I been gone for a dam long while now as I last year I moved 3 times (3 different countries) and the last time I wrote about Marvel Avengers Alliance I had for a short while worked at Disney still had nothing to do I guess off work but then I kinda quickly got a new job again which had me move again, then my mother sold her house so I really had to move. With all my stuff and so on, we also had a flood just before that with most of my stuff still in my mothers basement etc. Then I had to commute at first when I think about it for my new job back in Sweden which was 2.5 hours 1 way. So I had zero time to do anything unfortunately. Long story, bla bla. Pretty much. But now I plan to go over each character in Marvel Avengers Alliance which I always had. And I can say right away that Cloak and Dagger is crazy overpowered and this recap will mainly talk about how good they are. Then I will go over each character in order of release since my latest so it will take my a while to get to a full review of Cloak and Dagger.
It especially takes a lot of time to fill in the tier list, so that will not be finished until way later. At least not before I have review each character, but I can say that CD(Cloak and Dagger) is rank 1, they are extremely broken.
Knowing how friendly the Internet is, let me just start by posting this screen shoots so people don't think I lost my edge, I been playing the game constantly easy getting into Adamantium with 1 day effort I just haven't had time to write about it.
Of course I haven't been aiming for rank 3000 that just takes way to much time for no actually gain.
Current Meta:
What I want to talk about is the games current meta teams, the agent weapons and the general counters etc. I think that's the most important part of wining in the game and then other post as I mentioned will go over characters in detail.
First of all I think this season was pretty fun it was a lot of varied teams is not anymore the only fear itself or the Emma Frost in every battle. Well at high level of play you do face CD a lot, around 80% of the games.
But the CD teams are varied, they are not just CD and Nul, while its the most common one and actually what I used in offence is not the only CD team.
CD are mixed around with the top 3 fear itself characters, Nul, Kuurth and Angrir. As well with characters like Spitfire and other high damage dealers. However, CD also works with slow teams for the damage over time effect so they where also played with Loki, Pestilence and Enchantress.
SO overall I really enjoyed that a lot of variance even at the Top, while it was clear that CD is the new Emma Frost (first year) or Kuurth (year 2).
Right away that points at why CD is so good, they can be both high damage dealers, slow safe damage and they can heal the team and remove debufffs....yeah they freaking got everything. I am not gonna go into their details here but here is how their most effience team works.
You take Nul for this meteor rain that never goes away and use CD's second ability that damage everyone and heals them. This means you have 2 aoe constant damage dealing effects on the opponents which makes them take around 15-20% life each turn. Stack with the agent doing some aoe damage as well, its just a super safe way to kill any opponent.
Also the Meta is a lot about self healing with Bruiser agents, Angrir never deign, Enchantress self healing with magic abilities etc. This means that the Despair Iso is super important to be able to debuff the whole enemy team with it and here Nuls debuff is excellent for a safe Despair on the opponent. CD can also use it for their second ability so if I did not have Nul with it I would have it on them instead. On CD I used Endemic Iso instead so that the opponent cant remove debuffs as well as cant heal or resurrect.
Note do that Cloak and Dagger is IMBA they can still heal over Despair...
Otherwise as people now I am not a big fan of Nul, do I like him with Angrir as well but thats more as I like Angrir and he is good with him, likewise he is good with CD because of the same AoE meteors, you add that he can hit flying with his ground attack and as its ground attack it cant be protected. Its just very safe, I face a lot of people having way higher stats then me as I don't use any gold to improve my armor stats, I do that like once every 4-5 season or so. And 90% or so of the ones I faced has higher stats then me. In those cases damage over time effects as I have talked about in previous strategy guides are far superior. (But CD also deals huge flat damage ..broken)
So thats that team, its the best team by now.
Second best I would say is Angrir and Nul.
