* Doctor Doom (God Emperor) *

fight4thedream · January 2019

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.

MrEd95 · January 2019

Wow, any team with domino or cloak and dagger don’t stand a chance, while simultaneously being his best friends on his side

DAZ0273 · January 2019

I had hoped for entirely selfish reasons that this was going to be a 4* release as I only have about 38CP. Oh well.

I hear players saying that he is average for 5* tier but I can see Doom being very popular at lower levels. Passive healing and a decently cheap black nuke which can be fueled at both 3 * 4* level are going to make him an attractive option to run outside the 5* tier.

BlackBoltRocks · January 2019

@fight4thedream I agree with much of what you said. Doom could - and should - definitely be akin to Thanos in terms of health, and do much more damage, on par with GladiaThor and Jessica. Still, the devs designed him to be primarily defensive with a good nuke, and that's the lemons we'll have to make lemonade of.

I'll just address your comparison of Doom to Okoye, particularly as support characters (so I won't compare their nukes). Sure, Okoye has a better passive, self-healing, and match damage. But Okoye is designed to be the head of the Dora Milaje: she boosts the skill damage of her allies while leading from the front, hence her high match (and TU) damage to allow her to tank. As a result of her tanking, she'll need to heal herself with her Yellow. Note that her Yellow doesn't provide a burst of health to her teammates; instead, it's meant to heal only Okoye while simultaneously providing fuel for Okoye to boost her teammates' damage output. So, in a sense, Okoye converts defense into offense.

In contrast, I see Doom as sitting on his throne in Battleworld, giving his allies the support that they need to continue fighting, which is represented by his burst healing his teammates. And of course, Doom reshapes his world via his will, which is represented by the board shuffle. Perhaps not the best representation of his comic abilities, as you mention, but it isn't the worst representation either. And, like Okoye, Doom can also heal himself, albeit less reliably.

In sum: Okoye, as someone who leads from the front, supports her teammates by boosting their damage output, tanking hits for them, and healing only herself to allow her to continue her role. God Doom, as someone who generally hangs back and surveys the scene, supports his teammates by restoring their health, and taking advantage of opposition manoeuvers (i.e. their making Black and Yellow matches) to sustain himself in order to continue his role.

Doom supports his teammates by replenishing their health, so they can continue doing what they were already doing. Okoye takes what her teammates are already doing and makes it do even more.

Phumade · January 2019

BlackBoltRocks said:

@fight4thedream I agree with much of what you said. Doom could - and should - definitely be akin to Thanos in terms of health, and do much more damage, on par with GladiaThor and Jessica. Still, the devs designed him to be primarily defensive with a good nuke, and that's the lemons we'll have to make lemonade of.

Your using comic Lore to justify a power rating? LOL The rest of us gave up reconciling comic tradition and history to the game when they failed to acknowledge that Kitty is actually a Dr. and should have been in the doom release store.

But really this a 5* that is entire meant to be played by underleved by 3*/4* players. Think along the lines of what a 2 yellow cover oml could do for a high tier 3* / low tier 4* player.

Realistically a 3 cover doom raised to 315 -330 range with a 270 4*rocket, 3* featured. is a decently strong combo against other weakly champed chars.

I actually think people who wanted 4* doom actually go their wish. Doom's healing team heal isn't gonna keep up with Kitty. In fact at the minimum,

champed kitty buffs 4 specials for 633 a piece or 2400 points every TURN!

by comparision Doom's team heal is

burst of 10k health for 10 yellow ap.

If you assume it takes 3 rounds min to get 10 ap. then Kitty has stacked
7500 points of damage/ protect on her tiles. and doom has just used 10 ap to heal back to full health.

let that sink in.

in 3 turns, kitty can generate 7500 point of buff and Doom just gets you back to full health, but still struggling against over scaled strikes. And you praying that kitty doesn't luck into a double match the whole time.

Cactus_Jack_87 · January 2019

The fact that a herald of Galactus, an ancient cosmic fire entity, a god of mischief, a spirit of vengeance, all of Spidey's arch villains, the Sorceror Supreme, a time traveling mutant with a gun the size of his body, a horseman of Apocalypse, and the Incredible friggin' Hulk are outclassed by a lady with a pointy stick is just a reminder to me that I can't compare everyone to Okoye and her best buddy, Thor. With that said, I am also pretty disappointed that god Doom seems so lackluster. I guess he'll serve his purpose for me when he's boosted in PVE, and then it's back to autoplay with Thokoye for another few months. Hey, wouldn't it be great if we started getting some more character buffs pretty soon? Maybe we could even get someone reworked to give Doom a much needed partner! Finger crossing initiated...

MoosePrime · January 2019

Chrono_Tata said:

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

I had this question as well.

