Captain Hammertime and his broken friends

Chrynos1989

What’s it lately with all those broken chars? Juggs, ProfX, Captain Hits-every-nail, is it some giant troll? If yes, it’s a job well done.
And sorry for all the sarcasm, it was that or smashing my own head against a brick wall...

Edit: I admit that the original title was badly chosen and I excuse for any bad feelings it caused, it was chosen in a high state of frustration and after a 36h period of sleep deprivation

Chrynos1989

OJSP said:

What's broken about them?

You serious? Try to beat cap / Barton in pvp and ask again

Tony_Foot

I don’t have enough experience going against cap and Clint to comment really, but I haven’t lost to those I’ve tried. But the others mentioned I certainly don’t bat an eyelid facing. I don’t see them as broken at all. I’ve had a couple of fights go badly against prof. I’ve won but got hurt but surely that’s the point. 

I still wish cap was a 5* though.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

My main team ATM is Bart/CapHam/XFDP, the amount of blue and red....Holy ****

bluewolf

ThatOneGuyjp189512 said:

My main team ATM is Bart/CapHam/XFDP, the amount of blue and red....Holy tinykitty

After the AI's first match I had 30 Red and blue AP.

But JJ/HE/Worthy....that's the one everyone is running.

tiomono

You just need to hit cap lightly just like bishop. At least cap only really shines with Hawkeye. Bishop shines with anybody. But yeah worthycap Hawkeye is absurd. Do not put bishop in vs worthy cap hawkeye if you team him with a 5*.

If they pop your bishops overclocked 2 times in one turn. That 24 blue and 16 red the enemy team gets on their next turn. Plus whatever cascades cap gets converting yellow to blue and red. It gets ugly quick.

Chrynos1989

OJSP said:

I haven't seen any of that team yet. I can see why that would be tricky.. but I think I can beat that team with IM40 or Vulture and someone who stuns with blue.

For every hit cap takes, he creates around 5 1-turn-countdown tiles, every countdown tile that expires gives Barton 2 red and 2 blue, worst case Barton ends with 30 red and 30 blue after your first turn, spamming you with high damage red and all his blue skills, which are also countdown tiles and give him red and blue again, oh, and cap jumps in front every time and negates a lot of the incoming damage

tiomono

OJSP said:

tiomono said:

Do not put bishop in vs worthy cap if you team him with a 5*.

Why? He could fuel Dr Strange quite effectively. And also, are we talking a 3-on-3 or 2-on-2 situation here?

Again, like I've said before in a different post a long time ago, I don't really enjoy theory-crafting because I like to play around against a team with what I have. But, I imagine the mechanics that makes Worthy Cap useful in the team could be countered by different teams.

The synergy with Hawkeye is not entirely different to Hawkeye's synergy with Loki, Coulson, Gambit or any other CD makers. The spammability of Hawkeye's powers make that team really vulnerable against Dr.Strange.

The synergy with JJ is due to potential cascades the CDs create when resolving and subsequent powers they can use with those APs. There are lots of characters that punish cascades, so I'm quite confident they are beatable too. 

So, this comes back to my question above. What is broken? Fast AP gain from the CDs? The high chance of making cascades? The low damage threshold? All of them?

We've had a lot of teams that were able to punch above their weight and of course if they were truly broken, they ended up getting their powers changed (a few examples off the top of my head: 3*Magneto, 3*Spidey, 3*Ragnarok - all got their powers updated, but some characters with good synergy still exist: 3* Hulk and Patch - Hulkbombing, Patch and Loki, 4* Captain Marvel and Sentry, 4*s Rocket, Gamora, Medusa, etc.) With my lvl 300s Rulk, Carol and Valkyrie, I've managed to beat some lvl 500+ teams. Are they broken too? 

At the moment, I see Worthy Cap can be problematic, but there has to be a criteria before we call every strong new character broken. I see this problem more of a power creep issue.

Hawkeye, worthy cap just gets crazy fast. So say you take bishop and any other 5*. You match 3 cap jumps up and slaps down 4 cd's. Now it's their turn 4 cooldowns go off. They gain 12 blue 8 red. And likely get a cascade from cd's going off and changing yellow to blue or red. That likely hits bishop which procs cap again. 

I think Hawkeye cap may be a counter to bishop with a 5*. But it's pretty early for me to tell.

dkffiv

OJSP said:

tiomono said:

Hawkeye, worthy cap just gets crazy fast. So say you take bishop and any other 5*. You match 3 cap jumps up and slaps down 4 cd's. Now it's their turn 4 cooldowns go off. They gain 12 blue 8 red. And likely get a cascade from cd's going off and changing yellow to blue or red. That likely hits bishop which procs cap again. 

So, does that mean we have 10 blue AP? We can just stun Hawkeye and let Cap use up the red and blue. I think Cap will be downed by one or two of my Strange's Flames. During that time, maybe Bishop makes another 10 blue AP?

