Finally, a reasonable response. I agree with you. On my ladder, I would say more than 1/2 in the top 20 run Poe, as do I. I rank in the top 5 most days (today I was 3). There are a couple of whales on my server, and I can and have beat them (they run Poe). However, I have lost to everyone in the top 20 at some point, including those who don't run Poe. And let me say, there are some who don't run Poe who are in the top 5 on a regular basis as well. It is more about strategy in at what time do I try to start the last fight before 6:00PM. I am on EST time and I usually drop pretty quickly as the central and pacific times come online.
I also find a variety of teams on my ladder. There a a couple of droid teams, a couple of Jedi teams and a lot of teams led by Phasma and Sid. I try and mix it up, to mixed results I admit. I am usually 3,000 power below most teams at that level because I am trying heroes that are not maxed out. Today I ended number 3 using Phasma, Lumi, 6* Poe, 5* Rey and 6* QGJ. I also have a Resistance Pilot at 6* and a 5* Old Ben that I try and switch in and out.
Does Poe help my team? Yes! Do I lose to teams without Poe? Yes! In fact I did this afternoon.
I think we need to give the slight (I admit) nerf a chance and see what happens. I also bet there are new characters coming that will also change things up. Regardless, there are people who are very successful on my server without Poe.
Agree with everything you said. People are going crazy based on their myopic sample size of....1. Their own experience. Then they project that onto the rest of us, and if we don't see the same thing then something must be wrong with us, not them.
All this Chicken-Little the sky is falling talk is getting old.
I myself am ranked consistently top 20 now. About 1/2 the teams I face have Poe.
People who say "OMG my rank is going to drop after patch because people will target me because I don't have Poe".....I don't think are really ranked that high to begin with. Having Poe or not isn't going to matter for those ranking around 200-500. Up in the top bracket....well, I've been fighting against the same opponents for the past few weeks. Unless your name is Mol Eliza, I know who has Poe and who doesn't. A few people who I seem to fight every day I already have their squad memorized.
From my own perspective, I think Poe should problably have his TM reduction nerfed. But I will have faith that CG can see all the data and know what they are doing, and will make whatever changes they feel are appopriate. I do believe that the slow-nerf with communication method is best though, and I am glad they are (so far) following this path. I really hope they don't reflexively give in to the persistent whiners on this board just because they feel like they need to post 500x the same thing when we knew their viewpoint after about the 10th post. Because even if they nerf Poe to the ground, they will just move on to the next thing they think needs fixed (OMG Rey does too much dmg!) and then we will start with the next cycle of 500+ posts to get that fixed.
Good post. It is most certainly true that we base our experiences on games through a subjective lens of our experience and the experience of those around us. Hence, how you see threads from players who just started playing the game who have zero distaste for Poe and don't understand his use at all vs. threads from players who have been playing since before launch who vehemently oppose Poe. But I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment here.
While it's insulting for a single player to assert that their experience is the experience of all the players in the game and empirically state that a certain character "breaks" the game and should be fixed, it is through sharing our experiences and gathering information that we are able to make more accurate assessments about the game and it's characters and suggest changes that would bring a better experience to players as a whole. The more information you gather and assess correctly, the easier it is to arrive at a conclusion about what should be done to improve the overall experience of the game.
I think the biggest thing that people overlook when creating these threads about nerfing certain characters is defining the overall purpose of making a balance change in the game. For example, if the overall purpose of changes to the game is to increase profit for CG/EA, the changes they make might be entirely different from changes they might make if the overall purpose is to increase the overall player base of the game, or to improve the star rating of the app on the store, or to create a balanced and fair game.
In my personal opinion, the overall purpose of changing the game should be to increase the competitive nature of the game as a turn-based strategy game. Balancing characters to introduce a wide variety of viable team compositions so that players can collect and level/promote/gear the characters they want while still remaining competitive. I feel that making this the overall purpose or goal of the game would also improve some of the other purposes or goals that the company seeks, such as overall player base growth and customer satisfaction as well as continued support and investments of real money into the game.
If the goal is to create a competitive game, then the balance for that game needs to be done from a top-down perspective. Nearly every successful competitive game is done this way, with balance changes being based upon the top 1% of players focusing on the current meta which that group of players currently utilizes. The reason developers use these hardcore gamers as their reference point to create a competitive game is because gamers in this group are typically the ones that invest the most time into the game. The ones who research the game extensively to discover strategies and advantages which can be utilized against their opponents. They also are the example and reference point for newer, less experienced players to mimic. I'm sure a correlation can be drawn between the number of new players on each Arena Ladder that mimic the use of the most popular leader in the Top 10 of their ladder's rankings.
With that being stated, if the goal of this game is to create a competitive game, then it's more than appropriate to gather the opinions and experiences of the most elite players in the game and use that as a reference point for making balance changes in the game.
