Reyes The Dead impressions

ThaRoadWarrior

Is this the first time we have had a 5* pvp with a fully boosted required character that wasn’t a new release? Who are you seeing in there? What’s it like for non-5* players?

I’ve been messing around with random assortments of teams trying to make something work with the new (not improved, in my opinion) Hell Ride. Since GRRR shares all colors with Immortal Hulk and tanks them, I was using him as a green battery along with 4* Carol. I think Carol was more of a liability though since she is the only character making strikes and you’re better off just using that black for Damnation.

i also ran Thor/Sighclops, and I really like that team. Sighclops pumps all the match damage way high, so God of Thunder starts doing big damage every turn start. The only color Thor tanks is yellow after a couple fires, so you have to avoid that one. It’s fun though; only really choice is stun on green or put out some Hell Rides.

I tried Killmonger/Hawkeye, hoping to have a good red factory to make crits, but it just didn’t work out.

I also ran Storm/Colossus, but it didn’t last long. I’m mostly seeing Iceman/Storm or one of those two characters with Apocalypse. Fisk and Phoenix are few and far between but I have seen them.

entrailbucket

This is the first time an older 5* has been featured with the +100 level boost.  We've had older 5* featured before, but it was always the lame +15 or whatever.

Is there a decent black battery?  GR black is probably going to hit for some obscene amount of damage in this.  It's boring, I guess, but I bet it's pretty effective.

I'm probably going to run Storm/Phoenix to charge black for GR and also make red for him.

ThaRoadWarrior

I’m riding opponent Storm charge tiles as a black battery. Otherwise you have Doom, 4* Domino who happens to be boosted and overlap 100% with GRRR, and…I guess Wanda? Maybe Profe$$or X if you use his purple on black?

HoundofShadow

I don't have GR champed but Domino (5/3/5) + Thor is going to rock with characters who hit hard with black. I used these two and boosted Electro and it was really good.  Even though GR doesn't deal as much damage as her, spamming his black three times in a row for 70k damage a pop is pretty good. Remember to store up 14 or 21 green aps before you let the destruction begins. Don't bother matching black while collecting green aps unless the enemy is hitting aps needs for firing black power. Use this only when you are not concerned about points. 

tiomono

I have rider champed. I am running iceman and kitty with him. Kitty pretty much ruins opponents rider. So far I like the new rider. I do not like his green like I used too. It feels too fragile, several tries with it getting destroyed within a turn or two of casting it. So I dumped his green and went 3-5-5. I am still using his green over icemans though. I like the boardshake still. Seems the devs always highly value boardshake so they often make it expensive or unstable.

hothie

In 4* land, I do have GRRR at 1/1/0, but I haven't put any iso into him yet, so I just run with the loaner, which saves health packs, too.

I'm seeing the usual 4* suspects, but man I'm loving boosted Morbius. I mean, I loved him enough before, but boosted means he hits harder and gets to stay around for a lot longer, especially with his blue healing. Mainly the only 5*s I see are the boosted ones, and even those aren't scary enough to skip, unless they have 8ish covers or so. I managed to get up to 50 wins this morning, with a day and half left, so I'm shielding my way up to 75 wins, or possibly 1200, whichever comes first. For comparison, that's pretty fast for me, as the last event I got to 50 wins with like 12 hours left, and not the 36ish that I have for this event.

I'm liking GRRR, but even though I have him, I really never played him much before, so I can't intelligently speak about how the new version is better or worse. And I'm only playing with the loaner, so I don't know how his stats and abilities compare at higher levels.

Sekilicious

Does Sighclop's yellow boost GRRR's green damage? Is it worth it if he does?

His PvP I have been running Polaris with BRB, Grocket, and Sabertooth with the occasional Karnak/Chavez depending on the opponent. I don't really see Morbius much for some reason, even boosted. He is probably better for 5* players as a BRB counter. My BRB counter is Polaris/Grocket and is pretty effective most of the time. I could probably make good use of Domino and K.Bishop if they were champed. GRRR himself is pretty fun with his Hell Ride and Chain Whip. His two nukes are ok but just meh using the free 1/1/1 character. 

ThaRoadWarrior

It used to, and it was worth it then, but I haven’t crunched the math this time to see if he is doing basic match damage AND bonus damage or not. 

HoundofShadow

This is the calculation for GR's match damage:

GR's match damage of tiles destroyed including cd, + (bonus damage x no of green, black, red destroyed)

To give an example, 

I'm going to simplify his match damage as:

G/R/B match damage = 900/800/700
P/B/Y match damage = 90/80/70
Bonus damage for red, green or black = 1000

Situation
CD on black tile
Colours of those 5 tiles destroyed = 2R, 1G, 1P and 1Y.

Therefore, his total damage dealt would be: (700+800+800+900+90+70) + (1000 x 4) = 7360

Sighclops match damage won't boost GR's bonus damage.

