Circling prey

byc

You can't do anything.  You just lose.

Or you can hit him and kill him.  My plan as always, is to use my 5* Thanos and beat the **** out of anybody who gets in the way.

Moon Roach

I'm using Vulture / C & D / Sandman in Nefarious Foes.  I've had 8 defensive wins so far, and only 2 defensive loses, both to the same player who used 500 Thanos, 470 Hawkeye and 475 Panther.

I was up against a team of Sandman, Mordo, Red Hulk, and through overconfidence lost all but Vulture.  Luckily I had enough black already saved up to keep going airborn, firing off blue and green most times I took off, and ended up winning.

He is ridiculously good.

jamesh

It's only going to help a limited audience, but when I was playing with Vulture today I noticed that his green AOE didn't fire when landing during a battle against 5* Thanos.  This was because the enemy team had cast Infinite Power, preventing Vulture from removing his countdown tile on landing.

This doesn't prevent Vulture's AP generation, but offers a way to neuter his most damaging attack.

D4Ni13

I played 3 or 4 matches against Vulture teams (apparently if you don't fight at the top, you don't encounter to much of them), and didn't lose any of them. 

I think the best strategy is to kill him first, which whould not be so hard to do with the right team. Because he is boosted, like I already said C4rol is a good counter both for when the enemy is collecting black and to one shot Vulture when you have enough black (just need your Carol to have the strong color). Also Peggy can delay his flight. Gamora can stun him before he goes flying, or R&G can inflict some damage early on. 

I won all my matches with Carol, Mordo & Riri, and in one of them Vulture went airborne before I was able to kill him and he did kill both C4rol and Riri when he landed, but Mordo finished the job and won the fight. 

So my advice is this: Target Vulture first and use some stun (Gamora, Iceman), delayer (Peggy), or anything you can to buy you some time. If he manages to go airborne, focus on killing his allies. Once he is alone he might go once more in the air, but single he cannot collect enough black to go back up. He will not have enough AP to cast green all the time. If you drag the game maybe, but if you choose your team wisely, it's more than duable. 

Why I mentioned invisibility last time ? Well Invisible Women is pretty good for defending against him. You can make your team invisible just before he lands and uses his green, and save your team from dying. Even if he flies again, he won't use his green the second time, and he will probably remain without black too and then you take him down. 

Also Mordo is great because he is boosted too, and his purple hits like a truck even for 9-10 enemy AP. 

acescracked

MPQ is hard.

Beer40

I still think Court Death should hit him, even airborne. Its DEATH!!! You can easily be killed in the air. Probably more likely so as a dude in a flying suit.

broll

The meta in MPQ sometimes seems like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3avZE7T0cg

Bryan Lambert

Vulture in Nefarious Foes is probably as dangerous a character as there can possibly be for a strictly four-star roster, because of the event's boosted list.

If you're trying to deny him black and kill him quickly, that means you're collecting a lot of black. In the boosted 4's for this event, though, your options are Mordo, who's black even boosted does less than 5K damage and puts charged black tiles on the board that could be fatal to you if the opponent mathces them. There's Kingpin, but his black needs you to also collect a ton of Yellow for it to work - slow, slow, slow and slow is deadly against Vulture. And Venom, who's black is useless.

Which means, to use the black effectively, you're going to have to take an unboosted 4-star against a boosted Vulture. Which means taking unboosted power damage against boosted health, which slows you down, and slow is bad. Worse, Vulture's boosted attacks are enough to seriously damage the health of most unboosted 4's. 

It's a recipe for disaster if you don't have a champed Vulture of your own.

crackninja

He's great to use, and easy to dispose of when opposing him.  That can be said for a few characters.
In nefarious foes I targeted vulture teams because with a vulture of my own I was already scooping up black every turn anyway.

Jaedenkaal

Bryan Lambert said:

Vulture in Nefarious Foes is probably as dangerous a character as there can possibly be for a strictly four-star roster, because of the event's boosted list.

