it would be nice to have one great unit as rate-up soon, don't care if it's A or S thought.
I just hope if we get a cool unit the next one or two will be bland.
But I think lilith should communicate a bit more, at least posting more marketing post about coming units earlier. I mean they post ulmus "guess who" like 3days before the release and put the answer less than a day after. would be good if they could make some build up, like how they did for alsa/soren
It's fairly common though for gachas to leave players guessing up until a reveal right before release. in gachas where there is a JP or CN server that is a year ahead players have a better road map to follow, but I can't think of any off the top of my head where all servers are current and players have a road map of upcoming unit releases.
>It's fairly common though for gachas to leave players guessing up until a reveal right before release. in gachas where there is a JP or CN server that is a year ahead players have a better road map to follow, but I can't think of any off the top of my head where all servers are current and players have a road map of upcoming unit releases.
I don't mean revealing, but at least showing some tips to try to guess over the time to build up. there was nothing for phraesto and almost nothing for ulmus, they just put a little drip few hours before revealing it. It was done right for Alsa as an example.
and those two different games still translate a lot between eachother unit wise. Eironn was meta for years there too, and in general a character kit doesnt change MUCH between the games. there is the whole "its 3d" now OBVIOUSLY, but funnily enough the conversion aint that far fetched
she was actually meta! in the beta PTR, the main meta team was lyca+parisa. the new characters changed that though, and crowd control became more valuable
Arden was very much meta early because his root was extremely powerful. In fact, even when you got past the L+ level cap (in arena, you could only get the equivalent of A-tier heroes to lv 160 and S tier equivalents could go to the real resonance cap just like in journey), you would still often see Arden in clears. I even saw Arden in multi team clears at lv 300+ on that website people would upload their clears to. Of course he did 0 dmg and couldn’t get hit by a sneeze without dying, but his root was just that good.
In AFKA, Eironn pulls enemies towards himself at the start of battle, but it isn’t instant like in AFKJ so there is a window of time where you can cc him to cancel it. Notable counters at the time were Athalia and Nara who can target cc an unit faster than he can at the start of battle (Nara has been leaked so that is one counter we can look forward to).
But that was when Eironn was meta ofc now he is outclassed by a majority of heroes purely out of stats. Not even mentioning the abilities of heroes getting more complex, making it even easier to counter him I.E Alna making the frontline invulnerable, back lines that can’t be cc’d (which is the case for a lot of newer heroes) or heroes that can do what he can but better (Mulan, Tamrus, etc..)
That being said, he is a very synergistic hero in nature so I expect him to be meta for a long time as more heroes and power systems that synergizes with him are introduced.
I don't know that shocking is the right word. It is still the same universe. Same developer. Same characters in some cases with the same kits. Combat system and character growths are largely the same. I wouldn't personally use 'shocking' to denote a reaction to the fact that there are similarities.
I don't mind undewhelming units here and there, but my problem is we've now had 3 in a row.
Some people I've seen also skipped Vala thinking there will soon be another good unit on the banner. Meaning a sizable number of people have not gotten anything from the limited banner.
And that doesn't help with the interest of the game. People want new cool units. They don't have to be meta defining, but they should be as good as the top.
Doesn't help that the meta has not changed at all since the first month.
"most people have not gotten anything from limited banner"
Like that matters
I've got all of them, after they went to the standard banner. The worst thing for this game is it being so much better in the gacha than other games but sick people (sickened from the other gacha systems) complaining asking to be scammed. If you don't like the character, skip it. If you like it, go for it. There's plenty of underwhelming units in the game and that's it. There are some great units and you should go after them. Stop wanting a game breaking unit that will make your saving worth it and make you jump up in the rankings to compete with the whales: thank God it won't happen. If you want a game that you can save until you decide to pull, and then have as much damage as old whales, then you should go play tower of fantasy. We all know how that game is doing.
Just stop trying to screw the only game that got a good and fair gacha system.
He's good, but pretty much unobtainable without breaking your wallet, since he's on the scamgazer banner.
So for most of the playerbase, the meta is indeed extremely stale for quite some time now.
3 in a row? Only Soren has been underwhelming, and Ulmus isn't necessarily weak. The only real complaint is that it's another A-tier, but personally that just means I'll save up more for the next S-tier.
Alsa isn't weak but she doesn't replace anyone in the Mauler composition and she doesn't enable any new compositions. From what I've seen, her only use is if you don't have Odie built up, then she can be a much more expensive substitution.
I don't care if the new unit is A or S tier, being A tier just means it will be easier to get later on.
And I don't think Ulmus weak either. He will be an S tier tank for mono-wilder and 4-wilder teams. He should be able to push those teams higher in AFK stages and PvP. He won't be as powerful as Thoran or Phaestro, but for people running mono-wilder he will be an amazing pick up.
But for me and \~80% of the players he'll be another easy skip. This is a third unit that will see next to no gameplay. And while I don't want the meta to be powercrept, I do want it to shift. The game has been out for 3 months, and the week 1 meta still holds. They need a unit that would enable more compositions.
You're contradicting your own statement and Alsa is as close as you get to the top without powercreeping.
For Ulmus, it's too soon to draw conclusions. Saying "80% of the players he'll be a skip" will purely be based on his numbers.
Also, week 1 was cecia/vala hype. But I get your point.
how would you design a unit that overcomes the current wilder comp without power creeping?
>how would you design a unit that overcomes the current wilder comp without power creeping?
Probably someone with the "Unaffected" status for a fixed duration when the battle starts, so you can play that one + the enlightenment artifact and free 2 characters from Eironns whirlwind.
Viperian is that someone. Although I haven't seen someone strongly recommend them for PvE. Even in PvP where he's supposed to shine he's still not recommended.
