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

entrailbucket

wymtime said:

entrailbucket said:

Awymtime said:

entrailbucket said:

wymtime said:

entrailbucket said:

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

Those other characters are unusable trash because they're not as good as the 3 or 4 good characters. 

If Ultron isn't at least as good as Apocalypse or Hulk, he is also unusable trash.

With boosted 5* it is not about 3-4 good characters it is about is the boosted character useful.  Ultron will be useful when boosted

This just isn't true.  I wish it was.

An Ultron boosted to 550 will be about as good as a 450 Apocalypse.

An Ultron boosted will get more play in PVP than an un boosted Apocalypse.  Any 2nd tier 5* gets played more in PVP when boosted.  SW/Colossus would be the PVP meta if there were no boosted characters.  Now with Boosted 5* there are typically one to 2 5* that will be played in PVP over the regular meta.

It was this way for awhile but it's not now (for me, anyway), unless one of the best few characters is boosted.  People tried using the boosted characters but seem to be back to running meta teams.

Amazingly enough I still saw a lot of BB and even some GR in PVP not just Okoye in Web 2.0.  Last week boost for PVP was cap only and combined arms.  Boosted 5* get played in PVP.  You might not choose to do it but they get played.  

I...do choose to do it!  I run all the old guys at obscene levels against the meta teams.  But nobody else is using them, which is what I said.

atomzed

Entrail, your problem is 2-fold. Your MMR is skewed with certain of your 5* being 550 AND not all 5* are created equal. 

We talked about the second part quite a lot so I won’t dwell on it again. 

For the MMR, I think there’s a lot of scope for D3 to fine tune it so that players at your MMR have a better experience. 

At my baby champ MMR level, I have a wide selection of teams to choose from, especially with the boosted 5*. It’s been a more pleasant experience for me. For your case I can imagine it being much worse since you only have a few 550, and it doesn’t match up to those with the newer 5*.

entrailbucket

atomzed said:

Entrail, your problem is 2-fold. Your MMR is skewed with certain of your 5* being 550 AND not all 5* are created equal. 

We talked about the second part quite a lot so I won’t dwell on it again. 

For the MMR, I think there’s a lot of scope for D3 to fine tune it so that players at your MMR have a better experience. 

At my baby champ MMR level, I have a wide selection of teams to choose from, especially with the boosted 5*. It’s been a more pleasant experience for me. For your case I can imagine it being much worse since you only have a few 550, and it doesn’t match up to those with the newer 5*.

Yeah, I'm not reporting a problem, I'm describing what I see.  What I see is meta teams, not boosted 5*. 

I have no problem utterly demolishing these teams using various ridiculously high-level old characters.

fight4thedream

**Mod note: Please keep comments respectful and on topic. Thank you.

wymtime

Borstock said:

wymtime said:

entrailbucket said:

Awymtime said:

entrailbucket said:

wymtime said:

entrailbucket said:

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

Those other characters are unusable trash because they're not as good as the 3 or 4 good characters. 

If Ultron isn't at least as good as Apocalypse or Hulk, he is also unusable trash.

With boosted 5* it is not about 3-4 good characters it is about is the boosted character useful.  Ultron will be useful when boosted

This just isn't true.  I wish it was.

An Ultron boosted to 550 will be about as good as a 450 Apocalypse.

An Ultron boosted will get more play in PVP than an un boosted Apocalypse.  Any 2nd tier 5* gets played more in PVP when boosted.  SW/Colossus would be the PVP meta if there were no boosted characters.  Now with Boosted 5* there are typically one to 2 5* that will be played in PVP over the regular meta.

It was this way for awhile but it's not now (for me, anyway), unless one of the best few characters is boosted.  People tried using the boosted characters but seem to be back to running meta teams.

Amazingly enough I still saw a lot of BB and even some GR in PVP not just Okoye in Web 2.0.  Last week boost for PVP was cap only and combined arms.  Boosted 5* get played in PVP.  You might not choose to do it but they get played.  

It just depends on the character and also the required, in some rare cases. It might've been interesting to see if people used a boosted Parker had he been boosted during Web 2.0. With Miles flooding the board with web tiles and hiding, Parker's boosted green and red would probably hit like a truck. It would be nice if they put that kind of thought into it.

I don't look at Ultron as particularly viable boosted, but maybe I'm wrong. Like I said before, a double-dip from him and Kitty might get ugly, especially if they are both boosted. He might also be fun to play boosted with Hela, since she's got a nice buff when you down an enemy. But if he doesn't have a good duo partner that week, he's definitely not one you're gonna force.

And this has been my whole point.  If he has another 5* who can provide special tiles he can be useful when boosted.  The Meta is no longer just 2 5*.  The meta is are the boosted 5* good enough to play when boosted.

Jimsta_rooney

Ultron is brittys best partner, much better than polaris.
How are people not seeing this?
Britty and ultron would wreck any team in shield

HoundofShadow

You need someone to create a strike tile for him, unless you want to collect 7 red aps.

KGB

Anyone beaten the day 5 node with the loaners (CM, Beast, Thor) and no boosts?

I tried something like 10 times and twice got him down to where the next turn I would have won but he killed me first. The other 8 he obliterated the loaner team because he could NOT stop lucking into match 5's which carved about 1/2 health off a character or more and of course all 3 characters are utter garbage (CM in particular is a poor choice due to her Black being worse than useless to fire).

Once I got annoyed I switched to Polaris/Grocket/Medusa it took <12 moves (of course he lucked into yet another critical during that time).

Since we can't stun on these test nodes the least they could do is set the AI critical damage to 1x to even it up.

