Best Active Abilities by Colour - Green. RESULTS IN

Pylgrim

Following on the steps of viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17361, we're finding the best and worst abilities in each colour. Now it's Green's time!

HailMary

If we're talking about abilities operating alone, then X-Force wins by a mile.

However, with strike-tile support, WR obliterates an entire team with only a bit of self-team-damage. With Thunder Strike support and LT's tankiness, 3* CTS can dictate the outcome of a fight with zero downside.

Nellyson

Call of the Storm. Game changer...the one skill you hate to see the AI get

X-Force. Even at 4 , it causes a very significant amount of damage!

Judgement. I voted this 3rd over because his World Rupture is dependent on strike tiles. Punisher has the best no downside strike tiles in the game!

mags1587

There are way too many good choices here. Voted the same as Nellyson but Flame Jet, World Rupture, Beserker Rage, and Sniper Rifle are all favorites too.

IamTheDanger

I voted Torch, Patch and Thor.

seth_is_OK

Sniper Rifle, CotS, X-Force

I love Sniper Rifle. More damage to enemy team than Call of the Storm PLUS cascade damage and AP generation PLUS destroy enemy special tiles. Sniper Rifle does a lot more for only 5 AP extra green over CotS. X-Force is like Sniper Rifle (except you can't aim it) but for into individual targets. (~24 AP to aim at all 3 enemies)

Lystrata

Man. Thor is killin' these.

HairyDave

seth_is_OK wrote:

Sniper Rifle, CotS, X-Force

I love Sniper Rifle. More damage to enemy team than Call of the Storm PLUS cascade damage and AP generation PLUS destroy enemy special tiles. Sniper Rifle does a lot more for only 5 AP extra green over CotS.

This.

World Rupture is great too but you need strike tiles to get the most out of it and cascades and bad matches on the turns before it goes off can mean it does far less damage than it should.

Spoit

Lystrata wrote:

Man. Thor is killin' these.

His only bad move is red. Which is actually still fairly decent

Lystrata

Spoit wrote:

Lystrata wrote:

Man. Thor is killin' these.

His only bad move is red. Which is actually still fairly decent

Heh, yeah. Compared to other red abilities, his red 'sucks', but I've certainly found it more than a little useful at times. And as the first stepping stone towards getting his green (which is basically what it boils down to), I can't fault it much.

And the green, as we can see, is super valued.

Unknown

Wait, what?

Y'all hella dumb.

World Rupture isn't just "strong". World Rupture is downright meta-defining. As in, "If world rupture didn't exist, the upper tier of the game would look so drastically different as to be unrecognisable". World Rupture is the reason we have people consistently hitting well over 1300. World Rupture is metagame-defining in the same way O.Sagat is in SF2T or Metaknight is in Super Smash Bros Brawl (Or OBW is in the 2* range). It is the defining factor in how the game is played at high levels. The fact that it isn't winning in a landslide says more about the people here than it does about the viability of the skill. Nothing. Even. Comes. Close. This is like if we had a 2* Purple poll and people went for Gravity Warp because it does damage or Polarity Shift because it enables Wind Storm.

Unknown

This may be the most difficult one to judge.

I guess it all comes down to: are we including combos in this consideration or are we looking at the ability by itself?

Because if we're looking at just the ability, Call of the Storm wins. It is a high, but manageable cost and AoE damage, with big damage to the primary target.

If combos are being considered, then Sentry's World Rupture wins in a land slide. It is pretty harmless (all things considered) if you don't have any strike tiles on the board, but its synergy with Sacrifice, or Daken, is just so insane. It is a literal game ender in almost every case. If you have a team that can survive that much damage, then more power to you. But Sentry wins games by himself with that combo.

Another one to think of if combos are considered, is GSBW. It has an insanely high price, but with her purple ability, it is surprisingly easy to get that much green. Pair her with Thor to get even more green on the board. But her green is one of the strongest abilities in the entire game, once you have enough AP to use it.

