**** Howard the Duck (Howard, A Duck) ****

Blahahah

Honestly I will admit his purple is kinda bonkers, and his green... Yeesh, it does a pretty chunky bit of damage too.
At just 15 damage per tile he was still kicking out about 1k damage on an average board and making a huge shake on it...
But it's not just damage per tile, he eats them and does the actual tile damage on top of it.

That means you'll be doing like... about 500 per AP, give or take, with a great shake-up and simultaneously denying the opponent a lot of green, for as few as 10 green on the board.
Assuming a bit more of a stacked board, something like 20 green, then you'll be doing like 5600 damage plus an additional... 1600 damage, so like 7200 damage.

I actually think he would be kinda crazy if you give him the right team. His blue is kinda bunk imo.

So if you stack him in there with something like... Cyclops who can do beefy damage on his own and would benefit from getting the green off of the board, he would probably do great work in there.

You could also pair him with Nova and make use of that huge strike tile boost power.

SpecSpecter

So after waiting for the planned special Howard Titan node in the DDQ... and of coarse they put a character with a fricken mass attack against the guy who's one real strength is turning invisible... I have to say this whole Duck Season thing really felt more like a tease then a releace, maybe Howard was an April Fools joke after all.

(Took like 5 tries to beat the DDQ Titan node, but I finally got all three covers for Howard. Rather amusingly this makes him one of my most covered 4*s. That's more rather sad actually...)

sinnerjfl

I'm liking his green, even at 1 cover it still clears ALL green tiles and that can be useful, a lot of goons make green CD tiles. Damage isnt great but removing 1 color entirely can lead to some decent cascades/AP generation.

Apostrophe

Jesus Christ, I hate this character so much. That purple power is horribly balanced. Fights take F O R E V E R.

Why is Howard the bleepin' Duck better at invisibility than Invisible Woman?

I hope they delete this horrid character completely.

Crowl

Apostrophe wrote:

Jesus Christ, I hate this character so much. That purple power is horribly balanced. Fights take F O R E V E R.

Why is Howard the bleepin' Duck better at invisibility than Invisible Woman?

I hope they delete this horrid character completely.

Did you come across many high level Howards during the pvp then?

I was mostly seeing ones with about 8k hp so they could be roughly taken out with a couple of aoes, but I stopped at 1k as it wasn't a busy time slice.

BlackSheep101

If only there were some way to damage an invisible target!

Marc_Spector

BlackSheep101 wrote:

If only there were some way to damage an invisible target!

HA! This.
I love that the poster above is basically saying a character sucks because they do something effectively. I thought society had mostly moved beyond the confirmation-bias-nerfbat by now.

ANYWAY -- and I say this as someone who finished 1st in his Fowl Play bracket, playing through the weekend with a 3/2/2 Howard -- he's REALLY grown on me. Really. Seriously. His purple ability is hilariously annoying to fight against (if not fielding an AOE-heavy team), to the point where I'd still be targeting Howard first when he was grouped with buffed Fistbuster or Fiskbuster pairings. On my team, there were a few occasions where he was the last duck standing after a horribly cascade-unlucky match in the opponent's favor, and I was still able to take down a full health Hulkbuster by carefully protecting Howard's purple tiles, recasting purple to add more after every Quack-Fu cascade, and strategically timing my stuns for when I needed to use one move to set up a better one for myself. Sure, it took awhile, and clearly wasn't suited for faster play in the high-point ranges, but he was a LOT more effective -- and, dare I say, FUN? -- to use than I initially thought he'd be. A surprisingly solid 3rd-character to add to almost any team, in my newfound opinion.

notamutant

Marc Spector wrote:

BlackSheep101 wrote:

If only there were some way to damage an invisible target!

HA! This.
I love that the poster above is basically saying a character sucks because they do something effectively. I thought society had mostly moved beyond the confirmation-bias-nerfbat by now.

ANYWAY -- and I say this as someone who finished 1st in his Fowl Play bracket, playing through the weekend with a 3/2/2 Howard -- he's REALLY grown on me. Really. Seriously. His purple ability is hilariously annoying to fight against (if not fielding an AOE-heavy team), to the point where I'd still be targeting Howard first when he was grouped with buffed Fistbuster or Fiskbuster pairings. On my team, there were a few occasions where he was the last duck standing after a horribly cascade-unlucky match in the opponent's favor, and I was still able to take down a full health Hulkbuster by carefully protecting Howard's purple tiles, recasting purple to add more after every Quack-Fu cascade, and strategically timing my stuns for when I needed to use one move to set up a better one for myself. Sure, it took awhile, and clearly wasn't suited for faster play in the high-point ranges, but he was a LOT more effective -- and, dare I say, FUN? -- to use than I initially thought he'd be. A surprisingly solid 3rd-character to add to almost any team, in my newfound opinion.

I think the boosted characters for this week gave a bias to how players view Howard. The boosted characters were mainly single target heavy hitters, like HB and KP, with IF as a 3 star support. Oh course Howard would seem stronger against them, but in a different week with bad boosted characters or boosted AOE guys like JG or RH or Iceman, he would be useless.

Polares

notamutant wrote:

Marc Spector wrote:

BlackSheep101 wrote:

If only there were some way to damage an invisible target!

