PVP Supports: Feedback Thread

ThaRoadWarrior

I get 10 shards every 10 days from the dupe 2* support i get from the one basic token I get out of the taco vault. this is a fine and efficient way to grow a roster of supports. It is cool there are some shards in PVP progression now though.

entrailbucket

@LavaManLee said:
The biggest challenge the devs will have with trying to nerf supports is that, even more than the characters, it is a VERY long slog and resource intensive to get them to Level 5. It is a lot of work and they are the scarcest resources in the game. Nerfing them would probably require a good deal of compensation (similar to when the old devs nerfed 5Gambit).

Exactly.

Should they nerf some of this stuff? Yes.

Will they? I really, really don't think so. I think it's possible in the future, but only if some new character or support creates something that's a MASSIVE problem.

Bustapup

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

It's not just supports that are the problem it's a match making issue as well, putting players against each other that are wildly different levels

What does your roster look like and what are you being matched with? These problems are almost always explainable.

I'm ALWAYS getting matched against complete maxed out 5* mixtures if Mthor/brb/Polaris or chasm/omegared/may or three cyborgs.

I wouldn't mind but I've literally only just camped my first 5s recently (jubilee, old man Logan and Abigail brand) and so none of my teams can compete event with 5 champ Agatha. I have zero chance against op teams and op supports

entrailbucket

@Bustapup said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bustapup said:

It's not just supports that are the problem it's a match making issue as well, putting players against each other that are wildly different levels

What does your roster look like and what are you being matched with? These problems are almost always explainable.

I'm ALWAYS getting matched against complete maxed out 5* mixtures if Mthor/brb/Polaris or chasm/omegared/may or three cyborgs.

I wouldn't mind but I've literally only just camped my first 5s recently (jubilee, old man Logan and Abigail brand) and so none of my teams can compete event with 5 champ Agatha. I have zero chance against op teams and op supports

Wait, your highest characters are around level 450 and you're being matched up with teams running 2x level 550?

That shouldn't be possible. The game typically goes to great lengths to hide those teams from folks at your level. What end time are you playing in? Are you playing right at the beginning, or right at the end of events?

WhiteBomber

My highest is 479 and I see 550s often enough. Sometimes I forget to check and get rolled by a maxed Red, those are the worst. Anyone other than red is still quite disposable Bustapup if you champ the right characters and supports. The team I mentioned earlier of Darkveil and Shang with Fantasticar can easily avoid all non team damage and combo boosted 550s down. I reckon MThor can do the same, especially with a medium to high level Riri.

entrailbucket

@WhiteBomber said:
My highest is 479 and I see 550s often enough. Sometimes I forget to check and get rolled by a maxed Red, those are the worst. Anyone other than red is still quite disposable Bustapup if you champ the right characters and supports. The team I mentioned earlier of Darkveil and Shang with Fantasticar can easily avoid all non team damage and combo boosted 550s down. I reckon MThor can do the same, especially with a medium to high level Riri.

That's very interesting. Are you playing at odd times or in depopulated slices? Does this only happen when you're at a very high point total? Or only early or late in events?

There are conditions where the matchmaking algorithm breaks down but it really shouldn't be showing you those teams if it can be helped.

WhiteBomber

@entrailbucket said:

@WhiteBomber said:
My highest is 479 and I see 550s often enough. Sometimes I forget to check and get rolled by a maxed Red, those are the worst. Anyone other than red is still quite disposable Bustapup if you champ the right characters and supports. The team I mentioned earlier of Darkveil and Shang with Fantasticar can easily avoid all non team damage and combo boosted 550s down. I reckon MThor can do the same, especially with a medium to high level Riri.

That's very interesting. Are you playing at odd times or in depopulated slices? Does this only happen when you're at a very high point total? Or only early or late in events?

There are conditions where the matchmaking algorithm breaks down but it really shouldn't be showing you those teams if it can be helped.

I join PVP at totally random times, sometimes right at the beginning, sometimes the final day. Since they turned on supports though it's usually earlier since I enjoy playing it now. There are usually still at least a few hundred people, but after that I can't tell since I can't see behind me. Usually the final slice and level 10. I usually see at least a couple of them per tournament... when I'm paying attention. I usually don't look at the level until I accidentally choose to fight a 550 Red or boosted 550.

