u/Quirky_Atmosphere_49

Scenario 1: As you're preparing to set up a dive, both healers in your team gets picked, and the enemy tanks immediately begin pushing.

Scenario 2 (more extreme): The enemy cloak ults, your team has no ult to respond and the entire enemy team is pushing forward with the ult.

In these two scenarios, do you still dive the backline, even though your team is in no position to follow up? The alternative is just to head back and peel for your team, which works well for some heroes. But for Venom, he is a horrible peeler and a horrible frontliner. If my team is getting hard pressured and I try to head to frontline to relive the pressure, I feel like I'm getting zero value.

But if I continue backlining as always, I instantly get melted or ignored due to the lack of follow up from my team.

What would you do in these situations?

I've never been a mechanics kind of guy. Not one to mash buttons and get five K. Which is why I initially started MR as a strategist main and enjoyed the more macro concepts like positioning and ult tracking. However there was still something lacking, that additional "oopmh" factor that allowed me to feel like I was truly influencing the game.

Peni Parker was my first tank main, and I took to it easily as sliding on a glove. The strategic aspect of the nest is unlike any other hero. Playing Peni is to forecast the future - predicting where the enemy frontline and backline will be, predicting where your frontline and backline will be, predicting where the flanks and dive will attack. And dynamically adjusting the nest placement whenever it gets countered. And when on attack Peni - the amount of brain cells needed to predict the enemy doubles, and I loved it. Playing Peni is like playing chess, and I began to find MR fun like never before.

I was never a competitive player, but something about Peni sparked something within me. I began studying Peni seriously. Studied guides on nest placements. Watched the likes of Fullmetallamps, Cringealarm,, Flextarr. Religiously began reviewing my own games to see what worked and what didn't. Learnt about space, killboxes, chokes, and applied them to each map. And of course the peni Reddit was awesome to trade theories and tips with. I didn't reach my goal of celestial Peni(GM2) but I have learnt a lot about the process on how to improve.

And now we come to the current state of Peni. Now, her core kit isn't gutted per se. Her nest still remains intact and arguably better. But her snare is what kept her viable in higher level play. It was a way both to survive as well as secure damage. The snare was the reason Peni could play so aggressive and not sit afk in her nest all the time. It looks like the aggressive part of penis strategy is now gutted and her options are more severely limited now. More concerning now, is that it's becoming harder and harder to play her in higher elos (it was already bad before). The worst tank has become worse.

It looks my journey to learn Peni has come to an end, as I no longer find a reason to main her, be it in the fun aspect or the competitive aspect. Of course it's only been a few days, so here's to hoping the peni mains find some hidden tech or G2 drops a hotfix. Til then, though, I'll be signing off from the game, or at the very least Peni.

I thought I loved Peni too much to quit. I coped hard to try and see the brightside "now she can stun tanks more often" "now she can set up her nest faster". I didn't realise how much I relied on the stun until now.

Attack Peni is terrible now because 1v1 duels are way harder. AntiDive is terrible because proccing a stun on these mobile heroes is almost impossible. Even bunker Peni sucks because although you can supposedly stunlock tanks, they have enough mobility and shields to burn one of your webs, and that's often enough to cancel your entire combo.

I genuinely put a lot of effort into learning this buggy but fun character but I don't see a way forward. Maybe it's time to hang up the pilot suit for good.

Sad....

Man is a terror. This is on specifically Attack Peni where he often tries to contest the flank. And he is very good at doing so.

His hybrid brawl/poke playstyle means he has all the advantages of Poke(high dps, can avoid nest and mines) and at the same time none of the disadvantages (doesn't mind fighting close, tanky due to overshield). Also he has his hook to pull you out of nests easily.

I'd put him maybe on the same tier as Magik or Starlord as people who can absolutely shut down Peni (on a 1v1 flank context). Anyone have any tips on how to combat him?

I'm been noticing a consistent weakness of my Emma. Whenever I'm up against any form of brawl/dive tank comp, we always lose, there must be something wrong I'm doing but I can't know what. Characters like Rogue, Thor, Hulk,

- Kite? Ive been trying to keep a distance but it doesn't seem to work, it feels like we lose space and my team flames me for not walking up

- Diamond form grab? It only works if the enemy tank doesn't overextend, in which most don't ( I cant grab in LOS of entire enemy team). Also, I'm often at frontline duty (because I often have to play solo tank), so Im not exactly in a position to help the backline when an enemy dive tank jumps in.

Is there any tips you could give me? I'm currently on a 39% wr with Emma so there must be something I'm doing wrong.

