should be that way.

Can I ask you one more question? how is determined who goes first? it seems like when I am in a win streak and continue winning, 99% of the time I go second.


CC stands for CrowdControl, ie, Freeze/Stun/Taunt

@Prisioner: I believe making its Passive "steals" others passives leads to bugs. Made him disable a random passive, or better, disable all passives from all teams. This may leads to teams w different toons.




Thanks!

And I agree that Prisoner's passive is way too overpowered and there's no way to counterattack him (unless you have another Prisoner). I think one possible solution would be to introduce new characters that can do something about it.




This. I win going second on a very consistent basis - including most Prisoner teams - by choosing which teams to attack, character selection, and then building those characters talismans accordingly.

Aur0ra85 had been saying for a long time - before PvP - the poor drop rate of green runes was a killer because most toons ultimately could use at least one green talisman for health. Yes, you sacrifice some damage, but what good is damage if you're wiped out with two hits?

Great example of a strategy that is open to everyone - one that can make a huge difference - yet many overlook it

I like the idea of counter picking characters. PvP should be about strategy not about who goes first but the problem with counter picking is that there are not many characters where to pick from, with the current drop rates getting a rare character is almost impossible. I've been playing since the game came out and I still don't have Corrupt General, AG, prisoner, etc.. fu** I don't even have a Carriage Rider lol

And btw, stop attacking me lol

[CanyptianFit]

So I couldn't stand it anymore and I finally bit the bullet and "moved to Canada". I found out that 1/3 of my troops also live in Canada! Hey neighbors! ;)

So I've had about a day and a half playing with PvP and it is cool, and my experience is limited, but felt compelled to write.

There is a lot of whining going on. It seems like people are expecting to have a single 4 man team that wins all the time. That isn't how it works. Nicko nailed it above by saying it all comes down to toon selection, and strategy. I like you Nicko! I actually don't mind going second and, like Nicko, I pick my toons strategically against each opponent and their team, and have faired very well. I don't have the prisoner, and by himself, he's not a problem. I've beat a ton of prisoner teams going second. They don't scare me. It is when someone thinks through the pairing of the prisoner with other toons that can make that character difficult. Every character has a nemisis, except the prisoner...although I guess another prisoner is his nemisis? I'm willing to accept that if that is what the developers choose. I'm not scared of the Corrupt General, again every character has a nemesis/weakness to exploit. My defense loses regularly. I accept that, because I could easily beat me too. :)

I actually laugh after a tough back and forth battle that I lose. I failed to identify the foundational element of the defense. I just go back and win, order doesn't matter. But I really enjoy reading the defense to try and figure out the "weakness" that I will need to exploit to win. There are some creative MotherF**'s out there.

I've read whining about multi-hitters and trolls and other characters and I don't think it is valid. I demonstrated the 21 DoT affects in one round, but that was an extreme example of a legitimate play. One where the Warrior Golden son would be worse than a glass canon, a glass canon shattered put back together that would break if the wind blew on it. In other words, I could never replicate that performance in PvP and win. I can't replicate that in the Cosmos either, I don't think. If you tried it in PvP it is a losing strategy for sure. I hope the developers realize this and take the complaints for what they are. Bugs should be fixed, but changing mechanics and nerfing should not be done lightly.

Sparton, I'd love to be on the toon nerf advisory feedback team.

This game is like an ecosystem, and changing the mechanics (a la multi-hitter approach) is very dangerous, and the wrong solution IMHO. The multi-hitters have a weakness too and they have a place in the game as designed.

So here I sit with 40k trooper points and a decision. Do I buy 10 G/A souls or do I get 8 skill shards. Do I go for the prisoner or do I strengthen my team to fight him. It is my choice to make, we all have a choices.

My 2.5 cents Canadian.

[The Educated fool]

Interesting comments, CanyptianFit, and I agree with you 100%, the nerf bat should definitely be used sparingly!

I also continue to agree--hard--with BillLion's suggestion to cut defense points lost in half, but that's another matter.

P.S.: Get the skill shards, man! :cool:

[Sparton_LOTB]

I can see where you are coming from. But I def think that it needs a small tweak, maybe take a look a class advantages, I have seen a full HP built AG been murdered with one warrior hit and I don't think that should be that way.

I don't think I've ever seen an Angel of Fear (the hardest-hitting Warrior I've ever encountered) do more than about 20k to a Sentinel (3 hits of ~6k each), and most top-end Allied General builds should have at least 30k HP. There might be weirdness when you're not talking about level 100's with all 5 star talismans or if buffs aren't being taken into account (which only affect Angel of Fear so much, due to how much of it's damage is based on Max HP and it being True Damage and therefore not affected with Physical/Magic Charge and Def/MR Down).

If you have any specific examples where that's not the case (am I missing something and typical Angel of Fears can output more before buffs, or is there an even better single-target damager that doesn't take a setup?), then that's definitely interesting to know. The Angel of Fear is one of the premiere single-target damagers, so I don't really want to nerf it for doing it's job well unless it does it's job too well.


Can I ask you one more question? how is determined who goes first? it seems like when I am in a win streak and continue winning, 99% of the time I go second.

It's a coin flip; 50/50 chance. We hope to add a visualization at the start of battle for this in a future update, too (you may have seen it incorrectly pop out mid battle).

[Nicko]

So I couldn't stand it anymore and I finally bit the bullet and "moved to Canada". I found out that 1/3 of my troops also live in Canada! Hey neighbors! ;)

So I've had about a day and a half playing with PvP and it is cool, and my experience is limited, but felt compelled to write.

There is a lot of whining going on. It seems like people are expecting to have a single 4 man team that wins all the time. That isn't how it works. Nicko nailed it above by saying it all comes down to toon selection, and strategy. I like you Nicko! I actually don't mind going second and, like Nicko, I pick my toons strategically against each opponent and their team, and have faired very well. I don't have the prisoner, and by himself, he's not a problem. I've beat a ton of prisoner teams going second. They don't scare me. It is when someone thinks through the pairing of the prisoner with other toons that can make that character difficult. Every character has a nemisis, except the prisoner...although I guess another prisoner is his nemisis? I'm willing to accept that if that is what the developers choose. I'm not scared of the Corrupt General, again every character has a nemesis/weakness to exploit. My defense loses regularly. I accept that, because I could easily beat me too. :)

I actually laugh after a tough back and forth battle that I lose. I failed to identify the foundational element of the defense. I just go back and win, order doesn't matter. But I really enjoy reading the defense to try and figure out the "weakness" that I will need to exploit to win. There are some creative MotherF**'s out there.

I've read whining about multi-hitters and trolls and other characters and I don't think it is valid. I demonstrated the 21 DoT affects in one round, but that was an extreme example of a legitimate play. One where the Warrior Golden son would be worse than a glass canon, a glass canon shattered put back together that would break if the wind blew on it. In other words, I could never replicate that performance in PvP and win. I can't replicate that in the Cosmos either, I don't think. If you tried it in PvP it is a losing strategy for sure. I hope the developers realize this and take the complaints for what they are. Bugs should be fixed, but changing mechanics and nerfing should not be done lightly.

Sparton, I'd love to be on the toon nerf advisory feedback team.

This game is like an ecosystem, and changing the mechanics (a la multi-hitter approach) is very dangerous, and the wrong solution IMHO. The multi-hitters have a weakness too and they have a place in the game as designed.

So here I sit with 40k trooper points and a decision. Do I buy 10 G/A souls or do I get 8 skill shards. Do I go for the prisoner or do I strengthen my team to fight him. It is my choice to make, we all have a choices.

My 2.5 cents Canadian.

Great post - and just logged in - and saw you beat me :D

[Frost]

Great post - and just logged in - and saw you beat me :D

You can be defeated if you go second... Problem is when you get the first round.

@CanyptianFit

This is to discuss broke mechanics, not nerfs. I myself is not a fan of nerfs AT ALL, but sometimes you can't tune something w/o nerfing it.

Some broken mechanics as I said before is multiple hits procing talismans with every hit. Fixing this is not a nerf; you won't change multiple hits, you won't change talismans, just the way this is breaking PvP.

But I also think Prisoner is a broken mechanic. If you go second against a prisoner team you will lose 100% of time, because people who own him will build teams that will CC enemies during the entire battle. You can't counter this in any way. Even if you put a team of sentinels with maxed health talismans you will lose w/o even reacting, it's just it'll take 3 rounds instead of 1. That's an example of a broken mechanic that cannot be fixed or solved w/o a nerf IMO.

This is frustrating and infuriating because people like me will start dodging prisoner teams in order not to lose to a broken mechanic instead of a clever team. Oh yes I can always try another team w/o Prisoner... Just I don't. Today outta 10 enemies in my list 7 had Prisoner. 7 dodges... How can people climb if you need to dodge this mechanic all the time?

[CanyptianFit]

Nicko, for the record I went second when I beat you.

Frost, I don't agree with dodging prisoners. I'm not afraid of them and win regularly even when going second.