That's a LOT of "usually".

entrailbucket

@WhiteBomber said:

@entrailbucket said:

@WhiteBomber said:
My highest is 479 and I see 550s often enough. Sometimes I forget to check and get rolled by a maxed Red, those are the worst. Anyone other than red is still quite disposable Bustapup if you champ the right characters and supports. The team I mentioned earlier of Darkveil and Shang with Fantasticar can easily avoid all non team damage and combo boosted 550s down. I reckon MThor can do the same, especially with a medium to high level Riri.

That's very interesting. Are you playing at odd times or in depopulated slices? Does this only happen when you're at a very high point total? Or only early or late in events?

There are conditions where the matchmaking algorithm breaks down but it really shouldn't be showing you those teams if it can be helped.

I join PVP at totally random times, sometimes right at the beginning, sometimes the final day. Since they turned on supports though it's usually earlier since I enjoy playing it now. There are usually still at least a few hundred people, but after that I can't tell since I can't see behind me. Usually the final slice and level 10. I usually see at least a couple of them per tournament... when I'm paying attention. I usually don't look at the level until I accidentally choose to fight a 550 Red or boosted 550.

That's a LOT of "usually".

Just fyi (and this is a VERY common misconception) you can be matched with anyone who's unshielded and playing the same end time as you, not just the ones on your leaderboard (or "bracket") or CL.

It sounds like this isn't a consistent thing for you, and if you're playing in the final end time...that's a very, uh, depopulated slice, so there might be times when the matchmaking algorithm breaks down and has to show you these players because it's got nothing else to give you.

The main thing to remember about matchmaking is that it has to give you real players, who are unshielded and playing in the same end time. It does its best to give you matchups you can win, but it's got to give you something. Sometimes, this results in odd behavior when it can't find anything appropriate.

BriMan2222

@WhiteBomber said:

@entrailbucket said:

@WhiteBomber said:
My highest is 479 and I see 550s often enough. Sometimes I forget to check and get rolled by a maxed Red, those are the worst. Anyone other than red is still quite disposable Bustapup if you champ the right characters and supports. The team I mentioned earlier of Darkveil and Shang with Fantasticar can easily avoid all non team damage and combo boosted 550s down. I reckon MThor can do the same, especially with a medium to high level Riri.

That's very interesting. Are you playing at odd times or in depopulated slices? Does this only happen when you're at a very high point total? Or only early or late in events?

There are conditions where the matchmaking algorithm breaks down but it really shouldn't be showing you those teams if it can be helped.

I join PVP at totally random times, sometimes right at the beginning, sometimes the final day. Since they turned on supports though it's usually earlier since I enjoy playing it now. There are usually still at least a few hundred people, but after that I can't tell since I can't see behind me. Usually the final slice and level 10. I usually see at least a couple of them per tournament... when I'm paying attention. I usually don't look at the level until I accidentally choose to fight a 550 Red or boosted 550.

That's a LOT of "usually".

You might have better luck in slice 1 or slice 4. There are many more players in those time slices, so the game should have more options to show you from players in your level range.

WhiteBomber

For what it's worth, I have zero issue with the matchmaking, I almost never lose and since supports have been implemented my teams win an astonishing amount on defense. I just noted I also encounter 550's along with my character levels since Entrail seemed so interested in it, then he asked questions, so I answered. The only 550 I avoid is Red and Chasm.

I do appreciate the trying to help though

entrailbucket

@WhiteBomber said:
For what it's worth, I have zero issue with the matchmaking, I almost never lose and since supports have been implemented my teams win an astonishing amount on defense. I just noted I also encounter 550's along with my character levels since Entrail seemed so interested in it, then he asked questions, so I answered. The only 550 I avoid is Red and Chasm.

I do appreciate the trying to help though

Thanks for the information.

They used to tinker with matchmaking quite a bit behind the scenes, so if someone is seeing something weird, it could be a symptom of some sort of change.

In your case I'm pretty sure this is normal behavior, you've just got some slightly odd play patterns causing it.

LavaManLee

One more data point on adding supports to PVP.

Many alliances that used to have minimum PVP scores for events are either starting to lower them or drop the minimum all together for their alliance because of frustration from some of the members.

