MPQ: Is there a meta?

Blahahah

Hello, your local Blahahahah here with a question...

We all know there are powerful teams out there, everyone is familiar with the winfinite and the fistbusters and the Patch/Loki...
Now I have a question for you all, in regards to the team compositions what would you say is the meta?
For the sake of equal ground, lets say this is S.h.I.E.L.D. sim and so no characters are boosted. How would you define the current meta?
What do you feel makes the most difference in the game?

Is it reliable board shake?
Massive AP generation, in exchange for a slightly slower early game?
Insanely fast aggression, overwhelming the opponent before they can fight back?
Big combos? Multiple, smaller combos?
Special tiles? Special tile elimination? Special tile conversion?
Is it better to have a lot of smaller tiles, or one larger tile?
Is it better to have a team that can handle everything but doesn't excel?
Is it better to have a team which outright demolishes some popular teams, but loses heavily to others?
Is it better to focus on rainbow teams? Is synergy worth risking consistancy?

I'm interested to see what you all think. After all, with the game releasing characters whom compliment or counter others (I.E. Jean Grey to Professor X, Iceman to Hulkbuster, or like 4* Deadpool mixing with 4* wolverine), one would assume the game has some kind of direction its leaning into. Likewise, from this idea of the game direction we can also make some predictions as to where the game might go. I considered making a "meta discussion" thread, but I figured it would be better to first establish what, if anything, the meta is.

Selvokaz

Insanely Fast Aggression is my favorite strategy.

Mawtful

Blahahah wrote:

Hello, your local Blahahahah here with a question...

We all know there are powerful teams out there, everyone is familiar with the winfinite and the fistbusters and the Patch/Loki...
Now I have a question for you all, in regards to the team compositions what would you say is the meta?
For the sake of equal ground, lets say this is S.h.I.E.L.D. sim and so no characters are boosted. How would you define the current meta?
What do you feel makes the most difference in the game?

Is it reliable board shake?
Massive AP generation, in exchange for a slightly slower early game?
Insanely fast aggression, overwhelming the opponent before they can fight back?
Big combos? Multiple, smaller combos?
Special tiles? Special tile elimination? Special tile conversion?
Is it better to have a lot of smaller tiles, or one larger tile?
Is it better to have a team that can handle everything but doesn't excel?
Is it better to have a team which outright demolishes some popular teams, but loses heavily to others?
Is it better to focus on rainbow teams? Is synergy worth risking consistancy?

I'm interested to see what you all think. After all, with the game releasing characters whom compliment or counter others (I.E. Jean Grey to Professor X, Iceman to Hulkbuster, or like 4* Deadpool mixing with 4* wolverine), one would assume the game has some kind of direction its leaning into. Likewise, from this idea of the game direction we can also make some predictions as to where the game might go. I considered making a "meta discussion" thread, but I figured it would be better to first establish what, if anything, the meta is.

There are a few different metagames to line up with the different tiers of play.
I think the 3* tier probably still favours combo pairs, since players may not have all 3* characters covered sufficiently. Patch + Magneto and Patch + Hulk for variations on "bombing", and combos such as Daken + Blade or Iron Fist + Cyclops which let players finish fairly quickly once setup is complete. In SHIELD Sim, you can pretty much add an AP Support (Hood or Loki) to any of those teams to speed them up.

The 3-4* transition tier is fairly focused on AP acceleration - Iron Fist + Cyclops/XF Wolverine/Hulkbuster/etc. - and Professor X + Widow (which is really a variation of AP acceleration anyway). Just add Luke Cage to slow match damage or Loki/Jean to slow enemy AP gain.

4* tier mostly seems to be focused on scarecrows like Jean, Rulk, Carnage, Hulkbuster. Basically any character which lower tier players cannot afford a mistake/bad luck when playing against.

... one would assume the game has some kind of direction its leaning into. Likewise, from this idea of the game direction we can also make some predictions as to where the game might go.

An interesting assumption, but I fear it's probably false. The game is simply moving in the direction of trying to make more money and the prediction is that the devs will do whatever they can to make more money. The only time balance or meta are factored in is when the devs want to power creep just enough to encourage another round of player spending.

lukewin

Fielding a team that you can win with repeatedly without using a lot of healthpacks, that is foolproof enough that the AI can not mess it up too badly. So a good defensive team to deter attacks and still provide strong offense that the AI will not use the wrong move. I go with Jeanbuster, mixed with Thing for his high health. Red, blue, black for IMHB, purple, green for Jean, opponent is forced to avoid match 5s until Jean is down or stunned. If the AI uses Thing's red or green instead, while not ideal, they're not bad options. Don't really care that there's no outlet for Yellow. I could always put in Thor instead of Thing, but her red/blue in the hands of the AI are worse than IMHB's red/blue.

