***** Silver Surfer (Skyrider) *****

CloudTactics

135 tokens in, only 4 SS covers. 1/0/3

Will come back as get more. Gut feeling tells me that the 5% drop rate is off, but I'll keep opening

CloudTactics

1/0/3. Oops. Off by 1.

The gut feeling partially comes from my previous experiences doing these cover experiments. Usually I have to open twice as many packs to get the new character. I know, probability. That's why I said, gut feeling.

Peej13

Anyone know how the charged tiles on his blue are chosen? By that, I mean which colors.

Unknown

Lack create new events for the characters of 5 stars in pve.

CloudTactics

Peej13 wrote:

Anyone know how the charged tiles on his blue are chosen? By that, I mean which colors.

Random

xequalsy

After playing the loaner Surfer in the new Season node, all I can say is... Wow. I literally just mindlessly matched 3 to see if playing badly could make me even close to losing - but SS killed all 3 4*s by match damage alone and still survived with 10k+ health. Repulsive Punch barely tickled.

Vhailorx

ShionSinX wrote:

Thinking about how long would take to get an average 307 legendary tokens to max surfer, I started wondering the best path.

Best 1st cover seems undoubtedly blue, for the passive and minor heal helps a bit since he will always tank his colors. The second seems to be a second blue, for more healing, because red is too weak still and black uses more ap than it gets back.

For 3rd I was thinking that a 210 surfer wouldn't be better than a 300, the red damage still too low. It would need 3-4 red covers to have a lv cap high enough for base + lv/ratio damage. Black needs about 4 covers to get better.

So the path seems like 3 blue, then about same until you get 3+ red OR black, as a 311, 302 or 320 seem as good as 300.

While they said he would be usable with fewer covers, that's only for match damage, health and the blue cover (both aspects), I don't see him being really good until 6+ covers. Even tho I agree that 6 is better than a 4* with 8ish covers, the time it takes for him to get 6 (and they must be either 303 or 330) still way, way above the time to get a 8-10 cover 4* (specially with the legendary tokens introduction).

Thoughts?

Yeah, after looking at the particulars of his stats again, I agree. Just like all other tiers, his active powers don't really excel until 3+ covers. The blue is always useful because true healing is never bad, even if it's only a little true healing, and immunity to stun is huge, so even 1 blue cover is worthwhile.

optimus2861

xequalsy wrote:

After playing the loaner Surfer in the new Season node, all I can say is... Wow. I literally just mindlessly matched 3 to see if playing badly could make me even close to losing - but SS killed all 3 4*s by match damage alone and still survived with 10k+ health. Repulsive Punch barely tickled.

Wow is right. I came out of the match with 40K+ health after one blue cast. HB was dead in 4 turns, I think, after my first red.

Unbelievable.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

after playing the loaner....wow...just wow, i got bored and just did match damage without any abilities, killed HB with 10k health left. Pretty convinced that 4/5/4 is best build now, though the loaner had 3/5/5 and that was perfectly fine, and yes i'm aware it's wayyyyyyyyyyyy early to be thinking of builds but still, never hurts to think ahead.

BlackRose11

Just played with him in the Season, wicked cool.

MarcusGraves

optimus2861 wrote:

xequalsy wrote:

After playing the loaner Surfer in the new Season node, all I can say is... Wow. I literally just mindlessly matched 3 to see if playing badly could make me even close to losing - but SS killed all 3 4*s by match damage alone and still survived with 10k+ health. Repulsive Punch barely tickled.

Wow is right. I came out of the match with 40K+ health after one blue cast. HB was dead in 4 turns, I think, after my first red.

Unbelievable.

Programmer: "hey don't you guys think a character that can 1 vs 3 a team of max 4*s with two of them being considered the most powerful in game and be able to come out full health thanks to his true heal is unhealthy for the PvP of the game once someone finally gets this SoB fully built?"

Dev: ...."quit being a **** and code it in" *cracks whip*

notamutant

MarcusGraves wrote:

optimus2861 wrote:

xequalsy wrote:

After playing the loaner Surfer in the new Season node, all I can say is... Wow. I literally just mindlessly matched 3 to see if playing badly could make me even close to losing - but SS killed all 3 4*s by match damage alone and still survived with 10k+ health. Repulsive Punch barely tickled.

Wow is right. I came out of the match with 40K+ health after one blue cast. HB was dead in 4 turns, I think, after my first red.

Unbelievable.

Programmer: "hey don't you guys think a character that can 1 vs 3 a team of max 4*s with two of them being considered the most powerful in game and be able to come out full health thanks to his true heal is unhealthy for the PvP of the game once someone finally gets this SoB fully built?"

Dev: ...."quit being a **** and code it in" *cracks whip*

This is why I think people are better off skipping 4 star completely at this point. Why waste ISO on 4 stars when all you need is a 5 star? The only thing to consider is if you can get more 5 stars by building up your 4 stars.

simonsez

notamutant wrote:

This is why I think people are better off skipping 4 star completely at this point. Why waste ISO on 4 stars when all you need is a 5 star? The only thing to consider is if you can get more 5 stars by building up your 4 stars.

Even if you average 3 tokens a week, it's going to be well over a year until you have enough covers to matter. What are people supposed to do between now and 2017?

notamutant

simonsez wrote:

notamutant wrote:

This is why I think people are better off skipping 4 star completely at this point. Why waste ISO on 4 stars when all you need is a 5 star? The only thing to consider is if you can get more 5 stars by building up your 4 stars.

Even if you average 3 tokens a week, it's going to be well over a year until you have enough covers to matter. What are people supposed to do between now and 2017?

