***** Havok (Classic) *****

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  • Taganov
    Taganov Posts: 279 Mover and Shaker
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    I must be missing something. Looks like a featured character only. Uninspired abilities, no passives to compensate. I hope his special removal power hits one at a time. That would at least have an interesting interaction with BRB's blue.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2020
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    Taganov said:
    I must be missing something. Looks like a featured character only. Uninspired abilities, no passives to compensate. I hope his special removal power hits one at a time. That would at least have an interesting interaction with BRB's blue.
     I think his actives are all pretty good.  Green is the worst and it's decent.  But he has no passives in a game that has almost always had a passive meta (4* thorverine and sentry/hood are the only all-active meta teams  since the game's first 6 months, right?  And yes hood has a damn good passive, but sentry bombing didn't use it at all). So I agree that  it seems unlikely that havok will be must-have.

    As far as I can see, his only shot is that his blue might be part of some engine mechanic with the AP arbitrage.  But 7:3 ap is not very efficient.  And while his red is good, there is too much red competition in 5* land, many that come with good 5* passives (Thor, JJ, okoye, etc)
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,618 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Wreak Havok is going to be aptly named I think as that 5* loaner at lvl 368  is going to catapult lower players MMR into the stratosphere, no? Maybe the loaner isn't counted? 
  • TPF Alexis
    TPF Alexis Posts: 3,826 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Can't say I'm particularly impressed by him. Not bad, by any means, but not much interesting going on here, either.
    But I must say that I am very much not happy with the way his release is being handled, and even more so if  the way Sinister's release was handled is a sign of things to come.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,618 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Sadly this game has become far too immersed in Passive abilities for an old school AP damage dealer like Havok to move any needles. If we don't get it for free on turn one then it is immediately B List. I don't really know what else they could have done with Havok though - he shoots energy beams and wears a stupid hat. Done.
  • jamesh
    jamesh Posts: 1,600 Chairperson of the Boards
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    wymtime said:
    wil this character be required in the next PVE when only a small number of players have a cover for him?
    The answer is most likely yes.  Under the new reward scheme, the 5* character whose shards are given out as placement rewards in an event is the essential for the subsequent event.  The in-game preview of Infinite Pursuit shows Havoc shards as placement rewards.
  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,920 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2020
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    Vhailorx said: This response is overly harsh fight4. Bluewolf is obviously a net positive contributor to the boards and has a lot of knowledge of the game, even if you dislike this particular post


    That said, BRB/bishop is easy fodder for other stunner bro teams (arguably easier than other meta teams because BRB's tiles make it easier to avoid proc'ing bishop). And Demi certainly does care about synergies; they even hype them in those marvel.com "interviews." But they don't always seem understand synergies, in the same way they don't seem to understand many aspects of the elder game very well at all. A quick glance through the suggested team combos from those marvel.com puff pieces shows a less than perfect understanding of what actually plays well together in mpq.


    Overly harsh? How so? Bluewolf made claims that are neither based on their own in-game experience nor backed up by observation. I don't think it unfair to call into question the validity of such statements. While I do appreciate Bluewolf's contributions to the forum and their vast knowledge of the game, why should that have any bearing on the discussion at hand?

    My interests are solely on how true do I find the ideas that are being presented, mainly:

    Bishop/Beta Ray are unbeatable
    Synergy has never been the focus of the dev team
    Nerfing Bishop won't have a significant impact on Havok or Sinister

    These statements are untrue. I would find them problematic regardless of who has stated them. So I'm at a loss as to why you think a user's posting history should carry any weight in this matter. 

    ThaRoadWarrior said:

    Havok's powers don't counteract BRB as best I can read it, they in fact seem to make things worse against him. BRB is going to generate green and blue when Havok's way-too-expensive green fires off just as well as if they were matched or destroyed any other way. The only thing that would even remotely make him a counter is if his green 1-shots the fortified countdowns rather than breaks the fortification off of them. Did @IceIX or anyone confirm one way or the other what to expect from that?


