**** Carnage (Cletus Kasady) ****

TxMoose

not surprising - they gave great synergy to thor/loki and wolverine/daken (great synergy in the ** range, but still rainbow match damage and good synergy in the ***). that is one of the parts of the game I think they get right - character planning like that.

CrookedKnight

The difference between Carnage's red and Supernova is that Carnage's backlash only hits his allies. As long as you can keep shuffling in new non-Carnage teammates he's sustainable. And of course it doesn't hurt that his best teammate, Hulkbuster, is a megatank and can stand up to the red for a while.

ZeiramMR

I agree with everyone else that his red Scythes should be toned down.

One thing I don't think I have seen people say is that generating attack tiles for the enemy team makes him a counter for Iron Fist. For those of us who only end up with a few Carnage covers, I can see him as a Simulator/Gauntlet specialist against over-leveled Iron Fist.

Unknown

TxMoose wrote:

not surprising - they gave great synergy to thor/loki and wolverine/daken (great synergy in the ** range, but still rainbow match damage and good synergy in the ***). that is one of the parts of the game I think they get right - character planning like that.

Correct, the only problem is, Wovl/Daken and Thor/Loki have worked together in the past successfully. I don't remember a time win Carnage and Spidey were on the same team?

Malcrof

traedoril wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

not surprising - they gave great synergy to thor/loki and wolverine/daken (great synergy in the ** range, but still rainbow match damage and good synergy in the ***). that is one of the parts of the game I think they get right - character planning like that.

Correct, the only problem is, Wovl/Daken and Thor/Loki have worked together in the past successfully. I don't remember a time win Carnage and Spidey were on the same team?

http://www.newsarama.com/22963-spider-m ... xis-8.html

Pylgrim

sweet catch! Now, if they made Spidey's heal at least 4 AP cheaper, it wouldn't be such a **** ability.

Malcrof

Pylgrim wrote:

sweet catch! Now, if they made Spidey's heal at least 4 AP cheaper, it wouldn't be such a **** ability.

Won't allow me to upvote you.

Carnage, Spider, KK would make a great team to play (the AI would screw it up though), KK's heals on top of spidey's cheap blue and his yellow heal, would allow you to survive the match easily.. if they could just get the AI to use Kamala's green instead of Carnage's.. but either way, this would be a neat trio.

I fully intend on trying it out in the Shield Sim in about a year when i have Carnage fully covered.

Or at least 5/5/0 lol

snlf25

As he stands he looks like suicide to use and an instant skip when opposing. This one I want nothing to do with as is but I still need some 3* Magneto covers so I'll play it a little and see if I can pull those off.

OnesOwnGrief

Malcrof wrote:

traedoril wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

not surprising - they gave great synergy to thor/loki and wolverine/daken (great synergy in the ** range, but still rainbow match damage and good synergy in the ***). that is one of the parts of the game I think they get right - character planning like that.

Correct, the only problem is, Wovl/Daken and Thor/Loki have worked together in the past successfully. I don't remember a time win Carnage and Spidey were on the same team?

http://www.newsarama.com/22963-spider-m ... xis-8.html

Don't forget this was also during the "Inversion" spell that left a few people backwards and he died during this arc.

Smith13

Seriously stoked about this one. Maximum Carnage was one of my favorite games on Super Nintendo, looking forward to collecting and leveling this cover!

Unknown

Ugh, that icon is terribad. Like it hurts my eyes to look at bad. It looks like an 8 bit reject from an old spiderman game.

dkffiv

After some initial play with a 5/3/5 he isn't that fun. Against 250s he feels slower and more of a liability than Hulkbuster

Red: Good but I was having trouble getting more than 2 or 3 off. Without a red enabler the board goes dry. When enemies have 20k hp the 2k aoe doesn't do much

Green: Was dealing 4k on average I think, hit for 7k when there were a ton of tiles. Very similar to Xforce green prenerf.

