**** Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw) ****

Polares

I have to say that in the last PvE were he was featured/essential I started appreciating him a little bit more, well, his yellow specifically, using Magneto (was buffed) for 6 red and 8 blue, and Punisher (was also featured) for 6 was reaaaaally nice.

One thing is crystal clear, you need at least 4 in yellow. I think the poll probably needs to be reseted...

Phaserhawk wrote:

To me Star-Lord is a very interesting character. He really needs some tweaking on his abilities, with red needing the most. He needs the X-Force CD treatment where if they get matched away something still happens.

Purple--matched away destroys all enemy special tiles on the board.
Yellow--matched away refunds 2 yellow AP
Red --matched away still does some dmg

I think you are completely right. These changes (or something similar) would help him A LOT, and yeah still not top5 or anything like that but way more usable, and probably he would enter a lot more as third team member.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

To me Star-Lord is a very interesting character. He really needs some tweaking on his abilities, with red needing the most. He needs the X-Force CD treatment where if they get matched away something still happens.

Purple--matched away destroys all enemy special tiles on the board.
Yellow--matched away refunds 2 yellow AP
Red --matched away still does some dmg

Yellow is still influencing on his self-ability 'cause it cost 2AP less too. That's a good way to keep the tile in play. i used to launch the yellow power several times with different tiles on the board.

Anyway he is a very good accelerator...Playing with Daken, IF... I success to ends Gauntlet hard nodes with him.

Quebbster

I maxed and championed my Star-Lord in anticipation of the Black Vortex PvP, and I have to say I am enjoying him a lot. The way I see it now you need to keep yellow at 5 covers, but then you can decide if you want a 3/5/5 or 5/5/3 build - obviously it depends on what the rest of the team looks like.

D4Ni13

For his yellow, if you put 2 CD tiles on the board, does the effect add, or it remains the same?

jobob

D4Ni13 wrote:

For his yellow, if you put 2 CD tiles on the board, does the effect add, or it remains the same?

It's the same. Although I always put a second one out as the time winds down... since his yellow affects yellow (to save a couple AP)

jobob

After using him awhile with 5 red/purple and switching to 5 purple/yellow... I agree that 4 in yellow is a must, and you might as well go up to 5 (red isn't that great regardless... you'll probably want to bring a cheap red along anyway).

He's a really fun character, because he's unique. Of course, if you build a team around him and gen a board with no yellow... you're screwed.

Some fun combos:
SL - Iceman - Rags... Rags red + Iceman Blue = insane blue generation, and then the stun/punch only cost 4 AP each!

SL - Devil Dino - Prof X/OML/KK... a single purple match allows you to fire T-Rex arms 3 times... you will quickly fill the board with tiles, or make your team invulnerable to anything but stuns and 1-shot kills with KK

SL - Iron Fist + anyone... whith IFoKL costing only 3 AP... you can cast 5 times for only 15 AP, which is insane.

simonsez

jobob wrote:

SL - Iron Fist + anyone... whith IFoKL costing only 2 AP...

3AP. But you're right, that's some tasty spam...

jobob

simonsez wrote:

jobob wrote:

SL - Iron Fist + anyone... whith IFoKL costing only 2 AP...

3AP. But you're right, that's some tasty spam...

Yup... duh, whoops. Corrected my post, thanks.

wymtime

jobob wrote:

simonsez wrote:

jobob wrote:

SL - Iron Fist + anyone... whith IFoKL costing only 2 AP...

3AP. But you're right, that's some tasty spam...

Yup... duh, whoops. Corrected my post, thanks.

SL IF Gamora is the real deal for PVP. Not only is IF purple 3AP but so too is Gamora's red. That is some nasty spam

St1nkf1st

BlackBoltRocks wrote:

5 covers: Star-Lord holds nothing back. Deals 1563 damage to two selected opponents, stunning them for 2 turns, and destroys two selected 2x2 block of tiles, dealing damage and generating AP. Costs 13 AP.

I think there is no game mechanic yet to target two chosen emenys... or am I wrong?

