**** Devil Dinosaur (Gigantic Reptile) ****

Konman

Pwuz_ wrote:

Konman wrote:

Technically, dinosaurs are not reptiles. Can't believe no one else is harping on this. What's wrong with you people?

Probably because "Devil Dinosaur (Proto-Avian)" doesn't have the same ring to it. We are talking about a video game based on a comic series prominently featuring superhuman & mystical powers. How much scientific accuracy do you expect?

Aliens, mutants, alternate dimensions...totally possible. Calling a dinosaur a reptile...factually inaccurate. Should also have feathers, but that's a nit pick I suppose.

Quebbster

Konman wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

Konman wrote:

Technically, dinosaurs are not reptiles. Can't believe no one else is harping on this. What's wrong with you people?

Probably because "Devil Dinosaur (Proto-Avian)" doesn't have the same ring to it. We are talking about a video game based on a comic series prominently featuring superhuman & mystical powers. How much scientific accuracy do you expect?

Aliens, mutants, alternate dimensions...totally possible. Calling a dinosaur a reptile...factually inaccurate. Should also have feathers, but that's a nit pick I suppose.

Blame Jack Kirby for that one since Devil has never been depicted as having feathers.
Is he still from another planet or did they retcon that?

Pwuz_

Quebbster wrote:

Konman wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

Konman wrote:

Technically, dinosaurs are not reptiles. Can't believe no one else is harping on this. What's wrong with you people?

Probably because "Devil Dinosaur (Proto-Avian)" doesn't have the same ring to it. We are talking about a video game based on a comic series prominently featuring superhuman & mystical powers. How much scientific accuracy do you expect?

Aliens, mutants, alternate dimensions...totally possible. Calling a dinosaur a reptile...factually inaccurate. Should also have feathers, but that's a nit pick I suppose.

Blame Jack Kirby for that one since Devil has never been depicted as having feathers.
Is he still from another planet or did they retcon that?

I'm very confident that Devil Dino was created LONG before the scientific world agreed that Dinosaurs had feathers or were even more closely related to birds than reptiles.

Unknown

Hi.
Question:
Will Devil Dinosaur ever be offered again for the random cover purchases?
Still hoping to get a red cover, but I haven't seen DD in the "drop rates" of any offer in awhile.

Thanks for any help.

Dayv

grey_zealot wrote:

Hi.
Question:
Will Devil Dinosaur ever be offered again for the random cover purchases?
Still hoping to get a red cover, but I haven't seen DD in the "drop rates" of any offer in awhile.

Thanks for any help.

The developers have said that they intend to keep him as a special, limited release character at least for the time being. Personally, I doubt we'll see that change any time in the next several months. You will, however, get three in daily rewards on days 365-367 -- one of each color.

vudu3

I'm currently 3/5/5 and will get another green cover from my daily reward in about a week. I'd really like to respec him to 5/5/3 but there's no way I'm going to buy the last cover.

Should I go 4/5/4 and hope another green cover is offered sometime in the future or just keep him at 3/5/5 to make purple slightly less terrible?

NorthernPolarity

vudu3 wrote:

I'm currently 3/5/5 and will get another green cover from my daily reward in about a week. I'd really like to respec him to 5/5/3 but there's no way I'm going to buy the last cover.

Should I go 4/5/4 and hope another green cover is offered sometime in the future or just keep him at 3/5/5 to make purple slightly less terrible?

Why are you moving away from purple? The whole point of Dino is to be a defensive deterrent, and increasing the cascade potential on his purple (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18598) is the best way to randomly win you games. Look at it this way: a random 7 ap, 2.7k damage chomp or bite isn't going to be as game winning as a lucky cascade from purple. Given that purple is the only skill on defense that you know will 100% go off, it seems crazy to go anything but an X/X/5 build.

vudu3

Because going from 3 green covers to 5 increases damage by 133%. I think it's kind of ridiculous to give that up. By your own simulator analysis, going from 3 purple to 5 purple increases the chance of a cascade from 22% to 35%. Given that more often than not a "cascade" is a single match-3 it just doesn't seem worth it.