Black: This is where the problem lies. You get off an early red or two then you spend like 10 turns gathering AP to do a finisher. During this time the ai gets off a move or two and both sides are taking 2k a turn from attack tiles. It's like giving both sides an Iron fist. Attack damage goes so high that even Cage doesn't help that much. With the game slowing down both sides take a ton of damage from this.

For a deterrent 5/5/3 is probably the way to go.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

After some initial play with a 5/3/5 he isn't that fun. Against 250s he feels slower and more of a liability than Hulkbuster

Red: Good but I was having trouble getting more than 2 or 3 off. Without a red enabler the board goes dry. When enemies have 20k hp the 2k aoe doesn't do much

Green: Was dealing 4k on average I think, hit for 7k when there were a ton of tiles. Very similar to Xforce green prenerf.

Black: This is where the problem lies. You get off an early red or two then you spend like 10 turns gathering AP to do a finisher. During this time the ai gets off a move or two and both sides are taking 2k a turn from attack tiles. It's like giving both sides an Iron fist. Attack damage goes so high that even Cage doesn't help that much. With the game slowing down both sides take a ton of damage from this.

For a deterrent 5/5/3 is probably the way to go.

Said so.

This guy isn't good. He's like a 4* blade- steady damage that builds up over time. Nobody wants a 4* blade. 4*s are good for their nukes. I know people keep saying he's a deterrent because he will almost always cause a lot of damage to everyone, but we've always had Sentry for that, and nobody uses him.

Buret0

dkffiv wrote:

For a deterrent 5/5/3 is probably the way to go.

Boom. I voted 5/5/3 even before they adjusted/nerfjusted his Green.

There's lots of other Green powers I'd use before a Jug/Doc Oc style board shake for that amount of AP and the whole point is to speed up the battles, which a massive uptick in per turn damage from black will do.

Buret0

dkffiv wrote:

After some initial play with a 5/3/5 he isn't that fun. Against 250s he feels slower and more of a liability than Hulkbuster

Red: Good but I was having trouble getting more than 2 or 3 off. Without a red enabler the board goes dry. When enemies have 20k hp the 2k aoe doesn't do much

Yeah, but why aren't you bringing in someone to accelerate red?

Unknown

Don't know that it's worth the time to fix on your blog post, but Carnage didn't debut in 1963

dkffiv

His green is good, it's just that the ai won't use it properly. If you intend to play him 5/3/5 is better but if he's just a scarecrow 5/5/3 is better. It's like 355 or 535 Sentry.

He can chew through low hp targets but if both sides have 30-60k life you're going to end up with your entire team sub 50%. With Kamala and Cage I could usually end the match with only 20% damage taken per character but even that isn't great. If targets have hp, he isn't really that fast

Buret0

dkffiv wrote:

His green is good, it's just that the ai won't use it properly. If you intend to play him 5/3/5 is better but if he's just a scarecrow 5/5/3 is better. It's like 355 or 535 Sentry.

He can chew through low hp targets but if both sides have 30-60k life you're going to end up with your entire team sub 50%. With Kamala and Cage I could usually end the match with only 20% damage taken per character but even that isn't great. If targets have hp, he isn't really that fast

If I were using him on Offense, there's quite a few team configurations that you could use.

Hulkbuster is the best red feeder in the game, he can take the Carnage AoE damage, and his strike tiles will be a big boost to attack tile damage and match damage.
KK can heal the team every time Hulkbuster feeds or Carnage hits (and she is going to be able to keep the AoE damage going with her Green).
She Hulk for her AP drain and her ability to steal and buff the attack tiles you give the enemy (over and over).
Daredevil for his ability to stun and blow up the enemy special tiles (too bad his ambush is red... then again, since you will be chasing red a lot, you will be able to set off an ambush fairly often).
Luke Cage for his match damage protection (but will soon be overwhelmed by the attack tiles) and his active yellow.
Falcon is interesting, since he creates protect tiles, deals with opponent tiles, and will be boosting the strength of your own tiles... but he's a bit squishy if you are facing 20K health opponents.