Good discussion. That's what it all about.

[Nicko]

I beat Prisoner teams going second all the time

[BillLion]

I also beat prisoner teams regularly. As someone said it's not just the Prisoner -it's who he's paired with and how they're built that makes the difference.

Some teams if they go first I simply may not get even one turn to control my characters even if the match lasts a few rounds. Super frustrating, but the chance you have to take.

[slauki]

Nicko, for the record I went second when I beat you.

Frost, I don't agree with dodging prisoners. I'm not afraid of them and win regularly even when going second.

Good discussion. That's what it all about.


I beat Prisoner teams going second all the time

the problem is not the prisoner himself, as stated before. the problem is the prisoner in combination with other chars and their synergies. i'm not afraid of a standalone prisoner. but if you combine him with the right chars you can create some strategies that will let you win a very high% of the time, when you go 1st. and the real problem is you cannot counter them without having a prisoner on your own side...some teams stunn 3/4 of my party or even more many many times. no immunity possible, no troll shield possible, no green bat possible, nothing anyone can do if he isn't extremly lucky.

and one main problem causing this is the muliple proc chance of some talismans. sparton mentioned himself, that this is a bug and no intentional mechanic, so we are not talking about nerfing, we are talking about fixing at first.

EDIT: @billion, you was faster as it seems :D

[BillLion]

EDIT: @billion, you was faster as it seems :D

Great minds, Slauki...

[Shifter]

I still can't play pvp, but I have been testing several teams out using Autoplay at high level Underworld Madness levels. I don't have any of the main def guys, cc, troll, blue bat, death dog, prisoner so I have to get unique and building most of my team without passives.

I really hope that these discussions don't do tremendous nerfing, it's already a lot slower going through 50 troopers a day then it used to be, even at lower levels. I can see that PVP causing nerfs can really affect the future of PVE.

One thing it seems, I can stop trying to get shards in my Desert Marauder since it seems it will be slaughtered soon. I don't see the 100% proc playing PVE, but will pay more attention to it tonight.

If people really think they need to beat every defensive team out there then what good is PVP? It's not really PVP anyway, it's player against another players AI setup, it also boils down to, other than toons, most of the player based is max level/talismans anyway.

[BillLion]

I still can't play pvp, but I have been testing several teams out using Autoplay at high level Underworld Madness levels. I don't have any of the main def guys, cc, troll, blue bat, death dog, prisoner so I have to get unique and building most of my team without passives.

I really hope that these discussions don't do tremendous nerfing, it's already a lot slower going through 50 troopers a day then it used to be, even at lower levels. I can see that PVP causing nerfs can really affect the future of PVE.

One thing it seems, I can stop trying to get shards in my Desert Marauder since it seems it will be slaughtered soon. I don't see the 100% proc playing PVE, but will pay more attention to it tonight.

If people really think they need to beat every defensive team out there then what good is PVP? It's not really PVP anyway, it's player against another players AI setup, it also boils down to, other than toons, most of the player based is max level/talismans anyway.

My advice while you wait -keep pumping desert marauder with skill shards -he'll serve you well in PVP. And speaking of skill shards -use your trooper badges only for them even if you just stockpile them for now until you decide which characters to max.

[Shifter]

My advice while you wait -keep pumping desert marauder with skill shards -he'll serve you well in PVP. And speaking of skill shards -use your trooper badges only for them even if you just stockpile them for now until you decide which characters to max.
Exactly what I have been doing. I haven't spent a badge on souls since forever ago. I've just been collecting badges since i maxed my GR.

[Nicko]

But I also think Prisoner is a broken mechanic. If you go second against a prisoner team you will lose 100% of time, because people who own him will build teams that will CC enemies during the entire battle. You can't counter this in any way.

Just revenges AgeEquilian and Silentknight. Both have Prisoner and Corrupt General. Went second both times. Yes, occasionally you'll get an awful stun, but I beat teams like this going second all the time.

[MrFreeze]

What about mummy Eddie? It seems a little odd how often he uses that future move, or is it past? I'm still working on mine so I'm not sure which it is. I wish my GR used his future move that often.

Edit: burden of the damned. The future basic attack

[Mizrael]

What about mummy Eddie? It seems a little odd how often he uses that future move, or is it past? I'm still working on mine so I'm not sure which it is. I wish my GR used his future move that often.

Edit: burden of the damned. The future basic attack

that has been my observation as well! it is so annoying...you get blinded,taunted or stunned and it's GG. i lost 3x today against mummy eddies and didn't get a single move once...

[BillLion]

What about mummy Eddie? It seems a little odd how often he uses that future move, or is it past? I'm still working on mine so I'm not sure which it is. I wish my GR used his future move that often.

Edit: burden of the damned. The future basic attack

I wouldn't be upset if the AI on my Pharaoh Eddie played as well as on Mummy Eddie :)

[Frost]

It is also broken. I think it's giving way more fury than intended, coupled with multi-hit procs. how this one is intended to work?

[slauki]

What about mummy Eddie? It seems a little odd how often he uses that future move, or is it past? I'm still working on mine so I'm not sure which it is. I wish my GR used his future move that often.

Edit: burden of the damned. The future basic attack


that has been my observation as well! it is so annoying...you get blinded,taunted or stunned and it's GG. i lost 3x today against mummy eddies and didn't get a single move once...

yeah, but what is wrong with a good AI which uses the most usefull move very often? i think that more characters should be as good on AI as mummy. So i would opt to improve the others, not in making mummy eddie dumb again :D

[Shaolin85london]

I don't think that nerfing chars abilities would be the best decision to make. Let see CG, after nerfed he s still a letal murder! I'm arena there are so many good teams, Nicko, sag, homme de Louvre, pizza Friday ( I dont eat pizza on Friday lol, but he has built up a very strong team). Nicko strategy team it's just brilliant, an symphony of skills, affinity chars and talismans setup, why should we ruin all the back work done with them?

Instead I think that would be a nice idea change something on who s go first and the rewards points. Might be have a sort of pre contest against AI, in order to establish one is the first to attack, I thought a sort of mini quiz with maiden theme, could be nice, isn't?

[zamasu]

I honestly like that Mummy Eddie uses his most useful attack, that's how it should be. If every character was programed to actually use the best move they have/when needed PvP would be a great challenge and it will serve its purpose to challenge players and only the best rise to the top. I don't think mummy eddie IA should be nerfed, I think other characters should be programmed better.

[Nicko]

yeah, but what is wrong with a good AI which uses the most usefull move very often? i think that more characters should be as good on AI as mummy. So i would opt to improve the others, not in making mummy eddie dumb again :D

Don't make the mummy a dummy!

[Chaosego888]

I don't think that nerfing chars abilities would be the best decision to make. Let see CG, after nerfed he s still a letal murder! I'm arena there are so many good teams, Nicko, sag, homme de Louvre, pizza Friday ( I dont eat pizza on Friday lol, but he has built up a very strong team). Nicko strategy team it's just brilliant, an symphony of skills, affinity chars and talismans setup, why should we ruin all the back work done with them?

Instead I think that would be a nice idea change something on who s go first and the rewards points. Might be have a sort of pre contest against AI, in order to establish one is the first to attack, I thought a sort of mini quiz with maiden theme, could be nice, isn't?

I think the Iron Maiden mini quiz is genius to decide 1st attacker, just can't be too time consuming and should be able to skip and take the 15% chance of going first. I have got to the point that I don't even attack certain character combinations. I would rather be grinding than watching my team just stand there frozen and stunned. I think I have went against Nicko's team 3 times in 2 weeks and never made a single attack move. I fought someone else with same team. Same exact result. If I had those 2 characters, I would put them on defense as well.

[Shaolin85london]

I think the Iron Maiden mini quiz is genius to decide 1st attacker, just can't be too time consuming and should be able to skip and take the 15% chance of going first. I have got to the point that I don't even attack certain character combinations. I would rather be grinding than watching my team just stand there frozen and stunned. I think I have went against Nicko's team 3 times in 2 weeks and never made a single attack move. I fought someone else with same team. Same exact result. If I had those 2 characters, I would put them on defense as well.

Yeah, sometimes it's better avoid to attack someone, that's part of the strategy. Never been against Nicko time so far, if I ll do, ll be just for fun. I'm shielding my rank with all my energies, luckily we are just on a step to Saturday.

[The Educated fool]

If people really think they need to beat every defensive team out there then what good is PVP?

I think this is a very important question to consider... probably the most important one in this thread, in my opinion. The ability to beat every possible combination of characters with every other possible combination of characters should never be the goal, from a developers standpoint, as it would negate strategy, take away any of the fun of beating strong teams, and really hurt the Arena gameplay as a whole. As has been mentioned, climbing the ranks should involve strategy that includes sometimes avoiding certain character combinations that have favourable advantages that give them a high chance of defeating the team you are able to assemble with the characters at your disposal. In short, pick your battles... you can't and shouldn't expect to win them all!

