***** Doctor Doom (God Emperor) *****

JHawkInc

thorrium said:

Utterly disappointing that we get another reskinned character.
He seems interesting enough with true heal, but why did it have to be doom?

Eh, I mean that also guarantees that Namor is going to be a 4* character...    I guess I just don't follow what makes the characters viable to get 5* vs. 4* ratings. 
We have two of the founding members of the Illiminati as 4* when Namor comes out.

Why Doom?

Because Marvel is celebrating the return of the Fantastic Four to the comic world and people have been requesting God Emperor Doom ever since he appeared in Secret Wars a few years back.

There is no reasoning as to why a character is a 4* or a 5* except maybe a combination of popularity and marketing. Most every 5* character we've had for a while now has been a highly requested character, except for marketing tie-ins (Kingpin, Wasp, etc). High end gameplay needs to let people play with their favorite characters, or what's the point?

Phumade

RickOShay said:

Vs: Kitty/Grocket, run near-dead Doom, Thor, IW-Cap. Ensure Doom dies early so he will remove all enemy specials. Let Thor gain yellow for Cap's revive. Bring Doom back anytime before you win. Repeat the process next match since Doom will have minimal true health to start again. 

hmm lumbercap is a good partner for doom,  but probably choose a different third than thor because

Dooms team heal is more likely to heal 1/2 thor past the health trigger.  But lumbercap is worth testing out once Doom is released.

Borstock

On paper, he looks useless to me. 

Daredevil217

Phumade said:

RickOShay said:

Vs: Kitty/Grocket, run near-dead Doom, Thor, IW-Cap. Ensure Doom dies early so he will remove all enemy specials. Let Thor gain yellow for Cap's revive. Bring Doom back anytime before you win. Repeat the process next match since Doom will have minimal true health to start again. 

hmm lumbercap is a good partner for doom,  but probably choose a different third than thor because

Dooms team heal is more likely to heal 1/2 thor past the health trigger.  But lumbercap is worth testing out once Doom is released.

Except you'd be using the yellow to revive Doom instead of team healing.  It's an active power, so you can choose what to do with the AP.

DarthDeVo

Phumade said:

RickOShay said:

Vs: Kitty/Grocket, run near-dead Doom, Thor, IW-Cap. Ensure Doom dies early so he will remove all enemy specials. Let Thor gain yellow for Cap's revive. Bring Doom back anytime before you win. Repeat the process next match since Doom will have minimal true health to start again. 

hmm lumbercap is a good partner for doom,  but probably choose a different third than thor because

Dooms team heal is more likely to heal 1/2 thor past the health trigger.  But lumbercap is worth testing out once Doom is released.

Doom's team heal is his active yellow, which you don't have to use. You'll want to be saving it for IW Cap yellow to revive Doom anyhow. 

And I would imagine once he's revived, any black or yellow matches the AI makes will replace the burst heal, so depending on when he's revived, he might get true healed up some before the next match. Which could be a blessing or curse, depending on how you want to use him. 

Y'know if they wanted to take him from ho hum to meta threatening, his black should have been an AoE (though not that damaging), not a nuke. Would have been able to catch camping Thors that way. 

Vins2

thorrium said:

Utterly disappointing that we get another reskinned character.
He seems interesting enough with true heal, but why did it have to be doom?

Eh, I mean that also guarantees that Namor is going to be a 4* character...    I guess I just don't follow what makes the characters viable to get 5* vs. 4* ratings. 
We have two of the founding members of the Illiminati as 4* when Namor comes out.

Still holding out hope that Namor is a 5.  When it became apparent that both were incoming, there was no way god emperor doom was gonna be a 4.  He has too cool of a look, like Black suit Spidey. 

crackninja

Phumade said:

As an aside,  if the devs didn't know.  Kitty Pryde actually has a PhD in Astrophysics from university of chicago.  That actually means she's a doctor.  at least as much of a doctor as banner.  and way more dangerous...

