You both are right. It is fun to fool around a bit and try out new comps. But If you really want to go up the ladder you have to take a meta team, because it gives you the best chance of whinning, no matter which team your opponent takes.
If you would have infinite lifes in normal pvp, it would have the same effect as you now have with the draft.
This PVP draft brawl is literally identical to the meta we have had for months. If you want to win its the same Panzer/Heim/Caine/Gale combo that has had everyone hating PvP.
To make it worse you now add a minute to the game time when I am going to choose the same 5 heroes no matter what my opponent does. PVP is stale and the recent update has done nothing to fix it.
Autoing in free play was a far better option than trying hard in the brawl event. Racked up a few hundred wins instead of wasting huge amounts of time on a loading screen to see the same 5 heroes get selected.
1 Like
Another thought how about we pick what our opponent gets instead of what we want
As stupid as it sounds, i would really like that idea. This would show who can can really play and adapt.
They should speed this up by making the selection 2, 2, 1. maybe even 3, 2 so itās not too time consuming.
Also, you guys are saying meta, but my healblock team wipes any meta team without loss, especially when I donāt have to worry about anyoneās lives. Not having plat ifrit is damn fun but showtime is still annoying. Gammond is the sheeet with his gold and hard hitting neutral dmg silver.
I agree that they ban some heroes, maybe 2 randomly so a new team is forced to be created each matchā¦
The only good thing is that all heroes are at the same level. The rest isnāt different than regular pvp. Meta still rules.
We need a:
1 limit on the range of individual hero power letās say max factor two power between highest and lowest dps.
2 slight nerf to Dogface, Panzer and Nightingale.
3 strong buf for all other dps heroes, alternativly more viable heal blocks or options to coordinate damage.
Best Idea I think is ban list or opponent say picks first 3 and you try to balance with last 2 selections it would speed up the Draft as all 3 could be picked at once and final 2 or in ban list all 5 could be picked at once as ban list would make those unavailable for selection
Iām not a top tier player By any stretch of the imagination, but here are my thoughts from the brawl:
-
I learned how to get better at pvp. I won more matches during brawl and pvp matches after than I did before. Main thing I learned was importance of stars. My 3 star golds were getting murdered before. Needless to say they arenāt 3 star any more. Having everyone be gold and 6 star helped me realize I wasnāt horrible, I just wasnāt investing properly in my heroes.
-
I faced many different team comps. When I faced the panzer, dog and heal meta, 9 times out of 10 I won. Although to be fair, when they had ultimate skin nightingale, those were extremely tough and are most of the matches I lost against meta (Especially when they rolled all over). Iām not sure if that would have been the same if everyone was platinum though.
-
I personally loved the draft. I loved changing up team comp as I saw who they picked.
-
The biggest thing that the brawl showed me was how much more fun pvp was when everyone was same stars and rank. So to improve pvp, matchmaking needs to improve. It needs to match stars more closely.
1 Like
Does anybody know which heroes/meta mostly used by top 10 tier winner in the brawl?
Just another curiosityā¦
I didnāt like the event much, it turned out pretty much as I expected - stale, no new meta, everyone playing the same thing. I ended up around the top 120 without playing too many games.
I was initially pretty excited to begin the tournament. However I got to 1700 points fairly quickly and placed in top 50-60 at that time if I remember correctly. However I noticed that it was the same battles, same setup, over and over again, so I lost interest and anyway I had a busy Saturday.
Later on in the day to spice things up I deliberately lost 5-10 matches in a row to place lower in the low 1600s so as to see whether things were different there.
Alas, not at all. The players who knew what they were doing would run the regular meta teams, and the players who didnātā¦ well they suffered.
Seeing as it was totally the same gameplay over and over again, I got my points back up to around top 100 and stopped playing (this was around 6 hours before close of event) . Ended up around top 120.
Here are my takeaways:
1. The draft system does not introduce new systems and new team loadouts. Itās basically the same 7-8 heroes you encounter. Anyone who chose not to play a meta setup would get punished. It was also irrelevant how you sequenced your team whether you chose Panzer first, or Mandrake first, or whatever. The next instalments of PVP Draft, 3-2 or 2-2-1, arenāt gonna be different.
