*** Thor (Modern) ***

Unknown

I've got Thor at level 160, 3/5/5. Any reason to max him out? The difference in damage doesn't really seem worth the ISO to me.

famousfoxking

I have 3/5/5, and that's served me well, but I'm really starting to think seriously about respeccing to 5/5/3 when I have the available covers. I just have a better place to send that green now *cough*xforce*cough*. LThor/Doom/Xforce is proving to be a lot of fun.

Phaserhawk

famousfoxking wrote:

I have 3/5/5, and that's served me well, but I'm really starting to think seriously about respeccing to 5/5/3 when I have the available covers. I just have a better place to send that green now *cough*xforce*cough*. LThor/Doom/Xforce is proving to be a lot of fun.

X-Force--Does about 4K to singe target plus cascade

Call of the Storm--Does 4518 to single target and another 2259 to the rest of the team for a total of 9036 damage,

that's 645 per AP vs 525 dmg per AP

The only time where X-Force is better is if there is only one target left and you can down him right now, or one character can kill another of yours and X-Force can take them out before they do this, aside from that Call of the Storm is superior, sure it's slower but it takes X-Force 24 AP to do what one 14AP call of the Storm can. Also, why are you running LThor in that. You have way too many colors to prioritize, you want green/black/blue to feed black, by going after yellow as well you are slowing your team comp up.

famousfoxking

Phaserhawk wrote:

Also, why are you running LThor in that.

Because its fun. Because sometimes the opening board is filled to the gills with yellow or red. Because it's a lot of fun to add a bunch of green to a green-deprived board when you're about to cast Surgical on Xforce.

Mind you, my opinion definitely shouldn't be trusted though, cause I also think CptMarvel/She Hulk/IM40 is fun. Well, its fun when it works, at least. So, like 10% of the time. But a man can dream.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

famousfoxking wrote:

I have 3/5/5, and that's served me well, but I'm really starting to think seriously about respeccing to 5/5/3 when I have the available covers. I just have a better place to send that green now *cough*xforce*cough*. LThor/Doom/Xforce is proving to be a lot of fun.

X-Force--Does about 4K to singe target plus cascade

Call of the Storm--Does 4518 to single target and another 2259 to the rest of the team for a total of 9036 damage,

that's 645 per AP vs 525 dmg per AP

The only time where X-Force is better is if there is only one target left and you can down him right now, or one character can kill another of yours and X-Force can take them out before they do this, aside from that Call of the Storm is superior, sure it's slower but it takes X-Force 24 AP to do what one 14AP call of the Storm can. Also, why are you running LThor in that. You have way too many colors to prioritize, you want green/black/blue to feed black, by going after yellow as well you are slowing your team comp up.

Bad comparison. xforce is much cheaper, shakes the board and is on a character that can't generate green. If you want to take down an opposing hood, obviously xforce is the superior ability.

They are vastly different and a direct damage comparison per ap is meaningless

NorthernPolarity

famousfoxking wrote:

I have 3/5/5, and that's served me well, but I'm really starting to think seriously about respeccing to 5/5/3 when I have the available covers. I just have a better place to send that green now *cough*xforce*cough*. LThor/Doom/Xforce is proving to be a lot of fun.

Yeah, you're going to vastly regret this choice when LazyThor becomes featured in a heroic, just like how all the 5/5/3 Blade players that's marginally better for Daken pairings are regretting their choice in this heroic. I'd recommend heavily against it, especially since you don't even gain that much from 3->5 red.

Unknown

I always regret not having 5 in red whenever I face an AI's version of Thor, and then I remember they got 5/5/5 and I can't do that.

famousfoxking

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Yeah, you're going to vastly regret this choice when LazyThor becomes featured in a heroic

And that is an excellent argument. As Phantron says, if only he could be 5/5/5.

Unknown

Just to add my $0.02 about the 553 vs. 355 debate:

Long time ago when my roster was limited I used 355 Thor all the time and he was great. But when they buffed XForce and I got him to 270, he essentially permanently replaced lazythor in my lineup. And just for fun, I bounced around from lazythor 355 to 553 a few times just to see what it was like and here's my review:

If you already have an ADVANCED roster, 553 can be better than 355 for the following reasons:

• I'm a big proponent that immediately downing any ONE character is much better as opposed to whittling down all 3 and only downing all of them near the end. If you down one character right away, the match heavily swings to your favor as we're possibly talking about 2-3 colors the enemy can no longer use against you, as well as colors you don't need to worry about denying. That's a big deal.
• Opportunity cost. By the time we get 14 green, are all 3 enemies still on the board? If you're only fighting 2, or 1, the "total potential damage output" of Call the Storm loses relevance. Gathering all that green AP takes time, and you give an opportunity for the enemy to gather their colors to nuke you as well. Also, dependence on running high-AP cost attacks makes you more susceptible to AP thievery from Hoods, OBWs, etc. For the sake of argument, since it has been mentioned, XForce's green only costs about half as Call the Storm, shakes up the board (blowing up enemy special tiles and giving you a cascade advantage), you can insta-down OBW, and nearly insta-down Hood, Mystique, and Falcon, characters who will become quite dangerous if you don't deal with them right away. (max green XF in my experience reliably does ~4600 damage to a single target).
• I mainly use lazythor now when he's in featured PVPs (sometimes in the sim). Especially when he's buffed, the red does that extra bit of damage to immediately down one character. Every little bit adds up.
• In the 553 setup, we're trading in the ability to do massive amounts of team damage near the end, and swapping it in for the ability to do more damage earlier near the start of the game, which is something I'm more partial to now.

In the end, with my roster, I am going to stick with 553 lazythor, because I really do like it a lot. My green is almost always given to xforce nowadays, 553 lazythor feels faster and more comfortable to use in featured PVPs and the sim, and any disadvantage I face in Heroic I'm sure I can find a way to augment with the rest of my roster (and if not, I'll just do what I usually do for Heroic - join in the last 2 days and win an easy top 50). All I'm saying here is this: if you have an advanced roster (re: planning to run XForce with lazythor as much as you can), 553 is better than 355.

NorthernPolarity

When you boil down 3 vs 5 green and 3 to 5 red,
3 red - 1.3k damage
5 red - 2.1k dmg

3 green - 3k + 1.5k dmg to other 2
5 green - 4.5k + 2.5k damage.

Your argument is a good post about how single target spells are generally better than aoe, but to argue that 800 damage matters on red (ehich you arent even prioritizing with an xforce composition) doesnt make a lot of sense to me. The opportunity cost of getting 800 dmg on red is 3k damage on green. Now, in a scenario where youre running 270 xf 166 lazythor, sure. You use red more than you use green because xf exists. But in any scenario where lazythor is featured, youre completely gimping green by like 4.5k damage because you wanted to have than extra 800 damage on a low priority ability. This is from the perspective of a pkayer who never uses lazythor anymore so 355 makes far more sense for featured events - if you still use him with xf then 553 is an option.

Dauthi

NorthernPolarity wrote:

When you boil down 3 vs 5 green and 3 to 5 red,
3 red - 1.3k damage
5 red - 2.1k dmg

3 green - 3k + 1.5k dmg to other 2
5 green - 4.5k + 2.5k damage.

Your argument is a good post about how single target spells are generally better than aoe, but to argue that 800 damage matters on red (ehich you arent even prioritizing with an xforce composition) doesnt make a lot of sense to me. The opportunity cost of getting 800 dmg on red is 3k damage on green. Now, in a scenario where youre running 270 xf 166 lazythor, sure. You use red more than you use green because xf exists. But in any scenario where lazythor is featured, youre completely gimping green by like 4.5k damage because you wanted to have than extra 800 damage on a low priority ability. This is from the perspective of a pkayer who never uses lazythor anymore so 355 makes far more sense for featured events - if you still use him with xf then 553 is an option.

I agree with 5 on red. I prefer the extra damage for a low cost, and when scaled it is more significant. Killing high priority targets that fire off attacks quickly is more beneficial to me, for example it could mean getting hit by X-Force or not. Sure, Thor's green would mostly end the game towards the end, but it doesn't take back the fact that you got hit significantly (heaven help you if it was his black though).

My opinion is increased by the high unlikelihood of Thor being featured in a Heroic (and that there is no other green option) vs using him consistently in PVP. X-Force + M.Thor is a great pairing given Thor's yellow, and giving this team a better red to work with is very helfpul.

over_clocked

Excuse me? Modern Thor has already been featured twice or more in heroic events, where best standalone builds for characters matter so much more, while X-Force has never been featured in a Heroic event and likely never will.

Spec your Thors 5/5/3 all you want, but that build is severely **** compared to 3/5/5. His red is absolutely not meriting all 5 covers. Look at Doom; his blue and purple are bonkers good, so I can see the argument for going 3/5/5 with him and charging black for better black users. His purple packs much more damage than his own black, too.
But Thor's red is nowhere as good as his own green/yellow and can never oneshot a dangerous opponent anyway. Stop looking at those lvl 395 Thors in PvE with their perfect 5/5/5 builds. You can only go 13/13 covers and you want a character to be able to fight alone as well, in case things go wrong.

