**** Sandman (Flint Marko) ****

Cthulhu

Sandman (Flint Marko) 

4 Star Rarity (Legendary)

At Max Level: HP:  17288 65/11/74/4.0/13/85/12/43

Sand Blast 9 Green AP:
Sandman unleashes torrents of sand from his limbs, filling the area and pinning his target.  Deals 361 damage to the enemy team, and stuns the target for 1 turn.

• Level 2: Deals 555 damage to the enemy team.
• Level 3: Deals 629 damage to the enemy team and stuns the target for 2 turns.
• Level 4: Deals 1000 damage to the enemy team.
• Level 5: Deals 1768 damage to the enemy team.
• Max Level:
• Level 3: Deals 1227 damage to the enemy team and stuns the target for 2 turns.
• Level 4: Deals 1950 damage to the enemy team.
• Level 5: Deals 3448 damage to the enemy team.

Shifting Sands 8 Purple AP:

Sandman changes shape, moving around the battlefield and keeping his enemy off guard.  Swaps 6 random non-Yellow basic tiles, converting up to 3 of them to Yellow.

• Level 2: Swaps 8 random non-Yellow basic tiles.
• Level 3: Swaps 10 random non-Yellow basic tiles.
• Level 4: Swaps 12 random non-Yellow basic tiles and converts up to 4 of the swapped tiles to Yellow.
• Level 5: Swaps 14 random non-Yellow basic tiles and converts up to 5 of the swapped tiles to Yellow.
• Max Level
• Level 3: Swaps 10 random non-Yellow basic tiles, converting up to 3 of them Yellow.
• Level 4: Swaps 12 random non-Yellow basic tiles, converting up to 4 of them Yellow.
• Level 5: Swaps 14 random non-Yellow basic tiles, converting up to 5 of them Yellow.

Sand Smash 10 Yellow AP: 

Sandman hardens his body in preparation to bring the hammer down on his foes.  Create 4 strength 30 Protect tiles.  If there are 7 or more friendly Protect tiles, remove them all and deal 889 damage.

• Level 2: Creates 5 strength 34 Protect tiles or deals 1129 damage.
• Level 3: Creates 5 strength 44 Protect tiles or deals 1387 damage.
• Level 4: Creates 6 strength 53 Protect tiles or deals 1858 damage.
• Level 5: Creates 6 strength 85 Protect tiles or deals 2845 damage.
• Max Level:
• Level 3: Create 5 strength 86 Protect tiles or deals 2702 damage.
• Level 4: Creates 6 strength 103 Protect tiles or deals 3620 damage.
• Level 5: Create 6 strength 168 Protect tiles.  If there are 7 or more friendly Protect tiles, remove them all and deal 5,542 damage.

notamutant

Nope, not worth killing myself in new character PvE for this guy. His yellow is essentially useless. 1k in protect tiles is meh. Better than some other protect tile creators considering his purple can accelerate it, but not worth it. The damage trigger in the yellow is too hard to activate, and the damage amount is too low considering that it removes all your protect tiles. Why would I use his yellow over even *shudder* Venom's? Boosted, it will probably do around 11k damage. His green damage numbers are low, almost 3 star low, and a single character 2 turn stun doesn't really make up for it. At least he has somewhat higher health. Otherwise, bottom-mediocre character who I would rarely even use boosted. At least you can use his yellow with Hobofist's black for 1k in strike tiles, but there are better ways to get strikes than that.

Black Duke

Besides Sandman´s high health and okay AOE, his character design is kind of disappointing.

Shifting sands seems unreliable ("...converting up to...") so he isn´t a good choice if you´re a looking for a yellow battery (in my opinion Kingpin or Cloak & Dagger are better choices).

Sand Smash looks like garbage at first glance. Since it´s almost impossible to have more than 7 friendly Protect tiles (there only a few characters in game which are able to create so much Protect tiles and their abilities are all yellow), this power is pretty useless.

Lukoil

well for 15 yellow you can create 2850 worth of strike tiles with Wasp.... Is it worth it? Dunno, but I will try.

