Jaedenkaal said: Anon said: My biggest concern with Sandman (as much as I love the character) is whether I should champ him in case of a buff (I Champed Mordo literally the day his rework was announced regardless of how bad he was). My Sandman is 2/4/5 so he's 2 covers away from fully covered. I had optimism for 4* Iron Fist and Agent Venom when they were released and they turned out to be, not top tier, but way better than first impressions.Sandman doesn't share that optimism. His Green is ok, but one ok skill and two lackluster ones isn't much to get excited about.I love Sandman as a character and I look forward to camping him, but I really hope the devs take a look at him. I don't think you're giving Shifting Sands enough credit here. 8 AP to add 5 Yellow tiles to the board is fine, and the 14 tile swaps gives a passable chance to get some additional matches as well.Honestly I think Sandman's biggest problem is that none of his powers are good enough that he can afford to have any of them at less than 5 covers. Many characters have 2 powers that are excellent, and the 3rd power hardly matters at all. Others have 3 powers that each do something potentially excellent at 5 covers, and you choose which two you want at any given time. Sandman doesn't have that. Sandman has 3 powers that are all totally fine at 5 covers, but you can't have them all at 5 covers.
Anon said: My biggest concern with Sandman (as much as I love the character) is whether I should champ him in case of a buff (I Champed Mordo literally the day his rework was announced regardless of how bad he was). My Sandman is 2/4/5 so he's 2 covers away from fully covered. I had optimism for 4* Iron Fist and Agent Venom when they were released and they turned out to be, not top tier, but way better than first impressions.Sandman doesn't share that optimism. His Green is ok, but one ok skill and two lackluster ones isn't much to get excited about.I love Sandman as a character and I look forward to camping him, but I really hope the devs take a look at him.
Straycat said:His purple is hit or miss, like all board shake powers. I've had it make a couple match 5s or do nothing. Sometimes it sets up a match 5 only to change some of those tiles yellow and ruin it. But I have to disagree with you, his problem is his yellow power is bad. Which makes his purple worse, since you're self accelerating towards his bad power.
Straycat said: Maybe I'm biased against it by comparing it to what it could have been, but it is considerably worse than those powers you mentioned. Throwing out protects on its own doesn't make for a good power, and removing them for low damage is pretty lame. It would make sense for it to act like Falcaps dive bomb, but having extra protects doesn't make the power better. It kind of acts like Novas danger zone, but its more expensive and weaker. But those powers aren't double casted for the conditional to trigger. On his own, you would need to double cast it for any damage, which is where it really falls. If he simply made protects and did his low damage every time, I would be on board. But 5/5/5 without a rework is still pretty lame I think.
Straycat said:Which makes his purple worse, since you're self accelerating towards his bad power.
mexus said: Jaedenkaal said: Straycat said:Which makes his purple worse, since you're self accelerating towards his bad power. Well that's a silly thing to say. Just accelerate towards someone else's good power. I recommend Power Man himself, Luke Cage. Not only one of the few proper yellow skills in the 4* tier but also someone that appreciates Sandman's protect tiles - he loves to fortify these.
Jaedenkaal said: Straycat said:Which makes his purple worse, since you're self accelerating towards his bad power. Well that's a silly thing to say. Just accelerate towards someone else's good power.
Jaedenkaal said: I'd say you probably are biased, yes. Actually Danger Zone is an interesting comparison. You're right, the damage and damage/AP on Danger Zone is much better, and creating Strike tiles is probably a better effect in most cases than creating Protect tiles. Although, technically speaking, you'd have to triple-cast Danger Zone on its own to get the damage.However, removing all (Black) Strike tiles is probably a much heftier penalty than removing all Protect tiles, and I don't think Danger Zone even gains the benefit of those Strike tiles, although I haven't tested that lately. Also, if you have 5 or more Black Strike tiles out, you can't use Danger Zone to create more, even if you wanted to for whatever reason. Could be worth it sometimes, but not if you'd been strengthening those Strikes or whatever.Also, Danger Zone requires that the Strike tiles be Black, while Sand Smash doesn't care what color they are (and it only needs one). To get the damage out of Danger Zone you need 5 Black Strikes on the board when you fire it. There's no good way to passively get 5 Black Strike tiles out, while there are several reasonable ways to passively get out a single Protect tile of any color. Straycat said:Which makes his purple worse, since you're self accelerating towards his bad power. Well that's a silly thing to say. Just accelerate towards someone else's good power.
Straycat said:I dunno, in my head I was thinking he would be better if his green and yellow were switched. So purple would accelerate his AOE and stun. Obviously you can use him to support someone else, but I still think his purple would at least feel like it was better if it fueled his own power. I think handcuffing him to either protect makers or yellow users just shows that his yellow is lacking.
talleman said: What ive heard Sandman is one of the worst 4*s in the game but i got 2 covers on the vine about to expire and i resently champed xforce wolverine so i might aswell champ Sandy too. Even if hes not fun to play i do like the champ rewards.How do you recommend to play him and with who? Maybe play him with Iron Fist to convert the Protect tiles to Strike tiles? Could be fun.
zodiac339 said:Might consider supporting him with Nico once she’s in tokens, as long as the Try Not To Die protect tiles are decent past level 270.
Jaedenkaal said: zodiac339 said:Might consider supporting him with Nico once she’s in tokens, as long as the Try Not To Die protect tiles are decent past level 270. Getting a bit off topic, I guess, but anyways, boosted to 366 and at 5 covers, Nico would be making 4 tiles of strength ~250, and then boosting them by 50%, for a total Protect strength of about 1500, for 7 AP. Sandman (366 and 5 covers) would make 6 strength 336 tiles (2016 total) for 10 AP. So on a strength per AP basis Nico is slightly better (and with another edge because it's cheaper), and additionally she'll buff Protect tiles created by anyone else, and of course she boosts them every turn of top of that if you have the most.Presumably in this pairing you're never intending to fire Sand Smash, since it will remove all those protect tiles you spent all that effort creating and buffing.