With my rambling reaching it's peak, I will finish by saying that I'm in a guild which collectively has a lot of time and money invested into this game, with numerous players having access to 7* versions of every character in the game. And nearly every one of us collects rewards at the #1 spot on our Arena ladder. Based on this, I feel our guild is a part of that 1% tier of players I mentioned that developers should use as a standard for balancing a competitive game.
The collective experience and opinion of most of the players in our guild is that Poe is most definitely NOT the problem, but the speed and damage output of Arena as a whole. A competitive and strategic game is not determined by RNG. That is an objective statement. You don't start a game of chess by flipping a coin and the winner of that coin toss get's to remove 1/4 of the other player's pieces from the board. And the current state of the game at the highest level is such that the majority of battles are determined in the first turn of both teams without a player being able to strategize at all. There is no TURNS and very little STRATEGY in this "Turn-Based Strategy" game. Right now, this game is a Star Wars RNG Character Simulator. That can be accurately assessed and should be so that the game can move towards a better future.
Very reasonable post only slightly hindered by extreme eloquence that you'd read from a journalist o philosopher.
I can say that In my Arena server, Poe isncurrently in about maybe 40% of teams. Sid is much more prevalent. With about 60% (34% as leader top 50, verified). phasma may be in about 50% with a staggering 36% using her as Leader. I lose to Poe and no Poe teams, I beat Poe teams without Poe if I want to (I tryied a lotnof builds), and I get Ally request from many teams that don't use Poe as well.
The comment regarding Daka is also very resonating. I focused on her, dismissed Poe initially, and really had envy of his skillset. I had completely missunderstood thebrole of time meter and have amazingly missed the high damage/HP resulting from cap lift. And since I had decided I didn't like Poe first - to the extent of posting in the many threads about why Andoid users get the better chars!!!...so wrong, bith are excellent) I was vene more annoyed early on.
The thing I have learned is that until you have a char youbstart to learn their strengths and weakness well. And when you squad gets beaten over and over you also learn hiw to beat it. And it's simpler than it seems. For an Auto-Win vs Poe without needing much though, QGJ just MAKES the description by @EA_Jesse come to life:
"High Risk High Reward"
When QGJ is there (worst case is GS joins him in that squad) Poe either gets killed first turn, or one glass cannon or two (this latter more often), and I am just lost. But if he goes first, he either dies from GS or QGJ bufffs their entire rooster and remives the taunt. At that point I have a Poogle that does the same as their QGJ but occupies a key slot and does little, and a taunter that was only good to advance my char turns a bit, which doesn't protect and did no damage: auto loss 80% of times?
And then, the many ither dozens of way of killing my squad start to permeate. So much, that I had to change my team composition many times and think a lot abiut the trade offs vs my own server current meta (Phasma and Sid fest with turn 7-8 squads, heavy counter teams with assists and the occasional perfect Droid team.
With that being stated, if the goal of this game is to create a competitive game, then it's more than appropriate to gather the opinions and experiences of the most elite players in the game and use that as a reference point for making balance changes in the game.
First of all, thanks for engaging in such a constructive way despite having a different opinion.
The experiences of you and yours should absolutely be a reference point. It's valuable information to have.
My opinion is that the way the ladders are formed in this game provide the crux of the issue. Since many of the enthusiasts and spenders jumped on board during soft launch and Day 1, they are locked into the dps meta which has the Poe problem as an unfortunate side effect of the root cause, which I agree is damage and speed.
Because ladders are locked based on when you create your account, as the game was released into the wild, and user acquisition grew exponentially, this likely had the effect of diluting the percentage of whales in each individual ladder. I have no data to prove this, but it is my belief based on the discussions I've had with top ranking players on servers formed after the initial launch (again I don't mean baby servers).
The result of this effect is that in those servers formed after day 1, but early enough to have developed diverse rosters, there is not a significant delta in dps (since you don't see FOTP, and Rey, and QGJ ie dpsx3 or 4 everywhere even though you see a 7* GS frequently) on these diluted servers, Thus the "must play Poe or die" meta gets less and less valid over time with the exception of those players locked into early servers.
Because of this, the observations of the 1% you belong to, while absolutely valid for your experience, do not, in the case of this game, become necessarily predictive for the waves of servers which formed after yours.
Again, this is my opinion, but would explain both the middling stance from the devs on Poe balancing, and the polarizing attitudes about it on the forums.
Nice post. There are over 5 million downloads according to Google play market ( plus I assume millions more with Apple players. Compare that with the insignificant number that are posting here angry about Poe. Cg is smart waiting and analyzing data from hundreds of thousands or millions (perhaps) of Poe battles.
Despite the tongue-in-cheek title, the intent of this post is not to advocate for or against a nerf necessarily. If current trends are any indication of future behavior (they usually are), then the Poe problem won't be leaving the threads here any time soon. What I'd like to advocate for is a way to discuss and look at this issue that would make the forums and related Poe threads so much easier to stomach when visiting.
