The state of the PvP Meta - Why balance by releasing Counters does not work (at the moment)

The purpose of this thread is to raise awareness for a topic that has been on my mind for quite some time.

Currently the preference of the devs is to balance the PvP meta by releasing counters to dominant strategy. Let me state first that in general theres nothing bad about the idea and that in case you have a more or less balanced PvP meta this works just fine.

Additionally the tools to balance the meta are nerfs/buffs and the restriction list.

What we have seen in the last months is a very hesitant approach when it comes to direct nerfs. It took ages to nerf a combo Poseidon/Myst when it was clear from Day 1 that it was completely OP and ruining the PvP experience. Recently we have witnessed a catastrophic bastia nerf (for no good reason) which wasnt properly tested and had to be partially reverted.

However, the current meta proves that we desperately need a more effective nerf/buff policy. Because of the ineffective balancing the meta has become extremely stale. The introduction of view enemy team has lead to an amount of exact copies I have never seen before. The reason is simple though. Because of the lack of balancing theres currently an exact combination of 16 monsters that proves to be super effective. Its mainly based on link fires absurdly high sweeping power (not link fire in general, just that setup) and the fact that general strength of poison plays right into the strength of this popular setup.

@Dev_VKC Once something is this strong and this popular you cant push it out by releasing a few squishy counters. Without a <4 Star Cani is too weak to kill tankier fire mons with flame eater, Aoi is really bad non awakened (and I know of one person who has her awakened otherwise) and Arctic alone wont get the job done by being in an egg for one week and now hes gone again for good. The problem here is not only that link fire is too strong to be balanced by counters - the incentive to play the counters is way too low. If you want to balance stuff by releasing counters, people need a reason to play the counters in the first place.

You opened the box of the pandora by not realizing the growing strength of link fire. If you had realized, you would have never released monsters like Magmagund who boosted the effectiveness of link fire setups way way too much. You added to this by giving out the guaranteed Novem egg. You wont get it solved by releasing a bad water mythic.

A well balanced meta should encourage variety and creativity. Naturally leaning towards strong monsters but opening a niche for cool strategy displayed by players like @LemonSqueezy (who is simply the CEO of creativity) @NMEGaryOak (who will make you hate your own team because all of your monsters have turned into rocks before you even realize whats going on) @squinty1880 (who played link fire years before it was cool) or @GMagic (who convinced people Harleking endgame was strong by beating them with it before everybody just slammed poison or fire mons in their endgame) or @Killerdog (who composes very well balanced teams by simply playing what he likes instead of whats necessarily super effective). Like @Tanbeer (who remained loyal to Kuraokami when a lot of people sacrificed creativity for win rate) or like Eh Naomi from Discord who surprised me with a really cool endgame today.

Most of these examples are examples from the past because its just not fun to be punished for creativity.

So please @Dev_VKC : Revert “View Enemy team” and balance out link fire by slightly nerfing the obvious candidates. The Meta and many of your spenders and heavy PvP players would be thankful.

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As a link fire user I can confirm it’s too strong if you get a turn and can sweep with 45tu bloodbite, 65tu double poison eater :grinning:

I am also cool with you buffing existing stuff to counter common strategies @Dev_VKC

For example, poison immunity is by far the least common immunity passive, why not give a bunch of mons who need some love poison immune :slightly_smiling_face:

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Ah thanks :blush: @DMGInterference can I get this role on discord? :partying_face::partying_face::partying_face:

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I agree. There needs to be more action to balance the meta I think.

Poison in general is so strong. It counters

Sleep
Shields (and mortar)
Stealth
Hold ground
Overwatch
Revenges (if they have HG)
Clones and revival

It’s counter is purify. Let’s be fair, a poison gas is only 42 TU away.

The only other counter is stun. This is where we see Link Fire…

Magmarinus.
Novem
Magmagund
Flare
Crimea
Poseidon
Satomi
Infernicorn
Mechydra
Onika
Ahuizard

These are the fire counters to stun off the top of my head.

