***** Black Bolt (Inhuman King) *****

monsieurmojo

anishwatman wrote:

A question on BB yellow.

Faced a BB(1/1/1) + OML(0/1/0) with 3* strange.
Half way during the match , BB cast his yellow and OML got all his Powers temporarily.

Due to board shake and charged tiles, OML was able to change from Passive yellow to Active yellow in next 2 turns..

Can this happen????
Any one else has witnessed this coincidence????

Come to think of it, this is a great way to use the combo 0/1/0 OML for 2-4 * transition players provided you can time it.

It's not a coincidence; Bolt's Motivation tile gives you a boost to your power levels, even if you have no covers in that color. When Bolt used that Motivation tile, OML's skills went from 0/1/0 to 1/2/1 for the duration of that tile. Motivation is useless for characters that are well-covered, but for undercovered characters, it can be pretty neat.

I have a Black Bolt with his yellow, and a 0/1/0 OML. I didn't start playing MPQ until this past January, and because of classics dilution, Bolt's yellow is likely the only way I'll ever experience getting to use the rest of OML's powers.

Rick_OShay

Matching a charged tile should increase the duration of Motivation by 1 or 2 turns.
Otherwise, really like BB

CNash

I would very much like his Energy Channeling to not play the animation every single turn. Play it once, then just have the banner flash past.

AE_Fios

Is he usable at 3-4-1? I rarely pull 5 stars but I've had some luck with Blackbolt lately. I just don't really know if he's usable undercovered like OML or if he needs 10 or 11 covers before he's viable.

monsieurmojo

He'd be useful enough at 3/4/1. I can't remember the exact numbers, but Energy Channeling at 4 covers level 390 would do something like 2700 damage per turn with 275 self damage. The green w/ 3 covers would do on the vicinity of 5k/10k. That'd be an enormous help in PvE, if nothing else.

GrimSkald

I just fully covered my Black Bolt (my first fully-covered 5*! Yay!) but I ran him at 3/5/2 at 350 for a while. I'd say Channeling is still really useful at 3, 4, or 5 since it creates two charged tiles. Avoiding the self-damage is nice, but as I recall it's fairly low.

Green starts getting decent at 3. It won't be your best green out there, but it will fill the niche pretty well when you don't have any other green. Just be careful not to trigger the "scream" mode - the damage probably won't be worth resetting the board and your AP to 0.

Yellow will only really be useful if you run him with another under-covered 5*. I have OML at 4/2/2, so that's actually quite good. Otherwise, you can always build a character 4/4/5 (or the like,) which will make them 5/5/5. Still, it's not great, but it gives you something to do with your yellow if you don't have a good user.

So the short answer is yes - he'll be useful. If you're a 4* player he won't affect your scaling particularly, either.

hopper1979

Hello all, serious question here what am I missing with Black Bolt. A lot of the talk, at least from my interpretation has him as top 3 of the 5-stars and I am just not seeing it in the game, I would put him top middle so 4-6 depending on who he is paired with. On the right teams I avoid him at all cost (ie. paired with 4-Thor) but if he is under lvl 350 I will always take a shot at him and have yet to run into any issues (Usually taking a 405 lvl OML and two championed 4-stars). The AI might just play him that badly, or he just goes crazy once he is fully covered but I have to be missing something. The extra level seems nice but is not a game changer, his charged tile generation is great but again without somebody to exploit it, like 4-Thor or Chulk, you can work around it and his green is vanilla so please what am I missing? Or does he just have that good of a PR firm? Thanks.

Bowgentle

hopper1979 wrote:

Hello all, serious question here what am I missing with Black Bolt. A lot of the talk, at least from my interpretation has him as top 3 of the 5-stars and I am just not seeing it in the game, I would put him top middle so 4-6 depending on who he is paired with. On the right teams I avoid him at all cost (ie. paired with 4-Thor) but if he is under lvl 350 I will always take a shot at him and have yet to run into any issues (Usually taking a 405 lvl OML and two championed 4-stars). The AI might just play him that badly, or he just goes crazy once he is fully covered but I have to be missing something. The extra level seems nice but is not a game changer, his charged tile generation is great but again without somebody to exploit it, like 4-Thor or Chulk, you can work around it and his green is vanilla so please what am I missing? Or does he just have that good of a PR firm? Thanks.

5K damage per round on his passive.
28K team damage if you collect 10 green and 5 in the remaining colors.

Yes, he is a, if not THE top tier 5.

