I respectfully disagree. When it comes to killing Jedi, Maul is the supreme ruler. Whenever i run into a Jedi team, he alone is all the offense I need to bring. The rest of the crew is just support. Even a super defensive team like this: Barriss, ERG, old Ben, Daka and Maul. Guaranteed win against every Jedi team in existence.
thats only because AI does not play smart.
if you are on defense, Yoda goes first, QGJ calls assist, those 3 hits will take out Maul already.
Respectfully disagree. Cherry picking, yes to an extent. I couldn't be bothered to find the perfect sequence where Maul gets an Offense buff and proceeds to wipe out the entire enemy team. I did of course pick a sequence where Maul is called in as assist by QGJ. Because that's a perfect example of how you can use the character. Both QGJ and GS can be used like this.
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
Maul crits more often than not. He has the second highest crit rate in the game.
He also gains +20% crit rate after the first kill. Doesn't have to be him who kills. With Offense up (which he gains 50% of the time from his regular attack) he typically crits for just above 12K, unassisted.
So generally, the strategy is to either get lucky with an assist, as is the case in that video I posted, or to bring down a Jedi to ~6-7K. Then Maul comfortably kills it, and is almost guaranteed to do 12K on the next attack.
However, in real play, Vs a Jedi team like mine? My Yoda goes first (nothing in the game is faster than Yoda with QGJ as lead)...Then QGJ is going to hit. Those two are faster than Poe, GS, anyone you want to bring to help you get that early assist- other than another QGJ, but guess what? Yoda hitting QGJ with unstoppable will fix that and then they are both dead before they did a single thing.
That's what people mean about the speed meta. Your QGJ ad Maul both dust before they do a **** thing.
This issue cant actually be resolved unless burst stops being king and defensive stats such as evasion and defence start to factor in. This issue isnt really with Maul at all, honestly.
Maul crits more often than not. He has the second highest crit rate in the game.
He also gains +20% crit rate after the first kill. Doesn't have to be him who kills. With Offense up (which he gains 50% of the time from his regular attack) he typically crits for just above 12K, unassisted.
So generally, the strategy is to either get lucky with an assist, as is the case in that video I posted, or to bring down a Jedi to ~6-7K. Then Maul comfortably kills it, and is almost guaranteed to do 12K on the next attack.
However, in real play, Vs a Jedi team like mine? My Yoda goes first (nothing in the game is faster than Yoda with QGJ as lead)...Then QGJ is going to hit. Those two are faster than Poe, GS, anyone you want to bring to help you get that early assist- other than another QGJ, but guess what? Yoda hitting QGJ with unstoppable will fix that and then they are both dead before they did a single thing.
That's what people mean about the speed meta. Your QGJ ad Maul both dust before they do a **** thing.
That's one scenario. Of course, you can construct others. But if you mean to tell me that Maul needs a buff because Yoda+QGJ are really, really fast, then you're looking at a very, very long list of toons needing a buff. If that were the case, I'd say the problem is your characters, and not the relative strengths of all the other characters in the game.
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
Maul can be one-shot/assisted killed by 3 maxed fast folks such as QGJ GS or Rey.
However he also has a small of going right after the fastest QGJ with his assist. That chance is very small though.
RG won't be able to protect him unless Maul dodges one part of the assist.
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
Maul can be one-shot/assisted killed by 3 maxed fast folks such as QGJ GS or Rey.
However he also has a small of going right after the fastest QGJ with his assist. That chance is very small though.
RG won't be able to protect him unless Maul dodges one part of the assist.
Yup, true. This goes for about half the toons in the game btw... So I don't see the point.
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
Maul can be one-shot/assisted killed by 3 maxed fast folks such as QGJ GS or Rey.
However he also has a small of going right after the fastest QGJ with his assist. That chance is very small though.
RG won't be able to protect him unless Maul dodges one part of the assist.
Yup, true. This goes for about half the toons in the game btw... So I don't see the point.
Sir, have you tried using Maul as leader for evasion? With Sidious and Dooku, might be interesting.
Maul crits more often than not. He has the second highest crit rate in the game.
