***** Gargantos (Multiverse of Madness) *****

HoundofShadow

In MPQ, it's not the number of characters an ability will work against, but how often you can use it against those appearing frequently. As commonly said, majority of 5* are "useless" and they are sitting on players' roster slots "doing nothing". 

To prove my point:

Currently, we have 67 5* (not including Moon Knight and this). However, in shield sim, the common 5* I see are 
SC, Kitty, Wanda, Colossus, Apocalypse, BRB, Prof X and Onslaught, when you reach ~1500 points. And they represent only 12% of the total 5*. And out of these 8 5*, majority of the teams that I cycle through are: BRB/Kitty/Polaris and Wanda/Colossus/Apocalypse. At my baby champed MMR, Polaris/BRB/Kitty is very common. It's as common as seeing W/A/C.

Based on the above, while it might be theoretically true that it doesn't work against more than 30 5* in the game; however, in reality, you've the chance to use it ~50% of the time. 

I foresee the next counterargument to this is "why should I use his ability, when Morbius/Kitty/Apocalypse etc can do a better job?" It boils down to the goal you set for yourself. If you are only interested in finishing matches quickly or deal with special tiles quickly, then this character is not for you. As a matter of fact, you'll be disappointed in majority of the characters released, which has been proven true for some players in the past few years. Expecting the dev to shake up the meta 2-3 times a year will prove to be a fatal mistake to your overall enjoyment of the game.

bbigler

Keep in mind that not all 5* players have all the top 5* metas.  Many 5* players just have the newer ones; so could everyone realize this and not say that a character isn’t good because another 5* character released 2 - 5 yrs ago is better?  I feel like a broken record.  

This new character’s black power is useful against the current meta team of BRB and Polaris.  I see them a lot.  It also works against Gritty-Polaris which I see in Sim.  

Nevertheless, this character may not be amazing for new 5* players.  Yes, there’s some synergy with Abby, but I don’t think it’s very competitive.  His best partner is probably 5*Hawkeye, an old classic.  Of course, there’s always a variety of 4*s to pair with any new 5*. So players in 4* land could find him useful.  

But I won’t say any more until I see the numbers.  

Timemachinego

This feels like a character designed for pick-3, and that means it's a "bad character".  A power you can't even fire UNLESS conditional to SAP is also a huge nod against, this is a throw-back to past bad design; If / and is the rule for those kinds of powers now.

90% of the "important" things we do are pick 2 and hope the 3rd can do something other than take up space. SIM should never be a measure of anything because we can all do 4k+ if we actually would care to shield there, it's not an important mode of gameplay.

As to transitional play, sure if you want to throw some levels on this it'll be better than most of your 4s but you're ruining your entire PVP play just for a slightly better time in PVE and you'll be kicking yourself once you know what an actually good character looks like.

Is this character (if it's who we all think it is) thematic as all get out, YES! If you like playing a "bad character" for fun, then by all means go for it! If however you like to perform well, this character is a total waste of resources.

Unless you have a big 5* Hawkeye, SAVE SAVE SAVE.

TheRiddler

Can't wait to see the numbers. I have a gut feeling the character is gonna be pretty good.

All I'm saying is that the mechanics on that active black power seem like a flaw the type that get fixed in reworks down the road. It will hardly matter as this character seems like to be a 5/3/5 anyways.

Waddles_Pines

bbigler said:

This new character’s black power is useful against the current meta team of BRB and Polaris.  I see them a lot.  It also works against Gritty-Polaris which I see in Sim.  

@bbigler
Can you explain this further?  If I'm reading it correctly, when black is fired, any enemy asl tile below will be destroyed.  If that's the case, then usually with brb/pol, the board is full of shields.  If they're all potentially destroyed, wouldn't that just give the AI enough ap to skuttlebutt you to death?  Thanks.

Timemachinego

Waddles_Pines said:

bbigler said:

This new character’s black power is useful against the current meta team of BRB and Polaris.  I see them a lot.  It also works against Gritty-Polaris which I see in Sim.  

@bbigler
Can you explain this further?  If I'm reading it correctly, when black is fired, any enemy asl tile below will be destroyed.  If that's the case, then usually with brb/pol, the board is full of shields.  If they're all potentially destroyed, wouldn't that just give the AI enough ap to skuttlebutt you to death?  Thanks.

In theory it powers down some tiles and then explodes them for massive damage, so you'd finish the match with that on a character like BRB, but I don't expect the number for when it goes kablooey to be of any use unless you're fighting down already and then you should already be winning. If it's actually like >500 or something I'll totally eat my words and consider drawing for this character.

bbigler

Waddles_Pines said:

bbigler said:

This new character’s black power is useful against the current meta team of BRB and Polaris.  I see them a lot.  It also works against Gritty-Polaris which I see in Sim.  

