I think most of us can agree by now that AP spam has gotten out of control recently. True, it was encouraged further by the special rule pvp, but there’s still plenty of normal pvp viable options: Titanomoth, Saberzor, Lordsreign, Gearcroc, Sanctistag, Megiasloth, Aegisdragon, Dolphfreeze, Mistletorment, and 5 varieties of rockoids(I know I missed something); all of them bringing unique abilities to the table that makes them even harder to get rid of. It’s not impossible to counter strategies like this, but it tends to require far more preparation than should be needed, often requires teams to run counters to it more frequently which hurts variety(on top of the lack of variety due to ap spam being so common), and it provides ample reward for very, very little team-building effort. Honestly, I would liken it to the Wrangler from the game Team Fortress 2, which this video explains in full detail: https://youtu.be/toxY8lHfs30?t=6m32s
There’s actually a shocking amount of parallels between these two things.
So… what should be done to balance this out? Well, none of us are quite certain. I’m going to lay out every potential solution I can think of, and how effective each one would be is entirely up in the air. I think it’s important that we get the discourse going on this.
Fundamental changes:
Decrease the chances of a successful block. Definitely the most brute force solution, probably too blunt to really deal with the underlying problems of the strategy. But if the devs really are interested in making infiltration a bit more of a thing that can happen, then lowering it from 60% to 40% would suffice.
Prohibit APs from blocking for each other. This deals with specific setups and situations that can be especially aggravating. Let’s suppose there’s a Sanctistag and a Lordsreign, and you have a Chromera and a Prismegasus ready to fight them. Chromera tries to use chrono killer on lords, but nope. Stag blocks it and it does nothing. Then Prism tries to use stealthbane on stag, but nope again, lords blocks it. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s a 50-50 chance, so it causes a bunch of protector counters to become highly unreliable, especially when stag’s involved. It also makes the RNG of AP even more of a nuisance. I think this would be a fair measure to take if nothing else. Running two APs at once is conceptually a very egregious strategy, so it should not be able to prolong itself with shenanigans like this.
Only allow one AP block at a time. Another potential measure against double Auto Protect. With this change, if you have a 2 target attack, then you can target one AP and one non AP of your choice, and the second AP is not allowed to protect the non AP. That way, 2 APs can really only provide as much protection as a single AP would. If you try to bypass both APs, then one of them at random is allowed to block, but not the other. This could get slightly more complicated once you factor in its relationship with normal protectors or auto protect plus, but I’m sure all the logic of that can be worked out.
Skills that could be introduced:
True Hit: This is already a thing, basically Assassinate that doesn’t attack/rely on attacking the protector. It could kill the main sweeper monster in order to leave the enemy with nothing to protect, but it doesn’t always work out like that. There could easily be a second threat, not to mention a mon like bloom can simply shrug that single hit off with its shields. I think this move fails to really address what makes AP so problematic, because it does nothing to actually get rid of them for the team’s convenience.
The Regalion Approach: A passive that renders all chance based protect skills useless while it’s on the field. This way AP spam can be put in check, while honest protectors(and aegis) aren’t hurt in the process. Your team can take advantage of the passive just long enough to remove all the dangerous monsters from the enemy lineup and render the AP wall futile. If this feels a bit harsh, then I think a little consolation could be that the AP is temporarily immune to protector killer and assassinate, given that it’s lost its status as a protector.
A Different Kind of Wall Breaker: A low TU active skill that knocks back all enemy protectors to the back, ignoring stealth(suck it, stag). This monster could cycle through the enemy’s entire stock of APs in a matter of seconds, forcing all the non APs to the front so they can be dealt with without fear of blocking. It’s a weird one admittedly, but it would do something for sure.
Ally/Team Focus: giving a single teammate the ability to ignore protectors. I think giving the skill this much versatility could be a massive threat to AP teams, since you can power up your Delu or alba to snag Tago or Bloom, or maybe a mon with knock back to simply get rid of it. I don’t think it would be too terribly overpowered beyond that tbh.
Turn to Stone: for all intensive purposes turns a protector into stone; no attack power, increased TU, and unmovable. This would completely invalidate monsters like Lordsreign, Titanomoth and Mistletorment, while not being much of a problem at all for Sanctistag or rockoids. Could be an interesting concept for sure, albeit situational.
Protector Breaker: an active skill that removes a protector’s ability to protect, simple as that. Pretty much a less aggressive, yet permanent version of the Regalion approach, which again would probably free the protector from PK and assassinate. It definitely has the potential to turn the protector into useless deadweight, since their movesets tend to be heavily predicated on the assumption that the monster’s very presence is of value to the team.
That’s about all I can think of atm… interested in hearing some other people’s ideas.
A very well written post and not got any silly or radical ideas! I hope the Devs have a good read.
Personally I think it would be best not to do any of the fundamental changes if possible. While the auto-protectors blocking for each other is very irritating, introducing heavy counters to a strategy such as AP spam is a tried and tested method for pushing it out of the meta effectively.
With that in mind, here is a post I wrote in the “Stop AP spam” thread with some skill ideas…
"In general we do need more counters to AP spam. I have faith in the passive “focus” coming on a couple of legendaries (and a SE) and “true hit” has potential if the TU is not crazy on a legendary. However, a couple of extra ideas below…
First idea: “Turn to stone” , a skill which makes target enemy protector monster have its atk reduced to 0, TU of moves increased by 20% (like blizzard) and given unmovable status (and maybe defence increased too - fitting with the flavour of turning them into stone?). It would have 50TU or 70TU. Put it on a monster with “true hit” then they can partially disable protectors which they leave on the battlefield as they kill the other monsters.
