Crash of the Titans Cycle 4: Drax

Black Duke

After Quake's debut it's Drax' turn now! Mine is 3/3/3 (level 188), so I'm cautiously optimistic to beat this one.

My guess for his opponent is the newly improved Star-Lord or Gamora. They would fit in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" scheme as well as they would have a & or a & color overlap.

jojeda654

Currently, mine is 5/2/5 @ 170. This is another one of those characters that I have never used, but has skills that depend on allies. How does Secret Weapon work in a Crash match?

Black Duke

jojeda654 wrote:

How does Secret Weapon work in a Crash match?

This one will be merely useless because it only works when an ally fires a power. But there's little synergy with his black power: Its match damage depends on the number of friendly countdown tiles.

Tatercat

My Drax is 4/4/5 at lvl 150, so I’m cautiously optimistic too. I’m thinking its going to be Starlord too – two color overlap, recent rework, the GotG connection make it seem likely. That could be rough fight, especially if you take too long to get 8 red ap and match damage has lowered Starlord to 89% health. Definitely bringing AP boosts (but not damage boosts).

His black & purple look to be the main source of damage if you don’t get that first red shot in time, but they’re really a two-fer for most effectiveness, like Mystique’s same colors are. And man, do I hate powers that end turns.

On the outside chance (and it would be a slaughter for 99% of the player base), this would be a pretty bad-(good intended tiny kitty word) to introduce 5* Thanos.

stochasticism

Tatercat wrote:

My Drax is 4/4/5 at lvl 150, so I’m cautiously optimistic too. I’m thinking its going to be Starlord too – two color overlap, recent rework, the GotG connection make it seem likely. That could be rough fight, especially if you take too long to get 8 red ap and match damage has lowered Starlord to 89% health. Definitely bringing AP boosts (but not damage boosts).

Regardless of the opponent you want to get to 8 red before you do anything. You are better off matching off colors rather than accidentally bringing him down below 90% accidentally in this fight.

ZeiramMR

I had just posted that Secret Weapon would work with his Red power, because I tested it yesterday in Prodigal Sun to confirm and swore it worked. Having just tried it again, it doesn't.

sambrookjm

I think I'm looking at my first failure this cycle. My Drax is a LVL 131 1/3/2. If the purple is useless, I'm probably really hosed on this one. *shrug* I'll just be waiting for the Nick Fury one next week...

turbomoose

Hope it's easier than the last crash , I don't have many covers for drax so I'm not holding out much hope.

shadowyoshi

This will be my first defeat this cycle. My Drax has 2 red covers and that is it. Other than Agent Venom he is my least covered 4.

monsieurmojo

Excellent guesswork, everybody...it is, indeed, Star-Lord.

fmftint

5/3/5 leveled up to 100 took 3 attemps. Deny red & purple, I saved ap to use purple-red-red-black. I ate 1 SL red

CT1888

4/2/3 Drax, a few attempts bumping up as I went until 140.
+2 r/y, +2 all, +50%r/y
Targeted red and purple, hit red early to get the extra damage then stockpiled ap. Fired purple when I had a match that would have left him a purple match, then black next turn. Got lucky as both the yellows landed on match 4s so got wiped before they resolved. Got hit for a red without extra countdown out, and he got purple out, but I had enough AP to drop red and black for the win.
I enjoyed that one; another that required tactical play (and a wee dose of luck)

-> 1/3/0

ZeiramMR

I have Drax at level 137 with 3/5/4. Gave it a try with 100% damage and +4 Red AP boosts and got a lucky board the whole way through. Initial board had a match-4 in Red for me which let me get the bonus damage on the power. Ate 1 or 2 sucker punches across the fight, but also had a match-5 turn up at one point where the crit went in one of my strong colors. A use of The Destroyer followed by a match-4 got him the last 3000 or so down.

Legendary Token became a Champion level for X-Force Deadpool, but I did pretty well with all of my legendary pulls today... a total of 7 latest & classic tokens gave me my 5th OML Black, my 1st Black Bolt Energy Channeling, and no wasted covers (either a color I needed or a champion level).

Ralph-Wiggum

Barely managed to win with my lvl 108 4/3/3 Drax. Booster +2 Red, Black, and All AP. Focused foremost on red then purple matches. I got pretty lucky with the board; SL only got off red once. I actually used my purple ability twice; each time right before firing off my black ability. Only used it when there weren't any good matches for SL though. Finished the match with ~1000 HP.

