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

therightwaye

Is this accurate: https://imgur.com/a/fJFQO

If so, where do we reply? I have comments I want to share with @Demiurge_Anthony

Most important problem with this debuff for me is you made him less defensive. Carnage was basically the only reason I would avoid a PvP fight. I would say I have greater loss percentage against Carnage. And I certainly used more health packs because of him. And now he is like everyone else and I just don't care.

He also made Medusa and Mr. Fantastic more fun. That synergy was some of the best in the game. 

In all the past 4 updates the characters became more playable or simply more fun to play with. Carnage at best just net zero. For me I'm just less likely to use him. 

DrDoMe

@Demiurge_Anthony

Here's my feedback about the update.  Carnage's black was role-defining.  It made him unique and it gave him unique, exciting pairings that the new version completely negates.  I think simply making a better version of the 5 AP rebuild would make Carnage better, but it wouldn't restore his unique role.

So frankly, I think you should simply revert his black to what it was.  If the animation was a serious problem, replacing it with a simpler one or eliminating it altogether would be a better fix than the complete overhaul of effects you currently have.

If you simply must switch this to an active power, it needs to generate more attack tiles to better synergize with his green, and the allied tiles need to be stronger enough to justify the AP cost.

Dabrusky

I hated Carnage at first, then Medusa came and using both that was an amazing annoying team in shield pvp...and now due to his rework he's back to his old place : will never use him unless buffed and if there are no other character available.

Crowl

DrDoMe said:

So frankly, I think you should simply revert his black to what it was.  If the animation was a serious problem, replacing it with a simpler one or eliminating it altogether would be a better fix than the complete overhaul of effects you currently have.

If you simply must switch this to an active power, it needs to generate more attack tiles to better synergize with his green, and the allied tiles need to be stronger enough to justify the AP cost.

I think that the switch to an active power would be fine as it gives us more control over when it got used, but it is woefully underpowered for any possible scenario, there are neither strong enough attack tiles to make it worth using for their damage nor a large enough number of them to power up his green.

They should drop the extra tiles due to downed characters condition as if people are dead a couple more weak tiles isn't going to save the day and then they need to decide the purpose of the power i.e. is it to boost his green or to output decent damage in it's own right, the former needs plenty of weak tiles whereas the latter would be fine with drastically increasing the power of the few friendly ones.

GuntherBlobel

DrDoMe said:

@Demiurge_Anthony

If you simply must switch this to an active power, it needs to generate more attack tiles to better synergize with his green, and the allied tiles need to be stronger enough to justify the AP cost.

I agree. I don't like the "downed character" conditional. If his black was merely a copy of Storm's black, but gave half the tiles to the enemy, I think the active power could work. Or he could spam additional friendly tiles with each level, ultimately making 8 for the team and 4 for the enemy. The point is that Carnage is a tile spammer. Players enjoy that aspect to him even if it is a double-edged sword. More importantly, they rely on it for his green power to be useful.
 
Otherwise, I'm happy with his changes. I can play him my way (AoE) and others can play him their own way. Maybe that will be enough to make him more popular with the larger player base.

himatako

Black might be better if it creates attack tiles the first time it's used and creates a fortified CD tile that generates attack tiles every time an active power is used, basically turning the old passive into a CD tile form. 

This way if the animation is the problem, you only need to play the animation when the CD tile is created, not every time you generate attack tiles. 

hopper1979

I wish I could disagree with the general assessment but they really screwed up Carnage.  Black was the one power that did not need a tweak especially in the current meta of the game.  He red is still fine and is arguably better since we have a little more control of if we receive damage or not from the aoe, the green is a great change but pointless once the black change is taken into account this change hamstrings him plus it was what made him unique in the game.  Green is pointless unless you you have lots of tiles on the board, the original black achieved that goal perfectly, now it is a mid range costing tile destroyer that is only good for board shake-up and 1-2 K damage in most cases.  It is a real shame I just got my 13th Medasa cover yesterday and was looking forward to messing with that team.  This, and OML, are the first truly bad character updates since they started a serious attempt a reworking characters.  

Tiger_Wong

Why don't you use the black + green combo as a finisher?

hopper1979

It just does not put out enough tiles to work as a finisher even if you pop it twice followed by the green you are lucky to get ~4000-6000 damage.  Just sold mine a few minutes ago putting the iso towards leveling Medusa and 6000 HP is nothing to sneeze at.  I will recollect and put iso into him some day far in the future.  Really bummed about him he was one of my first 4's to max but they destroyed him.  Oh well wait a year and he may get another rework.

Starfury

himatako said:

This way if the animation is the problem, you only need to play the animation when the CD tile is created, not every time you generate attack tiles. 

If the animation is the problem they could also just allow us to disable them and get back half an hour per day.

OneLastGambit

himatako said:

Black might be better if it creates attack tiles the first time it's used and creates a fortified CD tile that generates attack tiles every time an active power is used, basically turning the old passive into a CD tile form. 