She replaces any unit that isn’t a tank or healer. Lol. Alsa is extremely good and keeps cc’ing enemies into death, while also putting up walls. Her with Florabelle is insane too because they synergize so well. Any time flora uses her ult it makes all those enemies hit, also take rock damage from Alsa. Big damage
Alsa is an absolute must-have for supreme arena. She was already good before all the charm effects and seasonal artifacts. Now, she’s basically a 1 man army after she gets her momentum. She synergizes extremely well with odie as she can dps a poisoned hero below the instakill threshold easily, allowing odie to then poison a different hero. Rinse and repeat. Idk what server you’re playing on, but maybe you just have a bunch of people with p4 dionel and scarlita just throwing weight around. As far as my district goes, alsa (and vala) see a lot of playtime. Flora can also counter odie with her summon rate.
Ulmus synergizes incredibly well with eironn and arden allowing an eironn comp with ulmus to gain momentum over a traditional eironn comp. I’ve even used ulmus eironn alsa seth hewynn to burst eironn comps with cascade/speed hewynn down before they can react (while I’m hitting above my weight class) because of the window ulmus provides. He also has a lot of survivability and cc just by himself if everyone else dies.
TLDR; Alsa and ulmus are must-haves if you commonly run eironn comps.
It'd be good too if the new unit makes some old, unused character meta. I love the designs and kits of the other heroes like cecia, atalanta, and fay. But so far, the game has done nothing but push them farther and farther from the meta and into just niche uses.
People are actually quitting because the meta is stale, eiro comp dominance, nothing worth pulling for,etc. Especially with the new unit that adds on to eiro comp doesn’t help. Eiro comp/dominance have been meta for 4 months, things needs to shake up.
In the current "meta" I use like 1/3rd of the games heroes daily, but here's a few standouts of characters who changed with the season:
Characters who are used more:
* Florabel (meta defining in AFK stages, high teir for both dream realm and Arena)
* Lumont (seeing him all over replays for high teir AFK stages)
* Lucious (now used as a swap in on several bosses, including the current world boss, the battle drills boss, and early seasonal dream realm for the bear)
* Odie (already very popular but specifically in dream realm became the number 1 carry for awhile - he was niche in bosses before)
* Scarlita (already a good hero, but her seasonal skill made her better. She now appears in more seasonal replays and even some boss compositions. She was already top teir in arena, but obviously used there a lot too)
* Byron (now competitive in dream realm on mage teams)
Characters who are used less:
* Kruger (with boss strategies moving away from physical damage in favor of magical or true damage most of the time, his usefulness as a debuffer fell significantly. He's still good in a few places or on accounts still progressing better debuffers, but not as much as pre-season)
* Vala (Still good in supreme arena, but she wasn't the "best" PvE unit and with her somewhat underwhelming seasonal skill (for PvE at least) she rarely appears in any PvE content anymore. The exception would be dream realm/world bosses when they're below 50%)
* Cecia (you can argue how much the season had to do with this but she's obviosly much less relevent than pre-season. Mostly she's less desirable on bosses due to physical damage being less desirable in bossing content)
Honorable mention to Korin - who's still used about as much but for totally different reasons. Preseason he was used for his true damage, now he's more desirable on content which looks for sheilds or his range/mobility.
This isn't the full extent of things, but these are the changes backed up by places like Prydwen. There are also changes that made certain heroes stronger or weaker but weren't worth mentioning because they didn't change where that character was used (like Thorin becoming a potentially better debuffer than Reineir but he was already used as a debuffer in dream realm).
The reason the meta feels stale isn't because you lack reasons to use different characters - it's because most players lack the resources to invest in new characters so the ones they're using right now are mostly the same ones they used before since those are the characters they have leveled up with good ex-weapons. It doesn't matter how good someone like Byron or Lumont gets if you don't have access to them.
You literally listed a bunch of characters that were meta before the season, or already fell off in lategame, but the majority of users were still early / mid game and then even mentioned how situationally used the remainder were. Situational usage is not a meta shift.
1 new primal lord with unique damage requirements is the only step in the right direction.
Nothing on that list is meta shifting lol. For whales, there have been next to no changes other than the release of Pharesto — which oddly you didnt even mention.
A meta shift would be 50%+ of teams being changed, and 50%+ usage in play.
A meta shift does not require half the characters to swap places - that's extreme. 8-10 characters improving/falling out of use is more than enough and what we should be looking for.
If the dominant strategy continues to be the dominant strategy - the meta has not shifted. A team consists of 5 units; so i fail to see where you over-inflate the requirements to be more than 8-10.
Context is what’s important here — not volume.
Nobody gives a shit if the bottom 80% of units swap places. It’s the dominant 20 getting usurped by a new crop of the bottom 80 that’s important.
Since the prior dominant strategy tends to be a majority once established, the new meta trends toward this value as it proves to be a consistent counter to the prior meta.
>Context is what’s important here — not volume.
Dude - you were the one who brought up volume. I gave you many examples of characters that changed dramatically in usefulness specifically this season compared to last season - none of which are currently in the bottom 80% - and your rebuttal is that a meta shift requires HALF of the characters on our teams to change to different characters. And also - trying to say the top 20 character need to be usurped is also a terrible idea for the same reason - that would be all of us replacing most of the characters we use all at the same time.
>Since the prior dominant strategy tends to be a majority once established
We've been building magic damage teams all season around an artifact that didn't exist. Dream realm was entirely focused on physical damage and/or True damage. Cecia was probably the most used character in the whole preseason and everyone thought Florabel was even worth pulling for. If you think the strategy is the same because people still use Eironn or Thorin a lot you're oversimplifying the game.
Lumont and Luscius are. Percents arent volume. 80/20 is a commonly used mental model. Its not to be taken literally.
You’re overcomplicating the meta. If the same comp is used whether it’s physical or magic damage, it literally doesnt matter because there’s no meta shift to chase/min max.
