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

Isay_Isay

I ran into the AI using a Red team-up against me during the last season and I don't believe it did any damage initially only when the CD ended.

Unknown

I can see a defense for nearly any build, and I think it's going to come down to how you use him.

That being said, without thinking too hard about teaming him up with people, I'm thinking 3/5/5, just because his purple doesn't strike me as particularly good, since it can't overwrite CD tiles, and doesn't do all that much damage. Placing it makes it better, but I still don't think it's good enough for five covers.

EDIT: Realized I goofed on the CD thing, but it still doesn't make me want to put 5 covers on his purple. If there are CD tiles, I'd rather bring in Captain America, since his red or blue give him two color options, offer much, much better ancillary effects, and are only slightly more expensive.

CrookedKnight

Phaserhawk wrote:

Well 5 purple seems mandatory after seeing the stats, you need level 4 just to make it be placeable

I don't know why the description on his purple seems to be giving so many people a hard time.

Level 1-3: You can place the countdown on a tile of your choice, except it can't target existing countdowns. Strike/attack/protect/web/team-up tiles are fair game.
Level 4-5: Can target any tile, just like Cap's shield throws at level 5.

Unknown

CrookedKnight wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Well 5 purple seems mandatory after seeing the stats, you need level 4 just to make it be placeable

I don't know why the description on his purple seems to be giving so many people a hard time.

Level 1-3: You can place the countdown on a tile of your choice, except it can't target existing countdowns. Strike/attack/protect/web/team-up tiles are fair game.
Level 4-5: Can target any tile, just like Cap's shield throws at level 5.

Yea, it's odd that people are misinterpreting that so badly.

Unknown

I would go 3/5/5 simply because, while the damage on his purple is nice, the main reason to use Starlord is to make high cost characters a little more manageable on your team and make low cost characters a little less spammy on the enemy team.

His purple is just a traditional "drop tile, tile does damage if it procs."

Now, his purple is the only one you can actually choose where to put it, but it's outcome isn't as impactful as yellow and red.

One thing I will say is his yellow must be at least level 4. It's useless at level 3. so I think 99% of people should run him with 5 in yellow, when they have the choice. You can run it at 4 as well if you don't want to make his purple ability cost 8.

His red is very interesting because you want it to be on the board and not be on the board at the same time, so either way, unless it is matched or cascaded away immediately, you'll get some kind of return out of it. Most countdown tiles are not like that.

I think Starlord will take over 3rd place in the 4 star race, considering Nick Fury's abilities are way too high for him to be any kind of threat on defense.

Unfortunately, I don't see him coming anywhere near the top 2.

Phaserhawk

While I agree 3/5/5 makes him a strong support, not giving him any damage makes him a strong liability. How many times in a match do you lose your main damage dealer and are stuck with supports?

And having misread purple, allowing him to overwrite any tile is sweet. Here's my take.

Purple--known
Yellow--known/random
Red--Random

what I mean by this is that I know what will happen with Purple, I know I can place it and if Captain America is any indicator, I can pretty much guarentee that damage going off. like I said what I don't know is how much purple will do. Does that 4k to target already include the AoE damage?

yellow is known once you place it and that for that turn you can guaretee reduced costs, after that though, it is all unknown.

red is all random, random where it goes, random if damage happens.

So from a sure thing build I would go 5/5/3 and rereading purple it says 2504 plus 731 which means it works like Thor, so he will do 6424 to target and 1451 to the other 2, I'll take that. That's better than Fury' purple

Max utility-- 3/5/5
Max Damage --5/3/5
Most consistent build--5/5/3

Now, let's say we are going for a full 4* roster. Well you have 4hor/X-Force then it comes down to Fury and Starlord.

Fury's blue won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

Starlord, his red won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

I would opt for Starlord becaue he can accelerate X-Force and 4hor into their skills, where as Fury just sits there, not to mention he tanks yellow and blue and with his low hitpoints this isn't ideal, with Starlord, 4hor will tank yellow and red for him so he can remain hidden.

2nd example. In PvP i opt to run 4hor and X-Force seperately to allow for a longer sustainged PvP push. Again, assuming I want to run only 4* in the other spot. 4hor/Starlord--I want Starlord 5/5/3, 1 his yellow can be very useful, 2 his red would block a red tile from possibly getting charged. X-Force/Starlord--yellow only overlap so build won't matter, however with purple I can at least place the tile in a corner and incease the likelyhood of survival vs. a random red so odds favor a 5/5/3 build, plus if facing off againsnt any characters, and I Surgical Stirke, Blackwidow, Daredevil, Deadpool, Loki, Mystique are the featured PvP's where surgical striking will destroy purple, vs. Marvel, Torch, IM40, Psylocke, Sentry, Thor. While close, odds still say I'm better off 5/5/3

With X-Force you obviously cannot guarentee anything on the board, so using Starlord's red seems like a waste of AP, where as at least Starlord's yellow can drop X-Force into a 2 match ability without boosts, at that point, if it gets blown up, I don't care.

