The value of defense

Unknown

I see people talking about defense a lot on the boards. Often I see people stress the composition of a team based on its defensive value, almost as much as I see people talk about offensive synergy. Since I seem to be one of the few dissenting opinions on this, I thought I would share my thoughts and see if I could stir up any debate.

Defense is almost irrelevant. Almost. The only really good defense is a skip. It is possible to put together such an annoying team that you are likely to be skipped; characters such as Daken (and the upcoming 3* Daken), Ares, Hulk, and Lazy Thor are just likely enough to force health pack usage that people may elect to skip them, thereby saving you a few retaliations and defensive losses.

On the other hand, it is impossible to put together a defensive team that is likely to win against equally levelled competition. If you tank particularly well it is almost impossible to put together a team that won't garner a few defensive wins from greatly lower levelled opponents (unless you are, in fact, tanking that particular tournament).

I see people discussing the merits of various teams based on how the AI is likely to utilize your characters, but I would posit that no matter what you do the AI will be terrible at playing your characters. Barring the infamous "magic cascade" your team will lose to almost everybody. And if you are worth enough points you will be attacked no matter what team you trot out. When was the last time you lost to the AI in PvP?

When you are trying to assemble your most competitive offensive team, even winning is an afterthought. All that matters is fast clears. If you can play two games in the time it takes your competition to play one, you will win the tournament, end of story. When available in the format, nothing is likely to be better than Patch/ Cmags or Punisher/ Cmags (for a more extended push), a strictly offensive team.

I value the debate, though. I wouldn't have posted this otherwise, so let's hear how I'm a big idiot and why defense is so important.

Unknown

Defense is not that important but if your team has Thor on it, it's not going to lose anyway so you might as well think about how to very slightly improve your chance of winning.

Winning quickly is still more important than anything else, but someone like The Hood provides a lot of defensive value for a minimal impact on slowing you down.

Unknown

When pushing from 900-1100 in the last pvp tourney I had 3/3 defensive wins. I get defensive wins daily. It may not matter nearly as much as offense but turning a -45 into a +10 2-3 times a tourney is a pretty big deal to me.

Unknown

Defense is more valuable when you're significant higher rating than your opponents. For example let's say you get +15 on a win and -30 on a loss. Then, even if you win twice as fast as anyone else, if whoever you attack always retaliate you'd still be making no progress at all. Never mind that it's fairly improbable to win twice as fast (not counting boosts) no matter how strong your team is against similar competition.

Now, having a strong defense team means you might win 10% of the time instead of 1% of the time, and in the grand scheme of things that doesn't matter much. But when you need to hit a particularly hard to reach threshold, even winning twice as fast doesn't do much for you against retaliations, but if you get that lucky 10%, that will be enough, and getting the lucky 10% is still far more probable than hoping you can somehow win twice as fast as all your opponents.

Unknown

That unlucky cascade against the attacker helps too

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

When pushing from 900-1100 in the last pvp tourney I had 3/3 defensive wins. I get defensive wins daily. It may not matter nearly as much as offense but turning a -45 into a +10 2-3 times a tourney is a pretty big deal to me.

I don't know your exact situation, but I have had similar things happen, but usually when I have tanked extra well and I am seeing a lot of 3x85 teams. I get defensive wins all the time when I am well tanked. When I am fighting in a fair MMR zone, though, it's usually more like 1 in 10, as Phantron indicated.

Unknown

On the other hand, patch/c.mags makes a great team on defence as well.
The protect tiles negate most match damage, and 2 ap red allows use of b.rage strike tiles twice in a turn.
It helps that they both have the standard 5800 hp plus patch has regen so you'll want to take him down last.
Most likely he'll bti with the whole board sporting his strike tiles then so your down a health pack as well.
The 3rd is usually the featured character forced on you, but at least with these 2, clear speed is still fast unlike if you use hulk to scare away people and his **** skills.
I guess Thor, c mags would be good too, but its not as annoying as always having to eat a bti if patch is the last one left.
There's also the annoying OBW/hood/m.storm combo where you die by endless cascades and not having any ap to use.

NorthernPolarity

What Phantron said. If you're at 1k points+ and grinding opponents for 5 points a pop, any defeat your roster faces is going to greatly hinder your progress. When these opponents generally have a team that includes 2 85 2*s, it's going to be incredibly hard for them to beat a defensive team such as LT/BP/Hood, whereas a team like C. Mags/PunPun/Patch would be very doable by comparison. Saving 100-150 points in retaliations then is the only way to reach high progression awards such as Lazycap.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

When pushing from 900-1100 in the last pvp tourney I had 3/3 defensive wins. I get defensive wins daily. It may not matter nearly as much as offense but turning a -45 into a +10 2-3 times a tourney is a pretty big deal to me.

