*** Colossus (Classic) ***

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

R60 change difference, yes. Originally, X-Force was going to go to Red instead of staying Green.

There ya go, that makes sense.

So far, I'm loving what I see with Colossus - much more pumped about him then I was with Beast. Colossus seems like he could really shake up the actual game, while Beast was just kind of a "meh" addition.

Unknown

coolbond wrote:

Updated with prerelease ability info. As always, this is subject to change.

[anchor=colossus1]Colossus (Classic)[/anchor]
3 Star Rarity (Rare) Wiki link
At Max Level: HP: 10200 Tile damage: 79/70/13/11/12/61

Immovable Object - Yellow 8 AP
Colossus protects his team by standing in front of any force that comes their way. Turns a chosen basic Yellow tile into a 4 turn Countdown tile. While active, Colossus moves to the front at end of turn, and resists 25% of the damage dealt to him.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Damage reduction up to 35% Level 3: Damage reduction up to 45% Level 4: Lasts 4 turns Level 5: Damage reduction up to 50%, lasts 5 turns

Colossal Punch - Red 11 AP
Using the incredible power of his organic steel fists, Colossus pummels the enemy. Deals 493 damage. If Colossus is already in front, he deals an additional 164 damage.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: 492 damage if Colossus is in front. Level 3: 820 damage if Colossus is in front. Level 4: 137 damage to other enemies if Colossus is in front. Level 5: 329 damage to other enemies if Colossus is in front.

Max Level: 1565 damage, additional 2610 to target and 1044 to other enemies if in front.

Fastball Special - Black 13 AP
Colossus pitches a teammate into the sky and toward the fray! Sends a chosen teammate Airborne (inactive, but immune to damage) for 3 turns. Upon landing, they activate one power at no cost, then take 274 damage. The enemy target takes 274 damage.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: 137 to teammate, 411 to the enemy upon landing. Level 3: 55 to teammate, 548 to the enemy upon landing. Level 4: Airborne duration down to 2 turns. Level 5: Airborne duration down to 1 turn.

Max Level: 1 turn Airborne, 174 damage to teammate, 1738 damage to target.

To help those with the 1st page deficiency.

He is looking like his strength will be primarilly defencive in nature.

OnesOwnGrief

Yellow has 4 posted twice. Something seems wrong there.

IceIX

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Yellow has 4 posted twice. Something seems wrong there.

Whoops, my mistake. Starts at 5. In my defense, the build has it listed as 4 as well, which is a bug that'll be fixed before release.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Colossus, cStorm vs Fury

Fury puts down traps
cStorm stuns Fury
Colossus throws cStorm
Colossus activates traps and dies
Now we have a stunned character against a stunned character.

Trisul

I'm excited about the Fastball Special for combo potential.

MPQ has been about low-AP-cost abilities for a long time, and we finally get one that combos well with high-ap-cost characters. 13 AP is still pretty high, but it'll be fun to throw IM and Cap.

OnesOwnGrief

I have a feeling TBTI is going to be useless if the skill is activated before becoming active again. Tile match ownership should change if they are inactive.

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Colossus, cStorm vs Fury

Fury puts down traps
cStorm stuns Fury
Colossus throws cStorm
Colossus activates traps and dies
Now we have a stunned character against a stunned character.

Storm counts down her stun, Fury counts his down, whoever comes out of stun first is the winner and gets to go.

NorthernPolarity

Initial analysis: seems mid-tier, better than other tanky supports like Cap Marvel / Hulk on offense, but significantly worse on defense. All of his abilities cost way too much on defense to be relevant, and he doesn't have any scary passives like Cap Marvel / Hulk.

