Character rankings 10/14 edition: the results!

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  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited October 2014
    onimus wrote:
    You can't vary your playstyle on defense.

    I wish you could program the AI, but you can't.

    If you put a level 5 Zerker rage in AI's hand, they'll fire it off as soon as possible. And if the enemy has a hulk or a Captain Marvel, they will put that character in front, giving them, in hulk's case, endless green and AoE damage or in Cap Marvel's case, endless red and black.


    Level 3 or even level 4 is much safer when dealing with Patch from a defensive perspective.

    Defence is a valid point.

    But seriously, with the exception of hulk and dino (as a Scarecrow and sentry counter), does anyone really care about defence? No defence team is safe. All defence teams *can* be beaten.

    As long as boosts are available in game, defence teams are irrelevant. Ok, less relevant.
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    atomzed wrote:
    I disagree with your recommended build for patch. 355, to me, is the *least* versatile build. 355 require you to plan your team around patch, such that he tanks as many color as he can. If not, TBTI won't be game ending as you are not doing enough dmg. This means you have to like be concerned about his placement, his level relative to others....

    I will argue that 535 is the *most* versatile build. Simply because you don't have to babysit the team set up. You just have to vary your playing style, to take care of the strike tiles.

    To put another spin, if you are playing patch with 2 max 4* (thoress and fury for example). Patch won't be tanking any color and his Tbti would deal 0 dmg. But if you have him at 535, life goes on as normal. That's *versatility*.

    Patch is still top 10 quality because the ability to play *forever* with ldaken is invaluable. Hence 5 yellow is pretty much a must.

    I think you missed his point. You don't go 3/5/5 because you want to use TBTI, you go 3/5/5 because you DONT want to give the enemy 6 strike tiles. 3/5/5 is "versatile" because you can use berzerker rage whenever you are able to match-3 on purple and only deal with 1-2 strike tiles, as opposed to 5/3/5 where you might have to deal with 3-4. I see a lot of posts here where people think that 5 green is strictly superior to 3 green, and that's just not how it works. With 5/3/5, you need to build your team around the fact that once you rage, you need to burst down the enemy team ASAP, and as such probably have to bring cheap spells and / or hoard your powers (which is varying playstyle like you said). TBTI is completely irrelevant when talking about Patch builds: all that matters is how many strike tiles you want zerker rage to give to you and the opponent.
    .fair point that you want less strike tiles to opponent.

    But I still dont get it. Let me explain my reasons.

    Let's say 3 green gives 600 dmg more to yourself and enemy. You cast it, thinking that "yeah, I deal more dmg to the enemy, but also less dmg to myself than 5 green". But wait a min, you are still doing 600 more dmg to yourself than before you fire 3 green. That 600 more dmg will still likely overwhelm the heal of patch. You *are* still taking more dmg when you cast berserker strike regardless of having it 535 or 355.

    My logic for 5 green is: go max dmg and end the game as quickly as possible. So in my games with patch, I look for opportunity to kill the enemy with the 5 green. So what if I'm taking match dmg before firing berserker strike? Patch can tank them and heal them back.

    When I calculate that I can kill off the enemy team (typically only 2 characters left on enemy team), I make my move and cast berskerer strike. Cast another move (usually ldaken blue, which would convert some of the red strike tiles on board). Take a match. Just this 3 step, you would have dish out 6000 dmg (rough feel, didn't calculate).

    With such an approach, you look for opportunies to deal more dmg to the opponent team, typically in the form of taking more moves. Bec You get more dmg from his strike tiles when you take more moves. Say you have 2 ability waiting to be fire. That's x2 of patch dmg. See a swap that match 2 sets of colors? That's x2 of patch dmg. Saw a match 5? That's another x2 of patch dmg. All goons match and you have multiple turns in a row? That's x amount more of berserker strike tiles dmg free.

    In short, I don't see a problem with 5 green because I use it to end the game quickly. Hence I don't see a point with
    More strike tiles. I don't understand why 3 green is better because the logic of "damage mitigation" in 3 green, also means that you deal less dmg to the opponent, while also taking more dmg than before you cast berserker strike.

