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

dkffiv

Polares wrote:

I am 97% convinced (:P) that 5/5/3 is the way to go. More now that we have new teammates for Carnage like Antman or specially Jean, that can help make black even better and has a better green (and those attack tiles with some strike tiles are really deadly). The only problem I see with Jean is that if you want to make black work, you want someone with cheap abilities, but hey if it is pve or shield you can build the team with someone else just to spam abilities (like beast blue).

Black gets such a marginal increase that it simply isn't worth it. When pairing him with someone who generates tiles (Blade, CMag, Ant-Man, Doc Oc, Daken) it isn't hard to flood the board with tiles by the time you end up with that much green AP and in those situations I'm averaging 8k+ damage on it (10k+ boosted).

On defense his green has a much higher chance of generating a win than black. The best you'll probably get is +300 damage a turn with 5 black vs. 3.

GrumpySmurf1002

Vhailorx wrote:

Haetron wrote:

Bullseye/Doc Ock/Carnage could be all kinds of nasty, you're just lacking yellow.

I think you are better off ditching either bullseye or doc oc and bringing someone who can generate ap. This team is kinda slow (since neither 7 ap power is game ending by itself), which puts you at the mercy of the board.

Switch to make purple to fuel bullseye, or im40 to fuel carnage?

Blade-DocOck-Carnage works well.

Unknown

Been doing carnage + ant man (5 blue) + jean (5 purp) in Prodigal Sun and it does alright. Assuming the world lines up, blue + purp can basically negate any of carnages enemy tiles. Working on grinding down the carnage essential and i have taken little damage so far.

dkffiv

barrok wrote:

Been doing carnage + ant man (5 blue) + jean (5 purp) in Prodigal Sun and it does alright. Assuming the world lines up, blue + purp can basically negate any of carnages enemy tiles. Working on grinding down the carnage essential and i have taken little damage so far.

Patch Daken or Daken Blade also work well, especially since patch and Daken are buffed

Polares

dkffiv wrote:

Polares wrote:

I am 97% convinced (:P) that 5/5/3 is the way to go. More now that we have new teammates for Carnage like Antman or specially Jean, that can help make black even better and has a better green (and those attack tiles with some strike tiles are really deadly). The only problem I see with Jean is that if you want to make black work, you want someone with cheap abilities, but hey if it is pve or shield you can build the team with someone else just to spam abilities (like beast blue).

Black gets such a marginal increase that it simply isn't worth it. When pairing him with someone who generates tiles (Blade, CMag, Ant-Man, Doc Oc, Daken) it isn't hard to flood the board with tiles by the time you end up with that much green AP and in those situations I'm averaging 8k+ damage on it (10k+ boosted).

On defense his green has a much higher chance of generating a win than black. The best you'll probably get is +300 damage a turn with 5 black vs. 3.

Well If you are averaging 8k for each green cast then, yeah green is better. 5 black gives you 100 more damage for each cast, every turn, so I guess that can go to 300 more damage every turn, probably more against goons, but the differnce in green would be bigger If you can average these numbers... Mmm I thought it would be more like 3-5k for every green cast.

But if you play a 5/3/5 Carnage Jean is not a very good partner, Antman on the other hand, it doesnt matter which build you have, he is the ultimate Carnage friend

simonsez

Polares wrote:

Well If you are averaging 8k for each green cast then, yeah green is better. 5 black gives you 100 more damage for each cast, every turn, so I guess that can go to 300 more damage every turn, probably more against goons, but the difference in green would be bigger If you can average these numbers... Mmm I thought it would be more like 3-5k for every green cast.

Averaging 8k implies that on average there are 30-40 special tiles out when green is cast. I don't think matches are going to last very long with so many tiles out. I also don't understand how, now that we have Antman and Jean, anyone would ever let a board get to that state in the first place. And if you are using Jean and Antman, you're probably going to mostly be destroying your own tiles... and bypassing Jean's much better green.

Raffoon

Some fun pairs for him while he's powered up in prodigal sun:

Black Panther - Falcon
Rainbow, strong tiles everywhere

BP Kamala
Rainbow, heal back the damage

He would probably pair well with Cyclops too...

Carnage Cyclops Ant Man would be a pretty great combo I imagine.

Definitely a character you need to build around. Hoping whatever the new 4* thing is helps me get him and Ant man covered up to try it out.

