Nova (Tanak Valt) 5*

entrailbucket

Also the Nova/Coulson/4* Carol team is a RIOT. If you got some Nova retro covers, give it a shot. Remember to spec Carol 5 yellow.

Seph1roth5

@entrailbucket said:

@LavaManLee said:
I agree you sometimes can't tell what they are like at 672. However, 5Nova still has two randoms which would make him not quite as scary to go against. Personally, I didn't have problems with 672 Hotpool or Kaine, but that could just be me.

I mean, no offense, but the 3 random outcomes are a pretty decent heal, decent damage, and decent special tiles. What team are you constructing that wants only one of those things, and really really doesn't want any of the others?

Fwiw, when you try to fire his black and it rolls "healing," if he's already at full health the power fails. You're not charged the AP, so you can just fire it again until you get a useful result. They're learning!

Attack tiles are kind of meh. They keep popping up but unless it's green node or you build a team all around it and are using boosted people, they're junk.

entrailbucket

@Seph1roth5 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@LavaManLee said:
I agree you sometimes can't tell what they are like at 672. However, 5Nova still has two randoms which would make him not quite as scary to go against. Personally, I didn't have problems with 672 Hotpool or Kaine, but that could just be me.

I mean, no offense, but the 3 random outcomes are a pretty decent heal, decent damage, and decent special tiles. What team are you constructing that wants only one of those things, and really really doesn't want any of the others?

Fwiw, when you try to fire his black and it rolls "healing," if he's already at full health the power fails. You're not charged the AP, so you can just fire it again until you get a useful result. They're learning!

Attack tiles are kind of meh. They keep popping up but unless it's green node or you build a team all around it and are using boosted people, they're junk.

He's a special tile/countdown tile synergy character. I'm running him in teams that want special tiles, and teams that do stuff when CDs go off.

I've done about 50 or so fights with mine (base lvl462, boosted to lvl551) and have not yet cast his black and thought "oh no, more junky attack tiles!"

GrimSkald

@entrailbucket said:

@658_2 said:
Idk, I’m not excited to run into this guy at 672, boosted by 4* May with Leapfrog on her. Even at baby champ, the red multi-hit will be very powerful in certain configurations, and then obviously if the black aoe fires it’s a rough match. He doesn’t blow me away, but he’s clearly playable boosted.

People are talking about the meh 5s lately. Have you guys hit 672 Kaine or Hotpool? Those fights suck.

It's the same thing every single time. Folks trash the new guy's kit on paper, then when he turns up in game he ends up being just fine.

I fought a 672 Hotpool last event and he downed 2 of my guys from full health in a single turn. I don't even know what he does or how he did it! Kaine is a total nightmare at high levels.

Hotpool's red is a bit deceptively phrased. Assuming you have at least 3 more red, yellow, or purple AP when you fire it, it does 4 + [as many strikes the opponent has] hits (i.e. applies the listed damage that many separate times.) Since Hotpool tends to keep at least one or two strikes on the opponent's side, that's at least four, probably more like five, six, or even more. And every single one of those hits can be boosted by strikes, Apocalypse, 5SW, etc. It adds up fast.

Of course, protect tiles will be proportionately better against the red, but still, strike tile teams are much more common than protect tile teams. What's more, if you're running Goose Hotpool can easily hit you a dozen or two times with each red.

sambrookjm

@entrailbucket said:

Fwiw, when you try to fire his black and it rolls "healing," if he's already at full health the power fails. You're not charged the AP, so you can just fire it again until you get a useful result. They're learning!

The first few times I got the "Nova's at full health" window after I fired the black, I didn't notice the AP were still there. Now it's not as annoying, but it should be easy to do something in the code like "If Nova's at full health, ignore the heal result and re-roll until you get something that won't heal him."

BriMan2222

@Tony_Foot said:

@entrailbucket said:

I fought a 672 Hotpool last event and he downed 2 of my guys from full health in a single turn. I don't even know what he does or how he did it! Kaine is a total nightmare at high levels.

Works well at 550 and boosted has become the new 'works well with okoye'. I mean how many people are factoring that in like you can, when deciding if a character isn't a worthy 5*

To be honest I'd written pool and kaine off because when I fought them at high 550 (not boosted) I had no problems dispatching them pain free with shang and half thor. But I will look again.

That said I do think people need to accept pushing the boundaries of 5* is over. Ascending is the long game and it's understandable that power creep now comes from 3 and 4*. It's much longer and harder now to get those to 550, they should be over taking 5*.