DFiPL

I pulled a classic LT on hitting one of the 5 CP progressions, and that yielded a Drax , allowing me to take him to 3/2/1 and level 131. Prior to that, I hadn't intended to even try this Crash.

Once I had the ability to get him to 131, I did a dry run without leveling him to see if his purple would even help.

Someone posted earlier that the purple doesn't work with his red. Well, no. His red and purple have nothing to do with each other. You can drop purple, which ends the turn, and then pop it by firing black the next turn. You need to make sure Star-Lord is below 6 red with no immediate opportunity to get there, though, or else pain.

So what I did after leveling him was bring along +2 R/Y AP, +50% R/Y damage, +50% G/Bk damage. I denied red and purple at every opportunity and hoarded black; I waited until I had enough for two uses each of black and purple, and even had two uses of red (though that latter proved unnecessary). Used match damage to whittle him down during that process, then went purple->black->purple->black over a three-turn span. Second use of black downed Star-Lord.

LT got his first to bring him to 4/2/1. Useful 4* = I'll take it.

DFiPL

Black Duke wrote:

jojeda654 wrote:

How does Secret Weapon work in a Crash match?

This one will be merely useless because it only works when an ally fires a power. But there's little synergy with his black power: Its match damage depends on the number of friendly countdown tiles.

Little is not "none." His black may only pop one countdown at most in a one-on-one, but that still amounts to a 50% damage boost for the black from 1-3 covers. That can be significant for lower-coverage attempts.

Black Duke

My 3/3/3 (level 188) Drax made it on 2nd attempt using +1 AP for all, +10% Y/R damage, 10% B/G damage. This one was easier as I thought! After my loss on first try (3 yellow CD tiles + SL`s red downed Drax) I used my powers at the last moment so that SL couldn`t use his yellow & red combo. I`ve finished him finally with a purple & black + black combo.

RNGesus rewarded me with bringing him to 5/4/1. It`s my first XFD cover for two month so I`m very glad about my reward!

Black Duke

DFiPL wrote:

Black Duke wrote:

jojeda654 wrote:

How does Secret Weapon work in a Crash match?

This one will be merely useless because it only works when an ally fires a power. But there's little synergy with his black power: Its match damage depends on the number of friendly countdown tiles.

Little is not "none." His black may only pop one countdown at most in a one-on-one, but that still amounts to a 50% damage boost for the black from 1-3 covers. That can be significant for lower-coverage attempts.

Yeah, I`ve underestimated the damage output of his purple & black combo (because I`ve rarely used him so far). After beating SL I would say that you need at least 1 purple cover and 3+ black cover to have a realistic chance to get through this crash.

stochasticism

L145 5/3/5. Won first try, no boosts. Was close though.

Vhailorx

1/1/3 drax @ 115 here.

11 tries so far and no luck. but I have gotten star lord down to less than 1k twice. Once I had him as low as 178 hp and was 1 red ap shy of victory, so I think I have the right strategy.

I have been using ap boosts (1 each of the 3 iso varieties) to start at +2 to all ap. Then deny red as much as possible, followed by purple. I have mostly ignored yellow, trying instead to focus on collecting black when possible. At 1 black cover, I can only use 1 CD at a time to do about 2.6k. The goal is to get 24 black ap, 16 purple ap and 24 red ap. Then fire purple twice consecutively (it's important to make sure that SL doesn't have enough ap that giving him a yellow CD will let him cast anything), and then fire everything you have all at once. With luck, it will be enough to drop him.

I have also tried using match damage boosts, but have had less success with that strategy.

Edit: i eventually stopped scrimping and went with +2 all ap, +100% match damage. That gave me 1400+ damage if i could get a critical match in a strong color. Key to my eventual victory.

Sluggo

Won on 6th try with 133 2/2/3 Drax.

Started at 111, got smoked on my first attempt, too much red and purple on the opening board to deny. On second attempt with a really friendly board, got SL down to 2k, so I decided to invest some ISO and boosts to get it done.

After leveling Drax to 133 and boosting 100% match and R/Y damage, strat was pretty straightforward: deny red and purple, try and to keep SL's AP low enough long enough to place a CD tile, then fire black and a few red on the next turn. Took a few tries to get a friendly board, but eventually got it.

Rreward: now 4/3/3