Character Investment - THe Changing Meta

bahamut685

Polroid wrote:

Astonishing Wolverine ( Solid damage, sucky HP, sucky Healing factor)

You DO understand that his Healing Factor got severely strengthened (but is conditional) after the patch, right?

Unknown

I've only found yellow to match twice since the Nerf and he dies a lot more often now. Maybe I'm just unlucky but that is a heck of a condition.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

mischiefmaker wrote:

Celerity wrote:

I don't have a high leveled Hood, I only know that he's probably the most annoying defensive character right now next to Hulk, and they probably work very well together. You couldn't pay me enough bonus ISO not to skip a team with a maxed Hulk+Hood on it. That team kills slowly, though, and I think you need someone who can benefit from at least 3 colors of AP sinking. Patch doesn't work because he gives your opponent a way out from the lock. Hood+Hulk+Punisher/IM40/Magneto would be a good team that you could use in both types of LRs and would net you tons of skips, plus some random defensive wins.

Hm, I like where you're going with this. Hood/IM40/Hulk sounds horribly slow, but Punisher (cheap casts fueled by Hood plus the OHKO from Retribution) might not be terrible, although he might make it hard to use Hood's yellow due to all the special tiles. Magneto seems like a nice pairing too -- super cheap casting costs and huge damage output.

Definitely need to get myself a couple more Hood blues (currently only at 3) and take him out for a spin.

Hmm... do you guys think that I should level Hood from 51->100 first, or go Hulk/Punisher 120->141 first?

For myself I would probably level Hood to 100 first over lvling hulk/punisher from 120 to 141. Because he hits 3118 health which makes it more difficult to kill him and gives you more time to benefit from the passive and possibly charge yellow. If you have Hulk and Punisher at 120 already i'd be skipping you lol.

Unknown

bahamut685 wrote:

Polroid wrote:

Astonishing Wolverine ( Solid damage, sucky HP, sucky Healing factor)

You DO understand that his Healing Factor got severely strengthened (but is conditional) after the patch, right?

I guess "sucky" was kind of a rash thing to say. But that being said his healing factor isn't very good because of his low health and condition. Also with his new update I feel that I would rather go
5/5/3 for the extra red damaged rather than the extra healing, which is a big difference considering his red dmg maxed is around 2800 I believe and my lvl 3 red only does around 2200. Combined with his green that can kill a 3000 health character as opposed to matching tile for an extra turn or two which could make the difference in a match.

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

Celerity wrote:

D3 has already stated that Espionage is not working as intended (with strike tiles)

I keep seeing people saying this. Are you sure? I seem to recall the quote was something more like "yes, we know that espionage currently works with strike tiles, so you're double-dipping", but I don't remember seeing anything definitive about whether this was a bug or not.

The comment I was able to dig up was in the R43 patch notes discussion:

IceIX wrote:

It's currently a separate tick that double dips on Strike tiles. So a max level 3 match of Black will do 117 base and 112 bonus for 229 damage total. An 18 damage Strike tile will raise that to 135 with a 130 bonus for 265 total.

Unless you read quite a lot into "currently", nothing there suggests it's not intended. That's just what I could find, though, there may have been other comments before or since that people are referring to.

I do think there's something wrong with Espionage, just not that. Description:

(PASSIVE) Black Widow steals enemy secrets. When she attacks by making a Purple, Blue, or Black match, and the enemy has that color AP, she steals 1 from them and does 112 damage.

What it does:

(PASSIVE) Black Widow steals enemy secrets. When she attacks by making a Purple, Blue or Black match, she does 112 additional damage, and if the enemy has that color AP, she steals 1 from them.

I don't think the first can be correctly read to mean the second, so either the description or the behavior is bugged. I think she'd be a bit more interesting if you needed AP to steal on the color she's matching for her to make Berserker Rage explode faces, but I'd better stop there before I get tracked down and immolated for requesting nerfs.

Unknown

I think some people are over rating the hood.

Sure he is annoying on D, but even at max level he has less than 5000 hp. If you are teaming him and hulk, you have a pretty easy team to grind through. It will take a while, but neither guy has an ability that you fear in the hands of the ai.

I really like the hoods powers. He's fun to use, but he's too squishy to be in the top tier. He'd be in my next 5.

To me the best five are: Patch, Hulk, Punisher, Spidey, C. Magneto.

Next five: GSBW, OBW, Im40, Dr Doom, The Hood.

mischiefmaker

Veracity wrote:

The comment I was able to dig up was in the R43 patch notes discussion:

IceIX wrote:

It's currently a separate tick that double dips on Strike tiles. So a max level 3 match of Black will do 117 base and 112 bonus for 229 damage total. An 18 damage Strike tile will raise that to 135 with a 130 bonus for 265 total.