I realize my 3 don't actually fit the first part of my statement, so my meta would be climb fast using teams that you can win repeatedly with without using a lot of healthpacks (Charlie's Angels, X-force duo, True Healers), then switch to a good defensive team at the point where using all of your healthpacks on that team, is going to get you to the mark you want to get to. You risk losing points due to retals of those you hit, but that's an acceptable risk to take. To avoid a bigger target on your back with those faster, weaker teams, go out when there's less people playing.

Eddiemon

Blahahah wrote:

Is it better to have a lot of smaller tiles, or one larger tile?

I don't know what this means.

But a proper meta doesn't have a best strategy, but more a rock-paper-scissors setup.

So for example Hood slows your opponent down and gains you time and resources. So you can counter him with Iron Fist. But Fist doesn't have as much health as a 4*, who generally are slower and vulnerable to Hood.

A team with a complex powerful attack strategy like winfinite is devastating in attack, but ridiculous on defense. Whereas Jeanbuster is slower in attack but annoyingly slow to take out. A combo like Hood-Thing-Cage is just unbelievably annoying to attack, but is generally terribly slow to use.

The existence of shields breaks the meta some, in that defense doesn't really matter, only speed of attack. In the climb up to 800 if I do it in 2-3 jumps I need a less attractive team to attack. So boosted 3*s are good. But then in the last jump when you break 800 and anyone can have a go, a team which wins quickly is all that matters.

hurcules

There has always been different meta at different phases of the game. We had the Thorverine, Hood Bombing, Thorverine 2.0, etc meta.

Now we seem to be in the Cupcake meta.

moogles85

Since the reduction of points due to defensive wins, leaving a "good" team on defense for more points is pointless.

You're better off with begin able to win fights quickly and shield hop your way up to your target.

cooperbigdaddy

Blahahah wrote:

We all know there are powerful teams out there, everyone is familiar with the winfinite and the fistbusters and the Patch/Loki...

So I'm somewhat new, but have been playing for a little over a year. I've also been reading a bunch on the forums and I always see "Winfinite" and "Fistbuster" and "Patch/Loki" being AMAZING combos. (Also, I'm sure I'm missing some of the top combos) Maybe this is an idiotic question, but why are these combinations so fantastic? If this is the wrong place to ask this question, I would love to be pointed to the correct threads so I can read up on why these combos kill so hard. As you can see from my roster, I'm still working on getting my 3*s boosted a bunch and barely have any 4*s so I don't implement any of these teams, though I'd like to! Would love to see why they rock and what I can aspire to. Thanks!

Ruinate

cooperbigdaddy wrote:

Blahahah wrote:

We all know there are powerful teams out there, everyone is familiar with the winfinite and the fistbusters and the Patch/Loki...

So I'm somewhat new, but have been playing for a little over a year. I've also been reading a bunch on the forums and I always see "Winfinite" and "Fistbuster" and "Patch/Loki" being AMAZING combos. (Also, I'm sure I'm missing some of the top combos) Maybe this is an idiotic question, but why are these combinations so fantastic? If this is the wrong place to ask this question, I would love to be pointed to the correct threads so I can read up on why these combos kill so hard. As you can see from my roster, I'm still working on getting my 3*s boosted a bunch and barely have any 4*s so I don't implement any of these teams, though I'd like to! Would love to see why they rock and what I can aspire to. Thanks!

Strong nukes combined with self acceleration. Although Patch/Loki is good because of special tiles. Nuke + acceleration is the meta in my opinion. All the great characters in 3* and 4* land have built in acceleration. Luke Cage is very good on his own, but if you stick him with Fist who accelerates, Luke becomes even better.

moogles85

cooperbigdaddy wrote:

Blahahah wrote:

We all know there are powerful teams out there, everyone is familiar with the winfinite and the fistbusters and the Patch/Loki...

So I'm somewhat new, but have been playing for a little over a year. I've also been reading a bunch on the forums and I always see "Winfinite" and "Fistbuster" and "Patch/Loki" being AMAZING combos. (Also, I'm sure I'm missing some of the top combos) Maybe this is an idiotic question, but why are these combinations so fantastic? If this is the wrong place to ask this question, I would love to be pointed to the correct threads so I can read up on why these combos kill so hard. As you can see from my roster, I'm still working on getting my 3*s boosted a bunch and barely have any 4*s so I don't implement any of these teams, though I'd like to! Would love to see why they rock and what I can aspire to. Thanks!

Winfinite is GSBW/PX/SW - generate purple match-5s with SW, generate green match-5s with GSBW, have PX deal massive damage with his floating head. Each match-5 will generate more purple to continue the combo.

Fistbuster - Iron Fist purple creates black which charges HB Overdrive (Creates 2 strike tiles + 9 red AP). This allows you to straight up deal 6k~ dmg and then proceed to double dip the strike tiles with IF's persistent attack tile. This allows for "quick" fights by collecting purple to create black to do massive damage quickly.

