The Meta Hall of Fame

2

Comments

  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx wrote:

    Sentry-bombing: before his nerf, world rupture only cost 7 green ap, and each time did damage and less self damage. Sacrifice inflicted less self damage and created a stronger strike tile. The typical sentry bomb strategy was to use hood with 5 black covers, +3 green/black ap, +3 all ap (at the time you copay boost up to +3!). Make 1 green match, 1 yellow match, and 1 black match. Cast world rupture, wait 1 turn. Cast sacrifice, then cast hood black to detonate all CD tiles. Done properly this could do about 10.5k aoe damage at a time when no one had more health than 3* hulk (until dino came out at least). And it only took about 30 seconds. Shield hopping was interesting.

    A few things to add about Sentry bombing
    - you could boost up to 3 ap per colour. So if you add in 3 green/black + 3 red/yellow + 3 all color boost, you will only need 1 green match and 1 yellow match to cast World Rupture and Sacrifice. If you managed to get another 3 black, then you cast Hood's Intimidation to reduce the cd tile by 1 turn.
    - Fully boosted Sentry bombing can be as fast as 10 seconds. Yes, 10 freaking seconds! Because on a good board, you just match 3 green and 3 yellow and you are all set.
    - Shield hopping WAS NOT interesting. In fact, it is the most boring meta. Because you absolutely have to have sentry to shield hop fast. If you run any other teams, you are 10x slower than others. Frequently, if you run other teams, you can be tapped 3 times before you finish one match. This is how fast Sentry-bombing was. I was glad they nerfed Sentry-bombing (though it made Sentry virtually useless, I don't miss him).
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    atomzed wrote:


    A few things to add about Sentry bombing
    - you could boost up to 3 ap per colour. So if you add in 3 green/black + 3 red/yellow + 3 all color boost, you will only need 1 green match and 1 yellow match to cast World Rupture and Sacrifice. If you managed to get another 3 black, then you cast Hood's Intimidation to reduce the cd tile by 1 turn.
    - Fully boosted Sentry bombing can be as fast as 10 seconds. Yes, 10 freaking seconds! Because on a good board, you just match 3 green and 3 yellow and you are all set.
    - Shield hopping WAS NOT interesting. In fact, it is the most boring meta. Because you absolutely have to have sentry to shield hop fast. If you run any other teams, you are 10x slower than others. Frequently, if you run other teams, you can be tapped 3 times before you finish one match. This is how fast Sentry-bombing was. I was glad they nerfed Sentry-bombing (though it made Sentry virtually useless, I don't miss him).

    Hopping was 'interesting' in that it only took attackers 30 seconds to do a complete match against you. So you are right that sentry was effectively required to compete at the top levels. I just meant that shield hops were were quite perilous if you floated for any time at all. But 3-hour shields were also unlimited at the time, so multiple hops were much less of a pain in the ****.
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx wrote:

    Hopping was 'interesting' in that it only took attackers 30 seconds to do a complete match against you. So you are right that sentry was effectively required to compete at the top levels. I just meant that shield hops were were quite perilous if you floated for any time at all. But 3-hour shields were also unlimited at the time, so multiple hops were much less of a pain in the ****.

    Well, it was boring to me. My experience during then was:-
    1) Load up 2 - 3 targets.
    2) Sentry bomb blitz the 2 - 3 targets, and only chasing for green and yellow.
    3) Shield up.
    4) Repeat step 1 - 3.

    How fun it is to only be chasing for green and yellow? It was good for the first day i got my sentry up. Subsequently, it is just boring.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    atomzed wrote:
    Vhailorx wrote:

    Hopping was 'interesting' in that it only took attackers 30 seconds to do a complete match against you. So you are right that sentry was effectively required to compete at the top levels. I just meant that shield hops were were quite perilous if you floated for any time at all. But 3-hour shields were also unlimited at the time, so multiple hops were much less of a pain in the ****.

    Well, it was boring to me. My experience during then was:-
    1) Load up 2 - 3 targets.
    2) Sentry bomb blitz the 2 - 3 targets, and only chasing for green and yellow.
    3) Shield up.
    4) Repeat step 1 - 3.

    How fun it is to only be chasing for green and yellow? It was good for the first day i got my sentry up. Subsequently, it is just boring.

    We agree! I should have used ""s around the word interesting. or maybe I could typed it more sarcastically! icon_e_smile.gif

    (shield cooldowns still suck though. why does my stupid mobile game require that I play 2-6 matches spaced out over strict 3/8 hours intervals. It's crazy)
  • Beast1970
    Beast1970 Posts: 421 Mover and Shaker
    Back towards the beginning, CStorm was a meta in and of herself. In the original Shield Simulator, people would put up a 5 yellow, that power would just about wipe out an opposing team if anyone else was damaged. Standard match was to put your weakest rostered character out front, get them attacked, win the match, move on to the next.
  • fun_and_gun
    fun_and_gun Posts: 120 Tile Toppler
    I believe there was a winfinite combo that included 2* mags, mystique, and someone else before they got nerfed.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    I believe there was a winfinite combo that included 2* mags, mystique, and someone else before they got nerfed.

    It was just the two of them. He made blue with his purple, and she made purple and black with her blue (at the time his purple made 5 placed blue tiles and no reds. Mystiquecs blue cost 9 and made more tiles). A good 3rd wheel was anyone with a good black. Mystique was released in Nov. 2014 and the nerf was in March 2015, right when prof x was coming out.

