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

Unknown

Mind you, this is just head theory on my part, but I can't see how you'd go without 5 black covers on Carnage. Sure, having one cover makes him pretty annoying, but his ability strictly scales up damage for you against the opposing team, while the other team keeps getting the same lower tiles.

The green is still random, and is going to require the black to have triggered multiple times for best effect, and the red damage to your own team and the other team increases with each cover.

It's best to go 5 because its making the most out of a bad situation you have no say in otherwise, IMO. In practice? Maybe it shakes out differently.

Marc_Spector

I had the opportunity to fight Colognoisseur's max covered/levelled/buffed (to 345) Carnage in the Webslinger tournament last weekend (who was alongside a Lv290 Spidey and 166 Doc Ock)

(Colog, I respect what you do for these forums too much to ever normally attack you, but in this case was VERY eager to see what a maxed-out Carnage can do )

I used my maxed/buffed Spidey/Rags/Doom, and no boosts... and found it a fairly evenly-balanced fight.

My first mistake -- not chasing red like a madman right at the start. Carnage got off a Scythes fairly early.

Second mistake -- trying to immediately heal Rags, stupidly already forgetting that my moves will also let Carnage create attack tiles. Duh!

Spidey's cheap blue actually had some good synergy with Carnage, as the AI would fire it as soon as ready, creating more attack tiles at a fairly fast rate. As a result, Doc Ock never got a manipulation off, but still matched away plenty of his opposing attack tiles to create more targetting me. Carnage got off his green just once to minimal effect.

Amidst all that, I focused on just saving up enough AP to down Carnage in a single turn (between Doom's purple and a few casts of Rags' red), and then focusing on the other two with plenty of HP to spare.

Overall, I didn't find Carnage particularly threatening or in need of a nerf. There are plenty of characters that can counter a board full of attack tiles, and I wasn't even using one of them. I definitely see that Doc Ock (at presumably 5/5/3 or 5/4/4) would be fantastic alongside OR against Carnage for both manually removing opposing attack tiles, and/or getting off the occasional manipulation or two to clear much of the board (+massive nuke).

If facing Carnage, one can minimize the amount of attack tiles created by simply trying to save up AP to down him in a single turn -- although the time required to do so may be more of an annoyance in PVP than Carnage's actual moves, similar to the shift in playstyle required to carefully fight Loki since his green was added to the game.

TL;DR -- I don't think Carnage will turn out to be the world-ending hellbeast that many are making him out to be. Deny red, have a tool to deal with attack tiles, and take him out first.

dkffiv

Marc Spector wrote:

I had the opportunity to fight Colognoisseur's max covered/levelled/buffed (to 345) Carnage in the Webslinger tournament last weekend (who was alongside a Lv290 Spidey and 166 Doc Ock)

(Colog, I respect what you do for these forums too much to ever normally attack you, but in this case was VERY eager to see what a maxed-out Carnage can do )

I used my maxed/buffed Spidey/Rags/Doom, and no boosts... and found it a fairly evenly-balanced fight.

My first mistake -- not chasing red like a madman right at the start. Carnage got off a Scythes fairly early.

Second mistake -- trying to immediately heal Rags, stupidly already forgetting that my moves will also let Carnage create attack tiles. Duh!

Spidey's cheap blue actually had some good synergy with Carnage, as the AI would fire it as soon as ready, creating more attack tiles at a fairly fast rate. As a result, Doc Ock never got a manipulation off, but still matched away plenty of his opposing attack tiles to create more targetting me. Carnage got off his green just once to minimal effect.

Amidst all that, I focused on just saving up enough AP to down Carnage in a single turn (between Doom's purple and a few casts of Rags' red), and then focusing on the other two with plenty of HP to spare.

Overall, I didn't find Carnage particularly threatening or in need of a nerf. There are plenty of characters that can counter a board full of attack tiles, and I wasn't even using one of them. I definitely see that Doc Ock (at presumably 5/5/3 or 5/4/4) would be fantastic alongside OR against Carnage for both manually removing opposing attack tiles, and/or getting off the occasional manipulation or two to clear much of the board (+massive nuke).

If facing Carnage, one can minimize the amount of attack tiles created by simply trying to save up AP to down him in a single turn -- although the time required to do so may be more of an annoyance in PVP than Carnage's actual moves, similar to the shift in playstyle required to carefully fight Loki since his green was added to the game.