We all know that Prehistoric Bite just doesn't compare with X-Force but biting for 2.5K damage isn't horrible (359 damage/AP); biting for 1.1K damage is (153 damage/AP).

john1620b

vudu3 wrote:

Because going from 3 green covers to 5 increases damage by 133%. I think it's kind of ridiculous to give that up. By your own simulator analysis, going from 3 purple to 5 purple increases the chance of a cascade from 22% to 35%. Given that more often than not a "cascade" is a single match-3 it just doesn't seem worth it.

We all know that Prehistoric Bite just doesn't compare with X-Force but biting for 2.5K damage isn't horrible (359 damage/AP); biting for 1.1K damage is (153 damage/AP).

I lucked out and got a 5/5/3 Dino from the anniversary covers, and I use him all the time. His damage ratio isn't great comparatively, but it's great for clearing low-level nodes in PvE. That's not really something you NEED him for, but it makes grinding much less boring when you can clear nodes quickly. If you're running strike tile generators, he even works for high-level PvE -- the low cost of his abilities actually makes them pretty good damage generators.

If you're going for speed, you'll also almost never use his purple, because it generally just wastes your time watching the animation. Yes, it can be randomly useful, but in general it's not worth the time it takes.

So, I'd definitely recommend switching him to 4/5/4, in the hopes that at some point you'll get a green cover, but that's based on how I use him. I like using him in PvE.

For PvP, I don't think he's a very effective defensive deterrant. I never see (or use) a Devil Dino at high levels, especially now that most veterans have a fully-covered and leveled X-Force and 4* Thor.

Phaserhawk

NorthernPolarity wrote:

vudu3 wrote:

I'm currently 3/5/5 and will get another green cover from my daily reward in about a week. I'd really like to respec him to 5/5/3 but there's no way I'm going to buy the last cover.

Should I go 4/5/4 and hope another green cover is offered sometime in the future or just keep him at 3/5/5 to make purple slightly less terrible?

Why are you moving away from purple? The whole point of Dino is to be a defensive deterrent, and increasing the cascade potential on his purple (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18598) is the best way to randomly win you games. Look at it this way: a random 7 ap, 2.7k damage chomp or bite isn't going to be as game winning as a lucky cascade from purple. Given that purple is the only skill on defense that you know will 100% go off, it seems crazy to go anything but an X/X/5 build.

I have to agree with vudu3 on this one. The animation length isn't that much longer for level 3 to level 5 and the rate of cascade is abymsmal and you might luck out and get a match 3 33% of the time isn't very helpful

Arondite

NorthernPolarity wrote:

vudu3 wrote:

I'm currently 3/5/5 and will get another green cover from my daily reward in about a week. I'd really like to respec him to 5/5/3 but there's no way I'm going to buy the last cover.

Should I go 4/5/4 and hope another green cover is offered sometime in the future or just keep him at 3/5/5 to make purple slightly less terrible?

Why are you moving away from purple? The whole point of Dino is to be a defensive deterrent, and increasing the cascade potential on his purple (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18598) is the best way to randomly win you games. Look at it this way: a random 7 ap, 2.7k damage chomp or bite isn't going to be as game winning as a lucky cascade from purple. Given that purple is the only skill on defense that you know will 100% go off, it seems crazy to go anything but an X/X/5 build.

I personally will build mine 4/4/5.

NorthernPolarity

john1620b wrote:

vudu3 wrote:

Because going from 3 green covers to 5 increases damage by 133%. I think it's kind of ridiculous to give that up. By your own simulator analysis, going from 3 purple to 5 purple increases the chance of a cascade from 22% to 35%. Given that more often than not a "cascade" is a single match-3 it just doesn't seem worth it.

We all know that Prehistoric Bite just doesn't compare with X-Force but biting for 2.5K damage isn't horrible (359 damage/AP); biting for 1.1K damage is (153 damage/AP).

I lucked out and got a 5/5/3 Dino from the anniversary covers, and I use him all the time. His damage ratio isn't great comparatively, but it's great for clearing low-level nodes in PvE. That's not really something you NEED him for, but it makes grinding much less boring when you can clear nodes quickly. If you're running strike tile generators, he even works for high-level PvE -- the low cost of his abilities actually makes them pretty good damage generators.

If you're going for speed, you'll also almost never use his purple, because it generally just wastes your time watching the animation. Yes, it can be randomly useful, but in general it's not worth the time it takes.

So, I'd definitely recommend switching him to 4/5/4, in the hopes that at some point you'll get a green cover, but that's based on how I use him. I like using him in PvE.

