***** Ultron (Age of Ultron) *****

Borstock

Tony_Foot said:

Barely hits harder than my Hulk buster. It seems like everything is released to be useable when boosted to 550 or with that boost in mind.

I feel like the pre-release nerfs came before that, back when metas involved Okoye or Kitty. No one was allowed to hit too hard, because they were almost always paired with a character that boosted their damage.

TheRiddler

wymtime said:

For everyone hating on Ultrons red it is pretty on par with many 5*.  

JJ gives one more strike tile an a little more damage for 9AP. 

 Carnage for 6AP does 9K damage but also does self team damage

Hela for 9AP gives 4 strike tiles only slightly better than Ultron.

it might not be Apocalypse or IHulk level red but it is not bad.  Plus you will be able to get out a lot of very strong strike tiles if you pairing him with a strike tile producer making his red do a lot of extra damage

JJ came out 3 years ago. Back when you didn't have characters like Knull with 100k health or Colossus doing 6k+ in match damage. I would guess and say that the average 5* character now has more a fair amount more health and match damage than back when she was released.

I used to run Carnage alot with Chavez and/or Karnak. And I never fired his red for that reason.... unless it was to end the match. If I was using Carnage it was for his match damage and the free match every turn. Red was a nonfactor.

I never see Hela unless she is boosted.

But you are right he will be better if you use him with somebody like Kitty or Okoye.

entrailbucket

If you look at the entire 5* tier, almost all of the characters are somewhere between mediocre and awful.  Then there's a few weird outliers that are just massively better in every way.  Those are the characters that get used, and those are the standard that's set for every new character.

Compare Beta Ray Bill to Ultron.  Every single one of his powers is better than Ultron's powers and it's not even close. 

For 7ap Ultron makes an unfortified countdown that destroys some AP and stuns once.  For 6ap (on a self-fed color) Beta Ray Bill does a hit bigger than Ultron's red, and puts out a fortified countdown that's guaranteed to make at least two protect tiles (that then feed that same ability if destroyed). 

Why are these characters even at the same tier?  Ultron isn't just worse than Beta Ray Bill, he's totally outclassed. 

Which one is the aberration?  Ultron looks like 95% of all the other 5* characters, and Beta Ray Bill is off in some completely different tier with Okoye, SW, and Apocalypse.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

We already had our quota of 2 metas this year . You might as well hoard until 2022. 

HoundofShadow

I forgot to exclude Carbage and 50% DD.   

Karnak sounds good and Ultron's critical tile multiplier is 4.5x, which is the highest multiplier in the game. You can simply switch Karnak to 3/5/5 so that he won't tank over Ultron.

I think red is low because of those buff or strike tiles that not only adds to your red power, but also adds to your match damage each turn. Without those strike tiles, his red would have dealt 15-16k damage. However, you would lose out on those strike tiles adding to your match damage. 

Sometimes I find it weird that players either complain about power creeps or complain about mid tier and below damage. If Ultron's damage/ability is better than Apocalypse's, it will be called power creep. If it's worse, it's trash. If the damage is similar for all future 5*, it's called stagnant or boring. It seems like players can't make up their mind whether they want power creep to happen. 

entrailbucket

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

We already had our quota of 2 metas this year . You might as well hoard until 2022. 

Shang-Chi is really, really good.  I don't know how much of him we'll see, because the hoarders just blew all their resources on SW.

There are only two "metas" a year because the free to play hoarders who currently dominate the game only earn enough resources to 550 one set of Latest per year.  If the devs increased rewards, there would be more characters represented in the metagame.

Bad

Ultron for 8 AP puts a fortified cd. Then, destroying 1 AP is a bit ridiculous.
You could set him at 5 and destroy 3 AP, but then you would sacrifice his buffing or his "big nuke".
A bit of a jack of all trades and master of none. Still on pve you could use him as an AP destroyer and stunner, just for fun, and target other enemies for destroying the 3 AP in a strong color you wanted.
Really the comparison with SC ruins him, and at least odin has a new playstile.
Playing on a gritty team and having 4 strikes, at the start of the turn he would buff one per 1000. Then it's not 8500 anymore, it's 9500.
However it's chip damage and no one of the 4 multipliers will make him do more than 25k, being so low amount of damage. 
Perhaps he is just a 5* supporter for polaris. 

Polares

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

We already had our quota of 2 metas this year . You might as well hoard until 2022. 

Yeah, but we need to chose who are the 5s we want to go with Shang Chi, and they are making it really hard to chose :P

At this point in time Elektro, Odin, Shang seems better than Odin, Shang, Ultron but I think most people is probably going to wait and see what comes next, I will wait (I think Elektro is pretty good, specially if you dont have SW, but he is not a "open a stash" kind of char). Lets hope whoever comes after Ultron is decent because I dont really care that much about Odin

If next char is worse than Elektro I am going to be pissed...

Bad

I was thinking before I was too rude with poor ultron saying he is ruined in comparison with SC.
I will try to fix that.
Any character in this game is ruined compared to SC boosted.
Much better now!

skittledaddy

Jimsta_rooney said:

entrailbucket said:

Oh, I forgot: I have no idea why they think "drain/destroy the enemy's strongest color AP" is ever useful.  It's almost always strictly worse than "drain/destroy random color AP" because *all the good characters have passives or bad abilities on their strongest color*.

