***** Magneto (Age of Apocalypse) *****

DAZ0273

I'm still not clear on how the 8 blows of damage work - is it random like BRB or is it more like Sabretooth/Valkyrie where it hits one character at a time and moves on if they are downed?

Bad

I proved yellow power conversion on the mycolojester.

DAZ0273

AXP_isme said:

When he's airborne what happens to his repeaters? Also, when he's airborne do we assume his +% protect buff is removed? 

I imagine Magneto protecting his allies then he goes airborne to survey the battlefield and returns triumphantly to find his allies have been beaten to a pulp in his absence. 

Magneto always did treat his allies well!

ThaRoadWarrior

Bad said:

I proved yellow power conversion on the mycolojester.

What does this mean?

Bad

I proved that all attack tiles on color selected on the mycolojester turned allied protect.
If he turns invisible you can prove all what you want, even his airborne.
But I doubt his passive ceases to work on protects, like he was dead.
About ihulk, like I said magneto brb and polaris quickly reduced all AoE.

ThaRoadWarrior

lol; mine defaulted to Magn3to and i was like "huh, that sure was a choice..." didn't even realize he was playable.

Bad

ThaRoadWarrior said:

lol; mine defaulted to Magn3to and i was like "huh, that sure was a choice..." didn't even realize he was playable.

Better than me, it defaulted to magneto2. Eagle eyed, live devs use to say.

ThaRoadWarrior

So i just went back in and fired off Mag5' yellow, and the 3 protect tiles do not seem to be receiving any benefit from having Profe$$or X, an active X-Man ally, on the board. 3x 96pt protect tiles totalling up to 288pts when i select one of them and look at the special tile popup. 

Went back in again, and confirmed that Mag5 blue only does yellow conversion one time at liftoff. there doesn't appear to be a return from airborne animation either.

The way yellow seems to work if you pick a color that has some empty basics and some SAPs on it is that it will randomly select some tiles from that color, and add a new special if it's empty and strengthen whatever it lands on that's already there, so it won't just default to strengthing tiles without creating more if some are present.

I confirmed that his repeaters definitely don't count down while he's airborne. Because it's a solo opponent, it's impossible to know how his blue multihit targeting behaves (valkyrie style or BRB style)

PiMacleod

so... wait... you can convert normal basic tiles to a protect tile?  but it targets enemy specials first?  is that the deal?  I was kinda foggy on the details, but its starting to come together...

sounds like, if the color selected has enemy specials, it converts them to friendly protects. If there are friendly specials, it strengthens them.  If there are more basic tiles leftover, it converts those to friendly protects.  

Is that it?  Do I got it? 

Edit:  I just re-read it in the game.  So, it sounds like I got it correct -- however, at best, it only targets FOUR tiles.  Four.  If I select green as the color of choice, that's only four of them covered.  It MIGHT slow Hulk down for a couple turns.  Which -- I'll admit -- might be enough time to do something... but that's a couple of turns that Okoye is also matching TU tiles, just biding her time.  All this focus on what Hulk is doing with Okoye's powers, and the potential 3rd person in the enemy party (prof5? onslaught?  anyone?)  is still benefiting from Okoye.

I dunno -- it just seems like a lot of this is relying on board luck.  I REALLY hope I'm wrong.  Because I'm also hoping I get a better pull ratio for Mags than I did for iHulk (sitting at 5 covers for iHulk, when doing the same thing I've always done, I've champed Onslaught, SamDak, Yelena, Apoc, etc).

Bad

PiMacleod said:

so... wait... you can convert normal basic tiles to a protect tile?  but it targets enemy specials first?  is that the deal?  I was kinda foggy on the details, but its starting to come together...

sounds like, if the color selected has enemy specials, it converts them to friendly protects. If there are friendly specials, it strengthens them.  If there are more basic tiles leftover, it converts those to friendly protects.  

Is that it?  Do I got it? 

To be honest I doubt there could be anybody that understands that text. Personally I selected enemy tile and 3 enemy tiles on that color turned protect.

ThaRoadWarrior

PiMacleod said:

[...].  It MIGHT slow Hulk down for a couple turns.  [...]

In my experience combatting Hulkoye, you get a couple turns to solve your problem, or you lose. and in this case your problem is Okoye. So if you can use Magneto to fill up green and then turn more basic green to yellow relatively fast, you may have a contender. That might be a good use of Nightcrawler with +4 to purple and blue, then pray there's a purple or blue match around in those first few turns. With the new spicy vault giving out +2 to all pretty regularly, this strategy may hold up for pushing through to some progression milestone.

Vhailorx

a few thoughts after trying him out in "introducing"

(1) he only converts green -> yellow once when casting blue.  this is bad.  it means his 3 turns airborne is a real detriment.

(2) damage from his blue appears to be most similar to valkyrie or sabretooth red.  it's multiple ticks of damage, but also targeted (unlike brb green).  So it doesn't work against invis opponents, but will transfer from one target to the next if a tick of damage kills someone.  hard to test in this sandbox with strike tiles, but I would assume that both strikes and damage boosters (like okoye/apoc) will work per-tick.  so the damage on this power could scale really high. 

