Marvel Avengers Alliance Making a Good Team Guide

Marvel Avengers Alliance Making a Good Team Guide by SRS

What makes a good team? You should ask yourself:

  • Is my agent well equipped for my team?
  • Can my team support each other?
  • Is my team versatile enough to handle various situations?
  • Do my team have a clear objective?

If all of your answers are yes, then you have pretty much a solid team, only limited by equpped ISOs, PvP stats, luck, and silly AI sheanigans. The AI doesn’t really know how to play most team comps properly anyway…

Is your agent well equipped for your team?
Your agent really determines how good your team is. At low levels this may not matter as good equipments do not appear at this point in time, but once better equipments are unlocked, you will start to notice how important your agent’s role is. If you cannot even answer yes to this question, then you agent is nothing more than a liability and a waste of space. Be sure that your agent has proper equipment for the job. If your agent is going to be an OHKO killing machine, you better have some serious protection from your heroes or other players that are facing your AI with half of their common sense will burst you to death first. If your agent is a supporter, you better be amazing at buffing your team and debuffing your enemy team. You are definitely not going to use a Galvanic Arm for a Dr.Strange/Spiderman Setup unless you have nothing better to use. In any case, try to get the best equipment you can get in MAA as soon as possible.

Notable non-gold items:

  • Magnetic Field Generator
  • Power of Four
  • Goblin Glider
  • Cosmic Ray Bomb
  • S.A. Pincer
  • Bolt Action 4 Bore
  • Super Blade Punch
  • Enchanted Crowbar
  • The Toolbox
  • Sabretooth’s Claws
  • Curative Reach
  • Golden Screaming Eagle
  • Mechanical Mjollnir

Notable gold items:

  • Quantum Jumper
  • Heroic Call
  • Deep-Field Cannon

Can my team support each other?
Your team should be able to cover each other’s weaknesses, having alternating coverage (e.g. Blaster, Infiltrator, Bruiser) is better than consecutive coverage (e.g. Tactician, Infiltrator, Scrapper). It is also not recommended to have more than one of the same type together in a team (exceptions to this are Tacticians, which are the most popular and safe to stack in general). Having a protection ability on one of the heroes is even better too. It is better to have Dr.Strange/Spiderman than Dr.Strange/Kitty Pryde in a team for protection against enemy Tacticians. This question is also why Captain America is extremely popular in PvAI (yes I said PvAI, AI for Artificial Idiots that can’t even use Power of Four and Curative Reach properly). Thanks to his team buffs and solid defense (Shield Guard), he’s a very good and top-tier supporter and can fit most teams.

Is my team versatile enough to handle various situations?
You team shouldn’t be only one-trick ponies. For example, an Agent with SBP, CR, QJ, S.A.P with War-Machine and Thor. Sure, your team can dish out some serious single-target damage, but that’s about it, your team heavily lacks defense, evasion and accuracy otherwise. Your heroes have little to no synchronization and will be annihilated by teams that are both offensive and defensive such as Colossus Steel Fortress and Storm/Spiderman teams. Once again, use your agent to suit the style of your team. If your team consists of pain-dishing glass-cannons that has poor accuracy, use accuracy-increasing gears or weapons and defensive items to protect them from damage.

Do my team have a clear objective?
Your agent and your heroes should have similar movesets. Is your team bleed based? If so, use Black Cat, Black Panther or Wolverine and gear yourself up with a Sabretooth’s Claw and other gears as backup against teams with Colossus, Luke Cage or Thing(haha lol Thing). Is your team focused on dealing lots of debuffs while using Mockingbird to do a clean sweep? Then use a defensive hero (Capt.America, Colossus, Scarlet Witch) that sets up Mockingbird or a deadly crit hero (Hulk, Black Cat, Luke Cage) that lets Mockingbird sets them up whereas your agent equips the necessary gear (Enchanted Crowbar, Sabretooth) to do so.