Imho yellow power is only good for those protect tiles - damage is garbage and make power only worse. If only this power create protect tiles it would be better than it have conditional with destroying them all=\.

His green power.....Well 2* storm unboosted power is better than his max level power. 4 turn stun is lways better than 2 turn stun. Damage difference is not that high (1k....)

zodiac339

Why is Sand Smash so very, very bad? Combined Forces nets 5K for 10 AP, and double that with met condition. Hero for Hire does 6K as long as there are three of any special tile for him to fortify, and much more if there were already fortified tiles, for 8. Riri's red is 1 AP more for base power 10K.
This is not just a condition to deal damage that others do as base or better, but then takes away the condition? Does "remove" mean "convert", or does it mean "leave holes where they used to be"? Even if it's board shake, it doesn't sound like enough to justify losing the defense you had to spend multiple turns to build up. Not even close to worth it.

Vhailorx

Compare Sandman yellow to Antman purple or blue.  Both require double casting to do direct damage. 

For 18 ap antman can do 10k damage; and if you wait a couple of turns you can get additional benefits like stolen enemy tiles or friendly attack tiles. 

For 20 ap sandman does 5.5k damage and. . .removes all of your friendly protect tiles. 

Yes, sandman self-accelerates, but who wants to accelerate such a garbage power.  As I said in the announcement thread: DOUBLE the numbers of sandman's yellow (ie let him make 6x320 protect tiles or do 11k damage) and he would still be a mid tier 4*.  One seriously wonders what the design team was thinking with these numbers!  Is this the same team that did SL?  tell them that they need to bring their damage values in line with the rest of the game.

Purple and green look decent or potentially even a bit better.  very curious to see that purple battery power in action and see if the added tile swap is at all useful.

DrDevilDinosaur

mechanically, those powers are sound, but looking at the numbers and this is one of the worst characters you've created so far

zodiac339

Wait, I just noticed something wrong.
@Cthulhu Shifting Sands lists different rank 5 numbers at max level. It's tile swap and conversion, not damage. There shouldn't be changes regardless of level.
@Vhailorx Good comparison there to Ant Man. Except that by himself, Sandman would need 30 AP to deal damage with yellow. He makes a max of 6 protects. Unless it counts the number of tiles after they are made before deciding if it will do damage. Will have to see it in action.

Vhailorx

Zodiac: i am assuming that the yellow power creates tiles and the, checks against the toles thresholds, kind of like hobofist blue.  If that is the case then 2 casts will proc damage.  If not then sandman is even worse.

Jarvind

Ew. This strikes me as a Mordo or Agent Venom type of guy: moderately useful when boosted, forget he exists when he isn't.

D4Ni13

Vhailorx said:

Zodiac: i am assuming that the yellow power creates tiles and the, checks against the toles thresholds, kind of like hobofist blue.  If that is the case then 2 casts will proc damage.  If not then sandman is even worse.

Actually, if that is the case, you can have it from 1 go. Just need 1 protect tile from somebody else (like C4ge) and then you add 6 and immediately remove them and deal damage ? Seems a little off though. 
I agree he seems weak in general, but he may be good situational.Have to wait & see. But yes, not worth killing yourself for him in the release event. 

Maybe he is intended as a yellow battery. Also seems to work well with Flaptain and C4ge. So my guess is that Sandman is supposed to make other overall weak heroes into better ones by playing them together.

Wasp also a great partner: create protect tiles, turn them to strike, create protection again.

So as I see it his best teams right now would be: C4rol, C4ge, Sandman or C4rol, Wasp and Sandman, both with yellow strong color.

zodiac339

Vhailorx said:

Zodiac: i am assuming that the yellow power creates tiles and the, checks against the toles thresholds, kind of like hobofist blue.  If that is the case then 2 casts will proc damage.  If not then sandman is even worse.