TL;DR -- I don't think Carnage will turn out to be the world-ending hellbeast that many are making him out to be. Deny red, have a tool to deal with attack tiles, and take him out first.

For offense that's a decent team but for defense you can do much better with Carnage. That team has a fast blue, pretty fast red, slow green + yellow, no purple or black. I'd wait to face a stronger composition before you completely write him off, I have a feeling its hard to avoid taking at least 20% damage to all characters if not more when facing him.

dfields3710

Honestly I would just use sentry cause he doesn't do that much damage over the course of a match. Sure carnage has higher health but the damage takes to much of a toll even for him.

Unknown

Der_Lex wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

I just like KK & Carnage conceptually. Everytime Carnage cast black, you get 'some health' back. With someone like Steve Rogers to put up protects while wiping tiles (or CMags). I really like the idea of Bullseye though...
- Unreall

KK's yellow heal doesn't trigger on passives, so that concept wouldn't work.

No, but Carnage does his thing on specials, the same trigger as KK, so everytime he is triggered so is she.
- Unreall

Ebolamonkey84

Unreallystic wrote:

Der_Lex wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

I just like KK & Carnage conceptually. Everytime Carnage cast black, you get 'some health' back. With someone like Steve Rogers to put up protects while wiping tiles (or CMags). I really like the idea of Bullseye though...
- Unreall

KK's yellow heal doesn't trigger on passives, so that concept wouldn't work.

No, but Carnage does his thing on specials, the same trigger as KK, so everytime he is triggered so is she.
- Unreall

KK yellow is only triggered for ally powers, not including her own, while Carnage black is triggered when any of the 6 characters fire a power.

Unknown

Malcrof wrote:

It means loki had enough black for his power, but no tiles to use it on, so the AI tries to use it and gets an error message.. Works for you as well if you try to use a power (like loki black) and get the error message, Carnage goes off like you used it anyway.

Actually I tested that using my own Loki and it never triggered alien instincts, even when spamming the ability with no valid target.

Malcrof

Dedwrekka wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

It means loki had enough black for his power, but no tiles to use it on, so the AI tries to use it and gets an error message.. Works for you as well if you try to use a power (like loki black) and get the error message, Carnage goes off like you used it anyway.

Actually I tested that using my own Loki and it never triggered alien instincts, even when spamming the ability with no valid target.

Did they fix it? i did see a data push last night.

Unknown

Reading a few pages back about HB vs carnage I can't see how carnage could be better in a 1x1 scenario. At all. After a single overdrive HB is the one who benefits way more on carnage's black, as he will proc his huge strike tiles twice a turn.

Unknown

HB definitely owns Carnage; his HulkProof even denies Carnage green and partially shields from the attack tiles. Together, two Scythes after an Overdrive is a good way to victory.

Der_Lex

Ebolamonkey84 wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

Der_Lex wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

I just like KK & Carnage conceptually. Everytime Carnage cast black, you get 'some health' back. With someone like Steve Rogers to put up protects while wiping tiles (or CMags). I really like the idea of Bullseye though...
- Unreall

KK's yellow heal doesn't trigger on passives, so that concept wouldn't work.

No, but Carnage does his thing on specials, the same trigger as KK, so everytime he is triggered so is she.
- Unreall

KK yellow is only triggered for ally powers, not including her own, while Carnage black is triggered when any of the 6 characters fire a power.

Thank you for expanding on my too brief comment. In the end, you'll end up only having shared att tiles/heal for the powrs of two out of the six characters on the board, which won't do all that much to mitigate damage. The timing of the passives (KK's healing working right after the power is used, and Carnage's attack tiles all doing damage at the end of the turn) could prove problematic as well.

Unknown

Attempting to mitigate carnages damage is a bad idea. You need to focus him down while you deny red. It's basically the same as you'd do with hb, but he has less health, hurts himself and can't generate red.

TLCstormz

Vhailorx wrote:

carnage is a headscratcher as a 4*, like Elektra. Fury, prof. X, kingpin, imhb, even star-lord(as the theoretical leader of a very popular team thanks to the movie) make sense. But Elektra and carnage standout as significant, but very much NOT a-list characters to be raised up to 4* level.

As I said before (and then got modded, for it), this is a clear cut case of the developers making who THEY want what THEY want.

And I would bet all the money in my bank account that they would have also made Moonstone a 4*, if they could have.

