Is Sandman the worst 4* in the game?

DyingLegend

I like using Sandman/Peggy/Vulture ( my vulture and sandman are 11/13 covers)

Vulture's black fuels Peggy's blue for stuns and Sandman's green for stuns.

Sandman lays down the defenses 

Peggy's red does decent damage as well.

Sometimes looking at characters solo makes them seem terrible, but certain teams make them pretty nasty.

Dormammu

Sandman does suck, he's among the top 5 worst 4-stars. That doesn't mean he's unusable because unlike the 3-star tier, the butt-end of the 4-star group is much more balanced.

Fixing Sandman is easy and it's all about his yellow. Either reduce the AP cost, or don't blow up the defense tiles when he does damage.

Anon

I think they could fix Sandman by having his Yellow go the Blade route. If there are a certain number of yellow tiles on the board, create a yellow protect tile.

That way if his purple doesn't make any yellow matches, you still get some benefit out of it.

Or just drop the cost to 7 or something *shrugs*

jackstar0

Anyone talking junk about Spider-Woman doesn't understand the joy of avoiding all damage. A healthpack saved is a healthpack earned.

Jaedenkaal

Anon said:

I think they could fix Sandman by having his Yellow go the Blade route. If there are a certain number of yellow tiles on the board, create a yellow protect tile.

This sounds like an extremely sensible solution. And then switch to Sand Smash once there are the threshold number of Protect tiles out. Probably doesn't even have to be specifically a Yellow Protect tile.

DesertTortoise

Hey you clowns! Don't drag Spider-Woman into this!

If I was in charge of reworking the 4-stars the current order I'd do it would be:

1. Elektra
2. Sam Wilson
3. The Thing
4. Nick Fury
5. Professor X (he works at his niche but could use some tweaks to be relevant within the 4-star meta)

After that it's a matter of preference, a few characters need some attention but nothing too dire. 

Tiger_Wong

Elektra is fine. If she gets Ballet of Death off, she becomes VERY hard to kill. As a one-on-one character, she's very tough to defeat. And I've got a bunch of teams she does WORK with. Even defensively.

I like Sam and I've got some teams that he goes well with. But now that his blue doesn't affect the new repeater tiles, his usefulness drops even more. 

My Thing is very undercovered. Can't really comment. 

Nick needs a rework badly. He needs not just one but 2 AP accelerators or a highly coveted black bolt to be worth it. 

I think Prof X may need a little touch up. The power creep is what has hurt him. 

Jarvind

DesertTortoise said:

Hey you clowns! Don't drag Spider-Woman into this!

If I was in charge of reworking the 4-stars the current order I'd do it would be:

1. Elektra
2. Sam Wilson
3. The Thing
4. Nick Fury
5. Professor X (he works at his niche but could use some tweaks to be relevant within the 4-star meta)

After that it's a matter of preference, a few characters need some attention but nothing too dire. 

I gotta disagree on Elektra. She's not a frontline powerhouse but she can wreck face working in the background. Stealing AP on 3 colors every turn can absolutely cripple some teams, and her reworked purple makes her deadly against tile spammers. I run her with 3 in black now and use it as an "uh oh things went bad" power, though that is partly because I champed her late compared to most of my 4s and it's hard to get her to tank over even the featured 3*. She was a monster in the recent Last Defender and Cage Match events with Bum Fist and C4ge together - firing off a couple powers to get enemy Cage to put out protects and then stealing them was br00tal. Plus she could steal fortified tiles.

Chuck is deceptive - he looks weak but I've had him absolutely ruin me during a boost week. Lowering the damage/AP destroy on Forehead of Doom but making it trigger on match-4s might be warranted.

Sam's red just needs to be cheaper. He definitely needs something since the introduction of repeater tiles was an indirect nerf to his blue. Maybe give him a way to fortify specials.

Fully agreed on Thing and Fury - they're very old and it shows. Especially Thing - his red and green are both pretty unimaginative. I would also add X-Force Wolverine in - he's not as bad as most say but his green needs a tweak. Either more damage, or let us target the tile destruction.

jamesh

If he is the worst, I wouldn't be surprised if they rework him since he's still fairly new.  So it's still worth collecting his covers.

Moon Roach

DyingLegend said:

I like using Sandman/Peggy/Vulture ( my vulture and sandman are 11/13 covers)

Vulture's black fuels Peggy's blue for stuns and Sandman's green for stuns.

Sandman lays down the defenses 

Peggy's red does decent damage as well.

Sometimes looking at characters solo makes them seem terrible, but certain teams make them pretty nasty.

I just tried this in Simulator, stuns galore.  I'm not sure it's as much fun as other teams, but it works.

DesertTortoise

Jarvind said:

DesertTortoise said:

Hey you clowns! Don't drag Spider-Woman into this!

