Arcade or Wong? Which is more worth overchamping?

Waddles_Pines

Agreed, I still don't 1000% understand how to play his powers, but Arcade sure does pack a wallop against non special tile spammers.

LavaManLee

Thanks again for all the comments. For those enjoying Arcade, what cover distribution do you use? Thanks!

Bad

I play him on 5/5/3 because he can deal big damage on purple and blue.
His black is an easy 3 because of the self damage. Probably a good power to put in work but more self damage isn't appealing.

Waddles_Pines

But if you don't care about self damage, 355 churns out a lot of damage assuming you get his doombots out.

entrailbucket

I actually have him 5/3/5. The self damage isn't a big deal because it hits so hard (that said, I use Thanos for almost everything, so I have a pretty high tolerance for self damage).

I've been using the flame trap instead of the poison gas one, and that thing also hits pretty crazy hard, even at 3 covers.

Omegased

I had him at 5/3/5, but changed to 5/5/3.

with Emma, his poison cloud (blue) is doing between 50k - 94k AOE. it hits like an absolute mack truck. ALSO when you match the fortified countdown, it'll stun the whole team.

HoundofShadow

It depends on who you team him up with. If you are putting him with someone who can help him to make purple/blue trap tiles easier, it would be 5/5/3. One such individual would be 1/2 Thor because he destroys red/green/yellow basic tiles, thus improving the probability of ggetting blue/purple. A third would be Sersi because she can reduce probability of red or yellow tiles appearing, and change tiles colour. You would want to reduce red tiles because she can create strong strike tiles which buff your trap and other damages. Thor can create yellow protect -> strike tiles as well. All these will increase the probability of having more trap tiles on blue/purple/black + /green.

If you can gain black ap quickly, then go for 5/3/5. You'll take some ally team damage but if you can mitigate that somehow and buff those attacks, it would be worth it. With this build, you're creating up to 2 trap tiles from purple and 2 more for each black repeater on the board, capped at 10.

Vhailorx

@HoundofShadow said:
It depends on who you team him up with. If you are putting him with someone who can help him to make purple/blue trap tiles easier, it would be 5/5/3. One such individual would be 1/2 Thor because he destroys red/green/yellow basic tiles, thus improving the probability of ggetting blue/purple. <snip.> Thor can create yellow protect -> strike tiles as well. All these will increase the probability of having more trap tiles on blue/purple/black + /green. .

This is nice theory crafting, but also kind of pointless for most players in most circumstances. Using thor's yellow to create strike tiles means collecting 21 yellow ap and waiting for special tiles to proc. Using those strikes in combo with another power (even a cheap one like arcade that also requires some babysitting) restricts this "synergy" to a vanishingly small set of matches. In almost all cases players will not want to use it. Either the player team will completely destroy the enemy team long before thor yellow --> thor yellow --> arcade purple aoe comes on line, or letting the match last long enough to use the combo will create a collateral problem (long match = worse placement, or long match = too long unshielded, or long match = giving a truly dangerous enemy team too much time).

I don't mean that Hound is wrong per se. I mean that everyone reading this thread dreaming about how much crazy damage they could do with arcade should recognize that there are practical limits to paper teambuilding, even if they don't often come up in threads like this. So I guess I am the killjoy. . .

Bad

Using half thor for to try to increase another color doesn't mean these colors will be favored, as those same colors can appear again, and sersi actually can do that already.
What you get using half thor is a lot of red green yellow and cascades, and a special tiles user doesn't like that, arcade doesn't like that at all if it messes up his trap tiles or repeaters.
Sersi indeed can convert tiles using the green and she can change to desired color trap tiles but imo that's too much AP wasted for situational damage also she won't fortify traps and they will be lost in cascades.

DAZ0273

Using Thor sounds like it would greatly increase the likelihood of Arcade's control room tile getting destroyed. Obviously purple is his most unreliable power so you might not put value on that but it seems an uneven trade-off to me.

I am slowly gathering the Iso needed to champ Arcade and so am moving him up in increments and you can see how much effective he becomes as you go - his blue can be devastating and his Black is a nice thing to have out. I still however can't really find the love for trap based characters even if he is definitely one of the better ones.

HoundofShadow

If you're using Arcade, I doubt you're playing for speed. And I've test out this team a few times already.

The purpose of putting Thor and Sersi with him is to increase the likelihood of his trap tiles falling on purple/black tiles. Sersi is there to reduce presence of red tiles, and Thor is there to block his trap tiles from being placed on yellow.

If his Control Room trap tile gets destroyed, you can fire his purple easily to create CR trap again, thanks to Thor and Sersi. And, his main offense is his blue power. Even if his Control Room gets destroyed, it won't affect his AoE damage.

Vhailorx

@Bad said:
Using half thor for to try to increase another color doesn't mean these colors will be favored, as those same colors can appear again, and sersi actually can do that already.
What you get using half thor is a lot of red green yellow and cascades, and a special tiles user doesn't like that, arcade doesn't like that at all if it messes up his trap tiles or repeaters.
Sersi indeed can convert tiles using the green and she can change to desired color trap tiles but imo that's too much AP wasted for situational damage also she won't fortify traps and they will be lost in cascades.

Halfthor leeches r/g/y from the board. After enough turns he will almost always leave the board flush with blue/black/purple because the tile drop % are flat across all colors, but 5 r/g/y tiles are removed every round and replaced at random from all 6 colors. Over time that means fewer r/y/g tiles. There are noticeably fewer r/g/y matches in a halfthor game, and correspondingly more b/b/p matches.

That is why it is fairly easy to suppress r/g/y opponents with halfthor on your team, and also so important that okoye tank purple and blue over thor if you want to run a proper thorkoye.

Using halthor as a way to match more of arcade's traps is plausible, if somewhat indirect.

Ruinate

I kinda agree with Hounds. I dont run Halfthor for trap placement (i dont care, I dont count traps), but I use him to make more blue pink black matches. Matching away Control Room tiles is a non-issue. Arcade's active pink is a great finisher regardless.

Dont know who Sersi is, I thought she was a Game of Thrones character, but anyways she sounds like a waste of time. Run 5* Emma for the near double damage, Halfthor auto generates red. Use Emmas red to blow up poison cloud 100% of the time for the double dip and stun. Now you have some speed. I came in 15th this pve with this team of 450-460s. I think that's solid.

Whats up with Black Suit Spiderman though? He's such garbage. I miss Arcade.