There will (almost, there will always be those exceptional few that WILL have them all) always be characters that we wish we could have at our disposal that we are simply unable to pull (lord knows I'd love an Angel of Fear, Carriage Rider or a Hell Hound for my own team! :cool:) but the fun of the Arena should come in large part from making the most of the characters that we do have, and experimenting with combinations of characters that lead to a defense from the AI for our defense teams every once in a while, at least. (As someone whose defense team once went over 5 days without a single hold, I speak from experience here).

Yes, the risk of being eliminated when some teams get the first hit can be extremely frustrating, I very well know, but players should be free to choose whether or not taking that risk makes sense for them, in order to score more points by beating a stronger opponent. There is--I very strongly suspect--no current combination of characters that are 100% unbeatable... that fact alone should suffice as the best possible argument against the need for devs to raise a nerf bat to particular characters. Fixing bugs like the talisman over-triggering rate for multiple hitters makes all the sense in the world, but killing off the abilities that make certain characters more desirable is punitive to anyone who has been lucky enough to pull and develop these characters, and would certainly make the thrill of pulling them in the first place obsolete.

In the end, this is still a game--in spite of how complex it may be, and how seriously it can potentially be taken--and devising strategies to defeat overpowered opponents is, in my opinion, the main thing that makes the Arena potentially uniquely fun. Beating the RNG is, and has always been a core mechanic of this game from the beginning... why should playing the odds on the ability to get the first turn when you really need it in the arena be any different? Risk and reward, baby! It's all about finding the balance. As was first said in this forum long ago: "Remember, the game is not supposed to be easy."

My two cents. :cool:

[Nicko]

I posted something similar, though much less eloquently, a few days ago

Agree completely

[Sparton_LOTB]

There is--I very strongly suspect--no current combination of characters that are 100% unbeatable... that fact alone should suffice as the best possible argument against the need for devs to raise a nerf bat to particular characters.

Emphasis mine.

That's the key though... there definitely isn't any combination of characters that is 100% unbeatable. But what if there is one that's 95% unbeatable? Or 95% unbeatable if you go second, even if you had every possible character in your possession? That's where we start to get concerned. We want characters to have unique niches and capabilities, but when they polarize the meta and start to make individual choices people make for team comp and choosing skills in battle meaningless, or have little thought or variation from battle to battle... that's the kind of places where we want to make changes.

Also, bug fixing and supporting the team with their fixes has tied me up a bit more than I thought this week, so I'll start discussion threads about specific characters at the start of next week. Keep the comments and suggestions coming.

[Nicko]

Emphasis mine.

That's the key though... there definitely isn't any combination of characters that is 100% unbeatable. But what if there is one that's 95% unbeatable? Or 95% unbeatable if you go second, even if you had every possible character in your possession? That's where we start to get concerned. We want characters to have unique niches and capabilities, but when they polarize the meta and start to make individual choices people make for team comp and choosing skills in battle meaningless, or have little thought or variation from battle to battle... that's the kind of places where we want to make changes.

Also, bug fixing and supporting the team with their fixes has tied me up a bit more than I thought this week, so I'll start discussion threads about specific characters at the start of next week. Keep the comments and suggestions coming.

Does such a defense exist? Cause I know I haven't faced one yet I couldn't beat repeatedly...and seems like I'm always going second:p

[Nicko]

And I will say some I'd never tackle without a Prisoner. But that's what EF is saying - it's all part of the strategy - knowing who to attack/revenge and who to avoid based on the strengths/weaknesses of your current team

Talismans that freeze you with a perfect hit almost every time cause there's three or four hits to trigger the effect? Yes - fix those - but otherwise, I haven't seen anything that is anything other than challenging (and I mean challenging in a good way). Obviously you guys want what is best for all, but dang - I hope you're very selective with that nerf bat

[The Educated fool]

That's the key though... there definitely isn't any combination of characters that is 100% unbeatable. But what if there is one that's 95% unbeatable? Or 95% unbeatable if you go second, even if you had every possible character in your possession?

I would respectfully counter with this question, noble Sparton: Has not a person who has put in the time to invest in characters and test specific combinations of characters in an effort to earn a very high win percentage (bug-exploiters aside, and luck notwithstanding) earned the right to reap the benefits of such efforts? Personally, I would see this as a just and fitting reward for such an individual. In light of this, further, it would seem to me punitive to then nerf the characters that lead to that advantage, and worse, it would seem specifically to counter the feeling of having been lucky enough to have pulled the characters that have lead to the possibility of achieving that advantage in the first place... a feeling, I feel I must add, given its lottery nature, that is a big part of the earning potential of this game. To speak simply: someone has to come in first in the Arena rankings (as I imagine this hypothetical player might achieve)... would not someone meeting this criteria of considered and strategic play seem like a fine potential ideal for a first place finisher? :cool:

To the point of my emphasis in your question: given the current (or even projected) roster limitations in place, is it actually even possible to collect every character in the game in the first place? And, as such, do (or should) these limitations render such questions of acceptable win percentage moot?

Please understand that I in no way intend this question, or any of my other questions or comments offered here, to be contentious or in any way disrespectful (I qualify such, as tone is easy to lose in text). Merely, again, my two cents. (That's 4, so far! :cool:)

[Sag7272]

As far as I know, every defense can fall first turn or not if the attack team is built the right way for who you fight, the chances won't be and should never be 100% either way and it's perfect that way...
Picking your fight is 90% of it, been attacked repeatedly by the kind players who whine game being rigged and prisoner too strong who average in the 25-40 rank without a single maxed tallisman on their whole team, I can understand they want a chance but how low the bar have to be dropped, obviously a toon with hardly 12k health and wrong tallisman setup will be dead going 2nd turn against any top 10 players Prisoner or not, I think it's normal losses cost so much I can't imagine how costly it would be point wise to let the AI fight with a handicap and even more disadvantages...
Once the multiple hits "bug" sorted everything should be business as usual, but that's my 2cents...

To those who may feel offended,
2 weeks ago I finished top 10 burning 150 ironites fighting repeatedly killhouse and Niko I got my prisoner and my marauder out of my prise, I know I'm lucky but go fight burn ironite and you may get wath you want instead of trying to nerf everything up to the mummy saying to not spend ironite since it's a beta and other infamous things I've red here I'm not targeting anyone in particular but in life there's no trophy for participating, you have to prove yourself better that's it...

[Nicko]

C'mon Sag - every kid gets a trophy! :D

Without mincing words, the difference here is the Prisoner/Desert Maurader combo. But there have been some epic battles tonight between Sag and myself - all day actually - and our Prisoners are neutralizing each other

We've both lost some battles but the majority of the time we've won as attackers - and I've gone second a ton of times - and I'm sure he has as well

The Prisoner can be beaten. Consistently. Please fix the broken Talismans but leave the characters alone. And if you're afraid of the Prisoner/Maurader combo cause you have no Prisoner? Attack someone else! It's not rocket science! Plenty of other teams to attack. A combination of hard work and a lot of hours, luck, and some money spent on the game has given players like me and Sag solid teams. Everyone has that option. Very few have the Prisoner/Maurader combo - why change the game around a statistically irrelevant minority? Prisoners have been popping up like weeds anyway since the Christmas event. And of course I have a vested interest. But many others like Shaolin85london and The Educated Fool have piped in recently with the same sentiments - because where does it end?

[Sag7272]

We've both lost some battles but the majority of the time we've won as attackers - and I've gone second a ton of times - and I'm sure he has as well

Why change the game around a statistically irrelevant minority? - because where does it end?

Of course a won a couple starting second ;) ,yes because I had a prisoner but when I attack those guys with CG the prisoner is useless I need my hellhound so he's next on list since the CG crowd have a disadvantage facing me with it?
Or my troll should have a random ally shield because glass canons can't stand facing it?

To me it's opening a can of worms because some lack judgement in theirs attack choices...

[Nicko]

Agreed Sag!

And interestingly enough - as I type - the #5 player is currently a level 94 player named Marcio

Is he some tactical genius who has managed to outmaneuver all the level 100 players? Does he have some insane overpowered team that compensates for a lower ranking?

Highly unlikely. He likely attacks and revenges smart.

[Sparton_LOTB]

Does such a defense exist? Cause I know I haven't faced one yet I couldn't beat repeatedly...and seems like I'm always going second:p

Well, maybe there's much you know that the rest of us don't... but that wouldn't surprise me!

That's also why we're wanting to be more open about discussing these kinds of (potential) changes, because if there's stuff we're missing, then sure, we're happy to tuck the nerf bat away.


I would respectfully counter with this question, noble Sparton: Has not a person who has put in the time to invest in characters and test specific combinations of characters in an effort to earn a very high win percentage (bug-exploiters aside, and luck notwithstanding) earned the right to reap the benefits of such efforts?

