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.

Marvel Avengers Alliance: Best Team PvP season 8 and some reviews.

This article will predict the season 8 best team. The thing is as I did in my latest article about Marvel Avengers Alliance were I explained the epicness of Kitty Pryde and Vision.... that thing is still true.

So here I will mainly go through the newest characters and analyze if they would do have any affect on the PvP Meta.

However, I really recommend  people reading this article. Which is about how to set up the best defense team, which is far more important as anyone can win in offense. (my def team toke me to adamantium in season 7(note I am free user with not even full 2 x 60 gold items).

Lets look at the new heroes etc.

But first I want to talk about another issue yet again with Marvel Avengers Alliance.

Obviously the PvP system is horrible which I have already throughly explained. Now at this latest season we saw another evidence why. Maintenance. While the games server has gone down several times before this was the first time it went down with almost an hour left of the time.

But the worst thing is the inconsistency of the down maintenance. For me it was down, for others not. So when it finally worked for me again I had dropped like 180 points.....

Yeah a system which makes only the last seconds of rating matters is not a good system.

This again enforce the most important offensive strategy of MAA. You need a buffer, people often ask me: “What is your team” or “How did you stay so high when everyone attacks so much”.

Well I did not stay high I was higher then I dropped a little.

But actually, it is quite easy to avoid getting attacked a lot. The higher your ratio is the less you are attacked. So my def team set me at around 0.4-0.3 that is extremely unsafe so I play myself up to maybe 0.01 at least then. I just have to maintain that. Which is fairly easy. When you are that high you get attacked rarely sometimes you do get like 5+ quick loses I think I had one this season(not the maintenance time) so then I just have to play a number of attacks to get up there again. The maintenance cut down on my buffer a lot this time.....but it was still fine.

Bottom line: Pro tip 1 to get adamantium: Maintain a buffer by several hundred points over the border.

And yeah --- the system has a lot of issues.

Shatterstar: 

I always enjoyed Rob Liefield’s character design. Still I do not at all get why Playdom let Shatterstar be a PvP reward such a unknown character. He was never big and he is not really a part of any of the current big teams etc (and obviously don't have his own comic).  For example Canonball(Sam Guthrie) would make much more sense, he is arguably more famous then Shatterstar if we look at old comics etc. But, more importantly hes a member of the new Avengers team. Also I never felt Shatterstar was of any importance in any major crossover(not saying Canonball really was-_-). Most obvious character I guess I rather have is of course Longshot if we are gonna look at the Mojoverse characters.

I would really like to see Sprial as an enemy when I think about that, also I mention her because as a side note to me its pretty clear Spiral will join Uncanny X-Force.

Anyway here is Shatterstar's comments when he joins(as that usually bugs for a lot of people)

OK. I got him I know everyone cant get him, so automatically this makes him impact the meta less. Still if he was a super hard counter to X or Y he could. But he is not, hes actually pretty useless in that sense. He is not good against anything right now, expect Magneto and Iron Patriot(War machine alt suit...wtf were they thinking in Iron man 3 btw. Its a freaking Norman Osborn suit and its currently a villainous mass murder in Secret Avengers)

However, Shatterstar does ridiculous damage. While he don't counter anyone expect people with shields and protectors he just has a sick damage output. With my mass attack build(all possible blasters + decent attack armory) I can almost 1 shot people with his third ability and hes not level 12 yet!

So he is an agent killer I guess and a tank killer. But really he don't have any fancy moves, he don't have any worthwhile debuffs, his only other debuffs then the shield breaker are just pure damage, pain which increases damage taken and tenderize which increase damage from slash attacks and of course all his attacks are slash and that also increases his critical chance. Really a pure damage dealer.

But the damage is way over the top right now, using his ultimate you gain 1 more turn he can easily kill someone with doing the ultimate and then another attack.

I actually think he can be quite good in defense, because he cant really do anything expect auto attack anyway.

Shatterstar right now is really awesome. Hes only drawback is that he don't have a proper stealth attack, as I have talked about in an earlier article(the one before this right?) Stealth + Scrapper = true. As they then can get their class bonus but mainly just do huge damage right away to an infiltrator. However, Shatterstar first move is an AoE stealth attack. Using this one he get the class bonus and cant be countered etc so is much better then an AoE attack to get bonus which e.g Ghost Rider has to do. Furthermore, obviously he can go past tanks to get that bonus.