We all know that defense is a farce, it's all about speed and high damage, and that's what a 5/5/3 Starlord would give you, speed in yellow, and damage in purple. I'm sure Phantron could factor in the factor of adding 1 AP to skills vs. 2 AP. Basically Skills that cost 5AP, 8AP, 11AP are the ones that get bumped up into another match bracket. which of top tier characters, would effect X-Force, Blade, Captain America, Daken, C.Mags, Thor, so you could argue that point, but I for one would rather be trying to speed myself up vs slowing the other guy down. Yes red can do some huge damage but it's also quickly countered by another Starlord because red doesn't effect purple, so I pop my purple and destroy your red tile.

That's my $0.02 but I think 5/5/3 is faster and more playable with X-Force and 4hor. Not to mention if my goal is to make other guys less spammy on the other team, I need look no farther than Hood or Loki as they do that job far better than Starlord can, nothing delays better than stealing AP.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

While I agree 3/5/5 makes him a strong support, not giving him any damage makes him a strong liability. How many times in a match do you lose your main damage dealer and are stuck with supports?

At max, his red only does slightly less damage (7k vs. 8k) than his purple, it does it more reliably, and it does it against a single target. Building him 3/5/5 is pretty far from not giving him any damage. And at 3 covers, his purple will still do about 4k to a single target, while his red goes down from 7k to about 2k, looks like. 3/5/5 is going to do more damage than 5/5/3.

Unknown

If his purple at 5 does 6.5k to the primary target and not 5k, 535 all the way. Otherwise it's a tough choice between 535 and 445.

Scoregasms

They've been improving lately with CD Tile users and usability (i.e. DD), seems odd they wouldn't incorporate something for a 4* who solely uses CD Tiles to be effective. Even X-Force Recovery CD Tile does damage if matched and that's just a heal.

Would it be too overpowered if he did the following:

Purple - 1/3 Damage if Matched and moves to a new location
Yellow - Grants 2P if Matched for colors based on Covers
Red - Steals 2AP if Matched for colors based on Covers and does 1/3 Damage

The Grants and Steals amount would also be based on how many covers you have (basically 1 for each early on). I mean, if he's just gonna drop CD Tiles, least this dude could do is auto-generate AP, lol.

Sorry, not meaning to derail this thread from his optimal build discussion currently being discussed. Just got Starlord myself from the PVE and already I'm thinking "Why did I kill myself for this, hopefully he's more usable then Elektra has been".

NorthernPolarity

Scoregasms wrote:

They've been improving lately with CD Tile users and usability (i.e. DD), seems odd they wouldn't incorporate something for a 4* who solely uses CD Tiles to be effective. Even X-Force Recovery CD Tile does damage if matched and that's just a heal.

Would it be too overpowered if he did the following:

Purple - 1/3 Damage if Matched and moves to a new location
Yellow - Grants 2P if Matched for colors based on Covers
Red - Steals 2AP if Matched for colors based on Covers and does 1/3 Damage

The Grants and Steals amount would also be based on how many covers you have (basically 1 for each early on). I mean, if he's just gonna drop CD Tiles, least this dude could do is auto-generate AP, lol.

Sorry, not meaning to derail this thread from his optimal build discussion currently being discussed. Just got Starlord myself from the PVE and already I'm thinking "Why did I kill myself for this, hopefully he's more usable then Elektra has been".

I think the 7k damage on red for 8 ap (i mean come on, thats almost like 50% more damage than X-Force) and what, 8k damage for 10 AP? is that compensation that you're asking for.

Scoregasms

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Scoregasms wrote:

They've been improving lately with CD Tile users and usability (i.e. DD), seems odd they wouldn't incorporate something for a 4* who solely uses CD Tiles to be effective. Even X-Force Recovery CD Tile does damage if matched and that's just a heal.

Would it be too overpowered if he did the following:

Purple - 1/3 Damage if Matched and moves to a new location
Yellow - Grants 2P if Matched for colors based on Covers
Red - Steals 2AP if Matched for colors based on Covers and does 1/3 Damage

The Grants and Steals amount would also be based on how many covers you have (basically 1 for each early on). I mean, if he's just gonna drop CD Tiles, least this dude could do is auto-generate AP, lol.

Sorry, not meaning to derail this thread from his optimal build discussion currently being discussed. Just got Starlord myself from the PVE and already I'm thinking "Why did I kill myself for this, hopefully he's more usable then Elektra has been".

