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

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Comments

  • Phaserhawk
    Phaserhawk Posts: 2,676 Chairperson of the Boards
    ark123 wrote:
    I fail to see how you'd ever consider lcap more useful than patch for transitioning players.

    Umm, PvE. Sure Patch will keep you sustained, but LCap will serve you much better in the long run, plus I still have Daken.
  • CrookedKnight
    CrookedKnight Posts: 2,579 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yeah, a well covered LCap can be a free pass into PvE top 10 rewards. Patch himself is sustainable but he gets his non-regenerating teammates killed.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Phaserhawk wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    I fail to see how you'd ever consider lcap more useful than patch for transitioning players.

    Umm, PvE. Sure Patch will keep you sustained, but LCap will serve you much better in the long run, plus I still have Daken.
    Pve can be done in any number of ways. I'd say cap only starts being really good in pve at x/5/5, and if we're talking about getting fully covered characters, might as well go for one that's also good in pvp.
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    After facing him in the gauntlet, I can say that fully covered Luke Cage is a grown man, and that an underdeveloped roster simply can't cope with him.

    He's as much a threat to an underdeveloped roster as is X Force or Thor, and turns squishy targets into tanky monsters.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Yeah high lvl luke cage is no joke after playing against him in gauntlet
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    Switchman wrote:
    Yeah high lvl luke cage is no joke after playing against him in gauntlet

    Yep. I really like him against malformed or underdeveloped teams.

    Obviously 4Hor or XForce can mow him down, but he's actually more effective than they are against weaker or transitioning rosters because of that insane protect tile.

    You can boost high enough and take out a priority target in a XForce / 4Hor team and then ride out the 3v2 for a shot at a win on offense against them, but against Cage even if you boost up, if your roster doesn't have the ammo to punch through all 3 members without match damage counting for anything at all, you don't have a prayer.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Arondite wrote:
    After facing him in the gauntlet, I can say that fully covered Luke Cage is a grown man, and that an underdeveloped roster simply can't cope with him.

    He's as much a threat to an underdeveloped roster as is X Force or Thor, and turns squishy targets into tanky monsters.
    He forces you to notice that even though abilities are fancy, you do a ton of work with match damage.
    Specially when you use an ability and someone is left with under 100hp. Jesus that's annoying.
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    ark123 wrote:
    Arondite wrote:
    After facing him in the gauntlet, I can say that fully covered Luke Cage is a grown man, and that an underdeveloped roster simply can't cope with him.

    He's as much a threat to an underdeveloped roster as is X Force or Thor, and turns squishy targets into tanky monsters.
    He forces you to notice that even though abilities are fancy, you do a ton of work with match damage.
    Specially when you use an ability and someone is left with under 100hp. Jesus that's annoying.

    Only 100 Match-3's to go!

    Thing is, he can down any 2 star or sub-maxed 3 star just as well as the 4 star cast can (one shot with the right amount of AP). It's just even harder to down him.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    ark123 wrote:
    Arondite wrote:
    After facing him in the gauntlet, I can say that fully covered Luke Cage is a grown man, and that an underdeveloped roster simply can't cope with him.

    He's as much a threat to an underdeveloped roster as is X Force or Thor, and turns squishy targets into tanky monsters.
    He forces you to notice that even though abilities are fancy, you do a ton of work with match damage.
    Specially when you use an ability and someone is left with under 100hp. Jesus that's annoying.

    Match damage accounts for a lot of your total damage, but ability is still what is responsible for winning or losing at the high end. If the average character is more like Psylocke than X Force, Luke Cage would be quite good, but this is generally not true even in PvP, and in PvE every 5/5/5 way overleveled AI opponent is like X Force, and some are like X Force on steroids. I think people just get distracted too much on the protect tiles because doing 1 damage makes you feel like you're not getting anywhere.
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    Arondite wrote:
    After facing him in the gauntlet, I can say that fully covered Luke Cage is a grown man, and that an underdeveloped roster simply can't cope with him.

