PvP and the Return of the MAC (8.20.17)

[mjmxiii]

Before I get into an obvious issue that is killing the game, I want to give gratz to Gmac for being back at the top of the podium in true beast-mode style, hitting 10k, almost doubling the point total of his nearest competitor. That is some next-level shit right there! Much like Jofer before him, if he wants Eternal, it is pretty much his. Makes me wish we could watch an actual real-time PvP best-of-seven matchup between the two truest Eternals the game has seen.. that would be cool.

Took it a bit easier last week and will probably be taking a bit of a break from LotB this week as family trickles into town for a big wedding this coming Saturday and the inevitable trips to some of the worst tourist traps Los Angeles has to offer. Ended at #37 this week and I am running to get VHE into shape.. got some time before that is done but damn that toon is fun! The new talismans are pretty awesome. I'm seeing a bunch of Immortality, Echo and all the other BNW achievement rewards in the Arena and wondering what you guys think of them.

Rank: 37
Points: 3589
ATK: 275
DEF:227


****Top 10****

1. GMAC (10296)
2. Kamuz
3. Carlos
4. shaolinlondo
5. Nicko
6. dje
7. Blacksteel
8. Drivenbyfate
9. caliza12
10. caretakerii


****BNW Needs Work!!!****

Since it is directly preventing me from building a new arena team, I thought I would talk about something that was meant "to work hand-in-hand with PvP" .... BNW. Odd that BNW makes it seem harder to upgrade talismans when its promoted as a feature intended to be "helpful", but that's par for the course I guess. The one saving grace is the new talismans that have come about but here are a few things that make the initial rewards, more frustrating than anything else.


The disappearing button trick, alive and well.. MCR is like, "Fuck it, I'm taking a nap"

Not only has NF decided that 3* evo runes should now only drop from BNW to make it "easier to upgrade talismans", but that the cost should be high (15 SoT for the "best drop rates") and game freeze should be part of the fun.. they also decided to increase the odds that 3* evo runes rarely drop and that when they do, even on LVL X, that they drop in increments of 5... one less than what is required to upgrade one talisman to 5*. This can't be how they intended it to work, right? I've been trying to farm BNW for red 3* evo runes since it released... I've landed fifteen... I've upgraded three red talismans to 5* since BNW launched...THREE!! It should be a crime because it definitely feels like I'm getting ripped off! It's near impossible not to be salty about it at this point so I will leave it there and mention that the button hang disease that infected PvP a week ago, is still stronger than the cure. Here is to the hope that a few days away from the game will resolve all of these minor issues that are a major annoyance. Troops, don't drop me if I don't log in for a few days this week!

See you all in the arena next week!

[Nicko]

Congrats - again - to GMAC. Broke 10,000 and just insane focus. Beast!

Kudos to the other winners as well! I generally chill until the last few hours on Saturday and when I returned saw Carlos had made a nice run to bump ShaolinLondo from the podium.

Attacks: 325
Defense: 262
Rank: #5
Points: 5201

About BNW - I think Mr Freeze summarized my feelings in another thread. The talisman drop rate? It HAS to be sparse on some of these. If every assassin was running around with Immortality and every Warrior had Echo - that would be plain silly. And you CAN make it happen - you'll just have to give up your life for two weeks straight - but that's the point - these talismans are rare for a reason - and should stay that way.

But the cost? That's where I have the problem. It's really expensive to farm there - and almost plain stupid to revive - so the "pay to win" element that the developers said they're trying to avoid rears it's ugly head. Yes - effort is required to get those talismans - but also a whole boatload of Ironite. Bringing the cost down to LoL levels simply makes sense.

Question - should there be a retrigger limit? I fought a defense yesterday where a Newborn with Echo retriggered 7 or 8 times in a row. Of course this was after a VHE fury so the results weren't pretty And we've all faced - and many of us use - VHE when he goes on a rampage. I'm thinking a cap of two retriggers would make sense - though it's certainly fun to use my VHE and watch him go ballistic - but it just seems a bit unbalanced when you can do all he can do.

Speaking of VHE - hate to say this - but I haven't touched another Eddie since slapping a set of Immortals on him. He's become in my opinion FAR above any Eddie in the game. Is he too much? No easy answer. Those who hate nerfs will say he's just a great Eddie and there's nothing wrong with that. But I guess my feelings are if there's an Eddie who is the automatic go-to - everyone who has him uses him and everyone who doesn't have him wants him - then that may be over the top. Why have any other Eddie?

