The "How Do I Defeat THIS Team With MY Roster?" Thread

Seasick Pirate

There always seems to be certain characters or teams that I see a lot in PvP, and struggle to defeat with an under-developed roster. Early on it was Punisher & Original Black Widow. Then it became Patch & Magneto. And of course Sentry & Hood. Currently I'm seeing a lot of X-Force and Goddess of Thunder teams.

What I thought we could do here is set up a resource where people can post teams that they have trouble with and others can chime in with strategies for dispatching them; such as which teams to use, who to target first, colors to deny, or any other words of wisdom. Also, anyone asking for help should provide info on their own roster and the levels of their enemies for the best advice.

PvE teams (Goons, Gorgon, and The Gauntlet) can also be discussed here as well. But players might find quicker responses in that particular event's thread found here: Events, Tournaments, and Missions

Seasick Pirate

My current "hard mode" team is anything with a level +200 X-Force and Lady Thor. Now that we have to be more strategic about our shield usage, the battles we choose are more important than ever. For me, it becomes impossible to progress past 600 points without having to confront these guys.

I have a reasonable 3-star roster (17 fully covered, see sig for full roster) but no usable 4-stars of my own. I feel comfortable dealing with a lone X-Force, especially under 200. But paired with Thor, plus whoever they bring with them, that becomes too much color denying to keep up with. It becomes too luck-based (board drops) to be worth the risk for me.

Any good tips for dealing with this using using only 3-star guys? Doubt there's a foolproof method, but maybe something with more reliability than chance.

Unknown

What's up with all the 157's?

I'll tell you that keeping all your characters at that level makes you a target in PVP. People are gonna opt to fight any character that's not 166.

Quebbster

Seasick Pirate wrote:

My current "hard mode" team is anything with a level +200 X-Force and Lady Thor. Now that we have to be more strategic about our shield usage, the battles we choose are more important than ever. For me, it becomes impossible to progress past 600 points without having to confront these guys.

I have a reasonable 3-star roster (17 fully covered, see sig for full roster) but no usable 4-stars of my own. I feel comfortable dealing with a lone X-Force, especially under 200. But paired with Thor, plus whoever they bring with them, that becomes too much color denying to keep up with. It becomes too luck-based (board drops) to be worth the risk for me.

Any good tips for dealing with this using using only 3-star guys? Doubt there's a foolproof method, but maybe something with more reliability than chance.

When I went up against Thor/X-force/Deadpool in the Gauntlet I used Steve Rogers, IM40 and The Hood to chew through them. Basically I figured there was no chance I'd be able to stop a Power Surge, so I'd better have a good outlet for Red/Yellow/Blue AP once it hit. It worked very well, but I'm not sure a team like that would be PvP worthy. You could always use your own Thor instead of Iron Man as he has a better outlet for Yellow AP...

VonMatterhorn

I've gotten 1300 a few times having to beat these teams without my own 4*s.

I used 3/5/5 Steve, 5/5/3 hood, and featured char at at least lvl 200 (think it was deadpool and daredevil). I'd boost at least +3 R/Y, and +2 all AP if I felt I needed to go super fast. Deny green and black hard, have the featured char tank any xforces or surgical strikes that get through, and hope to get the freight train that is steve going. Won most of my matches this way, but it'd take about 3-4 min per match. (Hopefully you'll be able to respec your hood from the most recent pvp?).
Honestly, Xforce Hood was harder than Xforce 4Thor with this team, just cuz the opposing hood would counter the AP denial effects of my own.

Using Maxed Hulk/Patch wouldn't be bad either. Have hulk tank green/red, Berzerker Rage into Angers, keep collecting greens, and rinse and repeat until you or the other team is dead. Much more high risk, but also much faster.

Best of luck.

Seasick Pirate

I described my soft-cap theory here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19844
Basically, it's because the health gained in negligible, it saves about 30k iso each character, and (hopefully?) keeps my PvE scaling under control.

I had been afraid of using Lazy Cap only because his matches can take longer to win, which was not ideal when hopping was a thing. I'll try bringing him out in the next event and see how it goes.