He also gains +20% crit rate after the first kill. Doesn't have to be him who kills. With Offense up (which he gains 50% of the time from his regular attack) he typically crits for just above 12K, unassisted.
So generally, the strategy is to either get lucky with an assist, as is the case in that video I posted, or to bring down a Jedi to ~6-7K. Then Maul comfortably kills it, and is almost guaranteed to do 12K on the next attack.
However, in real play, Vs a Jedi team like mine? My Yoda goes first (nothing in the game is faster than Yoda with QGJ as lead)...Then QGJ is going to hit. Those two are faster than Poe, GS, anyone you want to bring to help you get that early assist- other than another QGJ, but guess what? Yoda hitting QGJ with unstoppable will fix that and then they are both dead before they did a single thing.
That's what people mean about the speed meta. Your QGJ ad Maul both dust before they do a **** thing.
Lol,
Yoda and GQJ can kill Rey and Leia too before they attack. So lets open a thread how useless is Rey and that she needs buffs too.....
Now lets go back to Maul. You want him to have high hp so he would not die by yoda + GQJ + assist. In other words, you want Maul to have 6k+5k+7k = 18k hp so he won't die before he attacks?? Anything less than that will make you whine about how fast he dies by Yoda and QGJ. Ok.....
Maul crits more often than not. He has the second highest crit rate in the game.
He also gains +20% crit rate after the first kill. Doesn't have to be him who kills. With Offense up (which he gains 50% of the time from his regular attack) he typically crits for just above 12K, unassisted.
So generally, the strategy is to either get lucky with an assist, as is the case in that video I posted, or to bring down a Jedi to ~6-7K. Then Maul comfortably kills it, and is almost guaranteed to do 12K on the next attack.
However, in real play, Vs a Jedi team like mine? My Yoda goes first (nothing in the game is faster than Yoda with QGJ as lead)...Then QGJ is going to hit. Those two are faster than Poe, GS, anyone you want to bring to help you get that early assist- other than another QGJ, but guess what? Yoda hitting QGJ with unstoppable will fix that and then they are both dead before they did a single thing.
That's what people mean about the speed meta. Your QGJ ad Maul both dust before they do a **** thing.
That's one scenario. Of course, you can construct others. But if you mean to tell me that Maul needs a buff because Yoda+QGJ are really, really fast, then you're looking at a very, very long list of toons needing a buff. If that were the case, I'd say the problem is your characters, and not the relative strengths of all the other characters in the game.
No, I'm showing you exactly what the speed meta is that you claimed to not understand. The speed meta allows you to entirely circumvent intended strengths and weaknesses of other, slower characters. You've established that Maul has a niche to kill Jedi, i've established he never ever get a single turn Vs a Jedi speed team. His niche is therefore irrelevant in that game mode. That's an issue.
All good tho, until something changes it makes my life easier, wouldn't want the choice between Rey, Maul and GS or Leia all going on turn 1 and knowing I'd need to let at least 1 hit!
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
Maul can be one-shot/assisted killed by 3 maxed fast folks such as QGJ GS or Rey.
However he also has a small of going right after the fastest QGJ with his assist. That chance is very small though.
RG won't be able to protect him unless Maul dodges one part of the assist.
Yup, true. This goes for about half the toons in the game btw... So I don't see the point.
Sir, have you tried using Maul as leader for evasion? With Sidious and Dooku, might be interesting.
Wouldn't Dooku as lead be the better choice? Offence up on evasion...Then Maul really would be 1 shotting everyone.
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
Maul can be one-shot/assisted killed by 3 maxed fast folks such as QGJ GS or Rey.
However he also has a small of going right after the fastest QGJ with his assist. That chance is very small though.
RG won't be able to protect him unless Maul dodges one part of the assist.
Yup, true. This goes for about half the toons in the game btw... So I don't see the point.
Sir, have you tried using Maul as leader for evasion? With Sidious and Dooku, might be interesting.
Wouldn't Dooku as lead be the better choice? Offence up on evasion...Then Maul really would be 1 shotting everyone.