I don't know your exact situation, but I have had similar things happen, but usually when I have tanked extra well and I am seeing a lot of 3x85 teams. I get defensive wins all the time when I am well tanked. When I am fighting in a fair MMR zone, though, it's usually more like 1 in 10, as Phantron indicated.

It's only 1 in 10 against guys equally strong, but you sure aren't winning twice as fast as someone that's equally strong, so 10% chance is still better than nothing. And that's a pretty favorable +15 versus -30. If it's say +10 versus -40, you'd have to win 4 times as fast and you'd probably need hacks to do that!

Beast1970

I tend to agree with the OP. Perhaps because I tend to avoid tanking, I typically fight equivalent teams to my own roster, and a typical opponent would be Spidey/OBW/punisher. At most, seeing a maxed Hood might make me want to skip if time is of the essence, but barring the cascade from hell, it is still doable. I have to think others think the same when they see my team, so I don't worry much about defense. I have noticed my point loss vs retaliation amount has been more in my favor recently, not sure if that is a recent change in the game calculation, or just an effect of not tanking my MMR. I also think the recent changes to boosts and the 'skip tax' has done some good in leveling MMRs, this also might have some effect in what I see. I still get the occasional defensive win, but without tanking, I don't see a great necessity for a good defensive team.

Unknown

Jeremychen wrote:

There's also the annoying OBW/hood/m.storm combo where you die by endless cascades and not having any ap to use.

Is that actually working for anyone?

I'd probably seek out that team. Pack a few damage boosts I have 30, put storm in front and sit back. Especially with a Patch team. Storm will die 6-8 turns to tiles, then how they win? No damage dealing. They can collect any AP but then what? If patch taking most colors I fail to see possibility to be under full health for more than 2 turns ever.

Unknown

Match boost is the bane of the 'super tricky team'. Since people probably have 30 of the 2 color matches sitting around it's hardly a big deal to use up 5, and yet characters like The Hood and certainly Modern Storm gets destroyed by that. You can't AP steal match damage and you can't even outheal that with OBW (match 3 on your two strong colors + 50% easily beats Anti-Grav when damage is concentrated on one character). A team of 2 support characters can usually be defeated easily by this method too, either by taking out a support or just taking out the sole damage dealer first. Match boosts ensure Anti-Grav cannot deal with incoming damage, and once that guy is down 2 support characters literally can't do anything offensively to win.

To be fair I still fall victim to them occasionally because I'm too cheap to use a boost I have 30 of that is just rotting away, but that's because I'm cheap and shouldn't hoard my boosts.

Nemek

pasa_ wrote:

Jeremychen wrote:

There's also the annoying OBW/hood/m.storm combo where you die by endless cascades and not having any ap to use.

Is that actually working for anyone?

I'd probably seek out that team. Pack a few damage boosts I have 30, put storm in front and sit back. Especially with a Patch team. Storm will die 6-8 turns to tiles, then how they win? No damage dealing. They can collect any AP but then what? If patch taking most colors I fail to see possibility to be under full health for more than 2 turns ever.

I'm sure it works decently enough. I know I've retreated out of a couple of OBW/M Storm fights when it gets to something ridiculous like I have zero total AP and they have 10+ in every color. Just not worth the time...

Bowgentle

If I ever get to the point of having ISO to burn (not likely with all those new ISO-hungry characters coming out) I'd like to get Daredevil up to 141 and see what happens with Hood / DD / Lazy Thor (or Black Panther).
I think that might get a lot of skips.

Of course the main problem is that you're taking ages to kill the other team while you actually climb.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

dlaw008 wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

When pushing from 900-1100 in the last pvp tourney I had 3/3 defensive wins. I get defensive wins daily. It may not matter nearly as much as offense but turning a -45 into a +10 2-3 times a tourney is a pretty big deal to me.

I don't know your exact situation, but I have had similar things happen, but usually when I have tanked extra well and I am seeing a lot of 3x85 teams. I get defensive wins all the time when I am well tanked. When I am fighting in a fair MMR zone, though, it's usually more like 1 in 10, as Phantron indicated.

It's only 1 in 10 against guys equally strong, but you sure aren't winning twice as fast as someone that's equally strong, so 10% chance is still better than nothing. And that's a pretty favorable +15 versus -30. If it's say +10 versus -40, you'd have to win 4 times as fast and you'd probably need hacks to do that!

