Explain why Carol is so good

bbigler

I know that everyone thinks 4* Carol Danvers is over-powered, amazing and goes on any team, but I'm not seeing it.  I think she's good, but not all-powerful-super-amazing good.  I've looked at her stats at level 270 with a 5/5/3 build:

8 Black: creates a 5-turn fortified CD tile that creates a 220 strike tile every turn, then deals 11,674 when expired
5 Yellow: Expire a chosen friendly CD tile
0 Yellow: When a friendly CD tile expires, Improve 3 random friendly tiles by 427
0 Green: When enemy matches strongest color, gain 3 AP in your strongest color; if the same color, deal 1263 to enemy team

By herself, you collect black and yellow; there's a chance (not a guarantee) that the enemy will match their strongest color.  Around the 5th turn, you lay down the fortified CD tile and then wait for 3 more turns to create 3 strike tiles, then use yellow to expire the CD tile to instantly kill an enemy and buff your 3 strike tiles (assuming they weren't matched away).  You now have 3 x 647 Strike tiles, which is awesome.  Here's my issue: it takes about 8 turns until you can do any major damage, which is slow.  If you expire her tile right away, then you're spending 13 AP to deal 11,674 damage, which is OK, but not amazing.

Pair her with Wasp 5/5/3 & Medusa 4/5/4 (the Shield Simulator favorite): collect blue and yellow; try to match Medusa tile when possible.  Around the 5th turn, you're buffing special tiles every turn, which is great, but how would you handle a 15K Health enemy that's about to hit you?  You have heavy damage each turn, but no 1 shot nuke.  Carol needs 13 AP to nuke someone (8 Black + 5 yellow).  If you played Wasp as 3/5/5, then you could hit and stun someone for 3 turns for 7 Black.  Here's my issue: this team works well for steady damage, but it only has 1 color to deliver a kill shot.

Pair her with 4*Rocket/Groot 3/5/5 & Star Lord 3/5/5 against Goons (my idea): Now this is a good team!  Rainbow coverage.  Rocket throws down strong strikes immediately and Carol buffs them from Star Lord's CD tiles.  Those passive powers alone should destroy enemies.  All 3 of them can produce CD tiles with their active powers to fuel Carol, plus Star Lord will reduce those costs (except Black).  For Blue, Rocket can add a permanent 1-turn CD tile that hits often.  Carol can quick expire Rocket's green CD tile or her own Black CD tile.  Star Lord's 6 Red punch should usually hit for 8K to 10K (not counting buffed strike tiles).  Purple is defense and offense.

My point is this: Carol is not an all purpose, add to any team character.  Her yellow passive is her real strength, which requires 2 things to work: CD tiles and Special tiles.  If you want to focus on her Black power, then pair her with Cloak & Dagger to produce black all day long.  If I'm missing something here, then please explain. 

Jarvind

She's definitely a bit overexposed, partly as a result of vaulting making her very easy to cover and champ. She does fit on virtually any team, though - her black, as you pointed out, creates awesome strike tiles which are by far the most valuable tile type, at least currently. The damage on it is also quite strong for the AP cost, and you'll get the tile buff after it goes off as well. Even if she's not on an "ideal" team that creates a lot of countdowns, she can fill a third spot reasonably well regardless.

Personally I frequently find myself insta-triggering her cooldown as soon as I have enough strikes out to get the maximum number of tile buffs - two or three, depending on if I'm running her at 5/3/5 or 5/5/3. This week I've been using her with Carnage since both are buffed and I've just fired it without any strike creation a few times. This is mostly because I agree that she can be sluggish as the only source of damage, and three buffed strikes is still a ton of added damage. Obviously her instatrigger has a ton of other uses - throwing Cap's shield and immediately getting it back to throw again is a huge one.

I actually think her green is the biggest reason why you see her so much, though. It's a huge deterrent to the usual strategy of just chasing AP for your biggest nuke and melting faces ASAP. Obviously there are characters that can get around it - Red Hulk being one, since his strongest color is on a passive - but it's extremely disruptive to AP gathering and slows down your opponent, which is the same reason you see Peggy on every other team. And that AOE frigging hurts if your strongest colors happen to match.

I do also agree that she isn't overpowered since she has no defensive abilities; there's no reason you can't just blow her up first and mostly avoid all the pain she can bring if left to her own devices.

Jesus Jones

I like your example teams and descriptions and I understand your point, but I don't think that she is over-powered, amazing and goes on any team nor do I think the developers attempted to make her, or anyone all-powerful-super-amazing good.  She's a top 5, but in every character assessment that I've seen she's never in the top 2, Peggy and Ice-Man are always in the discussion for that honor.

Starfury

Like Peggy, she's annoying to play against because she slows you down.

