Marvel Avengers Alliance: Best Defensive Team

A week or two after I wrote how to win all battles in season 7. I was thinking on this a lot better topic. How, to win in defense?

Its quite easy to win in attack as long as the stats are reasonable high. Or arguable as long as the opponent has shitty stats.

Note: I got around 50% Win ratio at low Adamantium as a free player the game is not that hard OK-_-

For example, I face a lot of people who seems to spend their life savings meaning they have huge bonus over me. Fortunately for me they are retards who cannot set up a defense team even if their life depended on it.

My clear favorites are people who do the Hotshot combo, but instead of using signpost they use Hard nox, good job. You just wasted 64 gold to lower your chance of wining. I especially remembering beating this popular guy from the Marvel Avengers Alliance forum. Which a lot of people believe is sooo smart and insightful, guy got all characters bought Rescue early etc, Mix of 64 and 2 gold items...and of course got all the scrolls but uses Hard nox as you know it was the newest Limited edition weapon. I got like 200 points from him the last day, so dam easy. (He didn't make the cut, hilarious).

Why is it worse using Hard nox? Its a great item it makes you preemptively counter all enemies who are burning(if you are burning). And of course they are all burning as you got Hotshot.......

Nope, thats what stupid people think, honestly if you got hardnox, remove it right now from your defense set up its horrible. In offense its great in defense its just retarded.

To work the enemy have to burn, so at least then use a set up that cast burn like go with Ghost Rider, Go with human torch and so on.

To run it solely with Hotshot, which everyone does is the believe that the Agent will acordnling actually use Hotshot right away. Even worse, many run it with Warbringer axe or other items further reducing the chance the AI will use th AoE burning.

What I want to illustrate is that defense is all about controlling the AIs options!

Of course I rather would have had some kind of condition statements, which I have explained in my earlier articles(and can be read about in my RPG research).

But we don't have that. What we have is a stupid AI who randoms weapons to use, how do we solve this?  Simple only let the Agent random out of 1.

If you only have 1 weapon the Agent can only random that weapon.

So just remove all items on your agent expect the one you want to use.

Honestly that would probably be pretty OK.

The key is to use Quick action items but even more importantly cooldown items.

While most people run QA items to limit down what will be used, e.g most common scroll of angolob and Signpost(the 2 most imba QA items in the game) no one seems to get how to use Cooldown to your advantage.

But I have so let me explain the first goal is to make sure the Agent only use 1 item the first turn. By, this I don't mean QA you can utilize how many QA you want but 1 “real item”.

The best item currently by far is Hotshot. As its an AoE Stun + dot + lowering armor(by like all). Oh yeah it also does decent damage...

But what really makes Hotshot so OP its combined with the best QA item Signpost. So running this set gives you the best AoE weapon the best QA. An amazing QA item that does AoE damage and heals you every turn but also then increases the chance of using hotshot.

If you run an item like Darksigil with 3 other real items you will have a 25% chance to use Darksigil. I assume you got like Emma Frost and hopes for a critical mental truama. Well then its a lot better to have Darksigil and no other real items so the Agent always uses it.

People usually solve that trough mass QA, so 3 QA and one item to be used.

A set I myself used a lot for a while when it seemed everyone was using hardnox was the Hotshot with Signpost + Scroll of angolob + Rebott(QA + Immune to burning) then the agent could never pre counter me.

But obviously the real goal is ot make sure the Agent AI always uses hotshot.

This is way using Hardnox in defense is so bad. That makes the Agent go from a 100% chance to a 50% chance to use the right item. And the other item in this case Hard nox is specially bad when the other item has not set up the synergy.

Thats why we use QA items to control the defense AI.

But to the next step now, the even grandeur way.

Use Cooldown properly!

This is the major concept people are missing.

The team I roll uses Hotshot and Quantum Jumper, why?

Quantum Jumper starts with a Cooldown!

This means ta-da, the agent AI can only use Hotshot. Such an easy way to “code” your character. Basically all the cooldowns are like if statements right. So if its round 1 item X cant be used,. This is what we would have written if we could. To force a usages of the first item we want to be triggered. Which right now is Hotshot.

This is also the reason why the new Special set wont be good in defense while one of those items also got AoE stun it will be at least 66% for the wrong item to be used. Hotshot is optimal as its used with an QA.

Its awesome that QJ starts with a CD in that sense. Another viable items is for example Power of 4 also starts with a CD and its perfect to trigger on round 2. The problem with Po4 is that then the Agent has to run a no cooldown item. Still its a 50% chance to use it each round(expect first) if its combined with e.g only warbringer axe. A lot people run like Po4 warbringer and more stuff. Then the Po4 will often be used way to late(which usually means not at all as the Agent is already dead).

This is the important part. Always think about what item do I want to use most and how do I increase the chance of making it true.

