*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

Unknown

Xeonic-Ice wrote:

Professa D wrote:

danikalil wrote:

This is being discussed in a MPQ FB page too Marvel Puzzle Quest - Players Group . A player posted this video there:
Chuck Barry: How to win with Sentry in under a minute.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-0b-iAzq84..

Wow, just...wow. I mean I understood logically how this sequence worked in theory but watching it happen and down such a high HP team really drives the point home that something is a bit...off. Definitely skews the PvP mechanics and metagame for sure.

While that video showcases everything going perfectly, it's by no means the norm. You need to be fully boosted, but that opens you up to OBW wrecking your day because you now have blue/purple she can steal. Also, each time you let World Rupture go off, your team loses roughly 1k hp, and Sentry loses 2k hp. So even if you have Daken self healing and use the throwaway featured hero, you're going to burn through health packs to keep Sentry going. I wiped a number of times climbing the leaderboards for Webslinger using Sentry/Hood/Spidey.

Don't get me wrong, Sentry is very powerful and can be fast for sure, but there are many ways to lose with him if you don't get a good board or if you're careless for even a single turn. I don't believe he needs to be nerfed because the upkeep is high. He's fantastic to get those quick boosted matches in before the swarm of endless attacks come pouring in, but not sustainable without spending lots of HP. Sentry is at least interesting to play with his unstable power levels.

If boosts weren't able to be purchased, and instead only earned, it might be a better solution than nerfing Sentry. But Demiurge likely won't do that because it generates revenue.

@ Xeonic-Ice

That kind of board was pretty normal. I encountered enough yellow to heal during some runs. Sometimes I had trouble collecting green (neither team was able to get any). Black wasn't a problem, I would just gamble with the strike tile remaining in place. I posted a video of one of the fights I had a problem, I used it to highlight the difference in falling tiles, with normally ruptured tiles vs. Hood intimidate forced countdown tiles to rupture. It wasn't much of a problem.

On average:
Spider Man: 1 Heal (40 HP) pack every 6 rounds
Hood: 1 Heal (40 HP) pack every 3 rounds
Sentry: 1 Heal (40 HP) pack every 3 rounds

Each Turn
3 - +3 ALL AP (30 HP)
3 - +3 Red /Yellow (120 ISO)
3 - +3 Red /Yellow (120 ISO)

After match 3, prior to entering match 4
170 HP
720 ISO

After match 6, prior to entering match 7
380 HP
1440 ISO

After 60 matches
3800 HP
14,400 ISO

This is pretty much in line with the amount of HP and ISO I consumed, outside of shielding

Unknown

I don't think health pack would have a HP cost in this scenario because you're obviously not playing 20 games like this without shielding in between (that'd actually allow people to hit you back). Your normal allocation of health pack should be enough to cover whatever health loss you have between shields.

Xeonic-Ice

@Bugpop

Heh, that's a lot of spent resources in order to maintain that amount of consistency. My hood isn't specced for speeding up all countdown tiles yet but I can see how it makes a difference. I was only stating that you need to boost and use health packs if you want to keep at the 1 minute matches, which for most people, isn't feasible.

If you hadn't boosted at all, you'd have to do 2-3 green matches, 2-3 yellow matches, and 2-3 black matches to get to the mass destruction. By the time you accumulate all of that AP, the enemy team can throw off your plans.

Boosts imbalance every character for a brief time, which is what they're meant to do, so I can't really treat a boosted Sentry as the norm.

Xeonic-Ice

Phantron wrote:

I don't think health pack would have a HP cost in this scenario because you're obviously not playing 20 games like this without shielding in between (that'd actually allow people to hit you back). Your normal allocation of health pack should be enough to cover whatever health loss you have between shields.

Depends on your play style. If you spread out your attacks evenly throughout the event, yeah health packs won't be as much of a problem. But if you're making a big push in the last few hours trying to gain a few hundred points, health packs are definitely relevant since even while shield hopping, you still need 35 minutes per pack to recharge or head over to the prologue for healing.

Unknown

Xeonic-Ice wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I don't think health pack would have a HP cost in this scenario because you're obviously not playing 20 games like this without shielding in between (that'd actually allow people to hit you back). Your normal allocation of health pack should be enough to cover whatever health loss you have between shields.

