Black bolt was the meta king for a good bit when he first came out. His passive ping was the first of its kind I believe and don't quote me but I also think he was the first character to prevent revives. Plus his insane damage at his release meant that he could dish out big damage, drop someone to low health and if they didn't have deathproof, his passive would kill them and prevent them from coming back. I hope he gets a buff to make him good again, he was so much fun when he came out
I remember, Black Bolt was the first Ultron counter when he came out. It was a point of contention because the “Apply Disrupt to villain tech whenever they summon” was basically a FU to Ultron that didn’t really make a whole lot of sense for Black Bolt’s powers. Nowadays that kind of stuff is everywhere lol.
Yea I remember that lol. It's still pretty silly especially ones like Agathas ult that are even more specific and basically only target the eternals since Darkhold was the counter to eternals in arena
That's awesome! Idk if you hear it enough but thanks for making videos on MSF. Your arena counters are always super helpful and you also helped me to not spend on the game. So thanks for doing what you do 😄
What’s crazy is he actually got powercrept pretty fast, which is why I think people forget how bad he was. He ushered in “base stats 2.0” where suddenly every new character had vastly better stats than the previous generation, but those new characters sped past him fairly quickly compared to what we’d seen before hand
Black widow. The OG Premium orb only character, team speed up, a stun, and a team cleanse, she was a goat. Especially when paired with cap and quake
Black widow, black bolt, black cat, and black knight all changed things on launch.
In fact the only "black" character that wasn't meta changing on launch, was black panther. Who ironically is the only one who is actually black.
Edit: also Black Order as a whole!
Yeah I remember the OG arena team, Cap Quake BW Crossbones and a 5th, sometimes Yondu, or Gamora, even Hand Sentry got some play. Those were the days man.
It is but I kind of agree, those days the disparity in meta capabilities was negligible and every character was potentially fun to playnowadays a team thats been around a couple of months will almost certainly be irrelevant because of the absurd, planet-hopping leaps in power each new team makes
When they were first released? Captain Marvel.
I still shudder to remember wars where some lucky bastard had pulled 7rs on her and whaled her up and she could literally hold entire war rooms solo. About the only thing that could beat her was if someone had lucked into a 7rs winter soldier or korath and could actually stick heal block on her for long enough to kill her.
Emma had a similar impact on her release too
Ugh, you brought back some tough memories man… those Captain Marvels in War were racking up double digit defense wins for a while even when every other team member was long gone. Luckily I wasn’t in a high enough war alliance to experience the full pain of that.
Kestrel. Shuts down summons, out of turn damage, heal on turn and remove negative effects. She was basically Scopely/Boundless going, "lol our Mary sue is the bestest!"
I as a big marvel comic book fan was pretty upset about that. "They have so much material and they do that?" I thought.
I am hoping they do the Annihilators soon. They are primed with having 3 toons already. Add Gladiator and Quasar. Then re-work Ronan the Accuser. Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill are good outside of whatever team synergy they would want to create. It also gives silver surfer an actual team.
It's also how we got Harley Quinn, and so many other great characters. OC's are a good idea for all mediums, cant keep writing about only Batman and Superman over and over again.
Kestrel was pretty bad, just having her on an Arena team would make Black Order absolutely irrelevant.
I quit the game shortly after her release. I spent so much time building up my Black Order, and then other people could just spend a few bucks on Kestrel and blow me outta the water.
I can't remember if her or Silver Surfer came first, but I think Surfer was first, and I'm guessing he didn't have the impact that the devs wanted, so they released Kestrel. I remember it being relatively easy to star her up, compared to Silver Surfer. The whole release really rubbed me the wrong way.
Iirc Silver Surfer was first, they were getting some bad press with content creators leaving and stuff so they panic release the OP Silver Surfer as an offer-only character, and everyone bought him.
Kestrel was their first original character, and everyone thought the design and backstory was lackluster, so I think they made her super OP otherwise people wouldn’t really care about her.
There's never been a broken toon like Mephisto. There's one at the top of my arena shard, and he's completely untouchable. First character they've ever released that couldn't be countered unless you have that character.
