To many Okoyes and Thors on PVP

First21

This all I face on PVP. I face these teams because I have 2 champed 5*s to speed up PVE. But I started playing PVP until I get the 10 command point award. How about you is this all you face on PVP? 

jredd

1. yes
2. they aren't that hard to beat
3. pvp is always going to be the fastest 2 characters plus the featured. doesn't matter who they are, who they nerf who is new. whomever goes fastest wins the day.

Dormammu

First21 said:

 How about you is this all you face on PVP? 

No... sometimes I see Thor + Jessica Jones, too.

CharlieCroker

I actually find that up to the 575pt threshold for the 10cp there is a decent amount of variety.

Past that it is mostly Okoye/Thor simply because they are fastest (and almost as foolproof as Gambit teams were) but you'll also see some Daredevil/Thor and Jessica/Thor with some Panthos or even Thanos/Thor from shield hoppers clearing grills.

A few heavy hitters (i.e. with 500+ characters) can also sometimes be found with whatever combinations they have available, such as Gambolt, OML/PHX or Bolt/Strange.  But these are rare to find unless you're unfortunate enough to be hit by them.

Borstock

I want to say around 90% of teams have Thor, Okoye, or both. It's boring as all get out, but it is pretty easy to wipe the floor with them.

Unless they drastically change their thinking behind balancing power levels, there probably isn't much they can do. 

DyingLegend

I dunno, I don't mind it as they are a very easy combo to counter 

First21

DyingLegend said:

I dunno, I don't mind it as they are a very easy combo to counter 

What do you use to counter?

Phumade

First21 said:

DyingLegend said:

I dunno, I don't mind it as they are a very easy combo to counter 

What do you use to counter?

Your 5* or boosted 4* of choice.  Work the enemy Thor down to near half health and stun or one shot them

killercool

Phumade said:

First21 said:

DyingLegend said:

I dunno, I don't mind it as they are a very easy combo to counter 

What do you use to counter?

Your 5* or boosted 4* of choice.  Work the enemy Thor down to near half health and stun or one shot them

I just use Thor/JJ.  Do match damage on Okoye until I have enough red to fire Defenestrate and black to fire Body Check, along with green to fire God of Thunder.  Once I have that I target their Thor and hit them with Defenestrate (use first to generate strike tiles), followed Body Check to get him around half health and the God of Thunder to mop up.

Daredevil217

What is crazy is I predicted all this in the thread discussing Gambit’s nerf. People talked about having a whole new world of character diversity that would open up once Gambit was nerfed and I said once people settled on a new meta (which I said would be Thor) we’d go right back to staleness. I was basically told I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m a 4* player lol. Turns out more and more I’m reading about just how right I was (here, alliance chat, Line). 

I said back then Gambit and Thor were symptoms of a bigger problem that is the 5* tier. I would really like to see PVP get an overhaul in general. It’s sad that combined arms is most people’s favorite event and it’s because they can’t play their most powerful characters and instead can use more of their rosters.  What we need is more reasons to use more of our rosters. In the 3/4* tier boost lists do the job pretty well. But other than PVE essentials we have no real reason to use 90% of our characters we worked so hard to build up once we enter the 5* game. I think it was Spider-Man Run I played a long time ago that gave you multipliers for running certain characters each event. They encouraged having a fleshed our roster as any character might be picked each event.  We need something more than our rosters being digital janitors keys that allow us access to a node once a year but sit their doing nothing else otherwise.

DeNappa

Well, the other choice is to remain in 4* meta, with probably a seemingly endless stream of Grocket/Gamora. 

BlackBoltRocks

Interesting topic. For myself, I've come across a variety of champed 5* in PvP. I've encountered the occasional/rare First Avenger Steve, IM46, Banner, and the like.

For the Ragnarok PvP, I decided to do some tracking of opponents I got, until I specifically encountered someone who used both GladiaThor and Okoye together with Ragnarok. Some considerations: I entered my slice with 11 hours to go, and didn't get a single 1* seed team.

