*** Blade (Daywalker) ***

Phaserhawk

dkffiv wrote:

I almost exclusively pair him with Daken and either Patch or XForce - that said I think 4/5/4 is the superior build. If there isn't enough red to trigger thirst there are more than likely green matches to go for instead to generate strike tiles that way. Occasionally I use Blade's black over Xforce's if I need a target down in the 2k health range and either I lack black for surgical or there aren't enough of the primary color on board (like against Doom). Mine is currently 5/4/4 and I'm looking for that last purple (may just buy the last one).

yeah, 4/5/4 makes no sense at all IMO. You gain an extra 264 damge from 3=>4, now from 4=>5 green you are going from 30% chance of Thirst triggering to 43% chance, which IMO is huge and funny enough is actually a 43% increase from 30%, (lol) anway, if you are increasing your chance to put more strike tiles out which total 116 extra damage, you will outstrip that 264 very quickly. I can see arguements for 5/5/3 or 3/5/5 or 5/3/5 but Blade is one of those that only one skill (The Thirst) is decent at level 4, the other's are terrible and should either be left at 3 or go to 5, and since you can't have the Thirst be 4 without making another skill 4, you need to pick from 3/5/5, 5/5/3 or 5/3/5 and if you like purple you pretty much are left with 3/5/5 unless you always run Blade with Daken, then you could opt for 5/5/3, but if you want to be able to run Blade without Daken and like purple you have to go 3/5/5, but if 4/5/4 works for you, awesome

Stanley71

"Verleiht DEM INDUKTIONSTEIL für jedes verbündete Angriffsteil auf dem Feld einen Bonus von ..."
That would be not mistakable...

MarcusGraves

seriously, if you want to prioritize purple then you must max thirst especially if you're pairing him with daken whose strike tile pairs are weaker than blade's ( 46 vs's blade's 54) so you want thirst taking up a good bulk of those red tiles instead of PR. maxed thirst and PR together will just flood the board with strike tiles and keep an annoyingly consistent damage boost going for your team while cranking up KYEC to maximum power.

the minimal damage gain is not worth it on rank 4 nightstalker, max thirst will give you a much more damage over time

simonsez

MarcusGraves wrote:

seriously, if you want to prioritize purple then you must max thirst especially if you're pairing him with daken whose strike tile pairs are weaker than blade's ( 46 vs's blade's 54)

If I'm looking to put out 2k in attack tiles, I'm not sure I'm going to worry about an 8 point difference in a strike tile.

Unknown

So I've been using him at 454, mostly due to how the covers fell for me, and I must say I am thoroughly enjoying him with daken. I shove in HT for the lulz with his green. Even better if blade's black steals green AP

But PvP-wise he is 50/50 IMO. in PVE he is one of the better heroes to use! Love him lots!

Phaserhawk

Deadpooool wrote:

So I've been using him at 454, mostly due to how the covers fell for me, and I must say I am thoroughly enjoying him with daken. I shove in HT for the lulz with his green. Even better if blade's black steals green AP

But PvP-wise he is 50/50 IMO. in PVE he is one of the better heroes to use! Love him lots!

When you get your next green cover you will be amazed especially if you go 4/5/4. I had him that way as well but invested some HP to pump up green, OMG the difference is amazing.

Unknown

If survival mode is going to be at all a persistent thing then 5/3/5 is pretty much the only way to build him. He's pretty much the only guy that can deal with a goon generating a random color they don't use much/at all and then later a guy jumps in with that color. In Enemy of the State that'd usually be red since the goons generate generate way more than they can spend, which is no problem until Wolverine jumps in. You can find similar analogues for Muscles/Thugs/Don on yellow/blue/black too. Again it's normally not a problem they're sitting on 30 AP but if anyone who follows them can use those colors you'd be pretty screwed and draining 3 AP instead of 2 AP does matter here.

vudu3

Phantron wrote:

If survival mode is going to be at all a persistent thing then 5/3/5 is pretty much the only way to build him. He's pretty much the only guy that can deal with a goon generating a random color they don't use much/at all and then later a guy jumps in with that color. In Enemy of the State that'd usually be red since the goons generate generate way more than they can spend, which is no problem until Wolverine jumps in. You can find similar analogues for Muscles/Thugs/Don on yellow/blue/black too. Again it's normally not a problem they're sitting on 30 AP but if anyone who follows them can use those colors you'd be pretty screwed and draining 3 AP instead of 2 AP does matter here.

