**** Luke Cage (Power Man) ****

Cthulhu

Luke Cage (Power Man)
4 Star Rarity (Legendary) Wiki Link
At Max Level: HP: 14477 Tile Damage: 85/65/12/11/13/74/3.8x

Hero for Hire- 8 AP
Luke Cage is always ready stop and up for the little guy! Fortifies up to 1 friendly special tile(s), then deals 472 damage for each Fortified friendly special tile on the board. If Iron Fist is an active ally, creates a strength 43 Protect tile first.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Deals 666 damage for each Fortified friendly special tile.

Iron Fist creates a strength 56 Protect tile.
Level 3: Fortifies 2 friendly special tiles.
Level 4: Deals 925 damage fore each Fortified special tile. Iron Fist creates a strength 105 Protect tile.
Level 5: Deals 1055 damage for each Fortified friendly Special tile. Iron Fist creates a strength 171 Protect tile.
Max Level

Level 3: Fortifies 2 friendly special tiles, then deals 1249 damage for each Fortified friendly special tile.

Iron Fist creates a strength 104 Protect tile.
Level 4: Deals 1735 damage for each Fortified special tile. Iron Fist creates a 197 Protect tile.
Level 5: Deals 1978 damage for each Fortified special tile. Iron Fist creates a 318 Protect tile.

The Defender - 0 AP
(PASSIVE) Luke’s unbreakable skin deflects incoming attacks, bolstering his team’s defense. Whenever an enemy fires a power, creates a Black strength 44 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, he reduces a random enemy special tile by 37 (to a minimum of 1).
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Creates a strength 61 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, reduces a random enemy Special tile by 51. Level 3: Creates a strength 78 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, reduces a random enemy special tile by 69. Level 4: Creates a strength 112 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, reduces a random enemy special tile by 97. Level 5: Creates a strength 174 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, removes a random enemy Attack, Strike, or Protect tile.

Max Level

Level 3: Creates a strength 147 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, reduces a random enemy special tile by 129. Level 4: Creates a strength 211 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, reduces a random enemy special tile by 181. Level 5: Creates a strength 329 Protect tile. If Luke is in front, removes a random enemy Attack, Strike, or Protect tile.

Buncha Fiddle-Faddle - 13 AP
Luke doesn’t have time for all this nonsense. Give these knick-knack-paddy-whacks what for! deals 1076 damage, or 1721 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles on the board.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Deals 1506 damage or 2409 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles. Level 3: Deals 1937 damage or 3098 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles. Level 4: Deals 2798 damage or 4475 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles. Level 5: Deals 4159 damage or 7228 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles.

Max Level

Level 3: Deals 3627 damage, or 5803 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack Tiles. Level 4: Deals 5239 damage, or 8392 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack Tiles. Level 5: Deals 8463 damage, or 13541 damage if there are no enemy Strike, Protect, or Attack Tiles.

wymtime

First impression is he is an interesting character. I think yellow is under powered unless you are playing him with green goblin or war machine who also fortify tiles. Alone this ability is very under powered. Black is a good passive and red is a little expensive. 13 AP means 5 matches of red and that means he will take a long time to get going see Falcap. I will wait to see how he plays but I feel yellow which is a more unique ability really needs others to support him.

Tiger_Wong

All I want to know is this....

Does his passive activate before or after the enemy power resolves?
Ex. Gamora uses her power. When does Cage's black activate and when is the damage reduced if at all?

Jaedenkaal

Likely after, that's how all power-triggered passive work thus far. Good news is, it could remove a tile just created by the power (sorry Sentry).

Also, combo with Carnage?

Oldboy

Does his Black passive remove a special tile ONLY when the enemy fires a power or even when Luke is in front?

notamutant

Underwhelming numbers. Not impressed.

cyineedsn

Doesn't look like he'll change the meta, but he looks like he'll be pretty fun in PVE against ninjas, symbiotes, and other goon spam I'm forgetting

Jaedenkaal

Heroes For Hire seems like it could be pretty gross if you can keep 4 special tiles fortified. I guess it remains to be seen how plausible that is. GG and war machine's tiles expire, of course, except for the rare CDs that convert to other specials (peacemaker comes to mind).

The red power seems pretty weak, though. Even with the condition fulfilled its just a dumb 13 AP for 7k damage. Isn't Unibeam almost that good?

