Prodigal Sun Scaling

mouser

Definitely a healthy community scaling component as well. Skipped a node last night on my first clear that was at 256. Check in 8 hours later to find the node's up to 284 already.

orbitalint

tanis3303 wrote:

^This. Heck, they both have low health, I wiped earlier today because mystique took 2 pistol shots and died horribly. It works like 80% of the time. Less if you're using it vs someone that can move the board. It's a goon killer, no question, but a missed shift or infiltration can very easily lead to an enemy cascade if they have someone that can move tiles. I tried it vs the ultra-hard punisher battle and got murdered in a matter of turns. Not enough purple on the board and punisher kept matching the blue because the goon told him too. Gorgon was also a headache in Enemy of the State, with his snarky little smirk.

But I would argue that Magstique is the ONLY way to beat those nodes.

Is the combo broken? Yea, kinda But it's broken in the good way, where it takes skill, planning and a little luck to pull it off (kind of like a Tendrils deck in Magic the Gathering) not in the Sentry way where all you needed was 3 turns and a few boosts.

I used to say the same thing, it doesn't always work, requires luck and skill, etc. etc. But let's not fool ourselves here, +3 B/P makes it work much faster and with more reliability here, it's like close to 90% or more. Heck, goon nodes you get a free pass 3 times until it works because you can retreat before the timers go off and get to try again. It's a fun combo and I've used it for my own benefit but what's the need to play literally anyone else in the game?

I just have an issue where there is a distinct and tangible benefit that not everyone has access to that can win pretty much any node regardless of roster. So, it fails 20% of the time - the other 80%, you are able to play with minimal healthpacks for a sustained amount of time and clear nodes long after scaling should have kicked my roster to the curb. That's conservatively what? 3 more full clears? Not even the best PVE roster without the combo can hang with that. If it could only be used in prologue great, not an issue but I do expect competitive aspects of the game to be a level playing field, regardless of whether I'm the "in" crowd or not.

For jokes, you know you could take this into PVP, find a nice juicy 50 point 270 level XF/4hor and snipe for one game while he's unshielded. Defense team aside, match damage and shear health of that team should prevent any 166/94 pair from winning against that, right? But it doesn't.

On your 2nd point, absent the combo, shouldn't we expect lower scaling for everyone where people could actually still play? IMO, the scaling you see at the end of a sub, especially on this event, has got to have this combo as a meaningful factor. Look at The Simulator and Heroics - nobody touches some of those nodes at a certain point and everyone still competes just fine because everybody eventually learns it isn't worth it. Even XF/4hor throws their hands up to some nodes and says "Tinykitty this, it ain't worth 100 sub points." For Winfinite, the proposition is low-risk/medium reward where everyone else it is high-risk of healthpack usage/medium reward.

tanis3303

orbitalint wrote:

On your 2nd point, absent the combo, shouldn't we expect lower scaling for everyone where people could actually still play? IMO, the scaling you see at the end of a sub, especially on this event, has got to have this combo as a meaningful factor. Look at The Simulator and Heroics - nobody touches some of those nodes at a certain point and everyone still competes just fine because everybody eventually learns it isn't worth it. Even XF/4hor throws their hands up to some nodes and says "Tinykitty this, it ain't worth 100 sub points." For Winfinite, the proposition is low-risk/medium reward where everyone else it is high-risk of healthpack usage/medium reward.

You're probably correct. This will be my first event with a needed reward, so I'll see just how much of a difference it makes for the sub-end grind. I used the combo a lot in Enemy of the State, but I played that one pretty casually, no real grinding involved. People are chomping at the bit for IF tho, so this will be my first real test of the staying power of the combo. It's probably broken, but I don't want them to take it away yet, I haven't had my fill of playing around with it yet! haha

orbitalint

tanis3303 wrote:

You're probably correct. This will be my first event with a needed reward, so I'll see just how much of a difference it makes for the sub-end grind. I used the combo a lot in Enemy of the State, but I played that one pretty casually, no real grinding involved. People are chomping at the bit for IF tho, so this will be my first real test of the staying power of the combo. It's probably broken, but I don't want them to take it away yet, I haven't had my fill of playing around with it yet! haha

Fair enough, it's not like I have an actual leg to stand on - I'm using it like crack to keep up in my bracket. I just feel like I morally object to my drug use at this point in my roster development, .