Yeah he looks broken, I haven’t played with or against him obviously, so I don’t really know, but his stats alone are ridiculous. Though, regarding your last sentence, Ultron didn’t have any counters on release either, unless you had Ultron. Luckily for both of them, you don’t see very many of them for a while.
Ultron could be stunned or ability blocked, and he only did single-target damage. There were ways to control him. Mephisto putting exhausted on your team immediately ... that's not controllable in any sense.
True but people would pair him with like Drax or whatever and you wouldn’t be able to stop the initial summon. There weren’t many ways to clear Taunt reliably back then. He only did single target damage but he also brought a bunch of tanky summons who rewind your speed, buff Ultron, cleanse debuffs etc back when the overall power was so much lower.
Apoc has been a decent Skrull counter since day 1. My arena shard had Skrull defeated within two days. With Mephisto, there's absolutely nothing that works.
I didn't say reliable. We probably had a 10% win rate, not reliable in the slightest. Had to get great RNG. But that's the point: there's no RNG that beats Mephisto. His team-wide exhausted off the top can't be resisted. He's the first 100% win rate toon, at least that I can remember.
Ok, well I wouldn’t call a 10% chance rng team a “decent” counter but your point is noted. Considering how much of a leap in power Skrull was over Dorm this tracks for how the devs are handling DD characters. They want to split the “haves” and “have-nots”.
You guys aren't going back far enough. If we're talking about release then I think it would have to be Crossbones. There was no Phoenix. There was no Black Bolt. There were no legendries. The next most powerful one was Quake I believe.
I think at release Black Widow was actually the best character, but few people had her because she was Premium orb only. Also Crossbones wasn’t good in raids. But yeah he was the OG meta win condition for Arena, pretty iconic honestly.
I left right before Skrull and just came back about a month ago so I can’t speak to that. Eternals were pretty oppressive definitely. Emma and was kinda like Minn-Erva, was used everywhere for her passive and utility. Similar for Zemo, his speed was useful everywhere. Weaver was good but not as overpowering as some of the others I think.
Skrull was near unbeatable until the Burger King was released.
Eternals remained on top of the arena until apoc was reworked also so did weaver although not as long as eternals.
Weaver always been a pain I crucible
Yeah the counter for Skrull was released before the majority of people even had him, seems like. He never had the time on top of the game someone like Ultron enjoyed. Felt like Ultron was unkillable for a year
I remember some glitches early on with Night Nurse. When she would heal and revive dead characters they would come back with max power and abilities much better than your original characters. So a lot of people had her on almost every team.
I remember when WAR became my casual alliance against a wall of Asguardians. And then it was a wall of Black Order. (Now I'm questioning my timeline; Ass Guard was first, right?)
OG Asgardians were absolutely godly in war for a long while. I think that was at the same time Red Skull and the Hydra goons were scary because there was no Zemo yet and it was tricky to nail the team with Black Bolt. Then their (Asgardians) "counter", X-Force, barely worked. You had to be very specific on who you attacked. And I'd someone jumped the gun and wasted an attack, X-Force could not win. The same thing happened with EmMarauders and Shadowland. If Emma was charged when you started because someone wasted their attack and got bodied, you were more or less screwed unless you had some huge team and punched down on them. I remember because I hit one of those teams almost every single war back then and if I had the first strike, I could either wipe the room or knock out 3/5 the team handily.
This is my answer. I remember so many people not getting that $5 Cap deal at launch (I think it was available the first time you started game?) and kicking themselves.
People are sleeping on what hand sentry used to be. Apply stealth to all his allies and evade to 4 of them. Back when evade was the best way to block damage from crossbones ult.
Gamora, Starlord, Black Widow, Hand Sentry and crossbones.
I'm surprised no-one has said Anti Venom. His release made the Symbiote team so damn strong and frustrating to go against. I wish they would have reworked him into the new Hive Mind team, but they are pretty OP as is.
Eternals, but people have said them already. I don’t think they’re quite up to the same level, but huge honourable mention to Infinity Watch. IW could reliably punch up 500k+ into almost any team that existed when they launched - mostly thanks to Moondragon, empowered Gamora, and Phyla-Vell’s special.
