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

justsing

I recently got 3 yellows and 1 black. Is it worth adding the black, or should I stick with a 0/0/3 build for now? Is he a waste of a roster spot?

Anon

justsing wrote:

I recently got 3 yellows and 1 black. Is it worth adding the black, or should I stick with a 0/0/3 build for now? Is he a waste of a roster spot?

I'm a collector so I'd say keep it, as you never know when he will be a required character.

As for whether he's worth it, jury's still out.

Quebbster

Yeah, keep him. He's still in tokens, so odds are good you will get more covers for him. You don't have to spend ISO on him until you tried him out after all.

Jaedenkaal

AV's black isn't nearly as much of a drawback when under-covered as, say, Venom's Give and Take.

Black Duke

BlackBoltRocks wrote:

Mr_Sinister wrote:

Fully covered, champing soon, currently level 170. Agent Venom works really well with Gwenpool. Combo his yellow with her black for a turn of no damage and when Venom gets back he has damage mitigation. HHer green is a beast and that gives 2 different colors for AoE, a board control with her purple, and a single target heavy hit with his red.

This sounds like a fun team. My Gwenpool is at 5/4/4 (with a 14th cover waiting to champ her) and Agent Venom will be 4/4/2 after The Hulk PvE. Any suggestions for a third member?

In case that you're playing Agent Venom 3/5/5 and Gwenpool 5/3/5 I would pair them with a good red/blue user like Cyke or Peggy.

DesertTortoise

I don't think Agent Venom is a bottom tier character as a lot of people portray him as. He's probably in that tier of characters that are "very solid boosted, unspectacular when not" which is way better than the bottom 2 or 3 a lot of people have him at. I'm running him with an unboosted Iceman and IM40 for this week's The Hulk PvE event where he's an essential. He's doing very well against a lot of enemies with deep health pools. His red has a reasonable qualifier for its higher damage, especially since having 12 red when you fire it is enough to activate it, and his black is good for quick damage in a pinch (a bit over 9K boosted).

His biggest problem is when his black changes to Alien Weakness you lose access to his black. The downside isn't the board shake, AP drain and self-damage, because I think that's borderline a net gain in most situations. The bigger problem is that this is more prone to happen later in a fight, and later in a fight is typically when you need cheap nukes to finish people off.

bigsmooth

He is an interesting character to use once you have more covers, and his damage output is good. I do wish Alien Weakness did not destroy friendly special tiles. It's already relatively difficult to find a team that works well with AV because of the AP management concerns, and the fact that he can blow up friendly tiles further hinders his use with CD users and tile generators.

Ultimately, I think the team composition issues are what prevent me from leveling him further. There are many other characters that can fit into a wide variety of teams (or at least have great synergy with certain characters that I already have champed), and that causes me to spend my precious ISO elsewhere.

Dormammu

I leveled him up and have been using him in the Hulk event since he's boosted and required, and I like him. I'll get his 12th and 13th covers for progression and I intend to champ him. His red animation where the symbiote forms all sorts of guns and unloads is probably my favorite animation outside of Nova.

himatako

I really enjoy using him but it's too bad that right now there isn't any part in the game where it's good to use him. He's a complicated character and it's probably easier to just use other characters instead of having to manage your AP pool.

I guess the problem is, while AP pool management can be fun & challenging, the result isn't that satisfying? Like, it isn't worth the effort. His red deals only 7k damage even when the AP requirement is met, where as Spidergwen deals almost 10k for 12 red AP AND the cost can be reduced further with web tiles on the board.

His black passive is interesting but since it's random it's hard to tell whether it's good or bad. He also hurts himself in the process, so you can't really use him that long. He doesn't have a way to true heal himself, and there is no ability that will true heal other characters.

Not sure how to improve him right now, but currently I feel like there is no point using him unless you want to challenge yourself.

DesertTortoise

The damage on his red with the qualifier is totally unacceptable. Peggy has a really mediocre red and for 9 AP it does 750.1 damage/ap. When Agent Venom hits his qualifier of having 12 AP, it does 723.4 damage/AP. This excludes the non-trivial bonus that Peggy's red goes through all protect tiles. How does a cheaper power have a better damage:ap ratio? I think it'd be totally fair for the non-qualified red to have a mediocre ratio but it's behind so, so many reds even when its modest qualifier is hit. I think it'd be more interesting if it was a cheaper power but kept its qualifier at 12, if it cost 8 red AP with the same stats it would be very strong without having an insane ratio.

