**** Wolverine (X-Force) **** [PRE 2015-04]

Phaserhawk

SirPhobos wrote:

At what point is a **** Xforce worth leveling/playing? I have 10 covers, but they fell pretty sub-optimally at 4/2/4. Do I go now? Wait for a 5th green? Wait to get a couple more black?

I want to tell you it's okay, but it's not. 4*'s are very, very much tied into their covers more so than 3*'s. a 3/3/3 covered 3* will far out damage a 3/3/3 4*. For X-Force the jump from covers is huge. I had mine 5/4/4 for awhile and when I got that 5th black it was an entirely different character. I would throw some ISO at him here and there but until you could get him at least 4/4/4 he's pretty unplayable, at 4/4/4 he would be solid enough to play.

Unknown

It should be pretty obvious just looking at your own character how much damage you're getting for the last cover. If I recall level 4 X Force or Surgical Strike is somewhere around half the damage compared to level 5 (and Surgical Strike doesn't generate AP). Don't get caught up by the star status. If the number on his skill doesn't sound like much, then it's not that good. On the other hand all of X Force's moves at level 5 have incredible numbers that should not require any fancy analysis to see why he's good.

cg2912

I currently have 4/4/3 lvl 180 and will buy 1 cover w/HP. But which do you guys recommend--Green or Black?

NorthernPolarity

Easily black I think. The AP steal is game winning. Green gets a really nice damage boost from 3->5k damage, but if your roster is strong enough to have a good use for the surgical AP every time, it's game winning.

Unknown

When I'm playing Xforce, if I have to choose between matching a green or matching a black, I always go Green.

Xforce just has a higher value from 4 to 5 than Surgical Strike does.

Don't get me wrong, black becomes elite, possibly the best ability in the game, from 4 to 5. But Green goes from barely worth farming for to elite from 4 to 5.

At level 4, his Green destroys one single large X (at most 2 tiles per column), does about half the damage and creates very limited cascades.
At level 5, it destroys 3 separate areas of the board, possibly dropping some columns by 4 or even 6 tiles, does 4 to 5k damage (because the additional tiles being destroyed does additional damage as well) and creates massive cascade opportunities.

At level 4, black destroys all of one color, reduces their AP by 10 and does hefty damage.
At level 5, black destroys all of one color, reduces their AP by 10, you gain that AP destroyed and it does more damage.

Green went from pretty bad to great while Black went from great to elite.
The board shake is not altered, they still lose AP and it still clears the board of that color.


Plus, the price of Xforce is just insane. 8 Green for that ability? ****.

That's just my opinion though. If I could only have one of those abilities at 5 covers and the other be 4, I'd choose green to be 5.

cg2912

Thanks for the opinion, guys. That's my problem--I know black is a better ability, but when I use him now I fire off green more often. I've got about 6-7 166s to pair w/him. The other thing is, it will be a while before I save up enough to buy the other cover, cause I sure don't win them--it's either token luck or daily reward. So which ever way I go, I'll have to live w/that for some time.
Also, any thought on how high to level him? Curretnly at 180, but I play PVE as much as PVP and I don't want to ruin my scaling. I don't see the 395s you guys do, I'm at more the mid 250's when it gets high.

Unknown

I used my 5/2/3 X-Force just for green, at your lvl his green should do about 4k damage + cascades.
Of course black is powerful (best ability in game?), but you'll be fire green much often, and it's great.
I suggest to not level-up him further if you care about pve.

GrumpySmurf1002

cg2912 wrote:

Thanks for the opinion, guys. That's my problem--I know black is a better ability, but when I use him now I fire off green more often. I've got about 6-7 166s to pair w/him. The other thing is, it will be a while before I save up enough to buy the other cover, cause I sure don't win them--it's either token luck or daily reward. So which ever way I go, I'll have to live w/that for some time.
Also, any thought on how high to level him? Curretnly at 180, but I play PVE as much as PVP and I don't want to ruin my scaling. I don't see the 395s you guys do, I'm at more the mid 250's when it gets high.

I just took mine from 180 to 200 before the Hulk event and didn't see a noticeable difference in power. I'm guessing that's because a boosted, non-featured 166 goes to 196, and so anything based on your highest character (which I sense is part of formula) wouldn't get upset by a 200 level character.

My gut feeling is you can bring him to 220-230, but I'm personally going to leave him at 200 for a while until I have a backlog of Iso, so probably never.

As far as green/black, I believe in the game over button. 5 Black is often game over. 5 Green is never game over.

Ryz-aus

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

I just took mine from 180 to 200 before the Hulk event and didn't see a noticeable difference in power. I'm guessing that's because a boosted, non-featured 166 goes to 196, and so anything based on your highest character (which I sense is part of formula) wouldn't get upset by a 200 level character.

My gut feeling is you can bring him to 220-230, but I'm personally going to leave him at 200 for a while until I have a backlog of Iso, so probably never.