We do agree in that, but I guess it's more a matter of where we think it's fair for that to land. Personally, I agree that "a very high win percentage" is something that someone with a massive collection and excellent matchup knowledge should have, but it worries me if anything but the top few players have 95% or higher win rates (assuming you're in a competitive division for your progression). The multi-hit-proccing-talismans-multiple-times bug obviously skews things, but I don't think it'll be at a place we'll be happy with after fixing just that bug, but we'll be taking our time and still looking to do more in the way of buffs to alternatives than doing nerfs if we can.


To the point of my emphasis in your question: given the current (or even projected) roster limitations in place, is it actually even possible to collect every character in the game in the first place? And, as such, do (or should) these limitations render such questions of acceptable win percentage moot?

Assuming you disregard most of the 1 star and 2 star characters (there's a few gems, but most are fodder for the sake of PVE), yes, there should be barely enough capacity. We're also planning to add more character inventory space in the next update (one of our programmers resolved the task that let us work around the technical problem that was blocking us before earlier this week), so it will keep pace with new content releases until Sacrifice arrives.



Regarding the Prisoner, I want to stress that we specifically do not want to nerf him if we can at all help it. I don't want this to become too much of a Prisoner rant thread, though... we'll discuss him more in detail later.

[Shaolin85london]

C'mon Sag - every kid gets a trophy! :D

Without mincing words, the difference here is the Prisoner/Desert Maurader combo. But there have been some epic battles tonight between Sag and myself - all day actually - and our Prisoners are neutralizing each other

We've both lost some battles but the majority of the time we've won as attackers - and I've gone second a ton of times - and I'm sure he has as well

The Prisoner can be beaten. Consistently. Please fix the broken Talismans but leave the characters alone. And if you're afraid of the Prisoner/Maurader combo cause you have no Prisoner? Attack someone else! It's not rocket science! Plenty of other teams to attack. A combination of hard work and a lot of hours, luck, and some money spent on the game has given players like me and Sag solid teams. Everyone has that option. Very few have the Prisoner/Maurader combo - why change the game around a statistically irrelevant minority? Prisoners have been popping up like weeds anyway since the Christmas event. And of course I have a vested interest. But many others like Shaolin85london and The Educated Fool have piped in recently with the same sentiments - because where does it end?

Exactly, why to waste and to vanish time, dedication, money and energy of people spent into, just because it's a 5* extremely rare? There is no point here, prisoner is not immortal, he can die, it's Just built following his balance. Instead why don't introduce new toons in the game who can at least counter attack prisoner ability? Nerfing existent chars isn't the Way to get there, I think that is a sort of lack of respect in players confront. Devs can do better than this.

[slauki]

While i agree with most of your statements guys, i would only like to add one thought:

I fully agree, everyone should't be able to beat every possible combination, since that would ruin the fun and neglect the effort many people put into this game. If someone invested much time/money he should have an substantial advantage over a causal player.
But in theory every combination should have their nemesis. So if anyone has every possible toon, and knows how to use it perfectly, he should be able to outmaneuver every defense out there with pretty high %.

That's my theory of balance at least. Every charater should have a counter character. There are multiple ways to reach that. You can nerf characters,
you can add new characters you can add passives to old characters or buff them, till some point where a good equlibrium is reached.

I agree, i wouldn't be happy to see a huge nerfbat on many characters out there. I would like to see the bugfixes, changes in this ridiculous pointig system and some more balance to the gameplay, than i feel pvp would be very good. It is pretty good so far, but this thread has pointed out substantial leaks and i hope we will see some sensitive adjustments soon.

[MrFreeze]

We'll soon be at a point where every defense at the top is prisoner/DM. Take those two, mix in a golden son and any Eddie, and you got lotbs first meta. You can counter DM by himself with a hellhound. No counter if they're together unless you also have the prisoner. No surviving two rounds of freeze regardless of what team or build you have. I know it must be nice looking at all those defensive holds, but do you guys really want to fight the same defense over and over. I've seen everyone switching to some form of this setup. Once it's live and everyone's in, it's all your gonna see. It'll be, go first or die, unless you have a prisoner. Sounds boring to me.

theres another game I mess around with thats pvp is like this. Everyone runs the same team. I barely play pvp in that game it's so monotonous.

[Sag7272]

When PvP began, for me at last, everyone was running a troll, now I hardly see one from times to times it was reputed as a game breaker though, now it's prisoner/DM combo...
Have to keep in mind that without shards prisoner but for his passive is average at best as for Marauder, if they go 2nd it's defeat 90% of time... Kind of balance with greater odds of winning first round, with a troll and a sentinel bboy you can win ran by AI after several turns but odds of winning on 1st round are lowered too it's a matter of witch strategy you choose to adopt...
For now, to me, even while using it the problem is the multiple hits with multiple freeze/stun chances without those one or two cleansers and you are good to go Marauder or not, not having anyone to cleanse is a bad strategy not an unfair disadvantage...

[MrFreeze]

It'll be interesting to see how it changes once they fix the multiple proc thing. Once this goes live I don't expect to be able to keep up regardless of what happens. I think it would suck though if there's one defensive team that dominates the upper ranks. You either have that setup or you don't. I personally think it would be more fun with more variety. With all that said, would I run that team right now if I had them? Hell yeah I would!

[Sag7272]

I personally think it would be more fun with more variety. With all that said, would I run that team right now if I had them? Hell yeah I would!

As I do :P
On a more realistic note, it's fun to tinker around with defence and obviously working on something else for future since it definitely can't hold as is...

According to my testings on defense tests and GoD farming probability for stun/freeze go down significantly without the multiple hits, by Marauder or by mashing buttons you rarely see more than two toons disabled at same time even with 4 sets of effects tallismans... My Golden Son have kind of an advantage for now... But any good cleanser will soon have a chance me think...

[Nicko]

Well, maybe there's much you know that the rest of us don't... but that wouldn't surprise me!

That's also why we're wanting to be more open about discussing these kinds of (potential) changes, because if there's stuff we're missing, then sure, we're happy to tuck the nerf bat away.



We do agree in that, but I guess it's more a matter of where we think it's fair for that to land. Personally, I agree that "a very high win percentage" is something that someone with a massive collection and excellent matchup knowledge should have, but it worries me if anything but the top few players have 95% or higher win rates (assuming you're in a competitive division for your progression). The multi-hit-proccing-talismans-multiple-times bug obviously skews things, but I don't think it'll be at a place we'll be happy with after fixing just that bug, but we'll be taking our time and still looking to do more in the way of buffs to alternatives than doing nerfs if we can.



Assuming you disregard most of the 1 star and 2 star characters (there's a few gems, but most are fodder for the sake of PVE), yes, there should be barely enough capacity. We're also planning to add more character inventory space in the next update (one of our programmers resolved the task that let us work around the technical problem that was blocking us before earlier this week), so it will keep pace with new content releases until Sacrifice arrives.



Regarding the Prisoner, I want to stress that we specifically do not want to nerf him if we can at all help it. I don't want this to become too much of a Prisoner rant thread, though... we'll discuss him more in detail later.

Thanks for the response Sparton - it's always appreciated!

I'm not sure what you meant by that first answer - I read it as you HAVE found a defense you can't beat going second. I personally have not. I'll use my own as an example since it's been cited quite a bit lately. When I won the DM I put that defense together, and now face many similar defenses. I routinely beat them going second - but I have a Prisoner. If you don't have a Prisoner and go second? Good luck! There have been a few who have appeared here and told tales of victory going second, but it's almost impossible. Perhaps that's what you were referring to

But to Slauki's point - every character should have a counter - and there is one for this combo. He's called the Prisoner.

I think Sag's Hellhound/CG analogy is a good one. I would imagine if you're facing a CG/DM combo - no Prisoner in the mix - without a Hellhound you'll have as much luck going second against that defense as someone without a Prisoner has going against mine. And frankly, Prisoners seem to be as common as Hellhounds these days...

I know this combo doesn't work the same with an Assassin Pyro soldier - I've tried it - his Perfect Hit doesn't trigger the same. The DM triggers more like me playing manually - and DM seems much less common than APS

With all that being said - I hear what Mr Freeze is saying. I'm sitting here typing while owning the combo in question; I'd perhaps feel like him on the other side of the fence. At the same time I've put a ridiculous amount of time into this game - and some money too - and so I would think my defense SHOULD be really strong. But not unbeatable.

I initially griped about the Corrupt General nerf and it ended up being a good thing. We all want this game to be fun, so I appreciate this dialog and look forward to seeing what you bring to the table. While this isn't a democracy - you guys ultimately calls the shots - it would be great if there was at least some dialog about your proposed way to handle this before implementation as it is an issue that is pretty significant.

[Nicko]

When PvP began, for me at last, everyone was running a troll, now I hardly see one from times to times it was reputed as a game breaker though, now it's prisoner/DM combo...
Have to keep in mind that without shards prisoner but for his passive is average at best as for Marauder, if they go 2nd it's defeat 90% of time... Kind of balance with greater odds of winning first round, with a troll and a sentinel bboy you can win ran by AI after several turns but odds of winning on 1st round are lowered too it's a matter of witch strategy you choose to adopt...
For now, to me, even while using it the problem is the multiple hits with multiple freeze/stun chances without those one or two cleansers and you are good to go Marauder or not, not having anyone to cleanse is a bad strategy not an unfair disadvantage...

