PVP Supports: Feedback Thread

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.

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.

dianetics

Well yeah, but if you bring enough dps then Leap sends your opponents away and you have to have a way to either attack the tile or the opponent.

Supports really change how you assess the game, but you can't check the opponents supports live. You need an ipad or open website to check what your opponents have to even judge your attack.

Right now, it is just stupidly broken.

entrailbucket

@dianetics said:
Well yeah, but if you bring enough dps then Leap sends your opponents away and you have to have a way to either attack the tile or the opponent.

Supports really change how you assess the game, but you can't check the opponents supports live. You need an ipad or open website to check what your opponents have to even judge your attack.

Right now, it is just stupidly broken.

Yeah sorry, what you actually need is enough DPS but also the right kind of DPS, which can be even harder to find.

dianetics

@entrailbucket said:
Yeah sorry, what you actually need is enough DPS but also the right kind of DPS, which can be even harder to find.

Often if you bring "the right kind" of dps you are going to get blown out

Right now to me it seems certain supports are more valuable than any of the pick 2s you have. The loaner type get a AP gen and the pick 2 get leap and cart/omni/arrow.

The matches are now longer and less interesting.
It honestly reminds me of fighting Invisible Woman when she first arrived.

Rejoinder

Let's rewrite this to make it (a bit) less salty.

I appreciate the PVP support system, since it makes non-meta teams viable.

Playing through SHIELD Simulator is a terrible slog at the moment, since the lack of defensive supports means you immediately and repeatedly die to Mthor/Polaris or May/anything teams.

It's night and day compared to PVP nodes that include supports, where you can play off-meta characters and actually have fun.

Scofie

@Rejoinder said:
Let's rewrite this to make it (a bit) less salty.

I appreciate the PVP support system, since it makes non-meta teams viable.

Playing through SHIELD Simulator is a terrible slog at the moment, since the lack of defensive supports means you immediately and repeatedly die to Mthor/Polaris or May/anything teams.

It's night and day compared to PVP nodes that include supports, where you can play off-meta characters and actually have fun.

I do also think that has something to do with the boost list. I do see random teams in Sim but it is inherently less fun than the rest of the PvPs.

JoeHandle

@dianetics said:
Supports really change how you assess the game, but you can't check the opponents supports live. You need an ipad or open website to check what your opponents have to even judge your attack.

Please clarify ... you can't see the supports targets are using, or you're not familiar with the details of those supports?

dianetics

@JoeHandle said:
Please clarify ... you can't see the supports targets are using, or you're not familiar with the details of those supports?

You cannot click on your opponents supports in the game and bring them up to look at them and assess their value.
So you have to know what every support does at every rank.
If you want to know you need to either back out of the battle screen then go to your supports and look it up there or have another device or web browser to have them on a secondary screen.
You could also click on one of your heroes and click support swap support then read the description, but only your hero can equip the support and you have it.

Like, I use Omnipotence City, but I really don't even know what it does. Something beneficial I guess.
What does Helicarrier do at rank 3? What is the condition for Leapfrog to send an ally away? What does Battleword do at rank 5?
Plus the Synergies. Does the opponent get the synergy from the support?
There is just too much going on with these things.

Timemachinego

@dianetics said:

@JoeHandle said:
Please clarify ... you can't see the supports targets are using, or you're not familiar with the details of those supports?

You cannot click on your opponents supports in the game and bring them up to look at them and assess their value.
So you have to know what every support does at every rank.
If you want to know you need to either back out of the battle screen then go to your supports and look it up there or have another device or web browser to have them on a secondary screen.
You could also click on one of your heroes and click support swap support then read the description, but only your hero can equip the support and you have it.

Like, I use Omnipotence City, but I really don't even know what it does. Something beneficial I guess.
What does Helicarrier do at rank 3? What is the condition for Leapfrog to send an ally away? What does Battleword do at rank 5?
Plus the Synergies. Does the opponent get the synergy from the support?
There is just too much going on with these things.

Thankfully there's only a couple handfuls of actually relevant supports, the rest just don't do enough of note to warrant knowledge of. All of those ones that (mostly) just give bonus color match damage and like a low chance to spawn a special tile of some sort are entirely useless past 4* levels (and even then only good for manipulating who is tanking, really). I have a 5* Helicarrier and no idea what it does other than confuse me when I try to parse its text but since I've literally never seen it in PVP there's no point in ever figuring it out, either.

I'm not saying the UI shouldn't be improved in regards to this, especially for new players, but there's not THAT much to take stock of when you're skipping around looking for targets.

JoeHandle

@dianetics said:

@JoeHandle said:
Please clarify ... you can't see the supports targets are using, or you're not familiar with the details of those supports?

You cannot click on your opponents supports in the game and bring them up to look at them and assess their value.
So you have to know what every support does at every rank.
If you want to know you need to either back out of the battle screen then go to your supports and look it up there or have another device or web browser to have them on a secondary screen.
You could also click on one of your heroes and click support swap support then read the description, but only your hero can equip the support and you have it.

