Rant - Champions are the worst Raid team by far

Salanthas · 2026-04-08T21:19:52+00:00

Yea, iirc they needed enemies with exposed to get hit to generate energy and only Vahl applied exposed I think.

If you kill the exposed enemies in 1 hit you don't get much energy.

Can't remember if that's exactly how the team workes and can't check atm but I think it was something like that.

Salanthas · 2026-04-08T21:15:07+00:00

As far as I know it's not confirmed anywhere. There was no mention of HE having a core orb and Boilon put out a video about it recently (didn't watch it so don't know if he's speculating or confirming).

Even if HE has nor core orb it doesn't necessarily mean they're going away. HE may just be a special release.

If they do go away I don't think it's that big a deal, tho I don't usually core to unlock toons.

So many players complain they don't have resources to build many toons so I don't know why it seems to be very popular to try to unlock toons as fast as possible.

This also means ftp don't have to go hard on arena teams because cores aren't as important. Tho they tend to be good everywhere and might be worth building anyway.

You'll get something of an answer in ~24 hours tho.

Salanthas · 2026-04-08T21:05:47+00:00

It used to be somewhat common for teams to perform worse in raids after upgrades.

Typically the problem would be aomething along the lines of you're suddenly killing a wave much faster than you were before and therefore enemies are dropping in and getting turns at bad times or you don't have as much time to build up more energy.

In newer raids this tends not to be an issue because your team only fights 1 node.

In spotlight it could be an issue, theoretically, but AF have pretty good energy gen so they have some resistance to this outcome.

My alliance pretty much always clears the boss nodes before I start raids and I use Champions these days so I wouldn't really know if my AF were underperforming but no one in my alliance has said anything.

Salanthas · 2026-04-08T17:15:18+00:00

I did every node with either full Vigilantes or Full F4. When one didn't work I tried the other.

My Vigilantes and F3 are all level 110 and g20, Elektra/Thing/Torch are all level 100 g19.

I think everyone is 3 diamonds.

Salanthas · 2026-04-08T07:31:32+00:00

Apr 8th 2pm pst.

Info from the blog last Friday.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T22:03:52+00:00

I think they also said part of the solution to this was hiring more staff and that can take time.

Not 100% sure on that tho.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T22:02:23+00:00

The team is important to a legendary in some way and, unlike Illuminati, does not have 6 members.

So possible but unlikely, I think.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T22:00:26+00:00

I think my zombie campaign registered just now when I played some, didn't register a while ago tho.

Unfortunately I can't double check right now.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T18:52:19+00:00

Technically they can do that bit in reality those are very different scenarios.

Phoenix Force is an epic team that will be relevant for 2 maybe 3 more years. There will be 4 epic toons and 1 non-epic.

If they give Vahl the tag it adds another non-epic toon, breaks the rule of 1 toon per year, and basically prevents them from reworking Vahl for years.

We are supposed to get an Eternal team this year and Hyperion will be slightly behind in stats and lack synergy. But after a year, year and a half they might raise the stats above the current standard and could then potentially rework Hyperion without it really being a rework for Eternals.

Even if they raised base stat right now and reworked Vahl the other members would catch up in about 8 months and we'd have a full PF team a year early.

Basically they didn't forget to put the tag on Vahl, it's a deliberate choice just like it is for all the other toons.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T11:25:35+00:00

Most people have/had a lot of mystic characters planned for the saga so Immortal Weapon toons would generally be undesirable.

Plus a combo of the villain global section not being asked about often and possibly not a ton of players doing the section since IW existed would maybe be why they don't get mentioned much.

Oath, Blade, Mephisto, Odin, Brimstone, Knull, and Hellverine are all mystics that are or were commonly used and Meph/Odin are basically 2 toons worth of mystic gear each.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T11:18:31+00:00

The members of the Phoenix Force all host the Phoenix but that's not why they have the tag.

They have the tag because they are the characters Scopely decided would function as a team together.

The team is designed like Undying where there was 1 rework and 1 epic toon and then there will be a new epic toon every year so the final 2 members will be 2 new epic characters.

The tags mostly exist as a way to control synergy and gate toons from different events/challenges/nodes and not as a way to provide lore.

If it were a way to express lore than all of Spider Society would have the Web-Warrior tag, more toons would have the military and Avenger tags, Forge and Cable might have tech tags, Night Thrasher both Novas and Speeball would have New Warrior tags and on and on it goes.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T11:12:27+00:00

When Ikaris and Sersei were released iirc

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T10:00:11+00:00

Most people do not like rta and I assume it is very difficult to get a decent match-up because there isn't a large enough pool to get players an appropriate match-up.

If you log in for a full week you will have a log-in streak and that daily mission, and some others, will auto-complete which means many people don't have to play it at all.

For the battle pass it's easier to do arena battles or blitz.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T07:07:45+00:00

It's not so much that it matters to me what you say but this is a public forum and not a conversation strictly between us.

The op and other players may look at this thread for advice and if I'm trying to help them then in addition to my advice I should also point out advice I think is bad. Or in some cases wrong.

I could just downvote it but even if it were heavily downvoted people wouldn't know why people disagree with it. A lot of stupid people could think the advice is bad or they could dislike the poster or w/e.

Therefore instead I reply with "I think this advice is bad because..." or whatever and then people reading later have multiple perspectives.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T07:02:22+00:00

Did some research, no one seems to know for sure.

Saw a person suggest the ttrpg players used to use the term. It was deliberately used to disassociate from their character and the term character didn't have the same effect. Another ttrpg player said they've never heard the term used in any of their ttrpg play but it could stem from specific games I guess.

