Silly question: Any way to drop from 3* to 2* in PvP?

TheVulture

Probably a silly question, but is there any known way to drop from 3* level to 2* level in PvP?

I did take the scenic route graduating from 2* to 3* (I've 8 maxed 2* characters - silly use of ISO in hindsight!), but have a solid core of not-quite-top-tier 3* characters maxed now: Thor, Patch, The Hood + Grey Widow & Ragnorak (both closer to 2.5* nowadays but they did have their time of dominance).
Satisfying to complete them , lots of fun in PvE.

The problem is I am having is that PvP is no fun at all for me any longer; every event without exception is a full screen of 141 Spider-Man + a combination of The Hulk, Punisher, Magneto (a sprinkling of Thors too).
Matches take forever - since every one requires killing Spider-Man first when he has 6k health, nullifies all match damage after 1 purple match & heals - and even with careful AP denial, long boring matches inevitably gives the AI just one cascade to take a huge dent out my team with a Magneto purple or Punisher green.

This wouldn't be so bad if I'd 'earned' top 0.1% of the player-base credentials, but I've literally won 2 PvP tournaments ever (2* Thor and the Dark Avengers tournaments - which are basically 2* and my favourites) and it's been months since I did anything more than either a} grab 2 wins for the ISO & token or b} sprint to 300 early for the better token and lose points from there.
No matter how badly my PvP performance sucks, when the next event rolls around it's invariable a wall of 3 x 141 top-tier defense teams on every node.

Now I could try to upgrade my team with Spider-Man and Magneto (I don't have full covers for either but reasonably close), however I've tried them out and I just cannot imagine anything duller than playing Spidey stunlock or Mags blue-chaining - plus I'm so disenchanted with PvP that spending money on it really isn't on my horizon...

So is there anyway to drive my PvP standing down to the point I can just play my 2*s against other people's 2*s and part-levelled 3*s, and escape the slog of PvSpidey?
Has anyone ever reported success by sustained use of 2* teams, even if it means getting rolled in events over & over in the short term?
I'll try pretty much any tactic but deleting my 3*s!

Unknown

You need to tank. Use the search tool and look for the article on tanking. There was a good one around here awhile back. Basically your MMR has gotten too high and you need to lose more matches to get back to fighting people with more equivalent teams.

TheVulture

Thanks - proved shockingly easy, once I committed!

Didn't resign, but did throw in my un-levelled 2*s (handy to have the SHIELD thing up where losses don't matter anyway) then basically just played normally with 2* teams (Magneto + Storm / OBW + anyone RGY) regardless of who the opponents were - used the 'freebie' 3* required characters, just to be thorough.

Naturally a lot of KO's and a few losses, but picked up a few suprise wins against L141 teams & in no time at all I was down to playing 2* & 85-100 3* teams.

It doesn't seem to to matter if I go on a roll now either (went 50 > 300 on Loki and 50 > 500 on SHIELD), so long as I stick to only using 2*s - happiest & fastest (win or lose) PvP I've had in ages!

If anyone else is burning out on 3* 'meta', I do highly recommend giving this a try.

Seriously going to try and maintain a 3* PvE / 2* PvP split going forward, which gives a new perspective on who to level up...

Unknown

The biggest problem is they haven't handed out Spidey covers in a very long time, since before I even began playing, making it almost impossible for those without Spidey to compete. He's on the Dev's radar as "broken" but they are too busy pushing rewards down and designing new characters for the collectors who buy them up to 13 covers instantly to fix him. They don't want to compound the problem by giving out his covers, but that creates a new problem between the haves and the have nots.

I'm with you, the wall of Spidey is near impossible to climb, and tanking mmr has become much harder and less effective with Season 1. The simplest solution would just be to ban him from PvP rosters, bring balance to the world. If he's so broken why allow those with the character to have such an advantage?

Unknown

Spiderman is not a hard character to defeat in PvP. The problem with facing Spiderman is that whoever you just beat is almost certainly going to retaliate if you're worth more than 25 points later so you're likely wasting time unless that guy's rating is much higher than yours.

Unknown

AethD wrote:

You need to tank. Use the search tool and look for the article on tanking. There was a good one around here awhile back. Basically your MMR has gotten too high and you need to lose more matches to get back to fighting people with more equivalent teams.

Just out of curiosity, if he won only 2 PVP matches, shouldn't his MMR be low anyway?

Unknown

prash wrote:

AethD wrote:

You need to tank. Use the search tool and look for the article on tanking. There was a good one around here awhile back. Basically your MMR has gotten too high and you need to lose more matches to get back to fighting people with more equivalent teams.

Just out of curiosity, if he won only 2 PVP matches, shouldn't his MMR be low anyway?

He said he has won two pvps. Each individual match affects your mmr. Doesn't matter if you win the tourney or not.

TheVulture

beezer37_84 wrote:

He said he has won two pvps. Each individual match affects your mmr. Doesn't matter if you win the tourney or not.

You are spot on - seems I was maintaining a 90+% win rate, because no-one wants to retaliate against someone with 50 points.
(Except usually the 1st board of villain lightning round matches each week, which are seed teams like BaconMagic for some peculiar reason.)

It's been hard to resist using 'guest star' 3*s who I actually have levelled (e.g. useless free Ragnorak vs L115 one), but carrying that deadweight has proven advantageous for MMR - been gliding to 5-600 each tournament, and to 2 top 25 finishes in a row now without shielding or playing anywhere near the end time.
(That could be related to the dreadful 3* prizes recently though!)

Do get the odd KO to a Thor cascade etc., but rarely enough that with only 2 characters to revive the health packs are generally back before it happens again.