***** Kingpin (Spider-Verse) *****

ThaRoadWarrior

Lol; That's because I didn't pay attention to her and don't know her deal at all. I just checked though, and Ock doesn't stun on blue like I thought, but he does make strikes on black

RickOShay

Punter1 said:

Yeah - think you're supposed to use Blue to get more Blue to help fire Green with attack and Blue again with damage.  But... you can't fire Blue without the attack tiles from Green. 

So actually means you need to save Blue, fire Green, then Blue.  Meanwhile your opponent has already ended up with enough Blue so your Blue is toothless and your Green damage is hidden behind a repeater.

It also means the attack tiles from Green have been set as weak since you're meant to be donating them, so they're not that exciting.

Hmm, If you're against most Thorkoye teams they shouldn't be gathering up much blue, especially if you are prioritizing it. I realize you can't even play KP's blue unless you have a special tile out (boo!), but I think KP just needs to be played as a blue-green user, let black go for someone else if you can.
9 green happens easily enough, especially since you don't want enemy Thor getting any. Now, you actually want the enemy team to get 3 blue (randomly) so that you can steal it, but sometimes you can't really wait for that.
KP has a lot of drawbacks for PvP, and probably has no chance against Kitty/Grocket teams, but otherwise he can work on climbs with teams of JJ, Kitty, Phoenix, or even HDThor sometimes, which is good when your strongest team color is green.

RickOShay

Tony_Foot said:

He’s just awful, in need of a buff right out of the gate as seems to be the norm these days. Even boosted in pvp going against thor okoye team he nearly died. Never got him going at all despite 120k health. Can’t seem to find a team that he would even sit in and be useful. Just above wasp for me. Tepid garbage.

I get it, you're scared to be in another gambit situation but this is getting silly now.

10 cover 80K Kingpin beat Thorkoye teams repeatedly, so I wonder what was going wrong when you tried him.
 I'd definitely change some things about Kingpin, but he's not a bottom 3 5*, unless the player doesn't understand how to strategize his ability set. 

RickOShay

BlackBoltRocks said:

@Rick_OShay What teams are you running Fatpin on? And I know he's currently boosted; once his boost wears off, would a lv450 Fatpin still be able to stand against Thorkoye teams? What 5* teams would you suggest he be used with? Or even any 4* for that matter. Because right now, I just can't see why I'd use him over my Archangel.

Kingpin plays pretty well with Jessica Jones for example. When her red is your teams strongest color, it's easy to fire this multiple times since you earn red AP from hitting traps and from KP's blue fueling it. You'll have plenty of strike tiles to give away. The overlap on blue/black isn't significant since you'll certainly be using her black. If you happen to get the attack tiles from his green, excellent, They will carry all the strike tile damage with them, and they are a less powerful special tile for KP to give away.

I also have good runs with KP and DD (half health, creating strikes often, purple steals them back), Kitty, OML, Phoenix, and even Thor - hate to give away those strong protect tiles, but there's seemingly always one or more ready to be matched anyway. Pay attention to your team's strongest color, since yellow with DD isn't always very useful without someone who can spend it.

Separately, he plays very well with boosted 4* characters for your climb (Bl4de, C&D etc. this week). It can be fun to climb with one 5* and 4*s until you need to switch to higher characters later. 
 

bluewolf

It's interesting that often, no one comments about characters after:

1.  Their new character boost wears off
2.  The next new person comes along

I think it speaks a bit to the immensity of the character roster that most players can't spend a lot of time thinking about a new character, especially beyond their initial couple months of boost or being the hot new thing.

Anyway.  The reason I'm here is to wish that Kingpin's blue did something with enemy tiles.  Maybe instead of friendly or have different effects for either stealing an enemy tile or giving away a friendly one.  Or alternatively, a passive component on one of his powers that created a friendly tile under certain conditions (maybe a match 4 or something).

I really dislike having a power I can't use.  I know, bring a special tile user to make sure I can....but it still seems like this could have been handled better.

HoundofShadow

5/3/5

In the meantime, give him or his teammate a support that generates friendly special tile whenever you make a match-4 or one that generates friendly special tiles at the start of the turn as a band-aid.

Alternatively, his green generates friendly special tiles under certain condition.

I think the name of his powers flow nicely and smoothly if you look at things from a story-telling point of view. Forced hand is similar to  one of his 4* counter part power where he sacrifices his pawn (cd tile) to deal damage. Forced Hand was probably created from a thematic point of view.  

Passively creating a friendly attack tile (thematic) would be sweet to fire Forced Hand more easily.

ThaRoadWarrior

I find that I have initial impressions or interest in a character on release, but then I tend to come back a year later after I finally got them covered to talk about them lol. My Kingpin is still 1/0/3, so i can't really form meaningful opinions yet. On paper, his moves seem reasonably appealing for my playstyle, but I won't know for sure till i come up with more covers.

DAZ0273

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I find that I have initial impressions or interest in a character on release, but then I tend to come back a year later after I finally got them covered to talk about them lol. My Kingpin is still 1/0/3, so i can't really form meaningful opinions yet. On paper, his moves seem reasonably appealing for my playstyle, but I won't know for sure till i come up with more covers.

Mine is 2/1/1 and generating his special tiles is a bit frustrating.

Dormammu

I have a champed Fatpin and I still can't motivate myself to care about him. He's just... not very good.

