Character rankings 10/14 edition: the results!

eidehua

CrookedKnight wrote:

He'll get a bump from the Goddess of Thunder, though.

Hard to say whose a better partner, xforce just from being great anyways (plus sometime synergy with charge tile gain) or patch with the synergy ( but requiring 9 green and 12 yellow).
The former provides good to great active abilities in green/red/blue/yellow/black while the latter only does that for green/red/blue/yellow

Unknown

jralbino wrote:

I think the problem here is that this Hood debate is the classic sports MVP discussion. Are we talking about the "best" or most valuable? For me, if you forced me to start shedding characters, one by one, starting with Yelena and moving up, I promise you Hood would still be left when I had 3 characters left. That means he has very high "value" for me. Meanwhile, if you just look at his "stats" so to speak, he's a .280 hitter, with 3 home runs, 65 stolen bases, and 120 runs scored. No one would call that the best player in the game, but your team is going to have a much tougher time winning without him. To take it further, if I'm building my line up, I'm putting him and a solid 3 and 4 hitter in my lineup and worrying about the rest later.

You may need some pitching.
Also, statistically speaking, you want to put your best overall hitter second in the order.

Unknown

Disembiggen wrote:

jralbino wrote:

I think the problem here is that this Hood debate is the classic sports MVP discussion. Are we talking about the "best" or most valuable? For me, if you forced me to start shedding characters, one by one, starting with Yelena and moving up, I promise you Hood would still be left when I had 3 characters left. That means he has very high "value" for me. Meanwhile, if you just look at his "stats" so to speak, he's a .280 hitter, with 3 home runs, 65 stolen bases, and 120 runs scored. No one would call that the best player in the game, but your team is going to have a much tougher time winning without him. To take it further, if I'm building my line up, I'm putting him and a solid 3 and 4 hitter in my lineup and worrying about the rest later.

You may need some pitching.
Also, statistically speaking, you want to put your best overall hitter second in the order.

I was in the 3-hole so I'm biased

Unknown

eidehua wrote:

CrookedKnight wrote:

He'll get a bump from the Goddess of Thunder, though.

Hard to say whose a better partner, xforce just from being great anyways (plus sometime synergy with charge tile gain) or patch with the synergy ( but requiring 9 green and 12 yellow).
The former provides good to great active abilities in green/red/blue/yellow/black while the latter only does that for green/red/blue/yellow

When you can use all 3 Patch, Goddess, and Deadpool are fun! All those Rage tiles get turned into Whales!!!! Let's be honest whales is pretty much everyone's favorite animation, and it's no slouch even without using Deadpool Pts. That's my PvE dream team.

All I really took away from this set of rankings is I should put some iso into XForce and cap him with my 2*s for now. He's 222, but sounds like he's fun even without the right build.

eidehua

fakeaseizure wrote:

eidehua wrote:

CrookedKnight wrote:

He'll get a bump from the Goddess of Thunder, though.

Hard to say whose a better partner, xforce just from being great anyways (plus sometime synergy with charge tile gain) or patch with the synergy ( but requiring 9 green and 12 yellow).
The former provides good to great active abilities in green/red/blue/yellow/black while the latter only does that for green/red/blue/yellow

When you can use all 3 Patch, Goddess, and Deadpool are fun! All those Rage tiles get turned into Whales!!!! Let's be honest whales is pretty much everyone's favorite animation, and it's no slouch even without using Deadpool Pts. That's my PvE dream team.

All I really took away from this set of rankings is I should put some iso into XForce and cap him with my 2*s for now. He's 222, but sounds like he's fun even without the right build.

I don't think you should push him past 222 (maybe its too late already) but at 221 3*s highest color will be stronger than Xforce's which is usually good in mirror matchup so you don't give an enemy xforce green from surgical strike. And the damage difference between 221 and 270 isn't that great, and it's not worth the tons of iso that is better put in 3*s (like the other top 10 ranked). Especially since you say you are still using 2*s.

Most of Xforce damage comes from covers

over_clocked

eidehua wrote:

fakeaseizure wrote:

All I really took away from this set of rankings is I should put some iso into XForce and cap him with my 2*s for now. He's 222, but sounds like he's fun even without the right build.

I don't think you should push him past 222 (maybe its too late already) but at 221 3*s highest color will be stronger than Xforce's which is usually good in mirror matchup so you don't give an enemy xforce green from surgical strike. And the damage difference between 221 and 270 isn't that great, and it's not worth the tons of iso that is better put in 3*s (like the other top 10 ranked). Especially since you say you are still using 2*s.

Most of Xforce damage comes from covers

Maybe they meant covers, as in 2/2/2?

Wolarsen

by locked » Thu Oct 30, 2014 3:42 am
Just tested RoTP against the Grand Scheme node in Prologue (DA chapter). They have equal level Commander (yellow) and Spy (purple). First I killed them when both were alive and they got 5 purple, Spy is in the center so understandable. Next I killed Spy first and on being RoTPed they received 5 yellow for Commander taking priority.

I tried again, you are right; cheap testing from my part, sorry for the mislead ><

Unknown

Thanks so much for doing the rankings and writeups! As a new player, this is a very informative read and is a good reference when deciding which characters to keep/drop with the limited roster space.

