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

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  • granne
    granne Posts: 852 Critical Contributor
    I just pulled the cover from the event vault so mine is now 0/2/2. I've never had this many covers so quickly for a new release, and I've never been less excited about it. Blech.
  • TPF Alexis
    TPF Alexis Posts: 3,826 Chairperson of the Boards
    So far, the best thing I've found about him is that he tanks green for Thor when he's boosted like this. Even using the loaner in the teamup nodes, he feels more like a 3*.
  • moss04
    moss04 Posts: 147 Tile Toppler
    This guy needs an immediate tweak to be more than awful. My suggestion is change minimum tiles converted to yellow by his purple power to 4 and increase the max to 7. And also, most importantly, reduce the cost of his yellow to 6 as well as having the damage trigger only remove 7 protect tiles instead of all of them.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    moss04 said:
    This guy needs an immediate tweak to be more than awful. My suggestion is change minimum tiles converted to yellow by his purple power to 4 and increase the max to 7. And also, most importantly, reduce the cost of his yellow to 6 as well as having the damage trigger only remove 7 protect tiles instead of all of them.
    Well I won't defend Sand Smash too much, but I think Shifting Sands is better than it reads. At rank 1 its clearly bad, but all (ok, nearly all) powers are bad at rank 1. I think the potential for non-Yellow matches followed by the potential for Yellow matches add up to a reasonable, if not mind-blowing power.
  • zodiac339
    zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    moss04 said:
    This guy needs an immediate tweak to be more than awful. My suggestion is change minimum tiles converted to yellow by his purple power to 4 and increase the max to 7. And also, most importantly, reduce the cost of his yellow to 6 as well as having the damage trigger only remove 7 protect tiles instead of all of them.
    It shouldn't be removing protects at all. It's not like it affects the damage dealt. Reduce cost, reduce number of protect tiles it makes, give it reasonable base damage, then make it a large amount of damage when it hits the threshold. Enough to justify wrecking your defense. Or possibly make the protect tiles color specific and have it only destroy the protects of that color for decent (AOE?) damage.
  • hopper1979
    hopper1979 Posts: 565 Critical Contributor
    I like shifting sands it is solid.  Has anybody noticed if special tiles are converted to yellow I have not caught it happening yet but that would make it better.  Green is meh but yellow is where he goes from having potential to kinda bad.  It makes paining him with specific characters very difficult destroying all the shield tiles is devastating for the damage it does.  Pairing him with characters like 4Cage, 3spider man, 5 cap, Prof X and 2 Bullseye is pointless. Because it negates their usefulness.   Now there is an easy fix to this set it to a scale, the more protects that he eats the more damage he does.  No cap would fix this issue and make the payoff for casting it an actual choice.  I am leaning towards pairing him with Kinpin and Capt Marvel or Colson and spamming the hell out of Kingpins yellow.  He will have his use because the yellow battery is still very rare.  Hopefully they will tweak him a little down the road.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    hopper1979 said:
    I like shifting sands it is solid.  Has anybody noticed if special tiles are converted to yellow I have not caught it happening yet but that would make it better.
    According to the description it only moves non-Yellow basic tiles, and then converts some of those tiles (ie, the non-Yellow basic ones) to Yellow, so I doubt it. It can still match away special tiles if you're lucky or particularly strategic.
  • DrDevilDinosaur
    DrDevilDinosaur Posts: 436 Mover and Shaker

    I think that Shifting Sands is probably his best power. As other have indicated, it has pretty good potential for generating cascades.

    I also wanted to give Sand Smash a chance. I tried to compare it to a few other powers in the 4* tier. As a damage dealing ability, Sand Smash deals 5542 for 10 AP (or ~554 dmg/ap)

    Nova's Fingerguns hits a single target for 3068 (~438 dmg/ap) and then creates Strike tiles.

    Cyclops' Combined Forces deals 5394 for 10AP (~539 dmg/ap) or 11851 for 20AP if you have 10 Team Up AP (~593 dmg/ap)

    Luke Cage's Hero for Hire hits for 1978 per fortified friendly special tile. On first cast, assuming 3 friendly special tiles on the board, it hits a single target for 5934 (~742 dmg/ap).

    The fact that Sand Smash damage is really close in numbers to Cyclops Red was surprising, and it made me feel a bit better about the ability. The problem with Sand Smash is the damage isn't guaranteed or consistent. Two attacks will bring it close to the damage of Cyke's Red powered up to max, but in order to get there with Sandman alone, will cost 40 AP instead of 20.

    Since we know that Sand Smash creates the Protect tiles first, then deals damage if there's enough, it seems the best way to make use of the ability is to pair Flint with someone else who can reliably have a Protect tile on the board in advance - and right now, the list of candidates isn't great.

    Luke Cage is probably the ideal partner, since he can potentially put out a Protect tile for free - but we can easily see that Cage himself is a better outlet for Yellow.

    I could see some potential with Professor X - any other ability will trigger Psychic Convergence and generate a Protect tile to ready the board.