I really like Angrir, his possession debuff is amazing it can basically stun the whole opponent team even if they are stun immune! Its summon magic and cannot be countered and because of that it can be isoed to be Quick action it can also add in debuffs otherwise etc. He can also heal your team and protect you from damage. Very good at keeping you and himself a live and this is why he works with Nul as he reduces damage taken as well and makes Nul survive for the meteors. He can nullify Enchantress which is still decently popular.
Stamina Drain!!!
But what makes him strong is the combo with the Agent, Bruiser agent has always been the best. But now with the life and stamina steal iso, your agent can just stand there and adsorb attacks.
This is also the new shet. Trust me. Stamina drain has always been kinda good except when Tactician just made you have infinitive stamina I wrote about that years ago. But now Stamina is high still I would say but it is possible to take it away with such a good items for it. Signpost was always the best agent item and even more now. Stealing Hp and Stamina each turn, healing the agent so he is hard to kill and eventually if you get down to a 1v1 with your agent left they would run out of stamina eventually even 2 years ago. But now today just wow. Its so easy. I been runing with Luna-C for a while to further take away stamina and as the Madness debuff was great with Emma Frost. But now we also have the agent Bruiser iso. Which makes the agent auto drain all melee attackers. Bam they are out of stamina,
Even better last pvp gave us the Spirit Blade which is like the second best agent item now! Even better then the cube, it further drains a lot of stamina and heals the agent. Its literally impossible to kill an agent if you don't turn of healing. Especially as every agent runs the resurrect iso.
I was thinking about this a lot actually, as everyone is using this everyone is also using anti heal/resurrect at high level or else you cannot kill the agent. Because of that he resurrect iso actually is not that good anymore, it is pretty crap actually because it just never triggers. But stealing stamina is still suuuuper good now as even if you do not yourself gain it, the enemy loses it. And now you can easily drain all their stamina in 2-3(depending on their stats) turns, simply with Bruiser agent Spirit Blade + Signpost. And then throw in Angrir, bam 2 turns as he can also drain stamina. Its extremely strong, I would not necessarily say that Angrir is the second strongest character in the game but hes definitely in the top but the combo with the stamina draining agent is the best in the game!
Sure I used Nul over him because I just wanna win fast, because even hard matches leaves my CD alive vs them and they die by their broken shet. And it always goes Super fast. Gaining ranked points at an alarming speed. But the best partner for the best kind of Agent that is Angrir. The Stamina drain completely shuts down characters like Kuurth, who never gets to damage you, she sets up her debuffs and never get to attack, I was never a fan of her as she was so slow, now shes just useless. Enchantress always had a huge issue with luna-c agent stamina drain, she is completely out of this. Shes countered by Angrir anyway but with the agent going the same set up. She cannot do anything either. Every character that attacks are lot will go out of stamina in 2 turns max. Some even turn 1.
So this kind of agent in general is amazing vs Spitfire and Quicksilver as they just heal him and Spitfire teams are quite common. But then with Angrir's stamina drain as well :) They cant do anything. And it also then beats the rocket raccoon teams, if you survive turn 1 they will not be able to move. They can lock them self out sometimes even after the first combo attack.
And! Back to the resurrect iso. While I considered removing it as all top teams pretty much will remove healing and resurrect, sometimes like 20% or so of the matches at high adamantium will feature people with high damage type of teams. Mostly Spitfire teams, usually SF and Star-Lord. Or Rocket Raccoon with usually Spider-Man Noir. But also other type of high damage teams like Beta Ray Bill or other electric teams and than its a few % really funky teams that some run.
All of these are super useless versus resurrect. If you don't have a good debuffer with which removes healing, you cant win pretty much. So even if 70% (roughly I would say) the resurrect iso(that cost 30 gold I probably should say but is way worth it) of the games its useless. The 30% its an auto win.
