Carnage + 2 Muscles in the Blade essential node in Venom Heroic.
So from a very limited selection of your roster, you must form a team of 2 characters to face this monstrosity. Every turn, Carnage triggers 4 times off the Muscles abilities, then, if a single Threaten resolves, you are dead. Basically you have 4-5 turns to deal a total 40-50k damage with two characters and no chance of winfinite.
Boss Rush doesn’t hold a candle to this level of unfairness.
This node was basically IM40 and Peggy holding down the fort since Blade is basically a worthless meat shield at this point. I only have 1 yellow of Peggy’s but it was enough to get by with only using 3 health packs total in order to farm the CP out of the node. Peggy’s Blue stun helped a ton in this node as well. I can’t imagine trying to beat this node without her. My Peggy is boosted to lvl 255 3/1/4 for what it’s worth…
just hit that node and came here to see if there was a thread yet.
it is ridiculous, especially in an heroic event.
This sub event sucks in general. Most of the nodes consisted of freaking Carnage.. it sucks versus in him with a limited roster. The 3* recruit was Colosuss.. seriously.. what is he gonna do except sit there taking damage?
Yeah was def junk. I wiped twice because the board was missing yellow, and when it did drop muscle used CD on it.
I’m not looking forward to the final grind.
im40, peggy, pun. collect 6 yellow and then press the powers in the correct order.
also if board sucks retreat. It’s good that the penalty for retreating is no longer 1/3rd of your health isn’t it?
Emphasis mine.
The retreating advice is certainly valid (and useful!), but it’s kinda hard to use a 3-character combo on an essential node, you know?
Fair enough on pun. yes blade is also annoying reducing red to 8 when you have 9.
Also good that there’s that one node that everyone finds difficult - better for high level placement. I much prefer that to having easy welfare nodes that everyone can complete.
Exactly, that’s the cincher. Only having 2 characters from a limited selection is what impedes coming up with good enough strategies. Pun + Peggy is too slow (and so are X-Force + Xpool) And any of them plus an accelerator like OBW or IM40 is too fragile and luck-dependant. Both Daredevil and SG are normally good against Carnage but their 3* HP makes them topple hard even without Threaten tiles.
Also good that there’s that one node that everyone finds difficult - better for high level placement. I much prefer that to having easy welfare nodes that everyone can complete.
In theory, yes. In practice, such unfairly difficult nodes are highly reliant in luck. For example, I wiped at least thrice because the turn before I was going to use someone’s powers, a collapsing Threaten CD tile caused a 10k+ damage cascade that outright killed that character. That didn’t happen to you? Congrats, top placement is randomly going to be awarded to you because I’m out of Health packs so I’ll have to wait several hours, losing hundreds of points.
im40 is not too fragile. He’s boosted currently and for me has 19.7k health. Works well with peggy - she tanks everything for im40. the limited selection is what makes the heroic - heroic.
This is not the first time we’ve seen the carnage and muscles combo in a heroic, but this is definitely one of the easier times thanks to the availability of im40.
edit:
i retreated twice on my opening 4x grind when it looked like i would lose less health from retreating than letting the cd tiles resolve.
Random luck has nothing to do with it. If i don’t get the placement i’m looking for - it’s usually entirely my fault.
If my blade wasn’t 0/2/2 this would be a lot easier. Having one red (I assume) would make this fight soo much more bearable.
Having a red makes it harder if you’re running Peggy and need 9 red ap. It drops to 8 next turn whenever you happen to collect 9
Im40/2* cap work just fine, just slower. Stun Carnage and keep destroying countdowns with Cap’s shields.
I laughed at a new low on an event that has been run dozens of times. Dozens!
Don’t worry, we’re all struggling on that one.
I’ve retreated twice and wiped once on my initial four clears, and still finished them first in my bracket.
Yes, it’s playing the lottery, so is 90% of the rest of the game.
Just give yourself an extra 15 minutes for the end grind.
Edit:
But wait, wasn’t Caranage supposed to NOT have Scythes on all goon nodes? Was that change ONLY for Venom Bomb?
Only for Venom Bomb. Even then , Scythes isn’t the dangerous thing about this node. The dangerous thing about this node is those automatic 
tiles plus a threaten going off.
i’ve just been running xpool/xfwolvie for the essential nodes, gather as much purple for count down to what, and hope that xpools black will also kick in.
Got through 4 clears of it, wiping once, with IM40 + champed Xpool
Holy crap.
I also came here to post a thread about it if anyone else hadn’t.
I’m not as advanced as some, and have a IM40 1/5/5, but don’t have Peggy at all.
I’m running with Daredevil 3/5/5 as my other guy with only a beginner Blade at 0/0/1
Sigh…I managed to beat it once just barely.
The problem is not Carnage, it is the two feeders + char. Even doc Oc with two feeders, feeding him green, makes him really dangerous (firing Armed and Dangerous every two turns). But the 2Muscle+Hood is also a nightmare node.
Of course, two muscles in any node is also a nightmare scenario. Muscles should have been nerfed A LONG time ago.