***** Captain Marvel (Galactic Warrior) *****

Straycat

My fix. Keeping with the same basic powerset. Lots of repeaters, boardshake, and sacrificing friendly tiles.

Repeaters all start fortified

Red: Passive also increases all repeaters by 2 or until repeater resolves. Only works once per turn. Passive also works when matching strikes

Green Passive: level 4, 2 turn repeater generates 2 ap

                         level 5, 2 turn repeater generates 3 ap

Green Active: no countdown at all

                      level 1: destroys random row and additional per friendly tile

                      level 2: increased damage

                      level 3: still counts but does not destroy friendly repeaters

                      level 4: choose row

                      level 5: choose tile, power now destroys rows and columns

Yellow: True heals if Captain Marvel is chosen. Health and damage increased for each repeater tile on the board

Sidenote, Gambits passive stops when he's airborne, right? Might be a fun pair, have Carol throw Gambit up and use his red and purple ap for someone else. Maybe just her team up.

Warbringa

jamesh said:

I guess part of the problem with designing new characters that rely on special tiles now is making sure that Kitty isn't a hard counter.

You can see that in full swing with this character design.  You've got two powers using repeaters, which Kitty doesn't target.  While one power spams strike tiles, they've made sure it averages to more than one per turn, so it can keep ahead of Circuit Breaker.  And while there is a countdown based move, players have the option of bypassing the countdown if they put 5 covers into the power.

It's not quite as when Gambit ruled the roost, but it does impact on what character designs can actually work.  For example, a lazy upgrade of 4* Captain Marvel would probably be considered mediocre if her black countdown kept on getting removed.

True, they made her be able to do a bit too many things ala Gambit in hindsight. Too much offense combined with defense.  The only real problem with Gritty isn't Kitty, its Grocket.  Without those tiles to start out, Kitty isn't very intimidating and can be taken out relatively quickly without much problems.  All those tiles starting out and getting buffed from round 1 though is the problem.  I really wonder if the devs had considered that when they built Kitty? I think the solution to Gritty is a hard 4* counter to Grocket, which I think many players would welcome both in 4* and 5* land.  Give a 4* character a passive that destroys all starting tiles at the beginning of a match or an active very cheap repeater tile (since that is now the anti-Kitty dev solution) power that destroys multiple S/A/P tiles and gains AP.  


There is a counter in some ways in Ant-Man who can just steal the powered up tiles now but it takes too long to use.

Try this one for a new 4* power:  "Power A" - 5 Blue AP - at level 5 - create a 2 turn repeater tile that destroys 2 opponent's S/A/P tiles gain 1 AP of the color of tile destroyed.  Gain 1 random AP at when repeater countdown goes to zero.  

Lower levels could have longer repeater duration and less AP gain for example.  At 5 AP, you can fire it turn two with a boost. Would also be a power that pairs well with 4* Marvel.

MoosePrime

Warbringa said:

There is a counter in some ways in Ant-Man who can just steal the powered up tiles now but it takes too long to use.

Also, it's a countdown that could be overwritten by Kitty.

KGB

5/3/5

Warbringa said:

Try this one for a new 4* power:  "Power A" - 5 Blue AP - at level 5 - create a 2 turn repeater tile that destroys 2 opponent's S/A/P tiles gain 1 AP of the color of tile destroyed.  Gain 1 random AP at when repeater countdown goes to zero.  

Lower levels could have longer repeater duration and less AP gain for example.  At 5 AP, you can fire it turn two with a boost. Would also be a power that pairs well with 4* Marvel.

This power is too weak. Even if you boosted 2 Blue and fired the power on turn 2 it won't remove anything till turn 4. By that time Kitty has boosted 3 times and the strike tiles are in the thousands so it's very possible the character might be dead (esp on defense). Plus it only removed 2 tiles so unless you (or the AI on defense) matches away some strikes it may take yet another 2 turns to stop the buff by which time at least 1 character is dead (esp in 4* land).

There seems to be plenty of Grocket counters in 4* land since multiple GrockAMordusa counter teams have been around for months (for example Prowlers passive stealing of strikes is much better than the power you listed but it's also risky if you can't match to activate the steal). It's more the single champ 5 teams or weak dual 5* (non Thorkoye or BSSM) that are having trouble with this team.

KGB

Vhailorx

KGB said:

Warbringa said:

Try this one for a new 4* power:  "Power A" - 5 Blue AP - at level 5 - create a 2 turn repeater tile that destroys 2 opponent's S/A/P tiles gain 1 AP of the color of tile destroyed.  Gain 1 random AP at when repeater countdown goes to zero.  