Really good point. With my glass cannon approach if I don't go first it's lights out for me. But other teams I've faced - often Sentinel heavy - can be deadly throughout the match and survive much longer than my defense does

If you attack a Prisoner/DM combo without a Prisoner and they have a Golden Son on the team, I don't think a cleanser will help if you go second - cause he'll be frozen too. It's the talisman issue at work again...

And I haven't been using a Cleanser at all - though I did just level up my Mummy Eddie and experimented with him a tiny bit - but I have other tricks up my sleeve ;)

[Sag7272]

If you attack a Prisoner/DM combo without a Prisoner and they have a Golden Son on the team, I don't think a cleanser will help if you go second - cause he'll be frozen too.

Well I ment with a single hit chance like against all non Golden sons...

[MrFreeze]

Yeah I don't like seeing characters nerfed. It feels like we're going backwards when that happens. I thought the purple pyro people eater had the same passive as the DM. Your saying they don't work the same? thats odd.

[Frost]

So according to some guys I'm a whinner because I say Prisoner has no counter...

Even when top players say they never attack someone without a Prisoner themselves, and 7 outta 10 players in top have a Prisoner...

So it's simple. Dev teams start takikng statistics on the winning percentage of teams with him.

C'mon guys, Prisoner alone is fine, but couple him with one or two toons and you know you'll win almost 100% of the time. You know he has no counter, even with a fully maxed team you will lose if you go second no matter what you throw at him.

Or leave it as it is, when the release of PvP goes global it will be 10 outta 10 players with Prisoner and it'll be decided by who goes first anyway.

[Shaolin85london]

Frost, I often go for second against prisoner, troll and CG, and due my corr rescuer gunner or just a bit of luck, I hold the opposite team winning the match. It's all about some key strategy steps, even the order of attack opposite team, for instance. U never know...

[CanyptianFit]

Agree Shaolin85london I beat The prisoner going second with character selection and a bit of luck. Definitely a challenge, but doable. Yesterday I had a number of "top 5" prisoner hits and faired ok.

[Roquetas-5312]

Well regarding the prisoner he does have a counter and that's to have a prisoner yourself
Blame the RNG not the mechanics
As for always winning if goes first that is not correct
Going first does gives an advantage to whatever team you have but is not gaurenteed by any means

[CanyptianFit]

What we are saying Frost is don't give up hope. Keep trying different strategies and improving your team. It can be done bud!

:)

[slauki]

one further argument against the prisoner...

once you have him in this state of the game, you will put him into your defense, no matter what. He is a must have atm if you want to have a great defense.
Yeah there are more great defenses without him, but he is the most powerfull character in PVP atm.
So if nothing changes in a few months 90% of all defenses will have a prisoner in it, because there is no way around. That's the best proof how imbalanced the situation is atm. Once you got him he is part of your team. We need at least one or two more characters with the same passive and things would be better i think. Or if the passive removes also the own passives things would also be better IMO.

Nicko mentioned several times, that prisoners are popping up like mad in PVP. IMO that's a big bias. They are not popping up like mad, it's simply
that the guys who have him, will be at the top of the PVP leaderbord most likely. So most you see is prisoners out there in the top 25.

Do you really want to play against same defenses again and again? This is really hurting the game dynamics.

[Nicko]

Nicko mentioned several times, that prisoners are popping up like mad in PVP. IMO that's a big bias. They are not popping up like mad, it's simply
that the guys who have him, will be at the top of the PVP leaderbord most likely. So most you see is prisoners out there in the top 25.

Do you really want to play against same defenses again and again? This is really hurting the game dynamics.

I don't think it's accurate to say that Slauki, he's just not rare anymore. A number of people have mentioned recently getting him. Someone I know (not me, though I have two) mentioned getting his THIRD Prisoner.

Most I see with Prisoners in their defense do NOT have Hellhounds or Assassin Rocket Dogs so it's still possible to stun/freeze/taunt them. He's just deadliest combined with a DM

[The Educated fool]

one further argument against the prisoner...

once you have him in this state of the game, you will put him into your defence, no matter what.

Ah, but good sir, the reality is that no matter what changes you make, there will always be a reasonably short list of characters that work best for defence, and these will always be the characters that people will use in various combinations, once they get them. Regardless of changes too, there will always be a single best defensive character... would it not be best if that character was indeed somewhat rare?

Sticking with the Prisoner as an example, if his passive was given to other characters, you would see those characters showing up in people's defences when they were available too, and, unless the characters had the exact same other abilities as the Prisoner, you would see some used in defences more than others. By giving this passive to other characters then, you would end up with more defensive teams built around the same characters than ever... not less.

The bottom line is, no matter who you nerf, some characters will always be better than others, and this is what makes them desirable, and what will make people keep playing to earn and and paying to buy souls in order to be lucky enough to pull these characters. The Prisoner is currently the strongest (arguably--at least, the one you fight latest in the game campaign) boss character that can be drawn... does it not make sense that he would be one of the most desirable characters?

[Frost]

2384
2385
2386
2387
2388
2389
2390
2391
2392
2393
2393

what do we all have in common?

[Nicko]

Yup. Like I said - not rare anymore...

[Nicko]

And it's then a chicken - or - the - egg argument

Are a lot of these players at the top because they have Prisoners? Or do they have Prisoners because they play a lot and managed to score them - just as they're playing PvP a lot?

And yes, luck comes into play - you can play a lot and not have a Prisoner, or barely play at all and get lucky on one rare soul. But point is - Prisoner is no longer "rare", and these players have likely put in a good deal of grinding to get him - just as they do in PvP to rise to the top. It's the effort that's put them at the top more than a single character

[Sag7272]

If I remember correctly...



Regarding the Prisoner, I want to stress that we specifically do not want to nerf him if we can at all help it. I don't want this to become too much of a Prisoner rant thread, though... we'll discuss him more in detail later.

[Roquetas-5312]

@frost No 2 def teams are the same except where you posted same players twice so there is still some diversity.

[BillLion]

And it's then a chicken - or - the - egg argument

Are a lot of these players at the top because they have Prisoners? Or do they have Prisoners because they play a lot and managed to score them - just as they're playing PvP a lot?

And yes, luck comes into play - you can play a lot and not have a Prisoner, or barely play at all and get lucky on one rare soul. But point is - Prisoner is no longer "rare", and these players have likely put in a good deal of grinding to get him - just as they do in PvP to rise to the top. It's the effort that's put them at the top more than a single character

Not sure I'd agree he isn't rare. I've played since day one and have no Prisoner, CG, Hellhound, or some of the other meta PVP characters. I think people that have him put him in their team -and so we see him a lot more.

I'm not sure what should be done or if anything should be done at all. It just sucks that when I attack a prisoner team (with the proper support) I am guaranteed to lose, and often don't even get to control one character even one time, if I go 2nd. So my hope isn't on my solid defense (because Prisoner renders that null & void) it's whether or not I win the coin flip to go first. Not fun.

I just attacked pizza and won because I went first. I attacked Nicko and lost because he did. This is the way it goes, which forces people to think twice about attacking prisoner teams - which in turn gives an inherent advantage.

And to everyone's point -the moment I get a prisoner (if ever) I'll drop him in my PVP team too.

[The Educated fool]

Yup. Like I said - not rare anymore...

I don't know if you can say that unequivocally, to be fair... it's only 9 defense teams represented here (Miklos and mattyJ appear twice) out of what... 2000 or so defense teams in the Arena? Granted, there are certainly other examples of defense teams out there with the Prisoner too, but I would suggest the sample of defense teams with him would still statistically be significantly less than those without in our beta player pool... I'd guess maybe 10%? If that? Still relatively rare. (And yeah, that number is a pure wild guess, but an educated one, I think--at least, it's based on my own observations in the Arena... I'm no researcher. :cool: )

Anyway, to me, it's the differences in these teams that are more interesting than what they have in common. Everyone went with the combinations of characters that they had in their arsenals that they felt would work best to earn them some holds. I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say that my own team was constantly evolving to reach the line-up they ended on (even somewhat desperately so, when they failed to hold a single time in more than 5 days--lol) and even now, there are other characters I'd consider rotating in, if/when I ever get them. Defense teams, much like attack teams, should be as fluid as possible, I would argue. The fun is in making the most, as I've said, of what you have, and it's only natural that we'd all want to put our best characters forward to have the AI fight for us.

Also, @Nicko: I agree with your chicken/egg analogy too. Well said. :cool:

[MrFreeze]

The only ones that are really deadly are the ones paired with the DM for me. I have no prisoner, so no way to avoid the slaughter if I don't go first.

[Nicko]

Not sure I'd agree he isn't rare. I've played since day one and have no Prisoner, CG, Hellhound, or some of the other meta PVP characters. I think people that have him put him in their team -and so we see him a lot more.

