What to do against perma-airborne Vulture?

Spiritclaw

Was expecting one when the movie comes out, but no 5* Thor yet.

GrimSkald

Starfury said:

Sm0keyJ0e said:

The dude lands every two turns. Come on people. Stun him, nuke him, steal his black, deny him black... there are many, many ways to defeat this clown.

Does the AI wait a turn before it goes airborne again? Because a player sure doesn't have to.

When I used him together with C&D, I had around 14 black AP saved up when the rest of the team got killed. My Vulture didn't lose another hitpoint while slowly picking apart the rest of the enemy team.

No, the AI does not.  If on the turn he lands, the Vulture has 6 black AP available, up he goes again.  If the Vulture had enough AP when it went airborne, it can be a long, long time before it comes down so you can hit him.  He is only losing 2 black AP per use.  And he'll hit you with those blue powers and green powers too.

I mean, I like to use him myself, he's kind of the IM40 of the 4* tier, but they really need to put in some powers that will affect him when he's airborne as he can be incredibly frustrating to fight.

Moon Roach

GrimSkald said:

Starfury said:

Sm0keyJ0e said:

The dude lands every two turns. Come on people. Stun him, nuke him, steal his black, deny him black... there are many, many ways to defeat this clown.

Does the AI wait a turn before it goes airborne again? Because a player sure doesn't have to.

When I used him together with C&D, I had around 14 black AP saved up when the rest of the team got killed. My Vulture didn't lose another hitpoint while slowly picking apart the rest of the enemy team.

No, the AI does not.  If on the turn he lands, the Vulture has 6 black AP available, up he goes again.  If the Vulture had enough AP when it went airborne, it can be a long, long time before it comes down so you can hit him.  He is only losing 2 black AP per use.  And he'll hit you with those blue powers and green powers too.

I mean, I like to use him myself, he's kind of the IM40 of the 4* tier, but they really need to put in some powers that will affect him when he's airborne as he can be incredibly frustrating to fight.

If there's another black user on the team, those stored black might already be gone by the time he lands, or the AI might decide to wait and use the AP to fire another power instead.  It's worthwhile checking who else is on the team, because they can get in the way.

Seed teams are a not-at-all-simiilar situation (if you're not using Thanos to brute-force your way through them).  I generally target the 3* or 4* first, because I want to leave the AI the option of using the weak 1* powers.

JarvisJackrabbit

aesthetocyst said:

Silly, silly hyperbolic forum.

I'm guessing the OP had a bad match against Vulture and came to vent.

I had a bad match against Vulture and came to vent.

The combination of him being mega whales proof and downing two characters pushed me over the edge for a few minutes. I made the mistake of targeting Medusa and Grocket first, which won't happen again.

Brigby

*Moved to Character Discussion per OP's request

Daredevil217

JarvisJackrabbit said:

aesthetocyst said:

Silly, silly hyperbolic forum.

I'm guessing the OP had a bad match against Vulture and came to vent.

I had a bad match against Vulture and came to vent.

The combination of him being mega whales proof and downing two characters pushed me over the edge for a few minutes. I made the mistake of targeting Medusa and Grocket first, which won't happen again.

I’m glad rather than just venting (which is okay mind you) you learned something in defeat and plan to adapt!  Very cool.

I’d almost always target Grocket last. He does all his damage up front. Once the strikes are down he kind of sucks and doesn’t bring too much else to the table.

Similarly, Medusa is there to heal the team when you match the strikes away and to do passive damage with her countdown.  Either you match the strikes and her team heals or you leave them and slowly die. Since the latter isn’t an option you pretty much don’t have a choice but to heal her team a lot in the beginning.

Vulture is the only of the three whose nastiness can be prevented by denial.  So I’d either target Medusa first while denying Black to stop the passive damage, or target Vulture first while denying Black to stop his AP generation. 

JSP869

Daredevil217 said:

JarvisJackrabbit said:

aesthetocyst said:

Silly, silly hyperbolic forum.