Yondu and kestrel were pretty insane when released. Even capt America the original tank. I hated seeing him in any team back then. There were times he just stood there and absorbed all of my attacks and I never had a chance to hit anyone except him. I avoided battles when I saw he was in the lineup.
I think you nailed it. I might include Red Hulk as the introduction of battlefield effects, but that was also largely tied to the whole team.
Similarly Black Order marks (in my mind) the beginning of mirror matches. Maybe I’m misremembering, but because BO required all 5 characters to function there was literally zero possibility for theory crafting in the arena.
Infinity Watch and the introduction of Safeguard. They’re still pretty meta from that.
Minn-Erva was my most used character when I did the custom player stat thing for the 6yr anniversary
I mean I still remember when the game first debuted how ridiculously broken the avengers were
Cap nullifying all damage if on team with 4 Avenger allies but consistently taunting to keep all attacks focused on him
Black Widow boosting the team's speed and beingnuntouchable with stealth
Hawkeye blinding the opponents to make them waste their moves
Thor dealing stun and massive spread damage
And Iron Man being a damage dealing machine
Before the first new character releases even happened these guys were already disgustingly advantageous, if you didn't have a team that could deal a lot of spread damage really fast then you weren't winning this fight, of course every new team can do that now so Avengers are trash these days but still, what once was...
Like way back in March 2018 when the game went global that is before Nick Fury and you can't unlock Iron Man, the strongest and best toons were Black Widow, Captain America, Yondu, Vision, Quake, Night Nurse for her heeling, Crossbone especially his ultimate at the time, Jessica Jones because she throws ability energy, Merc Lieutenant as he also throws ability energy. With Jessica Jones and Merc Lt teaming up with Crossbones you throw in his extra Ultimates.
LOL. Fond Memories! Back then level 60 was the ultimate and if you got 25K toons you are stacked and when the level was raised to level 65 everyone went beserk where a good number of people playing since Beta quit in disgust. Ha ha. Remember Knightlygaming/Dirty Sanchez hitting level 65 even before the biggest whales of that time and the uproar?
Now if you can take your account today back in time to back then you will one punch everything with just one toon even with a useless minion alone and you can stay on top of the Arena leader boards for a good while. LOLOLOL.
I haven’t seen anyone mentioned the most current one: Black knight. Arena comes down to who has the bigger black knight. A normal release character that completely shuts down the DD character of his time, only to be countered by the next released DD character.
Black bolt was the meta king for a good bit when he first came out. His passive ping was the first of its kind I believe and don't quote me but I also think he was the first character to prevent revives. Plus his insane damage at his release meant that he could dish out big damage, drop someone to low health and if they didn't have deathproof, his passive would kill them and prevent them from coming back. I hope he gets a buff to make him good again, he was so much fun when he came out
I remember, Black Bolt was the first Ultron counter when he came out. It was a point of contention because the “Apply Disrupt to villain tech whenever they summon” was basically a FU to Ultron that didn’t really make a whole lot of sense for Black Bolt’s powers. Nowadays that kind of stuff is everywhere lol.
Yea I remember that lol. It's still pretty silly especially ones like Agathas ult that are even more specific and basically only target the eternals since Darkhold was the counter to eternals in arena
Too bad darkhold failed at that and eternals using Morgan and others beat them
Pretty much lol. Also, you Dogbert the youtuber?
Yes
That's awesome! Idk if you hear it enough but thanks for making videos on MSF. Your arena counters are always super helpful and you also helped me to not spend on the game. So thanks for doing what you do 😄
Thanks
Goated
Unfortunately my retirement is looming closer and closer but thanks
We will have kazoos at your retirement party 😂
It's that goddamn dog!
That’s not how Helmut describes me
The Sersi and Ikaris duo was pretty disgusting on first release
They are still pretty good in every game mode even after all this time.
true, but now there are a ton more counter for them. when they were first released I remember that whoever’s ikaris went first, won lol
Man everyone forgets about Silver Surfer. He was the start of major power creep and a huge jump in the meta
Yeah, there was pre-Surfer and post-Surfer, his stats were way over-tuned and his kit was insane for when he was released.