Blahahah

13 red is a little pricey, you might as well use Flaptain's red instead.
His synergy with IF is cool, however that makes the black generation have to fall on someone else.

You have yellow, red, green, purple so you need a black and blue user to compensate.

Surprisingly, if you don't care for the red, IMHB makes a pretty keen fit into this team.
Reed Richards is also not too shabby, of course this is assuming he gets a buff. Still, he benefits from healing off of the opponents having to match away your tiles and he can put out the imaginaut which can give some decent damage.

Punisher is also really good. Makes the strike tiles from IF stronger, just provides some big chunky damage.

Doctor Octopus is a weird but nice addition as well for a 3-4* transition. Means you don't get any use out of black AP, but reducing enemy tiles while keeping them on the board is great for Insult and Manipulation.

Piro_plock

Jaedenkaal wrote:

The red power seems pretty weak, though. Even with the condition fulfilled its just a dumb 13 AP for 7k damage. Isn't Unibeam almost that good?

It's 7k at base level. At 270 it deals 13.5k.

Quebbster

I like The Defender a lot, will probably go for 5 covers in that one. Not sure where to go with yellow vs red though, I guess it depends a bit on how long those Fortified tiles will stick around...
(I have a grand total of 1 Green Goblin cover, so that's not an option).

OzarkBoatswain

Heroes for Hire might get better over time as more fortify powers get added to the game. If somehow every board tile became fortified, it would do 126592 damage (16K/AP). If anyone ever gets near to this damage, I want a screen-shot as proof. If a 4* or 5* Iron Fist gets added, this'll be better.

I like the passive, especially the protect tile part. Should be good against PVE goons and survival nodes. The special tile part is better against OML at 4 covers than it is at 5.

Red does solid 4* damage but it's pretty boring, and it'll be easy to guard against the AI getting the full damage.

3/5/5. Black at 5 gives a better chance of getting the full red damage. Yellow, at present, is yet another weak 4* yellow.

Polares

He looks quite meh

- The fortification in the yellow should be a passive, as is, you can really count that much that there will be fortified tiles on the board when you recast the power again if GG is not around. I guess that at least, it fortifies the tiles and then it does the damage, so the first time, if at 5, it will do 4k ? A big problem is that it needs special tiles on the board so it can fortify them, if there are none, it does no damage!
- I think Black just works against power spammers, it can really stop those. But against 'normal' powers, what is it going to do a 329 protect against IMHB red, or Rhulks green?
- And red is too expensive. 8k for 13 AP is really bad. Then 13k for 13AP is much much better, but it is still a bit expensive. This power needs to be fired ALWAYS when the condition is met.

So all in all, it looks mid tier. Useful when buffed I guess.

The great combo I see for his yellow is to play him with GG+OML, if you fire GG's purple you put 3 countdowns and two OML strikes on the board, then the next turn the countdowns are fortified and then you fire Luke's yellow, that fortifies the two strikes and with 5 fortified tiles it will do 10k damage! 20k damage if buffed! Not bad.

PS: I guess we might get soon a new IF that will make this Luke's power better....

Crowl

Polares wrote:

He looks quite meh

- The fortification in the yellow should be a passive, as is, you can really count that much that there will be fortified tiles on the board when you recast the power again if GG is not around. I guess that at least, it fortifies the tiles and then it does the damage, so the first time, if at 5, it will do 4k ? A big problem is that it needs special tiles on the board so it can fortify them, if there are none, it does no damage!
- I think Black just works against power spammers, it can really stop those. But against 'normal' powers, what is it going to do a 329 protect against IMHB red, or Rhulks green?
- And red is too expensive. 8k for 13 AP is really bad. Then 13k for 13AP is much much better, but it is still a bit expensive. This power needs to be fired ALWAYS when the condition is met.

If they didn't want him scaling up too easily they could have just made the first one a passive and subsequent ones needing you to use ap.

That black does seem a little weak, maybe it should be a % of the dmg inflicted and also work for match dmg beyond a certain threshold too.

That red should be much cheaper or the base dmg should be a fair bit higher, if they are worried about the conditional dmg being too easily met then just reduce that bonus.

CrookedKnight

Holy moly, that red. 30% more damage than TU-powered Combined Forces, for three more red...that is going to be brutal when he's boosted.

(Yeah, it's only when there are no enemy special tiles on the board....if only there were a top-tier character who eliminates special tiles and complements Luke's colors perfectly. OH WAIT.)