The infamous Capt.America and Thor team you see all day in PvP works because they fulfilled most of the questions asked here. Capt. America has Shield Guard and provides all stat buffs, Thor provides an Attack Boost. Lead the Charge increases the next damage taken, setting up Thor’s Empowering Strike or Hammer Throw. Capt. America has Shield Throw and Thor has Summon Thunder to deal with Protective Shroud teams. All that’s left for the agent is to equip gears that quickens Thor’s Might of Mjollnir buffs, cover the teams Infiltrator weakness, and being a superb damage dealer him/herself in the event that Thor/Capt.America gets wiped out. As you can see, the Agent usually determines the winner of the duel. With about the same levels of gear and stats, an Agent with a Cosmic Ray Bomb, Quantum Jumper, Sabretooth’s Claw and Super Blade Punch would be better than an Agent with a S.A Pincer, Quantum Jumper, Ion Bean Cannon and Super Blade Punch, purely because the former is far more versatile (Double support powers, Counter Attack while idle, Nuke weapon) while the latter is no more than a one-trick pony that doesn’t do anything else useful besides dealing single-target damage (Double quick action damage weapons, support power, Nuke Weapon) and is asking to get their ***** served vs teams with any sort of defense.

Tried and True Teams (TTT)

You can name your team however you like, it’s not standardized. Team names here are just personal preferences. Your agent’s uniform class is up to you, though it is recommended to be a class that covers up one of your member’s weakness. For the team’s weakness, I will only cover the team’s standard weakness in general, that means I won’t be talking about Bruiser Spiderman or Blaster Thor, you’ll have to figure out class weaknesses yourself and adjust your agent to the team’s needs.

American Viking

Members: Captain America, Thor

Strategy: Solid and easy to use. As Captain America always starts first unless the enemy team also has Captain America, a buff to all stats immediately applies right after his first move (also triggers Coordinated Attack for Avengers version). Usually starts with Shield Guard unless the enemy team has at least a Blaster that does not have Steel Fortress Colossus or Spiderman as protection, which will instead be Leading Strike or Shield Bash then Shield Guard. When Thor’s turn comes up, Inspire Bravery is usually the first move, or you can proceed to OHKO one or more enemies if possible (doable for Modern Armor Thor, triggers Cooperative Defense for Avengers Thor).

Weaknesses: This team is very prone to strong Infiltrator matchups. Spiderman and Kitty Pryde are the most popular followed by the rarer Black Widow, Invisible Woman and Black Cat. Having Captain America in your team also means you’re sacrificing a substantial amount of firepower, as he only does an average amount of damage compared to the likes of War Machine, Black Panther(old) and even Cyclops, this means most of the firepower will be coming from your Agent and Thor, and if either one of them are quickly removed, your team strategy will pretty much fall apart.

Recommended Agent Uniform: Generalist is usually better than even a Blaster if you’re playing as a nuker as PvAI will usually ignore Generalists. A Scrapper uniform is also good to deal with pesky Infiltrators. Normally I wouldn’t recommend Scrapper uniforms as you’ll be Bruiser fodder (Thor, She-Hulk and Hulk says hi) but thanks to Captain America’s Shield Guard, you’ll be safe from all Bruisers, at least for the first turn. The rest fare average.

Recommended Gear: For this team, try to be as versatile as possible. On one hand you’ll want to deal some serious single-target pain. On the other hand, you can’t just rely on single-target damage because there’s bound to be Twilight Shroud and Steel Fortress teams about to make your Agent totally useless.
Single Target Nuke – Super Blade Punch/Bolt-Action 4 Bore/Annihilator/Tyrant Blade/Golden Screaming Eagle/Goblin Glider/Mechanical Mjollnir
AoE – Cosmic Ray Bomb/Deep-Field Cannon/P.E.W. Attenuator/The Toolbox
Support – Quantum Jumper/Magnetic Field Generator/Heroic Call/Curative Reach/Construct Matrix/The Doombringer
Quick Action/Counter Attack – Sabretooth’s Claws/Enchanted Crowbar/Beyond Corp Driver/Stark Industries Catalyst/Heavy Ion Beam/S.A. Pincer

Personal tl;dr Notes: WOOT I’M SO META AND ORIGINAL AND KING OF PVP AW YEAH, NOT.

Blood Felines (P.S. This is my team and I’ve been carrying with this up to 1500 rating and above, using the Black Cat variant)

Members: Wolverine/Sif, Black Cat/Black Panther/Mockingbird

Strategy: A relatively fast setup for Black Cat variants and somewhat slower for Black Panther variants, but both are much easier and faster than trying to stack 5 Hulk Ups on Hulk Teams. The damage this team can do can be as ridiculous as a Hulk with 5 stacks once bleed stacks start piling up. The team’s style can be super-aggressive or passive-aggressive. If you want extremely insane amounts of burst, go for Black Cat. If you want a less-damaging but more evasive style of play, go for Black Panther with Follow-Ups and Counter-Attacks. If you want class versatility, Mockingbird is your choice. Use the first-turn to setup Bleed stacks with your agent and Wolverine or Sif and additionally Unlucky with Black Cat, Wolverine stacks bleed faster but Sif is more versatile and team-oriented. Use your agent too, Sabretooth’s Claw is an amazing counter-attack weapon and “Snikt” has the potential to inflict 4 stacks of bleed in one attack, that stacks equate to “death by cats”, literally.