The only reason I like my Hood 3/5/5 is because I get more use out of his black. The guys I usually pair with Hood might not do as much damage as Hood with yellow, but they are more effective (Thor, Senty, Panther). Although I would favor his yellow over Cap's, I don't feel I'd use that combo enough building Hood for it specifically.

Unknown

As long as you didn't fall asleep on blue it's pretty much the same as just fighting X Force, and even if you did it's usually salvageable if your team has a good R/Y/blue power. Clear out any available red matches before a Power Surge hits so they can't match 3 red charged tiles into a Smite immediately. You have two colors (red/yellow) that you can leave undefended fairly safely for most of the match.

Seasick Pirate

Here is another approach to this question: is there anything that be particular irritating for the X-Force/Thor players to deal with? I don't think scarecrow teams work much anymore, but maybe there is a defensive team that has the slightest chance of doing something?

NorthernPolarity

Seasick Pirate wrote:

Here is another approach to this question: is there anything that be particular irritating for the X-Force/Thor players to deal with? I don't think scarecrow teams work much anymore, but maybe there is a defensive team that has the slightest chance of doing something?

I will skip max Hood / Loki teams at low point totals in search for easier prey so those guys are pretty good at being annoying. Just don't run Hulk on your team, as we will actively target Hulk players because of how easy he is to beat.

Unknown

The problem is that some players run X Force/Thor without having the max covers too and those guys probably don't know enough about the game to skip Loki/The Hood in the first place, and while you've a fairly favorable matchup against them, there's no way you're winning anywhere near 50% defensively which is what's needed to break even assuming that guy gets 25 off you so it's still a net loss. On the flipside while Hulk loses badly to the best characters it's possible that many mid range players think he's tough and again it's much better to get totally clobbered by a relatively few number of players as opposed to having everyone attack you with varying success as long as you're not winning more than 50% defensively which is practically impossible. You might want to consult the character ranking thread as that's likely a better representation of what the average person thinks about the characters and try to figure out how the average guy thinks.

It's relatively unimportant to have a team that's strong against the best players, because they're few in numbers, and if those guys need the points for whatever reason they're obviously still more than comfortable doing any potential mismatches.

squirrel1120

Before I was able to max Patch in Enemy of the State, both he and hulk were at the 153 cap for 12 covers. Even being short levels, they could reliably take a max'd XF/TGT team most of the time. Once zerker rage started the anger procs, the board quickly turns into a christmas tree. Mostly green with a nice scattering of decorative colors. Like most niche strategies, not getting to the green for BR almost dooms the attempt. A few were salvagable by either making patch take the stun and/or focusing on red matches so that if hulk goes down TBTI will be really effective.

Now that i've maxed patch/Lcap, they are serviceable against the composition, but slow. If I try to hop for a better reward tier, I wouldn't try to do more than 2 fights before shielding back up, unless I got 2 amazing boards in a row that just let me put the match to bed, and we know how unlike that scenario is. Anyway, the strat is to keep patch out front matching red, then green as a priority, harvesting blue when possible, and getting the red frisbees flying. Once there, XF is down, or close, so keep on with matching red, but switch priority mainly to blue. Depending on how dangerous the featured is, they often get taken down next, with a preference of stun locking TGT on your way out which gives much better board control making 3 moves to the AI's one. The last benefit being that even if patch too significant damage, as long as he's alive he'll be almost full health by the end of the match.

At my level of play and with my roster... thats all I've got. heh

Oh... and hulk will keep most of the lower level teams away once he's over 140ish, but yeah, any team composition with XF is going to eat him alive, so not so great once into higher points

wymtime

The biggest asset you can bring to the game against 4* is Hood. He slows the game down for the AI and speeds it up for you. When the AI only gets 2 AP instead of 3 that can be huge. Loki can work as well defending against the match 4 and his board manipulation to speed up AP generation, but the Hood is still the king in my mind. If you have a really good buffed character you can run Hood with Cap/LThor/Dare Devil/Doom. I don't know if I would recomend Patch with Hood as BR might kill Hood. I usually run Hood with a level 200 X-Force and that can beat a max 4thor/max X-force team.