Sidewinder (Seth Voelker) 4*

Waddles_Pines

@trenchdigger said:
I'd like to know what happens to sidewinder's powers after ascension, to understand whether he is worth favouriting.

There used to be a forumite with some sort of hacked/sandbox account who would post videos of battles using the newly released character at 550 just days after release? I think that was pre ascension though, so quite a while ago.

I think the policy is you can't ascend until a season later (approx 4 weeks), expect to see numbers then.

KGB

@trenchdigger said:
I'd like to know what happens to sidewinder's powers after ascension, to understand whether he is worth favouriting.

There used to be a forumite with some sort of hacked/sandbox account who would post videos of battles using the newly released character at 550 just days after release? I think that was pre ascension though, so quite a while ago.

Why would you want to ascend him?

His most important passive requires his team mates to tank colors (you want him tanking nothing). His other passive doesn't get any better as a 5 than it would be as a 4. None of his active powers is going to get any meaningfully better damage wise as a 5 than it is as a 4.

If you are worried about low health as a 4, just put Leapfrog on him to give him even more ways to escape being one shot killed or match damaged to death.

KGB

trenchdigger

At 370 he only has 22k health which can easily be chipped away by anyone with AOE. Ascend him to say 475 and with 2 550s he wont be tanking anything, but downing him will be far less trivial. He only needs to stay alive for a turn or 2 his boost is so over powered.

KGB

The only place you are getting a pair of 550s as team mates is in Simulator (unless you've ascended your 3s to 550 already?).

If he only needs a turn or two then 22K health is fine. Both Leapfrog and his only Blue passive will burst heal damage to help against AOE chip damage (besides OR, who else with AOE gets used?).

I rather suspect we are all going to be disappointed at his ascended numbers as I bet that match damage boost goes WAY down from 1500%.

KGB

WhiteBomber

My guestimate would be 1500 to 150; just remove a zero, niiice and simple. Maybe 15 though, to be more on theme with some other ascensions...

entrailbucket

@KGB said:
The only place you are getting a pair of 550s as team mates is in Simulator (unless you've ascended your 3s to 550 already?).

If he only needs a turn or two then 22K health is fine. Both Leapfrog and his only Blue passive will burst heal damage to help against AOE chip damage (besides OR, who else with AOE gets used?).

I rather suspect we are all going to be disappointed at his ascended numbers as I bet that match damage boost goes WAY down from 1500%.

KGB

I'm going to bonus him and ascend him because I don't care, but it's getting pretty difficult to make an argument to ascend some of these guys now.

Previously it was an offense vs defense thing -- with 3* May, for example, trading a bigger buff for 5* health could be worth it, if you want her to survive for more than a turn on defense.

The problem now is that there are so many ways to keep these guys alive anyway via supports, plus the bigger buff now matters a ton on defense. There are Chasm defensive teams that can oneshot you before you even move the board, and they absolutely require the higher buff levels. It doesn't matter if Sidewinder has low health if the AI can beat you before you get a chance to hit him once.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:
The only place you are getting a pair of 550s as team mates is in Simulator (unless you've ascended your 3s to 550 already?).

If he only needs a turn or two then 22K health is fine. Both Leapfrog and his only Blue passive will burst heal damage to help against AOE chip damage (besides OR, who else with AOE gets used?).

I rather suspect we are all going to be disappointed at his ascended numbers as I bet that match damage boost goes WAY down from 1500%.

KGB

There are Chasm defensive teams that can oneshot you before you even move the board, and they absolutely require the higher buff levels. It doesn't matter if Sidewinder has low health if the AI can beat you before you get a chance to hit him once.

Doesn't Sidewinder help with this? In a pick 3 you can run him with Moonknight/Surfer and have 2 stun immune characters that cover 5 of the 6 colors for match damage fun. Sidewinder means it no longer matters that they are useless characters power wise, they just need his match damage boost to be god tier. Even in pick 2 you can run Sidewinder/Surfer or Sidewinder/Moonknight against Chasm.

KGB

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:
The only place you are getting a pair of 550s as team mates is in Simulator (unless you've ascended your 3s to 550 already?).

If he only needs a turn or two then 22K health is fine. Both Leapfrog and his only Blue passive will burst heal damage to help against AOE chip damage (besides OR, who else with AOE gets used?).

I rather suspect we are all going to be disappointed at his ascended numbers as I bet that match damage boost goes WAY down from 1500%.

KGB

There are Chasm defensive teams that can oneshot you before you even move the board, and they absolutely require the higher buff levels. It doesn't matter if Sidewinder has low health if the AI can beat you before you get a chance to hit him once.

