*** Captain America (Super Soldier) ***

Phaserhawk

And I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying you could argue 5/3/5, but I can't see justification of 5/5/3, and regardless you are going to have a hard time saying 3/5/5 is not the most optimal. I will say, I am pleased with the new Cap, he's playable, he's fun, he's mean as hell, plus the A.I. is decent at playing him, so he's also good for defense in PvP.

NorthernPolarity

Phaserhawk wrote:

And I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying you could argue 5/3/5, but I can't see justification of 5/5/3, and regardless you are going to have a hard time saying 3/5/5 is not the most optimal. I will say, I am pleased with the new Cap, he's playable, he's fun, he's mean as hell, plus the A.I. is decent at playing him, so he's also good for defense in PvP.

How would you rank him in the current iteration of the character rankings? My intuition places him slightly above Psylocke, but I wanted to see what people who actually played with the character think.

mischiefmaker

NorthernPolarity wrote:

How would you rank him in the current iteration of the character rankings? My intuition places him slightly above Psylocke, but I wanted to see what people who actually played with the character think.

My intuition is similar to yours; I have him just outside the top 10, in the Psylocke-Punisher class of very good-but-not-great characters (keep in mind that relative to most people I overrate Psylocke and underrate Punisher). I'd have to play him to know for sure but offhand I'm guessing he's a lot slower than I generally want on offense.

Phaserhawk

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

And I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying you could argue 5/3/5, but I can't see justification of 5/5/3, and regardless you are going to have a hard time saying 3/5/5 is not the most optimal. I will say, I am pleased with the new Cap, he's playable, he's fun, he's mean as hell, plus the A.I. is decent at playing him, so he's also good for defense in PvP.

How would you rank him in the current iteration of the character rankings? My intuition places him slightly above Psylocke, but I wanted to see what people who actually played with the character think.

I would say his B team material for sure. I mean if we are talking Spidey, C.Mags, Patch, LazyThor are top of the line, then I would say New Cptn falls outside that. He's not as fast as Psylocke or Punisher, but once he revs up to the required blue and red AP it's game over, he will completely lock the game down, and with his hefty hit points. I mean his red is around 3400 dmg, so it's pretty much, stun a guy for 2 turns, kill another guy, work on the third, get your shields back, rinse and repeat and that blue is ohh so nice. I really love pairing him with Hood, Hood's black with Cap's CD is insane and your gonna rev up the AP, plus as long as Hood's been around 5-6 turns he's already done his job and Cap has the AP to do his work. As a good 3rd character I'm not sure but yeah, he's really good, funny all it took was a tweak to blue and damage scaling with red and he went from unplayable to really, really good..

Phaserhawk

mischiefmaker wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

How would you rank him in the current iteration of the character rankings? My intuition places him slightly above Psylocke, but I wanted to see what people who actually played with the character think.

My intuition is similar to yours; I have him just outside the top 10, in the Psylocke-Punisher class of very good-but-not-great characters (keep in mind that relative to most people I overrate Psylocke and underrate Punisher). I'd have to play him to know for sure but offhand I'm guessing he's a lot slower than I generally want on offense.

Yes, he is much slower, but once he gets rolling he doesn't stop and has the hit points to weather the early storm. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, my Punisher runs' outta gas especially if my strike tiles from Judgement get taken out early. The only relevant example I can give is with IM40. You know how once you get IM40's yellow off and get all that AP how the game just goes really easy and smooth after that? Caps about that speed, except he starts once you get all that blue AP, you start locking down, then picking off guys with red. Cap will actually pari up well with the upcoming Human Torch, it's that red of Torch's I worry about destroy red CD

Nonce Equitaur 2

He's A-team material for me, because of the emphasis I put on Board Control. Especially in PvE.

Spiderman and Mags are my current goto guys for controlling the board and field of play. Both are in the nerf queue, so I have others lined up for Board Control.

Captain America, The Hood, Wolverine X-Force, and BWGS are the 3* characters that can directly remove a pesky countdown tile. Of these, Cap is the fastest for handling a slew of countdown tiles. He can frequently stun one goon, remove a threat by another goon, and take down a third goon, all in the same turn, over and over and over again. Hood, BWGS and Wolvie X can't do that.

Steve Rogers currently isn't in the same league as Spidey and Mags, but he likely will be in the foreseeable future.