As an alum of the u of c, this makes me want to champ kitty even more.  I would also be pulling a bunch if she were in the store instead of banner...as it is not so much.

babinro

Thoughts on Doom: 

Yellow: Horrendous. 10 AP for lackluster levels of burst healing to just your other allies.  This is awful value for the AP and its burst heal to boot.  I don't get the balancing at play here when offensive skills and general match damage strategies can just vastly overwhelm the effort required to build up this much AP. 

Black: Excellent.  Not much to add here as this is a straightforward damage skill.  Impressive damage numbers and a small AP drain on your side is probably minor enough to not be a major issue.  At 23,000 damage and 9AP this skill is on par with Green Goblins black but without any downsides and the 1AP difference is made up by the blue passive.   This is probably the best black spender at 5* tier now.

Blue: Solid.  Passive true heal and AP generation is nice.  This will unreliable of course and its tough to really judge because I don't have a clear idea of how often this would trigger in a typical match.   I'd like to think that in a typical pvp style match it will trigger twice on average.  If that's true that's a nice little pesky bonus.

Overall: 3/5/5 build. Upper low tier or at best lower mid tier.

Doom is essentially Infinity War Captain America.   A one color character whose character is arguably best in class (definitely best in class for Cap) while the other skills range for 'meh' to straight up bad.  This quality of character is simply not enough to make an impact on the meta.  Honestly the best thing about Doom is that he compliments Thor/Okoye quite nicely.  Generating yellow AP for Okoye while giving an outlet for black and being a true healer.  This doesn't make him your best 3rd for that team as there are plenty of options to consider...but he's among the many good options.

jackstar0

Thank you, D3!

But our Doom is in another castle!

DyingLegend

Jeesh the movies can't do Dr. Doom right and now this game! Smh

Dragon_Nexus

thorrium said:

Utterly disappointing that we get another reskinned character.
He seems interesting enough with true heal, but why did it have to be doom?

Because Doctor Doom is one of the best and most popular villains in the Marvel lineup. Because the game only has one Doctor Doom in the game and it's a 3*. Because it's Fantastic 4 week. And also because this isn't a reskin in any way, it's wholly new art and a whole new move set.

Some people are never satisfied.

BlackBoltRocks

babinro said:

Thoughts on Doom: 

Yellow: Horrendous. 10 AP for lackluster levels of burst healing to just your other allies.  This is awful value for the AP and its burst heal to boot.  I don't get the balancing at play here when offensive skills and general match damage strategies can just vastly overwhelm the effort required to build up this much AP. 

You're forgetting the board shuffle part of his Yellow, which can cause matches and cascades. Sure, it's unreliable, but it still gives you first dibs on the newly-shuffled board, and can help you deal with a crummy board. It might still be the ability players set at 3 (although I think 5/5/3 is also viable, or even a 4/5/4 compromise), but I definitely wouldn't label it "horrendous".

HoundofShadow

His match damage is lower than the newer batch of five stars, which could be due to his passive true heal ability.

His 10 yellow ap burst-heal his teammate for 1/5 or 1/6 of an average five-star characters, and does a board shuffle, which set up cascades potential.

His 9 black ap nuke hits for 23,245 damage while draining up to 1 of each non-Doom colours. I think the draining of ap is not over the top.

His blue passive true heals him for ~8% of his hp.

I think Domino could be a good partner for him to fuel his black. Domino can easily hit 30 black ap with her cascades. Unfortunately, his strongest colour is yellow. Of course it would be pretty broken.

He's definitely an anti-SPA tiles maker, meat shield. 3/5/5 for me.

bbigler

Hmmm.....let's think about this and avoid knee jerk reactions......

Dr. Doom (3/5/5) - 57K Health

Blue Passive - when enemy matches yellow or black, steal 1 AP and true heal Doom for 4K: This is helpful if he's tanking 3+ colors (which is true for 4* players).  He'll save health packs and he gives you a little AP generation.  On defense, it's really annoying if you're trying to collect yellow or black.  If you wait to kill him last because of his true heal and other passive, then it increases the chance of him getting 9 Black and hitting you hard.  With Clagger, or even better, Domino, you'll have a great combo:  Doom tanks most colors, heals frequently and starts nuking people fast.  Overall, this is really good design: it helps right away on offense, it's annoying on defense, and it's not overpowered either.  If he stole 2 AP or healed for 8K, that would be OP.  I don't see this power as a real counter to Thorkoye though. 

