Dealing with sentries?

TPF Alexis

aesthetocyst said:

ZootSax said:

Finally, although conventional wisdom seems to be to down green than blue than yellow, personally I always go blue than green than yellow.  As annoying as Swarm is, core meltdown is just too deadly to ignore...at least in my opinion.

Good luck all!

I go blue (gunners) first as well, because of those crits. At high level play the match damage with crits hurts.

Although it was much, much worse in the bad old days of the broken super sentries, when their health and match dmg scaled off the charts at high levels.

At lower levels the fighters (green) probably are the bigger pain.

This is definitely one that changes with scaling. At lower levels, it's easier to down the Fighters before there are enough specials for the Gunners to start handing out crits. At higher levels, it's better to go for the Gunners first, because by the time they're down, the Fighters will probably have stopped Swarming anyhow.

8rock_MPQ

OJSP said:

froggerjohn said:

What about 2* players that don't have any of the recommend characters in this thread (or are at minimal covers)?
https://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/froggerjohn/revisions/38

Back when the Ultron event was released, I was still a 2*-3* transitioner. Wolverine Daken OBW worked quite well. Another would be Thor Magneto Storm for winfinite, but we need to wait until the Fighters stop Swarming.

Sorry guys. What is “winfinite?”

8rock_MPQ

OJSP said:

8rock_MPQ said:

Sorry guys. What is “winfinite?”

A team that allows us to chain powers over and over again on the same turn, without allowing the opponent any more turns. Occasionally, the chain is interrupted briefly, but we should be able to continue chaining our powers after we have enough APs.

What are some examples if you don’t mind me asking?

shadowyoshi

8rock_MPQ said:

What are some examples if you don’t mind me asking?

One example is the Charlie's Angels team GSBW, Scarlet Witch and underleveled Professor X (but with 5 Covers in his blue).

The Match 5s in Purple trigger Professor X Master Plan which does damage and generating AP in the strongest color (Purple which is why Prof X needs to be underleveled). With the Purple generation fire GSBWs Deceptive Tactics hopefully generating 2-3 Match 5s with the Green. Rinse and repeat. Scarlet Witch is there to accerlate getting the combo up and running with her passive countdown generating loads of Purple to start the combo and often trigger a Match 5 as well.

This team was often run years back as while it was (and is) quite slow it is also quite reliable once it gets going. The meta has moved beyond it as newer players are unlikely to have 5 blue in Professor X without having moved to the point where they have better options and vets are likely to have better options by now as well.

Richyyy

Just to add, Charlie's Angels generally still works with all three characters levelled as normal, as long as either GSBW or SWitch is boosted (and Prof X isn't) - because that pushes purple back to being your highest value color. That was the case for Ultron recently, and it worked pretty well for the boss as a backup plan when necessary.

8rock_MPQ

Thanks guys! Great info!

Yepyep

I'll add Riri & Ragnarok as something of a winfinite. Takes a minute to get going (saving up red for Rags to cast in search of blue AP and cascades. It certainly is fun...

MarkersMake

4* Carol, Coulson, and 5* Hawkeye could count, as Hawkeye and Coulson both generate lots of cheap countdowns, and generate 6 combined AP every time a countdown expires. I often run out of blue tiles to use as countdowns before I run out of AP. 

It's a bit more offensive than most winfinites, as Carol provides the firepower, increasing the strength of special tiles every time a countdown expires. 

AardvarkPepper

halirin said:

Um, how is hawk guy not getting more love in this thread? I love using him with sentries. Pair him with any purple user and you're gold. Personally, I like to pair him with Coulson, but there are so many potential combos. Drax and C4rol are nice. 3* Bullseye would work too since he needs special tiles for purple and is boosted. Daredevil is another nice boosted one- get your stun lock on and also purple hurts. 

In summary, 3* Hawkeye. Just do it! 

I do this.  If you have a lot of Special tiles that are running away with the game, and the enemy isn't firing powers to activate 3* Doctor Strange, you might as well try capitalizing on enemy Special tiles by using 3* Hawkeye to generate more AP.

sambrookjm said:

Thanos and a bunch of health packs. 

Other than that, if you're in 3-star Land, Doc Ock is a useful choice since there are seemingly billions of enemy special tiles on the board at any given time.  Loki for his Mischief tiles, since they will cascade into a Match 4 at a frightening pace.  Strange's purple won't help nearly as much as you think it will, since even at LVL 5 it will only remove two of their special tiles.