If I was in charge of reworking the 4-stars the current order I'd do it would be:

1. Elektra
2. Sam Wilson
3. The Thing
4. Nick Fury
5. Professor X (he works at his niche but could use some tweaks to be relevant within the 4-star meta)

After that it's a matter of preference, a few characters need some attention but nothing too dire. 

I gotta disagree on Elektra. She's not a frontline powerhouse but she can wreck face working in the background. Stealing AP on 3 colors every turn can absolutely cripple some teams, and her reworked purple makes her deadly against tile spammers. I run her with 3 in black now and use it as an "uh oh things went bad" power, though that is partly because I champed her late compared to most of my 4s and it's hard to get her to tank over even the featured 3*. She was a monster in the recent Last Defender and Cage Match events with Bum Fist and C4ge together - firing off a couple powers to get enemy Cage to put out protects and then stealing them was br00tal. Plus she could steal fortified tiles.

Chuck is deceptive - he looks weak but I've had him absolutely ruin me during a boost week. Lowering the damage/AP destroy on Forehead of Doom but making it trigger on match-4s might be warranted.

Sam's red just needs to be cheaper. He definitely needs something since the introduction of repeater tiles was an indirect nerf to his blue. Maybe give him a way to fortify specials.

Fully agreed on Thing and Fury - they're very old and it shows. Especially Thing - his red and green are both pretty unimaginative. I would also add X-Force Wolverine in - he's not as bad as most say but his green needs a tweak. Either more damage, or let us target the tile destruction.

I don't think Elektra is useless, I don't think any of those 5 are useless, I just think she needs a very specific situation to be useful and I think it may be a bit too niche. Her black is amazing at self preservation and her red is fantastic at draining certain teams if the trap tile doesn't get itself overwritten. Elektra was the first character I attacked in the Defenders boost week because I didn't want anything getting stolen from me so in that niche she's decent. The problem is she doesn't scale too well with boosts and I'd argue that her purple isn't nearly as good as Medusa's purple is for the same purpose (and Medusa has a bunch more utility). If Elektra is going to have a really narrow niche she better be amazingly good at it and I don't think that's the case in her current form. 

Chuck just needs some help to be caught up to the power creep, a pure, glass cannon support character sounds great to me in concept but he needs to be a bit refined.

Sam's complicated, but I think it's been stated pretty well that his ability to super overkill people really slowly when boosted limits his use. If anything, his blue could use an update as far as utility and buff power. If his blue passive is going to be a combo of Carol and Coulson's passive it should get a bump in what it provides. 

100% on the same page as you with Fury/Thing/XFW. None are helpless but could use some catch up given where the game has gone since their introduction or last revision. 

DesertTortoise

Warbringa said:

DesertTortoise said:

Sandman's fine. I can't believe people with undercovered loaners haven't figured out to wait until after you've champed them and played them during a boost week to gauge their value given how important boosts are to 4-star rosters. Agent Venom went through this, Iron Fist went through this and now Sandman's going through this. He's not perfect but he performs okay boosted. His green is solid as is, his purple is a legit good at what it does and his yellow is a bit of a mess. He also has a massive healthpool which is probably a reason his damage isn't as efficient as some other characters. 

Here are the main questions 4-star characters should be held to:

• Are they more useful boosted than top tier characters are unboosted?
• Do they have a role or niche that can assist boosted characters when they are unboosted?

Sandman can say yes to both of those. His green, when boosted, is great. His purple, boosted or not, is a solid yellow battery. His yellow is weird and could end up being okay with future additions to the tier, like if someone has a 3-star Luke Cage red passive power his yellow would deal damage every time it's fired. As is, he's a great green user when boosted and purple into yellow battery whether he's boosted or not. He's not fantastic but he's not even in the discussion of worst 4-star in the game. If, I had a boosted team that leaned on yellow and needed a green outlet, I wouldn't hesitate to plug 5/5/3 Sandman in there. 

Quick notes:

• 304 Blade boosted to 405's green: 7,121 damage
• 272 Sandman boosted to 377's green: 7,498 damage

No one complains about Blade's green, there's value in its conditional true heal but I don't think anyone will argue that a 2-turn stun doesn't have at least as much utility. 

Obviously by my original post, I disagree that he is fine.

First of all, I was only comparing him to the tons of other loaner nodes I have played 4* characters with over the years. This is the first one I have come across in a while where the 4* doesn't carry the team against a weaker team. I don't have him covered and was not looking at his essential nodes fyi.  Second, I don't need to play him boosted because I already know that all boosted 4* are generally better than unboosted due to scaling, even the worst ones.  I do believe you are right on other 4* such as IF and AV being unfairly called junk too early but I think Sandman may actually deserve that title.  

