POLL: Overpriced powers

Unknown

Unibeam and Smash: Disagreed, it just forces you to play a different way of collecting AP.
Ultra-Freon Beam: No.
Sentinel of Liberty: The high AP cost is due to being able to pick and choose the tiles, making it usable for defense and offense. Often you can use just one placed tile to gain a 5 yellow combo. Even if it were reduced I couldn't see it being lower than 17AP, probably not lower than 18AP.
Murderous Aim: Yes. 15AP or 16AP would be more reasonable.

Trickery: no. Maxed out cost much less and isn't that bad considering it's a secondary ability to illusions.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

Unibeam: Disagreed, it just forces you to play a different way of collecting AP.
Sentinel of Liberty: The high AP cost is due to being able to pick and choose the tiles, making it usable for defense and offense. Often you can use just one placed tile to gain a 5 yellow combo. Even if it were reduced I couldn't see it being lower than 17AP, probably not lower than 18AP.
Murderous Aim: Yes. 15AP or 16AP would be more reasonable.

Unibeam is just inferior to other direct damage red powers for an inflated cost. The damage it does is pretty similar to LCap's red, which costs less even before you consider it can cost almost nothing when it returns. Even 2* Wolverine's red matches up pretty well, and he caps out 70 levels lower. For a few more red and no drain you could get two Retributions out of Punisher for comparable damage even before you factor in the instant down capability. The only excuse for all this is IM40's relatively high hit points and ability to charge his own attacks. But in the world of LThor and Sentry high hit points do not equal bad offense, and Recharge has it's own downsides already built in (vulnerable countdown tiles, high cost at more covers, and self-stun). So any way you slice it Unibeam just doesn't stand up, no matter what "different way of collecting AP" you use.

Sentinel of Liberty just costs way too much for what it does. Speed kills, and by the time you're done screwing around collecting all that yellow for either protect tiles or the world's least efficient match-5 (or even two match-5s) what exactly do you think your opponent has been doing? Probably collecting red and green to beat your **** with. The nature of protect tiles is that they're mostly there to stop match damage and negate an equal power of strike tiles. Well bad news, all of the strike tile generating powers are WAY cheaper than 19, and as late in the game as you're likely to finally get it off you've already taken thousands of points in match damage. The fact of the matter is you save yourself way more abuse by using powers to end the match sooner than Sentinel of Liberty's protect tiles are ever going to save you that late in the game under normal circumstances. The only time I've ever gotten any meaningful use out of this power are in extremely prolonged PvE matches with horrible scaling, and that should hardly be the basis to declare a power well balanced and useful.

Murderous Aim actually does cost 16 once you have 4 covers for it, and that's still too much. Two crit tiles to place is nice and all, but the bonus damage for 4 crits is probably never reasonably going to happen (you can't even save up for two castings at 16 cost). At a cost closer to 12 you might start to get decent bang for your buck by hitting a couple thousand point criticals and maybe a decent cascade.

Unknown

Call me crazy but I think I would use a lazy 3* bullseye with a cheaper murderous aim. And think we could call him lazyeye, it would be great.

Unknown

It's ridiculously easy to recoup 7 or more AP from a single critical tile making a 4 clear. Even neglecting the fact that the AP are different types, 12 AP would be way overpowered for 2 placed criticals without bonus damage. It'd be nice if they change the leveling of it, eg something like
Lev 1: 15 AP
Lev 2: 14 AP
Lev 3: reduce critical tile requirement for bonus
Lev 4: 13 AP
Lev 5: 15 AP but 2 placed criticals

The only time I use Cap's Sentinel is PVE as well. Cap as a whole is too slow and boring to play with for PVP.

Unknown

Would 12 for Murderous Aim be too cheap? Maybe. But it's way closer to being balanced than 16. Compare it to some of the better 2* powers. 2* Wolvie does 3k damage for 12, granted no other utility. 2* Storm can do over 5k team damage with a 4 turn single target stun for 11. 2* Thor gets you 800 damage and an almost guaranteed cascade for 12 and likely a CtS as well.

Could you do some damage with two placeable crits for 12 cost? Sure. That's the point. Powers should be good. And let's not forget this is a power on a character who caps at a lower level and has absolute **** hit points. At least they gave HT some pop for being a glass cannon. Where's the love for Bullseye? Right now he's only even mildly annoying when he's scaled over level 100 in PvE, and only mildly dangerous when he's being goon-fed black.

Unknown

15 AP murderous aim at 5 covers i can work with, 16 ap makes it so much harder for the bonus damage to ever hit. Even if they brought the bonus damage down while lowering the cost. I really don't think in the current environment something that requires saving up 30 ap to be an effective combo would cause severe problems.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

It's ridiculously easy to recoup 7 or more AP from a single critical tile making a 4 clear. Even neglecting the fact that the AP are different types, 12 AP would be way overpowered for 2 placed criticals without bonus damage. It'd be nice if they change the leveling of it, eg something like
Lev 1: 15 AP
Lev 2: 14 AP
Lev 3: reduce critical tile requirement for bonus
Lev 4: 13 AP
Lev 5: 15 AP but 2 placed criticals

The only time I use Cap's Sentinel is PVE as well. Cap as a whole is too slow and boring to play with for PVP.

daibar wrote:

Unibeam and Smash: Disagreed, it just forces you to play a different way of collecting AP.
Ultra-Freon Beam: No.
Sentinel of Liberty: The high AP cost is due to being able to pick and choose the tiles, making it usable for defense and offense. Often you can use just one placed tile to gain a 5 yellow combo. Even if it were reduced I couldn't see it being lower than 17AP, probably not lower than 18AP.
Murderous Aim: Yes. 15AP or 16AP would be more reasonable.