SnowcaTT

CrookedKnight wrote:

You use Magneto's purple to collect a bunch of blue. Then you use Mystique's blue to collect a bunch of purple. And black, but it's the purple that's really important, because at maximum level Infiltration will often give you enough purple to immediately use Mags' power again. You just keep looping them over and over, mixing in a black damage ability as AP gain allows, and if all goes well everything dies before the enemy team gets another turn.

Somehow I've never seen this on the boards, thought - why not take my 0/5/4 mystique in and try it out, can't get those goon nodes anyway and Mags/Mystique wipe won't hurt.

Holy smokes, I am never not using that against goons again. I see why some say it should be out of the game.

tanis3303

SnowcaTT wrote:

Holy smokes, I am never not using that against goons again. I see why some say it should be out of the game.

Yea, but it's fun tho, ain't it?? Do you have Black Panther to go with it? Try that out since you'll be at 30 black before you know it. And since they're not getting another turn if everything goes right, RotP can funnel them as much AP as possible and it won't matter.

SnowcaTT

tanis3303 wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

Holy smokes, I am never not using that against goons again. I see why some say it should be out of the game.

Yea, but it's fun tho, ain't it?? Do you have Black Panther to go with it? Try that out since you'll be at 30 black before you know it. And since they're not getting another turn if everything goes right, RotP can funnel them as much AP as possible and it won't matter.

I have 233 5/5/1 X-force and max Hood, but 280 goons and a little bit of bad luck was making that match-up pretty difficult. Throw that X-force in with a weak mystique and weak 2*: even when I get unlucky at the top, I can match enough green to shake the board, possibly remove count-downs, and re-start building purple again.

At the end of these matches I'm sitting at full AP in almost every color, this is unbelievable.

Edit: it will absolutely make the difference in getting a cover as well. Went to do third clear this morning and couldn't get goon nodes, sat at ~120. Clear the four tough goon nodes, now at 75.

orbitalint

SnowcaTT wrote:

At the end of these matches I'm sitting at full AP in almost every color, this is unbelievable.

Edit: it will absolutely make the difference in getting a cover as well. Went to do third clear this morning and couldn't get goon nodes, sat at ~120. Clear the four tough goon nodes, now at 75.

Welcome to Winfinite-Anonymous, aka the dark side. We'd all love to quit (edit: maybe not all of us...tanis ) and some of us usually do until they drop a tasty new character that we really want and need to grind nodes to dust.

Trisul

SnowcaTT wrote:

At the end of these matches I'm sitting at full AP in almost every color, this is unbelievable.

Feels pretty dirty, don't it?

johnnyzero

I'll admit it, I'm a magstique addict. I used them a lot with Cyclops during EotS, and her blue generating the black for Cyclops' full blast...let's just say it's a beautiful thing.

They also are very useful during DPD's big enchilada!

But alas, Sub 2 has a few nodes where Magneto is on the wrong side (or is it right side since we're helping the Dark Avengers in this one? Nevermind) so you can't c-c-c-combo break that sub entirely. It'll be interesting to see what those nodes scale to.

orbitalint

Yeah, it's most effective as a high level goon slayer. Any actual characters and the low HP gets eaten up really fast. It's probably why you don't see this discussion or some of the associated scaling on a Simulator event or anything that has a better balance of node enemies. That first sub was practically all goon, so it was more pronounced.

Unknown

Saying playing Mystique + Mag is fun is like the guys saying 2 AP Thunderclap is fun. Well, it probably was pretty fun even though it threw the entire balance out of the window.

That said, since D3 improbably made a character like Iron Fist I think the Mystique + Mag combo won't have much to fear for a while. While it's in theory harder to infinite with Iron Fist unless you can Surgical on purple, this already happens half of the time in PvE events and it's just so quick/fast that it should put most fights away without even needing to infinite. Iron Fist's philsophy reminds me of a game where some class complain that their ability didn't scale so it's not broken, because it's something like 'this ability does 2 million damage at level 1' and it always stayed at 2 million damage, and sure, you can't put anything interesting to stack on top of that but when something does 2 million damage, you also don't need anything more than that either.

MyFeetStink

Just to chime in here, thank you everyone for the MNMags + Mystique advice. I am in 2* to 3* transition and was getting my butt handed to me by murder row. The only way I could beat them was CStorm/MNMags/MHawkeye, and even then not the last two. My Mystique was only lvl 45 with 2 blue covers and I was able to take out Assault IV with MNMags 94 / Mystique 45 and hood 184 with buff (he is 94 prebuff). Hood took one hit but had enough life to last, but that was all the damage I took.

