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

Dauthi

simonsez wrote:

Phantron wrote:

My bad for assuming you were able to make an argument where the size of the strike tiles determines whether someone is support or not.

Any comment I'm making is specific to IMHB's abilities. What I'm saying is, if they give him a nuke, and no one uses it, that makes him feel like a support character.

Does everyone think his red is bad? 630 damage per ap is great, who else has that kind of damage towards a single target? You can customize the damage too, for instance 12 ap will take down most 3*s (8k damage). His strike tiles just allow him to continue to provide some damage in between red blasts.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Phantron wrote:

My bad for assuming you were able to make an argument where the size of the strike tiles determines whether someone is support or not.

Any comment I'm making is specific to IMHB's abilities. What I'm saying is, if they give him a nuke, and no one uses it, that makes him feel like a support character.

Does everyone think his red is bad? 630 damage per ap is great, who else has that kind of damage towards a single target? You can customize the damage too, for instance 12 ap will take down most 3*s (8k damage). His strike tiles just allow him to continue to provide some damage in between red blasts.

If his red was good he'd be 4* ares, I'm just glad they didn't make another xforce

Unknown

raisinbman wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Phantron wrote:

My bad for assuming you were able to make an argument where the size of the strike tiles determines whether someone is support or not.

Any comment I'm making is specific to IMHB's abilities. What I'm saying is, if they give him a nuke, and no one uses it, that makes him feel like a support character.

Does everyone think his red is bad? 630 damage per ap is great, who else has that kind of damage towards a single target? You can customize the damage too, for instance 12 ap will take down most 3*s (8k damage). His strike tiles just allow him to continue to provide some damage in between red blasts.

If his red was good he'd be 4* ares, I'm just glad they didn't make another xforce

His red is absolutely fantastic. I cannot fathom a single reason anyone would build him anything but 553, or why anyone would "waste" a character by pairing him with Steve/Torch/Cyclops when their reds are only a marginal improvement over his own

Unknown

gamar wrote:

His red is absolutely fantastic. I cannot fathom a single reason anyone would build him anything but 553, or why anyone would "waste" a character by pairing him with Steve/Torch/Cyclops when their reds are only a marginal improvement over his own

so which is it, is his red good or not? i'm confused

Unknown

The value of a skill is supposed change depending on how much match it took to use it but Repulsor Punch does not. That's its drawback. If you use 9 AP it's 630 damage/AP. It you use 30 AP it's still 630 damage/AP, even though a 30 red AP, if one exists, should pretty much kill everyone on the other team. If you have say, 15 red AP, it'll do ~10K damage, but TBTI is 14 red AP and will usually do more damage depending on the team setup and give you minor strike tiles. If you have 11 red AP it does ~7000 damage, but 11 black AP pretty much always does 7000 damage with Surgical Strike and it creates a significant cascade and that's probably the easiest skill to compare to. Now at 9 red AP there are very few skills that are as good. This is because the difference between 9 (3 match) and 10 (4 matches) is huge, so it is an incredibly powerful 9 red AP skill but it's fairly average if not underpowered for 10-12 AP range and it's very weak in the 13+ range. So whether it's good depends on how often you can use it at under 5 matches and ideally, exactly 3 matches. At 5 matches you've to compare it to stuff like Full Blast or Righteous Uppercut and it doesn't really compare well to those abilities at all and that's just 3* level. If there's a 4* version of those abilities it'll probably compare even worse.

Arondite

Phantron wrote:

The value of a skill is supposed change depending on how much match it took to use it but Repulsor Punch does not. That's its drawback. If you use 9 AP it's 630 damage/AP. It you use 30 AP it's still 630 damage/AP, even though a 30 red AP, if one exists, should pretty much kill everyone on the other team. If you have say, 15 red AP, it'll do ~10K damage, but TBTI is 14 red AP and will usually do more damage depending on the team setup and give you minor strike tiles. If you have 11 red AP it does ~7000 damage, but 11 black AP pretty much always does 7000 damage with Surgical Strike and it creates a significant cascade and that's probably the easiest skill to compare to. Now at 9 red AP there are very few skills that are as good. This is because the difference between 9 (3 match) and 10 (4 matches) is huge, so it is an incredibly powerful 9 red AP skill but it's fairly average if not underpowered for 10-12 AP range and it's very weak in the 13+ range. So whether it's good depends on how often you can use it at under 5 matches and ideally, exactly 3 matches. At 5 matches you've to compare it to stuff like Full Blast or Righteous Uppercut and it doesn't really compare well to those abilities at all and that's just 3* level. If there's a 4* version of those abilities it'll probably compare even worse.