Captains blue is preferred over Hawkeye unless HE is stunned.  It's like Bishop team stun all over again

WiDoW0042

I think the Hawkeye/C4p/other is an effective counter to the Gritty/Bishop team.  Case in point, I was attacking an H/C/JJ team with my G/B team.  Made one move, sat for five minutes watching the countdown chaos and AP climb, and bam! Bishop down.  Made one more move and then the rest of my team was gone.  Two moves and done.

tiomono

OJSP said:

dkffiv said:

Captains blue is preferred over Hawkeye unless HE is stunned.  It's like Bishop team stun all over again

So, why can't we make a match with Bishop or the other character other than Strange and let Strange hit Cap with Flames? I appreciate Bishop might only tank red. This is exactly the reason why I don't like theory crafting about a match. There's a lot of factors involved to complicate the situation.

Look. I'm not denying that Hawkeye Worthy Cap would be a good combination. But, it's quite telling that in S2 I haven't seen it used since his release event (and during that event Coulson was boosted to make things worse, so I instinctively avoided it).

I see a lot of Okoye Strange Bishop instead, so maybe people are wary of Hawkeye Cap and using that team as a deterrent?

I have already run across 4 teams with worthy Hawkeye. When more people get cap covered buckle up.

tiomono

It was in slice 1. One was a champed cap. One had around 8 covers 4 yellow. 

jredd

i took on that team not realizing what i was getting into. not sure what level ham-cap was, but before i knew what was going on i was done.

obviously the devs don't see this as a broken mechanic cause now there's two characters that jump to the front and cause a high loss probability.

Lopan15

I have yet to beat Hawkeye and hammer cap.  As stated by others, the AP gain and cascades that create even more red and blue is too fast to overcome, even with strange.  All teams I've tried have had JJ which the AI fires her red first and often.

PiMacleod

I see this as a breath of fresh air for now....

How many topics about 'boring PvP climbs' are there? 

Its all thorkoye...

Or

Its all gritty....

Or

Its all grittyshop...

You get the point.

If a new character made 5* Hawkeye relevant again, awesome.  If its a new problem to work around, even better.

Besides, theres a mechanic ive been waiting for the devs to implement into a character.  A reactionary "When an enemy countdown reaches 0,..." sort of ability.  Maybe itll happen soon...

Tony_Foot

The only issue is how I get my own Hawkeye. If these people with him smash the floating bishops, well thats a plus.

Arctic_One

I am now officially a 5* player transitioning to 4* land

bluewolf

Over in slice 5, all I find is Troll Team Cap now that I have 900+.

shap328

I don’t get it. People have complained about Bishop forever and now there’s a legit counter and people complain about the counter?

The top complaint is lack of variety in PVP and now all these characters are being released specifically designed to break some of the meta. It’s forcing people to take time to pick their teams or opponents instead of steam rolling with one team. 

Operating as designed, IMO. 

HoundofShadow

These are 5* players' common complains (generally speaking):

1) Majority of 4* are useless
2) New 4* are just characters to take up their roster slots, soon to be forgotten.
3) Majority of 5* are useless, except being used as a meat shields

What happens when we get 4* that are useful, breathe life into old 5* characters, and are awesome?

1) They are broken: therefore, they should be nerfed.
2) 4* characters should not be allowed to take down 5* characters.
3) 4* characters should be bulldozed by 5* characters, not stopping them in their track or make their fights more difficult.

Adapt.

CharlieCroker

HoundofShadow said:

These are 5* players' common complains (generally speaking):

1) Majority of 4* are useless
2) New 4* are just characters to take up their roster slots, soon to be forgotten.
3) Majority of 5* are useless, except being used as a meat shields

What happens when we get 4* that are useful, breathe life into old 5* characters, and are awesome?

1) They are broken: therefore, they should be nerfed.
2) 4* characters should not be allowed to take down 5* characters.
3) 4* characters should be bulldozed by 5* characters, not stopping them in their track or make their fights more difficult.

Adapt.

I'm not going to pretend your observations are without merit.  A lot of newer 4*s haven't been particularly useful and haven't got a lot of play time.  The same unfortunately applies for the majority of recently released 5*s, although Iceman and Prof X hopefully are a sign of better things to come.

However there is a big difference between useful and broken.  Take the most common 4* partner for 5* players pre Bishop/Worthy which was Chavez - she is very strong particularly with combos that generate ap quickly, and occasionally can be a threat on defence - but she does nothing that fundamentally changes how the game has always been played and doesn't have a mechanic which makes making a match-3 generate the enemy team multiple times the ap you gain.

I could also point to multiple 4* tier characters who are fun, strong, sometimes dangerous on defence, but not broken.  CM4, Vulture, Iron Fist, Riri, Iceman, Mordo, Peggy and many many others.

And for your second/fifth point, there is nothing wrong with 4* characters taking down 5* characters.  I enjoy doing so, mostly with the boosted 4* characters that have health and power damage comparable and in some cases better than a champed 5*.  However there is something seriously wrong when a unboosted low level and in some cases unchamped 4* has a mechanic which has almost no counter and gets skipped in favour of a trio of 550's.

As with Bishop, the thresholds for the damage Worthy intercepts/triggers needs to be substantially raised or the mechanic changed.  As I've mentioned in other threads, MPQ is a game and should be fun.  Matches both with and against Bishop and/or Worthy are in my experience very unfun and frustrating and the end result is spending less time and money on the game.