**** Yondu (Awesome Mix Volume 2) ****

Player1575

Yondu will boost r&g strike tiles the same as drax, gamora, and starlord yes? 

Rick_OShay

Yep. And anyone who may be part of the team that gives R4G the bonus strike tile strength is a welcome addition.
That would leave a yellow-red-purple user to round out the colors. St4r-Lord makes sense, since he would reduce the cost of Yondu's blue etc, but that would mean no active yellow power, and as mentioned, potentially competing for yellow tiles for CD's. Overall this may not be a big issue sine Yondu will not need to create them until he is below ~50% health - then hopefully you are regaining it quickly anyway.
Separately, Medusa would work as a Y-R-P, again without active powers on all colors (obv. it doesn't always matter since she's so good). 
Give up red and go with C&D? Spam black for Yondu is probably a good idea, and many reds will be taken up by C&D's attack tiles. 
You've got a couple of the spider people to consider as well, for full actives. 

Jarvind

Rick OShay said:

Yep. And anyone who may be part of the team that gives R4G the bonus strike tile strength is a welcome addition.
That would leave a yellow-red-purple user to round out the colors. St4r-Lord makes sense, since he would reduce the cost of Yondu's blue etc, but that would mean no active yellow power, and as mentioned, potentially competing for yellow tiles for CD's. Overall this may not be a big issue sine Yondu will not need to create them until he is below ~50% health - then hopefully you are regaining it quickly anyway.
Separately, Medusa would work as a Y-R-P, again without active powers on all colors (obv. it doesn't always matter since she's so good). 
Give up red and go with C&D? Spam black for Yondu is probably a good idea, and many reds will be taken up by C&D's attack tiles. 
You've got a couple of the spider people to consider as well, for full actives. 

Straining for actives on all colors usually isn't worth it - 4 active colors is plenty for a good team. Sometimes less, depending on who you're using.

Forcing a character onto a team just because they cover an active color usually means you end up with poor synergy and dead weight. There are good rainbow teams, of course, but forcing it just for its own sake will often hurt more than it helps.

Anon

I have a 0/0/2 Yondu and I can confirm that his Blue has a whistling sound effect.

Something else I noticed is that while testing the power out, there was one enemy remaining, and they were stunned. Centaurian Arrow was already fired so it was still in Yaka Assault mode. Despite all this, the enemy took no damage for 2 turns. Once they recovered from the stun, the passive hit them each turn.

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but its something I noticed. I really hope it's a bug. If his Blue does nothing if one enemy is remaining and stunned, that sucks.

Daredevil217

He seems like maybe the weakest of the 4* Guardians (I say maybe because I have no idea what Drax does post-rework).  He has one really good power on offense but it is easy to counter when you face him as you can choose to put him in front and attack him whereas the AI can't. Thus he'll have to collect the AP to start the whole thing over again. I like the comparisons to Blade, except Blades is way better with his strikes and continual damage being passive and 1 AP respectively.

Jaedenkaal

Daredevil217 said:

He seems like maybe the weakest of the 4* Guardians (I say maybe because I have no idea what Drax does post-rework).  He has one really good power on offense but it is easy to counter when you face him as you can choose to put him in front and attack him whereas the AI can't. Thus he'll have to collect the AP to start the whole thing over again. I like the comparisons to Blade, except Blades is way better with his strikes and continual damage being passive and 1 AP respectively.

Does Yaka Assault end if he takes that much damage in total, or in one hit? 

Either way, the decision might be less obvious if you run him on a team with others who have "must die first" status, or who punish you for (or prevent you from) damaging allies.

sinnerjfl

Why does this guy make such weak strike tiles? Not only that, they're spread across 7 tiles...   they're worthy of a 2*...

The low cost is not helping either and multi-casting it, a lot of them will be matched away.

The AP destroying is nice but not even sure that will end up being useful either. His black needs a serious rework already.

D4Ni13

Jaedenkaal said

Daredevil217 said:

He seems like maybe the weakest of the 4* Guardians (I say maybe because I have no idea what Drax does post-rework).  He has one really good power on offense but it is easy to counter when you face him as you can choose to put him in front and attack him whereas the AI can't. Thus he'll have to collect the AP to start the whole thing over again. I like the comparisons to Blade, except Blades is way better with his strikes and continual damage being passive and 1 AP respectively.

Does Yaka Assault end if he takes that much damage in total, or in one hit? 

That's what I'm intetested into also. Anybody ?

Rick_OShay

It must be damage in total from 1 hit, from the little I've played with him at 1 cover. Now, it could be total damage during the entire turn (match damage + attack tiles for example). 
If it's canceled by accumulated damage across more than 1 turn, this would be the first time a passive would be affected by an aggregate total, right?
That, seems a bit too much of a coding effort/issue.

adamdivine

Yondus blue is really really good, worth it for that alone. Esp if you can hide him behind someone

Jaedenkaal

mexus said:

Seems like a better version of Bloodlust and Deadly Strike combined.

Definitely better than Deadly Strike, countdown synergy aside.

Yaka Assault only does half the damage of The Bloodlust, though. Aside from conditional per-turn damage it's hard to compare those two powers (passive strikes vs active damage, damage ends after taking damage vs damage ends when low on Red AP)

Rick_OShay

Congrats!
Yes, he does have whistling sound effects. It must be due to the bug because it's very intermittent.