So what happens is that you first have to waste the first turn doing an AoE attack and then the next turn you can do Y and get the bonus attack. That’s a lot worse then Wolverine, Quicksilver Kitty, Kurt and so on.

More interestingly is normal primary attack(his follow up attack and coordinated attack etc) is like with Quicksilver an AoE attack. However, he deals like 3 times the damage of Quickslver with his AoE and give them all the pain debuff which stacks 3 times. If the enemy has am open infiltrator most commonly a tank agent he will do humongous damage right away.

The thing is I can see him getting nerfed any day, he does pure damage so I would not be surprised if they are gonna “fix him” and then they only can change the numbers he don't really have any effects they can tinker with which will probably leave him with to low damage and become useless. This probably will happen in the end of season 9 or in season 10.

Lastly he cant use his third ability the first round which annoyance me a lot, I see no reason for this. Its not even that good to start with as it builds more damage after the second ability, Just don't make sense.

7/10. In one way I don't really like Shatterstar hes a boring pure damage dealer and very uncreative, but he looks good at least and he is pretty straight forward as they come giving it some kind of simplistic design correctness.

Rescue:

Which is clearly only in the game to promote the Iron man 3 movie... I never liked this character in the comics. I mean I like Pepper, but as a heroine never really worked. Furthermore, that she don't have any weapons is just silly. Sure she can be pacifist and so on but come on logical she should have some Iron man weapons  for self-preservation.

Rescue will see a lot of play. But shes not that great. She is the best support character, not that is much competition. But she is completely raped by scroll of angolob and characters who can remove buffs. And as everyone is using that scroll more or less + they just added in a 64 gold item version of scroll of anglob, scroll of something else shitty name. Which is pretty much the same but no Quick Action but damage instead. I really don't thunk she will work. Especially she is awful on defense.

Her absolute best ability is that that her ultimate is... scroll of angolob but that she will give everyone a passive which removes 1 random debuff each turn. This can remove stuns which is huge and will make her a viable defense vs all the AoE stun attacks. Thats the only way I can see her get played to prevent being stunned. However, it is not a fail safe as she can be stunned and some other buff get removed. The most common AoE stun is Hotshot which also does burning and melt armor so its only 33% chance to actually remove the stun + any other debuff would of course lower the chance. And yeah their usually are more debuffs.

She will be really good in the best offensive team set up, the Damage over time. As in other games with this battle system(e.g Naruto arena(where I was number 1 in the world for a long time) Dots are amazing set everyone to health/def/evasion and ignore blasters and she wil be really good. Her heal is based around your characters max health, and of course she can tank much better if you just ignore attack power. Some extremely stable teams can be made by using that but as she has basically no damage at all and the rest of the team will also do lower damage then usually this will take ages to win a battle.

Still this means thats its very viable when you have low bonuses and I might even use her when I am at 2000+ rating and only face super money spenders were using a safe offensive team is necessary.

She is also very good together with Magneto, because of the magnetized debuff she also lays and that they are both then very defensive makes them good together. However, they are both tactician so even when she does remove the counter attack with her attack. Well she will first be countered once and most people can easily remove that debuff. Furthermore, the biggest issue with this team is again how both of them are owned by removal. This team will definitely never be good in defense, even if everyone is magnetized and magneto will them pre counter. Its just not to target him and he wont counter. In attack this team works if the agent is running the DoT damage horrible in defense. I faced some of this team last season with people having already bought her to level 12 and full epic amour etc, such a free win each game.

0/10. In a game design perspective Rescue is horrible shit of lack of innovative creation. All her moves are reused older stuff. Ultimate = scroll of angolob, Tank = a lot of characters magnetized = magneto. And on that not a horrible, horrible idea to enter. Magnetizing stuff was Magnetos personal debuff and hes by far the hardest character to unlock in the game. So by letting any other character has that just makes him seem so less worthwhile. Heal/Shield = Construct matrix one of the oldest item in the game... and lastly her attack has the unique debuff from Vision. Vision is one of the newest characters and his ultimate had that unique to him... just awful design in every way possible.

Shes also really boring to use. Oh I can like do 1 attack which gives me 2 turns then I can like throw 2 shields and just sit there until I want to remove debuffs.