Patch/Loki - they have good synergy, use Patch Berzerker Rage and follow up with Loki's Trickery to have massive strike tiles + massive defensive tiles.

Hulkbombing - aka. Patch/Hulk - they have good synergy, use Patch Berzerker Rage, and let Hulk tank and let Hulk get angry. Each anger tile will deal aoe dmg to the other team due to all the green strike tiles.

Malcrof

Falcap/GhostRider - tile spammer and buffer. It gets messy in a hurry, especially since Cap ticks GR's cd tile when blue matches are made.. can get to the point of 3k+ more strikes and attack/strike buffs on a simple blue match.. Add in Penance Stare, and this duo can take down 5*s, they are built for long matches.

Rulkbuster - huge health, no overlap in colors, massive aoe and single target damage, + a penalty for doing damage to rulk.. and btw, you didn't really need your green AP did you?

TxMoose

unmentioned 'meta' combo jeanbuster (edit: for cooper) - 4* jean grey and hulkbuster. no acceleration across the 2 (hb accelerates plenty on his own) or direct synergy but 2 great characters that only leave yellow unused. there is some synergy with hb's black strikes being multiplied X3 with jean's aoes. good combo of focused accelerated nuke with good aoe options.

OneLastGambit

My playing style is one of denial so for me characters which reduce enemy AP are ones which I favour. If they increase yours at the same time (Hood, OBW, Rulk) then great. My strategy is always to stop the other team from firing powers.

Teams I hate facing are ones which have low power costs since they are hard to play a denial game against whereas supposed scarecrows like IMHB are easy fodder for a player like me even with my undercovered 3* team since they never get to fire a power.

I like 1 AP support character (OBW at the minute until I get some more covers for Hood) plus one all rounder (Mr Rogers at the minute) and then the final character is largely dependant on the opposition but will mostly consist of either a boosted character or my best covered 4*'s (KP or XFDP)

SnowcaTT

Meta:

Super-whales
Whales
Pay a bit
Freemium

Mix with some time-played in six-month increments.

Handoftheking26

My 4* roster is not covered enough for me to use....but in 3* land I'm pretty gtg. I like to have the whole rainbow covered whenever possible. I hate to see a huge AP pool on a color i can not use. I also avoid attacking certain teams/chars because it usually means I'm gonna use a health pack or two. So here are a few teams I like, and ones I don't like to face....

My squads:(all 3* variation)
Thor-Doom-Loki...Loki is mainly there for his green
Patch-Panther-DD....wait to fire DD purple until Patch fires green
Cap-GSBW-Hood....Hood and Cap rox, can switch GSBW for KK
Cy-KK-Daken...KK is awesome on any team
Cage-DP-Groot....Cage is my personal fav
Hulk-Blade-Mags....when play time is over

Iron Fist and Scarlet Witch are elite chars and anytime you can swap them into any of these teams you should.

Chars I avoid:(when I can)
IMHB
Iceman
Red Hulk
XFDP
Cy (3 and 4*)
Magneto (3*)

Loki and Hood are annoying as @#$%...but health is low, so matters who they with....and I must admit, to beat the Chulk lvl 395 node I had to break out Hood, Cap, KK cuz all my usual teams got worked....with those 3 I finished at full health

Hayek

Framing the discussion around Shield SIM is a problem when discussing the current PvP meta because Shield SIM has it's own meta. While normal PvP events favors fast damage because you have to minimize your time unshielded, in SIM you can afford to try more defensive comps because the clock is not ticking. And in today's meta, SIM does have a required character - Jean Grey. You have to field her if you have her well covered, because the most popular climbing team is PX's winfinite, for which the only counter is JG. So if you want to be able to float in SIM you have to leave JG on defense. For instance, floating around 1900 with thing/xfdp/kp, which is an excellent team, I was hit 5x in a period of 2 hours, all by winfinite teams. I retaliated each time with a JG team and I've been sitting at 1900 for 2 days with one hit (spoiler alert: not winfinite).

Blahahah

Hayek wrote:

Framing the discussion around Shield SIM is a problem when discussing the current PvP meta because Shield SIM has it's own meta. While normal PvP events favors fast damage because you have to minimize your time unshielded, in SIM you can afford to try more defensive comps because the clock is not ticking. And in today's meta, SIM does have a required character - Jean Grey. You have to field her if you have her well covered, because the most popular climbing team is PX's winfinite, for which the only counter is JG. So if you want to be able to float in SIM you have to leave JG on defense. For instance, floating around 1900 with thing/xfdp/kp, which is an excellent team, I was hit 5x in a period of 2 hours, all by winfinite teams. I retaliated each time with a JG team and I've been sitting at 1900 for 2 days with one hit (spoiler alert: not winfinite).

