Human Torch (Johnny Storm) - 2*

GrumpySmurf1002

Spoit wrote:

Diversity would be nice for them, but making them split their ISO like that makes the 3* transition, which was already pretty bad, that much harder

They've already decimated the idea of 'transition' to 3*. MMR changes + true heal + level shift have all created a chasm between 2* and 3* level.

Silver Torch isn't going to do any favors for those already caught in between. However, people finding the game now or who may only recently made the jump to 2* will benefit greatly by having another usable character. Those players should take dreams of 3* land out of their head until they have mastered 2* land, which means maxing most of those characters.

Phaserhawk

user311 wrote:

Unless this char is immediately added to Heroic token pool, and PVP rewards lists I don't see how it will beneficial to 2*s. It would still otherwise be cover deficient. Flame-Jet costs 5AP which Ares' Onslaught does as well. AP for AP Ares will always be the better character. I just don't see how Johnny Storm can be useful other than on essential nodes.

Well if you were to build a perfect Human Torch/Ares combo you would want Ares 5/3/5 and you want Torch 5/5/3. The AI would more than likely use Ares over Human Torch. But that doesnt' matter. The issue is that another 2* that's not of the same color combo's as the other playable 2*'s is going to help players who currently can only field a 2* roster a much better chance at placing in PvE's and PvP's.

Unknown

One thing that occurs to me - Baby Torch probably has the best active black power of the 2*s now, and is the only person you might want to put on your roster in the 1*-2* range (unless 1* Storm counts) who has an active black power. Not a huge need, but it's something, and makes OBW and 2* Daken slightly better.

GrumpySmurf1002

user311 wrote:

Unless this char is immediately added to Heroic token pool, and PVP rewards lists I don't see how it will beneficial to 2*s. It would still otherwise be cover deficient. Flame-Jet costs 5AP which Ares' Onslaught does as well. AP for AP Ares will always be the better character. I just don't see how Johnny Storm can be useful other than on essential nodes.

He'll get plenty of run in the simulator and PvE where you can actually build a 3 character team. He'll have the best black by a mile (only Moonstone/Bullseye even have an active black) and situationally better (if not entirely better) red for support of Ares/Thor teams. I can see plenty of RGY/OBW/SilverTorch teams being used.

For PvP, he'll get run as a team B or team C option. You can't just trot obw/ares/thor out there forever, you won't last 30 minutes.

Availability is definitely a concern and should be monitored, but I certainly think he becomes an essential character for 2* land.

NorthernPolarity

As others have said, ares and thor dont really have a good red ability, whereas human torch has an excellent red ability and the only playable black ability in 2* land. Hes going to be a staple for 2* teams, since ares/obw/torch is now the best offensive 2* team.

Unknown

What I see is a tournament that I can pretty much ignore, so I can spend more time with my wife and kids AND allows me to spend more time on my S3 ranking as the season comes to a close.

Yeah, 2* HT is a terrible, terrible reward for a 3* end gamer but I'll only get grumpy about it if:

- Such rewards become common in PvE
- Not getting multiple 2* covers in this event limits me significantly in upcoming events

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but both 3* and 2* versions of featured characters should be allowed in PvE rather than simply saying "only the 2* version is available". There are a number of characters now where having the 3* version almost completely removes any reason to keep the 2* version.

user311

Sorry I guess what I getting at was cover availability. Has it been confirmed or mentioned by devs that torch will be as available as say OBW?

Unknown

user311 wrote:

Sorry I guess what I getting at was cover availability. Has it been confirmed or mentioned by devs that torch will be as available as say OBW?

Going by the last 2* release (Ares, six months ago), he will, probably on the same schedule 3*s are (say 2-3 weeks after release).

GrumpySmurf1002

user311 wrote:

Sorry I guess what I getting at was cover availability. Has it been confirmed or mentioned by devs that torch will be as available as say OBW?

FWIW, I've been working on building a 2nd OBW. It's been about 3 weeks, and I only have a 2/3/1 build so far.

