***** Cyclops (Phoenix Five) *****

Tiger_Wong

Some people just want to watch the world burn I guess. 

ThaRoadWarrior

If Ghost Rider's tiles could be damage boosted, I feel like he'd be good actually. Because of this thread I've been running him in PVP Matchmaking with Ghostpool and Thor, feeling a bit nostalgic for the days when he was my only 5* champion lol. His black still slaps pretty hard, considering he is self accelerating. I prefer Ghostpool's red.

Akoni

LavaManLee said:

I know this is only the second day of his "Introduction" but he already seems worse than 5Mags.  The other problem is, based on other characters you might run him with, when would you ever use his green/yellow/red?  None of them are better than 5Thor/Okoye/Apoc that you might pair him with.  Maybe he's meant to go with 5PX or Kitty?  I really do not understand this character at all.

I know that the possibility is slim, but if the rest of the Phoenix Five were released with supporting/synchronous powers, he could turn out to be good. If he is a one-off, then I'm afraid I will have to agree with you.

Polares

After playing with him I realised that his red is even worse than expected Placing the repeater tiles in only red tiles is a big fail, as it stops you from matching red sometimes, and what it is worse, when you fire green, if you are lucky and get a cascade, there is a big chance of losing some repeaters to red cascades.

RickOShay

Heimdall plays decently well when fortifying GRRR's repeaters, so I'm hoping that he is fun at least with Cyclops. 

Chase Cyke's red and play it as soon as you also have 6 blue.  Use Heimdall to fortify those 3 red repeaters immediately. This keeps them safer and also reduces your red ability costs by 2 (or 3 at level 5). 
The color overlap isn't ideal, so I'd only play these two when your 3rd has a useful purple and/or black*. 

Hopefully the tile swaps from yellow, or the cascades from the repeaters, helps to align more blue matches for you. That way you can then choose green tiles to fortify to reduce Cyke's cost to 7. Getting a 2-turn stun, adding red to the board, and potentially overwriting enemy specials will be great for just 7 AP. 

I -could- see fortifying green first instead of red to get things going that way, but it seems more risky. 

*Green Goblin plays well enough with Heimdall already, since he automatically fortifies your 3rd ally's repeaters (and CD's), With these 2 and Cyclops, you can play Heimdall's blue on green right away and hope Goblin gets the red repeaters fortified safely for you.

None of this applies against Hulkoye teams. Thank goodness the first 500+ points in any event allows for team experimentation!

Bad

I played him another time,  I thought his swapping couldnt be so bad.
The second time I fired it I had 27 TU. He changed all board and he didnt match anything! That amazed me.
We are talking about collecting 7AP and then  collecting TU. For that cost he should swap good things at the very least.
But following morphy's rule, of course he will mess his own repeaters or special tiles.

I think I didnt talk about his nuke. 13 AP is excesive. Plus he needs TU for increasing and make a decent damage. It seems like the powers designed 3 years ago.
Perhaps devs thought that his swapping was a huge incoming of AP always and for that reason they increased a lot all his AP costs. Now he is leaning on luck.

Akoni

I tried teaming 5Cy up with Magik. It wasn't bad. It wasn't good either. I was able to generate a decent amount of Red and Green AP. In order to get it rolling, though, I had to use 5Cy's Red power to make repeaters which got me Green AP. 5Cy's Green power created lots of Red tiles. Magik's purple got me more Red tiles.

The problem with it is it generates AP just to generate AP. It's more or less cyclical. If at any time Red AP is used for anything else, no more Green. If Green is used for anything else, no more Red. The solution to this is a 3rd character who has a game-ending or game-changing Red and/or Green power that would give purpose to the AP cycle. 

Oh, and it's slow. REAAAAALLLLLYYYYYYY slow. With no real way to reliably stall, I cannot fathom a PVP match lasting long enough for it to work. The same problem occurs in PVE. If there are no (or too few) repeater tiles left, once the AP cycle is broken, it will need to be restarted.