Unknown

TLCstormz wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

carnage is a headscratcher as a 4*, like Elektra. Fury, prof. X, kingpin, imhb, even star-lord(as the theoretical leader of a very popular team thanks to the movie) make sense. But Elektra and carnage standout as significant, but very much NOT a-list characters to be raised up to 4* level.

As I said before (and then got modded, for it), this is a clear cut case of the developers making who THEY want what THEY want.

And I would bet all the money in my bank account that they would have also made Moonstone a 4*, if they could have.

their systems don't make sense...there's a 4* pipeline and that's all that matters.

Ant-Man is 4* when avengers only got 3*? what???? Well, I guess there's Hulkbuster, but really, who wants a 4* ant man before 3*?

Xeonic-Ice

raisinbman wrote:

TLCstormz wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

carnage is a headscratcher as a 4*, like Elektra. Fury, prof. X, kingpin, imhb, even star-lord(as the theoretical leader of a very popular team thanks to the movie) make sense. But Elektra and carnage standout as significant, but very much NOT a-list characters to be raised up to 4* level.

As I said before (and then got modded, for it), this is a clear cut case of the developers making who THEY want what THEY want.

And I would bet all the money in my bank account that they would have also made Moonstone a 4*, if they could have.

their systems don't make sense...there's a 4* pipeline and that's all that matters.

Ant-Man is 4* when avengers only got 3*? what???? Well, I guess there's Hulkbuster, but really, who wants a 4* ant man before 3*?

To be fair...

Ant-Man (Hank Pym) is the founder of the Avengers, so I'd qualify that as a 4* leader type. Terrible leader, but still a leader haha.

Carnage also had his lackeys so it's fitting that he's a 4*.

dkffiv

TLCstormz wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

carnage is a headscratcher as a 4*, like Elektra. Fury, prof. X, kingpin, imhb, even star-lord(as the theoretical leader of a very popular team thanks to the movie) make sense. But Elektra and carnage standout as significant, but very much NOT a-list characters to be raised up to 4* level.

As I said before (and then got modded, for it), this is a clear cut case of the developers making who THEY want what THEY want.

And I would bet all the money in my bank account that they would have also made Moonstone a 4*, if they could have.

A 4* Moonstone would probably be top tier.

8 purple to deal 2750 (3 cover) or 3380 (5 cover) and you can probably chose which tiles you're swapping as a 4* improvement, red is probably 1240 + 635 per red tile, that's on par with Hulkbuster with 9 or more red on board. Control Shift probably gets the She Hulk treatment of improving the tiles you steal too.

Unknown

TLCstormz wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

carnage is a headscratcher as a 4*, like Elektra. Fury, prof. X, kingpin, imhb, even star-lord(as the theoretical leader of a very popular team thanks to the movie) make sense. But Elektra and carnage standout as significant, but very much NOT a-list characters to be raised up to 4* level.

As I said before (and then got modded, for it), this is a clear cut case of the developers making who THEY want what THEY want.

And I would bet all the money in my bank account that they would have also made Moonstone a 4*, if they could have.

...
They're the developers. They could have. I'm not sure who else you think would decide that.

ApocryphicV

Theory crafting with a friend. A dirty team for Shield Sim would be Carnage/ Doc. Ock/ Falcon. Carnage owns red so no clashes there so he'll constantly do his red ability, his black and Doc. Ock's black passives compliment each other and we have Falcon buffing all the attack tiles. Top it off with Falcon's blue taking bad tiles off the board and his purple to either negate damage or feed Carnage's green.

Also its pretty brain dead which is great for defense, the only thing the CPU might not do right is Falcon's purple to Carnage's green combo or it using Doc. Ock's green over Carnages.

Unknown

Maestro was running around with a maxed 505 this pvp. I wonder if that's the right build. Black does seem like it's way more trouble than it's worth.

Unknown

Without the Black Ability, you're going to have little to no use from the Green unless facing a special tile spammer or using one yourself.

I'm thinking the best build is going to be 3 5 5 , to capitalize on the damage discrepancy between the black tiles in higher cover ranks, and reduce the self damage from the red, as it does increase with cover ranks. Then, the green has the best chance to break as many special tiles as possible for the damage bonus as well.

Now for PVP, maybe it's a bit different, as you can't rely on the AI to not match it's own attack tiles away and still take more damage itself, on defense, but I really think you have to embrace the on this character for him to really pay off.