A simple suggestion: discuss the topic using the words "I" "me" and "mine"
If you'll indulge me for a bit, I'll elaborate.
Many of those who are calling for a nerf are some of the OGs of the game - players who are on the soft launch server or day 1 hard launch servers. In these servers, there is a high concentration of whales, and players here have had the longest amount of time to develop their rosters. Given these two factors, a huge number of players on these servers have access to the creme de la creme Poe+DPS compositions.
For them, the Poe problem is very real and impacts their PvP experience in a very negative way. That Poe has stagnated the game at the top of the ladders for these servers (yes, I know it's not actually a separate physical server - hold your semantic little tongue, sir/madam) is not really disputable.
That being said, The players who fall into the aforementioned category make up an minuscule fraction of the overall player base. Indeed, all of us on the forums combined represent the tiniest fraction of the players out there.
If you fall into this category, my request is that you try rephrasing your concerns. Instead of "Poe breaks the game, obviously.", try something along the lines of "On my server (shard/ladder/whatever), the proliferation of Poe+DPS has made PvP much less enjoyable for me."
The first is a statement that invalidates any other opinion and invites an inflammatory response from those that are not playing on those servers and do not share the same experience with Poe. The second is a statement of subjective fact that cannot be argued and invites me to empathize with your experience rather than fire back in order to simply assert my right to feel the way I feel.
And I do empathize. Many of the people I talk with in Line fall into the aforementioned category and the realities of their day-to-day experience are clear to me. I do not dispute them.
Now let me offer my experience.
On my server, the population rushed to build Phasma and largely ignored Poe, instead focusing on Daka from cantina shipments. I see more Dakas than Poes at the top tiers. This is not because I am on a "n00b" server - I started 2 days after hard launch. All of the top tier players are at level 70 and have had time to develop strong rosters.
There are maybe 6-7 teams sporting Poe in the top 20 right now. My server has had plenty of time to develop Poe as a weapon and has chosen not to. On my server, there are fewer whales to contend with than on the soft launch/day 1 servers, so my experience is very different. I have Poe (just 7*'d him), and I fight against the other top Poe players on a daily basis.
When I fight the two whale teams that have Poe, my own Poe give me at least a chance to stand up to "firepower of that magnitude". I run Sid/Poe/Poggle/Lumi/GS all 7*, lvl 70, and fully geared so don't tell me "when I grow up I'll understand" - that's an extremely solid team while not being the optimal chromium lineup. Even when my Poe goes first I'm not guaranteed a win, but I'm pleased that I have a weapon that allows me a puncher's chance.
Against the other (again mostly 5x7* lineups with synergy) Poe users, their Poe going first does not determine the match - it merely gives them an advantage. My Poe going first doesn't necessarily seal the match either; with a few lucky crits and the AI targeting the right toons at the right time I can still lose. Teams without Poe knock me out of the #1 spot on a regular basis, and they tend to run similar compositions to what @JohnnySteelAlpha detailed so well in another thread. There are a few common builds, but no cookie cutter builds adopted by all. And they're all competitive up to rank 1.
So, given the fact that my server was formed very close to hard launch, it stands to reason that many are having the same experience with Poe that I am. We all don't see the need to have him, and those that do do not enjoy an unbreakable edge despite having powerful teams. I talk to these people on my Line group as well. For me, Poe actually represents greater team diversity. For me, Poe makes PvP more enjoyable, not less.
So what's the net of all this? I've been rambling for a while, my apologies.
Regardless of what your personal experiences may be with Poe, none of us has access to enough information about the state of the game and the experiences of top tier players (let alone mid-tier) across enough servers to be able to state with any legitimate objectivity what the "right" thing to do about Poe is for the entirety of the player base. Any statement to the contrary is myopic and eminently refutable.
So you want me to believe that "Poe breaks the game"? Sorry, never going to happen. It's not a fact. You don't have the ability to make that assertion for anyone but yourself and the statistically insignificant group of players you socially interact with.
You want me to believe that "Poe breaks the game for you and those you communicate with closely"? I can get behind that 100%, and I feel for you. I really do.
Conversely, I don't expect you to believe that "Poe isn't a problem". I can't make that statement with any veracity.
But if I tell you that "Poe isn't a problem for me, and in fact makes the game at the top tiers for mine and at least a few other well-developed servers more fun!", I hope you at least attempt to look outside your own meta (because it is yours, not everyone's) and realize that when you change certain variables by server, the proliferation of Poe isn't an eventuality for groups outside of your own. He's just another great toon.
It's insulting to speak on high and pretend you know what's best for the entire game, when none of us has enough data to make that assertion empirically. I've seen this from people who both support and oppose a stronger Poe nerf.
