Wartime feedback-an old vet's perspective
YoMoves
Member Posts: 1,284 ★★★★
Okay, this one's been a lil' time coming, but now that I have a week's wars in the new meta and have listened to what my alliance mates and fellow players have been saying, I think it's time to give an honest player's introspective into the new meta, and the direction of war in general.
This meta? It is the worst meta that we as MCoC players have ever seen.
Not since Stubborn have we had a meta so polarizingly difficult and unfun to play that it has warranted general concern and anger from the community at large that I have seen. The meta combines several problems. First, root is fine on its own, of course. It actually would have made for a more interesting meta if root was all that happened. But we must compound the issue. Root is made a problem by the other two parts of the meta: Daunted and Unblockable. Daunted forcing us to take more special attack damage would also be fine on its own, but we have to combine this with Root, making it far, far more likely that we will block or be hit-and thus take much more damage than we normally would. Again, this would be generally okay...were it not for the last bit. Unblockable. Given many Crush champs have specials that are difficult or impossible to fully dex just on their own, this is a brutal and frankly unfair needle to toss in the haystack of the meta. Certain champs, such as Onslaught and Photon, who you often cannot dex against regardless, now get to deal tons of damage for free. Sure, Parries can negate the Unblockable, but Onslaught's specials make this feat extremely unlikely, if not impossible. On top of this, duped Photon makes even blocking her specials highly inadvisory if at all possible, so certain champs in this meta become little more than paywalls. Give up this many champs to pass.
But the Sturdy meta is supposed to counter this, you say!
One problem.
The Sturdy meta, as it is, has almost no benefit to the player whatsoever. Sure, if you do an intercept, then manage to bait the enemy to special-an occasionally difficult task in and of itself-you can block the unblockable special. However, we must go back to the node and champ problems-Daunted means you are *still* taking boosted damage from said special attacks, and many of these champs in Crush are Mutant, meaning they will likely have Prowess effects boosting their special attack damage even further. A blocked special, even if it's Unblockable, is still going to hurt. A lot. And with some champs, there is nothing you can do about that. It's of little benefit to the player to actually play the attacker meta in many cases, as they are likely dead or down a very large amount of health regardless of if they play to it or not.
I've spoken to many in my alliance and beyond. My alliance floats between tier 1 and tier 2 wars, and we consider ourselves in the upper echelon of skill and roster. Many of us are considering dusting off Quake and Magik-two champions who have not even seen a 6* iteration. All to keep these global champions from being able to throw specials, as many champs are dead whether you are meta or not against them. This is not healthy. When the best counters are Quake and Magik, knowing full well the few good sturdy champs-Warlock and Black Cat as an example-are going to get banned anyways, the meta has reached an unhealthy and possibly unsustainable iteration. This shouldn't continue. As we've seen in Battlegrounds, an unhealthy and uncompetitive meta tends to kill player activity. I just reached Gladiator Circuit and at 0 points was in Gamma 2, meaning less than 4,500 players have deigned to go there this month. I believe we may see something similar in war-competitive levels are going to drop significantly, as if even decently skilled and rostered teams are struggling, imagine how badly lower level alliances are going to fare. One Photon in a bad spot may ruin an entire battlegroup. As stated before, this is not healthy.
What to do, then?
It seems the easiest way to alleviate this problem would be to fix the attacker meta to actually make it viable as opposed to jumping through hoops for something that does not seem to be a benefit in the first place. After all, up to this point, attacker metas actually countered the defensive meta and often helped with other fights. But how can we do this?
My suggestion is simple: Add one more effect to the meta. When the opponent throws a special 1 or 2 while taunted, the attacker gains an Indestructible passive for the duration of the special. Easy enough. This allows the champion to safely block, given it will also have a Steadfast, but also still incentivize trying to dex many specials, as many champions have effects that trigger through block and persist against the opponent. A simple example is Onslaught, who triggers some effects through block of the first hit of its special attacks.
That's my breakdown-hopefully someone at Kabam sees this and perhaps takes my suggestion to heart.
This meta? It is the worst meta that we as MCoC players have ever seen.
Not since Stubborn have we had a meta so polarizingly difficult and unfun to play that it has warranted general concern and anger from the community at large that I have seen. The meta combines several problems. First, root is fine on its own, of course. It actually would have made for a more interesting meta if root was all that happened. But we must compound the issue. Root is made a problem by the other two parts of the meta: Daunted and Unblockable. Daunted forcing us to take more special attack damage would also be fine on its own, but we have to combine this with Root, making it far, far more likely that we will block or be hit-and thus take much more damage than we normally would. Again, this would be generally okay...were it not for the last bit. Unblockable. Given many Crush champs have specials that are difficult or impossible to fully dex just on their own, this is a brutal and frankly unfair needle to toss in the haystack of the meta. Certain champs, such as Onslaught and Photon, who you often cannot dex against regardless, now get to deal tons of damage for free. Sure, Parries can negate the Unblockable, but Onslaught's specials make this feat extremely unlikely, if not impossible. On top of this, duped Photon makes even blocking her specials highly inadvisory if at all possible, so certain champs in this meta become little more than paywalls. Give up this many champs to pass.
But the Sturdy meta is supposed to counter this, you say!
One problem.
The Sturdy meta, as it is, has almost no benefit to the player whatsoever. Sure, if you do an intercept, then manage to bait the enemy to special-an occasionally difficult task in and of itself-you can block the unblockable special. However, we must go back to the node and champ problems-Daunted means you are *still* taking boosted damage from said special attacks, and many of these champs in Crush are Mutant, meaning they will likely have Prowess effects boosting their special attack damage even further. A blocked special, even if it's Unblockable, is still going to hurt. A lot. And with some champs, there is nothing you can do about that. It's of little benefit to the player to actually play the attacker meta in many cases, as they are likely dead or down a very large amount of health regardless of if they play to it or not.
I've spoken to many in my alliance and beyond. My alliance floats between tier 1 and tier 2 wars, and we consider ourselves in the upper echelon of skill and roster. Many of us are considering dusting off Quake and Magik-two champions who have not even seen a 6* iteration. All to keep these global champions from being able to throw specials, as many champs are dead whether you are meta or not against them. This is not healthy. When the best counters are Quake and Magik, knowing full well the few good sturdy champs-Warlock and Black Cat as an example-are going to get banned anyways, the meta has reached an unhealthy and possibly unsustainable iteration. This shouldn't continue. As we've seen in Battlegrounds, an unhealthy and uncompetitive meta tends to kill player activity. I just reached Gladiator Circuit and at 0 points was in Gamma 2, meaning less than 4,500 players have deigned to go there this month. I believe we may see something similar in war-competitive levels are going to drop significantly, as if even decently skilled and rostered teams are struggling, imagine how badly lower level alliances are going to fare. One Photon in a bad spot may ruin an entire battlegroup. As stated before, this is not healthy.
What to do, then?
It seems the easiest way to alleviate this problem would be to fix the attacker meta to actually make it viable as opposed to jumping through hoops for something that does not seem to be a benefit in the first place. After all, up to this point, attacker metas actually countered the defensive meta and often helped with other fights. But how can we do this?
My suggestion is simple: Add one more effect to the meta. When the opponent throws a special 1 or 2 while taunted, the attacker gains an Indestructible passive for the duration of the special. Easy enough. This allows the champion to safely block, given it will also have a Steadfast, but also still incentivize trying to dex many specials, as many champions have effects that trigger through block and persist against the opponent. A simple example is Onslaught, who triggers some effects through block of the first hit of its special attacks.
That's my breakdown-hopefully someone at Kabam sees this and perhaps takes my suggestion to heart.
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