Unknown

Personally I think if your running Lazy Cap it should be with IM40 and Hood. That should cut down on the time required to get 11 Red AP not to mention using intimidation to lower both the IM40 and Cap countdown tiles. Assuming lvl 3 yellow on IM40 you are looking at being able to stun and drop 3k damage by at latest turn 6.

Lazy Caps strength is his versatility that being said I think most people would still chose max lvl lazy thor over max lvl lazy cap. Does bag the question though do classic Mags and Spidey really need a nerf?

The more the new characters come out the less I think they do need to be nerfed. Perhaps it they will just end up increasing the AP cost of thier 2AP abilities slightly. Spideys stun lock at 3 or 4AP per stun is way less powerful

Nonce Equitaur 2

Is Steve Roger's shield supposed to be transparent on the character selection screen? I'm unfamiliar of any story lines where his shield was transparent.

Unknown

Tony Stark developed an "energy shield" for Cap when Loki / Empress busted the trusty trash can lid in Asgard. Later Wakandnanddian - T''Challa fixed the "real" shield.

This was in the TV series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heros. Which is awesome and highly recommended. Unfortunately, Disney kiboshed the series when they bought Marvel, so they could crank out toy selling fare like "Agents of SMASH"

Dayv

In the comics, Steve Rogers used the energy shield (a Tony Stark creation, if I recall correctly) while someone else carried on the role of Captain America.

This is in Ed Brubaker's run on writing duties for Captain America, which I recommend highly.

Spoiler for both comics and movies below:

Bucky came back from the seemingly dead as the Winter Soldier, and then took up the mantle and shield as Captain America after Rogers was killed. You know, for a while. Comics!

Unknown

Rorex wrote:

Does bag the question though do classic Mags and Spidey really need a nerf?

C Mags I'm not as sure about. I'm still not quite sure what all the fuss is about. I'm suspecting I'm not seeing it as I don't have a well built C Mags and the computer is **** at playing him.

Spidey is another story. A full stunlock is totally possible, even likely, with 5 in blue so he's casting for 2ap. The issue is, nothing can get around stunlock. Whatever difficulties you note with him, stunlock is a complete trump card to any other power in the game. There's no balancing around the abilty to stunlock. Overpowered stuns have been an issue in online RPG's for years and years now. They are frustrating to play against (less so in MPQ). Just look at the way some people talk about him "I took out this team of 230's and I didn't even need to pull spidey out!". It's great that it's possible. As a community, though, we know that using spiderman completely trivializes any fight. That's not good for the long term health of the game

Phaserhawk

Rorex wrote:

Personally I think if your running Lazy Cap it should be with IM40 and Hood. That should cut down on the time required to get 11 Red AP not to mention using intimidation to lower both the IM40 and Cap countdown tiles. Assuming lvl 3 yellow on IM40 you are looking at being able to stun and drop 3k damage by at latest turn 6.

Lazy Caps strength is his versatility that being said I think most people would still chose max lvl lazy thor over max lvl lazy cap. Does bag the question though do classic Mags and Spidey really need a nerf?

The more the new characters come out the less I think they do need to be nerfed. Perhaps it they will just end up increasing the AP cost of thier 2AP abilities slightly. Spideys stun lock at 3 or 4AP per stun is way less powerful

That's way to slow of a lineup. Hood will die quickly and IM40 the way the A.I. plays him is a waste. now it's 3v1 and Cap can't stop that. In order to utilize him best you are either going to have to have him as the lowest cost blue or red or have him as the only blue or red. I do think Hood is perfect, and if you want the rainbow, you would need a purple, green, yellow which we don't have yet, but I would probably go for Patch, Hulk, or even BWGS, that way you won't mess too much. You can pair him with whoever you want, but if you want to have a Cap lockdown he's going to have to have the cheapest blue and red on the board.

Unknown

Ruval wrote:

Rorex wrote:

Does bag the question though do classic Mags and Spidey really need a nerf?

C Mags I'm not as sure about. I'm still not quite sure what all the fuss is about. I'm suspecting I'm not seeing it as I don't have a well built C Mags and the computer is **** at playing him.