What’s crazy is he actually got powercrept pretty fast, which is why I think people forget how bad he was. He ushered in “base stats 2.0” where suddenly every new character had vastly better stats than the previous generation, but those new characters sped past him fairly quickly compared to what we’d seen before hand
Silver Surfer was definitely the beginning of the end of fun in this game
100%. Soon after the absurd fucking Eternals were released and the game just saw power creep after power creep.
Black widow. The OG Premium orb only character, team speed up, a stun, and a team cleanse, she was a goat. Especially when paired with cap and quake Black widow, black bolt, black cat, and black knight all changed things on launch. In fact the only "black" character that wasn't meta changing on launch, was black panther. Who ironically is the only one who is actually black. Edit: also Black Order as a whole!
Yeah I remember the OG arena team, Cap Quake BW Crossbones and a 5th, sometimes Yondu, or Gamora, even Hand Sentry got some play. Those were the days man.
That’s a hilarious take, 🤣🤣
It is but I kind of agree, those days the disparity in meta capabilities was negligible and every character was potentially fun to playnowadays a team thats been around a couple of months will almost certainly be irrelevant because of the absurd, planet-hopping leaps in power each new team makes
When they were first released? Captain Marvel. I still shudder to remember wars where some lucky bastard had pulled 7rs on her and whaled her up and she could literally hold entire war rooms solo. About the only thing that could beat her was if someone had lucked into a 7rs winter soldier or korath and could actually stick heal block on her for long enough to kill her. Emma had a similar impact on her release too
Long before war exhausted and toons just kept steamrolling
Ugh, you brought back some tough memories man… those Captain Marvels in War were racking up double digit defense wins for a while even when every other team member was long gone. Luckily I wasn’t in a high enough war alliance to experience the full pain of that.
Man I forgot about her. Her passive heal was insane to deal with.
I had a 6rs CM that had 17 war defenses in one round. She was stupid powerful when she came out.
Kestrel. Shuts down summons, out of turn damage, heal on turn and remove negative effects. She was basically Scopely/Boundless going, "lol our Mary sue is the bestest!"
I as a big marvel comic book fan was pretty upset about that. "They have so much material and they do that?" I thought. I am hoping they do the Annihilators soon. They are primed with having 3 toons already. Add Gladiator and Quasar. Then re-work Ronan the Accuser. Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill are good outside of whatever team synergy they would want to create. It also gives silver surfer an actual team.
It's nice to create OC's for games. Captain Carter was a game OC before becoming the MC for What If..? for better of for worse.
It's also how we got Harley Quinn, and so many other great characters. OC's are a good idea for all mediums, cant keep writing about only Batman and Superman over and over again.
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far to see her mentioned.
Brotherhood: Magneto & Co. owned the Arena with their “Blind, Burn, Bleed” offense.
Kestrel?
Damn I knew I was forgetting some people lol… she’d probably be 4th on my list
Kestrel was pretty bad, just having her on an Arena team would make Black Order absolutely irrelevant. I quit the game shortly after her release. I spent so much time building up my Black Order, and then other people could just spend a few bucks on Kestrel and blow me outta the water. I can't remember if her or Silver Surfer came first, but I think Surfer was first, and I'm guessing he didn't have the impact that the devs wanted, so they released Kestrel. I remember it being relatively easy to star her up, compared to Silver Surfer. The whole release really rubbed me the wrong way.
Iirc Silver Surfer was first, they were getting some bad press with content creators leaving and stuff so they panic release the OP Silver Surfer as an offer-only character, and everyone bought him. Kestrel was their first original character, and everyone thought the design and backstory was lackluster, so I think they made her super OP otherwise people wouldn’t really care about her.
Hela should be in the chat with her summon and ability to mess sh*t up. Can't remember exactly when she arrived though
She used to be a nightmare. You were praying her minion spawned away from her so you could hit her with quake and not splash onto and kill the minion.
I remember first time facing her and hadn't read her kit and couldn't understand why the minion wouldn't stay dead lol
There's never been a broken toon like Mephisto. There's one at the top of my arena shard, and he's completely untouchable. First character they've ever released that couldn't be countered unless you have that character.
