** Hawkeye (Modern) **

ZeiramMR

Frankly, I don't use Hawkeye much as I'm in 3-star land. But I look forward to trying the new Speed Shot out with GSBW next time the Hero lightning rounds roll around.

Unknown

his new passive makes him seem like someone you can pair up with any strong duo and he will sometimes throw out extra damage, that might really hurt a lot with strike tile users. GSBW, LDaken and 2* hawkeye? would be weird as hell but actually sounds fun to play.

OnesOwnGrief

Cryptobrancus wrote:

his new passive makes him seem like someone you can pair up with any strong duo and he will sometimes throw out extra damage, that might really hurt a lot with strike tile users. GSBW, LDaken and 2* hawkeye? would be weird as hell but actually sounds fun to play.

To me, Speed Shot sounds like mini World Rupture. Strike tiles are going to affect each countdown. Much hurt coming in 2* land.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Cryptobrancus wrote:

his new passive makes him seem like someone you can pair up with any strong duo and he will sometimes throw out extra damage, that might really hurt a lot with strike tile users. GSBW, LDaken and 2* hawkeye? would be weird as hell but actually sounds fun to play.

To me, Speed Shot sounds like mini World Rupture. Strike tiles are going to affect each countdown. Much hurt coming in 2* land.

A mini world rupture that doesn't hurt you

Unknown

I don't think people understand my criticism.

Hawkeye was one of the few 2*'s you could use in 3* land... he worked extremely well with certain chars with regen tanks, or on damaged effects. (Patch, Laken, to a lesser extent 2* wolvie with his half health regen. Hulk or Capt marvel in the latter category). The old purple was unique and provided a unique reason to use him.

People are saying how now he's like a mini-sentry. But he lacks the single biggest thing which makes sentry work. A ton of health. The ability to create his own mega-damage strike tile. And a fairly cheap green making it highly likely to go off even in the face of priority green denial.


The new power is completely different and because of it they heavily nerfed his powers which do work. His blue and red were usable... you just had to time them properly (such as when there wasn't an easily matched red or blue on the board.. not that hard). Not only that it is completely unreliable. The character has among the weakest health even with the slight increase. The trigger condition is hard to meet (a match 5). He has no strike tile generation on his own.

You can't even use him to remove special tiles on red or blue since it requires a basic tile. You get to pick which red or blue gets the countdown... okay. Simply changing the original hawkeye to do this especially paired with a slight cost decrease to 9 would have made him extremely usable and on par with most of the other 2*'s. Even more to the point since you can't use his normal powers to add a blue or red tile... you can't use them to create the 5th tile needed for a match 5. So he can't self-trigger either. The best you could do is set the countdown if lucky underneath something that when it drops one.. provides you the chance to match 5 on your turn.

So I see this change as largely nerfing him into oblivion. Mini-sentry okay... but with none of the features that make sentry work.

over_clocked

How many health classes are out there in 48 characters? Props to coolbond for gathering the info and Colog for maxing even Bag-Man and Bullseye.
1) super-squishy, or Storm class: Storm, Hawkeye, Bullseye, Hood, Invisible Woman.
2) squishy, or Black Widow class: Black Widow, Yelena Belova, Loki, Human Torch, Falcon, Nick Fury.
3) standard, or Wolverine class: Wolverine, Daken, Punisher, Magneto, Psylocke, Beast, Deadpool, Daredevil, Spider-Man.
4) sturdy, or Iron Man class: Iron Man, Captain America, Moonstone, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Doctor Doom.
5) tank, or Thor class: Venom, Ares, Thor, Ragnarok, Sentry, She-Hulk.
6) super-tank: Hulk.
7) omega-tank: Juggernaut.

All versions of a character belong to the same class and all Dark Avengers versions except Venom/Spider-Man belong to the same classes as well.

1*s (7) have the only omega-tank (yay for them?), 1 tank, 1 sturdy character, no standard characters at all, 2 squishies and 2 super-squishies.
2*s (13) have 2 tanks, 2 sturdy characters, 4 standard characters, 2 squishies, 3 super-squishies.
3*s (25) have 1 super-tank, 4 tanks, 5 sturdy characters, 9 standard characters, 4 squishies and 2 super-squishies.
4*s (3) have 1 standard character, 1 squishy and 1 super-squishy. Makes sense as 4* tanks would be scary as sh*t as even the squishy Fury has close to 10k health and the standard Wolverine can literally come back from the dead.