I think the 7k damage on red for 8 ap (i mean come on, thats almost like 50% more damage than X-Force) and what, 8k damage for 10 AP? is that compensation that you're asking for.

Yes, the damage at max level is good for the AP cost for sure, but we can't place the Red CD Tile right (just purple)? Just thinking it could probably be matched away is all considering you have 3 turns to do it and seems like a waste. At least with Lazy Cap's CD tiles, you can place them and they have an instant impact of either damage or a stun. If that gets matched away, at least you got something out of it. I've also matched enough Ares Yellow tiles to see it could be frustrating, but at least he got his damage out first.

It is a bit early of course, perhaps I'm being a bit hasty with my judgement.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

While I agree 3/5/5 makes him a strong support, not giving him any damage makes him a strong liability. How many times in a match do you lose your main damage dealer and are stuck with supports?

And having misread purple, allowing him to overwrite any tile is sweet. Here's my take.

Purple--known
Yellow--known/random
Red--Random

what I mean by this is that I know what will happen with Purple, I know I can place it and if Captain America is any indicator, I can pretty much guarentee that damage going off. like I said what I don't know is how much purple will do. Does that 4k to target already include the AoE damage?

yellow is known once you place it and that for that turn you can guaretee reduced costs, after that though, it is all unknown.

red is all random, random where it goes, random if damage happens.

So from a sure thing build I would go 5/5/3 and rereading purple it says 2504 plus 731 which means it works like Thor, so he will do 6424 to target and 1451 to the other 2, I'll take that. That's better than Fury' purple

Max utility-- 3/5/5
Max Damage --5/3/5
Most consistent build--5/5/3

Now, let's say we are going for a full 4* roster. Well you have 4hor/X-Force then it comes down to Fury and Starlord.

Fury's blue won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

Starlord, his red won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

I would opt for Starlord becaue he can accelerate X-Force and 4hor into their skills, where as Fury just sits there, not to mention he tanks yellow and blue and with his low hitpoints this isn't ideal, with Starlord, 4hor will tank yellow and red for him so he can remain hidden.

2nd example. In PvP i opt to run 4hor and X-Force seperately to allow for a longer sustainged PvP push. Again, assuming I want to run only 4* in the other spot. 4hor/Starlord--I want Starlord 5/5/3, 1 his yellow can be very useful, 2 his red would block a red tile from possibly getting charged. X-Force/Starlord--yellow only overlap so build won't matter, however with purple I can at least place the tile in a corner and incease the likelyhood of survival vs. a random red so odds favor a 5/5/3 build, plus if facing off againsnt any characters, and I Surgical Stirke, Blackwidow, Daredevil, Deadpool, Loki, Mystique are the featured PvP's where surgical striking will destroy purple, vs. Marvel, Torch, IM40, Psylocke, Sentry, Thor. While close, odds still say I'm better off 5/5/3

With X-Force you obviously cannot guarentee anything on the board, so using Starlord's red seems like a waste of AP, where as at least Starlord's yellow can drop X-Force into a 2 match ability without boosts, at that point, if it gets blown up, I don't care.

We all know that defense is a farce, it's all about speed and high damage, and that's what a 5/5/3 Starlord would give you, speed in yellow, and damage in purple. I'm sure Phantron could factor in the factor of adding 1 AP to skills vs. 2 AP. Basically Skills that cost 5AP, 8AP, 11AP are the ones that get bumped up into another match bracket. which of top tier characters, would effect X-Force, Blade, Captain America, Daken, C.Mags, Thor, so you could argue that point, but I for one would rather be trying to speed myself up vs slowing the other guy down. Yes red can do some huge damage but it's also quickly countered by another Starlord because red doesn't effect purple, so I pop my purple and destroy your red tile.

That's my $0.02 but I think 5/5/3 is faster and more playable with X-Force and 4hor. Not to mention if my goal is to make other guys less spammy on the other team, I need look no farther than Hood or Loki as they do that job far better than Starlord can, nothing delays better than stealing AP.

Quality argument on all fronts.
I guess his red is dangerously random.

Like you said, it all depends on who you're pairing him with. But you make a strong argument for 5/5/3. The only must have, in my opinion, is at least 4 in yellow. Other than that, there's an argument for any build, depending on what you are going to run him with and what goals you want to accomplish with him.

The only thing I disagree with is that defense is a farce.

I think I've been in the minority on this subject for a long time, but I think defense is vastly more important than offense. And not just in the sense that you can win games when they attack you. I'm more interested in scare factor.

For example, yes Thorverine is fast. And deadly. And powerful.

But their main draw is their defensive scare power. If Thorverine were an easy to kill team, being able to one shot and win games in under 5 minutes wouldn't matter very much. Unless you love buying shields.

