5* Match Meta - who is part of it/how are you playing it?

ThaRoadWarrior

We've seen a string of characters lately that have been playing around with enhanced match damage, and that's powers that pump up match damage rather than power creeped basic numbers (though of course those characters could be a factor). There seem to be a few different classes of match enhancement, so I'm curious if anyone is using this with any effectiveness yet. I don't have any of the most current crop champed yet, so it's hard for me to properly evaluate in practice. As best I can tell we have:

Passively boosted match damage (self):
Colossus: yellow passive increases his match damage by 126%, and reduces allied received match damage by 83%
iHulk: every time he dies, it goes up by 63% to a maximum of 378% with 5 on black
Adam Warlock: When above 50% health, his base match damage is improved by 113%

Active Power Match boosts:
Thano5 - 8purple AP - while the 4-turn CD is on the board, deals an extra 80% match damage (weird in that it doesn't adjust his match numbers, just adds that 80% in post, so he doesn't start tanking over other characters)
Sighclops: 7yellow AP - increases teammate's match damage by 75% up to 300% (not his own)
Yellowjacket: 6blue AP - while invisible, deal an additional fixed chunk of damage every match (not boostable by okoye/apocalypse)

Match Damage Adjacent characters:
Profe$$or X - do a slug of bonus damage and eat an extra tile on a match-N
Onslaught: crush all the team up on a match N
Mr. Sinister: possibly wishful thinking, but if you're just crushing basic matches left and right, it seems like he could be a sneaky addition to a team like that for AP suppression and additional passive damage boosts off his traps
Black Bolt: too old to have high match himself, but he creates charge spam that does 300% damage per tile when matched on any color
5torm: passive black charge spam, active any color spam and cascade generation
Gambit: see above, charges tiles

So what are "good" teams and strategies for this? Did I miss anybody? I can tell you that if you can eat a few death cycles of iHulk, even at baby champ levels 5 covers of What Does Kill me will have him doing ~13k on a basic match 3 of green or black. Given that he also promotes his own cascades on green and does passive boostable AOE, he in my mind is leading the charge here. Any of y'all getting good use out of Warlock yet? Are you running these characters with crit producers like Karnak, Chavez, or Killmonger? Or is the match damage meta just a mirage?

ThaRoadWarrior

There is a grip of 4* characters that may offensively play-up to this style of play, at least in pick 3:
Chavez
Karnak
Throg
Negasonic
Nightcrawler
C&D
Juggernaut? he's weird because he kind of is this meta but a tier down

PiMacleod

Maybe i've been looking at these guys wrong this whole time...

I've been seeing charge tiles as its own meta, much like web tiles (neutral affiliation, but usable by select audiences).  I've tried (too much) to force Throg, St5rm, Negasonic, etc, to work in my PvP play.  And while i do get success from time to time, its nowhere NEAR as often as Polaris/Be4st/Medusa wins.  And yes, this is definitely 5* land... 

Negasonic completely failed my hopes.  Throg does okay, but doesnt live up to what he could be either.  Both suffer because their effects dont pause, allow enemy effects to react, repeat.  Instead, Throg's green, and Nega's Deal with It both only allow enemy stuff to happen once their whole thing is done (i.e. cant fire throg green, have Practiced Offense make tiles, and expect throg green to go again... And same for BRB blue).

But as match damage fodder?  Could have some weight to it.

Too bad i dont have ANY of those 5* Damage dealers besides Th5nos and St5rm champed.  Otherwise, i'd go try it out!

Anon

Don't forget Dark Beast

ThaRoadWarrior

I feel like 4* characters are going to struggle to do high match damage in 5* play, but there are a few who do that. Jubilee, Talos, and Chavez all have some component of it. How high will Dark Beast's number climb? I could see 57% for every black AP in the bank getting fairly high, but will that even be basic 5* territory?

ThaRoadWarrior

PiMacleod said:

[...]Negasonic completely failed my hopes.  [...]

Negasonic is an interesting one; she is a cascade machine, which I think is a huge component of a potential match-focused team. The problem with cascades is that they reduce in damage more and more with ever subsequent match, so unless you have a Profe$$or X in play, they are diminishing returns across a big one.

PiMacleod

ThaRoadWarrior said:

PiMacleod said:

[...]Negasonic completely failed my hopes.  [...]