Loki's passive does not mention stuns, but I'm fairly certain it works when he is stunned, so it's possible that Doom's will also work when he is stunned.

bbigler · January 2019

Phumade said:

champed kitty buffs 4 specials for 633 a piece or 2400 points every TURN!

Kitty buffs up to 5 tiles per turn, so at level 450, it's 5 x 633 = 3,165 damage stacking each turn. You can lose some strikes along the way, but it still ramps up quickly. I saw someone with a level 503 Kitty which buffed for 952! Champed and Boosted in PVE, it must be well over 1K.

It's fair to compare Kitty to Okoye (not Doom). Both can stack damage to similar degrees, but they're very different. Okoye can't always get TU tiles to match, and if she's not in front, her damage boost lessens. Plus, her boost only applies to powers, not regular tile matching, like Kitty. Kitty can lose strikes during the match, but her boost works every turn, usually, and it works on every tile match, making simple cascades an actual nuke. While Thorkoye is setting up, Grockitty has already killed someone. I think the real test is which team is faster in PVE SCL 9. I said long ago that Grockitty-Thanos could rival the fastest teams in PVE. Let's test that out.

bluewolf · January 2019

I’m not going to argue that Doom is meta changing, but vs Kitty he could be interesting. Kitty is paired with Rocket because otherwise she’s not much of a threat. Her strongest color is yellow, so you leave yellow there, maybe (or at least some) for her to heal you and steal 1 AP each time. So she’s healing you and feeding your shuffle while you match other strikes away. Yes, it’s taking a while to get to 10 AP, but its not just Kitty roolz, Doom droolz. You shuffle and there’s a decent chance you take out more strikes while healing your team. Hopefully you’re gathering black as well to nuke her after you’ve destroyed Rocket and the 3*.

I’m still not sure who to partner him with exactly. In that scenario DD or Cap make a lot of sense.

It might be a bit slow, but better than just letting all those Gritty teams float, maybe.

Richyyy · January 2019

The problem is that the game design makes characters like this pretty worthless to most people trying to play competitively. Everything's based on speed, whether you're trying to clear nodes in PvE or trying to climb before you get hit back in PvP. So defensive characters become of significantly less use than offensive ones who can power through opponents. If there were more puzzle-based, thinking-necessary events/nodes/opponents/whatever then characters who are difficult to beat, or who keep you alive, would be much more valuable. As it is, I read Doom's powers, go "Mehhhhhh", and go back to waiting for a 5* who's going to change anything.

Chrono_Tata · January 2019

MoosePrime said:

Chrono_Tata said:

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

I had this question as well.

Loki's passive does not mention stuns, but I'm fairly certain it works when he is stunned, so it's possible that Doom's will also work when he is stunned.

Yeah if it can be disabled with stun then a Grocket team could stun him with a TU or something before killing him, which could make him a lot less useful on defence. Would be good to clarify.

bluewolf · January 2019

Richyyy said:

The problem is that the game design makes characters like this pretty worthless to most people trying to play competitively. Everything's based on speed, whether you're trying to clear nodes in PvE or trying to climb before you get hit back in PvP. So defensive characters become of significantly less use than offensive ones who can power through opponents. If there were more puzzle-based, thinking-necessary events/nodes/opponents/whatever then characters who are difficult to beat, or who keep you alive, would be much more valuable. As it is, I read Doom's powers, go "Mehhhhhh", and go back to waiting for a 5* who's going to change anything.

Gambit: Aug '17.
Thor: Oct '17.
Okoye: May '18
Next one: ???? March '19? Late April? July? who knows.

One problem the devs constantly face is how to make each new character do something unique (usually a combination of existing effects). So the idea is less "new meta" as "new things to do". This is kind of obviously their approach, and usually means "not a meta".

You could easily make Thor 2 (just a different costume) by changing some colors around, increasing match/tile damage numbers, tweaking some of the conditions around damage causing, and BOOM! new meta.

Kitty is just SL on steroids. Doesn't steal SAP, just destroys them and causes damage. Doesn't boost Rocket once, but constantly. Her ex-boyfriend 2.0.

A champed boosted Kitty with rocket clears PVE nodes in 38 seconds by my count, and my phone isn't even the newest phone. This is from pushing "fight" to "Victory" after switching from my stopwatch app (back and forth).

There isn't a lot of room at the top of the meta at this point. What do you want? Push fight, watch the board blow up and win? 5 second fights?

So no, the meta isn't being shaken up. I question what it will look like when it is. It's just some new stuff to do.

GrimSkald · January 2019

Character power level has nothing to do with power in the game. Sorry. Seriously, eight characters in the 5* tier are quite literally physically normal human beings with no special powers, or at least no special powers that affect combat with invulnerable people in a meaningful way.

I mean, Daredevil vs Phoenix? Hawkeye vs. Black Bolt? Black Widow vs Thanos? Captain America vs. the Silver Surfer? Sure, Cap's a master strategist, but what exactly is he going to do?