In the Hotshot QJ case we also get one epic item in the second round which is otherwise hard to get of and the order becomes amazing.

2 QA items(I go with Scroll and Signpost(obviously) + Hotshot and Quantum jumper means. Round 1 HS, Round2 QJ, Round 3 HS etc. So its amazing good item round 1 and then again another item.

Thats basically it, use items to make sure its a 100% chance to use the correct item.

Then its obviously good if you can get of another good item round 2, which is done by using precooldown item + item that has a cooldown after use.

Lastly, what possible characters can be used.

You want characters who obviously compliment each other or the agent. That is true for any game. What is important in Marvel Avengers Alliance is 2 factors.

LUCK!!!!

And  

Simplicity.

The reason Quicksilver is so good is because hes a combo of this 2 factors. He got a passive for extra damage which is just pure luck to get at the right person. He also got the AoE stun which in good luck stuns all 3.

Then he is pure damage he got no intelligent abilities no tricks really just 2 stealth attacks 1 aoe attack and 1 single target attack. Were all of them have no effects(expect stun and exploit combo but the latter is just a pure damage increase debuff so) just pure damage.

The goal to find possible characters who work in defense is simply to get characters who have these. DO NOT go for conditional synergies. Like Kitty Phoenix, hoping she will Mind link Kitty(also tanking is almost always pointless). So many things that can go wrong with hoping that the AI will set up synergies who requires specific abilities used on specific characters.

Team synergies that works are for example Union Jack + Human Torch as HT always has his annihilus rod passive. Which make him attack people for free sometimes and that can trigger Union Jack to also attack them for free.

OK I hope everyone gets the point and also understand that the way Playdom has designed the game usually most items that cost money usually are shit to get.

What you need is often only 1 good weapon maybe 2 if you can get one with start Cooldown.

I could write 10+ pages about how this illustrate a broken game system weapons with started cooldown should be balanced or weapons can become “nerfed” through getting a start CD. But as it is now several weapons would be better if they had different Cds as then the user can prepare the defense much better.

That’s that about the actual strategy you should utilize.

OK, I am gonna do a shortlist of playable characters for defence. And basically any other character not in the list is unplayable, like I mention earlier don't get into the trap "ooh but if Y does this to X and then Z does then its awesome". Yeah that wont happen nearly enough and you will lose.

Heroic Age Hawkeye: Huge variation in damage on luck, so not great.

Captian America both WW2 and Avenger, Avenger is better if you got good stats.

Po5. Colossus has some team he works in. The other suit is completely useless.

Ani Human Torch. Good vs a lot of fire and energy, survivability and the ultimate can give a win or a draw etc if lucky.

Kitty Pryde: Arguably works, if the opponent cant touch her and you got amazing damage output she is Ok.

Nightcrawler is pretty good, he is kinda bugged with his Swashbuckler outfit as it can miss but still apply bleed and stuff. His possibility to avoid stuff and interrupt attacks makes him a very luck based character which can win games then.

Iron Patriot War Machine: Straight powerhouse. I am testing him as Blaster + Shatterstar(in offense so far) with great success.

Tan Wolverine. Overall very good, stealth attack huge damage. A Stun. Recommend going with full defense set up e.g huge HP pool makes him better. Same with X-23.

Mockingbird, very situational. She can deal amazing damage on the same time she got no tricks etc and is very weak to phase teams and Emma Frost. But her stun can also give a lucky win.

Emma Frost. As everyone knows the Queen of PvP. Huge Damage with her ultimate, one of the best passive both huge damage and  a lot of luck factor with her passive and stun attack.

Rouge. Is actually quite good if you got huge bonuses to your stats.

Quicksilver. As mentioned earlier got both factors.

Ghost Rider: With either huge damage in a glass canon team for instantly kills with penance stare or maximum HP oriented team for a DoT strategies.

Cable: Has potential,-.-. very lucky based.

Havok. Straight forward like with Iron Patriot.

Magneto. Will basically always make sure the opponent Agent cant avoid nor critical hit. His shields can at sometimes trigger extra turns were the opponent cant stop it, and he deals huge damage. So both Luck and Simple damage but also decrease of opponent damage.

X-23: as with Wolverine she is pretty good in Health oriented teams.

Fantomex: is really good as his passive will make the characters avoid a lot. And his debuff disoriented is a lucky base and really nasty. He like x-23(and they make a good team together I tried it last season with like 40% win ratio at adam) if he is also 100% tanky. (I use 8 Spry iso)

Omega Sentinel: is really good if you got really high bonus(meaning if u got like 60 x 64 gold items)

Union Jack: Does have a huge luck factor in the right teams. He is more if a potently OP guy depending on the Meta.

Shatterstar: Super high damage super straight forward.