**** Iron Man (Hulkbuster) ****

Arondite

notamutant wrote:

Arondite wrote:

I personally love this guy, and I don't think he's imbalanced. He sits pretty comfortably on what I think is a good power level for a 4 Star hero.

He is balanced. The problem with a game as complicated as this is many characters that would be balanced individually become unbalanced when teamed up with certain teammates. Only time will tell how balanced he is. I really don't have a problem with him since his best synergy requires two other guys, so he can only be abused in PvE or shield.

IMO the only time synergy is truely imbalanced is infinites and pseudo-infinites. If a character is balanced on their own, paired with another character that is balanced on their own and they become multiplicatively effective with realistic advantages and shortcomings, that's perfectly fine.

simonsez

notamutant wrote:

his best synergy requires two other guys

Fist and Cyclops?

notamutant

simonsez wrote:

notamutant wrote:

his best synergy requires two other guys

Fist and Cyclops?

Haven't you figured it out by now? Professor X is ALWAYS going to be one of the guys with best synergy with a tile creator. Throw in Cyclops too. You get yellow converting to red and blue converting to red, you get red from Prof X Master Plan, its just so much red you will destroy PvE no matter what once you get enough AP to use Cyclops yelllow and HB blue on same turn.

Unknown

aesthetocyst wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

From http://marvel.com/news/video_games/2448 ... _of_ultron

Joe Fletcher: We’ll be running two sets of this event back-to-back with each going for about four and a half days apiece and starting on April 24. The first run will be rewarding Wanda herself, while the second run will allow her to get in on the Avengers fun as a featured character with the reward being the crowd pleasing Iron Man: Hulkbuster which we will have more info on at our D3 forums in the coming days.

Considering that the first event ends in just over 24hrs, and that piece was published 5 days ago .... who at Demiurge is getting on the "more info" being "on our D3 forums in the coming days"?

I think by 'more info' and 'coming days' are code words because, obviously, D3 doesn't do that ****.

I mean, a employee did "Spoiler" Hulkbuster(after Turul did). But Turul gave us wayyy more info.

notamutant wrote:

simonsez wrote:

notamutant wrote:

his best synergy requires two other guys

Fist and Cyclops?

Haven't you figured it out by now? Professor X is ALWAYS going to be one of the guys with best synergy with a tile creator. Throw in Cyclops too. You get yellow converting to red and blue converting to red, you get red from Prof X Master Plan, its just so much red you will destroy PvE no matter what once you get enough AP to use Cyclops yelllow and HB blue on same turn.

I'm surprised they don't replace AP abilities with 'you can equip 2 2color AP stockpile for free' since they hate AP generation so much.

Unknown

There's no ability that IMHB has that would create an unreasonable number of match 5s. Only one of his ability can even create a match 5 and at 9 blue AP that doesn't exactly have 'degenerate' written on it. Likewise Cyclops can't exactly pump out match 5s like they're out of style with an 8 AP cost. After all, all their color conversion abilities are still quite inferior compared to Iron Fist who seems to have a permanent alliance with Professor X.

Now, if you want to pump a lot of red AP so you can do Repulsor Punch over and over again, that's perfectly fine, but it's only 650 damage/AP. Fireball is pretty close to 600 damage/AP and creates a minor cascade. Star Spangled Avenger is in theory around 4000 damage/AP, but let's say you're possessed by the AI and always throw your red straight into another match 3, then it's still about 500 damage/AP (4000 damage for 8 AP because throwing into a red match 3 gets you 3 AP back). A Ballet of Death that lasted 4 turns is 624 damage/AP. While there is value in being able to deliver a lot of damage at once, there is also a drawback in that you can't finetune the damage. For example if you picked up 15 red AP in a single big cascade, you can only dump it into a single ~10K hit, and say your opponent is The Hood + ??? + ???, you wasted a lot of AP overkilling The Hood's meager 5000 HP but if you don't hit him first, that might come back to haunt you later. In this particular scenario you're only getting 333 damage/AP on The Hood.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

There's no ability that IMHB has that would create an unreasonable number of match 5s. Only one of his ability can even create a match 5 and at 9 blue AP that doesn't exactly have 'degenerate' written on it. Likewise Cyclops can't exactly pump out match 5s like they're out of style with an 8 AP cost. After all, all their color conversion abilities are still quite inferior compared to Iron Fist who seems to have a permanent alliance with Professor X.

