*** Luke Cage (Hero For Hire) ***

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Not really sure what the problem is here. Thor is awesome. Cage is awesome. They are basically 2 of the top 3 or 4 3*s in the game. They both have awesome yellow powers. Cage is better for dropping a single target. Thor is better for board control and (because of the daisy chain into green combo) air damage. Which ever one is better, it's like debating between the value of $20.00 and $19.99 (i.e. what is the point?).

The issue was saying Thor's yellow was 'unreliable'. If I knew anything about guns I'd say Thor's yellow was a gun that had very good accuracy and did its job to counter.

I'm glad other folks are chiming in about this...I don't want noobs to get the wrong impression.

Vhailorx

Unreal:

Pre health shift I would have agreed with you about laken. But now that he has so much less health than everyone, I think he is a liability in PvP. His true healing is good for sustainability, but unless he is boosted, he just doesn't generate or absorb enough damage to make the cut. He has been passed by the meta. If you want sustainability, bring cage. If you want strike tiles and fast damage, bring blade.

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Unreal:

Pre health shift I would have agreed with you about laken. But now that he has so much less health than everyone, I think he is a liability in PvP. His true healing is good for sustainability, but unless he is boosted, he just doesn't generate or absorb enough damage to make the cut. He has been passed by the meta. If you want sustainability, bring cage. If you want strike tiles and fast damage, bring blade.

On the high end I'm with you *except Blade, I love Blade, but don't agree with all the current Blade love, he is way overrated right now*, but with climbing, its so rare that you fight anything that will take Laken down. At least when I climb, I do my best to never use HP, so True Healing > high health, especially in the current 'cascade heavy' game we've got going on. Cage is great against match dmg, but getting hit for 1k-3k chips away at him, while Laken is only phased if hit for 6k or a combo of at least 6k. I'm not even concerned about dmg done, I don't care about strikes, I just care about health and his blue attack...

With that said, the recent change to the numbers changes how many fights it takes to climb, so that does make Cage better for climbing on the surface, but before this season, I would still rather climb with Laken.
- Unreall

Unknown

Unreallystic wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Unreal:

Pre health shift I would have agreed with you about laken. But now that he has so much less health than everyone, I think he is a liability in PvP. His true healing is good for sustainability, but unless he is boosted, he just doesn't generate or absorb enough damage to make the cut. He has been passed by the meta. If you want sustainability, bring cage. If you want strike tiles and fast damage, bring blade.

On the high end I'm with you *except Blade, I love Blade, but don't agree with all the current Blade love, he is way overrated right now*, but with climbing, its so rare that you fight anything that will take Laken down. At least when I climb, I do my best to never use HP, so True Healing > high health, especially in the current 'cascade heavy' game we've got going on. Cage is great against match dmg, but getting hit for 1k-3k chips away at him, while Laken is only phased if hit for 6k or a combo of at least 6k. I'm not even concerned about dmg done, I don't care about strikes, I just care about health and his blue attack...

With that said, the recent change to the numbers changes how many fights it takes to climb, so that does make Cage better for climbing on the surface, but before this season, I would still rather climb with Laken.
- Unreall

Blade's not overrated.

Good at any amount of covers.

Pairs with Strike Team

Got a health buff

Didn't get his AP trick nerfed.

This is why ppl like him

Unknown

I know why people like him, he's one of my favs and the first of the 'newer' characters I marched to 166. But because I like him, I'm also honest about his short comings, he tanks green *bad* for most of my teams, and with me avoiding making red matches, you end up making lots of green ones, on top of that red is 'becoming' the new hotness *again*, so his green special is becoming more and more like QS's blue ability...not THAT hard to get off, but trending in that direction. That substantially weakens the value of his purple, leaving him with black. Yes he's extremely well balanced and has all good covers, but he's super board reliant, boosting doesn't help him, he gets hit 'alot'...almost as much as Hood, and he doesn't have high health.

I'm not saying he's not good (not at all), just that I think people are higher on him than they should be (especially for PvP, for PvE, he is a God, no question).