    He's as much a threat to an underdeveloped roster as is X Force or Thor, and turns squishy targets into tanky monsters.
    He forces you to notice that even though abilities are fancy, you do a ton of work with match damage.
    Specially when you use an ability and someone is left with under 100hp. Jesus that's annoying.

    Match damage accounts for a lot of your total damage, but ability is still what is responsible for winning or losing at the high end. If the average character is more like Psylocke than X Force, Luke Cage would be quite good, but this is generally not true even in PvP, and in PvE every 5/5/5 way overleveled AI opponent is like X Force, and some are like X Force on steroids. I think people just get distracted too much on the protect tiles because doing 1 damage makes you feel like you're not getting anywhere.

    It's not an insane advantage, but it is still very relevant. Let's take your favorite example of X-Force on Hood. X-Force deals ~4.4k damage, Hood has 5.1k health. How do you deal the last 700 hp if cage is protecting Hood? If you're running a team that doesn't have an ability below 9 AP, that defense tile basically represents an extra 3-4k HP on Hood, since you need to overkill Hood with another ability, which is a huge waste of HP and damage.
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    Arondite wrote:
    After facing him in the gauntlet, I can say that fully covered Luke Cage is a grown man, and that an underdeveloped roster simply can't cope with him.

    He's as much a threat to an underdeveloped roster as is X Force or Thor, and turns squishy targets into tanky monsters.
    He forces you to notice that even though abilities are fancy, you do a ton of work with match damage.
    Specially when you use an ability and someone is left with under 100hp. Jesus that's annoying.

    Match damage accounts for a lot of your total damage, but ability is still what is responsible for winning or losing at the high end. If the average character is more like Psylocke than X Force, Luke Cage would be quite good, but this is generally not true even in PvP, and in PvE every 5/5/5 way overleveled AI opponent is like X Force, and some are like X Force on steroids. I think people just get distracted too much on the protect tiles because doing 1 damage makes you feel like you're not getting anywhere.

    It's not an insane advantage, but it is still very relevant. Let's take your favorite example of X-Force on Hood. X-Force deals ~4.4k damage, Hood has 5.1k health. How do you deal the last 700 hp if cage is protecting Hood? If you're running a team that doesn't have an ability below 9 AP, that defense tile basically represents an extra 3-4k HP on Hood, since you need to overkill Hood with another ability, which is a huge waste of HP and damage.

    *958 Damage
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    Max Level: 3 - 2435/706 damage [3847 (295.923/AP)], 4 - 3130/907 damage [4944 (380.307/AP) ], 5 - 4521/1310 damage [7141 (549.307/AP)]


    Max Level: 3 - 783/2596 damage [12 - 3379 (281.583/AP) ], 4 - 783/2596 damage + 1 turn stun [3379 (281.583/AP) ], 5 - 1044/4340 damage +1 turn stun [5384 (448.667/AP)]


    In case anyone wanted to see how damage efficiency scaled across his two damaging abilities, I went ahead and divided it for everyone. I think the revealing thing here is that 4/5/4 is outright a bad choice, as a 1 turn stun hardly balances the extra 169/AP lost from Yellow, and if you're going to give that up, there's no reason not to set aside the extra 85/AP to gain the 167/AP that 5 Black grants.

    tl;dr your choices are 549/AP if your team is up, or 448/AP with a stun that works more efficiently with Strike Tiles. 4/5/4 is objectively a bad idea. You just need to decide if a stun is worth 101/AP.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    Arondite wrote:
    After facing him in the gauntlet, I can say that fully covered Luke Cage is a grown man, and that an underdeveloped roster simply can't cope with him.

    He's as much a threat to an underdeveloped roster as is X Force or Thor, and turns squishy targets into tanky monsters.
    He forces you to notice that even though abilities are fancy, you do a ton of work with match damage.
    Specially when you use an ability and someone is left with under 100hp. Jesus that's annoying.