I just wish there was more of the lower tokens in the rewards and 3* shard for opening LT and classics because I'm barely moving the needle of shards on my favourite 3* I save my tokens for when the new 3* goes in and Dr Strange is my fav, I get about 4 levels on him per season (12ish covers).

I've fought a few lvl 672 DP and Kaine. DP was mostly a non issue, but one time he did down my full health ascended negasonic, but it was towards the end of the match and I was gonna finish him off next turn any way so 1 health pack was needed.

I fought a bunch of 672 Kaine's and I always saved him for last because I have no idea what his powers do, but every time he fired a power it didn't seem to do much of anything.

entrailbucket

@Tony_Foot said:

@entrailbucket said:

I fought a 672 Hotpool last event and he downed 2 of my guys from full health in a single turn. I don't even know what he does or how he did it! Kaine is a total nightmare at high levels.

Works well at 550 and boosted has become the new 'works well with okoye'. I mean how many people are factoring that in like you can, when deciding if a character isn't a worthy 5*

To be honest I'd written pool and kaine off because when I fought them at high 550 (not boosted) I had no problems dispatching them pain free with shang and half thor. But I will look again.

That said I do think people need to accept pushing the boundaries of 5* is over. Ascending is the long game and it's understandable that power creep now comes from 3 and 4*. It's much longer and harder now to get those to 550, they should be over taking 5*.

I just wish there was more of the lower tokens in the rewards and 3* shard for opening LT and classics because I'm barely moving the needle of shards on my favourite 3* I save my tokens for when the new 3* goes in and Dr Strange is my fav, I get about 4 levels on him per season (12ish covers).

"Can dispatch them pain free with Shang and Thor" is just as meaningless as "good at 550 and boosted!" You can dispatch literally everyone pain free with that team.

Are there any ascended characters who are good at 550 without the boost? Are there ascended characters who can't be trivially dispatched by Shang-Chi and m'Thor? I have a TON of them, and I've not found that to be the case at all.

BriMan2222

It's kind of lame how Tanak and Richard look almost identical, down to the pose, when they are supposed to be 2 separate characters. 3 and 5 star Jubilee look more diverse and they're the same character.

entrailbucket

@Tony_Foot said:
I didn't say Mthor. I don't use her apart from in pve when I need to make X number of tiles or remove x tiles.

Ha, I didn't even notice! The question is the same, though -- is there any character or team that you can't beat with that team?

entrailbucket

@Tony_Foot said:
Of course there are a ton of teams I avoid running half thor. AOE teams and anyone that can hit thor when not at the front. I skip a lot of teams in sim all things being equal. I do find I get less RNG results than mthor but I have to be a lot more choosy on my matches.

Ok, so for you, Nova is actually going to be incredibly difficult to beat, because you're not capable of beating anyone who has an AOE.

Sorry, but what are we even doing here? Why can't we have some sort of normal conversation about how strong a character is, without folks chiming in with stuff like "attack tiles are bad so Nova is bad" and "any character who loses to Shang-Chi on defense must be terrible."

I feel like some players have got it in their heads that any new character must be terrible, and are just looking for reasons that's true.

Domitronas

@entrailbucket said:
Ok, so for you, Nova is actually going to be incredibly difficult to beat, because you're not capable of beating anyone who has an AOE.

No it's not going to be difficult, because before Nova gets enough AP to fire off anything the match will already be over.

entrailbucket

@Domitronas said:

@entrailbucket said:
Ok, so for you, Nova is actually going to be incredibly difficult to beat, because you're not capable of beating anyone who has an AOE.

No it's not going to be difficult, because before Nova gets enough AP to fire off anything the match will already be over.

The guy just said he skips any team that has an AOE!

BriMan2222

@entrailbucket said:

@Domitronas said:

@entrailbucket said:
Ok, so for you, Nova is actually going to be incredibly difficult to beat, because you're not capable of beating anyone who has an AOE.

No it's not going to be difficult, because before Nova gets enough AP to fire off anything the match will already be over.

The guy just said he skips any team that has an AOE!

I would assume he's talking about characters like Omega Red and Ihulk who do it passively, and not someone who needs ap.

Domitronas

@entrailbucket said:

The guy just said he skips any team that has an AOE!