Whichever camp you fall into - there's simply no excuse for Poe manners.
I like what you are saying and it is the same on my server. Poe doesn't give you a win. No need to nerf him.
Very reasonable post only slightly hindered by extreme eloquence that you'd read from a journalist o philosopher.
You sir, just won this thread in my heart. Extreme verbosity and a penchant for verging on affectatious language is my Achilles' heel when it comes to writing. I'll do better!
In the words of Mark Twain, "I wrote you a long letter because I did not have the time to write you a short one."
Today qgj has dispelled my poe's taunt 100% of the time on 5 different occasions which not only stopped my other characters avoiding the first initial damage but it also stopped me from taunting in the first round so I could kill qgj then taunt Poe there after. I'm happy the devs have found a solution and a counter to Poe and I thought that should be that but now after hearing Poe is getting nerfed I'm hoping the dev's haven't killed a great character just bcoz some others haven't got him the same way everyone has Sid or lumi. So qgj is a solution for people who can't beat poes taunt in the same way e.koth and jawa's are used to combat droid teams. I'd also like to add that phasma being nerfed is a bit OT bcoz if u have grinded, farmed and spent money to build a first order team u expect that 38% or so ally assist instead or the regular 18% to give u bonus attack advantage so I'm curious to see how that bonus attack nerf works coz as it stands it's not that bad and if u have a first order team u should be getting them bonus attacks the same way droid teams get huge crit n speed. I don't think anyone wants to see Dooku having more bonus attacks than an entire first order team which happens a lot of the time anyway. And while nerfing is the main balancing act in the game right now I think Sid n Dooku need the anti-Jedi abilities nerfed now coz everyone will be farming Jedi teams but let's just wait and see how the new update goes and give Poe a break in his last week before his nerf sentence lol
Today qgj has dispelled my poe's taunt 100% of the time on 5 different occasions which not only stopped my other characters avoiding the first initial damage but it also stopped me from taunting in the first round so I could kill qgj then taunt Poe there after. I'm happy the devs have found a solution and a counter to Poe and I thought that should be that but now after hearing Poe is getting nerfed I'm hoping the dev's haven't killed a great character just bcoz some others haven't got him the same way everyone has Sid or lumi. So qgj is a solution for people who can't beat poes taunt in the same way e.koth and jawa's are used to combat droid teams. I'd also like to add that phasma being nerfed is a bit OT bcoz if u have grinded, farmed and spent money to build a first order team u expect that 38% or so ally assist instead or the regular 18% to give u bonus attack advantage so I'm curious to see how that bonus attack nerf works coz as it stands it's not that bad and if u have a first order team u should be getting them bonus attacks the same way droid teams get huge crit n speed. I don't think anyone wants to see Dooku having more bonus attacks than an entire first order team which happens a lot of the time anyway. And while nerfing is the main balancing act in the game right now I think Sid n Dooku need the anti-Jedi abilities nerfed now coz everyone will be farming Jedi teams but let's just wait and see how the new update goes and give Poe a break in his last week before his nerf sentence lol
I can mostly agree with the OP here and will say most every point he makes is fully valid.
That said, i will add one tidbit to it in contrary to what the OP has said
*note* i do not think poe is OP, i do think he is broken but not OP
Here is something needed noted about poe.
He scales badly till hes badically max gear then its like night/day. So most of the poes ppl see are subpar. But if you go to ANY servers top 20 and look at the poes there, you will find them max'd. And you will only find max'd ones at the top because he makes that large of an impact.
The OP is 100% correct that each arena group is dif and nets a def experience but no matter what the individual experience, the fact remains that poes "package" is broken. He is simply capable of too much for how fast he is OR he is too fast for what hes capable of.
Those who like poe the way he is and like that hes considered "OP" (again i dont think hes OP) will have no issue or change in their experience with him after this baby-nerf because poes tenacity is basically meaningless to his effectivness. The reason i describe poe as broken is this.......
1) hes too fast for what he can do - Once he taunts (which happens quickly) the damage is done. All the "side effects" of his taunt have already happened with no way of preventing or changing them. He has already exposed you, increses his teams turn meters. Even if your able to remove the taunt, its too late anyway and the full effect is already in place.
Solution: simply slow him down so that his speed is resonable for the package they gave him.
2) his package is too powerful for his speed - same scenario as above.
Solution: since his taunt lasts 2 turns, get rid of his self heal (its not needed anyway) and after 1 turn, he increses turn meters to his team, and potential expose is granted when his taunt disappears (wears off or is removed). This way you can justify the speed without full effect happening at once.
Imo poe is broken, no matter what way you look at it (1 or 2 or possibly other options) its just some adjustments to balance him, lowering tenacity does nothing and wont solve the "poe issue".
