Week 28 Boost: Cable, Hawkeye (Clint Barton), Thor (Gladiator), Yellowjacket

HoundofShadow

The pesky bug is back again.

I have only Thor and Cable champed. There doesn't seem to be any obvious team except for Thor being a battery for others.
Look out for revival of iHulkoye because all 4 5* boosted will be susceptible to them. Then, this will bring us back to Colossus/Wanda. Thor/Wanda can be fun because it will be easy to boost Thor's power by 150%. Weekly boost gives you x2.5 more damage (for 450 -> 569) and that gives you a total of 3.75x more power damage.

For 4*, we have:

Kate Bishop, Monica Rambeau, Spiderman (Infinity War), Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw), Wiccan

Infinity War Spiderman can be fun with Silk, with all those passive burst heal and damage.

Who are you setting up for PvPs and PvEs?

ThaRoadWarrior

Cable/Thor might be offensively alright. Cables big green should do well against wanda teams. 

HoundofShadow

It will work but Thor will take damage if you want to speed up green aps and Wanda will always have one charge on her repeater tile, which reduces your power by 40%.  Colossus match damage will wear down Thor as well, I suppose. Also, I find it a little difficult to match green in order to stun opponent via Cable's blue power because Thor destroys green tiles. Cable/Thor doesn't fit my current playstyle in pick-2 because I play in a burst of 30-45 minutes. So, I can't revive and bring Thor to half health regularly.

However, Wanda/Thor/Cable could be great in pve. Use her purple on green and stack up 24 green aps. That's 120% power damage boost. Boosted Cable's green deals about 54k damage. Add on Wanda's power and it's 2.2*54k = 118.8k damage. The second one will deal about 86k damage for a total of ~200k damage. It's good for pick-3 hard nodes and Thor can use his red power first and finish up the rest of enemies with Cable's Green.

DAZ0273

Having Thor boosted is nice to deal with Yellowjacket invisibility shenanigans and Cable should hit hard so I am happy enough.

ThaRoadWarrior

There is quite a lot of color overlap on this crew; I’ll be curious what kind of Yellowjacket teams we see.

LavaManLee

The big problem with Thor boosted as that when he is at half-health, he will tank colors so will be out front more.

entrailbucket

I don't remember what happened last Thor week.  Thor is not very good when he's boosted, because Thor at > 50% health is absolutely *terrible*.  Without someone he can hide behind, it's a lot of work to keep him sufficiently injured. 

Yellowjacket is great but he actually makes that problem worse since he hides.

ThaRoadWarrior

match damage boosters can pump up Thor's green passive so it does additional damage on turn start. In pick-3 you could hide him behind maybe Cable who overlaps 2 of his colors and run Sighclops as third if you want to play that game maybe.

DAZ0273

Cable tanks Thor on green for me so should be OK.

HoundofShadow

Nobody talks about Hawkeye, and it's supposed to be Hawkeye week.

ThaRoadWarrior

I love Hawkeye, but even boosted his best bro is probably still Coulson, or situationally Blob now. Although he might be interesting with Odin now.

entrailbucket

Hawkeye's a really great battery for blue or red or both, but nobody is interested in his help this week. 

Thor batteries himself, Cable's blue is the sort of ability you'd only cast by accident, and Yellowjacket can't multi cast his blue.

ThaRoadWarrior

We might have been on to something had Goblin or Ronan been boosted. In Pick 3 he might be fun with Ghost Rider and Thor. 

HoundofShadow

The lack of attention on Hawkeye made me realise that we don't have 1-2 turn cd-spammers in 5* land like 4* land does. Iceman could be fun with him? Goblin could be fun because it means it will take him a net 4 purple aps to cast his power. Put him with Heimdall and you can spam cds for 3 purple aps? Heimdall is so awesome for spamming powers and Hawkeye feeds his blue power  Unfortunately I got a lousy build for him. I think Heimdall is similar to 5* Thor in the sense that you need only 5 covers in his blue and he will work greatly. 

Edit: he needs only 4 blue covers to work greatly.

ThaRoadWarrior

What makes Goblin work so well is his yellow CD shortener. That’s what you really need for Hawkeye, and part of what makes Coulson so dominant as his partner. Ghost Rider now has that 1-turn CD, but you really need Thor to power it now that it doesn’t generate AP for itself like it used to. Iceman doesn’t work as well as you would want, I’ve tried it. They compete for blue tiles on the board so you can’t do anything unless Hawkeye is Out of Arrows.

entrailbucket

Heimdall and Hawkeye works fine.  3ap arrows are cool and you get unlimited AP.  Unfortunately Heimdall doesn't really do anything else in that team...you probably wouldn't use his blue or red.

ThaRoadWarrior

heimdall’s red hits very hard, even unboosted, if you have it set up correctly. But that is finicky and on the same colors Hawkeye is using. Even a baby champ Heimdall will do about 40k if you have the right spread of fortified tiles. And if you have enough reds fortified, you can do that type of damage for 3ap, but for that you need Shuri or Magik or someone who spams them harder than he does.

ThaRoadWarrior

I guess the takeaway observation is that Hawkeye will be using an unboosted companion of he is going to get used, and that companion will be a 4* most likely like XFDP or Coulson. For that I would consider a 5/5/3 build and try to run out of arrows asap to hit with his bow instantly.

HoundofShadow

I forgot 5* Hawkeye gives red and blue aps instead of purple and blue, which his 3* version is doing. Since a lot of people is guessing Echo, I'm not sure if she can do similar things like passive ap gains.

XFDP will be good because it will be easy to trigger his cd.

It seems like what will make Hawkeye great again is a 5* cd spammer, preferably with blue or red doing awesome stuff. Time to bring some similar lovely cd spammer from 4* land to 5* land next year. 

ThaRoadWarrior

A CD spammer or a Flaptain/Coulson level passive CD shortener. 

If you are going to play him with Heimdall, the trick is to get Hawkeye’s red off as fast as you can a couple times, that way you get some “free” fortified blue tiles. Then you want to unload his blue until it runs out. It occurs to me that having a character who can generate red and blue as well as Hawkeye paired up with a character who totally overlaps is probably desirable in the AI’s hands. A player can spam those powers, but the AI can’t, but it will fire off each power one time each from all the characters who can do it as long as the AP is there. It would be better if Heimdall were also boosted though.

entrailbucket

Hawkeye's already pretty great at what he does, which is generate a stupid amount of blue and red for someone else to use.  The Hawkeye Blob Polaris team is total insanity, and there are a few more infinite-stun teams that he's the engine and sole enabler for.

The only problem this week is that there's nobody good for him to battery.