The Royal Family- SCL 10

helix72

I know this is a node that has puzzled MPQers for ages. Looking for the best team setup to balance safety (lowest probability of wiping) with speed (fastest time to finish). Willing to test any ideas people have. Please provide the following:

1) The 3 toons you'd use (obviously this run PX has to be one of them)
2) How each toon would be configured (e.g. 5/5/3, 5/3/5, etc)
3) What boosts or team ups you'd equip
4) What supports you'd equip

I'll run them with my roster and report back the results. For example, one person suggested running:

PX 5/5/3
Carpool 5/5/3
Onslaught 3/5/5

My test:
463 PX 5/5/3 + Kimoyo Beads support (chance of extra blue on match to feed Onslaught's blue)
453 Deadpool 5/5/3 + Shuri's Lab support (chance of extra red on match to feed Deadpool's red)
435 Onslaught 4/5/3 + Quantum Realm support (chance to start with extra Purple AP)

For this test I did not equip any boosts or team-ups, and I recognize that either could potentially materially affect the results.

Result:
Victory
5 min 13 sec

Observations

1. My Onslaught is only 4/5/3 so one cover short of champed and a bit under powered in his Blue, which is an important power if any of Medusa's countdowns get matched. This test her tile never got matched.
2. Medusa's tile does not count as damage coming from her. After taking 5500+ passive damage for like 5 turns, Deadpool's black still said Medusa had done 0 damage. This is disappointing as I was hoping this would be a way to nuke her quickly.
3. Four colors to chase gives decent coverage. The only power the enemy team got to fire was Bolt's Yellow. This helped, and I fear that absent that luck the chance of wiping would actually be quite high
4. Deadpool's red was clutch. For example, I was able to stun and then nuke Black Bolt just before he got his Green off. Another sign that this team is a bit risky.
5. As everyone knows, playing the Slotty machine is a bit like gambling: you can get some good match 4's plus some good cascades and before you know it, the enemy team is gone. This test I only got a couple and no great cascades, and annoyingly every match-4 I got seemed to end with setting up the enemy for their own match-4.

Conclusion: A possibility, but not a clear "pencil's down, we have a winner".

*EDIT: I did equip supports, I did not equip team ups. Text corrected.

LavaManLee

I used PX and Thorpacalypse.  Made sure Thor was 50%.  Korg on Thor (5/5/3), Chimi on Apoc (5/3/5) and Quantum on PX (5/5/3).

Targeted Medusa first, then BB and then Lockjaw.  Great coverage (all colors do good damage).  Let Thor do the lifting for R/G/B.  Chased purple for P5.  Used Shared Strength for boosting.

Loosie

PX, Apoc and Onslaught worked for me.

BriMan2222

Half thor and apocalypse smacked them down.

Michael1957

I don’t even contemplate suicide having zero of the aforementioned characters . I reached max progression in first 2 days so I don’t have to play these insane meta combos . I went down to 9 once for this event and finished worst because hundreds of others with rosters twice my size are all down there . 

PiMacleod

Thorpocalypse.  
Thor with Korg (rank 3)
Apoc with Vanessa Fisk (rank 4)
PX with Stepford Cuckoos (rank 3)

No real problem... just Medusa, then BBolt, then Lockjaw.  Sometimes needed a health pack.
Oh, and my 3 are basically baby champs (Thor is only 436, but that's because I wanna keep him under my Okoye)

Rod5

Thorkoye is pretty fast, with Thor driving likelihood of cascades and the others just soaking up all the damage.

I would suggest killing the dog first though, if his passive starts and you can’t clear the charged tile(s) then he can be super-damaging.

SP/DR on Thor
RTF on Okoye
Quantum on PX

sambrookjm

Rod5 said:

I would suggest killing the dog first though, if his passive starts and you can’t clear the charged tile(s) then he can be super-damaging.

Yep.  If you're using Thorkoye, bear in mind that it doesn't matter if Thor was the one that made the match of the special tile or not.  If he's in front with the cascade that destroyed the special tiles ends, he's the one that takes damage.  Mine went down from 24K health to about 6K in one turn thanks to that little tidbit.