HA! This.
I love that the poster above is basically saying a character sucks because they do something effectively. I thought society had mostly moved beyond the confirmation-bias-nerfbat by now.

ANYWAY -- and I say this as someone who finished 1st in his Fowl Play bracket, playing through the weekend with a 3/2/2 Howard -- he's REALLY grown on me. Really. Seriously. His purple ability is hilariously annoying to fight against (if not fielding an AOE-heavy team), to the point where I'd still be targeting Howard first when he was grouped with buffed Fistbuster or Fiskbuster pairings. On my team, there were a few occasions where he was the last duck standing after a horribly cascade-unlucky match in the opponent's favor, and I was still able to take down a full health Hulkbuster by carefully protecting Howard's purple tiles, recasting purple to add more after every Quack-Fu cascade, and strategically timing my stuns for when I needed to use one move to set up a better one for myself. Sure, it took awhile, and clearly wasn't suited for faster play in the high-point ranges, but he was a LOT more effective -- and, dare I say, FUN? -- to use than I initially thought he'd be. A surprisingly solid 3rd-character to add to almost any team, in my newfound opinion.

I think the boosted characters for this week gave a bias to how players view Howard. The boosted characters were mainly single target heavy hitters, like HB and KP, with IF as a 3 star support. Oh course Howard would seem stronger against them, but in a different week with bad boosted characters or boosted AOE guys like JG or RH or Iceman, he would be useless.

Yeah that is probably true, IMHB and KP were not the best to fight him, but I don't think we are going to see him buffed many times (once or twice a year) so he can be killed fast if we need to.

Anyway, It was quite fun the first time the enemy Howard got invisible, I was playing IMHB+OML, I though 'Oh my god, what I am going to do, how do I manage to match the invis tiles in time (while hopping, etc.), I don't have any AoE user buffed, and those two doesnt have powers to destroy/move the board :O ... then I remembered that OML yellow when transformed is AoE (!!!), I transform him so little lately that I didnt remember for a looooong while

But in the end in most of the fights I killed Howard first, it was faster to do it like this most of the time (while controlling red and black of course).

stochasticism

Curious what people's opinions are now on Howard, in terms of build. Personally I think purple is the one that should be maxed for sure and I'm leaning towards maxing green so 5/3/5. One extra turn of stun and increasing the situational special tile removal by 2 doesn't seem worth gimping green for. Other thoughts? After the pseudo Duck Season we are having when more people have him maxed would love to hear opinions.

I currently have him 3/4/3 so can probably make him any build I want in the next week or so.

amusingfoo1

stochasticism wrote:

Curious what people's opinions are now on Howard, in terms of build. Personally I think purple is the one that should be maxed for sure and I'm leaning towards maxing green so 5/3/5. One extra turn of stun and increasing the situational special tile removal by 2 doesn't seem worth gimping green for. Other thoughts? After the pseudo Duck Season we are having when more people have him maxed would love to hear opinions.

I currently have him 3/4/3 so can probably make him any build I want in the next week or so.

Mine is only 2/2/3, so take this with a grain of salt, but 3/5/5 looks best to me.

lukewin

amusingfoo1 wrote:

stochasticism wrote:

Curious what people's opinions are now on Howard, in terms of build. Personally I think purple is the one that should be maxed for sure and I'm leaning towards maxing green so 5/3/5. One extra turn of stun and increasing the situational special tile removal by 2 doesn't seem worth gimping green for. Other thoughts? After the pseudo Duck Season we are having when more people have him maxed would love to hear opinions.

I currently have him 3/4/3 so can probably make him any build I want in the next week or so.

Mine is only 2/2/3, so take this with a grain of salt, but 3/5/5 looks best to me.

Mine is 333 and I'm going for t2, and think I'm going 355. Green is cheap, but if you destroy them all, using it again means a lot less damage. At 3 covers, he still destroys all green. I like the extra turn stun and ability to target invisibility tiles. I definitely will max purple, but could be swayed to 535 instead of 355. I definitely want to decide before I apply any, since I won't be championing him, so respec isn't gonna be an option. Will be building a dupe and hope purple will still be in the Webbed Wonder node.

simonsez

Am I correct that he's not part of the regular boost rotation, hence champing him would pretty much be a waste of ISO?

Quebbster

simonsez wrote:

Am I correct that he's not part of the regular boost rotation, hence champing him would pretty much be a waste of ISO?

He hasn't been boosted at all since Duck Season in April, so there are probably better uses for your ISO. On the other hand, there's only one Howard.

bpcontra

I love Howard...and Ant-man. But i love weird teams so...

Yepyep

Is Howard ever an essential character for an event? Thanks in advance.

ZootSax

Yepyep said:

Is Howard ever an essential character for an event? Thanks in advance.

I think he's only been featured in PVE twice; both on the first two runs of his event.

OneLungDave

 If I'm not mistaken, he was an essential character in the pve after his release event. But he hasn't been since then. 

He has been boosted for unrelated events tho. 

Jaedenkaal

Cthulhu said:

The Quack-tinykitty One-Two - 8 AP
Oh, I’m sorry, you’re messing with a MASTER OF QUACK-tinykitty?

@Brigby
I think your language filter is a tad aggressive here.

Brigby

@Jaedenkaal
Oh I see. Hmm...I'll see if I can adjust that. Thanks!