I. Jessica/America (one of the first three teams)

II. Daredevil/Okoye (one of the first three teams)

III. OML/4* Wasp (one of the first three teams)

IV. Surfer/Thanos

V. BeardCap/4* Grocket

VI. 5* Strange/America

VII. GladiaThor/Okoye (there we go! I decided to keep tracking.)

VIII. Daredevil/America

IX. GladiaThor/5* Ghost Rider

X. Daredevil/OML

XI. GladiaThor/Jessica

XII. OML/Gwenpool

XIII. Black Bolt/Okoye

XIV. Daredevil/4* Wasp

XV. Archangel/America

XVI. Black Bolt/Okoye (repeat opponent)

XVII. GladiaThor/Okoye (there we go again!)

I decided to stop at this point, since I was using only Loki and Jessica; those two are a surprisingly fun pairing, and I was out of healthpacks.

So. Out of 17 opponents, only two used both GladiaThor and Okoye together. Out of the other 15, only five used either GladiaThor or Okoye. I came across 12 different 5*.

Therefore, in answer to the OP's question: no.

CharlieCroker

Daredevil217 said:

What is crazy is I predicted all this in the thread discussing Gambit’s nerf. People talked about having a whole new world of character diversity that would open up once Gambit was nerfed and I said once people settled on a new meta (which I said would be Thor) we’d go right back to staleness. I was basically told I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m a 4* player lol. Turns out more and more I’m reading about just how right I was (here, alliance chat, Line). 

But the big difference as many people pointed out at the time is now you don't have to have one specific character to reliably win matches.   As Phumade pointed out, you can reliably beat Okoye/Thor with any combination of 5*s and/or boosted 4*s.  That simply wasn't true during the majority of the era of Gambit.

I also find the current meta much more enjoyable within matches than with Gambit where the strategy was nearly always to hold off firing red/purple until the enemy had.  Which in some cases could go on well past the respective 7ap and 11ap thresholds.  Now I can actually use ap as and when I want to (and can actually collect and keep ap without it being drained with no counter).

You do however have a legitimate point about people reverting to a new meta.  But the way the game is structured, that's not going to change unless the game does.  The vast majority of players will always gravitate towards the latest quickest/strongest combo.

WEBGAS

Let's ask for an Okoye nerf, then...just like they did for Gambit 

.... I am joking, of course. Nerfing Okoye will be wrong, just like it has been for Gambit, OML, Thoress, XFWolvie, Ragnarok etc. etc.

Buff other characters or create counters...but instead they prefer to create a new shiny toy everyone will like to have, hence spend money to get it....and after a few months they realized that the character is too good and for the game's sake it has to be nerfed.

This is one of the most hated issue I have with this game! 

Tony_Foot

It doesn’t bother me because it’s easy, boring but easy and low risk. But the issue as I’ve stated time and time again is thor, free AP is just too hard to replace and makes any other decent release redundant straight away. That kind of free AP shouldn’t exist unless it’s a big support and not every turn. 

I dont care care much about pvp, it’s something I tolerate for the rewards but it can be fixed straight away making Thor tank for that AP or he doesn’t get it.

Also for any diversity all they need to do is make pvp a max of 1 five star. It would open up all our rosters to much more interesting teams and roster diversity. It wouldn’t matter if you were playing three star or four star pvp, the max use of one five per match. So much synergy between fives and fours to be exploited in a variety of ways. Rather than two fast power characters with a largely ignored featured.

BlackBoltRocks

WEBGAS said:

Let's ask for an Okoye nerf, then...just like they did for Gambit 

.... I am joking, of course.

I know you're joking, but just to reiterate why Gambit deserved his nerf, and Okoye doesn't need a nerf:

For Gambit, there were very few ways to prevent his unconditional AP gain, and all of those ways necessarily included having to gather your own AP (whether for a Stun, or skills that destroy AP/prevent AP gain/prevent a move, like BeardCap's Purple and Archangel's Green and Black), AP which had a chance of being destroyed by Gambit. By far the most reliable way was to bring your own Gambit, and wait or the opposing Gambit to fire off his Purple and/or Red before using your own, as CharlieCroker has pointed out. It was extremely stifling. Oh, and when you finally downed Gambit, it was likely that he had left a decent amount of Red and Purple AP for his teammates to use, if they had those skills.