Unknown

Too many people are bitter about C.Mags nerf. I'd trade him for Hulk in the top 10. I also don't think Hulk is the deterrent some people do. The right team just owns him, and other teams can safely ignore him to the end and then just match green and red him to death. Other than that this list is pretty spot on for the current Meta. I am surprised Sentry didn't rank 1 tho, or at least 2. He is better than Thor, if only marginally, because of the speed.

Unknown

Yeah, anyone ranking thor above sentry obviously doesn't play this game very much. They're not even in the same league.

hurcules

RE: why Sentry is below LT

This is why most outcome of contests are determined by a panel of judges rather than popularity votes. It's all about the current roster state of voters when he or she votes. If I am in 1* to 2* transition, there's no way I can comprehend well how the games are played at 900+ and above in PvP, and thus limiting my understanding of strength and weaknesses of those higher end characters. Similarly, the average joes would vote the current / next Avenger movies as best Oscar pictures.

But, the fact is, MPQ player base is like a population pyramid. People who have working Sentry and XF, scoring north of 1300 every PvP is probably less than 5% of total player base. The vast majority are still in various transitioning phases. As someone mentioned, we would have probably gained a better understanding of the votes if we had asked some additional questions like which characters have the voters maxed at the time of voting. Going forward, maybe that should probably be incorporated as part of the survey.

atomzed

Late to the "should hood be rank higher discussion?", I think it's pointless to compare him with Xforce, sentry and lthor. Simply because it's not an Apple to Apple comparison.

Using an analogy in WoW or Diablo, in a team raid, you will need a tank (to soak up the mob), a crowd control dmg dealer (usually a mage), and a healer. Sure you can play the game with only one character but it's so.much better to have dedicated roles to create team synergy.

So is hood more important than Xforce? I would say he cannot compare with him in terms of dmg output. But Xforce also can't do what hood does, slow down the other team and accelerate your own. So whether he is better becomes individual preference.

A better question should be whether hood is the best support character. And I would say that he is indisputably the best support character.

onimus wrote:

I go with 4/4/5 and I'll tell you why.

That is my logic for avoiding 5 green.

Sorry for the slow response. Busy in RL and no time to sit and response a proper post.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I guess it boils down to individual playing style. I never really have an issue with 5 green. But one man's poison is another's person mead.

Unknown

Here's the writeup I made for sentry. Not to diminish the final product, but I feel like this ought to be read, in particular due to the quotes at the end from top players.

Sentry is good. Really, ridiculously, stupidly good. How good is Sentry? Well, to put it in context, when Sentry gets nerfed eventually, about half of this list will be all but completely irrelevant. That's how good sentry is. The Wiki has this as one of the notes for the character: "With one maxed Sacrifice strike tile, a maxed World Rupture does 11568 damage to the enemy team, plus possible match damage."
...Keep in mind that at the moment, up until very recently the character with the most health in the game is Hulk. With a whopping 11475.

...Oops.

The practice of Sentry Bombing essentially defines the metagame. A way to end matches in under 3 turns and under 30 seconds completely breaks the game. Which characters are good? Past 1000 it doesn't matter - you see Hood and Sentry because everything else is too slow, and leads to shieldhops failing. Is XForce a monster? Is Thor a powerhouse? It doesn't matter - Sentry/Hood is faster; they might as well not exist once you hit 1k points. Hell, even in events like Balance of Power, nothing can compare! Headbutt deals 6k damage for 6AP… But World Rupture deals something like 15k AOE. That’s something you just can’t argue with. Boosting just on ISO, it’s entirely realistic to consistently do two games per minute with Sentry/Hood. Sentry is slated to be nerfed soon, and after that the question of relevance is back open. Until then, who cares how fast Xforce can knock you down? Sentry’s faster. A lot faster. Even in PvE, Sentry is the end-all, be-all. Tough node? It had better be "Can eat 10k AOE" tough!

What else is there to say about Sentry? He has premium health (fourth-best in the game after Hulk, Devil Dino, and Xforce, tied with LThor), World Rupture deals pretty great damage for 7AP even without strike tiles (almost 2.8k), Supernova is a really powerful AOE nuke for only 11AP (10.5k total, giving this skill the highest “official” Damage/AP ratio in the game at 954), and Sacrifice is one of the meatiest strike tiles in the game. Get rid of sentry bombing and Sentry is still an absolute beast of a character. But with sentry bombing, Sentry is a force that completely defines the metagame. Being able to do 10k AOE damage on turn 3 or 4 is broken. Even the developers have acknowledged this, with IceIX having said at NYCC that Sentry was getting nerfed at some point soon. Enjoy him while you can, and let's hope he turns out more like C.Mags than like Ragnarok.
Best build: 3/5/5.


…


(...Um, you do realize that Sentry isn’t ranked first, right? -editor)

…

...Wait, what? Do you guys like, not hit 900 or something? AKA the point where 90% of teams become Featured/Sentry/X? There’s a reason that happens. Well, at least I can rest easy knowing that the developers of MPQ understand the problem with this character. Damn.