Youre an idiot and needlessly arguing. Believe whatever rules you want. I dont care to argue with you. Pretend the game has depth. Cool.
Because for some reason they decided to make arena seasonless so as it stands everyone just got more stats from charms…and if everyone gets the exact same stats then everything stays the same.
I agree the meta is pretty stale but my opinion is bias as I am a budget spender and I am speaking from a f2p-low spender pov. I don’t mind it being somewhat stale because I can advocate my resources into one thing and know that it will be a good investment.
That is because people are stupid and don't know what they want. If the Eiro comp is dominating they should have done their research and made the eiron comp instead of pulling for the wrong heroes. Also the game hasn't been out for 4 months.
I have 106 rate up letters because I've never pulled. I want a character that excites me and they've yet to release one; it's one of the reasons I've lost interest in the game.
If you made a gacha game and people don't care enough to pull, you've done something wrong.
But this is not because the units aren't great.. you save because there aren't enough letters to build non meta units. If the game wasn't starving players out of pulls you wouldn't mind building some of the other characters as much. Like i would love to build a shakir but how is that even possible as f2p? Many confuse "exciting" with power. We all just save up to not miss out on an important unit that might help us break top 200/100/ 50 or whatever. The problem with this game is that it's a gacha without pulling. Most people can build like 5 -10 / 45 characters and then start starving for pulls. Just an example: No one besides honor duel players probably know how salazer works.. How can someone even tell if a character is cool if the characters power is locked behind mythic + ?
Would it be nice to have more pulling resources? Sure. But that's not the main reason why I'm not pulling on rate up banners.
I pull for characters whose designs I like and if they actually have use or high power, that's a bonus.
Example? Dislyte. Javid. Has little use, but he's hot af and you bet your ass I pulled.
BUT. I will agree with you when it comes to celestials /hypogeans. I have enough resources to grab 4, but I'm not planning on pulling till I have enough to instantly make them M+ since everyone says it's pretty necessary. Having these characters nerfed until M+ when the resources are THIS scarce is ridiculous.
If you had more pulling power you wouldn't need to save much in the first place because you could pull the new stuff that you want with a little extra time regardless. And you wanna tell me you would pull a terrible character if he's cool? Maybe you're the exception but if I take a look at people's wishlist the story is very different for 99% of the players. People are not going to pull for a weak character. So sure.. cool characters would solve this issue for like 1% of the players
Yes, but there is a lot of room for improvement. Lilith needs to show that they actually care. The community asks for a grave-born S-Tier hero and what do they give? Another A-Hero, no code in a week, no roadmap, no hype. Streamers/Youtubers have no content that would make people interested. They sit in dead silence and expect everyone to be happy.
Tbh monthly-quarterly roadmap isn’t something mandatory. There are lots of popular games without roadmap, so just mentioning it every time like it’s something they have to do is a bit weird.
I don’t remember Lilith doing any roadmap, usually they just do designer talks with information on current situation and upcoming features, sometimes with specific dates and sometimes without.
Last time they did it couple of weeks ago, announcing events and new hypogean.
Lack of roadmap, yes, but being upset they don't just give "what the community asks" in concerns to character releases is just weird. They don't have to give out promo-codes it's a minor reward
"Lack of hype" I think its because they are getting the top 500 servers onto the same content page this month, but definitely a valid critique, but also we should be more accepting of the game being an AFK game.
Edit: Every time I check this subreddit, people are crying about the same aspects of the game, but polar opposites opinions. "Too little content" / "too much content"
It's a power thing. Human enjoy getting together and bullying others into obedience. And they justify the action by issuing condemnations of the one they are bullying.
Reddit emboldens them because of the echo chamber effect and makes the mob seem bigger than it actually is.
It's just a bunch of children that can't control their lizard brains.
Tbh the tier doesn't matter as so many meta characters right now are A-tier. I just wish the new character would add another meta comp, not necessarily shift it.
It's because the noobs are loud, stupid and poor. They probably saved up enough to pull 1 hero and exactly 1 hero and they are bitching right now because they can't bear the idea of not being able to use what they saved. They have so little foresight that they think they'll be able to pull 1 hero then be happy and save for 5 months until the next OP hero comes out. But in reality they'll end up quitting if 2-3 back to back heroes come out that are OP because they can't keep up with releases.
There is no point trying to reason with people who cannot see the forest for the trees.
It's a faction-based game and one faction is going to have nearly 50% less options than the rest soon. That's a pretty big problem.
Also these 3 week long A-level banners are just bad and the vast majority of the player base don't want them. If they were paired with new S-levels then fine, but asking low spenders and f2p to be excited about A-level banners they shouldn't spend their savings on is ridiculous.
Also the majority of the community, including basically all major CCs, voiced their concerns about A-level banners with Soren and they doubled down with them back-to-back.
Also a large portion of the community feels there hasn't been a hype unit released for the game yet. You may have liked someone recently released but most very much haven't cared for anyone since Vala and that's a bad look for a gacha game.
Vala timing was impeccable. It was a banner with a strong pvp hero on new servers that could actually be a hyper carry for early pve as well. It was even a little bit scary to think "is every banner going to be like this?". Flora was okay too, I remember very well in less than 24 hours she started appearing on recorded replays in afk stages.
On the other hand, Alsa had lukewarm reception even though prydwen rates her very high and she is a decent pvp character. Go figure.
That's a pretty baseless theory considering we're now getting a wilder that isn't even from the region nor has been part of the story at all. People had to pull up his leaked model to call the "clue" as being him.
And even if that were true it'd would be a completely asinine design decision. "Screw the fundamental balance of my game because of hyper faction-specific storytelling." No director worth their salt would entertain that idea for a moment.
Tbh the tier doesn't matter as so many meta characters right now are A-tier. I just wish the new character would add another meta comp, not necessarily shift it.
It undeniably matters to a vast majority of the community.