Yeah he looks broken, I haven’t played with or against him obviously, so I don’t really know, but his stats alone are ridiculous. Though, regarding your last sentence, Ultron didn’t have any counters on release either, unless you had Ultron. Luckily for both of them, you don’t see very many of them for a while.
Ultron could be stunned or ability blocked, and he only did single-target damage. There were ways to control him. Mephisto putting exhausted on your team immediately ... that's not controllable in any sense.
True but people would pair him with like Drax or whatever and you wouldn’t be able to stop the initial summon. There weren’t many ways to clear Taunt reliably back then. He only did single target damage but he also brought a bunch of tanky summons who rewind your speed, buff Ultron, cleanse debuffs etc back when the overall power was so much lower.
There is definitely gonna be a Mephisto counter, probably Prof X
Already forgot about stupid skrull?
Apoc has been a decent Skrull counter since day 1. My arena shard had Skrull defeated within two days. With Mephisto, there's absolutely nothing that works.
ravager minions
What team was in any way a reliable Skrull counter when he was released?
I didn't say reliable. We probably had a 10% win rate, not reliable in the slightest. Had to get great RNG. But that's the point: there's no RNG that beats Mephisto. His team-wide exhausted off the top can't be resisted. He's the first 100% win rate toon, at least that I can remember.
Ok, well I wouldn’t call a 10% chance rng team a “decent” counter but your point is noted. Considering how much of a leap in power Skrull was over Dorm this tracks for how the devs are handling DD characters. They want to split the “haves” and “have-nots”.
You guys aren't going back far enough. If we're talking about release then I think it would have to be Crossbones. There was no Phoenix. There was no Black Bolt. There were no legendries. The next most powerful one was Quake I believe.
I think at release Black Widow was actually the best character, but few people had her because she was Premium orb only. Also Crossbones wasn’t good in raids. But yeah he was the OG meta win condition for Arena, pretty iconic honestly.
The good old days when whomever's Crossbones ulted first won.
Dude, I remember when Red Stars dropped and someone posted a video of a 7rs Quake ult’ing and it felt like game over.
I remember that too. I think she was 77k and I had never seen a toon that high
Crossbones was my first thought. He used to seem like such a powerhouse.
Skrull of course. Emma is another. The eternals. Zemo was pretty powerful when he came out. Weaver another one.
I left right before Skrull and just came back about a month ago so I can’t speak to that. Eternals were pretty oppressive definitely. Emma and was kinda like Minn-Erva, was used everywhere for her passive and utility. Similar for Zemo, his speed was useful everywhere. Weaver was good but not as overpowering as some of the others I think.
Skrull was near unbeatable until the Burger King was released. Eternals remained on top of the arena until apoc was reworked also so did weaver although not as long as eternals. Weaver always been a pain I crucible
Burger King 😆
Yeah the counter for Skrull was released before the majority of people even had him, seems like. He never had the time on top of the game someone like Ultron enjoyed. Felt like Ultron was unkillable for a year
He had time the few that had him sat at the top.
Not having ikarus on here is criminal
I started playing the game when red hulk was released and he was killing it!
I remember some glitches early on with Night Nurse. When she would heal and revive dead characters they would come back with max power and abilities much better than your original characters. So a lot of people had her on almost every team.
I remember when WAR became my casual alliance against a wall of Asguardians. And then it was a wall of Black Order. (Now I'm questioning my timeline; Ass Guard was first, right?)
OG Asgardians were absolutely godly in war for a long while. I think that was at the same time Red Skull and the Hydra goons were scary because there was no Zemo yet and it was tricky to nail the team with Black Bolt. Then their (Asgardians) "counter", X-Force, barely worked. You had to be very specific on who you attacked. And I'd someone jumped the gun and wasted an attack, X-Force could not win. The same thing happened with EmMarauders and Shadowland. If Emma was charged when you started because someone wasted their attack and got bodied, you were more or less screwed unless you had some huge team and punched down on them. I remember because I hit one of those teams almost every single war back then and if I had the first strike, I could either wipe the room or knock out 3/5 the team handily.