What niche does Sandman really provide?  His green is average at best. Rhulk is straight up better and a much better self synergy character for green aoe. Since it is Sandman's only power that really deals damage effectively, it is probably his best power as of now.  His purple is not a great yellow generator in that it only provides 5 random yellow tiles at 5 covers and some board shake.  Kingpin is a far superior yellow AP generator.  Perhaps with improvement in his yellow power it could be serviceable.  Sandman's yellow power is terrible as there are far better protect tile makers than him in 4* land and the requirements to make it do damage are poor (lots of AP and destruction of protect tiles). Perhaps as you say someday it could be a good synergistic power but as of now it isn't.  

Also nobody really uses Blade primarily for his green, it is a secondary power.  You use Blade almost exclusively for his red power.  So I don't see that as a good comparison when one characters second best power is basically about the same as another characters best power.

I am curious as to who you believe is far worse than Sandman in 4* land as well.

If you were wrong about IF and AV, please believe me that Sandman is roughly in the same arena. If you want his niche I described it about as well as I could have: a green outlet who can provide a purple into yellow battery/board shake. Kingpin's purple and Sandman's are very different, his is less reliable but has a higher ceiling while Kingpin's is much more straightforward. Kingpin unboosted has some strange utility, based on who he is paired with, while Sandman is a green user/purple->yellow converter. They aren't the same character in a lot of ways.

If you're going to do compare Rulk to Sandman I'll be happy to state their differences. Rulk boosted is a superior purple/green user. Sandman boosted is a character that uses green well and can convert purple into yellow AP unreliably but he does it fairly well. Unboosted, Rulk is a bit weird, sure he's a decent outlet for purple and green if you need it since his green at 18 green AP is really high up there in efficiency, but it's not always something you'd want to focus on if you paired an unboosted Rulk with two other boosted characters. Sandman, as he stands, is a green outlet that's not as efficient as Rulk's 18 green AP but is more efficient than his 9 green AP power. Also, it stuns, that's something that doesn't need boosts to scale well. He can also turn purple into yellow and a bunch of other AP at 5/5/3, it's not reliable but it's certainly not a waste and board shake only gets more valuable in the 5-star realm. Rulk as an unboosted battery is awkward, are you really going to use him strictly for his purple>green AP ability and ignore his green entirely? It's not an awful idea if you need a purple outlet for a superior green user but it's a fully different niche than Sandman's. As I wrote up in my tier guide, the biggest problem with Sandman is that yellow just isn't that compelling of an AP to go after. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a niche. 

Blade's green is just something I threw out. Up to 1,194 dam/AP with a 2-turn stun is legit a good return. Again, no arguments his yellow is weird currently. Even with someone spamming protect tiles I don't think it's that great of a return even if he's boosted. I posted a bit earlier who I'd consider more flawed than Sandman. 

Jaedenkaal

DesertTortoise said:

If you were wrong about IF and AV, please believe me that Sandman is roughly in the same arena. If you want his niche I described it about as well as I could have: a green outlet who can provide a purple into yellow battery/board shake. Kingpin's purple and Sandman's are very different, his is less reliable but has a higher ceiling while Kingpin's is much more straightforward. Kingpin unboosted has some strange utility, based on who he is paired with, while Sandman is a green user/purple->yellow converter. They aren't the same character in a lot of ways.

Strongly agree with this. The Fisk Defense may generate 8 Yellow AP more often than Shifting Sands, but, Shifting Sands can actually down someone on its own. You can also use it to try and match away some enemy tile that's causing you trouble (invisibility, photonic barrage, etc...), and, of course, it can generate AP in other colors here and there.

Kingpin's rework makes this comparison more favourable (for Sandman); as Wilson's Gambit and Sand Smash are now both awkward abilities at best.

Milk Jugz

mexus said:

finlanderboy said:

I think Sam Wilson owns that title.  

I would argue he is near the bottom though.

Why is Sam so hated?
I still haven't champed him but looking at what he does he doesn't seem even half-bad!
Lots of protect tiles, strengthening protect tiles and bomb-dives with devastating results. What's so poopy?

He can turn every yellow tile into a powerful protect tile. Let's say we have 10 yellow tiles turning into 10 protect tiles. These will definitely nullify any match damage and half many skill attacks.
Releasing him as a dive-bomb with 10 yellow protect tiles should deal around 18000 damage when champed / not boosted. That sounds to me like a killer. Kinda almost as good as Power Man.

Did you do Nova's crash yet? Just deny Flaptain red and yellow and he has absolutely nothing..... I'd argue he is the worst 4*. Plus, as other people have noted by the time you have enough AP to make dive bomb truly devastating you don't need that much damage!

