**** Cloak & Dagger (Classic) ****

granne

Lots of good ideas in here. I had fun with them in Sim with Carol and Coulson. They generate black and yellow for her, pop out attack tiles to take advantage of her strikes, and every time they flip, Phil spits out a countdown to buff things.

So. Much. Fun.

Rick_OShay

That certainly depends on whether you have their skills set at 3 or up to 5 covers.
It's sure is easy to have less than 11 yellow on the board for example, but the average count per color is around 9-10 each. You need to set Yellow or Black (or both) at 5 covers if you really want to ensure that you get enough of the color you want added to the board each turn. 
Very often an automatic match may happen - for free - when they are added. There is tremendous value in that.

Tiger_Wong

Yes they would. 

DesertTortoise

They're a bit clumsy as a yellow battery since you have to switch them and that price can be annoying if there isnt' enough black out (though they help themselves out with that). They're a very natural black battery right off the bat, though, so they're more of a "yellow or black battery" rather than a "yellow and black battery". Being able to choose who is in front at the start of the battle would be great. 

Dayv

DesertTortoise said:

They're a bit clumsy as a yellow battery since you have to switch them and that price can be annoying if there isnt' enough black out (though they help themselves out with that). They're a very natural black battery right off the bat, though, so they're more of a "yellow or black battery" rather than a "yellow and black battery". Being able to choose who is in front at the start of the battle would be great. 

It might be a bit over-powered to be able to choose that, though.  I think the reason the devs chose to have them start in black-passive mode is so that they aren't healing from turn one, like 3* or 5* Wolverine do.  Their self-heal is one of the better ones in the game, but you're going to need to fire off at least one skill before you can access it.

It might be interesting to have it random which of them starts out in front, but it would also make it a bit harder to strategize a team around them.  It also starts to step on Moon Knight's gimmick a little.

Elric_VIII

DesertTortoise said:

They're a bit clumsy as a yellow battery since you have to switch them and that price can be annoying if there isnt' enough black out (though they help themselves out with that). They're a very natural black battery right off the bat, though, so they're more of a "yellow or black battery" rather than a "yellow and black battery". Being able to choose who is in front at the start of the battle would be great. 

4/4/5 ensures that they will always either be pumping out tiles or able to switch for 3 purple. 

Tiger_Wong

Another team I forgot about. 

C&D 4/4/5
Invisible Woman 4/4/5
5* Black Panther 2/1/4 (hey! That's all you got. Sue me.)

Dayv

Elric VIII said:

4/4/5 ensures that they will always either be pumping out tiles or able to switch for 3 purple. 

It also ensures that their yellow active will do one-third less damage (and remove 2 fewer enemy tiles), and as a passive it will heal them at about 60% the rate of five covers.

And then the loss on black from five to four colors, in passive mode the attack tiles are at 60% of full value, and as an active losing a turn from 7 to 6 on the countdown isn't too bad, but it drops enemy powers by 3 instead of 4, and most importantly, it isn't fortified!

If you're bringing Cloak and Dagger for anything other than tile generation, 5/5/3 is by far the most effective build.  Purple is still easy to get under the cost reduction threshold, you just need to wait a turn once in a while.  And if you're regularly bringing Cloak and Dagger purely as an AP generator for other characters, that's as bad a crutch as the targets players who rely on 3* Iron Man well past the 3* tier of play.

sinnerjfl

Dayv said:

And if you're regularly bringing Cloak and Dagger purely as an AP generator for other characters, that's as bad a crutch as the targets players who rely on 3* Iron Man well past the 3* tier of play.

errr isnt that their explicit role, to be an AP generator? Because by themselves they really do very light damage all things considered. Their own skills are OK but not great (black doesnt even work on goons), there are objectively much better yellow and black abilities...  Not sure im following you there.

Elric_VIII

Dayv said:

Elric VIII said:

4/4/5 ensures that they will always either be pumping out tiles or able to switch for 3 purple. 

It also ensures that their yellow active will do one-third less damage (and remove 2 fewer enemy tiles), and as a passive it will heal them at about 60% the rate of five covers.