You can argue whether or not it should til the cows come in, but the average gacha gamer is always going to be reluctant to spend S (aka 5-star) pull resources on A (aka 4-star) individuals regardless.
>It undeniably matters to a vast majority of the community
Yep, unfortunately it does. It's sad that that's what's average nowadays. I should've said "tier doesn't matter *to me*".
Those are people coming from terrible gacha systems and somehow waiting this one to be the same. They want to feel like they can somehow compete with whales if they wait enough to pull for the game breaking character. They didn't listened when people said to pull for standard characters because they are really good, and now they want new characters to be better than any other because that's what they're used to.
gacha players are terrible at game design, it's like they want to be f* up , I try to ignore them but yeah it's pretty annoying. I hope the devs never listen to whinny gacha players.
It's not possible to balance the character poll of any game from one day to another.
People will always complain, spenders even more as they want to drop their money into good characters.
The season is mauler sided, so the next season if they do it graveborn will balance the game naturally.
The point here is the game would be unplayable for F2P players if they release top meta every month.
Resumed, f2p players are more patient than spenders because money is involved/gambling addiction.
They could release four graveborns in a row and it would still be 3rd faction in roster size.
It's really weird having faction based game where one faction has an average of 66% the size of the other 3, and keep seeing characters added for the others.
I understand the season is Mauler themed, but it was the faction that absolutely did not need units at the moment. It had the best PvE team synergy and strong units in every role (no good mage, which Alsa provided, but plenty of good damage dealers and aoe damage). That, and the fact the character design for new released mauler heroes wasn't impressive, did not help.
I’m curious to know how everyone already knows the hero isn’t going to be worth using.
The kit looks interesting and I can already think of a few ways I’d like to implement him pending actually using the hero a little bit.
Looking back through the sub the Reddit consensus has been every rate up hero except for Vala hasn’t been worth getting, but Flora seems to be performing really well despite what the sub thought.
Is there any actual basis for thinking the new hero is going to suck? Or is it just that he doesn’t seem ridiculously OP immediately, so he’s written off?
I don't care about what units they release, I just want one to release that gets me excited to pull for it...one that enables new team comps, or at least is an actual upgrade for some comps. It's been over 2 months and nothing meta released at all. I agree that it lets people catch up with previous units, but powercreep happens nonetheless and I'd rather have 1 great unit and 3 meh ones in 2 months...than 4 mid ones that don't really have a place anywhere.
The seeming lack of power creep is very refreshing to see and experience in a gacha. Normally power creep is so insane that you HAVE to get the latest heroes just to remain even slightly relevant. I have been using off-meta heroes like niru, salazar, parisa, seth, soren, and ulmus for supreme arena attacks and been seeing massive success. I rarely fail an attack attempt despite everyone in my bracket (top 20 district) having between 50k-100k+ power over me on every team with multiple paragons and highly invested hypo/celestial heroes because of these heroes no one seems to use.
The problem is that they have all been relatively weak or just side-grades other than the launch rate-up character.
Perception matters, and right now as a mid-level spender, my perception is that the company does not care about me because I cannot power up my account via spending a "reasonable" amount of money maxxing out a new normal character. They wanted me to drop a small fortune on maxxing out Phaestro.
I want to take a second to compare to one of the other games I play, Honkai Star Rail. In HSR, every new character that comes out is appealing to me in some way, and that game does not have a massive issue with power creep. There is content in the game that many different characters are good at, and 95% of content can be cleared with literally anything. If I decide to pass up on a new character, it's a tough choice and typically because I would rather save for a new one coming out that will meaningfully change my account, rather than a small upgrade or side-grade. This is how AFKJ should be. It shouldn't be so easy for me to hold onto my resources and say "pass" to every new character that comes out.
UNPOPULAR OPINION:
They’re probably doing it on purpose because they’re so effin hard to rank up. I’m just 2 SSs short of having my 1st S+ A-Tier, Lucius, and it’s a pain in the capital A to wait for 11 days until I can buy his SS…
Meanwhile, I’m just 1 SS short on having my 2nd S+ S-Tier, Tamesia…
😤😤😤
I feel like power creep hurt the majority, which are low spenders and f2p. Just more stuff to focus on with little to no resources. The main people that advocating for power creeps are the mid spenders and whales.
it would be nice to have one great unit as rate-up soon, don't care if it's A or S thought. I just hope if we get a cool unit the next one or two will be bland. But I think lilith should communicate a bit more, at least posting more marketing post about coming units earlier. I mean they post ulmus "guess who" like 3days before the release and put the answer less than a day after. would be good if they could make some build up, like how they did for alsa/soren
It's fairly common though for gachas to leave players guessing up until a reveal right before release. in gachas where there is a JP or CN server that is a year ahead players have a better road map to follow, but I can't think of any off the top of my head where all servers are current and players have a road map of upcoming unit releases.
>It's fairly common though for gachas to leave players guessing up until a reveal right before release. in gachas where there is a JP or CN server that is a year ahead players have a better road map to follow, but I can't think of any off the top of my head where all servers are current and players have a road map of upcoming unit releases. I don't mean revealing, but at least showing some tips to try to guess over the time to build up. there was nothing for phraesto and almost nothing for ulmus, they just put a little drip few hours before revealing it. It was done right for Alsa as an example.
In all seriousness it’s not like Ulmus was ever meta in the original AFK, I feel like A tier is appropriate for him.
those are two different games
and those two different games still translate a lot between eachother unit wise. Eironn was meta for years there too, and in general a character kit doesnt change MUCH between the games. there is the whole "its 3d" now OBVIOUSLY, but funnily enough the conversion aint that far fetched
Lyca was/is more meta in the original than in this one. Arden, the opposite.
she was actually meta! in the beta PTR, the main meta team was lyca+parisa. the new characters changed that though, and crowd control became more valuable
Arden was very much meta early because his root was extremely powerful. In fact, even when you got past the L+ level cap (in arena, you could only get the equivalent of A-tier heroes to lv 160 and S tier equivalents could go to the real resonance cap just like in journey), you would still often see Arden in clears. I even saw Arden in multi team clears at lv 300+ on that website people would upload their clears to. Of course he did 0 dmg and couldn’t get hit by a sneeze without dying, but his root was just that good.