Thanks Mjmxiii for keeping this thread going!

[surfingwithdje]

Congrats to everybody, and especially Gmac for his performance! 10k points is insane GG !

I finished at the gate of the rank #5 this week, congrats to Nicko who won the race and Carlos for his superb rush

rank #6
points 4752
atk 97% (340)
def 21% (300)

About the BNW talismants we start to see them in the arena, immortal and echo are the most frequent...
I'm agree with Nicko, maybe it's a good thing that they are rare, i really don't want to see them on every character...
Echo tals can be very annoying, i did a battle versus blacksteel today and his desert marauder got 9 extra turns (yes, 9...) when we were 2vs2... he destroyed my poor VHE and my hope to win the battle lol !!

About VHE, yes he is actually the best Eddie... I hope he will not be nerfed, why not a buff on other Eddies ?

Ps: @mjmxiii : no problem for your few days off, i hope your bug will be fixed for your come back

[Kardas]

Congrats again GMAC, as well as the rest of the Top 10. 10K points!? I don't know how you do it.

My stats:
Rank: 38
Points: 3580
Tier: Warlord I
Attack Wins: 92% (177/192)
Defense Wins: 10% (16/159)

Nice being able to reach Top 50 again after missing the Top 100 last week because of holiday and a festival.
This was an interesting week, seeing some of the BNW Talismans trickle down to PVP. And seeing VHE defenses sprout up like mushrooms after rainfall. Fortunately I had worked up a significant backlog of skill shards so I was able to shard him this week, save for 3 levels in Rouse (does anyone use that? AI doesn't seem to).

As for Vampire Hunter Eddie: I'm not sure. I used Pharaoh as my main for the past two weeks, and my win percentage is rather similar despite the new VHE defenses. So from my point of view, VHE+Immortal is certainly powerful, but it doesn't look like a dealbreaker just yet. On the other hand, I started trying out VHE on offense this week, and well... DAMN he's nice.

I agree with Nicko. There's a good reason to keep the BNW Talismans rare, but the SoT cost is ridiculous. Especially when you still have 50 Troopers to do each day. While this could be partially fixed by allowing endgame players to run multiple Troopers in fights, this is probably less efficient for BNW considering the high difficulty on the higher floors. LoL-level SoT costs could go a long way.
The Extra Turn cap may not be half bad either. Funny how NF nerfed Extra Turns into the ground last year, and now it's coming back. Just fought DaveMurray, where my VHE, his SSD, and both our Newborns traded blows for what seemed like an eternity, until his buzz was almost dead by the time my turn was done.

As for me, I don't know how much time I'll have later this week, considering I'm starting my first ever job, but otherwise I'll be busy getting a second Strike set, and acquire more than one Immunity Will!

[slauki]

attacks 200ish
defense 185

well guys, the most might know that i tend to say yes on nerfs. and i'm with nicko regarding VHE, the marks are ridiculous for example. he is the must have eddie at the moment and since i discovered him lately i never used another eddie. it's always bad when there is an obvious solution, and the most obvious solutions these days are VHE and wrath.After that comes SSD to a lesser degree. Everyone who has Wrath/VHE will put them on defense (rightfully) and that's killing the diversity once again. Not sure if we will ever reach a balanced situation, but right now we are far away from it. That said, VHE is really fun to play and i like him, but...

Regarding the talismans i think the argumentation is too short term. Well if we play 5 rounds of BNW every day we will drop all talismans we want anyway. So it's just a matter of time till we all get enough immortals and echoes to equip entire teams with it. It might take one or two months. The bad drop rate only slow this process down but it's inevitable. So let's buff the droprates on all dungeons and make them available for all, just to see very soon how powerfull they are. And buff the other drops too ofc.

The talismans are okay for defense i feel but they are ridiculous on offense. hard to loose with VHE and a immortal set i found. so we need counter talismans for that something like permadeath talis. or more characters who apply that. Or something that prevents passive from talismans (not sure if prisoner can do that). So the talismans are a nice addition but every strategy game needs a tactic and a equal powerfull countertactic.