I'm not sure what should be done or if anything should be done at all. It just sucks that when I attack a prisoner team (with the proper support) I am guaranteed to lose, and often don't even get to control one character even one time, if I go 2nd. So my hope isn't on my solid defense (because Prisoner renders that null & void) it's whether or not I win the coin flip to go first. Not fun.

I just attacked pizza and won because I went first. I attacked Nicko and lost because he did. This is the way it goes, which forces people to think twice about attacking prisoner teams - which in turn gives an inherent advantage.

And to everyone's point -the moment I get a prisoner (if ever) I'll drop him in my PVP team too.

Point taken, and certainly I could be wrong as far as commonality. It just seems like there were a LOT more Prisoner teams after the Christmas event. That may be a one-off.

And I lost against Demoonchild today - who has the exact same defense as mine - without making a move. And I have a Prisoner;). It's the Talismans that are the issue - if the Golden Sons hit you perfectly you're done. Once that gets fixed I think this discussion will really die down

[BillLion]

Point taken, and certainly I could be wrong as far as commonality. It just seems like there were a LOT more Prisoner teams after the Christmas event. That may be a one-off.

And I lost against Demoonchild today - who has the exact same defense as mine - without making a move. And I have a Prisoner;). It's the Talismans that are the issue - if the Golden Sons hit you perfectly you're done. Once that gets fixed I think this discussion will really die down

Yeah, that will help for sure. And in the meantime we all use them to our advantage :)

[MrFreeze]

Yeah, maybe more so offensively than on defense. No ones talking about it cause it's to all our advantages, but there are some rediculous things you can do with multi proc hitters on offense too.

[Sparton_LOTB]

When I won the DM I put that defense together, and now face many similar defenses. I routinely beat them going second - but I have a Prisoner. If you don't have a Prisoner and go second? Good luck! There have been a few who have appeared here and told tales of victory going second, but it's almost impossible. Perhaps that's what you were referring to

But to Slauki's point - every character should have a counter - and there is one for this combo. He's called the Prisoner.

But the Prisoner being the only counter to the Prisoner is the problem. When a character's only reasonable counter is the opposite side having the same character, then it becomes a game of "have that character or lose substantially more", and it makes every team force themselves to dedicate 1 or 2 slots to specific characters you'll then see everywhere (which is what we see a lot of in the top 25... but also in a lot of the lower rankings, too).


With all that being said - I hear what Mr Freeze is saying. I'm sitting here typing while owning the combo in question; I'd perhaps feel like him on the other side of the fence. At the same time I've put a ridiculous amount of time into this game - and some money too - and so I would think my defense SHOULD be really strong. But not unbeatable.

Yeah, in the end, that's the goal; we don't want everyone to win 50/50, and we want people with better stables of characters and the skill to know how to best pair them up to have better win rates than others. We just feel that some characters create massive spikes in capability to achieve high win rate, and commonly it doesn't have to due with specific synergies the characters have, but in their raw presence and power that start invalidating many more opposing options than intended.


I initially griped about the Corrupt General nerf and it ended up being a good thing. We all want this game to be fun, so I appreciate this dialog and look forward to seeing what you bring to the table. While this isn't a democracy - you guys ultimately calls the shots - it would be great if there was at least some dialog about your proposed way to handle this before implementation as it is an issue that is pretty significant.

That is precisely what we'll be doing next week (and I guess to a degree what we've started in there). We'll start with a few characters that on our end we specifically want to look at, but I'll also be opening the a dedicated thread for others to make their case if they think there's something we on the design team are missing, so we as a community can look at and discuss what'll make Legacy of the Beast's PVP as dynamic, competitive, and fun as we can for as much of our players as possible.


The bottom line is, no matter who you nerf, some characters will always be better than others, and this is what makes them desirable, and what will make people keep playing to earn and and paying to buy souls in order to be lucky enough to pull these characters. The Prisoner is currently the strongest (arguably--at least, the one you fight latest in the game campaign) boss character that can be drawn... does it not make sense that he would be one of the most desirable characters?

It's not a problem that the Prisoner is popular/valuable in PVP. We knew that well before PVP would launch that he would be popular. Our oversight is that there's no practical answer to him without using him.

If we introduce other characters with the same passive, we haven't solved the problem. We've just made it so there's a shortlist of characters with X passive you need to bring to have a top-end defense. Team building on defense still stagnates in basically the same way.

Our goal is that there should be viable combinations of characters/talismans that can meet or exceed the value of having a prisoner on defense, even if that means it's much harder to get such a combination. Right now, it doesn't look like that exists, and due to the nature of why he is so dominant, there may not be anything without changing the nature of how his passive works (such as no passives for everyone, or only some characters getting locked down, etc).


And it's then a chicken - or - the - egg argument

Are a lot of these players at the top because they have Prisoners? Or do they have Prisoners because they play a lot and managed to score them - just as they're playing PvP a lot?

Yeah, that's a good question, and something I'll be continuing to review next week.


If I remember correctly... [my quote about not turning this into a Prisoner discussion thread]

RIP my intentions.

[The Educated fool]

Our goal is that there should be viable combinations of characters/talismans that can meet or exceed the value of having a prisoner on defense, even if that means it's much harder to get such a combination. Right now, it doesn't look like that exists, and due to the nature of why he is so dominant, there may not be anything without changing the nature of how his passive works (such as no passives for everyone, or only some characters getting locked down, etc).

Interesting. I suppose then my questions must become why should there be characters that exceed the value of the Prisoner? And which characters are then more worthy to be the best ones? I honestly don't get this criteria at all, and legitimately wonder about the answer to these questions... but I've asked similar questions in this thread already without reply, so I doubt the answers are forthcoming. Ultimately, I'm just a random player anyway, and some things may simply not be meant for me to know. :cool:

At this point though, based on your conclusion here, the nerf bat of Damocles seems destined to fall upon the Prisoner no matter what, so further discussion in another thread would seem entirely unnecessary anyway, from my perspective. At least I can save myself some time. :cool:

[Nekroliun]

Idk if this classifies as broken but using holy smoke's hunt on an enemy that has a 2-4 burns (physical ones) usually insta kills him. Pretty op, it one shot the freaking sentinel beast... also tried it in pvp against some of the really low ranks, it usually still one shots everything... pretty powerful, but idk if broken cuz it depends on burning talisman for me with the red bat, but since there's the desert guy's perfect hit passive that procs talismans his could be a pretty good tactic, thou using bugs to win is dirty af

[CanyptianFit]

I've got to give the devs credit. The more I play pvp the more I'm impressed with the delicate balance they have achieved with the character builds. The prisoner has his weaknesses, is clearly powerful, but also requires more work to get. The G/A soul is the most pricey, so you have to give a lot to try and get him. If you spend your points on souls for the chance to get him, there is a difference then spending your points on shards. Trade-off.

I got a G/A rare soul on on the last round of pvp, and heard Bruce's scream only to get my second gunner Golden son. I was hoping for anything but a dupe.

I really was perplexed with Slauki's comments that the defenses would be a lot more diverse without the prisoner. I think so and maybe not. Still wondering on that.

At the end of the day I'm glad that the first person to attack is random, as that gives me a chance to win. Again, I'm not afraid of the prisoner, certain builds will almost guarantee a win if going first with him; and if I had him I would have him in my defense for sure. But I'll take that chance.

Top 5 teams be lenient on me. 😍 Please!

This decision on how to counteract him is not to be taken lightly. If he his to have a counterpart they should be an assassin I'm guessing. Hard to get with similar shortcomings.

Love this game damn it.

[Nicko]

Our goal is that there should be viable combinations of characters/talismans that can meet or exceed the value of having a prisoner on defense, even if that means it's much harder to get such a combination. Right now, it doesn't look like that exists, and due to the nature of why he is so dominant, there may not be anything without changing the nature of how his passive works (such as no passives for everyone, or only some characters getting locked down.

Or a 60-70% chance his passive kicks in. 50% is too much of a nerf��

Disabling ALL passive so for both teams? Kind of like Visions Eddie stuns himself? Also an interesting idea...he couldn't be paired with the DM effectively anymore

[Sparton_LOTB]

Interesting. I suppose then my questions must become why should there be characters that exceed the value of the Prisoner?

The intent is not to say we want other characters to exceed the value of the Prisoner. The intent is that certain combinations of characters should exceed the value (ie allow you to get a higher winrate) than any old team which splashes the Prisoner.

Which isn't to say we don't want him to be good in a team for attacking or defending, or even that we want to make it so there's more teams which have high win rates without Prisoner than those which do. We just want to ensure that the top teams will not always want to pick the Prisoner if available, no questions asked.

[RCarter]

Or a 60-70% chance his passive kicks in. 50% is too much of a nerf��

Disabling ALL passive so for both teams? Kind of like Visions Eddie stuns himself? Also an interesting idea...he couldn't be paired with the DM effectively anymore

I struggle with the idea of nerfing the Prisoner in the name of PVP.

