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

jgomes32

Got him fully covered and will start working on him after i'm done with Peggy and Star-Lord. Hopefully champed during boost week. Maybe he will surprise me.

DesertTortoise

He comes across as someone who may be fine boosted and a yellow battery at worst. 9 green AP for 3,400 team damage and a 2 turn stun isn't terrible, but not great. It's far better than Red Hulk's unqualified green. When boosted, 9 AP for ~7K team damage is going to be fast and useful. His purple should be good board shake and will generate a lot of yellow hopefully for someone else. His yellow is just a mess, with such a complicated qualifier I don't understand how it can deal such low damage. 

Cactus_Jack_87

After champing Sandy a few days ago, I was eager to try him out, hopeful that he's not as bad as he seems. I climbed with him and Hulkbuster in the Beast PvP, so I got a good amount of time with him. My opinion is...he's not terrible, but he's far outclassed by all of the great recent 4*s that have come out. I'm tempted to compare him to Mr. F, in that he's pretty good at building up defense and decent on utility, but not so great on offense.

I used him at a 3/5/5 build in the Beast PvP, because Beast's AoE is similar in damage, if not better, than Flint's. So I barely used his green, other than to stun a couple times.

His purple is actually pretty good, especially if the board is already full of yellow. It's important to note that it does board shake first, than matches colors, THEN turns to yellow. I was able to get as much as 20 yellow in a couple different matches. As a yellow generator, he's not bad, but it's still too expensive.

His yellow...it's great at throwing at protect tiles. And they are SOLID. For 10 AP, I was getting around 1800 points in defense. You do have to be careful though, because it throws out the tiles first, and then does damage if there are the required amount of protect tiles, which then removes all of them. So when Beast would have a blue protect tile out and I would use Sandy's yellow, it would do 10k damage. Meh, I'd rather have the defense, unless it's used to finish someone off. This is the biggest problem with his powers; he needs to either have a passive with this, or an option to keep your protect tiles. Removing them all is just silly.

Finally, his health is great. I don't regret champing him, but I don't see him being a big threat in PvP yet, unless he's able to slow down matches with his protect tiles. Take Medusa or Venom and they'll tear him to shreds.

Anon

I genuinely like Sandman as a character, so I'm annoyed at how bad he is in this game.

Cactus_Jack_87

Update on champed/boosted Sandman: I've been climbing with him and Hulkbuster in the Blade PvE, and his defense tiles have been a life saver against all of these strikes. He can make an extremely solid wall of defense for only 10 yellow. I'm running him at 5/3/5 this time around, and his green hits for a very decent amount (around 6000). I've only used his purple a few times, since Blade's is so much better. Sandy is not a bad character at all for PvP if you want to do some steady climbing, I've only used 6 health packs total by the time I hit 900 and shielded, and that was with the same climbing team the whole way.

talleman

Im not impressed by Sandman even when boosted. I will save my Iso to other characters untill he is fixed.

DesertTortoise

As an essential boosted he's still just okay. Boosted from 271 to 376 his stats are:

• 37,078 health
• Green deals 7,439 team damage for 9 AP
• Yellow deals 11,965 damage or puts out 6 strength 361 protect tiles

The green is fine, not spectacular but definitely fine for a cheap power with a stun element. His purple is okay too, adds some chaos and potential yellow generation which isn't too bad for its cost. The yellow is just not great, sure that's a good amount of protect tiles out but 10 yellow AP is a lot to pay for that. The damage he'd deal is just pretty good, as far as boosted powers go, but it's not easy to reliably get off unless you have 3-star Luke Cage on your team. If he had a really good yellow he'd probably be mid-tier but as he stands now he's lower tier but he's not awful. It really doesn't do him any favors that he's an essential the same week Vulture is boosted. 

