Observations of a new 5* PvP Player

helix72

I recently joined the 5* tier. I thought I'd champ just Okoye and try single champ MMR, but it was miserable--I was getting destroyed by Gritty and BRBishop teams left and right. So I figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and I champed my Kitty & BRB too. (I also champed Apocalypse and leveled iHulk and Thor to below Okoye's tank level).

First thing I misunderstood--I thought my opponents were going to be based on the teams I used, not who was on my roster. But I was immediately (from 0 points) presented with double 5* champ teams. So that didn't work.

Second was my excitement--and then disappointment--over my ability (or rather, inability) to achieve a higher progression level. Before champing, I would hit 1000 points, then shield out. Now, I've been hitting 1000 points, shield and out.

I did an experiment and skipped 25 times, recording the opponents it gave me each time. I put the aggregate results below, but to summarize: the skip function does not give any teams at my level. It is all significantly stronger or significantly weaker teams. There must be a better way.

-17 of my 25 skips just rotated between the same 4 players. Each had multiple 5*'s in the 540 range or high level BRB + 370 Bishop. Each were worth 69 points or more. Why should I pay a skip tax to get the same team back I just skipped?
-the other 8 were all teams worth 7 points or less. Easily beatable but not worth the risk of unshielding.

The results:

Enemy	# Times	Points
1	5	75
2	5	75
3	4	75
4	3	69
5	1	7
6	1	7
7	1	5
8	1	4
9	1	5
10	1	8
11	1	5
12	1	4

Vhailorx

Yup, this the standard experience.  If you keep playing PVP, you will get a feel for how quickly the nodes refresh and how long it takes to get new opponents. And yeah. It sucks that getting a stronger roster doesn't really ever get you weaker pvp opponents (except maybe once you are at 500+?); It just means you are playing in a smaller pool of bigger fish.

I think something that happens here on the forums is we vets say things like "with X meta team you can get Y score easily." And there are usually good reasons for saying something like that.  But what we should probably say is something more like: "once you know how mmr and pvp slices work, and have X meta team, you can generally figure out a slice/playtime that should let you get to Y score without too much trouble, though you may have to boost/hop a little if Y is much above 1000."

bluewolf

For years the devs talked about making a defensive meta.  They did accomplish that, finally, when BRB joined Kitty (and turned Bishop up to 11) and it became harder to build big scores due to longer matches (defeating them is possible, but it can also take a while meaning you can't do as many matches).  This means that 5's aren't much better in certain slices as getting 1200 than any other tier is.

The other thing to keep in mind is when you were doing your climb, etc.  I'm not sure when you were doing your skipping but the fact is that there are not, in general, all that many players (certainly not %wise) who are climbing to high points in PVP (most players find it to be annoying and a slog, or play for wins, etc).  So if you were trying to hit 1000 or so and started skipping you are very likely to just see the same people over and over.

 If you are looking to do higher points (1200+) you need to hop and possibly coordinate over a period of time.  You would climb to a relatively high level, shield, and then you need to periodically look for targets.  A check room gives you some targets to q or you can log into PVP every few hours and skip a bit, check leaderboards, etc., do a hop, and repeat.

When we had the offensive metas (Thorkoye and Gritty) as the predominant ones, you could easily hit 1200 in any slice. Now you need to put a lot more work into it and I personally rarely hit 1200.

Exception to all this is the giant teams which truly rule again, back when you had Thorkoye as your main tool you could take a mirror out with ease.  Not so easy with Hulkoye or BRBitty.

Where, oh where, is my Bishop nerf......

Vhailorx

If only someone had warned demi years ago that chasing a defensive meta was a terrible idea if they didn't also change scoring and health and shielding and all the extrinsic factors in the game that make speed desirable. . .

That said, I disagree with the "thorkoye could do 1200 with ease" statement.  Offensive metas definitely made climbing easier, but even back in the day you still needed a pretty robust understanding of the PVP system to actually climb to 1200 reliably, even with the meta teams.  If you pulled out your pre-nerf Gambit in early 2018, joined slice 2 with 6 hours left, climbed to 900 and walked away to let your health packs recharge, you could not come back 5 hours later and finish the climb to 1200 at your leisure. Same with the thorkoye meta in late 2018 or early 2019.  After that, gritty started taking over and everything remained more or less the same, but with a higher variance (because even a modest cascade is wipe-inducing against gritty). 

at least that was always my experience with 450-460 baby champs.  there are some rosters that can just float unshielded at 1000+, but they are generally uber-whale rosters that are beyond unachievable for 99% of players.  In mpq, it's best to assume there are always players with a better roster than you and plan your pvp strategy accordingly.