IMO, they should've copy-pasted Ares' Green with Iron Man's numbers. If this were 690/AP, Min=6 Red this would be a top tier skill.

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The value of a skill is supposed change depending on how much match it took to use it but Repulsor Punch does not. That's its drawback. If you use 9 AP it's 630 damage/AP. It you use 30 AP it's still 630 damage/AP, even though a 30 red AP, if one exists, should pretty much kill everyone on the other team. If you have say, 15 red AP, it'll do ~10K damage, but TBTI is 14 red AP and will usually do more damage depending on the team setup and give you minor strike tiles. If you have 11 red AP it does ~7000 damage, but 11 black AP pretty much always does 7000 damage with Surgical Strike and it creates a significant cascade and that's probably the easiest skill to compare to. Now at 9 red AP there are very few skills that are as good. This is because the difference between 9 (3 match) and 10 (4 matches) is huge, so it is an incredibly powerful 9 red AP skill but it's fairly average if not underpowered for 10-12 AP range and it's very weak in the 13+ range. So whether it's good depends on how often you can use it at under 5 matches and ideally, exactly 3 matches. At 5 matches you've to compare it to stuff like Full Blast or Righteous Uppercut and it doesn't really compare well to those abilities at all and that's just 3* level. If there's a 4* version of those abilities it'll probably compare even worse.

IMO, they should've copy-pasted Ares' Green with Iron Man's numbers. If this were 690/AP, Min=6 Red this would be a top tier skill.

It is a top tier skill.

It's just a very boring one, on a character with two other skills that are also very boring. This is the least unique feeling 4* of all imo. Just red onslaught and two very limited red producers. The numbers are just too good to ignore, unfortunately.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The value of a skill is supposed change depending on how much match it took to use it but Repulsor Punch does not. That's its drawback. If you use 9 AP it's 630 damage/AP. It you use 30 AP it's still 630 damage/AP, even though a 30 red AP, if one exists, should pretty much kill everyone on the other team. If you have say, 15 red AP, it'll do ~10K damage, but TBTI is 14 red AP and will usually do more damage depending on the team setup and give you minor strike tiles. If you have 11 red AP it does ~7000 damage, but 11 black AP pretty much always does 7000 damage with Surgical Strike and it creates a significant cascade and that's probably the easiest skill to compare to. Now at 9 red AP there are very few skills that are as good. This is because the difference between 9 (3 match) and 10 (4 matches) is huge, so it is an incredibly powerful 9 red AP skill but it's fairly average if not underpowered for 10-12 AP range and it's very weak in the 13+ range. So whether it's good depends on how often you can use it at under 5 matches and ideally, exactly 3 matches. At 5 matches you've to compare it to stuff like Full Blast or Righteous Uppercut and it doesn't really compare well to those abilities at all and that's just 3* level. If there's a 4* version of those abilities it'll probably compare even worse.

This is the 4* version of those skills.

Look at xforce's green. The days of 4* powers being significantly superior to 3*s are over.

Unknown

ArkPrime wrote:

This is the 4* version of those skills.

Look at xforce's green. The days of 4* powers being significantly superior to 3*s are over.

I checked the numbers and both Righteous Uppercut and Full Blast are pretty much around 600 damage/AP and they're on the low end of 5 match (13 AP) so if a hypothetical 13 AP 4* skill exists it'll probably be slightly better. Given that Repulsor Punch at 10-12 AP definitely loses out to top tier 4 match 4* moves (but is still pretty average since some 4 match moves still suck) this trend should continue to a hypothetical 5 match move. Of course that's not really much of a drawback since those are all still very good moves and you obviously try to use Repulsor Punch on as low AP as possible unless you need the extra punch to down someone, and in that case you don't care about wasting some AP.