Hulk and Patch is an even faster team, so logically they could be seen as the best team in the game. Except they are an easy target on defense. So yes, they can easily take out a 270 270 249 team in PVP in under 3 to 5 minutes. But when you come out of that match, you have a much higher chance of having lost twice as many points as you just gained. Defense is a huge part of scoring high. In a PVP where you have the featured character at 166, you stand an exponentially better chance of getting to 1000 than if you trot out a level 60 featured character, even with your high leveled 4 stars.

Defensive scare factor is one of the biggest attributes, in my opinion, for building a character. And support characters, specifically ones that can slow fights down like Loki, Hood and, perhaps, a 3/5/5 Starlord, are far more intimidating than high damage characters that the AI won't be able to place the tiles correctly or even (and I've seen this with Captain America all the time) use their placement tiles to make a three match in that same color.

It's the same reason that Nick Fury isn't worth leveling right now. Big damage doesn't scare anyone if the risk of it going off is negligible. Just like the new Sentry.

Easy to proc, spammable and virtually unstoppable damage is terrifying. Xforce has it. Thor has it. Both Fury and Starlord lack it, regardless of your build.

And that's why I think 3/5/5 would still be an equally, if not slightly better, build both defensively and offensively, as it increases his utility, scare factor and power level in general, in many cases.

Phaserhawk

gamar wrote:

If his purple at 5 does 6.5k to the primary target and not 5k, 535 all the way. Otherwise it's a tough choice between 535 and 445.

It does say at level 5. 2.5K plus 750 to the enemy team. So maxed, to me that is saying 5K to target then 1400 to the team, meaning the target as well.

I think people are falling too much in love with the potential damage for red. How about this just to make you guys realize what will happen 90% of the time.

Recovery - 9
Wolverine's healing factor repairs his wounds, and he ferociously lashes out if interrupted. Places a 3-turn Yellow Countdown tile that heals for 1187 damage when activated. If the Countdown tile is matched, Wolverine destroys 6 random tiles, dealing 32 damage per tile. Does not generate AP.

How many times does Recovery go off for you? Maybe it's me but I would say Recover goes off less than 50% of the time, in fact I would say about 20 to 25% of the time the tile resolves, and that's because as well all know it's random.

How many times do Capt's tiles resolve and come back? I wold say a good 85 to 90% of the time.

So while Starlord's red may very well slow the team down, there is not a very high chance it actually resolves to do the damage. If Starlord is the only red user, well then yes, I want it maxed, but I see him playing support to 4hor or X-Force and in either one of those situations I don't see me using his red or his red lasting very long

Phaserhawk

onimus wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

While I agree 3/5/5 makes him a strong support, not giving him any damage makes him a strong liability. How many times in a match do you lose your main damage dealer and are stuck with supports?

And having misread purple, allowing him to overwrite any tile is sweet. Here's my take.

Purple--known
Yellow--known/random
Red--Random

what I mean by this is that I know what will happen with Purple, I know I can place it and if Captain America is any indicator, I can pretty much guarentee that damage going off. like I said what I don't know is how much purple will do. Does that 4k to target already include the AoE damage?

yellow is known once you place it and that for that turn you can guaretee reduced costs, after that though, it is all unknown.

red is all random, random where it goes, random if damage happens.

So from a sure thing build I would go 5/5/3 and rereading purple it says 2504 plus 731 which means it works like Thor, so he will do 6424 to target and 1451 to the other 2, I'll take that. That's better than Fury' purple

Max utility-- 3/5/5
Max Damage --5/3/5
Most consistent build--5/5/3

Now, let's say we are going for a full 4* roster. Well you have 4hor/X-Force then it comes down to Fury and Starlord.

Fury's blue won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

Starlord, his red won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

I would opt for Starlord becaue he can accelerate X-Force and 4hor into their skills, where as Fury just sits there, not to mention he tanks yellow and blue and with his low hitpoints this isn't ideal, with Starlord, 4hor will tank yellow and red for him so he can remain hidden.

2nd example. In PvP i opt to run 4hor and X-Force seperately to allow for a longer sustainged PvP push. Again, assuming I want to run only 4* in the other spot. 4hor/Starlord--I want Starlord 5/5/3, 1 his yellow can be very useful, 2 his red would block a red tile from possibly getting charged. X-Force/Starlord--yellow only overlap so build won't matter, however with purple I can at least place the tile in a corner and incease the likelyhood of survival vs. a random red so odds favor a 5/5/3 build, plus if facing off againsnt any characters, and I Surgical Stirke, Blackwidow, Daredevil, Deadpool, Loki, Mystique are the featured PvP's where surgical striking will destroy purple, vs. Marvel, Torch, IM40, Psylocke, Sentry, Thor. While close, odds still say I'm better off 5/5/3

With X-Force you obviously cannot guarentee anything on the board, so using Starlord's red seems like a waste of AP, where as at least Starlord's yellow can drop X-Force into a 2 match ability without boosts, at that point, if it gets blown up, I don't care.