If you're trying to deny him black and kill him quickly, that means you're collecting a lot of black. In the boosted 4's for this event, though, your options are Mordo, who's black even boosted does less than 5K damage and puts charged black tiles on the board that could be fatal to you if the opponent mathces them. There's Kingpin, but his black needs you to also collect a ton of Yellow for it to work - slow, slow, slow and slow is deadly against Vulture. And Venom, who's black is useless.

Which means, to use the black effectively, you're going to have to take an unboosted 4-star against a boosted Vulture. Which means taking unboosted power damage against boosted health, which slows you down, and slow is bad. Worse, Vulture's boosted attacks are enough to seriously damage the health of most unboosted 4's. 

It's a recipe for disaster if you don't have a champed Vulture of your own.

I think the error you've made here is the assumption that you have to use the Black that you've gathered. Denying black is enough; while not airborne, Vulture has only an unexciting Green ST damage countdown and an (in all likelihood) even less exciting Blue that might blow up the odd tile. And his HP is decidedly below average.

In any case, stealing AP is still a viable strategy, and many AP steal powers can be fired even if Vulture is alone and airborne (I haven't tested all of these, marked the ones I'm unsure about with a *) and are, in most cases, just as good even when not boosted:

That Buzzing Sound
Super Secret Tech
The Fisk Defense
Escape Plan* (I'm positive the CD will resolve correctly regardless of if Vulture is airborne when it expires, though)
Gamma Siphon
Precision Shot*
Power With Purpose*
Secret Mission
Supernatural Sense
Ravager's Ruse

3* Team-Ups to consider (apologies if some of these aren't valid as team-ups):

Crimson Bands of Cyttorak*
Bewilder (No, really)
Furious Charge
Nightstalker* (this could be one of the best counters out there, if you can fire it. He can't match the repeater away while he's airborne, and Black is guaranteed his strongest color, if he's alone)

Bryan Lambert

Jaedenkaal said:

I think the error you've made here is the assumption that you have to use the Black that you've gathered. Denying black is enough; while not airborne, Vulture has only an unexciting Green ST damage countdown and an (in all likelihood) even less exciting Blue that might blow up the odd tile. And his HP is decidedly below average.

No, I'm not assuming you have to. I'm saying that if Vulture gets to 6 black, you have a problem, and if he gets to 8 black, you have a serious problem.

The practical reality of denying six black is that every time there's a bleck match on the board, you have to match it. If you're matching that much black, you're not matching other colors as much. If you can't use the black you're matching, you'll be much slower in firing off the non-black powers. The longer you take to kill Vulture, the greater the chance the board will give him black matches you can't stop. 

Nefariou Foes makes this particularly difficult. And, you know, successful strategies in MPQ aren't the ones that work some of the time, or just have to work once, unless they're strategies for beating Clash of the Titans or Gauntlet nodes back when Gauntlet was a thing. THey need to work most of the time, with whatever the board throws at you, if you want to beat Vulture teams to climb to 40 wins.

Jaedenkaal

Bryan Lambert said:

Jaedenkaal said:

I think the error you've made here is the assumption that you have to use the Black that you've gathered. Denying black is enough; while not airborne, Vulture has only an unexciting Green ST damage countdown and an (in all likelihood) even less exciting Blue that might blow up the odd tile. And his HP is decidedly below average.

No, I'm not assuming you have to. I'm saying that if Vulture gets to 6 black, you have a problem, and if he gets to 8 black, you have a serious problem.

The practical reality of denying six black is that every time there's a bleck match on the board, you have to match it. If you're matching that much black, you're not matching other colors as much. If you can't use the black you're matching, you'll be much slower in firing off the non-black powers. The longer you take to kill Vulture, the greater the chance the board will give him black matches you can't stop. 

Nefariou Foes makes this particularly difficult. And, you know, successful strategies in MPQ aren't the ones that work some of the time, or just have to work once, unless they're strategies for beating Clash of the Titans or Gauntlet nodes back when Gauntlet was a thing. THey need to work most of the time, with whatever the board throws at you, if you want to beat Vulture teams to climb to 40 wins.