Edit: Read Jessy's post above, it explains the point somewhat but Thor's red can never oneshot Hood, oBW or Loki anyway, that's what X-Force is for. Early damage is very good but Thor is not about early, he needs time to build up but then he smites. Early damage, we have tons of specialists: Ares, Psylocke, Deadpool, HT, Punisher, etc.
I have been finding Thor fun to use in PvE now that he's no longer required in PvP for me, and with teams I use him on, his green can be a lifesaver:
Hulk/GSBW/Thor, Thor/Deadpool/Hood, Thor/Blade/Grocket, etc.

Unknown

Allow me to restate some things, as I probably didn't make myself very clear and I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea:

-My original point boiled down to this: the 553 lazythor setup is a good arrangement if you are planning to run him exclusively with xforce, wherein xforce's green will completely supplant Call the Storm and you will almost never use CtS ever again. I personally enjoy the board shake and the tile explosions from xforce and find all that extra utility more handy than CtS, so if we are never going to use CtS ever again you may as well spec it to 3 and set red to 5, which was the rationale for my previous post. I personally can't remember the last time I used CtS so that's why I did a 5 red respec. Chaining Thunder Strike, getting at least 16 green, and casting xforce twice in a row is usually enough to smash the board and inflict insta-down damage to one opponent. I haven't found that casting CtS once (at 15 green) will result in one down as frequently as casting xforce twice consecutively does. And again, I think there's validity to be made about how high-AP attacks like CtS are high-reward, but equally high-risk. Say we have one enemy at around 4400 health and you have 8 green. He's got enough AP or a countdown tile and it's about to nuke your team next turn. With 8 green you can cast xforce to down him or shatter/match-out the countdown tile. But with the 14 green required to summon CtS its already too late (this is even precluding the scenario we have AP stealers on the opposing team). And that's one of the reasons I'm not hugely fond of high-AP attacks in general anymore.

-I will reiterate: Lazythor's 5 green is overwhelmingly better than 5 red. No argument from me there. That's how you should/how I did run my lazythor when he was my best character. But what I'm mainly talking about is running under a non-standalone hypothetical scenario in which we have a 270 553 xforce to pair him with. If you don't have a maxed xforce, there's zero reason to set up lazythor anything other than 355. I'm brainstorming arguments to the question "is there any situation, at all, in this game where lazythor 553 ever has any merit?" I'm apparently in the minority that thinks it does

over_clocked

I almost see your argument... Of course if you can run lazy Thor you can simply run 4or instead, provided you have her, but only running LT with X-Force seems... a bit... narrow? Reminds me of the days people used to spec Hood 3/5/5 for the sake of running him with Sentry and never using his yellow - and maxed Intimidation was never necessary back then for Sentry-hopping. But kudos for making your point crystal clear even to a mule like me, Jessy

Phaserhawk

The thing is X-Force makes all green and black users moot at the moment. You may as well run Hulk 3/5/5, BWGS 3/5/5, Mowhawk 3/5/5 or any other characters that share a color with X-Force. That's awesome 5/5/3 Thor works for you but the extra 800 dmg upgrade for absolutely gutting his green just doesn't seem like a good idea, not to mention you are comparing an overpowered 4* to a 3* so not sure I agree with you. In addition if you play Thor smartly you spread the damage out across the 3 enemies, then do a little math and figure out if you Lightning Strike/CtS the team where should your targets be, I have taken out more teams quicker with Thor than X-Force. But again, why are you running those two together? There are better uses of red and yellow then Thor, like Colosuss, C.Mags, or Captain America. That's why you see so much of him lately, Surgical Strike steals either Green from another X-Force or red fro 4hor, and then launches the best red in the game

CrookedKnight

Captain America is a better use of red, no doubt, but 3* Thor has the better yellow because it fuels X-Force, and the best possible thing you can get from Surgical Strike, other than the Power Surge/Smite one-two, is a follow-up X-Force.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

The thing is X-Force makes all green and black users moot at the moment. You may as well run Hulk 3/5/5, BWGS 3/5/5, Mowhawk 3/5/5 or any other characters that share a color with X-Force. That's awesome 5/5/3 Thor works for you but the extra 800 dmg upgrade for absolutely gutting his green just doesn't seem like a good idea, not to mention you are comparing an overpowered 4* to a 3* so not sure I agree with you. In addition if you play Thor smartly you spread the damage out across the 3 enemies, then do a little math and figure out if you Lightning Strike/CtS the team where should your targets be, I have taken out more teams quicker with Thor than X-Force. But again, why are you running those two together? There are better uses of red and yellow then Thor, like Colosuss, C.Mags, or Captain America. That's why you see so much of him lately, Surgical Strike steals either Green from another X-Force or red fro 4hor, and then launches the best red in the game

