PvP requires ever evolving strategies in the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance. Strategies that assured victory in Season 15 are practically worthless in Season 16. And that is particularly important because at least one of the rewards for Season 16 is one of the best uniforms ever released. If you are trying to get the rewards from a tier above silver during PvP Season 16, the following guide will help you get to the top of the ladder.
Diamond League Reward: Satellite Support – The simple existence of this equipment basically assures that X-Force Psylocke will only be useful during PvP Season 16. When you use this equipment, you entire team becomes immune to distraction and disoriented and attacks against your team can’t be stealthy. Additionally, it activates Wild Blue Yonder three rounds after the equipment is used. This practically destroys PvP teams using X-Force Psylocke or Fandral and hurts the Cosmic Cube as well. But, while the Satellite Support is a nice spoiler in PvP, it is mostly worthless in PvE. Ironically, the existence of this device makes it unnecessary to use, because players will simply stop using the heroes and equipment it nullifies once it becomes available. Simply put, you don’t need to earn it to take advantage of it.
Vibranium League Reward: Infiltrator’s Safeguard Suit – This uniform is the best reward from PvP Season 16. The primary benefit of this suit is that the wearer is immune to the off-balance debuff, which is one of the most devastating debuffs to use against most agents, especially in PvP. Additionally, the first attack the agent makes in a battle applies the fumbling status effect to the enemy. You should tailor you efforts to reach Vibranium above all else during Season 16.
Adamantium League Reward: Drax – Drax is a mediocre hero at best, mostly useful in niche or corner case situations. Reaching Adamantium League will save you 135 command points, but you shouldn’t put any special effort into it.
Threat: Heroic Age Iron Fist – One of the biggest threats of Season 16 is Heroic Age Iron Fist. Almost all of the top PvP players own him and he appears in nearly a majority of the defensive PvP teams. His ability to preemptively counter and prevent follow-up and counterattacks completely destroys the most common PvP strategies. You will see him on a lot of enemy teams and you need to be capable of limiting your follow-up and counterattacks when this happens. This means you should completely avoid heroes like Ares or Black Widow that have counterattacks and follow-up attacks that can’t be manually avoided. Even stunning Iron Fist won’t stop him, because he can prevent these attacks while stunned. You either need to defeat him or use a different strategy. The simple solution, during PvP Season 16 is to build a team that has as few counterattacks and follow-up attacks as possible.
Solution: Heroic Age Iron Fist – There are only a few heroes that effectively handle Iron Fist. There are a few reasons for this. First, since you don’t know whether he will be a scrapper or a bruiser, it is hard to rely on counterclass strategies. Second, if you damage him too much, he can simply heal himself and his entire team. The latter is the big problem, though rather easily solved. Either Horseman of Death or Gamora can hit him with a status effect that will prevent him from using buff or healing actions. Alternatively, if you don’t have either of those characters, you can hit him with the exhausted debuff. This prevents him from powering up before healing, which makes his healing ability much less useful. Havok, in particular, is an excellent counter to Iron Fist because he can apply exhausted, has a massive single target attack that can take him out in almost one shot, and will sometimes be the counterclass to this hero.
Threat: X-Force Psylocke – Since she is almost certain to lose her effectiveness in Season 17, Psylocke is especially likely to be prevalent in PvP Season 16. Expect to see her on a team with either Wolverine or Deadpool, also in an X-Force uniform. This means that two of the three enemy characters only have stealthy attacks and have true strike with all attacks. This is devastating if you are using the Cosmic Cube and makes counterattack strategies even more worthless. It also means that protection heroes will be of low value in Season 16. Killing Psylocke quickly can solve your problem, but she isn’t easy to defeat.
Solution: X-Force Psylocke – True strike is your best friend against Psylocke. You should expect that she will probably be a tactician instead of an infiltrator, which makes true strike a little bit harder to get. You could fight fire with fire and use X-Force Psylocke as well, but is chancy. Since she will probably be a tactician, Omega Sentinel is actually perfect. She can apply targeted to Psylocke in order to ignore her Psionic Shadow and then attack her with scrapper powers that completely ignore her Kinetic Shield.
Threat: Four Horseman Equipment – Even though new Special Operation equipment has been released, Four Horseman equipment is still very popular in PvP and almost a near majority of defensive teams equip a few items of it. This means that you can expect your team to constantly be hit with debuffs round after round. Unless your agent is equipped with nothing but the Scroll of Angolob in every slot, you simply can’t keep up with this onslaught unless you prepare for it.
Solution: Four Horseman Equipment – There are two excellent ways to deal with this set. The first method is to depower the agent. Spiral is particularly good for this because she has a stealthy attack that can apply depowered. Fandral would also be an excellent choice if not for Heroic Age Iron Fist. Alternately, if you have the right Empowered ISO, Invisible Woman can make your team immune to negative status effects whenever she puts a shield on them. Use Future Foundation Invisible Woman to add shields more often. This also allows you to make her a blaster instead of an infiltrator, which may be a little safer, depending on the metagame for your level.
Threat: Havok – You probably won’t see Havok that often, but he will be common on offensive teams. This means you want a defensive team that can take care of that hero. The only way you can judge your success is by looking at your defensive score changes, so this requires a little guesswork.
Solution: Havok – Since you are relying on the AI to control your defensive team, you can’t afford to get tricky. You need a character this will assuredly hit Havok with exhausted on the first round of combat. There are two characters in the game that will do that for near certain. The first is Havok’s brother, Cyclops, assuming you have a tactician version of Cyclops. He will almost always start by using Exploit Weakness on Havok. If you want to be even more confident, fight fire with fire and put Havok on your defensive team. The two characters pretty much negate each other, so then it just depends on how effective the rest of your team is.