BlackBoltRocks

My fix for Fatpin’s Blue would be to make it create an enemy Strike, Attack, and Protect tile. In return, take up to x AP of a selected enemy colour and deal guaranteed damage. Obviously, this wouldn’t be the current 13k damage. Something more proportionate with a 7AP power that has both drawbacks and benefits, like say ~8k damage. And it would make his Blue usable all the time, independent of anything else.

himatako

BlackBoltRocks said:

My fix for Fatpin’s Blue would be to make it create an enemy Strike, Attack, and Protect tile. In return, take up to x AP of a selected enemy colour and deal guaranteed damage. Obviously, this wouldn’t be the current 13k damage. Something more proportionate with a 7AP power that has both drawbacks and benefits, like say ~8k damage. And it would make his Blue usable all the time, independent of anything else.

Yeah, I think this is probably much better than having blue AP and not being able to do anything because there is no friendly special tile you can give to the enemy. He himself can't even create friendly special tiles that easily since his green requires you having more AP than your opponent in order to create attack tiles.

After using him for a while, his only useful power is his green. You can place many green repeater tiles and each of them benefits from strike tiles as well as Okoye's black separately. His blue can't be fired most of the time and his black is pretty much useless. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm really struggling to win SCL9 Kingpin nodes in simulator, so i went to my go-to stunlock team of Vulture/G4mora for a few clears. He was pretty fun in the middle of that- Vulture lets you spam out green and G4mora is a better blue user who also creates okay specials very cheaply that he can give away if you're so inclined. At the levels I have everyone, it was better for me to use Vulture's green and use Pin as a meat shield, but I could see that working better when he has more levels on him.

Dormammu

It occurred to me today that I have never seen an opposing Fatpin in PvP. Never once. Not in normal PvP events and not anywhere in the SHIELD Sim. It's kind of amazing, even though I realize he's not well-regarded. I mean, I see 5-star Banner Hulks with decent regularity, and he's generally regarded as awful. I see 5-star Doc Ocks from time to time, and he's considered lower tier. But never once I have I seen someone using Fatpin.

I'd be interested to see what his usage percentage is, because my guess is that the numbers (if not our complaining) warrants a re-balancing.

ThaRoadWarrior

I see him here and there, but it’s always one I stop to fight just because it feels like a rarity

himatako

I was actually surprised to see him popping up in PvP recently. He feels like such a dead weight to your team I don't know why people use him. 

ThaRoadWarrior

There is almost certainly a contingent of folks who use him simply because they have him. Every 5* is somebody's only 5* champ most likely.

BlackBoltRocks was telling me on the side they have been running GE Doom/Jessica Jones/Fi5k with good results, but I haven't seen anyone fielding this particular team anywhere in my simulator travels. I could probably attempt this team, I have those 3 characters with 12/9/11 covers respectively, i just haven't sunk any iso into Doom or Fi5k

RickOShay

Kingpin could be improved there's little debate there, but I've been having good success when he is paired with 5* Carol. She earns free green from her repeater, and KP's green is actually quite good. It's fortified and a 2-turn damage dealer of around 8500.
The problem is usually surrounding KP's blue, and certainly his black. Now, with Carol she is usually creating strike tiles with little effort from her red repeater (yes it's easy to keep safe for a while when played correctly). KP's blue hits pretty hard and gives away one of his small attack tiles ideally, or one of Carol's strikes if you need to. This should steal enemy red AP so you can quickly play another of Carol's red repeaters. 
Any purple-black user fits in here, and Goblin is an ideal candidate since he will fortify all of these repeaters. This is not a scary team to face, but things can easily get out of hand against you. 
As stated, Jessica or Doom could easily be the better black user and you could forgo the purple.

Dormammu

The only time I use my champed Kingpin is when I pair him with 5Widow, for a full rainbow, to clear the three PvE easy nodes. Even then, he's just there to soak damage from Court Death so I don't have to use health packs on my characters who are actually effective.

And the only reason I have a champed Kingpin is because he happened to be there when I pulled a hoard for Kitty.

Glockoma

Kingpin finally has a good partner; 5* Carnage. Try it out if possible.

Tiger_Wong

5* Carol 5/5/3
Fatpin 5/3/5
5*Carnage 3/5/5

It works and there’s surprising synchronicity. I have them all champed at 451 and here’s how it goes.....

Carnage is the mvp of this team. I can not overstate how great his extra match is. That AP will be needed 9 out of 10 times (unless it matches purple). His green is the team’s strongest color so everytime you fire off Forced Hand, you getting up to 5 more green AP which fuels 2 important powers: Break Their Will and Event Horizon. 

You’re going to find yourself with a lot of green AP. So you fire off Break Their Will and every 2 turns, you’re dealing about 8000+ damage. If you enough AP for another one, wait so they’re firing on alternating turns. But if you need to do immediate damage, fire Event Horizon. At lvl 5, it’ll immediately hit for 6600+ Tile damage.

Speaking of Carol, her Mean Right Hook is another repeater you want to fire early to get more repeater damage popping off. But later on, you want to fire off Carnage’s cheap red power for immediate damage. 

This is weird team that works. Not top tier by any means but it’ll take down a thorkoyeX team down with ease. Of course the biggest problem with this team is your team will be taking damage from opposing attack tiles and all your heals are bursts.