Jaedenkaal

St1nkf1st wrote:

BlackBoltRocks wrote:

5 covers: Star-Lord holds nothing back. Deals 1563 damage to two selected opponents, stunning them for 2 turns, and destroys two selected 2x2 block of tiles, dealing damage and generating AP. Costs 13 AP.

I think there is no game mechanic yet to target two chosen emenys... or am I wrong?

Could be as simple as the current target plus the 'next target'. As soon as there are only 2 targets it's moot, of course.

In general I'm not in favor of powers that increase in cost as they rank up. Considering what powers this would be competing with I'm not sure it needs to cost 4 more than before.

Vhailorx

I don't think demiurge has released a power that changed prices as it was leveled in more than year (IM40 doesnt count, that was a rework of a 1st gen character). That's a design mechanic they have phased out pretty aggressively (I think it proved quite a bit harder to balance two changing factors, effect and cost, than just balancing a fixed cost against an effect.)

Also, going from a 9ap power to a 13ap power is a massive change and it will have a huge effect on how the character plays.

I still maintain that the fundamental design idea of star-lord (active powers that fiddle with the cast cost of other powers) is completely broken given the current meta. Speed is so incredibly important in this game that spending time collecting AP just so you can spend less time collecting other ap basically is never a good idea. And while you will occasionally find that you have randomly collected enough yellow to make this power matter at the end of a long match, that's basically worthless. If you had used a better team, you would probably already have won, and in any event by the time you randomly collect yellow, the match will probably be decided one way or the other already. His cost-shifing powers should be passive.

I think something like 3* falcon's blue is a good place to start for the yellow. Collect x yellow AP and every other casting cost goes down. Alternately yellow could become a wildcard ap. So if you don't have enough of one color to cast a given power, you can just use yellow ap instead (must have at least 1 of the color typically used to cast the ability).

And red can work like SWitch's blue. he periodically triggers a countdown tile that increases the enemy's casting cost. Maybe even make it passive/active so you can passive increase the enemy's cast cost or actively detonate the countdown for direct damage (and prevent the countdown from respawning for some time, so the player must choose between increasing the enemy's casting costs, or dealing damage).

Obviously, you would have to calibrate these new passives carefully to avoid making him OP, but it would be a hell of a lot better than his current, useless state. . .

(disclaimer: I really like the SWitch passive mechanic and think it should be used for a lot of currently active powers, like XFW's healing and Colossus' tanking)

Marc_Spector

Vhailorx wrote:

(disclaimer: I really like the SWitch passive mechanic and think it should be used for a lot of currently active powers, like XFW's healing and Colossus' tanking)

Agreed. Star-Lord's red working similarly is a good idea. I'd rather that be applied to his yellow though -- turn it into a persistent passive countdown similar to SWitch's, which lowers your costs be one and raises enemy costs by one (or two of each at 5 covers). He'd instantly be astoundingly more useful, for the reasons you mentioned of how counterproductive it is to collect one color in order to save on another color.

TxMoose

so I currently have a 5/3/5, which makes his ddq day easier. but I can see where moving towards 4+ yellow can make him quasi-'useful', and I pulled his yellow from an event token. he's so far down my iso list I don't ever see me leveling him (behind rulk, xpool, xfw, x22, thing, kp, antman, carnage, main px, falcap, gr, etc). so is it worth moving off of the 5/3/5?

Quebbster

TxMoose wrote:

so I currently have a 5/3/5, which makes his ddq day easier. but I can see where moving towards 4+ yellow can make him quasi-'useful', and I pulled his yellow from an event token. he's so far down my iso list I don't ever see me leveling him (behind rulk, xpool, xfw, x22, thing, kp, antman, carnage, main px, falcap, gr, etc). so is it worth moving off of the 5/3/5?

I have a champion Star-lord now and personally I Think yellow needs to be at least level 4 to make him worthwhile. My default build for him is 5/5/3 as I find his Purple and yellow to be the most fun and useful Powers, but I can see a 5/4/4 build as viable compromise if you want a Little more damage output.