He reminds me a lot of The Punisher during his era. There's nothing outright broken about him but he just did everything slightly better than anyone else, so that makes him the best of his era. Like you said he's got boring skills but his boring skills have bigger numbers than anything comparable, not by a broken margin but bigger is still always better.

Mawtful

Phantron wrote:

The value of a skill is supposed change depending on how much match it took to use it but Repulsor Punch does not. That's its drawback. If you use 9 AP it's 630 damage/AP. It you use 30 AP it's still 630 damage/AP, even though a 30 red AP, if one exists, should pretty much kill everyone on the other team. If you have say, 15 red AP, it'll do ~10K damage, but TBTI is 14 red AP and will usually do more damage depending on the team setup and give you minor strike tiles. If you have 11 red AP it does ~7000 damage, but 11 black AP pretty much always does 7000 damage with Surgical Strike and it creates a significant cascade and that's probably the easiest skill to compare to. Now at 9 red AP there are very few skills that are as good. This is because the difference between 9 (3 match) and 10 (4 matches) is huge, so it is an incredibly powerful 9 red AP skill but it's fairly average if not underpowered for 10-12 AP range and it's very weak in the 13+ range. So whether it's good depends on how often you can use it at under 5 matches and ideally, exactly 3 matches. At 5 matches you've to compare it to stuff like Full Blast or Righteous Uppercut and it doesn't really compare well to those abilities at all and that's just 3* level. If there's a 4* version of those abilities it'll probably compare even worse.

Full Blast (Visor Off) deals 8171 damage and Cyke is stunned. It has a damage:ap ratio of ~628.
Righteous Uppercut (2 allies standing) deals 7141. It has an ap ratio of ~549.
A 13 AP Repulsor Punch will deal 8190 damage; with no self stun, and regardless of how many allies are still standing. Obviously, it has an ap ratio of 630.

I'd say that compares pretty well, really. Except, of course, for being on a 4* instead of a 3* character. However, perhaps that should be the sort of comparison we need to be making at the moment. Surgical Strike has better damage output and ap ratio, and has good cascade potential. Smite with 5 charged tiles out (from Power Surge) deals only 7650 and realistically cost you 19 AP, so its ratio is stupidly poor.

I see Repulsor Punch as (hopefully) being the new "baseline" ability. It's straight up pay X, get Y with an obvious damage:ap ratio and no funny business or strings attached. It only has one lever to modify if it's too strong or too weak, and so I would expect that it should become the measuring stick for other damaging abilities.

Dauthi

Mawtful wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The value of a skill is supposed change depending on how much match it took to use it but Repulsor Punch does not. That's its drawback. If you use 9 AP it's 630 damage/AP. It you use 30 AP it's still 630 damage/AP, even though a 30 red AP, if one exists, should pretty much kill everyone on the other team. If you have say, 15 red AP, it'll do ~10K damage, but TBTI is 14 red AP and will usually do more damage depending on the team setup and give you minor strike tiles. If you have 11 red AP it does ~7000 damage, but 11 black AP pretty much always does 7000 damage with Surgical Strike and it creates a significant cascade and that's probably the easiest skill to compare to. Now at 9 red AP there are very few skills that are as good. This is because the difference between 9 (3 match) and 10 (4 matches) is huge, so it is an incredibly powerful 9 red AP skill but it's fairly average if not underpowered for 10-12 AP range and it's very weak in the 13+ range. So whether it's good depends on how often you can use it at under 5 matches and ideally, exactly 3 matches. At 5 matches you've to compare it to stuff like Full Blast or Righteous Uppercut and it doesn't really compare well to those abilities at all and that's just 3* level. If there's a 4* version of those abilities it'll probably compare even worse.