We can hope. I expect the optimal to be 5/5/3 and let almost any other character use yellow. And naturally, that's the first color they're forcing on the "winners

himatako

And Sand Smash is... single target? All that effort just to deal 5k damage to a single character? If I'm going to sacrifice all of my protect tiles, it'll be when I'm sure that I'll one-shot a character, not dealing just 5k damage -_- 

I don't know why they make his powers so boring. Sand Smash could have been more interesting like a base damage of 5k + total strength of all removed protect tiles or something. 

BlackBoltRocks

Sand Smash makes Falcap look top-tier

Starfury

Vhailorx said:

Zodiac: i am assuming that the yellow power creates tiles and the, checks against the toles thresholds, kind of like hobofist blue.  If that is the case then 2 casts will proc damage.  If not then sandman is even worse.

Yeah, if that's true you can bring 3cage along with Sandman to get a constant protect tile on the board and then use 3cage's yellow because that's likely going to do more damage

Straycat

Feels like they took the wrong lessons from the Riri backlash. "They don't like strong damage and weak health? Ok strong health and weak damage!"

Purple is sort of a new mechanic, just a mix of swap and color change. I guess that would give more chance for cascades, but any cascade power is hit or miss. Maybe it is a reliable yellow generator, but will have to see it in action.

I liked someone's comparison to Daken but for protect tiles, and now I am really disappointed. Nova does almost the same damage for removing his 5 strikes at 3 covers, at a lower ap cost and special tile threshold.

I would go the other way from Vhailorx, I wouldn't double the damage, I would halve the cost. 5 ap for 6 protects, 10 for 5k damage. Or 5 ap for 5k damage if one protect already exists. Also maybe convert the protects to yellow basic tiles too. Or just remove one. Do something besides just remove them all with no other way to create them

Vhailorx

I dont mean to suggest doubling his yellow power as a fix, just an illustration of how weak the power is.  5ap for the current values would be ok: not great, but usable.  A bit worse than AV black because it cannot be spammed.

zodiac339

For the cost to damage on Sand Smash, what we should be seeing is an actual smash:
If there are at least 7 friendly protect tiles, Sandman destroys all friendly protect tiles and up to 4 random tiles surrounding each protect tile. Insert obligatory destroyed tiles don't generate AP message here.
Considering the traditional overcost of board shake, that would make more sense.

PorkBelly

Everything just seems underpowered for the 4* tier.  The comparison of Sand Blast to 2* Storm's Wind Storm mentioned above is illustrative of the overall problem with the character.  

It really seems like all the numbers need almost a 50% damage increase or a 20% AP reduction.

zodiac339

PorkBelly said:

Everything just seems underpowered for the 4* tier.  The comparison of Sand Blast to 2* Storm's Wind Storm mentioned above is illustrative of the overall problem with the character.  

It really seems like all the numbers need almost a 50% damage increase or a 20% AP reduction.

Sand Blast is okay. It has a lower cost and deals more damage than the similarly costed Tools of the Trade, and provides targeted CC. The stun could go up by 1 more turn, and that would feel good, but it's acceptable as is. Like many characters seen as bad, it really comes down to 1 power being truly bad. There's no respeccing here like you might do with other characters. He's 5/5/3 and needs a partner for yellow. That said, it sure would be nice if they made 5/3/5 look viable.

Jaedenkaal

I dunno... Sand Smash is a passable power if you have 1 Protect out already. It's a shame that most other characters who can easily create a Protect tile have much better Yellow damage powers, or need Yellow AP to make them in the first place. Prof X, maybe?

It does make Symbiotic Assault seem pretty good, though, doesn't it.

I think Sandman's strength will depend on how easy it is to generate Yellow AP with Shifting Sands, although presumably if it's pretty reliable then you should bring someone else who can actually put it to good use.

Sand Blast seems fine, if unexciting. It's pretty comparable to Full of Surprises, or Mind Over Matter, although it's cheaper than both. I definitely wouldn't argue with a 3-turn stun, although even with two it's probably comparable to Thing's Red. Of course these are all unexciting comparisons, which I guess sums Sandman up pretty well.

Unexciting.