Hello and welcome back to the 111th edition of Burning Questions (not counting a couple of special editions). Sadly, this will be the second-to-last edition as Snap Fan will be winding down articles on the site at the end of this month. The final Snap.Fan article, outside of the patch articles that will continue, will be a tribute-style article released on February 28th. But we still have a lot of great topics in Marvel Snap! Star-Lord is a menace! Kraglin… is a card!
1) Is it better to play Star-Lord or counter him?
Beat them or join them? Even more than past meta game considerations, this depends entirely on your matchmaking rating (MMR), skill level (closely correlated to your MMR, but not identical), and what your pocket meta is doing.
If you're at a low MMR, you should play the dominant deck. Play a greedy version of it and make your opponents have the answers. Snap aggressively when you have your combo, retreat from immediate Snap backs and Boomer Snaps.
Baby Bear
If you're higher up, but not quite in the nosebleeds, you can have a lot of success hard-countering this deck. So many people are playing it that you can feast on the predictable play pattern of Star-Lord decks at this level. Any deck that can get priority and plays Cosmo can beat a predictable Star-Lord deck (hint: they ain't playing him middle), either with the help of a card like Jean Grey, Daredevil, or Supergiant or not.
Mama Bear
If you're truly in the nosebleeds, just let everyone else counter Star-Lord and play whatever you want! So much work has gone into figuring out how to counter Star-Lord at the highest MMR levels that he's not nearly as much of a threat there. Play to beat the counters and retreat for a cube if you do happen to get paired into the occasional Star-Lord. Mid-range is still alive here; take advantage of the fun.
Papa Bear
2) Does Kraglin have a use?
Kraglin is pretty narrow. He'd be a lot better if he were a discarder or a destroyer. There's no synergy with Banish yet. However, he and Wave are currently the only way to play a 6-Cost card on Turn 4. Luna Snow and Electro decks tend to include more 5-Cost cards, but Kraglin should be used in a deck that very greedily zeroes in on playing a 6 on 4. But what do we want to play that early? Only cards with high combo/shenanigans potential. What are the best cards to play out early with Kraglin?
Galactus is better positioned for the meta than he has been in a long time. Onslaught can enable a lot when followed up with Sera.
3) Is Snap.Fan really discontinuing articles?
Yep! Sadly, articles and the time along with work that goes into them are no longer sustainable with the state of the game. Snap.Fan will still be here with all of the tools you've come to enjoy and monthly datamines. Don't worry! Our intrepid dataminers are still hard at work to bring you the freshest coded secrets! But other article content will no longer be a part of Snap.Fan. Where does this leave me? Written Snap content generally? Stay tuned! I'll have a lot more about that in next week's farewell edition of Burning Questions!
Now, for the last time (I'll have a special format next week), let's hop over to the official Marvel Snap discord server and grab some exchanges from the ask-the-team channel!
4) Question:
We really appreciate your job of nerfing cards when it's time to do so, but why release cards in such a state and then nuke them in the future? That's a genuine question that I'm asking. Does anyone really test cards? How is it possible for the card tester to not report to you that the new Star-Lord is game-breaking? Nerfing is required, yes, and you do nerf cards when it's needed, yes, but why do you need to collect data when players are telling you that the game it's not healthy?
Answer:
I'm sorry to hear you're feeling less engaged, and you're right that we have data on engagement. Your experience isn't necessarily representative of the majority, or even a meaningful minority. Data cuts through the anecdotal experience of which group wants to talk about their experience the most on social media. (Spoiler: it's almost always the group having a bad time.)
Another reason we collect data is that players are often wrong early but right late, just like us. (I don't even have to look very hard to find pre-release content shooting low on Star-Lord. He also was supposed to be good.) Plenty of cards spike winrates or play rates for several days before calming down. Being overly sensitive to card performance would mean making lower-quality decisions overall.
We have dedicated balancing resources, but game balance isn't an exact science. The exact same team of people worked on Spider-Punk, Weapon X, Shou Lao, and Star-Lord. League of Legends has multiplicatively more resourcing dedicated to game balance than we do, and regular adjustments up and down are a core part of their game as well.
As for Star-Lord specifically, he's more nuanced than you assume. Star-Lord's individual card winrate isn't anything special, but his cube rate is quite good, and specific cards from one of his decks overperform him by a lot. That tells us there are lots of weaker Star-Lord decks being played, people aren't retreating enough, and 1-2 Star-Lord decks are very good. So should Star-Lord be weaker, killing the other decks to put the top ones in their place? Or should we adjust the top ones down? Or are the top ones in fact the element suppressing the weaker ones?
Answering those questions (and more) are basic fundamentals of live balance, and time to gather data helps do that too.
-Glenn
Scosco's Note:
Glenn gives a pretty thorough explanation here of why the idea that “old cards die for the sins of new cards” is an oversimplification. I definitely agree that the ideal when nerfing cards is to preserve their identity and what drew people to the card in the first place. Star-Lord definitely needs a nerf, and he'll definitely get one, but it will come along with nerfs to other cards and leave Star-Lord playable, but less oppressive.
5) Question:
There has been a long-term bug that has been known by the community for a while regarding Captain Marvel not calculating Hydra Stomper's ongoing power. As far as I'm aware there has not been a confirmation or acknowledgement of the bug as of yet. I realise there might be a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" situation with this card since I imagine there are a lot of incorrect bug reports given regarding this character, so just asking if the team is aware of it?
Answer:
We’re aware of this bug. It’s on hold right now as we’re implementing and evaluating some substantial and fundamental revisions to how abilities work in the backend, and these updates should impact this bug (and many others). Hydra Stomper has a problem where his power is unaccounted for by other movers, not just Captain Marvel, but Drax, Avatar of Life as well.
-Glenn
Scosco's Note:
This is the first public acknowledgement of the progress on the Hydra Stomper bug I've seen. It's great to hear that the team is aware and actively working on a solution.
That's it for this week! Be sure to come back next week for the final edition of Burning Questions! Find me on social media and visit my YouTube channel!