Negasonic is an interesting one; she is a cascade machine, which I think is a huge component of a potential match-focused team. The problem with cascades is that they reduce in damage more and more with ever subsequent match, so unless you have a Profe$$or X in play, they are diminishing returns across a big one.

But thats the problem...

Shes NOT a cascade machine.

They changed something, i swear.  I used her a few times recently and her own "deal with it" passives kept on trucking, even though the tiles would land on valid matches.  

It USED to hit the "deal", resolve matches, continue...  But nope.  Now it just "deals" over and over until all the deals are dealt out.  THEN cascades can resolve.  Lots of missed opportunities for extra fun.

Tiger_Wong

I run Adam Warlock quite a bit in pick 3s at 5/5/3. I tried running him with charge tile creators early and it seemed slow. Running him with crit creators is much faster do get the big damage out. I’ve pretty much settled on.....

AW 5/5/3
Onslaught 3/5/5
America Chavez 3/5/5

all champed. 

It only takes one boost and a match to get the crits out. My AW is currently at level 461. A match 3 with a crit in yellow/purple/black is over 10000 damage. A match 4 with a crit is double that. Nobody survives a match in those colors with 2 crits. It’s for that reason I want to run colossus with AC and Karnak when I eventually champ colossus. I don’t run this team vs Hulkoye teams because AC just doesn’t have the health to survive more than about 3 Doors. I also don’t like this team vs Thorkoye teams because it becomes tricky to kill Thor past his half-life threshold and he becomes a hassle because my team doesn’t have a controlled nuke. Every other team is fair game. 

Another team with AW I run is....

AW 5/5/3
Sinister 4/4/5
Rogue 5/3/5

I specifically run this team to hunt teams with Onslaught with or without Prof X. Match 4s and 5s and resulting cascades are incredibly diminished by Rogue and if you have more than 3 black, it becomes negligible. I use Rogue’s Gloves Off on Onslaught and it triples match damage and doubles AP gain in purple. Match 3s in purple with AW do over 16000 damage. Match 4s are nukes. With purple matches also doubling AP, youre firing it basically everytime you make any match. Rogue is another character I’m looking forward to using with Collosus. 

Michael1957

You are all very helpful in this . New and better team designs and shared creativity is what the forum truly should be about . Thanks for not being part of the herd . 

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm trying to champ-em-all, so my 5* roster is all below 470. For me it gives me a lot more options to play teams with level parity since I don't have 500+MMR locking me into always having to use the few characters I may have at that level. No judgement on people playing that way, I just don't care to. My gimmick around here was always trying to turn a Magikarp into a Gyardos and find novelty uses for otherwise dud characters.

Theghouse

I have a hard time using Warlock primarily for his match damage.

Chasing yellow and purple is great because you get his big match damage, he's in front tanking, and you can fire his healing powers to keep everything working. But eventually you are going to make some black matches, which will then proc his black passive to start chipping his HP down and take his match damage bonus away.

Running him with Sighclops is needing too much yellow for the combo to be truly effective.  You could try using halfThor as a third but as soon as you fire Sighclops yellow Thor will tank on Red/Green so that's not really great.

Running Warlock with Colossus would be kinda useless as he'll only tank on purple and you won't keep black for Warlock's passive when you can fire Colossus' nuke.

I have had success running Warlock 5/3/5 as a third wheel for Thor-pocalypse, chasing yellow first for Apoc boost, then black to start up Warlock's passive.  After that I try to keep matching with Warlock while his boost is active but between tanking and his black passive he gets under half pretty quick.   Most of the time you get enough yellow from Thor's passive to heal a couple times even after getting Apoc's boosts out which helps.  I only fire purple if I have a yellow match I can make, otherwise the traps tend to get overridden or Thors passive blasts the surrounding yellow tiles and makes them unmatchable.  My previous third wheel for Thor-pocalypse was BRB, and I think speed wise they are about the same.

In a previous thread I speculated that you could run Warlock 5/5/3 with Yellowjacket, using YJ's black to heal YJ and ready his extra shot on YJ's next power, which would also keep Warlock's black from proc'ing most of the time.  YJ also gets the flat damage boost to all his matches and powers while invisible.  With Warlock over half health and YJ invisible you have some sort of damage boost on 6/7 possible colors. In pick 3 you could add Killmonger, Chavez, or Karnak for red coverage and crit tile making, though crits aren't as strong with YJ's flat damage boost.  I haven't finished YJ so I haven't been able to test this duo out yet.

