***** Knull (King In Black) *****

ThaRoadWarrior

I think you need to maximize his passive damage on that purple, so right now it feels like Apocalypse is the best pick-2 pair for him for doing that while keeping the board full of specials.

your only current countdown shortener is goblin, who can reduce them by 1 for 9-yellow which I think we can all agree is suboptimal. Honestly I think Flaptain could be viable for dropping a billion protects down while passively shortening CDs and buffing specials, but the base damage is pretty low without a booster.

Maybe C4rol could be fun with him?

DAZ0273

At least we will have Knull as the featured character on the main page and they can send Monica back to whatever tenth level of hell she came from.

wingX

His black active looked really weak and expensive, but his green passive seem to be perfectly work with 4*Carol. Not only does it provide countdown, it also provide strike tiles. Once the countdown end, it is just nice have 3 strike tiles to boosted and then deal damage with boosted strike tiles. All that is left is need the countdown to be fortified.

It will be good if his black create the same number of purple tiles as the same number of green tile he destroyed.

Polares

HoundofShadow said:

...
He has 5 powers. Unfortunately, only 1 is somewhat useful, 2 are situational, and the 2 other powers are close to useless. However, he seems to be a good scarecrow against IHulk, Brolaris, and 50% Thor dependent team.  For players who player defensively, they might like him. Carbage could be a good fit for him and Iceman can be a interesting combo because he could stun opponents and reduce damage taken for his team, while spamming friendly special tiles for him to trigger his purple passive.

I agree pretty much with your analysis. 

In the end he seems decent, but not great (or even very good). I fail to see what some people like so much about him (other than his extreme hitpoint pool and match damage).

This is another of those chars that are going to be extremely hard to fight against when controlled by the AI at level 600. Sometimes I think they design more with the AI in mind than with human players having fun with these chars.


PS: Also, who designed his active black !?!?!? What an AWFUL power. The tiles dont even do damage! One of the worst powers in the whole tier.

ThaRoadWarrior

If the purple scaled up with covers it would be something. If this power really is supposed to be an anti-hulk and a self battery, it should have cost 3-5AP. There isn't a thor-level black battery at the 5* tier save Jessica Jones if you can find a trap, or Ghost Rider Robbie Reyes if you can get his green moving, but it's possible he could work well with Doom - I just don't think you're using his black over Doom's (or Robbie's for that matter) at that point. 

Polares

ThaRoadWarrior said:

If the purple scaled up with covers it would be something. If this power really is supposed to be an anti-hulk and a self battery, it should have cost 3-5AP. There isn't a thor-level black battery at the 5* tier save Jessica Jones if you can find a trap, or Ghost Rider Robbie Reyes if you can get his green moving, but it's possible he could work well with Doom - I just don't think you're using his black over Doom's (or Robbie's for that matter) at that point. 

This seems another case of "Oh look this ability is doing two things, so it must be more expensive". I HATE when Devs do this (Sighclops red comes to mind, but there are tons of these). We always end up with expensive abilities that are not worth the cost.

If this was 4AP, and destroyed 4 green tiles it would be much better. If it had the same cost and transformed 3 tiles to purple the same. As is, clearly too expensive.

HoundofShadow

5* Storm can be considered a black battery because she focuses on creating black charged tiles and her yellow power can create black tiles too. However, it's not worth it just to fire his black.

Thor can be considered a black/purple/blue battery indirectly because he absorbs red/yellow/green tiles every turn; thus, the board are left with the other three colours most of the time. Thor can also create special tiles and turn his protect tiles into strike tiles. Knull can also increase the damage for Thor's red power with his CD, strike and attack tiles. Come to think of it, they actually help each other to trigger each other abilities more quickly, and increase each other damage. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Asgardian Tactics has an upper bound, at level 450 my thor with 10 friendly specials on the board is still only doing about 20k damage. It also ignores protects, which is nice since all your major attacks will then be ignoring protects, but I'm not sure he is actually a great pair with Knull. His black/blue/purple is a secondary cascade-based gather compared to his direct gathering of red/yellow/green, so it's for sure going to be WAY slower. 

Knull's countdowns are going to be extremely vulnerable to Kitty and a number of other characters, so if we can't find a proper direct-battery for his moves I'd be more inclined to come with a power booster or CD shortener myself. 

I'll be curious to run him a bit and see how he feels, but i don't really expect much from his 1/1/1 PVP intro. Those are just never impressive.

HoundofShadow

I'm focusing on building teams in Pick-2 pvps around his purple powers only, and I'm ignoring the rest of his powers for now. As for his green passive, I just take it as something that gives free strike tiles. If it goes off, I treat it as a bonus. 

Since his purple power CDs are placed on red tiles, Thor helps to decrease the probability of them getting matched. Knull's black will also have a higher probability of converting basic colour tiles to purple tiles that creates near purple matches. 

As for Kitty, she will be playing catchup with him with close run of her Circuit Breaker exploding. That's why you need another ally who can churn out special tile every turn or spam a few in a single turn to decrease the probability of her replacing your next CD. At my level, 20k damage is considered a lot without booster. If only his CDs are actually repeaters... 

