Best Active Abilities by Colour - Black RESULTS IN

Pylgrim

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Reading that list, black is a really strong color. x-force and panther are obvious winners but everything else on that list is usable and or situationaly helpful. I would almost call molotov one of the worst 3* black abilities and I have nothing bad to say about molotov.

Yeah I was surprised myself while making the poll. While there are the expected forerunners, there's no ability that is really bad. For example, with green, which is widely regarded as the strongest colour, the poll showed that there are just a handful of superpowerful abilities and craploads of absolute garbage. Black is definitely the strongest suit. This is mildly important to know because it means that if you are building a good rainbow team, you can fill the black hole with almost anyone, while the green hole necessitates the usual suspects.

Unknown

I'd also call Surgical Strike overpowered... if used correctly. You have to figure out what's the strongest colour for your opponent first, ideally select your team so you can do a lot of damage with that colour, and then fire it off when there aren't just a few tiles of that colour on the board.
Rage of the Panther is another easy option for me.

The others... well, some are pretty good, like Psylocke and Captain Marvel. Intimidation is more... situational, IMO (like with World Rupture ). Molotov Cocktail can rack up quite a bit of annoying damage if you leave it on the board for a while and is cheap, Hailstorm certainly adds up to, same goes for Summon Demons. Fastball Special has a big fun factor in it the only downside is that you don't get to pick the actual power that you are going to use on your opponent.

HairyDave

babinro wrote:

Note: BP's black is amazing and situationally better than this skill but it's far less reliable. How often are all the threats below the damage threshold? Meanwhile, X-Force can easily take down Hulk on his own because SS will follow up with one if not 2 green attacks.

3700 damage to all opponents seems pretty reliable to me

Running BP with Patch and Daken, you'd be surprised how often that number edges up closer to 5000. That's putting some serious holes in people, even chunky grade guys like Sentry and Thor. Sure it might not be killing everyone outright, but it doesn't take much more to put them down after that.

Pylgrim

Results for arguably the best colour group in MPQ

1. Surgical Strike (Wolverine X-Force) 87
2. Rage of the Panther (Black Panther) 86

3. Psi-Katana (Psylocke) 29
4. Summon Demons (Doctor Doom) 16
5. Intimidation (Hood) 13
6. Molotov Cocktail (Punisher) 11
7. Hypersonic Punch (Captain Marvel) 7
8. Hailstorm (Storm) 5

9. Fastball Special (Colossus) 4
10. Inferno (Human Torch) 2
11. Trickery (Loki) 2

The two landslide winners in the group taking up ALL of the votes (only one person didn't vote for RotP!) make the rest of the powers look a bit pathetic in comparison, but the truth is that even the "bottom" ones are useful and strong even if only situationaly.

Unknown

Still can't believe Psi-Katana got twice the votes of Intimidation. Thanks for putting all these polls up, they were fun.

Spoit

Paintsville wrote:

Still can't believe Psi-Katana got twice the votes of Intimidation. Thanks for putting all these polls up, they were fun.

Hard to beat the utility of a 6 AP move, especially since getting out earlier adds up a lot more in the long run

Unknown

Psi-katana is a cheap, very good move. Intimidation was widely considered borderline useless pre-world rupture, and is only narrowly useful (except as an occasional overpriced hit) with it.

HairyDave

I'm more surprised Inferno got almost no love.

mags1587

HairyDave wrote:

I'm more surprised Inferno got almost no love.

I'm not that suprised. Inferno has some significant drawbacks. There's the AP drain and the fixed placement means that it's doubtful that you'll get all possible attack tiles and increases the chances of them being easily matched away or destroyed. There are just too many other better options in black.

Unknown

mags1587 wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

I'm more surprised Inferno got almost no love.

I'm not that suprised. Inferno has some significant drawbacks. There's the AP drain and the fixed placement means that it's doubtful that you'll get all possible attack tiles and increases the chances of them being easily matched away or destroyed. There are just too many other better options in black.

Even comparing straight up to Hailstorm, Hailstorm can be done with 3 black matches, Inferno usually requires 4. Hailstorm nearly guarantees placement of your strike tiles unless you've already cast it earlier in the match, meaning the damage is about the same on average as inferno. If you're using strike tiles, it's much harder to match away all of Hailstorm, compared to Inferno.

Black really has become a power color behind Red and green.

ronin_san

Molotov is MUCH more powerful than these votes indicate. if you spend 2 more than Doom's Summon Demons, you do the equivalent damage to all enemies in one turn (you'd need the summon demons to last 3 turns to equal it). Further, it gets a benefit by and leaves a counter that allows the to propagate.

There's no downside to it like there is with Surgical Strike; that you output damage is limited by the number of strongest tiles on the board, and only targets an individual. There's also no "give the enemy 5 of their strongest AP" like with Panther.

The reason it didn't get votes, I think, is that people tend to favor 3/5/5 with Punisher.

Pylgrim

ronin-san wrote:

Molotov is MUCH more powerful than these votes indicate. if you spend 2 more than Doom's Summon Demons, you do the equivalent damage to all enemies in one turn (you'd need the summon demons to last 3 turns to equal it). Further, it gets a benefit by and leaves a counter that allows the to propagate.

There's no downside to it like there is with Surgical Strike; that you output damage is limited by the number of strongest tiles on the board, and only targets an individual. There's also no "give the enemy 5 of their strongest AP" like with Panther.

The reason it didn't get votes, I think, is that people tend to favor 3/5/5 with Punisher.

Unless we're talking of values in the thousands (CtS/RotP/Sniper Rifle/Wind Storm) damage spread across AoE is generally less useful than that much damage focused on a single character. The 700ish damage of Molotov is but a harsh tickle for each character in an opposed maxed team (decent with Judgement's around, though). And yeah, it is madness to have 5 covers in black, specially since the 5th doesn't add damage.

Unknown

Looking at these I'm thinking how glad I am that BP has Rage instead of Hailstorm. Jesus can you imagine? Killing him wouldn't do anything if he fired his abilities off.

ronin_san

RE: Molotov

Unless we're talking of values in the thousands (CtS/RotP/Sniper Rifle/Wind Storm) damage spread across AoE is generally less useful than that much damage focused on a single character. The 700ish damage of Molotov is but a harsh tickle for each character in an opposed maxed team (decent with Judgement's around, though). And yeah, it is madness to have 5 covers in black, specially since the 5th doesn't add damage.

For the same reason that you spec 3 into OBW's purple, the low cost of Aggressive Recon means you can land it more often. As with Punisher, the attack comes often. I have him 5/3 right now, Because I keep getting black covers. It simply means the attack tiles propagate more often. If you don't think the low cost has any thing to do with its effectiveness, consider World Rupture.

The point of molotov is that you can spam it. See also Chemical Reaction.