2. The guys at the top of the LBs - kudos to you guys, you are truly creme de la creme. Congrats to yāall and your gold portrait is well deserved. Especially Sogui who proved that he can win legit, without min-maxing. So buddy, why donāt you just level up all your heroes and come to the light. 
3. PVP draft DID separate the pvp grinders from the skilled players. This was just about the only aspect that I liked about PVP draft - I enjoyed killing guys from the top alliances, sometimes easily, sometimes not so easily. I also got killed by some impressive players from top alliances and unknown alliances too. I also particularly enjoyed the fact that many players who would consistently get top 50 from these top alliances didnāt appear anywhere in the top 200. I can think of one kinda rude, low skilled player (I think female, not sure) who is basically a flat track bully in regular PVP and I was happy to see she wasnāt anywhere in top 200 in PVP draft. In regular PVP players can spend gold to get multiple revives and run their Plat++ Panzer teams without obstruction - and placement on the LBs in regular pvp sometimes can be weighted by how much gold you are willing to commit to revives.
4. The point spread is too thin. I noticed that 10th and 11th place had the same points but 10th got the gold portrait and 11th got the silver? I wonder how 11th felt! There were also lots of people tied for points because it seemed like the Valor won or lost tended towards 15 & 16 points on average. This system only works for long tournaments where there is enough time (and requires strong participation) and doesnāt work for short tournaments where players play less than 50 games.
5. By far the worst thing about this tournament was its repetitive and stale nature. And I also agree with Sogui that sometimes the match was decided by RNG, notably, Nightingaleās and Mandrakeās stun. If you got stunned just at an inopportune moment, it could be decisive in a close fight.
6. If the heal meta remains the same (and I think itās going to be worse the next round if PVP draft is fixed at plat due to Ifritās availability), the next PVP Draft is gonna be more of the same thing.
7. Speaking for my own alliance, I didnāt see high participation rates. What I surmise is that PVP Draft is only appealing to those who are fairly competitive and attracts players that want to do well. For the decent and run of the mill guys who could get outplayed badly game after gameā¦ PVP Draft could be a turn off.
8. Nightingale continued to dominate this brawlā¦ Is there any team that can successfully run without her? You could run Dogface without Panzer, or go without Mandrakeā¦ You also donāt need Caine. But no Nightingale is a suicide wish. Nightingale has dominated the past 7-8 Brawls (maybe more)ā¦ maybe even as far back as UAF Month in JULY! Elemental Brawl - you gotta bring Night. Energy Heroes Brawl - remember that one? You HAD to bring Night. Factional Brawl UAF vs Watch - you gotta bring Night. Not only Brawls but virtually every PVP tournament - you have no choice, you gotta bring Night. Lest people be mistaken, the one compulsory hero that every successful PVP team must field, is Nightingale. No exceptions.
That there are no alternatives is pretty bad. I am not calling for a nerf (for now). But if this continues and NO OTHER ALTERNATIVES are available, then it is sad indeed.
Thatās all I can think of for now.
/Sing
1 Like
I didnāt run Nightingale (Legendary or regular), Panzer, or Dogface at all this entire Draft Brawl, and I managed to snag myself a Silver Brogan portrait (so top 250) during Canadian Thanksgiving weekend (thus much less time to actually spam PvP than usual). So I wouldnāt say no Nightingale is a āsuicideā. Hell I even ran a successful FRANCOISE comp for a good 10-15 matches and won 2/3s of thoseā¦ Iād love to see someone accomplish that in the regular PvP mode.
The Draft isnāt perfectā¦ YET, but Iāve seen more variety in this mode than Iāve seen in PvP since before this game came out of Beta, so I think things are going in the right direction. Itās more fun than regular PvP, and definitely a step on the correct path towards where everyone seems to want the PvP meta to go to (just a step, so weāre not at the destination yetā¦ so asking āare we there yet?ā, āwhy arenāt we there yet?ā wonāt help get the Devs there there any faster)
(yes itād be nice if there was a per match or daily reward for playing PvP, and yes the Role warfare stuff still needs to address some of the meta issuesā¦ but those balance issues are tangent to the Draft stuff, at least how I see things).