For PvP, I don't think he's a very effective defensive deterrant. I never see (or use) a Devil Dino at high levels, especially now that most veterans have a fully-covered and leveled X-Force and 4* Thor.

I think you guys are undervaluing Dino's purple. What you're forgetting is that it costs 3 purple AP per cast. This means that if you cast it 3 times, level 5 will give you roughly 6 AP for 9 AP compared to the terrible 3.6 AP for 9 AP at level 3. 6 AP for 9 AP on average is roughly equivalent to a level 4 MQ blue, which considering how it costs a single purple match 3, is pretty reasonable. I envisioned that Dino's main purpose would actually be as a random board shaker in purple, since purple is very underrepresented in this game.

I will admit, I didn't consider Dino speed killing in PvE. He seems like a solid guy for that case, but for people with Torch maxed out, Torch seems just as good if not better at speed killing than Dino, especially when paired with Blade / Daken. Honestly I don't ever see myself pumping 200k iso into Dino so the build doesn't matter as much to me, but in a vacuum purple seems like the most unconditionally good ability he has, so it seems like a mistake to not level that.

Unknown

A lot of uses of purple will be on an already purpled board, so that affects the "typical" use case quite a bit. And giving up 2.4 Ap of a random color for ~1k damage ain't a bad trade, and that's what you'll get (assuming you always need 3 match3s to activate his attacks) if you max both of his attacks instead of purple

scottee

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I think you guys are undervaluing Dino's purple. What you're forgetting is that it costs 3 purple AP per cast. This means that if you cast it 3 times, level 5 will give you roughly 6 AP for 9 AP compared to the terrible 3.6 AP for 9 AP at level 3. 6 AP for 9 AP on average is roughly equivalent to a level 4 MQ blue, which considering how it costs a single purple match 3, is pretty reasonable. I envisioned that Dino's main purpose would actually be as a random board shaker in purple, since purple is very underrepresented in this game.

Independent trials in your lab when it doesn't work like that in real life. You can't spam tinyarms 3 times in a row. You mostly can't even spam it 3 turns in a row. You have to wait for the top left corner to get shaken up.

In addition, I still will never take tinyarms seriously because it's clearly a joke ability. It's like leveling up a penguin's wings for its flying potential.

Unknown

I think people do undervalue all of his skills but the fact is that none of his skills are meant to be very good. About the only thing he's very good at is the number of HPs and the amount of time Prehistoric Arms eat up in real time whenever it's used. If you're using Devil Dino offensively for whatever reason you can generally get the full expected value of Prehistoric Arms because it's hard to imagine why you'd continously try to match purple to use it again. Defensively it's slightly worse but defensively you're counting on the time it eats up, which is constant even if the board state doesn't change (because it still has to swap those 6 tiles with 6 tiles of the same color elsewhere), and I'd hope you're not actually planning to win with Devil Dino defensively.

Phaserhawk

Currently Devil Dino is ranked as the 14th best character so lets look at the 13 above him and see what his best build would be.

X-Force--3/5/5--reason, you use XForce green
4hor--5/3/5--reason, you use 4hor's red
Thor--3/5/5--reason, you want Thor's green
Fury--5/5/3--reason, you want Fury's purple
Daken--5/3/5--reason you match green making red strike tiles why blow them up and daken tanks purp
Black Panth--any build
Captian America--5/3/5, reason you want Cap's red
Hood--any build
Magneto--5/3/5--reason, Mag's red better, but you could argue any build
Blade--5/3/5 or 5/5/3--reason 5/3/5 you want red left alone, reason 5/5/3 purple is for Blade
Patch--3/5/5, reason green is for Patch
Deadpool--5/3/5 or 5/5/3 depending on your value of red to purple
Hulk--3/5/5 or 5/5/3--reason, red is all for Dino, up to you on value of green, probably 5/5/3 though

Some characters that are good and not ranked or slightly below devil Dino
Luke Cage--any build
Mystique--5/5/3
Captain Marvel--assuming Marvel is 3/5/5, Devil Dino 3/5/5 or 5/5/3
Human Torch--5/3/5
Sentry--5/3/5 or 5/5/3
Punisher--3/5/5
Falcon--doesn't matter

When you look at it, it really does depend on your pairing as to what build to take him. This means you have to ask yourself the hard question, do I see myself using him? If so in PvP as a meat shield, and depending if you have him with X-Force or 4hor makes you want him 5/3/5 or 3/5/5. Is he going to be your PvE hero, tanking red and green for other hero's? Mine's sitting at 2/3/5 and since I won't spend any HP for covers, I'll let him come as may, whch for the moment looks like 3/5/5.

