Med/Gam/R&G

Blackstone

All five nodes in the versus simulator, my current PVP nodes, have the exact same team.

4* Medusa, Gamora, and R&G.

Skipping any match still results in four out of five teams being the same thing.

I understand the synergy is great between them, but at least there were some gambat teams intermingled in there prior to Gambit's nerf. (Which was too much, three star version should have been more like what the five star version got)

Yes the team is beatable, but it gets old playing the same match over and over again.

udonomefoo

I agree, but it's fast and uses near-zero health packs.  I gave up on using my lvl 420 black bolt, he just slows the team down.

Blackstone

I know, there's little incentive to use anything else if you have the three of them.

I actually just replace Gamora with Yondu just to be a little different.  Anything else just seems to be asking to be attacked repeatedly.

I only wish there were multiple teams of the same worth.

jgomes32

Carol+Rocket+Deadpool destroys that team after the first move.

Kahmon

And with 2 of the 3 characters being 2 of the 4 that give direct 5*s as champ rewards they won't be going away any time soon.

acescracked

Question for @Blackstone. What PvP team do you field the most? (Honest answer accepted).

Blackstone

I have no reason to be less than honest.

I routinely use the following combinations:

Spider-Woman, Peggy Carter, and IM40.

Medusa, Nova, C&D.  

PunMax, IM40, Mockingbird.  Because it's the most fun I'm having right now.

Yondu, Medusa, 4R&G.  I will also use 4Gamora instead of Yondu from time to time.  It is effective and I never implied that it wasn't.

I also field Carol and Coulson from time to time and am still trying with a good team for Riri, but usually go with one of the above for PVP.

I have a decent 4* lineup, all of the 1-3* characters, but my 5* characters only have 5 or 6 covers at the most so I haven't spent iso on the 5*s and only use them for some PVE nodes.

I'm not sure why that matters though.  I only mentioned the Med/Gam/4R&G team because they seem to everywhere.  It is an efficient team.  They are beatable though and if I skip them it's only because I'm tired of playing against the same team.

Yes, there will always be certain characters that form the meta, but I feel it would be healthy for the game if that meta contained a broader selection of characters.

Facing Gambolt, or Panthos for that matter, repeatedly in 5* land doesn't sound all that inviting but I wasn't complaining about the Grammora team as being a nightmare, so much as stating that I wish there was a bit more variety in the PVP matches.

ammenell

whenever I have health packs to burn i bully those teams with rulk, carol and baby groot.
this is awesome, because it is super fast

sambrookjm

I started a very similar thread back in May, only it was commenting on the Carol/Medusa/Wasp teams that were everywhere in the simulator.  The reason (given) that OML was nerfed was because 10%-15% of all fights included him in it.  Considering the team that you've just mentioned is in WAY above 10% of the fights, you'd think that a logical conclusion would be that at least one of these characters would be nerfed.  The complaints about the 5-star realms were Panther/Thanos teams, although I have no experience in that range.

Granted, Gambattery was completely busted and should have been fixed well before any of these three.  But now that he is taken care of, it might be time to move on and fix at least one of these characters.  Maybe have Groot's ability add a strike tile each turn up to a certain number, instead of BOOM! all at once at the start of the game?  Or tone down Medusa, since she is the common 4-star in all of these threads?

turbomoose

This is the result of the failed vaulting experiment, everyone, myself included, picked up a ton of covers for those 3 characters so they were easy to champ 

but we should all be warey of what happens in this game when things are over used , OML and Gambat nerfs 

i predict a similar nerf to Medusa or R4G next year 

ZeroKarma

The prevalence of that team really does seem directly related to the vaulting experiment, along with generally good synergy for relatively strong characters. I think the key difference in this discussion is, while people are naturally gravitating towards the more efficient team for sustained play, there are any number of teams that can handle it in the 4* realm fairly easily. (Though they don't get away unscathed)

Objectively speaking, characters like Mordo, Captain Marvel and Riri would land higher up individually on my power rankings than any of those 3. Once you get rid of the initial strike tiles ,which will happen naturally, the active powers aren't so much to write home about. 

Keirain1982

I for one would welcome a nerf to Medusa so that we see some variety in team compositions. Without her, the synergy between R4G + GOTG would be more easily beatable.

Jarvind

This has pretty much always been a thing. Before Grootmordusa it was just some combination of Wasp, Carol, Medusa and Peggy (gurl power, y'all) ad infinitum.

Turns out good characters are good.

It is a shame, though, just because everyone is forced to use it or get pummeled. There are a ton of fun combinations people will never even know about because it's either use the cookie cutter team or get violated.

cpeyton3535

There will always be a go-to team that just plain outperforms all others.  IMO, the issue isn't that this team (and Medusa in particular) is a high performer, it's that there is nothing in the game that encourages players to be creative with their team selections.  Everyone is going to gravitate to the most effective team b/c that gives them a better chance at getting rewards.

Nerfing isn't the answer, it'll just lead to a new go-to team.  I have no idea how you encourage players to go for variety over performance.  The style-points suggestion is interesting but that would be difficult to implement and I'm sure players would learn to game that somehow.