Peggy does it by delaying your first power activation by a few turns,

Carol does it by making your strongest color expensive to match. (And like Teen Jean a "lucky" cascade can mean you eat a few thousand AoE damage + whatever the opponent does with the additional AP)

Punisher5784

Carol is #1 for me and here's why... she completely revolutionized my play style. Prior to her the matches were simply gather this AP, go for the one-shot.. normally consisted of IM40 with Peggy, 4hor, JG, or Rhulk. Since champing Carol, my world has expanded. She fits nicely on so many teams: Wasp, Medusa, Bl4de, C4ge, SL, IF, as well as Grocket and Coulson when I gain more covers.. she made them better. She makes all special tile or CD creators better. I had no desire to pursue Wasp, Blade or Cage prior to her.

The best part about her.. pair her with Medusa, Wasp/Blade and I don't need to care about active powers. I don't need to care about what AP I'm gathering.. why? Because the special tile buff does the work for me. I can easily do 1000-5000+ per turn once they get going. Rarely need healthpacks because it's often fast. It's never boring, I find it fun and different. That's why she is the best to me.

Basepuzzler

She's overrated.

scottee

Nevermind 

bbigler

I'll admit that playing against her is a little annoying because of her green passive, but just like Peggy, she can be stopped.  Medusa, Carnage and 4*Grocket cannot be stopped.  They will hurt you no matter what you do.  Perhaps Thing and XFDP will become their solution.  Anyway, time will tell how good Carol really is. 

I think the latest 12 are getting a lot of play because they are the hot new thing or some people's only 4* champs. 

PuceMoose

I have been loving the beans out of her with my current go-to Sim-team - 4Carol, Wasp, Starlord. The amount of hijinks that team can get up to is ridiculous. Even though my Starlord is stuck at 229 (5/3/3) it's been the most fun I've had in the seasonal sim in over a year (my team for the Sim for the last 18+ months or so has been 3Cage, 3Fist, 3Clops). 

Vhailorx

Carol is the best pure single target offense character in the game.

She has a very cheap nuke that does 11k damage for just 8 ap.  Sure, it takes 5 rounds, but each round you get a pretty strong strike tile (The best best kind of tile!).  And if you really need get damage out fast she can fire a cd immediately for 5ap.  This is an awesome utility power.  It has as many possible effects as there are CDs in the game, just tons of options,

So her active kit is well matched for both solo and team play.

But then she has 2 very good passives.  Her green is an ap accelerator on offense, when the ai keeps making strongest color matches.  And it's a decent enemy suppressor on defense because humans are smart enough to avoid making strongest color matches.  Plus it does aoe damage sometimes.  Nice!

Her yellow passive is insane.  Proc it once with 3 tiles on the board and you add 1200+ to the tiles. We have all seem the crazy high tiles that prof x can create.  She boosts tiles 50% more than prof. X.  And while he only proc's with each match (so maybe once per turn plus cascades) she can proc as many times as you can resolve CDs.  And there are tons of ways to make cds.  

Off the top of my head:
-Peggy blue makes 3 that will also double dip on strikes.
-Loki makes 4 for free with his passive (so 4800 in buffs for each enemy match 4)
-Switch, medusa and chulk get a free one every few turns
-Wasp makes a free one every turn
-Hawkeye makes them all day long
-Coulson generates one wit each other power used
-Kp makes as many as 7 with his yellow
-Lazy cap makes th very efficiently
-Blad3, torch, and 4*r&g all make respawning cds that proc each turn and last forever
-Thanos makes some very useful/powerful CDs
-Antman makes 5 for 7 yellow ap
-xpool makes 5 for 8 purple ap

There are just endless options at all tiers of play.  And the boost is so strong that carol is lightning fast if you build around proc'ing her passive.  

She has no defense and is a bit squishy though.

In short she has well designed powers that play well together and with many partners.  Her powers have very few downsides and hit hard for their cost.

blade is really her only competition for pure damage output in 4* land.  But she gets the edge for having a wider range of synergies and potentially needing less ap than he does to really get going.  R&g +wasp + carol teams will be able to start doing crazy damage with as little as 3 blue ap if they ap boost.  

And while carol usage is up due to her current 12 status, she was beastly even before that.  She is not a current 12 creation.  She is the current best 4* for damage output (medusa is the best for support/utility, and iceman are peggy are probably the best for all around play due to their stuns.)

Bowgentle

Go play a mirror match against her in PVP, preferably with a 5* Thanos.

bbigler

You guys might find this interesting.  I just played a PVP Deadpool match against a boosted Carol and Rhulk.  I was using a boosted Rhulk and IM40.  From the opening board, I could see 2 match 5's, which were both red, so I went for them as usual, even though Carol would trigger her AP generation.  After the board settled, I noticed my guys were seriously hurt!  Apparently, I forgot that both of our strongest colors were red, so Carol hit me for 4400 team damage, twice! 

The rest of the match didn't go very well, but I eventually won, but barely.  My 37K Rhulk was down to 231 health.

Carol certainly has the surprise factor. 

Jaedenkaal

She's also been boosted a lot lately, where she's -completely- absurd. Strengthening 3 strike tiles of any starting strength by 850 or more whenever a CD expires, plus access to what amounts to an on-demand 23k damage.

Of course, nearly every 4* is good (or better) when boosted, but for me the reason Carol is so good is because it doesn't take too much to really get rolling. All you need is a special tile (preferably 3), and an easy way to generate Countdown tiles. She may be ridiculous with R&G and Wasp/Starlord/Coulson/Medusa. Or completely the best.

