**** Venom (Agent Venom) ****

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Comments

  • Skygazing
    Skygazing Posts: 165 Tile Toppler
    Etheus wrote:
    spectator wrote:
    Skygazing wrote:
    a yellow that deals team damage (entirely unheard of ) and also makes allies invisible.
    oml says hi

    Fury with 5 greentile.png has been doing that for years now.

    I was talking more about 4* tier than in general, so OML doesn't really count in my mind. He also requires 9 black and 12 yellow before he can pull that off. I did forget about Fury to be fair, but he has a similar restriction anyway in that he needs green ap (an admittedly a low amount) to do so.

    AV yellow does a decent amount of damage and applies an extra effect with no requirements beyond base AP, which is still pretty unique.
  • Orion
    Orion Posts: 1,295 Chairperson of the Boards
    spectator wrote:
    Skygazing wrote:
    a yellow that deals team damage (entirely unheard of ) and also makes allies invisible.
    oml says hi

    So does 4Thor. Yeah, it's a bad one, but it does exist.
  • Oldboy
    Oldboy Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker
    Will invisible allies (by Venom) be rendered visible when Venom is downed?
  • zodiac339
    zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    Orion wrote:
    spectator wrote:
    Skygazing wrote:
    a yellow that deals team damage (entirely unheard of ) and also makes allies invisible.
    oml says hi

    So does 4Thor. Yeah, it's a bad one, but it does exist.
    Oh, yeah. She does have a yellow. Easy to forget since IM40 is the one that uses yellow with her.
  • richterbelmont10
    richterbelmont10 Posts: 186
    Final verdict?

    -Low-to-mid tier 4*
    -Utility character/board shaker
  • TobiBlackmore
    TobiBlackmore Posts: 52
    While this characters looks cool his powers seem disappointing. One power benefits from having a lot of AP in one pool while the other power suffers from it, or rather, makes your character suffer from it. It's especially difficult to maintain since having this character on your team already creates a passive ability, which means you have to get another blacktile.png power character to drain the pool if you need to. It seems like too much of a hassle to do all this AP managment for just one character that is not-so-great.
  • Mitchjewitz
    Mitchjewitz Posts: 84 Match Maker
    TobiBlackmore wrote:
    While this characters looks cool his powers seem disappointing. One power benefits from having a lot of AP in one pool while the other power suffers from it, or rather, makes your character suffer from it. It's especially difficult to maintain since having this character on your team already creates a passive ability, which means you have to get another blacktile.png power character to drain the pool if you need to. It seems like too much of a hassle to do all this AP managment for just one character that is not-so-great.

    Uhh his black isn't always passive. At a cost of only 5 ap, black will likely never be the AP pool with too much ap.
  • ErikPeter
    ErikPeter Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    Just to reiterate, Alien Weakness is not a drawback, it's a strategy. Destroying 9 tiles at the start of many turns for only 2 AP is amazing and should often generate decent AP cascades which potentially will let you keep it up turn by turn. The tiny Health loss is thematic perk and won't matter most of the time unless you're really cranking out the tile destruction, which means you're winning anyway.
  • DrDevilDinosaur
    DrDevilDinosaur Posts: 436 Mover and Shaker
    ErikPeter wrote:
    Just to reiterate, Alien Weakness is not a drawback, it's a strategy. Destroying 9 tiles at the start of many turns for only 2 AP is amazing and should often generate decent AP cascades which potentially will let you keep it up turn by turn. The tiny Health loss is thematic perk and won't matter most of the time unless you're really cranking out the tile destruction, which means you're winning anyway.

    I know right?
    Rank 5 is 139 damage, out of 16465 health.
    It's not even 10%.
    It's not even 1%!
    It's lower than opposing match damage from a 4* character.

    Whelp, taking damage makes this character lower than trash tier, better not use them at all but also still complain about rostering them.
  • vinsensual
    vinsensual Posts: 458 Mover and Shaker
    It's not the damage, it's the 2 from your highest pool. Saving up for a lethal turn is a common strategy and getting Hood'ed after 12* AP isn't fun. Board shake at a point where you have 12+ AP usually isn't always desirable either. At least Modern Blade would drain only one AP per turn.

    To me, rest of the kit doesn't offer enough to warrant a complete change of playstyle, aka no hoarding.
  • Tromb2ch2
    Tromb2ch2 Posts: 301 Mover and Shaker
    Still better than brock.
  • Norksman
    Norksman Posts: 42
    Finally a character that can make use of Psylocke's blue?
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    Oldboy wrote:
    Will invisible allies (by Venom) be rendered visible when Venom is downed?

    No. It just happened to me yesterday in his Essential node in simulator PvE and the other two characters remained invisible.

    Also, they were invisible while he got stunned.

