Upcoming Event: Spider-Man Vs. The Sinister Six

Stax the Foyer

acescracked said:

TOO EASY!!! Bring on a little pain!

Tuning puzzle-type fights like this is very difficult.  RNG is the difference between Doc Ock spawning his reactor in the corner versus spawning it lined up with a match-5.

Beating this drum again, but this is where WIN CONDITIONS would be ideal.  If we had WIN CONDITIONS, bonus ISO or something for beating Doc Ock without Cho Hulk.  Let people ramp up their difficulty in certain ways for extra rewards.

(Sorry about the caps, it's just that I've been pushing for WIN CONDITIONS for years now)

BoyWonder1914

I liked the difficulty where it was at, just surprised that I hit personal progression after like 2 cycles. Facing Carnage first in Rd 8, he could easily wipe your entire team by himself. Venom was also incredibly to fight, if you keep forgetting to bring someone who can hit invisible opponents. My annoyance in fighting these 2 alone almost made up for how easy I felt everyone else was. 

smkspy

I felt the best strategy for venom was to use him has an ap battery if he was first or second to fight. Build up your ap and let him fire off his stealth blast then nuke him. 

And after the side node scaling jump 55 to 200s in my case, I'm wondering what people that haven't completed the event will say about it being too easy.

Bryan Lambert

What I like most about this is that it signifies a philosophical shift in boss event design from "you're supposed to lose" to "you're supposed to fidgure out a way to win".

I remember the first boss event - where, from the pre-release descriptions, people in the forums were working out hypothetical strategies, and every time they did, the devs negated that strategy by updating the boss's abilities, until the fight was reduced to a mix of luck and slugfest. But this event not only allows for strategies, it allows for MULTIPLE strategies, and lets you use a deep developed roster in various combinations to try to match "wits" with a changing series of opponents. It's the most MPQ  has felt like a real game, and not a time-killing grinder, in a long time. 

And yes, a design like this can end up being easy, especially when the players have four different ways of comparing notes and strategies and very quickly crowdsourcing the solutions, but that's way better than just eliminating all the solutions so there's nothing to share.

keitterman

So far my strategy has been to use Black Bolt's scream to end the fight

optimus2861

I'm quite enjoying this so far. My alliance is about 2/3 of the way through round 5. My freshly champed Hulkbuster has earned his keep during the "slugfest" boss fights vs Carnage et all. Beast has been reasonably useful in both the slugfest and the "puzzle" bosses, since his green acts as fairly cheap board shake.

I just now realized that the first two Carol covers are green & yellow, and that will take my 4/4/3 Carol to 13 covers! Whoa. Really hope we can pull it off! Most previous boss events we've reached either round 6 or 7 before stalling out.

macgawel

scottee said:

Cleared both boss nodes in round 6 using 4Clops/KK/3Storm. Haven't used any healthpacks yet.

It's a winfinite team that can smash random tiles with green, or target tiles with Cyclops.

1. Set up KK for max purple, and Storm for max green/yellow.
2. Target purple at the beginning.
3. Continuously use purple to put as much green on the board as you can, and green on lightning storm to collect more AP.
4. Use yellow before firing green in order to get mainly colors on the board.
5. If stalled, use Cyclopes to target tiles to make more purple matches.

It can take a little bit to get going, but once it's up and you know the nuances, it never stops.

I prioritize the order- Storm yellow - KK purple - Storm green.


EDIT: This worked at Rounds 7 & 8. I did a FULL clear of the boss nodes until I couldn't reset them anymore. It spanned Rounds 7 & 8, and I reached full progression without using a single healthpack for the entire event.

Nice team.

My poor 4Clops is 1/1/1, so I tried a variant with 3Magneto.
The result is impressive (round 5). The only difficult boring part was to destroy Venom's invisibility, but thanks to the many board control powers it eventually happened.

iron-n-wine

macgawel said:

scottee said:

Cleared both boss nodes in round 6 using 4Clops/KK/3Storm. Haven't used any healthpacks yet.

It's a winfinite team that can smash random tiles with green, or target tiles with Cyclops.

1. Set up KK for max purple, and Storm for max green/yellow.
2. Target purple at the beginning.
3. Continuously use purple to put as much green on the board as you can, and green on lightning storm to collect more AP.
4. Use yellow before firing green in order to get mainly colors on the board.
5. If stalled, use Cyclopes to target tiles to make more purple matches.

It can take a little bit to get going, but once it's up and you know the nuances, it never stops.

I prioritize the order- Storm yellow - KK purple - Storm green.


EDIT: This worked at Rounds 7 & 8. I did a FULL clear of the boss nodes until I couldn't reset them anymore. It spanned Rounds 7 & 8, and I reached full progression without using a single healthpack for the entire event.

Nice team.

My poor 4Clops is 1/1/1, so I tried a variant with 3Magneto.
The result is impressive (round 5). The only difficult boring part was to destroy Venom's invisibility, but thanks to the many board control powers it eventually happened.

Thanks to both of you! Just got max progression using this trio

PuceMoose

I had a great time with this event - the side nodes were nice and breezy, and the boss fights were all different and interesting. I had some tense moments with Doc Ock, and had some of my finest MPQ moments finally getting rid of an isolated corner reactor just before it went off. It actually... felt like a puzzle!