Spidey is another story. A full stunlock is totally possible, even likely, with 5 in blue so he's casting for 2ap. The issue is, nothing can get around stunlock. Whatever difficulties you note with him, stunlock is a complete trump card to any other power in the game. There's no balancing around the abilty to stunlock. Overpowered stuns have been an issue in online RPG's for years and years now. They are frustrating to play against (less so in MPQ). Just look at the way some people talk about him "I took out this team of 230's and I didn't even need to pull spidey out!". It's great that it's possible. As a community, though, we know that using spiderman completely trivializes any fight. That's not good for the long term health of the game

Anyone with stun can stunlock assuming they have enough AP. Now with most characters the amount needed is enough that this isn't an issue or the length of the stun is so short that it doesn't matter. Take BW modern for example. With 9 AP she will stun lock for 1 turn, with 18 AP 2 turns, and with 27AP five turns. The issue with Spidey can be looked at three differnt ways either his stuns are too long, or they are too cheap or some combination of the two. The question is how do you fix it. Right now with Spidey you probably need 10 blue AP to start in order to hold a stun lock for the rest of the game. So if you increase the casting cost from 2AP to 3AP it can be assumed that you now need about 15AP, at a casting cost of 4 AP its probably 20AP. However even at 20 AP its still relatively cheap compared to other characters. Alternatively you could change the abilities effect to half the number of webtiles rounded down is the number or turns you stun for.

However you also need to consider the other characters with non stun abilities. For example with 30 red, green, black or purple AP there are a few characters who can end the game on the spot. Green AP in paticular is easy to generate so its hard to even compare the AP directly, by that I mean its going to take longer to generate 30 Blue AP then 30 green AP in most cases.In addition the stun lock strategy is by its very nature slow. So therefore you are not going to see a player flying up the ranks who is stun locking to victory. Essentially in PVP its going to equate to more grinding time and less down time due to the fact you should have plenty of health then using a high damage output team. Where its really unbalanced is PVE as you mentioned. That said, OBW is in my opinion, more effective at dealing with hammer or maggia. Also I have to say I can't remember ever being stunlocked by the AI playing Spidey.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Rorex wrote:

Personally I think if your running Lazy Cap it should be with IM40 and Hood. That should cut down on the time required to get 11 Red AP not to mention using intimidation to lower both the IM40 and Cap countdown tiles. Assuming lvl 3 yellow on IM40 you are looking at being able to stun and drop 3k damage by at latest turn 6.

Lazy Caps strength is his versatility that being said I think most people would still chose max lvl lazy thor over max lvl lazy cap. Does bag the question though do classic Mags and Spidey really need a nerf?

The more the new characters come out the less I think they do need to be nerfed. Perhaps it they will just end up increasing the AP cost of thier 2AP abilities slightly. Spideys stun lock at 3 or 4AP per stun is way less powerful

That's way to slow of a lineup. Hood will die quickly and IM40 the way the A.I. plays him is a waste. now it's 3v1 and Cap can't stop that. In order to utilize him best you are either going to have to have him as the lowest cost blue or red or have him as the only blue or red. I do think Hood is perfect, and if you want the rainbow, you would need a purple, green, yellow which we don't have yet, but I would probably go for Patch, Hulk, or even BWGS, that way you won't mess too much. You can pair him with whoever you want, but if you want to have a Cap lockdown he's going to have to have the cheapest blue and red on the board.

I agree that on defense the AI will undoubtably mismanage the line up but thats usually the case. At least with 2 characters with 7250 hp you will deter some people. Also I should point out that Caps blue and red are the lowest cost abilities with a Hood, IM40 line up so the AI should be using them (especially the blue). Personally I always try not to put Patch or Hulk with Hood. With Hulk its way to easy for the AI to kill Hood by misusing Hulks red which with Cap shouldn't get used but then again I have seen the AI use a more expensive ability before especially if it reaches the AP needed for both abilities at the same time. With Patch I find giving the opponent strike tiles to help them match Hood to death faster is not necessarily a good idea. In fact when playing the AI I have used the other team's Hulk to kill their Hood all it takes is a stun at the right time to the character with a cheaper red and the AI is going to pop HulKs red when it shouldn't. If theres one thing you can count on its the AI messing things up.

over_clocked

Rorex, whatcha talking about? mBW stuns the entire enemy team for 1 turn and the targeted character for 5 turns at lvl 5 blue with 9 blue AP.
Unless that's what you were trying to say. She's not the character to stunlock anyway, maybe with IM 40 or MMN.

