Cage Match 6/1-6/4

over_clocked

Boosted Magneto wants Punisher to take black/green/environment, the Hood to take yellow, and to play Jungle/Desert/Lab exclusively, so all fine. I don't know, 3 in yellow just for the cases when Mags is buffed? Even with 4 yellow, sometimes I find Patch's regen to not be enough (PvP-wise, mind you). Daken is that annoying.
Edit: Hood always takes environment over Patch/Magneto. Even though I always knew that the Hood's 3 environment strength is one of the strongest if not the strongest among 3 env. characters, I just checked again both in the Sim (buffed Mags) and in Cage Match (buffed Patch).

WilsonFisk

Jumped in this morning and find the known cheater Watercat in my bracket. Just watched him go from around 100pts to 887 in about a half hour. Guess D3 has better things to do than deal with him.

HairyDave

My bracket seems pretty chill at the moment - the leader is sitting on less than 200 points.

Unknown

Emeryt wrote:

Combined with Black from Alliance rewards in this one... I guess I can sit down, prepare a shisha, pour some amaretto into milk and relax

Amaretto and milk? Really? I love amaretto but have not tried it with milk.

Unknown

WilsonFisk wrote:

Jumped in this morning and find the known cheater Watercat in my bracket. Just watched him go from around 100pts to 887 in about a half hour. Guess D3 has better things to do than deal with him.

But they sandboxed jimbojim23. Not sure if he go out or not after all. Or whether it was a mistake or real -- if the latter it took way too much time for sure.

But why would we expect that part work any better than the others.

Cragger

I suppose that the name of this tournament reduces the probability that Hero for Hire/New Avenger/Thunderbolt Luke "The Powerman" Cage is added to my hero roster.

Or conversely, that he is, and Demiurge has a devilishly ironic sense of humor and is just playing the fool to give us something to rant about.

djpt05

Any tips of staying healthy this tournament?

I've run both Patch/OBW/IM40 and Patch/CMag/Hulk (or Thor) and in both instances have burned through health packs (even with C.Mags board controlling)

Bowgentle

djpt05 wrote:

Any tips of staying healthy this tournament?

I've run both Patch/OBW/IM40 and Patch/CMag/Hulk (or Thor) and in both instances have burned through health packs (even with C.Mags board controlling)

Run a maxed Patch with 5 yellow. He tanks most colours and shrugs off damage like it's nothing.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Boosted Magneto wants Punisher to take black/green/environment, the Hood to take yellow, and to play Jungle/Desert/Lab exclusively, so all fine. I don't know, 3 in yellow just for the cases when Mags is buffed? Even with 4 yellow, sometimes I find Patch's regen to not be enough (PvP-wise, mind you). Daken is that annoying.
Edit: Hood always takes environment over Patch/Magneto. Even though I always knew that the Hood's 3 environment strength is one of the strongest if not the strongest among 3 env. characters, I just checked again both in the Sim (buffed Mags) and in Cage Match (buffed Patch).

It's not just in case Mag is buffed. It's about the case where your featured character doesn't suck because vast majority of the time whoever is featured will take 5 out of 7 match types from Patch if he's sufficiently high level (environment for being in center, their 3 colors, plus any overlap in color and only GSBW has no overlap in colors). Since I'm trying to have all my featured characters level up to not encourage extra attacks, I'm finding a lot of time Patch can't get enough colors, and if Patch is getting low colors you're better off with a high level TBTI/Berserker Rage than regen, because you have to be able to match colors for regen to matter, while TBTI you can at least use it after someone died. Yes you can also regen after someone died, but that'd be a terrible strategy to use in general whereas a TBTI after someone died can actually turn things around.

Having said that, I sure could've used a 5 regen Patch in all those Doom/Loki/Ragnarok events.

Unknown

Obviously the more Patch is matching the better regen is, but even when he's only taking two colors you can frequently get him in front when the opponent gets the AP for an attack (not to mention AOE attacks) so his regen still ends up quite useful

Thanos

I haven' seen anyone mention a 4/4/5 build. Is there any merit to it? I've always used punisher over patch so i dont have much experience with him. Three in green seems like too little and five in green seems like too much. I would think four in red would still do decent damage. Any thoughts?