But you know what? Given my intense focus on Sentry being busted as hell over the last few weeks (as anyone on the forum can attest), maybe I’m not being objective. So... let’s hear from some of the people in top alliances, eh?

“basically he broke the game and he needs to be fixed. he turned the game into who can shield hop the fastest past 900.” - 5DeadlyVenoms member who prefers not to be named
“Sentry is an ****. That is all.” - Ahsan, 5DeadlyVenoms
“Sentry will be nerfed soon” - Puerto Rico, X-Men 1 (2000+)
“NERF. BAT. HIT THAT MUTHAFUKKA HARRRRD [...] 1300 won't even get you top 5 anymore and I'm done with this 2k **** unless it's for new heroes.” - Johnny1Punch, Army Of Sparta (~1600)
“I feel bad every time i had to sentry bombing.. Ultimate failure.. Unfortunately at high end Its mandatory.. Sentry is the cancer of this game..” - franckynight, Shield (1400-1800)
“Sentry is the de facto character for shieldhopping at high point values. There's top-tier, and there's Sentry-tier. His sole weakness is sustainability.” - HailMary, DjangoUnbuffed (~1200).
“Sentry: very easy to use, even for noobs. Once you get him to lvl150 and up he’s OP and can crush any team easily which makes all players wanna use him. And then it becomes **** because all I see is sentry hood which makes the other characters unusable in pvp because sentry can shieldhop faster than any other. HE NEEDS TO BE **** NERFED!!” - Soundwave, X-Men 1 (~2000)
“Sentry is undercosted and overpowered. He needs to have the cost of WR raised from 7 to 10 or 11. They can keep how it works the same, but make it cost more ap to activate.” - The1WhoKnocks, X-Men 1 (1800-2300).

These are the people who play this game like it’s a competitive sport. The people who spend money to ensure they can win their brackets. As I keep saying on the forums, Sentry isn’t just strong, isn’t just top tier, he completely defines the metagame past a certain point. Even if you’re not aiming for 2000 points. Even if you just want to get that damn Fury cover at 1300. You need to use Sentry. I don’t mean to be a **** about this. But when a character that warps the meta at such a fundamental level isn’t ranked #1, that means that many of the people voting need to learn more about the game they play.

Unknown

The vast majority of this game's player base does not experience Sentry.

Let's face it.

Sentry is NOT a climber. You will never ever ever ever see a Sentry at 200 or 300 points.

Or even 600 or 700.

And they DEFINITELY never see Sentry/Hood combos.

Let's face it. If you have a Sentry and a Hood in your roster, you're getting 1000 to 1500 points per PVP.
That is likely the top 5% of the playerbase, at most, that scores that high.

So while it makes sense to players like you and me, who score a minimum of 1000 points each PVP, to put Sentry as the top character, it won't be as obvious to the people in 1 star, 2 star and the beginning of 3 star land, ie most of the player base.

I will say that I know that Sentry trivializes much of the game, from my experience with him and against him. But a lot of people only hear about it from the top players on the forums.

Unknown

Sentry is so good that I can start with 4 hours left and still do 900 points like it was nothing ...
xforce may be better for 1 pvp, for a lot of quick wins sentry is just awesome

Unknown

onimus wrote:

Let's face it.

Sentry is NOT a climber. You will never ever ever ever see a Sentry at 200 or 300 points.

Wat


I use sentry that low all the time. Whenever I see a hard node that I really want to beat, doesn't matter how far down, I'll bust out sentry. I'm not gonna climb all day with him (although I start using him really extensively around 500 or 600), but people who just don't use sentry below 900 r doin it rong.

Unknown

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

onimus wrote:

Let's face it.

Sentry is NOT a climber. You will never ever ever ever see a Sentry at 200 or 300 points.

Wat


I use sentry that low all the time. Whenever I see a hard node that I really want to beat, doesn't matter how far down, I'll bust out sentry. I'm not gonna climb all day with him (although I start using him really extensively around 500 or 600), but people who just don't use sentry below 900 r doin it rong.

I just climbed from zero to 600 with Captain Marvel, Patch and Daken.

I used 2 health packs.

And those were used on Captain Marvel.

I don't know what nodes you're seeing in the 300 range, but I don't even see 3 stars until I hit about 700.

So if you need to break out Sentry to beat a 2* thor, OBW and level 60 Captain Marvel, go for it.

But its a waste of health packs.

Now, if Sentry is your only 166, then that makes more sense. But if you have a developed roster, there's no reason to use sentry under 700 points.

Pwuz_

Sentry is to 3* Thor
as Ares is to _______

A. 2* Thor
B. 2* Wolverine
C.3* Wolverine
D. A ham sandwich

Unknown

Gonna have to go with "D".

Spoit

AdrianoD wrote:

Sentry is so good that I can start with 4 hours left and still do 900 points like it was nothing ...
xforce may be better for 1 pvp, for a lot of quick wins sentry is just awesome

4 hours? That's more than enough time to climb to something like 1k with just random other characters like LT or BP, not even bringing X-force or sentry into play in the first place.

Heck during the Beast PvP, I got to 1.4k without even touching sentry once