*** The Punisher (Dark Reign) ***

NorthernPolarity

Puritas wrote:

actually there's pretty much no situation where 5b/3g is more damage than 3b/5g apart from an extremely short fight where you can't get enough green to fire off before the match ends

The main point to getting 5 black in the first place is so that you have the added consistency of getting an attack tile out one turn earlier, which could matter a good amount. Suppose you molotoved them, and then your opponent destroyed the molotov right after your 2nd turn. With 5 black, you got an attack tile out and that tile gets to do damage for probably the rest of the match, which adds up to a lot. With 3 black, your tile didn't produce an attack tile and so you miss out on all of that sweet damage. I would say that in the majority of situations, the extra strike tile is going to do more damage for you, but this situation is certainly non-trivial and shouldn't be discounted, as it's the main argument for 5 black over 5 red.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Puritas wrote:

actually there's pretty much no situation where 5b/3g is more damage than 3b/5g apart from an extremely short fight where you can't get enough green to fire off before the match ends

The main point to getting 5 black in the first place is so that you have the added consistency of getting an attack tile out one turn earlier, which could matter a good amount. Suppose you molotoved them, and then your opponent destroyed the molotov right after your 2nd turn. With 5 black, you got an attack tile out and that tile gets to do damage for probably the rest of the match, which adds up to a lot. With 3 black, your tile didn't produce an attack tile and so you miss out on all of that sweet damage. I would say that in the majority of situations, the extra strike tile is going to do more damage for you, but this situation is certainly non-trivial and shouldn't be discounted, as it's the main argument for 5 black over 5 red.

I disagree, 3/5/5 is better in all but the long PVP matches with no board clearing, lots of luck, and enemies with low HP. Otherwise Retirbution is better. Not to mention PVE where Retirbution really shines. Lvl 300 enemies hate Retirbution .

There is no change in initial damage between 3 and 5 covers with Molotov. Just 11 more attack tile strength and a reduction of 1 to the CD. So essentially the only way your going to do more damage is if your CDs and attack tiles don't get destroyed. So its really a choice between a more consistent inconcistent Molotov or more damage in a consistent ability. Currently with LT everywhere, Falcon being added into the mix, and Daken coming (can't place a CD if they are all strike tiles already) I think Retirbution is a better choice. Also keep in mind if your using Molotov to create damage you have to worry when you use judgement any time after the CD and or Attack Tiles are down while there is no worry with Retirbution.

NorthernPolarity

Rorex wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Puritas wrote:

actually there's pretty much no situation where 5b/3g is more damage than 3b/5g apart from an extremely short fight where you can't get enough green to fire off before the match ends

The main point to getting 5 black in the first place is so that you have the added consistency of getting an attack tile out one turn earlier, which could matter a good amount. Suppose you molotoved them, and then your opponent destroyed the molotov right after your 2nd turn. With 5 black, you got an attack tile out and that tile gets to do damage for probably the rest of the match, which adds up to a lot. With 3 black, your tile didn't produce an attack tile and so you miss out on all of that sweet damage. I would say that in the majority of situations, the extra strike tile is going to do more damage for you, but this situation is certainly non-trivial and shouldn't be discounted, as it's the main argument for 5 black over 5 red.

I disagree, 3/5/5 is better in all but the long PVP matches with no board clearing, lots of luck, and enemies with low HP. Otherwise Retirbution is better. Not to mention PVE where Retirbution really shines. Lvl 300 enemies hate Retirbution .

There is no change in initial damage between 3 and 5 covers with Molotov. Just 11 more attack tile strength and a reduction of 1 to the CD. So essentially the only way your going to do more damage is if your CDs and attack tiles don't get destroyed. So its really a choice between a more consistent inconcistent Molotov or more damage in a consistent ability. Currently with LT everywhere, Falcon being added into the mix, and Daken coming (can't place a CD if they are all strike tiles already) I think Retirbution is a better choice. Also keep in mind if your using Molotov to create damage you have to worry when you use judgement any time after the CD and or Attack Tiles are down while there is no worry with Retirbution.

I wasn't saying that 5/5/3 is better than 3/5/5, I'm just saying that there are non-trivial situations where 5 black is genuinely better than 5 green as a counterexample to Puritas comment.

Puritas

3g to 5g is a 141 strike tile difference.

3b to 5b is a 19 dmg difference per tick (someone said 11? is that true? ;/)

Firing 5b one turn in advance means you have 132 (113 + 19) dmg advantage across two turns, then ticking for bonus 11 per turn after.