I really like his Yellow power, but I'm having trouble building a team around that too. Has anyone tested a 5Cy, Elsa, Sandman or 5Cy, Elsa, Cloak team? That's all I got. I'm kinda grasping at straws here.

sinnerjfl

The tile swapping is just as bad as 3* Loki's purple, might be even worse. It will rarely give you a free match so its really just some minor shuffling, it's not good.

Playing him is just painful, red's damage is pathetic and 3 turn repeaters that are not fortified, really?!!?. The effect is not even good anyway, removing 1 green tile per proc...  ridiculous.

Green indeed makes it so that your repeaters are probably just gonna get destroyed (this is very similar to Phoenix adding red and removing all of her strike tiles because they're also on red, bleh).

He is very very bad. Dissapointing.

Tiger_Wong

Y’know...... Havok is actually a pretty good partner for Cyclops thanks to his blue. Mine is only 3/3/3 but the synergy is there. Team the brothers up with Scott’s son Cable, fortify his repeaters with a yellow match, and you’ve got a decent team that’s all in the family. 

Theghouse

I really tried to make Sigh-clops the star when playing with him by using the loaner 4*s, but he's just baaaddd... I'm sure his yellow would be more effective boosting champed 5*s but this was pathetic.

His red puts unprotected long-timer repeaters on a color you're chasing without giving you an upside if you destroy them, and his green fills the board with red tile cascading the repeaters away.  Even in a perfect world where he could cascade a ton of red yet all his repeaters survived, his red and green powers are weak even if you end up firing both several times a turn...

When I got tired of chipping away at them like a cardboard chisel, I prioritized using a non-champed and under-leveled Magik's more expensive red power to end the battle over the 5*s red power... Just sad.

I'm sure his yellow would really shine as the third to Thorkoye, but I don't even have an Okoye to test it out.  I can't think of any other situation where I'd choose this guy.

HoundofShadow

I used Rogue and Prof $ in his third day node. I find this team relatively effective. Cyclop's yellow doesn't boost his own match damage, which means his allies have to tank for him as each turn passes by. Rogue and Prof $ have passive reducing damage abilities, which fits the situation. Use Rogue's Green to siphon Black Panther or Spider-Man so that each match of yellow gives you double the yellow ap instead. Use Prof $ to create more yellow tiles and also to heal your allies. 

I think people need to stop focusing on using all his three powers in one fight because I'm sure you don't do it with other teams that have active colours overlap. 

I'm going to focus on his yellow power and occasionally his green power, and let other allies use red and green. When the situation calls for his green over other allies' green, then I'll use it.

Other ally I find effective is 5* Storm.

I still think that Cyclops' perfect teammates are those who destroy (targeted) tiles, create criticial tiles and self-heal or have some form of damage reduction.

Theghouse

HoundofShadow said:

I used Rogue and Prof $ in his third day node. I find this team relatively effective. Cyclop's yellow doesn't boost his own match damage, which means his allies have to tank for him as each turn passes by. Rogue and Prof $ have passive reducing damage abilities, which fits the situation. Use Rogue's Green to siphon Black Panther or Spider-Man so that each match of yellow gives you double the yellow ap instead. Use Prof $ to create more yellow tiles and also to heal your allies. 

I think people need to stop focusing on using all his three powers in one fight because I'm sure you don't do it with other teams that have active colours overlap. 

I'm going to focus on his yellow power and occasionally his green power, and let other allies use red and green. When the situation calls for his green over other allies' green, then I'll use it.

Other ally I find effective is 5* Storm.

I still think that Cyclops' perfect teammates are those who destroy (targeted) tiles, create criticial tiles and self-heal or have some form of damage reduction.

How sad that Prof$ power has a better Cyclops in 1/6 of one of his powers than this entire character has with 4 powers....

HoundofShadow

How is it better?

Akoni

HoundofShadow said:

I used Rogue and Prof $ in his third day node. I find this team relatively effective. Cyclop's yellow doesn't boost his own match damage, which means his allies have to tank for him as each turn passes by. Rogue and Prof $ have passive reducing damage abilities, which fits the situation. Use Rogue's Green to siphon Black Panther or Spider-Man so that each match of yellow gives you double the yellow ap instead. Use Prof $ to create more yellow tiles and also to heal your allies. 