We all know that defense is a farce, it's all about speed and high damage, and that's what a 5/5/3 Starlord would give you, speed in yellow, and damage in purple. I'm sure Phantron could factor in the factor of adding 1 AP to skills vs. 2 AP. Basically Skills that cost 5AP, 8AP, 11AP are the ones that get bumped up into another match bracket. which of top tier characters, would effect X-Force, Blade, Captain America, Daken, C.Mags, Thor, so you could argue that point, but I for one would rather be trying to speed myself up vs slowing the other guy down. Yes red can do some huge damage but it's also quickly countered by another Starlord because red doesn't effect purple, so I pop my purple and destroy your red tile.

That's my $0.02 but I think 5/5/3 is faster and more playable with X-Force and 4hor. Not to mention if my goal is to make other guys less spammy on the other team, I need look no farther than Hood or Loki as they do that job far better than Starlord can, nothing delays better than stealing AP.

Quality argument on all fronts.
I guess his red is dangerously random.

Like you said, it all depends on who you're pairing him with. But you make a strong argument for 5/5/3. The only must have, in my opinion, is at least 4 in yellow. Other than that, there's an argument for any build, depending on what you are going to run him with and what goals you want to accomplish with him.

The only thing I disagree with is that defense is a farce.

I think I've been in the minority on this subject for a long time, but I think defense is vastly more important than offense. And not just in the sense that you can win games when they attack you. I'm more interested in scare factor.

For example, yes Thorverine is fast. And deadly. And powerful.

But their main draw is their defensive scare power. If Thorverine were an easy to kill team, being able to one shot and win games in under 5 minutes wouldn't matter very much. Unless you love buying shields.

Defensive scare factor is one of the biggest attributes, in my opinion, for building a character. And support characters, specifically ones that can slow fights down like Loki, Hood and, perhaps, a 3/5/5 Starlord, are far more intimidating than high damage characters that the AI won't be able to place the tiles correctly or even (and I've seen this with Captain America all the time) use their placement tiles to make a three match in that same color.

It's the same reason that Nick Fury isn't worth leveling right now. Big damage doesn't scare anyone if the risk of it going off is negligible. Just like the new Sentry.

Easy to proc, spammable and virtually unstoppable damage is terrifying. Xforce has it. Thor has it. Both Fury and Starlord lack it, regardless of your build.

And that's why I think 3/5/5 would still be an equally, if not slightly better, build both defensively and offensively, as it increases his utility, scare factor and power level in general, in many cases.

And you also argue a strong case. However, ask yourself this question. What makes Thoerverine scary on defense?

To me it's this.

X-Force--2 skills you don't want going off in green and black, with one being very low costed.
4hor--2 skills you don't want going off together that are avg cost but seperately not scary.

Here's the reason they are scary. You have 4 colors to defend and 26000+ hitpoints to eat through. If you sub Fury in for 4hor you still have the same number of colors to defend, but a hell of a lot less hitpoints to chew threw, knowing that if Fury's blue goes off, one of your guys is dying more than likely. Sub Fury in for X-Force and you have only 3 colors to defeend and less hitpoints. The reason Thorverine is so scary is because of the combinations of skills and hitpoints.

If you make Starlord 3/5/5 and put him with 4hor, you only have 2 colors to defned, red and blue, because Starlord's purple is now not scary and yellow doesn't hurt you much. Pair Starlord with X-Force at 3/5/5 again you don't need to defend purple because it's not scary, you just need to defend green/black/red. Now if you remove 4hor and X-Force, well now I 100% agree that 3/5/5 would be the way to go since if you paired him with Fury, Fury's purple is cheaper and more guarenteed damage.

My final reason to go 5 purple, is it also makes him playble in PvE, because face it, with Goons it doesn't matter if you add 2 onto their costs, they will make tiles regardless because of their free AP, but at least with max purple you can destroy their CD tiles, and that is why I will for sure go 5 purple.

PvE i'm not sure if 5/3/5 or 5/5/3 is better, but for PvP I think a 5/5/3 Starlord is the better way to go and I do see him playable in high level PvP, not as your defensive team, but as a climb, because he saves you ISO because he lowers your need to always boost

IlDuderino

Re having him at 5/5/3 (which I am not clear is the best build, although if the team damage on purple also applies to the target then 5 purple would be appealing, though damage on red then becomes terrible) - wouldn't there be an argument for going 5/5/2? If you want red to actually do damage rather than prevent the opponent using his / her powers (black costing 1 more ap is a pretty marginal benefit when going from 2 to 3 covers on red) then my experience is a two turn countdown is far more likely to go off than a three turn one.