Now, if you want to pump a lot of red AP so you can do Repulsor Punch over and over again, that's perfectly fine, but it's only 650 damage/AP. Fireball is pretty close to 600 damage/AP and creates a minor cascade. Star Spangled Avenger is in theory around 4000 damage/AP, but let's say you're possessed by the AI and always throw your red straight into another match 3, then it's still about 500 damage/AP (4000 damage for 8 AP because throwing into a red match 3 gets you 3 AP back). A Ballet of Death that lasted 4 turns is 624 damage/AP. While there is value in being able to deliver a lot of damage at once, there is also a drawback in that you can't finetune the damage. For example if you picked up 15 red AP in a single big cascade, you can only dump it into a single ~10K hit, and say your opponent is The Hood + ??? + ???, you wasted a lot of AP overkilling The Hood's meager 5000 HP but if you don't hit him first, that might come back to haunt you later. In this particular scenario you're only getting 333 damage/AP on The Hood.

And those times when you are on a 1x2 fight and both enemies (or the one you should deal with first) are at lowish health and you need 19 red AP to fire HB twice.

simonsez

notamutant wrote:

Haven't you figured it out by now? Professor X is ALWAYS going to be one of the guys with best synergy with a tile creator.

Argh! Was only thinking of guys I've actually used...

notamutant

Phantron wrote:

There's no ability that IMHB has that would create an unreasonable number of match 5s. Only one of his ability can even create a match 5 and at 9 blue AP that doesn't exactly have 'degenerate' written on it. Likewise Cyclops can't exactly pump out match 5s like they're out of style with an 8 AP cost. After all, all their color conversion abilities are still quite inferior compared to Iron Fist who seems to have a permanent alliance with Professor X.

Now, if you want to pump a lot of red AP so you can do Repulsor Punch over and over again, that's perfectly fine, but it's only 650 damage/AP. Fireball is pretty close to 600 damage/AP and creates a minor cascade. Star Spangled Avenger is in theory around 4000 damage/AP, but let's say you're possessed by the AI and always throw your red straight into another match 3, then it's still about 500 damage/AP (4000 damage for 8 AP because throwing into a red match 3 gets you 3 AP back). A Ballet of Death that lasted 4 turns is 624 damage/AP. While there is value in being able to deliver a lot of damage at once, there is also a drawback in that you can't finetune the damage. For example if you picked up 15 red AP in a single big cascade, you can only dump it into a single ~10K hit, and say your opponent is The Hood + ??? + ???, you wasted a lot of AP overkilling The Hood's meager 5000 HP but if you don't hit him first, that might come back to haunt you later. In this particular scenario you're only getting 333 damage/AP on The Hood.

I think you are forgetting WHY Cyclops has such good synergy here. Cyclops also has a high damage red. Let's say you save up 9 blue AP and 8 yellow AP. You now have 7 red tiles being created from the blue, and 6-8 more red tiles from yellow. That is 13-15 red tiles being created from either 6 matches (if you get lucky and can match blue and yellow each turn) or 4 matches (if you use AP boosts and get lucky). There is no way that doesn't create as least one match five and/or potentially set up a second match five. That gives you 4.5k damage and 4 more red AP. You will probably be able to make multiple red matches in that 4th or 6th turn due to match five extra turns. You definitely come out of that with at least 9 red, which should be enough to finish off a high HP foe after using Prof X for the 4.5k, or if you target differently, you can finish off the Hood. If you get really lucky, and get some mega cascade with lots of extra reds, I could see 16 red AP being possible after using those moves. So now you have the extra red AP you were concerned about wasting. Guess what? You have CYCLOPS! Use his red, create another chance to match all those extra reds on the board from his row destruction, kill Hood, and make another red match! Now you are only one more red match away from using HB red. No red AP wasted on overkill.

Now, maybe I am overestimated cascade potential. After all, it is just turning green to red, and clearly those green won't be making match 5s on their own or they wouldn't be sitting there. But I still think with the huge amount of red tile creation, it is almost guaranteed to go something like either one of my above scenarios.