Doesn't Sidewinder help with this? In a pick 3 you can run him with Moonknight/Surfer and have 2 stun immune characters that cover 5 of the 6 colors for match damage fun. Sidewinder means it no longer matters that they are useless characters power wise, they just need his match damage boost to be god tier. Even in pick 2 you can run Sidewinder/Surfer or Sidewinder/Moonknight against Chasm.

KGB

I'm not sure.

The problem with Surfer and Moon Knight was that they're good against Chasm but bad against almost everyone else. I don't know if the Sidewinder bonus bridges that gap.

Timemachinego

@Borstock said:

Generate a lot of blue quickly and send the entire other team away, I believe.

It's not even quite that anymore, after Darkveil. Used to be you'd gen 27 blue with 3* Iron Man's yellow and 5*HE's passive, which took a few turns, wasn't fast to resolve and was moderately vulnerable to enemies; now you just let Deathlok rack up some blue for your final away and Darkveil will do most of the away'ing. There's also the Chasm variant I was told about recently, where Chasm's self-damage will trigger Darkveil (so you never need Kang to directly do anything), but I had it fail a number of times on me in ways I couldn't figure out so I benched it.

Borstock

Might as well bring back Bishop, WorthyCap, and Gambit. If you can't win turn 1, you aren't winning.

Tac

Idk why people draw the line here. Pandora's box has been opened with imay, OF COURSE they would print upgrade from her numbers soon or later

entrailbucket

@Tac said:
Idk why people draw the line here. Pandora's box has been opened with imay, OF COURSE they would print upgrade from her numbers soon or later

It was easy to look at her and see a one-off, because there really wasn't anybody else doing that sort of thing that well. Getting more probably means she's not that.

revskip

I suspect a nerf will be coming in on this one. I know folks who did 2000 wins in SHIELD Sim this past season just doing 1 turn wins with Sidewinder. I personally am already up to 100 wins in the Rogue PvP with the vast majority of those wins happening before the other team ever gets to make a match. Those kind of metrics probably catch some eyes.

Codex

And yet it went through "testing". And was determined to be fine as is.

entrailbucket

@revskip said:
I suspect a nerf will be coming in on this one. I know folks who did 2000 wins in SHIELD Sim this past season just doing 1 turn wins with Sidewinder. I personally am already up to 100 wins in the Rogue PvP with the vast majority of those wins happening before the other team ever gets to make a match. Those kind of metrics probably catch some eyes.

I ran Chasm (550) M'baku (470) Sidewinder (272 or something) with both cascade supports and leapfrog -- boosted +2 TU every fight, against mostly 550/550/550.

Against non Chasm teams I usually won (mind you, against full 550 5* teams) before they could move the board at all, and sometimes even before they woke up from the stun. Any cascade killed one or more enemies.

Sidewinder just has to be bugged. There is no way this is intentional.

Codex

@entrailbucket said:

@revskip said:
I suspect a nerf will be coming in on this one. I know folks who did 2000 wins in SHIELD Sim this past season just doing 1 turn wins with Sidewinder. I personally am already up to 100 wins in the Rogue PvP with the vast majority of those wins happening before the other team ever gets to make a match. Those kind of metrics probably catch some eyes.

I ran Chasm (550) M'baku (470) Sidewinder (272 or something) with both cascade supports and leapfrog -- boosted +2 TU every fight, against mostly 550/550/550.

Against non Chasm teams I usually won (mind you, against full 550 5* teams) before they could move the board at all, and sometimes even before they woke up from the stun. Any cascade killed one or more enemies.

Sidewinder just has to be bugged. There is no way this is intentional.

The only "full" 550 team I saw was 3a5Namor chasm baku. The rest had at most two 550s with at the most a lvl 290 Sidewinder.

entrailbucket

@Codex said:

@entrailbucket said:

@revskip said:
I suspect a nerf will be coming in on this one. I know folks who did 2000 wins in SHIELD Sim this past season just doing 1 turn wins with Sidewinder. I personally am already up to 100 wins in the Rogue PvP with the vast majority of those wins happening before the other team ever gets to make a match. Those kind of metrics probably catch some eyes.

I ran Chasm (550) M'baku (470) Sidewinder (272 or something) with both cascade supports and leapfrog -- boosted +2 TU every fight, against mostly 550/550/550.

Against non Chasm teams I usually won (mind you, against full 550 5* teams) before they could move the board at all, and sometimes even before they woke up from the stun. Any cascade killed one or more enemies.