Seriously, if you're going to keep giving that to us, start making characters who actually care about their strongest color.

Can only think of one truly decent ap drain, 3 star she hulk

Only for the AI.  Never seems to work well for me.

SaltnPeppa

Just saw the cover chosen for Ultron and I want to say Thank You for keeping the original cover with no edits!  And including the bar code!

heybub

Yeah, but we need to chose who are the 5s we want to go with Shang Chi, and they are making it really hard to chose :P

At this point in time Elektro, Odin, Shang seems better than Odin, Shang, Ultron but I think most people is probably going to wait and see what comes next, I will wait (I think Elektro is pretty good, specially if you dont have SW, but he is not a "open a stash" kind of char). Lets hope whoever comes after Ultron is decent because I dont really care that much about Odin

If next char is worse than Elektro I am going to be pissed...

Yes, this.  Is Electro that good?  On paper seems pretty meh, but I am a terrible estimator on potential performance.

My prediction is that I will end up unloading for Odin, SC, and Ultron.

I really dont think this Ultron kit is that horrible and might serve a niche counter to certain teams.  He isn't meta, but like most 5*s, he is meh-ta.

dianetics

Elekktro's black is really strong if the conditions are met. The yellow is nice. And the green can be good or bad if the countdown tiles stay on the board. For me her green has knocked out strong countdown tiles for me several times, add the to that the destroyed tiles do damage and the green can do decent damage and enable cascades.
She's good not great and has found a spot on my fourth team.

Jimsta_rooney

If he started with a strike or started making strikes every turn like knull he might be decent. 
I'm pretty underwhelmed after using him tbh. 

Jimsta_rooney

HoundofShadow said:

I forgot to exclude Carbage and 50% DD.   

Karnak sounds good and Ultron's critical tile multiplier is 4.5x, which is the highest multiplier in the game. You can simply switch Karnak to 3/5/5 so that he won't tank over Ultron.

I think red is low because of those buff or strike tiles that not only adds to your red power, but also adds to your match damage each turn. Without those strike tiles, his red would have dealt 15-16k damage. However, you would lose out on those strike tiles adding to your match damage. 

Sometimes I find it weird that players either complain about power creeps or complain about mid tier and below damage. If Ultron's damage/ability is better than Apocalypse's, it will be called power creep. If it's worse, it's trash. If the damage is similar for all future 5*, it's called stagnant or boring. It seems like players can't make up their mind whether they want power creep to happen. 

I want power creep, bring on the match dmg meta! 

PiMacleod

I'm not this guy normally...  but here we go.

I'm HIGHLY underwhelmed.  A few reasons...

The kit is largely the same as the Ultron we fight outside of boss events.  In other words, they only tweaked it a bit to fit being a 5*, instead of making it more interesting for current day gameplay.  After using Wanda, Colossus, Knull, ... even oldies like Iceman, Storm, Prof X...  Ultron here feels pretty dull.  There's no "fun factor".  Not sure how else to put that.  He just matches tiles, and hopes to get enough AP to fire some lasers (because no one's relying on a single CD tile for a stun for some endgame strategy).  Hive Mind is cute, but a single tile creation per turn... are you basing your team around this?

Then there's the animations... it's the same ones!  Not even colored up differently or given extra pizzaz...  just the same old stuff from before.  I usually keep them off, so I guess this shouldn't bother me as much, but I DO turn them on during the Introducing nodes, just to see what's been cooked up... and it's a fat nothing. 

Finally, there's the store.  I pull my mini hoard of CP for EVERY SINGLE NEW RELEASE, because it's just what I do.  Since Ultron looks so underwhelming, and Loki and Magneto are part of it (and it doesn't help that I have them champed already), I might actually skip this one.  I don't like the idea of it, but I have zero interest in this 5*.

Here's hoping I'm horribly wrong, and after a few uses in Introducing, I'm shown where he can outshine my lower-than-low expectations.

Bad

Indeed it is the same. 
Ultron on pve spams some blacks cds, if many of them are unmatched it stuns. No matter how many are popping, it stuns your character in front for the same turns. That power is similar. 
But his bean! On pve is a low AoE. Was it too much to keep it without changing?
A low AoE ignoring reduction could had a good use.
I have SC near champing and I wanted to champ odin. Now I am forced to have some covers of this middle-aged -game character. 
Ultron? No. Ultraslow.

TheRiddler

Jimsta_rooney said:

If he started with a strike or started making strikes every turn like knull he might be decent. 
I'm pretty underwhelmed after using him tbh. 

They should have just made it where if there are fewer than 5 he creates one period. Like with Polaris if there are none she creates one. Looking at it again with that power creating a matching one on an adjacent tile it also makes it more likely to that they get matched away.

dianetics

By himself he is less than useless if cannot at least create a strike tile without ap.
evem with say knull he won’t copy one until turn 3. The same turn he potentially create some with his red, which is a wet paper slap compared to comparable powers with the ap spent.
he doesn’t buff others enough and he doesn’t help himself. He’s done before the weekend

entrailbucket

You could potentially build a team around him where he does something useful.  But it would be a lot of work, and whatever you come up with, another character would fit that role better than he does.

I will champion him because I champion everyone, but this is the worst release in a long time. 

I'm not sure he's going to be usable when boosted, and that's a really low bar to clear.