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

dkffiv

ArkPrime wrote:

patch and daken are so tiny now, though. I only throw zerker rage around when i have groot tanking.

I don't know, Carnage just feels so wasteful. I feel like I'll be cringing a lot every time I use him.

On easy nodes a quick red will end the match and patch/daken are just about the only ones who can take the hit.

Doc Oc sorta works well with him but you wouldn't want to use Carnage's green unless its a finisher since the majority of tiles should be yours (making Doc's green superior). Missing yellow purple black so Kingpin would fit, the problem is its a team tailored around Carnage that isn't anywhere close to being a top tier team.

The problem is that his black doesn't generate tiles that are significantly stronger than your opponents so its a wash. Even at 5 covers his black is barely 50% stronger than the ones you give your opponents. At least with Patch you hold off on using his ability until either the opponent gets fewer tiles generated or you can immediately match a few of them away. The old She Hulk blue used to give you 3x stronger tiles than your opponent. The attack tiles appear immediately after an ability cast so your opponent gets first usage on the new tiles after they cast an ability.

His red is decent but really hurts your own team badly and is not worth using in a lot of situations (if your team is alive and the opponent is down to 1 its generally not worth using unless you absolutely must win immediately, questionable if the opponent is down to 2 characters), his green is pretty good but deals a random amount of damage and is moderately expensive (and not worth using in some situations if you have more tiles than your opponent) and his black helps your opponent as much as it helps you, so its like he only really has 2 mediocre abilities.

Remember if you bring a Carnage to fight another Carnage you're going to be generating ~400 worth of attack tiles every abilities for both sides. If he's buffed its 500+ depending if they have more than 3 covers.

simonsez

So is everyone now in agreement that the only use for this character is to put him in if you're looking to float and not get hit much? Seems like a pretty narrow niche for a 4* character. Or any character for that matter.

Unknown

Alien Instincts seems to generate attack tiles on any random basic tile (not color dependent). This makes it a much stronger move and not as easily counterable.

I didn't realize this at first, but he's a good counter to IF. His black creates an attack tile so you can destroy IF's attack tile, and take much less relative damage. Plus IF has relatively low health.

Another team I'd like to try for hopping:
Carnage/Cyclops/Xavier

Vhailorx

I still don't see am argument that this is a good character. This game charges real money to replenish health, and This is a character that has a lot ofbhwalth and puts out a ton of damage with the only real drawback being that the damage hurts your own team.

How does that not staight-up incentivize pay-to-win?

Unless he is just so bad as a character that not using him at all is best strategy (like thermal-nuclear war!). In which case he is still a terrible character because he's not worth playing in his own right. Yay another very expensive roster bench slot! It looks like a lose-lose from the player perspective.

Malcrof

They have to stay true to the character, not just make another "kills everything with no downside" 4*.. There are many ways to use him successfully, and many that can counter the team damage. Toss him with Spidey and KK (keep carnage at 5/5/0, so Kamala can use her green) and watch the heals come in and enemy die.

CrookedKnight

Vhailorx wrote:

I still don't see am argument that this is a good character. This game charges real money to replenish health, and This is a character that has a lot ofbhwalth and puts out a ton of damage with the only real drawback being that the damage hurts your own team.

How does that not staight-up incentivize pay-to-win?

Unless he is just so bad as a character that not using him at all is best strategy (like thermal-nuclear war!). In which case he is still a terrible character because he's not worth playing in his own right. Yay another very expensive roster bench slot! It looks like a lose-lose from the player perspective.

Because Carnage doesn't hurt himself with Symbiote Scythes, you can keep spamming his red forever as long as you have fresh teammates to throw into the meat grinder. Just make sure to set him up with Hulkbuster or Cyclops as your defensive team and nobody in their right mind will attack you.

john1620b

dkffiv or notamutant: can you test whether Invisibility blocks the team damage from Carnage's red ability? I would assume not since it's AoE, but you never know with this game.

If it works, it'd give at least a marginal reason to use Xavier or IW with him.

Vhailorx

CrookedKnight wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

I still don't see am argument that this is a good character. This game charges real money to replenish health, and This is a character that has a lot ofbhwalth and puts out a ton of damage with the only real drawback being that the damage hurts your own team.

How does that not staight-up incentivize pay-to-win?

Unless he is just so bad as a character that not using him at all is best strategy (like thermal-nuclear war!). In which case he is still a terrible character because he's not worth playing in his own right. Yay another very expensive roster bench slot! It looks like a lose-lose from the player perspective.

Because Carnage doesn't hurt himself with Symbiote Scythes, you can keep spamming his red forever as long as you have fresh teammates to throw into the meat grinder. Just make sure to set him up with Hulkbuster or Cyclops as your defensive team and nobody in their right mind will attack you.

We are on the same side here crookedknight, right?

My point is that EITHER carnage is good, in which case he is a pay-to-win machine for all the reasons you mention, OR, her is terrible, in which case we have a useless new HP sink to carry on rosters just for events when he is a pve essential.

Either way, the players lose.

CrookedKnight

Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I just think he's not even really pay-to-win in terms of health packs because he doesn't need you to heal his allies to keep going. Buy covers, collect points.

Vhailorx

CrookedKnight wrote:

Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I just think he's not even really pay-to-win in terms of health packs because he doesn't need you to heal his allies to keep going. Buy covers, collect points.

It's true that his red is sustainable. But unless you run 5/0/5, his black will pump out plenty of enemy attack tiles, so carnage will likely take a fair bit of damage in each match.

I like the concept of a passive that triggers whenever the enemy uses a power, that is an interesting counter toenemies with cheap abilities (i e daken), but I continue to think that carnage is a poor implementation of this idea.