That is a good question. And we don't know how many other 5 stars will end up being in the loop after the initial 3. But we won't know the effect of the new 5 stars until they up the percentage to 10% next month. I would guess the super whales are waiting until then to throw down money. Only time will tell. 4 star are obviously useless currently against maxed 5 stars. The only question is how long before it becomes a regular thing to have maxed 5 star. Well, actually another question is when will 4 star be boosted, and how strong will boosted 4 star be compared to 5 star?

GrumpySmurf1002

notamutant wrote:

That is a good question. And we don't know how many other 5 stars will end up being in the loop after the initial 3. But we won't know the effect of the new 5 stars until they up the percentage to 10% next month. I would guess the super whales are waiting until then to throw down money. Only time will tell. 4 star are obviously useless currently against maxed 5 stars. The only question is how long before it becomes a regular thing to have maxed 5 star. Well, actually another question is when will 4 star be boosted, and how strong will boosted 4 star be compared to 5 star?

Surfer is insane, and almost certainly top of the 5* food chain regardless of whats released behind for one reason and one reason alone. You can't stun him.

Yeah, 35-45k health is a laughable amount to chew through when the time comes, but no one is dangerous if they can't make a move. Think about a 350 iceman with a 6AP 4turn stun, drains red, and hits like a brick with blue and green. A combination of he and IMHB could probably chew through that kind of health reasonably quickly (not Fistbuster quick, but quick enough) getting potentially infinite turns. Heck, the 270 versions probably could too.

I think it's easy to look at Surfer and extrapolate the future of 5*, but as long as they can be stunned, any future 5* release has a weakness, and thus not *as* scary. Would be nice if they turned down the stupid level match damage, though.

Unknown

You think that's bad; Wait until you see the first team in the simulator with a fully maxed 5* and two maxed 4*s by their side. Or even worse, 3 maxed 5 stars. It will be a while, but if you're looking for brutal, there it is.

Turbosmooth

simonsez wrote:

I just wrote a quick sim that simulates the draws. The average number of draws needed to get 13 usable covers is 307. If you want the source code, I'll post it.

I would love to see more code in these forums. I could write this too in Java/Javascript/Python/others, but don't want to re-invent the wheel. I've done gambling algorithms in the past (the house always wins). A Silver Surfer is worth $24560 at $80 per 40x pack assuming 307 is the magic number.

I'm holding all my Legendary tokens until odds become 10%.

The sim of him was amazing. Could you imagine having him + Hood + Jean Grey. Completely unstoppable.

evil panda

Maybe the loaner scenario is a test for one proposed future application - if you want to use a five star, he has to fight by himself. Not that it matters - Surfer slays any current combination in the game without a scratch

Unknown

I don't post often, but here it is. Silver surfer, as he is, is a game killer. A single character, who, by himself, makes all other characters worthless. All the characters we have invested all this time and effort to build suddenly don't matter. And why doesn't he affect scaling/mmr? It will take most of us a long time to acquire this nuclear bomb disaster of a character, but once the 10% drop rate starts, I agree that the superwhales will start showing up with him. So what happens then?

1. Since the developers have "wisely" decided that having a character exponentially more powerful than the best 4* roster in existence shouldn't affect that player's MMR, I will be in brackets with players who have surfer. That will be the last time anyone who does not have a surfer can potentially win a PVP bracket.

2. Although the cost of building an early surfer is astronomical, once you have him, you would never have to spend hp on shields ever again. You could sit there, unshielded, winning matches within 6 or 7 moves whenever you wanted to, and never have to worry about losing any points, or using a health pack during pve (as, remember the wisdom, scaling is also unaffected)

3. This could result in almost unlimited hp and ISO, as the person with a surfer will easily win every bracket, every lightning round, every pve, gaining as much ISO and HP as they desire, while markedly reducing the time and effort it takes to do so.

4. This will also result in a maximum number of legendary tokens for the player with a surfer, allowing him to build other 5*, or 6*, or 11* for all I know, much faster than anyone else. And meantime, he can use all this HP and ISO pouring in to immediately whale any new 4* without spending much, if any, money.

5. So while a team of buffed 3* can take down a team of unbuffed 4*, apparently the devs thought for 5 stars, let's up the hp by a factor of 3, make him unstunnable with true healing, AP generation, match damage that can kill the 4* team alone without using a special.

Someone please tell me why this is good for the game?

I didn't whine about Rags, or Sentry, or XForce nerfs. I Didn't post after any of the major changes that occurred, just altered my game play to suit the new rules. But this is orders of magnitude worse. I am finding that gaining 1300 legendarys for me is not so easy, as the major multi alliances with their coordinations make it far more difficult than before. All this means is that although I have a good roster, it will become obsolete at some point. Not just worse, compketely and utterly meaningless in a surfer world. Why even care about divine champions, and figuring out what combos of buffed characters will be best, when a player who only has surfer and single cover Yelena and bagman will still eat my lunch without breaking a sweat?

Once I see useable surfers appearing in my brackets, that will be it. After almost two years, that will end it for me.

simonsez

Turbosmooth wrote:

I would love to see more code in these forums. I could write this too in Java/Javascript/Python/others, but don't want to re-invent the wheel.

Here's SAS code that simulates a million trials:

data x;
do j = 1 to 1000000;
  total_s1=0;total_s2=0;total_s3=0;
  do i = 1 to 100000;
    x=ranuni(0);
    if 0<=x<=.05/3 then s1=1; else s1=0;
    if .05/3<x<=.1/3 then s2=1; else s2=0;
    if .1/3<x<=.05 then s3=1; else s3=0;
    total_s1+s1;
    total_s2+s2;
    total_s3+s3;
    if min(total_s1,5)+min(total_s2,5)+min(total_s3,5)=13 then do;
	   draws=i;
	   i=100000;
	   output;
	end;
  end;
end;
proc means ; var draws;
run;