**** Gwenpool (Gwen Poole) ****

Ruinate

I would run the **** out of Oml Phx Gwen in Shield Sim.

zodiac339

Vhailorx wrote:

Mitchjewitz wrote:

Black is the last power that the AI uses. So if you have AP in other colors. Your other teammates will use their powers first, Gwenpool uses her black to throw her friends in the air for one turn. This means when the opponent goes they are impervious to damage and stun. Then on your turn they land and can be used again. This move is an excellent defensive move. This being said.... the game itself is offensive based.

I am looking forward to teaming her up with falcap.

But so what? At Max level this power still costs 9ap and only produces about 1k of protection. Boosted that's about 2k. That's nothing. Boosted imhb does 1.2k damage per ap with his red. Ice does 16k aoe with his green.

Active defensive powers that do little more than negate match damage are basically worthless. We have learned this over and over again. The opportunity cost is way too high.

Demi continues to substantially overvalue protect tiles and defense in general in their internal power valuation. 1 point of defense is much less valuable than 1 point of offense. Passive defensive skills have some value. Spiderwoman might have a useful active defensive skill. What other defensive skill in this game is actually worth prioritizing?

That protect damage is, however, capable of shutting down quite a few levels worth of Epic match damage. Protect was never meant to shut down massive burst. And you don't have to use it if you're worried about the "opportunity cost" of her allies not making a match that turn. It's early defense to save on health loss from match damage bleed, or a strategic defensive move to protect the characters you really, really want to save. Let the AI blow their AP taking her out, then land and take the win. If you don't want to do it, feel free to not use it.

Pylgrim

Danng, second worst HP among 4*s. That is a disappointment. Other than that, she looks fun and decently powerful if not so much that she needed to be "balanced" with such low HP.

Vhailorx

zodiac339 wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Mitchjewitz wrote:

Black is the last power that the AI uses. So if you have AP in other colors. Your other teammates will use their powers first, Gwenpool uses her black to throw her friends in the air for one turn. This means when the opponent goes they are impervious to damage and stun. Then on your turn they land and can be used again. This move is an excellent defensive move. This being said.... the game itself is offensive based.

I am looking forward to teaming her up with falcap.

But so what? At Max level this power still costs 9ap and only produces about 1k of protection. Boosted that's about 2k. That's nothing. Boosted imhb does 1.2k damage per ap with his red. Ice does 16k aoe with his green.

Active defensive powers that do little more than negate match damage are basically worthless. We have learned this over and over again. The opportunity cost is way too high.

Demi continues to substantially overvalue protect tiles and defense in general in their internal power valuation. 1 point of defense is much less valuable than 1 point of offense. Passive defensive skills have some value. Spiderwoman might have a useful active defensive skill. What other defensive skill in this game is actually worth prioritizing?

That protect damage is, however, capable of shutting down quite a few levels worth of Epic match damage. Protect was never meant to shut down massive burst. And you don't have to use it if you're worried about the "opportunity cost" of her allies not making a match that turn. It's early defense to save on health loss from match damage bleed, or a strategic defensive move to protect the characters you really, really want to save. Let the AI blow their AP taking her out, then land and take the win. If you don't want to do it, feel free to not use it.

Her allies making a match is not the opportunity cost to worry about it. You can spawn 900-1.3k of protect tiles at max level. But to do that you had to both gather 9ap AND not spend it on something else.

Kate bishop can do almost 7.5k damage for 8 black ap. for just 11 black ap IMHB can spawn 700 in strike tiles and generate 9 red ap. Punmax can do almost unlimited damage if you have enough strike tiles out on the board, and solid damage even if you don't. There are so many better ways to spend 9 black ap (even at just the 4* tier) than spawning a few protect tiles and disabling your own teammates to boot.