AP Drain is tough with this team because they are all squishy and aren't going to survive the AoE, so against those really big 20K health opponents, Carnage might not be as good of an option as Hulkbuster on Offense (but much better on D).

dkffiv

The problem is every ability cast creates even more tiles. She Hulk blue steals 2, then creates 2 for you and 2 for the enemy. Same thing with Carnage's green, you destroy a bunch then you create 4 more. Once the damage starts up its really hard to mitigate - you can force the enemy team to take more than you do but you still take a ton of damage. Daredevil doesn't work and Cyclops isn't great, anything under 10k HP is only good for a single match.

He's absolutely terrible in PvE, you want your team to have equal or more HP than your opponent so you can wear them down by attrition - terrible against overscaled opponents.

Daken / Kingpin / Carnage is rainbow with some true heal / tankiness but it feels really slow. His matches take forever and all it succeeds in doing is making sure both teams die.

Carnage (345) / Hulkbuster (350) / Cyclops (3/5/5 build level 166) vs. 329 Moonstone / Ares / Venom, with full boosts I managed to win in under 3 minutes.

Waited til I had enough for Overdrive, then Mutant Revolutionary into 2 or 3 Scythes in a row. Spent a few more turns gathering and got off another Scythe, killed them before they could use any abilities (other than a Symbiote Snare). 58,911 damage dealt but Cyclops died from the AoE (9,265) and Hulkbuster was down to 7300 life (about 15700 damage).

25k life to deal 59k damage.

Hulkbuster/IF/Cyclops I managed to beat the same team in under 2 minutes taking 500 damage on IF, 600 on Cyclops, 5k on Hulkbuster. 6.1k total damage taken 33-50% faster.

Phaserhawk

I totally agree with you guys about the 5/5/3 vs. 5/3/5 I just have so much problem using 5 covers in black. I mean it's 24 extra dmg per tile from 3 to 5, vs. 4 extra tiles destroyed, higher cascade and more potential damage with green.

I guess if it's a spam fest of skills then that 24 starts to add up. But that' also what makes green insane, if you and the AI fire off about 3-4 skills each, you have 12-16 tiles on that board and now green is looking to do some more damage. I don't know, I could go either way on this.

Essentially green is
Lvl 3--15% chance of destroying a special tile for 452 dmg
Lvl 4--18.7% chance and 560 dmg
Lvl 5--25% change and 651

Vs.

Black
Lvl 3--206 dmg per turn after skill used
Lvl 4--228 dmg per turn after skill used
Lvl 5--274 dmg per turn after skill used

Black increases by 33% dmg. Green increases by 44% dmg and increases effectiveness by 60%

Assuming no tiles destroyed before green going off, and each team has 3 skills fired there are 12 tiles on board. For each one of those turns this is what black has done
Lvl3--206+618+2060=2884
Lvl4--228+684+2280=3192
Lvl5--274+822+2740=3836

again this is all best scenario--Now I fire green with 12 tiles on the board

Lvl3--851 + cascade
Lvl4--1260 + cascade
Lvl5--1953 + cascade

In this type of scenario 5/3/5 does slightly more damage, but it's not much.

Basically the more special tiles out the stronger 5/3/5 is, the less 5/5/3. There doesn't really appear to be any "best build" Honestly this guy reminds me a lot of Human Torch. 5 red and the rest doesn't matter.

Essentially it comes down to a ratio--162/24==6.75 or round up 7

162 is 25% of 651 which is what the real damage. So for every special tile out on the board with 5 green you should do roughly 162 dmg per tile. You need to have 7 procs of level 5 attack tiles to mitigate that. So those black can really add up quickly, or perhaps not at all.

Even after crunching all the numbers I don't think there is a best build. I do know 5/4/4 is not good compared to the others so basically go 5/3/5 or 5/5/3 and you're golden. But you want to pair Carnage with a strong black user so that leaves you with

Hulkbuster
XForce
KingPin
Black Panther
Blade
Cyclops
Doctor Doom
etc.

I see Hulkbuster, X-Force and KingPin being the goto's Hulkbuster makes Carnage 5/5/3 make more sense as well as with X-Force, King Ping I sorta think 5/3/5 especially if you King Pin is 5/3/5