    (Edit: the defence point brought up by ominus is valid. But I just don't care about defence because my assumption is that all defence would lose anyway. And maybe bec I only use patch and ldaken in the climb, I don't rate defence so importantly as a 2* to 3* transition players. I would typically swap to Xforce once i reach 500 points.)
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    onimus wrote:
    You can't vary your playstyle on defense.

    I wish you could program the AI, but you can't.

    If you put a level 5 Zerker rage in AI's hand, they'll fire it off as soon as possible. And if the enemy has a hulk or a Captain Marvel, they will put that character in front, giving them, in hulk's case, endless green and AoE damage or in Cap Marvel's case, endless red and black.


    Level 3 or even level 4 is much safer when dealing with Patch from a defensive perspective.


    Btw it doesn't matter whether you have 3 or 5 green. The opponent hulk and capt marvel would still have his/ her power trigger with the strike tiles in board.

    I do get it that hulk anger aoe will be less... But really defence is a non factor for me.
  • mjh
    mjh Posts: 708 Critical Contributor
    We can conclude from process of elimination that top3 are (in no particular order) X-Force icon_wolverine.png , icon_sentry.png and icon_thor.png

    That means the top3 star.pngstar.pngstar.pngs are icon_sentry.pngicon_thor.pngicon_daken.png

    2/5ths of top5 are star.pngstar.pngstar.pngstar.png. This game has changed
  • We can conclude from process of elimination that top3 are (in no particular order) X-Force icon_wolverine.png , icon_sentry.png and icon_thor.png

    That means the top3 star.pngstar.pngstar.pngs are icon_sentry.pngicon_thor.pngicon_daken.png

    2/5ths of top5 are star.pngstar.pngstar.pngstar.png. This game has changed
    Yeah, 4 stars means something now.
  • MarcusGraves
    MarcusGraves Posts: 495 Mover and Shaker
    Yeah, 4 stars means something now.

    cept for IW....sigh
  • Talahamut
    Talahamut Posts: 231 Tile Toppler
    I'm loving the number of Queen songs in the list! icon_e_biggrin.gif
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    atomzed wrote:
    onimus wrote:
    You can't vary your playstyle on defense.

    I wish you could program the AI, but you can't.

    If you put a level 5 Zerker rage in AI's hand, they'll fire it off as soon as possible. And if the enemy has a hulk or a Captain Marvel, they will put that character in front, giving them, in hulk's case, endless green and AoE damage or in Cap Marvel's case, endless red and black.


    Level 3 or even level 4 is much safer when dealing with Patch from a defensive perspective.


    Btw it doesn't matter whether you have 3 or 5 green. The opponent hulk and capt marvel would still have his/ her power trigger with the strike tiles in board.

    I do get it that hulk anger aoe will be less... But really defence is a non factor for me.
    Yeah, but in pvp, who actually uses hulk or cap marvel? (Or patch for that matter)
  • over_clocked
    over_clocked Posts: 3,961
    locked wrote:
    Predictions (Captain Obvious presents):
    Top 10: X-Force, Sentry, Hood, lazyThor, Black Panther, cMagneto, Patch, lazyDaken, Nick Fury, Hulk - with the exception of cMagneto (replaced by lazyCap) which is wrong since cMagneto is just as good in PvE if not better, and miles better in PvP ><
    Highest climb: X-Force - seems to be true
    Lowest drop: modern Storm - seems to be true
    Lowest new: Beast followed by Mohawk Storm - Beast followed by She-Hulk (okaaaay, guess She-Hulk's 10200 loses to Mohawk's 5100 health on the basis of all three Mohawk skills actually being decent-ish when Shulk only has red)
    Highest new: Nick Fury followed by Captain Marvel - Nick Fury followed by Deadpool with Captain Marvel trailing close
    Too good for their stars: oBW, Ares - obvious
    Too bad for their stars: IW, Daredevil - obvious
    Best 2*: oBW - obvious
    Best 1*: mBW (team-up power!) - Juggernaut which was predictable honestly, I just adore Widow's Sting team-ups
    Most controversial: She-Hulk/Spider-Man? - no idea
    Most agreed on: Yelena - 176 lowest votes? You bet!
    Oh and Daredevil unsurprisingly wins 'the worst 3*' title. HE IS STILL TOO HIGH ON THE LIST, PEOPLE.
  • Just worse than Hood and Daken at the very least.

    not even close, Hood would be a mediocre character w/o his passive which is also the main reason you use him and why he places so high but he also has an abysmally low HP amount of 5100 which hurts his value.
    Yes, and remove everything that makes Thor good and you have a bad character. icon_rolleyes.gif Yeah, Hood has one good ability and low HP. That ability happens to be by far the best passive skill in the game.