    I was thinking specifically in terms of fighting Beta/Kitty teams, a Havok/Bishop team would be a good counter.  Depending on the board state (i.e. location of protect tiles and blue tiles) and enemy AP pool (specifically, blue, yellow and red AP), a player should have enough blue after turn 2 to either: 1. stun Beta or Kitty, 2. use Havok's blue for potential red or green AP gain and significant damage to enemy.

    Ideally, you get a board where you can match away one of Beta's protect tiles to prevent Kitty's passive boosting. However, all is not lost if you aren't able to as you can juggle between stunning one or both and work on collecting the green AP to remove the boosted protect tiles.

    Obviously, you will want Beta stunned when you use Havok's green.  I like to think of his green as a fall back plan if things don't go smoothly. But I think Havok is a much better option for that fight than the majority of 5* characters. 

    The key to his effectiveness against Beta is that you will need to partner him with either a character that stuns or removes countdown tiles.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,913 Chairperson of the Boards
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    So again, like road warrior said, broken Bishop is doing all the real work. You can bring any heavy hitter with Bishops stunlock and get essentially the same results. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,162 Chairperson of the Boards
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    fight4thedream said:
    [...]

    The key to his effectiveness against Beta is that you will need to partner him with either a character that stuns or removes repeater tiles.
    BRB doesn't generate repeaters, why is that important?

    Are people seeing BRB/Kitty in pick 2? I don't see that team at all. I see BRB/Carbage if it's not BRB/Bishop in pick 2, I only see Kitty in the mix if it's Pick 3 with BRB/Kitty/Carbage. That team is out of control. If you can't get a quick stun on them, you aren't winning.
  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,920 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2020
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    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    fight4thedream said:
    [...]

    The key to his effectiveness against Beta is that you will need to partner him with either a character that stuns or removes repeater tiles.
    BRB doesn't generate repeaters, why is that important?

    Are people seeing BRB/Kitty in pick 2? I don't see that team at all. I see BRB/Carbage if it's not BRB/Bishop in pick 2, I only see Kitty in the mix if it's Pick 3 with BRB/Kitty/Carbage. That team is out of control. If you can't get a quick stun on them, you aren't winning.
    Brainfart! Nice catch. Probably had repeaters on the mind since I had a bad run with a Kitty/BRB team lol 

    We are probably in different MMR. I see various kinds of BRB teams:

    BRB/Bishop and BRB/Kitty are perhaps the most common, followed by BRB/Xavier and BRB/Carnage. Occasionally I see the Hammer Bros BRB/Thor but not very common which makes me somewhat sad as I would have loved for them to have been a thing. 

    Daredevil217 said:
    So again, like road warrior said, broken Bishop is doing all the real work. You can bring any heavy hitter with Bishops stunlock and get essentially the same results. 
    True to a certain extent. It depends on the levels of Kitty/Beta. If they are high enough, one or two Kitty buffs to those protect tiles can prove quite troublesome for even heavy hitters. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,162 Chairperson of the Boards
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    fight4thedream said:
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    fight4thedream said:
    [...]

    The key to his effectiveness against Beta is that you will need to partner him with either a character that stuns or removes repeater tiles.
    BRB doesn't generate repeaters, why is that important?

    Are people seeing BRB/Kitty in pick 2? I don't see that team at all. I see BRB/Carbage if it's not BRB/Bishop in pick 2, I only see Kitty in the mix if it's Pick 3 with BRB/Kitty/Carbage. That team is out of control. If you can't get a quick stun on them, you aren't winning.
    Brainfart! Nice catch. Probably had repeaters on the mind since I had a bad run with a Kitty/BRB team lol 

    We are probably in different MMR. I see various kinds of BRB teams:

    BRB/Bishop and BRB/Kitty are perhaps the most common, followed by BRB/Xavier and BRB/Carnage. Occasionally I see the Hammer Bros BRB/Thor but not very common which makes me somewhat sad as I would have loved for them to have been a thing. 

    Daredevil217 said:
    So again, like road warrior said, broken Bishop is doing all the real work. You can bring any heavy hitter with Bishops stunlock and get essentially the same results. 
    True to a certain extent. It depends on the levels of Kitty/Beta. If they are high enough, one or two Kitty buffs to those protect tiles can prove quite troublesome for even heavy hitters. 
    It probably is MMR related. When I see Kitty, she's invariably with 370 4ockets in pick 2. 