This game is now 3 years old. There are lots of characters with active defensive skills, and basically none of them are top tier. Spiderwoman (black) and 3Cap (blue) are basically the only good active defensive powers in the game (elektra's shadowstep is awesome 1v1, but only meh otherwise because she has to tank). there are just a handful of good passive defensive powers (e.g. both cages are solid, 3* spidey and 2be aren't bad, 5* spidey's passive is awesome for disabling strikes, but has nothing to do with protect tiles). This is not coincidence. Whatever internal metrics the devs use to balance powers significantly overvalues protect tiles (as well as charged tiles and random boardshake). Characters with defensive powers that are good are almost invariably good despite their defensive powers, not because of them. I don't see Gwenpool as any different. if she worth using at all, it sure as hell isn't for her black.

richterbelmont10

Almost every time I used her in the Story "loaner" mode, she dies. All I was doing was fighting Venom and a couple symbiotes, and I had a powered-up 3* Cyke and Thor to help. I used her Sploits to remove all strike tiles from the board. That can't be a good sign when she keeps dying like that...

carrion_pigeons

The green gun mechanic has the effect of making the ability much worse on defense since the human player will get it 90 percent of the time. Offensively it's a good skill, but hard to imagine wanting to use her in pvp when she only has one medium quality ability the AI can use effectively.

Her black would be good if there was a way to get it for free. For 9 AP it's not worth it.

Her purple makes her useful in pve, so she has a niche, but I don't see how she can ever be very interesting. For all of the "new" things she does, none of it gives her any particularly valuable utility.

zodiac339

carrion pigeons wrote:

The green gun mechanic has the effect of making the ability much worse on defense since the human player will get it 90 percent of the time. Offensively it's a good skill, but hard to imagine wanting to use her in pvp when she only has one medium quality ability the AI can use effectively.

I imagine both sides will have a gun tile, the player's facing right and the AI's facing left. I'd say chances are pretty good that, somehow, both tiles will eventually matched or destroyed.

carrion pigeons wrote:

Her black would be good if there was a way to get it for free. For 9 AP it's not worth it.

It could have been Squirrel Girl's protect move. At least Plot Armor doesn't end the turn.

carrion pigeons wrote:

Her purple makes her useful in pve, so she has a niche, but I don't see how she can ever be very interesting. For all of the "new" things she does, none of it gives her any particularly valuable utility.

I'm not sure what your definition of "interesting" is. Keep a cheat sheet and strategically wreck the board, or decide to goof off with the weird things that 'Sploits can do. No, she isn't a massive powerhouse. But she's a whole lot more interesting than using Old Man Logan in every match you play.

Vhailorx

zodiac339 wrote:

Keep a cheat sheet and strategically wreck the board, or decide to goof off with the weird things that 'Sploits can do. No, she isn't a massive powerhouse. But she's a whole lot more interesting than using Old Man Logan in every match you play.

You are right that this is a matter of opinion, and I agree that her purple board control is the most useful thing about her (green is good, but there are better greens out there).

but this game asks top 100 pve alliance players to do a minimum of 36 matches a day at various difficulty levels. even averaging just 3 minutes a match, that's almost 2 hours per day, every day. (top PVE players need to play 20-30 matches per event to hit 1.2k, depending on strength and when they climb, so the total investment of time is noticeably lower. but if you have to shield hop, then your play schedule is at least as tedious as optimal PVE play).

Gwen's board control may be a lot of fun to use in a couple of those matches much. But I would much prefer to use the usual suspects (be that OML/Phoenix, or Switch/Rulk, or IM40/Ice) in the other 30+ if they save me 30-60 seconds. So when it comes to making choices about which character to pick first when I get the chance, gwen won't be on the list.

spectator

The game/d3 didn't actually ask you to do any of that, your fellow competitors did

Vhailorx

spectator wrote:

The game/d3 didn't actually ask you to do any of that, your fellow competitors did

the game has a top pve progression reward set at 4 clears per node/per day. And each PVE has at least 9 nodes per sub (some have a few more that are playable once). How is that not asking dedicated players to play that much?

Players aren't required to play that much, but they certainly are encouraged.

Pylgrim

Are all stats and effects posted in the OP at 5 covers? Do we know if something changes at 3 covers? (besides, I'm guessing, damage.)

Also, added to the Character Compendium.

Chthulu, there's no board icon for her yet.

ErikPeter

The stats

Pylgrim wrote:

Are all stats and effects posted in the OP at 5 covers? Do we know if something changes at 3 covers? (besides, I'm guessing, damage.)

No. The level 70 stats are at 1 cover in Pink, (But listed from 1-5 covers in Green and Black). The level 270 stats are from 3-5 covers as listed. My source didn't get level 70 stats for 2+ covers in `SPLOITS!. Cthulhu probably has them though.