And then the loss on black from five to four colors, in passive mode the attack tiles are at 60% of full value, and as an active losing a turn from 7 to 6 on the countdown isn't too bad, but it drops enemy powers by 3 instead of 4, and most importantly, it isn't fortified!

If you're bringing Cloak and Dagger for anything other than tile generation, 5/5/3 is by far the most effective build.  Purple is still easy to get under the cost reduction threshold, you just need to wait a turn once in a while.  And if you're regularly bringing Cloak and Dagger purely as an AP generator for other characters, that's as bad a crutch as the targets players who rely on 3* Iron Man well past the 3* tier of play.

It's almost like they are a versatile character with multiple usable builds. Something has to be lower than level 5.

And if you want to play the percents game, purple deals 50% damage at level 3 compared to level 5. I'd rather deal 1k less damage on my 8 AP power compared to 1k less damage on my 3 AP power. Even if your yellow gets the AoE, it's still about the same damage/AP that you lose.


To be honest, I'm unsure if you've actually used this character to any reasonable degree. the difference between needing 11 and 9 tiles to reduce AP costs is huge, especially since you won't generate additional tiles with the passives at 5 past 9 tiles on the board. Assuming you actually want to use their actives, you'll be matching those colors. It just doesn't work as well.


The black ability is just there to negate a nuke. The AI will fire off their (now) level 2 power even if the countdown tile is there. And I don't care if my attack tiles deal ~60 less damage if they're carrying my strength 200+ strike tiles with them. 

C&D is a support character. Their abilities are internally synergistic but situational. They help characters like Carol by fueling her actives and providing a cheap ability to trigger her strike tiles along with the occasional cascade.

DrDevilDinosaur

I'm certain that the best partner for C&D hasn't been released yet. There was/is a lot of synergy between Wasp, Carol, Medusa, and Coulson - specifically around the tile buff provided by the passive part of Carol's Yellow and the countdown tiles of those other characters. Wasp's already gone, and we'll see Medusa and Carol leave soon enough.

C&D generating black tiles is useful for Mordo or Iron Fist, since those character also use Black AP, but I don't think either of those pairings is ideal.

Pairing with Vulture will be interesting, since you want to rush Black AP to get Vulture airborne and generating AP himself. I haven't tested with Gamora, but C&D should be chasing purple, which can keep the tile count low, and generates black for Gamora to cover remaining purple tiles - although I don't think relying on the insta-kill is a great strategy.

There's still 7 more characters that will be in the latest 12 before C&D gets kicked out. If we get anyone with a Passive that fires when a friendly ability is used, that's obvious synergy with C&D Purple. I also wouldn't be surprised to see at least one ability that interacts with enemy special tiles (either a strong attack which grants tiles to the enemy which Dagger Yellow can remove, or an attack which gets stronger if there are no enemy specials in play).

sinnerjfl

They really don't do light damage.

2000 damage for 3 AP. That's decent. 4000 damage for 6 AP. 8000 damage for 12 AP.

And with no enemy special tiles on the board their yellow AoE damage is top-notch, Red Hulk class.

The damage on purple is tied to a condition, its kinda rare you can use it twice in a row for 3 AP, even more so since you'd have to lower black or yellow to get max damage out of purple.

On paper it looks great, in practice you'll use it once at 3 AP to switch, wait 4 or 5 turns for enough yellow to appear, then its 3 AP again etc. Its pretty frigging slow.

Yellow's great but again, another condition that you need a clean board, it happens sometimes or you might have to use yellow twice to get the AOE.

Elric_VIII

sinnerjfl said:

They really don't do light damage.

2000 damage for 3 AP. That's decent. 4000 damage for 6 AP. 8000 damage for 12 AP.

And with no enemy special tiles on the board their yellow AoE damage is top-notch, Red Hulk class.

The damage on purple is tied to a condition, its kinda rare you can use it twice in a row for 3 AP, even more so since you'd have to lower black or yellow to get max damage out of purple.

