Quebbster wrote: Now I want to run Cage, Deadpool and Grocket together. Full rainbow, one active skill in each color, and should be a nightmare to take out.
NorthernPolarity wrote: vudu3 wrote: Two over-leveled Daken strike tiles will negate a 3 red Cage protect tile. Given how much Daken is an enemy in Heroics 3 red Cage isn't going to protect your team very much. If you under-develop the one thing that makes Cage unique it seems like a missed opportunity. Meh, if boosting the thing that makes him unique is suboptimal to me, I won't do it. I decided to dig deeper on how much his red at 3 vs 5 actually matters. The highest level we'll see in a heroic is ~300, with a standard node being say 160-200. If you look at the link with updated match damage since that match damage nerf for scaled 2*/3*s we had a while back (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... d=64247071), here's what we see: Level 140 - Roughly 70 / 60 / 50 for all stars. Level 200 - Roughly 80 / 70 / 63 for all stars Level 300 - Roughly 90 / 80 / 70 for all stars. Finally, we can expect Cage to be boosted by 30 or 90 depending on minor or major boost in PvE. Lets take a look at his red boosted. Level 196 Cage - Level 3 - 166 Defense 4 - 214 defense 5 - 316 defense Level 256 Cage - Level 3 - 217 defense Level 4 - 280 defense Level 5- 413 defense Since you can't really expect the enemy to always match their best color strength, we'll take the secondary strength and how much damage you end up taking. Level 196 Cage - Level 140 - 14 damage for level 3, 1 damage for level 5. Level 200 - 44 damage for level 3, 1 damage for level 5 Level 300 - 74 damage for level 3, 1 damage for level 5 Level 256 Cage Level 140 - 1 damage in both cases. Level 200 - 7 damage for level 3, 1 damage for level 5 Level 300 - 23 damage for level 3, 1 damage for level 5. Lets assume a worst case of say 20 turns of damage for each match. Each heroic has 1 level 300 node, roughly 3 level 200 nodes, 4 level 140 nodes, and a bunch of other low level nodes that don't really matter. One single clear of a heroic would therefore be: 20 * (74 + 44 * 3 + 14 * 4) = 5240 damage for a 196 Cage with 3 red, and 960 damage for a 256 Cage with 5 red. Now you could argue "5.2k damage for a single clear is a lot of damage!", but you also have to account for the fact that you have 3 black. So now the question becomes "what percentage of the time will the difference between 3 and 5 black prevent 5.2k damage by killing the enemy sooner than I otherwise would have". Well, given that 5.2k damage is a single Headbutt, or two onslaughts / gravity warps, I don't think it's that farfetched to say that over the course of one clear, having 5 black will probably end up saving you far more ability damage by just killing them faster. Based on this analysis, it still seems like the offensive power of 5/3/5 more than makes up for the defense tile. Also remember that this analysis is considering the worst case of 20 turns per match: obviously matches involving level 140s will take less time, so it ends up doing even less. If you have a 256 Cage, 5 red is complete overkill for obvious reasons. You could argue that Daken is common in Heroics thus making higher levels of red more important, but optimizing a build for a character that appears in 1/3rd of the time in relevant heroic nodes probably isn't that important.
vudu3 wrote: Two over-leveled Daken strike tiles will negate a 3 red Cage protect tile. Given how much Daken is an enemy in Heroics 3 red Cage isn't going to protect your team very much. If you under-develop the one thing that makes Cage unique it seems like a missed opportunity.
Lerysh wrote: It's not a chain you can keep going, as it's wording would imply, but simply a massive damage dump for 12 or 18 or 24 black, and many other characters do that far better than Cage.
atomzed wrote: After Fist Bump pvp, I will be able to respec cage to either 553 or 535. I'm still undecided about him... On one hand I love the protect tile, but on the other hand, NP makes a good point that I'm sacrifice a lot of dmg from black. Sigh, tough decision... If I have a max IF, it would be an easier decision, but it is going to be months before I max IF.
Arondite wrote: atomzed wrote: After Fist Bump pvp, I will be able to respec cage to either 553 or 535. I'm still undecided about him... On one hand I love the protect tile, but on the other hand, NP makes a good point that I'm sacrifice a lot of dmg from black. Sigh, tough decision... If I have a max IF, it would be an easier decision, but it is going to be months before I max IF. It's 5/5/3.