With that being stated, if the goal of this game is to create a competitive game, then it's more than appropriate to gather the opinions and experiences of the most elite players in the game and use that as a reference point for making balance changes in the game.
My opinion is that the way the ladders are formed in this game provide the crux of the issue. Since many of the enthusiasts and spenders jumped on board during soft launch and Day 1, they are locked into the dps meta which has the Poe problem as an unfortunate side effect of the root cause, which I agree is damage and speed.
Because ladders are locked based on when you create your account, as the game was released into the wild, and user acquisition grew exponentially, this likely had the effect of diluting the percentage of whales in each individual ladder. I have no data to prove this, but it is my belief based on the discussions I've had with top ranking players on servers formed after the initial launch (again I don't mean baby servers).
The result of this effect is that in those servers formed after day 1, but early enough to have developed diverse rosters, there is not a significant delta in dps (since you don't see FOTP, and Rey, and QGJ ie dpsx3 or 4 everywhere even though you see a 7* GS frequently) on these diluted servers, Thus the "must play Poe or die" meta gets less and less valid over time with the exception of those players locked into early servers.
Because of this, the observations of the 1% you belong to, while absolutely valid for your experience, do not, in the case of this game, become necessarily predictive for the waves of servers which formed after yours.
Again, this is my opinion, but would explain both the middling stance from the devs on Poe balancing, and the polarizing attitudes about it on the forums.
Thanks again!
I would guess that the ladders formed in the early stages of the game have more whales, however from my personal experience I would say that the forums and internet guides/videos as well as trial and error lead most Arena ladders to similar top 10 team compositions. Even though I have spent quite a bit of money on this game, I'm still a relative newcomer on a newer Arena ladder. Our ladder started around the end of the year, I believe it was Dec. 29th when I downloaded the game. I am currently level 69 and will be the first player on my ladder to reach level 70 tomorrow. I was the first person on my server to have a gear 8 Poe at lvl 61 and I was able to hold the #1 spot for nearly an entire week with my team composition (thanks to the informational advantage I had from joining a top guild and being given in-depth stats and good synergies for the best team compositions.) While my spot at the top for that period of time might have influenced the builds of the top players on my ladder, I just checked and 5 players of our top 10 are running Phasma leader, 4 are running Sidious and 1 droid team is running Poggle. Of the top 5 teams, all 5 are currently running Poe compositions. Of the top 10, if my memory serves me correctly, at least 2 more of ranks 6-10 are running Poe. I am looking forward to next week's update when I can browse through the ranks and get definitive data about my P2P & F2P account ladders.
On my F2P account that is level 59 which I created some time in the middle of January, there is actually more whales on that ladder than my P2P account. The top 3 are all running full 7* Speed/Dmg Poe compositions, however my guess is that these players are actually players from older servers who decided to move into whale territory by starting a new account. That's because of the speed that they adjusted to the speed/dmg meta. They were running 7* speed/dmg teams by week 2. I'm guessing a lot of F2P players that decide to become P2P players in this game decide to start new accounts rather than investing in their old accounts since spending money early in the leveling cycle gives you a great advantage to resources on each ladder.
I have a different opinion as to why the devs took the stance they did on the Poe nerf, and it's quite a negative perspective. But I think that the developers are actually just not very hardcore gamers and are quite misinformed as to how their own game works. If you take a look at my post here (click to view), you can see that two developers clearly do not understand how the speed mechanic works in the game. There is another thread that I would have to find which shows that a developer did not understand how the GW mechanics worked. These are very concerning signs to me that the developers are making balance changes based upon incorrect assumptions about how their own game works, and that not enough play testers are telling them otherwise. If that is the case and the don't have enough play testers / human resources to test their game, we as a community need to fill that gap and share our experiences and opinions with them about what we feel is or isn't working. Although I do admit that most forum posters could do so in a more constructive and helpful manner without belittling the experience of others.
Here is something needed noted about poe.
He scales badly till hes badically max gear then its like night/day. So most of the poes ppl see are subpar. But if you go to ANY servers top 20 and look at the poes there, you will find them max'd. And you will only find max'd ones at the top because he makes that large of an impact.
Well-worded and excellently toned post by the OP, but Abyss wrote pretty much everything we need to know about Poe in a nutshell.
He goes from zero-to-awesome once hitting gear 8. Turn meter nuking is supremely excellent from my side using Poe, but it could be taken down to like 50% effectiveness and let's get on with the turn based game again. It's very very simple.
When they increase cap to 80 poe meta will be over as many of his current fps buddies will get faster than him and you could kill him before he taunts up.But till then the poe meta will continue.This could change if yoda or some other legendary counters poe somehow or creates a new tribe specific meta.
