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

roberts_2

Why not if she's OP and i wanna use her with Osborn/Phoenix?, may i renunce to 2 strong teams because Agent Venom black power is not good designed and interfieres?, i don't think so.

PorkBelly

Really terrible design for the black power. I will never voluntarily use this character if it's not altered.

TetsujinOni

Running 2/4/0 in Army of Two, finding that the black power is *great* to work with.

Try OML / XFool / AV, get into symbiote mode and stay there. Drop Countdown to What and let AV or the AI pop them for free while you transform OML.

(Obligatory joke: Of course Wade plays with Transformers....)

Dauthi

Can someone explain why everyone thinks this character is bad?

Let's compare his abilities to Hulkbuster's Red, which has a ap/damage ratio of 650 damage per AP spent, which is considered one of the better abilities in the game.

Venom's red at 12 red ap (4 red matches you might have to make to activate it anyways) does 723 damage/ap, better than Hulkbuster's by quite a bit.

Venom's black at 5 will be extremely easy to manage, just don't get 16 AP in any color. Granted this means you have to have a rainbow to manage that, but you should be trying to do that anyways. So considering that the downside is easy to manage, consider that this ability has a damage/ap ratio of 836, drains 2 of the enemy's strongest ap, and it activates at 5 ap! That is crazy OP, what are people thinking?


The area damage on the yellow is pretty pathetic, but you would only use the yellow to avoid damage, which is really handy, like a much better Colossus. It still covers you for 3 turns at 3 covers, so that's perfect.

What is the downside to this character?

acescracked

Dauthi wrote:

Can someone explain why everyone thinks this character is bad?

Let's compare his abilities to Hulkbuster's Red, which has a ap/damage ratio of 650 damage per AP spent, which is considered one of the better abilities in the game.

Venom's red at 12 red ap (4 red matches you might have to make to activate it anyways) does 723 damage/ap, better than Hulkbuster's by quite a bit.

Venom's black at 5 will be extremely easy to manage, just don't get 16 AP in any color. Granted this means you have to have a rainbow to manage that, but you should be trying to do that anyways. So considering that the downside is easy to manage, consider that this ability has a damage/ap ratio of 836, drains 2 of the enemy's strongest ap, and it activates at 5 ap! That is crazy OP, what are people thinking?


The area damage on the yellow is pretty pathetic, but you would only use the yellow to avoid damage, which is really handy, like a much better Colossus. It still covers you for 3 turns at 3 covers, so that's perfect.

What is the downside to this character?

Because thinking is hard. Majority of the players would rather whine than think of synergies with otherer characters or how to use agent venom.

I like his cascade ability and think he looks cool as well.

eidehua

Dauthi wrote:

Can someone explain why everyone thinks this character is bad?

Let's compare his abilities to Hulkbuster's Red, which has a ap/damage ratio of 650 damage per AP spent, which is considered one of the better abilities in the game.

Venom's red at 12 red ap (4 red matches you might have to make to activate it anyways) does 723 damage/ap, better than Hulkbuster's by quite a bit.

Venom's black at 5 will be extremely easy to manage, just don't get 16 AP in any color. Granted this means you have to have a rainbow to manage that, but you should be trying to do that anyways. So considering that the downside is easy to manage, consider that this ability has a damage/ap ratio of 836, drains 2 of the enemy's strongest ap, and it activates at 5 ap! That is crazy OP, what are people thinking?


The area damage on the yellow is pretty pathetic, but you would only use the yellow to avoid damage, which is really handy, like a much better Colossus. It still covers you for 3 turns at 3 covers, so that's perfect.

What is the downside to this character?

He's pretty interesting character. Overall I agree he is good actually, but it does not drain 2 of enemy strongest ap, but two of your own highest ap pool. So it is damage for 7ap, although it is not exactly 7ap since draining 2 of your highest AP pool might, but also might not, harm your overall game plan.