If you are truly looking for a defensive build, 5 purple is the best option because he could random get you 2 AP to say push your X-Force into a Surgical Strike against a player. 1/3 of the time you use purple you should get a cascade and the ratio max level is 3AP to get 2AP, which means if I cast it 3 times I'm gonna end up with an average of 6AP. I may get all 6 on my first go around and nothing after, I may get it to go 1st time and get 3 tiles, nothing 2nd time, and get it on my 3rd.

What does Devil Dino do? Defensive Deterant, as a tank for your green primary or red secondary characters. There is no bad build, like Blade/Daken you do want him probably 5/3/5, but then again, maybe you are forced to match red and since he's only red/green user you opt 5/5/3, seriously it doesn't matter.

Seltsam

Great write-up, Phaserhawk. Thank you for taking the time for this analysis.

ayatorahxephon

My Devil Dino is sitting at 4/4/4 .. I was planning to build him at 5/5/3 but ever since I read up at this forum, I found out that some people are using 4/4/5 ... What I experience is from my build anyway is that I always wish that his bite would do more damage as mine only around 1.4 k at the moment. I will get his last green/ red/ purple in 20 more days. His purple for me now only causes cascade like 30% of the time and in my experience, when the 1st time you used if it doesn't causes cascade, the 2nd and 3rd time wont either. I would really like to know how huge is the probability between 3/4/5 purple? Does the chances really goes up? I currently like using BP with him (complete colors) and I have X force, hood, Loki, Magneto, Nick Fury, Invi woman, thor, punisher, blade to team up with which made me wonder which is his best general build.. I guess might be 5/5/3 or 4/4/5 but I want to know the difference between a 3 purple and 5 purple.. can you keep spamming it until you get a cascade? I can say 4 purple can't cascade if you keep spamming it if the first time using it doesn't cause one

Phaserhawk

ayatorahxephon wrote:

My Devil Dino is sitting at 4/4/4 .. I was planning to build him at 5/5/3 but ever since I read up at this forum, I found out that some people are using 4/4/5 ... What I experience is from my build anyway is that I always wish that his bite would do more damage as mine only around 1.4 k at the moment. I will get his last green/ red/ purple in 20 more days. His purple for me now only causes cascade like 30% of the time and in my experience, when the 1st time you used if it doesn't causes cascade, the 2nd and 3rd time wont either. I would really like to know how huge is the probability between 3/4/5 purple? Does the chances really goes up? I currently like using BP with him (complete colors) and I have X force, hood, Loki, Magneto, Nick Fury, Invi woman, thor, punisher, blade to team up with which made me wonder which is his best general build.. I guess might be 5/5/3 or 4/4/5 but I want to know the difference between a 3 purple and 5 purple.. can you keep spamming it until you get a cascade? I can say 4 purple can't cascade if you keep spamming it if the first time using it doesn't cause one

Lvl 3--22% chance
Lvl 4--27% chance
Lvl 5--34% chance

If you had say 9 purple and wanted to use the skill 3 times in a row, but nothing happened after the first use, then you are correct, it will not cause any cascades the next 2 uses, because then it would just be swapping like colors on use 2 and 3. In addition if it did cause a small cascade but say only on the right side of the board and neither of 6 tiles swaped move down, then it also will not work the next 2 uses.

vudu3

ayatorahxephon wrote:

My Devil Dino is sitting at 4/4/4 .. I was planning to build him at 5/5/3 but ever since I read up at this forum, I found out that some people are using 4/4/5 ... What I experience is from my build anyway is that I always wish that his bite would do more damage as mine only around 1.4 k at the moment.

4/4/5 seems crazy in my opinion. As you said, you lose to much power in both his red and green abilities with just 4 covers--to the point where they're not even worth using. If you want to keep 5 purple you're better off going 3/5/5 or 5/3/5. Otherwise, you're gimping both his attack abilities. Figure out who you're going to pair him with and that's going to be determine your build.

Or--better yet--just go with 5/5/3.