Weaknesses: Naturally, being a team that relies on Bleed stacks, teams with Colossus and occasionally Wolverine is going to wreck your team really hard so your Agent must cover that weakness in some sort of a way. Your team will be susceptible to Scrappers(BC)/Infiltrators(BP) and Bruisers unless you burst them down very fast. Luckily Scrappers are rare in PvP because of the Capt.Thor meta and the only Bruiser you’ll need to worry is actually She-Hulk.

Recommended Agent Uniform: If you want to stack Bleeds offensively Tactician will be the best option for you. If you want to stack Bleeds defensively, go for Bruiser, you’ll want the enemy to hit you so try to make them do it in a way. If there’s no other options, go for Generalist, the rest are bad.

Recommended Gear: In a bleed team, speed and versatility matters, find a way to either put huge amounts of bleed stacks and watch one-cat-genocide-show, or nuke the problem child if you can’t do it.
Single Target Nuke – Super Blade Punch/Bolt-Action 4 Bore/Annihilator/Tyrant Blade/Golden Screaming Eagle/Goblin Glider/Mechanical Mjollnir
AoE – Cosmic Ray Bomb/Deep-Field Cannon/P.E.W. Attenuator/The Toolbox
Support – Quantum Jumper/Magnetic Field Generator/Aegis Defender/Digital Decoy/Overwatch
Bleed Weapon – Sabretooth’s Claw, “Snikt”

Personal tl;dr Notes: NYANNYANNYANNYANNYANNYANNYANNYANNYANNYANNYANNYAN x1337

Colossus Wall

Members: Colossus, Ms. Marvel/War Machine/Captain America/Iron Fist/Iron Man/Dr. Strange/Daredevil/Kitty Pryde/Sif/Human Torch/Mockingbird/Thor/Hulk/Scarlet Witch

Strategy: The focus here is obviously, Colossus. even better if Modern Colossus. While using Colossus as a single-target shield, your Blasters and Tacticians will be having a field day by simply nuking the enemy team members off one-by-one, starting from the most dangerous target. There’s a lot of heroes you can pair with Colossus that I may have even missed several of them, but either pick someone who can dish out serious damage, someone who can buff and heal Colossus for continued use, or someone who can put or make use of the Exposed debuff, as Colossus is weak in the offense department even with Exploit Exposed. For Instant Nuke Colossus, War Machine, Dr. Strange, Iron Man or Scarlet Witch are obvious choices. For Exposure Colossus, use Mockingbird, Daredevil, Sif or Kitty Pryde. For Defensive Colossus, Captain America or Iron Fist. For Delayed Burst Colossus, Hulk and Thor.

Weaknesses: When you’re using Colossus, you’re effectively losing half a member that deals damage on your team, so try not to sacrifice any more firepower. Unless you’re sacrificing even more offense and go for Captain America, Colossus teams are susceptible to AoE attacks, pretty much murdered if you met the Kamikaze Agent teams. (The reason I do not recommend Storm for Colossus teams, Protective Shroud does nothing to stop AoE). Colossus will also go down quickly when the enemy has Ignore Defense attacks and Blasters. But other than that, there’s hardly any fears of Tacticians and Infiltrators targeting your heavy-hitters as Tacticians only trigger double-attacks if they use single-target attacks on blasters and none of the Infiltrators besides Invisible Woman, Kitty Pryde and the Agent can bypass Colossus with Stealthy or AoE Attacks, not until Colossus goes down anyway… oh and I forgot Nightcrawler and Mr.Fantastic bypasses Colossus, but almost nobody uses them in the first place…

Recommended Agent Uniform: As your agent is pretty much safe from enemy focus fire, pretty much, you can use Blaster and Tactician uniforms and your agent should dish out some serious pain instead of going on the defensive. Anything else is subpar, and Bruiser uniforms are less than pointless.