Black Passive - when downed, remove all enemy strike, attack, protect tiles: this is obviously meant to be used on defense, but perhaps with some creativity, it could be used on offense with 5*Cap (but I'm doubtful).  Against the 4* special tile meta, it forces your attacker to kill him last.  If paired with Domino and Vulture, your opponent would be in a pickle: Domino keeps dropping black tiles and they need to match black to stop Vulture, but they still give them black anyway.  After killing Domino and Vulture, there's a good chance Doom could nuke them back.  In 5* land, this power can be problematic, but to a lesser degree. 

9 Black - Deal 23K damage and drain 1 friendly red, green, purple AP: This is a great nuke! Cheap with minimal negative side effects.  It could be compared to Green Goblin's black nuke, but it's better.  In 5* land, this is a solid power.  In 4* land, it could be exploited with Domino, as mentioned above.  Even 3* players can flood the board with black using Fist.  Given the AP generation of his blue passive, this power could be viewed as being cheaper than 9 Black AP. 

10 Yellow - Team health burst of 5K and reshuffle board: This power is far from exciting.  I like board shuffling and cascades, but 10 AP is a lot for that.  I could view this as cheaper than 10 AP because of his blue passive, but still.  Health bursts are most useful in the beginning of the match, but at 10 AP, it will be mid-late battle by the time you fire this.  If it cost 7 Yellow AP, then we would have a great power because it could be fired often and early.  Perhaps at 7 AP, it would be OP as you could frequently do team bursts, cascades and never die (kinda like Medusa).  But if Doom was paired with Domino, then you have a board shaking theme.  I suppose they purposely made this power "meh" because his Blue passive and Black active spell certain "Doom".

Overall, I like this character and find him interesting to try out.  I can understand that 5* players are not excited because he doesn't appear to be top tier.  Nevertheless, I think people will find that he's more useful than first anticipated.  True healing, passive AP stealing and a cheap nuke is nothing to ignore.  As usual, he's more useful to 4* players than to 5* players, but that's probably a result of having a million 4* characters and many possible combos and counter-combos.  I don't see any synergy with Kingpin, Cable or Kitty, so perhaps we'll get someone else that pairs well with him in 5* land.  If you paired him with Loki and Phoenix, your opponent would have a real pickle deciding who to kill first. 

ZeiramMR

RickOShay said:

Brigby said:

ZeiramMR said:

Can the board shuffle from his Yellow cause cascades, or is it like Quake's green power that does a shuffle with intentionally no cascades?

Yes. It can cause cascades!

Vs: Kitty/Grocket, run near-dead Doom, Thor, IW-Cap. Ensure Doom dies early so he will remove all enemy specials. Let Thor gain yellow for Cap's revive. Bring Doom back anytime before you win. Repeat the process next match since Doom will have minimal true health to start again. 

I was going to suggest Doom and IW-Cap myself as something to try once, but that's a better full-team composition. Not sure how well it will work in practice, especially with the variety of 3rd characters being used with Kitty/Grocket.

HoundofShadow

His match damage seems to be lower than the newer batch of five stars, which could be due to his passive true heal ability.

His 10 yellow ap burst-heal his teammate for 1/5 or 1/6 of an average five-star characters, and does a board shuffle, which set up cascades potential.

His 9 black ap nuke hits for 23,245 damage while draining up to 1 of each non-Doom colours. I think the draining of ap is not over the top.

His blue passive true heals him for ~8% of his hp.

I think Domino could be a good partner for him to fuel his black. Domino can easily hit 30 black ap with her cascades. Unfortunately, his strongest colour is yellow. Of course it would be pretty brokem.

He's definitely an anti-SPA tiles maker, meat shield and good for transitioning. His true heal is great for players of all levels.

BlackBoltRocks

bbigler said:

I can understand that 5* players are not excited because he doesn't appear to be top tier.  Nevertheless, I think people will find that he's more useful than first anticipated.  True healing, passive AP stealing and a cheap nuke is nothing to ignore.  As usual, he's more useful to 4* players than to 5* players, but that's probably a result of having a million 4* characters and many possible combos and counter-combos.  I don't see any synergy with Kingpin, Cable or Kitty, so perhaps we'll get someone else that pairs well with him in 5* land.  If you paired him with Loki and Phoenix, your opponent would have a real pickle deciding who to kill first.  