On the other hand, you can sort of neuter Okoye's Black simply by moving her to the back i.e. attacking her teammates first. Sure, she can heal, but there are plenty of other healers in the game as well; it's a frustrating mechanic to face, but nowhere near a game-breaking one. Likewise for cascades. If she's set at 5/3/5, it lowers her healing. If she's set at 5/5/3, her own damage output is lowered (albeit it can be buffed by her own Black). Plus, her high match damage means she tends a tank a lot of damage, which somewhat balances her healing. And like every character in the game, you can simply save up AP (which was quite hard to do pre-nerf Gambit) and smack her down.

One huge piece of evidence to support this is my list above. When Gambit was king, literally 9 out of 10 matches featured Gambit. From the 17 opponents I faced in the current Ragnarok PvP, only seven used Okoye.

Tony_Foot

I do agree thor okoye isn't the issue Gambit was in that you had to bring your own, but the best way to combat them is still to bring your own. Simply because you use no health packs. You can beat that team with others but no way near as consistently and certainly not for zero health loss. Not only that but Thor not only boosts your AP he stops them having red green and yellow by destroying them before they can be matched. Okoye has fired off yellow I'm guessing less than 5 times against me. Even if she does, it's a positive because she's laid out more TU's for you.

I've used less than 5 health packs in pvp since the gambit nerf. There are other counters but still nothing beats an okoye thor team like another okoye thor team.

Borstock

I am currently ranked around 205 in the PvP Simulator. For our purposes, I went through 100 opponents by pressing skip and compiled how many of those teams included Okoye, Thor, Both, or Neither. Obviously, some of the teams showed up more than once, but I think it represents what the matchmaker in this game offered. Here are the results:

Thor+Okoye - 61
Thor only - 16
Okoye only - 5
Neither - 18

Read into it what you will. 

Dartmaster01

Yeah, Okoye/Thor is the best team no doubt but there will always be a best duo. Most of this thread seems like observation bias anyway, I see different teams well past 1200. Panthos, JJ, OML, Blackbolt, and even Gambit from time to time and I'm sure Kitty and Cable are about to start popping up also. Thor/Okoye is easily beatable with most anyone, no one in my alliance has complained about not being able to hit their pvp goal since Gambit's nerf. In fact, this is probably the most fair meta that has ruled pvp to date. I guess I just don't see what the problem is, if you have Okoye/Thor... great, if not, be glad you're not locked out of getting more than 600 pts like the Gambit era.

Phumade

Borstock said:

I am currently ranked around 205 in the PvP Simulator. For our purposes, I went through 100 opponents by pressing skip and compiled how many of those teams included Okoye, Thor, Both, or Neither. Obviously, some of the teams showed up more than once, but I think it represents what the matchmaker in this game offered. Here are the results:

Thor+Okoye - 61
Thor only - 16
Okoye only - 5
Neither - 18

Read into it what you will. 

That’s not entirely fair or honest.  In sim you can pick all 3 chars, in pvp only 2 out of 3.  Those selection rules alone will change the ratio.

 205 in sim at this point represents what 1800?  When your scores that high you might as well be faced with a teams.

a. More accurate sample is start psylocke from 0 at the start of event and report your next 20 matches.

not wait till end of event.

bbigler

First, I want to point out that ALL games have a meta, a standard best strategy to win, so no matter if the current meta is nerfed, another meta will take its place. So, accept that there will always be certain characters that dominate the scene. This is true with the lower tiers as well. 

Second, because of the current problem with covering Classic 5*s, which includes Thor and Okoye, new 5* players will have to use someone else, which is good for variety. As time goes on, the 5* variety in pvp should increase, but still be dominated by the latest meta teams available when one started playing. 

I agree that Thor + Okoye are amazing - Quick AP generation, Huge AOE hits and Healing - which is a near perfect combo. Fortunately, they are easy to beat on defense and a part of Classic purgatory. So, that puts 5* play in a good situation going forward. When Gambit reigned, things were bad, repetitive and limiting. He needed a nerf. 

If they nerfed Thor and Okoye just a little bit, they would still be viable AND players would start considering other teams, which is good. The bad thing for the game is a good thing for revenue, which is introducing a new 5* meta defining character. Then everyone chases after this 5* and play them ad nauseam, which is bad. 

I think we all agree that more variety is good, which includes all aspects of play.