D4Ni13

mexus said:

I think they should re-work Sandman almost completely and make all his abilities gimmick Iceman, but with another color spread. It all makes sense:

Sandman unleashes a tempest of sand and pebbles across the battlefield, devastating everything in its path and causing local archeologists to loose their findings. Deals 365 damage to the enemy team, plus 32 damage for every yellow tile on the board (to a max of 15 tiles).
(12 purple AP)

Build a snowman? Bah! Build a clayman.
Punch a snowman? Not me - I punch a clayman!
(this would have the same AP costs as Sandmans equivalent but would be a yellow skill)

Cold as ice? More like warm a burning sandstorm. Creates yellow tiles.
(8 green AP)

That would be lazy... 

His powers are not bad, only the numbers are mediocre. But with a bit of finetunning it could become better. 

For example, his green cost could be lowered with X for every friendly protect tile on the board, to a minimum of 6. That would synergize with his yellow and also transform a decent ability into a good one (heck, it's his strong color). 

His purple is fine. Good utility. 

For yellow, I would suggest dealing some damage regardless of protect tiles on the board. Also remove only a part of the protect tiles if there's more than the number required (keep the synergy with proposed green, and make the ability useful all the time). 

Doing something like that, would make him pretty good, and would also keep the initial design, which is not bad IMO . 

OrionKannan

mexus said:

D4Ni13 said:

That would be lazy... 

Maybe!
How about his purple:
swap XX tiles, create X yellow protect tiles.

And his yellow: 
Deal XXXX damage + XXX damage for each yellow protect tile on the board
(if there are more than XX yellow protect tiles, destroy these and down the enemy <- maybe OP)

Might be a little OP, but I was thinking an extra 200-500 Damage for each additional protect tile.  Option two could be to add a stun if there are more than XX protect tiles; stun entire team for 1 turn for every 2 protect tiles over XX.

Jaedenkaal

D4Ni13 said:

mexus said:

I think they should re-work Sandman almost completely and make all his abilities gimmick Iceman, but with another color spread. It all makes sense:

Sandman unleashes a tempest of sand and pebbles across the battlefield, devastating everything in its path and causing local archeologists to loose their findings. Deals 365 damage to the enemy team, plus 32 damage for every yellow tile on the board (to a max of 15 tiles).
(12 purple AP)

Build a snowman? Bah! Build a clayman.
Punch a snowman? Not me - I punch a clayman!
(this would have the same AP costs as Sandmans equivalent but would be a yellow skill)

Cold as ice? More like warm a burning sandstorm. Creates yellow tiles.
(8 green AP)

That would be lazy... 

His powers are not bad, only the numbers are mediocre. But with a bit of finetunning it could become better. 

For example, his green cost could be lowered with X for every friendly protect tile on the board, to a minimum of 6. That would synergize with his yellow and also transform a decent ability into a good one (heck, it's his strong color). 

His purple is fine. Good utility. 

For yellow, I would suggest dealing some damage regardless of protect tiles on the board. Also remove only a part of the protect tiles if there's more than the number required (keep the synergy with proposed green, and make the ability useful all the time). 

Doing something like that, would make him pretty good, and would also keep the initial design, which is not bad IMO . 

Definitely the worst part of his design is Sand Smash, which removes all Protect tiles for a non-scaling effect. This essentially punishes you for having too many Protect tiles on the board when you fire Sand Smash.

Jaedenkaal

mexus said:

I champed Sandman some days ago and while he's not good I must say he's better than the rumour has it. 
His green is fine, cheap AoE + sun. The damage output is good more than OK; better than Quake for instance.
But I'd still like to change in Sandman so that the purple becomes his AoE an the Drifting Sands would be green. This would make him stand out in the 4* tier as somewhat unique with his purple AoE. There are already 10+ green AoE.
His Drifting Sands is fine. Just change it into green and add maybe 1 more yellow tile created.

His yellow - meh. Good protection but what happens next is just bad. If Sandman is going to destroy his protect tiles the damage number must increase double or triple.

In the interests of being technically correct, Sand Blast is slightly worse than Earthquake both in terms of damage (3448 vs 4401) and damager per AP (383 vs 400), but the additional stun makes it definitely a comparable power, do I don't disagree there.

Rick_OShay

Got his 13th cover today from a Thor Sakaar Heroic token, quite the shock since he was at 2/5/5. 
I've also been hearing that he's better than people are giving him credit for, so we'll see soon enough from my own perspective. I won't champ him until I finish two others (Mockingbird in a few days, then Thano5). 

