Week 13 Boost list Adam Warlock, Carnage (Prophet of Knull), Havok, The Hulk (Bruce Banner)

Bad

AW works well with apocalypse. However they are not really sharing sinergy althought with SS active there could be good AoE. The one I think he plays better is a team I never saw, possibly because brb performs better, a gritty team.
I saw him unchamped in a hulkoye team, but quikly changed by another pick 3 more suitable for a hulkoye team.
And that it is why he is not popular: when he is not boosted he hasn't an impressive pool health plus he needs certain smart play style that AI in defense won't do.
Actually in pick 2 SW is his best multiplier partner and she can provide him a lot of yellow, also they aren't overlapping colors, still it is a weak defensive team as it is needed AI performing like i said and it won't do.
Colossus is more fool prof than AW plus he provides extra toughness, plus he shared store with SW(a lot of people thinking he was awful later were giving thanks to having pulled him, imo). A lot of reasons for colossus being more popular as it is the case.

DAZ0273

I used Kitty with Adam in the Blade PvP so she could boost the strike tiles Blade puts out and that did OK. Adam is a beast and I am glad I got him champed. Not started the 'Gator PvP yet but seems like Adam's aoe will be handy for invisible Loki's.

ThaRoadWarrior

Boosted Adam with Valkyrie kept him alive, but didn’t hit that hard. The strikes only landing on yellow prevent the purple traps from contributing to anything, and those hit pretty hard. But basic matches trigger bounty hunter for yellow every turn which is fun.

entrailbucket

HoundofShadow said:

Generally speaking, self-harmed characters are frowned upon. There are a few exceptions like Thanos and iHulk. 

Between Colossus and AW, most went with Colossus instead. For AW, you need to make sure he's constantly in tip-top condition to maximise his black passive. So, there's a lot of micromanaging needed for him. Even if AW is compared to iHulk, he doesn't need constant micromanaging. You just need to make sure Okoye is x level higher than him.

Still, I like AW, but too bad I was not at a point where can I can fully cover him. I think if Colossus appeared later, more might have pulled for AW because of the match damage increase.

Havok is sad but he's pretty good if you can find a perfect combo that plays around his ap switching and charged tiles.

It's funny, because in certain circles self-harm characters are frowned upon, but at high tiers they typically dominate the game.  Sentry/Hood, BP/Thanos, and Okoye/Hulk were all utterly dominant meta teams during their run.

The reason is simple: the devs' tendency to balance super fast/powerful abilities with downsides that hurt your own team.  The problem with this is that you can buy health packs any time you want, which often completely negates these downsides.  Most players who compete don't think twice about spending $0.75 or whatever on health packs whenever they need them.

Sometimes self-harm abilities aren't even a downside, because if you can end a fight very quickly, you take less damage from the enemy team.  Against extremely dangerous high level characters, letting the match drag out might cost you 3 health packs per fight, while blazing fast self-harm characters use 3 packs every 3 or 4 fights.

ThaRoadWarrior

I think he only works when boosted or very highly champed. His black passive at any rate. Since his AOE is dependent on his total health, a lvl 450 baby champ Adam Warlock is taking 10,520.4 pts of self harm and only issuing out 6,312.24 AOE, and then it decreases every firing unless you are super lucky with yellow and purple matches. For reference a level 451 Immortal Hulk does 5,533 AOE damage just for showing up every turn. Adam absolutely needs a power booster, and since both Okoye and Apocalypse compete with him for yellow, they aren't very effective in pick-2. I've seen a lot of y'all talking about 5Witch being a great power booster, but I've yet to be impressed at all by that aspect of her kit (or frankly to even notice it's working). When you have her blue CD out, that does a noticeable slug of boost for sure, but the purple AP bank up boost really doesn't do much. But you really need a Thor-level yellow or purple battery to keep Warlock in play, so in Pick 2 you can run him with Thor, or Valkyrie, or Jessica Jones, but like what's the point since he is doing weaksauce damage compared to hulk? He is in Heimdall tier pretty squarely as far as I'm concerned - characters who are somehow less than the sum of their parts until you slap 100 levels on them, at which point they are really impressive.

I'm also thoroughly underwhelmed by Havok - even though I just champed him, he is getting 0 use at all. Even boosted up to lvl 569, he has a green that costs 12ap and does 4,650 base damage? His red and blue are pretty okay though. 

entrailbucket

Yeah, the PvE people are using Adam in a pick-3 team with Hulk, for 2 free AoEs that take advantage of whatever power booster they're using.  Also they all have their preferred power booster 550'd so it doesn't matter that Adam's damage is relatively low.

I also have no idea why people think SW is viable as a power booster.  When compared to Okoye and Apocalypse she's not even on the same planet.  A percentage-based boost is simply too "fair" when compared to the flat/AP-scaled boosts of the other two.

Just ignore Havok's green, it's really bad.  Run 5/3/5 always and only use his blue in single-target mode.  Boosted, he can do some pretty big single-target damage at a decent cost.