Then finally, X Force's green is nice. But it is ultimately just a strong nuke. No AoE, just single target. so while it is very strong, there are stronger greens out there.

Unknown

onimus wrote:

This may be the most difficult one to judge.

I guess it all comes down to: are we including combos in this consideration or are we looking at the ability by itself?

Because if we're looking at just the ability, Call of the Storm wins. It is a high, but manageable cost and AoE damage, with big damage to the primary target.

Except the only reason it's truly "manageable" is Thor's Yellow. Getting 14 AP normally is a huge pain in the ****. If we're going on abilities in a vacuum, then we have a clear winner in XForce - 8AP for almost 4k damage, plus cascades? In all honesty, we're looking at a Damage:AP ratio of very close to 500:1, which is only slightly worse than CTS (550:1), centered on one character rather than spread out, and a lot less susceptible to AP steal disruption or denial tactics (stopping a team from hitting 14 green? Not that hard. Stopping a team from hitting 8 green? Damn near impossible). There's really not much reason to consider CTS superior.

But looking at skills in a vacuum is dumb. I could understand if WR was only broken if you also ran someone like BP or Psylocke... But it isn't. Sentry, on his own, contains both a skill that becomes impossibly broken with strike tiles, and a skill that creates one whopper of a strike tile. Similarly, CTS outpaces X-Factor, because blocking two colors is difficult and Thunder Strike accelerates it dramatically. But overall, you kind of have to look at the meta. If CTS was removed right now, you'd still have bomby AOE skills - Sniper Rifle, Rage of the Panther, etc. If World Rupture was removed, the game would change drastically, because there is nothing else anything like it.

Unknown

World Rupture is by far the winner. It's cheap, produces massive cascades, and works wonders with any strike tile which are plentiful.
X-Force is a close 2nd: Damage + cascades.

Unknown

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

onimus wrote:

This may be the most difficult one to judge.

I guess it all comes down to: are we including combos in this consideration or are we looking at the ability by itself?

Because if we're looking at just the ability, Call of the Storm wins. It is a high, but manageable cost and AoE damage, with big damage to the primary target.

Except the only reason it's truly "manageable" is Thor's Yellow. Getting 14 AP normally is a huge pain in the ****. If we're going on abilities in a vacuum, then we have a clear winner in XForce - 8AP for almost 4k damage, plus cascades? In all honesty, we're looking at a Damage:AP ratio of very close to 500:1, which is only slightly worse than CTS (550:1), centered on one character rather than spread out, and a lot less susceptible to AP steal disruption or denial tactics (stopping a team from hitting 14 green? Not that hard. Stopping a team from hitting 8 green? Damn near impossible). There's really not much reason to consider CTS superior.

But looking at skills in a vacuum is dumb. I could understand if WR was only broken if you also ran someone like BP or Psylocke... But it isn't. Sentry, on his own, contains both a skill that becomes impossibly broken with strike tiles, and a skill that creates one whopper of a strike tile. Similarly, CTS outpaces X-Factor, because blocking two colors is difficult and Thunder Strike accelerates it dramatically. But overall, you kind of have to look at the meta. If CTS was removed right now, you'd still have bomby AOE skills - Sniper Rifle, Rage of the Panther, etc. If World Rupture was removed, the game would change drastically, because there is nothing else anything like it.

If this logic were true, then wouldn't that mean Sacrifice is the best Yellow ability? It is, after all, the reason world rupture is so strong.

But Thor's yellow won that ranking pretty definitively.

Sacrifice makes World Rupture the best green ability.
Without Sacrifice, World rupture is only decent. But without world rupture, sacrifice is still the strongest strike tile in the game. Yet Sacrifice didn't win best yellow.

That's why I asked the question. We were clearly looking at abilities in a vacuum for Yellow, so why not green as well?

Unknown

I noticed that Beast, Doc Ock, and Lazy Storm are up there. That's just adorable.

Unknown

onimus wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

onimus wrote:

This may be the most difficult one to judge.

I guess it all comes down to: are we including combos in this consideration or are we looking at the ability by itself?