I started playing recently and am currently at level 48. My current arena team consists of Sid 4*, QGJ 4*, Lumi 4*, GS 4* and Dooku 3*. QGJ hit 4* today and is at 2/65. I keep hearing how amazing Poe is so should I switch to him? I currently have 12 Poe shards. Just curious what others think especially with the Jedi event coming up. I currently have 5 Jedi. With the two above I also have JC 3*, Ashoka 2*, and Aayla 3*. Thanks for the advice!
Yes, I would. Given that many high end player have stated he is very very counterabe, and CG having atats about what happens at that level makes him very safe.
The only risk is that Poe may lose against the Forum-Warriors, that try to win battle by assasinating characters only and with words. Each, low damange. But they have killed Barris, so beware.
I think this kind of uncertainty is not good. Devs should be best annoucing no nerf fornthe next 3 mo. So the doibts halt for at least a reasonable time in which this can be analysed properly.
Poe is great at 5* and max gears for speed. You could just stop him there. At least until you get top 20ish.
No one doubts that you can hit rank 1 without Poe, just how much did it cost you is the question. And with people being able to see your team, I wouldn't want to be the team without him (unless you just have a stacked team).
Replies
I also find a variety of teams on my ladder. There a a couple of droid teams, a couple of Jedi teams and a lot of teams led by Phasma and Sid. I try and mix it up, to mixed results I admit. I am usually 3,000 power below most teams at that level because I am trying heroes that are not maxed out. Today I ended number 3 using Phasma, Lumi, 6* Poe, 5* Rey and 6* QGJ. I also have a Resistance Pilot at 6* and a 5* Old Ben that I try and switch in and out.
Does Poe help my team? Yes! Do I lose to teams without Poe? Yes! In fact I did this afternoon.
I think we need to give the slight (I admit) nerf a chance and see what happens. I also bet there are new characters coming that will also change things up. Regardless, there are people who are very successful on my server without Poe.
Agree with everything you said. People are going crazy based on their myopic sample size of....1. Their own experience. Then they project that onto the rest of us, and if we don't see the same thing then something must be wrong with us, not them.
All this Chicken-Little the sky is falling talk is getting old.
I myself am ranked consistently top 20 now. About 1/2 the teams I face have Poe.
People who say "OMG my rank is going to drop after patch because people will target me because I don't have Poe".....I don't think are really ranked that high to begin with. Having Poe or not isn't going to matter for those ranking around 200-500. Up in the top bracket....well, I've been fighting against the same opponents for the past few weeks. Unless your name is Mol Eliza, I know who has Poe and who doesn't. A few people who I seem to fight every day I already have their squad memorized.
From my own perspective, I think Poe should problably have his TM reduction nerfed. But I will have faith that CG can see all the data and know what they are doing, and will make whatever changes they feel are appopriate. I do believe that the slow-nerf with communication method is best though, and I am glad they are (so far) following this path. I really hope they don't reflexively give in to the persistent whiners on this board just because they feel like they need to post 500x the same thing when we knew their viewpoint after about the 10th post. Because even if they nerf Poe to the ground, they will just move on to the next thing they think needs fixed (OMG Rey does too much dmg!) and then we will start with the next cycle of 500+ posts to get that fixed.
While it's insulting for a single player to assert that their experience is the experience of all the players in the game and empirically state that a certain character "breaks" the game and should be fixed, it is through sharing our experiences and gathering information that we are able to make more accurate assessments about the game and it's characters and suggest changes that would bring a better experience to players as a whole. The more information you gather and assess correctly, the easier it is to arrive at a conclusion about what should be done to improve the overall experience of the game.
I think the biggest thing that people overlook when creating these threads about nerfing certain characters is defining the overall purpose of making a balance change in the game. For example, if the overall purpose of changes to the game is to increase profit for CG/EA, the changes they make might be entirely different from changes they might make if the overall purpose is to increase the overall player base of the game, or to improve the star rating of the app on the store, or to create a balanced and fair game.
In my personal opinion, the overall purpose of changing the game should be to increase the competitive nature of the game as a turn-based strategy game. Balancing characters to introduce a wide variety of viable team compositions so that players can collect and level/promote/gear the characters they want while still remaining competitive. I feel that making this the overall purpose or goal of the game would also improve some of the other purposes or goals that the company seeks, such as overall player base growth and customer satisfaction as well as continued support and investments of real money into the game.
If the goal is to create a competitive game, then the balance for that game needs to be done from a top-down perspective. Nearly every successful competitive game is done this way, with balance changes being based upon the top 1% of players focusing on the current meta which that group of players currently utilizes. The reason developers use these hardcore gamers as their reference point to create a competitive game is because gamers in this group are typically the ones that invest the most time into the game. The ones who research the game extensively to discover strategies and advantages which can be utilized against their opponents. They also are the example and reference point for newer, less experienced players to mimic. I'm sure a correlation can be drawn between the number of new players on each Arena Ladder that mimic the use of the most popular leader in the Top 10 of their ladder's rankings.