Btw, i'm pretty sure She Hulk is next on the list.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Obviously the more Patch is matching the better regen is, but even when he's only taking two colors you can frequently get him in front when the opponent gets the AP for an attack (not to mention AOE attacks) so his regen still ends up quite useful

It's useful but when damage is spread out more evenly you're almost always limited by the other guys. Let's say all 3 of your characters have exactly 5800 HP and you take exactly 2000 damage each every fight, and for some reason Patch only regen 1000 HP each game with regen 3 (that'd be 3 turns where the board had more than 10 yellow tiles). After first game your HP will look like 4800/3800/3800, and after second game it's going to be 3800/1800/1800. At this point you obviously have to use 2 health pack on the other two guys, while Patch can still go on for a while just fine. If we assume this ratio just holds and you only use health pack at 1800 then the other 2 guys would've used up 4 before Patch needs 1, and that'll also happen on a game where all your characters end up with 1800 HP so you can't continue anyway. Yes you can always try to be clever but if Patch is only getting 2 colors, he's probably only taking 1/3 of the total damage at best.

Patch is great when your featured character is low, but you shouldn't purposely try to have low level featured character if you can do something about it.

Unknown

Thanos wrote:

I haven' seen anyone mention a 4/4/5 build. Is there any merit to it? I've always used punisher over patch so i dont have much experience with him. Three in green seems like too little and five in green seems like too much. I would think four in red would still do decent damage. Any thoughts?

The problem is that his red and green skills have a much bigger jump from 4 to 5 than they do from 3 to 4. If you go 4/4/5, you getting two solid skills, instead of a very good one and a pretty good one. It gives you a little more flexibility, but less overall potential. Personally, I think this is more of a problem with the red than the green - mine is 3/5/5 now, but was 4/5/4 prior to today - because the green's positive gets better, but its negative gets worse, so they balance out more. There's little reason to have red at 4.

over_clocked

Phantron, lotsa letters

I have looked through some alliances' rosters (X-Men, Shield, 5DV), looks like most of them have 5/3/5 Patches, but some have 3/5/5 builds, too. Very few have builds with 4s or 5/5/3.
Imo 5/3/5 while spectacular with cMags is mostly for shield-hoppers which I am definitely not. I care more for consistency rather than ultra-speedy kills.
You want 5 in yellow when Patch does a lot of tanking. But 5 in green with a bad board is impossible to tank off unless you wipe purple strike tiles with precious Magneto blue or bring Loki, and if you want Patch to do a lot of tanking, why not give him a better TBTI, too?
5/5/3 is all-around suicidal and weird, so no. While A.Wolvie/X-Force are fine at 5/5/3 as they need damage and their regen sucks too much anyway, Patch has too much damage of all kinds to offer, which someone has to tank, and I want that sucker to be Patch and not characters without self-healing. At the very least his whole canonical point is to be that one guy who doesn't need healthpacks. Okay, make that two with LD.
3/5/5 has only one weakness, having slightly less immediate damage, but still fitting for all general purposes: angering the Hulk, safer Espionage for oBW (match 2/3 purple strike tiles immediately and there's only one enemy tile left), Magneto spam. Not crazy enough with Loki, but Loki? Yeah.
Magneto generates enough AP for the strength of strike tiles to matter very little. My current Patch has 4 green as I have said and the damage ratio is pretty absurd as is. Don't see how 3 green is that much worse.
If you look at it another way, it's also stronger by not benefitting the opponent that much on defense. I have lost a couple of times already on offence due to Patch being unable to outheal 4 green with 4 yellow, or 4 green biting me back in general. You have no hope of winning with 5 green and a bad board with no red/blue, whereas 3 green at least doesn't doom you further.

Edit: of course it's not very beneficial to field Patch in general when there's a buffed high-leveled green/red/yellow character, but no one should rely on just one character, which you don't see me doing. Just switch Patch with Punisher and you are none the worse off, gaining Punisher's env strength, cheap AoE, attack tiles, black coverage and a strong finisher, while having to use healthpacks a bit more often.