Or just go 5/5/3, forget about his red and use his yellow to allow spamming of other red users' powers (Torch, Gamora, Thor etc)?

Phaserhawk

IlDuderino wrote:

Re having him at 5/5/3 (which I am not clear is the best build, although if the team damage on purple also applies to the target then 5 purple would be appealing, though damage on red then becomes terrible) - wouldn't there be an argument for going 5/5/2? If you want red to actually do damage rather than prevent the opponent using his / her powers (black costing 1 more ap is a pretty marginal benefit when going from 2 to 3 covers on red) then my experience is a two turn countdown is far more likely to go off than a three turn one.

Or just go 5/5/3, forget about his red and use his yellow to allow spamming of other red users' powers (Torch, Gamora, Thor etc)?

As for red damage, like I said on paper it looks amazing, but unless it resolves more than 2/3rds of the time, take that 7K dmage and divide it by 2 or 3 or more because that's how much damage it will average over the course of the character. That tile will not resolve more than 1/2 the time, like I said, look no further than X-Force's Recovery. That is a perfect comparison, roughly same cost, same CD time, and I can say Recovery goes off far less than 1/2 the time so the skill really reads this way

Oldest Trick in the Book 8
Star-Lord points past his enemy and shouts "Hey! Is that Beta Ray Bill?" before swinging in with a sucker punch. He creates a 2-turn Countdown tile which deals 612 damage 66% of the time. While at least one such tile is on the board, all enemy Red and Green ability costs are increased by 1. (Dev note: This is placed on a random Red tile)
Level 2: Deals 802 to the target enemy 66% of the time. Enemy Yellow ability costs are increased by 1.
Level 3: Places a 3 turn Countdown tile. Enemy Black ability costs are increased by 1.
Level 4: Deals 1897 to the target enemy 50% of the time. Enemy Red, Yellow, Green, and Black ability costs are increased by 2.
Level 5: Deals 3525 to the target enemy only 50% of the time. Enemy Red, Yellow, Green, Black and Blue ability costs are increased by 2.
Max Level: 6998 max damage, 0 min damage

So assuming this skill has a 50% chance of going off which I think is highly unlikely max damage would actually average to 3499
Resolve rate % of the life of the character
0%=0 dmg
25%=1749
33%=2332
50%=3499
66%=4665
75%=5248
100%=6998

When you look at what the numbers will average you that damage is far, far less appealing than it seems. Now it could be well worth going 5 for the sole fact of slowing down the other teams' blue, and I will not knock anyone's choice for going 5 red, but...you have to factor in the realistic rate of that tile resolving, not always best case scenario. I know the same can be said for purple, but the fact you can place it anywhere increases it's survival rate immensely, and as I said, Captain America does that and has a 3CD timer vs. Starlord's 2CD and that tile survives at least 75% of the time or more.

IlDuderino

Phaserhawk wrote:

IlDuderino wrote:

Re having him at 5/5/3 (which I am not clear is the best build, although if the team damage on purple also applies to the target then 5 purple would be appealing, though damage on red then becomes terrible) - wouldn't there be an argument for going 5/5/2? If you want red to actually do damage rather than prevent the opponent using his / her powers (black costing 1 more ap is a pretty marginal benefit when going from 2 to 3 covers on red) then my experience is a two turn countdown is far more likely to go off than a three turn one.

Or just go 5/5/3, forget about his red and use his yellow to allow spamming of other red users' powers (Torch, Gamora, Thor etc)?

As for red damage, like I said on paper it looks amazing, but unless it resolves more than 2/3rds of the time, take that 7K dmage and divide it by 2 or 3 or more because that's how much damage it will average over the course of the character. That tile will not resolve more than 1/2 the time, like I said, look no further than X-Force's Recovery. That is a perfect comparison, roughly same cost, same CD time, and I can say Recovery goes off far less than 1/2 the time so the skill really reads this way

Oldest Trick in the Book 8
Star-Lord points past his enemy and shouts "Hey! Is that Beta Ray Bill?" before swinging in with a sucker punch. He creates a 2-turn Countdown tile which deals 612 damage 66% of the time. While at least one such tile is on the board, all enemy Red and Green ability costs are increased by 1. (Dev note: This is placed on a random Red tile)
Level 2: Deals 802 to the target enemy 66% of the time. Enemy Yellow ability costs are increased by 1.
Level 3: Places a 3 turn Countdown tile. Enemy Black ability costs are increased by 1.
Level 4: Deals 1897 to the target enemy 50% of the time. Enemy Red, Yellow, Green, and Black ability costs are increased by 2.
Level 5: Deals 3525 to the target enemy only 50% of the time the tile resolves. Enemy Red, Yellow, Green, Black and Blue ability costs are increased by 2.
Max Level: 6998 max damage, 0 min damage

Sure I agree and I think it is almost worth not using his red at all with a 5/5/x build, and instead it would be better to pair him with a strong red user (of which there are many) and use him in this way on the PvP climb and in PvE.

