Vhailorx wrote: Not really sure what the problem is here. Thor is awesome. Cage is awesome. They are basically 2 of the top 3 or 4 3*s in the game. They both have awesome yellow powers. Cage is better for dropping a single target. Thor is better for board control and (because of the daisy chain into green combo) air damage. Which ever one is better, it's like debating between the value of $20.00 and $19.99 (i.e. what is the point?).
Vhailorx wrote: Unreal: Pre health shift I would have agreed with you about laken. But now that he has so much less health than everyone, I think he is a liability in PvP. His true healing is good for sustainability, but unless he is boosted, he just doesn't generate or absorb enough damage to make the cut. He has been passed by the meta. If you want sustainability, bring cage. If you want strike tiles and fast damage, bring blade.
Unreallystic wrote: Vhailorx wrote: Unreal: Pre health shift I would have agreed with you about laken. But now that he has so much less health than everyone, I think he is a liability in PvP. His true healing is good for sustainability, but unless he is boosted, he just doesn't generate or absorb enough damage to make the cut. He has been passed by the meta. If you want sustainability, bring cage. If you want strike tiles and fast damage, bring blade. On the high end I'm with you *except Blade, I love Blade, but don't agree with all the current Blade love, he is way overrated right now*, but with climbing, its so rare that you fight anything that will take Laken down. At least when I climb, I do my best to never use HP, so True Healing > high health, especially in the current 'cascade heavy' game we've got going on. Cage is great against match dmg, but getting hit for 1k-3k chips away at him, while Laken is only phased if hit for 6k or a combo of at least 6k. I'm not even concerned about dmg done, I don't care about strikes, I just care about health and his blue attack... With that said, the recent change to the numbers changes how many fights it takes to climb, so that does make Cage better for climbing on the surface, but before this season, I would still rather climb with Laken. - Unreall
Unreallystic wrote: I know why people like him, he's one of my favs and the first of the 'newer' characters I marched to 166. But because I like him, I'm also honest about his short comings, he tanks green *bad* for most of my teams, and with me avoiding making red matches, you end up making lots of green ones, on top of that red is 'becoming' the new hotness *again*, so his green special is becoming more and more like QS's blue ability...not THAT hard to get off, but trending in that direction. That substantially weakens the value of his purple, leaving him with black. Yes he's extremely well balanced and has all good covers, but he's super board reliant, boosting doesn't help him, he gets hit 'alot'...almost as much as Hood, and he doesn't have high health. I'm not saying he's not good (not at all), just that I think people are higher on him than they should be (especially for PvP, for PvE, he is a God, no question). Back to Cage, I really want to pair him with Blade...can't figure out a good third though for that team. And my IF only has like 3 covers... -Unreall
atomzed wrote: One of my fave pve team is Groot-Cage-Blade. You have coverage across all colors. And have active skills in all color except red. And you don't want to match red anyway with blade. Groot will tank 4 colors (blue, green, yellow and TU) and can heal. Has active strike tiles and a green board shake. Blade tanks black and purple and has am active purple and black. Groot blue helps to provide enough strike tiles for max blade purple effectiveness. Blade black is also useful to drain AP. Cage tanks only red so he is rarely hurt; which is good since blade and groot has accelerated healing. Has a nuke in yellow and cheap black that fully maximise the strike tiles.
Vhailorx wrote: Unreallystic wrote: I know why people like him, he's one of my favs and the first of the 'newer' characters I marched to 166. But because I like him, I'm also honest about his short comings, he tanks green *bad* for most of my teams, and with me avoiding making red matches, you end up making lots of green ones, on top of that red is 'becoming' the new hotness *again*, so his green special is becoming more and more like QS's blue ability...not THAT hard to get off, but trending in that direction. That substantially weakens the value of his purple, leaving him with black. Yes he's extremely well balanced and has all good covers, but he's super board reliant, boosting doesn't help him, he gets hit 'alot'...almost as much as Hood, and he doesn't have high health. I'm not saying he's not good (not at all), just that I think people are higher on him than they should be (especially for PvP, for PvE, he is a God, no question). Back to Cage, I really want to pair him with Blade...can't figure out a good third though for that team. And my IF only has like 3 covers... -Unreall Someone blue/Red/green is the ideal pair with cage/blade. That means she hulk (i don't count rags), which is less than ideal given her board shake. Maybe one should just abandon blue and green and bring Cyclops.