(3) the repeater tiles do appear to tick off individually as well, suggesting that they can stack with damage boosts as well.  That's good.  unfortunately, they all spawn on the same color (like OMD) so they can be a bit vulnerable (especially if you run thorkoye and have a board that's flush with purple).

(4) as expected by most, his yellow was just missing a comma.  So it works as follows: (i) players choose a color, (ii) game randomly selects some tiles of that color, and (iii) if the selected tiles are basic or enemy SAP tiles, they are overwritten with friendly protects, or (iv) if the selected tiles are friendly SAPs, they are strengthened.  I think the basic takeaway is that this is a fine power, but not one that can be used to reliably boost anything except protect tile strength (absent some teammate that can flood one color with strikes or attacks, e.g., blade or hela). there's just too much RNG and it maxes out at 4 tiles.  plus you don't really want to use yellow at all anyway to charge up the blue nuke. 

Overall, I don't think this tiny sample of him has made me much more optimistic.  He has tons of damage potential with all of his damage ticks.  But his powers are slow and cumbersome, he has very little self-acceleration, and he is both squishy and hard to hide.  so a modern, 'meh' 5* that is clearly better than older 5*s thanks to power creep, but is unlikely to break into the meta (i am not even sure that an ideal partner would save him because he remains quite slow).

Seems like 5/3/5 if you intend to use him for damage output, or 5/3/5 if you want to play protect tile games. but maybe 3/5/5 is actually the way to go because the blue is just too clunky to use reliably?

MoosePrime

ThaRoadWarrior said:

So i just went back in and fired off Mag5' yellow, and the 3 protect tiles do not seem to be receiving any benefit from having Profe$$or X, an active X-Man ally, on the board. 3x 96pt protect tiles totalling up to 288pts when i select one of them and look at the special tile popup.

That's normal for this type of tile buffing.  It doesn't show on the board, but you should be able to tell by looking at the damage numbers.

See also:  Venom (Eddie Brock) -> enemy protect tiles, Black Suit Spider-Man -> enemy attack tiles, Wolverine (Samurai Daken) -> enemy strike, attack and protect tiles.

Polares

Well, it seems his blue damage can be very good if buffed by Okoye/Apoc or strikes, and that it might move from one target to another after the first one is dead. Of course, this means not using his active yellow for anything as you want to keep all the yellow AP.
Also we now know for sure that his repeaters dont do anything while he is Airbone. It leaves those tiles for 3 turns without doing anything! If it was one turn It would not be that bad but 3 turns is A LOT.

This character is a really great demonstration of bad game design. His blue conflicts with his two other powers !!!! Cheap yellow active vs storing yellow to do damage and then repeater tiles vs going airbone for 3 turns!!!  Who designed this guy?!?!?!

ThaRoadWarrior

Right on - I was expecting that the little protect total would be what the tile says, then the overall total would be the modified version, but I guess not.

ThaRoadWarrior

The time is ultra ripe for someone who can mess with Repeater timers to drop. Some sort of Flaptain or Coulson-like ability to short them by a turn based off of something, ideally a passive. In fact, given the current protect tile meta, just reworking it so Flaptain shortens them every blue match would be a great change.

PiMacleod

I've been waiting for repeater manipulators for quite some time now.  Sure, we can fortify them... but that's it, really.  Seems like a no-brainer, since repeaters affect all tiers except 1*.  

If there could be a Coulson-like ability somewhere for repeaters, so that you can force repeaters to activate... imagine.  Just imagine.  Use some board manipulators to trigger it (i.e. match TU tiles like Coulson requires), and still keep your turn going.  Maybe this is WHY they don't wanna do it... but I don't see it being any more OP than the current meta.  Maybe some day, on their next iteration of characters we already have copies of.  ;P

Bad

Polares said:

Also we now know for sure that his repeaters dont do anything while he is Airbone. It leaves those tiles for 3 turns without doing anything! If it was one turn It would not be that bad but 3 turns is A LOT.

At level 4 2 turns. Now its the choice of the player 2 or 3.
Check on a really long battle with invisibility. When he is airborne protects buff works and repeaters not.
When he lands legion was toasted.
In fact the tiles he converts to yellow aid to fuel his landing blow.

LavaManLee

Bad said:

Polares said:

Also we now know for sure that his repeaters dont do anything while he is Airbone. It leaves those tiles for 3 turns without doing anything! If it was one turn It would not be that bad but 3 turns is A LOT.

At level 4 2 turns. Now its the choice of the player 2 or 3.
Check on a really long battle with invisibility. When he is airborne protects buff works and repeaters not.
When he lands legion was toasted.
In fact the tiles he converts to yellow aid to fuel his landing blow.

I fail to see how this is good in the long run.  When would you rather have a player out of the fray for three turns?

ThaRoadWarrior

When iHulk is dying and reviving and you’re desperately chasing blue?