Trickery: no. Maxed out cost much less and isn't that bad considering it's a secondary ability to illusions.

Are you related to Phantron?

Unknown

daibar wrote:

It's ridiculously easy to recoup 7 or more AP from a single critical tile making a 4 clear. Even neglecting the fact that the AP are different types, 12 AP would be way overpowered for 2 placed criticals without bonus damage. It'd be nice if they change the leveling of it, eg something like
Lev 1: 15 AP
Lev 2: 14 AP
Lev 3: reduce critical tile requirement for bonus
Lev 4: 13 AP
Lev 5: 15 AP but 2 placed criticals

The only time I use Cap's Sentinel is PVE as well. Cap as a whole is too slow and boring to play with for PVP.

By the time I have enough AP to use CAP's sentinel, The match is pretty much over. The only time I've ever been able to use it is when I paired Daken, with Falcon and Captain America. I was able to use it twice. If I had used lazy thor, I'd have been able to Thunder Strike 3 times.

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

By the time I have enough AP to use CAP's sentinel, The match is pretty much over. The only time I've ever been able to use it is when I paired Daken, with Falcon and Captain America. I was able to use it twice. If I had used lazy thor, I'd have been able to Thunder Strike 3 times.

Well said, because that there is exactly the problem with Sentinel. It serves no purpose. In order for protect tiles to do anything they have to be out before the damage rolls in. Meanwhile one Thunder Strike is usually enough to end a match and it costs way less.

As if that's not bad enough, True Healing actually made Sentinel worse. Once upon a time you might be able to get your protect tiles out late in a game and then heal yourself up to full while the enemy tickles you. That doesn't fly anymore. The best way by far to avoid taking damage out of a battle now is to make it over faster.

Spoit

And again, his blue is way cheaper, and is really enough to trivialize match damage all on it's own

Unknown

but still an excessively slow way to get protect tiles down

Unknown

Adding another overpriced ability to the list, GSBW's pistol at 5 covers it is essentially a low damage board clear for 17 AP

Spoit

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Adding another overpriced ability to the list, GSBW's pistol at 5 covers it is essentially a low damage board clear for 17 AP

Especially compared to Hood's Yellow, which costs less, and generates AP

ErikPeter

Spoit wrote:

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Adding another overpriced ability to the list, GSBW's pistol at 5 covers it is essentially a low damage board clear for 17 AP

Especially compared to Hood's Yellow, which costs less, and generates AP

True. It does do 800-odd damage, too (and yes, I'd rather have the 18 AP). But the real reason it's overpriced is it just doesn't hold up to level 5 Purple or Green.

Going back to Bullseye I think he'd be great with a black AP generator, maybe in Red (though his 3rd suit is Green). At level 85 his defense tiles would be a bit more effective and he'd have a bit more HP. And then Murderous Aim, which is awesome but too expensive to reliably use during a match, would be easier to pop, like Sniper Rifle with Deceptive Tactics.

Though to add: Even though 2 crits can do a few thousand damage and trigger some cascades, it's usually better used to generate a ton of environment AP (except in City and tinykitty Latveria, since they are terrible). 102 Winter AP is basically a game-ender, as the board will usually explode into a cascade of critical tiles. Desert AP just gets better and better the more you have (with the same result as above, feeding CtS or whatever big green you want to use to mop up). And the insta-kill 7k bonus damage? Just a Johnny trap, good luck getting it to trigger in your lifetime.

Unknown

The only 'effective' way I have come up with to get the bonus damage is to save up 30 black AP ~and~ an aggressive recon when the enemy still has a few blacks to steal. Put the first two crits in safe place, steal some more black, line 4 crits up in a row and watch the fireworks. Yes exceedingly hard to pull off but oh so worth it when you do.

GrumpySmurf1002

Cryptobrancus wrote:

The only 'effective' way I have come up with to get the bonus damage is to save up 30 black AP ~and~ an aggressive recon when the enemy still has a few blacks to steal. Put the first two crits in safe place, steal some more black, line 4 crits up in a row and watch the fireworks. Yes exceedingly hard to pull off but oh so worth it when you do.

There's a couple other potential solutions to getting the black to trigger:

16 Purple + 16 Black. cHawkeye's Take Aim is the easiest one. Build Purple (added bonus of Adamantium Bones to shield match damage).
9 Purple + 16 Black. mMags' Polarity shift. Build two crit tiles with his blue, hope they don't trigger when they fall.
There's an environment 'nuke' that drops 6 crit tiles at once too (I think). mStorm might be able to help pull that off.

Don't think it's a coincidence his passive is Purple, given the common color needed to get him the Crit tiles.

I've yet to trigger it myself, but it's my goal to do it while he's boosted in this PvE.

Unknown

The randomly generated ones are so difficult to control but you can get lucky and hope they stay, agreed 1* hawk would be the best way to combo it, (I just sold him ages ago and can't justify the roster slot to bring him back, maybe it is time after all....)

Spoit

The only way I was able to get enough crits to fire it was back when you had boosted enviro crits and was able to use forest fire. I guess you could maybe pull it off with the cheaper blue mountain one

Unknown

As requested, 3-5-5 Hulk @166

Green: 1025 + [5 tiles + (Green AP / 2)] damage

Red: 2920 + [ 348 * (Green AP - 10)] damage. With 30 Green AP, theoretically 2920 + (20 * 348) = 9880 damage.

Nonce Equitaur 2

This list would be a good starting point for "Worst Team-Up Powers".

Battleplan is good now.