***** Mister Sinister (Nathaniel Essex) *****

RickOShay

The Developers seem to have missed the memo about adding stun-immunity when you have 4+ traps out...

Also, we should be careful not to level Mr.S too high or he will tank black over Okoye.

I'm not overly excited about characters who cannot deal a fixed amount of direct damage. But I do like his potential in some settings. 

Defensively he will be helpful against Professor X and Jessica when they trigger passive damage. Also, when the enemy team cascades into a big critical tile match, assuming you have some black AP on hand in these cases. 

I hope the traps add up faster than they are seeming to on paper. Outside of goons triggering them in PvE, I usually try to prevent enemy powers from being fired off very often, making his purple less 'useful'. 
Not to mention, I will probably regret going against Kitty when she gets lucky enough to fire off her red CD. These traps & small ticks of damage everywhere may become a huge liability (think BRB & his CD, eww). 

Once you fire Mr. Sinister's blue though, you have multiple opportunities to deal lots of damage if you can match those specific traps away (or the enemy). This will usually be great, but be careful against sending enemy Thor under 50% too early in the match. 

wymtime

MrEd95 said:

Vhailorx said:

Purple: 

Potentially interesting, as enough enemy casts will make a lot of tiles that result in a lot of AP shenanigans.  But most meta teams are laregoy passive, and won't be casting many abilities until they can drop opponents.  

I think you are sleeping on him a little bit here. The fact that there are so many traps going off on matches is what will make him useful against the passive matchers like gritty. It’s true that you would lose a bit of the ap steal, but the opponent will be overly reliant on matches and will constantly slip up.

Regardless of all this, he will be fantastic in pve against the hoards of ’tile mover + 2 goons’ nodes in every event. Especially the kingpin/muscle/don level in webbed wonder

The big difference for his purple is PVE be PVP.  In PVE this passive could be really good against goons and how they spam tiles putting out his traps.  In PVP is purple will be fairly useless since the enemy typically does not fire a power.

for his black it could be beneficial against gritty teams with those trap tiles being able to damage kitty down especially with Okoye beefing them up.  His blue I am waiting on seeing how he plays.

the downside is in his black when he is fully leveled to see how often those trap tiles go out.  The issue might be his black will take too much damage to truly spam tiles.  Also if the trap tiles need to be matched or if the work when destroyed on match 4’s.  If the tiles just need to be destroyed he could be really fun to play.

unfortunately I don’t think his black will fire often enough kind of like Icemans yellow.  Also no other trap tile works when destroyed making those traps worse.  Overall I think this is a character who is interesting conceptually but will fall short in reality

wymtime

RickOShay said:

You guys missed the memo about adding stun-immunity if you have 4+ traps out...


Once you fire Mr. Sinister's blue though, you have multiple opportunities to deal lots of damage if you can match those specific traps away (or the enemy). This will usually be great, but be careful against sending enemy Thor under 50% too early in the match. 

I have reread the powers and I am not seeing any stun immunity?  Can you please point out which power that is and at what level?

Tiger_Wong

Y’know..... Black Cat makes trap tiles too. 

ThaRoadWarrior

The purple is the anti-hawkeye Power. CapHawk stays firing off powers after you’ve made your first match and given them 30 red and blue. Since that team so often features JJ, they’ll be sliding you a free trap or two for your trouble, and then if you aren’t stunnned they’ll be cascading into your traps for you too.

HoundofShadow

Immediately, I thought of Iceman's yellow ability when I saw his black.


Question:

If I pair him with 5* Iceman and a third member, I wonder whose damage prevention will trigger if the opponent deals enough damage to the third member, say 10,000, assuming I have 3 black and 3 teamup ap?

Black power: max 2 trap tiles, deals 2767 damage each

Purple power: 3 trap tiles everytime enemy fires power. If opponent has more than 3 ap when those trap tiles are matched, steal 3 of them, if not destroy them.

Blue power: 8ap, creates 3 trap tiles. Deals 3395 * 8 = 27,160 damage

Question:

Do the 3 trap tiles created by the blue power deal 27,160 x 3 = 81, 480 (assuming condition met), or all 3 trap tiles deal a maximum of 27,160 damage?

Vhailorx

ThaRoadWarrior said:

The purple is the anti-hawkeye Power. CapHawk stays firing off powers after you’ve made your first match and given them 30 red and blue. Since that team so often features JJ, they’ll be sliding you a free trap or two for your trouble, and then if you aren’t stunnned they’ll be cascading into your traps for you too.