Yellow seems bleh. Yeah, the extra defense is nice but you aren't ever going to prioritize a defensive ability over the haymaker abilities.
Red looks very good: this is 4k damage to the main target and 1k to the other 2, making it a mini call the storm for 11 red AP: all you have to do is make sure that colossus a couple of colors and make a match-3 to get him in front.
Black looks average. You need to build your team such that you aren't casting dumb abilities off of it (LazyThor has a 1/3 chance of casting his **** red, BP has a 1/3 chance of casting defense grid, etc), and even if you have okay partners, are you really going to match 13 black to do this and an extra 1k damage when you could, you know, just cast the ability by itself? The fact that its 13 AP means that its in the 5 match-3 territory, and thats way too much for this type of effect, especially if its random.

This leaves us with a character that has one very good ability in a relatively popular color, one average ability in a not popular color and one blech ability in a relatively popular color. I think the design of yellow putting him in front for red is too cute, and practically speaking doesn't really help since you can just build the team such that Colossus can match-3 his way to the front anyways, especially considering how defensive abilities suck in this game. I would have done something like make the ability 6AP and tone down the percentages slightly to compensate (it should be stronger than it is now per AP because defense sucks): 9AP for that effect is bad considering how even something like C. Mag's yellow isn't good enough to get played.

I'm going to add the random design changes (not 100% thought out, but closer to the theoretical balance point) I would make to the characters on release in order to get them to a state that I would consider balanced, and look back on this later to see if my predictions were in line with how the character is actually played.

[anchor=colossus1]Colossus (Classic)[/anchor]
3 Star Rarity (Rare) Wiki link
At Max Level: HP: 10200 Tile damage: 79/70/13/11/12/61

Immovable Object - Yellow 6 AP
Colossus protects his team by standing in front of any force that comes their way. Turns a chosen basic Yellow tile into a 3 turn Countdown tile. While active, Colossus moves to the front at end of turn, and resists 15% of the damage dealt to him.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Damage reduction up to 20% Level 3: Damage reduction up to 25% Level 4: Lasts 4 turns Level 5: Damage reduction up to 40%, lasts 5 turns

Colossal Punch - Red 11 AP
Using the incredible power of his organic steel fists, Colossus pummels the enemy. Deals 493 damage. If Colossus is already in front, he deals an additional 164 damage.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: 492 damage if Colossus is in front. Level 3: 820 damage if Colossus is in front. Level 4: 137 damage to other enemies if Colossus is in front. Level 5: 329 damage to other enemies if Colossus is in front.

Max Level: 1565 damage, additional 2610 to target and 1044 to other enemies if in front.

Fastball Special - Black 12 AP (13->12AP to make it not slow)
Colossus pitches a teammate into the sky and toward the fray! Sends a chosen teammate Airborne (inactive, but immune to damage) for 3 turns. Upon landing, they activate one power at no cost, then take 274 damage. The enemy target takes 274 damage.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: 137 to teammate, 411 to the enemy upon landing. Level 3: 55 to teammate, 548 to the enemy upon landing. Level 4: Airborne duration down to 2 turns. Level 5: Airborne duration down to 1 turn.

Max Level: 1 turn Airborne, 174 damage to teammate, 1738 damage to target.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Fast healer?

OnesOwnGrief

I'm guessing Fastball special isn't going to allow trap skills like Ambush or Demolition. If they do, do they just lay down the tile or does it activate? Also, can we get a list of skills that does work with it before release?

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Fastball Special. Colossus, Patch, Beast against Sentry.

Colossus throws Patch, and he's out for two rounds.
Enemy Sentry World Rupture activates, killing Colossus and Beast.
What happens after that? A round where nothing happens? Are tossed characters immune to Area of Effect abilities?

Yep, nothing happens for a round. It'd be as if Patch was Stunned for that round, but he'd take no damage either.

Pretty cool. Makes me think you guys could do something simular for Rogue if she shows up.