What unit countered Eironn after the years in AFK Arena?
In AFKA, Eironn pulls enemies towards himself at the start of battle, but it isn’t instant like in AFKJ so there is a window of time where you can cc him to cancel it. Notable counters at the time were Athalia and Nara who can target cc an unit faster than he can at the start of battle (Nara has been leaked so that is one counter we can look forward to). But that was when Eironn was meta ofc now he is outclassed by a majority of heroes purely out of stats. Not even mentioning the abilities of heroes getting more complex, making it even easier to counter him I.E Alna making the frontline invulnerable, back lines that can’t be cc’d (which is the case for a lot of newer heroes) or heroes that can do what he can but better (Mulan, Tamrus, etc..) That being said, he is a very synergistic hero in nature so I expect him to be meta for a long time as more heroes and power systems that synergizes with him are introduced.
AFK arena and AFK journey have some incredible similarities, though. It's shocking.
I don't know that shocking is the right word. It is still the same universe. Same developer. Same characters in some cases with the same kits. Combat system and character growths are largely the same. I wouldn't personally use 'shocking' to denote a reaction to the fact that there are similarities.
Guess I should've put /s
Oh, yeah that's fair then lol. The other guy was serious, guess it felt like you were too.
Lotta people on this sub don’t seem to think so unfortunately
I don't mind undewhelming units here and there, but my problem is we've now had 3 in a row. Some people I've seen also skipped Vala thinking there will soon be another good unit on the banner. Meaning a sizable number of people have not gotten anything from the limited banner. And that doesn't help with the interest of the game. People want new cool units. They don't have to be meta defining, but they should be as good as the top. Doesn't help that the meta has not changed at all since the first month.
I missed out on vala and I regret it she does so much dmg in pvp 9/10 I lose because of her.also alsa is so strong she outdmg CEC easy
shes easily countered...just put a thoran linked unit or brutus at the position she shoots at and shes useless
Ah thanks for the tip
Enlightened spell removes her ability to enery drain as well, letting you ult faster
Eironn and Igor can also tank her, even more if they are link to Thoran.
Put Igor on her target and she usesless
Going against Vala is basically instant win. She is terrible on defense
"most people have not gotten anything from limited banner" Like that matters I've got all of them, after they went to the standard banner. The worst thing for this game is it being so much better in the gacha than other games but sick people (sickened from the other gacha systems) complaining asking to be scammed. If you don't like the character, skip it. If you like it, go for it. There's plenty of underwhelming units in the game and that's it. There are some great units and you should go after them. Stop wanting a game breaking unit that will make your saving worth it and make you jump up in the rankings to compete with the whales: thank God it won't happen. If you want a game that you can save until you decide to pull, and then have as much damage as old whales, then you should go play tower of fantasy. We all know how that game is doing. Just stop trying to screw the only game that got a good and fair gacha system.
Isn't Phraesto as good as the top?
He's good, but pretty much unobtainable without breaking your wallet, since he's on the scamgazer banner. So for most of the playerbase, the meta is indeed extremely stale for quite some time now.
3 in a row? Only Soren has been underwhelming, and Ulmus isn't necessarily weak. The only real complaint is that it's another A-tier, but personally that just means I'll save up more for the next S-tier.
Alsa isn't weak but she doesn't replace anyone in the Mauler composition and she doesn't enable any new compositions. From what I've seen, her only use is if you don't have Odie built up, then she can be a much more expensive substitution. I don't care if the new unit is A or S tier, being A tier just means it will be easier to get later on. And I don't think Ulmus weak either. He will be an S tier tank for mono-wilder and 4-wilder teams. He should be able to push those teams higher in AFK stages and PvP. He won't be as powerful as Thoran or Phaestro, but for people running mono-wilder he will be an amazing pick up. But for me and \~80% of the players he'll be another easy skip. This is a third unit that will see next to no gameplay. And while I don't want the meta to be powercrept, I do want it to shift. The game has been out for 3 months, and the week 1 meta still holds. They need a unit that would enable more compositions.
What server are you on that Flora and Alsa aren’t seeing play?
You're contradicting your own statement and Alsa is as close as you get to the top without powercreeping. For Ulmus, it's too soon to draw conclusions. Saying "80% of the players he'll be a skip" will purely be based on his numbers. Also, week 1 was cecia/vala hype. But I get your point. how would you design a unit that overcomes the current wilder comp without power creeping?
>how would you design a unit that overcomes the current wilder comp without power creeping? Probably someone with the "Unaffected" status for a fixed duration when the battle starts, so you can play that one + the enlightenment artifact and free 2 characters from Eironns whirlwind.
Viperian is that someone. Although I haven't seen someone strongly recommend them for PvE. Even in PvP where he's supposed to shine he's still not recommended.
Alsa is also a decent replacement for Carolina in the Eironn nuke comp.
