u/PiplelinePunch

Peni Parker has been the highest winrate Vanguard in the game (at all ranks) since season 2.

She has also been the highest winrate character overall, since season 4.5. In that season Rocket, with the old 2-nest Peni teamup, briefly eclipsed her when his damage boost increased from 25% to 40%

For over a year Peni has been burdened with infinite arguments and debate surrounding her outlier winrates. And how, uniquely, she appears very strong at all elos. The Council of Peni OTPs keeping her winrate sky high even in Cel+ PC where she "shouldn't" be good.

Not only has Devil Dino snatched Peni's long held title of winningest Vanguard

He has done so with a monstrous 62% pickrate

In higher elos; Peni still holds on. GM+ and Cel+ Peni still holds a minor lead over Devil Dino. Thanks largely to her 10x lower pickrate. As high elo adapts, players determine most optimal Dino abuse comps, Dino mains solidify themselves over Dino Larpers, and the character gets banned more so only known Dino enjoyers actually get the pick allowed through: expect this winrate to rise and Peni to be knocked off her pedestal even in high ranks.

This is stealing a point made by Fawkz in a proplay review VOD, but its a point I thoroughly agree with, and realized it explained something I had always implicitly understood but could never quite articulate. A Lightbulb moment / Rivals showerthought / Tanking TED Talk / Essayposting

Magneto is not a main tank

Magneto can only take space by slowly walking forward. He has no button, cooldown or ability that allows his team to make a play, to engage in a fight, without slowly approaching the enemy with his survival abilities. In fact his bread and butter gameplay is trading survivability cooldowns and HP for value, in order to slowly muscle his way forwards. Think about how Magneto interacts with, say, a Venom or Cap. What's going to happen in an engagement is those two will dive in to the enemy team, contesting space. Mag will not be with them, he'll be overlooking shooting at the dive, deploying bubbles. Mag is not the focus, he isn't not drawing the attention, he's supporting and damaging: Mag is the off-tank.

Imagine his effective area from a top down view. His influence on the space around him. Its essentially, a big old circle. He's a slow, lumbering walking turret that is a medium to high damage threat depending on your LoS to him. Its not that different to Hela, or Punisher (excluding shotgun puni). Whereas a tank like Angela, Venom, Cap; their area of influence is far harder to define. They can impact a very wide area of the map very quickly, and force something to happen. They can close the gap to the enemy, take aggro and attention, force things to happen and in short take... space. And before anyone jumps to "but these are just dive tanks" ; Groot or Emma are Main tanks. Creating terrain and changing LoS forces a reaction, Diamond form choke slamming the enemy tank forces a reaction. Nothing Magneto, or Dr Strange, does forces enemies to do something other than them slowly walking up and outputting damage.

Its similar on the defensive. Magneto must physically occupy the area in high he wants to protect, or be immediately adjacent to it in order to shoot at it. A common use of won space is to plonk a Magneto in front of it as a barrier, forcing enemies to go through or past it to reach the target space. Other tanks, not so much. A co-ordinated team can even choose to play entirely off the area they want to control, in order to recontest it or a new space from preferable angles: the world is their oyster with how they want to set up according to map terrain, enemy comp etc. So many more options, when tanks that provide those options are in the game, that are not Magneto.

The main tank Myth, and the adjacent topic of conflating a "shield tank" with a "main tank", probably arises from OW1. The way people thought Reinhardt worked is the platonic ideal "Main" tank: even if quite possibly in hindsight, it was never truly real to begin with. The concept of a slow lumbering shield gradually walking forwards to provide cover from which people sit behind: maybe it was true in OW1. Maybe it was a fantasy, because people did not yet understand what we now know of hero shooters. But certainly with the amount of mobility, cc, and general speed of Rivals being far faster than, say, early Overwatch: there is no room anymore for this vision of gameplay.