As long as people are not on the ball of this kind of healing Agent, you cannot lose. They may kill you but you then easily jump to full life again drain their stamina and then they cant do any damage you keep healing yourself and so on. Its just so strong it was not worth removing as the meta was not stall enough for only fear itself or CD teams. (Which is really good way game wise)
I would summarize and say that healing teams way outplay the rest of the teams. High attack teams have a chance because they can kil them so fast, but resurrect agent, resurrect on Angrir etc then comes back once more so it can be really tough. And other teams who are just there, like Enchantress + Pestilence a good classic team but they are 100% useless versus healing teams, unless if you despair on one of them but they cant spread it as good as for example CD with a stable unblockable AoE debuff.
Agent set up:
The agent items I use, which I would say is the best set up unless you go full attack is. You may change a few of these to get in for example Luna-C instead especially as it stacks better with the Dark Energy Blade. You may want to change Modok but I would not recommend it.
Spirit Blade -Cube - Signpost - Custom Only For Killing (modok's weapon) and Dark Energy Blade.
I am gonna rank them and top 3 is not changeable. There is no better item than them 100% sure on that.
1: Signpost. This has been the weapon for ages. Its amazing, simply drain life and stamina each turn, no counter no way to protect them self. It goes over ethereal plane etc as its magic. It heals your agent by a lot. Its just so incredible solid as its a Quick Action so you will use it each and eveyr turn. This is also why I removed Luna-C in favor over Spirit Blade. First I wanted to have Luna-C+ Spirit Blade + Signpost. But I just never ended up using Luna-C over this item, very rarely will Luna-C be better then Signpost to use, maybe once a game like the first turn. Note Luna-C also is way better with Modok's weapon. Luna-C is great but you don't have spot for both of htem anymore, you used to be able to use all QA weapons but now you can only use one per turn and Signpost is just so good not to use.
2: The Cube. 20% Evasion for team(Fantomex passive) being able to debuff, opponents. Being able to clean yourself of buffs (usually the heal is voided these days) but then especialy the probably field from Scarlet Witch has always been amazing. When you cant remove debuffs you can still buff yourself to counter out many of them. Which also works on the opponent. Broken item as always
3: Spirit Blade. This is a new item and its crazy good. I was surprised how good it was. It does give your team mates protect, which kinda mess with the attackers as you also run protect on your agent. Mainly its bad but it may also be good. W.e its worth it anyway, agent as the last in your team is standard and agent with these items is super hard to kill in 1v1 for most characters its 100% impossible so yeah just ignore that passive thing.
The good shet is the debuffs, it first of all heal yourself again as with Signpost, good luck killing the agent, removing stamina as I been over. But it also gives HEX. Hex is super annoying, like Wanda is actually pretty good. Hex is when you attack it Backfires and you take damage, high damage teams like a Spitfire teams also take extra damage as they got low defecne and high attack. I seen them take like 33% of their max life on a Backfire. As I went over this team set up is great vs those teams anyway, with Spirit Blade its even better. But in General Hex just makes your team avoid 1-2 attacks per battle. Which means longer game, great for CD (and other DoTers like Enchanters, Nul,Angrir, Emma Frost etc). It just stacks so good with its own stamina drain and of course again then Signpost.
It also has freaking more stuff, it has Breakdown! This is a random debuff that can hit stuff like Deathfrost. Deathfrost is the better form of Chilled which damage over time health and STAMINA.
I mean really, wtf Playdom. If you go this kind of agent and hit them with Deathfrost they will have no stamina left at all at an incredible rate. And you will be able to keep locking them down by removing so much that they cant attack anyway after a recharge.
It can also hit them with Soulfire removing their buffs and a bunch of other random dots. Its just amazing, it may be better then the Cube. The cube is just so well used, so well proven that its amazing. That I rate it as rank 2 for now. But just attack wise, sprit blade is the best by far. Oh it also never misses, its magic so it can be avoided. Its basically just the attack version of Signpost.
That what I mean that these 3 items are just by far the best. You don't even need to use anymore items.