Because if we're looking at just the ability, Call of the Storm wins. It is a high, but manageable cost and AoE damage, with big damage to the primary target.

Except the only reason it's truly "manageable" is Thor's Yellow. Getting 14 AP normally is a huge pain in the ****. If we're going on abilities in a vacuum, then we have a clear winner in XForce - 8AP for almost 4k damage, plus cascades? In all honesty, we're looking at a Damage:AP ratio of very close to 500:1, which is only slightly worse than CTS (550:1), centered on one character rather than spread out, and a lot less susceptible to AP steal disruption or denial tactics (stopping a team from hitting 14 green? Not that hard. Stopping a team from hitting 8 green? Damn near impossible). There's really not much reason to consider CTS superior.

But looking at skills in a vacuum is dumb. I could understand if WR was only broken if you also ran someone like BP or Psylocke... But it isn't. Sentry, on his own, contains both a skill that becomes impossibly broken with strike tiles, and a skill that creates one whopper of a strike tile. Similarly, CTS outpaces X-Factor, because blocking two colors is difficult and Thunder Strike accelerates it dramatically. But overall, you kind of have to look at the meta. If CTS was removed right now, you'd still have bomby AOE skills - Sniper Rifle, Rage of the Panther, etc. If World Rupture was removed, the game would change drastically, because there is nothing else anything like it.

If this logic were true, then wouldn't that mean Sacrifice is the best Yellow ability? It is, after all, the reason world rupture is so strong.

But Thor's yellow won that ranking pretty definitively.

Sacrifice makes World Rupture the best green ability.
Without Sacrifice, World rupture is only decent. But without world rupture, sacrifice is still the strongest strike tile in the game. Yet Sacrifice didn't win best yellow.

That's why I asked the question. We were clearly looking at abilities in a vacuum for Yellow, so why not green as well?

Well, FWIW, I think people who voted for Thunder Strike over Sacrifice are pretty dumb too.

Pylgrim

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

Well, FWIW, I think people who voted for Thunder Strike over Sacrifice are pretty dumb too.

Let us all keep it polite and nice, shall we? If some (most?) people want to grade the abilities by their usefulness alone without counting the way they interact with others, that's completely fine. For example, think of this: If you had a difficult battle and the opponent just accumulated enough AP to cast their nuke, or maybe a huge countdown tile ability was about to go off and you need a way to solve it or kill that character but you only have some T-U AP, World Rupture is one of the most useless Team Ups that you could use. Hell, even if you are not in an emergency, WR T-U is pretty useless UNLESS you have strike tiles.

Moreover, not everyone experiences Sentry as a maxed-up shield-hopping machine, i.e. they don't use 9 boosts per game, so they still have to work out to get 9 yellow in addition to the green in order to do the "combo" (or use Daken, but now we're definitely adding external variables) which is not always easy. That's why WR is not right now winning in a landslide like Fireball, S-SA, or Thunder Strike did. All those are abilities that are excellent by themselves, regardless of external factors or setup. (That and the fact that more people have experienced the full power of CTS -even if only with Thor- than the full power of WR)

Knyghtmare

onimus wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

onimus wrote:

This may be the most difficult one to judge.

I guess it all comes down to: are we including combos in this consideration or are we looking at the ability by itself?

Because if we're looking at just the ability, Call of the Storm wins. It is a high, but manageable cost and AoE damage, with big damage to the primary target.

Except the only reason it's truly "manageable" is Thor's Yellow. Getting 14 AP normally is a huge pain in the ****. If we're going on abilities in a vacuum, then we have a clear winner in XForce - 8AP for almost 4k damage, plus cascades? In all honesty, we're looking at a Damage:AP ratio of very close to 500:1, which is only slightly worse than CTS (550:1), centered on one character rather than spread out, and a lot less susceptible to AP steal disruption or denial tactics (stopping a team from hitting 14 green? Not that hard. Stopping a team from hitting 8 green? Damn near impossible). There's really not much reason to consider CTS superior.

