Source
r/MarvelStrikeForce•
psolva

Unpopular opinion: Asguardians have no redeeming qualities

Discussion

In the midst of all the "We want more Sif shards" threads, I thought I'd post my thoughts.

In most cases, when a team comes up that's hard to beat, it's usually an incentive to get it, try it out in Blitz, and usually it's fun to do that. Most teams are interesting, have interesting quirks, and you get to know and like them for what makes them different.

I... I almost regret doing this with the Asguardians (except that because it's so OP you pretty much have to.) The Asguardians are what happens if you allow Michael Bay to design a MSF team. Each power might just as well be labelled "Blam!". Hell, I've seen 3 of the 5 opponents wiped out by the Asguardian's passives without me needing to lift a finger. And for the most part, you don't need to use any strategy or thought while using them, just randomly press buttons for a couple of minutes and you've won.

Which is probably why they're almost unbeatable on defense because that's more or less what the AI does.

It's not that I want them nerfed, it's that I'd like them to actually be interesting and for it to be possible to think of strategies to make them work together, like you would Guardians or Supernaturals, or even Defenders. The Asguardians aren't the only team like this, some come close like the Power Armor group, but it seems to be an extreme simply because they're so OP.

Posted Mar 24, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

020
Aronndiel1•

People dont want Sif shards to make their asgardians stronger, they want to be able to unlock Black Bolt (mostly)

19
KickCastleXIDeadpool•

This.

3
psolvaOP•

Yeah I forgot about that, but I get the impression that it's a popular team right now and it's wise to collect them to at least use as your Arena defense team.

-2
TheRealTormDK•

Asgardians don't do that well on Arena defense truth be told.

Maybe in newbie shards, but the nano second your shard gets Phoenix and Ultron, it's game over.

5
SIIRCMKillmonger•

Or. Phoenix or Ultron. I know from experience.

1
Hydecka84•

They’re not an arena defence team, they’re an alliance war defence team

5
vexedvox•

I'd never let my Asgardians anywhere near arena, though I have heard it's popular for early-mid game players

2
psolvaOP•

I'm seeing 20-30% of people in the top 500 using it as their defense team, and I understand why as someone who finds it hard to beat an Asguardian team that's 20-30% less powerful than my 'A teams'. So I'm kinda surprised everyone here is saying they're useless as Arena defense.

1
vexedvox•

They're much easier to beat in arena since they don't have their war boosts. It just depends on where in the game you are. My arena is nothing but Ultron/Phoenix etc. Granted, I stay top 100 to maybe 150ish if I get busy and drop. No clue what it looks like lower than that

2
maj0rdisappointment•

Don't be ridiculous. Can't name all the passives "Blam!"... Need to call one "Blammo!", another "Ka-Blam!", and another one "Boom!"

Honestly, the Asgardians get routine after a while, but they're nowhere near as boring as the Punfenders.

7
AtlaholicMercenary Riot Guard•

Tell that to bungie. They named so many of my halo 3 stuff Blam.

2
BasedDogTreats•

I prefer the “wham, bam, thank ya ma’am, thrust, fuck, thank ya Chuck”

1
ZP4LHYDRA Scientist•

I love the way Power Armor is set up. They HAVE to kill the enemy within two turns, otherwise they become completely useless. It creates an interesting risk/reward situation.

My biggest issue with Asgardians, like all war defense specific teams, is I never get to see the full potential of my team. I hate hate hate war defense specific traits...

6
XKingslayerBSJAnt-Man•

Man.. there's so many times I have taken PA against guardians in 8-3 and groot and drax survived the turn 2 and just proceeded to whittle down and kill everyone because you're doing peanut damage to them after turn 2

2
fordmadoxfraud•

And for the most part, you don't need to use any strategy or thought while using them, just randomly press buttons for a couple of minutes and you've won.

Unpopular opinion maybe, but this describes probably this entire game.

There isn't nearly as much "gameplay" as people think there is. Outcomes are mostly deterministic based on character kit and power level. Outcomes would be different if every fight on offense was set to AUTO - for sure - but not *drastically* different. I'm thinking a human player makes a material difference in outcomes in high-single, low-double digit percentage points. Like, maybe 15, 20% of the time it matters that a person is even there playing.

The rest of the time, the car drives itself. The game does a good job disguising this (as evidenced by how often I hear people describing their play as ever being "skill" based.) It's certainly not not-skill-based, but that's definitely not the dominant factor at play.

What you're describing is just ... the game being a little more transparent about what it actually is.

2
ZP4LHYDRA Scientist•

Made me realize...I have no idea when the last time I manually played a blitz match. I’ve never not auto’d every blitz for as long as I can remember.

2
GeneralGalvatronThanos•

You are 100% correct. This is a ‘strategy’ game (though it is becoming increasingly less strategic) that requires literally 0 skill (unless you consider pushing a button a skill). A ‘skill’ game is Contest of Champions; I have seen Seatin beat the hardest content in the game with teams I could not even dream of doing the same with. In this game though, if you give me the same team as person X, I can (provided RNG breaks the same) produce the exact same result

2
psolvaOP•

I understand that view, but there are opportunities for team building and trying out different techniques. The most fun I had was when Hela came out at about the same time as the Supernaturals, and I found Mordo + Hela + SW made for an excellent poor-man's Magneto (just to be clear, the Asguardians on their own I have no objection to, but as a team they are just boring.)

The Asguardians runs counter to that. "here's a win everything team that just AoEs almost all the time, and wins as a result." You don't need to think about who goes with whom, or whether this toon from another group might pair well with another in that group. Just keep hitting the blam button and you've won as long as it's not one of the handful that might be hard for Asguardians to beat.

DCL kept getting meta'd to death because of overuse of buffs and, to a lesser extent, revives. (They then tried to fix the former using a toon that punishes overuse of buffs and had problems because you couldn't not overuse buffs any more...) MSF seems to have similar issues with AoEs and secondary strikes on neighboring toons, but moreover on team affinities that discourage custom team building. The Asguardians seems to be the worst team for that, and it's dragging the game down.

1
KidWayneD•

They allow me to auto another team in blitz and I'm fine with that... also Black Bolt will be mine when he arrives next.

1