Phantron wrote: It's not Luke Cage's red is that good at 5. It's that unless you're trapped on a deserted island where X Force and Black Panther can never be used you'd have no reason to use his black at all, and there are at least a few more guys who have a comparable black. Even 2 Psi-Katanas is likely to average more damage done over time considering the first Psi-Katana can come out much earlier than a Jab (Jab has the same cost, but use it early wastes its damage). By the way, in the heroics, you do not have Loki, The Hood, or Mystique, so you got to get your black AP the old fashion way and it's not exactly very fast. I've played plenty of Black Panther boosted heroics to know that 12 black AP isn't something you can just easily come up with in a heroic, and even then a single ROTP is usually not enough to win and it's a far stronger move than Jab.
NorthernPolarity wrote: In heroics I've proven that 5/3/5 is better
vudu3 wrote: I was taking on the Iron Fist, Colossus, Daken node in Simulator Hard today with X-Force, cMags and Cage. Thanks for a bad cascade X-Force took two Chemical Reactions early on and fell. A Sting TU and Cage's black was the only thing that saved that fight. Even at level 3 it did fairly decent damage and I managed to get out 3 Jab, Jab, Crosses while the CD tile was out. I'll admit that I'm more torn between 5/5/3 and 5/3/5 than I was before. I'm currently 5/5/3 but with the two black covers I'll get from Fist Bump I can respec to 5/3/5 if I want to. Regardless, I don't have to make the decision until after Sticks and Stones is over because 5/5/3 seems like the best build for that event since I'll be running with X-Force. NorthernPolarity wrote: In heroics I've proven that 5/3/5 is better While this may be true, it simply doesn't make sense any more to base your build around Heroics. As it's been pointed out, Heroics aren't run nearly as often as they were in the past. Basing your build on an infrequent event that may or may not even allow the character seems overly cautious. That's not to say that you shouldn't build your character in a vacuum--obviously take into account other characters as well as your personal roster--but Heroics just aren't as important/prevalent as they once were.
vudu3 wrote: Wolvie and/or Thor getting locked out of certain event nodes are much more common than Heroics. It makes sense to build a character to their individual best build, not some theoretical Heroic that may never come. Slightly off-topic, but very relevant at the same time, I've found that build I build characters around X-Force so much I don't have any strong green users besides X-Force and Patch. When Wolvie is locked out of a node I'm finding it hard to replace him with a solid green user. 3* Thor is generally my best bet but he's not the best against scaled PVE baddies because CotS spreads its damaged out against all 3 targets. Rocket & Groot (at 3 covers), Gamora, Sentry and She-Hulk all have mediocre greens. Hulk's green has never been that great and Punisher quickly gets scaled out. I suppose Iron Fist will now fill the roll of green user when I can't use X-Force but until last week that was a niche that hadn't been filled because it's always "this characters gets 3 green covers because X-Force exists".
NorthernPolarity wrote: My team for when Wolvie is locked out is 4or / mohawk / loki, and xf / cmags / loki when 4or is locked out. Personally Cage doesn't seem like he'd replace any of those characters I mentioned, so I don't see his utility even with XF / GT locked out.
vudu3 wrote: NorthernPolarity wrote: My team for when Wolvie is locked out is 4or / mohawk / loki, and xf / cmags / loki when 4or is locked out. Personally Cage doesn't seem like he'd replace any of those characters I mentioned, so I don't see his utility even with XF / GT locked out. I guess the difference is I don't use Thor as much as you do. I do use X-Force quite a bit in PVE but I like to try out different partners. In the last event I ran with X-Force, She-Hulk and Hood quite a bit and found it be a very effective team. Even with the change to 8 hour node refreshes I'm still fairly conservative with health pack usage so rather than use the same characters all the time I sub-in fresh guys every few fights. Some people will try to argue that using different characters adds variety to the game and while that's true to a point in the end you're still matching 3 (or more) like-colored gems in an 8 by 8 grid. For me, it's all about health pack conservation because when I get wiped by a nasty node I'm glad I have 3 health packs in reserve to try again.