    Match damage accounts for a lot of your total damage, but ability is still what is responsible for winning or losing at the high end. If the average character is more like Psylocke than X Force, Luke Cage would be quite good, but this is generally not true even in PvP, and in PvE every 5/5/5 way overleveled AI opponent is like X Force, and some are like X Force on steroids. I think people just get distracted too much on the protect tiles because doing 1 damage makes you feel like you're not getting anywhere.

    It's not an insane advantage, but it is still very relevant. Let's take your favorite example of X-Force on Hood. X-Force deals ~4.4k damage, Hood has 5.1k health. How do you deal the last 700 hp if cage is protecting Hood? If you're running a team that doesn't have an ability below 9 AP, that defense tile basically represents an extra 3-4k HP on Hood, since you need to overkill Hood with another ability, which is a huge waste of HP and damage.
    This is it, in a nutshell. This is what makes him a perfectly balanced character in my opinion. No crazy combos, no need for a specific character to support, just two very solid abilities that you can't possibly ignore, but that aren't metagame defining. I should say, though, I find hood and loki ten times more infuriating when I have to spend 7k damage worth of abilities to down them.

    Also this is a pretty clear 5/5/3. Yellow is just a ridiculously powerful ability, black is merely fine.
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    ark123 wrote:
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    He forces you to notice that even though abilities are fancy, you do a ton of work with match damage.
    Specially when you use an ability and someone is left with under 100hp. Jesus that's annoying.

    Match damage accounts for a lot of your total damage, but ability is still what is responsible for winning or losing at the high end. If the average character is more like Psylocke than X Force, Luke Cage would be quite good, but this is generally not true even in PvP, and in PvE every 5/5/5 way overleveled AI opponent is like X Force, and some are like X Force on steroids. I think people just get distracted too much on the protect tiles because doing 1 damage makes you feel like you're not getting anywhere.

    It's not an insane advantage, but it is still very relevant. Let's take your favorite example of X-Force on Hood. X-Force deals ~4.4k damage, Hood has 5.1k health. How do you deal the last 700 hp if cage is protecting Hood? If you're running a team that doesn't have an ability below 9 AP, that defense tile basically represents an extra 3-4k HP on Hood, since you need to overkill Hood with another ability, which is a huge waste of HP and damage.
    This is it, in a nutshell. This is what makes him a perfectly balanced character in my opinion. No crazy combos, no need for a specific character to support, just two very solid abilities that you can't possibly ignore, but that aren't metagame defining. I should say, though, I find hood and loki ten times more infuriating when I have to spend 7k damage worth of abilities to down them.

    Also this is a pretty clear 5/5/3. Yellow is just a ridiculously powerful ability, black is merely fine.


    I'm in pretty much the same camp. Just wanted to present the maths in case anyone was on the fence.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    It's not an insane advantage, but it is still very relevant. Let's take your favorite example of X-Force on Hood. X-Force deals ~4.4k damage, Hood has 5.1k health. How do you deal the last 700 hp if cage is protecting Hood? If you're running a team that doesn't have an ability below 9 AP, that defense tile basically represents an extra 3-4k HP on Hood, since you need to overkill Hood with another ability, which is a huge waste of HP and damage.

    That's the same argument for using Deadpool as an extra lifebar for The Hood, and Deadpool has considerably better offense than Luke Cage. Luke Cage may have extended The Hood's survivality by one AP consuming move but the opponent gets an extra person to make up for that. Note that Righteous Uppercut is in the same 5-match territory as Whales. In this case, since the presence of Luke Cage prevents X Force from being used effectively, you don't even have to worry about if the team with Luke Cage has X Force unless you somehow failed to defend green, so yes using 2 moves to kill The Hood is a pretty good deal when this effectively ends any hope of your team from winning.
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2015
    Phantron wrote:
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    It's not an insane advantage, but it is still very relevant. Let's take your favorite example of X-Force on Hood. X-Force deals ~4.4k damage, Hood has 5.1k health. How do you deal the last 700 hp if cage is protecting Hood? If you're running a team that doesn't have an ability below 9 AP, that defense tile basically represents an extra 3-4k HP on Hood, since you need to overkill Hood with another ability, which is a huge waste of HP and damage.