I think that depends on how you use the other characters. Lazy Thor is a "B" tank for me - I'm not running him with X-Force; rather, I'm using him mainly as a major tank for things like PVE nodes (obviously not in the current heroic) and the SHIELD simulator. If I'm using him, it's explicitly because I can't use X-Force (PVE node with a Wolverine for example, or he's knocked out) or don't want to use him (saving X-Force for other battles, for example).

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to approach every 3* like they're going to be paired with X-Force, unless that's explicitly what your plan for using them is. My primary partner for X-Force is Deadpool, my secondary is Lazy Daken. Those don't have any overlapping actives, so I don't have to plan around them, but if I decided to start pairing Blade with X-Force, for example (not that I plan to), that would definitely mean I'd build him with three black.

Unknown

@ Locked and Phaserhawk:

About running LT and XF together, you're correct that there are better choices. But the reason why I mention them together is because I'm mainly referring to a situation where lazythor is essential - the main bulk of my playtime (re: the only time I ever pull out lazythor) happens to be in his featured PVP (and sometimes in PVE), where he has to be on your team. In that instance, I like using LT / XF / Hood. Surgical Strike will steal red, generate yellows, and once I get Thunder Strike the game will be near finished. (Then again, I suppose every PVP team is now Featured/your choice of 4*/Hood.)

Also, I agree there are better uses of red (my favorite is now Deadpool's), but better uses of yellow? I still think lazythor's Thunder Strike is still amazing, since it quite reliably cascades a significant chunk of the board and gives you good openings to either make a match-5 or follow up with any green power. I think that's way better than some protection tiles.

But if I had complete autonomy over my team selection (eg. the SHIELD sim) of course I wouldn't run XF and lazythor together. My A-team would be Thoress/XF/Hood. Only problem for me is I don't have a 270 Thoress yet

NorthernPolarity

JessyC01 wrote:

@ Locked and Phaserhawk:

About running LT and XF together, you're correct that there are better choices. But the reason why I mention them together is because I'm mainly referring to a situation where lazythor is essential - the main bulk of my playtime (re: the only time I ever pull out lazythor) happens to be in his featured PVP (and sometimes in PVE), where he has to be on your team. In that instance, I like using LT / XF / Hood. Surgical Strike will steal red, generate yellows, and once I get Thunder Strike the game will be near finished. (Then again, I suppose every PVP team is now Featured/your choice of 4*/Hood.)

Also, I agree there are better uses of red (my favorite is now Deadpool's), but better uses of yellow? I still think lazythor's Thunder Strike is still amazing, since it quite reliably cascades a significant chunk of the board and gives you good openings to either make a match-5 or follow up with any green power. I think that's way better than some protection tiles.

But if I had complete autonomy over my team selection (eg. the SHIELD sim) of course I wouldn't run XF and lazythor together. My A-team would be Thoress/XF/Hood. Only problem for me is I don't have a 270 Thoress yet

The thing is, optimizing a hero for his featured PvP once every 3 months is pretty.... marginal. 5 red is probably better than 5 green in that case, but it happens so infrequently, and 3 red isn't that much worse that it doesn't make sense to do that. On the other hand, 5 green is going to make a huge deal on the one heroic every 3 months that features him, so again, it makes far more sense to optimize him for that. IMO, this is the only decision tree that makes sense:
1. Do you have XF? If not, 3/5/5.
2. Do you have XF and use LazyThor as XF's pairing in a MAJORITY of PvPs? 5/5/3
3. Do you have XF and ONLY use LazyThor in his featured PvP / PvE? 3/5/5, because optimizing for heroics is more important than optimizing for featured PvP.

I think any other decision is a misalignment of priorities.

Unknown

That's a good point NP. I almost completely forgot about heroic mode, mainly because I'm so tired of fighting the same 8 Dark Avengers over and over again I barely play it at all. Personally, I just enter in the last 1.5 days and try to catch a fresh bracket and win a top 50.

The reason why I chose to optimize lazyThor for PVPs was because, for me at the time, I was on a hunt to either come first or hit 1300 as smoothly as possible as to win 4* covers, as that was where I was in my roster transition stage, and PVP seemed like the more reliable way to win 4* covers. Regardless, I can see what you mean by "misalignment of priorities".