    The counter to BRB/Kitty is probably DD5. Go ahead and let her buff those tiles, then just flip them to friendly strikes when you're ready and be on your way. If he doesn't have a battery in place, it's not that bad to just avoid the starter-protects that are on the board for a few turns. It's only when he gets his blue CD out that he starts to steamroll my teams. Carbage does the same thing with his attack tiles. It just escalates so quickly between the two of them, particularly with the free turn carbage takes.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2020
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    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    fight4thedream said:
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    fight4thedream said:
    [...]

    The key to his effectiveness against Beta is that you will need to partner him with either a character that stuns or removes repeater tiles.
    BRB doesn't generate repeaters, why is that important?

    Are people seeing BRB/Kitty in pick 2? I don't see that team at all. I see BRB/Carbage if it's not BRB/Bishop in pick 2, I only see Kitty in the mix if it's Pick 3 with BRB/Kitty/Carbage. That team is out of control. If you can't get a quick stun on them, you aren't winning.
    Brainfart! Nice catch. Probably had repeaters on the mind since I had a bad run with a Kitty/BRB team lol 

    We are probably in different MMR. I see various kinds of BRB teams:

    BRB/Bishop and BRB/Kitty are perhaps the most common, followed by BRB/Xavier and BRB/Carnage. Occasionally I see the Hammer Bros BRB/Thor but not very common which makes me somewhat sad as I would have loved for them to have been a thing. 

    Daredevil217 said:
    So again, like road warrior said, broken Bishop is doing all the real work. You can bring any heavy hitter with Bishops stunlock and get essentially the same results. 
    True to a certain extent. It depends on the levels of Kitty/Beta. If they are high enough, one or two Kitty buffs to those protect tiles can prove quite troublesome for even heavy hitters. 
    It probably is MMR related. When I see Kitty, she's invariably with 370 4ockets in pick 2. 

    The counter to BRB/Kitty is probably DD5. Go ahead and let her buff those tiles, then just flip them to friendly strikes when you're ready and be on your way. If he doesn't have a battery in place, it's not that bad to just avoid the starter-protects that are on the board for a few turns. It's only when he gets his blue CD out that he starts to steamroll my teams. Carbage does the same thing with his attack tiles. It just escalates so quickly between the two of them, particularly with the free turn carbage takes.
    Maybe, but with[out] a purple battery, DD is slow.  And denying BRB blue is hard.  The basic strat of letting the enemy tiles grow and then stealing them is good.  But in practice, I think it will fail more often then I would like because BRB gets a blue off and they have too many tiles to punch through before their various damage-dealing powers (fueled by BRB's passive) overwhelm dd's healing.  I think a faster stunlock strat is better against this pair.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,162 Chairperson of the Boards
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    It's true, 9 purple is a lot. So....does Gambit counter this team? Overwriting those tiles won't trigger the AP gain for BRB, but even with Stacked Deck it may take too long to get started since that costs 11 purple, and you'd need like 6 turns for the repeater to just generate it for you.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2020
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    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    It's true, 9 purple is a lot. So....does Gambit counter this team? Overwriting those tiles won't trigger the AP gain for BRB, but even with Stacked Deck it may take too long to get started since that costs 11 purple, and you'd need like 6 turns for the repeater to just generate it for you.
    It's amusing to think of gambit's repeater surviving for 6 turns (without bringing GG along).  That might work, but I would think hela will give you the same result more reliably, at least in terms of overwriting the specials.  She will also punish BRB's passive generating green.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,913 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Vhailorx said:
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    fight4thedream said:
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    fight4thedream said:
    [...]

    The key to his effectiveness against Beta is that you will need to partner him with either a character that stuns or removes repeater tiles.
    BRB doesn't generate repeaters, why is that important?