4: Dark Energy Blade. It is weaker without madness debuff from Luna-C that is for sure because that thing made you be able to hit cube and other moves which otherwise this weapon cant hit as they are subtitle. But even so its a very good item.
What it does is that it interrupts moves by the opponent sometimes. So while you can attack with it and it does ok damage, sometimes it does 2 attacks, well most of the time opponent have the drain life bruiser iso so you will just lose more life then. Basically its attack is shet. Never use it. Its all about its amazing passive. I would prefer if it did not have an attack for my AI agent. What we want is the passive.
Not being able to interrupt everything makes it a lot weaker but it still makes you protect allies which stacks with your life drain and it also gives you an extra turn! When that happens. Almost always. So its way to have your agent gain like 1 extra turn every second round being able to interrupt a lot of attacks and debuff moves.
5. Custom Only For Killing. This is just Tap from Emma. You will debuff someone and even if that debuff has been hard nerfed it means they will take something like 30% of their max life if they attack. It stil just such a good safe way to kill a specific taget like a Pestilence or a Nul that has to die fast.
It also is really good because the base damage is way, way higher then Emma's so you can actually kill people with the attack alone. And this attack is not stopped by psychic immunity as its a Energy attack. This means you can still use it to attack a Kuurth or Magneto etc. And this damage is actually very high if you have the Bruiser iso stack on you.
And of course its stil a psychic attack so its not blockable, its not counterable etc. Its very safe damage on someone.
The mental debuff has been the most safe, most solid debuff in the game since pre season 1!!! Even do its nerfed now its still just such as safe way + then that agent actually do deal high damage with, you know safe damage.
Note: There are a couple of other items which are great, but you don't wanna go into using items like the staff(which I can bother to check what name it has, askahandir?) for example. Because you do not want to heal by "healing". That is to slow and to weak and gets instantly countered by despair teams. You want to heal by draining! Draining is the key word here. Those kind of items are still popular and that is stupid. Its an auto lose against a CD team.
2 isos are then mandatory.
Its obviously Elite Empowered iso for Bruiser the super broken draining iso.
Then resurrect as I went over that will just stop so many teams.
Lastly, do I actually Pox Foil.
This removes the debuff from signpost on your agent. This means you will never die on those 5% HP left where you could heal to 50% but you died from your own poison. It also removes that stats minus making you deal more damage and makes you immune to stuff like biofeedback which Kuurth will hit you with like 20% of the games. I am not saying its the best one, but its the most solid one. No chances just victory.
While I talked a lot about this set up now, it still boils down to how this actually is super important for the Meta.
Because this with variation is what you will face, draining agents with Angrir as the worst draining team but even when its like Kuurth + Nul its gonna be Draining Bruiser agent tanking for them almost always!
This is the agent to beat.
Meta Teams:
These are some of the teams you see then (This is like 90% or so I wont bother with each small fringe set up)
Pestilence + Rulk: Classic debuff team, they are crap now! Never been very good, but yeah just kill Pestilence and its over.
Pestilence + Enchanters: The evolution of Rulk teams. Enchantress is very strong and impossible to kill for a lot of characters. Here the anti heal is very important and killing Pestilence fast yet again.
Enchantress + Loki: A Rare team but strong. Loki will counterspell your stuff and Enchantress will stun you(charm) or make you attack the wrong things, Loki also make some attack heal. This team is super hard to beat with no anti heal as Loki also uses magic and they are pretty much only used by people with full gold wallet stats. They will wither you down. Weak versus anti debuff characters like Cloak and Dagger or Emma Frost.
Enchantress + Cloak and Dagger: Here Enchantress will protect CD with her mind stuff and CD will drain everyone life while she self heals over their drain. And then you die eventually by all the debuffs and shet. Somewhat weak to anti heal. Weak versus Cloak and Dagger as they can remove the other CD darkness and remove Enchantress debuffs. If this team was not so weak versus CD it may be the strongest CD team.