Except HE means worthy, worthy means sinister will be stunned by round 2. . .

Sinister is not a useless character, but he a very limited role in a passive-heavy meta.  And mpq has always had a passive + heavy meta.

RickOShay

HoundofShadow said:

Immediately, I thought of Iceman's yellow ability when I saw his black.



Blue power: 8ap, creates 3 trap tiles. Deals 3395 * 8 = 27,160 damage

Question:

Do the 3 trap tiles created by the blue power deal 27,160 x 3 = 81, 480 (assuming condition met), or all 3 trap tiles deal a maximum of 27,160 damage?

I can't tell if you are being serious or joking.

But I'm sure we should read that power as "a match including one or more of these trap tiles deals up to 8x 3395".

There is definitely potential over a couple of turns to match 1 of these, then another separately, then another, etc. 

HoundofShadow

The 80k damage seems virtually impossible because it will be broken for 8 ap.

I wonder what's going to happen to the other 2 trap tiles once any of those three are matched. The trap tiles created by blue power says:

Creates 3 Trap tiles that deal 469 damage for each friendly Trap tile on the board (including these tiles; up to 8 tiles) when matched by either team. 

Level 5: Trap tiles deal 844 damage for each friendly Trap tile. (Max level - 3395 damage per tile)

So, it's 3395 * 8 = 27, 160. So, I guess the other two trap tiles created by his blue power will have their effects removed while staying on the board to prevent confusion, assuming you fire his blue a second time and can't remember which trap tiles were created by the second blue power?

Edit: I just went to look at how America Chavez's and Dr. Doom's trap tiles work. It specifically removes all those trap tiles after dealing damage.

RickOShay

Right, but Black Cat and Mysterio's traps operate independently of each other. Meaning, when one deals damage upon being matched, the others remain in place.

I'm definitely hoping that Sinister's traps from Behold! work independently as well (unless there's more than 1 in a single match, that's too OP). 

Comparatively, America and 3Doom's abilities state 'and removes them', and 'disables them' to deal the damage. 

@HoundofShadow
@IceIX

jamesh

Vhailorx said:

Black:

If the damage threshold were lower (so it proc'd of a 5* match 3) this would be a good power, and would effectively prevent the opponent from collecting/using black.  As is, this will proc only for enemy powers/strike boosted matches. I don't think it will slow down any of the meta teams.

The power drains friendly black AP, so won't affect the enemy's AP collection.  You're essentially spending 2 black AP to soften a hit that would deal > 10% of his health, with the possibility of dealing some additional damage down the road if the traps are matched.

I imagine it could work quite well against multi-hit attacks if the hits exceed the damage threshold. An Okoye-boosted Sabretooth red could add eight traps to the board, for instance.

HoundofShadow

Mysterio creates 5 blue trap tiles. Assuming each deals 1000 damage, you get a total of 5000 damage.

If you matched one of his blue trap tile, you deal 1000 damage and the other 4 trap tiles remain. So, your total trap tile damage is 4000.

For Mr Sinister, He creates 3 trap tiles that deals 3395 damage for each friendly trap tiles, up to 8 of them, when they are matched.

I guess it's another unspoken rule just like how America Chavez don't count Dr Doom or any other characters' trap tiles to process her passive damage. For Mr Sinister, the unspoken rule is his other two trap tiles will remain on the board but the effects will be removed?

I rarely play characters with trap tiles so, pardon me for my ignorance. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I read this as working the way P4nther's extra damage from matching Protect tiles works, so each one is going to calculate the number of traps on the board at the time of it being matched, which could lead to some serious damage in a cascade. Those two previously referenced powers, 3* Doom and Chavez both explicitly tell you they remove the traps, and this power does not.

As for being stunned by turn 2 off of CapHawk, I only see that team in pick-3 pvp (usually with JJ in the middle), it's all bishop all the time in pick 2, so there is room for someone who can stay awake for a second, maybe. At any rate, I don't know that I believe yet that purple power WILL defeat the AP gain, i'm just saying it seems like that it was an attempt at it.

HoundofShadow

I find his blue power unbelievable at a total of 81k damage for 8 ap over a few turns, even though you need to match all those three trap tiles to achieve it, assuming it works like Panth4r's passive damage.

