Board 8 > Mercenaries Draft State of the League: I've got the power (rankings)!

(+) Yeah! (+)

I thought Nisha was from Remember Me.
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Sylvanas is great in battle too IMO

real strong antimage bullshit in particular. Silences ain't nuthin ta fuck wit.
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Actual Sylvanas maybe.

Not party game only no feats Sylvanas.
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FFDragon posted...

Actual Sylvanas maybe.

Not party game only no feats Sylvanas.

Sylvanas has no 'actual'. She's never really fought in WoW IIRC (only as much as you fight faction bosses) and in WC3 she's a hero like any other. HotS IS how she fights for all intents and purposes and it doesn't really matter if it's from a party game because you're purely looking at the mechanics, and those mechanics are impressive enough. She's really really good as a debuffer and dakka spammer.
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sorry she's like a 2/week in combat in this build

and I bought her in SPITE of that

(dem abilities)
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Sylvanas has no 'actual'. She's never really fought in WoW IIRC (only as much as you fight faction bosses) and in WC3 she's a hero like any other. HotS IS how she fights for all intents and purposes and it doesn't really matter if it's from a party game because you're purely looking at the mechanics, and those mechanics are impressive enough. She's really really good as a debuffer and dakka spammer.

She has fought in WoW.

She fought in the Battle of the Undercity event (sadly now removed from the game), and more importantly she fights with you in the dungeon Halls of Reflection, where she holds off the Lich King in single combat for a couple minutes before being forced to flee.

She was also at least present at the Siege of Orgrimmar but I don't recall if she did anything noteworthy there.
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What I mean is that she has no playable or fightable version where she gets hype shit. So it makes her p hard to hype in general. I know she has some showings.

(Didn't forget about that ranking BTW. Will finish it tomorrow, including some long explanations for why the mercs were picked. Stay tuned! It'll be up before the redraft begins!)
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Okay wrapping up my first half of merc buys are Kefka(round 5), Flynn(round 4), and Dr. Light (round 6).

I habe limited time but Flynn was an appealing purchase. First off he is borderline 5 upkeep that can be paid down to low for very cheap. His characyer upgrade is 5 exp too. Furthermore, his base ability is great, and his upgraded trigger is high upkeep (every other week triggering on removal). And honestly upgrading his base Talk to have a third valid application of his ability is very nice too. But in general he Is a super good merc with great battle worth and cheap upgrades and even more if you sink a bit extra exp.

Conversely you can look at a merc like Seph: very good obviously but DAMN those exp costs are huge. 30 for supernova 20 for beast KO. And heartless angel upgrade is absolutely needed too. Seph, to me, is unbuyable without Light -- which btw is definitely the strongest PS in the format besides maybe Harth. And he is very RNG heavy so maybe you get RNG screwed every week who knows!!!
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dr. light is the best PS in this format

my beautiful boy flynn is also clearly A+ and kefka is the strongest combat 5/week and his slave and stomachache abilities are fire

very good picks gravy
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And here we are. The last three picks! Rejoice!

3) The Player

You don't know which series this merc is from (it's Terraria btw). Even if you do, you probably don't remember what he can do in combat either. In spite of this, The Player is one of the best possible buys you can make. You see, his ability, Shut Up And Dig Gaiden, gives him five minutes (yes, FIVE. Garrus gets a measly one!) to go in and build stuff before the enemy team arrives. This sounds unimpressive...until you remember one of the things The Player has access to is Hellstone. Hellstone is a type of rock that burns and rapidly kills you if you linger on it without protection. But the key thing is, when you BREAK Hellstone...it spews out lava. And nothing stops The Player from building a solid cage of Hellstone to trap the enemy team inside of it, burning them to death one way or another when they come in. The Hellstone trap is so abusively strong that it justifies the existence of this merc by itself. Forcing opponents to spend resources on canceling the once-every-four-weeks autowin is super money, and the best part is that if the player gets, say, KO'd, you get most of the cooldown back because it's a Start of Battle. An absolutely outstanding pick due to how easily he slots into every teamcomp and provides serious ability muscle in the process.