Lower levels could have longer repeater duration and less AP gain for example.  At 5 AP, you can fire it turn two with a boost. Would also be a power that pairs well with 4* Marvel.

This power is too weak. Even if you boosted 2 Blue and fired the power on turn 2 it won't remove anything till turn 4. By that time Kitty has boosted 3 times and the strike tiles are in the thousands so it's very possible the character might be dead (esp on defense). Plus it only removed 2 tiles so unless you (or the AI on defense) matches away some strikes it may take yet another 2 turns to stop the buff by which time at least 1 character is dead (esp in 4* land).

There seems to be plenty of Grocket counters in 4* land since multiple GrockAMordusa counter teams have been around for months (for example Prowlers passive stealing of strikes is much better than the power you listed but it's also risky if you can't match to activate the steal). It's more the single champ 5 teams or weak dual 5* (non Thorkoye or BSSM) that are having trouble with this team.

KGB

This is a problem with virtually all powers with any form of cast now for X ap, wait Y rounds, and something happens.  Unless you are talking about something like im40's yellow, which turns 6ap into 36ap across 4 colors, this type of power is always too slow in the current meta. 

Demi's only real choices (other than the status quo) are to nerf the fast characters and cap how fast any character can truly be (a very unpopular move with players), or change the underlying incentive structures that makes speed essential (scoring, shielding, placement, grinding, etc), which is effectively a fundamental overhaul of mpq.

Warbringa

KGB said:

Warbringa said:

Try this one for a new 4* power:  "Power A" - 5 Blue AP - at level 5 - create a 2 turn repeater tile that destroys 2 opponent's S/A/P tiles gain 1 AP of the color of tile destroyed.  Gain 1 random AP at when repeater countdown goes to zero.  

Lower levels could have longer repeater duration and less AP gain for example.  At 5 AP, you can fire it turn two with a boost. Would also be a power that pairs well with 4* Marvel.

This power is too weak. Even if you boosted 2 Blue and fired the power on turn 2 it won't remove anything till turn 4. By that time Kitty has boosted 3 times and the strike tiles are in the thousands so it's very possible the character might be dead (esp on defense). Plus it only removed 2 tiles so unless you (or the AI on defense) matches away some strikes it may take yet another 2 turns to stop the buff by which time at least 1 character is dead (esp in 4* land).

There seems to be plenty of Grocket counters in 4* land since multiple GrockAMordusa counter teams have been around for months (for example Prowlers passive stealing of strikes is much better than the power you listed but it's also risky if you can't match to activate the steal). It's more the single champ 5 teams or weak dual 5* (non Thorkoye or BSSM) that are having trouble with this team.

KGB

True, then I guess we need a passive that just destroys all of Grocket's tiles at the start of the match lol or a passive that prevents opponents tile from being buffed?

Straycat

I start to worry about too many ill conceived Gritty counters being made in the future, like how Angel and IWCap were supposed to be Gambit counters. Doom sort of already does that with his death passive, but thats not a good opening move. There is room for defensive or retaliation characters like bishop in the 5* tier tho.

Vhailorx

But IW cap and archangel we're obviously terrible Gambit counters because they relied on CD tiles and original Gambit absolutely owned CD tiles.

Imagine archangel's black mechanic as sending himself airborne rather than placing CDs, and while airborne, he could suppress a chosen color. That would have been a much more effective mechanic.

Or IW cap could have placed special shield tiles that Gambit couldn't overwrite (like ultron's bomb tiles).  And while a shield tile is on the board, a 1 selected enemy power could be disabled (active or passive).

Designing Gambit counters was a potentially fine idea. But those two characters were straight up design failures.

tiomono

Maybe carol is being tried as a counter to kitty. She seems as effective against kitty as archangel and lumbercap vs gambit.

It could break up gritty a bit if grocket worked like carnage. Let his strikes ramp up and not just start with all of them on the board.

HoundofShadow

3/5/5

How is 5* Carol a counter to Kitty? I'm assuming you are talking about dealing with Kitty+R4G. None of her abilities looks like a counter to them unless you are referring to her ability to destroy up to an additional 8 rows. 

1. Blackbolt can destroy the entire board
2. A downed God Emperor Doom removes all enemies' ASP tiles.
3. SMBB virtually negates the enemies' buffing of strike tiles to 1 immediately.
4. Gambit can replace up to 3 enemies' ASP tiles.
5. DD's Sonar Strike convert 4 enemies' ASP tiles to friendly strike tiles
6. Starlord can destroy 3 random column and steal 4 random enemies' ASP tiles.

A universal counter that any player can use is simply to reduce the number of friendly A/S/P tiles on the board to fewer than 4 (most of the time) or 3. 

