*** Colossus (Classic) ***

Unknown

The game is never going to favor playing defensively until they get rid of characters with regen who have effectively way more HP than any alleged 'tank' character. Why use a guy with 10000 HP compared to 6800 + 400 turn guy who also has above average offense? On offense, the guy who can regen is almost certainly going to be able to withstand more damage. On defense, neither character will get attacked first, but the guy with regen has better offense, so he can at least contribute more.

And even getting rid of regen isn't enough because of boosts. Let's imagine we have identical teams and identical characters and you get to have either Judgment or Coercive FIeld for free as soon as the fight starts (your team is still unchanged). You'd always take Judgment first over Coercive Field first even though Coercive Field actually has bigger numbers. And let's flip that situation around. You're attacking a team and they get the unfair advantage of starting the game with either a Judgment for free or a Coercive Field for free. Which one would you rather face? You'd always want the Coercive Field since the defense starting with Judgment would quickly do some serious damage with that free boost while Coercive Field you can just focus on collecting AP/destroying protect tiles and sure you lose pretty much all your match damage, but it's still better than facing a Judgment as soon as the game started. Defensive moves/characters are by definition reactive, and boosts always favor active abilities and they're a very big part of the game. For anyone with a developed roster, you probably should use all the iso boosts every fight because there's not much use for saving up iso unless you're trying to build up X Force once you got your 3* team.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Some more theory on black:

Black costs 13AP. 13 AP is 5 match-3s, which means that it is extremely unlikely that you will be able to use the ability unless you actually prioritize the color. Think Falcon's purple when you use Daken + Falcon. If you aren't prioritizing purple, how many times did you actually have enough incidental AP to cast bird strike? Almost never, I would imagine.

This means that in order to use black, you have to prioritize it, which means that it needs to be really good for you to get 13AP's worth of value out of it. This also means that arguments along the lines of "But black is an unused color, so having even a mediocre black ability is still a lot better than no black ability right?" do NOT work, because if you aren't prioritizing the color, then chances are you aren't going to cast the ability, which means that its not really that much better than having no black ability at all. This brings us to an interesting guideline that I think I will use heavily from now on: If an ability costs more than 9 AP (especially for abilities that cost 13+ AP), then you have to prioritize the color in order to reliably cast it. If the ability is not good enough to be prioritized, then it's probably a bad ability.

Colossus's black ability is only consistently worth casting with Fury I believe, so if you aren't using it with Fury, then it's probably not going to be used at all.

Black seems to be more designed for defensive purposes since the cost of 13 AP is more most abilities you'd want to use even if it was selectable (and it's not). On defense it's more likely you end up with unwanted colors and converting 13 black for something potentially useful isn't a bad trade. For example on Thor you got 2/3 chance of getting something really good for 13 black. Also now that games without Sentry tend to take longer, it's not unreasonable to end up with a lot of low desireability tiles over a long game so it lets you convert it to something else. Of course why convert 13 black to something else when X Force can take 11 black and usually kill someone?

atomzed

[quote="coolbond"

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 5 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

The yellow ability reads, while active, he moves to front at end of turn.

Does that mean that when fighting him on defence, we can still skip him, and choose another team mate to target?

I do hope that he can be tweak such that he covers his team mates both on defence and offence.

Unknown

So these are the legit abilities?

Unknown

I would use Colossus to tank Ares. If the fastball special goes off, I wouldn't mind having Ares abilities going off for free. Imagine having 10 green Ap when Ares lands and his onslaught goes off 2x against a non-green using AI team.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Invisible Woman / Hood / Colossus + boosts

Yellow match for Immovable Object
Collect for Force Bubbles
Collect for Force Field Crush -- Generates a lot of AP

At this point, Hood and IW have enough AP to be unstoppable, and both have powers to increase their AP even further.
For fun, have Colossus throw IW for random Invisibility or Bubbles.