Unknown

Is anyone excited to match him with KK? Every time he hits allies for damage she comes in and heals them. I can't wait.

dkffiv

john1620b wrote:

dkffiv or notamutant: can you test whether Invisibility blocks the team damage from Carnage's red ability? I would assume not since it's AoE, but you never know with this game.

If it works, it'd give at least a marginal reason to use Xavier or IW with him.

Invisibility does not block it as it is self damage + AoE damage. An invisible Juggernaut hurts himself with his own red.

Malcrof wrote:

They have to stay true to the character, not just make another "kills everything with no downside" 4*.. There are many ways to use him successfully, and many that can counter the team damage. Toss him with Spidey and KK (keep carnage at 5/5/0, so Kamala can use her green) and watch the heals come in and enemy die.

He's bad because his black and red help the enemy as much as they help your team. You never want to actively use him, the only reason you have him is so that he winds up on defense in PvP. The problem is "kills everything with no upside" 4*. Red is probably balanced as is but I would prefer for it to cost more and not kill your team as badly, high covers in black should create tiles that are at least twice as strong as your opponent's.

daibar wrote:

Alien Instincts seems to generate attack tiles on any random basic tile (not color dependent). This makes it a much stronger move and not as easily counterable.

I didn't realize this at first, but he's a good counter to IF. His black creates an attack tile so you can destroy IF's attack tile, and take much less relative damage. Plus IF has relatively low health.

Another team I'd like to try for hopping:
Carnage/Cyclops/Xavier

The problem is the tiles are nearly as strong for your opponent as they are for you and you can't match theirs away either. Its just a timer that drains 500-2000 life per turn for both sides.

Remember that if you down someone fast with him (like IF) then red becomes more of a liability because you end up taking more damage from his red splash than your opponent.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

john1620b wrote:

dkffiv or notamutant: can you test whether Invisibility blocks the team damage from Carnage's red ability? I would assume not since it's AoE, but you never know with this game.

If it works, it'd give at least a marginal reason to use Xavier or IW with him.

Invisibility does not block it as it is self damage + AoE damage. An invisible Juggernaut hurts himself with his own red.

Malcrof wrote:

They have to stay true to the character, not just make another "kills everything with no downside" 4*.. There are many ways to use him successfully, and many that can counter the team damage. Toss him with Spidey and KK (keep carnage at 5/5/0, so Kamala can use her green) and watch the heals come in and enemy die.

He's bad because his black and red help the enemy as much as they help your team. You never want to actively use him, the only reason you have him is so that he winds up on defense in PvP. The problem is "kills everything with no upside" 4*. Red is probably balanced as is but I would prefer for it to cost more and not kill your team as badly, high covers in black should create tiles that are at least twice as strong as your opponent's.

daibar wrote:

Alien Instincts seems to generate attack tiles on any random basic tile (not color dependent). This makes it a much stronger move and not as easily counterable.

I didn't realize this at first, but he's a good counter to IF. His black creates an attack tile so you can destroy IF's attack tile, and take much less relative damage. Plus IF has relatively low health.

Another team I'd like to try for hopping:
Carnage/Cyclops/Xavier

The problem is the tiles are nearly as strong for your opponent as they are for you and you can't match theirs away either. Its just a timer that drains 500-2000 life per turn for both sides.

Remember that if you down someone fast with him (like IF) then red becomes more of a liability because you end up taking more damage from his red splash than your opponent.

Interesting. So my question is: are we looking at our first purely defensive character in MPQ?

Unknown

If we ignore Dino

dfields3710

How about using invisible woman and professor x. They may not be immune to AoE damage but it helps conserve health packs and about every color is tanked and used. Plus massive damage from IW green and yellow while getting full effects of PX 5 match passive Think about it you get you can make it a very annoying day for any opponent

Vhailorx

My problem with this character design is that it really only a few possible outcomes.

(1) He does enough damage with enough speed to the enemy that the self damage is worth it. If this happens, then he becomes a pay-to-win machine where those who are willing to spend endlessly on healthpacks can always field a dominant team that pumps out crazy damage to everyone and needs 3 packs after each match. that's not a great outcome, as it just favors whaling it up over strategy or roster diversity etc.

or

(2) He doesn't do enough damage fast enough to justify the self damage. If this happens, then he just isn't worth playing at all and we have a new 4* bagman.

or (least likely)

(3) he is totally dominant defensively because he guarantees huge damage to everyone, but isn't particularly fast. This is sort of a hybrid position. he will have some value defensively in pvp, but using him for that last match so he sits on your defensive team will be risky. And of course defense isn't terribly important at high level in pvp because unless you are defending with tissue paper, the plan is to complete a hop before anyone can beat you in a defensive match. This is still a pretty bad outcome for players, where there's no clear path to use the character at all, kinda like starlord.

I appreciate the devs attempt to create a character that counters enemies with fast, spammable powers. That's a good idea. And I appreciate that this character design does kinda fit with Carnage's overall psychopathy. Nevertheless, I just think carnage (at least on paper) isn't good enough as the former to justify the latter.

Also, I should add that I love the idea of the devs releasing some inside-baseball game design blurbs with each new character. Always great to have more communication between the community and the devs (except when the "communication" is just message board flame).

dr tinykittylove

I tried playing against Beee's Carnage in Most Wanted when I bumped into him, just to try him out. Beee had him with HB and I was trying to let him get ap to use his abilities so I could see his animations.

HB used red every single time.

Highdark

Carnage shred health packs like crazy but didn't i real somewhere they buffing health packs to 10?

CrookedKnight

There's also that, yes.

(Also, red deals 9K damage to the enemy team and 4K to yours with Carnage himself totally immune, it definitely does not hurt both sides equally)

Hendross

skydivearcher wrote:

Someone care to explain to me how the hell is Carnage any different from pre-nerf Sentry?

1