Bad

SW is a good booster however she optimally multiplies better strong hits rather than multiple hits. Giving yellow to him will boost her repeater, his AoE and his traps, given that yellow is a color that AW will wait for to fire it.
Of course there is also the extra protection that AW finds really handy for to continue with his increased match damage more time, hence saving the yellow until the end of the battle. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I was having an okay time on offense climbing the Loki PVP with Warlock/Thor, but i'm not hanging on to points. I've gotten to a 1/1/1 Loki, so I'm not sure if I care to try and climb the rest of the way to 1200 or not. Maybe I'll go back into it later.

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I was having an okay time on offense climbing the Loki PVP with Warlock/Thor, but i'm not hanging on to points. I've gotten to a 1/1/1 Loki, so I'm not sure if I care to try and climb the rest of the way to 1200 or not. Maybe I'll go back into it later.

Thor is weak on defense, always has been.  Run Banner!

acescracked

entrailbucket said:

HoundofShadow said:

Generally speaking, self-harmed characters are frowned upon. There are a few exceptions like Thanos and iHulk. 

Between Colossus and AW, most went with Colossus instead. For AW, you need to make sure he's constantly in tip-top condition to maximise his black passive. So, there's a lot of micromanaging needed for him. Even if AW is compared to iHulk, he doesn't need constant micromanaging. You just need to make sure Okoye is x level higher than him.

Still, I like AW, but too bad I was not at a point where can I can fully cover him. I think if Colossus appeared later, more might have pulled for AW because of the match damage increase.

Havok is sad but he's pretty good if you can find a perfect combo that plays around his ap switching and charged tiles.

It's funny, because in certain circles self-harm characters are frowned upon, but at high tiers they typically dominate the game.  Sentry/Hood, BP/Thanos, and Okoye/Hulk were all utterly dominant meta teams during their run.

The reason is simple: the devs' tendency to balance super fast/powerful abilities with downsides that hurt your own team.  The problem with this is that you can buy health packs any time you want, which often completely negates these downsides.  Most players who compete don't think twice about spending $0.75 or whatever on health packs whenever they need them.

Sometimes self-harm abilities aren't even a downside, because if you can end a fight very quickly, you take less damage from the enemy team.  Against extremely dangerous high level characters, letting the match drag out might cost you 3 health packs per fight, while blazing fast self-harm characters use 3 packs every 3 or 4 fights.

It's interesting how MPQ play style is so different between types of players. There's those that try to save health packs & HP so don't see the benefit of fast AOE self damaging characters.

Then there is the chase top 10 CL10 players, whom have so much HP they can spend it on health packs and boosts. So they love warlock/ihulk using all AP/black AP/tu boosts and clearing CL10 in 20 mins or less.

It's good players have drastically different choices in the same game.

ThaRoadWarrior

entrailbucket said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I was having an okay time on offense climbing the Loki PVP with Warlock/Thor, but i'm not hanging on to points. I've gotten to a 1/1/1 Loki, so I'm not sure if I care to try and climb the rest of the way to 1200 or not. Maybe I'll go back into it later.

Thor is weak on defense, always has been.  Run Banner!

I would legit love to, but he is 4/3/4 lvl 285 and I don’t have the resources to dump levels into him before the boost ends. I committed all my iso to 5trange.

ThaRoadWarrior

I switched over to Warlock/Carbage like everybody else and got to 1200 without much trouble. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Dang; in PVE running boosted iHulk/Thano5(not boosted yet)/Okoye is the fastest SCL10 experience I've ever had. It's ultra healthpack intensive, but man it's quick.

Bad

AW and Ihulk both boosted are killing machines.
Today I was t20 when I finished the nodes, without actually equipping nothing. 
On the rare days that I had the time to play the sub right on the start.

ThaRoadWarrior

I did try running that, but found Warlock was kind of in the way since he required me to chase a bunch of additional colors. For me, Thano5 meant that I really only had to actively think about what Okoye needed at any given time. So it was faster for me, but I don't know if it would be empirically faster.

HoundofShadow

If you have The Tinkerer Support, that can jump start you with 6 Black aps, add in +2 black aps and you don't have to worry about matching black for next 5 turns.

ThaRoadWarrior

I have a 2* Tinkerer, which means there is just a 34.88% chance to create a 237pt Strike Tile when the character fires a power unfortunately, but that's a great tip for those who have a 5* unlocked.

HoundofShadow

Unfortunately, it's limited to Villians only. Ebony Maw gives you 3 black aps to boot.

entrailbucket

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Dang; in PVE running boosted iHulk/Thano5(not boosted yet)/Okoye is the fastest SCL10 experience I've ever had. It's ultra healthpack intensive, but man it's quick.

The secret to running Hulk/Thanos is to never, ever use packs on Hulk.  You can set Court Death to 5 covers for the 2-turn stun, and set Hulk's resurrection power to 5 covers.

The goal is for Court Death to kill Hulk.  He'll immediately resurrect and give you free moves and passives (with boosted damage) while the remaining enemies are still stunned.  You want Hulk to tank so he'll die as many times as possible, increasing his match damage and passive damage to ridiculous levels.

This setup actually *saves* packs vs many other Hulk teams because Thanos has very high health and you never use your packs on anyone else.

ThaRoadWarrior

yeah that’s that’s always my hulk strategy, but with court death in the picture at least one time he died at mission victory and stayed dead, requiring a pack. Also gator Loki and mystique didn’t make it out the other side of too many rebirths or court deaths.