I used Gwenpool/4Carol/Medusa for the seven rounds we played, and only lost a character once (poor Gwenpool ate a Venom Devour on a particularly horrible board). One of my most enjoyable moments came in a round with Venom, where purple simply wouldn't drop - he stayed at four invisibility tiles for at least 20+ rounds, and I built up attack and strike tiles, and 4Carol kept boosting them off into the stratosphere. When he finally got his six invisibility tiles, and attacked and lost his invisibility, I killed him from full health with one match-3 move! I cackled like a crazy person (my cat gave me a slightly alarmed look). 

Good work on re-tuning the Boss Rush! 

sambrookjm

4Carol, Flaptain, and Medusa just absolutely destroyed the Sandman side of things. Goblin's first three matches were Black, which is both his and your most powerful color. That's a lot of free AOE damage for you! Activated Carol's black, and it went off just in time to take down Carnage. Sandman's yellow matches give you more black, and there's enough yellow in that fight for you to zero that out very quickly and smack him hard. I had Flaptain in there for his yellow/red finisher, but I didn't get a chance to get enough red to use it.

DarthDeVo

So it finally took until Round 8 before I failed to clear a boss attempt. Starting with Carnage is plain hard. But, it is Round 8. Hopefully my alliance can get this finished off before we hit the final scale up of the essential side nodes. Not sure how much more I'm gonna want to play after that happens.

iron-n-wine

Puce Moose said:

I used Gwenpool/4Carol/Medusa for the seven rounds we played, and only lost a character once (poor Gwenpool ate a Venom Devour on a particularly horrible board). One of my most enjoyable moments came in a round with Venom, where purple simply wouldn't drop - he stayed at four invisibility tiles for at least 20+ rounds, and I built up attack and strike tiles, and 4Carol kept boosting them off into the stratosphere. When he finally got his six invisibility tiles, and attacked and lost his invisibility, I killed him from full health with one match-3 move! I cackled like a crazy person (my cat gave me a slightly alarmed look). 

Just tried this combo based on your comment and wow thats powerful! I dont have any of those 3 champed and they still cruised through a Round 5 fight

Landale

Just gonna say I love the event.  The pace is good, the bosses aren't crazy hard and are a bit fun (sufficiently challenging, I think).  I think the alliance rewards are also well structured for some of the less active alliances (like mine) .

I just, personally, wish individual rewards gave more ISO.

turbomoose

I'm finding one punch knocking out vulture with  TA Hulk highly amusing

Winfinity works very well on the second set of bosses 

monsieurmojo

Kudos to the devs for this event.  The bosses were fun, challenging (I think I wiped to Carnage 3 times in the last round), and most importantly, maintained the puzzle aspect of MPQ.  Very much looking forward to the next run!

shardwick

I enjoyed it for the most part. I had way too many bad boards against Doc Ock where the reactor would end up in a bottom corner and was unable to take it out with a match 4. Normally GSBW would take care of that but I think that she cut Carnage off in traffic once and he just won't let it go so he always kills her off immediately during his twenty straight moves routine. Cloak and Dagger had fun with Sandman and Bl4de laughed at Venom pretending to be invisible against him.

sambrookjm

This is probably one of the best events they've run, so great job on the Devs for listening to the constant gripes from the first Boss Rush event, and fixing them this time around.  The bosses were different enough to require individual strategies instead of "Bash with most powerful team!" 

The only nitpick I've got is the same with every other 3-day event of this type - scaling takes place each 24 hours, rather than depending on what wave you're in.  Well, that and Winfinite Carnage...

zodiac339

sambrookjm said:

This is probably one of the best events they've run, so great job on the Devs for listening to the constant gripes from the first Boss Rush event, and fixing them this time around.  The bosses were different enough to require individual strategies instead of "Bash with most powerful team!" 

The only nitpick I've got is the same with every other 3-day event of this type - scaling takes place each 24 hours, rather than depending on what wave you're in.  Well, that and Winfinite Carnage...

Sub mission scaling shouldn't be time-based or round-based. It should be based on your individual progression since the degree of mission scaling is based on your individual roster average. That way, a late starter won't be at an immediate disadvantage. And in this event, alliances were in round 5 or 6 within the first 8 hours, so a "late starter" ends up meaning "at work when the event started".
This would be even better in a Civil War run, so that when the alliance is actually ready to start on the other boss, the few strong members able to take on round 8 will cruise through sub missions once they complete that round and move over to help against the other boss.

Dragmus

Looks like another event where my alliance will be full of too many deadbeats for us to get much out of it. I wish I could've jumped ship before this started, but no one seems to respond to PMs in the alliance recruitment thread.

Painmonger

I like the puzzle aspect being highlighted, but it seems like a lot of us have still found one maybe two teams that work for us regardless of the boss orders. Personally I went with boosted 4hor & IM40 & tried a couple in the third slot until I settled on 4*Lord. High health to soak if need be, solid nuke, and targeted time destruction seem to work no matter what. Carnage as the first wave is a little annoying, but everything else is usually trivial. Even got sloppy & let wave 1 venom insta-KO my 28K hp Thor once, but the other two recovered & finished with >75% hp. Only 1 other member of my alliance has hit max progression though, so still waiting to finish round 6.