HoundofShadow

To me, Rogue, Karnak, America Chavez and Killmonger look to be the core team for match damage meta. For charged tiles, Storm and Blackbolt could work. Of course, there are a ton of other 4* charged tile specialists.

I was thinking OMD, Killmonger and Warlock. Match black so that OMD can convert them to red and use it to fire Killmonger's red that put two critical tiles. OMD can also keep Warlock's passive black AoE in check. 

Anon

While this is all great theory crafting, Britty will shut down all that match damage fairly quickly. Which isn't to say the devs should give up. If they released a 5* character that has match damage ignore protect tiles, that would be an extremely valuable counter. With that having been said, they still don't have a 5* counter to iHulk so I wouldn't hold my breath.

A new meta would be interesting, but if most of the meta characters are 4* it will die before it takes off.

ThaRoadWarrior

I’m still trying to figure out how to salvage Danver5’s yellow engine to power Sighclops, but I need a board crusher to do it well.

ThaRoadWarrior

Yellowjacket bypasses protects while he is invisible, but I would say he is the weakest of the match enhancers because his bonus damage is a fixed number. @Tiger_Wong have you tried comparing charged tiles to basic matches to see if these characters are taking the better of two bonuses rather than stacking? 

Daredevil217

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Yellowjacket bypasses protects while he is invisible, but I would say he is the weakest of the match enhancers because his bonus damage is a fixed number. @Tiger_Wong have you tried comparing charged tiles to basic matches to see if these characters are taking the better of two bonuses rather than stacking? 

Jacket’s matches don’t bypass protects when invisible. 

ThaRoadWarrior

My bad, I misread that. Looks like just his powers do.

PiMacleod

Anon said:

While this is all great theory crafting, Britty will shut down all that match damage fairly quickly. Which isn't to say the devs should give up. If they released a 5* character that has match damage ignore protect tiles, that would be an extremely valuable counter. With that having been said, they still don't have a 5* counter to iHulk so I wouldn't hold my breath.

A new meta would be interesting, but if most of the meta characters are 4* it will die before it takes off.

Honestly, i think that's heading in the right direction.

Rock/Paper/Scissors needs to become more prevalent.  With Morbius stepping in, and Apoc's ability to ignore protects, we have more ways to get around a protect meta.

Having a heavy match damage meta will be nice, if it eventually picks up any large-scale notice.

Now we just need the counter to turn 1 team damage based on green tiles... 

Tiger_Wong

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Yellowjacket bypasses protects while he is invisible, but I would say he is the weakest of the match enhancers because his bonus damage is a fixed number. @Tiger_Wong have you tried comparing charged tiles to basic matches to see if these characters are taking the better of two bonuses rather than stacking? 

I have not but I will. All of my charged tile creators are champed except gambit and havok and I have been thinking about it. The charge tile creators are mostly random and seem slower than Rogue and the critters. However that could just be theory talk. The best chargers are in 4* land so they’ll all work better with Collosus. 

Still, this is only in theory. Need to do a bunch of matches. Also, a good 3rd character can do wonders. 

ThaRoadWarrior

You know who it turns out is pretty effective at dropping charge tiles is Cable. I just went into the hood PVP with BRB (3/5/5) and Cable (5/3/5) with +2 to blue against a Hulkoye team, and if you can get the 9 blue it takes fast enough, making a green match basically shuts hulk down

Aweberman

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Yellowjacket bypasses protects while he is invisible, but I would say he is the weakest of the match enhancers because his bonus damage is a fixed number. @Tiger_Wong have you tried comparing charged tiles to basic matches to see if these characters are taking the better of two bonuses rather than stacking? 

If the question is whether Adam gets a charged tile bonus on top of his yellow passive match damage bonus, the answer is a simple yes. The yellow passive adjusts the values of his gems (as seen in the in-match info screen), so the charged tile triples the already amplified damage. 

As a quick example, my Adam over 50% health does 251 damage with a blue tile. Making a match-3 on blue does 1,255 damage. Similarly, purple damage is 1,758; a match-3 on purple outputs 8,790 damage.