In 4-star realm, Medusa is always good, no matter what is going on.  Ant-Man will steal those tiles away. Venom will knock their protect tiles down to 1, and his yellow and green will get huge.

Against Ultron himself, a boosted Hulkbuster can knock out just about anybody with enough red.

I really can't recommend Thanos.  Thanos is nice if you're doing Lightning Rounds or whatever PvP and want to cut down on time.  But in PvE, you're grinding nodes 3-4 times, and using Thanos means you're slaughtering your own team.  Sure, you could go 3* Wolverine - 3* Daken - 3* Thanos but that just takes so long.  Of course maybe that poster was just kidding.

As for 3* Doctor Octopus, I can't recommend him either.  Looking at his powers, sure he should be used against enemy Specials.  But in practice he's just so slow.  As to Loki and Strange, Loki's fragile and acts more to help out after a lot of enemy damage is already done.  Strange's purple really isn't that useful, but if you have Strange (which most should), Hawkeye can feed his blue and purple, which makes him much more interesting.  It's not that I'm saying 3* Doctor Octopus is categorically wrong, you can do things with 3* Falcon for example, and 3* Loki could be hiding behind a meat shield &c.  But I don't think either alone is at all a good answer to Sentries, so recommending them as-is I think is incomplete advice.

froggerjohn said:

I'm playing SCL5, so the enemies in the hard waves were 135 or so.

When Sentries were mixed with Mindless Ones, I used Moonstone to steal the high-powered tiles, and that works great, providing they aren't destroyed by Swarm, or other mishaps. Ultron nodes with the crit-generating Sentries were the ones that took me out quickly though, once they reached that stage.

Captain Marvel is a great suggestion that I totally missed. It's a fairly cheap clear of lots of tiles, so hopefully could minimize those effects.

Definitely didn't have anything approaching suitable shielding against the crits though. I tried 2* Bullseye (helps only until the crits hit), and the other two 3* suggestions are still in their infancy (Luke Cage 2/0/1, Spidey 1/2/2).

Re:  2* land:  Well you're going to get worn down, because there's really no good "answer" to Sentries in that range.  You can try 2* Daken - 2* Wolverine - 2* Bullseye, the combination of regeneration and Protect tiles makes the team tough to take down.  Sure, your Strike tiles are not going to be much use because Sentries mess with the board so much, and Wolverine (and Bullseye even if you put him third) are going to eat some damage, but it's a sort-of-viable team.  Then you can rotate other characters into Wolverine and Bullseye's places, and keep taking advantage of 2* Daken's regeneration while Wolverine heals on the clock - it isn't that fast, but it's better than nothing.

Other characters that at least sort-of work there are 2*s Thor, Ares, Captain Marvel, Moonstone, maybe Black Widow, then 1* Juggernaut but more on that in a bit.  I noticed you don't seem to have 3* Hawkeye, you should get him because he's how you can get a load of AP if the board gets away from you - especially when enemy powers are triggering off passives, 3* Doctor Strange isn't always reliable.

2* Thor can generate green tiles, green matches lead to Strike tiles for Daken and let you trigger Daken blue at greatly increased effectiveness.  2* Ares is nice because he has a decent-hitting yellow that he heals back from some, and if he's low on hit points his red hits harder.  2* Captain Marvel looks like you spec'd 5/5/3, though 5/3/5 is worth thinking about IF you plan on spamming Teamups.  2* Moonstone you have spec'd 5/3/5, which is maybe not so great; 5 purple on Moonstone means she can change more enemy Specials, but that makes the power effectively more random and less reliable - where Moonstone's red at 5 covers is pretty hard hitting.  2* Black Widow is kind of weird because it's easy for her to take damage, but at least the enemy is generating AP that you can steal and temporary HP for the team isn't the worst thing in the world.  1* Juggernaut is pretty good because of his cheap board shakeup.  He won't last long, but if you're digging into your roster because everyone's hurt, think about using 1* Juggernaut in the rotation.

Someone else already mentioned 2* Magneto and 2* Storm.

2* Captain America and 2* Hawkeye can maybe come in handy in the right situations, but remember 2* Captain America is pretty garbage for damage, and both are really vulnerable to losing their Special tiles.  So don't rely on them unless you're sure you can stop enemies from messing with the board (destroying bottom 5 tiles or making Criticals)

==

Re:  killing blue sentry first:  It depends in part on whether or not the enemy sentries are getting a load of healing, but generally the blue sentry does a crazy ton of damage with generated Critical tiles, so if you're playing at all near your roster's limits, killing blue as a priority is something to think about.