Heard that Dookus leadership is bugged atm. Someone submitted a bug report too.
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
Maul can be one-shot/assisted killed by 3 maxed fast folks such as QGJ GS or Rey.
However he also has a small of going right after the fastest QGJ with his assist. That chance is very small though.
RG won't be able to protect him unless Maul dodges one part of the assist.
Yup, true. This goes for about half the toons in the game btw... So I don't see the point.
Sir, have you tried using Maul as leader for evasion? With Sidious and Dooku, might be interesting.
Wouldn't Dooku as lead be the better choice? Offence up on evasion...Then Maul really would be 1 shotting everyone.
Heard that Dookus leadership is bugged atm. Someone submitted a bug report too.
I wish that his leadership was the only bug he had. That dude has 220% potency and sure enemy resist stun a lot. And i doubt they have over 220% tenacity.
Maul crits more often than not. He has the second highest crit rate in the game.
He also gains +20% crit rate after the first kill. Doesn't have to be him who kills. With Offense up (which he gains 50% of the time from his regular attack) he typically crits for just above 12K, unassisted.
So generally, the strategy is to either get lucky with an assist, as is the case in that video I posted, or to bring down a Jedi to ~6-7K. Then Maul comfortably kills it, and is almost guaranteed to do 12K on the next attack.
However, in real play, Vs a Jedi team like mine? My Yoda goes first (nothing in the game is faster than Yoda with QGJ as lead)...Then QGJ is going to hit. Those two are faster than Poe, GS, anyone you want to bring to help you get that early assist- other than another QGJ, but guess what? Yoda hitting QGJ with unstoppable will fix that and then they are both dead before they did a single thing.
That's what people mean about the speed meta. Your QGJ ad Maul both dust before they do a **** thing.
That's one scenario. Of course, you can construct others. But if you mean to tell me that Maul needs a buff because Yoda+QGJ are really, really fast, then you're looking at a very, very long list of toons needing a buff. If that were the case, I'd say the problem is your characters, and not the relative strengths of all the other characters in the game.
No, I'm showing you exactly what the speed meta is that you claimed to not understand. The speed meta allows you to entirely circumvent intended strengths and weaknesses of other, slower characters. You've established that Maul has a niche to kill Jedi, i've established he never ever get a single turn Vs a Jedi speed team. His niche is therefore irrelevant in that game mode. That's an issue.
All good tho, until something changes it makes my life easier, wouldn't want the choice between Rey, Maul and GS or Leia all going on turn 1 and knowing I'd need to let at least 1 hit!
Well I keep reading these claims all the time. "Speed meta", "All that matters is speed", etc. Yet, still I am always in top 20 in Arena. Finished 7 yesterday. I don't use those speedy toons at all. And I'm in a very competitive ranking board with FTB ppl and plenty of classical "meta" builds.
So, I hope you'll respect that I don't accept your hypothesized scenario purely at face value. I keep picking fully committed speed teams apart way too often to put much weight into all the claims being made about them being the only way.
Here's the deal - look at the weak damage he did on Poe - he did like 2.2k with his AOE. That's really lame damage for such a low health / slow character. He needed that Jedi buff months ago so that he wasn't utterly useless. Even vs. Jedi, you still NEED to have RG or something else there to protect him because he's too weak and slow. Basically the guy is a big liability that you're much better off using something else in his place. That's what you're going to get often with Maul. Can he hit Jedi hard if he crits on them - sure - he hits Lumi for 7K above which is great on AOE - but look at what his crit did on Sid. Sid is pretty low health character - didn't even turn him yellow. Sid does more AOE damage than that and he's one of the fastest in the game.
As the OP is doing - you'll need to use RG or something else to protect him.
I don't think a 4* superstar type hero should be so limited to a niche AND then on top of it still need RG or something else just to make him able to hit vs. that niche without getting killed. That's a pretty narrow toon if you need all that to make him functional. He would be nearly last on my list to tell people to build because he's so restrained in his usage. If you wanted a strong AOE that had some anti-Jedi skills I'd build IG88 over Maul.