Depends on your play style. If you spread out your attacks evenly throughout the event, yeah health packs won't be as much of a problem. But if you're making a big push in the last few hours trying to gain a few hundred points, health packs are definitely relevant since even while shield hopping, you still need 35 minutes per pack to recharge or head over to the prologue for healing.

I was making a concerted effort to use Sentry in a manner to get high points. My typical playstyle is more in line with Phantron's observation. I would have used quite a bit less playing under my typical style.

Unknown

Xeonic-Ice wrote:

@Bugpop

Heh, that's a lot of spent resources in order to maintain that amount of consistency. My hood isn't specced for speeding up all countdown tiles yet but I can see how it makes a difference. I was only stating that you need to boost and use health packs if you want to keep at the 1 minute matches, which for most people, isn't feasible.

If you hadn't boosted at all, you'd have to do 2-3 green matches, 2-3 yellow matches, and 2-3 black matches to get to the mass destruction. By the time you accumulate all of that AP, the enemy team can throw off your plans.

Boosts imbalance every character for a brief time, which is what they're meant to do, so I can't really treat a boosted Sentry as the norm.

Sincerely, without boosts, I find it's easier to get 7 green AND 8 yellow than it is to get 12 black or 14 green.

Xeonic-Ice

Bugpop wrote:

Sincerely, without boosts, I find it's easier to get 7 green AND 8 yellow than it is to get 12 black or 14 green.

Makes sense since you're focusing on one or the other at any one time as opposed to focusing on only black or only green. Focusing solely on a single color match will definitely take longer because there's a limit of how many are even on the board right away. Shifting between green or yellow allows you to still open up the board for more tiles as well as progress the abilities you want.

kensterr

The idea of the video and of this thread is to show how fast Sentry can down a team with boosts, as what some players are doing to achieve high scores.

Self damage to own team is not an issue because obviously if those players have HP and ISO to spend on shield and boosts I do not see any reason for them to wait for health packs to regen if they have few bad boards in a row (wiping their own heroes).

reckless442

Jamie Madrox wrote:

sms4002 wrote:

you know, maybe it's just me but has anyone ever actually been hit by flo!?! I always see him in nodes randomly when i catch him for the 30 seconds he unshields but He has never attacked me....Who is he beating up to get up that high?

The running theory is that they only hit each other (X-Men) and climb the ranks that way. Nobody really wants to hit them so they can go as high as they want uncontested.

They hit each other. If you're around the same level, you can jump for 25 points per opponent. If you coordinate with two opponents, you can do two quick battles for an average of 50 points in 2-3 minutes. You're unshielded so briefly that nobody else can possibly strike you. So the Sentry strategy has the huge advantage of making you nearly immune to attack because it is so quick between shields.

That is true for people at the top of the alliance. However, people with lower scores use Sentry later in the event the can snipe higher-level opponents for 40+ at a time when the opponents are unshielded, even briefly, because a Sentry battle is quick enough that you can target a Lazy Thor team and defeat it in the time that the person using Lazy Thor is fighting a battle between shields. That puts pressure on the person higher up to switch to boosted Sentry as well, since it minimizes the time that he or she is unshielded.

That is my biggest concern with boosted Sentry. Shields are an advantage that you can pay for, but they don't make you effectively immune from attack while you are gaining points nor do they give you a huge advantage in terms of sniping other players.

Unknown

Maybe it's just me, but no matter how costly it is to consistently pull off, it feels wrong to have a fairly easy to execute one-turn kill in a game like this.

Unknown

newdarkcloud wrote:

Maybe it's just me, but no matter how costly it is to consistently pull off, it feels wrong to have a fairly easy to execute one-turn kill in a game like this.

In order to do this consistently, you need to constantly purchase the +3 all AP boost with HP. Also, since Sentry self-damages, you will eventually also have to constantly purchase heal packs with HP after the upcoming heal nerf in order to keep playing continuously.

Working as intended, in other words.

Unknown

Where do people get the crazy idea that Sentry killing a team in two moves is only if you're rich?

It just takes less time to get those 2 moves off if you're rich, and the self damage is negligible compared to the damage you would've taken, especially against another top calibur team, if you didn't kill them in two moves.

HailMary

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

I think I accidentally deleted Sentry while clearing out spam. Sorry, Sentry.