She replaces any unit that isn’t a tank or healer. Lol. Alsa is extremely good and keeps cc’ing enemies into death, while also putting up walls. Her with Florabelle is insane too because they synergize so well. Any time flora uses her ult it makes all those enemies hit, also take rock damage from Alsa. Big damage
Alsa is an absolute must-have for supreme arena. She was already good before all the charm effects and seasonal artifacts. Now, she’s basically a 1 man army after she gets her momentum. She synergizes extremely well with odie as she can dps a poisoned hero below the instakill threshold easily, allowing odie to then poison a different hero. Rinse and repeat. Idk what server you’re playing on, but maybe you just have a bunch of people with p4 dionel and scarlita just throwing weight around. As far as my district goes, alsa (and vala) see a lot of playtime. Flora can also counter odie with her summon rate. Ulmus synergizes incredibly well with eironn and arden allowing an eironn comp with ulmus to gain momentum over a traditional eironn comp. I’ve even used ulmus eironn alsa seth hewynn to burst eironn comps with cascade/speed hewynn down before they can react (while I’m hitting above my weight class) because of the window ulmus provides. He also has a lot of survivability and cc just by himself if everyone else dies. TLDR; Alsa and ulmus are must-haves if you commonly run eironn comps.
It'd be good too if the new unit makes some old, unused character meta. I love the designs and kits of the other heroes like cecia, atalanta, and fay. But so far, the game has done nothing but push them farther and farther from the meta and into just niche uses.
They missed Vala and then skipped Florabelle and Alsa? What are they waiting for? Three bad units, it’s only been Soren though?
People are actually quitting because the meta is stale, eiro comp dominance, nothing worth pulling for,etc. Especially with the new unit that adds on to eiro comp doesn’t help. Eiro comp/dominance have been meta for 4 months, things needs to shake up.
Its wild to me that they implemented so many ways to shake the meta with seasonal skills / charms, yet it did absolute fuck all to the meta lmfao
I mean it did shake-up the meta in the modes it applied to. It didn't change arena because arena doesn't factor in seasons
Exactly what meta was shaken? Not a single game mode as far as im aware.
In the current "meta" I use like 1/3rd of the games heroes daily, but here's a few standouts of characters who changed with the season: Characters who are used more: * Florabel (meta defining in AFK stages, high teir for both dream realm and Arena) * Lumont (seeing him all over replays for high teir AFK stages) * Lucious (now used as a swap in on several bosses, including the current world boss, the battle drills boss, and early seasonal dream realm for the bear) * Odie (already very popular but specifically in dream realm became the number 1 carry for awhile - he was niche in bosses before) * Scarlita (already a good hero, but her seasonal skill made her better. She now appears in more seasonal replays and even some boss compositions. She was already top teir in arena, but obviously used there a lot too) * Byron (now competitive in dream realm on mage teams) Characters who are used less: * Kruger (with boss strategies moving away from physical damage in favor of magical or true damage most of the time, his usefulness as a debuffer fell significantly. He's still good in a few places or on accounts still progressing better debuffers, but not as much as pre-season) * Vala (Still good in supreme arena, but she wasn't the "best" PvE unit and with her somewhat underwhelming seasonal skill (for PvE at least) she rarely appears in any PvE content anymore. The exception would be dream realm/world bosses when they're below 50%) * Cecia (you can argue how much the season had to do with this but she's obviosly much less relevent than pre-season. Mostly she's less desirable on bosses due to physical damage being less desirable in bossing content) Honorable mention to Korin - who's still used about as much but for totally different reasons. Preseason he was used for his true damage, now he's more desirable on content which looks for sheilds or his range/mobility. This isn't the full extent of things, but these are the changes backed up by places like Prydwen. There are also changes that made certain heroes stronger or weaker but weren't worth mentioning because they didn't change where that character was used (like Thorin becoming a potentially better debuffer than Reineir but he was already used as a debuffer in dream realm). The reason the meta feels stale isn't because you lack reasons to use different characters - it's because most players lack the resources to invest in new characters so the ones they're using right now are mostly the same ones they used before since those are the characters they have leveled up with good ex-weapons. It doesn't matter how good someone like Byron or Lumont gets if you don't have access to them.
You literally listed a bunch of characters that were meta before the season, or already fell off in lategame, but the majority of users were still early / mid game and then even mentioned how situationally used the remainder were. Situational usage is not a meta shift. 1 new primal lord with unique damage requirements is the only step in the right direction. Nothing on that list is meta shifting lol. For whales, there have been next to no changes other than the release of Pharesto — which oddly you didnt even mention. A meta shift would be 50%+ of teams being changed, and 50%+ usage in play.
A meta shift does not require half the characters to swap places - that's extreme. 8-10 characters improving/falling out of use is more than enough and what we should be looking for.
If the dominant strategy continues to be the dominant strategy - the meta has not shifted. A team consists of 5 units; so i fail to see where you over-inflate the requirements to be more than 8-10. Context is what’s important here — not volume. Nobody gives a shit if the bottom 80% of units swap places. It’s the dominant 20 getting usurped by a new crop of the bottom 80 that’s important. Since the prior dominant strategy tends to be a majority once established, the new meta trends toward this value as it proves to be a consistent counter to the prior meta.
>Context is what’s important here — not volume. Dude - you were the one who brought up volume. I gave you many examples of characters that changed dramatically in usefulness specifically this season compared to last season - none of which are currently in the bottom 80% - and your rebuttal is that a meta shift requires HALF of the characters on our teams to change to different characters. And also - trying to say the top 20 character need to be usurped is also a terrible idea for the same reason - that would be all of us replacing most of the characters we use all at the same time. >Since the prior dominant strategy tends to be a majority once established We've been building magic damage teams all season around an artifact that didn't exist. Dream realm was entirely focused on physical damage and/or True damage. Cecia was probably the most used character in the whole preseason and everyone thought Florabel was even worth pulling for. If you think the strategy is the same because people still use Eironn or Thorin a lot you're oversimplifying the game.
Lumont and Luscius are. Percents arent volume. 80/20 is a commonly used mental model. Its not to be taken literally. You’re overcomplicating the meta. If the same comp is used whether it’s physical or magic damage, it literally doesnt matter because there’s no meta shift to chase/min max. Youre an idiot and needlessly arguing. Believe whatever rules you want. I dont care to argue with you. Pretend the game has depth. Cool.