So, even with under-leveled characters with a bit of luck it can be done. Down side is, one hit to Mystique and she is going to be done for me. But, I was losing non-stop on that level anyways so worth the gamble.

Now I am wanting more Mystique covers ASAP....

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

Saying playing Mystique + Mag is fun is like the guys saying 2 AP Thunderclap is fun.

No it's not. But we all knew is was just a matter of time til this discussion got Phantroned.

orbitalint wrote:

So, it fails 20% of the time - the other 80%, you are able to play with minimal healthpacks for a sustained amount of time and clear nodes long after scaling should have kicked my roster to the curb. That's conservatively what? 3 more full clears? Not even the best PVE roster without the combo can hang with that.

A couple problems with this. First, if you were right, everyone would be using Magstique. But if we poll the leaderboard at the end of this event, I'm happy to bet that the guys at the top aren't using it.

And the reason, aside from speed, is because if it fails 20% of the time, you can't use it to clear 4 nodes 5-6 times each during a final grind without running out of health packs long before you're done.

Arimis_Thorn

Switchman wrote:

If you have Loki, let the goons put down 2-4 high dmg strike tiles then just flip them. let the game do the work for you.

Tried this. There's no way to keep up with the enemy strike tile generation. Or maybe you need Trickery maxxed out, but I was only able to use it twice, and then in a stroke of luck only every achieved by the computer, my next use of Illusions magically matched up ALL of my new protect tiles.

Seriously, the AI should buy a lottery ticket.

Arimis_Thorn

tanis3303 wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

Holy smokes, I am never not using that against goons again. I see why some say it should be out of the game.

Yea, but it's fun tho, ain't it?? Do you have Black Panther to go with it? Try that out since you'll be at 30 black before you know it. And since they're not getting another turn if everything goes right, RotP can funnel them as much AP as possible and it won't matter.

....

Great googly Moogly. My MN Mags is lvl 94, BP is 76 and Mystique is 60 and I just completely owned lvl 249 goons with this.

Utterly outstanding. Thank you!

orbitalint

simonsez wrote:

A couple problems with this. First, if you were right, everyone would be using Magstique. But if we poll the leaderboard at the end of this event, I'm happy to bet that the guys at the top aren't using it.

And the reason, aside from speed, is because if it fails 20% of the time, you can't use it to clear 4 nodes 5-6 times each during a final grind without running out of health packs long before you're done.

Um yes it does work to grind it down even with the failure rate and is still light on health packs. This is largely a known way to win hard goon nodes and anyone competing will use everything at their disposal to place where they'd prefer.

On the all goon murder's row of the first sub, ground down to 60 points each with one or two health packs. And this was after they took down my falcon/daken/blade team after only one pass. Goon nodes you can retreat before you take a shot, rinse repeat until you get a good board. There is your 20% failure rate. You will find 2 purple matches on 80% of the boards before cd timers go off especially when you get relatively consequence free redos with retreating.

I'm not saying it is god like for all character nodes but even in those situations it gives you a huge leg up. Did a quick scan of my top ten, 7 had the combo viable (5 blue stique and a mags). If they aren't using it, how did they keep up with my grind down (assuming no health pack buys)? The other three? Not playing on an optimal schedule. They are leading sub 2 by 5k.

Edit:oh and patch makes the combo lethally quick...can't convert non-basic green tiles so they stick around a long time...

Trisul

simonsez wrote:

A couple problems with this. First, if you were right, everyone would be using Magstique. But if we poll the leaderboard at the end of this event, I'm happy to bet that the guys at the top aren't using it.

And the reason, aside from speed, is because if it fails 20% of the time, you can't use it to clear 4 nodes 5-6 times each during a final grind without running out of health packs long before you're done.

I think it's more widespread than you think, though maybe we should try a poll to get a sense of it.

ClydeFrog76

I like Patch and OBW versus Goons. They don't have an infinite combo potential, but once you get out a BR, Espionage makes very short work of everything. You've also got Anti-Gravity for any CD tile emergencies.

"Magstique" does sound fun, though. I'd probably give it a go if I had a Mystique with more than just two blue covers

chaos01

After reading I used this against a 249 goon node. I made two moves to charge polarity shift and then looped their powers with surgical and x-force occasionally making a match five for no other reason then change the monotony of using powers.