***** The Hulk (Bruce Banner) *****

Jaedenkaal

monsieurmojo wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

I disagree slightly here. at 5 covers he will transform with just 6 green ap. The transform tile will proc beforeany green user might fire an ability so even if AI collects more green the transform tile will still proc before he can use it up.

No, I understand this, Gambit! I'm actually looking forward to pulling that 5th green cover many years down the road from now, just to get that cost down. What I'm saying is just that, since AI Banner will prioritize blue, then black, then purple, then TU matches before green--and because the blue, even at five covers, is still such a poor generator of green--an AI controlled Banner is far too unlikely to ever even get the green in the first place. Even if he *does* get it, the moment Hulk gets another match, he's going to use it on that pathetic AOE. There needs to be a better method of green generation to make him even worth an ISO investment for anything outside of PvE.

I don't believe that's how AI match logic works. As far as I know the AI prioritizes matches with only the following checks:

1) Make a match 4 in a color needed to fire a power
2) Make a match 4 in any color
3) Make a match 3 in a color needed to fire a power
4) Make a match 3 in any color

If there's more than one match available within the current check, it makes one randomly. Tile damage is not taken into account.

cyineedsn

Jaedenkaal wrote:

I don't believe that's how AI match logic works. As far as I know the AI prioritizes matches with only the following checks:

1) Make a match 4 in a color needed to fire a power
2) Make a match 4 in any color
3) Make a match 3 in a color needed to fire a power
4) Make a match 3 in any color

If there's more than one match available within the current check, it makes one randomly. Tile damage is not taken into account.

I think you are mostly, right, but #3 is "Make a match 3 using a color where a character has strong tile damage", which also translates into the colors needed to fire a power. You can see this more clearly during the 4* crash of the titans when the AI will prioritize getting colors for their passive despite never being able use the AP. So yeah, unless you are also using a character that has green as one of their powers, the AI will endlessly match blue black and purple before getting around to getting green

OneLastGambit

cyineedsn wrote:

Jaedenkaal wrote:

I don't believe that's how AI match logic works. As far as I know the AI prioritizes matches with only the following checks:

1) Make a match 4 in a color needed to fire a power
2) Make a match 4 in any color
3) Make a match 3 in a color needed to fire a power
4) Make a match 3 in any color

If there's more than one match available within the current check, it makes one randomly. Tile damage is not taken into account.

I think you are mostly, right, but #3 is "Make a match 3 using a color where a character has strong tile damage", which also translates into the colors needed to fire a power. You can see this more clearly during the 4* crash of the titans when the AI will prioritize getting colors for their passive despite never being able use the AP. So yeah, unless you are also using a character that has green as one of their powers, the AI will endlessly match blue black and purple before getting around to getting green

Also doesn't AI prioritise team up before any other colour when it has a team up power to use?

Jaedenkaal

OneLastGambit wrote:

Also doesn't AI prioritise team up before any other colour when it has a team up power to use?

As far as I know, this is not the case. It prioritizes Team-Up AP the same as any color for which it has powers, and higher than colors for which it does not.

Highdark

Got first cover . Tried him out. Got hulk. Hulk preceded to deny me ap. Lost. Def needs to gain ap on free match

OzarkBoatswain

It's fun to play Mystique against this guy. Hulk makes a match without gaining AP, but Mystique still manages to steal AP from it.

Rick_OShay

He's great to play along with Thanos. Since you are already gathering green for Come and Get Me, Hulk absorbs the court death damage, then Bruce us still unharmed for the next battle.
Just be sure greens are safe to play CDs on, or hulk will match it away...

Dayv

Ozark Boatswain said:

It's fun to play Mystique against this guy. Hulk makes a match without gaining AP, but Mystique still manages to steal AP from it.

On the other hand, one of the few upsides to Hulk's free-but-no-AP moves is that he works really well with allies that do something on matches.  Try him with Medusa and Carnage, for a kind of crazy example.  Medusa's burst healing and AP generation plus Carnage creating attack tiles for both sides makes random tile matches pretty ok.

On the other other hand (gamma radiation from champing 5* Hulk has given me some extra limbs), now that 4* Rocket and Groot are doing free matches that *do* generate AP, 5* Hulk looks even worse by comparison.  And compare his green tile generation to the black/yellow tile generation on Cloak & Dagger -- that's just depressing.  Banner makes a tiny bit of green (and does a sub-match-3 hit of damage) only if the board is almost totally drained of green (same threshold that ruined Amadeus Cho's old black),  C&D make more tiles more easily, and do something else (attack tile or healing) if the board is not below the threshold.  You have to make a conscious effort to keep Banner's blue passive operating, but C&D are always doing something.

And his black?  It's not as bad as people say.  7 AP is a low cost, and depending on your team (this brings us back to him working well with Medusa -- she even generates green AP sometimes), you may have a way to deal with those attack tiles, but to get the best damage out of the friendly attack tiles you have to sacrifice value on one of his two fairly critical passives.

On top of that, as others mentioned here months back, while his numbers in this thread for his active green as Hulk are ok (and only ok), they don't appear to have ever been improved in the game, or they reverted before I champed him.  My Hulk at level 451 does less than 6000 damage for 9 green AP, which is really, really underpowered for someone not generating extra green at the time they can use it.

With 5* Cap having been turned pretty solidly mid-tier or better with his redesign, it's well-past time for 5* Hulk to get some proper attention from the designers.

Dayv

Dayv said:

On top of that, as others mentioned here months back, while his numbers in this thread for his active green as Hulk are ok (and only ok), they don't appear to have ever been improved in the game, or they reverted before I champed him.  My Hulk at level 451 does less than 6000 damage for 9 green AP, which is really, really underpowered for someone not generating extra green at the time they can use it.