Will be interesting to see how he actually plays in practice (sometime in 2016 probably unless I win the lottery in the meantime!)

Unknown

Well, red is usually a higher priority color than yellow so there's less chance of a red match being available. And while I think the possibility of blowout damage shouldn't be ignored, one to three turns of pseudo-stun on the enemy team is CRAZY on its own.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

onimus wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

While I agree 3/5/5 makes him a strong support, not giving him any damage makes him a strong liability. How many times in a match do you lose your main damage dealer and are stuck with supports?

And having misread purple, allowing him to overwrite any tile is sweet. Here's my take.

Purple--known
Yellow--known/random
Red--Random

what I mean by this is that I know what will happen with Purple, I know I can place it and if Captain America is any indicator, I can pretty much guarentee that damage going off. like I said what I don't know is how much purple will do. Does that 4k to target already include the AoE damage?

yellow is known once you place it and that for that turn you can guaretee reduced costs, after that though, it is all unknown.

red is all random, random where it goes, random if damage happens.

So from a sure thing build I would go 5/5/3 and rereading purple it says 2504 plus 731 which means it works like Thor, so he will do 6424 to target and 1451 to the other 2, I'll take that. That's better than Fury' purple

Max utility-- 3/5/5
Max Damage --5/3/5
Most consistent build--5/5/3

Now, let's say we are going for a full 4* roster. Well you have 4hor/X-Force then it comes down to Fury and Starlord.

Fury's blue won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

Starlord, his red won't get used, but his other 2 potentially can.

I would opt for Starlord becaue he can accelerate X-Force and 4hor into their skills, where as Fury just sits there, not to mention he tanks yellow and blue and with his low hitpoints this isn't ideal, with Starlord, 4hor will tank yellow and red for him so he can remain hidden.

2nd example. In PvP i opt to run 4hor and X-Force seperately to allow for a longer sustainged PvP push. Again, assuming I want to run only 4* in the other spot. 4hor/Starlord--I want Starlord 5/5/3, 1 his yellow can be very useful, 2 his red would block a red tile from possibly getting charged. X-Force/Starlord--yellow only overlap so build won't matter, however with purple I can at least place the tile in a corner and incease the likelyhood of survival vs. a random red so odds favor a 5/5/3 build, plus if facing off againsnt any characters, and I Surgical Stirke, Blackwidow, Daredevil, Deadpool, Loki, Mystique are the featured PvP's where surgical striking will destroy purple, vs. Marvel, Torch, IM40, Psylocke, Sentry, Thor. While close, odds still say I'm better off 5/5/3

With X-Force you obviously cannot guarentee anything on the board, so using Starlord's red seems like a waste of AP, where as at least Starlord's yellow can drop X-Force into a 2 match ability without boosts, at that point, if it gets blown up, I don't care.

We all know that defense is a farce, it's all about speed and high damage, and that's what a 5/5/3 Starlord would give you, speed in yellow, and damage in purple. I'm sure Phantron could factor in the factor of adding 1 AP to skills vs. 2 AP. Basically Skills that cost 5AP, 8AP, 11AP are the ones that get bumped up into another match bracket. which of top tier characters, would effect X-Force, Blade, Captain America, Daken, C.Mags, Thor, so you could argue that point, but I for one would rather be trying to speed myself up vs slowing the other guy down. Yes red can do some huge damage but it's also quickly countered by another Starlord because red doesn't effect purple, so I pop my purple and destroy your red tile.

That's my $0.02 but I think 5/5/3 is faster and more playable with X-Force and 4hor. Not to mention if my goal is to make other guys less spammy on the other team, I need look no farther than Hood or Loki as they do that job far better than Starlord can, nothing delays better than stealing AP.

Quality argument on all fronts.
I guess his red is dangerously random.

Like you said, it all depends on who you're pairing him with. But you make a strong argument for 5/5/3. The only must have, in my opinion, is at least 4 in yellow. Other than that, there's an argument for any build, depending on what you are going to run him with and what goals you want to accomplish with him.

The only thing I disagree with is that defense is a farce.

I think I've been in the minority on this subject for a long time, but I think defense is vastly more important than offense. And not just in the sense that you can win games when they attack you. I'm more interested in scare factor.