We don't know for sure how the number of tiles affected when using a "remove special tiles" code. It starts at 2, is at least 4 at level 3; It's actually only an assumption that all three tile types are removed in the same amounts (e.g. possible but unlikely it removes more Attack tiles than Strike tiles). That would be the most helpful for a Dev team member to provide, unless someone with "sandbox" access wants to grind matches against Storm and Daken (latter one is less fun since he likes to match away Pink) and test out how many tiles are removed at each point.

My guess is 2,3,5,All, for levels 1-4 (and level 5 just does waaay more damage). But really it's just as likely it does 2-6 from levels 1-5. Because CDs are not represented I'm optimistic; I think "all" would be cool and kind of a nice "oh TK" button for an unexpected hailstorm teamup etc.

Moon Roach

I'm interested in knowing how random the 'sploits! code selection is when used by the AI. Does it "learn" as covers and level increase and so use something close to useful?

ErikPeter

So far, in I Choose You!, the AI has only picked one joke out of 4 activations. So--and obviously that's not very much data--it looks like its picking 1/32 actions instead of 1/84 possible codes, which is good.

fanghoul

zodiac339 wrote:

That protect damage is, however, capable of shutting down quite a few levels worth of Epic match damage. Protect was never meant to shut down massive burst. And you don't have to use it if you're worried about the "opportunity cost" of her allies not making a match that turn. It's early defense to save on health loss from match damage bleed, or a strategic defensive move to protect the characters you really, really want to save. Let the AI blow their AP taking her out, then land and take the win. If you don't want to do it, feel free to not use it.

I'm finding her black power surprisingly irritating in PvP. Not devastating, but annoying in that I'll be lined up to use a power or do a good move, and suddenly I can't target that character anymore.

It makes me wonder about what would happen with an Iron Fist + Switch + Gwenpool team.
(^this is a terrible idea)

Quebbster

I want to play Gwenpool with Wasp some time, simply because Gwen is one of the few characters who can make protect tiles with something other than yellow AP. Then Wasp can make them into strike tiles with her yellow.
Obviously not a top tier team, but it could be fun to try at least.

zodiac339

fanghoul wrote:

zodiac339 wrote:

That protect damage is, however, capable of shutting down quite a few levels worth of Epic match damage. Protect was never meant to shut down massive burst. And you don't have to use it if you're worried about the "opportunity cost" of her allies not making a match that turn. It's early defense to save on health loss from match damage bleed, or a strategic defensive move to protect the characters you really, really want to save. Let the AI blow their AP taking her out, then land and take the win. If you don't want to do it, feel free to not use it.

I'm finding her black power surprisingly irritating in PvP. Not devastating, but annoying in that I'll be lined up to use a power or do a good move, and suddenly I can't target that character anymore.

It makes me wonder about what would happen with an Iron Fist + Switch + Gwenpool team.
(^this is a terrible idea)

Strategically very useful. Used Plot Armor when the enemy Widow had 23 Green. I'd wanted to use Full Blast, but not enough red on the board to up the damage enough to kill her first. Saved me a bunch of healing. Oh! Just realized you were quoting one of my earlier post suggesting something similar. Yeah, it worked just fine.
EDIT: Should I be using "tactically" instead of "strategically"?
EDIT NUMBER 2: Can also send allies airborne when boosted Nick Fury uses Demolition, allowing Gwen to take another one for the team mates.

ErikPeter

Plot Armor is an awesome team up. Send your whole team airborne (it ends the turn, since no one is there to make a match) and make protects. Especially if the AI is about to beat the **** out of you with something, like say, countdowns going off or any attack that will fire without a target (e.g. IM46's Girl Friday, team damage).

notamutant

ErikPeter wrote:

Plot Armor is an awesome team up. Send your whole team airborne (it ends the turn, since no one is there to make a match) and make protects. Especially if the AI is about to beat the **** out of you with something, like say, countdowns going off or any attack that will fire without a target (e.g. IM46's Girl Friday, team damage).

You tested it can be sent as a TU?

simonsez

notamutant wrote:

ErikPeter wrote:

Plot Armor is an awesome team up. Send your whole team airborne (it ends the turn, since no one is there to make a match) and make protects. Especially if the AI is about to beat the **** out of you with something, like say, countdowns going off or any attack that will fire without a target (e.g. IM46's Girl Friday, team damage).

You tested it can be sent as a TU?

Don't know if it can be sent, but I've received one after a fight, which implies that it can.