DyingLegend

I wish I never crossed into 5 star territory. 

4 star tier had so much variety. 5 star is the same teams over and over and over and over again. 

I hope they rebalance some of the older 5 stars to pump a little life into the PVP meta. This current meta is the worst in my opinion. 

MrPlow

How are people finding time and how many hops does it take to get scores over 3000?  It just blows my mind that some slices will have 10 guys with scores over 3000.  Then I see others with a handful of guys just over 1200.

Vhailorx

MrPlow said:

How are people finding time and how many hops does it take to get scores over 3000?  It just blows my mind that some slices will have 10 guys with scores over 3000.  Then I see others with a handful of guys just over 1200.

 As far as I understand it, to get that high you start when the event opens, frontrun up to your first shield (actual score depends on slice), then shield hop 3 times every 8 hours until the event ends.  each hop used to be 3 (or sometimes 4+ way back with cupcakes) matches, but I think people can only do 1 or 2 matches now because the meta defensive teams are so slow.

Michael1957

I’m in the exact same situation. My only champed 5* is Okoye , but I find she’s enough with a 7/13 rainbowed iHulk.  I have to skip the 90% mindless one dimensional clones who only play Gritty, BRBishop or Hammerhawk, which takes several minutes , but with timing I can find enough wins in the other 10% of challenges to cap 700+ and get a satisfying top 50 placement. 

  Hang in there , be patient, figure out the best timing to grind and shield 🛡 and it can be done with nice rewards 

Borstock

When the Thorkoye meta was strong, I could regularly climb to 1200 in one shot and shield out because they were fast and there were a lot of points to be had. Once the Thorkoye meta was surpassed, it became increasingly more difficult to hit 1200 unless I used a hop around 1050.

Now, I find using Thorkoye is like painting a target on my metaphorical back. I like to use them to get some healthpack-free wins when I join, but players love to retal against that matchup. When it's not a retal, the targeted attacks start rolling in when I've only hit around 575. It's really annoying how unforgiving the game has become to non-meta teams. It's one thing to have a meta and it's another to have one that straight up renders other teams irrelevant and unusable.

Depending on the matchup, I can tell if I'm going to lose before any team even makes a match. Facing a Holkoye team and you get a board covered in green and tu AP? Dead. Facing BRBishop and get a board covered in blue AP? Dead. I feel like that's not a healthy place for the game to be. But I'm still playing, so maybe I'm my own proof I'm wrong.

HoundofShadow

Just some questions:

1) When did you record your skip? Did you record your skip at the start or at around ~900-1000 points?

I find that the climb from 0 to ~850 presents a wider variety of opponents, compared to those that you find after the ~850th point.

2) Which slice did you play in? 1, 3 or 4?

3) Didn't you see 4* teams to hit? I get hit by 5* players regularly once I hit the magical 800 and above points. Some of them are not even 550 rosters. Some are baby champed.

4) Were your opponents mainly:

1) Britty
2) Hulkoye
3) BRB/Bishop
4) HE/WorthyCap
5) Prof X / BRB

All the above are those 5* players' teams that hit my 4* teams regularly, except for HE/WorthyCap. I rarely see this team hitting my 4* teams. Probably once per season?

The top 3 retal I get from 5* players, in order of highest occurrence is: 

1) Hulkoye (both champed) (~60%)
2) Britty (~25%)
3) BRB/Bishop (15%)

Reecoh

I still mainly use Thorkoye because I play for wins and ignore points. It's still the best balance of speed & health pack use IMO, even with the occasional wipe by stronger teams (usually ProfX getting a good cascade). I skip all of the slow defensive teams and still have plenty of opponents. So far anyway.

Vhailorx

Borstock said:

When the Thorkoye meta was strong, I could regularly climb to 1200 in one shot and shield out because they were fast and there were a lot of points to be had.

This was basically true. . .IF you knew which slice to choose and when to play and all the other tricks to maximize points-per-match and minimize hits in pvp (not even counting Line). 

Lots and lots of people would read comments like that, level up their own 5* meta team, and then be shocked to discover that having a 450 thorkoye did not mean you could club baby seals up to max prog and float at 1200 for hours.