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

[quote="coolbond"

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 5 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

The yellow ability reads, while active, he moves to front at end of turn.

Does that mean that when fighting him on defence, we can still skip him, and choose another team mate to target?

I do hope that he can be tweak such that he covers his team mates both on defence and offence.

I assume he's forced to be in the front similar to Deadpool's passive while his yellow is active, because anything else would be pretty worthless.

Moral

I'm starting to think of fastball special as a 1 turn invulnerability.

Supernova or World Rupture about to go off? Pick someone to avoid all the damage.

GTannen73

Phantron wrote:

atomzed wrote:

[quote="coolbond"

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 5 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

The yellow ability reads, while active, he moves to front at end of turn.

Does that mean that when fighting him on defence, we can still skip him, and choose another team mate to target?

I do hope that he can be tweak such that he covers his team mates both on defence and offence.

I assume he's forced to be in the front similar to Deadpool's passive while his yellow is active, because anything else would be pretty worthless.

I picture it working like pre-R60 Hawkeye's Avoid, where you could target him, but when you made a match, if there was enough purple on the board to trigger Avoid, he'd move before the damage landed. In this case, if Colossus' yellow is active, you can target anyone you want, but as soon as you make a match (or use a damage-dealing power), he jumps to the front and takes it.

mohio

Moral wrote:

I'm starting to think of fastball special as a 1 turn invulnerability.

Supernova or World Rupture about to go off? Pick someone to avoid all the damage.

Not to sound condescending, but wouldn't you rather use those 13+ ap to just kill sentry as opposed to save one guy?

IceIX

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Hey IceIX! For his red, when you guys say "in front", do you mean his yellow ability has to be active, or can he just be in front by performing a match-3 where his color strength is the strongest? Jozier brought up a good point that he's automatically placed "in front" when he casts the ability anyways. I interpreted it as if hes the only red guy and you match-3 red to place him in front, you can use the red ability for full damage.

He doesn't need the Countdown tile active at the moment, he just needs to be in front. For the opponent since you can flip them around, it generally means that unless they have the tile out so he moves automatically you're probably going to be smart and *not* target him the turn before he's about to haul off and hit you.

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

So it goes from 5 turns to 4 turns to 5 turns? That would mean the 4th level is actively harmful to the character, and two covers gives just a 5% increase.

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 5 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

Ahh, jeebus. No, that one is definitely me not thinking straight on correction. It starts at *3* turns, goes to 4, then 5. I'll fix that.

NorthernPolarity

IceIX wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Hey IceIX! For his red, when you guys say "in front", do you mean his yellow ability has to be active, or can he just be in front by performing a match-3 where his color strength is the strongest? Jozier brought up a good point that he's automatically placed "in front" when he casts the ability anyways. I interpreted it as if hes the only red guy and you match-3 red to place him in front, you can use the red ability for full damage.

He doesn't need the Countdown tile active at the moment, he just needs to be in front. For the opponent since you can flip them around, it generally means that unless they have the tile out so he moves automatically you're probably going to be smart and *not* target him the turn before he's about to haul off and hit you.

Casting red automatically puts him "in front" though right? Does this mean that he'll always be in front on offense when using this ability, or does he need to be "in front" at the start of the turn?

IceIX

MattyMattMatt wrote:

So these are the legit abilities?

These are legit as in they are the abilities as they stand currently on our QA server. They may be changed before release, but it's unlikely that any wholesale changes would occur.

vudu3

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Some more theory on black:

Black costs 13AP. 13 AP is 5 match-3s, which means that it is extremely unlikely that you will be able to use the ability unless you actually prioritize the color. Think Falcon's purple when you use Daken + Falcon. If you aren't prioritizing purple, how many times did you actually have enough incidental AP to cast bird strike? Almost never, I would imagine.