    The point is, in the current meta, hood is not just the go-to support character, he's The Support Character, full stop. Every serious tank heavily benefits from his inclusion. There's almost no-one better to team with. This might change with Blade, but Hood is basically the 3* analogue to OBW. And nobody questions her role.
  • locked wrote:
    Most controversial: She-Hulk/Spider-Man? - no idea

    Seems like the most controversial this time is IW.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    Just worse than Hood and Daken at the very least.

    not even close, Hood would be a mediocre character w/o his passive which is also the main reason you use him and why he places so high but he also has an abysmally low HP amount of 5100 which hurts his value.
    Yes, and remove everything that makes Thor good and you have a bad character. icon_rolleyes.gif Yeah, Hood has one good ability and low HP. That ability happens to be by far the best passive skill in the game.

    The point is, in the current meta, hood is not just the go-to support character, he's The Support Character, full stop. Every serious tank heavily benefits from his inclusion. There's almost no-one better to team with. This might change with Blade, but Hood is basically the 3* analogue to OBW. And nobody questions her role.
    That's because they did a hatchet job on the only other viable 3* support character. Moreso the color changes than the strike.png reduction, but still
  • Wolarsen
    Wolarsen Posts: 326 Mover and Shaker
    A tip for using Rage of the Panther: if you know what color RotP will give the opponent (and you should!) and can use it to kill off a character, it grants AP before it does damage. Often I’ve managed to leave the opponent with a pile of AP they just can’t do anything with because the hero that could’ve used it died that turn. Fun stuff.

    Even more, the strongest colour is kept even if it belongs to an already killed enemy before using RotP icon_e_smile.gif
  • hurcules
    hurcules Posts: 519
    Wolarsen wrote:
    A tip for using Rage of the Panther: if you know what color RotP will give the opponent (and you should!) and can use it to kill off a character, it grants AP before it does damage. Often I’ve managed to leave the opponent with a pile of AP they just can’t do anything with because the hero that could’ve used it died that turn. Fun stuff.

    Even more, the strongest colour is kept even if it belongs to an already killed enemy before using RotP icon_e_smile.gif
    Not sure about that. At least for Surgical Strike it's usually the remaining character's highest match damage colour.
  • over_clocked
    over_clocked Posts: 3,961
    Pretty sure ROTP switches same as Surgical Strike since I had it give different colours to identical teams at different points, meaning downed enemies matter.

    As for IW being controversial: she hasn't been changed and nothing about her changed outside of her becoming even slower in the current meta, but the most controversial change without doubt has been Fake Healing even if Level Shift was secretly the true nail in oBW's coffin (so to speak, she's still a darling). Shulk especially, would she rate better if she had been introduced prior to the Fake Healing change? Someone mentioned it and it got me thinking.
  • MarcusGraves
    MarcusGraves Posts: 495 Mover and Shaker
    Yes, and remove everything that makes Thor good and you have a bad character. icon_rolleyes.gif Yeah, Hood has one good ability and low HP. That ability happens to be by far the best passive skill in the game.

    The point is, in the current meta, hood is not just the go-to support character, he's The Support Character, full stop. Every serious tank heavily benefits from his inclusion. There's almost no-one better to team with. This might change with Blade, but Hood is basically the 3* analogue to OBW. And nobody questions her role.

    but guess what? Hood isn't the one that does the heavy lifting on teams because while yeah his passive is a massive battery for characters, he himself is not scary. he'll get your team their powers faster, but its not like they can't carry on w/o him should he ever die.

    following the list after 8th place:

    -Patch by himself can cause sudden death to 1-2 characters if left alone and won't die unless you can out damage his healing
    -black panther can cleave even a 3* team in 2 with a battleplan boosted RotP for 4233 or 4458 (with TU AP power up)
    -Daken will boost your team's damage to astounding levels, won't die unless you can out damage his healing and can finish someone off for just 5 blue AP
    -Fury's Demolition will kill 99% of the character roster in one shot or will finish off one enemy and continue to murder the next
    -thor is murder
    -sentry is the master of corpses
    -XF is never ending slaughter (not much needs to be said about the last 3, we all know why)

    notice the trend? each of these character are extremely dangerous in their own right because they can cause death with ease, and death is the best CC of them all in any game. yeah hood is the best support right now but what he doesn't really do is damage and damage is what really matters, he just gets your team from point A to B faster.
  • over_clocked
    over_clocked Posts: 3,961
    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.

    Marcus: I invite your BP/LT/say, IM 40 team to kill my Hood/Pun/oBW team...
  • Yes, and remove everything that makes Thor good and you have a bad character. icon_rolleyes.gif Yeah, Hood has one good ability and low HP. That ability happens to be by far the best passive skill in the game.

    The point is, in the current meta, hood is not just the go-to support character, he's The Support Character, full stop. Every serious tank heavily benefits from his inclusion. There's almost no-one better to team with. This might change with Blade, but Hood is basically the 3* analogue to OBW. And nobody questions her role.

    but guess what? Hood isn't the one that does the heavy lifting on teams because while yeah his passive is a massive battery for characters, he himself is not scary. he'll get your team their powers faster, but its not like they can't carry on w/o him should he ever die.

    Yes, just like technically the pulley assembly didn't do the heavy lifting in the construction project - that was the guy at the end of the rope. However, lemme tell you, getting those boulders up that wall without it would be a pain.

    Hood on his own is not scary. But how often is he alone? The reason Hood is good is not because he's a powerhouse. It's because there is not a powerhouse in the game that does not benefit from his presence. And even when he does die (and this is ignoring attempts to protect him on offense, which is totally a thing), by the time you've eaten through that life you've more likely than not taken the equivalent of at least one Aggressive Recon, all without needing to gather any AP of your own. On offense, you try to protect him; on defense, by the time the enemy has killed him, you've still got a massive tank to deal with and that tank is probably ready to go off. You're either seriously underestimating how valuable hood is, or you're inherently devaluing support characters.

    (Oh, and for the record: I beat the 395 super thor in the sim something like 10 times with OBW+Hood+Patch. Patch ended up dying each match before being a factor.
  • atomzed wrote:
    atomzed wrote:
    I disagree with your recommended build for patch. 355, to me, is the *least* versatile build. 355 require you to plan your team around patch, such that he tanks as many color as he can. If not, TBTI won't be game ending as you are not doing enough dmg. This means you have to like be concerned about his placement, his level relative to others....

    I will argue that 535 is the *most* versatile build. Simply because you don't have to babysit the team set up. You just have to vary your playing style, to take care of the strike tiles.

    To put another spin, if you are playing patch with 2 max 4* (thoress and fury for example). Patch won't be tanking any color and his Tbti would deal 0 dmg. But if you have him at 535, life goes on as normal. That's *versatility*.

    Patch is still top 10 quality because the ability to play *forever* with ldaken is invaluable. Hence 5 yellow is pretty much a must.

    I think you missed his point. You don't go 3/5/5 because you want to use TBTI, you go 3/5/5 because you DONT want to give the enemy 6 strike tiles. 3/5/5 is "versatile" because you can use berzerker rage whenever you are able to match-3 on purple and only deal with 1-2 strike tiles, as opposed to 5/3/5 where you might have to deal with 3-4. I see a lot of posts here where people think that 5 green is strictly superior to 3 green, and that's just not how it works. With 5/3/5, you need to build your team around the fact that once you rage, you need to burst down the enemy team ASAP, and as such probably have to bring cheap spells and / or hoard your powers (which is varying playstyle like you said). TBTI is completely irrelevant when talking about Patch builds: all that matters is how many strike tiles you want zerker rage to give to you and the opponent.
    .fair point that you want less strike tiles to opponent.

    But I still dont get it. Let me explain my reasons.