Disclaimer: I am a GM2 Peak Peni and this may be incorrect but feel free to comment. I am writing down these notes for the sake of discussion.

We've all seen it before. Someone runs attack Peni on one team and it's a tossup whether she runs the lobby or is completely useless. Attack Peni is extremely situational and it's taken me any hours to wrap my head around the macro situations at play.

Here are some scenarios that I came up with that can affect how I play attack Peni, or whether I play attack Peni at all:

1. Your team is running a brawl/dive comp against a poke comp. In this situation, the enemy team will get pushed back in an attempt to kite your frontline. If that's the case back to front attack Peni works wonderfully here. You can web off key choke points behind the enemy and they will walk into it like clockwork.

2. Your team is running poke against a brawl/dive comp. This is the inverse situation where your team gets forced back, so the space in the enemy backline that you mine off is essentially useless. In that case, switch to the reverse and play the nest in your backline to let the divers eat the mines.

3. Your team is running poke vs poke. This is one of the most suboptimal situations. You can't really run dive Peni here because Peni is hard as a solo diver, you can melt in seconds. Your team will inevitably get pushed back because Peni sucks as a frontline tank. Flank Peni is ineffective because the enemy has much more space to ignore you (this is assuming the enemy team is competent and the mk doesn't chase you alone into the nest for example)

I'm sure, though it's suboptimal, there are ways to get to make it work. You can play a hybrid frontline/flank playstyle where you take an off angle and harass positions the dps want to stand in. Or, you can time your dive/flank exactly when the enemy is making a play. This is much less consistent though.

4. Your other tank isn't doing well. This is Attack Peni's biggest crutch I feel. Plenty of tanks don't know how to play with their Peni and will overextend far away from your nest, mistime their push with your flank, expect a second shield tank but then die because Peni isn't a shield tank. In a perfect world, both teams skill level can be equal so we can predict plays perfectly, but if you notice your other tank is always dying in seconds, then it may be time to swap off or adjust your playstyle.

I wrote these notes to get clearer on how to duel enemy characters. This is especially useful for playing flank Peni because often a flank dps will break off from the team to try to contest you.

These notes were assuming the following conditions:

1. This is a straight 1v1. So this is assuming no help from either team, not any wider macro game considerations like time limits etc.

2. Neither party is willing to back down, so there are no stalemates here. Each party wants the space so they are going to fight to the death.

3. This is not assuming that Peni takes this fight in a perfect nest spot. As such, in this scenario, Peni would not have placed down her nest yet and is in a random location when the fight starts. Of course, she can retreat to a good nest spot if she needs to, but by then the fight would already have started, so she doesn't have the drone damage buildup just yet. This condition is to account for real life games where often Flank Peni takes fights in the middle of nowhere.

These notes I wrote may not be the most correct. Disclaimer: I am a GM2 Peak Peni and I don't play dps that often. So if there is anything wrong with my guide, please point it out. I posted this guide to also source opinions from the community.

Let me know what you think:

Here's the guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o1zMcrBodfT6yjp5\_yOsP3Y3dTGJ6s10ZfibmBOimAQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

As we all know, support ults are the most impactful in the game. And Invis has one of the hardest ults to get right. If she places it wrongly, or if she gets burst down while in the ult, it's useless. It's different from CnD or Luna because they can still get value from suboptimal ults. For Invis if she fks up, the whole teamfight is lost.

I'm not exaggerating when I say in the last few games I played, I'm the sole reason my team lost. Sure, maybe the dps screws up and gets picked, the tank overextends and dies, but a good support ult can erase all of these mistakes. I can play a perfect neutral but once I screw up the ult, it's all on me.

Just wanted to get that off my chest, as it's only now that I realise the sheer responsibility and power all Sue mains have with that ult. It's a stressful cross to bear.

There seems to be a soft stigma against white foxes in the game, where people often tell you to get off Fox at any one point. Sometimes politely, sometimes rudely, sometimes with a reason and sometimes without. I'm writing this in the cases where there is a reason, and it might happen more often than you think. In a game where support is the most influential role, if you mess up as Wf, the entire team will feel it much harder.

Here are the most common mistakes I see foxes do:

1. Dying first. I cannot understate how important supports are. If a support is the first to die, the whole teamfight is pretty much over. And Wf players like to die the most. This is because the nature of her kit requires her to be closer to the action, but that doesn't mean she throws away all her fundamentals, like positioning, cover, sticking behind the tanks, like all other supports.

Particularly damning is when some foxes like to use Awakening aggressively, charge in first and then die. It's possible to use Awakening aggressively but its a niche use case and requires some finesse to pull off. Another wasted skill usage is teleporting right in front of the tank and dying instantly. Don't forget these two skills are also your only survival skills and have long cooldowns, so if you waste it, even if you get out alive somehow, that's more than ten seconds where you have no more escape buttons.