Steal Ability 15 Purple:
Rogue kisses her opponent draining their power and stunning them for a time. Places a countdown tile on the board, while this tile is active Steal Ability becomes a random power of the victim, useable with the correct color AP, if the tile is matched Steal Ability returns to play.
Level 1: stunned for 2 rounds, places a 4 turn countdown.
Level 2: stunned for 3 rounds, places a 6 turn countdown.
Level 3: stunned for 4 rounds, places a 8 turn countdown.
Level 4: stunned for 5 rounds, places a 10 turn countdown.
Level 5: + 5 AP Oops Rogue stoll too much and now has the power permently, the opponent is stunned for the remainder of the match.

Just a thought.

Moral

I'll use Colossus every time vs Bagman or OBW. Keep increasing that CD tile.

And I can finally use Yelena to her full potential! (Fastball Payback Mission)

Unknown

On Colossal Punch - the ability description says 164 for the extra; the level 4 says 137 for the extra. Is there something I'm not understanding about how it works?

Unknown

5 black doesn't look bad considering that the character is only inactive for a turn, only takes about 100 damage at level 166, and the opponent takes about 1500 BEFORE the power kicks off.

It's a little expensive but could be fun if you're using someone like Punisher with three capable skills.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

A tank character sounds absolutely idiotic in the meta of MPQ. The devs clearly don't even play their own game.

Great, Colossus absorbed damage for one match. Now he's out of commission for 4 hours. Do the devs really think the ideal game mechanic is one match every couple hours?

I guess they really do. Force everybody to waste $$$ on shields every few hours, and then on health packs.

Another wonderful character with self damage and a health pack thirst. The devs are consistent if not anything else positive.

Great job continuing to ruin what was once a fun, strategy filled game and turning it into Candy Crush Marvel. When can I expect to ask my friends on facebook for health packs so I can keep playing?

There's a serious disconnect between the game they think they're designing versus the one that people really play. And if the point is that you can only play 5 games every 3 hours, they're not even doing a very good job at enforcing that. I remember the original nerf to Wolverine AW's Healing Factor read something like: "Wolverine isn't meant to be a tank like Colossus, and yet that was how he was used". Well, I can assure you Patch and Daken will both tank far better than Colossus. I mean, the math isn't hard. 6800 + 400 or so every turn >>> 10000 HP base for tanking even if you're not doing anything cheesy like sending one of them against level 1 story mode guys to heal, and if you do you'd need a few more >s on the comparison.

On an unrelated note, after seeing his yellow this is the first ability I can think of that benefits from Snarky Remark used on your own tiles.

OnesOwnGrief

Ben Grimm wrote:

On Colossal Punch - the ability description says 164 for the extra; the level 4 says 137 for the extra. Is there something I'm not understanding about how it works?

I think its a single target that turns AOE with later covers.

NorthernPolarity

Teke184 wrote:

5 black doesn't look bad considering that the character is only inactive for a turn, only takes about 100 damage at level 166, and the opponent takes about 1500 BEFORE the power kicks off.

It's a little expensive but could be fun if you're using someone like Punisher with three capable skills.

For the Punisher case, you are spending 13 black AP to cast a skill that costs 7-8 AP + 1.5k damage. This translates to 5-6 extra AP for an extra 1.5k damage with a few significant differences:
1. 13AP is a LOT more than 8AP to rush to, since the board dries up on colored AP after making ~2 match-3s.
2. The skill you get is random, meaning that it could not do anything for the situation at hand.

You could spend 13 black AP to do this, or you could spend 11 black AP on a guaranteed surgical strike or 14 green AP on a call the storm. We expect a lot more out of abilities that cost 13+ AP: the only one that sees any play is Call the Storm + Sniper rifle sort of kind of, and thats only because they have supporting abilities that let them generate that much AP to begin with. I think it'd be fine at 12AP, but is too much at 13.

Unknown

On his black, is the one ability you get for free random or chosen?

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

On his black, is the one ability you get for free random or chosen?

You choose the character, but the ability is random, at least thats how the ability seems like it reads. "Chosen" should be in front of the word ability if it was otherwise.