It's never been about power level. High power level on a character (i.e. God-Emperor Doom,) makes it more likely they'll introduce the character at the 5* tier, but only a little.

Richyyy · January 2019

bluewolf said:

There isn't a lot of room at the top of the meta at this point. What do you want? Push fight, watch the board blow up and win? 5 second fights?

Nah, what I'd actually like, personally, is for them to address it from the other side. Give us events or new types of play where characters who have a particular skillset or are defensively strong are actually useful. Give us something (besides the occasional boss event) where you're not constantly striving for speed. Then these decent-but-different-but-not-good-enough characters could become meaningful. Maybe Doom keeps you alive long enough to beat a particular level you couldn't win with offensive strength, maybe there's a special board with no green that makes Thor significantly less useful, hell maybe they just bring back Heroics so I have to pay attention to the 90% of my roster that goes ignored.

I agree with you that the game's already become virtually just a tap-fest in PvE and can't get much quicker without literally being decided by who has the better phone and faster internet connection. So give us more interesting styles of play that would in turn make these new characters potentially much more intriguing.

Daredevil217 · January 2019

Phumade said:

Your using comic Lore to justify a power rating? LOL The rest of us gave up reconciling comic tradition and history to the game when they failed to acknowledge that Kitty is actually a Dr. and should have been in the doom release store.

They did not fail to acknowledge that Kitty has a doctorate no more than they failed to acknowledge Ock or the fact that Stark has multiple PhDs. The store only has three 5*. So they put Bruce and Strange in rather than the person who is already in a token store. This is like saying they failed to acknowledge OML or Phoenix as mutants because they weren't in Cable's Mutant Maveicks store.

Daredevil217 · January 2019

bluewolf said:

Richyyy said:

The problem is that the game design makes characters like this pretty worthless to most people trying to play competitively. Everything's based on speed, whether you're trying to clear nodes in PvE or trying to climb before you get hit back in PvP. So defensive characters become of significantly less use than offensive ones who can power through opponents. If there were more puzzle-based, thinking-necessary events/nodes/opponents/whatever then characters who are difficult to beat, or who keep you alive, would be much more valuable. As it is, I read Doom's powers, go "Mehhhhhh", and go back to waiting for a 5* who's going to change anything.

Gambit: Aug '17.
Thor: Oct '17.
Okoye: May '18
Next one: Kitty Pryde: Sept. '18

FIFY

People keep asking, "When are we going to get a 5* that matters? All we get are duds. I'm going to be hoarding forever!". Those people are going to be really sad if they miss out on Kitty. Especially if we get a person who specializes in rapid/passive special tile creation in the 5* tier.

She's super fast on offense, a great deterrent on defense, plays well with lots of others and gives a ton of newer players who missed out on Thorkoye a chance to sit at the big kids table (as evidenced by all the grittys popping up in PVP and sim). But yeah, when are we going to get a 5* who matters?

whitecat31 · January 2019

I know some of you look at Doctor Doom and go Meh. But Doctor Doom absolutely shames the last 5 star that was released with the same color scheme that had the Blue Black Yellow colors. Every single ability, is straight up better than that last 5 star.
His lower attack damage, allows him to fit right in with the ThorOkoye teams and still allow Okoye to tank some colors as needed to maintain her cache of team-up AP.
Doom's passive will also give Gritty teams pause. He may not be better than JJ as the third, but his black is more powerful and cheaper, and he steals yellow and black AP.
Although if you are worried about Gritty teams, Blacksuit spiderman is clearly the ultimate third companion and has some stuns.

He also creates some decent combos with some 4 stars. Domino, cloak and dagger, vulture all come to mind.
For PVE his heal can help mitigate damage from the use of Thanos.

So he has use. Is he game breaking? No. Is he a smoldering dumpster fire like Hope Van Dyne that makes you question what were they thinking? No.

Daredevil217 · January 2019

I agree, but I think the problem is if they are not game-breaking, but also not a smoldering dumpster fire, most categorize that as "meh".

I'd say the top 5* in the game are (in release order): Thanos, Thor, Okoye, Jessica, and Kitty. So 4 of the top 5 have all been released the past year and some change. I think we've been spoiled with some pretty awesome releases relatively recently and as such everything that doesn't hit that high mark looks cruddy in comparison.

Starting with Thor, we've had the 4 awesome ones, we've had two "dumpster fires" in Wasp and Kingpin and the rest have been in that "meh" category: Archangel, Ghost Rider, IW Cap, Loki, Cable, and now Doom.

So 4/12 Excellent, 2/12 awful, 6/12 meh. That's half of the last dozen characters that fit into that meh category. I think that's where people's complaints come from. I think Doom has the potential to be the best among the meh bunch just due to his niche as an annoying defensive character, but he's still another "mid-tier" character.