    Let's say 3 green gives 600 dmg more to yourself and enemy. You cast it, thinking that "yeah, I deal more dmg to the enemy, but also less dmg to myself than 5 green". But wait a min, you are still doing 600 more dmg to yourself than before you fire 3 green. That 600 more dmg will still likely overwhelm the heal of patch. You *are* still taking more dmg when you cast berserker strike regardless of having it 535 or 355.

    My logic for 5 green is: go max dmg and end the game as quickly as possible. So in my games with patch, I look for opportunity to kill the enemy with the 5 green. So what if I'm taking match dmg before firing berserker strike? Patch can tank them and heal them back.

    When I calculate that I can kill off the enemy team (typically only 2 characters left on enemy team), I make my move and cast berskerer strike. Cast another move (usually ldaken blue, which would convert some of the red strike tiles on board). Take a match. Just this 3 step, you would have dish out 6000 dmg (rough feel, didn't calculate).

    With such an approach, you look for opportunies to deal more dmg to the opponent team, typically in the form of taking more moves. Bec You get more dmg from his strike tiles when you take more moves. Say you have 2 ability waiting to be fire. That's x2 of patch dmg. See a swap that match 2 sets of colors? That's x2 of patch dmg. Saw a match 5? That's another x2 of patch dmg. All goons match and you have multiple turns in a row? That's x amount more of berserker strike tiles dmg free.

    In short, I don't see a problem with 5 green because I use it to end the game quickly. Hence I don't see a point with
    More strike tiles. I don't understand why 3 green is better because the logic of "damage mitigation" in 3 green, also means that you deal less dmg to the opponent, while also taking more dmg than before you cast berserker strike.

    (Edit: the defence point brought up by ominus is valid. But I just don't care about defence because my assumption is that all defence would lose anyway. And maybe bec I only use patch and ldaken in the climb, I don't rate defence so importantly as a 2* to 3* transition players. I would typically swap to Xforce once i reach 500 points.)

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

    I had him at 5/3/5, but I found that I was holding my green until I could guaranteed kill the entire enemy team that turn.

    I didn't want to cast it early and suffer all that match damage all game, so I was holding back until I was in killing range.

    This creates one major problem: The longer the game goes, the higher chance of the enemy getting enough AP to cast a big ability or get a huge cascade to get the AP for a big ability. When you're forced to hold your damaging abilities back, the game will inevitably go long.

    Now, I didn't want to go 3/5/5 because I was pairing Patch with Hulk a lot at the time, and I wanted hulk to tank. So I didn't want to go full in on TBTI. Plus 14 red AP is still had to come by and I wanted to have some damage potential in a pinch if I needed to quick kill someone and just deal with the consequences of using green before ending the game. But I didn't want 5 in green either because of how badly it punishes you if you don't end the game with it.

    So I went 4/4/5 and now I'm able to cast Zerks when there is a purple match available. Sure, it may only have 1 or 2 of the 4 strike tiles appear on that match, but it is still better than having to corral 6 purple strike tiles.

    Like you said in your post, Patch is all about sustained climbing. I use Patch and Daken as my climb team as well.

    But using a level 5 green was making me use health packs when things went wrong. Which is the worst thing you could do with those two. If you're spending health packs on Daken or Patch, you **** up somewhere haha.

    That is my logic for avoiding 5 green.
  • Spoit wrote:
    Just worse than Hood and Daken at the very least.

    not even close, Hood would be a mediocre character w/o his passive which is also the main reason you use him and why he places so high but he also has an abysmally low HP amount of 5100 which hurts his value.
    Yes, and remove everything that makes Thor good and you have a bad character. icon_rolleyes.gif Yeah, Hood has one good ability and low HP. That ability happens to be by far the best passive skill in the game.

    The point is, in the current meta, hood is not just the go-to support character, he's The Support Character, full stop. Every serious tank heavily benefits from his inclusion. There's almost no-one better to team with. This might change with Blade, but Hood is basically the 3* analogue to OBW. And nobody questions her role.
    That's because they did a hatchet job on the only other viable 3* support character. Moreso the color changes than the strike.png reduction, but still
    I hope you're not talking about Daken. The guy who came in 5th place, above Hood?

    Because Daken is still amazing.