Phaserhawk

True Healing....did this somewhat nerf Sentry by limiting his ability as an offensive juggernaut and now is an insane defensive monster?

Unknown

has anybody tried sentry / hulk/ daken ?

sentry's green & strike tiles make my hulk anger so that I could make more green tiles match and extra turn.

Spoit

bruceway wrote:

has anybody tried sentry / hulk/ daken ?

sentry's green & strike tiles make my hulk anger so that I could make more green tiles match and extra turn.

It....shouldn't? IIRC, self damage is not effected either way by tiles, protect or strikes

Unknown

bruceway wrote:

has anybody tried sentry / hulk/ daken ?

sentry's green & strike tiles make my hulk anger so that I could make more green tiles match and extra turn.

only sentry's red can trigger your own hulk's anger

morgh

I have a 4/4/5 Sentry and am not quite sure which way I should move it (for defense mostly) - TBH I would like to pair him up with Laken and go 5/5/3, however I don't think I saw too many such builds... it seems viable though, doesn't it?

FaerieMyst

I've been hit about 20 times by Sentry's World Rupture. Only once has it killed me - and that was when it was teamed with Daken.

There are several options for dealing with this -

1. Deprive Sentry of green AP and then he can't fire it off.
2. Kill him. Keep an attack back just for him.
3. OBW - extend the countdown tiles and you have time.
4. Hawkeye 1* - can add a critical tile to the right place or can eliminate an entire row.
5. She-Hulk - especially with 5 red - she destroys the bottom row plus 5 more along the next row.
6. Captain America, Spidey, Bullseye - protect tiles are a wonderful thing. They protect from each hit.
7. CMags - blue tiles to create matches or overwrite.
8. Board disruptors like Hulk or Storm.

I don't like Sentry because he needs therapy to quit hurting himself and his team but as a threat he can be countered.

Phaserhawk

morgh wrote:

I have a 4/4/5 Sentry and am not quite sure which way I should move it (for defense mostly) - TBH I would like to pair him up with Laken and go 5/5/3, however I don't think I saw too many such builds... it seems viable though, doesn't it?

For sure you want 5 in green. You can argue either way on the others. 3/5/5 is most popular, but 4/5/4 or 5/5/3 could be just as good. However, the biggest issue with red is the number of tiles. You can probably guarente 7 tiles out on the board, you can't always guarentee 9

Looking at Sacrifice. Lets just use Punisher as a basis since he's probably the most balanced character in the game. He drop 104 strike tiles.

Lvl 3 Sacrifice = 401 = 401/104 that's equal to 3.8 Punisher strike tiles
Lvl 4 Sacrifice = 467 = 467/104 that's equal to 4.5 Punisher strike tiles
Lvl 5 Sacrifice = 575 = 575/104 that's equal to 5.5 Punisher strike tiles

Now that is rolled into one tile which can be very easy to destroy, but I would find it hard to justify 5/5/3 over 3/5/5 or 4/5/4 and too me the upgrade from 3 red to 4 red is not worth it for only an extra 341 dmg vs losing a super awesome strike tile, I just can't justify it. Which basically puts you with two choices 5/5/3 or 3/5/5.

5/5/3's red does 785 more damage at max, and you will take 193 less damage. However 5/5/3's yellow does 174 less strike tile damage which with tile match only would take you 4.5 turns to reccop back but Sentry takes 149 less damage.

I have questioned Sacrifice's higher levels as overkill, I mean if you get World Rupture off with Sacrifice it's game wether or not it's lvl 3 or lvl 5. My preference would be 3/5/5. With True Healing now, I just don't see myself casting Supernova unless I have to as I don't want to damage my whole team. And it's a lot less resource intensive to use one Health Pack on Sentry vs. 3 on Sentry + 2 teammates. Now don't get me wrong, I"m not saying 5/5/3 is bad or you shouldn't build it, Just know 4 in red is very bad compared to 3 or 5. So in those regards there really are only 2 Sentry builds 5/5/3 or 3/5/5, 5/5/3 has more concrete damage, where 3/5/5 is more independent. I also lean towards 3/5/5 because I feel it's a more flexible build, 5/5/3 has you relying on Daken and there may be situations you can't pair them together