This is part of a continuing series of posts. I am in the process of reevaluating the ISO-8 strategy for all of my heroes to make them do what they do better and to eliminate waste. I've completed the P5 outfits, so how about the six Avengers. I'll start with one I use a lot and one I hardly ever use.
Your first question might be, "Why the Mark 5 when you have the Avengers uniform?" Or "Why the Mark 5, it's so ugly?" Well, on the first question, it's a question of use. The Avengers version of Iron Man cooperates with his repulsors, which are okay, but not what I'd prefer the Iron Man to be doing. The Mark 5 has a shield that replenishes stamina while in existence. Stamina is very useful for Iron Man, as I use him exclusively to kill people with his Unibeam... the one beam to rule them all.
On the second question, for me, most of the game is all pixels on a page concealing numbers on a spreadsheet... I'd use the Mark 5 over the Avengers uni even if the Mark 5 were undifferentiated bit garbage or a naked picture of Paul Giamatti.
Original Build[]
Iron Man has good potential along a lot of lines, but is somewhat limited by low initial health and stamina. You could build him strictly with Chaotics and have a solid character, but that is now that I did. I went:
2x Durable (Health, Stamina, Defense)
3x Steady (Health, Attack, Accuracy)
2x Masterful (Stamina, Attack, Accuracy)
1x Flourishing (Health, Stamina, Accuracy)
That produces the build above at my level. I find this to be an effective build. Here's how it plays. I get 4-5 blasts of the Unibeam off, culminating with one that does 15-20K non-crit damage.
The Logic[]
I think we need to talk really briefly about how The One Beam To Rule Them All works. It does two things: Unibeam Focus Deadly Crits
Deadly crits is self-evident. If it crits, it does double damage or more. Unibeam Focus is the important thing. The more he hits with it, the more stacks of Unibeam Focus he gets, and the bigger the Unibeam gets. It is stamina intensive and, if he misses or does anything (besides cooperative actions or counter actions) other than Unibeam, it resets. Since the damage gets fairly large in a hurry, especially with crits, I think I might be wasting some iso here on Attack, and not putting enough into Accuracy.
The second question is about stamina vs. health. And that's a question that requires an investigation into the way his shield functions*. The "health" of the shield is based on Iron Man's BASE health (40% of his health, to be precise). The stamina replenished by the shield is 50% of a recharge. How much is a recharge... well, I just went and determined that a recharge is 40% of your stamina. So, Iron Man gets a shield that is 40% of base health and it restores 20% of adjusted stamina. If that's not clear, the shield doesn't get stronger if I ISO up his health, but it restores more stamina if I put ISOs to his stamina.
This leads to one final question. Can I make the shield last longer? There are a couple of ways to do that. The most obvious would be to improve his evasion. But, his evasion is a lost cause. The second is to pair him with someone who uses a different type of shield, or a tank who will keep people off his shield. And indeed, I like using him with Captain America quite a bit, as Cap can keep people away from Iron Man. Invisible Woman's "Fourth Field" does not overwrite his shield, so she could be a good pair as well. Lastly, I can improve his defense, which starts in the "improvable" range. That will make the shield take less damage per hit, though ignore defense people will, well, ignore his defense. I do not see Iron Man as a viable PVP option at my level, so I don't know that I care about Ignore Defense.
So, let's think here. I don't care about health. I want 4 stats as high as can be, in this order of importance: Stamina, Accuracy, Defense/Attack. Since Stamina is the most important, we will be strapping Stamina on with every crystal. This limits us from using Orange shards. So, Purple and Green (Feel like I've been here before).
I will admit, it is not a major revamp. I gave away 500 points of health that weren't boosting the shield (and he doesn't need the health because his shield will be 1524 health, giving him 5334 total health), and in return, I got 350 points of stamina (plus an extra 70 per turn with the shield), maintained the same attack, and improved the defense and accuracy. Granted, these are small gains. But ISO at this level is about small improvements. Which is why I'm taking the time to rebuild. Since the first build above was my fourth or fifth Iron Man build, you can see why there would be minimal room for improvement.
Hawkeye[]
I am firmly in the camp that says that Hawkeye is lousy. But, can I iso him out of the basement? I dunno. I did not keep notes on where Hawkeye was before. He had a motley assortment of crystals (he looked like his ISO came from QVC) and he was lousy. Let's look at his base condition, and examine him from there.
Suckeye is high in places he doesn't need to be. His accuracy is just under five bars at my level, but all of his attacks are 100% hit anyway, and his L9 makes him crit 100% and everyone else hit 100%. His stun is a straight proc (some people believe that accuracy affects stun application, but I haven't seen evidence to that effect). So, his accuracy is kind of wasted. Of his attacks, the Arrow Volley takes a wee bit of stamina, but nothing takes 20%. And look, Suckeye is high there. He can shoot arrows till the cows come home. The Attack and the Defense are low, along with the health. So, we're gonna have to build health, Attack and attempt to work the evasion into something.
There is a strong temptation to use gold crystals here. I could whip him into this kind of shape (assuming L12 Hawkeye, which I dont have):
3x Refined Skillful Shards
5x Refined Stalwart Shards
Health - 5162 - 5 Bars
Stamina - 4657 - 4 Bars
Attack - 1034 - 5 Bars
Defense - 932 - 4 Bars
Accuracy - 1016 - 4 Bars
Evastion - 1033 - 5 bars
That is a destroyer (except that he still won't do that much damage).
But since I don't play that much Suckeye (just enough to remember why I don't play that much Suckeye), why would I spend the gold? Not gonna do it. So, instead, it's about navigating some limited options. There is no silver purchase crystal that works on all three things we want to work on. We can only do two at once. Powerful (Health, Attack), Deft (Health, Evasion), Proficient (Attack, Evasion).
The Rebuild[]
Avengers Hawkeye
Base Stats
Health:
3810
Stamina:
4657
Attack:
762
Defense:
762
Accuracy:
1016
Evasion:
931
Effects:
Master Marksman Avengers Assemble - • Grants Coordinated Attack to all allies after this Avenger's first action
• If this Avenger already has Coordinated Attack, grants Coordinated Defense
Cost and Requirements:
1 **Will be recruited during Tutorial**
Organization/s:
,,
Bio:
{{{bio}}}
This is a build that factors the 8th ISO slot which I haven't opened yet. The build uses:
5x Powerful
3x Proficient
Short of spending gold, that's about the limit of responsible attack build. We could push it another 20.7% (which works to 48 points and still not 5 bars) by ignoring the health and the evasion and going true glass cannon. I have left the evasion short of 5 bars in favor of 116 more health. I don't want to say whether this is correct or not, but it feels right to me. You could tweak yours a different way.
My final position on Hawkeye is to get a deeper understanding of why he's just not very good. His stat points are concentrated in two attributes he doesn't use. If there were an ISO that let you take points away from an attribute to put them in another, I'd move 20% of his stamina to health, and then build him with more ATK and EVA.
Special thanks to members of the Playdom Forums for doping out this information: Cidolfas for consolidating, painspinner for investigation, and Rubicon209 for the Energized Shield material.
Avengers Hawkeye
Base Stats
Health:
4390
Stamina:
4657
Attack:
946
Defense:
762
Accuracy:
1016
Evasion:
1000
Effects:
Master Marksman Avengers Assemble - • Grants Coordinated Attack to all allies after this Avenger's first action
• If this Avenger already has Coordinated Attack, grants Coordinated Defense