So in short, I think she's good because she has good synergy with lots of other characters, and several of those characters also happen to be top tier 4*s. On top of that her powers are cheap and reliable, AND she has a passive ability that is at least a mild deterrent .

Pants1000

IMO she's top 5 or 10, but not at the very top.  It's situational for sure, but run her at 5/3/5 against a team with the same strongest color, avoid that color, and she can win with just her passive.

With her boosted, I like to get a black countdown out as soon as possible, then around turn 8 kick out another countdown, use yellow on the one you just created, and she can do 50k damage quickly.  If that doesn't win the match right there, you'll have some nice strike tiles out to end it quickly.

She's not super fast, and her green is useless in goon fights, but she's still pretty good.

Vhailorx

Not at all a criticism pants, but have you tried her 5/5/3?  Did you build her at 5/3/5 and just keep her that way"  I wonder if people's early experience with her affects their opinion.  

When she was releasex, i planned ti build her 5/3y5 and thought she would be very strong, but maybe not the best.  

My first 11 covers fell 3/5/3 and i quickly discovered that her tile boosted was way more effective than i expected.  So much so that was reluctant to give it up.  I tried her at 3/5/5, 5/5/3, and 5/3/5 before settling on 5/5/3 for almost all matches.  The different in tupe boosting from 3-->5 is enormous (it goes from a +400 boost to a +1200 boost at level 270).

MarkersMake

Bowgentle said:

Go play a mirror match against her in PVP, preferably with a 5* Thanos.

This. 

In a mirror match, you (probably) both have black as your strongest color. If you match black first, then you eat a 2k AOE, plus the other team gets 3 black as well. You match black 2 more times, and your whole team is down about 7k health, but you are ready to fire Carol's countdown. 

But so is the other Carol, and it's her turn, not yours. Naturally, she has also gathered 5 yellow, so she immediately burns her CD tile and one-shots your Carol.

Bringing Peggy helps obviously, but it's a similar situation to Rulk, in that they are the best counter to themselves. 

Claypigeon

Hmmm, Carol I find is effective because her passive fires on matches and it generates AP. As someone said it completely changes the way you play and in PvP the way people most likely have to play against you.

If she has any weaknesses it's versus those who don't need their strongest colour or goons. So in PvE she's slightly less effective but in PvP, I'd say she's one of the most dangerous right now, particularly considering that right now  number of top tier characters whose strongest colour who use black is quite high. This helps both you and hinders your opponents. Plus that feedback damage is decent and can impact on squishier supports. 

Basically it can stop (or at least discourage) the opponent from being able to access at least a 1/6 of the board or more. That has a huge impact.

Like any of the top tier 4* she can be played multiple ways. A battery to gain whatever AP colour you're strongest in. A support who can both strengthen and generate special tiles or a cheap front line striker if you can generate yellows.

Honestly her biggest weakness is she's not really that good at defending at such but as far as an offensive support, pretty damn nasty.

granne

Honestly her biggest weakness is she's not really that good at defending at such but as far as an offensive support, pretty damn nasty.

Which is why she's so often teamed with Wasp and Medusa; burst team heal and strike/protect/strike flips and buffs. It's so much fun.

Claypigeon

granne said:

Honestly her biggest weakness is she's not really that good at defending at such but as far as an offensive support, pretty damn nasty.

Which is why she's so often teamed with Wasp and Medusa; burst team heal and strike/protect/strike flips and buffs. It's so much fun.

Pretty much 

bbigler

MarkersMake said:

Bowgentle said:

Go play a mirror match against her in PVP, preferably with a 5* Thanos.

This. 

In a mirror match, you (probably) both have black as your strongest color. If you match black first, then you eat a 2k AOE, plus the other team gets 3 black as well. You match black 2 more times, and your whole team is down about 7k health, but you are ready to fire Carol's countdown. 

But so is the other Carol, and it's her turn, not yours. Naturally, she has also gathered 5 yellow, so she immediately burns her CD tile and one-shots your Carol.

Bringing Peggy helps obviously, but it's a similar situation to Rulk, in that they are the best counter to themselves. 

Then just don't match black!

Jarvind

bbigler said:

MarkersMake said:

Bowgentle said:

Go play a mirror match against her in PVP, preferably with a 5* Thanos.

This. 

In a mirror match, you (probably) both have black as your strongest color. If you match black first, then you eat a 2k AOE, plus the other team gets 3 black as well. You match black 2 more times, and your whole team is down about 7k health, but you are ready to fire Carol's countdown. 

But so is the other Carol, and it's her turn, not yours. Naturally, she has also gathered 5 yellow, so she immediately burns her CD tile and one-shots your Carol.

Bringing Peggy helps obviously, but it's a similar situation to Rulk, in that they are the best counter to themselves. 

Then just don't match black!

Yeah, in this scenario you deliberately leave the black out for the AI to match. That way it AOEs itself and gives you more AP than it gains for itself (assuming 5 covers in green).