Not totally true. If you leave a match-4 on the board, the AI will take that instead of the black match-3. Also, the AI won't always make the black match even if there are no match-4s. I agree you can't rely on that "most of the time"

And, if there's another character on the team with a Black ability, some of the time it'll save the Black AP to fire that instead. Presumably the "good" teams won't, but in Nefarious Foes this means not having Mordo or Kingpin. Or Loki, or Doom, etc... This time around I'm seeing a lot of Mordo.

SupermanTampa

The whole being airborne and not taking damage is ****. It makes less sense than being Invisible but still taking damage. The is one of the dumbest things. If you are invisible, you shouldn't take damage.

Moon Roach

Jaedenkaal said:

<snip>

I think the error you've made here is the assumption that you have to use the Black that you've gathered. Denying black is enough; while not airborne, Vulture has only an unexciting Green ST damage countdown and an (in all likelihood) even less exciting Blue that might blow up the odd tile. And his HP is decidedly below average.
</snip>

Well, that and the 14000 or so damage

Jaedenkaal

Moon Roach said:

Jaedenkaal said:

<snip>

I think the error you've made here is the assumption that you have to use the Black that you've gathered. Denying black is enough; while not airborne, Vulture has only an unexciting Green ST damage countdown and an (in all likelihood) even less exciting Blue that might blow up the odd tile. And his HP is decidedly below average.
</snip>

Well, that and the 14000 or so damage

Ok, but this is not a 5/5/5 Vulture. Is 5/3/5 the preferred build? In that case I suppose the Blue is worth worry about, but not the green 

Moon Roach

Jaedenkaal said:

Moon Roach said:

Jaedenkaal said:

<snip>

I think the error you've made here is the assumption that you have to use the Black that you've gathered. Denying black is enough; while not airborne, Vulture has only an unexciting Green ST damage countdown and an (in all likelihood) even less exciting Blue that might blow up the odd tile. And his HP is decidedly below average.
</snip>

Well, that and the 14000 or so damage

Ok, but this is not a 5/5/5 Vulture. Is 5/3/5 the preferred build? In that case I suppose the Blue is worth worry about, but not the green 

My personal preferred build is 5/3/5, because I like the immediate damage and don't like relying on a countdown tile that does less damage.  Sandman is a much better green user, at least in this event.  In my opinion.

Eddiemon

There's this boosted hood guy who can apparently drain AP continually and prevent most of the bad stuff from happening.

D4Ni13

Bryan Lambert said:

Vulture in Nefarious Foes is probably as dangerous a character as there can possibly be for a strictly four-star roster, because of the event's boosted list.

If you're trying to deny him black and kill him quickly, that means you're collecting a lot of black. In the boosted 4's for this event, though, your options are Mordo, who's black even boosted does less than 5K damage and puts charged black tiles on the board that could be fatal to you if the opponent mathces them. There's Kingpin, but his black needs you to also collect a ton of Yellow for it to work - slow, slow, slow and slow is deadly against Vulture. And Venom, who's black is useless.

Which means, to use the black effectively, you're going to have to take an unboosted 4-star against a boosted Vulture. Which means taking unboosted power damage against boosted health, which slows you down, and slow is bad. Worse, Vulture's boosted attacks are enough to seriously damage the health of most unboosted 4's. 

It's a recipe for disaster if you don't have a champed Vulture of your own.

I think the starting point of this thought is just wrong. Why exactly is the unboosted character team a recipe for disaster ? You might forget that it was a time when 2* Storm and Magneto teams or Patch & Loki teams beat the hell up of more powerful teams. Having boosted heroes on your team is not always the best strategy. 

I guaranty you that unbooted Carol or Gamora will just ruin Vulture's day. You can also add Peggy there just to be sure Vulture is not flying soon. An example of unboosted team that will eat Vulture alive. Peggy will up the required AP to 9 or 10 (depending on the level of her yellow). Gamora will stun Vulture. And Carol will make good use of that black. Or you can just switch Carol with someone else and relly on Gamora to use black as well. 

I beat Vulture teams with Carol, Mordo & Riri, which was a test to see if I can do it with a team that was not made for that battle per-se. Mordo was there for his purple, and yes it helped to have more health. But Carol & Riri did all the hard work.