are strike tiles and protect tiles equally valuable now?

Unknown

It seems to me, this should be one consequence of the increased hp.

simonsez

In what context? If you're climbing, protect tiles can be a good way to extend it a bit. If you're hopping, that's not something you want to waste an ability on.

Unknown

I'm not sure I understand why protect tiles would be ok when climbing, but not while shield hopping. I think some shield-hoppers would hesitate to attack a team like Spiderman and Falcon, not because it's hard to beat them, but because protect tiles + more hp = very slow matches.

In general, I feel that if matches are lasting longer it's easier to get some protect tiles out early enough in the match for it to make a difference. That's why I was thinking that strike tiles and protect tiles are a little more even now.

Unknown

You wouldn't want to hop with Spidey because it would be terribly slow for you to win. When you are hopping, you are not being hit by other hoppers -- you are being hit by the people with 300-500 points that see a big juicy point reward for clobbering you. They don't care how long a match takes.

Unknown

platypusavenger wrote:

You wouldn't want to hop with Spidey because it would be terribly slow for you to win. When you are hopping, you are not being hit by other hoppers -- you are being hit by the people with 300-500 points that see a big juicy point reward for clobbering you. They don't care how long a match takes.

Ok, that makes sense. Good thing I don't shield hop then, because I've got a soft spot for Spidey even if he's slow.

Scoregasms

For PVP, speed is still king, even if they have lowered the speed limit to grandma levels with all these changes.

But going back to your original thought, I tend to agree that they are trying to emphasize more use of Protect Tiles with this latest round of changes (thinking PVE here). Who knows, outside of Cage, I don't regularly use Protect Tile users (prefer Strike/Attack tile play) but if matches are indeed going to be lasting longer and we no longer have our big nukes at our disposal, big damage mitigation may be the only way to deal with some of the more uber-scaled nodes.

orbitalint

Take it for what it's worth but I went with Cage, Cap and a 5/5/2 Gamora and got attacked maybe twice? in Lethal Intent. So, I could see the two of them being a possible shield hop counter depending on the featured. I might end my sessions with them fully boosted. Counteracts their slowness and makes for an ok deterrent to attacks in my book.

I mean, I try to skip any IF or Cage just because of the health pack costs/effort required to effectively mitigate those guys. They are definitely beatable but a skip is just as valuable when the horde is looking at you.

As long as the featured has a decent green outlet, I could see myself putting Cage and Cap in for my "bugger off, I don't want to shield right now" team when hovering 400 around before my push. Used them up through 700 and in my shield hop to 800 at the end of the event to preserve placement (dunno why, 2 QS covers are as good as 0, imo, lol).

Unknown

Speed is not the only thing matters but since protect tiles aren't in a magnitude that'd be considered overpowered you're generally still better off with offense. If there's an ability that costs 5 AP that makes an X strength protect tile versus the same 5 AP for an X strength strike tile you should always take the strike tile because normally enemies don't do more than about 200 damage per turn so anything beyond that is overkill for match damage but still almost nothing for ability damage, but if you have an ability that makes a 2000 strength protect tile for 5 AP that'd be more than enough to negate ability damage meaningfully. Of course such ability doesn't exist so you don't have to focus on them, but there's no inherent reason why you can't have way overpowered protect tiles.

Unknown

The biggest problem is there are no really good cheap protect tile abilities, and there are tons of good strike tile abilities. Everyone loves Luke Cage because A) his offense is pretty good, at least above average and 2) his protect tile doesn't cost jack. Not so much love for Captain America because his protect tiles cost so much as to have a negligible impact on the match (under old health values).

Under new health values I could see reliably getting a Cap blue protect down early being valuable, but not if it lets the other team take all the red and black. Almost all other protect abilities are too expensive to be viable, it's still better to use that AP on damage than defense. MAYBE C.Mags yellow, but then again just take C.Mags along with Luke Cage and use the yellow to beat face.

orbitalint

Lerysh, completely agreed. Sorry, I was talking about the generation of protect tiles on cap blue, not yellow, lol.

My thing is that blue is usually a dead color for me. I rarely prioritize it and if I end up getting it, great. So, having cap in there at least lets the computer mess with an opponent on a non-contested color if and when they end up getting 9 blue. So, having any blue option with a non-overlapping red, with a cage yellow that is almost guaranteed to go off at some point because of the stupid high cost of Cap's yellow, seems close to optimizing opportunity costs for a set of PVP partners for both offense and defense, despite its irrelevance.

CMags is a possibility but I hate the low yellow AP requirement which makes LThor and Cage less likely to obliterate someone on D. That works in Caps favor.

Yeah, team is slow but it has great sustain as well as an annoyance factor for would be attackers. Throw in a viable Kamala in there and I might have my new favorite SHIELD Sim team .

Unknown

Protect tiles of strength X are more valuable than Strike Tiles X when you're facing ridiculously scaled enemies in PVE or the enemy just generally outclasses you in general, and you have an AP stealer like Loki, Hood, or even OBW, and have a long battle on your hand. In general strike tiles are better though.

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

Lerysh, completely agreed. Sorry, I was talking about the generation of protect tiles on cap blue, not yellow, lol.

My thing is that blue is usually a dead color for me. I rarely prioritize it and if I end up getting it, great. So, having cap in there at least lets the computer mess with an opponent on a non-contested color if and when they end up getting 9 blue. So, having any blue option with a non-overlapping red, with a cage yellow that is almost guaranteed to go off at some point because of the stupid high cost of Cap's yellow, seems close to optimizing opportunity costs for a set of PVP partners for both offense and defense, despite its irrelevance.

CMags is a possibility but I hate the low yellow AP requirement which makes LThor and Cage less likely to obliterate someone on D. That works in Caps favor.

Yeah, team is slow but it has great sustain as well as an annoyance factor for would be attackers. Throw in a viable Kamala in there and I might have my new favorite SHIELD Sim team .

I saw many a LCap Luke Cage while climbing Gamora, helped I think by her having Green covered. It's not a bad climb team for health pack preservation. Still tho, cheap defense tiles don't really exist yet, except for maybe a 5 yellow IW build but I don't think anyone is going to do that.

orbitalint

Agreed. Giving a plus one for being able to have a meaningful convo about this topic without crazy drama. Kind of drove me away the last few weeks.

Spoit

sure cheap exist now. PX gets 2 everytime one of your other chars use a power, and like people mentioned, cage's are free