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

Vhailorx

Tonypq,

For those with hoards to blow right now, the question is probably: is GED + Hela a good enough team?

They have 5/6 active covers, true healing (against tile moving opponents), decent special tile generation, decent offensive output, and some board control.  They are too slow to be a great PvP team, but they should be pretty reliable for pve (use GED to tank, and heal's green + GED black for direct damage).  not exactly "must have" but likely good enough to justify the hoard for some players.

Marvel doesn't do much to add to that team, but if she were kept underleveled (so she doesn't tank), her green could be used to fuel hela.

hopper1979

Got 3 GED, 1 Capt Marvel and no Hela so my question was posed toward the wrong character.  Doom seems middle of the pack so I guess best possible results from the pull.

kennn712

Does Kitty's Circuit Breaker overwriting a strike tile count as destroying it (thus giving CM yellow AP)?

himatako

kennn712 said:

Does Kitty's Circuit Breaker overwriting a strike tile count as destroying it (thus giving CM yellow AP)?

Overwriting and converting it to basic tile don't count as destroying it, IIRC.

RickOShay

Champed Carol a few days ago and I think many are giving her a bit of a rough review. I would rather have direct damage abilities over repeaters / CD's, but her red is probably better than Hela's against any random team. If played when there are no dangerous red matches available on the board, Carol's repeater should count down 2 or 3 times (unless you are very unlucky) before the repeater gets matched or destroyed. I use it at 5 covers so that it's a 2 turn repeater, 3 turns is just too much. 
Hela's red is quite good, but if the enemy has no specials out yet it's just strikes on random colors (no direct damage). It's best played when the enemy has special tiles to overwrite of course. 

Played Carol with Goblin a few times to fortify the repeaters and it was fantastic. Brought along Hawkeye to earn additional red AP from expiring CD's, and I had 2 of Carol's repeaters running quickly. Continual damage plus all of the strike tiles was great. 

I would have designed her green differently, and something tells me that Hela's green ability should have been Carol's instead (quite good).

kennn712

RickOShay said:

Champed Carol a few days ago and I think many are giving her a bit of a rough review. I would rather have direct damage abilities over repeaters / CD's, but her red is probably better than Hela's against any random team. If played when there are no dangerous red matches available on the board, Carol's repeater should count down 2 or 3 times (unless you are very unlucky) before the repeater gets matched or destroyed. I use it at 5 covers so that it's a 2 turn repeater, 3 turns is just too much. 
Hela's red is quite good, but if the enemy has no specials out yet it's just strikes on random colors (no direct damage). It's best played when the enemy has special tiles to overwrite of course. 

Played Carol with Goblin a few times to fortify the repeaters and it was fantastic. Brought along Hawkeye to earn additional red AP from expiring CD's, and I had 2 of Carol's repeaters running quickly. Continual damage plus all of the strike tiles was great. 

I would have designed her green differently, and something tells me that Hela's green ability should have been Carol's instead (quite good).

I'm about to champ CM as well so thanks for the insight. I'm assuming you're running her 5/3/5 based on your thoughts?

I didn't realise repeaters worked for Hawkeye's passive ability!

Vhailorx

I do not have her champed, so to be fair this is my thought experiment v. Rick's real world experience. 

To me, this is an unsurprising observation.  Repeater and CD tile powers will generally have higher ceilings than immediate effect powers; that's a truism of the game deaign (otherwise they wouldn't be justifiable even on paper). 

But in practice, being more useful ONLY when (I) there are no dangerous red matches on the board, and (ii) the outcome of the match is and will remain uncertain for several more turns, is not particularly useful in a game where extremely fast victory is substantially more valuable than plodding victory.

And even if we concede that 5carol's red is better than hela's, that does not end the analysis.  In order to get Carol's red, I also have to take her mediocre green and average yellow (and her very high match damage).  But hela's red come along with her very useful black and her exceptionally good green.

And that's before considering collateral requirements like bringing GG or other mid tier 5*s just to cover her weaknesses.  i still think carol is mediocre as designed and plays down because of the long-standing mpq meta that favors speed.

RickOShay

kennn712 said:

RickOShay said:

Played Carol with Goblin a few times to fortify the repeaters and ...

I'm about to champ CM as well so thanks for the insight. I'm assuming you're running her 5/3/5 based on your thoughts?

I didn't realise repeaters worked for Hawkeye's passive ability!

Yes 5/3/5 on Carol, wish I could justify running the green higher but just cant reduce her yellow (way too low at 3 covers). 
Goblin fortifies her repeaters, Not Hawkeye. Clint simply gains a lot of red AP for Carol to use when CD's resolve.

A forum suggestion for running Cable with Carol has proven quite efficient as well. Play Carol's red when you have a ready yellow match on the board. Cable's passive side of his yellow will fortify the repeater for you. Carol passively earns green AP that you will use for Cable's big shot. Use which yellow makes more sense at the time, and bring a purple and black user to round things out if needed. 

RickOShay

Vhailorx said:

I do not have her champed, so to be fair this is my thought experiment v. Rick's real world experience. 