ThaRoadWarrior

It's fine if it doesn't boost the bonus, if it's raised his base damage by 375%. My GRRR is doing 1016 per green base, something like that now. So at maximum fire, every green is doing 3,810 before bonus damage. That adds up quick; of course it added up quicker before when there were 3 repeaters doing that and accruing AP so you could get even more of them out before, but that ship has sailed. 

HoundofShadow

I guess that's the double-edged sword of rebalances: you can't keep all the good stuff. Dr Ock had a pretty awesome stun and passive match damage ability but it was traded for some refresh. 

If Phoenix is next for a rebalance, probably her green power will become a watered down version since it's her best power.

Sekilicious

That's too bad. Luckily, all damage is boosted by Gritty though the chaos caused by Hell Ride could play tinykitty with strike tiles.

ThaRoadWarrior

HoundofShadow said:

I guess that's the double-edged sword of rebalances: you can't keep all the good stuff. Dr Ock had a pretty awesome stun and passive match damage ability but it was traded for some refresh. 

If Phoenix is next for a rebalance, probably her green power will become a watered down version since it's her best power.

There's no reason it HAS to be that way. I do think Doc Oc's old auto match while stunned ability was super interesting, but there is no meaningful 5* stun game for it to matter. Also the ability to self-stun the team seems limited to 5* Court Death and 4* Punisher, so it's hard to build around that on purpose.

I'm actually a little curious if swapping Robbie off of repeaters isn't an indication there is some repeater timer manipulator coming out at some point? Probably not since Ronan would be pretty bananas if you could accelerate his repeaters.

entrailbucket

They gave us a little summary of the goals of each power's changes, and it seems like for green, they were trying to fix the problem where you'd cast it then it never does anything (the repeaters randomly spawn at the bottom or near other color tiles).

I think the fix did address that specific situation, but created a new problem where you cast his green and it doesn't do anything at all because it gets destroyed right away. 

*At this point, a power that just creates one unfortified countdown needs to either be super cheap or super powerful, and his is neither.*

Anyway his green power wasn't terribly great before and it's not terribly great now.  The upside of the rework is that his red and black both got better to varying degrees.

It's pretty hard to predict what they'll do with any potential future reworks since we don't have much history to look at.  If they're interested in removing unnecessary complexity I think that's a worthwhile goal (see Kingpin, Magneto, Wasp).

HoundofShadow

He could be useful against 5* Bishop back then.  and BRB/Polaris/Kitty team still cast stun most of the time.

I think cds were turned into repeaters because of their interactions with Blade/C4rol. GR's repeaters were 1-turn at 5 cover, so I'm not sure if he's significant enough to cause a nerf to his own repeaters. If we are talking about Ronan, then there's a possibility. Anyway, we already have that ability (to accelerate repeaters) from one of the newer goons in the game. I guess someone who can fast forward time can officially introduce that mechanic into the players' hands. I think it's going to be like a blue or purple power.

ThaRoadWarrior

That's correct, yeah. there were a whole raft of short-repeater characters who got a soft nerf with that change, right around the same time that the trap nerf happened as I recall (where hitting one downstream of a match-4 would trigger it as if an enemy had matched it). 3* Daredevil was hit particularly hard by that one. original flavor Human Torch i believe had a short countdown on green as well. 

jredd

lots of health to chew through. difficult to get through a match unscathed. 

Srheer0

Wanda and st5rm was my go-to team. Ghostrider was at 12 covers, so not yet champed. Get black, kill the enemy who has dealt the most dmg. Was easy peasy. 

Will try him out in Sim and see if he is still fun when unboosted. 

LavaManLee

Srheer0 said:

Wanda and st5rm was my go-to team. Ghostrider was at 12 covers, so not yet champed. Get black, kill the enemy who has dealt the most dmg. Was easy peasy. 

The interesting thing about Black was that if you downed the char that did the most damage, Black does not replace the character with the most damage until the NEXT turn.  Would be really cool if it would change it immediately.

GrimSkald

I ran him with Storm and Iceman, the boosted 5*s.  His green was not worth bothering with, not with Iceman there, and his red was so-so.  His black hit super hard, and may justify using him when he's boosted, but there are blacks out there that are as good or better.

I think despite the reduced utility to Green, it's still overall a good boost to the character, but not nearly enough to change his placement in the 5* rankings more than a few notches.  I will also add that with three boosted 5*, it was obscenely hard on health packs, I had to make a serious dip into my taco tokens - would have needed to do it twice if I didn't get the 10 health packs the first time.

ThaRoadWarrior

LavaManLee said:

Srheer0 said:

Wanda and st5rm was my go-to team. Ghostrider was at 12 covers, so not yet champed. Get black, kill the enemy who has dealt the most dmg. Was easy peasy. 

The interesting thing about Black was that if you downed the char that did the most damage, Black does not replace the character with the most damage until the NEXT turn.  Would be really cool if it would change it immediately.

I couldn't tell if that was just a dynamic UI refresh thing, or if the power wasn't actually doing more damage to whoever did next most.