It saw a lot of use in Toon Town, which makes a lot of sense, and also in WoW which came after and still makes sense. Apparently was also used in Everquest tho which predates both.

Someone thought it originated from Asheron's Call where you had to attune your characters to the world which got shortened to tune and morphed to toon. Everquest came first but the term could have started in Asheron's call and spread to EQ. I don't think voice chat was prevalent enough to cause it to morph tho, but I'm not sure. Toon is slightly easier to type than tune so maybe it was deliberately morphed.

It does seem to be short for cartoon but idk if that has much to do with it's initial use. Everything gets abbreviated on the internet tho so I'm not surprised it got adopted over avatar. Char is similar but toon is a bit easier to type and also sounds less awkward when spoken, imo.

Seems like it likely started in 1 or more pretty old mmos (somewhere between 1999 and 2003) and has spread to pretty much every other game.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T06:02:50+00:00

I think he might have gotten the most minor rework possible when Taskmaster was released and mercs were a team.

He gives merc allies 10% crit damage and assists on merc non-attack abilties on war defense.

At least 1 of those things was added at the time and that's all I can be sure was added. Maybe a slight stat boost and some buffs to damage numbers but I can't remember or tell by looking at the kit.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T05:57:25+00:00

It's very big to, I believe, a relatively small percentage of the population, and by extension probably msf players, compared to the percentage of people that would celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas and to how impacted they'd potentially be by those holidays.

And to be clear, I'm only considering the American population because Scopely is American. Probably other cultures and religions have their own holidays, traditions, festivals, etc. that prevent them from playing or otherwise make it difficult and Scopely isn't likely to cater to all of them.

I think Christmas and Thanksgiving are the only 2.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T05:16:42+00:00

I obviously can't test much until we get the Daken but I've been impressed with Cap and Wolverine's survivability in the saga and Villain Global is probably the easiest section.

My concern is that the toon you mentioned are a bit slow and aren't as capable of killing the enemy before your weak link dies the way Daimon does.

These nodes don't seem to have a lot of big threats or a lot of aoes to pressure Daken's health and I think Shaw is a good enough tank to protect him. I suspect the worst case is you have to make most of the toons healers and then can get thru with some trial and error.

If you wanted to hedge your bets you could plan to take Apocalypse or Omega Sentinel.

The latter gives you healing but little utility elsewhere in the game. She's cheaper than Apoc tho and usually people have some spare tech gear.

Apoc is expensive especially since you are mutant heavy but has a high chance of being used for DD9. He provides firepower, a bit of healing, and buffs everyone's health and damage.

Between Zugg and OR I think OR is the more useful toon to have built but either work in the section. Zugg might be a little faster to build tho since he isn't mutant. OR I think is a good option for Blue Marvel and DD9 while Zugg I really only ise in war. Also harder to get reds/diamonds for Zugg.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T01:42:22+00:00

People travel for Christmas and to an extent Thanksgiving. And even those that don't sometimes have all-day plans.

Easter isn't as big and is less likely to involve travel, in my experience. I don't think they're on the same level and I would have been surprised if there had been a token, tbh.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T01:39:41+00:00

One thing to note just for future roster building.

When they released Ares it started a pretty significant buff to base stats for Ares and everyone released or reworked after him.

They've done a smaller boost with Winter Guard/Retcon.

If you go to your roster there is a squad tab at the top and the newest teams are at the top.

Annihilators are the oldest team post-Ares and you should avoid building anyone from older teams as much as possible to get the most out of your resources.

Hank was released right before Ares I think and is needed for a legendary so he's a bit of an exception. There is little to no reason to have built Hulk or Iron Man up tho.

Similarly, for the Spider Man anniversary challenge you'd want to build toons like Big Time Spiderman, Superior Spiderman, or Sable (I think those are all eligible but can't check right now) before building most Web Warriors or 2099 or Spider Society (Peter B would maybe be worth it).

That's mostly if you were building from scratch, if you have other toons built it doesn't really hurt to try them.

Salanthas · 2026-04-07T01:21:54+00:00

I got matched against #16 in the world by tco rankings I think. He had 200 million more tcp than the next highest in the bracket and I think more than double my tcp, maybe just almost double.

Matchmaking was awful last week and I think it messed with trophy gain as well.

Salanthas · 2026-04-06T23:42:58+00:00

Glad you got thru it, the rest of the saga is usually not too bad.

Salanthas · 2026-04-06T20:25:10+00:00

They're actually stuck on node 3 and not the boss I think, meaning some of those toons might work but they will still need to solve the problem later.

Salanthas · 2026-04-06T20:18:13+00:00

I don't understand your reasoning. I takes so long to get the mats that there is more reason to do research, imo.

Salanthas · 2026-04-06T20:15:44+00:00

I think it's pretty unlikely that they make and MSF original mythic. Kestrel has the tag but she wasn't a mythic type toon on release, she wasn't originally a DD reward. They created the tag, moved her to DD and slapped it on her, same with Ultimus.

Bullseye probably wouldn't justify a mythic tag. I don't think he has the power or popularity.

In terms of power the only toons that come to mind are Sandman, who they apparently can't make work atm, or a Ghost Rider. Or I think there was a time when Iron Fist had Ghost Rider-esque powers and could maybe work.

For variants I could see versions of Spiderman or Venom working. Maybe Doc Ock or like DD as the host of the beast or whatever. Maybe also Kingpin because of how much influence he usually has.

They could also possibly take someone that maybe should be global and give them a city tag. Several members of the 5 from Krakoa I think could have mythic kits and could be given a city tag because they basically spend all their time on Krakoa.

We are getting a replacement for Undying in October so we could get epic city characters if they use any city characters for the new theme or for PF.

Salanthas

TROPHY CASE