(Also, think about how many times you've fought teams in PvP recently that don't make special tiles. There'll be quite a few times where red will deal its full damage automatically, barring a lucky team-up for the AI.)

simonsez

Assuming there'll be mostly Luke vs. Luke battles, it'd be good to know if his "removes a random enemy Attack, Strike, or Protect tile" will remove a fortified tile.

Ezrius

Kind of awkward?

He incentivises using Iron Fist, but that's two characters with passive black powers, making them really want to team up with someone with an active black as well as something in blue. I suppose not having a reason to spend black AP helps IF turn his purple into constant damage output, though. We'll also probably get a 4* IF whenever his Netflix show debuts.

Seems like Loki would be fun here, you'd just have to take the hit on blue.

His yellow has potential to do some evil, evil things with in the right setup.

Punisher5784

I think he looks good considering his 3* counterpart is tough to top but I agree with players above. I wonder how long before we get 4* Ironfist because his TV show does not come out until next year I believe.

Regardless, the thing I love about 3* Cage and 3* IF is IF creates tons of black for Cage to spam but this does not work with 3* IF and 4* Cage. I wonder if 4* IF would create Yellow tiles so you can spam 4* Cage's Fortified tiles. We do not have a Yellow battery (Thor's red is not very good). I'm sure 4* IF would have a passive when a villain uses a power, he creates a Attach Tile.

babinro

I haven't been doing 4* breakdowns for a while now but I feel the need to comment here because 4* Luke Cage needs a rework in my opinion.

"When Luke is in front,..."

Haven't we learned that this is a HUGE design flaw in the game by now? Hulk, Captain Marvel, Xavier, Gamora's black all suffer from this big time. They become super niche characters because of the nature of championed characters, weekly boosts and higher tiers.

The message this sends to me about Luke Cage is that I better get a lot of his covers if I'm a 3* transitioning player because that's among the only times in the game where he'll truly shine. My level 191 3* cage can have a 284 protect tile on the board so increasing that to 329 on a max level 4* who can't reliably be in the front isn't a strong enough advantage to justify the downsides.

Hero for Hire
My only gripe with this power is that Iron Fist is currently only a 3* character. I'm sure it's possible we'll see a 4* Fist but until then it's never been a great idea to have character synergy between tiers of play.

It limits how viable they are as a team because of PvE scaling and PvP MMR not to mention the detriments of running lower tier characters on defense makes you a bigger target. In all fairness, Fist is among the most viable 3*s to the point where he's essentially a 3.5* character but I feel my point is still valid.

I'd have like to have seen more Fortify synergy with this character as well. Perhaps adding that as a kicker to his red or a reworked kicker on his black.

Buncha Fiddle-Faddle
This skill is fine. The base damage is solid and the kicker damage is great. I do think that the kicker is particularly hard to fire given the design of 4* and 5*s but on the other hand you can run Cage with JG and clear the board prior to firing this. It's a team synergy that has no colour overlap and compliments one another.

************************************

The main reason for this post was to point out the 'character in front' mechanic issue. This is among the worst problems with long term character usefulness in my opinion and the last thing we need is to see it on yet another character. Especially a 4* whose match damage can't hope to compete with 5* tier realistically.

GrumpySmurf1002

babinro wrote:

The main reason for this post was to point out the 'character in front' mechanic issue. This is among the worst problems with long term character usefulness in my opinion and the last thing we need is to see it on yet another character. Especially a 4* whose match damage can't hope to compete with 5* tier realistically.

At least he doesn't share all 3 colors with a universal tank. Oh...oh no.

I'm looking at him at a tier of now 39 characters and I'm not sure he cracks the top half, which means he's probably not worth it unless you're swimming in iso (so, to basically no one).

Consolation, his loaner will be among the more useful for his PvP, since that red will likely do ~9k boosted w/ condition at base.

wymtime

Jaedenkaal wrote:

Heroes For Hire seems like it could be pretty gross if you can keep 4 special tiles fortified. I guess it remains to be seen how plausible that is. GG and war machine's tiles expire, of course, except for the rare CDs that convert to other specials (peacemaker comes to mind).

The red power seems pretty weak, though. Even with the condition fulfilled its just a dumb 13 AP for 7k damage. Isn't Unibeam almost that good?

It only does 13k if there are no enemy special tiles on the board. That means if there is 1 protect tile or 1 attack tile cage does 7k damage