YES! Thank you, I've been searching for that quote forever. I definitely have not seen anything since that suggests they intend to change it, although, yeah, I guess "currently" could imply an impending change.

aboudreau wrote:

I think some people are over rating the hood.

Sounds like someone wants to participate in the next round of character rankings!

Kelbris

gobstopper wrote:

Kelbris wrote:

DD isn't very reliable

Tile overwriting (Attack tiles from Punisher/Storm/Doom, strike tiles) kills his red

M.Stor completely negates his purple

4+ match activates his traps

tile destruction skills (juggs, storm, punisher, etc) kill his traps

He really isn't that good. Mid tier at best. He's usable, but shouldn't be anywhere near Hulk.

Fixed

Cute, but not what I meant;

Row 5, trap on red

GGGGBYRP

Trap dies

Unknown

Kelbris wrote:

Cute, but not what I meant;

Row 5, trap on red

GGGGBYRP

Trap dies

Actually that would activate the trap. Row/column clearing with 4/5 match activates it, but any tile destruction abilities would remove it.

Moral

Linxis wrote:

Kelbris wrote:

Cute, but not what I meant;

Row 5, trap on red

GGGGBYRP

Trap dies

Actually that would activate the trap. Row/column clearing with 4/5 match activates it, but any tile destruction abilities would remove it.

Trap activates on my client with that setup.

I have not seen tile destruction powers like Hulks Clap hit a trap.

DD-The-Mighty

Fun meta tip for midlevelers: Run the Kings of the 1*s -13/13 Iron Man and storm on defense

With the drastic slowdown and weakening of most to all 2 star characters AP abilities, and the new-found push to match damage. They are actually better than most of the 2 stars (even some of the level 50 2 stars)

Just throw those 2 out there. They're great together as they use most of all the popular colours and they're AP moves pop off faster and harder than most sub 50 2* damage dealers making cascades work very well in their favour. and once storm starts her ap loops IM will be nice and fed to start chaining his moves. All it takes is a few bad drops and a cascade and they're all set to at a minimum decimate the HP of at least one of the opponents characters or at best just kill him/her outright. even for folks with a good near maxed cover ( but not level) 2* team those 2 can deter just off of the annoyance factor alone.

and the best part: D3 will never Nerf them because they're 1*s and their HP cap keeps them out of 50+ 2* competition and semi-well built 3* competition. Making them perfect of competing in the midlevels until you have enough covers and io to make an actual decent 2* team. aka OBW+whoever+the sucktastic tourney passenger

Unknown

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

Fun meta tip for midlevelers: Run the Kings of the 1*s -13/13 Iron Man and storm on defense

With the drastic slowdown and weakening of most to all 2 star characters AP abilities, and the new-found push to match damage. They are actually better than most of the 2 stars (even some of the level 50 2 stars)

Just throw those 2 out there. They're great together as they use most of all the popular colours and they're AP moves pop off faster and harder than most sub 50 2* damage dealers making cascades work very well in their favour. and once storm starts her ap loops IM will be nice and fed to start chaining his moves. All it takes is a few bad drops and a cascade and they're all set to at a minimum decimate the HP of at least one of the opponents characters or at best just kill him/her outright. even for folks with a good near maxed cover ( but not level) 2* team those 2 can deter just off of the annoyance factor alone.

and the best part: D3 will never Nerf them because they're 1*s and their HP cap keeps them out of 50+ 2* competition and semi-well built 3* competition. Making them perfect of competing in the midlevels until you have enough covers and io to make an actual decent 2* team. aka OBW+whoever+the sucktastic tourney passenger

Very true.

Without any significant one-shot firepower to down either of these two, the player has to consider which one to go after first. Of course, because of 1* Storm's capacity to start the "chain of doom", everyone will go after her first. And this is where IM35 shines. Just like how IM40 can be problematic in the 3* game if left standing for a long period of time, while the player works on whittling down Storm, IM35 lurks in the background gaining power. A few relatively quick casts of Armored Assault will completely mitigate tile match damage (which the AI loves to cast), while building up annoying Repulsor Blasts and saving up for the dreaded Ultra-Freon Beam. IM35 can get quite a head start on saving up for that while lurking in the background as Storm picks up tiles for him.

I'm seeing teams in the DD tourney with 400-500 points, rocking 15 DD + 50 IM35 + 50 MStorm. This is likely why.