2) Richter Belmont

I could just say 'three good abilities' and leave it at that, but no. Look at Mankind Ill Needs A Savior Such As You. Did you notice that it redirects ANY randomized ability? Any at all, if you so wish? Something like Vergil's Scum... becomes a weapon with Richter around. Doomguy becomes completely guilt-free because he won't be tagging allies. Little Mac chooses his battles with a little bit of help. The possibilities are endless, and when you add Richter's awesome low tier battleworth and two other good abilities on top (A KO and a delay!), there's no reason not to draft him.

1) Turok

HE

IS TUROK

So...you get a gunner that is good on two tiers (three really, the gunz are good in high too, I mean being top of the line in two). You also get any one out of three abilities that are all outstanding (SoB Martial Law in Knife>All, postrosters KO in the energy totem, hard disable in Motion Sickness). You can get the remaining ones for exactly the price of a single win, each. If that wasn't enough, you get an unique terrain that has natural obstacles to hold the enemy team back. Really, which part of this merc ISN'T amazing? It's completely unexplainable that the turoks went undrafted. If you were paying attention, you saw how Energy Totem created the single most lopsided match we've ever seen. What are the odds this beautiful merc DOESN'T get drafted this go around? Zero, maybe?
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And that's all, folks! I hope you enjoyed this list. I know I did! It's always fun to discuss strong mercs combos with you all. :)
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As someone who knows absolutely nothing about the Player, how is he building a giant cage out of hellstone in five minutes? I assume there's magic involved?
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redrocket_pub posted...

As someone who knows absolutely nothing about the Player, how is he building a giant cage out of hellstone in five minutes? I assume there's magic involved?

You just put cubes down

The building works exactly as in terraria, where you just drop premade cubes of whatever you need on the floor or on other blocks and they fit together.
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ok but I owned Turok

The abilities are solid (wouldn't have made it to the playoffs without energy totem) but he just doesn't get the respect he deserves. Voters seem to view 3/week Turok and 5/week Turok as basically indistinguishable. Hell, 5/week Turok lost the 1v1 against Little Mac badly, despite the fact that he's strong enough to tank gunfire and dinosaur attacks.

And since all his abilities are SOBs, they all require rostering a merc that everyone has seen get less respect than many other 5/weeks
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Johnbobb posted...

ok but I owned Turok

The abilities are solid (wouldn't have made it to the playoffs without energy totem) but he just doesn't get the respect he deserves. Voters seem to view 3/week Turok and 5/week Turok as basically indistinguishable. Hell, 5/week Turok lost the 1v1 against Little Mac badly, despite the fact that he's strong enough to tank gunfire and dinosaur attacks.

And since all his abilities are SOBs, they all require rostering a merc that everyone has seen get less respect than many other 5/weeks

Turok never fought in a match that mattered and was remotely even and you tried to hype the cerebral bore instead of his quad energy minigun or multi rocket launcher

I'm pretty sure about where the issue was there and it wasn't on Turok!

(and his abils being SoB doesn't really matter, especially with the energy totem. If you can't win a 5v4 it's on you, really, tbqh)

EDIT: Also the point is he has a shitload of good abilities. His battleworth could be middling and he'd still be worth for them - but it isn't middling. Trying to argue that losing a boxing match is cause for him to be bad is silly. Tifa is a literal martial artist and she lost a match against Mac. Boxing is stupid like that.
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Yeah but Tifa lost by like 1 tiebreaker vote

Turok got wrecked
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Kan has very different combat respect for people. You should know that by now.
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Tifa was getting lustrous anti-arguments like "She'd forget she isn't supposed to kick him and get DQed." There was nothing about that match legit
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FFDragon posted...

Kan has very different combat respect for people. You should know that by now.

Not really? Turok never really fought in close matches, I think he had just one. The 'fought' weeks were W34 vs mewtwo (IIRC there were 6s on both sides taking up all the attention, Guardian vs Kratos or something?), W36 vs Tom (match was kinda close, Turok fought in his 3/week form), and that was it. It's like saying Diablo was disrespected when he was on Scare's team, which sucked and so Diablo would've had to have been utterly ridiculous to carry that.
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KanzarisKelshen posted...

