early Ultron thoughts

Unknown

You got to keep the special tiles at some exact number (5? 6?) to not trigger the convert to crit (if more than 7 I think) and Swarm (if 5 or less). I find it's easier to just try to kill the guys that do Swarm and then you can go on trying to destroy the special tiles as fast as you can. The 'convert to 2 crit' ability is really powerful, and kind of shows why Fist of Fury would've been pretty overpowered if can convert 2 crits.

The difficulty of the Ultron Sentries seem so high that I don't see how any scaling with them could possibly make sense. Somebody's going to be screwed here for sure. Well, you're usually not at a significant risk of losing to them, but getting out of a fight with your health intact seems pretty much impossible. Maybe Kamala would be useful here, except I'm still waiting for the Iso 8 cost to go down...

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

You got to keep the special tiles at some exact number (5? 6?) to not trigger the convert to crit (if more than 7 I think) and Swarm (if 5 or less). I find it's easier to just try to kill the guys that do Swarm and then you can go on trying to destroy the special tiles as fast as you can. The 'convert to 2 crit' ability is really powerful, and kind of shows why Fist of Fury would've been pretty overpowered if can convert 2 crits.

The difficulty of the Ultron Sentries seem so high that I don't see how any scaling with them could possibly make sense. Somebody's going to be screwed here for sure. Well, you're usually not at a significant risk of losing to them, but getting out of a fight with your health intact seems pretty much impossible. Maybe Kamala would be useful here, except I'm still waiting for the Iso 8 cost to go down...

Im using Patch and LDaken on every fight of this event, havent been taken down to 50% at any given time, and then I can just go to another PvE node and heal back up.

Vhailorx

so far cage/lazy cap/ X has been ok against the sentries (into round 3 now).

But whenever the sentries level up high enough to outstrip cage's 1 protect tile, it will get pretty ugly clearing those survival nodes.

DFiPL

The Sentry Gunner might be juuuuuuuuuust a little OP. I've been able to clear the survival nodes so far, but that Core Meltdown getting spammed three turns in a row effin' HURTS.

I also notice that the "Swarm" mechanic for Flyers works for EACH FLYER each turn. So I've had some survival nodes where Swarm is proc'ing 2-3x each turn. Ow.

CrookedKnight

Whatever that Destroy Server passive is that they have on the sentries now is totally OP. Nerf plz.

chris0001

Wouldn't know can't get into game to play! Been over 2.75 hours at this point!

Vhailorx

Clearly demiurge has realized that many recent changes and newly introduced characters have favored a static board, special tile dependant, playstyle.

Ultron in all his forms basically seems to be declaring open season on player special tiles.

So far it seems like characters that (1) don't rely on special tiles (e.g. lazy thor, kk, ), or (2) characters that get free, powerful special tiles (cage, iron fist) are a better strategy for this event.

spccrain

It may just be because of the novelty of the event (and the fact that I'm not locked out) but I love this! It's challenging (past the first 2 Ultrons), requires more strategy than your normal match experience, and promotes character variety quite well. This is how a character release should be (*cough* servers pending *cough*) it should be up to your teamwork to get new covers not up to how many hours of sleep you would like to get over a 1 week period. More of this please! Also more servers...

MarvelMan

This would all be REALLY helpful info.....if I could play. Already over THREE hours of "check internet connection" and/or blank events. This is AWESOME. Best. Event. Ever.

babinro

I'm a big fan of all aspects of this PvE save for the following:

1) The event is very poorly explained.
I've figured out most if not all of it but there was a lot of confusion on what's going on with the 2 subs and why some people who just started the event did so at Round 2 or 3+ without having fought a battle.

2) Sentries are a mess.
There's just WAY too much going on with these guys. Each turn you seemingly have 2-4 special tiles flooding the board. Crits generating around the board AND they get to take turns to boot. The matches are challenging, sure...but not for the RIGHT REASONS.

There's zero skill involved as the player. I can't tactically approach these battles. Simply choose which enemy I want to focus fire and trigger my skills. Trying to actively counter their actions is pointless because a tile match containing 1 special enemy tile will just lead to another 1+ entering play.

You might as well have Sentry casting his green skill every 3 turns and it would have the same impact. Namely, forget about what's happening and just focus fire while hoping for the best.