I don't really have this happen to me except in lightning rounds. I mostly play at off times when I can build up hundreds of points at a time without being hit back. Then I go to bed and wake up to find I'm down about 150 points or so from my peak. The situation of being hit back during a fight only seems to happen to me when I play at peak times or in the last few hours of the tourney.

As to the clearing twice as fast, it is easily possible, twice may even be undervaluing it when I am playing Patch and CMags and my opponent is playing something like Hulk and IM40 because he wants people to have to chew through HP on defense. What I'm suggesting is that offense trumps all defensive considerations.

KaioShinDE

I think I fall in line with the OP, I have no illusions that everyone who tries can defeat my team, even with a 141 Patch. I see the defensive team mostly as a deterant, so hopefully that as many players as possible simply decide to skip and look for an easier target. So annoyance factor weighs most heavily and what the AI would or would not do with the team is irrelevant.

Unknown

Like mostly everyone here, I long ago lost any illusions to consistently win on defense, even with a 3x141 team. The only time when i foundnd myself raking more win than loss is when I unber-tanked before an event, and even this seems to be not working anymore.

Gold daken will probably be the ultimate protection though.

Unknown

Let's just hope we don't see a Lazy Bullseye next. One of most annoying enemy teams in pve for me is a 230 Bullseye + Daken. Even a 141 Bullseye can be extremely annoying if you get a bad board.

Unknown

Defense has a limited role in the metagame, but it's still worth considering.

In this Cap tourney, attacks against me dropped dramatically when I swapped out my speed Patch/C. Mags combo for BP/LT, and my defensive win rate nearly tripled. Yes, you need your AI team to catch a cascade or two, but you also have to have abilities that can truly take advantage of that bonus AP. Patch on defense encourages retals (people were breaking out Spidey like he was getting nerfed in the morning), because he's a liability. High health is one form of deterrent because people want to maintain their win speed. AP starvation is another (match damage boosts are a good counter for these OBW/Hood/DPS teams, but it's not sustainable, and still takes longer than you want it to). When someone is racing for a 900-1100 tier reward, they're dreading coming out to a loss every match, and may be more inclined to skip if they think it will take more time. I know I burned ISO like nobody's business as I approached 1100 trying to find the right match. More often it was a mid health combo like Pun/C. Mags or Patch/C. Mags I was looking to hit, even though I made 80% of my push with Patch/C. Mags.

It might only make the difference between one loss turning into a win, but that's a potential 50 pt. swing (from -40 to +10) at a critical time.

It's far more important if you're jockeying in the last hours of a PvP or elite tourney, but I'd agree that if you're the type of player who plays early and shields up with a big lead it's not a very large concern.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

pasa_ wrote:

Jeremychen wrote:

There's also the annoying OBW/hood/m.storm combo where you die by endless cascades and not having any ap to use.

Is that actually working for anyone?

I'd probably seek out that team. Pack a few damage boosts I have 30, put storm in front and sit back. Especially with a Patch team. Storm will die 6-8 turns to tiles, then how they win? No damage dealing. They can collect any AP but then what? If patch taking most colors I fail to see possibility to be under full health for more than 2 turns ever.

I'm sure it works decently enough. I know I've retreated out of a couple of OBW/M Storm fights when it gets to something ridiculous like I have zero total AP and they have 10+ in every color. Just not worth the time...

I misread the original for cstorm really, but it stands for mstorm too -- she is indeed more danger in general bu goes down even faster.

Are you sure you retreated from OBW/M Storm with Hood? Not with Thor or ares or Wolvie or whatever guy than can deal acutalat damage? I too stumbled on hard time with those once in a while. But the reason was exactly that, a few turns in while I concentrated effort on mstorm I was looking at full AP stores and incoming hammers or slashes or other nasty stuff with thousands of damage each, many on each of my members.

This team is restricted to tile damage and have some low-damage black as the only thing. Even with long cascades it's hardly feasible to go for too much of it.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

As to the clearing twice as fast, it is easily possible, twice may even be undervaluing it when I am playing Patch and CMags and my opponent is playing something like Hulk and IM40 because he wants people to have to chew through HP on defense. What I'm suggesting is that offense trumps all defensive considerations.

But they can be combined for all the benefits: I make the push with the mags/patch team and play the last match with something defensive. That is slower and picking more damage but who cares on the last game when it will heal up even from down by my next play?

Then only the retals face the fast team all the rest will be offered the scarecrows.

It's even more benefit for (single) shield-jumping as when you break the shield still the defensive team shows up in the most interesting period you're vulnerable to attacks. And all it has to do to delay the finish by 2-3 minutes so hits arrive when you're under next shield.