Or you could just be using Cap and 1Y IM40 and be sitting on 30 red AP when random villain jumps out at you. Two or three shields to the face before they can get off a turn will stop them from using any of that excess AP.

Unknown

I must have missed the announcement that survival mode cannot have more than one person who can move the board per wave in the future. If they have 30 red AP set up and the next wave has 3 red users, you're pretty much screwed even with Captain America sitting on 30 red/blue AP at any highish scaling. They don't even have to be good red users since AI gets 5/5/5. The current survival mode isn't too bad because you average less than one guy that can move the board per wave but that's hardly an intrinsic property of the node.

vudu3

Saying that 5/3/5 is the only way to build Blade is one of the more outlandish things I've seen you type. It's fine to prefer that build to 3/5/5 or 5/5/3 but to claim 5/3/5 is the be-all, end-all build because it may be preferred in this one situation is a bit much. It's like claiming the best X-Force build is X/X/5 because there's a theoretical PVE node somewhere that will do 8K damage to your character every 4 turns and the only way you're going to survive it is with Wolvie using Recovery to heal himself completely.

Etheus

vudu3 wrote:

Saying that 5/3/5 is the only way to build Blade is one of the more outlandish things I've seen you type. It's fine to prefer that build to 3/5/5 or 5/5/3 but to claim 5/3/5 is the be-all, end-all build because it may be preferred in this one situation is a bit much. It's like claiming the best X-Force build is X/X/5 because there's a theoretical PVE node somewhere that will do 8K damage to your character every 4 turns and the only way you're going to survive it is with Wolvie using Recovery to heal himself completely.

I'm running a 102 Blade 3/2/3 wih 166 Daken and 98 Falcon in survival mode and most pve nodes. I rarely have trouble, though I haven't come up against a Wolverine that can 1 shot Daken yet. Strike tiles come so easily and gain in strength quickly, that I can say 5 green is unnecessary. Whenever all the red s are covered in strike tiles, I can Chemical Reaction to make room for more. I don't think there is a wrong build or a best build, but I would probably go 5/5/3 with Blade for use in this grouping.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

If survival mode is going to be at all a persistent thing then 5/3/5 is pretty much the only way to build him. He's pretty much the only guy that can deal with a goon generating a random color they don't use much/at all and then later a guy jumps in with that color. In Enemy of the State that'd usually be red since the goons generate generate way more than they can spend, which is no problem until Wolverine jumps in. You can find similar analogues for Muscles/Thugs/Don on yellow/blue/black too. Again it's normally not a problem they're sitting on 30 AP but if anyone who follows them can use those colors you'd be pretty screwed and draining 3 AP instead of 2 AP does matter here.

I found that level 5 black rarely matters in survival: you have more than enough time to get out 2+ blade tiles, and the difference between 6 and 9 AP stolen per turn is whatever. 3->5 purple on the other hand, is nearly double the damage on the attack tile, which i think is more substantial overall.

Etheus wrote:

vudu3 wrote:

Saying that 5/3/5 is the only way to build Blade is one of the more outlandish things I've seen you type. It's fine to prefer that build to 3/5/5 or 5/5/3 but to claim 5/3/5 is the be-all, end-all build because it may be preferred in this one situation is a bit much. It's like claiming the best X-Force build is X/X/5 because there's a theoretical PVE node somewhere that will do 8K damage to your character every 4 turns and the only way you're going to survive it is with Wolvie using Recovery to heal himself completely.

I'm running a 102 Blade 3/2/3 wih 166 Daken and 98 Falcon in survival mode and most pve nodes. I rarely have trouble, though I haven't come up against a Wolverine that can 1 shot Daken yet. Strike tiles come so easily and gain in strength quickly, that I can say 5 green is unnecessary. Whenever all the red s are covered in strike tiles, I can Chemical Reaction to make room for more. I don't think there is a wrong build or a best build, but I would probably go 5/5/3 with Blade for use in this grouping.