I do look forward to his purple building up yellow for another teammate, and his green aoe with 2-turn stun is nice.
Lots of characters have 2 'good' powers and a third that is lame. That doesn't specifically make SM bad on it's own. The general consensus is that there are much better green-purple users out there, so he will probably play a role where I need to build up yellow quickly for a boosted character, and his green stun is a bit unique among 4*s.

Jaedenkaal

Rick OShay said:

Lots of characters have 2 'good' powers and a third that is lame.

Yeah I hear Blade is fine, for instance. Ok, that's a bad example. Well only kinda a bad example. Sand Smash is probably better than Supernatural Sense.

Cactus_Jack_87

I've been using him to climb in PvP, and again, I really enjoy using him. His yellow is a wonderful health pack saver, as long as you only use it once, and maybe one more time to finish the match off. His green is very decent when boosted, and his purple gives good board shake. Since stepping up to the 5* tier, he's been a great meat shield during boosted weeks for early climbing, and his defense tiles help against that hateful 5* match damage. My name is Cactus Jack, and I am a Sandman apologist.

hopper1979

I want to like Sandman and I have been using him a lot while boosted, he is ok boosted but he need a tweak to his pink and yellow to make him good.  Pink just does not convert enough tiles yellow to warrant 20 ap to double cast his yellow and get the aoe effect, the protect tiles are not good enough that you want to use it for protection purposes if you are worried about them being matched before you can cast it again.  Also when he remove all the protect tiles cause more harm that good, limit it to 6 or 8 not all.  He needs to passively create defensive tiles or we need somebody other that 4Cage or Spider man who quickly generate defense tiles and does not have a better yellow (don't mention Bullseye a PVP player would drool for that matchup and in pve it is too slow).  Somebody suggested the pink creating yellow shield tiles, that is a good idea, some may get matched but you can get to his yellow power aoe on first cast because the odds of one surviving is high.  That change alone might make him significantly better but his yellow should be changed some as well, removing all the defensive tiles is a heck of a hit especially for the cost (this is the same issue with Kingpin now, the cost is not worth the damage output of his black power).  Even with these changes he would not be a top 10 4 star he would be a solid support character with two decent aoe's and some control.  I hope they look at updating him sometime soon.  Green is definitely his best power and does not need any changing.  Somebody mentioned his best partner is Vulture and that is definitely the case you can almost lock down a team once you get Vulture airborn.  (I have been running a 3 cover vulture at lvl 70 and it is still effective, I expect great things once I can level Vulture completely) C&D might be a good third to this pair get them to generate yellow and spam all the aoe's your team has while stunning the most dangerous opponent.  I have been running C&D with the boosted sandman and it makes casting his yellow easier but frankly I would rather put the yellow towards C&D's aoe for 4 less aoe and only ~3000 less damage.  

Rick_OShay

Yellow is a direct damage power, not aoe.

Jaedenkaal

hopper1979 said:

I want to like Sandman and I have been using him a lot while boosted, he is ok boosted but he need a tweak to his pink and yellow to make him good.  Pink just does not convert enough tiles yellow to warrant 20 ap to double cast his yellow and get the aoe effect, the protect tiles are not good enough that you want to use it for protection purposes if you are worried about them being matched before you can cast it again.  Also when he remove all the protect tiles cause more harm that good, limit it to 6 or 8 not all.  He needs to passively create defensive tiles or we need somebody other that 4Cage or Spider man who quickly generate defense tiles and does not have a better yellow (don't mention Bullseye a PVP player would drool for that matchup and in pve it is too slow).  Somebody suggested the pink creating yellow shield tiles, that is a good idea, some may get matched but you can get to his yellow power aoe on first cast because the odds of one surviving is high.  That change alone might make him significantly better but his yellow should be changed some as well, removing all the defensive tiles is a heck of a hit especially for the cost (this is the same issue with Kingpin now, the cost is not worth the damage output of his black power).  Even with these changes he would not be a top 10 4 star he would be a solid support character with two decent aoe's and some control.  I hope they look at updating him sometime soon.  Green is definitely his best power and does not need any changing.  Somebody mentioned his best partner is Vulture and that is definitely the case you can almost lock down a team once you get Vulture airborn.  (I have been running a 3 cover vulture at lvl 70 and it is still effective, I expect great things once I can level Vulture completely) C&D might be a good third to this pair get them to generate yellow and spam all the aoe's your team has while stunning the most dangerous opponent.  I have been running C&D with the boosted sandman and it makes casting his yellow easier but frankly I would rather put the yellow towards C&D's aoe for 4 less aoe and only ~3000 less damage.  