For top end pvp, maxing him is worthwhile for the extra health. Outside of that, the big threshold is level 222 - at that point he no longer hides behind the 3*s. I think he's better at that level - he can prologue heal if necessary so I want him to sponge the damage - but if you prefer hiding him somewhere in the 150-200 range is perfectly usable.

Unknown

onimus wrote:

When I'm playing Xforce, if I have to choose between matching a green or matching a black, I always go Green.

Xforce just has a higher value from 4 to 5 than Surgical Strike does.

Don't get me wrong, black becomes elite, possibly the best ability in the game, from 4 to 5. But Green goes from barely worth farming for to elite from 4 to 5.

At level 4, his Green destroys one single large X (at most 2 tiles per column), does about half the damage and creates very limited cascades.
At level 5, it destroys 3 separate areas of the board, possibly dropping some columns by 4 or even 6 tiles, does 4 to 5k damage (because the additional tiles being destroyed does additional damage as well) and creates massive cascade opportunities.

At level 4, black destroys all of one color, reduces their AP by 10 and does hefty damage.
At level 5, black destroys all of one color, reduces their AP by 10, you gain that AP destroyed and it does more damage.

Green went from pretty bad to great while Black went from great to elite.
The board shake is not altered, they still lose AP and it still clears the board of that color.


Plus, the price of Xforce is just insane. 8 Green for that ability? tinykitty.

That's just my opinion though. If I could only have one of those abilities at 5 covers and the other be 4, I'd choose green to be 5.

It mostly depends on who you're playing against. Against green-strong teams, 5-covers SS is a nightmare for the enemies: firing a Surgical Strike means that you'll have enough Green AP to cast 2 or 3 X-Force afterwards, which means that the match is over.

I've played X-Force with 5 green and 4 black covers for a while and honestly I'd have preferred the opposite in terms of versatility. Also the 5th black cover, in addition to letting you gain AP, doubles the damage output of the skill, so that means that with 10 tiles destroyed, you go from 2-3k damage to 5-6k.

I'd take a 5th black cover any day before a 5th green cover.

hurcules

Yup, definitely 5th Black over 5th Green if you have to buy one cover, for the reason Northern Polarity mentioned. You would ideally bring in teammates with complementary colours active skills (i.e. not Green or Black) to help make use of the AP obtained from 5th black Surgical Strike, which would potentially lead to infinite combo if said skills do board shake-up (see: SexMagnet). 5th green only gets you 4-4.5k damage on a single target, hardly game-ending.

Unknown

Not sure if this has been discussed since we're on page 19 now but have you guys noticed a change in Healing tile placement?

I used to think that the game intentionally placed the healing tile in the most matchable location and went out of its way to cascade a yellow such that the healing tile would go off.

Now I find that the healing tile is more likely put into a harder to match location AND cascades don't seem to want to trigger a match.

Is it just me?

NorthernPolarity

onimus wrote:

When I'm playing Xforce, if I have to choose between matching a green or matching a black, I always go Green.

Xforce just has a higher value from 4 to 5 than Surgical Strike does.

Don't get me wrong, black becomes elite, possibly the best ability in the game, from 4 to 5. But Green goes from barely worth farming for to elite from 4 to 5.

At level 4, his Green destroys one single large X (at most 2 tiles per column), does about half the damage and creates very limited cascades.
At level 5, it destroys 3 separate areas of the board, possibly dropping some columns by 4 or even 6 tiles, does 4 to 5k damage (because the additional tiles being destroyed does additional damage as well) and creates massive cascade opportunities.

At level 4, black destroys all of one color, reduces their AP by 10 and does hefty damage.
At level 5, black destroys all of one color, reduces their AP by 10, you gain that AP destroyed and it does more damage.

Green went from pretty bad to great while Black went from great to elite.
The board shake is not altered, they still lose AP and it still clears the board of that color.


Plus, the price of Xforce is just insane. 8 Green for that ability? tinykitty.

That's just my opinion though. If I could only have one of those abilities at 5 covers and the other be 4, I'd choose green to be 5.

4 green is roughly 2k direct damage + 9 tiles destroyed damage, lets call that 2.5k conservatively.
5 green is 3.4k direct damage + 15 tiles destroyed, which comes out to 4.2k damage.

Assuming a reasonable 8 tiles for black,
4 black is 2.7k damage and no AP drain.
5 black is 4.2k damage and net 8 AP in some random other color.

Now, 4 green might not be the greatest, but 2k damage and board clear for 8 ap is still pretty reasonable, if unexciting. You end up losing ~1.7k damage on each cast of green.
5 black, on the other hand, is a 1.5k damage loss and 8AP loss. Assuming that your roster is deep enough that you have an ability that does 400-500 damage per AP (which is reasonable), this means that that losing that 8 AP is like losing out on 3.2k-4k damage. So 4->5 green is 2.5k-4.2k damage, 4->5 black is 2.7k damage->~8k damage.

Yeah, green might be used more than black when stomping 2* teams with lower HP but when push comes to shove, surgical is whats sustaining your team vs enemies with high HP such as LadyThor, and that's more important than the extra green damage.