Level 350 is no indication of his value when at 450+.

notamutant

hopper1979 wrote:

Hello all, serious question here what am I missing with Black Bolt. A lot of the talk, at least from my interpretation has him as top 3 of the 5-stars and I am just not seeing it in the game, I would put him top middle so 4-6 depending on who he is paired with. On the right teams I avoid him at all cost (ie. paired with 4-Thor) but if he is under lvl 350 I will always take a shot at him and have yet to run into any issues (Usually taking a 405 lvl OML and two championed 4-stars). The AI might just play him that badly, or he just goes crazy once he is fully covered but I have to be missing something. The extra level seems nice but is not a game changer, his charged tile generation is great but again without somebody to exploit it, like 4-Thor or Chulk, you can work around it and his green is vanilla so please what am I missing? Or does he just have that good of a PR firm? Thanks.

Two problems: 1) You are fighting him, not using him on offense it seems. 2) He is pretty bad until his black and green are fully covered.

Black Bolt is best on offense, as on defense, you can try to match away the charge tiles better than the AI. He also isn't as likely to save up AP in all colors for green to kill your entire team at once on defense. His last couple covers increase his damage by a lot for both green and black. I am also guessing since you say you always attack him when he is under level 350 that you are still a 4 star player pretty much. In that case, you are likely to only see undercovered 5 stars. Some 5s like OML can be good even with just a few covers. Black Bolt is not one of those characters.

Dormammu

notamutant wrote:

He also isn't as likely to save up AP in all colors for green to kill your entire team at once on defense.

This happened to me in the simulator last week. I thought an under-covered Black Bolt would be easy pickings. I defeated his teammates, which took more out of me than I thought and I was down to 2 guys. Bolt's only active color was green, so I denied it to him and forced him to match all the other colors. Then he got lucky on a massive cascade, which took my second guy out. The cascade gave him enough green to shatter the board... taking my final guy out.

udonomefoo

Mine is 360 2/4/2 (lucky!) and I think the biggest thing here is offense vs defense. He's a lot of fun on offense, even with only 8 covers. On defense though, you can just steal all the ap that his charged tiles create. It's a double edged sword, so I don't use him in pvp over boosted 4*s, but I still use him a lot in other situations.

hopper1979

Thanks for the quick reply I figured it might be a cover issue. He is the only 5 I still do not have a couple of covers in so I have never been able to play test him. I see the potential there just I have never seen him in action used correctly. Thanks again.

monsieurmojo

hopper1979 wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply I figured it might be a cover issue. He is the only 5 I still do not have a couple of covers in so I have never been able to play test him. I see the potential there just I have never seen him in action used correctly. Thanks again.

Covers are a big part of it, and so are levels. I messed around with mine a bit in the early stages, but wasn't very impressed, either. He really doesn't shine until he gets 5 black. Energy Channeling is one of the most absurd powers in the game; at champion level it's doing 5300 damage per turn. The charged tiles *can* blow up in your face, from time to time, and he can be sort of a liability on defense against other championed 5* because of it. But you can take down a champion level Dr. Strange in about 7-8 turns without firing a power. At 5 green, he's also doing 14,000 damage for 10 AP and causing good board shake. If you manage to save up the boost AP, it's generally game over: 27,000 AoE, and there's almost *always* a cascade after the new board falls, to mitigate the AP loss a touch. The yellow is pretty terrible, so terrible that I can't actually remember the last time I used it. But the other two powers are *so* good that I'm okay with him being a two-trick pony.

Dayv

BlackBoltRocks wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

Questions about that yellow aside, this is potentially a great partner for Silver Surfer. Both are classic cosmic Marvel, and the only color they overlap in is black and Black Bolt's version is a passive that acts on charged tiles, so it has some synergy with SS's blue and red.

I know a lot of people don't consider SS to be a viable 5*, but it would be nice to see him have some solid synergy with someone.

And they go well with Star Lord.

And now, months later, Star-Lord and Silver Surfer have both had improvements, I've champed both Black Bolt and Star-Lord, and Silver Surfer (level 468!), Black Bolt (level 450) and Star-Lord (level 291, currently boosted to 390) have become my go-to team for PvE. Sooo... that happened.

I even use Black Bolt's generally disappointing yellow on purpose. Spec Star-Lord to 4/5/4, wait for enemies to use a skill and it's just six yellow to increase Star-Lord to 5/5/5 for a while.