Sidewinder just has to be bugged. There is no way this is intentional.

The only "full" 550 team I saw was 3a5Namor chasm baku. The rest had at most two 550s with at the most a lvl 290 Sidewinder.

That particular team only showed up in any kind of numbers once I got near 2000 (but there are a LOT of 550 3->5 Namors around now, someone has been spending!). I was playing right at the very end though.

revskip

@entrailbucket said:

@Codex said:

@entrailbucket said:

@revskip said:
I suspect a nerf will be coming in on this one. I know folks who did 2000 wins in SHIELD Sim this past season just doing 1 turn wins with Sidewinder. I personally am already up to 100 wins in the Rogue PvP with the vast majority of those wins happening before the other team ever gets to make a match. Those kind of metrics probably catch some eyes.

I ran Chasm (550) M'baku (470) Sidewinder (272 or something) with both cascade supports and leapfrog -- boosted +2 TU every fight, against mostly 550/550/550.

Against non Chasm teams I usually won (mind you, against full 550 5* teams) before they could move the board at all, and sometimes even before they woke up from the stun. Any cascade killed one or more enemies.

Sidewinder just has to be bugged. There is no way this is intentional.

The only "full" 550 team I saw was 3a5Namor chasm baku. The rest had at most two 550s with at the most a lvl 290 Sidewinder.

That particular team only showed up in any kind of numbers once I got near 2000 (but there are a LOT of 550 3->5 Namors around now, someone has been spending!). I was playing right at the very end though.

Not necessarily spending but definitely using resources. I'm a pretty light spender, did VIP monthly for a long time and a couple of starks early on. Once you get to everything rostered HP income throttles pretty fast. I'm sitting on 250k right now and haven't spent more than a couple of bucks to unlock the bonus rewards for the past 3-4 months. The bigger hurdle is tokens. Those that did spend big prior to the boycott are sitting on HP hoards that beggar mine by orders of magnitude.

I'd wager a lot of those folks running the 550 3a5 Namors had both tokens and HP put away well over what they could spend. I'm not in that camp since I open most of my tokens outside of LL immediately but there are plenty who build up massive hoards of every token type.

entrailbucket

@revskip said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Codex said:

@entrailbucket said:

@revskip said:
I suspect a nerf will be coming in on this one. I know folks who did 2000 wins in SHIELD Sim this past season just doing 1 turn wins with Sidewinder. I personally am already up to 100 wins in the Rogue PvP with the vast majority of those wins happening before the other team ever gets to make a match. Those kind of metrics probably catch some eyes.

I ran Chasm (550) M'baku (470) Sidewinder (272 or something) with both cascade supports and leapfrog -- boosted +2 TU every fight, against mostly 550/550/550.

Against non Chasm teams I usually won (mind you, against full 550 5* teams) before they could move the board at all, and sometimes even before they woke up from the stun. Any cascade killed one or more enemies.

Sidewinder just has to be bugged. There is no way this is intentional.

The only "full" 550 team I saw was 3a5Namor chasm baku. The rest had at most two 550s with at the most a lvl 290 Sidewinder.

That particular team only showed up in any kind of numbers once I got near 2000 (but there are a LOT of 550 3->5 Namors around now, someone has been spending!). I was playing right at the very end though.

Not necessarily spending but definitely using resources. I'm a pretty light spender, did VIP monthly for a long time and a couple of starks early on. Once you get to everything rostered HP income throttles pretty fast. I'm sitting on 250k right now and haven't spent more than a couple of bucks to unlock the bonus rewards for the past 3-4 months. The bigger hurdle is tokens. Those that did spend big prior to the boycott are sitting on HP hoards that beggar mine by orders of magnitude.

I'd wager a lot of those folks running the 550 3a5 Namors had both tokens and HP put away well over what they could spend. I'm not in that camp since I open most of my tokens outside of LL immediately but there are plenty who build up massive hoards of every token type.

It's possible, but those reserves aren't going to last forever.

I expect to see a bunch of those same names with 550 Falcons shortly, as well as 370/550 Sidewinders (depending on how he ascends).

bluewolf

The fact that people can have 250k hp while spending a few bucks a month is why Sidewinder is broken AF and they are desperate to get people to burn resources (swaps for hp) to level him up.

A 550 5, no one is spending on those because there’s no advantage to anyone current (not good enough) to make spending cash on them. And so most 550 folks are hoarding cp and LTs.

They need to find a way to make whales spend. Buy clubs are shut down. No swaps, no spend.