How often have you played out Mag + Strange frontline, and thought: Nothing happens. Kills don't arrive, progress is slow and laborious and initiatives to create something feel impossible. A lot of damage is being soaked up and absorbed, but the initiative if it exists anywhere is in fact on the DPS. For them to take risky off-angles alone, or solo flanks, hope they are unmarked, and find some pick 1v6. Win an ego duel, catch the supports lacking - etc. Which "shouldn't" be possible, if they get it; its a mistake from the enemy team. This was an extremely common play-pattern a few seasons ago. Meta, even, at least at a lot of elos including my Cel queues. But within this it exposes the flaw of current "main tank" theory: these games devolve into ult economy resource battles, because within this setup space incredibly hard to take for the Magneto player.

How many times have you played the mirror match; two slow and bad deathball comps mutually handshaking doing nothing until they collide, ults happen, or someone makes a rudimentary mistake. For me, I know its a lot, and they always felt especially unplayable and low-agency from a Magneto's perspective. That's not a nuance I'm missing, its not a misunderstanding of positioning or ult theory; its the nature of playing bad comps into each other. Its feels bad, because it IS bad.

Now take the same situation but instead of a Mag its Hulk, 5-man bubbling the team as they walk up, and himself jumping ahead to contest backline. Or instead of Strange its Emma, who can create a frontline imbalance and punish tank overextension with Diamond grab. Rogue Grab, Cap slam, Angela pull. Suddenly; there are possibilities. Sticky comps can be unlocked, breakthroughs can be made, DPS can play the game and actually set up to get kills. We are not reliant on ultimate abilities to be the only way these things can occur.

Is an underlying reason why 2/2/2 (or, 2/1/3) is better at all elos, becuase of this false underlying assumption that the omnipresent "default" main tank pick... is in fact not a main tank? Maybe that second tank suceeds so much, not just from having two of them, but because the team now actually has a proper main tank!

Reasons why the myth persists so much probably has to do with target prioritization, and healers' general capacity to keep themselves alive. The lower in elo one goes, the more people shoot at tanks unnecessarily. And Magneto does want people to shoot at him: remember he gains value from his mitigation cooldowns and turns that into an advantage, otherwise he is a fat DPS. The hardest thing in the game to do, is to slowly walk directly through a Magneto deathball comp. And yet, this is the gameplay so many people choose to opt into, and believe that it is correct. Eventually one has to ask, why do any of it? Equally the lower in elo ones goes, the more supports die to things they simply should not die to. They play too close when they should not, and too far when they should not. They feel they need additional support-like effects, when they are safe as can be. Scared to walk up, when it is free for them to do so, and scared to deal damage and kill enemies they are perfectly able to deal with.

The higher elo one goes, the more bad Magneto players are ignorable. People walk past, over or around them. Challenging him within his circle to be the DPS damage threat he pretends to be. Quite often: they can do this freely, its on the Magneto to hit his shots, just like a DPS ego check. The most immediately apparent pattern from watching any amount of high elo gameplay is how much more ruthlessly bad supports are punished, and how much smarter supports have to position in order not to BE punished. This ultimately stems from poor tank matchup understanding, with some realising when tank presence is fake and the space they believe they hold is free for the taking.

And lastly, because this post cant be written by me without talking about Peni Parker: this is the way in which Peni, especially attack Peni, is unique to any other tank. She can take and control multiple areas of space at once, in vastly different locations, simultaneously. Where her nest is, where she is, and where her mines are placed. Which, once one strays outside of the Bunker, do not have to be in the same locations at all. Mines are damage investments for future payoff; with the caveat that they struggle to actively contest occupied space. Flank Peni does well when delayed control of uncontested areas is good (which is surprisingly often), but struggles when the enemy does not need to go anywhere. And, the additional insight I'm now pondering: are not compelled to go anywhere because I'm so often playing with a second off-tank in Magneto, rather than a main tank that can force movement.

Thanks for reading my on-the-clock procrastination writing a lot of shit that is not the reports im paid to have done, for yesterday's deadline.

Inspiration for this post, Start of Map 3 section.