Back to Cage, I really want to pair him with Blade...can't figure out a good third though for that team. And my IF only has like 3 covers...
-Unreall

Phaserhawk

Unreallystic wrote:

I know why people like him, he's one of my favs and the first of the 'newer' characters I marched to 166. But because I like him, I'm also honest about his short comings, he tanks green *bad* for most of my teams, and with me avoiding making red matches, you end up making lots of green ones, on top of that red is 'becoming' the new hotness *again*, so his green special is becoming more and more like QS's blue ability...not THAT hard to get off, but trending in that direction. That substantially weakens the value of his purple, leaving him with black. Yes he's extremely well balanced and has all good covers, but he's super board reliant, boosting doesn't help him, he gets hit 'alot'...almost as much as Hood, and he doesn't have high health.

I'm not saying he's not good (not at all), just that I think people are higher on him than they should be (especially for PvP, for PvE, he is a God, no question).

Back to Cage, I really want to pair him with Blade...can't figure out a good third though for that team. And my IF only has like 3 covers...
-Unreall

In regards to just 3 stars, She-Hulk gives you the rainbow of actives. Functionally, Falcon, Daken, Human Torch and Gamora would fit well. Gamora is nice as she wouldn't steal much red to hurt blades passive, the strike tiles make it meaner, and you can have her tank green, red, blue making her black useful

Vhailorx

Unreallystic wrote:

I know why people like him, he's one of my favs and the first of the 'newer' characters I marched to 166. But because I like him, I'm also honest about his short comings, he tanks green *bad* for most of my teams, and with me avoiding making red matches, you end up making lots of green ones, on top of that red is 'becoming' the new hotness *again*, so his green special is becoming more and more like QS's blue ability...not THAT hard to get off, but trending in that direction. That substantially weakens the value of his purple, leaving him with black. Yes he's extremely well balanced and has all good covers, but he's super board reliant, boosting doesn't help him, he gets hit 'alot'...almost as much as Hood, and he doesn't have high health.

I'm not saying he's not good (not at all), just that I think people are higher on him than they should be (especially for PvP, for PvE, he is a God, no question).

Back to Cage, I really want to pair him with Blade...can't figure out a good third though for that team. And my IF only has like 3 covers...
-Unreall

Someone blue/Red/green is the ideal pair with cage/blade. That means she hulk (i don't count rags), which is less than ideal given her board shake. Maybe one should just abandon blue and green and bring Cyclops.

Unknown

People overrate his protect tile for the same reason why people think Bullseye is a difficult opponent. When Luke Cage or a high level Bullseye is on the board you need to just act as if all your match damage is always doing 1 damage and play like that. If you happen to get match 4/5s it'll usually still comfortably overpower the protect tile though that's not even the primary benefit of making a match 4/5 (getting a boatload of AP is the primary benefit). Aside from the Ultron event that is tailored to make protect tiles look good, you shouldn't ever change your game around for passive protect tiles. Yes if your team has 3 Nick Furies it can be pretty infuriating to figure out how to do the last 300 damage when all you got are moves that require 4 matches, but 3 Nick Furies is probably not the ideal way to build a team. Even if you were running such a ridiculous team, a 250 protect tile isn't going to do much on Demolition so either that should be enough or maybe a Demolition with either an Avenger's Assemble red or green will still do the trick. Of course you can calculate your damage wrong but it's just not that common even if you were somehow running 3 Nick Furies who have by far the most expensive usable moves in the game (IM40/GSBW might have a higher average but some of their moves aren't realistically usable)

atomzed

One of my fave pve team is Groot-Cage-Blade.

You have coverage across all colors. And have active skills in all color except red. And you don't want to match red anyway with blade.

Groot will tank 4 colors (blue, green, yellow and TU) and can heal. Has active strike tiles and a green board shake.

Blade tanks black and purple and has am active purple and black. Groot blue helps to provide enough strike tiles for max blade purple effectiveness. Blade black is also useful to drain AP.

Cage tanks only red so he is rarely hurt; which is good since blade and groot has accelerated healing and true healing respectively. Has a nuke in yellow and cheap black that fully maximise the strike tiles.

Phaserhawk

atomzed wrote:

One of my fave pve team is Groot-Cage-Blade.

You have coverage across all colors. And have active skills in all color except red. And you don't want to match red anyway with blade.

Groot will tank 4 colors (blue, green, yellow and TU) and can heal. Has active strike tiles and a green board shake.

Blade tanks black and purple and has am active purple and black. Groot blue helps to provide enough strike tiles for max blade purple effectiveness. Blade black is also useful to drain AP.

Cage tanks only red so he is rarely hurt; which is good since blade and groot has accelerated healing. Has a nuke in yellow and cheap black that fully maximise the strike tiles.