2 Likes
@Rygel - To be fair, with all due respect to your experience in the game, top 250 was relatatively effortless for mildly experienced veteran players.
If you had any gameplay anywhere near the top 150-200, then you saw that EVERY team had Panzer, Gale, Drake, & Heim plus one of [Caine, DF, Keel].
The draft event was an absolute embarrassment for HHG. It highlighted everything wrong with PvP. Iām seeing people say in forum threads that they wish they could lock in their team choices ahead of timeā¦ WHAT?? Thatās a symptom of a horribly balanced game.
So if thereās one strategy that works best, then draft should be perfect to fix that right?? If everyone is running the EXACT same team. Then draft should mean that you can build the perfect counter to that team right? Well jokes on you if you think that. Turns out the best counter for panzer/gale/drake/heim/caine is panzer/gale/drake/heim/caine. What a joke.
To addā¦
Come on. Once I hit top 200, I donāt think I saw a single team that didnāt have the ābig 4ā. I played a LOT of games. And I canāt rememeber a SINGLE game without those 4. I made it up to top 20 for much of the event and it was worse the further up you got on the leaderboard.
1 Like
Iāve had plenty of success countering Panzer/gale/drake/heim/caine with teams like:
Caine/Heim/Moss/Phoenix/Odachi
Caine/Heim/Min/Odachi/Clyde (this one usually would have the match won in less than a minute and a half)
not saying the meta or the draft was perfectā¦ but it was a step in the right direction. with a little more work I think the Devs can overturn the inertia, that is basically lazy players who want to auto the entire time with the safest team possible.
thatās not a symptom of a horribly balanced game (tho not saying the balance isnāt badā¦ it definitely needs a lot more work), but a symptom of people used to autoplay grinding and not wanting to put effort into exploring the new brawl fully.
No no no. You canāt say you had success against the meta when your event placement was well outside of the realm of top level play.
The draft was a step in the right direction, I agree with you there. But it was a lazy, minimum-effort step in a kinda-right direction.
You are ignoring one fact that makes all the difference. Every single person (ok fine 99%, woe is me) within the top 200 used the EXACT SAME TEAM. Keep in mind that they knew which heroes they were going to face.
So EVERYONE at the top level knew EXACTLY what team they were going to faceā¦ and they were UNABLE TO COUNTER THAT TEAM with the heroes available in the game.
thatās not a symptom of a horribly balanced game
I justā¦ whatā¦? Get your head out of the sand.
Most in the top100 used the mentioned teamā¦ I didnāt play much and ended top30 but met almost only the same team over and over, I used 4 of those heroes and a 5th that is not mentioned thoughā¦ I found the draft boring though and honestly my choice of heroes didnāt really change whatever opponent I met, so the 20-60sec added time to get started was annoying. And playing with 6 star gold heroes when you only play 10 star plat heroes normally didnāt make it more funā¦
To replay these PvP fights without any PvP gems nor PvP chests made it pointless to spend much time on. I would recommend either to have 10 lives for each hero so there is a limit to it and to reward with PvP chest every 10th win and 50 PvP gems pr match wonā¦
I do like that the draft mode focuses on skill, you cant buy your way to the top with revives and big 10* plat bonus heroes that let you rack up 600k points per win.
Even in this horrible meta with many games decided by RNG, you still had to play well to climb. I appreciated getting to sharpen my skills against other top players.
The draft also revealed how the PVP imbalance (at gold at least) is focused on a handful of strong heroes. Iāll write more about them later but it seems like if we could actually get to a decent metagame the draft would allow people to counter pick and exercise more strategy at the pick phase. Draft has potential but it still comes back to this stale meta destroying the fun in every form of PVP we get.
Personally, I think its very tough to completely change the meta in a game like this.You can take a few heroes out here and there that were seen in a lot of meta teams (Gammond, Savage, even Halo to an extent) but thereās always going to be staple heroes. The only way to take some of them out of the meta would be to completely change how they work, not just fix some stats. Also, I think part of it too is lack of trying to find teams to counter as well. A lot of people stick to those heroes that are considered strong rather then trying to find ways to combat them, which just ends up creating a lot of similar match ups that come down to who can get a skill off/ who can get the first kill.
1 Like