DyingLegend

Tiger Wong said:

Elektra is fine. If she gets Ballet of Death off, she becomes VERY hard to kill. As a one-on-one character, she's very tough to defeat. And I've got a bunch of teams she does WORK with. Even defensively.

I like Sam and I've got some teams that he goes well with. But now that his blue doesn't affect the new repeater tiles, his usefulness drops even more. 

My Thing is very undercovered. Can't really comment. 

Nick needs a rework badly. He needs not just one but 2 AP accelerators or a highly coveted black bolt to be worth it. 

I think Prof X may need a little touch up. The power creep is what has hurt him. 

Prof X is fine, people play him mostly as a 5/3/5, but a most successful build for me is a 4/4/5.

Try this team;

Agent Venom (3/5/5 on left), Prof X (4/4/5 Mid), Bl4de (5/5/3)

AV's cheap 5 gets Prof x making all those special tiles
Bl4de will start doing his thing with a red board
Once prof x goes invisible since yellow/blue/purple/TU are his strongest matches, you start buffing like crazy
Eventually you get enough blue AP were AV starts breaking the board triggering Crits for Prof X doing massive damage bc of the buffed strike tiles.

Once this team gets rolling, the match is over pretty quick

DyingLegend

Milk Jugz said:

mexus said:

finlanderboy said:

I think Sam Wilson owns that title.  

I would argue he is near the bottom though.

Why is Sam so hated?
I still haven't champed him but looking at what he does he doesn't seem even half-bad!
Lots of protect tiles, strengthening protect tiles and bomb-dives with devastating results. What's so poopy?

He can turn every yellow tile into a powerful protect tile. Let's say we have 10 yellow tiles turning into 10 protect tiles. These will definitely nullify any match damage and half many skill attacks.
Releasing him as a dive-bomb with 10 yellow protect tiles should deal around 18000 damage when champed / not boosted. That sounds to me like a killer. Kinda almost as good as Power Man.

Did you do Nova's crash yet? Just deny Flaptain red and yellow and he has absolutely nothing..... I'd argue he is the worst 4*. Plus, as other people have noted by the time you have enough AP to make dive bomb truly devastating you don't need that much damage!

Yes Sam is terrible in a 1V1 match, most are.

Sam is better than most think, pairing him with the proper team makes a difference considering i would classify him as a support character, thus meaning he supports a team and not good alone.

A team i like with Sam is;

Sam (3/5/5) / GwenPool (4/4/5) /Peggy (3/5/5)

So this team requires a little bit to get going, but Peggy's yellow buys you some time. Build up Sam's yellow and Gwenpool's black. This will give you a decent damage mitigation.

Then you should focus on getting Peggy blue, stun the weaker enemies and then you still should have enough protect tiles on the board to one shot someone with Divebomb. GP's green will do decent damage prior to getting a DB ready.

Once Peggy's blue is on the board, match more blue, and sam will cut the countdown tiles down kicking off her attack sooner.

There are plenty of counters for this team but i think its fun

Jaedenkaal

Milk Jugz said:
Did you do Nova's crash yet? Just deny Flaptain red and yellow and he has absolutely nothing..... I'd argue he is the worst 4*. Plus, as other people have noted by the time you have enough AP to make dive bomb truly devastating you don't need that much damage!

Well, to be fair, Jean Grey does absolutely nothing if you deny Purple and Green. Iceman does (almost) nothing if you deny Green and Blue. This applies to pretty much every character without brutal color-independent passives.

Milk Jugz

Jaedenkaal said:

Milk Jugz said:
Did you do Nova's crash yet? Just deny Flaptain red and yellow and he has absolutely nothing..... I'd argue he is the worst 4*. Plus, as other people have noted by the time you have enough AP to make dive bomb truly devastating you don't need that much damage!

Well, to be fair, Jean Grey does absolutely nothing if you deny Purple and Green. Iceman does (almost) nothing if you deny Green and Blue. This applies to pretty much every character without brutal color-independent passives.

True, to an extent. At least Jean still has her passive that can change a battle for you, even in 1V1. Iceman has great self synergy- you definitely need to deny him purple also. Flaptain quite literally has nothing if you deny red and yellow, and if he does get a little of each it doesn't matter- both powers are pretty expensive.

I do get what is being said, I've said it numerous times. Every 4* can be a powerhouse in the right team and I do firmly believe that. But, someone has to hold up the rear and, IMO, Flaptain locks down the bottom spot in the 4* tier.

Gari

Mordo and sandman are bottom tier. And i say this rarely. Utterly hopeless. 

jamesh

Gari said:

Mordo and sandman are bottom tier. And i say this rarely. Utterly hopeless. 

Have you tried Mordo since his rework?  His new purple does a nice amount of damage with the right circumstances, especially against teams that have many passive abilities that lead to the AI collecting AP it can't use.