The reason I phrased it as Shield sim specifically is because otherwise every response would be
"play the boosted character + cMag/IF/KK/etc"

I wanted specific insight from the players on what they thought was the most powerful team composition/strategy on an equal playing field.
For example, yeah winfinite is balls on a plate for most people, but I find it easy enough to crack open offensively speaking...

Still, its prominance might lead one to say that the meta is a "combo-based meta" which would fit the patch/loki ideal.
The presence of Fistbuster can't be ignored though, so one might say the meta is "extreme acceleration" based.
Even still, other teams float around like SWitch/Fist/Cage or XFDP + Thing that would lead people to believe its based on the long game.

Mostly people have been listing their personal styles, which is fine as it also crafts the idea of the meta on an individual level.
Still your note is appreciated, I'll take your vote is winfinite is the offensive meta, while Jean grey basically breaks that meta in half.

ammenell

moogles85 wrote:

[...]
Winfinite is GSBW/PX/SW - generate purple match-5s with SW, generate green match-5s with GSBW, have PX deal massive damage with his floating head. Each match-5 will generate more purple to continue the combo.

Fistbuster - Iron Fist purple creates black which charges HB Overdrive (Creates 2 strike tiles + 9 red AP). This allows you to straight up deal 6k~ dmg and then proceed to double dip the strike tiles with IF's persistent attack tile. This allows for "quick" fights by collecting purple to create black to do massive damage quickly.

Patch/Loki - they have good synergy, use Patch Berzerker Rage and follow up with Loki's Trickery to have massive strike tiles + massive defensive tiles.

Hulkbombing - aka. Patch/Hulk - they have good synergy, use Patch Berzerker Rage, and let Hulk tank and let Hulk get angry. Each anger tile will deal aoe dmg to the other team due to all the green strike tiles.

Malcrof wrote:

Falcap/GhostRider - tile spammer and buffer. It gets messy in a hurry, especially since Cap ticks GR's cd tile when blue matches are made.. can get to the point of 3k+ more strikes and attack/strike buffs on a simple blue match.. Add in Penance Stare, and this duo can take down 5*s, they are built for long matches.

Rulkbuster - huge health, no overlap in colors, massive aoe and single target damage, + a penalty for doing damage to rulk.. and btw, you didn't really need your green AP did you?

nice list.
where can i find more "special" teams? is there a list somewhere? i read the guide (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17105) but its mostly a list of good combinations, without any explanation.

Phaserhawk

Yes there is a meta.

Currently there are 6 characters you see All the time at high PvP

Jean Grey
IMHB
Iceman
Red Hulk
Cyclops
Old Man Logan

OML is usually the least covered of the bunch but he's showing up more and more.

Now with boosts you will generally see Deadpool, Thing, Kingpin, and Carnage when they are boosted but the aforementioned 6 you will see always. Thor and X-Force are there hell even Fury, but other than that I never see anyone else.

The only 3*'s I see always are Iron Fist, Cyclops and KK. The rest only if featured or boosted. Also pre 800 you will see some Xavier/GSBW or Scarlet witch.

Phoenix will soon be appearing once more covers are obtained

PvP is pretty diverse nowadays. You see mostly Greybusters, but I've been seeing a lot more Redclops, RedIce, and IceBusters nowadays. Also loads of OML/RedHulks. You need to be able to deal with those top 6 consistently.

Malcrof

Phaserhawk wrote:

Yes there is a meta.

Currently there are 6 characters you see All the time at high PvP

Jean Grey
IMHB
Iceman
Red Hulk
Cyclops
Old Man Logan

OML is usually the least covered of the bunch but he's showing up more and more.

Now with boosts you will generally see Deadpool, Thing, Kingpin, and Carnage when they are boosted but the aforementioned 6 you will see always. Thor and X-Force are there hell even Fury, but other than that I never see anyone else.

The only 3*'s I see always are Iron Fist, Cyclops and KK. The rest only if featured or boosted. Also pre 800 you will see some Xavier/GSBW or Scarlet witch.

Phoenix will soon be appearing once more covers are obtained

PvP is pretty diverse nowadays. You see mostly Greybusters, but I've been seeing a lot more Redclops, RedIce, and IceBusters nowadays. Also loads of OML/RedHulks. You need to be able to deal with those top 6 consistently.

We are apparently playing different PVP's.. In 3* land, Cage, even when not boosted shows up quite a bit. I see Silver Surfer just as often as OML, and XDP/Thing is an everpresent team.

Blahahah

Yeah, in 3* land honestly I see Cage and Patch most consistantly, with close seconds going to rocket/groot...
So maybe its slice dependant? I know in slice 2 its pretty split between characters at 140 and Maxed winfinite, where as slice 3 is more diverse and middle-heavy.