White Fox is a more aggressive support, but she is still a support. The base fundamentals a support should have should still stay intact.

2. Not understanding team comps and the macro game. Wf is more situational than most, and her playstyle has to be adapted to suit not only your team comps, but the enemy team comps as well.

First off, counters. Wf is countered hard by poke and if you think you can play like you normally do slashing away in front of a firing squad, you're providing no value to your team. You have to adapt. Use cover more, be ready to burn your dash to get out of range, and don't teleport in main even if your tank is dying. Bait out ults so they don't melt yours. The point is, you have to be adjusting your playstyle appropriately to the counters. And if you can't do it, you have to swap to another more reliable support.

Secondly, team comp. White fox is considered an off healer, and she does not throw up the same numbers as Invis or Cloak. So if your only other support is a dp, for example, and your team is running shield tanks against a sustained damaged comp, then you're cooked. In this case, there's not much you can control apart from maybe asking your team to play safer or swap. And you have to swap if nothing else is happening. Wf does not fit in all team comps, unlike other supports.

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Now I made this post because I recently experienced a white fox in ranked which did these two mistakes exactly. First, she ran Fox against a poke versus poke comp, and punisher pretty much wrecked her ult every time while the enemy Invis and Luna had ults for days. Second, she kept trying to brawl at the frontline with her awakening right in front of punisher and Strange so she kept dying first. And this was a champion white fox. Don't contribute to the stereotype, kumihos. If winning is the objective, I hope you don't make these mistakes.

Disclaimer: I'm a GM Peni. Trying to jot down some notes as flank Attack Peni all by her lonesome is extremely scary and requires some strategy. Particularly, it's rather important to know which enemy characters you're up against.

Flank Peni's gameplay loop is pretty standard. First, set up your nest in an area you can control. Then engage the enemy team either through passive mine throwing or active diving. Then retreat back to your nest if things get too hot. These notes assume that you have a good nest spot and cover which is reasonably hard for the enemy to take your space. But there are some characters which can still even destroy that, especially if you're alone.

Danger Level: Low 🟢

Everyone else - Basically anyone who doesn't have the tools to threaten your nest. Im including poke characters in here because while they are annoying and they can melt you fast - they can't stop you from playing on your nest as long as you limit test. I'm also including shield tanks in here because although they technically can negate your nest damage, they belong on the frontline and if they're trying to contest you, their fight is often already lost.

Danger Level: Medium 🟡 - The Duelists

These characters will actively try to contest your nest. They have either great mobility to get in or get out, or damage negating abilities. You should be able to win a 1v1, but in flank situations sometimes it isn't a fair fight, and these characters take up a lot of your resources and attention. Exercise caution.

Magik

Iron Fist

Venom

Captain America

Angela

Deadpool

Thing

Hulk

Danger Level: High 🟥 - The cc merchants

Cc I think is a death sentence to Peni. She relies so much on her mobility but the moment that's gone, she melts like a candle. These characters must be accounted for when engaging and their cooldowns be tracked.This doesn't just include stuns but also displacement abilities as well - getting pulled out of your nest isn't fun.

Less dangerous cc:

Luna

Mantis

Scarlet Witch

White Fox

Emma (dangerous but hard to proc)

Thor

More dangerous cc:

Spiderman

Squirrel Girl

Bucky

Invisible Woman

Danger Level: Extreme 💀 - The assassins

The characters that can not only contest you on your nest, but will be able to win singlehandedly everytime, rendering your flank useless. So far there's only one character in this category I have found

Star Lord

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And that's the list. Feel free to tell me what you think. Thanks!

I'd always thought Peni was a decent counter to dive tanks. Until I started matching with Venom - especially the good ones which get their dive timing right and don't get focused. The guy's health pool is big enough that he ignores my nest and just breaks it. He's easy to web, but his health pool is so big he doesn't care. He serves his exact purpose - a distraction which wastes too much of my time while the frontline collapses onto me.

How do you deal with a Venom diving at your supports? Does the nest help? Does webbing help? Do I just need to ignore him?

I don't know if it's just a skill issue, but even if I'm looking out for it, when Spiderman ults he's always moves in this zigzag pattern thats completely random and I always miss my web. Do any of you have trouble stopping Spiderman ults?

Strange always flies through the air at mach 10 and I can never web him before he gets off his ult, even if I'm purposely watching out for it. Is it a skill issue? Any tips on consistently webbing a flying strange?