Not really?

lol

tell me more about Aeris soling Wario and Louie
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At least that match ended up being like 10-1 Wario (guess the 1)
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FFDragon posted...

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Not really?

lol

tell me more about Aeris soling Wario and Louie

One disagreement with the consensus doesn't imply all of my combat respect is super different from the norm. Generally I feel like I'm pretty close to the mean overall respect for most dudes, Sonic characters excluded.
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bro

come on

seriously
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I am putting all my faith in Kan-san to save my dying team so I sure hope his finger is on the pulse of mercs respect!
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You may hate me DC but know I was with Tifa till the end in that boxing match. Robbery of M4 right there.
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Lopen posted...

You may hate me DC but know I was with Tifa till the end in that boxing match. Robbery of M4 right there.

I mean it's 30% boxing is just dumb and 70% Little Mac being a meme.
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JeezyMiyagi posted...

dr. light is the best PS in this format

my beautiful boy flynn is also clearly A+ and kefka is the strongest combat 5/week and his slave and stomachache abilities are fire

very good picks gravy

thanks man i decided the best way to win were to draft broken mercs that you and kanz bought

it is a sound strategy!
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There's still another redraft phase right? Doesn't matter.

Tomorrow I will tell you all why you suck. I don't care if you are 3-0, you still suck. I will tell you which merc you have that makes you suck the most so you can possibly suck less by switching them out.

I will say that you as a collective suck a little less than I thought since both groups dropped the two mercs I thought sucked the most in this format -- Neph and Wesker.
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For an extra challenge do mine and don't say Crono
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im excited do me first ffd since i volunteered you for mentoring failed prospect igcd you surely have PENT UP RAGE
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FFDragon posted...

There's still another redraft phase right? Doesn't matter.

Tomorrow I will tell you all why you suck. I don't care if you are 3-0, you still suck. I will tell you which merc you have that makes you suck the most so you can possibly suck less by switching them out.

I will say that you as a collective suck a little less than I thought since both groups dropped the two mercs I thought sucked the most in this format -- Neph and Wesker.

Wait, Neph specifically sucks more in this format than normal?
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Nah, Neph and O&S both suck regardless of format. It's just people expect more out of Neph than the stooges.
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There's a 5/Week Turok? What? Why?
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KJH posted...

There's a 5/Week Turok? What? Why?

Josh Fireseed from Turok 2. Reason why is 'gunz'.
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KJH posted...

There's a 5/Week Turok? What? Why?

Big Gunz.
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FFDragon posted...

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Not really?

lol

tell me more about Aeris soling Wario and Louie

to be fair, she could totally do it on better terrain. she's just terrible in that church
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I don't think there's any feasible scenario where Wario does not just roar up on his bike and punch Aeris in the face while she's casting a spell, or otherwise just charge through whatever the first spell is and then punch her in the face since Wario can literally tank being burned alive and not care.

And then Louie was there too
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With moderate starting distance I think she can fire off a spell and explode the motorcycle's fuel tank, which makes Wario mostly a non-factor. Louie is the bigger problem of the two.
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Man, I played Turok 2 and those guns weren't that crazy. The only things I even remember are the throwing star and the cerebral bore, which is just... well, any projectile that's going into someone's head is going to do a lot of damage in the first place.
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stop stealing my thunder KJH

trust me we'll get there
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but but


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fair enough

I'm sure there's enough to go around.
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I do have to ask though...

HotS is a "party game?"

...

wut?
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So did anyone ever buy Bill Rizer? Because there's a man with big guns.
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any game that mashes together multiple game series together and promotes parity is a party game to me

whether that is a mario kart or a PSAB or a HotS
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KJH posted...

So did anyone ever buy Bill Rizer? Because there's a man with big guns.

Skyridge grabbed him via link

Then Tirofog abilityhaxed him to absolute death and we got no rizer fun
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Rizer with all 30 lives was supposed to be awesome.

Canon Rizer is 1 life, so 30 lives Rizer is a force of nature the likes of which mercs is not prepared for.
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Which is why I'm upset it didn't happen.