    Aesth,

    I think sentry was released with prodigal sun in May 2014. Don't know how long it took for bombing to become ubiquitous, but it was predominant when I started paying attention to PvP on late July. And It really took off in late August/early September when cMags was revised (and science was also buffed and became steadily more popular for the rest of the year).
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,610 Chairperson of the Boards
    I heard that before I joined the game, there was a time when Loki was setting the whole board purple, which was self-feeding. He was then nuked into oblivion before getting a pretty good passive added in a lot later.
  • carrion_pigeons
    carrion_pigeons Posts: 942 Critical Contributor
    Rags and Loki were the big nerfs everyone was complaining about when I first started playing. I never saw them in action, and both of them only had two abilities each at the time and were completely terrible, so I didn't roster them for ages and never got any experience with them. But I do essentially recall whispers of them both being one-character winfinites.
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx wrote:

    Thorverine - at release 4*Thor's red did more damage, and her blue stunned for 4 rounds and spawned 12 (!!!) charged tiles. Blue-into-red could one-shot anything in the game. From september 2014 through April 2015 Xfw was a beast. His green did 3400 damage (+ tile damage) for 8 ap. That was an awesome ratio at the time, and could typically 1 shot hood, who was a premier PvP character via sentry bombing). His black was the best power in the game. It did a little less damage per tile (about 500-ish), BUT it destroyed 10 of the ai's strongest ap AND every tile destroyed generated ap (!!). So assume the ai's strongest color was green. You would wait until there was a decent amount of green on the board, cast black, and then use the resulting green ap to cast xforce a few times and clean up the mess. Devastating. Used together Thorverine covered 5/6 colors, had very high health, and were incredibly fast.

    Interestingly enough you have forgotten to include the Original Thorverine combo! The original Thorverine were 2 * Thor and Wolvie, xfw and 4hor just inherited the name icon_razz.gif

    That team reigned just after Ragnarok nerf, and they were a blast to play. Together they were much much better than any other 3 released until Spidey came up. After the nerf Thor was still quite good but 2 wolvie lost a lot of his magic.

    Edit: I have just seen Demolira already mentioned the original Thorverine
  • juff
    juff Posts: 4
    The "interesting" thing about environment tiles was that they multiplied the AP generated when they crit. Since the electrical map let you spawn crits with enviroment AP, a high crit multiplier character could loop and spam crits. mstorm could also loop on the desert map with her old red skill.
  • Malcrof
    Malcrof Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards
  • mpqr7
    mpqr7 Posts: 2,642 Chairperson of the Boards
    I remember when certain characters were terrifying. I stood down against an obw-3* hulk team. KK would heal back all the damage! 3* cyc would one-shot kill you! As would Doom's purple!!!

    Now with 5*s and boosted 4*s with 30,000, 40,000 or more hit points and 10,000+ dmg attacks, those 2*s and 3*s aren't nearly so scary in pvp icon_cool.gif
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    mpqr7 wrote:
    I remember when certain characters were terrifying. I stood down against an obw-3* hulk team. KK would heal back all the damage! 3* cyc would one-shot kill you! As would Doom's purple!!!

    Now with 5*s and boosted 4*s with 30,000, 40,000 or more hit points and 10,000+ dmg attacks, those 2*s and 3*s aren't nearly so scary in pvp icon_cool.gif

    Yeah, the health shift was a big change at the 3* and 4* level. 9k health was a lot back then, and a 7k attack was devastating. And then 5*s (and now boosted 4* champs) blew the top off everything!
  • _M4ru_
    _M4ru_ Posts: 91 Match Maker
    Wasn't there an insta-day-after-release Black Panther's black nerf? I vaguely remember it being super op i.e. killing the entire enemy team?
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,758 Chairperson of the Boards
    When 1* storm could take out a full 3* team by herself. She had red for 5 AP that would collect all enviornmental tiles. With the enviornmental power of forest you would spam the board with green and then collect a bunch of AP on the board. Wash rinse and replete. In forest she was one of the original winfinity!!

    The original thorverine!! 2* wolvie and 2* Thor were overpowered and had their own winfinity for cheep abilities. I want to say they got nerfed 2-3 months into the game.
  • Kavel
    Kavel Posts: 85
    _M4ru_ wrote:
    Wasn't there an insta-day-after-release Black Panther's black nerf? I vaguely remember it being super op i.e. killing the entire enemy team?

    Yeah I feel like his Black did a lot more damage originally and was immediately nerfed upon release.
  • Swish
    Swish Posts: 33 Just Dropped In
    Back when OBW was doing true healing, it wasn't uncommon to see her paired with 2* Thor in 3 out of 4 PVP matches back when I started getting into PVP (I'm on day 922, but got hit with a bug that prevented my daily rewards for a month or so; probably been playing closer to 960/970). That's also when Xforce (who really sucked, and had a red ability instead of green) and Invisible Woman were the only 4* in the game.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    I thought xfw's red was switched to black. Wasn't he r/g/y? As I recall he had a red power that destroyed 3 horizontal rows.

    As for BP, his yellow did get changed a few times. I think it had just become what it is now when I started playing (i e strike tiles, and stronger strikes if you have 12 team up ap). I always assumed that was because of the environmental tiles > team up change.
  • mohio
    mohio Posts: 1,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx wrote:
    I thought xfw's red was switched to black. Wasn't he r/g/y? As I recall he had a red power that destroyed 3 horizontal rows.

    As for BP, his yellow did get changed a few times. I think it had just become what it is now when I started playing (i e strike tiles, and stronger strikes if you have 12 team up ap). I always assumed that was because of the environmental tiles > team up change.
    I don't know if BP was actually released with his "preview" numbers, but his black was indeed insane. At max it was doing like 5000+ aoe and there were very few characters who even had more than that at the time. So yes, it was either nerfed pre-release like a few other characters, or immediately afterwards. As for his yellow, it's been changed a few times, but I think only tweaking the numbers. Pretty sure it's always been producing strike tiles, but maybe originally it made double the amount instead of making them stronger.