I'd gladly trade in the anti-Jedi stuff and his 1 in 20 chance OP mechanics for a kit that's more reliable and diverse. There's stuff faster and with more natural damage that is superior against Jedi anyway even without specific bonus damage.
Here's the deal - look at the weak damage he did on Poe - he did like 2.2k with his AOE. That's really lame damage for such a low health / slow character. He needed that Jedi buff months ago so that he wasn't utterly useless. Even vs. Jedi, you still NEED to have RG or something else there to protect him because he's too weak and slow. Basically the guy is a big liability that you're much better off using something else in his place. That's what you're going to get often with Maul. Can he hit Jedi hard if he crits on them - sure - he hits Lumi for 7K above which is great on AOE - but look at what his crit did on Sid. Sid is pretty low health character - didn't even turn him yellow. Sid does more AOE damage than that and he's one of the fastest in the game.
As the OP is doing - you'll need to use RG or something else to protect him.
I don't think a 4* superstar type hero should be so limited to a niche AND then on top of it still need RG or something else just to make him able to hit vs. that niche without getting killed. That's a pretty narrow toon if you need all that to make him functional. He would be nearly last on my list to tell people to build because he's so restrained in his usage. If you wanted a strong AOE that had some anti-Jedi skills I'd build IG88 over Maul.
I'd gladly trade in the anti-Jedi stuff and his 1 in 20 chance OP mechanics for a kit that's more reliable and diverse. There's stuff faster and with more natural damage that is superior against Jedi anyway even without specific bonus damage.
I hear you and to a certain extent, I agree. Maul isn't on my Arena team, for good reasons. With this said... I must still disagree with the bulk of the statements you make here.
Every toon in the game is reliant on other toons for synergies, support and protection. No hero becomes worthless because it works better in conjunction with certain other heroes. Fives doesn't become useless because his true potential needs other Clones to be unlocked. So why flame on Maul because he becomes more viable with a tank? This is a game where TEAM building is at the core of it - not the comparison of different individual toons with one another.
I understand why many like to take FOTP, Geonosian Soldier, or Rey, as examples of why Maul in particular is not a worthwhile character. But what I fail to understand is why you all don't address the fact that even if Maul had 11K HP, all those toons would still have a very decent chance to one-shot him. Now, they do an extra 2-3K overkill - but overkill doesn't award extra points. When you pick examples like these, then by extension you're writing off ALK characters in the game if they are below 11K HP and roughly 120-125 speed, as non viable.
Yet, it's Maul who gets all the flak. And I'm guessing that's because he is an outlier both when it comes to HP and Speed. The imbalance just becomes all that more obvious. But, as I stated above, overkill doesn't award extra points and what's true for Maul is just as true for, for example, IG-88, IG-86, Luke and Ventress.
I've used my maxed Maul for a long time now, and he's a given addition vs any Jedi team. I generally don't have any trouble at all keeping him alive, perhaps because I actively do try to build my teams around their strengths and weaknesses rather than just throw a bunch of powerful hitters together. I don't know. I can only speak from my lived experience from playing the game. As, of course, you are doing too. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Anecdotal evidence from 1 critical attack doesn't prove much. With current meta he is not viable for arena at all he's slow and has some of worst hp in game. I think he absolutely needs a buff.
Anecdotal evidence from 1 critical attack doesn't prove much. With current meta he is not viable for arena at all he's slow and has some of worst hp in game. I think he absolutely needs a buff.
If the game was all about the Arena, we could just as well remove ~50 toons from the roster right away...
Anecdotal evidence from 1 critical attack doesn't prove much. With current meta he is not viable for arena at all he's slow and has some of worst hp in game. I think he absolutely needs a buff.
If the game was all about the Arena, we could just as well remove ~50 toons from the roster right away...
@Nonemo you seem to have a roster that can take numbrr 1 rank daily. Why are you at 7? Is top 20 enough for you?
Anecdotal evidence from 1 critical attack doesn't prove much. With current meta he is not viable for arena at all he's slow and has some of worst hp in game. I think he absolutely needs a buff.
If the game was all about the Arena, we could just as well remove ~50 toons from the roster right away...