It's the first time ever I witness a health class change (modern Hawkeye moving to the Black Widow class). Wonder if classic Hawkeye and Bullseye will also be buffed eventually, or cHawkeye, outright.
I wouldn't mind Storm being upgraded to Black Widow class, as frankly she needs it, and Mohawk Storm arguably most of them all. Modern Storm has been nerfed quite thoroughly so that getting more health won't get her even close to the old OP levels. Hood, IW and Bullseye can sit where they are; Hood certainly doesn't need any help with damage boosts being scarce, and Bullseye/IW need ability/AP cost tweaks before they can hope to become good.
As noted before, though, one tier upgrade wouldn't do much for mHawkeye as previously he had a unique mechanic that helped him stay alive despite his super-squishy status.

Cabol

Once these changes come out, i could see Hawkeye getting a lot more usage in the 2* metagame. I think his most likely partners are MNMags or Thor. Hawkeye + MNMags to trigger Hawk's passive with Polarity, Hawk + Thor for cascade chances and to cover all but Black.

Maybe use Hawkeye + MNMags + 1* Storm/Thor for perfect coverage (or all but black with Thor) and best chance to activate Hawk's purple passive with cascades?

Trisul

Cabol wrote:

Once these changes come out, i could see Hawkeye getting a lot more usage in the 2* metagame. I think his most likely partners are MNMags or Thor. Hawkeye + MNMags to trigger Hawk's passive with Polarity, Hawk + Thor for cascade chances and to cover all but Black.

Maybe use Hawkeye + MNMags + 1* Storm/Thor for perfect coverage (or all but black with Thor) and best chance to activate Hawk's purple passive with cascades?

Thor, MNMags, Hawkeye is definitely the best 3-man 2* team that Hawkeye can be on.

For 2-man teams, MNMags is most definitely Hawkeye's best 2* partner, to be able to reliable hit match-5s to trigger Hawkeye's passive. Thor is strong in his own right, but can't quite generate the same number of match-5s. (Thor is much better complemented by OBW than Hawkeye, IMO.)

I don't think those teams are good enough to unseat more reliable top-tier 2* teams (MNMags teams are super reliant on purple-heavy boards), but we have to wait to be sure. I'm curious about the exact mechanics of Hawkeye's new passive, so we'll see after r60 hits.

optimiza

I'm gonna roll with him along with my Patch and Doom. He hides behind everything, and 9g + 9u most times = gg. Doom will probably make at least one match 5 with his blue skill, which in turn generates several purple countdowns. Patch slashes someone's face and gets fewer enemy strikes out because they're occupied by cd tiles already. Then they pop, which is about 4-8k damage plus strike tiles. For a passive, that's pretty obscene, and it's perfectly serviceable at the 3* level too. You probably also never "waste" damage as the unused tiles will go to the next person up if previous ones end up downing someone. I'll have fun with this.

OnesOwnGrief

Just ran Hawkeye with XForce and managed to hit Speed Shot 4 times why cascade. Matters little since tilles require people on the board.

Unknown

Speed Shot does not trigger on match 4s (clears 8 tiles). Or on match 3+3s. Only when a crit tile is created. This makes me sad. Also somewhat ironically it makes Bullseye's black one of Mawkeye's best set up abilities.

OnesOwnGrief

Lerysh wrote:

Speed Shot does not trigger on match 4s (clears 8 tiles). Or on match 3+3s. Only when a crit tile is created. This makes me sad. Also somewhat ironically it makes Bullseye's black one of Mawkeye's best set up abilities.

3+3 only works I'd they are like connecting at any point. So something like these work:

xxx
xxx

xxxo
oxxx

xxxoo
ooxxx

I've seen those type of matches quite frequent in my games during cascades. Can use abilities to get multiples of those as well.