Surprisingly Groot does not have accelerated healing, unless you count taking him from low to almost full in prologue

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

I know why people like him, he's one of my favs and the first of the 'newer' characters I marched to 166. But because I like him, I'm also honest about his short comings, he tanks green *bad* for most of my teams, and with me avoiding making red matches, you end up making lots of green ones, on top of that red is 'becoming' the new hotness *again*, so his green special is becoming more and more like QS's blue ability...not THAT hard to get off, but trending in that direction. That substantially weakens the value of his purple, leaving him with black. Yes he's extremely well balanced and has all good covers, but he's super board reliant, boosting doesn't help him, he gets hit 'alot'...almost as much as Hood, and he doesn't have high health.

I'm not saying he's not good (not at all), just that I think people are higher on him than they should be (especially for PvP, for PvE, he is a God, no question).

Back to Cage, I really want to pair him with Blade...can't figure out a good third though for that team. And my IF only has like 3 covers...
-Unreall

Someone blue/Red/green is the ideal pair with cage/blade. That means she hulk (i don't count rags), which is less than ideal given her board shake. Maybe one should just abandon blue and green and bring Cyclops.

I'm all for cyclops, as I'm finishing up Cage (I took a sabbatical on 166 as I got everyone else to 120, just got like 3 characters left) and cyc is next in line, but with Cyclops, I'd fight over yellow usage and black usage.

I don't love Shulk.
I'm also not concerned about rainbow, I think its a waste of time to worry about it. If I have a dead color or two its fine, most of the time my effort is focused on two colors with a third "if I have to" color. With Cage/Blade, I'd actually want to avoid someone who is based on red as I want them to stay on the board (CMags for instance is fine, his main use is blue, red is just a luxury).

Actually CMags maybe the guy...I currently use him with Blade/Falcon anyways, it would be thematically swapping falcon for cage.
- Unreall

Vhailorx

Phantron wrote:

People overrate his protect tile for the same reason why people think Bullseye is a difficult opponent. When Luke Cage or a high level Bullseye is on the board you need to just act as if all your match damage is always doing 1 damage and play like that. If you happen to get match 4/5s it'll usually still comfortably overpower the protect tile though that's not even the primary benefit of making a match 4/5 (getting a boatload of AP is the primary benefit). Aside from the Ultron event that is tailored to make protect tiles look good, you shouldn't ever change your game around for passive protect tiles. Yes if your team has 3 Nick Furies it can be pretty infuriating to figure out how to do the last 300 damage when all you got are moves that require 4 matches, but 3 Nick Furies is probably not the ideal way to build a team. Even if you were running such a ridiculous team, a 250 protect tile isn't going to do much on Demolition so either that should be enough or maybe a Demolition with either an Avenger's Assemble red or green will still do the trick. Of course you can calculate your damage wrong but it's just not that common even if you were somehow running 3 Nick Furies who have by far the most expensive usable moves in the game (IM40/GSBW might have a higher average but some of their moves aren't realistically usable)

Totally disagree.

You are correct that Cage's tile doesn't help much against enemy abilities. But most much of high-level pvp play and all of high-level PVE play is dedicated to preventing the ai from using their abilities at all. That's why ap-stealers are so powerful. And Cage is a perfect match for that strategy. He negates match damage, while ap theft and ap-denying matches keep the enemy from firing abilities. On top of that, Cage's other two powers just deal significant damage, which is also desirable when facing high-level opponents.

As nothernpolarity (r.i.p.) said when cage was released, at 5 covers, his protect tile is absorbing a little over 250 damage per turn. Back then average matches lasted about 10 turns, and that length has gone up since then with the health shift and boost reduction. That means that cages is effectively true healing your entire team for 2500+ health each match. If you can prevent the enemy from using their abilities, he can effectively neutralize all damage completely. What's not to like?

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Phantron wrote:

People overrate his protect tile for the same reason why people think Bullseye is a difficult opponent. When Luke Cage or a high level Bullseye is on the board you need to just act as if all your match damage is always doing 1 damage and play like that. If you happen to get match 4/5s it'll usually still comfortably overpower the protect tile though that's not even the primary benefit of making a match 4/5 (getting a boatload of AP is the primary benefit). Aside from the Ultron event that is tailored to make protect tiles look good, you shouldn't ever change your game around for passive protect tiles. Yes if your team has 3 Nick Furies it can be pretty infuriating to figure out how to do the last 300 damage when all you got are moves that require 4 matches, but 3 Nick Furies is probably not the ideal way to build a team. Even if you were running such a ridiculous team, a 250 protect tile isn't going to do much on Demolition so either that should be enough or maybe a Demolition with either an Avenger's Assemble red or green will still do the trick. Of course you can calculate your damage wrong but it's just not that common even if you were somehow running 3 Nick Furies who have by far the most expensive usable moves in the game (IM40/GSBW might have a higher average but some of their moves aren't realistically usable)

Totally disagree.