@Nonemo you seem to have a roster that can take numbrr 1 rank daily. Why are you at 7? Is top 20 enough for you?
Yeah, I'm not big on Arena battles. I don't need the crystals and the ten minute wait often means I go do something else and forget about it. Half the time I don't even do all five battles.
Perhaps the biggest reason is that I like doing things my way. I just don't enjoy setting up a team that adheres to the "meta" and then just competing with ten others with identical teams. I manage to be competitive without being a copycat, while exploring new and strange forms. That's what's fun to me, not getting high ranks.
Presently I have Kit Fisto as my Arena leader. The tenacity bonus does work ok.
Lots of people ask him for buff. Absolutely non-sense period.
With his current power if he gets more speed or health he will be OP for sure.
Come on people if you have Darth Maul's power but with faster speed and double hp
he will be untouchable.
coming from a guy who has 7* Maul by the way
I strongly disagree. ...with the new order tie pilot and a few droids who hit as hard as they do, along with their health and speed, why is Maul so **** slow?
Lots of people ask him for buff. Absolutely non-sense period.
With his current power if he gets more speed or health he will be OP for sure.
Come on people if you have Darth Maul's power but with faster speed and double hp
he will be untouchable.
coming from a guy who has 7* Maul by the way
I strongly disagree. ...with the new order tie pilot and a few druids hit as hard as they do, along with their health and speed, why is Maul so **** slow?
Honey Maul hits like a truck with AOE. He can take out 2,3 with one shot. FOTP and other droids takes out single.
got it?
I'm using him on GW and Arena. He is a beast mode. chews up and spits out jedis. they say current meta is
jedi. If he can beat down jedis like this how in the world should he be buffed?
Here's the deal - look at the weak damage he did on Poe - he did like 2.2k with his AOE. That's really lame damage for such a low health / slow character. He needed that Jedi buff months ago so that he wasn't utterly useless. Even vs. Jedi, you still NEED to have RG or something else there to protect him because he's too weak and slow. Basically the guy is a big liability that you're much better off using something else in his place. That's what you're going to get often with Maul. Can he hit Jedi hard if he crits on them - sure - he hits Lumi for 7K above which is great on AOE - but look at what his crit did on Sid. Sid is pretty low health character - didn't even turn him yellow. Sid does more AOE damage than that and he's one of the fastest in the game.
As the OP is doing - you'll need to use RG or something else to protect him.
I don't think a 4* superstar type hero should be so limited to a niche AND then on top of it still need RG or something else just to make him able to hit vs. that niche without getting killed. That's a pretty narrow toon if you need all that to make him functional. He would be nearly last on my list to tell people to build because he's so restrained in his usage. If you wanted a strong AOE that had some anti-Jedi skills I'd build IG88 over Maul.
I'd gladly trade in the anti-Jedi stuff and his 1 in 20 chance OP mechanics for a kit that's more reliable and diverse. There's stuff faster and with more natural damage that is superior against Jedi anyway even without specific bonus damage.
I hear you and to a certain extent, I agree. Maul isn't on my Arena team, for good reasons. With this said... I must still disagree with the bulk of the statements you make here.
Every toon in the game is reliant on other toons for synergies, support and protection. No hero becomes worthless because it works better in conjunction with certain other heroes. Fives doesn't become useless because his true potential needs other Clones to be unlocked. So why flame on Maul because he becomes more viable with a tank? This is a game where TEAM building is at the core of it - not the comparison of different individual toons with one another.
I understand why many like to take FOTP, Geonosian Soldier, or Rey, as examples of why Maul in particular is not a worthwhile character. But what I fail to understand is why you all don't address the fact that even if Maul had 11K HP, all those toons would still have a very decent chance to one-shot him. Now, they do an extra 2-3K overkill - but overkill doesn't award extra points. When you pick examples like these, then by extension you're writing off ALK characters in the game if they are below 11K HP and roughly 120-125 speed, as non viable.
Yet, it's Maul who gets all the flak. And I'm guessing that's because he is an outlier both when it comes to HP and Speed. The imbalance just becomes all that more obvious. But, as I stated above, overkill doesn't award extra points and what's true for Maul is just as true for, for example, IG-88, IG-86, Luke and Ventress.