If Mr. Sinister is an attempt to stop Bishop from gaining ap, wouldn't Peggy Carter be better? She increases enemy power cost by 4 ap, and Bishop's passive blue ap gain stops once they have 10 blue ap, cascades aside.  Make 2 match-3 by 5*, Bishop gains 10 blue ap and his passive turns into active power that costs 10ap. With Peggy Carter, he needs 14 blue ap to cast his stun. So, unless he lucks into blue matches, you will be taking damage at most until he's dead, and your team won't get stunlocked.

leoperez90

I dont know how I feel about him. He sounds okay, nothing meta breaking or stopping other characters (bishop/wcap) jump in front protect ability. (It was wishful thinking this character was gonna be a solution for this since they started the other thread on rebalancing characters)
I'm reading what you guys are saying and sounds valid. Just gonna have to wait and see until he is released. 

Vhailorx

jamesh said:

Vhailorx said:

Black:

If the damage threshold were lower (so it proc'd of a 5* match 3) this would be a good power, and would effectively prevent the opponent from collecting/using black.  As is, this will proc only for enemy powers/strike boosted matches. I don't think it will slow down any of the meta teams.

The power drains friendly black AP, so won't affect the enemy's AP collection.  You're essentially spending 2 black AP to soften a hit that would deal > 10% of his health, with the possibility of dealing some additional damage down the road if the traps are matched.

I imagine it could work quite well against multi-hit attacks if the hits exceed the damage threshold. An Okoye-boosted Sabretooth red could add eight traps to the board, for instance.

Yeah, I misread it as draining enemy black ap.

wymtime

so I i did a little experiment to see what my highest level 5* could do in a match 4 match damage.  My Iceman is a level 475 and his yellow does 990 damage.  I found a match 4 of blue his weakest power 770 damage got up to 7370 damage.  This means a 5* match four could trigger his black.  If a match 4 is going to trigger his passive in PVP he could get some traps out before you fire blue.

  I am still not a fan of his purple but can see a lot of trap tiles going out in PVE letting his blue be good in PVE.

biggest issues is when he comes out and has a boost his black will really struggle to get traps out.  I think he will do well in PVE and think in PVE 3,5,5 will be the best build.  PVP it is 5,3,5.

i see much better use in PVE for this 5* as a 3rd.  I am not seeing a natural partner for him

RickOShay

On a team that has no black outlet, this guy might make it quite difficult to deal big damage. The AI will continue to make black matches, and every time you fire a power against them he will be producing traps. He's another one you'll need to be taking out first. Deny black like crazy, and bring a stunner as others have mentioned. 

And what happens when AoE damage is fired at Mr. Sinister's team, and he has the requisite 6 black AP (or 9)?  Does he reduce that damage for each on his team, and produce 6 traps? Oof. 

HoundofShadow

This guy is anti high-damage and anti-active power spammer. So, those are his strengths.

Domino comes to mind. The more black tiles on the board, the higher the chances of trap tiles landing on black tiles, the easier it is to match them. Dr Doom's yellow helps too because it creates matches and there goes your rainbow team, with most colours covered:

Domino: red and green active power
Dr Doom: Black and Yellow active power
Mr Sinister: Blue active power

It's a guarantee the AI will fire each of their respective powers without overlap.

I assume it works similarly to Iceman's passive damage prevention. Their wordings are similar:

Mr Sinister:

If an enemy would deal 1735 or more damage and the friendly team has at least 3 Black AP, drain 3 friendly Black AP, prevent up to 1215 damage, and create 2 Trap tiles that deal 417 damage when matched by either team.

Iceman:

If an enemy would deal more than 8428 damage and you have at least 3 Team-Up AP, Iceman protects his friends with an ice wall stronger than steel. Prevents 8428 damage, drains 3 friendly Team-Up AP, and creates a 2-turn Yellow Countdown tile that does 8428 damage to Iceman.

I think a lot of players are sleeping on this guy and he has huge potential to be an annoying character.

Bad

He has the potential to win the battle. Traps are turns infinite and he can fill the board with them. 
Plus JJ and iceman trigger their tramps if allies match them altought stunned. Can he do it too?
And the best part is the ap drain. He can suck dry the enemy ap and steal for him relatively at will. In pve is a great feature.
So, in ofense I think is really good. In defense, really anoying.