I'm guessing the OP had a bad match against Vulture and came to vent.

I had a bad match against Vulture and came to vent.

The combination of him being mega whales proof and downing two characters pushed me over the edge for a few minutes. I made the mistake of targeting Medusa and Grocket first, which won't happen again.

I’m glad rather than just venting (which is okay mind you) you learned something in defeat and plan to adapt!  Very cool.

I’d almost always target Grocket last. He does all his damage up front. Once the strikes are down he kind of sucks and doesn’t bring too much else to the table.

Similarly, Medusa is there to heal the team when you match the strikes away and to do passive damage with her countdown.  Either you match the strikes and her team heals or you leave them and slowly die. Since the latter isn’t an option you pretty much don’t have a choice but to heal her team a lot in the beginning.

Vulture is the only of the three whose nastiness can be prevented by denial.  So I’d either target Medusa first while denying Black to stop the passive damage, or target Vulture first while denying Black to stop his AP generation. 

In the 5* Daredevil node in Deadpool vs MPQ, my entire team was wiped out by Vulture after he got airborne. I was targeting him first but now I know I made the mistake of going after Blue so I could use G4mora's stun, instead of denying black, and once Vulture went airborne that was it. He landed once, took off immediately, landed a second time and took off immediately again, then fired his 'airborne' power and wiped my entire team.

So I healed up, went in again, and in the rematch had no trouble at all because he must not have gotten enough black to go airborne, I KO'd him on my 3rd or 4th turn, stunned Thanos and Daken, then tore them apart.

Someone else mentioned here that if the AI has the AP to fire a power, that generally it does so. That's not been my experience. I've also read somewhere that the way the AI works is that at the start of its turn, it checks if it has the AP to fire a power, and if it does it makes a /random check to determine whether or not it will fire that power. This is what allows an AI with two characters that use the same color AP to fire one power or the other; otherwise, the AI would always be firing the power with the lowest cost. This is also why you sometimes get nuked by the AI when it spams power after power on the same turn.

TPF Alexis

If it only has one power in a colour, it will fire it as soon as possible. If there are multiple powers in a given cover, it will randomize between them which it's going to go for.

JarvisJackrabbit

TPF Alexis said:

If it only has one power in a colour, it will fire it as soon as possible. If there are multiple powers in a given cover, it will randomize between them which it's going to go for.

Not true. I recently had a match where Juggernaut was the last opponent and had eight green AP for two turns without using it.

TPF Alexis

Was it an easy node where he was under-covered, perhaps? At 1-2 covers, it costs more than 8AP.

Jaedenkaal

TPF Alexis said:

If it only has one power in a colour, it will fire it as soon as possible. If there are multiple powers in a given colour, it will randomize between them which it's going to go for.

This is correct, other than the typo. It's not clear if more "weight" is given to saving for more expensive powers, or if it's just an even chance for each. If the AI has enough AP for -all- of its powers of a given color, however, it WILL fire one of them.

That's (among other things) why, on those nodes with like 3 Thugs, they always make a new Pistol tile every turn. There's never a turn where they choose not to fire a power, as long as they have the 2 Yellow it costs.

JarvisJackrabbit

TPF Alexis said:

Was it an easy node where he was under-covered, perhaps? At 1-2 covers, it costs more than 8AP.

That's got to be what it was. Makes perfect sense. You have my apologies for derping.

TPF Alexis

Jaedenkaal said:

TPF Alexis said:

If it only has one power in a colour, it will fire it as soon as possible. If there are multiple powers in a given colour, it will randomize between them which it's going to go for.

This is correct, other than the typo.

It's not a typo on the right side of the Atlantic

Jaedenkaal

TPF Alexis said:

Jaedenkaal said:

TPF Alexis said:

If it only has one power in a colour, it will fire it as soon as possible. If there are multiple powers in a given colour, it will randomize between them which it's going to go for.

This is correct, other than the typo.

It's not a typo on the right side of the Atlantic

It's colour in the cold north, too.

TPF Alexis

This is why I'm not a proofreader