ZeiramMR

Locked: You are running Patch/Magneto/Hood, right? It takes a while to accumulate the AP, but you could always use Twin Pistols to clear a good chunk of Patch's purple Reverse-Strike tiles. I have been using Patch/Daredevil/Hood for SHIELD Training and just hold on to the green until I can clear most of the purples as soon as they go up. Not optimal of course, but an option.

over_clocked

Yes, Hood's yellow can take care of two-three strike tiles, but it's a game-ender, being that expensive, it's not a reliable way to cope with 5 green. And my AP problems when running Magneto/Patch in general are more of the 'which attack do I use to kill that second guy?' kind, not the 'where dem APs' kind. It's not unusual to have 10+ red, 10+ purple, 10+ green, 10+ black at the end of a match with any semi-decent board.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

gamar wrote:

Obviously the more Patch is matching the better regen is, but even when he's only taking two colors you can frequently get him in front when the opponent gets the AP for an attack (not to mention AOE attacks) so his regen still ends up quite useful

It's useful but when damage is spread out more evenly you're almost always limited by the other guys. Let's say all 3 of your characters have exactly 5800 HP and you take exactly 2000 damage each every fight, and for some reason Patch only regen 1000 HP each game with regen 3 (that'd be 3 turns where the board had more than 10 yellow tiles). After first game your HP will look like 4800/3800/3800, and after second game it's going to be 3800/1800/1800. At this point you obviously have to use 2 health pack on the other two guys, while Patch can still go on for a while just fine. If we assume this ratio just holds and you only use health pack at 1800 then the other 2 guys would've used up 4 before Patch needs 1, and that'll also happen on a game where all your characters end up with 1800 HP so you can't continue anyway. Yes you can always try to be clever but if Patch is only getting 2 colors, he's probably only taking 1/3 of the total damage at best.

Patch is great when your featured character is low, but you shouldn't purposely try to have low level featured character if you can do something about it.

Damage doesn't occur in a steady fashion though, there are predictable spikes, which makes a max regen Patch invaluable. For example, once your opponent's Ares has gathered enough green, you match to put Patch out in front and he absorbs it. All the tick-tack match damage doesn't really matter because it's fairly low, so the difference between a 3y Patch and any non-regen hero is negligible.

Where a 5y Patch shines is taking the huge spikes (Patch, Thor, LDaken, Ares, etc) and also post-fight healing, because you can just go to prologue, not use anyone special, and just heal back to full during regular match damage.

[EDIT] and although it's counter-intuitive, it is sometimes advantage for Patch to tank less colors, at least where regen is concerned. This is because you can put Patch out in front to take a big hit, and then afterwards "hide" him by letting someone else tank, and then that gives him time to regen so he can take another hit, if necessary.

Unknown

Milkrain wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

Combined with Black from Alliance rewards in this one... I guess I can sit down, prepare a shisha, pour some amaretto into milk and relax

Amaretto and milk? Really? I love amaretto but have not tried it with milk.

I like trying different things. Thought one day it might work and it worked

And if You want a strong, but veryyyy good one, mix polish Krupnik, Amaretto, Bailey's or Kahlua,

Unknown

It seems people play Patch based on what they think happens in a PvP game as opposed to what actually happens in a game.

If you have Patch and Magneto and a game went on for longer than 10 turns it's probably going on too long. You shouldn't even have a game that didn't immediately end when you hit 9g very often. In such a short game damage taken from match 3 dominates your sustainablity and here you're limited by how many colors Patch can match, which is a variable outside of your control unless you purposely choose to have low level featured heroes.

Regen is not good for a long game in PvP, because currently in the PvP game the strongest teams are built on the bomb model. That is, you won't find a strong PvP team that relies on multiple weak attacks since the AI isn't very good with them. Rather they're already centered around something like Thunder Strike, Rage of the Panther, or even a Berserker Rage which is something that will set you irrecoverabily behind if they pulled it off. The only person that doesn't fit this model in the high end is The Punisher, but Judgment is actually strong enough to punch through Patch's regen, and Molotov hoses your sustainability on the 2 other guys that can't regen.

Now since TBTI isn't meaningful in a short game, usually there's no real difference anyway, but if a game went on unexpectedly long and assuming your featured character is actually higher than level 141, having a level 5 TBTI to use when someone died is far more useful than having regen 5 to use when someone died.

vudu3

locked wrote:

I have looked through some alliances' rosters (X-Men, Shield, 5DV), looks like most of them have 5/3/5 Patches, but some have 3/5/5 builds, too. Very few have builds with 4s or 5/5/3.

I can't believe you didn't check out Ace of Blades. For shame!