With that being stated, if the goal of this game is to create a competitive game, then it's more than appropriate to gather the opinions and experiences of the most elite players in the game and use that as a reference point for making balance changes in the game.
With my rambling reaching it's peak, I will finish by saying that I'm in a guild which collectively has a lot of time and money invested into this game, with numerous players having access to 7* versions of every character in the game. And nearly every one of us collects rewards at the #1 spot on our Arena ladder. Based on this, I feel our guild is a part of that 1% tier of players I mentioned that developers should use as a standard for balancing a competitive game.
The collective experience and opinion of most of the players in our guild is that Poe is most definitely NOT the problem, but the speed and damage output of Arena as a whole. A competitive and strategic game is not determined by RNG. That is an objective statement. You don't start a game of chess by flipping a coin and the winner of that coin toss get's to remove 1/4 of the other player's pieces from the board. And the current state of the game at the highest level is such that the majority of battles are determined in the first turn of both teams without a player being able to strategize at all. There is no TURNS and very little STRATEGY in this "Turn-Based Strategy" game. Right now, this game is a Star Wars RNG Character Simulator. That can be accurately assessed and should be so that the game can move towards a better future.
I can say that In my Arena server, Poe isncurrently in about maybe 40% of teams. Sid is much more prevalent. With about 60% (34% as leader top 50, verified). phasma may be in about 50% with a staggering 36% using her as Leader. I lose to Poe and no Poe teams, I beat Poe teams without Poe if I want to (I tryied a lotnof builds), and I get Ally request from many teams that don't use Poe as well.
The comment regarding Daka is also very resonating. I focused on her, dismissed Poe initially, and really had envy of his skillset. I had completely missunderstood thebrole of time meter and have amazingly missed the high damage/HP resulting from cap lift. And since I had decided I didn't like Poe first - to the extent of posting in the many threads about why Andoid users get the better chars!!!...so wrong, bith are excellent) I was vene more annoyed early on.
The thing I have learned is that until you have a char youbstart to learn their strengths and weakness well. And when you squad gets beaten over and over you also learn hiw to beat it. And it's simpler than it seems. For an Auto-Win vs Poe without needing much though, QGJ just MAKES the description by @EA_Jesse come to life:
"High Risk High Reward"
When QGJ is there (worst case is GS joins him in that squad) Poe either gets killed first turn, or one glass cannon or two (this latter more often), and I am just lost. But if he goes first, he either dies from GS or QGJ bufffs their entire rooster and remives the taunt. At that point I have a Poogle that does the same as their QGJ but occupies a key slot and does little, and a taunter that was only good to advance my char turns a bit, which doesn't protect and did no damage: auto loss 80% of times?
And then, the many ither dozens of way of killing my squad start to permeate. So much, that I had to change my team composition many times and think a lot abiut the trade offs vs my own server current meta (Phasma and Sid fest with turn 7-8 squads, heavy counter teams with assists and the occasional perfect Droid team.
First of all, thanks for engaging in such a constructive way despite having a different opinion.
The experiences of you and yours should absolutely be a reference point. It's valuable information to have.
My opinion is that the way the ladders are formed in this game provide the crux of the issue. Since many of the enthusiasts and spenders jumped on board during soft launch and Day 1, they are locked into the dps meta which has the Poe problem as an unfortunate side effect of the root cause, which I agree is damage and speed.
Because ladders are locked based on when you create your account, as the game was released into the wild, and user acquisition grew exponentially, this likely had the effect of diluting the percentage of whales in each individual ladder. I have no data to prove this, but it is my belief based on the discussions I've had with top ranking players on servers formed after the initial launch (again I don't mean baby servers).
The result of this effect is that in those servers formed after day 1, but early enough to have developed diverse rosters, there is not a significant delta in dps (since you don't see FOTP, and Rey, and QGJ ie dpsx3 or 4 everywhere even though you see a 7* GS frequently) on these diluted servers, Thus the "must play Poe or die" meta gets less and less valid over time with the exception of those players locked into early servers.
Because of this, the observations of the 1% you belong to, while absolutely valid for your experience, do not, in the case of this game, become necessarily predictive for the waves of servers which formed after yours.
Again, this is my opinion, but would explain both the middling stance from the devs on Poe balancing, and the polarizing attitudes about it on the forums.
Thanks again!
I like what you are saying and it is the same on my server. Poe doesn't give you a win. No need to nerf him.
You sir, just won this thread in my heart. Extreme verbosity and a penchant for verging on affectatious language is my Achilles' heel when it comes to writing. I'll do better!
In the words of Mark Twain, "I wrote you a long letter because I did not have the time to write you a short one."
Oh wait. I'm doing it again. Poop.
It sounds like a beginning to nerf QGJ.