I've used my maxed Maul for a long time now, and he's a given addition vs any Jedi team. I generally don't have any trouble at all keeping him alive, perhaps because I actively do try to build my teams around their strengths and weaknesses rather than just throw a bunch of powerful hitters together. I don't know. I can only speak from my lived experience from playing the game. As, of course, you are doing too. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle.
You nailed it there with the speed / health. Essentially Maul is among the slowest and lowest health characters in the game - that's in a game where there is a bias toward high speed / damage characters. That's not a good combo to have . When not vs. Jedi, he has just decent damage - nothing great at all in that video when he hit Poe for example. In summary, he has terrible health, is extremely slow, and only vs. a subset of the roster does he actually do big damage. Vs. anything non-Jedi he's just ok. That just feels very narrow for me and in arena for example, where there are a lot of Jedi, he's not even the best option vs. Jedi.
Now, this doesn't mean he can't be used...but is he worth building and bringing something viable to the roster? Is he a better option than something else? There's a difference between being worthless and being actually good. I don't think Maul is good generally, but he's not worthless. I'd put him in the lower half tier of the game.
Replies
thats only because AI does not play smart.
if you are on defense, Yoda goes first, QGJ calls assist, those 3 hits will take out Maul already.
Also, I'll vehemently refute that Maul would in a typical scenario get one shotted by the team I battle in the clip. Using RG is a very good way to keep your team alive.
However, in real play, Vs a Jedi team like mine? My Yoda goes first (nothing in the game is faster than Yoda with QGJ as lead)...Then QGJ is going to hit. Those two are faster than Poe, GS, anyone you want to bring to help you get that early assist- other than another QGJ, but guess what? Yoda hitting QGJ with unstoppable will fix that and then they are both dead before they did a single thing.
That's what people mean about the speed meta. Your QGJ ad Maul both dust before they do a **** thing.
That's one scenario. Of course, you can construct others. But if you mean to tell me that Maul needs a buff because Yoda+QGJ are really, really fast, then you're looking at a very, very long list of toons needing a buff. If that were the case, I'd say the problem is your characters, and not the relative strengths of all the other characters in the game.
Maul can be one-shot/assisted killed by 3 maxed fast folks such as QGJ GS or Rey.
However he also has a small of going right after the fastest QGJ with his assist. That chance is very small though.
RG won't be able to protect him unless Maul dodges one part of the assist.
Yup, true. This goes for about half the toons in the game btw... So I don't see the point.
Sir, have you tried using Maul as leader for evasion? With Sidious and Dooku, might be interesting.
Lol,
Yoda and GQJ can kill Rey and Leia too before they attack. So lets open a thread how useless is Rey and that she needs buffs too.....
Now lets go back to Maul. You want him to have high hp so he would not die by yoda + GQJ + assist. In other words, you want Maul to have 6k+5k+7k = 18k hp so he won't die before he attacks?? Anything less than that will make you whine about how fast he dies by Yoda and QGJ. Ok.....
No, I'm showing you exactly what the speed meta is that you claimed to not understand. The speed meta allows you to entirely circumvent intended strengths and weaknesses of other, slower characters. You've established that Maul has a niche to kill Jedi, i've established he never ever get a single turn Vs a Jedi speed team. His niche is therefore irrelevant in that game mode. That's an issue.
All good tho, until something changes it makes my life easier, wouldn't want the choice between Rey, Maul and GS or Leia all going on turn 1 and knowing I'd need to let at least 1 hit!
Wouldn't Dooku as lead be the better choice? Offence up on evasion...Then Maul really would be 1 shotting everyone.
Heard that Dookus leadership is bugged atm. Someone submitted a bug report too.
I wish that his leadership was the only bug he had. That dude has 220% potency and sure enemy resist stun a lot. And i doubt they have over 220% tenacity.
How did u get him 7 stars?
U don't know what your talking about.