Unknown

IMHB's red is 630 damage/AP. This is a decent, but it's not even top tier damage ratio let alone broken tier damage ratio. For example, Surgical Strike can beat 630/AP easily (need to destroy 9 tiles) and creates a major cascade. Fireball is pretty much straight up 600 damage/AP. Demolition is about 1000 damage/AP (conditional and delayed, but generally still pretty easy to blow things up). A Ballet of Dance lasting 4 turns is 624 damage/AP . Star-Lord's abilities both beat 630 rather easily contingent on the CD surviving. Therefore, if an ability converts one color AP to red AP at 1 to 1, that'd mean that color is also doing 630 damage/AP, but there's nothing particularly broken about this. Let's look at the AP accelerators for red discussed here:

IMHB Black: Looks like it converts 11 black AP to add either 8 or 9 AP at level 5 (estimate, no stats available), so it's lower than 1 to 1. It creates a pretty strong strike tile that might be overpowered, but not much point to speculate on unknown data at this point.

IMHB Blue: 9 blue to add 7 tiles. For the sake of argument we'll just say that whatever tile you add to the board come back as AP via matches, so it's slightly less than 1 ratio. Yes sometimes it will be much better but sometimes it can be much worse too.

Cyclops yellow: 8 yellow to add 7 tiles. Again slightly less than 1 ratio.

So all these abilities have a baseline expected damage/AP of 630 or lower and note that you can't have both black and blue at level 5 unless you're the AI (dropping red to a lower level would completely defeat the purpose of pumping red). Now, can these abilities chain off to a massive cascade? Sure, especially if you have say a IMHB blue followed by a Cyclops yellow, or even 2 of those. But the game always reward you for pulling big combos and you're looking at either 8+9 or even 16 of one color, so yeah there should be a pretty big boom if you can pull that off. Yes you can say 'just wait for the red to be near the green', but what if that never happens? Now his red is good enough that you're not sitting at dead AP just because you can't pull your massive combo of doom, and it might be relatively too good on a guy with 17K HP, but the damage it does is not game breaking in itself. It might turn out that IMHB offers too much of a package deal (his black looks really scary) but I'd think it's far more likely the blue/black gets retuned, e.g. black creates weaker strike tiles/less AP generated, blue more expensive and creates one less tile. I don't think they need to mess with his red at all.

slidecage

Repulsor Punch 9
Lvl 5--Iron Man pours his energy reserves into his next punch, using repulsors in his elbow for extra force. Depletes his team's Red AP, dealing 630 dmage for each

Overdrive 11
Lvl 3--Tony recklessly diverts power from his heart's Arc Reactor to give his suit more firepower. Deals 1541 Damage to Iron Man, but gains 6 Red AP and creates 2 yellow strike tiles of strength 183
Lvl4--creates 7 Red AP and strike tiles with strength 241

Hulk-Proof 9
Lvl 5--The Hulkbuster suit deploys gas grenades and powers up shielding, ready for incoming damage. Converts 7 basic green tiles to Red and creates 3 blue Protect tiles of strength 72

---

anyone want to guess rounds
round 6 blue
round 7 black
round 8 red

Unknown

I am really surprised that Repulsor Punch is basically Ares' Onslaught. One of the very few times they are taking a power and duplicating it.

Unknown

slidecage wrote:

anyone want to guess rounds
round 6 blue
round 7 black
round 8 red

I think they will come in the right order, both QS and SW were given on 1st/2nd/3rd cover on AvU.

Unknown

ShionSinX wrote:

slidecage wrote:

anyone want to guess rounds
round 6 blue
round 7 black
round 8 red

I think they will come in the right order, both QS and SW were given on 1st/2nd/3rd cover on AvU.

round 6 std token
round 7 std token
round 8 1 Cover

remember, he's a 4*

D3 only throws us scraps when 4* are involved

Unknown

raisinbman wrote:

round 6 std token
round 7 std token
round 8 1 Cover

remember, he's a 4*

D3 only throws us scraps when 4* are involved

Well, thats true, we cant expect all 3 covers from D3 but one can dream. I would be fine with a couple more SW covers too and only Ultron Prime 8 giving the HB cover.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

From an alliance mate, his powers seem...meh

Dragon_Nexus

Ben Grimm wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

I"m pretty sure the absence of Silver Surfer from pretty much every current game is the same reason Contest of Champions has no FF-film-license-related characters and this game hasn't introduced a new one in almost a year. I'll stop believing that when something, anything related to the characters in the FF film license gets licensed in any way shape or form in North America again.