@bbigler
Can you explain this further?  If I'm reading it correctly, when black is fired, any enemy asl tile below will be destroyed.  If that's the case, then usually with brb/pol, the board is full of shields.  If they're all potentially destroyed, wouldn't that just give the AI enough ap to skuttlebutt you to death?  Thanks.

I was thinking if you hit a protect tile wall during a match, then you could blow them all up and then do some more hits to take down BRB in the same turn.  Of course, blowing them up triggers his blue and green AP generation, so you would need to end the match soon after, especially if Polaris is still alive.  It’s not ideal, but it could work.  

Morbius is the best counter to BRB, there’s also Doc Ock, Mantis, & Eddie Brock (he reduces enemy protect tile strength to 1).  But hey, this is a 5* that can destroy enemy specials in mass (assuming the dmg threshold is high, like 1,000).  It won’t stop everybody’s specials, like Sersi, Ultron and Kitty, but I still think it’s a useful power and not dead weight.  

HoundofShadow

Usually, when you've collected 8 or more aps, Polaris would've been downed by then. So, it's safe to blow up those tiles and depending on the damage per ap, it might or might not down BRB. If we are talking pick-3, then it's more tricky. Usually, Kitty is the third. Eddie Brock was one of my favourites to deal with BRB/Polaris. He turns all protect tiles into 1 strength, and he creates protect tiles for enemies. It was great with Carbage or 3* Hawkeye + a stunner. Then, there's also 5* Gamora whose repeater ignores all enemies damage reduction. 

Bad

It's always the same story with BRB. 
However, samurai was changed after his release for not giving AP.
After that they thought about it on characters such as yellowjacket and big wheel. 
I wouldn't bet that this character finally would be giving AP for free.

obikenobi12

looks like ability 2 Black power can generate AP with the tile destruction. Interesting! I think this character can be sneaky good in the right lineups. I was thinking that 4* Carnage would guarantee that the enemy team would have special tiles for this character to target with the Black bower. II'm interested to see what the numbers look like for this guy/gal. Also, Green being their strongest color is interesting for opening up other combos with Valkyrie such as 4* Human Torch to spam out his Wildfire ability. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Bad said:

It's always the same story with BRB. 
However, samurai was changed after his release for not giving AP.
After that they thought about it on characters such as yellowjacket and big wheel. 
I wouldn't bet that this character finally would be giving AP for free.

When you say "changed after his release," you mean he launched "destroying" tiles, then was buffed to "removing" them, or do you mean he was changed after his ability preview but before he was openly playable? I don't recall him getting a rebalance after going live

bbigler

obikenobi12 said:

looks like ability 2 Black power can generate AP with the tile destruction. Interesting! I think this character can be sneaky good in the right lineups. I was thinking that 4* Carnage would guarantee that the enemy team would have special tiles for this character to target with the Black bower. II'm interested to see what the numbers look like for this guy/gal. Also, Green being their strongest color is interesting for opening up other combos with Valkyrie such as 4* Human Torch to spam out his Wildfire ability. 

As we learned with Black Knight, just because the description here doesn’t say you don’t gain AP, that doesn’t mean it will.  The standard now on tile destruction is no extra dmg or AP, unless the power specifically says so.  

HoundofShadow

If it does generate aps, I think IceIX would've mentioned it too. Generating aps is a big deal. 

Bad

ThaRoadWarrior said:

When you say "changed after his release," you mean he launched "destroying" tiles, then was buffed to "removing" them, or do you mean he was changed after his ability preview but before he was openly playable? I don't recall him getting a rebalance after going live

My memory uses to be good when it interests me (or at least many people told me that):
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/932332/#Comment_932332
Page 5 and 6 many players were reporting daken destroying tiles, page 7 daken correctly removes them, 3 months later.
I can't remember if he was released like that, and the final character powers description won't help as they edit it.

IceIX

And in this corner, we have the master of incidental trypophobia, and other fears while we're at it, that cuddly(?) space octopus, Gargantos!

HoundofShadow

The numbers look high to me. New meta with Hawkeye incoming.  

TheEyeDoctorsWife

IceIX said:

And in this corner, we have the master of incidental trypophobia, and other fears while we're at it, that cuddly(?) space octopus, Gargantos!

Nice use of an obscure mental disorder , well played . 

IceIX

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

IceIX said:

And in this corner, we have the master of incidental trypophobia, and other fears while we're at it, that cuddly(?) space octopus, Gargantos!

Nice use of an obscure mental disorder , well played . 

We tried our best with the art to obscure that a bit, but there's only so much you can do with a being that literally has one side of its body covered in little suckers (with teeth).

TheEyeDoctorsWife

Seeing the numbers I like it , enemy SAP manipulation and passive permanent damage plus Invisibo. Can’t be that bad

jsmjsmjsm00

Does the SAP tile destruction threshold scale too or only the value of the reduction?