Firing 5g before using black is obviously in 5g's favor.
Firing 5g *after* using black means you have 141 bonus dmg on next match 3 and 141 dmg on the strike tile, for 282 that turn alone

Best case scenario for 5b over 5g where you fire green 1 turn after using black (which is such a bad case scenario) is still going to be made up within two match 3s, meaning that unless black has been ticking for a good 5-6 turns before you can use green it's never a better option.

like I said, there's pretty much no situation where 5b/3g is more damage than 3b/5g apart from an extremely short fight where you can't get enough green to fire off before the match ends
n.b. unless you're pairing punisher with patch or daken in which case you're kinda a jerk


5b vs 5r is much more interesting, and I did the math way back in the first few pages of the thread if anyone's interested in looking

NorthernPolarity

Puritas wrote:

3g to 5g is a 141 strike tile difference.

3b to 5b is a 94 dmg difference per tick

Firing 5b one turn in advance means you have 207 (113 + 94) dmg advantage across two turns, then ticking for bonus 94 per turn after.

Firing 5g before using black is obviously in 5g's favor.
Firing 5g *after* using black means you have 141 bonus dmg on next match 3 and 141 dmg on the strike tile, for 282 that turn alone, meaning that unless black has been ticking for a good 5-6 turns before you can use green it's never a better option.

like I said, there's pretty much no situation where 5b/3g is more damage than 3b/5g apart from an extremely short fight where you can't get enough green to fire off before the match ends
n.b. unless you're pairing punisher with patch or daken in which case you're kinda a jerk

5b vs 5r is much more interesting, and I did the math way back in the first few pages of the thread if anyone's interested in looking

Perhaps I need an example to better explain my point.

You play molotov. The countdown ticks for two turns and then your opponent destroys it.

5 black:
You generate an attack tile. That attack tile deals 113 damage or however much damage it is a turn. If amplified with green's strike tiles, it does 113+150=263 damage a turn.

3 black:
You do NOT generate an attack tile. There is NO attack tile generating damage until you molotov again.

The point is that situations can arise when 5 black would leave you with 1 attack tile on board whereas 3 black wouldn't. Under the common assumption of judgement followed by molotov, its obvious that having that attack tile on board will deal more damage than having 150 extra judgement power but no attack tile on board. I'm not saying that this situation is common nor saying that you should go 5 black over 5 green, but it's certainly happened to me a non-trivial amount of times at the very least be considered.

Puritas

Ah I see.

Then you're pretty much hedging your balance of

the odds of cd tile getting destroyed in one extra turn
with odds of that strike tile not getting destroyed

against

running any other attack generator on your team (which are all black anyways, not a big deal here)
obw's passive
other character's damage powers
criticals/mags -> extra turns


Even in that situation I feel like 5g comes out on top, but I don't wanna touch those probabilities

Unknown

I just switched from 5b to 5r and am thinking of switching back, but it's unlikely. It's two completely different play styles. I've found that with 5b, I seek out black to drop molotovs early and often. I some CD and attack tiles will survive a subsequent Judgement. and it tends to fill up the board - sometimes it prevents enemy abilities from being effective - fewer spots for enemy tiles.... at 3R I was waiting until 30% hp to finish off a character.

with 5R/3B molotov became all about the initial AOE damage. I just assume the CD won't last long enough to fire off an attack tile, so dropping the judgement first becomes the priority. with 5R, I'm pulling the trigger almost whenever since with Judgement, I am dealing so much damage that the next match will usually finish the person off anyway.

Dauthi

I believe 5/5/3 is the way to go for general damage while putting red to 5 will only surpass it when fighting high health characters.

Over the course of any game your attack tiles and countdown tiles get broken. If you are left with no attack tiles and there are green strike tiles on the board you are missing out on substantial damage every turn. By having a 2 turn countdown tile pumping out attack tiles you get more attack tiles spread out on the board meaning you are a lot less likely to lose out on that substantial damage every turn. It's hard to scale this chance type damage compared to solid damage like retribution, but after using Punisher 5/5/3 for a long period of time I find that I virtually never have 0 attack tiles on the board once I get molotov going.

It is especially crucial for taking out low to moderate health characters in PVP that can wreck your team if left alive. For me, having 3 strike tiles on the board without an attack tile costs me around 300 damage per turn. Multiply that across the battle, or multiple battles, and it adds up.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

I believe 5/5/3 is the way to go for general damage while putting red to 5 will only surpass it when fighting high health characters.

Over the course of any game your attack tiles and countdown tiles get broken. If you are left with no attack tiles and there are green strike tiles on the board you are missing out on substantial damage every turn. By having a 2 turn countdown tile pumping out attack tiles you get more attack tiles spread out on the board meaning you are a lot less likely to lose out on that substantial damage every turn. It's hard to scale this chance type damage compared to solid damage like retribution, but after using Punisher 5/5/3 for a long period of time I find that I virtually never have 0 attack tiles on the board once I get molotov going.

It is especially crucial for taking out low to moderate health characters in PVP that can wreck your team if left alive. For me, having 3 strike tiles on the board without an attack tile costs me around 300 damage per turn. Multiply that across the battle, or multiple battles, and it adds up.