I've run Blade / Daken / Torch a ton for the past couple of months. Sometimes you get games that you say where you're overflowing with strike tiles, other times the board is completely dry of either green or red, and you end up struggling to get any sort of strike tiles. At least for Blade, it just doesn't make sense to not go 5 green. Blade heavily depends on being thirsty in order to carry his weight, and level 5 green makes a very big difference in making the ability reliable: I've been paying attention to the amount of times where there were exactly 10 red tiles out, and it occurs for at least one turn in roughly 20-30% of the games I've played with Blade. Given how you need 6 tiles out to make his purple good, I don't see how 5 purple makes too much sense without going 5 green as well. The Daken / Blade combo certainly helps in enabling the attack tile, but you usually don't get 6 tiles out with Daken unless it's a good board, and so still rely on Blade being thirsty.

simonsez

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Given how you need 6 tiles out to make his purple good, I don't see how 5 purple makes too much sense without going 5 green as well.

You're not going to get all the purple you need in just 3 turns, so I don't see why it'd speed things up if he's laying the tiles 2 at a time.

NorthernPolarity

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Given how you need 6 tiles out to make his purple good, I don't see how 5 purple makes too much sense without going 5 green as well.

You're not going to get all the purple you need in just 3 turns, so I don't see why it'd speed things up if he's laying the tiles 2 at a time.

It's a combination of the laying tiles down 2 at a time, and requiring 10 red tiles for the passive to activate. In the ideal case where you get 11+ red from the beginning, then sure. 3 green is obviously fine, since you won't get 10 purple by the time you get 6 tiles out. However, in the average or below average case, I've found plenty of games where even 4 green with Blade just didn't work out that well. There would be games where I would have 12 red on the board for a turn, and then a match-3 brings me down to 10 red for multiple, consecutive turns of no tiles at all. In those cases, 3 vs 5 green is easily the difference between 2 strike tiles out and 6 tiles out to fuel purple.

I guess it ultimately boils down to consistency:
5/5/3 makes Blade thirsty enough to get full mileage out of purple say 60% of the time, and a slightly better black.
3/5/5 makes Blade thirsty enough to get full mileage out of purple ~85% of the time, with a slightly worse black.

The payoff of 700 extra damage and an extra ap/turn just isn't worth the 25% of games where Blade ends up being significantly worse because he isn't thirsty when he would be otherwise. Since the main point of Blade is his strike tiles, I don't see a valid argument for not going 5 green. I will say that 5/3/5 is better if all you're using Blade for is on your speed kill team against seeds and low level PvE nodes: 3/5/5 is better in all other cases.

simonsez

NorthernPolarity wrote:

There would be games where I would have 12 red on the board for a turn, and then a match-3 brings me down to 10 red for multiple, consecutive turns of no tiles at all.

I would only use him against goons, so I think it'd be rare to be forced into a situation where I had to match red with that few on the board. Using him against active opponents, especially since it's likely there's a red power you'd prefer to see not go off, raises more problems than I'd want to deal with.

Phaserhawk

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

There would be games where I would have 12 red on the board for a turn, and then a match-3 brings me down to 10 red for multiple, consecutive turns of no tiles at all.

I would only use him against goons, so I think it'd be rare to be forced into a situation where I had to match red with that few on the board. Using him against active opponents, especially since it's likely there's a red power you'd prefer to see not go off, raises more problems than I'd want to deal with.

Are you not playing this Hand PvE? If you don't match red you are going to have a very hard time surviving. Colors ebb and flow as we are seeing. Green, Red, Yellow were kings now red has been replaced by black and yellow is slowly being supplanted by purple and blue, so while red may work for you now you can't always expect it to, especially if Gorgon gets released as a character, red will become very contested again.

NorthernPolarity

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

There would be games where I would have 12 red on the board for a turn, and then a match-3 brings me down to 10 red for multiple, consecutive turns of no tiles at all.