    PS: This is what happens when in an Essential node, a one cover Venom needs to be in front against level 400+ Iceman & co. He dies in a heartbeat. It is so damn stupid that the Essential nodes don't consider the level of your essential character...
  • GuntherBlobel
    GuntherBlobel Posts: 987 Critical Contributor
    At 1/1/1, I'm having more fun with him than most 4* characters.

    I've used Take Cover yellowflag.png to rescue both his teammates from lengthy stuns that Bobby and Wanda caused in the Simulator 4* required node.

    Alien weakness blackflag.png is fun at any level. If another character is downed, it triggers constantly and can help to reverse the trajectory of that game. It has destroyed Wanda's countdowns and brings in an extra 3 AP a turn. To force it to trigger more often, I just let yellowtile.png AP build up, since I am using Take Cover for the situational invisibility effects anyway.

    It'll be interesting to see how he plays with more covers. In any case, he should be good boosted, which pretty much determines which fully covered 4* I play in any given week.
  • Marc_Spector
    Marc_Spector Posts: 628 Critical Contributor
    GuntherBlobel wrote:
    At 1/1/1, I'm having more fun with him than most 4* characters.

    Alien weakness blackflag.png is fun at any level. If another character is downed, it triggers constantly and can help to reverse the trajectory of that game. It has destroyed Wanda's countdowns and brings in an extra 3 AP a turn. To force it to trigger more often, I just let yellowtile.png AP build up, since I am using Take Cover for the situational invisibility effects anyway.

    Likewise, Gunther - I didn't expect to like him as much as I do. I'm loving him at either 1/1/1 or the fully covered loaner-node version.

    His blackflag.png may be one of my favorite recently added moves in the game, and (for thematic reasons alone) captures the host/symbiote struggle better than either of the other disappointing in-game Venoms (Venomses?) (Venomii?) The cascades from the passive component have often led to crazily-full AP pools across most colors, allowing him to stay in symbiote mode perpetually (which may not be a bad thing... I'd love to do the math someday on the effectiveness of 3 covers / 14 AP transformation threshold / 5 random tiles destroyed, versus 5 covers / 16 AP / 9 tiles)

    Another thing to consider - Agent Venom may be the first character in the game who benefits from your group NOT having full color coverage (e.g., not having a usable purple power in the loaner node). On either offense or defense, having one color un-castable could allow it to build up faster after a cascade or two, allowing (as mentioned above) a longer staying in symbiote-mode.

    All said and done, I will absolutely be scared/wary of how quickly a few consecutive turns of -9 tile cascades could turn the match around in the A.I.'s favor when facing him in PVP.

    My only two gripes so far:
    - I wish there was some sort of damage mitigation component after casting his yellow; even a minor self-burst-heal would help mitigating him becoming the only target for those two turns.
    - I'd love it if symbiote mode also changed his portrait in the upper area to something resembling the pop-up artwork from when it triggers!
  • hopper1979
    hopper1979 Posts: 565 Critical Contributor
    I agree at first glance I was not impressed but after playing him in the event he is a lot of fun and very solid, I would love to see what he can do maxed, he is easily on of the most flexible character in the game now. Quick damage or board shake.
  • dodgeson
    dodgeson Posts: 4 Just Dropped In
    I honestly don't get the negativity towards this character. As was mentioned, his black causes a change of playstyle and only for that I find him interesting.
    Yellow is great as a teamup, causes some team damage and can be stratigically used to avoid damage. Red is ok damage. Black allows you to control the passive activating and reliably deals damage. When it switches to passive you get a great board shake.
    The backlash against the black is so severe that I wonder what would people say if Patch would be released now - would there also be posts saying his green is tinykitty becouse it can hurt you if you don't plan for it?
    I am looking forward to covering this character and agree that he reflects the symbiot relationships much better than the other Venoms.
  • roberts_2
    roberts_2 Posts: 126 Tile Toppler
    Black stole my purple Scarlett Witch a lot of times and can't use it until the end, black shakes board and put's enemy tiles out of match. Invisible Woman was my last match and i lose 10k health in a EASY fight because the black power of my Agent Venom. Useless char for me.
  • jobob
    jobob Posts: 680 Critical Contributor
    Yellow seems bugged with BSS blue... BSS blue is supposed to do extra damage when invisible, but it doesn't seem to work when Venom makes him invisible.
  • Mitchjewitz
    Mitchjewitz Posts: 84 Match Maker
    roberts_2 wrote:
    Black stole my purple Scarlett Witch a lot of times and can't use it until the end, black shakes board and put's enemy tiles out of match. Invisible Woman was my last match and i lose 10k health in a EASY fight because the black power of my Agent Venom. Useless char for me.

    So this was brought up before but be aware of your team. Any three chars don't just magically work together. Venom's black at one cover triggers at 12 AP so don't pick characters with powers more expensive than 12 AP.

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