KGB

Captain_Trips88

I tried it once with the loaners, quit out pretty quick after first two dropped out after a couple of turns. Returned with a normal team to cruise through it.

would be interesting to know if it is at all doable with the loan team

HoundofShadow

Use the loaner in the following order:

Carol/Beast/Thor

The strategy is simply to play defensively.
Using this setup, Beast tanks yellow, green and blue, while Carol tanks Red and Black. 

Gather 6 blue as soon as you can, then match red or yellow. Ultron's top 3 colours will trigger Carol's passive, which nets you 5 red and 3 black aps. 

When you have 24 red aps, fire Thor's red thrice to create yellow tiles. Fire Beast's blue followed by his yellow.  You will repeat this a few times. Never fire Carol's black even when you have 30 of them because you are helping Ultron. You fire it when you will be able to down him in the next couple turns. Also, when someone is about to get stunned, always let Beast get stunned.

revskip

BlackBoltRocks said:

Sekilicious said:

If Ultron is making people question whether they want to continue playing the game it is because they are bored. It won’t hurt to take a break from grinding daily, in this game anyways I haven’t found a mobile game that doesn’t have some sort of grind unless it can be beaten in a short time. If you have meta characters, then you will still have meta adjacent characters if you decide to return since nerfs are pretty rare in this game.

Exactly. I've lost track of how many times certain posters have "threatened" to quit the game whenever an allegedly dud character comes out. And yet here they still are, matching coloured tiles and posting on the forums, waiting to thrash the next meh character. Words are wind eh.

If you don't like a particular character, then just skip them. If you keep threatening to quit, honour your words and quit. Constantly claiming that you're going to quit the game whenever a character who's not to your fancy comes out, and yet still continuing to play it, speaks to issues or problems about yourself far deeper and more worrisome than in-game character design.

If a game starts to make you no longer enjoy playing it please stop playing it.  I walked away from MPQ for 2 years when it started to feel like a job.  

Picked it back up early this year.  It is fun again.  If it gets to be a chore I'll walk away again.  What Sekilicious said is dead on.  It took me maybe 3 months to "catch up".  I don't have every meta 4 champed yet but I managed to transition to the 5* game and it holds my interest again without feeling like I "have" to play.  Taking a pause isn't really that big of a deal.  Taking a long vacation is fine too.  Permanently walking away is fine too.  

Jacklag

A possibly more interesting approach to Ultron's Hive mind ability might be adding to his tile duplication the following passive:
"Ultron takes 3% less damage for each friendly Attack, Protect and Strike tile on the board. When a friendly Attack, Protect or Strike tile is matched away or destroyed, Ultron takes X (roughly 3% of his max health) damage.

ThaRoadWarrior

Got to love a 5* so bland their character thread is a nuanced conversation about when it's time to stop playing the game mixed with "what if they had THIS power instead?"

For me Ultron feels somewhere between Havok and Kingpin for being simultaneously boring and innefectual, but I still try to champ everyone so there is a chance my opinion will evolve over time.

Sekilicious

There is a little 'he might make a decent solo 5* with Polaris and Grocket', 'all y'all have no clue how to evaluate characters without playing them', and 'he might play well with BRB and Kitty' sprinkled in there.

In his PvP, his synergy with Polaris and Grocket is there but he does not share enough colors so my weak-tinykitty 4*s end up tanking more than I would like. He has better synergy with Sabertooth in that respect. It was nice he added protect tiles for BRB as well so they might indeed play well together in a pick 3. On defense, if you make four special tiles surrounding his SAP in non-diagonal directions, then he cannot make more and his blue stalls out. This is very much a weakness in his design, though very much rng dependent.. 

Also, I somehow died to a Polaris cascade with Polaris and Morbius vs. Polaris and Medusa. I'm still not entirely sure how, but she lucked into an early stun (on Ultron) followed by unending match-5s. Whatever. 

HoundofShadow

Here's another way of looking at Ultron's powers:

R4G has been on the nerf wishlist for years. Some also wanted Kitty and Polaris to be nerfed. 

If we were to combine Kitty and Polaris together, we get a nerfed version of them called Ultron.

Can you imagine Ultron is a combination of the three characters above where he puts a strike tile at the start of the game and at the start of each turn (capped at 5) followed by buffing the strike tile immediately? Do you think this is broken?

ThaRoadWarrior

Rocket + Kitty is strong because there are a buffable number of strikes in play from battle start. Adding a single strike per turn until you are at best 5 turns in (assuming none are matched, stolen, or removed by any of the myriad powers that do this) and THEN buffing them one at a time is a very weak power. You are essentially describing Knull's power, of which the strikes themselves are basically a non-factor - that is all about having enough of them on the board to trigger the AOE that can't be blocked.

entrailbucket

That's the problem, right?  Ultron's power may be a "fair" version of those others, but why on Earth would anyone use him when we have access to the "unfair" versions?

(Please don't fixate on the words fair and unfair, I'm borrowing descriptive terms, not making a judgement)

ThaRoadWarrior

I also feel it's kind of a wild comment on the state of this character that nerfing two 4*s and adding in a hamstrung version of an old 5* = this brand new release...

entrailbucket

It's the same reason SW's power boost is bad.  If she was the only booster in the game she'd be great!  But the other two boosts are way way better than her, so hers looks bad by comparison. 

Ultron would be great if those other characters didn't exist, but they do, so he looks bad by comparison.

LavaManLee

In his PVE, Ultron/Kitty/BRB is annoying to play.  Beatable now, but curious to see how annoying this will be when he is champed.  He's not the best 5* out there but I really believe he won't be at Banner or Wasp level either.