I would only use him against goons, so I think it'd be rare to be forced into a situation where I had to match red with that few on the board. Using him against active opponents, especially since it's likely there's a red power you'd prefer to see not go off, raises more problems than I'd want to deal with.

Even against goons, sometimes you just get unlucky with red, and get a board with <11 red tiles on board. In this case 5 green still gives you extra turns of him being thirsty, from my experience typically 2-3 turns on average. Youre also wasting his potential by only playing him vs goons, as hes proven to be prrtty good in survival mode.

simonsez

Phaserhawk wrote:

Are you not playing this Hand PvE? If you don't match red you are going to have a very hard time surviving.

That's why I'm using Cap and not Blade, unless their level is so low, they don't last more than 2 turns.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

There would be games where I would have 12 red on the board for a turn, and then a match-3 brings me down to 10 red for multiple, consecutive turns of no tiles at all.

I would only use him against goons, so I think it'd be rare to be forced into a situation where I had to match red with that few on the board. Using him against active opponents, especially since it's likely there's a red power you'd prefer to see not go off, raises more problems than I'd want to deal with.

Are you not playing this Hand PvE? If you don't match red you are going to have a very hard time surviving. Colors ebb and flow as we are seeing. Green, Red, Yellow were kings now red has been replaced by black and yellow is slowly being supplanted by purple and blue, so while red may work for you now you can't always expect it to, especially if Gorgon gets released as a character, red will become very contested again.

Not if you get an early 5 cover black in early. then they won't have enough ap to use their skills until you can get a second black (green) tile going, and then it's basically over unless you can't find something to do with your 30 red ap.

I bought the last cover to make him 5/3/5 and I don't think I'm ever changing it. Feels borderline OP. There are tons of teams that just won't be able to do anything after you made their strongest color permanently zero.

5 green keeps him spitting out premium red strike tiles pretty often. Purple is still great at 3, specially if you already crippled the opponent.

The survival nodes are a joke with blade at 5/3/5.

Phaserhawk

ark123 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

There would be games where I would have 12 red on the board for a turn, and then a match-3 brings me down to 10 red for multiple, consecutive turns of no tiles at all.

I would only use him against goons, so I think it'd be rare to be forced into a situation where I had to match red with that few on the board. Using him against active opponents, especially since it's likely there's a red power you'd prefer to see not go off, raises more problems than I'd want to deal with.

Are you not playing this Hand PvE? If you don't match red you are going to have a very hard time surviving. Colors ebb and flow as we are seeing. Green, Red, Yellow were kings now red has been replaced by black and yellow is slowly being supplanted by purple and blue, so while red may work for you now you can't always expect it to, especially if Gorgon gets released as a character, red will become very contested again.

Not if you get an early 5 cover black in early. then they won't have enough ap to use their skills until you can get a second black (green) tile going, and then it's basically over unless you can't find something to do with your 30 red ap.

I bought the last cover to make him 5/3/5 and I don't think I'm ever changing it. Feels borderline OP. There are tons of teams that just won't be able to do anything after you made their strongest color permanently zero.

5 green keeps him spitting out premium red strike tiles pretty often. Purple is still great at 3, specially if you already crippled the opponent.

The survival nodes are a joke with blade at 5/3/5.

5/3/5---2 casts black, 1 purple ---- 1877 * 2 = 3754 plus 890 x # turns
3/5/5---2 casts black, 1 purple ---- 1092 * 2 = 2184 plus 2024 x # turns

at almost 1 turn of 3/5/5 purple it almost outstrips the damage of the 5 black, at 2 turns you are way ahead. 5/3/5 can lock teams out as you say stealing 6 AP in this scenario vs. 4, but 3/5/5 with purple going off is going to finish matches way sooner because it will do more damage than 5/3/5 ever could, if you have Falcon as backup any CD tiles they do slip out are quickly destroyed. I see what you are saying, but in none 3 goon world 3/5/5 Blade is much more powerful IMO as the only downside of purple is the cost and once you have it going off, it's just game over so much quicker, and ending the game quicker is always better than locking a team out.