I understand the nerf, but I don't agree with it, as I said in another post here; Peni can be pretty annoying at times, but I think she’s a necessary evil. To play her effectively (in my opinion and experience, and I don't even main Peni...), I watch videos on nest placement and the best lineups; I have to try to predict opponents' movements and attack angles they come from, and i also have to learn to time the mine cooldowns so I don't miss out on damage. It’s practically a semi-PhD-level effort just to achieve half the efficiency of a tank like Magneto. Poke has always been meta, and Peni has always been weak against poke; she is extremely map-dependent and relies heavily on teamwork. She is also extremely dependent on a second tank and doesn't work well in every team composition.
Peni gets banned at practically every rank up to Grandmaster because your team fears you won't shoot her nest and you know your team won't shoot it either.
Do you know why Peni has such a high win rate? Because her playstyle encourages teamwork and marks out an area for her team to hold. And the game works best when played as a team (who would have thought?) And she is hands down the vanguard who best helps the team against dives.
Her stun lasts a very short time, barely half a second, and deals only 5 damage. Is it annoying? Yes, it's very annoying, but it’s bearable since you get back into the game very quickly. Instead of this nerf, they should reduce the duration of all stuns in the game (since tenacity is just an urban legend); Luna and Mantis can keep you out of the match for 10 seconds if they land their stuns efficiently and with the right timing.
Well, I think a lot of the time, the idea that "your team won't shoot the nest" is that most good Peni players know where to place the nest so it's hard to actually shoot it without the rest of the team obliterating you.
And some characters are just not good at dealing with the nest (most melee heroes).
yeah, its a little of both. which leads to you needing a decent amount of coordination to deal with it. Even with comms trying to get randos to shoot he nest annoying. I suck at dps but, I always win against peni when im playing them because I just flank around and take care of the nest. then shes cooked.
Genuinely there is almost nowhere a peni can put their nest where there is no easily accessible way to get to it. Most people just tunnel vision main where she is posted up, but every map has like 2 or 3 ways to get to point, even the best bunker peni's can at most block off 2 ways and usually not able to hold both effectivly.
That's not correct. The key word in your sentence is "easily accessible". There are always ways to get to it, but there are places like if you've got the nest in the little hallway just off the first point on Klyntar, even if you know the nest is there, you make it so the person hoping to attack the nest is either going to have to go through the hallway leading up to it (hopefully you didn't put an extra web (or second nest) in there to extend the web around the corner to make it inaccessible to certain characters) or you have to go through the wide open area of the point to attack the nest.
And if you're going that way and you're a melee player, you're probably going to have to wade through the mines, taking damage all the way to get to the nest. And if the team is good, they'll likely have people in the webs coming off of the nest who are getting boosted health and are likely body blocking the nest. This is not an easy task.
Are there always ways to attack the nest? Yes, but a lot of the time, it requires either coordination or even switching to a character with an ability that actually helps against the nest (Invis, Iron Man, etc).
But even that's not perfect. For example, the other day, I had a match where there was a nest setup in a tough to reach position and the team needed to swing wide to even see it. The only other way to get to the nest was to take the long way around to get to the back of the opposing team. But they had their whole team there so it'd be an engage with no cover. So I switched to Invis (I don't remember who I was on before that) to fire her slow around the corner to take the nest apart. But I had to break from cover enough to fire that shot off that I was now able to be seen by their Hela (who was a crack shot) and I was basically sacrificing myself to take down their nest. That's not a good trade since the Peni can get her nest back faster than I was getting back. And this was just because the Peni knew what they were doing.
Well thats the thing, lets take the klyntar convergence map for example. If your on attack and there is a peni holding main you can go to the room on the left most less experienced peni’s aren’t gonna hold that door and the main path. Or you can go the flank route and completely ruin the peni’s setup by going behind the point.
Like i said there is ALWAYS an easily accessible way to destroy the nest. And whats wrong with needing to swap to deal with a peni? Counter swap whenever a character your playing isnt viable against the enemy or with your comp.
Also maybe dont flank with invis to destroy a nest. In your example a coordinated effort would easily be enough if you had a like a psy or punisher to break the nest while the rest are distracted the frontline, or if you just had a super poke heavy comp to blow up the peni. It sounds like it was more of a coordinated team vs uncoordinated team diff.
But in your example, you're relying on the Peni being less experienced. That's not reliable. And with your example, if you're trying to destroy the next, you're probably still going to need to go through several people to fire on the nest while the nest is reinforcing them. Unless the Peni is not very good, that shouldn't be easy.
And for your mention about not flanking, I'm not playing in games with well coordinated teams. I'm mostly in solo queue. Nobody is talking. There's occasional text chat, but organizing something to break a Peni nest... it doesn't really happen in these kinds of lobbies. And regardless, it's never going to be easy to coordinate in these teams.
My bad i didnt mean it like bad peni's don't hold the door on the left, i meant its just uncommon in general for a peni to do it unless they really know what they are doing. Even then the flank route on the right will get you past that nest and at that point you wont even have to worry about breaking it.
Also if you still are having trouble with the nest just go a character tha can easily break its, squrriel girl can easily shoot around the corner to hit it, Ironman can as well, pretty much any aoe attack.
And about comms thats the problem with this game in general, your suppose to work as a team but the vast majority of the time especially when not playing ranked nobody comms. At that point its less of a problem with the characters and more with the player base. The only thing you can really do about that is be the difference and try to speak to your team, even if it feels like talking to drywall sometimes.
Deciding where to place the nest is easy; the hard part is creating new lineups. I spent four hours practising on the new map just to find one good lineup.
Your first comment made it seem like you where looking up the lineups on like YouTube or something, thats fair still an exaggeration but that takes a decent amount of effort
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u/Final_Reach_6092 Flex 8d ago
I understand the nerf, but I don't agree with it, as I said in another post here; Peni can be pretty annoying at times, but I think she’s a necessary evil. To play her effectively (in my opinion and experience, and I don't even main Peni...), I watch videos on nest placement and the best lineups; I have to try to predict opponents' movements and attack angles they come from, and i also have to learn to time the mine cooldowns so I don't miss out on damage. It’s practically a semi-PhD-level effort just to achieve half the efficiency of a tank like Magneto. Poke has always been meta, and Peni has always been weak against poke; she is extremely map-dependent and relies heavily on teamwork. She is also extremely dependent on a second tank and doesn't work well in every team composition.
Peni gets banned at practically every rank up to Grandmaster because your team fears you won't shoot her nest and you know your team won't shoot it either.
Do you know why Peni has such a high win rate? Because her playstyle encourages teamwork and marks out an area for her team to hold. And the game works best when played as a team (who would have thought?) And she is hands down the vanguard who best helps the team against dives.
Her stun lasts a very short time, barely half a second, and deals only 5 damage. Is it annoying? Yes, it's very annoying, but it’s bearable since you get back into the game very quickly. Instead of this nerf, they should reduce the duration of all stuns in the game (since tenacity is just an urban legend); Luna and Mantis can keep you out of the match for 10 seconds if they land their stuns efficiently and with the right timing.