So the best plan is to nerf a toon for one aspect of a game, running the risk of rendering it useless for the rest of the game?

Hmm, sounds pretty weak to me.

If people are so cheesed off about seeing him in PvP lineups, ban him from PvP. Just don't trash him for the rest of the game. The Prisoner is as solid a toon that LotB has in terms of balance in both the campaign and the dungeon.

[Nicko]

The intent is not to say we want other characters to exceed the value of the Prisoner. The intent is that certain combinations of characters should exceed the value (ie allow you to get a higher winrate) than any old team which splashes the Prisoner.

Which isn't to say we don't want him to be good in a team for attacking or defending, or even that we want to make it so there's more teams which have high win rates without Prisoner than those which do. We just want to ensure that the top teams will not always want to pick the Prisoner if available, no questions asked.

Kind of like a Prisoner, a Desert Maurader, a Golden Son, and a Tailgunner Eddie ;)

[MrFreeze]

Maybe this should be in the bugs thread, but is anyone else experiencing weird things tonight? I just lost two matches in a row, to the same team, because invisibility was removed when no characters on the opposing team had the ability to do that. I'm confused.

[Frost]

Maybe this should be in the bugs thread, but is anyone else experiencing weird things tonight? I just lost two matches in a row, to the same team, because invisibility was removed when no characters on the opposing team had the ability to do that. I'm confused.

Did you hit someone that had void shield? void shield has a chance to remove buffs from the enemy team... Yeah, they are pretty good.

If thorns or other talismans existed this Prisoner thing would be solved. He can't disable talisman passives, can he? I never had a chance to test. What if you reintroduce thorns and other kinds of talismans, or even change some like blizzard shield to give a passive shield much like repel does, that affects all team and then one every round...

[MrFreeze]

It was removed when their team was attacking. It was bizarre.

Prisoner has no effect on talismans, just the passives. You can freeze him all day if he doesn't have immunity.

[CanyptianFit]

I had a situation we're all my beneficial stats transferred to the enemy while I attacked him/her with my hellhound. Was a total glitch and I ended up losing.

Was really weird. Clearly a glitch.

My hellhound attacking a grim reaper Eddie, and while I was attacking my beneficial stats transferred to them before I finished. Really?

:0

[Sparton_LOTB]

The intent is not to say we want other characters to exceed the value of the Prisoner. The intent is that certain combinations of characters should exceed the value (ie allow you to get a higher winrate) than any old team which splashes the Prisoner.


Kind of like a Prisoner, a Desert Maurader, a Golden Son, and a Tailgunner Eddie ;)

That's not what I mean... if you wanted to have a defense that could be good against an attack team like that, and you have every character but the Prisoner... would you wish you had the Prisoner, or do you think you could make a defense that could be better than one which included the Prisoner?

[Roquetas-5312]

If you made the prisoner remove all passives then he becomes an offensive player only, there would be no need to put him in defense team at all. As for his offensive ability stun for 2 rounds is good but he will mess up a lot a synergies so probably would not be used a lot and would kill him for campaign.
So on balance I would rather see him removed from pvp over a change to remove all passives

It's a very difficult decision for the devs to make

[BillLion]

I struggle with the idea of nerfing the Prisoner in the name of PVP.

So the best plan is to nerf a toon for one aspect of a game, running the risk of rendering it useless for the rest of the game?

Hmm, sounds pretty weak to me.

If people are so cheesed off about seeing him in PvP lineups, ban him from PvP. Just don't trash him for the rest of the game. The Prisoner is as solid a toon that LotB has in terms of balance in both the campaign and the dungeon.

But this rebalancing of characters has been going on for quite some time even before the devs launched beta PVP. Corrupt General was one of the ones people took the hardest, but even people that have him see how this makes sense in PVP. Unfortunately, nerfs (or rebalancing) are necessary to create a fun, competitive PVP environment.

We all just feel it should happen to the character we don't have. :)

[Demoonchild]

Yesterday my son told me that my Def team was solo OP, yes, I have a Prisoner... I tell him, "dear son, a team is just as OP as people think..."

And I try my team with a non Prisoner Team, and I went second, and I was able to win with no Allies killed.
My team wasn't even skillsharded, the talismans are not maxed neither...

I just use the same strategy that I use against refrigerator teams, high Hp and Def, AOE, and heal/debuff...

Prisoner is not a problem, is that people that makes everything a problem if they cant resolve it...

[Schadenfreud-0217]

That's not what I mean... if you wanted to have a defense that could be good against an attack team like that, and you have every character but the Prisoner... would you wish you had the Prisoner, or do you think you could make a defense that could be better than one which included the Prisoner?

The Prisoner's passive is just way too powerful right now. He counters so many defensive strategies that would help you win if you were going 2nd, like using a Hellhound for the immunity or a Troll so as the other team doesn't wreck you, he even counters Angel of Pain (a.k.a. Blue Bat)'s Siege... Basically the point is he has no counter, except himself which makes him way too valuable in PvP right now.

So to answer your question - I don't think that right now there's a way you could make a better defense w/o The Prisoner than one with him.

[Frost]

Yesterday my son told me that my Def team was solo OP, yes, I have a Prisoner... I tell him, "dear son, a team is just as OP as people think..."

And I try my team with a non Prisoner Team, and I went second, and I was able to win with no Allies killed.
My team wasn't even skillsharded, the talismans are not maxed neither...

I just use the same strategy that I use against refrigerator teams, high Hp and Def, AOE, and heal/debuff...

Prisoner is not a problem, is that people that makes everything a problem if they cant resolve it...

Sorry, if Prisoner is not a problem, why you have the same exact team as Nicko? That team is pretty much op and you will win 90% of the time, being it 100% of the time if you go first. It's a clever team? Yeah, but it abuses every broken mechanic in the game:

- Multiple hits triggering talisman effects;
- DM passive triggering talisman effect 100%;
- Thief talisman filling the fury bar in one hit;
- Prisoner having no counter

Don't try to hide the problems. We all know that is broken and will be fixed/balanced. To say it's not is just a try to protect your team to easy wins.

[Nicko]

If you made the prisoner remove all passives then he becomes an offensive player only, there would be no need to put him in defense team at all. As for his offensive ability stun for 2 rounds is good but he will mess up a lot a synergies so probably would not be used a lot and would kill him for campaign.
So on balance I would rather see him removed from pvp over a change to remove all passives

It's a very difficult decision for the devs to make

I don't know if that's true. If he's on your defense, it still neutralizes Hellhounds so you can stun, Trolls so you can get damage in, etc. But it also makes you vulnerable as well...

I'm not saying this is the best answer. I agree this is a very challenging decision for developers. Other options are working as he currently does a certain percentage of the time (ex 60% chance to disable opponents passives), disabling one random opponent passive, or leaving him alone ;)

[slauki]

And I try my team with a non Prisoner Team, and I went second, and I was able to win with no Allies killed.
My team wasn't even skillsharded, the talismans are not maxed neither...

I just use the same strategy that I use against refrigerator teams, high Hp and Def, AOE, and heal/debuff...

Prisoner is not a problem, is that people that makes everything a problem if they cant resolve it...

hey demoon, try it 30 times with 2nd turn against your team i would be very surprised if you win more than 3-4 times. you have to be extremly
lucky. if your buzz is not frozen you have a chance, if he is you will die. but don't worry mate, it won't be a slow painfull death, it will be
very fast and painless :P

[BillLion]

hey demoon, try it 30 times with 2nd turn against your team i would be very surprised if you win more than 3-4 times. you have to be extremly
lucky. if your buzz is not frozen you have a chance, if he is you will die. but don't worry mate, it won't be a slow painfull death, it will be
very fast and painless :P

Ha, I think that's a fair assessment.

[Demoonchild]

hey demoon, try it 30 times with 2nd turn against your team i would be very surprised if you win more than 3-4 times. you have to be extremly
lucky. if your buzz is not frozen you have a chance, if he is you will die. but don't worry mate, it won't be a slow painfull death, it will be
very fast and painless :P

Hi Slauki!!! Is just the same when you go with no Hellhound, and no artillery Dog against a freezing team..
You can't even play your turn... If you think that Prisoner's passive must be reviewed, the same goes to freeze and stunt... And many OP chars, like AOF they also break Pvp experience...
Nerfing The Prisoner, will result in people switching to AOP(or Death Dog) and after a while they will be nerfed too... Mark my words man.

[Nicko]

Hi Slauki!!! Is just the same when you go with no Hellhound, and no artillery Dog against a freezing team..
You can't even play your turn... If you think that Prisoner's passive must be reviewed, the same goes to freeze and stunt... And many OP chars, like AOF they also break Pvp experience...
Nerfing The Prisoner, will result in people switching to AOP(or Death Dog) and after a while they will be nerfed too... Mark my words man.

Exactly - nerf the Prisoner and the Blue bat just becomes the new Prisoner...