Leugenesmiff

I'm not sure how often I'd seriously use Hawkeye, having moved on to 3*s, but if I do I think 5/3/5 will be how I build him. It may not be Hawkeye's optimal build but I can't see many teams that I'd play where I wouldn't have much better red power available from another character. 5 in purple for me is the key, since I think I'll be using him mostly when he's required and, like his red, very likely he'll be matched with someone who's got a better blue power. With purple being passive it won't matter if a teammate has a better purple.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Speed Shot does not trigger on match 4s (clears 8 tiles). Or on match 3+3s. Only when a crit tile is created. This makes me sad. Also somewhat ironically it makes Bullseye's black one of Mawkeye's best set up abilities.

3+3 only works I'd they are like connecting at any point. So something like these work:

xxx
xxx

xxxo
oxxx

xxxoo
ooxxx

I've seen those type of matches quite frequent in my games during cascades. Can use abilities to get multiples of those as well.

You are talking about 3+3 of the same color. I'm talking about clearing 6 tiles of 2 different colors. Speed Shot fires anytime you make a crit tile, which is infrequent enough to make it kinda worthless IMO. You just made a crit tile for damage boost, here's more damage? Or you can have double color AP drain on his blue. I could see 4/5/4 potentially but I'm going to leave mine at 5/5/3 for now.

The 3+3s of different colors I can see being two separate match 3s and therefore not triggering, but the match 4s definitely should, not only because it clears 8 tiles in one move, but also because the AI will never ever use Speed Shot as it's implemented now. Fighting against a Mawkeye atm is a hobbled AI opponent.

Unknown

C.Storm, MNM, M.Hawkeye also a great team. Use a 3/5/5 Hawkeye and rain down Speed Shot death with 9 purple. Whoever survives the Wind Storm will be dead in 2 turns.

GrumpySmurf1002

Lerysh wrote:

You are talking about 3+3 of the same color. I'm talking about clearing 6 tiles of 2 different colors. Speed Shot fires anytime you make a crit tile, which is infrequent enough to make it kinda worthless IMO. You just made a crit tile for damage boost, here's more damage? Or you can have double color AP drain on his blue. I could see 4/5/4 potentially but I'm going to leave mine at 5/5/3 for now.

The 3+3s of different colors I can see being two separate match 3s and therefore not triggering, but the match 4s definitely should, not only because it clears 8 tiles in one move, but also because the AI will never ever use Speed Shot as it's implemented now. Fighting against a Mawkeye atm is a hobbled AI opponent.

Depends how you use him. W/ Magneto/GSBW, Speed Shot is a near guarantee to launch at least once. As for the AI, it's a fair point, but bad cascades happen, not impossible for the AI to trigger it, and if it does, those bad cascades are that much worse to deal with.

I still think 3/5/5 is ideal. The extra damage from both moves seriously outweighs an extra stun turn from a faster countdown. As I said though, it does depend on who you plan to pair him with.

ZeiramMR

Lerysh wrote:

The 3+3s of different colors I can see being two separate match 3s and therefore not triggering, but the match 4s definitely should, not only because it clears 8 tiles in one move, but also because the AI will never ever use Speed Shot as it's implemented now.

Should it would. The AI doesn't create crits from L shapes, but it certainly will match a line of 5 when the middle tile is offset to either side. Plus the chance of cascade criticals.

Lerysh wrote:

Fighting against a Mawkeye atm is a hobbled AI opponent.

This is true.

Nellyson

So Hawkeye is awesome now, but I wish it would speed shot on ANY 5-crit matches instead of just 5-crits that you make. That would probably overpower him a little, but maybe not. They are countdown tiles right?

ForgedSteel

I do miss his evade ability. I think it's what makes him stand out. But now with the choice of blue placement, it's a huge advantage.

Trisul

I'm saving ISO for the 3* transition, so I can't play around with a maxed Hawkeye yet.

For those of you who do have him maxed:

- How reliable are your Hawkeye teams compared to the standard 2* teams? At first glance it seems like a bad board (i.e. no purple for MNMags to gobble) is especially tough to deal with in any of his ideal compositions.
- How often would you play Hawkeye's red vs. MNMags' red in any given match?