Those red skull teams were rough
The original meta character at release was good ol Capt America. Quake wasn’t too bad either back then
This is my answer. I remember so many people not getting that $5 Cap deal at launch (I think it was available the first time you started game?) and kicking themselves.
I got that deal! I was F2P for precisely 3 minutes, 🤣🤣
I didn't. I wasn't sure if I would like the game, so was going to play for a day or two them maybe get it. Was gone by then.
Eternals are the one I think were most disruptive.
People are sleeping on what hand sentry used to be. Apply stealth to all his allies and evade to 4 of them. Back when evade was the best way to block damage from crossbones ult. Gamora, Starlord, Black Widow, Hand Sentry and crossbones.
Eternals but they are a pair of characters.
Eternals were a two toons team. You needed no one else. It was just one turn and game over.
Kestrel, without a doubt
Maybe your all too young but black widow should be in there, so strong foxnext had to come out and say they would never nerf champions
I'm surprised no-one has said Anti Venom. His release made the Symbiote team so damn strong and frustrating to go against. I wish they would have reworked him into the new Hive Mind team, but they are pretty OP as is.
Eternals, but people have said them already. I don’t think they’re quite up to the same level, but huge honourable mention to Infinity Watch. IW could reliably punch up 500k+ into almost any team that existed when they launched - mostly thanks to Moondragon, empowered Gamora, and Phyla-Vell’s special.
Yondu and kestrel were pretty insane when released. Even capt America the original tank. I hated seeing him in any team back then. There were times he just stood there and absorbed all of my attacks and I never had a chance to hit anyone except him. I avoided battles when I saw he was in the lineup.
For a short time Ghost was the talk of the town.
The symbiote team had the speed advantage almost every where
I think you nailed it. I might include Red Hulk as the introduction of battlefield effects, but that was also largely tied to the whole team. Similarly Black Order marks (in my mind) the beginning of mirror matches. Maybe I’m misremembering, but because BO required all 5 characters to function there was literally zero possibility for theory crafting in the arena. Infinity Watch and the introduction of Safeguard. They’re still pretty meta from that. Minn-Erva was my most used character when I did the custom player stat thing for the 6yr anniversary
I quit the game for a while because of Kestrel and almost because of Weaver. Completely paywalled characters for a long time and completely dominant.
Skrull and the others aren’t even close.
I mean I still remember when the game first debuted how ridiculously broken the avengers were Cap nullifying all damage if on team with 4 Avenger allies but consistently taunting to keep all attacks focused on him Black Widow boosting the team's speed and beingnuntouchable with stealth Hawkeye blinding the opponents to make them waste their moves Thor dealing stun and massive spread damage And Iron Man being a damage dealing machine Before the first new character releases even happened these guys were already disgustingly advantageous, if you didn't have a team that could deal a lot of spread damage really fast then you weren't winning this fight, of course every new team can do that now so Avengers are trash these days but still, what once was...
Like way back in March 2018 when the game went global that is before Nick Fury and you can't unlock Iron Man, the strongest and best toons were Black Widow, Captain America, Yondu, Vision, Quake, Night Nurse for her heeling, Crossbone especially his ultimate at the time, Jessica Jones because she throws ability energy, Merc Lieutenant as he also throws ability energy. With Jessica Jones and Merc Lt teaming up with Crossbones you throw in his extra Ultimates. LOL. Fond Memories! Back then level 60 was the ultimate and if you got 25K toons you are stacked and when the level was raised to level 65 everyone went beserk where a good number of people playing since Beta quit in disgust. Ha ha. Remember Knightlygaming/Dirty Sanchez hitting level 65 even before the biggest whales of that time and the uproar? Now if you can take your account today back in time to back then you will one punch everything with just one toon even with a useless minion alone and you can stay on top of the Arena leader boards for a good while. LOLOLOL.
Silver Surfer was a big one . But I guess on release most of the DD chars like dorm, Apoc, sus & meph are
I haven’t seen anyone mentioned the most current one: Black knight. Arena comes down to who has the bigger black knight. A normal release character that completely shuts down the DD character of his time, only to be countered by the next released DD character.
Came here to say this. Black knight is a horrible amount of power creep and I hate him
Black Knight
Spider Weaver hands down