On paper it looks great, in practice you'll use it once at 3 AP to switch, wait 4 or 5 turns for enough yellow to appear, then its 3 AP again etc. Its pretty frigging slow.

Yellow's great but again, another condition that you need a clean board, it happens sometimes or you might have to use yellow twice to get the AOE.

That's why I advocate the 4/4/5 build barring special conditions. When you use your purple you can usually activate it on the next turn due to the cutoff on the passives also being 9 tiles on the board. C&D works very well with Carol for this reason. Generate/match black to put up a Photonic Blasts tile, get a few strikes on the board, then you've got a 3AP attack to take advantage of those powerful strike tiles. The only problem is that Medusa is just so much stronger with Carol. 

Although, when they were boosted I kept them at 4/5/4 for a flood of attack tiles.

I also really like them with a soft-capped OML. I've got him at 2/4/3 and C&D fuels his transformation while triggering his red passive with the purple. It's a corner-case, but I'm sure some people can make this work.

DrDevilDinosaur

Champed C&D, still playing around with builds. Something I have noticed is that I generally don't want to necessarily spam Purple. Although it's nice to have a 3AP attack at my disposal, I find that I generally want them to be in a specific configuration for the purposes of swapping tile colours. I need to be able to double cast Purple otherwise I find myself holding on to that AP - and for the most part that seems to generally be a good plan in case I need to swap them in a pinch to make use of their other active. I feel like this playstyle really lends itself to 5/5/3.

In any case, they really love having some strike tiles around to help them out. I paired them with my 4* Grocket (currently 4/5/3, level 150) and the results already look good. I might add Gamora to the mix - that gives a red active for rainbow coverage, and a better use for spending black, plus the GotG team bonus on the Grocket strike tiles. I think that could be a good test of the 4/4/5 build where I want to be casting Purple as often as I can (keep as much purple off the board for Gamora to trigger her insta-kill).

ammenell

figuring out partners, too. 
c4ge and 4fist seem kinda lame. 
starlords yellow doesn't reduce c&ds pink, which feels both odd and surprisingly not broken at the same time. 
not sure about Carol, either - others are way better with generating tiles.
i didn't champ him yet, but could mordo be a good partner with her? 

ammenell

for whatever reason, I see dagger as the more dominant of the two, really can't tell you why. 
so "her" just seems right to me, I don't even think about "them" 

zodiac339

ammenell said:

for whatever reason, I see dagger as the more dominant of the two, really can't tell you why. 
so "her" just seems right to me, I don't even think about "them" 

Understandable. Dagger has the first active power, she's up front when they flip, she does the healing and yellow generation when flipped. Cloak has the passive pre-flip, and potentially doesn't get his active used if your strategy is "generate black for a damage dealer."

ammenell

nah, I champed her recently and have next to zero experience with... them 
obviously, all good and valid points but I think it's more the artwork of the cover... 

Rick_OShay

Recently champed, and thought C&D would be a great yellow battery for others - and they are - but, their yellow is pretty dang good. So much that I now play them as a yellow-purple character almost exclusively.
Certainly I start them as a black feeder for a teammate who needs it, then switch for yellow building. If there's no enemy specials, for 8 yellow that is a great AOE attack. There is usually some enemy specials out there, so you have to decide if it's worth it to hit only 1 target while removing the specials. Saving up for two hits is easier than you may think.
Their only drawback is that they really have no nuke, so be sure to bring others who can deal large 1-hits.
I only use their black if I have an unavoidable large enemy attack incoming. Reducing that enemy power level can greatly reduce the damage you take.
The best partners I've been using them with is C4rol (no surprise), for the easy black accumulation, plus the automatic attack C&G creates that Carol can buff. It's great to bring a cheap CD tile creator with these two.
Wasp is a good partner too, and I usually bring Bl4de along with her for great color spread. 

CrookedKnight

Vulture was a fantastic partner for C&D in his debut PvP, because I could use his blue to take out enemy specials, get AP for it, and then use Light Knives as an AOE.