Poll: Seasons and Tanking

djpt05

Curious if season rewards and progressions have changed people's philosophies on tanking

Unknown

You need to add a "I would tank, but it's been nerfed" option. Tanking has definitely been hit with the nerf bat.

Nemek

I find that the shift in PvP matchmaking when this season started had a huge effect on tanking. While tanking is somewhat effective at the very low point levels, the benefits go away rather quickly, and actually slows down the overall push when you get into these 1* bubbles worth only a handful of points each.

I haven't tanked at all this season, but it's irrespective of the season rewards. The new PvP system has essentially changed it so that you fight low level opponents when you're at low points and increases the difficulty as you gain more points. It's substantially better in my eyes, because it shifts the meta from purposely lowering MMR, to having a fairly high-level team.

over_clocked

I'm not sure if allowing everyone to beat on me when not shielded can be considered tanking. Probably just lowering my score gets me back into solid 2x 85 and a loaner land (although late joiner jerks still find me and beat me with their silly Hulk-Spidey teams).
To answer the poll: used to tank profusely for LRs and few PvPs, but not anymore. Not missing tanking much (yet).

Unknown

They have for sure changed something with MMR because I have sacrificed my whole roster almost in shield vs and still am seeing max 2 star teams (I'm at ~750ish points). Before if I retreated that much it would all be level 10 guys by now. However the tanking still seems to be working somewhat because if I look at my nodes in loki, they are all super low. Not sure how it would have been if I hadn't tanked though. I think over 700 is when it starts to change because I tanked to under 700 in shield vs and it pretty much instantly turned back to under leveled 1 stars.

mohio

I used to tank a lot in the old shield versus and rode my low MMR to mid 800s which, as I'm sure y'all remember, was good enough for top 10. I had a max 2* roster so it was somewhat necessary to not run into many 141s. Now that I have LT at 128 and LC and Punisher both over 100, I don't feel as much of a need to tank, and as others have said I don't think it'd do any good with the way they changed matchmaking recently. It might make getting to 5-700 slightly easier, but that's just not worth the time it'll take me to tank 12-15 matches every couple days in SHIELD. I'll still tank LRs though cause if you don't have the 90 minutes to try and place well, you might as well grab some iso and throw in the tank team.

Unknown

I don't think season rewards are that great and LR is still my main source of tanking. The regular events were less about me wanting to tank and more about just not wanting to do them so might as well tank.

Unknown

Most of my tanking was in LRs, and I've gone from tanking most of the ones I participate in to tanking all of them I participate in because they made the prizes useless. I pretty much only tank in them now, though.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

Most of my tanking was in LRs, and I've gone from tanking most of the ones I participate in to tanking all of them I participate in because they made the prizes useless. I pretty much only tank in them now, though.

same story for me
marc

Unknown

I just tank at the start of an event, then grab a bunch of points when there's like 8 hours left, keeping one node with a seed team, then beat that seed team with the weakest thing I have available then shield. It's going well.

Unknown

I tank lr still, but only out of kindness and habit. I never tanked shield (never necessary) anyway, and I wasn't about to start given the newer less tankable PvP setup. I will say the seasons has made me actually TRY at all on every event so far..though I don't particularly care about the rewards besides the alliance reward. Normally I prob wpuldnt ha e even played most of these events..or I would have only played the last jour or two as to not have to shield.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

I find that the shift in PvP matchmaking when this season started had a huge effect on tanking. While tanking is somewhat effective at the very low point levels, the benefits go away rather quickly, and actually slows down the overall push when you get into these 1* bubbles worth only a handful of points each.

I haven't tanked at all this season, but it's irrespective of the season rewards. The new PvP system has essentially changed it so that you fight low level opponents when you're at low points and increases the difficulty as you gain more points. It's substantially better in my eyes, because it shifts the meta from purposely lowering MMR, to having a fairly high-level team.

This.

But if I wanted to tank, the season has exactly 0 effect on that. You just tank at the beginning of pvp tourneys and throughout LR's. I'm not even voting on the poll because the question is irrelevant.

Unknown

I'm still not sure what tanking is. Is it like in sports, where, as an example, a team that's gonna miss the playoffs anyway will sorta stop trying as to get a better draft pick when the season ends?

mohio

Selenium wrote:

I'm still not sure what tanking is. Is it like in sports, where, as an example, a team that's gonna miss the playoffs anyway will sorta stop trying as to get a better draft pick when the season ends?

I suppose you could look at it like that. It gets its name (I imagine) from the fact that you're trying to drop your matchmaking rating (MMR) as low as you can get it (i.e. tank your rating). This is meant to tip the scales in your favor in future PvP matches, just as tanking in sports is meant to help you in the future. The two main ways were to go into the old S.H.I.E.L.D. Versus and retreat away most of your roster, or in LRs you would beat as many seed teams as you could at the beginning (which doesn't raise MMR iirc since they aren't "real" teams), saving one at the end to then beat with the worst team you can put together, which will then end up losing to everyone who's actually trying to place. They have changed how they do matchmaking so it doesn't rely on MMR quite as much anymore, but it used to be you could tank enough so that you were still seeing 1* teams up to 600+ points. I had top 10'd a couple of PvP events just off of beating non-maxed 2* teams up to ~750 points (I had a max 2* team so it's not like it was such a huge disparity, but still).

Spoit

I vote for not tanking anymore because I've been too lazy

Unknown

Retreating has been completely nerfed. Losing still has an impact on MMR, but as everyone mentioned, MMR is highly influenced by pts so tanking is pretty limited. It still helps tho. I don't know about you, but I strongly prefer not to fight 141s until i absolutely need to.