Oh, I'm definitely excited for him. Largely because the only other Blue/Black/Yellow user in 5* land is Wasp, and we all know how awesome she is. As @DarthDeVo and @Rick_OShay have pointed out, he has good synergy with Thor/Okoye/BeardCap. He makes a great alternative to Jessica in those Thor/Jess/Okoye trios, especially because Jess is a health pack suck, given that she tanks Red and Blue in that trio.

He might even pair well with Thanos due to his healing. I believe Thanos' Purple won't affect Doom's Yellow either, since the latter shuffles tiles rather than changing them. Round up that duo with a Red/Blue user like Surfer, Jessica, Peter Parker. I can see Thanos/Surfer/Doom being irritating on defence, alongside Doom/Thor/Okoye.

Dragon_Nexus

BlackBoltRocks said:

Heck, he might even pair well with Thanos

History suggests otherwise.

Chrono_Tata

So will his passive on death activate if he's stunned (like Phoenix)? From the wording of the ability I assume not?

fight4thedream

While I understand the dev team has to keep game balance in mind when creating new characters, I can't hide my disappointment with this design. Unfortunately, with a character as OP in the comics as God Emperor Doom it really is a difficult task to do such a character justice without making him game-breaking. But I can't escape the feeling they missed the mark.

For starters, his health. Both JJ and Okoye have higher HP. Yet, I doubt either of them could take on the Celestials a feat Doom did in his non-Godhood state. At the very least, God Emperor Doom should have Thanos level health if not more.

I get what they were trying to do with his yellow power (universe creator and savior) but it's underwhelming. His yellow should either destroy all enemy special tiles or steal and buff them a la Medusa purple. Either that, or the boost heal should max out above 20k as we have entered a meta of quick high damage power stacking teams like Okoye/Thor and Kitty/Grocket.

Black is good in terms of the current meta but considering God Emperor Doom one-shotted both Dr. Strange and Thanos, I would have liked for it to do 30k + damage at the cost of wiping all your friendly AP. Additionally, the passive should be complete board destruction (a la 2* Magneto's Iron Hammer) to symbolize the collapse of Doom's Battleworld universe and for dramatic effect. I mean if Doom is going to go down, it should at least be with a big bang, no?

Blue: Of the three powers this one makes the least sense in terms of power description and comic-lore. If, as per the power description, Doom seizes anything that might pose a threat to his sovereignty it would make sense for this ability to steal both enemy AP and special tiles when matched. Also I would have liked the heal to be a little higher.

Under the current 5* meta, Doom is solidly high mid-tier which means he will be helpful to 4* players and lower and 5* players not currently running meta tier characters. Unfortunately, under the current quick high stacking damage meta with characters like Okoye and Kitty, his healing powers are rendered insignificant at higher tiers of play. In fact, Okoye pretty much outshines him in every aspect with the exception of their nukes. She has higher health, higher match damage, and a far better passive ability and partners well with a plethora of characters. Perhaps their healing ability is close on paper, but in practice under the current Thor/Okoye meta it's no question her heal is superior in most circumstances.

God Emperor Doom, on the other hand, doesn't have a particular 5* counterpart that helps him shine. You could make arguments for Dr. Strange and Thor, but they are not perfect pairings since there is overlap and costs which admittedly fits the lore well. Sure, there are some 3* and 4* like IF and Domino who can help get that black going, but those teams won't do well in high level play. I wish the dev team would factor this inaccessibility in their valuations. God Emperor Doom could see a rise in value if they release a great 5* with an amazing yellow ability but even then, depending on that character's particular color build, he would be competing with Thor's passive AP generation. 

Don't get me wrong. He isn't a bad character. But for someone who attained godhood, created his own universe and one shotted some of the strongest characters in the Marvel universe, he certainly doesn't seem very god-like. With that said, from what I have seen of his visuals the art team did a great job. Here's hoping my initial impressions are wrong.