I haven't tracked the match drops (may start to soon), but from event tokens there's not a single character that I could've re-built in that time. (personal favorite it is the 1/9/0 Wolverine drops).

Thus, even if SilverTorch becomes a regular drop immediately, it's probably at least a month before you can get all the covers w/o buying them.

Unknown

More 2* characters is a fine idea. If I was still in the phase of the game where such things meant anything I would be thrilled to have more toys to play with that were more readily available. I'm not, and so the impact of a new 2* on me personally is slim to none. I'll take the HP hit for a roster spot and move along.

The problem is lazy characters are still lazy, and the notion of backwards lazy characters is just silly. It's like going from driving a Ferrari to putting around in a beater with two flat tires and a trash bag over the back window. And while Lyrian has a good point about attack/strike tile interaction at the 2* level being underrepresented, having yet another red/green character does not make for greater roster diversity or game depth. There were already too many and now we have three lazy characters with the same color combo and She-Hulk.

Moreover, do 2* players really NEED a Lazy Torch to improve their lot in life? They already have Ares and Thor, and a low hit point character that he AI is too dumb to play right is roadkill in PvP. The idea of pairing him with original flavor Daken is fine, but unless you're going to leave Torch-lite underleveled he's probably going to jump in front way more than you'd like for a dude with a glass jaw. And this much talked about black power is debatable in its utility to begin with. It saps other colors, can be hard to get all the tiles down, and because they're clustered you can lose a lot of them in a heartbeat. So what exactly are you getting out of this as a 2* player? A PvE toy. Which is fine. Take it for what it is. But let's not go declaring this some kind of great boon for the middle class. Because it's not.

Unknown

I'll get the covers out of PvE because I like collecting things and the therapy hasn't started working yet but a bit disappointed personally. I'm glad there's a new 2* but disappointed it's a lazy 2* and even more disappointed it's HT. I don't think he really adds that much to 2* players because of his incredible squidginess and complexity beyond the AI's ability to "think" massively limiting his use in PvP. He's good enough on offence that you'd use him as a 2* player but you can't leave him on defence so he's good for one to 2 matches, not worth using health packs on and then abandoned for the usual suspects.

If they're going to downlevel a 3* then I would have preferred to see Falcon or, if I really wanted attack tiles Punisher. At least they have some potential uses. Actually scrap that, I think they should have taken a 3* with only 2 covers, downlevelled him and AT THE SAME TIME added a 3rd cover to the hero for both the 2* and 3* version. I would have picked Doom (gives attack tiles to 2* players) and I think 3* players would have been much happier about a 2* PvE reward knowing one of their 3*s just became more interesting and viable.

At the end of the 1st set of subs we (Ace of Blades) were second overall. THAT'S how little people are caring about this PvE in general ....

vudu3

I believe all 2* characters have the same drop rate in both tokens and PVP awards. (Note that characters with only 2 covers have a 33% lower drop rate but only because they have fewer covers.)

If you're personally seeing more Wolvie covers then that's just because someone else out there has sold off 10 OBW blacks in the past month. For me personally, Ares green is the flavor of the month.

Isay_Isay

For mischiefmaker come next ranking time


To play Devil's Advocate-


Maybe since 2* covers are easier to come by, many players will get a feel for how HT plays and will appreciate how deadly he can be especially with a major stat bump as a 3*. But sure RABBLERABBLEHARRUMPH

Unknown

It makes much more sense from a business standpoint to create a 2* character and make you waste resources (time&money) getting him for featured nodes. They want your money not happiness lol they don't care if you think they're lazy only that the majority pay money to compete. Giving kids another powerful 3* that helps them compete costs them money.

over_clocked

This hasn't been mentioned I believe but it looks like miniTorch will have oBW's health pool (3430). I have a lvl 15 oBW that has same starting health as Torch, 665.

dr tinykittylove

I definitely hope he gets into general pvp and heroic token drops soon. In just the past couple of weeks I've gone from zero covers to 11+ covers on MNMags, MHawkeye, 2*Cap and Wolvie, and sold off more Ares, CStorms, Moonstones and OBWs than I care to count, plus a handful of 2*Thor.

