Cooperative PVP teams for trading wins (fast/easy loss on D / wins on O)

philosorapt0r

So, the new PvP system makes things a lot grindier.  However, it also opens up options, as now players who only care about hitting progression targets with a minimum time investment no longer have to care about losses.  In the time-honored tradition of using all legal means (cupcakes, etc.) to make the best of the design choices we're stuck with, what characters/teams should now become 'dessert-meta' to make all of our lives easier?

Which characters lose the most from how the AI plays them, such that mirror-matches are cake-walks?  All the recent heroes with powerful passives, auto-damage, and the like are right out, unless on a very low-hp frame.  Targeted abilities (tile creation like GSBW's purple, or swapping like Coulson's purple) might be a good candidate?  Characters that rely on using abilities in the right sequence are a decent choice (4hor).

IM40 teams seem like a reasonable go-to: as long as you prioritize/deny yellow, he's quite weak on defense, but very fast on Offense.
Gwenpool is good at this, since the AI doesn't prioritize matching her Gun tile, and doesn't use Sploits optimally, so her as your only Green/Purple user is a big edge to the human offense.

Ideas?  Other insights into how to game the MMR system to achieve this (just pick a slice with some similar-MMR friends and trade retaliations forever?)?

Infrared

Low level Hood with 5 blue. He won't step in front on offence, but is easy to target on defence.
2* Magneto to generate blue/red for 3* Cap, 4* Cyclops, or 5* Surfer. Not effective on defence.

However, MMR prevents those with similar rosters as you from seeing those easy teams. They will only be seen by people with weaker rosters. For example, 5* players will only ever see 5* teams until they reach a high enough score to break out of the MMR limit. The exception is retaliation nodes. Leave out the weak team to get hit by lower level rosters. Then harvest the retaliation nodes. Due to the anti-cupcake system, your weak team will not be visible if you have already used a strong team. So you would need to use weak teams right from the start of the event.

TPF Alexis

Infrared said:

Due to the anti-cupcake system, your weak team will not be visible if you have already used a strong team. So you would need to use weak teams right from the start of the event.

Which is one more reason that jumping on the Seed Teams feels like it's going to be pretty important in this style of PvP scoring.

vinsensual

I was successfully able to leave out as bait IM40/Storm/Cap, probably my first team of champed 3s going back over a year ago.  I think I was able to successfully leave them out as bait by getting two consecutive wins in a row with them.  During the infinity season test I used Loki/Patch, and maybe also Wasp/Falcon/Switch. 

Leaving out situationally weak teams, that's the puzzle portion of puzzle quest and the meaning behind "you're supposed to lose."

ammenell

hm... I just start a game with any 2*s and immediately retreat. keeps my score low if I do this against matches which net me 30 points or less, and doesn't really cost me health packs.

TPF Alexis

Strang3/Cag3 seems good for this, too. it's easy enough to take Strange down by prioritizing him, and the AI always fire's Cage's black too soon, which, in a mirror match, would trigger Flames of the Faltine pretty regularly without doing too much damage.

ammenell

OJSP said:

ammenell said:

hm... I just start a game with any 2*s and immediately retreat. keeps my score low if I do this against matches which net me 30 points or less, and doesn't really cost me health packs.

Why?

to keep my score low. 
lower score means I see lower rosters.
im at 29 wins in the nc pvp with 2d3hs to go and first targeted matches with no boosted 4*, after that i looked for matches with no double boosted 4*s.
now i wait until I'm knocked down again and more people entering, additionally i sacrifice some 2*s in matches to lose as many points as possible.
back down to 300 points, then I can see even 3*rosters again.

edit - nope, can't even edit my text and move it below the quote... 

fanghoul

Currently my favorite team to use / fight in the Devil You Know PvP is Wasp / C4rol / Nightcrawler, with C4rol at 5/3/5, though 3/5/5 might be better now that I think about it.

The computer is so much worse at using this team than a player is, not knowing to avoid matching yellow or to go for black and blue or not to match away any strike or protect shields it does manage to generate. On the off chance it does manage to collect blue, Nightcrawler uses it for a fairly useless one cover attack.

Usually you want to spend most of your time attacking Wasp, because C4rol is slowly dying from the blowback from matching yellow anyway. You don't necessarily want Wasp to die first, since then the explosions stop, but since she has twice unboosted Carol's life, that's not much of an issue. 

