I tried playing Strange this week for the first time. Nobody told me how much less stressful he is than Thing.
Sure, I don't feel like I can just run up and beat on anybody's ass like with Thing - but on the other hand, I'm also not nearly as worried about dying with this shield ready to go.
Also the belt whipping is so sassy.
OK STORYTIME. Hit my level up match to SILVER ONE BABY and I just knew Guanguang was gonna pull some shit. You can tell by the stats we were struggling.
They had more total kills than us, more total heals than us, just better stats all around. Very likely better players individually, none of us could really aim or do the hard mechanical stuff as well as they could.
Not only that but after our first push our Cap disconnects.
Not only that but our Spider-man was just out dying in Narnia.
Not only that but enemy Wanda and Strange kept teleporting her ult and wiping us.
It was the usual shit show.
BUT we had the power of heart and (eventually) T E A M W O R K, because listen:
Dagger and I were the only ones on comms, mostly just panicking and crying about Cap and Spidey and their Wanda eating us alive, but still, any little bit of coordination helps, right?
So when I realize our Cap had disconnected, you can tell because I'm waiting for everybody to group up for a push and there's no sixth teammate, I'm looking around like an idiot. That would've been when somebody calls for surrender but I had my ult, Dagger had her ult. Fuck it we ball. Each of us saying it instead of just quiet despair helped so much. WE GROUP UP AND PUSH AND BOTH ULT.
..annnnd their Wanda ults and kills us. BUT, it doesn't matter because at that point it was like we had decided to be a team. And one by one we each got our shit together and turned it around.
First, Cap reconnected! I watched the replay and he was having wild connection issues the whole game, spent a quarter of the game just glitching and jumping in spawn or getting stuck running into corners. But when he finally got back in... well he still didn't do much, but the return was really good for morale. Not only that, but if everybody group hugs on Cap and plays close it can work out. I don't know if that's true or not, but I said it on comms and people pushed up to support the front line better, we had some kind of plan.
Second, our Spidey locked the fuck in after we all watched him repeatedly dying out in the middle of nowhere 1v5 their team. I watched his replay and he started to swing in high over me and dive into the middle of whatever I was doing, press all his buttons and then swing to the nearest high ground or safe spot and shoot from a distance before doing this again. Not only that, but AT ONE POINT THIS MF WENT TO GET A HEALTH PACK ❤️, Like, he really turned his approach around completely and worked with the team.
Third, our Dagger was supporting her ass off, I have to assume she's one of you lovely people, just based on comms. She also CALLED OUT THE STRANGE PORTALS which did eventually help, by the end we learned to turn around for them, ready to fight or cover.
Our Hela was struggling with aim at first and just spammed down main and not doing much, but then SHE SWAPPED to squirrel girl and did the same thing, but now it was working much better.
Our Deadpool was just slapping buttons at first, and died the first time he stopped in the middle of a team fight to upgrade from the book. Then he realized to do it from cover or when respawning. He also stopped trying to dps so much and was HEALING THE TANKS.
We did terrible on attack, but completely turned the game around on defense. At the end, they got really close to the win line, but there's that bend in the map right out of first point that has a lot of natural cover and high ground and then the payload itself. Aside from the usual stomping around, my level-up was saying over comms Y"ALL USE THE PAYLOAD FOR COVER DON"T PANIC and these sexy mf did just that, and we stuck together and came back and won.
By the numbers we probably should have lost, and it was close many, many times - but I had so much fun and can't wait to do this as rainbow Thing.
Here's the game if you want to see sweaty silver gameplay and Ben punching a lot of uppity mfs in the face: 10294674327
Strategist later??????
Practice using Krita, weening myself off Photoshop. It's so difficult after 20 years of muscle memory, but cheaper to make the switch.