To me, this is an unsurprising observation.  Repeater and CD tile powers will generally have higher ceilings than immediate effect powers; that's a truism of the game deaign (otherwise they wouldn't be justifiable even on paper). 

But in practice, being more useful ONLY when (I) there are no dangerous red matches on the board, and (ii) the outcome of the match is and will remain uncertain for several more turns, is not particularly useful in a game where extremely fast victory is substantially more valuable than plodding victory.

And even if we concede that 5carol's red is better than hela's, that does not end the analysis.  In order to get Carol's red, I also have to take her mediocre green and average yellow (and her very high match damage).  But hela's red come along with her very useful black and her exceptionally good green.

And that's before considering collateral requirements like bringing GG or other mid tier 5*s just to cover her weaknesses.  i still think carol is mediocre as designed and plays down because of the long-standing mpq meta that favors speed.

You are quite right, and just too much of the game favors speed to place well in each event. Keep in mind though, there is a very large player population that clears PvE at their own pace just to reach progression goals. 

Also, the first ~1600 points in Sim may be enjoyed by virtually any team combos. After that you pretty much need to play more meta teams to reach 2000+ with minimal hits.
I try to have fun by adding a lot of variety to climbs. Same goes for the first half of PvP (not shield hopping with Carol obv). This approach makes the game more enjoyable than the slog it can become with the same teams all the time. 
I appreciate posts like yours that clearly state why certain characters are rated lower than others. Way too many comments however simply state that a character is bad without explaining to the general reader why this is. 

areacode212

I’ve been playing her for the couple of weeks or so since I blew open my hoard, and it makes me actively angry how terrible & slow she is. Her red isn’t self-fortifying and doesn’t let the  player choose where it goes, like 4*Carol black? And it only makes strikes on red tiles?

So you have to collect 9 red (which usually takes forever unless you’re  using Thor in which case most red tiles are destroyed anyway so you’ll be getting few strike tiles), then wait another 2 turns before it does anything and hope that the repeater doesn’t get matched away or destroyed. Most games I play with her, I either never get around to placing the tile, or it only activates once or twice, if it doesn’t get destroyed before the first. Hugely frustrating.

Her green is an OK finisher if you have 1 enemy left. I don’t love destroying my hard-earned special tiles/repeaters but if you’re gonna do this, might as well go all in and keep destroying rows if any subsequent destroyed rows contain special tiles. And keep doing damage to subsequent enemies if the first enemy dies.

Still not sure what to make of yellow (rarely use it). If I have Carol repeaters out I don’t usually want to send Carol herself airborne so the repeaters take even longer to resolve. Same with a teammate that has a passive power.  At 3 it doesnt really heal all that much. 5* Doom heals a nice chunk at 3 yellow, he heals 2 teammates at once, doesn’t take them off the board, and gives a good chance for board shake.

So, please rework her. I hardly used her in the Honor Among Thieves PvE even though she was boosted, because she sucks so hard.

Richyyy

I find it pretty ridiculous that they don't just tweak characters that are immediately glaringly terrible, right out of the box. You don't have to completely start from scratch, but for example at least make it so that Marvel's red power activates right away then starts the repeater, rather than having to wait 2 or 3 turns to do anything at all. Or make Loki's green power a 2-turn repeater instead of a 3, like it blatantly ought to be. Or, well, chuck Kingpin in the garbage and try again.

AlexR

Richyyy said:

I find it pretty ridiculous that they don't just tweak characters that are immediately glaringly terrible, right out of the box. You don't have to completely start from scratch, but for example at least make it so that Marvel's red power activates right away then starts the repeater, rather than having to wait 2 or 3 turns to do anything at all. Or make Loki's green power a 2-turn repeater instead of a 3, like it blatantly ought to be. Or, well, chuck Kingpin in the garbage and try again.

Really, all repeaters ought to activate for the first time when you fire them, rather than needing to tick down first before you get the effect. Because the way things are now, repeaters really, really suck.

Loki's 11 AP 3-turn repeater is an especially egregious example. I can probably count the times I've seen Loki's green actually going off on 1 hand, with still plenty of fingers left over, and in at least one of those instances the repeater hit its own row and destroyed itself. All other times, the battle ended long before that thing ever went off. But at least his purple is good. 5* Carol being so reliant on repeaters in multiple of her powers really hurts her a lot.

Glockoma

So, I have love/hate for her. Ultimately, she is slow. 

I champed her back about a month ago and have to say her match damage and health are a check mark in favor of her. 

Her green is probably going to be at 5 covers if I must say myself. Red is too slow and doesn’t auto populate on the board like green will. As stated by other users, it is just not practical in most situations (who is really going to bring a green goblin to a gun fight?). 

Green at 5 will give you her only direct damaging skill and a chance to clear some of the board, albeit at cost of your own special tiles. I believe this is paramount to cap at 5 given this fact. This, however, I believe is how they intended her. She works well with any special tile spammer.