Rick_OShay

So everyone knows Yondu's blue is fantastic, but I'm seeing a true value in his black as well. Since lot's of teams still feature C4rol, he can combat her tremendously with his AP reduction. As long as your teams strongest color is different than the enemy team - so that you avoid the AOE from Carol - you can match your strongest color knowing that you will soon be able to simply reduce what she absorbs for them, using his black. I agree the strikes could be stronger, but reducing up to 7 enemy AP can be a life saver.
Separately, his passive yellow can be great to save on health packs. You can start a match with quite low health, because soon enough you'll get a match-4+ to gain health. This should happen early on when the enemy has yet to gain enough AP to fire powers against you. Just be careful since you will not gain enough to avoid one-shots.

Jaedenkaal

Rick OShay said:

So everyone knows Yondu's blue is fantastic, but I'm seeing a true value in his black as well. Since lot's of teams still feature C4rol, he can combat her tremendously with his AP reduction. As long as your teams strongest color is different than the enemy team - so that you avoid the AOE from Carol - you can match your strongest color knowing that you will soon be able to simply reduce what she absorbs for them, using his black. I agree the strikes could be stronger, but reducing up to 7 enemy AP can be a life saver.

It's certainly better than Supernatural Sense, for what that's worth And it's a cheapish source of Strike tiles for boosting Hero for Hire, Carnage Rules, Tracking Prey or Keep Your Enemies Closer, if that's your thing.

Rick_OShay

There's been some comparisons of Yondu's blue to Blade's Bloodlust, and I think they are quite similar with no clear edge to either. Sure, with bloodlust, that's around 9K+ happening automatically over 3 turns, but it hits a random enemy each turn. To keep it going, you will need to make another red match within the next 3 turns, easily, for 9K more damage over time.
Now, with Yaka Assault, it's around 9K+ damage right away, to a targeted enemy. That is Very useful. You can use it to down an already-injured enemy, or make it the first hit on a full-health foe. I like to hit a full health enemy, since they will now likely become the lowest-health enemy, meaning that the assault will continue to hit them, even if I put them in back until downed - and focus on someone else. Yep, you need to avoid direct damage to Yondu to keep it going, which is still pretty easy to do. 
To compare further, if red happens to become scarce for Blade, he will run out of dealing damage after that first 9K is dealt. Yondu just keeps on hitting regardless of what colors you are gathering, and can hit one weak opponent after the other. You may even get lucky and have nearly enough blue gathered again by the time Yondu get's hit to stop the assault. 

An interesting contest can boil between these two. Yondu's black can be pretty underwhelming, unless it's Blade you are against. If Blade gets enough red to start his bloodlust, if it's the highest color pool, Yondu's black simply takes that AP away. 

To be fair, if I'm given the choice between one of these two for any general battle I'm usually going with Blade due to having two damage dealing skills, and easier heal to potentially count on. But, Blade doesn't buff Grocket's strikes...


@Anon

Jaedenkaal

Rick OShay said:

An interesting contest can boil between these two. Yondu's black can be pretty underwhelming, unless it's Blade you are against. If Blade gets enough red to start his bloodlust, if it's the highest color pool, Yondu's black simply takes that AP away. 

Not to mention that Supernatural Sense makes Ravager's Ruse look amazing in comparison, AND SS doesn't do much of anything against Yondu.

Anon

Rick OShay said:

There's been some comparisons of Yondu's blue to Blade's Bloodlust, and I think they are quite similar with no clear edge to either. Sure, with bloodlust, that's around 9K+ happening automatically over 3 turns, but it hits a random enemy each turn. To keep it going, you will need to make another red match within the next 3 turns, easily, for 9K more damage over time.
Now, with Yaka Assault, it's around 9K+ damage right away, to a targeted enemy. That is Very useful. You can use it to down an already-injured enemy, or make it the first hit on a full-health foe. I like to hit a full health enemy, since they will now likely become the lowest-health enemy, meaning that the assault will continue to hit them, even if I put them in back until downed - and focus on someone else. Yep, you need to avoid direct damage to Yondu to keep it going, which is still pretty easy to do. 
To compare further, if red happens to become scarce for Blade, he will run out of dealing damage after that first 9K is dealt. Yondu just keeps on hitting regardless of what colors you are gathering, and can hit one weak opponent after the other. You may even get lucky and have nearly enough blue gathered again by the time Yondu get's hit to stop the assault. 

An interesting contest can boil between these two. Yondu's black can be pretty underwhelming, unless it's Blade you are against. If Blade gets enough red to start his bloodlust, if it's the highest color pool, Yondu's black simply takes that AP away. 

To be fair, if I'm given the choice between one of these two for any general battle I'm usually going with Blade due to having two damage dealing skills, and easier heal to potentially count on. But, Blade doesn't buff Grocket's strikes...

Yeah I definitely see what you mean. Blade can also put down Strike tiles before Bloodlust kicks in and that's very useful. Bloodlust stops when Blade is running low on Red ap but that's why he has his Black to kick start it again. I've even run 5/3/5 a few times to test it out and it's not actually all that bad. 5/5/3 is still his best build, but 5 in black isn't too bad if for whatever reason you can't bring IM40 or Gambit.

Definitely see that the difference isn't as great as I once thought. Probably because my Blade is Champed and I have 5 covers for Yondu. Thanks for this post!

Kishida

This boost week has definitely opened my eyes. Yondu is really good, way better than I was expecting. I think he's even viable as non-boosted option.

zodiac339

Only real issue is the high liklihood of facing an enemy Grockmora team. If Yondu can get off his blue, he’ll probably be knocked back out of its passive if he takes one hit.

broll

mexus said:

Kishida said:

This boost week has definitely opened my eyes. Yondu is really good, way better than I was expecting. I think he's even viable as non-boosted option.

Indeed. He's amazing unboosted. I prefer him over Gamora for the classic Rocket & Grott + some Guardian team + Medusa.

I haven't used him that much, but I tend to think he's probably better when not boosted as it will be easier to shield him from damage so his arrow isn't stopped.