Full Blast (Visor Off) deals 8171 damage and Cyke is stunned. It has a damage:ap ratio of ~628.
Righteous Uppercut (2 allies standing) deals 7141. It has an ap ratio of ~549.
A 13 AP Repulsor Punch will deal 8190 damage; with no self stun, and regardless of how many allies are still standing. Obviously, it has an ap ratio of 630.

I'd say that compares pretty well, really. Except, of course, for being on a 4* instead of a 3* character. However, perhaps that should be the sort of comparison we need to be making at the moment. Surgical Strike has better damage output and ap ratio, and has good cascade potential. Smite with 5 charged tiles out (from Power Surge) deals only 7650 and realistically cost you 19 AP, so its ratio is stupidly poor.

I see Repulsor Punch as (hopefully) being the new "baseline" ability. It's straight up pay X, get Y with an obvious damage:ap ratio and no funny business or strings attached. It only has one lever to modify if it's too strong or too weak, and so I would expect that it should become the measuring stick for other damaging abilities.

Ah, you beat me to it . Would also like to note that Cyclops has to have 10 reds on the board too to even do that much damage.

Not only does Repulsor punch have no drawbacks, the fact that it is pay X means you can always kill one target rather than harm them, and there is little waste. It has a boon while the other skills that have similar damage/ap ratios have drawbacks.

Then if we step back and see that the character generates ridiculous amounts of red AP AND has the second highest HP in the game... yeah, he is pretty strong. It's the damage dealer 4*s were waiting for.

Unknown

Repulsor Punch's all or nothing property is not strictly beneficial. You're going to run into a scenario where you have 12-15 red AP and a guy that's wounded but still has 5K HP that makes it awfully hard to decide who to target first. With anyone else you'd just use whatever your ability is once and save up the rest for a second use of the ability. Keep in mind that the rotating buffed character thing is coming back which means you should expect to see guys with low and even mid teens thousands of HPs which will make it a lot harder to decide who to focus on first. It's not a significant drawback but it's definitely going to impact you at some point. Even with Onslaught you'll notice there are times you have to overkill someone and waste some green AP and that has a threshold of 5 (or 6 AP under most realistic configuration). I'm guessing it has a very good ratio because of this drawback. I don't know if it's enough to matter without seeing him in action.

simonsez

Dauthi wrote:

Does everyone think his red is bad?

No, my comments started as a response to notamutant's gameplay video, in which he's using IMHB to generate red for LCap. I wouldn't have gone this way myself, but after seeing it in action, it does seem better than using IMHB's red. Doesn't make it "bad" though.

simonsez

gamar wrote:

I cannot fathom a single reason anyone would build him anything but 553, or why anyone would "waste" a character by pairing him with Steve/Torch/Cyclops when their reds are only a marginal improvement over his own

Citing 3*s with a "marginally better" ability than a 4*'s nuke, isn't really a ringing endorsement for the 4*

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Does everyone think his red is bad?

No, my comments started as a response to notamutant's gameplay video, in which he's using IMHB to generate red for LCap. I wouldn't have gone this way myself, but after seeing it in action, it does seem better than using IMHB's red. Doesn't make it "bad" though.

You're still going to use Hulkbuster's red for the last guy. LCap's red is just good in term of sustained damage every 3 turns beyond an attack tile. Actually Elektra's red could be as good as it goes off every turn.

Comparison with Hulkbuster's strikes:
8 AP - 3 turns of Ballet of Death
1247 + 708 = 1955 dmg a turn
1955 X 3 = 5865 dmg every 3 turns

Cap 11-AP Shield
4031 + 708 = 4739 dmg every 3 turns

Elektra's is one match less, so you can get it out sooner, and it doesn't need 1AP maintenance. However, you lose the single tile override and the return red AP, and the placement is not always the best. Further, multiple ballets of death proc together, whereas Steve's shield procs for every hit. Add to that the loss of yellow damage (assuming you're using IF), and Steve wins out most of the time, an exception being a match against another Hulkbuster. This also assume you build a 5 red Elektra, which isn't as common either.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

gamar wrote:

I cannot fathom a single reason anyone would build him anything but 553, or why anyone would "waste" a character by pairing him with Steve/Torch/Cyclops when their reds are only a marginal improvement over his own