Another idea (bit stronger here): “Break protection” , a skill which removes auto-protect / protect status from target enemy. This one should be 130TU or something and maybe one-time use (a 50TU SS with 100s restriction??). Here you could probably make an enemy protector absolutely useless on the field and make the rest of the battle 4v3.
Final idea: “Focused team” , a passive which grants all teammates focus."
P.S. @Lucrayzor Feel free to add these ideas into the above post or not, as you wish.
Forgive a duplicate post on a duplicate thread but:
2 APs - the AP you target takes the damage.
2 Action Protects- the protector you tatget takes the damge.
2 AP+ - the AP+ you target takes damage.
When mixed:
AP+ always takes the damage.
Unless theres an AP+ the protector with protect always takes the damage.
Unless theres an AP+ or action protector the targeted AP always takes the damage.
Almost a perfect solution except AP+ and Protect moves should be identical in regards to targeting. So everything you said except when there is an AP+ on the field and a monster that used a protect move you can choose which one to Target. The reason I say they should work the same because they both have 100% protect rate.
@Lucrayzor
Dude this is the 3rd thread on this topic during this PvP special rule season alone. It’s no coincidence everybody is complaining during this AP spam special rule. The devs have already stated they will change it and indicated they will do it like evertale. I don’t understand why you needed to post another topic about this. It’s irrational. At the very least you could have waited until next PvP or the next update the devs mentioned they will make the changes. They literally said next update.
The suggestion to reduce the protect rate is horrible btw. 60% is total trash and is the reason I l was forced to use two protectors and it’s still trash. I guarantee if the RNG is removed all problems will be solved. Stag will get killed with stealth bane 100% of the time. And Dolphreeze will hit the Chrono protector 100% of the time. It will be game over AP spam. I would like this change to happen to be honest I’m over the uncertainty as well. Even when it works in my favor. Kinda stressful.
I made this with the intention of bringing everyone’s ideas together in a nice little list that the devs can look over to see if anything catches their interest.
Thanks Luc for opening a clearer thread about this. Giving the devs more ideas to look at is not a bad thing. Obviously targeting the AP we want will fix alot of our issue’s with AP which in fault would remove the RNG aspect.
There have been many AP discussion threads in the past very recently . I’d like to see a mod lock this thread and link it to one of the old threads like it’s done Everytime .
Completely agree. This thread should be locked and linked to. I don’t want @Lucrayzor post to go to waste because he put a lot of effort into it, but perhaps relocated to the original.
@Professor_Oak@Saitama
I totally agree there have been too many threads regarding AP spam recently. However, I think the Devs would appreciate a thread such as this one with the ideas collected and explained clearly. This thread isn’t yet another one for people to rant about their hatred of AP spam or to get into arguments over things, hence it’s arguably different to those other threads and doesn’t need closing as a duplicate. I agree with Lucrayzor’s approach to give the Devs a clearer message, even if it is on top of all the stuff they’ve trawled through these past two weeks.
If you have any good, relevant points regarding AP spam and how it could be better dealt with in the game then write them here and I’m sure they will be incorporated to some degree in the original post, as mine were.
@Saitama@KikNaz I’ve removed/edited all the posts containing arguing. Please don’t argue any more here.
I think this is inconsistent moderating not locking this thread but you are a mod and your right to do as you please. If this is now going to become the main thread then lock or link the old ones…It will be a shame though because the old ones had some good ideas and the devs already responded with a pretty big hint of a solution they will be bringing.
I don’t mean to discredit what was said there… like KD said, I just wanted a more compact and convenient way for us to communicate our ideas straight to the devs. They did confirm that they were looking into what they could do, that doesn’t mean we can’t still offer a little input.
I respect you luc your a great player. You did a great OP in this thread as well. I just can’t see how this thread is more compact or convenient than what already exists. Anyway, I’m out!
Enjoy the discussions.
Wouldn’t it be simpler to just limit the amount of protect monsters (Skills, Passives) ones allowed to put into his team. E.g Lets say the devs add a rule that states only 2 protect orientated monsters are allowed in pvp lineup. This would encourage people to be alot more strategic in where they place their protect monsters and open up opportunities to open up the meta without creating skills that completely invalidate strategies/Monsters which to me is bad for the game
My mind went there, but… I just don’t think that can reasonably be done. There’s stuff like TTs and pupas that can shoot themselves in the foot by there being too many of them, but at least they’re still allowed to try. The game doesn’t ever impose conditions that forbid you from using a certain combination of monsters, unless it exceeds your cost limit, or there’s 2 mons of the same species. It’s been like that since the very beginning, I just really don’t like the idea of messing with the framework like that.
I do have to agree here too, if anything I’d limit it to 4 protectors rather than 2. Since teams are just huge by nature, I think 4 doesn’t feel too much like spam at all as long as they’re evenly spread throughout the team.
Still, I don’t want to put hard constraints on people’s strategies like that. Ideally, it’s your opponents that should be punishing you for using absurd strategies, not the game itself.
Thats fair reasoning, a limit of 2 was just an example not an actual suggestion. This is just how ive seen other games balance their gameplay in a successful manner. Its the best way to stop a spam strategy that abuses game mechanics.