Ultron himself on the other hand is AWESOME!
He's far too easy early on but you have a clear goal here and one you can plan towards. There's got to be a balance between these two extremes where the sentries can fit in.

Bottom Line: VERY pleased with the event itself (massive server connection issues aside). Just those two nagging issues that could offer a better experience to the player. It'd be nice to have a challenge without it feeling 'cheap'.

Unknown

Ultron 1: 75k HP; 6k per fight
Ultron 2: 150k HP, 8k per fight
Ultron 3: 400k HP, 10k per fight
Ultron 4: 1.000k HP, 13k per fight

Three fights against each one alredy fill that round's progeressive rewards (last being 25hp).

CrookedKnight

I think the Sentries are very well designed as a way to counter the usual method of dealing with survival battles - namely, you get special tiles in hard-to-reach parts of the board, build them up, and neutralize whatever the enemy goons place (often with Falcon or LCap). The Sentries shake the board so much and give you so many special tiles to worry about that those strategies become much less useful, and instead you have to focus on quick attacks and, likely, healing.

Also alpha-striking the tinykitty out of those Swarming green jerks.

Unknown

My biggest worries are gainst the blue sentries because of the critial tiles they make. While I can usually heal enough to keep on positive HP every round with Patch-LDaken, those criticals leading to cascades and more criticals end this balance.

Unknown

I think the sentries are very well designed to counter the usual method of playing match 3 games, namely, the crashing the servers. This is a less grindy pve than normal though. It is hard to grind when you can't get online.

Unknown

Server Issues aside, I love this event and agree that there should be more of them using other bigtime baddies (Thanos, Galactus, etc...)

The Sentries are a pain, but they are making me use heroes I rarely used before like Daredevil and Capt Marvel just because they can handle larger amounts of special tiles than Falcon can. And I'm not complaining about that. It means I have to put more thought and strategy into my team builds to make things work and to me that just makes for a better game. I actually have a reason to have these people on my roster outside of the occasional required event.

Iron Fist works great against Vanilla Ultron, since his green just keeps coming back. 3* Torch has been great against him too so far with his low cost/high damage ability

Grocket works really well against the sentry nodes since he has healing plus a board shake that can knock out some of those tiles.

slidecage

they need to make these 4 hour locks or something I mean 8 hours is just Way too long for these events. ALSO the ranking are way too high. I can grind in normal PVE and get 2 covers easy. The covers this time

1 cover rank 100+
2 covers rank 140+
3 covers rank 180+

and that is if the ranks dont go higher

Unknown

spccrain wrote:

It may just be because of the novelty of the event (and the fact that I'm not locked out) but I love this! It's challenging (past the first 2 Ultrons), requires more strategy than your normal match experience, and promotes character variety quite well. This is how a character release should be (*cough* servers pending *cough*) it should be up to your teamwork to get new covers not up to how many hours of sleep you would like to get over a 1 week period. More of this please! Also more servers...

Funny you'd mention that. The few Ultron fights I had, I was really contemplating my moves. Weighing match fours vs. clearing "bad" tiles vs. building AP vs. considering each of my heroes' highest damage moves...

Pretty cool, all in all.

DBC

GrumpySmurf1002

slidecage wrote:

they need to make these 4 hour locks or something I mean 8 hours is just Way too long for these events. ALSO the ranking are way too high. I can grind in normal PVE and get 2 covers easy. The covers this time

1 cover rank 100+
2 covers rank 140+
3 covers rank 180+

and that is if the ranks dont go higher

In the Gauntlet PvE, you also get 3 total covers, and the levels are at minimum no worse if not slightly harder than these. 140 isn't really all that much worse than DDQ right now, which is around 120-130 by the end.

donietsche

I love it, great event!

Maybe a bit repetitive in the long run, but it's definitely a huge improvement of the classic PVE format.

And for the first time IW is not warming the bench... Suzie says "thanks, devs!".

SnagglePuss

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

In the Gauntlet PvE, you also get 3 total covers, and the levels are at minimum no worse if not slightly harder than these. 140 isn't really all that much worse than DDQ right now, which is around 120-130 by the end.

Difference is in DDQ most people have enough AP saved to wipe out the last/2nd wave without them even registering a move.
Here you only get that time when there is one sentry left.