Don't know whether that is good or bad for the game in the long run but thought it was an interesting tidbit and shows the affect that supports is having on PVP (looking at you Leapfrog).

entrailbucket

@LavaManLee said:
One more data point on adding supports to PVP.

Many alliances that used to have minimum PVP scores for events are either starting to lower them or drop the minimum all together for their alliance because of frustration from some of the members.

Don't know whether that is good or bad for the game in the long run but thought it was an interesting tidbit and shows the affect that supports is having on PVP (looking at you Leapfrog).

Good.

As a commander I've never had alliance minimums and as a player I'd never tolerate them. All they do is force players to play more than they want to. Our alliance "minimum" is (and has always been) "have fun."

Pottsie1980

I have wiped a few times because of leapfrog/fantasticar, but am still favouring using ap generators for quick wins. Will see how it develops

entrailbucket

@Pottsie1980 said:
I have wiped a few times because of leapfrog/fantasticar, but am still favouring using ap generators for quick wins. Will see how it develops

Pretty much the entire top end of the PvP metagame has switched to defensive supports 100% of the time. Generally this is leapfrog + Eros arrow.

I'm not sure why so many players tend to favor defense over offense (we saw this with slower teams like sw/Colossus, and also with the immortal bros team), but for whatever reason they do. Both of these can be annoying and sometimes slow you down, but I've mostly learned how to play around them.

One fun offensive combo I've found is fantasticar + Thanos copter, with match damage characters. Things can get crazy pretty fast!

dianetics

@entrailbucket said:
Pretty much the entire top end of the PvP metagame has switched to defensive supports 100% of the time. Generally this is leapfrog + Eros arrow.

I'm not sure why so many players tend to favor defense over offense (we saw this with slower teams like sw/Colossus, and also with the immortal bros team), but for whatever reason they do. Both of these can be annoying and sometimes slow you down, but I've mostly learned how to play around them.

One fun offensive combo I've found is fantasticar + Thanos copter, with match damage characters. Things can get crazy pretty fast!

Leapfrog and Arrow are way too strong. They can legit stop you on a bad board.
You don't need great supports to win, but great supports can stop you from losing.
So Leap-Arrow-Hotdog cart or maybe 1 offensive support like Fantasticar, Implanted Bomb, or Omnipotence City.

If nobody wants to attack you that is the same as a win on defense, and I have recently seen few to no defenses in PvP because my guess is that people just skip me more often than not.

Tony_Foot

Yep I just skip anything running those supports now. Can I work around them, yes. Do I want to spend that time when I can turn 1 lots of other teams to 25 wins, nahhh.

entrailbucket

@Tony_Foot said:
Yep I just skip anything running those supports now. Can I work around them, yes. Do I want to spend that time when I can turn 1 lots of other teams to 25 wins, nahhh.

Once you get to a certain point you've got no choice though. If I skipped these teams I wouldn't be able to play at all!

These matches are winnable eventually, they're just complicated, long, and sometimes annoying or unpredictable.

I do think this is where the metagame is going overall -- players who aren't using these supports now are probably chasing them (to the extent that's possible!) and will be using them as soon as they can.

I'll add -- players at the top are the early warning system for this stuff. The metagame solidifies much faster among folks like us. We were seeing (and complaining about) stuff like Chasm/Hulk way before it ate the entire game. If you're not seeing a wall of defensive supports right now, I promise you it's coming.

dianetics

Leap - Arrow - DPS/Utility support is probably where it is going.
Like if you have **** luck and Arrow + the deadpool give you **** luck you will likely lose because you wont be able to do dps for 3-7 turns.

entrailbucket

@dianetics said:
Leap - Arrow - DPS/Utility support is probably where it is going.
Like if you have **** luck and Arrow + the deadpool give you **** luck you will likely lose because you wont be able to do dps for 3-7 turns.

There are ways around this (for example, bring enough DPS that you can win a 2 vs 3 match with any two of your three characters), but getting a roster that level isn't easy. There are also stuns, AoE, targeted board destruction...but these supports tend to act like always-on passives and the counterplay is often active.

I suspect they're going to be under a lot of pressure to do... something...about some of these supports, as their usage expands -- and MPQ is a copycat metagame, their usage WILL expand.

I don't know if they'll act or how they will act in response to that pressure.