Crowl

himatako wrote:

Not sure how to improve him right now, but currently I feel like there is no point using him unless you want to challenge yourself.

I think they need to up his damage across the board for a start and in addition to that they should also tweak the conditional requirements to be a little less harsh on low covered characters as that way people won't get such a negative impression of him to start with that they overlook him even when more highly covered later on.

For red, instead of starting at 16 and reducing it with every cover, start at 14, go to 13 at 3 covers and 5 covers remains the same at 12. Similarly for black, start him at 14 for 1 cover, 15 for 3 covers and 5 covers remains the same at 16.

DesertTortoise

I'll again state that I actually don't hate him boosted, but he could be so much better with small tweaks. I agree with you, Crowl, that something has to be done with just how brutal he is to use as an essential with low covers.



I'd reduce the initial cost to 8 AP and keep the qualifiers and damage the same. It'd be nice to have some inefficient but quick damage when you need it but grows to be formidable as the fight goes on and AP pools go up.



I'd definitely start the qualifier at 14 AP so 1 and 2 covers have at least the same as 3. A champed AV will never have less than 3 covers in any one skill so penalizing people below 3 covers is a bit cruel. Have it only drain 1 AP from the highest colored AP pool at 5 covers. I think the biggest drawback to Alien Weakness isn't that it damages you, shakes the board and drains AP but that you lose Military Might when it activates. I'd make it so that Alien Weakness is a passive rather than an alternative ability so that you can still use Military Might when it triggers.



It's a fantastic team up and seems pretty good as is. Would be nice if AV would be invisible for at least one turn, maybe two at 5 covers. Maybe knock down the AP cost by one or two.

Jaedenkaal

I don't know, 4* powers at 2 covers or less have always basically been hot garbage unless they do something not affected by character level (Peggy Yellow comes to mind).

They're not typically an active penalty, I guess. Venom (Eddie Brock) has that issue too. I think it's interesting design to have powers that include drawbacks, but not particularly fun to play.

I agree his Red should reward you more for meeting the requirement. "Poor" below the AP threshold and "Decent" above it is hardly exciting.

Tromb2ch2

I've made some videos and posted them on YouTube from the recent hulk event. You can search for them if you want to I'll add a link dunno if they will delete it https://youtu.be/_f7kRzZmQAc
I actually enjoyed using him. His black was hitting for 9k damage which was nice. I ran him 5/5/3 with mordo and im40.

Tromb2ch2

Sorry double post...

seraphiel

He's trash. At max level he might have some limited uses, but that's not really an excuse. 

 He punches himself in the face while stealing power from the rest of your team and randomly smashing your own tiles off the board. He brings nothing that isn't better done by someone else, without the annoyance of having your AP pools constantly drained. 

Being forced to use him for even one round is a ridiculous, offensive burden.  Having him be the required 4* for a week long event is just sadistic.

Tromb2ch2

Well I wouldn't use him with a tile maker, but board shake is a really good ability vs certain enemies. The hulk event doesn't have the proper goons to display this. If it was against like sentries or hand you'd be able to see it better. And I'd run him at 5 black regardless.

Black Duke

Tromb2ch2 said:

I've made some videos and posted them on YouTube from the recent hulk event. You can search for them if you want to I'll add a link dunno if it will be removed. https://youtu.be/nMYJHsh8jnU.
I actually enjoyed using him. His black was hitting for 9k damage which was nice. I ran him 5/5/3 with mordo and im40.

Thanks for the video! I haven´t mention the synergy between Agent Venom and Mordo yet. I guess you are running Mordo 3/5/5, aren´t you?

Tromb2ch2

Yes I did. I actually prefer mordo as a support character at 3/5/5 @Black Duke. His black is awkward because of the aoe. It's like a drawback sort of. But you can view more about my thoughts on him in the mordo page.

BoyWonder1914

Just champed him this morning. Was hoping to get some good teams here but it seems to mostly just be people hating him, or liking him but being kinda vague on how they can reliably use him. Mordo and Gwen Poole have come up as decent teammates, but I don't have them champed yet unfortunately.