ThaRoadWarrior

I used 5torm/Negasonic for all 4 clears. I did clears 1 and 2 without using any health packs, but 5torm and X needed a refresh going into 3 and then going into 4. Negasonic never took a point of damage.

target Medusa, then Lockjaw, then Bolt. Match/destroy as many charge tiles as you can, watch hilarity ensue. Use X to heal or make more cascades as you need. Negasonic is the Polaris of charge tiles, so if you like board shake give this team a chance.

for reference, my non-boosted levels on this team are:

Profe$$or X: 5/5/3 lvl 465 (boosted to 575 for this event)

5torm: 5/5/3 lvl 457

Negasonic: 5/5/3 lvl 285

i didn’t use any boosts, but I’m sure it’s more reliable if you do.

helix72

Thanks to everyone who gave input. I ended up going with my original clear team of 1/2 Thor + Apoc. I cleared both times without wiping although it was close both times. The first time I started getting chewed up by the Dog's damage from the charged tiles. The second time, Medusa's CD got matched several times and the attack tile damage plus the damage from matching said attack tiles did a number. Both times I had to use PX's Yellow to stay alive, which pushed Thor above 1/2, but I was able to luckily get Thor back in front to take enough damage to get him below 1/2 but not so much that he died.

Next time this runs, I'm guessing it will be a much less effective 3rd than PX and the answer may change. But for now, I was able to sneak in a t10 finish!

abmoraz

As someone else said, the key is to kill Lockjaw first.  2nd priority is to manage charged tiles whenever possible (to mitigate BlackBolt's passive).  3rd priority is to avoid Medusa's countdown (so that you don't create fists, which if matched, trigger Lockjaw's other painful passive).

If using Thorkoye (or any AoE bomb team), you NEED to abandon the "kill them all at once" mentality.  KILL THE DOG FIRST and the rest will fall fairly easily.

ThaRoadWarrior

I'll be very curious to see if my 5torm/Negasonic team will remain viable when Profe$$or X isn't the featured 5* next time, and/or if there will be a place for Throg on that team. It's hard to know for sure how much of that success was driven by X + 2 XMen helping out his defense.

PiMacleod

I tried that team (storm/nega/throg) in other formats against others....

And its severly disappointing so far. 

Mainly because cascades arent allowed to interrupt.  Fire storms green or black, nega goes crazy, but it wont match tiles until ALL nega's passive destruction is done.  Watched so many potential match 3+s go away because its required to destroy them all before cascades are enabled.

Needless to say, its a lot slower than i want it to be, despite all the charge tile potential.  I had better luck with Storm/Throg/halfThor.

ThaRoadWarrior

That is a bummer; but I like these decent-to-good charge tile 4*s we're seeing, it gives me hope that there is a potential charge tile meta waiting in the wings. Just to be sure I'm ready, i'm remedially working on Cable and Gambit lol. I guess I'll have to chase Bolt eventually, but he's a lot further back for me than those two.

slow

I am still having problem clearing this till today.  I was using Kitty & Polaris & the essential this time was Knull (champed) but in the end I had to Whale through it. Is there a better team (for decently fast clear)? Thanks in advance.

HoundofShadow

Switch Polaris for R4G.

slow

I tried that too twice but maybe my board's luck was bad. Thanks   

Captain_Trips88

If you are using boosted kitty then keep medusa around for 30k damage when clearing away her countdown tile, nice free damage every couple of turns. Then you can get the stun game and strike tile boost with polaris going once everyone has taken a few big hits 

Seph1roth5

Who's PX?

I use my normal duo of polaris/beta ray bill, and i think....Knull because he's boosted this time around.  Get blues up to stun medusa and then just beat her down.  Think I got unlucky once and got wrecked, but the other fights went fairly smoothly.

slow

Gotta note down all these characters just for this royal node cause I totally forgotten about BRB (was distracted by kitty cause she was boosted). I remember now as previously I did use BRB + Polaris & can stun both Medusa & the Royal dog. Thanks & my name is really... Slow

BlackWidower

Seph1roth5 said:

Who's PX?

Professor X