[slauki]

Hi Slauki!!! Is just the same when you go with no Hellhound, and no artillery Dog against a freezing team..
You can't even play your turn... If you think that Prisoner's passive must be reviewed, the same goes to freeze and stunt... And many OP chars, like AOF they also break Pvp experience...
Nerfing The Prisoner, will result in people switching to AOP(or Death Dog) and after a while they will be nerfed too... Mark my words man.

fair enough man, there are more characters that seem to be pretty op, and yeah my favorite character of all time (redbat) is probably among those for sure.
and yeah we should also look into to freeze/stun frequency too.

all that is necessary IMO, to make the game better. but one char is dominating this discusion, and that's the prisoner and that has good reasons, which
i won't repeat now.

and IF after nerfing the prisoner all change to bluebat/death dog and we see that this is killing the game too, well then nerf them too.
but i really doubt this, since they don't work against all passives. so you cannot compare these characters at all. prisoner is far more outstanding.

i know some might dislike my words, but i'm interested in that what i belive is the best for the game, that's all. and fixing OP character it good i think, although i
get that the people are frustrated that their favorite toon is nerfed.

one last statement: you all remember the rage quits, the offenses, and the cryings after the corrupt general was nerfed. people even nowadays cry about that sometimes. Imagine how ridiculous it would be to play against him if he still would stun everyone 80% of the time and do 8k damage in addition....so it was good for the game to nerf him, regardless if we like it or not.

The future of this game is not farming game of death 100 times a day or any other PVE feature. The future is PVP, and that's why they concentrate on that, and that's why this is so important. If PVP fails the game will fail too i think

[Frost]

Exactly - nerf the Prisoner and the Blue bat just becomes the new Prisoner...

Cleanse anyone? Yeah, PDK does wonders against blue bat and hard CC teams. Same with Mummy cleanse, and other cleanses. You might not always have the desired toon cleansed but I found out PDK is a really strong counter to Blue Bat and Death Dog.

Prisoner on the other hand...

Just for a change, I started dodging Prisoner teams this week. Went from 1300 to 1700 points... A HUGE increase considering my casual playstyle.

Simple challenge: those who have Prisoner stop using him for a week. See how far you can go up/down. We can discuss results later.


Also, the infinite cicle of revenge. Change for something like this:

- If your team holds the attack, you can't revenge, but get double coins or a +10 point bonus;
- If your team loses, you can revenge ONLY ONCE;
- The attacker cannot revenge back your revenge;

[zamasu]

This thread clearly became a Prisoner/DM combo thread, and it is true at this moment this is the combo that is overpowered. When fighting against a team with this combo it all comes down to whoever goes first, not matter what and this shouldn't be this way, the offensive player should be able to counter the defensive player by picking the right characters (not picking the same characters as with the prisoner case) and this is what the game is lacking with certain characters. I can think of a few ideas to (at least) reduce the problem:

1. Nerf prisoner's passive: "75% to disable one passive, 50% to disable 2 passives and 15% to disable all passives" or something along those lines.
2. Introduce more characters with the same or counter passive as prisoner
3. Introduce a new set of talismans, one that will grant the wearer "immunity to his passive", for example if gunner golden sons wear this sets of talismans his passive cannot be disabled by prisoner's one. I think this will be a great counter to prisoner's
4. Make a PvP rare "special reward" that grants the player first turn in any given match

I think there are ways that this problem can be solved and make PvP an strategy game, not a "must have" character game.

@sparton In other topic. I don't know if anyone here experienced the draw feature, but yesterday I had a match that came down to one character in our teams and we were never able to kill each other and it resulted in a DRAW. I just want to point out that "the match will be automatically end in draw after 3 turns" doesn't work properly and I had to manually end the match after many turns lol

[Sparton_LOTB]

@sparton In other topic. I don't know if anyone here experienced the draw feature, but yesterday I had a match that came down to one character in our teams and we were never able to kill each other and it resulted in a DRAW. I just want to point out that "the match will be automatically end in draw after 3 turns" doesn't work properly and I had to manually end the match after many turns lol

Yeah, the auto-draw functionality is pretty busted in the current release, but that should be tightened up in the next app store release.

[Arcturus]

I got the auto-draw notification after 10 rounds. Seemed like it was giving me the option to call a draw (is it the win randomly decided), but my last guy died while it was up.

[Roquetas-5312]

I get killed when I have vanish on why ? Has it been changed to function like blind and a perfect ignores it ?

[CanyptianFit]

Roquetas- Wondering if a reflect shield or the like was applied or even can be applied when invisible. Would be good to know.

[Roquetas-5312]

Roquetas- Wondering if a reflect shield or the like was applied or even can be applied when invisible. Would be good to know.

Straight fight AOS vs prisoner 1 on 1 normal hits happened twice in 2 days

[Frost]

Straight fight AOS vs prisoner 1 on 1 normal hits happened twice in 2 days

AoS and AoF torture skill seens to be ignoring everything sometimes, from passives to buffs and talismans.

[Frost]

Now everybody seens to be using DM with Gunner Golden Son and Prisoner... All the broken mechanincs.

[R1ck]

If not gunner golden son; assasin, magus or sentinel. The thing is my team ends up frozen all the time, not able to make a single move if I go second.
Wonder how long devs will take to fix that.

[Nicko]

Now everybody seens to be using DM with Gunner Golden Son and Prisoner... All the broken mechanincs.

No regrets needed - people would have figured it out pretty quickly as they played defenses with that combo. As much as its helped my defense percentage (and I think I'm the original perpetrator here ;)), it definitely needs to be fixed and it's a good thing you and Slauki shed some light on it

[Roquetas-5312]

I have worked out what the problem is with this game and it's skill shards supposed to be the most important thing but it's a trap any good character that you put skill shards on is nerfed.
I got prisoner from Xmas souls and I haven't shardded him because of all the talk of him being too op
My percentage on defense is very low and I use mummy AGS prisoner ass pyro
I'm not playing pvp actively since the points where changed as I lose 150-200 a night so why waste ironite I just use what sow builds up except on last day where I try to make top 25.
For campaign If there was no auto farm I wouldnt be playing this game still.
I'm holding on in the hope of the promised releases but not sure how much longer I can wait. we have seen lots leave even kalijester has gone.
This is my last post here as I'm spending less time with the game I really don't care what's discussed here

[Arcturus]

I got prisoner from Xmas souls and I haven't shardded him because of all the talk of him being too op
My percentage on defense is very low and I use mummy AGS prisoner ass pyro


this is a good point: the Prisoner is only OP in the right combination. If I see a prisoner team, I think twice, but I usually still attack unless he's paired with a DM, CG, and/or golden son (and frankly, I often attack anyway because if I go first it's usually a pretty easy team to beat)

[Frost]

Losing 200 points a day to broken mechanics is killing me... Besides Prisoner now I have to deal with Gunner Golden Son + DM all day. Not fun.

[Nicko]

Losing 200 points a day to broken mechanics is killing me... Besides Prisoner now I have to deal with Gunner Golden Son + DM all day. Not fun.

I took away my Prisoner/GS/DM combo. My defense percentage DID take a bit of a dive overnight, but I'm still getting some Holds so we'll see how it works. If I get pummeled I'll have to put them back in until the Talisman nerf hits - I'd like to finish top 5 and this point system absolutely sucks - but for now trying not to exploit the broken mechanics

That may change after Saturday :p

[Sag7272]

I took away my Prisoner/GS/DM combo. My defense percentage DID take a bit of a dive overnight, but I'm still getting some Holds so we'll see how it works. If I get pummeled I'll have to put them back in until the Talisman nerf hits - I'd like to finish top 5 and this point system absolutely sucks - but for now trying not to exploit the broken mechanics

That may change after Saturday :p

Followed you on that one, at least it shows good intentions and some fair play maybe others will follow who knows 😊

(Still I may reconsider too...)

[slauki]

i found another broken mechanics, we discusses a little, but now i'm pretty confident to say that this is some kind of bug or broken mechanics.
the list of opponents is very similar after every refresh, only one or two names changes after the refresh. 90% stay the same almost every time!

i never saw some of the top 10 guys for the whole week. no shaolinlondon, no bradata no marcio the whole week, pizza and sag only once i belive. some names like demoonchild and nicko poped up a lot. there seems to be something very broken with this list mechanics. in addition with the bad pointing system, this is another problem in climbing up the ranks and enjoy diversity in PVP.

[Bradata]

I think the whole PVP arena is the problem, the point system as Frost mentioned, the attack list that has the same names over & over again and many more small things. I think that the defenses like Nicko's and other similar to his are just the answer to the broken system problem. As many have suggested before, the points system, the unlimited revenge loop and the attacking list system need to be changed first and then, may be we can explore the broken mechanics issue. I have seen Nicko's troops, he has almost all the best chars that are out there and I believe that he spent a lot of time figuring out what chars to put in the defense team of his And now we want to take away from people like him what they have achieved by spending a lot of money & time getting the good chars. I think better that the Devs should start addressing the arena system issues first and then the broken mechanics.