Union Jack:

Finlay a real addition to the game ....not.

Well I actually like Union Jack hes amazing in PvE and a fun character to use. The huge problem is that the person(s) who designed him are fucking retards. Everything is fine with him except the decided he cant preemptively counter physic or stealth attacks. O, what was it that everyone and their mother was playing with thats right physic and stealth attacks especially as the absolute most popular team is Emma Frost and Quicksilver this season I would guess I faced around this team 60% of the time. And then of course you face Quicksilver + Phoenix or Emma + Phoenix and so on like previous season. So yeah a character which is really awesome but has absolute no effect versus the most common used characters.

Otherwise Union Jack kills everyone else. I mean really everyone else. My Union Jack often one shots people with his preemptively attack it does more damage then what is normal attack does and usually easily do 80% of their max health.

So hes kinda interesting to use in offense as long as you don't face the common teams you will absolutely devastating anything else.

And I would like to Note I used Union Jack + Fantomex (to level them) the whole season in offense until the last day and I lost zero battles. Is this because he still works?

Well its more because hes bugged. OK Union Jack right now with my agent can easily get everyone down to 30-40% health in one attack. And thats in offense so he actually works in defense in will, as long as you utilize the games horrible coding (its more that the games system is awfully constructed around how the games count attack etc as object I would guess but this I would say is not intended).

Hotshot! yes the item who everyone already know is imba, try using it with Union Jack! Hotshot first does an AoE attack, then it don't apply burning + melt armor and might apply stun no.

 It does an second follow up attack on everyone.........................which is fucked up. And this usually mean Hotshot is irritating Overpowered as then even if a character avoids the attack he/she can still be stunned by the follow up(note this does not do damage it just applies the debuffs afterwards regardless of hit or not)

 What it means when Union Jack is on the field is that he can trigger his Allied Forces per Follow up attack. Usually around 1-2 but extremely rarely 0 and sometimes 3 then. Which means he will attack them individually and gain his Capital Defence buff.

  When I do a Hotshot what happens is I get them to around 60-70% health(depending on armor etc) and then he shots 2 and deals like 30% of their health. So in one AoE from the agent you can get 2 down to 30% and one to 60% if you are lucky all 3. And thats just the agent turn. Then you can easily kill one of them with Union Jack(or the other character for that matter).

When using Union Jack is a lot about thinking about how cool the British flag as and how many small countries the British conquered its all about that allied forces. Characters that works really well with him are then obviously people with follow up stuff. As I mentioned Fantomex  is great because of his Eva follow up attack can also trigger from anyone getting attacked and when anyone attacks same with Human Torch(but I severely prefer Fantomex over Human Torch). Other good characters are Avenger suited ones or the agent then with Coulson'srevenge.  But, if you got optimal items there is no room for Coulson in the agent arsenal(as I explain in my defense article).

One would think preemptively teams are better with him, e.g Magneto or Quicksilver and Agent with Mayuhga and/or Decade. While it has some uses, as I mentioned how many times will Union Jack actually be able to pre counter, not a lot. It is much more effective to aim at follow up attacks.

Still even do its horrible how he cannot counter physic and stealth I have to say he easily slay the opponent agent. Its easy to determine what items they have and set up the right ability.

Union Jack has a very interesting meta potential. If people stopped using QS and Emma he would be one of the absolute best characters. Given that they aren't replaced by other Physic/stealth characters. Hes a character one really should have at level 12 as he can any day become extremely good.

Lastly his ultimate, which gives anyone a guaranteed extra attack(basically gives them the scrapper bonus) can obviously create some nasty combos. Especially with characters who take more turns, Omega Sentinel, Cable etc.

5/10. I like the general idea of Union Jack, but its so extremely faulty finish. The person responsible should be ashamed, all characters who are released have to be PvP usages. Releasing a character thats abilities don't work against 50%+ of the teams the user faces....just sad.

Summary of prediction for  season 8:

New teams with Rescue will be used and should be really, really easy to defeat facing them in offense.

Shatterstar will have zero effect on the meta as hes just a damage dealer and don’t counter anyone.

Union Jack is pretty good and might become on of the top characters if Emma etc is nerfed.

What  this means is that basically season 7 characters will still be played. Meaning Kitty awesome, Vision awesome. A lot of Emma a lot of QS etc.