OK, I may have been wrong here, I just tested it again and at level 451 it does 8476 damage to the enemy team.  I'm confused now, does it do decreased damage sometimes?  Maybe this is an intermittent bug?

Dayv

Dayv said:

OK, I may have been wrong here, I just tested it again and at level 451 it does 8476 damage to the enemy team.  I'm confused now, does it do decreased damage sometimes?  Maybe this is an intermittent bug?

I've done some more testing, and it look like the damage done by Hulk's green skill is dependent on the number of covers in Banner's purple "The Other Guy" passive!  I'm going to play with a few builds and make sure it correlates to purple only, then post some more details.

spectator

I thought that was always the case 

himatako

I've been using him with Carnage and Medusa but it's so slow to get him transform. Here's an idea to improve him that I have: makes him starts the match in his Hulk form instead of Bruce Banner form. However, once he is downed in Hulk form, he returns back to his normal form. In Bruce Banner form, he should be very weak and his health should be really low. If he's downed in this form, then he's downed for good for that match.

This way, not only he'll be much more useful than he currently is, it also fits the theme more. I understand that from game balance point of view, the current design needs his Hulk form to have significantly less HP than his normal form. But it just feels wrong to transform into Hulk and has lower health than a normal human form. 

Edgeman

I really hope he will get an update around the time when Thor 3 comes out.

Anon

I have him at 0/2/0 and he's absolutely awful at these levels.

sambrookjm

Anon said:

I have him at 0/2/0 and he's absolutely awful at these levels.

I have him, and he's absolutely awful at all levels.  The "Booster Banner/Non-Boosted Hulk" is the icing on the cake.  I wonder if the other transforming 5-stars will also have this bug.  They seem to get the 4-stars right (as shown by Cloak and Dagger in the Venom Bomb event where Banner's boosted.)

zodiac339

sambrookjm said:

Anon said:

I have him at 0/2/0 and he's absolutely awful at these levels.

I have him, and he's absolutely awful at all levels.  The "Booster Banner/Non-Boosted Hulk" is the icing on the cake.  I wonder if the other transforming 5-stars will also have this bug.  They seem to get the 4-stars right (as shown by Cloak and Dagger in the Venom Bomb event where Banner's boosted.)

Well, Banner’s transformation is quite different from any other character. Really, what ends up happening is that Banner is one character, and Hulk is another. He comes in not only with his own powers, but also his own match damage and health pool as well. Any other character with a transformation just swaps powers around while still being the same character.
All that being said, yes, it’s a pretty big issue that the required Banner tranforms into a base-level Hulk. At over 400, Hulk should come in and do a noticable AOE with green, but instead, he ends up coming in at level 300 and hurling wadded up tissue at the enemy team. Vulture with a rank 3 green is a much better choice, even with the delayed AOE. Hopefully in the future, they will remember to code the Hulk side as boosted when Banner is required. Since he’s classic though, it will thankfully only be a concern once or twice a year.

bluewolf

My Hulk is pathetic at 0/1/2, but having him as a 5E I observed that not only does the first match he makes as Hulk not collect AP, but all subsequent matches (ie cascades) collect no ap later. I suppose there’s a on/off condition for AP collection. But it really frustrates to see all that AP go up in smoke.

My new working theory on reworks is:  how likely are you to work toward covering that character if he/she is reworked?  A 4* can be targeted with bonus heroes and Heroic tokens, etc.  AKA make money for devs.  5* Classics are in never-never land, pretty much, and not really whale-able.  Hence the stinkers stay stinky.  Nothing in it for the devs.

BlackBoltRocks

"*sees that Banner is the essential 5* for Venom Bomb starting 24 Dec*

*sees that his Banner is at 4/5/3*

*sees that he will easily hit 250CP by Christmas or Boxing Day*

*feels like D3 is teasing him*"



I posted this in the Sneak Peek thread like a week ago. I would like to say I am so grateful for this Venom Bomb PvE, because it has restored my sanity. Using Bruce with Surfer and Thanos, he kept making all the matches that would have gotten me important AP but did not. Examples include match-4s; making a Red match when my Surfer had 4 Red AP; matching away Thanos' Come and Get Me tile; etc etc. Such an awesome teammate. The only fun thing about using him was seeing Thanos down Hulkform with Court Death, and Bannerform nonchalantly popping up with full health intact.

Thank you, Venom Bomb PvE, for preventing me doing something I would have regretted for life, and diverting that 250CP to covering my 2/4/4 GladiaThor.

Oh, and please buff Banner (both forms). Tyvm

jackstar0

I'm actually getting use out of my 5* Hulk in Prodigal Sun when teamed with my 5* Thor.

This has highlighted some strengths and put a spotlight on the weaknesses. Honestly, if Hulk's matches gave AP and Hulk's HP/powers was tied to Banner's level just a little, I think he'd go from garbage to decent. It doesn't seem like they could design him to be top-tier, but he could be viable and a little more fun out there.

Oh, and the strength? When he transforms and then Thanos Courts Death, your Banner is unscathed, which has been a little helpful, but certainly niche.

Team Ragnarok has been fun for essentials, but it could be actually good with just a couple minor tweaks. Here's hoping for next season to loosely coincide with the Ragnarok home release.

wingX

I manage to find a use for him with America Chavez (5/3/1). As he Hulk is the only 5* that has complement colour to America's. This make her tank all her colour while still provide critical tile for Hulk to match. 3rd in the team will be mystique for damage attack and AP stealing. However, when Banner transform, I think Hulk will tank 2 of America's colour so which sometime may not be a good idea to let him transform, but if he did, at least he can tank damage for America for few turn.