HailMary

locked wrote:

Rorex, whatcha talking about? mBW stuns the entire enemy team for 1 turn and the targeted character for 5 turns at lvl 5 blue with 9 blue AP.
Unless that's what you were trying to say. She's not the character to stunlock anyway, maybe with IM 40 or MMN.

That's... exactly what he's saying. With 27 B: select enemy 1, MBW-stun, select enemy 2, MBW-stun, select enemy 3, MBW-stun. Et voila: 5-turn team stunlock!

The huge startup-cost differential between MBW's 5-turn team-stun and Spidey's essentially endless team-stun, though, is, ahem, huge.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

locked wrote:

Rorex, whatcha talking about? mBW stuns the entire enemy team for 1 turn and the targeted character for 5 turns at lvl 5 blue with 9 blue AP.
Unless that's what you were trying to say. She's not the character to stunlock anyway, maybe with IM 40 or MMN.

That's... exactly what he's saying. With 27 B: select enemy 1, MBW-stun, select enemy 2, MBW-stun, select enemy 3, MBW-stun. Et voila: 5-turn team stunlock!

The huge startup-cost differential between MBW's 5-turn team-stun and Spidey's essentially endless team-stun, though, is, ahem, huge.

5 turns isn't generally enough to kill an enemy team. Generally when people say they have a "lock" they mean they can almost always continue it indefinitely, or close enough to indefinitely to ensure a victory. Otherwise it isn't a stun-lock, it's just a stun.

HailMary

gamar wrote:

5 turns isn't generally enough to kill an enemy team. Generally when people say they have a "lock" they mean they can almost always continue it indefinitely, or close enough to indefinitely to ensure a victory. Otherwise it isn't a stun-lock, it's just a stun.

Agreed. Thanks for the "stunlock" clarification. I've seen people use "stunlock" interchangeably with "stun," and was always puzzled as to why they were needlessly typing four extra letters.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

HailMary wrote:

locked wrote:

Rorex, whatcha talking about? mBW stuns the entire enemy team for 1 turn and the targeted character for 5 turns at lvl 5 blue with 9 blue AP.
Unless that's what you were trying to say. She's not the character to stunlock anyway, maybe with IM 40 or MMN.

That's... exactly what he's saying. With 27 B: select enemy 1, MBW-stun, select enemy 2, MBW-stun, select enemy 3, MBW-stun. Et voila: 5-turn team stunlock!

The huge startup-cost differential between MBW's 5-turn team-stun and Spidey's essentially endless team-stun, though, is, ahem, huge.

5 turns isn't generally enough to kill an enemy team. Generally when people say they have a "lock" they mean they can almost always continue it indefinitely, or close enough to indefinitely to ensure a victory. Otherwise it isn't a stun-lock, it's just a stun.

While I'm not sure this belongs in Shieldbro's thread, I think MBW can get nine Blue in 5 turns relatively frequently and if her team can't kill at least one guy during that time, something is wrong. 27 blue for MBW is as close to a guaranteed stunlock as you will see outside Spiderman. You would stun the guy you meant to kill on turn 1. Attack him. Then stun guy B on turn 2, Attack guy A again, then stun guy C on turn 3, attack guy A. At turn 3 guy a is stunned for 2 more turns, B 3 more turns, C four more turns. Keep collecting blue and concentrating your attacks on the soonest ending stun. This is basically what you do in a 1* tourney to maximize your health packs.

Unknown

Okay, so I've allowed myself to be convinced that Shieldbro is good. Heck, he's one of my favorite characters and I WANTED to be convinced. Now I'm itching to dump some covers and iso into him. So where does he fit on my existing three star team. I've got maxed Hulk, Black Panther, Punisher, and Patch, as well as 128 Cmags and 100 GSBW. He looks to pair reasonably well with BP, what's the third here? I have enough green users, goodness knows. I'm thinking possibly GSBW? Her green is nice, she brings an excellent (though not when used by the AI) purple power to the table, and her red doesn't really conflict with Cap's. I don't know about Patch in this setup, since you really want to bring someone like Cmags with him, and while Punisher seems like never a bad choice, I think he might be here due to his red and black semi-conflicting with his teammates. Hulk is fine, but it's just not striking me right now.

What is the prevailing opinion here?