Citing 3*s with a "marginally better" ability than a 4*'s nuke, isn't really a ringing endorsement for the 4*

That wasn't an endorsement for Hulkbuster, merely saying that doubling up on great single-target-damage reds is a waste when you would do better to pair Hulkbuster with someone who can add a lot more to the team

But since you brought it up, HT Torch have very pushed Reds, their reds are the premiere top single-target damage abilities in 3* land and the reason you use those characters at all

Those abilities being only slightly better than the 4*s SECONDARY ability (Overdrive being overwhelmingly his best ability) is definitely a ringing endorsement

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The value of a skill is supposed change depending on how much match it took to use it but Repulsor Punch does not. That's its drawback. If you use 9 AP it's 630 damage/AP. It you use 30 AP it's still 630 damage/AP, even though a 30 red AP, if one exists, should pretty much kill everyone on the other team. If you have say, 15 red AP, it'll do ~10K damage, but TBTI is 14 red AP and will usually do more damage depending on the team setup and give you minor strike tiles. If you have 11 red AP it does ~7000 damage, but 11 black AP pretty much always does 7000 damage with Surgical Strike and it creates a significant cascade and that's probably the easiest skill to compare to. Now at 9 red AP there are very few skills that are as good. This is because the difference between 9 (3 match) and 10 (4 matches) is huge, so it is an incredibly powerful 9 red AP skill but it's fairly average if not underpowered for 10-12 AP range and it's very weak in the 13+ range. So whether it's good depends on how often you can use it at under 5 matches and ideally, exactly 3 matches. At 5 matches you've to compare it to stuff like Full Blast or Righteous Uppercut and it doesn't really compare well to those abilities at all and that's just 3* level. If there's a 4* version of those abilities it'll probably compare even worse.

But it doesn't make sense to evaluate a skill for each individual use of the skill. Repulsor Punch is a 9 AP skill that does 630/AP and its modality is a bonus (yes I get that there could be some "wasted" AP from overkill but in that case it would compare exactly the same as Righteous Uppercut: both give you One Dead Opponent). An ability that has options associated with it is always greater than the sum of its parts, even if one (or both!) of its modes are only average

Unknown

daibar wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Does everyone think his red is bad?

No, my comments started as a response to notamutant's gameplay video, in which he's using IMHB to generate red for LCap. I wouldn't have gone this way myself, but after seeing it in action, it does seem better than using IMHB's red. Doesn't make it "bad" though.

You're still going to use Hulkbuster's red for the last guy. LCap's red is just good in term of sustained damage every 3 turns beyond an attack tile. Actually Elektra's red could be as good as it goes off every turn.

Comparison with Hulkbuster's strikes:
8 AP - 3 turns of Ballet of Death
1247 + 708 = 1955 dmg a turn
1955 X 3 = 5865 dmg every 3 turns

Cap 11-AP Shield
4031 + 708 = 4739 dmg every 3 turns

Elektra's is one match less, so you can get it out sooner, and it doesn't need 1AP maintenance. However, you lose the single tile override and the return red AP, and the placement is not always the best. Further, multiple ballets of death proc together, whereas Steve's shield procs for every hit. Add to that the loss of yellow damage (assuming you're using IF), and Steve wins out most of the time, an exception being a match against another Hulkbuster. This also assume you build a 5 red Elektra, which isn't as common either.

I'd say the trap is too vulnerable to Buster's to be a really good outlet. Plus you will never use her black which is her best ability. And at a consistent 630 damage per AP Buster's red is good enough on it's own. Even LCap needs his shield to rebound twice before he gets above this number.

Best Partner to Buster might be L.Thor. Solid / with built in synergy plus you can add green tiles to convert to red if needed. KK would aslo work, with / synergy and match damage on yellow, but then you need someone with a yellow ability and those are rare.

Unknown

I think blasting is a little incorrect. Crashing in may be more accurate

Malcrof

Bigtaf wrote:

I think blasting is a little incorrect. Crashing in may be more accurate

Did you see his red ability?