Oddly though, only 2 Bagmen.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I have a decent roster, and I can tell you, this is a character that was sorely needed for 2* players. As a 2* you have OBW, Ares, Thor as you're only solidly playable characters. Then a drop off, then you have C.Storm, Wolverine, then another drop off and then you have Captain America, M.Magneto, Daken (Daken is better than Wolvierine, but just doesnt have the hitpoints, or actives, thus dropping him)

With Human Torch those 2*'s now have a little more variety as they can basically still require OBW, but can rotate a Human Torch, Ares, Thor lineup. IMO Human Torch replaces Thor and gives this deck a useable black and red and with OBW, Torch, Ares you have a rainbow of actives

We're still waiting the final values but if it resembles the *** version I doubt Johnny will be useful in metagame. He has reduced health and slow abilities, nothing near cStorm for offense -- and utter trash on defense due to AI handicap.

He may be better than Cap** but will just sit in his company on the bench.

For discussion sake can you provide minimum values for his health and abilities at max level when you'd consider him in a ** team? Make a set for minimum to use and for welcome. (Or more sets that make him barely better than Cap, storm, Wolvie, Thor ) Then it will be easy to compare with reality and put him on the proper shelf.

EDIT: for simplicity let's just assume the health is same as OBW that is most likely, so just go for the abilities

DD-The-Mighty

pasa_ wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

I have a decent roster, and I can tell you, this is a character that was sorely needed for 2* players. As a 2* you have OBW, Ares, Thor as you're only solidly playable characters. Then a drop off, then you have C.Storm, Wolverine, then another drop off and then you have Captain America, M.Magneto, Daken (Daken is better than Wolvierine, but just doesnt have the hitpoints, or actives, thus dropping him)

With Human Torch those 2*'s now have a little more variety as they can basically still require OBW, but can rotate a Human Torch, Ares, Thor lineup. IMO Human Torch replaces Thor and gives this deck a useable black and red and with OBW, Torch, Ares you have a rainbow of actives

We're still waiting the final values but if it resembles the *** version I doubt Johnny will be useful in metagame. He has reduced health and slow abilities, nothing near cStorm for offense -- and utter trash on defense due to AI handicap.

He may be better than Cap** but will just sit in his company on the bench.

For discussion sake can you provide minimum values for his health and abilities at max level when you'd consider him in a ** team? Make a set for minimum to use and for welcome. (Or more sets that make him barely better than Cap, storm, Wolvie, Thor ) Then it will be easy to compare with reality and put him on the proper shelf.

EDIT: for simplicity let's just assume the health is same as OBW that is most likely, so just go for the abilities

True but at least cap can take a punch. Bagboy is probably gonna be the 1st character to get knocked out if there no other higher priority mark on the enemy team. The birthday candle vitality is what balanced out his 3* versions ridiculous damage output. That combo doesn't work so well for 2*s on def. (looking at you cStorm) Storm at least has that annoying yellow that slows down your ability to hit her with the heavy attacks if you want to minimize your true damage. Bag boy has no such defenses. So unless he sees some major boosts with his damage output at 13/13 I don't even see his as a threat to anyone with a few decent maxed 2*s.

He's a cute little addition though. but no ares level 2* game changer.

Unknown

Twysta wrote:

I think while your point is well taken Pol, what he's trying to say is that despite these slew of new characters...

We're seeing no evidence of any activity of popular new content.
Instead we're seeing things like, new crit boost gem, new sound on desert ability, Nerf, nerf, nerf, new reward page, event rerun, event rerun, server down, server down.

Personally for me I'm disappointed that they've repeatedly gone back on their word.
Most of us know these things take time, but I've seen smaller teams do things faster and more efficiently than this.

I'm just disappointed... just disappointed

I agree with you here. When Patch was released they specifically said that clones would be very minimal going forward. Instead since then we have seen more clones than new characters.

Unknown

hhmm, since this is a 2* char, does it means we will randomly get the covers in the future while playing random pvps (lightning rounds included) to slowly build him up or so ?