But looking at skills in a vacuum is dumb. I could understand if WR was only broken if you also ran someone like BP or Psylocke... But it isn't. Sentry, on his own, contains both a skill that becomes impossibly broken with strike tiles, and a skill that creates one whopper of a strike tile. Similarly, CTS outpaces X-Factor, because blocking two colors is difficult and Thunder Strike accelerates it dramatically. But overall, you kind of have to look at the meta. If CTS was removed right now, you'd still have bomby AOE skills - Sniper Rifle, Rage of the Panther, etc. If World Rupture was removed, the game would change drastically, because there is nothing else anything like it.

If this logic were true, then wouldn't that mean Sacrifice is the best Yellow ability? It is, after all, the reason world rupture is so strong.

But Thor's yellow won that ranking pretty definitively.

Sacrifice makes World Rupture the best green ability.
Without Sacrifice, World rupture is only decent. But without world rupture, sacrifice is still the strongest strike tile in the game. Yet Sacrifice didn't win best yellow.

That's why I asked the question. We were clearly looking at abilities in a vacuum for Yellow, so why not green as well?

Actually Sacrifice only has the strongest single strike tile in the game. With 12 team-up tiles, Black Panther's yellow creates 3 250hp strike tiles for 750hp. Sacrifice's single tile is only 600+.

Unknown

People are so focused on the game-ending aspect of world rupture that they completely ignore the loads of AP it gives you when it goes off normally, particularly if you've set the board up right. It's more the team-self harming aspect of it that prevents it from being #1. Health packs are expensive.

Spoit

onimus wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

onimus wrote:

This may be the most difficult one to judge.

I guess it all comes down to: are we including combos in this consideration or are we looking at the ability by itself?

Because if we're looking at just the ability, Call of the Storm wins. It is a high, but manageable cost and AoE damage, with big damage to the primary target.

Except the only reason it's truly "manageable" is Thor's Yellow. Getting 14 AP normally is a huge pain in the ****. If we're going on abilities in a vacuum, then we have a clear winner in XForce - 8AP for almost 4k damage, plus cascades? In all honesty, we're looking at a Damage:AP ratio of very close to 500:1, which is only slightly worse than CTS (550:1), centered on one character rather than spread out, and a lot less susceptible to AP steal disruption or denial tactics (stopping a team from hitting 14 green? Not that hard. Stopping a team from hitting 8 green? Damn near impossible). There's really not much reason to consider CTS superior.

But looking at skills in a vacuum is dumb. I could understand if WR was only broken if you also ran someone like BP or Psylocke... But it isn't. Sentry, on his own, contains both a skill that becomes impossibly broken with strike tiles, and a skill that creates one whopper of a strike tile. Similarly, CTS outpaces X-Factor, because blocking two colors is difficult and Thunder Strike accelerates it dramatically. But overall, you kind of have to look at the meta. If CTS was removed right now, you'd still have bomby AOE skills - Sniper Rifle, Rage of the Panther, etc. If World Rupture was removed, the game would change drastically, because there is nothing else anything like it.

If this logic were true, then wouldn't that mean Sacrifice is the best Yellow ability? It is, after all, the reason world rupture is so strong.

But Thor's yellow won that ranking pretty definitively.

Sacrifice makes World Rupture the best green ability.
Without Sacrifice, World rupture is only decent. But without world rupture, sacrifice is still the strongest strike tile in the game. Yet Sacrifice didn't win best yellow.

That's why I asked the question. We were clearly looking at abilities in a vacuum for Yellow, so why not green as well?

Except that WR is still great with any other strike tile ability too (and actually doesn't cause that much self damage in isolation since the vast majority of sentry's self damage comes from sacrifice). Like, against a average health (6800 and under) or 2* team, the strike tiles from the laken matches you got to get WR in the first place are quite sufficient to do a full wipe. Or if you actually have a team slot for him, BP's BP is only 100 strike damage less, which is largely enough to put the rest of the game into clean up mode with a few more matches, if not an instant total wipe