You are correct that Cage's tile doesn't help much against enemy abilities. But most much of high-level pvp play and all of high-level PVE play is dedicated to preventing the ai from using their abilities at all. That's why ap-stealers are so powerful. And Cage is a perfect match for that strategy. He negates match damage, while ap theft and ap-denying matches keep the enemy from firing abilities. On top of that, Cage's other two powers just deal significant damage, which is also desirable when facing high-level opponents.

As nothernpolarity (r.i.p.) said when cage was released, at 5 covers, his protect tile is absorbing a little over 250 damage per turn. Back then average matches lasted about 10 turns, and that length has gone up since then with the health shift and boost reduction. That means that cages is effectively true healing your entire team for 2500+ health each match. If you can prevent the enemy from using their abilities, he can effectively neutralize all damage completely. What's not to like?

You're both right, Phantron is talking about protect tile meta, you're talking about protect sustainability

Unknown

Putting AP steal and Luke Cage on the same team and assuming they've synergy is kind of like in the Matrix where the machine have invented Cold Fusion and also use human batteries to supplement their power supply. One of the two is doing most of the work here, and it's not Luke Cage or the humans. AP steal is a dominant form of damage prevention since moves are what kills you about 99% of the time when not fighting someone who can do ability damage passively (Iron Fist, Daken, Blade, Prof X). Even if you are running The Hood, it's not hard to keep him protected now that there is the weekly buffed list that makes it easy to hide him behind (and if The Hood is boosted you can't hide him but that still probably outweighs the drawback). Since match damage does not scale linearly with level past 166, in the current meta you're going likely to have 3 guys with 10-12K HP a piece but your match damage is still just in the 200s. Even if all that damage went to a guy like The Hood, if that's all they're doing you're not really worried about losing, and most of the time it's going to go to someone with 12K HP who just shrugs it off with or without Luke Cage's protect tile.

Now AP steal also gets you offense and Luke Cage has okay offense, though it's not top tier quality when he's not boosted especially if you have 5 in red which implies you cannot have 5 in both yellow and black. Even a 5/3/5 I don't consider him anywhere near top tier when he's not boosted and certainly am not worried about his damage output at 166. It's not irrelevent but it's definitely not enough to worry about losing unless your team starts out crippled.

atomzed

Phaserhawk wrote:

atomzed wrote:

One of my fave pve team is Groot-Cage-Blade.

You have coverage across all colors. And have active skills in all color except red. And you don't want to match red anyway with blade.

Groot will tank 4 colors (blue, green, yellow and TU) and can heal. Has active strike tiles and a green board shake.

Blade tanks black and purple and has am active purple and black. Groot blue helps to provide enough strike tiles for max blade purple effectiveness. Blade black is also useful to drain AP.

Cage tanks only red so he is rarely hurt; which is good since blade and groot has accelerated healing. Has a nuke in yellow and cheap black that fully maximise the strike tiles.

Surprisingly Groot does not have accelerated healing, unless you count taking him from low to almost full in prologue

Thanks for pointing that out! I didn't realise it. I guess my 5 yellow Groot has sufficient heal that I mistake it for accelerated heal

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Since match damage does not scale linearly with level past 166, in the current meta you're going likely to have 3 guys with 10-12K HP a piece but your match damage is still just in the 200s. Even if all that damage went to a guy like The Hood, if that's all they're doing you're not really worried about losing, and most of the time it's going to go to someone with 12K HP who just shrugs it off with or without Luke Cage's protect tile.

eeeehhhh...I can't cosign that part. If we were talking 'one fight to rule them all' or healing was still a thing, you are 100% right, but in the current game, those 200s add up, lets say Hood is open to yellow, 5 matches is 1k off his health, that's 1/5 of his health. Add in the matches being so much longer right now, with increased chances of cascades, Hood would be REALLY open to match and cascade dmg, AND that's not taking into consideration that the longer matches most likely at least one 'doom and gloom' power will be pulled out, and could hit Hood. It might not - sure, especially if you are paying attention and throw a loaner Bullseye in front of XF's SS *hilarity*, but that dmg adds up and quickly. Typically if I'm using Hood right now, he needs a HP every '3' matches (an average). If on the team I could fit someone like Cage, (I've done it recently in the PvE nodes) Hood last ten+ matches without a HP (assuming no Whales or stupid AoE) as he no longer gets exposed to that match dmg.