Oh come on, I know that you know better. There's a big difference between someone like iHulk or Omega Red, and someone like Tanak. Even with the active AoE dealers, you bring a juiced May and the enemy is down hundreds of thousanda of HP on turn 1, you bring Tanak and you'll be dealing damage equivalent to a slap with 5 wet noodles. Maybe 6 on a good day.

entrailbucket

@Domitronas said:

@entrailbucket said:

The guy just said he skips any team that has an AOE!

Oh come on, I know that you know better. There's a big difference between someone like iHulk or Omega Red, and someone like Tanak.

Honestly I don't care anymore. If you guys think Nova is terrible because he makes attack tiles sometimes, or because he dies to Shang-Chi, or because he can't win turn 0, enjoy playing with the same two characters forever.

I'll champion him and find fun things to use him for, because I enjoy playing the game.

LavaManLee

@entrailbucket said:
I'll champion him and find fun things to use him for, because I enjoy playing the game.

Oh, so if you play the way you want it's because you enjoy playing the game? But if other players play the way they want, it means they don't enjoy playing the game?

I do like your arguments but when you get snide and snippy like the blanket statement "because I enjoy playing the game" it loses some credibility.

Just because players don't play the way YOU want to play doesn't mean they don't enjoy the game. They enjoy it differently.

I mean, you get immense pleasure whacking players points down in PVP. Personally, I don't think that is fun at all but I would never tell you that you were playing the game wrong and that I enjoy it more.

Domitronas

@entrailbucket said:
Honestly I don't care anymore. If you guys think Nova is terrible because he makes attack tiles sometimes, or because he dies to Shang-Chi, or because he can't win turn 0, enjoy playing with the same two characters forever.

I'll champion him and find fun things to use him for, because I enjoy playing the game.

Well everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I think you're taking it the wrong way. I can look at the character and say that Tanak is not going to make any waves while at the same time I can enjoy diverse roster of characters and not be a complete meta slave. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Instead of making excuses for mediocre character kits perhaps we should ask the questions why is his kit like this in the first place? Why is there so much RNG involved? Why does one of his powers wants to keep the CD tiles on the board while the other one actively wants them destroyed? Why does he even have heal?

And if you look at the broader picture you'll see that there are many characters like this, who are trying to do 100 and 1 thing all at once and suck at all of them. I'm sure people would much rather have diverse characters that are good at certain specific things than a bunch of mediocre generalists.

entrailbucket

@LavaManLee said:

@entrailbucket said:
I'll champion him and find fun things to use him for, because I enjoy playing the game.

Oh, so if you play the way you want it's because you enjoy playing the game? But if other players play the way they want, it means they don't enjoy playing the game?

I do like your arguments but when you get snide and snippy like the blanket statement "because I enjoy playing the game" it loses some credibility.

Just because players don't play the way YOU want to play doesn't mean they don't enjoy the game. They enjoy it differently.

I mean, you get immense pleasure whacking players points down in PVP. Personally, I don't think that is fun at all but I would never tell you that you were playing the game wrong and that I enjoy it more.

But I didn't say anything about anyone else. There was no other half of that line. I'll find something fun to use Nova for because I like playing the game.

entrailbucket

@Domitronas said:

@entrailbucket said:
Honestly I don't care anymore. If you guys think Nova is terrible because he makes attack tiles sometimes, or because he dies to Shang-Chi, or because he can't win turn 0, enjoy playing with the same two characters forever.

I'll champion him and find fun things to use him for, because I enjoy playing the game.

Well everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I think you're taking it the wrong way. I can look at the character and say that Tanak is not going to make any waves while at the same time I can enjoy diverse roster of characters and not be a complete meta slave. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Instead of making excuses for mediocre character kits perhaps we should ask the questions why is his kit like this? Why is there so much RNG involved? Why does one of his powers wants to keep the CD tiles on the board while the other one actively wants them destroyed? Why does he have heal in the first place?

And if you look at the broader picture you'll see that there are many characters like this, who are trying to do 100 and 1 thing all at once and suck at all of them. I'm sure people would much rather have diverse characters that are good at certain specific things than a bunch of mediocre generalists.

How many fights have you done with Nova so far? What level is yours? Have you faced one at 672?

My answers are about 100, about lvl460, and yes, btw.

Domitronas

@entrailbucket said:
How many fights have you done with Nova so far? What level is yours? Have you faced one at 672?

Oh so if I don't have him maxed out suddenly my points are invalidated?