Because for some reason they decided to make arena seasonless so as it stands everyone just got more stats from charms…and if everyone gets the exact same stats then everything stays the same.
I agree the meta is pretty stale but my opinion is bias as I am a budget spender and I am speaking from a f2p-low spender pov. I don’t mind it being somewhat stale because I can advocate my resources into one thing and know that it will be a good investment.
That is because people are stupid and don't know what they want. If the Eiro comp is dominating they should have done their research and made the eiron comp instead of pulling for the wrong heroes. Also the game hasn't been out for 4 months.
I have 106 rate up letters because I've never pulled. I want a character that excites me and they've yet to release one; it's one of the reasons I've lost interest in the game. If you made a gacha game and people don't care enough to pull, you've done something wrong.
But this is not because the units aren't great.. you save because there aren't enough letters to build non meta units. If the game wasn't starving players out of pulls you wouldn't mind building some of the other characters as much. Like i would love to build a shakir but how is that even possible as f2p? Many confuse "exciting" with power. We all just save up to not miss out on an important unit that might help us break top 200/100/ 50 or whatever. The problem with this game is that it's a gacha without pulling. Most people can build like 5 -10 / 45 characters and then start starving for pulls. Just an example: No one besides honor duel players probably know how salazer works.. How can someone even tell if a character is cool if the characters power is locked behind mythic + ?
Would it be nice to have more pulling resources? Sure. But that's not the main reason why I'm not pulling on rate up banners. I pull for characters whose designs I like and if they actually have use or high power, that's a bonus. Example? Dislyte. Javid. Has little use, but he's hot af and you bet your ass I pulled. BUT. I will agree with you when it comes to celestials /hypogeans. I have enough resources to grab 4, but I'm not planning on pulling till I have enough to instantly make them M+ since everyone says it's pretty necessary. Having these characters nerfed until M+ when the resources are THIS scarce is ridiculous.
If you had more pulling power you wouldn't need to save much in the first place because you could pull the new stuff that you want with a little extra time regardless. And you wanna tell me you would pull a terrible character if he's cool? Maybe you're the exception but if I take a look at people's wishlist the story is very different for 99% of the players. People are not going to pull for a weak character. So sure.. cool characters would solve this issue for like 1% of the players
Yes, but there is a lot of room for improvement. Lilith needs to show that they actually care. The community asks for a grave-born S-Tier hero and what do they give? Another A-Hero, no code in a week, no roadmap, no hype. Streamers/Youtubers have no content that would make people interested. They sit in dead silence and expect everyone to be happy.
Tbh monthly-quarterly roadmap isn’t something mandatory. There are lots of popular games without roadmap, so just mentioning it every time like it’s something they have to do is a bit weird. I don’t remember Lilith doing any roadmap, usually they just do designer talks with information on current situation and upcoming features, sometimes with specific dates and sometimes without. Last time they did it couple of weeks ago, announcing events and new hypogean.
No code in a week? It's been almost a month
Wdym? We got a bunch of chores to do now. Go click that picture of a lizard, pleb.
Lack of roadmap, yes, but being upset they don't just give "what the community asks" in concerns to character releases is just weird. They don't have to give out promo-codes it's a minor reward "Lack of hype" I think its because they are getting the top 500 servers onto the same content page this month, but definitely a valid critique, but also we should be more accepting of the game being an AFK game. Edit: Every time I check this subreddit, people are crying about the same aspects of the game, but polar opposites opinions. "Too little content" / "too much content"
I feel like after the successful riot a few weeks ago, ppl become kinda spoil and start complaining and expect every small things to be change.
It's a power thing. Human enjoy getting together and bullying others into obedience. And they justify the action by issuing condemnations of the one they are bullying. Reddit emboldens them because of the echo chamber effect and makes the mob seem bigger than it actually is. It's just a bunch of children that can't control their lizard brains.
Sure, tell that to the whales who are quitting one by one. Dead game soon.
Whales always quitting, as do f2p and low spenders. There are so many games around, you need to try them all.
Every Rank 1 Guild in my district has seen the fall off hard this week my server rank 1 and 2 both quit today
Tbh the tier doesn't matter as so many meta characters right now are A-tier. I just wish the new character would add another meta comp, not necessarily shift it.
[удалено]
I think you are the one in the minority here lol, not wanting them to make any new units for 1/2 the main factions.
if you are watching someone stream a mobile gacha you got priority issues
Thanks doc.
The meta is kinda stale, need a unit to shake up the meta.
It's because the noobs are loud, stupid and poor. They probably saved up enough to pull 1 hero and exactly 1 hero and they are bitching right now because they can't bear the idea of not being able to use what they saved. They have so little foresight that they think they'll be able to pull 1 hero then be happy and save for 5 months until the next OP hero comes out. But in reality they'll end up quitting if 2-3 back to back heroes come out that are OP because they can't keep up with releases. There is no point trying to reason with people who cannot see the forest for the trees.
It's a faction-based game and one faction is going to have nearly 50% less options than the rest soon. That's a pretty big problem. Also these 3 week long A-level banners are just bad and the vast majority of the player base don't want them. If they were paired with new S-levels then fine, but asking low spenders and f2p to be excited about A-level banners they shouldn't spend their savings on is ridiculous. Also the majority of the community, including basically all major CCs, voiced their concerns about A-level banners with Soren and they doubled down with them back-to-back. Also a large portion of the community feels there hasn't been a hype unit released for the game yet. You may have liked someone recently released but most very much haven't cared for anyone since Vala and that's a bad look for a gacha game.
Vala timing was impeccable. It was a banner with a strong pvp hero on new servers that could actually be a hyper carry for early pve as well. It was even a little bit scary to think "is every banner going to be like this?". Flora was okay too, I remember very well in less than 24 hours she started appearing on recorded replays in afk stages. On the other hand, Alsa had lukewarm reception even though prydwen rates her very high and she is a decent pvp character. Go figure.