I think people need to stop focusing on using all his three powers in one fight because I'm sure you don't do it with other teams that have active colours overlap. 

I'm going to focus on his yellow power and occasionally his green power, and let other allies use red and green. When the situation calls for his green over other allies' green, then I'll use it.

Other ally I find effective is 5* Storm.

I still think that Cyclops' perfect teammates are those who destroy (targeted) tiles, create criticial tiles and self-heal or have some form of damage reduction.

I just tried it with Rogue and the Prof. It's not great, but it works. First match I played featured cascades due to his yellow. Following games were a bit slower because nothing matched on his yellow.

The main issue I have with it is Rogue. If there are no enemies with Yellow as their strongest, the strategy doesn't work. 

It's a very niche, but fun team to play with. I will keep 5Cy and Prof, but a third is still needed.

Bad

Today his node was designed for making him shine alone, fighting hyper slow emma and ice5 who cant stun him and storm5 fueling  his black.
And so firing his nuke( his animation is real good and his face reminds me Dimitri of darkstalkers, only the fangs are missing)
No need to thinking it more, this guy is only for a matching damage team. The problem is that he needs to collect 7 AP and then matching more, and hence its a slower meta. But a matching damage team shouldnt be underrated. Only for that reason I will cover him, because his green is slow and his red only able to cast if his red partners died. Being his AoE nuke so far far away.

Blackstone

... In the last node of his introducing, you fight c5ke... And they give you characters to use that literally feed c5ke...I think that's an indication that they know he sucks.

Daredevil217

Look. I like thematically what they were going with. Cyclops inspires his teammates. Ups their match damage so they are in the front lines tanking for him.  This makes them likely to die first. 

In the P5 storyline, when a member of the Phoenix Five were defeated, the others got stronger. Eventually they all fell except for Scott and he became the fully powered Dark Phoenix.

All of this is well represented in the game mechanics. But just like with Daken, the kit is interesting but the numbers are absolutely awful. Which sucks because you can tell a lot of thought went into making him “feel” like Cyke and do cool things. Sadly Daken, who was a huge disappointment for me, is way better than Cyke here. 

Looking at my character rankings I’m thinking the only ones I’d rank below him are Banner, Wasp, Stark, Kingpin and Widow. I’m torn as to who is better between Cyke and Ock. That’s awful. 

Daredevil217

HoundofShadow said:

It actually sounds plausible that new 5* characters with active power in either R/G/Y receives a "caution" note due to the high usage of 5*Thor, who helps to generate R/G/Y + and the choice to use +4ap boosts at the start of the game. 

So was that firewall removed when Apocalypse was created?

HoundofShadow

I thought about Apocalypse. Just some thoughts since we never know the answer. It's possible they lifted it for Apocalypse.  I'm sure the mods have feedbacked to them what kind of abilities the players in here like and dislike. It would be more interesting if they reveal the results of the survey where they asked why players like to use certain characters. It will be interesting to see how many % chose speed.

Akoni

Daredevil217 said:

Look. I like thematically what they were going with. Cyclops inspires his teammates. Ups their match damage so they are in the front lines tanking for him.  This makes them likely to die first. 

In the P5 storyline, when a member of the Phoenix Five were defeated, the others got stronger. Eventually they all fell except for Scott and he became the fully powered Dark Phoenix.

All of this is well represented in the game mechanics. But just like with Daken, the kit is interesting but the numbers are absolutely awful. Which sucks because you can tell a lot of thought went into making him “feel” like Cyke and do cool things. Sadly Daken, who was a huge disappointment for me, is way better than Cyke here. 

Looking at my character rankings I’m thinking the only ones I’d rank below him are Banner, Wasp, Stark, Kingpin and Widow. I’m torn as to who is better between Cyke and Ock. That’s awful. 

I agree. Thematically, his power set is perfect, but their cost-benefit is off. It's not just the AP cost, but his repeater tiles too.