Phantron wrote: People overrate his protect tile for the same reason why people think Bullseye is a difficult opponent. When Luke Cage or a high level Bullseye is on the board you need to just act as if all your match damage is always doing 1 damage and play like that. If you happen to get match 4/5s it'll usually still comfortably overpower the protect tile though that's not even the primary benefit of making a match 4/5 (getting a boatload of AP is the primary benefit). Aside from the Ultron event that is tailored to make protect tiles look good, you shouldn't ever change your game around for passive protect tiles. Yes if your team has 3 Nick Furies it can be pretty infuriating to figure out how to do the last 300 damage when all you got are moves that require 4 matches, but 3 Nick Furies is probably not the ideal way to build a team. Even if you were running such a ridiculous team, a 250 protect tile isn't going to do much on Demolition so either that should be enough or maybe a Demolition with either an Avenger's Assemble red or green will still do the trick. Of course you can calculate your damage wrong but it's just not that common even if you were somehow running 3 Nick Furies who have by far the most expensive usable moves in the game (IM40/GSBW might have a higher average but some of their moves aren't realistically usable)
Vhailorx wrote: Phantron wrote: People overrate his protect tile for the same reason why people think Bullseye is a difficult opponent. When Luke Cage or a high level Bullseye is on the board you need to just act as if all your match damage is always doing 1 damage and play like that. If you happen to get match 4/5s it'll usually still comfortably overpower the protect tile though that's not even the primary benefit of making a match 4/5 (getting a boatload of AP is the primary benefit). Aside from the Ultron event that is tailored to make protect tiles look good, you shouldn't ever change your game around for passive protect tiles. Yes if your team has 3 Nick Furies it can be pretty infuriating to figure out how to do the last 300 damage when all you got are moves that require 4 matches, but 3 Nick Furies is probably not the ideal way to build a team. Even if you were running such a ridiculous team, a 250 protect tile isn't going to do much on Demolition so either that should be enough or maybe a Demolition with either an Avenger's Assemble red or green will still do the trick. Of course you can calculate your damage wrong but it's just not that common even if you were somehow running 3 Nick Furies who have by far the most expensive usable moves in the game (IM40/GSBW might have a higher average but some of their moves aren't realistically usable) Totally disagree. You are correct that Cage's tile doesn't help much against enemy abilities. But most much of high-level pvp play and all of high-level PVE play is dedicated to preventing the ai from using their abilities at all. That's why ap-stealers are so powerful. And Cage is a perfect match for that strategy. He negates match damage, while ap theft and ap-denying matches keep the enemy from firing abilities. On top of that, Cage's other two powers just deal significant damage, which is also desirable when facing high-level opponents. As nothernpolarity (r.i.p.) said when cage was released, at 5 covers, his protect tile is absorbing a little over 250 damage per turn. Back then average matches lasted about 10 turns, and that length has gone up since then with the health shift and boost reduction. That means that cages is effectively true healing your entire team for 2500+ health each match. If you can prevent the enemy from using their abilities, he can effectively neutralize all damage completely. What's not to like?
Phaserhawk wrote: atomzed wrote: One of my fave pve team is Groot-Cage-Blade. You have coverage across all colors. And have active skills in all color except red. And you don't want to match red anyway with blade. Groot will tank 4 colors (blue, green, yellow and TU) and can heal. Has active strike tiles and a green board shake. Blade tanks black and purple and has am active purple and black. Groot blue helps to provide enough strike tiles for max blade purple effectiveness. Blade black is also useful to drain AP. Cage tanks only red so he is rarely hurt; which is good since blade and groot has accelerated healing. Has a nuke in yellow and cheap black that fully maximise the strike tiles. Surprisingly Groot does not have accelerated healing, unless you count taking him from low to almost full in prologue
Phantron wrote: Since match damage does not scale linearly with level past 166, in the current meta you're going likely to have 3 guys with 10-12K HP a piece but your match damage is still just in the 200s. Even if all that damage went to a guy like The Hood, if that's all they're doing you're not really worried about losing, and most of the time it's going to go to someone with 12K HP who just shrugs it off with or without Luke Cage's protect tile.
Buret0 wrote: Okay, so I'm getting his fifth yellow cover today and I need to decide how to respect his build. I love the one turn stun on the 4 black covers, so I don't really want to give that up, but for PvP his black is useless. I have his red at five covers, but I can take the 80 point per hit damage protection reduction fairly easily. Obviously for Defense his best build is going to be 5/5/3, but I'm seriously thinking of going 5/4/4 because I don't want to lose his stun for offense. I really like being able to stun characters like Hulk or Captain Marvel before unloading on them. I realize that it isn't ideal for D, because the AI never gets the second punch in and 5 Reds is a much better deterrent than 4 reds... Advice?
Vhailorx wrote: Phantron wrote: As nothernpolarity (r.i.p.) said when cage was released, at 5 covers, his protect tile is absorbing a little over 250 damage per turn. Back then average matches lasted about 10 turns, and that length has gone up since then with the health shift and boost reduction. That means that cages is effectively true healing your entire team for 2500+ health each match. If you can prevent the enemy from using their abilities, he can effectively neutralize all damage completely. What's not to like?
Phantron wrote: As nothernpolarity (r.i.p.) said when cage was released, at 5 covers, his protect tile is absorbing a little over 250 damage per turn. Back then average matches lasted about 10 turns, and that length has gone up since then with the health shift and boost reduction. That means that cages is effectively true healing your entire team for 2500+ health each match. If you can prevent the enemy from using their abilities, he can effectively neutralize all damage completely. What's not to like?