Well, that. Is a wall of text. Hit return every once an a while

You're right; double-casting Sand Smash for 20 Yellow is a terrible idea, so don't do that. I assume you mean damage effect, not AOE, since Sand Smash does not do aoe ever.

The Protect tiles ARE pretty strong at 5 covers; 6 of them at 270 gives you just over 1000 strength, and presumably double that when boosted. And you only need one left (from anywhere) when you fire it again to get the damage.

While it is true that most powers at the 4* tier that generate Protect tiles cost Yellow AP, that's not the complete truth. As you say, Luke Cage will do so passively, and Professor X will also do so the first time you fire any power. Thing also creates Protect tiles passively, so there's that. Hulkbuster and Lockjaw (occasionally) will create small Protect tiles for Blue AP and Mr Fantastic will make larger ones, and Gwenpool makes them for Black AP. At 4-5 covers in Sand Smash you only need 1 Protect tile on the board ahead of time to get the damage.

Anon

My biggest concern with Sandman (as much as I love the character) is whether I should champ him in case of a buff (I Champed Mordo literally the day his rework was announced regardless of how bad he was). 

My Sandman is 2/4/5 so he's 2 covers away from fully covered. I had optimism for 4* Iron Fist and Agent Venom when they were released and they turned out to be, not top tier, but way better than first impressions.

Sandman doesn't share that optimism. His Green is ok, but one ok skill and two lackluster ones isn't much to get excited about.

I love Sandman as a character and I look forward to camping him, but I really hope the devs take a look at him.

Jaedenkaal

Anon said:

My biggest concern with Sandman (as much as I love the character) is whether I should champ him in case of a buff (I Champed Mordo literally the day his rework was announced regardless of how bad he was). 

My Sandman is 2/4/5 so he's 2 covers away from fully covered. I had optimism for 4* Iron Fist and Agent Venom when they were released and they turned out to be, not top tier, but way better than first impressions.

Sandman doesn't share that optimism. His Green is ok, but one ok skill and two lackluster ones isn't much to get excited about.

I love Sandman as a character and I look forward to camping him, but I really hope the devs take a look at him.

I don't think you're giving Shifting Sands enough credit here. 8 AP to add 5 Yellow tiles to the board is fine, and the 14 tile swaps gives a passable chance to get some additional matches as well.

Honestly I think Sandman's biggest problem is that none of his powers are good enough that he can afford to have any of them at less than 5 covers. Many characters have 2 powers that are excellent, and the 3rd power hardly matters at all. Others have 3 powers that each do something potentially excellent at 5 covers, and you choose which two you want at any given time. Sandman doesn't have that. Sandman has 3 powers that are all totally fine at 5 covers, but you can't have them all at 5 covers.

hopper1979

It shows how bad the power is I have cast it so few times that I cannot even keep track of if it is an aoe or not.  I guess I want it to be an aoe because then it might be worth the cost.    

Yes you only need one shied on the board for the power to hit but if you are pared with 4Cage, especially in pve, you may have 3-4 on the board by the time you can cast Sandman's yellow that is a big defensive hit.  Also Cages yellow is much better.  Like Kingpin is the Sandman's yellow power worth the penalty, in most of the situations I would argue no.  If he could create shields passively or if his pink created a couple to feed his yellow it might work, but his problem now is there is just no synergy at all between the powers.  I really liked the way he was set up in Sinister Six event, I could get behind that set up but a tweak is needed.  Why are all the yellow generators in 4 land horrible now except for C&D.