AtlasAxe

 Winfinites are generally in this category.

fanghoul

Oh man, maybe it's a coincidence, but after posting that I got all the retal opportunities a ghoul could dream of.

TPF Alexis

fanghoul said:

Oh man, maybe it's a coincidence, but after posting that I got all the retal opportunities a ghoul could dream of.

I was using it after I moved up out of the point where Cage/Strange could work. Got some pretty good trading back and forth. Thanks!

Rod5

Carol/Sentry is another classic, unbelievable damage potential, weak as anything on defence.

Tony_Foot

I ran to 40 without seeds. 4 star player. S1. 

Hit the first easy team with at best 1 unboosted four star and two three stars. I climbed to 600-700 and just had a stack of players doing the same as me, I checked their rosters and could put out a big team if required.

I used carol Loki if they had a carol and could let them match black or blade and gambit. At times I could clear 5 retals at a time with no heals.

i got hit lots but stayed at 600 on retals, rinse and repeat. 

Horrible way to play but there you go, the more that do it the easier it will be. I got a lot of defensive wins because people wipe trying to win with low teams too I'm guessing. I got to 40 without ever having to hit a boosted 4 star like this. Boost list has become irrelevant to me now when I want 40 wins.

Beer40

Tony Foot said:

I ran to 40 without seeds. 4 star player. S1. 

Hit the first easy team with at best 1 unboosted four star and two three stars. I climbed to 600-700 and just had a stack of players doing the same as me, I checked their rosters and could put out a big team if required.

I used carol Loki if they had a carol and could let them match black or blade and gambit. At times I could clear 5 retals at a time with no heals.

i got hit lots but stayed at 600 on retals, rinse and repeat. 

Horrible way to play but there you go, the more that do it the easier it will be. I got a lot of defensive wins because people wipe trying to win with low teams too I'm guessing. I got to 40 without ever having to hit a boosted 4 star like this. Boost list has become irrelevant to me now when I want 40 wins.

Hopefully more start to do it! When I beat them with Hood/Ares instead of 5* Starlord/boosted 4...the message should be pretty clear!

Eh, wish in one hand and...

wymtime

This will only get worse when we go back to 3* PVP instead of 4*.  I am planning on leaving out 1* for my finals match on seed teams so I can have easy retaliations and keep low level teams out till about 25-30 wins then climb for placement.  This is such a crock and not the way PVP should be played, but this is the system d3 thinks is best for the game

heckbringer

I wish we had options we could select for the AI, or something we could do to make characters that the AI can't play more viable... Things like "Don't fire this ability until you get x mana" or setting which colors/abilities to prioritize. I feel like 4*s in particular suffer from that; 4*s should be a better bet on defense because they should be stronger, but 3*s are about as good on defense because they're harder for the AI to mess up.

Maybe they need to make more 4*s that are simpler for the AI to use?

I recognize that isn't what we're trying to do here, but the fact that it's easy to make something that's good one offense and terrible on defense feels like it points out an important flaw.

Daredevil217

I posted this in another thread, but thanks to low level iso reserves, my max covered Gambit with like 10 on the vine is still level 40.  So I've been playing

3* Wolverine
3* Gambit (at level 40)
2* Daken / or 2* Storm (if the opponent is running Strange)

The idea is Patch makes strikes, Double cast Gambit's Purple's to overwrite the enemy strikes, use Gambit's red to do pretty decent damage fueled by strikes and to collect AP.  Storm has to stun strange first if he's on the team.  You also have to target AOE characters 1st because having 1-2k health toons means easy one-shot kills.  I'm somewhere around 40 wins in sim just running Patch/Gambit/2* and taking out 3* teams (I'm at 35 4* champs).  Getting plenty of retals.

Daredevil217

aesthetocyst said:

Ran a lot of BSSM, OML, Surfer vs Gramora teams. Turns the gramoras into tasty bite-size snacks. Not leaving the easiest retals, but when I try that it doesn't work too well.

Left out a 4* + 2x3* team in Sim, got a pantload of champ 5* retals. C'mon people ....

That happens to me too.  Hate when I leave out a tasty treat and get hammered with a team that even my best couldn't beat.