That said, i will add one tidbit to it in contrary to what the OP has said
*note* i do not think poe is OP, i do think he is broken but not OP
Here is something needed noted about poe.
He scales badly till hes badically max gear then its like night/day. So most of the poes ppl see are subpar. But if you go to ANY servers top 20 and look at the poes there, you will find them max'd. And you will only find max'd ones at the top because he makes that large of an impact.
The OP is 100% correct that each arena group is dif and nets a def experience but no matter what the individual experience, the fact remains that poes "package" is broken. He is simply capable of too much for how fast he is OR he is too fast for what hes capable of.
Those who like poe the way he is and like that hes considered "OP" (again i dont think hes OP) will have no issue or change in their experience with him after this baby-nerf because poes tenacity is basically meaningless to his effectivness. The reason i describe poe as broken is this.......
1) hes too fast for what he can do - Once he taunts (which happens quickly) the damage is done. All the "side effects" of his taunt have already happened with no way of preventing or changing them. He has already exposed you, increses his teams turn meters. Even if your able to remove the taunt, its too late anyway and the full effect is already in place.
Solution: simply slow him down so that his speed is resonable for the package they gave him.
2) his package is too powerful for his speed - same scenario as above.
Solution: since his taunt lasts 2 turns, get rid of his self heal (its not needed anyway) and after 1 turn, he increses turn meters to his team, and potential expose is granted when his taunt disappears (wears off or is removed). This way you can justify the speed without full effect happening at once.
Imo poe is broken, no matter what way you look at it (1 or 2 or possibly other options) its just some adjustments to balance him, lowering tenacity does nothing and wont solve the "poe issue".
I would guess that the ladders formed in the early stages of the game have more whales, however from my personal experience I would say that the forums and internet guides/videos as well as trial and error lead most Arena ladders to similar top 10 team compositions. Even though I have spent quite a bit of money on this game, I'm still a relative newcomer on a newer Arena ladder. Our ladder started around the end of the year, I believe it was Dec. 29th when I downloaded the game. I am currently level 69 and will be the first player on my ladder to reach level 70 tomorrow. I was the first person on my server to have a gear 8 Poe at lvl 61 and I was able to hold the #1 spot for nearly an entire week with my team composition (thanks to the informational advantage I had from joining a top guild and being given in-depth stats and good synergies for the best team compositions.) While my spot at the top for that period of time might have influenced the builds of the top players on my ladder, I just checked and 5 players of our top 10 are running Phasma leader, 4 are running Sidious and 1 droid team is running Poggle. Of the top 5 teams, all 5 are currently running Poe compositions. Of the top 10, if my memory serves me correctly, at least 2 more of ranks 6-10 are running Poe. I am looking forward to next week's update when I can browse through the ranks and get definitive data about my P2P & F2P account ladders.
On my F2P account that is level 59 which I created some time in the middle of January, there is actually more whales on that ladder than my P2P account. The top 3 are all running full 7* Speed/Dmg Poe compositions, however my guess is that these players are actually players from older servers who decided to move into whale territory by starting a new account. That's because of the speed that they adjusted to the speed/dmg meta. They were running 7* speed/dmg teams by week 2. I'm guessing a lot of F2P players that decide to become P2P players in this game decide to start new accounts rather than investing in their old accounts since spending money early in the leveling cycle gives you a great advantage to resources on each ladder.
I have a different opinion as to why the devs took the stance they did on the Poe nerf, and it's quite a negative perspective. But I think that the developers are actually just not very hardcore gamers and are quite misinformed as to how their own game works. If you take a look at my post here (click to view), you can see that two developers clearly do not understand how the speed mechanic works in the game. There is another thread that I would have to find which shows that a developer did not understand how the GW mechanics worked. These are very concerning signs to me that the developers are making balance changes based upon incorrect assumptions about how their own game works, and that not enough play testers are telling them otherwise. If that is the case and the don't have enough play testers / human resources to test their game, we as a community need to fill that gap and share our experiences and opinions with them about what we feel is or isn't working. Although I do admit that most forum posters could do so in a more constructive and helpful manner without belittling the experience of others.
He goes from zero-to-awesome once hitting gear 8. Turn meter nuking is supremely excellent from my side using Poe, but it could be taken down to like 50% effectiveness and let's get on with the turn based game again. It's very very simple.
The only risk is that Poe may lose against the Forum-Warriors, that try to win battle by assasinating characters only and with words. Each, low damange. But they have killed Barris, so beware.
I think this kind of uncertainty is not good. Devs should be best annoucing no nerf fornthe next 3 mo. So the doibts halt for at least a reasonable time in which this can be analysed properly.
I build both, because to denial is just as bad as excess.
Poe is neither the problem or the solution.
No one doubts that you can hit rank 1 without Poe, just how much did it cost you is the question. And with people being able to see your team, I wouldn't want to be the team without him (unless you just have a stacked team).