I think the key thing here is what type of opponents your facing. Like I said if your facing opponents with board control abilities (which by the way is about 1/2 of characters last time I checked) then attack tiles are less likely to deal signifigant damge as their survivabilty is substantially reduced. Also it depends what your MMR is and what kind of opponents your facing. If your facing 141 then we can safely assume that on average your oppenents have at least 5800HP (only 6 out of 19 3* have less HP than this at max level). In which case a 10% increase is equal to 580 damage. Since the difference in strike tile strength from lvl 3 molotov to lvl 5 is only 11, you can see its going to take 53 attack tile ticks to make up the damage of using retribution once as a finishing move. Generally I use it at least twice a match as a finishing move so that 106 attack tile ticks. And this is just in PVP. When it comes to PVE, given the scaling of goons and alike to 200-300 lvl range, Retirbution is always better.

So if your still working your team from 2* to 3* and therefore likely facing 2* characters then I can see the arguement as the only 2* will 5000+ hp are Ares and Thor but as soon as you get to facing max lvl 3 star team retirubution is way better and less opponent specific.

Puritas

Dauthi wrote:

I believe 5/5/3 is the way to go for general damage while putting red to 5 will only surpass it when fighting high health characters.

I used to feel the same
However, vs mid-level characters 5r is surprisingly good just off its base damage, unless you're running a character with a better red
After a judgement it's ~1800 damage which is a sizable chunk of most characters' hp in the level 70-80 range

Dauthi

Puritas wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

I believe 5/5/3 is the way to go for general damage while putting red to 5 will only surpass it when fighting high health characters.

I used to feel the same
However, vs mid-level characters 5r is surprisingly good just off its base damage, unless you're running a character with a better red
After a judgement it's ~1800 damage which is a sizable chunk of most characters' hp in the level 70-80 range

This brings up the other problem. Many characters already have a good red and they continue to be released with good reds too. How many 13 cover 3 stars have a decent black though? Is it worth sacrificing a great black ability when retribution can be easily be replaced by better reds? In the case of PVE I would say yes, in the case of PVP I would say no.

Also, unless i'm missing something, 30% health is easier to decipher from 40% since it lines up perfectly with the last piece of the health cross on the character. This makes it more efficient when pulling off instant KOs.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

Puritas wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

I believe 5/5/3 is the way to go for general damage while putting red to 5 will only surpass it when fighting high health characters.

I used to feel the same
However, vs mid-level characters 5r is surprisingly good just off its base damage, unless you're running a character with a better red
After a judgement it's ~1800 damage which is a sizable chunk of most characters' hp in the level 70-80 range

This brings up the other problem. Many characters already have a good red and they continue to be released with good reds too. How many 13 cover 3 stars have a decent black though? Is it worth sacrificing a great black ability when retribution can be easily be replaced by better reds? In the case of PVE I would say yes, in the case of PVP I would say no.

Certianlly a point to be made. Though if we are going down that road, their are better green abilities as well, Patch's and LT's come to mind. Also how many characters are you going to run with the same colours? Of the red abilities that might be considered better the only one that doesn't use red/green or red/black abilities is Cap. Of course if your running Cap I would say you should use Hood. Then if your using Cap/Hood/Punisher I am not sure a faster CD matters just make sure there are 3 CDs on the board between CAP and Punisher and use intimidation. Use Caps red for everything but finishing off the largest of foes (LT/Hulk), Hoods black to lower CDs, Punisher's green to add strike tiles, Hood's yellow to generate additional AP and Caps blue for stuns where necessary.

Unknown

The only characters with a clearly superior red would be HT and lazy Captain. Neither characters make much sense when paired with The Punisher (Judgment is just a bad idea when you got multiple of Captain's CD tiles out, and HT shares exactly the same colors as Punisher). Magneto's red is generally superior, but its function is pretty different (reshaping board and/or strike tile spam) from what a normal red does. Against characters like lazy Thor, Retribution is probably as good as Fireball. While the improvement to black is nontrivial, there are a lot of cases where Punisher's red is actually your best red power.

Dauthi

Rorex wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Puritas wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

I believe 5/5/3 is the way to go for general damage while putting red to 5 will only surpass it when fighting high health characters.

I used to feel the same
However, vs mid-level characters 5r is surprisingly good just off its base damage, unless you're running a character with a better red
After a judgement it's ~1800 damage which is a sizable chunk of most characters' hp in the level 70-80 range

This brings up the other problem. Many characters already have a good red and they continue to be released with good reds too. How many 13 cover 3 stars have a decent black though? Is it worth sacrificing a great black ability when retribution can be easily be replaced by better reds? In the case of PVE I would say yes, in the case of PVP I would say no.