Also I guess people always want top tier characters to come out.

snlf25

I despise his mechanics, having to keep my ap low and losing 2 per turn. The only build i'd consider is 0/0/5. New least favorite character having bumped off Carnage. I use Thor and Hulkbuster a lot and this guy **** allover my play style.

grapez

HAHAHAHAAHA ONLY BUILD I CONSIDER IS 0/0/5

HAHAHHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHA

I EFFIN DESPISE THIS CHARACTER.

Worse concept ever d3p. please remove this character

SangFroid

acescracked wrote:

Because thinking is hard. Majority of the players would rather whine than think of synergies with otherer characters or how to use agent Venom

Lol so much THIS!

While he is not top tier he is VERY useful and solid all around. For those that can't see that not much you can say if you can't see how amazing his Black can be.

apmonte

The tradition of lackluster Venom characters continues. What a terrible verses with him. Another duplicate 4-star that nobody asked for.

amusingfoo1

I thought he was ok the first few times I played him. After that, just found him miserable. As an indication, in his PvP, I left him alive because he hindered the other team reliably. And he was a consistent problem for me. He just kept chewing up ISO better used elsewhere (he kept getting what I wanted, not extraneous stuff). He was better when I got to four black covers, but still not good.

vinsensual

Matches have been dragging with his Black constantly switching between Might and Weakness for both sides and the corresponding active animation, on top of him taking away board control and his AP denial. I would roster him only because he has less health than the loaner and would go down faster. I can't wait till his event is over.

vinsensual

acescracked wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Can someone explain why everyone thinks this character is bad?

Let's compare his abilities to Hulkbuster's Red, which has a ap/damage ratio of 650 damage per AP spent, which is considered one of the better abilities in the game.

Venom's red at 12 red ap (4 red matches you might have to make to activate it anyways) does 723 damage/ap, better than Hulkbuster's by quite a bit.

Venom's black at 5 will be extremely easy to manage, just don't get 16 AP in any color. Granted this means you have to have a rainbow to manage that, but you should be trying to do that anyways. So considering that the downside is easy to manage, consider that this ability has a damage/ap ratio of 836, drains 2 of the enemy's strongest ap, and it activates at 5 ap! That is crazy OP, what are people thinking?


The area damage on the yellow is pretty pathetic, but you would only use the yellow to avoid damage, which is really handy, like a much better Colossus. It still covers you for 3 turns at 3 covers, so that's perfect.

What is the downside to this character?

Because thinking is hard..

Please don't try to insult some of the player base when you're quoting an inaccurate description of Venom's abilities. At the very least he described the black skill wrong because it steals the player's AP, not the enemy's.

DrDevilDinosaur

Hahaha. Everyone's so mad in this thread.

Lots of love to the haters who are proclaiming they'll refuse to roster AV because they don't understand how abilities work.
Also loving everyone upset about using 2AP from a random colour because why? Did you build your team around firing one specific ability and you get upset when you can't use it? Why don't you just use Whales Team Ups for everything? AV won't drain TU AP, and Whales is as close to an I win button, which is what you want.

But most of all I'm really digging the people who are upset because AV somehow stops them from using the characters they want to use, but can't seem to articulate which character that might be.

I think AV just became my favourite character because so many people are going to get irrationally upset when they see him.

bbf2

I'm sure he's fine when you get a bunch of covers for him, but using the loaner or your own under covered version in his PVP when he adds nothing to the team and only detracts is a nightmare. I'm sure people with a ton of championed fours can find combos that get around his liability but for those of us just starting the four star transition who have to rely on a small amount of champed 4s or use the boosted three stars find him to be quite an annoyance.

himatako

Yeah, I don't understand why are people angry at Agent Venom. His black passive isn't even that bad. It actually helped me many times during his PvP event. His black is a free board shake + damage. Combining it with strike tiles (I used X-23 to create them), you get to deal 1,000+ damage per turn with a cost of his health.