Recommended Gear: Either go full out offense, or slightly delayed offense. You don’t want to waste time and should end the duel in 3 turns or less.
Single Target Nuke – Super Blade Punch/Bolt-Action 4 Bore/Annihilator/Tyrant Blade/Goblin Glider/Golden Screaming Eagle/Golden El Diablo/Omni-Fury/Frag Bracer/Mechanical Mjollnir
AoE – Cosmic Ray Bomb/Deep-Field Cannon/P.E.W. Attenuator/The Toolbox/Golden Batstone 2.357 Minigun
Support – Quantum Jumper/Magnetic Field Generator/Momentum Generator/Power of Four/Chrono Overdrive/Mirror Field Generator/Heroic Call/Gamma Booster
Quick Action Weapon – Stark Industries Catalyst/Heavy Ion Beam/S.A. Pincer

Personal tl;dr Notes: I want an heal that Ignores Defense and heals as much as Iron Fist.

Cloak and Dagger

Members: Storm/Scarlet Witch/Phoenix, Spider-Man/Captain America/Kitty Pryde

Strategy: This team is famous in PvP for “BAH WHY AM I MISSING ALL MY ATTACKS?!”. All you need is a glass cannon with protection abilities, and a bodyguard that can protect the glass cannon from harm. If you’re using Storm, set up Twilight Shroud whenever it is off cooldown and for Scarlet Witch, use Hex Spheres. If you’re using Captain America as a bodyguard, Shield Guard whenever he can. For a Phoenix/Kitty Pryde team, just set Mind Link to Shadowcat Kitty Pryde. Once you have set up nicely in turn one, go to town for 3 turns.

Weakness: For C&D teams relying on Protective Shroud, they are susceptible to AoE damage just like the Colossus Wall team, with the additional weakness of Multi-Hit attacks. Captain America somewhat solves this, but only every other turn and he won’t be able to protect the Blaster from Tactician massacre on the 2nd turn. Scarlet Witch Hex debuff can stop AoE from being too damaging and Spiderman can protect for more than one turn and can deal with weakness against the ever popular Tacticians, but both of them are luck-based when it comes to any sort of defense and neither of them can take more than 3 hits from the weakest damage dealer in the game. Phoenix and Kitty Pryde teams will have Phoenix and the Agent vulnerable to AoE. Daredevil wrecks these teams single-handedly – Twilight Shroud does not stop him and Backfire can even backfire due to his Radar Sense(irony), oh and Thor with 2 stacks of MoM too.

Recommended Agent Uniform: Similar to Colossus Wall, Blaster and Tactician work best in this setup, with the additional mention of Infiltrator to make use of all the defense you have.

Recommended Gear: Your agent should emphasize on more defense than other teams. Be very sure to have defensive support items like Shields or Mirror Images handy. (That one team where MFG is better than QJ)
Single Target Nuke – Super Blade Punch/Bolt-Action 4 Bore/Annihilator/Tyrant Blade/Golden Screaming Eagle/Goblin Glider/Mechanical Mjollnir
AoE – Cosmic Ray Bomb/Deep-Field Cannon/P.E.W. Attenuator/The Toolbox
Support – Quantum Jumper/Magnetic Field Generator/Heroic Call/Curative Reach/Construct Matrix/Force Field Generator/Digital Decoy
Quick Action/Counter Attack – Sabretooth’s Claws/Enchanted Crowbar/Beyond Corp Driver/Stark Industries Catalyst/Heavy Ion Beam/S.A. Pincer

Personal tl;dr Notes: Scarlet Witch just made this all the more stronger.

Kamikaze Dominance

Members: Daredevil/Scarlet Witch/Spider-Man/Captain America/Kitty Pryde/Cyclops/Luke Cage/Black Panther/Black Widow/Hulk/Spider-Woman/Mockingbird

Strategy: For those who have zero understanding on Japanese, Kamikaze somewhat equates to “Go Kill Yourself”. No kidding. For this strategy to work, you need at least 1 high-damage AoE weapon and Power of Four. You can also get one of either Quantum Jumper, Heroic Call, Chrono Overdrive or Magnetic Field Generator. For those who played this game for a while before Deep-Field Cannon is nerfed, you may perhaps remember how crazy it was when Detroit Fried Chicken and Po4 dominated PvAI and you’ll basically auto-lose without Captain America or if your agent started second. Ever since Delicious Flat Chest got nerfed, this strategy wasn’t so deadly anymore(still deadly). This strategy is pretty simple – the moment your agent’s turn begins, immediately activate Po4, then activate HC or CO before 3 AoE blasts, or activate QJ or MFG after. Once your agent burns out, you may either have a completely wiped enemy team, or soon to be. Your remaining team members should be those who are self-sufficient and will only worsen your opponent’s already bad formation should they even attempt to attack you. An example would be Captain America/Black Widow pairing. Magnetic Shield, Shield Guard and Revenge Tactics causes the enemy team to self-destruct should they attack both of them and if both have the Avengers costume, Cooperative Defense says “OH HI!”.