I know it's taboo to even say it, but win-based PvP did lead to more variety.  Just saying.

Daredevil217

ZeroKarma said:

Objectively speaking, characters like Mordo, Captain Marvel and Riri would land higher up individually on my power rankings than any of those 3. Once you get rid of the initial strike tiles ,which will happen naturally, the active powers aren't so much to write home about. 

This can’t be understated. Individually these characters are great but are not the elite tier (Peggy, Rulk, Ice, Vulture, Carol). I could argue Medusa in this tier but she needs the right teammates to shine. So none of these character should be nerfed as they aren’t that powerful. However the synergy is great. Not only that but it’s fast and saves health packs (though not for the opponent) and in a game that demands so much grinding, of course people will gravitate to that. 

ZeroKarma

cpeyton3535 said:

I know it's taboo to even say it, but win-based PvP did lead to more variety.  Just saying.

Wins-based PvP led to me climbing immediately and hitting 4* teams repeatedly with the exact same team over and over. The effect of that system did not affect all people and tiers the same. 

Not to beat a dead horse here, but people do feel free to try new teams if they have no fear of being hit anymore. At the same time, if you want to place you always have to run the best teams. 

Calnexin

cpeyton3535 said:

Nerfing isn't the answer, it'll just lead to a new go-to team.  I have no idea how you encourage players to go for variety over performance.  The style-points suggestion is interesting but that would be difficult to implement and I'm sure players would learn to game that somehow.

In another mobile Marvel property I play, there's cooldown limitations on characters.  If you use a character, they're out of commission in that mode (can still be used in other game modes) for some amount of time, which can be reduced by your alliance (which costs nothing and actually awards the alliance members who "help" with special currency).

Characters are plentiful there, though, and the gating mechanics are quite a bit different.  Something similar might work for MPQ.  My first thought is to put timed scoring penalties on reused characters that decrease over time, similar to point refresh in PvE.  The 5th time you use Grocket, they take 2 points away from your match.  The 6th time, 4 points, etc, until using them reduces your score to a single point.  That would mean the Panthos and Gambolt teams are only good for a run of 6-7 victories before the player is forced to go to their B-list if they want to continue raising their score and/or hurting competition.

That might not solve the ubiquity of opponent teams.  Players would just save their A teams for the end of a run, or do 1 run at 1 point to leave their best defense visible.  You'd still be able to see the variety mid-climb, though.

I would think that would be relatively simple to implement, but would require a drastic rework of the rewards structure.

cpeyton3535

ZeroKarma said:

cpeyton3535 said:

I know it's taboo to even say it, but win-based PvP did lead to more variety.  Just saying.

Wins-based PvP led to me climbing immediately and hitting 4* teams repeatedly with the exact same team over and over. The effect of that system did not affect all people and tiers the same. 

Not to beat a dead horse here, but people do feel free to try new teams if they have no fear of being hit anymore. At the same time, if you want to place you always have to run the best teams. 

Very good point.  As you say, if placement is your goal you are really left with little or no choice.

thedarkphoenix

but but 5 gambit!


It sucks, but that's always going to be the case with almost anything. 


The sad thing is there should be more options viable with how many 4 stars are available but those characters are just good for nice quick and smooth climbing.

 

If you make it to 5 land it'll be people complaining about how its all gambits.


Its not much you can do about it, For the last 6 months or so that team has been everywhere none stop. I dont really see anything shaking up R&G and gamora for awhile unless they drop a characters thats hard counter to strike tiles.

Wonko33

Calnexin said:

cpeyton3535 said:

Nerfing isn't the answer, it'll just lead to a new go-to team.  I have no idea how you encourage players to go for variety over performance.  The style-points suggestion is interesting but that would be difficult to implement and I'm sure players would learn to game that somehow.

In another mobile Marvel property I play, there's cooldown limitations on characters.  If you use a character, they're out of commission in that mode (can still be used in other game modes) for some amount of time, which can be reduced by your alliance (which costs nothing and actually awards the alliance members who "help" with special currency).

Characters are plentiful there, though, and the gating mechanics are quite a bit different.  Something similar might work for MPQ.  My first thought is to put timed scoring penalties on reused characters that decrease over time, similar to point refresh in PvE.  The 5th time you use Grocket, they take 2 points away from your match.  The 6th time, 4 points, etc, until using them reduces your score to a single point.  That would mean the Panthos and Gambolt teams are only good for a run of 6-7 victories before the player is forced to go to their B-list if they want to continue raising their score and/or hurting competition.

That might not solve the ubiquity of opponent teams.  Players would just save their A teams for the end of a run, or do 1 run at 1 point to leave their best defense visible.  You'd still be able to see the variety mid-climb, though.

I would think that would be relatively simple to implement, but would require a drastic rework of the rewards structure.

that would be an enormous burden on small developing rosters ,slow their progression to a crawl.

I don't know if you remember but when you get that one first good team of a new tier, you start being able to compete and earn rewards to progress in that tier

Kahmon

Perhaps instead of a penalty, there can be a bonus. I'll call them variety points.

Each time you use a character in PvP for the first time each day you get 1 VP.
Once a day you get some kind of bonus based on how many points you get the previous day.