Venom Bomb is over. I would like to thank...

Dormammu

Venom Bomb. The bane of my existence and so often used as the platform to release new characters. The one event I'd love to do my four clears on and be happy with progression prizes, or skip entirely as an 'anti-burn-out vacation' from the game. But no... I set top 100 as my goal and decided to slog through 4 days of hell so I can get one measly Iron Fist cover. Now as the event comes to a close (slice 4) it looks as though I will be able to easily achieve my goal with a final clear tonight (maybe even hit top 50).

But I didn't get there alone. There are several people I'd like to thank who helped me along the way.

First and foremost, I'd like to extend my gratitude to Teen Jean. Her green and purple were working overtime this weekend and the poor girl barely got a moment of rest. Without her, taking out three symbiotes in one turn before their tile spam got out of hand would have been impossible.

Next, I must give credit to IM40. He spent the majority of the weekend stunned from countless recharges.

Lastly, thank you to the developers. Not only did you boost Teen Jean for this event, you created a bug which causes damage every time a countdown timer goes off. Because of that bug, the three required characters (2Torch, 3Blade, & 4Falcon) were an efficient team and could handle the required-character nodes all by their lonesome. Without the bug that team would have been <tinykitty>.

STOPTHIS

While Teen Jean did most of the heavy lifting for me Luke Cage was the real MVP. At (unboosted) level 150 and 5/4/2 he didn't do much damage, but those protect tiles man. He made the Carnage nodes tolerable and saved me a ton of health packs. He worked perfectly with F4lcon, a character I was struggling to work with. Throw in my under leveled 4/5/3 Medusa and most annoying nodes were easy, if a little slow at times.

I also had a bit of fun with Mr. F, Thing, and IW. Not characters I go to a lot, but they worked well together and it was nice seeing 3/4ths of the Fantastic Four together. They crushed non-goon nodes with ease.

One I found a good balance I wasn't hating this event as much as usual. Except that Venom/Moonstone/goon node. **** that one.

CT1888

I'd also like total the chance to thank Team Electric Sabrina - Teen Jean, Scarlet Witch and IM40 - you crushed it this weekend, and have allowed me to do my clears 4 hours away from the node flip time (like, 4 before then 4 after) and still look.set for top 50.
You guys rock.
Yellow! Green! Purple! Die symbiote die!

Punisher5784

I'd like to thank all the players that joined my slice but barely played which allowed me to stay afloat T50 without stress.

Marine8394

I would like to thank my common sense, and my ability to not grind an event that I hate just to achieve a new cover. I promised myself I would not do that when I came back to this game. No more being to dog looking for the ball that was not thrown.
And I am perfectly content with the fact that I didn't play. Oh I DDQ'ed it over the time. But after that I just used my phone as a phone, and a camera. The one that took pictures of me doing other things, and being with my family. Get thee behind me Venom Bomb.

JHawkInc

STOPTHIS wrote:

While Teen Jean did most of the heavy lifting for me Luke Cage was the real MVP. At (unboosted) level 150 and 5/4/2 he didn't do much damage, but those protect tiles man. He made the Carnage nodes tolerable and saved me a ton of health packs. He worked perfectly with F4lcon, a character I was struggling to work with. Throw in my under leveled 4/5/3 Medusa and most annoying nodes were easy, if a little slow at times.

I also had a bit of fun with Mr. F, Thing, and IW. Not characters I go to a lot, but they worked well together and it was nice seeing 3/4ths of the Fantastic Four together. They crushed non-goon nodes with ease.

One I found a good balance I wasn't hating this event as much as usual. Except that Venom/Moonstone/goon node. tinykitty that one.

I hope you get a 5th cover for Luke Cage's passive before Venom Bomb runs again.

My Luke Cage was champed, ran him at 5/5/3. Every symbiote passive meant I got to eliminate one of their tiles, and drop a protect of my own. Any time Carnage was involved, enemy triggers Carnage, Carnage drops 2 Friendly attacks and 2 Enemy attacks, Cage eliminates an enemy attack and gives a friendly protect, so a dropped Symbiote countdown gave the enemy 1 attack, but me 2 attacks 1 protect, and it was awesome.

I had champed Teen Jean too, and her purple is great for clearing the board, but Cage kept them in check enough I didn't always need it in the first place. Just make an effort to keep Cage in the front (which meant making yellow/black/red matches), and he managed the tiles all on his own.

Rick_OShay

Hawkguy, Medusa, and any green user made this actually kind of fun. Yep.
Throw in Bl4de and I almost felt sorry for those cute little symbiotes... buuuut I didn't.

firethorne

My newly champed Cage was awesome. Seeing that same passive animation a few hundred times in a weekend got a bit old, but, seeing that -1 damage on almost anything they threw at me was really satisfying.

Dormammu

firethorne wrote:

My newly champed Cage was awesome. Seeing that same passive animation a few hundred times in a weekend got a bit old, but, seeing that -1 damage on almost anything they threw at me was really satisfying.

Defense isn't always a tactic well promoted on these forums, but I love it. My 3Cage's red has always been set to 5 and I use him a lot, often thrown in just to keep match damage to a minimum. I'm looking forward to owning a functional 4Cage.

firethorne

Dormammu wrote:

firethorne wrote:

My newly champed Cage was awesome. Seeing that same passive animation a few hundred times in a weekend got a bit old, but, seeing that -1 damage on almost anything they threw at me was really satisfying.

Defense isn't always a tactic well promoted on these forums, but I love it. My 3Cage's red has always been set to 5 and I use him a lot, often thrown in just to keep match damage to a minimum. I'm looking forward to owning a functional 4Cage.