Weakness: Your agent tends to do stupid things with the Po4 while controlled by the AfK AI, so make sure you don’t have anything else in your slots besides AoE weapons, Magnetic Field Generator or Quantum Jumper. This strategy pretty much falls apart if your agent gets focused and is knocked out before he can use Po4, or complete the 4 turns of mass destruction, resulting in an uphill battle for your remaining party members. Captain America, Kitty Pryde, Colossus and other high HP or Evasion heroes are quite popular and can easily shut down your strategy as they are very likely to survive through all your blasts, so if any of those are present, just do the kamikaze anyway and hope you’ll be able to survive a 2v3.

Recommended Agent Uniform: The only suit you’ll need is the Blaster, nothing else. The only other option is Generalist, which is considered to be a poor choice in a Kamikaze strategy.

Recommended Gear: The only gears you need are Power of Four and 3 AoE weapons, with the possible exceptions being Coulson’s Revenge for Avenger pairings and the mentioned supports to replace one of the AoE weapons.
Kamikaze – Power of Four
Single Target Nuke – Coulson’s Revenge
AoE – Cosmic Ray Bomb/Deep-Field Cannon/P.E.W. Attenuator/The Toolbox/Isotope Cannon
Support – Quantum Jumper/Magnetic Field Generator/Heroic Call/Chrono Overboost

Personal tl;dr Notes: Hah, try to attack my Mockingbird and Kitty Pryde complete with Magnetic Shields you weakling! But my agent is stupid…

Stun Control

Members: She-Hulk/Spider-Man/Hulk/Thing/Hawkeye/Phoenix/Mockingbird

Strategy: As the name implies, stun is the game here, which is so obvious that explaining it would be embarrassing. While most combinations rely on extra turns to be fast, Stun Control teams gains even more speed by not giving the enemy team a turn. The team may sound impractical on paper, but in practice surprisingly effective. I had games where I lost because my agent did not even get a turn to move before getting KO’ed. Both your agent’s single-target “nuke” and AoE weapon should have either Exploit Stun or Stun written on them, with two support items or another single-target nuke/AoE weapon.

Weakness: Compared to other teams, Stun Control tends to have lackluster damage without exploit Stun, but can still make up for it by wasting the enemy team’s turn. Most of the useable heroes here are Bruisers, so take care not to have too many of them or they’re Blaster food. This team also relies on Stun as a defensive measure against enemy attacks, so it lacks cooperative protection. Not focusing one enemy to death on a Stun Control team is a silly thing to do, so make sure not to do this mistake.

Recommended Agent Uniform: You can use Anything on this team really, Tactician is the best, but just cover your team’s class weakness and you’ll be fine.

Recommended Gear: You’ll need both single and AoE Stun/Exploit Stun weapons. Annihilator is devastating if you have the money. Web Blaster is perfect with Spiderman and Voltage Crash has a surprisingly high chance of stunning. If you like it, you can have 2 single-target stun weapons instead of a counter-attack weapon.
Single Target Nuke – Annihilator/Voltage Crash/Taste of Thunder/Web Blaster/Tesla SP-Arc
AoE – Cosmic Ray Bomb/P.E.W. Attenuator
Support – Quantum Jumper/Magnetic Field Generator/Heroic Call/Chrono Overboost/Curative Reach/Construct Matrix
Counter Attack – Sabretooth’s Claws/Enchanted Crowbar/Beyond Corp Driver/SI PDW11

Personal tl;dr Notes: ZOMG THING IS USEABLE?! Naw I’ll rather use Shulkie anyday.

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2 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    AI also stands for artificial intelligence as well

  2. jeremiah says:

    What is better blackwidow(grey)+captain america or black cat(alternate)+wolverine?? I am lvl 45 ….

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