The Current Meta

DyingLegend

So I've been attempting to climb the ranks of the simulator to hit 2000 to get that sweet sweet Gamora cover. I'm 100 points away so I am hopefully going to get there. One thing I've noticed is the sheer number of the same.... Exact...... Team combinations. Now, it's not the same guy I'm skipping over and over again, it's all different players teams but the team I constantly keep seeing are;

Medusa/Bl4de/Carol (in various orders) 
Medusa/carnage/carol
Medusa/ carnage/ peggy
Medusa/wasp/peggy
Medusa/carol/peggy
Medusa/wasp/carol
Medusa/Bl4de/peggy

I skipped about 50 times before I got a team with Someone different. 

My question is, how does everyone feel about this current meta( I'm saying the above is the 4 star meta) ? Are other people seeing what I'm seeing, what could be done to increase variety? Is this a result of vaulting because the newest characters are easier to obtain? 

I mean I don't mind fighting those team, just boring fighting the same group over and over. Need a little spice in the rotation!

(Bit more information, I've just started a 4 star transition so I'm seeing more 4 star only teams and players.)

Orion

Things are a little messed up right now because of vaulting.  The newer 4*s are the ones people have the most of, so they pick the best ones of those and use them.  Right now that's Medusa, Peggy and Carol.  In a few months, Rocket and Groot will be there too (seriously, they're awesome).

In 5* land, it's Thanos and Black Panther.  The third can be anyone - Hawkeye, Phoenix, OML, Black Bolt or even Surfer (who I use).  So the 5* meta is just as bad or worse than the 4* meta.

FokaiHI

Don't worry. That's vaulting. If it wasn't them it would be Peggy with IM40. 

DyingLegend

"FokaiHI said:

Don't worry. That's vaulting. If it wasn't them it would be Peggy with IM40. "

Stupid mobile phone doesn't let me comment in white. I could at least deal with that combo. Im40 is easy to counter unless the countdown tiles go in weird spots. If I see any team with 3 stars I attack them so I'd welcome that combo. 

Orion said:

Things are a little messed up right now because of vaulting.  The newer 4*s are the ones people have the most of, so they pick the best ones of those and use them.  Right now that's Medusa, Peggy and Carol.  In a few months, Rocket and Groot will be there too (seriously, they're awesome).

In 5* land, it's Thanos and Black Panther.  The third can be anyone - Hawkeye, Phoenix, OML, Black Bolt or even Surfer (who I use).  So the 5* meta is just as bad or worse than the 4* meta.

I could understand the 5 star meta being unvaried because there aren't a ton of options. But the 4 star meta have over 40 options, yet everyone uses the same combos. I hope by the time I hit 5 star land there will be more options.

***Fixed formatting and consolidated @DyingLegend posts - Ducky

FokaiHI

That combo didn't eat health packs as well. Anything with Bl4de and c4rol just kills shortens my gameplay sometimes. 

FokaiHI

Lol. Are you only really able to post on quotes? That's seems like a restriction. 

DyingLegend

I try not to post on quotes but the website doesn't work too well with mobile phones. Sometimes it posts in white other times is snaps up to the Grey section. Really annoying. 

spectator

That's why boost weeks are such a godsend in pvp. It's encourages the use of different characters from week to week, In 4 star land anyway

Moon Roach

I tried my fun teams (Carol/Wasp/Coulson, Fist/Cage/C&D) but they kept losing to the teams you list, so I had to fall back on Medusa/Wasp/Blade just to get some points.  If you have them, you have to use them.

Vhailorx

I think there are two main factors at work roach:

(1) There was a very strong batch of 4*s released from July 2016 through January 2017 (Peggy, post-buff-Wasp, Blade, Medusa, Carol).  These characters are all among the best-in-tier for their respective niches, and all have extremely strong passives that make them decent (or better) deterrent characters in PVP.  So it's not too surprising that people gravitate to them in SSim where defense is extra valuable because no one is boosted and shielding in SSim is a waste of HP.

(2) Vaulting means that a significant portion of players only have access to recent 4*s, so it's no surprise that they focus on using the best of the current 12. 

There may be some other factors at work here too, like simple boredom (I played with xpool, imhb, cyclops, and iceman endless last summer when they were my best 4* options.  I am not convinced that the new top tiers are much better than iceman straight up, but they are new and therefore less boring to play.) but I suspect that is dwarfed by my first two factors. 

It IS a bit stale, but it's also pretty much inevitable.  If demi releases new characters, then people gravitate to them and the meta is swamped with the new hotness.  If demi releases **** characters then people **** about them and complain that all they ever see is Iceman, rulk, etc.   

Moon Roach

Valid points all.

Going a little off topic (please don't ban me mods) I want a fun team that can hold its own against the identical masses ("Yes! We're all individuals!"), preferably winning more than losing.

At the beginning of my climb I had a little fun with Green Goblin / 4* Deadpool / don't remember who (maybe 4* Luke Cage?!?), but my GG is relatively squishy and levelling him to non-squishiness brings with it its own problems.

But you have reminded me to maybe break out Peggy / IM40 / Iceman, give that a go against the identical hordes ("Yes, we ARE all different!").

(There's a bonus 20 ISO up for grabs for getting the references.)

FokaiHI

The only thing is Bl4des passive is so strong. I can hold off Peggy with Bl4de and medusa. I have a bunch of older 4*s I wish I could use, but they just get eaten up. G4mora and R4G are coming up, and it's going to change again

KinDM

As said, it's pretty much the result of vaulting. Medusa guarantees decent damage done, so in theory acts as a scarecrow of sorts, but almost everyone is using her. Expect it to get worse once more people have large G4mora and Grocket to add to the mix. Despite benefiting from it, it almost seems like there should be some incentive to mix things up a bit. Bonus points for using either characters who are infrequently used in the game as a whole or by your own roster. Not sure how they'd implement it, but it would make things a lot less stale.

Moon Roach

All we really need is for those characters to be used in 10% of all matches...

KinDM

Moon Roach said:

All we really need is for those characters to be used in 10% of all matches...

Poor, poor Medusa...

Skrofa

In pvp SIM I used Medusa a lot once I had champed her! Especially with wasp and carol.
When I champed coulson I used him instead of medusa in my wasp carol team.
Then, I champed cnd and I sometimes switch wasp with them.

My point is that is your title suggests, this is the current meta. Sure, you are going to be seeing a lot of medusa because she can be a detterant (especially with carnage and mr f.) Most people though will actually move on as more champs come and more interesting team ups are created

dstann

The other team I see a bit and to me is the scariest is Medusa/Carnage/Mr Fantastic.....just too much healing.

alphabeta

I see 6 names on the original list of characters so 4* land is in better shape than 5* land where its an endless cycle of Thanos/BP, Thanos/BP, Thanos/BP and just every now and again for variety BP/Thanos

MarkersMake

DyingLegend said:

I try not to post on quotes but the website doesn't work too well with mobile phones. Sometimes it posts in white other times is snaps up to the Grey section. Really annoying. 

It happens to me too.

I found a way to avoid it though - the very first thing you need to do is enter one or two line breaks to separate your response by an extra line or two from the quote block. Once you do that, it won't get automagically sucked into the quote anymore. 

Starfury

You've forgot to mention the Medusa/Carnage/Iceman team.

Gotta have someone to put all that green and blue to a good use.

DyingLegend

Starfury said:

You've forgot to mention the Medusa/Carnage/Iceman team.

Gotta have someone to put all that green and blue to a good use.

I haven't seen that team too often, but I can imagine that it would be annoying.