A Look Back - Defenders
PantherusNZ
Member Posts: 2,199 ★★★★★
A combination of the ongoing 10-year anniversary, and another thread asking about overrated defenders, had me remembering the earlier days of MCoC - and I'm thinking I'll do a bit of a mini-series of looking back at how different the world of MCoC was in years gone by.
So - let's start this one by thinking about old defenders, especially the ones we'd place in War, and the strategies that we used to employ.
For starters - here's what the AW map looked like in 2016:
It was a very different experience to war now.
- Linked Nodes
- Hidden Defenders
- Unblockable SP1 or 2 nodes were among the most dangerous, although I seem to recall Infinity Blast was the most BS
- THORNS!!
Strategy-wise we would actually take masteries to help us see what classes we were coming up against and then try to guess who the opponent would be in order to counter them, we had to friggin guess!
There were the usual suspects of Defenders back then - of course Magik (post-buff) was arguably the toughest, but it was a big call whether to put her on defence or keep her for offence because she was the best counter to herself, especially on the node where she starts with 2 bars of power.
Electro was another common opponent - but there was large conjecture whether putting him on the Thorns node was a genius or pointless action, considering if you had a counter for him (max sig Black Widow, or maybe Elektra) then both him and the node were obsolete, whereas putting him on another node (unblockable SP1 or 2 were also common placements) and putting a different defender on thorns meant that attackers had to plan out multiple things; alternatively if they DIDN'T have a counter for him then putting him on Thorns effectively stonewalled attackers through that path.
Then we had the Unblockable Special nodes, it's almost laughable now when dexing specials is virtually part of standard play and unblockable specials are basic kit, but back then they were a massive headache. Unblockable SP1 saw all kinds of projectile-based defenders put up, like Iron Man (both OG and Superior) and Iron Patriot, Cyclops was of course VERY common and caused all kinds of headaches ( @KabamDORK put up a whole video trying to educate the masses on how to dex his specials when he was an AQ boss) while War Machine was guaranteed damage with his, fortunately it wasn't MUCH damage
Then there was Spider-Man, whose SP1 being unblockable made him even more of a **** defender while you had to dance around his Evades on top of it.
Meanwhle the unblockable SP2 saw OG Storm as a common defender, Scarlet Witch, and the aforementioned Electro.
Finally the boss. There was a time that virtually every AW boss was Ultron, and a common strategy was to beat him down to 50% and then immediately quit out when his regen triggered because you couldn't do squat about it since he was stun immune. Then Attacker #2 would go in and try to beat him down to 25% to trigger the next regen, and quit again. Finally #3 would finish him off. And that's if everyone did their job. Woe betide you if you triggered his Regen and somehow screwed it up so that he'd heal up significantly.
I know there were many more more examples, but that's where the discussion comes in. What are some of your memories of the old days of MCoC? Or for the players who only joined the game well after 12.0, what stories just make you shake your head as to how we ever survived?
So - let's start this one by thinking about old defenders, especially the ones we'd place in War, and the strategies that we used to employ.
For starters - here's what the AW map looked like in 2016:
It was a very different experience to war now.
- Linked Nodes
- Hidden Defenders
- Unblockable SP1 or 2 nodes were among the most dangerous, although I seem to recall Infinity Blast was the most BS
- THORNS!!
Strategy-wise we would actually take masteries to help us see what classes we were coming up against and then try to guess who the opponent would be in order to counter them, we had to friggin guess!
There were the usual suspects of Defenders back then - of course Magik (post-buff) was arguably the toughest, but it was a big call whether to put her on defence or keep her for offence because she was the best counter to herself, especially on the node where she starts with 2 bars of power.
Electro was another common opponent - but there was large conjecture whether putting him on the Thorns node was a genius or pointless action, considering if you had a counter for him (max sig Black Widow, or maybe Elektra) then both him and the node were obsolete, whereas putting him on another node (unblockable SP1 or 2 were also common placements) and putting a different defender on thorns meant that attackers had to plan out multiple things; alternatively if they DIDN'T have a counter for him then putting him on Thorns effectively stonewalled attackers through that path.
Then we had the Unblockable Special nodes, it's almost laughable now when dexing specials is virtually part of standard play and unblockable specials are basic kit, but back then they were a massive headache. Unblockable SP1 saw all kinds of projectile-based defenders put up, like Iron Man (both OG and Superior) and Iron Patriot, Cyclops was of course VERY common and caused all kinds of headaches ( @KabamDORK put up a whole video trying to educate the masses on how to dex his specials when he was an AQ boss) while War Machine was guaranteed damage with his, fortunately it wasn't MUCH damage
Then there was Spider-Man, whose SP1 being unblockable made him even more of a **** defender while you had to dance around his Evades on top of it.Meanwhle the unblockable SP2 saw OG Storm as a common defender, Scarlet Witch, and the aforementioned Electro.
Finally the boss. There was a time that virtually every AW boss was Ultron, and a common strategy was to beat him down to 50% and then immediately quit out when his regen triggered because you couldn't do squat about it since he was stun immune. Then Attacker #2 would go in and try to beat him down to 25% to trigger the next regen, and quit again. Finally #3 would finish him off. And that's if everyone did their job. Woe betide you if you triggered his Regen and somehow screwed it up so that he'd heal up significantly.
I know there were many more more examples, but that's where the discussion comes in. What are some of your memories of the old days of MCoC? Or for the players who only joined the game well after 12.0, what stories just make you shake your head as to how we ever survived?
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