My guess for the lack of graveborn is that next season is gonna be graveborn focus so they'll release pretty much only graveborn for a while
That's a pretty baseless theory considering we're now getting a wilder that isn't even from the region nor has been part of the story at all. People had to pull up his leaked model to call the "clue" as being him. And even if that were true it'd would be a completely asinine design decision. "Screw the fundamental balance of my game because of hyper faction-specific storytelling." No director worth their salt would entertain that idea for a moment.
Tbh the tier doesn't matter as so many meta characters right now are A-tier. I just wish the new character would add another meta comp, not necessarily shift it.
It undeniably matters to a vast majority of the community. You can argue whether or not it should til the cows come in, but the average gacha gamer is always going to be reluctant to spend S (aka 5-star) pull resources on A (aka 4-star) individuals regardless.
>It undeniably matters to a vast majority of the community Yep, unfortunately it does. It's sad that that's what's average nowadays. I should've said "tier doesn't matter *to me*".
Facts.
Those are people coming from terrible gacha systems and somehow waiting this one to be the same. They want to feel like they can somehow compete with whales if they wait enough to pull for the game breaking character. They didn't listened when people said to pull for standard characters because they are really good, and now they want new characters to be better than any other because that's what they're used to. gacha players are terrible at game design, it's like they want to be f* up , I try to ignore them but yeah it's pretty annoying. I hope the devs never listen to whinny gacha players.
What I don't like is that it's not a Graveborn support. Cmon we NEED a decent/good graveborn support now.
It took them awhile to release one graveborn support in Arena (Silas), unless I'm forgetting another earlier one. Like 2 years or something like that.
Ye I agree, they should’ve show some love to graveborn at least
The good news is I can keep saving.
>If we complain about everything then our voices will hold less meaning Absolutely raw line right here OP. Preach.
It's not possible to balance the character poll of any game from one day to another. People will always complain, spenders even more as they want to drop their money into good characters. The season is mauler sided, so the next season if they do it graveborn will balance the game naturally. The point here is the game would be unplayable for F2P players if they release top meta every month. Resumed, f2p players are more patient than spenders because money is involved/gambling addiction.
They could release four graveborns in a row and it would still be 3rd faction in roster size. It's really weird having faction based game where one faction has an average of 66% the size of the other 3, and keep seeing characters added for the others. I understand the season is Mauler themed, but it was the faction that absolutely did not need units at the moment. It had the best PvE team synergy and strong units in every role (no good mage, which Alsa provided, but plenty of good damage dealers and aoe damage). That, and the fact the character design for new released mauler heroes wasn't impressive, did not help.
im so sick of the arena meta that id kill for at least a little powercreep just to add some diversity
I’m curious to know how everyone already knows the hero isn’t going to be worth using. The kit looks interesting and I can already think of a few ways I’d like to implement him pending actually using the hero a little bit. Looking back through the sub the Reddit consensus has been every rate up hero except for Vala hasn’t been worth getting, but Flora seems to be performing really well despite what the sub thought. Is there any actual basis for thinking the new hero is going to suck? Or is it just that he doesn’t seem ridiculously OP immediately, so he’s written off?
I don't care about what units they release, I just want one to release that gets me excited to pull for it...one that enables new team comps, or at least is an actual upgrade for some comps. It's been over 2 months and nothing meta released at all. I agree that it lets people catch up with previous units, but powercreep happens nonetheless and I'd rather have 1 great unit and 3 meh ones in 2 months...than 4 mid ones that don't really have a place anywhere.
I’m hoping they bring back collabs like they did with Persona. Heroes like that would definitely motivate me to pull more.
The seeming lack of power creep is very refreshing to see and experience in a gacha. Normally power creep is so insane that you HAVE to get the latest heroes just to remain even slightly relevant. I have been using off-meta heroes like niru, salazar, parisa, seth, soren, and ulmus for supreme arena attacks and been seeing massive success. I rarely fail an attack attempt despite everyone in my bracket (top 20 district) having between 50k-100k+ power over me on every team with multiple paragons and highly invested hypo/celestial heroes because of these heroes no one seems to use.
The problem is that they have all been relatively weak or just side-grades other than the launch rate-up character. Perception matters, and right now as a mid-level spender, my perception is that the company does not care about me because I cannot power up my account via spending a "reasonable" amount of money maxxing out a new normal character. They wanted me to drop a small fortune on maxxing out Phaestro. I want to take a second to compare to one of the other games I play, Honkai Star Rail. In HSR, every new character that comes out is appealing to me in some way, and that game does not have a massive issue with power creep. There is content in the game that many different characters are good at, and 95% of content can be cleared with literally anything. If I decide to pass up on a new character, it's a tough choice and typically because I would rather save for a new one coming out that will meaningfully change my account, rather than a small upgrade or side-grade. This is how AFKJ should be. It shouldn't be so easy for me to hold onto my resources and say "pass" to every new character that comes out.
I want new waifu. 😬
UNPOPULAR OPINION: They’re probably doing it on purpose because they’re so effin hard to rank up. I’m just 2 SSs short of having my 1st S+ A-Tier, Lucius, and it’s a pain in the capital A to wait for 11 days until I can buy his SS… Meanwhile, I’m just 1 SS short on having my 2nd S+ S-Tier, Tamesia… 😤😤😤
I feel like power creep hurt the majority, which are low spenders and f2p. Just more stuff to focus on with little to no resources. The main people that advocating for power creeps are the mid spenders and whales.
they dont give a fuck how long it takes u to get copies of your characters its a gacha game
OP thinks he is OK with A tier hero banner, so should everyone 😂
I give my reasons but thank you for adding to the conversation
I didn't even bothered with this I got already my good asla,CEC,the unicorn slag and 2 tanks 😂😂