Ares76

I joined 5-star champ exactly a year ago and made similiar observations. As already mentioned the single-5-star MMR seems to be a myth. I also champed Okoye back then with my other chars softcapped at level 360 and constantly had do fight 5* double-champs. After a a week or so I champed my other 5-star metas who were sitting on 13 covers like Kitty Pryde to make the matches somewhat fairer again. 

Regarding PVP I must say that it became tougher than before to get a good placement. In 4-star-land I was most of the time getting TOP 25-placements by scoring about 1,000 points and then shielded out. Today it is nearly impossible to get to 1,000 points. My fastest team is Thorkoye of course and when I reach around 700 points  (sometimes earlier) I am getting hit all the time. Even if I'm playing 30 or 60 minutes in a row I can't climb higher because I am getting more hits while I am playing my own matches. Once I grinded to 75 wins in a PVP and had only 500 points which felt not worth shielding out. I ended with 300 points and 210th place!!! Fact is that Thorkoye is no defensive team at all. If you use them too often you will get a lot of retals. Or you have to do shield hops from the beginning.

Last week I was lucky and pulled my 13th Beta Ray Bill. Now I am one of those Britty teams that most of you skip because it is too slow and dangerous to beat them all the time. The negativ part for me is that it is also very slow to beat others with my Britty-team but retals nearly aren't a thing anymore if you don't climb too fast and give away 75 points for others. I normally buy a shield at around 700 points now when there are only 1 day and a few others left. I come back later when another 8 or 24 hour-shield is sufficient and play for 900+ points. That's TOP 100 for me.

Comparing Thorkoye and Britty I would say that it seems to be the same time investment at the end. With Thorkoye I often had to play for 40 wins to get the 4-star-reward and also did some more wins to get some more points. With Britty the matches are longer but I don't have to play to 40 wins anymore. In the latest "Brace the Cure" I hit 934 points with only 32 wins.

If I am around TOP 50 during an PvP I can still skip an see new opponents. The higher I get (TOP 10) it's likely to see the same four players all the time although I hit the skip-button.

DyingLegend

I sat as a single 5 star team for a little while (Clint was my single, pre worthy) it was absolutely brutal until I finished Okoye and Jessica. I do not recommend anyone enter 5 star territory with only a single 5 star. 

bluewolf

DyingLegend said:

I sat as a single 5 star team for a little while (Clint was my single, pre worthy) it was absolutely brutal until I finished Okoye and Jessica. I do not recommend anyone enter 5 star territory with only a single 5 star. 

Way back when it wasn't the worst idea.

I started in the 5 tier with Spidey in the fall of 2017.  I think I started with him leveled up and champ him when they pushed in feeders and I had the choice of watching the covers disappear or champing him.  Anyway, it worked OK.

Then Gambit came along.  And about 6 months later, Okoye.  And then Kitty a few months later.

I think you could still enter the 5 tier with just Kitty, assuming that you have the option, and do sort-of-OK for a while.   However, it is obvious you'd be targeted heavily by dual+ champed 5 teams once you got to a certain point.  You wouldn't do any better (possibly worse) in PVP over being a champed 4 player.

5's aren't quite what they used to be, given the longevity of the game and how many players have "fallen up" into the tier.

Borstock

Vhailorx said:

Borstock said:

When the Thorkoye meta was strong, I could regularly climb to 1200 in one shot and shield out because they were fast and there were a lot of points to be had.

This was basically true. . .IF you knew which slice to choose and when to play and all the other tricks to maximize points-per-match and minimize hits in pvp (not even counting Line). 

Lots and lots of people would read comments like that, level up their own 5* meta team, and then be shocked to discover that having a 450 thorkoye did not mean you could club baby seals up to max prog and float at 1200 for hours.

If you have multiple 5* characters champed, I feel like you should know a few things about how to play PvP. For example, floating at 1200 has never been a thing unless you have 550's, at least not in my experience. Maybe VERY early on in the 5* tier. But I couldn't even do that with God Gambit.

I will give you that picking the right slice wasn't automatic knowledge. That part is true. It's knowledge I came across while competing as a 4* character, but I could see that not being everyone's experience.

MrPlow

I have a single 5* with Kitty and I can say PVP has been much better for me.  With Grocket I can usually hit 1000 in less than 40 matches although these days I go for 75 wins.  Before when Kitty was at around 300 before I had enough covers I had trouble reaching 700 before getting hit all the time.  My next highest character is Grocket at 305.