Well I keep reading these claims all the time. "Speed meta", "All that matters is speed", etc. Yet, still I am always in top 20 in Arena. Finished 7 yesterday. I don't use those speedy toons at all. And I'm in a very competitive ranking board with FTB ppl and plenty of classical "meta" builds.
So, I hope you'll respect that I don't accept your hypothesized scenario purely at face value. I keep picking fully committed speed teams apart way too often to put much weight into all the claims being made about them being the only way.
As the OP is doing - you'll need to use RG or something else to protect him.
I don't think a 4* superstar type hero should be so limited to a niche AND then on top of it still need RG or something else just to make him able to hit vs. that niche without getting killed. That's a pretty narrow toon if you need all that to make him functional. He would be nearly last on my list to tell people to build because he's so restrained in his usage. If you wanted a strong AOE that had some anti-Jedi skills I'd build IG88 over Maul.
I'd gladly trade in the anti-Jedi stuff and his 1 in 20 chance OP mechanics for a kit that's more reliable and diverse. There's stuff faster and with more natural damage that is superior against Jedi anyway even without specific bonus damage.
Nothing is viable at just 4 star.
I hear you and to a certain extent, I agree. Maul isn't on my Arena team, for good reasons. With this said... I must still disagree with the bulk of the statements you make here.
Every toon in the game is reliant on other toons for synergies, support and protection. No hero becomes worthless because it works better in conjunction with certain other heroes. Fives doesn't become useless because his true potential needs other Clones to be unlocked. So why flame on Maul because he becomes more viable with a tank? This is a game where TEAM building is at the core of it - not the comparison of different individual toons with one another.
I understand why many like to take FOTP, Geonosian Soldier, or Rey, as examples of why Maul in particular is not a worthwhile character. But what I fail to understand is why you all don't address the fact that even if Maul had 11K HP, all those toons would still have a very decent chance to one-shot him. Now, they do an extra 2-3K overkill - but overkill doesn't award extra points. When you pick examples like these, then by extension you're writing off ALK characters in the game if they are below 11K HP and roughly 120-125 speed, as non viable.
Yet, it's Maul who gets all the flak. And I'm guessing that's because he is an outlier both when it comes to HP and Speed. The imbalance just becomes all that more obvious. But, as I stated above, overkill doesn't award extra points and what's true for Maul is just as true for, for example, IG-88, IG-86, Luke and Ventress.
I've used my maxed Maul for a long time now, and he's a given addition vs any Jedi team. I generally don't have any trouble at all keeping him alive, perhaps because I actively do try to build my teams around their strengths and weaknesses rather than just throw a bunch of powerful hitters together. I don't know. I can only speak from my lived experience from playing the game. As, of course, you are doing too. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle.
If the game was all about the Arena, we could just as well remove ~50 toons from the roster right away...
@Nonemo you seem to have a roster that can take numbrr 1 rank daily. Why are you at 7? Is top 20 enough for you?
Yeah, I'm not big on Arena battles. I don't need the crystals and the ten minute wait often means I go do something else and forget about it. Half the time I don't even do all five battles.
Perhaps the biggest reason is that I like doing things my way. I just don't enjoy setting up a team that adheres to the "meta" and then just competing with ten others with identical teams. I manage to be competitive without being a copycat, while exploring new and strange forms. That's what's fun to me, not getting high ranks.
Presently I have Kit Fisto as my Arena leader. The tenacity bonus does work ok.
I strongly disagree. ...with the new order tie pilot and a few droids who hit as hard as they do, along with their health and speed, why is Maul so **** slow?
Honey Maul hits like a truck with AOE. He can take out 2,3 with one shot. FOTP and other droids takes out single.
got it?
jedi. If he can beat down jedis like this how in the world should he be buffed?
You nailed it there with the speed / health. Essentially Maul is among the slowest and lowest health characters in the game - that's in a game where there is a bias toward high speed / damage characters. That's not a good combo to have
Now, this doesn't mean he can't be used...but is he worth building and bringing something viable to the roster? Is he a better option than something else? There's a difference between being worthless and being actually good. I don't think Maul is good generally, but he's not worthless. I'd put him in the lower half tier of the game.