    That's the same argument for using Deadpool as an extra lifebar for The Hood, and Deadpool has considerably better offense than Luke Cage. Luke Cage may have extended The Hood's survivality by one AP consuming move but the opponent gets an extra person to make up for that. Note that Righteous Uppercut is in the same 5-match territory as Whales. In this case, since the presence of Luke Cage prevents X Force from being used effectively, you don't even have to worry about if the team with Luke Cage has X Force unless you somehow failed to defend green, so yes using 2 moves to kill The Hood is a pretty good deal when this effectively ends any hope of your team from winning.

    Okay you're talking about a completely different thing here: all my example was trying to show was that the defense tile has a significant impact on the game because delaying killing ANY character (not just Hood, which I used just as a common example) by an 9 AP PASSIVELY obviously matters. I was not trying to argue the merits of a Hood / Cage team at all.

    Secondly, Cage is a lot better than a "second life bar" for Hood compared to Deadpool: Deadpool's passive has no damage mitigation. Take down Deadpool first, his passive does nothing. Cage's passive by reducing the amount of match damage taken effectively adds a ton of extra HP to your team: extra HP gained from reducing match damage, and forcing the opponent to use ability overkill to kill your guys, which obviously matters when you can only deal damage in increments of 8AP: 4k damage.

    You don't need to only consider X-Force when presenting your arguments you know. A character can be evaluated on the basis of the 3* metagame (since Cage is a 3* and obviously is not supposed to be as powerful as X-Force), and that analysis is actually useful for transitioners trying to figure out what character to invest in. Otherwise every single character thread turns into "who cares because X-Force".
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Phantron wrote:
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    It's not an insane advantage, but it is still very relevant. Let's take your favorite example of X-Force on Hood. X-Force deals ~4.4k damage, Hood has 5.1k health. How do you deal the last 700 hp if cage is protecting Hood? If you're running a team that doesn't have an ability below 9 AP, that defense tile basically represents an extra 3-4k HP on Hood, since you need to overkill Hood with another ability, which is a huge waste of HP and damage.

    That's the same argument for using Deadpool as an extra lifebar for The Hood, and Deadpool has considerably better offense than Luke Cage. Luke Cage may have extended The Hood's survivality by one AP consuming move but the opponent gets an extra person to make up for that. Note that Righteous Uppercut is in the same 5-match territory as Whales. In this case, since the presence of Luke Cage prevents X Force from being used effectively, you don't even have to worry about if the team with Luke Cage has X Force unless you somehow failed to defend green, so yes using 2 moves to kill The Hood is a pretty good deal when this effectively ends any hope of your team from winning.
    Except Cage's tile works for every character, and sticks around after he dies. And isn't conditional, it applies to all damage.

    Every time you bring cage he WILL stop thousands of points of damage. Every single match.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    I just want to emphasize again how good this guy is for newer players like me. I have him at 5/5/1, Lvl 85 now and he prevents so much matching damage while collecting AP for his and your team's nukes.

    He's been an absolute godsend for PvE and responsible for me placing at least top 20 in every PvE so far.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    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.
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    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.

    The same team idea occurred to me - and can you imagine how long it would take to slog through beating those guys on defense? You'd have to focus deadpool down first, which would take long enough to slog through with that defense tile. Then you'd need to bring down cage and hopefully get his tile with him, THEN take down 10,200 hp of tree bark and pray he doesn't get a yellow match in the home stretch.

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