Cloak and Dagger + Nul
Cloak and Dagger + Kuurth
Cloak and Dagger + Angrir
Cloak and Dagger + Loki
Cloak and Dagger + Everyone else
Its a lot of CD teams. What does not work is low damage teams or teams who dont actually support them. Kuurht is pretty bad, her cower is meh and that's about it. CD and Nul as I went over is solid AoE. CD and Angrir is suuuper lock down and super slow game with massive self heal and drains. Easily a top team. CD Loki is like with Enchantress hard to kill, healing, prevent enemy damage etc eventually die all die from the darkness.
Another team that is actually very strong is Cloak and Dagger + Spitfire
So this is a full attack set up and your CD will deal broken, really broken damage with the third ability as it has way to high base damage this then with spitfire also doing super high damage and going first can easily kill 2 characters turn 1. I would say this is the best attack CD team but you can also go with like Quicksilver, Star-Lord etc
Fear itself combos:
As always the ever lasting fear itself team up is popular. Best by far as the other kinda sucks is of course Nul Angrir. Where Angrir will slow down the game a lot especially with his possession. Which makes it harder to kill Nul so the meteors can fall for a longer time.
The other ones are way worse, but the Kuurth + Nul used to be the 90% every dam game team. So its not surprising is still played about 10% or so of the games even do Angrir is vastly superior. And no ever played Akroma anymore (but probably someone is running like Akroma Kuurth like 3-4 season back but its less 1%). And well the Angrir + Kuurth is also played probably around 5% still, which I guess is also based on the reminiscing of Kuurth and Nul but those people want to mix it up just a little bit.
Electric teams:
Then we have the mix of static charged teams which uses the electric debuffs to do more damage with their attacks mainly as how the chain lighting thing bounces around:
The classic one is still used around 5% (which is)
Victor Mancha + Beta Ray Bill: This team has always sucked. Its a crap team, if you can use a remove debuffs with your first character like Agent or CD. Game over they cannot win. Only thing annoying with this team is how Victor Mancha never dies, that is however auto fixed by using anti heal in your team which you run anyway. So yeah this team is utter crap now.
Then you do of course have inferior mixture of this team. Which are not that common anymore as the main staple is low as mentioned but still you will find Thor + Beta, Thor + Victor etc all bad.
I am actually quite surprised that no one used Electro he does amazing damage. I mean really. Elector is great. His ability makes everyone do electric so it stacks way better with the agent. And then his ultimate is like a one shoot ability. Hes by far the best one, typical people don't wanna adept and change. If I where to run electric team he is my number 1 choice by far.
Also Female Thor, really good passive that interrupts everything that is really good at AI defence. So for example Beta Ray Bill + Female Thor is way better then Beta + Victor. He can start by static charging everyone and than she will interrupt everything. This works in attack. Should be even better in defence. Just saying, this archetype got 2 new good characters no one is using. I can see why no one is using Blue Marvel he is also really good btw but he is jut solid good, he does not combo with anyone.
I used Electro in attack for a long time last season, him alone being the only electric guy and that was when leveling him (lol) and it worked amazing. He would just 1 shoot anyone turn 2. So if you wanna go Electric go Electro that is my main point.
Than we have the full auto go first team.
I alreayd mentioned Spitfire and CD which is great. Otherwise its Spitfire + Star-Lord or Spitfire + Quicksilver
These teams are often super easy to beat or lose right away. They go first they are super low on life and defence but they do huge damage. Can you survive turn 1 you win. They are easily countered by agent as I went over. But also with for example astral plan iso on your character. I run that on CD or they die from spitfire at start. But if they have it, Spitfire wont be able to do anything(some people run her with +magic attacks which I would recommend). They are very weak, VERY weak versus Emma Frost with Diamonds last forever. Then she can take infinite attacks and nothing happens. Emma should have love defence so the AI targets her and does nothing. Follow up attacks does zero damage on the follow up as well. Overall as mentioned the Agent should take care of these teams.