I'm pretty sure it's because Silver Surfer was already immortalized in video games, and any further attempt at his inclusion will only remind it's players that they are not playing THAT game.

I'm not sure whether to upvote you for the sentiment or downvote you for reminding me that I paid money for that game.

Don't knock it, you'd have got your money's worth.
I'll bet you you've bought a game in the last year that cost you full retail but you beat in 20 hours, eh? Well you bought Silver Surfer and haven't beaten it in 20 years!

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

There's no ability that IMHB has that would create an unreasonable number of match 5s. Only one of his ability can even create a match 5 and at 9 blue AP that doesn't exactly have 'degenerate' written on it. Likewise Cyclops can't exactly pump out match 5s like they're out of style with an 8 AP cost. After all, all their color conversion abilities are still quite inferior compared to Iron Fist who seems to have a permanent alliance with Professor X.

Now, if you want to pump a lot of red AP so you can do Repulsor Punch over and over again, that's perfectly fine, but it's only 650 damage/AP. Fireball is pretty close to 600 damage/AP and creates a minor cascade. Star Spangled Avenger is in theory around 4000 damage/AP, but let's say you're possessed by the AI and always throw your red straight into another match 3, then it's still about 500 damage/AP (4000 damage for 8 AP because throwing into a red match 3 gets you 3 AP back). A Ballet of Death that lasted 4 turns is 624 damage/AP. While there is value in being able to deliver a lot of damage at once, there is also a drawback in that you can't finetune the damage. For example if you picked up 15 red AP in a single big cascade, you can only dump it into a single ~10K hit, and say your opponent is The Hood + ??? + ???, you wasted a lot of AP overkilling The Hood's meager 5000 HP but if you don't hit him first, that might come back to haunt you later. In this particular scenario you're only getting 333 damage/AP on The Hood.

650 damage per AP on a tank tho, that is pretty good. 18k health to chew through on a self sustaining red generator to red slap you in the face is a pretty good character. Fireball's damage is so high because HT's hp is terribad.

And anytime you get 15 against Hood + ??? + ??? go ahead and murder the guy standing behind Hood, especially if he has less than 10,000 health. An opportunity to hit Hood for 9 AP will come around again. In the mean time as long as he doesn't soak up too much yellow his actual threat level is mitigated by killing his friends as well. If you had 11 I can see wasting some and getting Hood down for the count, especially if you brought your own.

Buster plus any kind of other red generator is going to be phenomenal, with PX being the leading contender for broken combo. PX, Buster, and MNM might form the new PvE Trio of death. And Buster brings out strike tiles for PX to buff.

Looking at his powers, I'm inclined to think 3 in for the same reason you put 3 in Cyclops . Especially with 18k health and enemy health increased. Matches will go long enough to get 18 blue and convert all the green on the board for 2 castings, and all the green that comes after every time you get 9 blue. Unless you are actually fighting the Hulk.

It does seems weird to make a 4* character who is thematically designed to crush an individual 3* tho.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

It does seems weird to make a 4* character who is thematically designed to crush an individual 3* tho.

Unless... 4* World War Hulk confirmed!

Mawtful

Lerysh wrote:

Buster plus any kind of other red generator is going to be phenomenal, with PX being the leading contender for broken combo. PX, Buster, and MNM might form the new PvE Trio of death. And Buster brings out strike tiles for PX to buff.

Lerysh wrote:

Buster

Every time:

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

650 damage per AP on a tank tho, that is pretty good. 18k health to chew through on a self sustaining red generator to red slap you in the face is a pretty good character. Fireball's damage is so high because HT's hp is terribad.

Of course he's very good. He may very well be too good as a package. I'm just saying this whole obsession with accelerating to red being overpowered is unfounded because it's not close to a top tier damage/AP ability and it does suffer from overkill. Yes most of the abilities that do better have some conditions, but the criteria to trigger Demolition or a Ballet of Death surviving 4 turns is just not that hard. If anything, I'm more worried about the black because based on previous trends it looks like it'll probably do 8-9 AP and 2X300 strike tile for 11 black AP, so that's basically an Escape Plan without the drain but also doesn't get stopped (strike tile roughly the same size, AP just goes directly to another Repulsor Punch as damage). Okay you take 1500 damage but I'm definitely willing to take 1500 damage to have Escape Plan resolve immediately in virtually every case.