Misconceptions

Dormammu

Below are a lot of things you'll read on these forums that aren't always wise. Consider some things before you rule out using a character/strategy.

1. Defense is important.
- No it's not, it's impossible. Trying to build your team defensively is like playing poker against someone with ten cards and you only have one; the attacker has too many advantages and the AI isn't smart enough to counter a human brain.

2. So-and-so is awesome on offense, but is a defensive liability.
-So what? Being awesome on offense is what you want because that's the only aspect of this game you control. Don't worry about defense, worry about offense. If you have a winning offensive strategy that takes out your enemies quickly and efficiently you're not going to give two s#!ts about losing tournament points from defense; you'll be swimming in victories and gaining more than enough points to compensate for defensive losses (which are inevitable anyway).

3. So-and-so is awesome but they don't have enough hit points to be viable.
-Nonsense. If you have a character you really like and has an ability that compliments your team, put someone stocky in front of them. Usually (not always) characters with low hit points have some awesome unique ability that will help you dominate. Not everyone can have 5000 health.

4. So-and-so sucks because their AP costs are too expensive.
If an ability is expensive in AP, that usually means it's pretty good. Team these characters with other AP-generating characters. 3* Black Widow is a good example: her green sniper ability costs 19AP when maxed, which is a big number that scares a lot of players. But she also has a purple ability that when maxed allows you to place 6 green tiles - when combined with green tiles on the board, you can easily generate 12+ green AP with one move. If you have Ragnarok, his red power places 5 green tiles on the board every time he uses it (it only costs 2 when maxed!) and you'll be swimming in green AP. 3* Iron Man is another AP hog - try teaming him with a Magneto, both of which allow you to place blue tiles.

5. Classic Storm is overpowered and needs to be fixed.
-This one makes me laugh. Classic Storm isn't overpowered, she's just overused. Players think she is a great defensive character because of her yellow passive, but like I already said there is no defense. She's easily dispatched by targeting her first, rendering her yellow passive completely moot and not allowing her enough time to gather enough tiles to trigger her blue attack-all ability. I love fighting teams with Classic Storm on them, they are usually easy wins. She's fun on offense though!

6. Thor and Classic Storm are the best combo for this tournament.
-No they're not, they're just one of many awesome combinations of characters. Choose the characters you want and like and don't worry about what all the other copycats out there are doing. I don't use either of them and I do very well in tournaments.

In the end, it's all about using the characters that work for you. Put together a team that compliments each other, where the characters each have a role and cover as many colors as possible. You don't need three offensive powerhouses on your team, you only need one. And remember, you don't get enough points from defending to even bother worrying about it, so just concern yourself with attacking. If you build up a good team at a formidable level the attacks on you will slow

Unknown

I wouldn't say defense is impossible and I'd certainly say it's a concern if you want to place well in pvp tournaments. If your only goal is to reach the highest rewards from point gathering defense is less important. You can play late at night when there are fewer players and hope to get attacked less. However, as has been pointed out in other threads, your best defense is intimidation. No one is scared of classic storm, but people are more afraid of ragnarok. If you can pair ragnarok with a decent grey widow, I'm probably going to skip you. I recognize that combo is insanely good, even on defense. Though on defense the widow is unlikely to use her sniper, because rag will use his godlike before she is able to. Now if you add storm to that team, you are creating problems. The attacker has to attack storm first. Meaning he probably will use his boosts to take her out fast. Or if they are running spiderman, they may stun her and take out the widow.

You are right no team can defend against a team with spiderman, because he can stun easily, but it's not worth attacking really strong people, especially if they have a similar number of tourney points. You know they will attack you back for no net gain.

You should definately play with whatever combo you like, because it's fun. But if you want to get ranked well in tournaments, the intimidation factor is a great aid.

Unknown

Shamusyeah wrote:

I wouldn't say defense is impossible

I would. I'm still moderately afraid of Rag, but I'm in the 2* character camp. If I had decent 3*s then I wouldn't be -- and those are the people you're mostly up against at that level. I see very few good 3* teams in my matchmaking group, and even then I've taken down what are supposed to be intimidating teams (Rag/Spidey/C Storm) without issue.

Nemek

I also disagree about your (the original post) opinion on defense.

If nothing else, if a player had to choose between two different teams to fight against for the same point value, and one team runs IM40/Rag/Spidey, and the other runs C Storm/Black Widow/Dr. Doom, there is an obvious easier fight.

When you're going through a tournament, you are constantly trying to beat teams while sustaining as minimal losses as possible. While you're unlikely to actually lose any matches from getting your characters downed, there's a big difference between losing 1000 health off a character and losing 150 health off a character. (Though, a lot of that is moot if you're running a decent spidey...but the trade off there is that battles often take longer as you're just making web tiles for half of it.)

Unknown

Since you used a poker analogy, I'll use one too. Defensive players are playing the odds game. It's about minimizing risks.

BTW, Rag and Spidey both excel in defense and are both considered some of the best characters in the game.

Dormammu

Offensive Advantages:
1. Attackers get 3 tries; damage to the defender holds while the attacker can heal in-between tries.
2. Attackers can use boosts.
3. Attackers can choose who they are attacking in-match by putting whichever defending character in front.
4. Attackers can SKIP until they find a favorable match-up, defenders have no choice who they defend against.
5. Attackers can use any three characters they want to counter the defender's characters; the defender can only throw three out there and cross their fingers.
6. The attacker is fighting against the AI, which has no idea what the defender's strategy is.
7. Attackers move first, a small but important advantage.
8. Attackers can choose match-ups that they know will net them more tourney points than the defender can get through retaliation.