This means that in order to use black, you have to prioritize it, which means that it needs to be really good for you to get 13AP's worth of value out of it. This also means that arguments along the lines of "But black is an unused color, so having even a mediocre black ability is still a lot better than no black ability right?" do NOT work, because if you aren't prioritizing the color, then chances are you aren't going to cast the ability, which means that its not really that much better than having no black ability at all. This brings us to an interesting guideline that I think I will use heavily from now on: If an ability costs more than 9 AP (especially for abilities that cost 13+ AP), then you have to prioritize the color in order to reliably cast it. If the ability is not good enough to be prioritized, then it's probably a bad ability.

Colossus's black ability is only consistently worth casting with Fury I believe, so if you aren't using it with Fury, then it's probably not going to be used at all.

Don't forget about the 1,738 damage that Fastball Special causes on its own. It's only 134 damage/AP by itself, but when you add it to whomever you're throwing it adds up. If you throw a 3/5/5 Thor you're expected to do 4,297 damage, assuming each ability has an equal chance of triggering. Added to the initial 1,738 damage that's 464 damage/AP for Fastball Special. That's not fantastic but it's not horrible either.

I'd also argue that in most cases a 13 AP skill does not translate to 5 match-3s. By the time you hit your fourth one you're likely to have picked up a stray black via match-4 or match-5.

With characters like X-Force and Panther, black is becoming a much stronger color than it used to be. While you might not want to prioritize the color, it's becoming more common to want to deny your opponent black AP.

IceIX

NorthernPolarity wrote:

IceIX wrote:

He doesn't need the Countdown tile active at the moment, he just needs to be in front. For the opponent since you can flip them around, it generally means that unless they have the tile out so he moves automatically you're probably going to be smart and *not* target him the turn before he's about to haul off and hit you.

Casting red automatically puts him "in front" though right? Does this mean that he'll always be in front on offense when using this ability, or does he need to be "in front" at the start of the turn?

No, he needs to be at the front when the ability is actually fired. Him moving to the front as a result doesn't cause the secondary damage to trigger. Which means either having ended the turn with the Countdown up or having made a match.

Nellyson

IceIX wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

IceIX wrote:

He doesn't need the Countdown tile active at the moment, he just needs to be in front. For the opponent since you can flip them around, it generally means that unless they have the tile out so he moves automatically you're probably going to be smart and *not* target him the turn before he's about to haul off and hit you.

Casting red automatically puts him "in front" though right? Does this mean that he'll always be in front on offense when using this ability, or does he need to be "in front" at the start of the turn?

No, he needs to be at the front when the ability is actually fired. Him moving to the front as a result doesn't cause the secondary damage to trigger. Which means either having ended the turn with the Countdown up or having made a match.

So let's say I have enough red to cast his punch, but wait and make a match with his powers. Will this put him in front when I go to cast his punch for that AOE damage on my next turn? Sorry to be dense, but that is what you mean by having made a match, right?

IceIX

Nellyson wrote:

IceIX wrote:

[No, he needs to be at the front when the ability is actually fired. Him moving to the front as a result doesn't cause the secondary damage to trigger. Which means either having ended the turn with the Countdown up or having made a match.

So let's say I have enough red to cast his punch, but wait and make a match with his powers. Will this put him in front when I go to cast his punch for that AOE damage on my next turn? Sorry to be dense, but that is what you mean by having made a match, right?

So if you say, had him at the back, then used Fastball Special so he moves, then Colossal Punch? He'd be in the front due to Fastball Special, so he'll deal the added damage. By making a match, I mean just that. He's wherever, you make a match which moves him to the front, then next turn he's still in the front so he'll do the extra damage.

Nonce Equitaur 2

When I'm fighting Colossus, should I always make sure to rotate him to the back before ending my turn, so that he doesn't get his bonus for being in front?

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

When I'm fighting Colossus, should I always make sure to rotate him to the back before ending my turn, so that he doesn't get his bonus for being in front?

If you're worried about him whacking you with a Punch, yes. Of course, he could always do the same as I said above; Use a different ability to push himself forward *then* Punch.