Certianlly a point to be made. Though if we are going down that road, their are better green abilities as well, Patch's and LT's come to mind. Also how many characters are you going to run with the same colours? Of the red abilities that might be considered better the only one that doesn't use red/green or red/black abilities is Cap. Of course if your running Cap I would say you should use Hood. Then if your using Cap/Hood/Punisher I am not sure a faster CD matters just make sure there are 3 CDs on the board between CAP and Punisher and use intimidation. Use Caps red for everything but finishing off the largest of foes (LT/Hulk), Hoods black to lower CDs, Punisher's green to add strike tiles, Hood's yellow to generate additional AP and Caps blue for stuns where necessary.

The problem isn't green though, there are a few good green alternatives but his green is good in comparison to those. It is his red that is circumstantial, and red that has the biggest selection to dig through from other characters. How many black ability alternatives are there for characters that can go to 140? Since we are looking to the future it would be best to consider using characters passed 110.

Phantron wrote:

The only characters with a clearly superior red would be HT and lazy Captain. Neither characters make much sense when paired with The Punisher (Judgment is just a bad idea when you got multiple of Captain's CD tiles out, and HT shares exactly the same colors as Punisher).

I disagree, I find that his green's destruction is pretty mild (especially since he can target border tiles reducing the destruction) and is not a problem for someone who only has a few CD tiles out.Granted when it does happen, it would be devastating.

Magneto's red is generally superior, but its function is pretty different (reshaping board and/or strike tile spam) from what a normal red does.

True, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a great ability and would work well with strike tiles.

Against characters like lazy Thor, Retribution is probably as good as Fireball. While the improvement to black is nontrivial, there are a lot of cases where Punisher's red is actually your best red power.

Correct me if I am wrong, fireball does twice the damage of retribution and destroys tiles.

Whats wrong with IM 40? I would say his red is as good as retribution (in pvp) and he comes with his yellow.

My point earlier is that his 5 black is not (im assuming you meant to write trivial) trivial, it is simply hard to calculate it's usefulness because of circumstance. The facts are that in many cases you find your CD and attack tiles being broken, and keeping attack tiles out is important for consistent damage with strike tiles.

Unknown

A maxed Retribution does close to 4500 damage on lazy Thor and 2800 damage to BP/Cap.

You need to have 14 AP at some point to use 2 Fireballs, so the fact that Fireball really costs 6 rarely matters. You will likely only have one Fireball and one Retribution (14r is a lot to have) and Retribution packs a bigger punch than Fireball in the right circumstances. Since there are a lot of powerful characters with a ton of HP that has to be killed first, the 40% restriction isn't as limiting as it looks. There are a lot of time where the first character I kill is lazy Thor because if you don't have an especially low HP guy like The Hood or OBW around, you're basically looking at a character that is twice as dangerous in straight up numbers as anyone else with only 60% more HP compared to the usual 5800 HP guy, so despite his massive HP he still should be eliminated first. Of course Fireball is much better against The Hood than Retribution, but being good against lazy Thor counts for a lot too.

Dauthi

Phantron wrote:

A maxed Retribution does close to 4500 damage on lazy Thor and 2800 damage to BP/Cap.

You need to have 14 AP at some point to use 2 Fireballs, so the fact that Fireball really costs 6 rarely matters. You will likely only have one Fireball and one Retribution (14r is a lot to have) and Retribution packs a bigger punch than Fireball in the right circumstances. Since there are a lot of powerful characters with a ton of HP that has to be killed first, the 40% restriction isn't as limiting as it looks.

Don't forget you will still have Punishers 30% instant kill. It is also easier to identify when someone is at 30% making it more efficient. Let's face the truth, how much of the 10% bonus are you actually getting?

By running with a red alternative you get the instant kill on high health targets and a red to deal with low health targets.

Unknown

Erm, just wanted to mention a small typo in the first post listing his skills. It states right now that 5 black reduces the countdown "to 1" instead of "by 1".

atomzed

With the addition of falcon, who can pump up the strike tiles and attack tiles, does this swing the debate towards a 5/5/3 build? I have a 5/3/5 (draw of the covers) so when I respec I have the option of both builds. Since I am likely to have a 3/3/3 falcon, I thinking he might be a good addition with pun.

Spoit

atomzed wrote:

With the addition of falcon, who can pump up the strike tiles and attack tiles, does this swing the debate towards a 5/5/3 build? I have a 5/3/5 (draw of the covers) so when I respec I have the option of both builds. Since I am likely to have a 3/3/3 falcon, I thinking he might be a good addition with pun.

not really, since you want to enhance his strike tiles, not the attacks,so diluting it is even worse

kensterr

Yes, red is good depending on situation - especially situations like if you had a 20,000 hp Juggs or Venom in your PVE. To one-shot them when their hp is just below 8000 - priceless.