GrimSkald

DayvBang wrote:

BlackBoltRocks wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

Questions about that yellow aside, this is potentially a great partner for Silver Surfer. Both are classic cosmic Marvel, and the only color they overlap in is black and Black Bolt's version is a passive that acts on charged tiles, so it has some synergy with SS's blue and red.

I know a lot of people don't consider SS to be a viable 5*, but it would be nice to see him have some solid synergy with someone.

And they go well with Star Lord.

And now, months later, Star-Lord and Silver Surfer have both had improvements, I've champed both Black Bolt and Star-Lord, and Silver Surfer (level 468!), Black Bolt (level 450) and Star-Lord (level 291, currently boosted to 390) have become my go-to team for PvE. Sooo... that happened.

I even use Black Bolt's generally disappointing yellow on purpose. Spec Star-Lord to 4/5/4, wait for enemies to use a skill and it's just six yellow to increase Star-Lord to 5/5/5 for a while.

Yeah, BB's yellow, for all it's uniqueness, is just not that great, but if you don't have another yellow user (and I often don't,) it's worthwhile to bring another character's skill or two up to 5. I run him with Widow who works best at either 5/4/4 or 4/4/5 (I usually run her the latter, the black hits harder than the purple.) So firing the yellow to squeeze out a bit more damage out of the "off color" is not useless.

The other thing is he's a ton of fun with a new character, since you get to try a lot more...

Rick_OShay

Just got his third black cover (3/3/0) and wow what an improvement. I used to have to try so hard to avoid matching his charged tiles so that he could begin energy channelling the opposition. Now that he creates two charged tiles each round, it can be super helpful in gathering AP faster knowing that he'll still be zapping fools down soon enough. Not to mention it hits a bit harder as well.
I kinda wish his Whisper/Scream destroyed all non-charged tiles, but he's been great regardless.

kennn712

As someone with 30 or so 4* champs (highest around 310), would leveling my 5/5/1 Bolt up to around 360-370 hurt my PvP scaling? I usually only play to 650 pts for the token. How are his dmg numbers at 5/5/1 at lvl 360? Thanks!

therightwaye

kennn712 said:

As someone with 30 or so 4* champs (highest around 310), would leveling my 5/5/1 Bolt up to around 360-370 hurt my PvP scaling? I usually only play to 650 pts for the token. How are his dmg numbers at 5/5/1 at lvl 360? Thanks!

@kennn712 yes, I believe so. When I crossed the 350 mark my PvP scaling went crazy ugly.

Though, it only got worse when I moved more than one. BB sitting at 350 alone wasn't terrible. More got ugly. 

Vhailorx

kennn712 said:

As someone with 30 or so 4* champs (highest around 310), would leveling my 5/5/1 Bolt up to around 360-370 hurt my PvP scaling? I usually only play to 650 pts for the token. How are his dmg numbers at 5/5/1 at lvl 360? Thanks!

With 30+ 4* champs leveling a 5* to 370 or so will have no effect on you.  Your boosted 4*s are already in the 375-400 range, and you have several boosted each week.  

And with cl-based sacling there is no reason to soft-cap 5*s for pve any longer.  The only risk is pvp mmr.  That will change if you push bb up near 400.  It wont necessarily be worse, but you will have to adjust to the different pool of opponents.

kennn712

therightwaye said:

kennn712 said:

As someone with 30 or so 4* champs (highest around 310), would leveling my 5/5/1 Bolt up to around 360-370 hurt my PvP scaling? I usually only play to 650 pts for the token. How are his dmg numbers at 5/5/1 at lvl 360? Thanks!

@kennn712 yes, I believe so. When I crossed the 350 mark my PvP scaling went crazy ugly.

Though, it only got worse when I moved more than one. BB sitting at 350 alone wasn't terrible. More got ugly. 

Vhailorx said:

kennn712 said:

As someone with 30 or so 4* champs (highest around 310), would leveling my 5/5/1 Bolt up to around 360-370 hurt my PvP scaling? I usually only play to 650 pts for the token. How are his dmg numbers at 5/5/1 at lvl 360? Thanks!

With 30+ 4* champs leveling a 5* to 370 or so will have no effect on you.  Your boosted 4*s are already in the 375-400 range, and you have several boosted each week.  

And with cl-based sacling there is no reason to soft-cap 5*s for pve any longer.  The only risk is pvp mmr.  That will change if you push bb up near 400.  It wont necessarily be worse, but you will have to adjust to the different pool of opponents.

Thanks @therightwaye and @Vhailorx! I think I will search for some numbers then make a choice. Not sure if a 370 BB will help me more than an event/4*/4* team for PvP