I think it isn't a promoted tactic because it doesn't work in PvP. My Cage matches were cool, but slow. And slow is fine so long as it is a one to one ratio of matches you participate in to matches you could loose. But, a nice long match unshielded over 700 for too long on the PvP side can lead to some real bad results. Still, Cage saved many a health pack on the PvE side, so for that, thumbs up.

Dormammu

firethorne wrote:

I think it isn't a promoted tactic because it doesn't work in PvP. My Cage matches were cool, but slow. And slow is fine so long as it is a one to one ratio of matches you participate in to matches you could loose. But, a nice long match unshielded over 700 for too long on the PvP side can lead to some real bad results. Still, Cage saved many a health pack on the PvE side, so for that, thumbs up.

You make a good point. In theory, a defensive team should be stubborn and take a long time to defeat, promoting skips. Unfortunately, the AI isn't very good at handling our teams for us (either offensively or defensively) and you might attract more than one attack at a time.

But for PvE and the SHIELD simulator, I don't mind taking my time with a defensive team.

STOPTHIS

JHawkInc wrote:

I hope you get a 5th cover for Luke Cage's passive before Venom Bomb runs again.

My Luke Cage was champed, ran him at 5/5/3. Every symbiote passive meant I got to eliminate one of their tiles, and drop a protect of my own. Any time Carnage was involved, enemy triggers Carnage, Carnage drops 2 Friendly attacks and 2 Enemy attacks, Cage eliminates an enemy attack and gives a friendly protect, so a dropped Symbiote countdown gave the enemy 1 attack, but me 2 attacks 1 protect, and it was awesome.

I had champed Teen Jean too, and her purple is great for clearing the board, but Cage kept them in check enough I didn't always need it in the first place. Just make an effort to keep Cage in the front (which meant making yellow/black/red matches), and he managed the tiles all on his own.

I actually pulled another black right before my final grind. It really made that Carnage/guard dog X2 node a breeze. Removed an attack/strike tile AND help nullify the goons passive? Awesome. This event really won me over on C4ge.

shadowyoshi

I'd like to thank my boosted Teen Jean / Scarlet Witch / boosted Falcap team for carrying me to my first top 10 in a release event and first individual sub top 5 since the Ghost Rider release event.

Everything dies so quickly with that crew.

Honorable mention to using Falcap and Blade together with the countdown bug. I can't believe I'm saying this but this has actually been fun.

CNash

I'd like to thank Doctor Strange, who was the real MVP for this event despite not even being boosted. Thanks for helping me win my 13th Falcap cover!

Felonius

I champed C4ge earlier this month and I'm glad I did. Set at 3/5/5 he did some seriously heavy lifting, and heavy standing... -in the way of incoming attacks. Of course, that 20-30k red haymaker of his came in handy, too.

At first I ran him with Mr. Fantastic and Thing, both of which I also had champed, but I found Thing too slow, C4ge's red did more damage, and Thing's green would just as easily punch out friendly tiles as enemy's. I soon settled on C4ge, MF, and Wasp. The latter while champed, wasn't boosted, but her utility more than made up for it, particularly using that cheap yellow to flip C4ge's shields into powerful strikes (rinse/repeat), and it wasn't long before Carnage regretting ever giving me punch tiles.

As a lark, I played the 2* Essentials with Mr. Fantastic, Johnny, and my champed Invisible Woman. Not the most efficient team, sadly, but good enough and fun, none-the-less.

SummerGlau

I would like to thank 3 underused heroes who got a major workout

Blad3, Falcap and C4ge

a lot of slow rolling (sometimes blade's passive makes buttloads of strikes, sometimes the board is Red Starved), they never really were threatened though

I alos got plenty of use out of my first 4 star champion (X-23) and two that will likely join her (Peggy and Spider Woman)

Style55

This was the first Venom Bomb event that I actually made a real attempt to participate in and go for progression/placement. Sadly I couldn't run with mine being 4/4/1, I also hadn't considered using 4* 5/4/3. I did manage to clear 4x on the nodes. My MVPs were 3* and 4* for most nodes and the lesser essentials. The more difficult nodes I ran 3* and which made quick work of Carnage + whoever. 4* node with (3/4/5) and 3* .

Anyway I'm pretty glad I managed to actually get through this event, since it was one of the events I personally never cared for.

Congrats to all who got 4* and other placement rewards!

Oldboy

I had great fun using Teen Jean, 4Cage and Mr Fantastic. They cover all colours and MF gives you some board control with his Blue. With protect tiles and team heals this event was almost bearable. What wasn't bearable was waiting each round for all the passives and blinking lights to finish... the devs really should shorten the passives and cut down on the blinking lights. I think it took twice the amount of time i would normally take to complete 4 rounds of the last Hard node (the one where Carnage and Venom were present).

Edit: Just to add, using Mr F's blue/black also drops fortified tiles which you can use to boost Cage's yellow damage.

broll

I'd like to thank 4* Cage, 3* Blade, me Strang3 for making this event even easier. Enjoyed this event as usual.

kidicarus

I would like to thank the players in my s2 bracket grinding down nodes 1 point at a time for hipster fist.

DaveR4470

Now that my Teen Jean is fully covered and champed, this Venom Bomb with her boosted was by far the most enjoyable one I've played. I ran a variable mix of Jean, Mr. F (surprisingly effective!), Flaptain, and 3* Blade. The only real challenges were the Carnage nodes. Other than that, it was like a knife through butter.