    I guess my final analysis right now is that the ability is perhaps not as bad as I first assumed - it's merely average. But average just doesn't cut it in MPQ, not when there are options in the same (or similar) category which are considered outstanding. It think it's very likely that Sandman was designed alongside some other Sinister Six members who may not yet be in the game - if one of those brings a non-Yellow AP way of adding Protect tiles, then there will be an obvious synergy there. I also think that we're in the middle of a "meta-shift". When the Latest 12 first started, the meta was very clearly focused on countdown combos (Carol/Medusa/Coulson/Wasp) - and somewhat aided by the countdown 1dmg bug. The three most recent characters - Grocket, Gamora, Sandman - all appear to be designed around slowing the game down just a little bit. Grocket has early Strike tiles, yes, but they are really designed as a "damage over time" style character, delivering a death by a thousand cuts. Gamora has an insta-kill which requires achieving a specific board configuration. And we know all about Sandman. Demiurge have really wanted to push a slower metagame for a while, and 4* vaulting may finally be the way in which they can bring this into effect.

  • spiderpool
    spiderpool Posts: 76 Match Maker
    Am I the only one dissapointed in the choice for sandman pvp title?  Sandstorm, with so many popculture references to sandman to choose from.

    -Enter Sandman
    -Grain of sand
    -Exit light 
    -Mr. Sandman
    -Bring me a dream 
    -I hate sand. It's rough,  and course,  and it gets every where
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    spiderpool said:
    Am I the only one dissapointed in the choice for sandman pvp title?  Sandstorm, with so many popculture references to sandman to choose from.

    -Enter Sandman
    -Grain of sand
    -Exit light 
    -Mr. Sandman
    -Bring me a dream 
    -I hate sand. It's rough,  and course,  and it gets every where
    It does seem a bit uninspired, yes. Everything about Sandman, really.
  • himatako
    himatako Posts: 269 Mover and Shaker
    The only good thing about him is he's a pretty good third for Peggy and IM40 team, I guess. IM40's Recharge fill green & purple AP so you can use his powers faster. With his green and Peggy's blue, you can stun the whole team. If that's not enough and you need to recharge again, fire his purple to get more yellow. 
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    himatako said:
    The only good thing about him is he's a pretty good third for Peggy and IM40 team, I guess. IM40's Recharge fill green & purple AP so you can use his powers faster. With his green and Peggy's blue, you can stun the whole team. If that's not enough and you need to recharge again, fire his purple to get more yellow. 
    Not fair to say that's the only good thing, I suspect, but that combo does seem worth exploring. Not sure it's any better than just using Ice Man, but for everyone who doesn't have Ice Man he might be a solid replacement. Won't topple the 4* meta, to be sure.
  • hopper1979
    hopper1979 Posts: 565 Critical Contributor
    Ok possible team up for Sandman, I have been working hard at finding an area where where he can excel, unfortunately the testing for this is way down the road since I have only one of these three championed.  If somebody could test this out and let me know what they think, the major downside I see is acceleration.  So the teams is Sandman/4Cage/4Iron Fist.

    Ranbow team with one great passive Cage's black, Sandman's pink feeds yellow which goes towards Cages yellow which is boosted by Iron Fists blue.  Pick your green Sandmans stun or Fists aoe.  Yellow goes to Cage who should be dropping bombs very quickly and you also have the crazy nuke of Iron Fists black which can also be feed with Sandmas's yellow as well if it is really necessary.  So a little acceleration for a key color yellow, very high defense and relatively cheap but hard hitting powers and some control.  It looks reasonable to me as a group.

    On paper it looks good to me might be more pve than pvp but I think it might be able to hold its own in pvp especially against a quick team.  

    Iron First is my next character I plan to champion but Sandman is a long way off if you can try this group let me know if works.  I am really trying to find a useful niche for Sandman.  I think it is possible. :)
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    hopper1979 said:
    Pick your green Sandmans stun or Fists aoe.
    Sand Blast is the aoe while Crowd Control is not. You're more choosing AOE/stun vs higher single target damage and (maybe) Black AP gen.

    Seems like a fine group, but I think the problem here will probably be that IF and Cage have better partners
  • hopper1979
    hopper1979 Posts: 565 Critical Contributor
    edited June 2017
    There are definitely better teams for Cage/Iron Fist but trying to come up for the best match for when we need to use Sandman in an event or pvp :)  I am actually surprised I do not see those two more in pvp they are great together.
  • zodiac339
    zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    Pairs well with Spider-Man! As a yellow battery! Bring in cannon fodder and watch Sandman cry at the massive damage Spidey can do with yellow.
  • MaxxPowerz
    MaxxPowerz Posts: 276 Mover and Shaker
    Kingpin is still a better yellow battery. Not only does he generate 7ap, he also destroys enemy ap. 
  • Rick_OShay
    Rick_OShay Posts: 765 Critical Contributor
    edited July 2017
    Depends though, you are pretty sure to get match damage on Sandman's tile swap, not to mention board shake in general for your next move(s). So you have to weigh these results in comparison to Kinpin's AP reduction. 
  • JarvisJackrabbit
    JarvisJackrabbit Posts: 232 Tile Toppler
    Just give him the abilities he has in the Spidey boss event and he'll be great.

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