Most 5* PvPs with 1/1/1 loaners doesn't showcase the true potential of them. For Knull, his damage is already low in the first place.  Even with a champed Knull, he still needs someone who can boost his damage greatly. 

Uber_mpq

Looks like his tiles are capped on damage output which is a bit meh

Anon

Aside from healthpool and damage, I'm not impressed.

ThaRoadWarrior

HoundofShadow said:

I'm focusing on building teams in Pick-2 pvps around his purple powers only, and I'm ignoring the rest of his powers for now. As for his green passive, I just take it as something that gives free strike tiles. If it goes off, I treat it as a bonus. 

Since his purple power CDs are placed on red tiles, Thor helps to decrease the probability of them getting matched. Knull's black will also have a higher probability of converting basic colour tiles to purple tiles that creates near purple matches. 

As for Kitty, she will be playing catchup with him with close run of her Circuit Breaker exploding. That's why you need another ally who can churn out special tile every turn or spam a few in a single turn to decrease the probability of her replacing your next CD. At my level, 20k damage is considered a lot without booster. If only his CDs are actually repeaters... 

Most 5* PvPs with 1/1/1 loaners doesn't showcase the true potential of them. For Knull, his damage is already low in the first place.  Even with a champed Knull, he still needs someone who can boost his damage greatly. 

She will only play catchup if you can fire off his purple regularly, and there are no good purple batteries at the 5* tier. It'll be exactly like the 3* Fist/Cag3 pvps where someobody brings Kitty for the auto-damage and you'll be cursing them out.

There's a world where you Heimdall it, and fortify a bunch of purples to bring the cost down, but even that is slow if you can't also bring Shuri to reduce the cost of Heimdall's blue.

Bad

I think he is a good third wheel for some goods 5*s.
He seems slow. His black is clearly designed for to set it at 3 and it is only a board shaker if the player has no better black powers. Reminds of what happens to carnage green.
Being his green and purple passives the best, still they are low.
His purple passive is ok but not impressive.
And the perma damage it is a thing quite useless, perhaps if it was greatly buffed it could be worth it, but small damage is meaningless. 
I think he can be faster with a kitty team.

HoundofShadow

I should be clearer. His green passive puts out a CD, and 1 strike tile each turn for the next 3 turns. So, Circuit Breaker (CB) will start appearing regardless of whether his red CD is out or not. 

Player Turn 1: Green Passive creates a CD
Enemy's: CB appears
Player Turn 2: creates one strike tile

If CB replaces CD tile, next turn Knull will create a new CD.
If CB replaces strike tile, next turn Knull will create a strike tile.

For this scenario, her CB will explode only if this CD resolves or if they manage to match your strike tile or CD on the board. If not, he's bringing her around the globe. So, it's important to stick him with special tile spammer so that she will never catch up. Apocalypse seems like the best choice so far because he ticks 2 out of 3 or 4 boxes: spam special tiles and boost Knull's damage. The other two are fortifying his CDs and speeding up his CD.

I thought about Heimdall too, but he's pretty slow because his blue doesn't get reduction from his own passive ability.

Anyway, I'm excited to test out those teams in his PvPs. 

Currently, 5* lineup looks like this: Cyclops/Colossus/Wanda/Knull/??. Wanda and Knull are compulsory. Hopefully, the next 5* can work very well with Knull.

Anon

If his black power gained ap for the green tiles destroyed, he could've been a fun gimmick with OMD.

HoundofShadow

The only problem is OMD will keep converting 3 black aps to 3 red aps whenever you have 6 of them. So, you need to somehow gather 10 black ap in a single turn, or OMD need to be rendered inactive someway.

ThaRoadWarrior

His power damage numbers seem to be in Iceman territory, who I find to be generally more effective than he was thought to be at launch, but he's one who really comes alive with a damage enhancer. I think Knull would be pretty ruthless with a boosted high level D4nvers, but I'm also wondering if he'll land in the rankings down around Sinister who is still waiting for his meta to pick him up for the Prom...

Daredevil217

Sinister will never be meta. He’s had a slew of quality trap tile partners in the tier that came out after his release (unfortunately all purple overlappers!) in Adam, Yelena and Killmonger. These characters are exactly what he was needing and move him to playable status. The issue is that the payoff for all those traps, then the 8 AP to cast blue, then waiting for a trap to be matched is pretty middling damage compared to the Apocs and the Hulkoyes of the world. The damage for all that setup was good for it’s time, but was quickly outclassed by power creep. All that said, he's not a bad character and actually one of my favorite fun ones to play.  But he’s too slow to ever be meta in a game that relies on speed for success. 

Sekilicious

Forever stuck at the prom waiting to be picked up by your one, true, meta partner. Sounds like hell...

ThaRoadWarrior

I have a feeling an original flavor Bishop-level passive blue battery could put Sinister on the map, but this thread isn't really about that.