NF is great in swiching the most obvious tactics every few weeks, from prisoner, to mummy/SSD, Visions, VHE and Wrath we have seen a lot. But they are really bad in creating necessary counters. Lets say for VHE with immortals there shouls be an awesome singlehitting gunner eddie who applies permadeath to counter him. And this should work for every character/talisman and so on.

My suggestion so far: buff wrath so that he can also apply aoe permadeath, that would bring the balance back :P

[Nicko]

About VHE, yes he is actually the best Eddie... I hope he will not be nerfed, why not a buff on other Eddies ?

Wouldn't mind that at all - especially for the "forgotten" 5* Eddies like Mystic and Shaman (we almost NEVER see these two in the top 50 for a reason). But Kardas saying "VHE defenses sprout up like mushrooms after rainfall" is accurate - kind of like Visions before - and we all know what happened to him.

Interestingly - on my defense (which is a little off the beaten path) I found Nav did better...

[MrFreeze]

Speaking of VHE - hate to say this - but I haven't touched another Eddie since slapping a set of Immortals on him. He's become in my opinion FAR above any Eddie in the game. Is he too much? No easy answer. Those who hate nerfs will say he's just a great Eddie and there's nothing wrong with that. But I guess my feelings are if there's an Eddie who is the automatic go-to - everyone who has him uses him and everyone who doesn't have him wants him - then that may be over the top. Why have any other Eddie

Boost the other eddies in my opinion. VHE is too much fun.

My concern with all the nerfs from the beginning was, what happens when new, harder content is released? If everyone is made too weak for BNW or night city, it kind of defeats the purpose of making the new worlds harder. I really hope the devs don't change him. They just made him fun only a month ago. If they'd left everyone strong in the first place, we might not have so few "op" characters. Then there's just be more "fun" characters to use.

I don't have much to say about pvp except, holy 10,000 point gmac!

[mjmxiii]

Np Nicko, in regards to the talisman drop rates, not great and agree they shouldn't be, but I have been able to get an extra set of Resilience and Resistance talismans since it was released on top of rewards. The rest are one here, one there... but no complaints about that since it is the same for everyone.. No point in obtaining more talismans if we can't upgrade the ones we have now anyway.

It's the evo rune drop rates that either need to be better imo or the amount should be higher than increments of 5 for the 3* evo runes... especially if they are gonna be this rare and 12 to 15 SoT for a chance at them. Definitely P2P at this point and something I also thought was a thing that NF kinda promised they were going to avoid.



We cannot get any 3* evo runes to drop from any PvE worlds anymore, unless they are "all colors" (whatever those are called)... that is seriously annoying. We basically have no choice but to spend at least 12 SoT for a chance at specific 3* evo colors now. Mixing poor drop rates with high SoT costs, low reward increments and crashes is a just one more nail in that VHE coffin, imho. For me, that is problem that could and should have been avoided. They took a long time to get this right brotha lol.. it should be non-issue.

Oh and yes if any of the devs read this, leave VHE as is!! Easily the best Ed in the game!

Edit: I believe sone skull quest are 8 SoT but I can't remember the last time 3* evo runes dropped from those locs.

[MrFreeze]

It's the evo rune drop rates that either need to be better imo or the amount should be higher than increments of 5 for the 3* evo runes... especially if they are gonna be this rare and 12 to 15 SoT for a chance at them. Definitely P2P at this point and something I also thought was a thing that NF kinda promised they were going to avoid...

This is a good point. I haven't run into this problem yet, but I'm sure it'll suck when I do. Something similar happened with colored 3* evo shards when they released LoL. I can't remember the details, but it created a bad bottleneck until they fixed it.

[Ezz]

I'll say it again VHE is a pain but beatable. Mark skill though needs the cost increased to at least 3 pwr if not 4. For all characters who use it, not just VHE. Not a nerf of the character, just cost balancing one of his many tools.
As for BNW and talis, I agree to some extent the talis should be rare and take time to build. But what kills me is RNG and the worthless versions of talis. For example I was grinding garden of life level 8 for chance talis. Probably played 20 games before finally getting one to drop. And you guessed it, onslaught. Useless, in fact worse than useless as now I have to grind another 20 games and pray I don't get another onslaught. That is just plain defeating, in fact I have not touched BNW since and that was 3 days ago.