This way if the animation is the problem, you only need to play the animation when the CD tile is created, not every time you generate attack tiles. 

With a slight tweak this way is better.

Make it a repeating CD tile like blade and torch which creates x amount of attack tiles per turn and costs 5 ap. 1 animation same effect and also combines what the devs want (less free attack tiles) with what we want (lots of free attack tiles)

GuntherBlobel

Tiger Wong said:

Why don't you use the black + green combo as a finisher?

That does kinda work. You basically need to save all your black AP until 2 characters are downed and then unleash. As a strategy it works, but I didn't find it very fun because it doesn't feel like you are changing the direction of the match. It's a slightly quicker end to a done deal.

Thematically, it doesn't appeal either. I'd rather construct a team to balance black's double edge sword, than to just wait till the last turn to use it.

Arroway

It's not just the utility that's been nerfed - it's the fun factor too. Using Carnage was a whole different experience - they've taken away the whole flavour of the character, the risk/reward tightrope, and replaced it with a bland special tile generating active power. Meh.

Jjshack

Also sold him.  Never really used before, never put ISO in (was at lvl 115) and his covers had fallen 1-2-4 so the way RNG works I would have probably been selling covers before I finally got to 13.  That is assuming I'd ever even get covers given vaulting.  I only have 6 champ 4* at this point, so Carnage was an eternity away from significance anyway.

I leveled to 148 to get to 20k and 2500 HP sell price, I can do more with 2500 HP.  Rather buy 1 specific cover for my 3-2-5 Iceman that I need (if it comes up right on Heros for Hire) than keep Carnage

Phaserhawk

The only way this could have worked is if  this could've possibly work is if they made green six then the combo would have been the same. So bad, so bad

Pwuz_

I tried to be patient and let this new version of Carnage grow on me.  As one of the few players who regularly used Carnage prior to this change, I can honestly say he's totally dropped off my rotation for play.

Paired with Mr.F or Medusa and he used to really shine.  Now he just sits there reminding me that I could be using that AP on better moves with a better health pool.

He was very niche before, but could have a few good teams built around him.  Now he's just another average meat shield for Thanos to Court Death with on easy noses.

Phaserhawk

Pwuz_ said:

I tried to be patient and let this new version of Carnage grow on me.  As one of the few players who regularly used Carnage prior to this change, I can honestly say he's totally dropped off my rotation for play.

Paired with Mr.F or Medusa and he used to really shine.  Now he just sits there reminding me that I could be using that AP on better moves with a better health pool.

He was very niche before, but could have a few good teams built around him.  Now he's just another average meat shield for Thanos to Court Death with on easy noses.

Pwuz_ said:

I tried to be patient and let this new version of Carnage grow on me.  As one of the few players who regularly used Carnage prior to this change, I can honestly say he's totally dropped off my rotation for play.

Paired with Mr.F or Medusa and he used to really shine.  Now he just sits there reminding me that I could be using that AP on better moves with a better health pool.

He was very niche before, but could have a few good teams built around him.  Now he's just another average meat shield for Thanos to Court Death with on easy noses.

Yeah, he's crazy bad. His black needs to be creating like Storm amount of attack tiles like 16-20 where half are yours and half there's' sand green needs to be 6

bigsmooth

I have to agree that Carnage is downright terrible now.

Black is basically worthless. Green suffers greatly from the awful change to black. Red is still good for the AP cost, but there are a ton of red powers in the 4* tier that are just as good or better.

It's not even worth trying to spam black to generate Coulson CDs or heal with Kamala (for example) because there are other cheap powers that don't help the enemy (Wasp yellow, Hawkguy blue, Cloak & Dagger purple, for example). 5 AP for 4 tiles is not cheap enough to warrant using him with Medusa anymore, either.

When you can't find a single good use for a champed 4*, the character design is a problem. I haven't sold him (mostly since he's vaulted and I am holding out for another rework), but he's going to sit and collect dust for now.

Vhailorx

It's really impressive to think about demi spending dev time to redesign a lower mid tier 4* that had no role in the meta.  Guess everyone was really spamming the medusa/fantastic/carnage combo.  Or maybe the devs actually played some matches with carnage and realized that his passive was quite annoying.  In any event, I think he is now firmly trash tier (even though he was close to that before). 

I'm SO glad I champed him over the winter after getting a glut of covers for him all at once when I had no one better to champ.  But hey, all 4*s offer good champ rewards, and it's a solid investment that will bear fruit over time.  Unless demi starts vaulting again. . .

Orion

Vhailorx said:

It's really impressive to think about demi spending dev time to redesign a lower mid tier 4* that had no role in the meta.  Guess everyone was really spamming the medusa/fantastic/carnage combo.  Or maybe the devs actually played some matches with carnage and realized that his passive was quite annoying.  In any event, I think he is now firmly trash tier (even though he was close to that before). 

I'm thinking he was changed because he is one of the main villains in Venom Bomb.  They made him terrible so they could give him all of his powers back and he wouldn't crush everyone like he was doing during the initial run of that PvE.