I will say do that wile Spifire and QS are good versus CD. I found myself many times with a 10% Hp CD and then I just go to full hp again with them, very risky team but they do pretty much auto win versus any fringe team. Any kind of weird out of meta team that is not super high on defence will auto lose instead versus this team so its a good way to win like every 10th defence. Which can be fine on like 2000+ rating. OF course they do also counter teams like Pestilence etc. Because they don't have time to set up their dots / die from the dots.
Lastly you have the follow up combo team that everyone hates.
Which of course is Rocket Raccoon + Spider-man Noir and Union Jack kinda does the same spot as Noir. Also some other team ups like Rocket Raccoon + Star-Lord.
All of these teams are even more countered by Emma Frost with her unique iso. She gets attacked as of her low defence and no one can injure her all the follow up does zero damage and then she can kill all of them with 2 aoes..
This team is exactly like the super fast go team. Full attack no defence. If you survive turn 1 you win. However, they do put in 1 extra issue. Some of them can trigger counters or pre counter moves usually the agent. This will stop you from using certain abilities. This is again why Emma is the bane of this team as she can just use her psychic abilities with no issue.
I never found this team strong at all, sure maybe becasue I use Emma a lot but. You just have to be smarted, don't use counterable moves to easily/eagerly and you will be fine. If its not worth it for high damage / debuffs don't use it, simple as that. You just have to be smart vs this, for example with my current agent Attack with Spirit Blade is a bad option triggering them. So here I just go turn 1: Signpost and then cube, to give them disoriented. Disoriented is great versus them for that matter but its also safe. That's the safe way, if am first in my team I may use spirit blade to get them to be hexed as that is so good and then my team won't likely die. And then for example you don't use the aoe attacks with CD but the second ability it wont trigger them and start to drain them.
And eventually my agent just never loses to them alone anyway. They are weaker the less you are as its less combos for follow up so then I can drain heal over their damage while quickly get them into no stamina and then sprit blade becasue very viable to use. Also this team always had 1 huge flaw. As soon as 1 of them die they are useless. They need to team combo to work. IF you kill of Rocket Raccoon (usually easiest) The others just cant do anything. However, its easier to instead kill the agent sometimes etc depending on what happens. So comparing to for example Pestilence teams or a Nul team where they have to die fast. This is easier as any target will do then they cant anymore do the follow up and its over.
Characters that I missed:
(Electro I suppose he was never used so cannot really miss him but, I thought at least someone would try)
Amazing Spider-Women: She has one of the highest damage in the game, singel target which is better I would say then AoE she can just kill of 1 person right away, often the agent. While countered by resurrect she was still amazing and webbing is quite good. But she seems to be completely forgotten now, I would much rather use her with Spitfire I think then any other combo.
You know what spider-teams in general. The weebing debuff is great when all 3 characters spams it.
Another team that seems to be almost dead now is Invisible Women and X. Often Nul.
Where the team would rely on her shields to prevent debuffs. She was always completely horrible so I am not surprised her popular has died of, this team still pops up but very rarely. I miss her as she was the worst character in the game for the opponent to have last. Sometimes it would be her vs my agent....and just wow she ultimate and the agent can still use signpost on her and heal himself etc. The best free kill in the game. Reminiscing of old Rescue teams that died of over a year ago.
Also the Colossus PO5 team seems dead now, that is because it was a healing team and not a Draining team. They would heal themself for ever and never do anything. They where also a 100% free kill then for a Drain team, as then you heal yourself as well but also deals damage. (Obviously the only self heal/protect team never worked)
I guess overall the shield yourself teams are completely gone soon over the way superior Angrir, cd,enchantress etc the damage + heal characters.
Amazing Spider-Women is really the only purely character I do not get why shes gone as she as mentioned is probably the highest single target damage in the game and stil is so she has use in several teams.