Phaserhawk

Polares wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

Polares wrote:

I am 97% convinced (:P) that 5/5/3 is the way to go. More now that we have new teammates for Carnage like Antman or specially Jean, that can help make black even better and has a better green (and those attack tiles with some strike tiles are really deadly). The only problem I see with Jean is that if you want to make black work, you want someone with cheap abilities, but hey if it is pve or shield you can build the team with someone else just to spam abilities (like beast blue).

Black gets such a marginal increase that it simply isn't worth it. When pairing him with someone who generates tiles (Blade, CMag, Ant-Man, Doc Oc, Daken) it isn't hard to flood the board with tiles by the time you end up with that much green AP and in those situations I'm averaging 8k+ damage on it (10k+ boosted).

On defense his green has a much higher chance of generating a win than black. The best you'll probably get is +300 damage a turn with 5 black vs. 3.

Well If you are averaging 8k for each green cast then, yeah green is better. 5 black gives you 100 more damage for each cast, every turn, so I guess that can go to 300 more damage every turn, probably more against goons, but the differnce in green would be bigger If you can average these numbers... Mmm I thought it would be more like 3-5k for every green cast.

But if you play a 5/3/5 Carnage Jean is not a very good partner, Antman on the other hand, it doesnt matter which build you have, he is the ultimate Carnage friend

Red is truly all that matters. That being said, you are almost never going to have more than 20 special tiles out at any one time in PvP, PvE maybe as you can go against goons and load the board.

Lets look at the most likely output of green, that would be a Carnage/Storm combo with Hailstorm into Carnage Rules. If you have a maxed Hailstorm you get 32 tiles, plus the Carnage trigger, you have 36 on the board. That means 56.25% of the board is covered. Instead of figuring out probability, lets just assuming that Carnage rules does 56.25% of it's full dmg

At level 3 -- 2542
At level 4 -- 3780
At level 5 -- 5859

if only 25% of the board is covered

level 3 -- 1130
level 4 -- 1680
level 5 -- 2604

Now if you subtract say 2604 - 1130 you get a dif of 1474, divided that by the black difference of 34, and you need to get 43 triggers of carnage black. What that means isn't that each attack tile has to trigger 43 times, it means you need a total of 43 triggers to get there, which if you cast 2 abilities and have 4 tiles out, its a pretty quick clip, if they drop 2 you have 8 tiles, but some get destroyed etc. You also have the strong probability that you don't get green off at all.

The difference between level 4 and 5 is 40 triggers, so you are better off either going 5/3/5 or 5/5/3 as 5/4/4 is not a gain either way.

In the end if you only use him for shield hopping 5/5/3 is probably more beneficial, but I look at him like Doc Ock and why I went 5 in blue even though I rarely use it. It's because when I do it usually wins the game. Carnage black maxed is rarely going to win you a game and it's sure not going to save you, but a maxed green can end matches so with black on a low upgrade, I like having green as insurance incase things don't work out.

simonsez

A simpler way to look at the math is that the expected damage contribution of a special tile at green3 is 10/64*452 = 70.625; at green5, it's 16/64*651=156.25, and increase of 86. The difference in attack tile strength between black3 and black5 is 34, so the tile only needs to exist for 2.5 turns (86/34) for you to break even. You say black won't win you games, but I disagree. It just does it in a way that's as noticeable and spectacular. And it's doing it in every match, unlike green, which is more of a hail mary.

GrumpySmurf1002

simonsez wrote:

A simpler way to look at the math is that the expected damage contribution of a special tile at green3 is 10/64*452 = 70.625; at green5, it's 16/64*651=156.25, and increase of 86. The difference in attack tile strength between black3 and black5 is 34, so the tile only needs to exist for 2.5 turns (86/34) for you to break even. You say black won't win you games, but I disagree. It just does it in a way that's as noticeable and spectacular. And it's doing it in every match, unlike green, which is more of a hail mary.

Nitpick: 16/64 * 651 = 162.75.

Anyway, as I said in the other thread, I'm still on board with 5/3/5. I concede that offensively 5/5/3 is likely the superior build, but in the hands of the idiot AI, I like abilities to hit as hard as they possibly can, because hail mary/super cascades is really the only way to get a defensive win.

dkffiv

simonsez wrote:

A simpler way to look at the math is that the expected damage contribution of a special tile at green3 is 10/64*452 = 70.625; at green5, it's 16/64*651=156.25, and increase of 86. The difference in attack tile strength between black3 and black5 is 34, so the tile only needs to exist for 2.5 turns (86/34) for you to break even. You say black won't win you games, but I disagree. It just does it in a way that's as noticeable and spectacular. And it's doing it in every match, unlike green, which is more of a hail mary.