Like, I use Omnipotence City, but I really don't even know what it does. Something beneficial I guess.
What does Helicarrier do at rank 3? What is the condition for Leapfrog to send an ally away? What does Battleword do at rank 5?
Plus the Synergies. Does the opponent get the synergy from the support?
There is just too much going on with these things.

Ohhhh, you were referring to in-match. Yeah, when they bolted these things on to PvP, they didn't add that to the UI ... but it's a shortcoming that's always been there, have never been able to see them in-match in PvE, either. Not a new problem but one that shoulkd have been resolved.

It's always a relief when the enemy carrying Leapfrog goes down

I thought you were saying you couldn't see them before going into a match. That would really suck.

As for knowing what they do ... game has lacked from birth in-game references. There should be an in-game "encyclopedia", a reference for looking up all in game constructs at every level and configuration. Hovering over characters / supports should bring up their details. Should, should, should.

I have a handle on what all the supports do ... and it helps in PvP that players typical use a small subset ... at least they do in my MMR where most everyone has most everything so we're all taking the same minmax'd approach ... but I also play way too much and obsess over such things. To a casual player, this must seem like a big mystery box full of chaos!

Thanks for expanding your thoughts.

dianetics

@JoeHandle said:
I thought you were saying you couldn't see them before going into a match. That would really suck.

You can see them during the match and inspect them. Oddly enough, the in match display and text are probably the best/easiest to see on mobile.

You can't see them before the match though. You can't click on them to see what they do.

You can see the opponent and which support they have equipped and its level, but you can't click it to see what it does.

So you have to have a web browser open, back out of the team selection and go to your support screen section, or go to the support swap section and hope your toons can equip it.

It's just an annoyance.

bluewolf

The lack of easy access to support details was pointed out a long time ago as an issue for PvP.

Presumably there is no good fix to any of this until…..maybe…..say it with me….

JoeHandle

@dianetics said:

@JoeHandle said:
I thought you were saying you couldn't see them before going into a match. That would really suck.

You can see them during the match and inspect them. Oddly enough, the in match display and text are probably the best/easiest to see on mobile.

You can't see them before the match though. You can't click on them to see what they do.

You can see the opponent and which support they have equipped and its level, but you can't click it to see what it does.

So you have to have a web browser open, back out of the team selection and go to your support screen section, or go to the support swap section and hope your toons can equip it.

It's just an annoyance.

OK, precisely outlining the complaint now ... sounds the same as Steam. Yes, in-match you can dig in and find the details. Clunky and awkward, tho.

As for not being able to pull up the details prior to match ... you can't pull up the details of the enemy characters, either ... or at least can't on steam. You can see # of covers in which color, but no farther than that, player has to know what all that means, or find out the hard way. Again, nothing new, just the SOS!

Daredevil217

@dianetics said:

@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.

This. I just joined the Leap Mob. With Frog in tokens I opened Masters until I got mine from 2* to 5* off of shards (I also pulled a 5* Web Shooter and 5* Kamar Taj) while leveling Frog.

I will say I noticed a huge difference running Leap. Typically I roll with Arrow/Car/Omni (or an AP boost if I’m not running godlike- but I’ve been running Jean all month). I typically get beaten down past around 8-900 and just go for wins. This time I swapped out Car for Leap once I hit 800 pts and was only attacked/beaten twice. Was able to hit 1200 easily. Way too small of a sample size but definitely felt the difference.

WhiteBomber

@Daredevil217 said:

@dianetics said:

@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.

This. I just joined the Leap Mob. With Frog in tokens I opened Masters until I got mine from 2* to 5* off of shards (I also pulled a 5* Web Shooter and 5* Kamar Taj) while leveling Frog.

I will say I noticed a huge difference running Leap. Typically I roll with Arrow/Car/Omni (or an AP boost if I’m not running godlike- but I’ve been running Jean all month). I typically get beaten down past around 8-900 and just go for wins. This time I swapped out Car for Leap once I hit 800 pts and was only attacked/beaten twice. Was able to hit 1200 easily. Way too small of a sample size but definitely felt the difference.

I find Arrow to be much more effective for my offense and switch to Frog when I'm leaving defense. If you only care about wins just go Veil Krakoa, mandatory char arrow / frog, any damage character and car; you can hit 25 wins with no health packs usually every time.

Everyone talks about frog, but I find car significantly more devastating and it's the only support so far that has also decisively crushed me when attacking it.

dianetics

The meta has settled as much as I can tell and there are 5 supports or 6 if you have a great Stone.
Fantasticar
Leap
Arrow
Hot Dog Cart
Omni

It seems to me nothing else matters at higher levels.

**edit Add Krakakoa for certain team comps.

LavaManLee

Oh, I definitely think there other supports that matter at higher levels. My 5* Baton isn't great on defense but when equipped on the mandatory, Car on SC and Omn on MT, I can get by the 550s who are boosted on turn 0 or 1, depending on if Baton hits or not. I won't leave it on defense, but that team is fast and hits up to the boosted 550s no problem.