    Are people seeing BRB/Kitty in pick 2? I don't see that team at all. I see BRB/Carbage if it's not BRB/Bishop in pick 2, I only see Kitty in the mix if it's Pick 3 with BRB/Kitty/Carbage. That team is out of control. If you can't get a quick stun on them, you aren't winning.
    Brainfart! Nice catch. Probably had repeaters on the mind since I had a bad run with a Kitty/BRB team lol 

    We are probably in different MMR. I see various kinds of BRB teams:

    BRB/Bishop and BRB/Kitty are perhaps the most common, followed by BRB/Xavier and BRB/Carnage. Occasionally I see the Hammer Bros BRB/Thor but not very common which makes me somewhat sad as I would have loved for them to have been a thing. 

    Daredevil217 said:
    So again, like road warrior said, broken Bishop is doing all the real work. You can bring any heavy hitter with Bishops stunlock and get essentially the same results. 
    True to a certain extent. It depends on the levels of Kitty/Beta. If they are high enough, one or two Kitty buffs to those protect tiles can prove quite troublesome for even heavy hitters. 
    It probably is MMR related. When I see Kitty, she's invariably with 370 4ockets in pick 2. 

    The counter to BRB/Kitty is probably DD5. Go ahead and let her buff those tiles, then just flip them to friendly strikes when you're ready and be on your way. If he doesn't have a battery in place, it's not that bad to just avoid the starter-protects that are on the board for a few turns. It's only when he gets his blue CD out that he starts to steamroll my teams. Carbage does the same thing with his attack tiles. It just escalates so quickly between the two of them, particularly with the free turn carbage takes.
    Maybe, but with[out] a purple battery, DD is slow.  And denying BRB blue is hard.  The basic strat of letting the enemy tiles grow and then stealing them is good.  But in practice, I think it will fail more often then I would like because BRB gets a blue off and they have too many tiles to punch through before their various damage-dealing powers (fueled by BRB's passive) overwhelm dd's healing.  I think a faster stunlock strat is better against this pair.
    I use Daredevil/BSSM all the time against Gritty with that same, let them buff and then steal strategy. Works almost every time. That said, we all know Grocket is worthless once he puts his strikes down and Kitty is worthless without tiles to buff (or when their strength is neglected). Bill can stand alone as a scary dude. I still think the DD strat can work. Not against Bish of course. But I think he can take Bill/Kitty. Who is a good second though? Since you don’t have to bring Spidey along like with Gritty. Maybe Carbage?
  • Bubba3210
    Bubba3210 Posts: 244 Tile Toppler
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    Do we know when he hits latest legends?
  • RickOShay
    RickOShay Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker
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    Bubba3210 said:
    Do we know when he hits latest legends?
    Usually 2 weeks from the end of his HP-based store
  • RickOShay
    RickOShay Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker
    edited February 2020
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    Havok, Thor, Prof X sounds like a good team on paper. All colors have nice match damage, with black being the only non-active ability color.
    3x AoE abilities is the fun part. Prof X purple -> green actually adds some green to the board, helping to speed the most expensive AoE's up. Thor board chaos helps line up blue (and purple) matches, not to mention match 4's.

    Havok's red will usually hit harder than Thor's, and charges blue tiles. Therefore, play this when you have a ready blue match to be made, so that you gain more AP and damage.

    This team should do well against BRB Kitty & non-Bishop in pick 3, since you will actually want 3x enemy specials out when you fire Havok's green for top damage. Can you afford to run his green at level 5?  which other power(s) would you be willing to reduce? I think 4/4/5 may make sense here for the trade-off. Keep in mind, Thor's green AoE damage would be reduced by the protects the enemy has out, Havok's wouldn't (right?). 
    Does Havok as the red-blue user bring more or less than what Jessica would have? Probably close on offense, not sure how tough he'll be on defense. 

    Again, I think Sinister should have had a stun-immunity, but Havok would have really made sense. i.e. Havok could have been designed to be immune to stun if his team has 3 blue AP (or something like that). 
    That way, you could match blue immediately against a Bishop team, and you would have less of a severe disadvantage.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,162 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2020
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    I think Carbage is a liability if part of the strategy is leaving the protects on the board. Maybe EB Venom? That way it doesn’t even matter if the protects get excessive? But that puts way too many down to avoid probably.

    The blog post confirmed he is 1-shotting fortified tiles, so if you bank up Green hold on to it until a countdown is out, I could actually see Havok helping out against a BRB team.

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