For example, yes Thorverine is fast. And deadly. And powerful.

But their main draw is their defensive scare power. If Thorverine were an easy to kill team, being able to one shot and win games in under 5 minutes wouldn't matter very much. Unless you love buying shields.

Defensive scare factor is one of the biggest attributes, in my opinion, for building a character. And support characters, specifically ones that can slow fights down like Loki, Hood and, perhaps, a 3/5/5 Starlord, are far more intimidating than high damage characters that the AI won't be able to place the tiles correctly or even (and I've seen this with Captain America all the time) use their placement tiles to make a three match in that same color.

It's the same reason that Nick Fury isn't worth leveling right now. Big damage doesn't scare anyone if the risk of it going off is negligible. Just like the new Sentry.

Easy to proc, spammable and virtually unstoppable damage is terrifying. Xforce has it. Thor has it. Both Fury and Starlord lack it, regardless of your build.

And that's why I think 3/5/5 would still be an equally, if not slightly better, build both defensively and offensively, as it increases his utility, scare factor and power level in general, in many cases.

And you also argue a strong case. However, ask yourself this question. What makes Thoerverine scary on defense?

To me it's this.

X-Force--2 skills you don't want going off in green and black, with one being very low costed.
4hor--2 skills you don't want going off together that are avg cost but seperately not scary.

Here's the reason they are scary. You have 4 colors to defend and 26000+ hitpoints to eat through. If you sub Fury in for 4hor you still have the same number of colors to defend, but a hell of a lot less hitpoints to chew threw, knowing that if Fury's blue goes off, one of your guys is dying more than likely. Sub Fury in for X-Force and you have only 3 colors to defeend and less hitpoints. The reason Thorverine is so scary is because of the combinations of skills and hitpoints.

If you make Starlord 3/5/5 and put him with 4hor, you only have 2 colors to defned, red and blue, because Starlord's purple is now not scary and yellow doesn't hurt you much. Pair Starlord with X-Force at 3/5/5 again you don't need to defend purple because it's not scary, you just need to defend green/black/red. Now if you remove 4hor and X-Force, well now I 100% agree that 3/5/5 would be the way to go since if you paired him with Fury, Fury's purple is cheaper and more guarenteed damage.

My final reason to go 5 purple, is it also makes him playble in PvE, because face it, with Goons it doesn't matter if you add 2 onto their costs, they will make tiles regardless because of their free AP, but at least with max purple you can destroy their CD tiles, and that is why I will for sure go 5 purple.

PvE i'm not sure if 5/3/5 or 5/5/3 is better, but for PvP I think a 5/5/3 Starlord is the better way to go and I do see him playable in high level PvP, not as your defensive team, but as a climb, because he saves you ISO because he lowers your need to always boost

I can see your point and I relent that 5/5/3 would absolutely be stronger when pairing him with either Xforce or Thor. With Xforce, you'll be too busy farming green and black to ever put any focus on red. And even in the scenario that you are out of green or black to farm, purple at 5 covers is far more likely to proc than red, as you've said. And with Thor, obviously she's going to be using all your red.

That point is quite clear.

I still think you can't dismiss how long a 3/5/5 could potentially drag out a defensive fight. Especially since we all know the AI loves to randomly cascade the perfect amount of AP necessary to just make your fight miserable.

But you're right. I don't think 3/5/5 would be significantly more strong than 5/5/3 on defense such that it would justify weakening him on offense, in matches with the other relevant 4 stars, as well as weakening him in PVE.

He would work at 3/5/5 if you pair him with Nick Fury. But let's be honest. If you have leveled Nick Fury and Star Lord before you leveled Thor and Xforce, you either have terrible prioritization skills or you somehow came into a bunch of covers for 2 of the inferior 4 stars and committed almost 1 million ISO to them haha. That is far from an ideal scenario.

It was good to talk it out though.

Phaserhawk

Anyone else notice though how well he pairs with Groot and Gamora.

Groot blue to himself
Gamora black to herself
Starlord purple and technically yellow to himself

Groot tanks yellow and blue, however Gamora is able to cover green/red/black thus giving her 3 colors and making her black worthwhile and cheap thus making her 3/5/5 the stronger build.

I would go Groot 5/3/5 (after my experience with Green, 5/3/5 is optimal
Starlord 5/5/3
Gamora 3/5/5

Get Starlord's yellow off ASAP and Groot tanks' damage, then all of Gamora's red is 1 match material, her black is still expensive though even at 10, but is just a 2 3 match 1 4 match away and Groot's blue gets a lot scarier at 9 AP. The funny thing is how Groot's green gets worse with Starlord's yellow, considering you can fire it off at 8 instead of 10, but now you only destroy 4 tiles instead of 5