That's Carnage in a vacuum though, you will almost always be pairing Carnage with someone who generates strike tiles as they automatically double dip with the attack tiles. Carnage alone probably won't flood the board with special tiles but his partners will more than likely be contributing. I've had a lot of matches where nearly every tile, save for TU's, were special and his green was hitting for near max damage. During the Nefarious Villains PvP I was running Carnage Daken Kingpin and there were tons of CMag opponents, always got a ton of mileage out of green.

GurlBYE

Not in 4 star but theory land seems fun.

How would 3/5/5 falcap and carnage pair.
I'm not too sure about defense tiles lower team self damage, but the blue matches strengthening of the tiles can get carnage's black active extremely quickly while boosting 2 significantly. (nearly adding 2 tiles damage wise)

can save falcaps Red if you need a nuke (you only need two protect tiles out to make the damage equivalent to 14 carnage red without the draw back of team damage).

If you wanted could slip a kingpin in and every blue match would drag his countdowns closer to their damage point if you don't have enough black to use them all.

It seems like Carnage's team damage makes him the most selfish 4 star to build a team for.

I guess absolutely desperately Mr and Ms Fantastic could work. With her hiding them. You'll be healing and dealing extra damage with the nut when it's out because carnage needs the colors anyway. She could throw a protect around the nut to make keep it around longer.
Issue here being when you take carnage down (or he takes himself out) the teams just stalling hoping his leftover tiles can finish the job.

Buret0

Mystique event. Played a team with a carnage, so I matched. At one time both Mystiques were shape-shifted into Carnage, so there were four Carnages in the battle. That is the maximum Carnages you can have in a battle.

Marc_Spector

Buret0 wrote:

Mystique event. Played a team with a carnage, so I matched. At one time both Mystiques were shape-shifted into Carnage, so there were four Carnages in the battle. That is the maximum Carnages you can have in a battle.

HA iseewhatyoudidthere

sinnerjfl

Playing with a well-covered Carnage for the first time in PVE... Could his passive please not activate when goons use an ability? That just makes him so hard to use on these nodes

That restricts him to basically only nodes with real characters, kinda terrible and like the only character to have this problem.

Phumade

sinnerjfl wrote:

Playing with a well-covered Carnage for the first time in PVE... Could his passive please not activate when goons use an ability? That just makes him so hard to use on these nodes

That restricts him to basically only nodes with real characters, kinda terrible and like the only character to have this problem.

Its just a different way to play. Carnage vs bots is great for:

1.KK Daken
2.Mr F / patch
3. Doc Ock / daken

really any combination that can spam strike tiles or double dip into enemy tiles.

GrumpySmurf1002

sinnerjfl wrote:

Playing with a well-covered Carnage for the first time in PVE... Could his passive please not activate when goons use an ability? That just makes him so hard to use on these nodes

That restricts him to basically only nodes with real characters, kinda terrible and like the only character to have this problem.

Bring your self healers. Grocket, Patch, Daken, Kamala are all quite good in this situation.

Mr F. doesn't work against the goons cause they're not moving the board to heal him, but is great otherwise with Carnage.

sinnerjfl

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Bring your self healers. Grocket, Patch, Daken, Kamala are all quite good in this situation.

Mr F. doesn't work against the goons cause they're not moving the board to heal him, but is great otherwise with Carnage.

Tried self-healers, problem is when there are goons involved it ends up doing over 1000 dmg per turn to them
So far my team that doesnt die if I can get the blue/purple early, ProfX/IW/Carnage

I just feel his passive shouldnt fire off goons' CD since they don't gather AP (magically generates it) with the consequence they use an ability every 2 or 3 turns.

GrumpySmurf1002

sinnerjfl wrote:

Tried self-healers, problem is when there are goons involved it ends up doing over 1000 dmg per turn to them
So far my team that doesnt die if I can get the blue/purple early, ProfX/IW/Carnage

Grocket can keep up with 1k per turn with little problem. The others, yeah, it adds up eventually but still should be able to survive long enough then either prologue heal or rotate.

I get what you're saying, but launching a CD is launching a power, same as Starlord or anything else, so it's the way it should function. Just have to strategize around it.

TxMoose

I haven't found anything I'm in love with yet either, and my carnage is 5/2/5. tried cage(respecc'ed for the protect)/falcon, switch/jean, daken/falcon. haven't tried drock, but his blue is expensive - need to try him at least.