Defensive advantages:
1. Uh... the defender can use Ragnarok and Spidey?

Ragnarok is great, I love him. I play with Ragnarok. But it's not because I think he's an awesome defender. When I'm faced with Ragnarok I just use my own and take all the red and green color first and down the opposing Ragnarok. Or stun him.

Spidey is great. I love him. He's invaluable. I also love fighting against teams who have him because he can't do anything to seriously hurt my attacking team. Oh, he can stun me? I have a good team, they can handle a little stun. If you're that scared of him just stun him back.

There is no defensive strategy that some attacker can't counter. Can you scare people off with a tough, high-level team? Sure. I think I made that point in my original post. But that's not a strategy, that's progression. Don't sacrifice offense for defense.

Unknown

Dormammu wrote:

Offensive Advantages:
4. Attackers can SKIP until they find a favorable match-up, defenders have no choice who they defend against.

If people skip you, because they think you are too tough for them, your defence succeeded without even fighting.

Unknown

Shikao wrote:

Dormammu wrote:

Offensive Advantages:
4. Attackers can SKIP until they find a favorable match-up, defenders have no choice who they defend against.

If people skip you, because they think you are too tough for them, your defence succeeded without even fighting.

This is largely useless after the beginning of the tournament. Middle and end you're pretty much looking for anyone with more points than you, no matter their makeup, because it's not a matter of choosing between two teams -- it's finding ANY team.

Unknown

To echo the other responses, again, the current meta is all about speed. You want a lot of wins in as little time as possible.

If you want to place highly in tournaments in the closing hours, or simply get a lot of Ws under your belt to earn progression rewards and ISO-8 as quickly and efficiently as possible, you want to fight teams of squishy characters you can flatten in 2-3 minutes or less. C. Storm? Great. Any version of Black Widow? Great. The Hood? Great. I'll stomp them all flat in no time.

You do not want to get stuck fighting teams of level 100+ Thor/Rag/Model 40 Iron Man if at all possible. Not because they are "scary." Not because you are afraid they will beat you. But because they have thousands of health that will take forever to cut down, impeding your progress. In the time it would take me to whittle down Ragnarok's 6,000 health, I would rather crush 3 teams of C. Storms, Widows, Spideys, etc. I regularly skip playing against such tanky teams for this exact reason, especially when I'm trying to place.

Unknown

someguy wrote:

To echo the other responses, again, the current meta is all about speed. You want a lot of wins in as little time as possible.

Your post seems a bit ambigious as to your stance on defense. But I think the following line should be refined as win:loss ratio, not just wins. You can get all the wins you want, but if you have more losses than wins, your score isn't going anywhere but down.

Speed is important, but the amount of matches you can win has a relatively low limit. The amount of matches you can lose has a very high limit, if not effectively unlimited. This is why defense is a vital component to "speed" if you refer to speed as the net gain of points and not just the # of wins. In fact, you could argue that # of wins is probably the least important factor. When talking about speed for strictly points accumulation, 2 matches worth 30 points each is better than 5 matches worth 10 points each. This doesn't even account for retaliation, because those 10 point matches result in a net loss if they retaliate due to point differences and there's 5 possibilities for retaliation, versus only 2 chances of retaliation which would still leave you with a net gain.

So win:loss ratio > high point matches rather than low point matches > # of matches, IMO.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

someguy wrote:

To echo the other responses, again, the current meta is all about speed. You want a lot of wins in as little time as possible.

Your post seems a bit ambigious as to your stance on defense.

Sorry for the lack of clarity. In this case, I was referring to "defense" as tankiness or high health. Which I consider important because I tend to avoid fighting tanky teams in favor of squishy teams if I can possibly help it, since they're faster to take down, meaning I can fit more wins within my playtime.

ihearthawthats wrote:

But I think the following line should be refined as win:loss ratio, not just wins. You can get all the wins you want, but if you have more losses than wins, your score isn't going anywhere but down.

It sounds like you're talking about over the life of a tourney, which is fair enough. But in this game, it's the last hour or so that really matters if you're trying to place, and at that point, your prior win/loss ratio for the week leading up until 59 minutes and 59 seconds left in the tourney is irrelevant. In that last hour, what matters is how quickly you can rack up wins in that limited timeframe. When my time is limited, and point values being equal, I will always target squishier teams with lower "defense" (health) over tankier teams because I will crush a squishy team faster, leaving me with more remaining time to rack up even more wins.

If, hypothetically, each of us had only 30 minutes remaining to place in a tourney, and our choices were to fight either:

A) An endless array of The Hood / Widow / Storm teams at max level (health in the ~2,000-3,000+ range) offering an equal number of points

An endless array of Iron Man Model 40 / Thor / Ragnarok at max level (health in the ~5,000-6,000+ range) offering an equal number of points

...in the current meta, I know which one I'd pick. Every time.

Unknown

Shorter matches are generally better (i.e., against lower-health opponents) because they make it far less likely you'll take significant damage during the match. Most of the really powerful, high-damage abilities don't come until the match really gets going. Finishing the match before those abilities can come into play means that you don't need to use heals as often.

I think I fought a zillion Thor 85, c.Storm 85, GS.Black Widow 15 teams during this past week's GS.BW tournament. Thor was slightly annoying, but taking out the other two was nicely zippy thanks to their squishiness, and overall match speed was very fast.