To me, that is where Cage shines, match dmg and cascades really sting over time when it comes to climbing and stupid attack tiles in PvE, but Cage pretty much limits them to having ot use REAL attacks - which with AP Denial, AP Steal, and anti-CD/anti-passive strats can really ruin your opponents day.
- Unreall

Buret0

Okay, so I'm getting his fifth yellow cover today and I need to decide how to respec his build. (BTW edit: respect is an autocorrect nightmare when typing anything about gaming and redoing someone's builds)

I love the one turn stun on the 4 black covers, so I don't really want to give that up, but for PvP his black is useless.

I have his red at five covers, but I can take the 80 point per hit damage protection reduction fairly easily.

Obviously for Defense his best build is going to be 5/5/3, but I'm seriously thinking of going 5/4/4 because I don't want to lose his stun for offense. I really like being able to stun characters like Hulk or Captain Marvel before unloading on them.

I realize that it isn't ideal for D, because the AI never gets the second punch in and 5 Reds is a much better deterrent than 4 reds...

Advice?

Unknown

So with health packs expanding to 10 I'm really thinking about going 5/3/5 with my Cage. Today is Yellow Cage day in DDQ so I am going to go 4/4/5 for a month and see how that goes. If I hate it I can go back to 3/5/5, if I don't hate it then I start searching for a yellow cover.

While boosted 3 is totally enough to cover match damage, and then you also gain the benefit of highly boosted damage output skills. When not boosted I feel like maybe 141 is enough to mitigate some match damage and save on health packs, and since I will have 10 soon protecting someone like Hood from all match damage all the time is far less important. Plus with matches taking much longer now 13 cost skills have really come into their own and Cage's 13 skill is probably the best yellow skill that exists, damage wise. Thor might have better overall, with the green production, but not by a lot.

Unknown

Buret0 wrote:

Okay, so I'm getting his fifth yellow cover today and I need to decide how to respect his build.

I love the one turn stun on the 4 black covers, so I don't really want to give that up, but for PvP his black is useless.

I have his red at five covers, but I can take the 80 point per hit damage protection reduction fairly easily.

Obviously for Defense his best build is going to be 5/5/3, but I'm seriously thinking of going 5/4/4 because I don't want to lose his stun for offense. I really like being able to stun characters like Hulk or Captain Marvel before unloading on them.

I realize that it isn't ideal for D, because the AI never gets the second punch in and 5 Reds is a much better deterrent than 4 reds...

Advice?

It doesn't really matter, but in seeing the knowledge that's been given in this thread, I'd opt for 5/3/5. It depends what you want to do and what purpose Cage serves. I would say X/X/4 is the only necessary part for Cage(stuns are valuable and you never know who'll be powered up/who you need in an heroic).

Chief270

Vhailorx wrote:

Phantron wrote:

As nothernpolarity (r.i.p.) said when cage was released, at 5 covers, his protect tile is absorbing a little over 250 damage per turn. Back then average matches lasted about 10 turns, and that length has gone up since then with the health shift and boost reduction. That means that cages is effectively true healing your entire team for 2500+ health each match. If you can prevent the enemy from using their abilities, he can effectively neutralize all damage completely. What's not to like?

This assumes
1) only one match per turn
2) every match is 250+ damage (which only 4* characters / Boosted 3* come close, someone correct me if I'm wrong)
3) no damage abilities are fired

But using those assumption.. those same 10 turns with 3 covers is 1400+. Plus gives the opportunity to end the match sooner due to higher damage output on black/yellow.

So the question is, is it worth the possible ~ 1100(assuming max damage per match) to lower the damage output by either his yellow or black.

I've been a 3/5/5 user on this guy for a long time, and am considering a change. The protect tile is nice, but starting to think the change from 5 to 3 will be less noticeable, than the extra damage I see from his enhanced yellow. Should help me speed up my hops as well.

^ Just realized I'm taking a PVP mentality. PVE might have another stance entirely.