I also agree that I have mixed feelings for her yellow. You cannot use it on herself, it delays all of her passive and active skills. I don’t know if they omitted this fact or if she was supposed to only play with a boosted Vulture. Either way, you must use it on another teammate to avoid losing out on anything good 5* Marvel theoretically brings to the match.

 Pve isn’t so bad with a high level Shuri’s Lab. It allows her to enterprise on her red and green and fortify them herself. She would be much better if allowed to fortify special tiles this way. Otherwise, I’m actually enjoying trying to make her better via team composition, but she is very slow...

Kolence

5/3/5

I wish to chime in too, as I've been trying to play her in pvp as much as I can since champing, around the time it was Gamora's pvp (4-star). And in pve too, but that's more forgiving since I haven't played for serious placement for a long while and could afford to try make some fun teams with her.

Initially, I thought that she looks too slow and that damage might be a bit low. After champing, I have to eat a little crow and admit her damage actually looks ok, thanks to that high match damage. But she's definitely still too slow. In part because the actual repeater numbers could be faster, and in part because the repeaters are too fragile and easily matched away before doing anything even once during the fight.

Maybe it's the novelty of using a different 5* after some time, or I'm just that big/dumb a Carol fan... but I find her kit pretty fun to play so far. Even with all her troubles. Even in pvp. It's hard to make it work in pvp though, 'cause there are serious issues that can ruin that fun potential real quick in practice.

First, her only instant direct damage is green (but even that not necessarily, if it's spec'd <5 covers), so she can't really react well when the enemy has just gotten the AP to fire some abilities.

And green does very nice damage, BUT only if there are a good number of friendly special tiles on the board. So, without other tile spammers around to support her, I often find I'm delaying firing green (and restarting the auto generation of AP) waiting for red to make some (more) tiles.

On top of it all, it's still random. You can reduce the randomness by keeping the green at 4 and having other character that can place special tiles on the same row after her, but then you give a turn to the enemy to mess it all up still, so it's a trade off at best.

Red power big problem is that the repeater is not fortified initially and too often manages to be matched away before making any strikes. 

And lastly, yellow too has to wait for the damage part. Plus using it on her puts the other repeaters on pause while the healing doesn't really keep up with the amount of damage she's taking while tanking a lot with that nice match damage.

Now, for the possible changes that could help for pvp.

There's fortifying the red repeater, maybe at 5 covers, while leaving it at 2 turns at 4 covers. This, I think, would let her be a bit more reliable on her own. 

For her green to be truly reliable though, it would have to let us choose the row (or the tile for the CD). That would also be a power that works much better on offense than in the hands of the AI, which is good? Also, I still don't think it would be too much if matching the green repeater added some strike tiles and /or if it dropped to 2 turns. That's where Gambit has it, and he's not particularly fast (or reliable!) either, now.

Yellow... idk. It offers nice tactical options, but dealing damage up front would help. If it's not too difficult to figure it out, she could also have a passive added that reduces all friendly repeaters by 1 whenever Carol lands after beeing airborne.

In the end, here's a fun team for pve (when there are goons involved preferably) I haven't seen mentioned. Carol with Hulkbuster and St4r-Lord. HB makes red both directly and by adding tiles, which can achieve 3+ repeaters at once, otherwise hard to do as she runs out of available tiles on the board. He also adds special tiles, plus her yellow can heal the damage he takes from black. SL lowers her costs and can place 3 CDs on the same row where her photon CD is, or alternatively with her green at 5, he can use it to "patch" any "empty" rows guaranteeing some extra damage/destruction...

Theadmiralm

So, i have 5*CM on her way to being champed and I've noticed some things...

When her green activates, if it hits a fortified friendly tile it doesn't proc the second hit. 

Also, there are some questionable instances when i thought her passive yellow ap gain should have kicked in, but didn't. Can't think of examples off hand. 

She is solid pve, but far too slow in pvp (i know I'm not saying anything new with that). She needs a fix.

Perhaps:

While captain marvel is airborne her countdown tiles still count down every turn? 

hopper1979

She is very solid pve especially with vulture where you can send him airborn with her yellow but pvp ugh.  If her powers came out protected or like most of these countdown powers they were 1 lower she might be viable but I use here all the time in pve she is a lot of fun there.

MegaBee

As of November 16 2020, her green power no longer destroys friendly tiles.

Glockoma

R.I.P...

ThaRoadWarrior

At some point since that November nerf, perhaps at the same time, her Red passive was adjusted to create 2x yellow per friendly strike destroyed by a means other than a match, but there still aren't too many good options by which to create an engine for that.

Kolence

5/3/5

ThaRoadWarrior said:

At some point since that November nerf, perhaps at the same time, her Red passive was adjusted to create 2x yellow per friendly strike destroyed by a means other than a match, but there still aren't too many good options by which to create an engine for that.

No it hasn't.
She was making 2 yellow AP off of a destroyed Strike tile always.
Here's a video (that survived purges... ) I dug up from September '20.

https://youtu.be/Wc1U0OjSOTk