His condition means you have a way to control when to switch his black from passive to active. I like firing a high ap cost power to switch his black to Military Might, and spamming that 5 AP ability to finish off the enemy.

One downside that I see is his black passive takes away his health and his yellow makes him tank all the other characters, but none of his abilities heal him. There isn't really a good healer in 4-star land either. Considering his active black is so cheap, perhaps KK is the one to go with for now.

jobob

Wow, overreaction on the Internet? I would've never thought. Here's my impression after champing him and playing the PVP...

He is a solid, mid-tier character. Red hits hard, yellow does neat things, and black is a unique and useful power.

First off... 14 AP (or 16, depending on whether you go 3 or 5) is a lot of AP. Especially if you go 5, there aren't many moves that his black will screw up. GSBW green is the only one that immediately comes to mind. You can even still fire many powers 2x, like Phoenix purple.

People complaining about the black really need to put some thought into team composition. DONT take GSBW along. Gear your team toward cheaper powers...

Because the real benefit to Venom black is that he can save you from a bad board, and to some extent he makes every team a "rainbow" team. There are plenty of good teams out there who don't cover all colors with actives. AV at least can make use of those colors if you get a cascade or an unfriendly board. The only other character who can use any color is Black Bolt, and he requires 5 of them all.

Wait til you play with him fully covered, and then give it some thought, before you trash a decent character that does some interesting and unique things.

hopper1979

I will say it again this character has the potential to be devastating but he has to be on very specific teams. After playing his pvp event you can see how good he can be with the "right people" but the "right people" are not the people most play with. When you make a team with Venom you must make sure your major powers, the ones you plan on casting, cost less than 12 or you need somebody who can generate important energy when necessary. There are plenty of good low cost powers out there. I would suggest support characters, OML, Prof-X, Kahn, IM-40, IF etc, all generate effects while you build up your energy pools. He does solid damage with his black and red and yellow keeps people protected. Then you can get into his tile destruction which is where he really shines, great easy board shake. If you dont like the shake use the energy he is very flexible and fun to play but the team must be build around him, he is not a filler/support character you must plan around him for him to be effective. I just wish i had more than 2 covers so I could offer more advice but do not sell him short, I think once people figure him out you will see a lot of him in PVP and PVE.

Crowl

Mitchjewitz wrote:

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.

It is all very well talking about people not using certain characters with him, but the reality of scaling and boosted characters means that lots of people have the choice of using those characters or struggling even more on those nodes than they do without them.

Luckily it will be quite some time before he could possibly be an essential in a heroic.

Polares

The big problem of people complaining about AV right now is because we had to use him with just 1 cover in black in both his PvP and featured PvE. Black at 1 really sucks, and this is why people is so mad with him (it was really annoying trying to get 14 purple to cast PH purple twice or trying to get 12 yellow to transform OML, really really annoying).

Devs should stop creating these 'negative' powers. Powers should be usable at 1 cover, with less effect than at 3 or 5, but it should be better to have any given power at 1 than having it at 0. Both Venom black powers are not like this, and this is a problem until you get them covered.

I think black is a badly designed power in general though. The problem is you want a big board shake so you would want to go 5 black, but then you need to get a lot of not usable AP to trigger the power at 5 covers. Then if you go 3 you can trigger it more easily, no need to get so many AP you don't really want, but it has less board shake. This is not how it should have been designed. The amount of AP needed to trigger black should have been fixed at any number of covers, let's say 14 or 15, and then damage and number of tiles destroyed would be dependent on the number of covers. This would make the power to always be useful, at any given number of covers, and it would make it clearly more useful at 5 covers.

Best build is probably 5/3/5 so you can get black's effect more often (if you bring AV to a fight it is because of his black, there are plenty of reds and yellows better than those, so I guess then it is better to have black trigger more often, than doing more board shake, and then maximize the effect of the other two powers).