GrumpySmurf1002

Ryz-aus wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

I just took mine from 180 to 200 before the Hulk event and didn't see a noticeable difference in power. I'm guessing that's because a boosted, non-featured 166 goes to 196, and so anything based on your highest character (which I sense is part of formula) wouldn't get upset by a 200 level character.

My gut feeling is you can bring him to 220-230, but I'm personally going to leave him at 200 for a while until I have a backlog of Iso, so probably never.

For top end pvp, maxing him is worthwhile for the extra health. Outside of that, the big threshold is level 222 - at that point he no longer hides behind the 3*s. I think he's better at that level - he can prologue heal if necessary so I want him to sponge the damage - but if you prefer hiding him somewhere in the 150-200 range is perfectly usable.

222 it is. I have a goal!

I don't care about winning PvP's, I can still hit 900 in the brave new world, which is good enough for me and pretty much a lock for top 25 barring disaster brackets which I mostly seem to avoid. I'd like PvE not to become a 395 grindfest, and the easiest way to guarantee that (best I can tell) is to leave XForce below 270 somewhere.

Unknown

Hey, not sure if anyone's posted this one already, the couple of threads about X-Force's recovery power didn't seem to mention this.

When you field a team with X-Force and the enemy team matches his countdown tile away, he removes a bunch a tiles from the board and does damage for them, which is all well and good unless this then triggers a cascade. All the damage from the cascade ends up being taken against your own team (presumably because the matches happen during the enemy team's turn.) This doesn't seem right given that the idea behind the power is that the enemy team should be the one taking damage for matching away X-Force's countdown.

Dayv

This is working as designed. It's kind of a double-edged sword, but it would be overpowered if the cascade counted for the opponent. Besides, it's happening simultaneously to any cascades caused by the match, how would you sort them out?

Phaserhawk

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Ryz-aus wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

I just took mine from 180 to 200 before the Hulk event and didn't see a noticeable difference in power. I'm guessing that's because a boosted, non-featured 166 goes to 196, and so anything based on your highest character (which I sense is part of formula) wouldn't get upset by a 200 level character.

My gut feeling is you can bring him to 220-230, but I'm personally going to leave him at 200 for a while until I have a backlog of Iso, so probably never.

For top end pvp, maxing him is worthwhile for the extra health. Outside of that, the big threshold is level 222 - at that point he no longer hides behind the 3*s. I think he's better at that level - he can prologue heal if necessary so I want him to sponge the damage - but if you prefer hiding him somewhere in the 150-200 range is perfectly usable.

222 it is. I have a goal!

I don't care about winning PvP's, I can still hit 900 in the brave new world, which is good enough for me and pretty much a lock for top 25 barring disaster brackets which I mostly seem to avoid. I'd like PvE not to become a 395 grindfest, and the easiest way to guarantee that (best I can tell) is to leave XForce below 270 somewhere.

Or 221 if you want him to be able to hide behind Hulk or other Green Primary characters.

GrumpySmurf1002

Phaserhawk wrote:

Or 221 if you want him to be able to hide behind Hulk or other Green Primary characters.

That's only Hulk, Patch (n/a), Gamora and moStorm. Storm's too squishy (besides complete color overlap), and I don't think I'd ever use Gamora and XForce together. That leaves Hulk, who I don't particularly care for, and again, would probably never use with XForce anyway.

Managing the Black to cover Deadpool and Loki seems more important, as I'm looking at it. So need 71 in Black (or 70.unknown).

Phaserhawk

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Or 221 if you want him to be able to hide behind Hulk or other Green Primary characters.

That's only Hulk, Patch (n/a), Gamora and moStorm. Storm's too squishy (besides complete color overlap), and I don't think I'd ever use Gamora and XForce together. That leaves Hulk, who I don't particularly care for, and again, would probably never use with XForce anyway.

Managing the Black to cover Deadpool and Loki seems more important, as I'm looking at it. So need 71 in Black (or 70.unknown).

Then I think you can take him up to 224 or 225 before his Black outstrips someone else with a Secondary Black and then I think you can get him up to 227 before his yellow tanks all 3rd yellow abilties.

Unknown

I don't agree. Say the X-force is on the other side, the damage from X-Force and the destruction of tiles after you match the countdown seems to me to be intended to act as a disincentive for you to match the tile to prevent X-Force's healing. That's where the double-edged sword effect comes in, you stop the healing but it causes you damage. If you then get the benefit of any cascades (which might actually cause more damage to your opponent than you receive) then it's not as much of a disincentive. Furthermore, it seems inconsistent if the other side gets the benefit of any cascades from the extra tiles removed when they match the countdown tile themselves during their turn, but you get the benefit of any cascades when you match the countdown tile during your turn.

Now it may be too difficult to separate out the cascades from the other match as you suggest, and maybe it's too difficult to program the game so match damage is inflicted against a player during their own turn, but I can't really comment on that as I'm not a developer and wouldn't know what kind of programming challenges that throws up.

You could be right and it might have been the developer's intention that it be this way all along, it just seems like it might have been an oversight which I wanted to check with the developers/forum. If not, then that's fine.