Between poison having virtually no weakness and Fire having so much stun immunity (which I’m generally all for) it’s quite easy to build all out aggressive teams and win.

Also Gazer is an endgame cheat code and Tridakhan can kill 3 monsters at high speed and even has stunning entrance lol.

It’s time to do something I think. We’re seeing this all too much now.

P.S. Buff Throw.
P.S.S Add more Shadow stun protection.

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Go get yourself a shiny Lavaronix from the shop.

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I agree linked fire and poison should be nerfed

It’s a flawed design isn’t it. Since it’s an absorber and you can’t give turn to it. Make it a stun counter :partying_face:

Like Mons with stealth abilitys :sweat_smile: just saying

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Stealth Protection = Mon can’t be poisoned by auto poison or poison gas

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image

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I love when top players make threads like this. I really really hope they consider the suggestions from veterans in here

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Shrek is love, Shrek is Life

We’ve all said it too many times already the fire link in general needs to be reviewed.

I’ve always managed to survive metateams over the years on Neo and I have done it by adding 1 or two counters :

Cani aoe I answered using Rexcong or Megalodragon, sometimes both

Ooo - Something purifying Roaring, now down to a simple magma entrance

Suik + jaguar, kanna solved it
Spam AP + bloomeluga , solved Cypridrus in his release egg for me

Anyway I just want to say that these meta combos that dominated pvp at a certain point were countered using 1 or 2 monsters and you could take them on.After hard testing trying not to lose to fire , trying all kinds of things , intermittently managing to control fire , win loses against fire links , I decided giving up on my first idea, which I didn’t want to use but there was no other, I’m using a full camo ending just to counter fire link and sometimes even then it can win…I’m talking about 6 cloaked monsters just for counter fire link

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@ItsSherlock im surprised more players aren’t butthurt about being on your list of creative players

I’ve been asking this since day 1. Glad someone did it in a detailed way

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We have that role in the Discord, but we give it to the winners of the monthly “Monster Design&Moveset Suggestions” contest :relieved:

Btw

This is why I think buffing Stealth so that it automatically removes Poison (and Poison only) wouldn’t be an unreasonable buff.

That buff would even allow some (not all) Stealth monsters to switch Poison Immunity for some other, more aggressive passive! The only downside I can think of this is that Tenebris would become seriously powerful in PvP, while also being one of the strongest PvE monsters.

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Ah should be CEO of design :yum:

That would be a great buff. Could always increase the TU of Tene’s SS

I completely agree the “View Enemy Team” should be removed. Whatever positives it brings are overshadowed by how much it encourages copying in high level PvP (where people have the monster collection to copy each other). Having a diverse meta is what makes people enjoy PvP much more.

As for the link fire / poison we see everywhere right now, I think some of these changes should happen:

  • Link slayerbane all 100s → 150s restriction from start of battle (maybe 200s)
  • Link poison eater 50TU → 70TU
  • Keeperdragon full attack stats → standard attack / rounded
  • Tridrakhan stunning entrance → stun revenge
  • Magmagund auto-poison → chance auto-poison, instant poison gas → 100s restriction from start of battle

That hits it in a variety of ways, particularly some of the key link fire monsters we see in teams right now.

I’ve personally been beating these copy-paste teams and don’t think they’re totally busted. However, they’re clearly dominating the meta and have a very high power level so it would be nice to see something happen that pushes people to use other things.

As Guesswhosback pointed out, we’ve been given more and more strong link fire monsters (most of the best fire monsters want to be in link fire) so it’s encouraged this strategy too heavily. That said, I think in general the designs we’ve been getting lately are brilliant and its nice to see some strong union payoffs. The different strategies are all there, it must be frustrating as the Devs that the way the PvP meta works is most people play just one strategy at a given time.

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I dont see a problem at all if nebris becomes strong at pvp :yum: is kit isnt that good and is SS could be tweaked or slowed down a bit to 70tu

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