Ddq - Xpool vs NC17

UncleSmed

Just wondering if anyone else is having serious trouble with this matchup?

Any advice (outside of deny three colours you don't need and can't use while trying to get enough red and purple to make a difference... and get more covers.. both of those are self evident and honestly useless because gem drops are random) on how to approach this?

I know my 3/1/1 xpool doesn't have much chance, but i remember IceIX saying even 4 and 5 cover heroes have a chance.. wondering if there's something I'm missing?

21 health packs burnt and all my damage boosts burnt.

mikepro

Try using a few boosts like +2yellow/red and +2 blue/purple. Then hopefully save up till you can fire off 2 red and a purple at one time and hoe you get it.

Ps what lvl is he at. Makes a huge difference

Pylgrim

In reality you only need to deny black, which thankfully is a strong colour of X-Pool. X-Force's green doesn't deal that much damage and that's ok since you have a healing ability. His yellow may be annoying but you only need to guard against it if you have dealt substantial damage (i.e. have used your powers). Better to let him heal 1-2k than being dealt 3k+. So, deny black and collect red. Those two colours are your main focus, in that order. If none of those colours can be matched, match green, purple, yellow, team-up and blue in that order of priority, but always prefer a weaker match if it will not enable (or potentially enable) a black match for X-Force. Don't jump for 4-matches if they come at the cost of letting X-Force get black. Once you accumulate enough AP for your powers wait until you can kill him outright with them or you might get screwed by his yellow. Only cast his purple if there's at least one green match to be made in the board and not many more green tiles, or wait until he himself gets enough green for X-Force,as that's liable to hit many of your CDs. That's pretty much it.

All this, obviously factoring that you have levelled your X-Pool as far as it can go. 5 or 10 or 13 covers won't do much if he's level 70.

Mawtful

My XFDP is 5/2/1 for this run and was 5/1/1 last run. I'll be honest, the rank 5 in red definitely helps, but I think you can use a similar strategy.

1. Prioritise Red.
1a. Deny Black.
Basically, Surgical Strike will kill you dead pretty fast if you let Wolvie gather enough AP. However, there's a neat trick! SS deals damage based on the number of tiles it destroys (it's something like 701 damage per tile). I had Wolvie fire it off in this current challenge but there were only 2 red tiles on the board, so I could easily take that hit and regain health with Out of Bullets.

2. Conserve Red.
You don't always want to fire Deadpool's red straight away. Optimally, you want to have taken damage exactly equal to how much it heals you. It won't over heal, so don't pull the trigger early.

3. Deny Yellow matches.
4. Deny Green.
I actually try and have Wolverine match a bunch of Yellow early in the fight if I can help encourage it, and then try to keep yellow tiles just separated enough. If he uses Recovery when he's only taken 900 damage, I don't really care if he heals back to full or not. If he Recovers when he only had 900 health left, then I'd be upset. Both Green and matching away the recovery CD can cause a cascade, which could give him Black AP when you don't have a counter for it. You can probably soak a hit from Green and be ok, the cascade is the bigger worry, but if you've managed to get enough Purple AP to cast CDFW then a few green matches could help stack some damage.