Polares

Quebbster wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

so I currently have a 5/3/5, which makes his ddq day easier. but I can see where moving towards 4+ yellow can make him quasi-'useful', and I pulled his yellow from an event token. he's so far down my iso list I don't ever see me leveling him (behind rulk, xpool, xfw, x22, thing, kp, antman, carnage, main px, falcap, gr, etc). so is it worth moving off of the 5/3/5?

I have a champion Star-lord now and personally I Think yellow needs to be at least level 4 to make him worthwhile. My default build for him is 5/5/3 as I find his Purple and yellow to be the most fun and useful Powers, but I can see a 5/4/4 build as viable compromise if you want a Little more damage output.

I have it at 5/4/4, DDQ was easy enough, and without doubt yellow is his only useful power and the only reason he should exist. There are only two good builds for starlord, 5/5/3 or 5/4/4, I dont understand how people voted the better build 5/3/5 (well probably they voted before nobody used him, and before all the other 4s far better than him came out). Mine is the only vote for 5/4/4

The only reason to go 5/3/5 is we you are going to use him with GG... (But with GG his best build would be 3/5/5, so still yellow most important power).

Vhailorx

Polares:

Thanks for the info on best builds.

But do you find him useful at all (ie how deeply buried is he in your bench). Even at 4+ covers, is it really worth collecting yellow to lower the cost of whatever you want to cast rather than just directly collecting ap for whatever you want to cast? The universe of scenarios where he is a real asset versus another purple/yellow user seems so small.

Quebbster

Polares wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

so I currently have a 5/3/5, which makes his ddq day easier. but I can see where moving towards 4+ yellow can make him quasi-'useful', and I pulled his yellow from an event token. he's so far down my iso list I don't ever see me leveling him (behind rulk, xpool, xfw, x22, thing, kp, antman, carnage, main px, falcap, gr, etc). so is it worth moving off of the 5/3/5?

I have a champion Star-lord now and personally I Think yellow needs to be at least level 4 to make him worthwhile. My default build for him is 5/5/3 as I find his Purple and yellow to be the most fun and useful Powers, but I can see a 5/4/4 build as viable compromise if you want a Little more damage output.

I have it at 5/4/4, DDQ was easy enough, and without doubt yellow is his only useful power and the only reason he should exist. There are only two good builds for starlord, 5/5/3 or 5/4/4, I dont understand how people voted the better build 5/3/5 (well probably they voted before nobody used him, and before all the other 4s far better than him came out). Mine is the only vote for 5/4/4

The only reason to go 5/3/5 is we you are going to use him with GG... (But with GG his best build would be 3/5/5, so still yellow most important power).

Looking closer at the specs, I Think a 4/4/5 might be the absolute best specifically for DDQ. You give up some damage for Purple, but it's still fully functional. In return you double the damage from red.

On the topic of combos, I've been having fun running Star-Lord and Iron Man 40 together. Everyone with Me reduces the Recharge cost to 4... then you can do all sorts of nasty things with the generated AP. Not competitive, but fun!

Vhailorx

Is it really worth giving up the 5th purple cover? That doesn't just lose a bit of damage, it loses aoe damage entirely, which makes it much less of a threat.

Plus, purple is wildly more likely to go off than red because it's a targeted tile, rather than a random red. Is a 60% chance at massive single-target damage worth more than a 90% chance of significantly single target damage + aoe + board cinteol?

Quebbster

Vhailorx wrote:

Is it really worth giving up the 5th purple cover? That doesn't just lose a bit of damage, it loses aoe damage entirely, which makes it much less of a threat.

Plus, purple is wildly more likely to go off than red because it's a target tiles, rather than a random red. Is a 60% chance at massive single-target damage worth more than a 90% chance of significantly single target damage + aoe + board cinteol?

Specifically for the DDQ where you only face a single enemy? I Think the case can be made, which is why I suggested it. For general use 5 Purple is better in most cases.
You do make a good Point about targeted Purple vs random red though.