Board "shake up" abilities (100% more Sniper Rifle)

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

bonfire01 wrote:

Illusions is kind of meh.

How come? 4.25 seems like a great return on 5 purple, especially when you're getting back colors that'll do damage.

Overall you lose 0.75 AP and do no damage at all. You can hope for a better match to make than before the ability but overall you're not achieving much. Also consider the hero it's on... Loki lacks health, other ability is dependent on Patch being on your team or the other team generating the right kind of tiles and caps at 115.

The ability is fairly underwhelming considering it's description plus all the on screen action would tend to make you think it'll have a much bigger impact than it does. To top it all off almost half the time it didn't make a single match....

(also note those AP generated could be environmental or in a colour you have very little use for whereas you likely specifically collected the purple AP to fire it instead of matching a colour you are guaranteed to be able to do damage with).

simonsez

bonfire01 wrote:

Also consider the hero it's on...

Yeah, I wasn't defending Loki as a character, just this ability in comparison to the others.

But were you saying that illusions doesn't generate match damage???

john1620b

simonsez wrote:

But were you saying that illusions doesn't generate match damage???

I think bonfire was just saying that 1-2 matches are basically worthless damage.

Unknown

Illusions is quite good compared to the average board manipulation ability. it's just that Loki doesn't do anything else while most characters who can shake up the board also do other stuff too.

simonsez

john1620b wrote:

I think bonfire was just saying that 1-2 matches are basically worthless damage.

Since the idea is to compare these different board shakeup abilities, unless Loki's operates differently, I'm not sure why this'd be mentioned in any comparisons. Again, not defending Loki... he's a flimsy, one-trick pony... I just think it's an underrated trick. If he ever gets a 3rd skill and reasonable hit points, he'd rise pretty high on my "pain in the ****" list.

Unknown

I guess to be a bit clearer about my dislike of illusions.....

Abilities that add tiles (eg. ThunderStrike, Anger, etc) are going to get you at least 1 match in a specific (presumably desirable) colour if they do anything at all. If they don't match there is an increased chance of being able to naturally make a match in that colour due to its increased prevalence.

Abilities that destroy tiles will give you damage for the shattered tiles (sometimes AP for those tiles) before making matches. So if no matches re made you will at least do some damage.

Illusions swaps tiles. So If no matches occur it's done pretty much nothing (although has the potential to leave the board in a better state for you or, I guess, a worse one). If it does make matches that is ALL it's doing and the colours you get are pretty random (although increased chance of colours which are more prevalent prior to casting).

So taking all that into account I don't think an average return of 4.25 random AP + match damage for 5 purple AP is all that good.

Unknown

The other advantage of all "shake up" abilities is the ability to choose when to use them AND first crack at the board afterwards if there's a 4 or 5 match or a match which visible sets off a cascade.

If you don't get any matches with Thunder Strike there's probably a free crit on the board for you to create. Even if you DO get matches with Thunder Strike there's a reasonable chance of that.

Illusions can be held to use when the board is not advantageous for you or when there's a lot of one colour which is spread out (and will hopefully be clumped by the swaps) and not used when you've got good matches to make already. Indeed, one of the best uses for it is right after something like Thunder Strike or Anger goes off... but there advantages are harder to quantify. And when push comes to shove it's attached to a relatively low HP character with only two abilities (and the other one is very niche)- it's not worth picking Loki just for Illusions, Illusions is a solid ability which would go well as the 3rd ability on a character you wanted for something else if you happened to get purple AP.

HairyDave

There's actually one more incredibly valuable use for illusions: hard to reach CD tiles.

Loki has saved my bacon on more than one occasion by pulling a Flamethrower or Tommy Gun tile out of a corner where I had no hope of getting to it before it went off. I'll admit there are far better ways of getting rid of them but Illusions is the most fun way of doing it

Unknown

Sentry is great

Supernova removes a certain number of red tiles. It's saved my hide from magnetic translocation on a number of occasions. When c.mag has 10 purple. If I can use it I will. Magneto will use the move even though there are less than 4 tiles on the board.

World rupture is great. It pops the tiles one by one, and there can be quite a few cascades.

Unknown

I'll try to get some sentry data next. Maybe D3 will help me by allowing him in the Heroics coming up.... doubt it though