The question is: Are the players looking for a counter to deal with Gritty or are they looking for a counter that can render Gritty useless in 2 or fewer turns? I think this distinction makes a big different. Most of the above 5* need 3 matches to stop Kitty's from buffing tiles, except for SMBB (in some way).

Straycat

Well that’s my point, the supposed Gambit counters were bad at it, as I expect future gritty counters would be. Carol wasn’t, but in the future I don’t want 1/3 of a characters kit wasted on a specific counter, limiting their use.

Vhailorx

HoundofShadow said:

The question is: Are the players looking for a counter to deal with Gritty or are they looking for a counter that can render Gritty useless in 2 or fewer turns? I think this distinction makes a big different. Most of the above 5* need 3 matches to stop Kitty's from buffing tiles, except for SMBB (in some way).

But this circles back to the meta-game issue I have been mentioning repeatedly for the last few weeks here (and for years before that).  A counter that DOESN'T work in just a few turns might as well not exist at all.  Because it won't be be fast enough to be useful for shield hopping or it will cost too many health packs for grinding.

This is why GED's kitty-counter doesn't work (except on defense). He literally has to die.  Who wants to run a tactic that requires deliberately sacrificing a character (especially a 5* who has to lose dozens of thousands of hp to die at all)?

In mpq "reliable and slow" is barely better than "straight up bad."

himatako

Fought her in PvP and she wasn't scary at all. I kept matching her green repeater tile and eventually down her before she could do anything. To be fair, she was probably low level with not many covers.

tonypq

I thought she sucked when reading about her abilities, after using her test character in the new event wow she blows. And now we have to se yet another LL store occupied by one or two 5s who are pretty bad.

For 4 players transitioning to 5s, D3 is making it impossible to get into the mix with a good set of 5s, and no way to target in on any of the ones you really want or classics. Guess I'll just be logging in for daily drop and DP daily CP or LL, they've killed any motivation to play any more than that or in a competitive alliance.

Daredevil217

tonypq said:

I thought she sucked when reading about her abilities, after using her test character in the new event wow she blows. And now we have to se yet another LL store occupied by one or two 5s who are pretty bad.

For 4 players transitioning to 5s, D3 is making it impossible to get into the mix with a good set of 5s, and no way to target in on any of the ones you really want or classics. Guess I'll just be logging in for daily drop and DP daily CP or LL, they've killed any motivation to play any more than that or in a competitive alliance.

To be fair, they just gave a direct path to get the three best characters in the game if anyone was hoarding and thinking about transitioning around this time (Kitty/Okoye/Thor store). I think those special stores (which have been popping up more recently) should be more regular and open much longer than 4 days. 

I agree it doesn’t solve the problem that they struggle to design quality characters with any consistency. We’ve had Kitty as the only great character and Doom as the only good. Surrounded by a sea of Wasp, Carol, Kingpin, Loki, Cable, etc. type duds. 

Really really hoping End Game gives something to get excited for and not more moans and groans from disgruntled players WANTING a reason to spend. 

y4747

i can assure you, no matter what, moans and groans will be present

Feliz

Worst look of her ever. I think the more stars she goes up the uglier she gets

jredd

after playing her as the essential 5* in strange sights - damn, she is straight up dog's breakfast. i'm almost tempted to keep hoarding until she's out. 

hopper1979

Is she any good in pve, I get her issues in pvp, she is just too slow, 3 countdowns are pointless, but is she good in pve especially when you can benefit most from her green and enemy tiles.  The little I have used her she seemed slow but usable.  Not worried about top 10 placement in pve which is time dependent. About to spend to get Hela and I am sure I will get a couple of Carols in the hoard

tonypq

Kind of depressing how bad 5Carol is, especially now that 5Kingpin has been swapped out of LL for Hela. I'd like 5Doom and Hela, but absolutely hate 5Carols power set and countdown/repeater garbage.

Doesn't seem like 5Carol synergizes well at all either with  Doom or Hela. She shares a yellow with doom and red/green with Hela. For a moment I thought it could be cool using Helas black to create a bunch of special tiles, then hope Carol's green ended up destroying a bunch of rows. Then I realized Helas green is considerably more potent than Carol's,  does more damage it would seem, and unlike Carol's won't clear the board of friendly special tiles. Helas red drops strikes down instantly, unlike Carol's that has the stupid countdown. 

For those with hoards to blow to enter 5* land, seems like this trio of 5s is very unfortunate to have such a lousy 5 as Carol. Probably wouldn't want to use Carol's red or green over Helas. Might decide to use Carol's yellow over Dooms since hers deals some damage, but sucks to have her in the mix and have only one power you'd really use in this trio. Most other 5s seemingly have better reds and greens also, seems like she doesn't fit well in any comp.