*** Blade (Daywalker) ***

Unknown

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. 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 Green, Red, Yellow were kings now red has been replaced by black and yellow is slowly being supplanted by purple and blue, so while red may work for you now you can't always expect it to, especially if Gorgon gets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.

My Blade is only 2/5/4, but I've been using him a lot in the Hand PVE, especially the survival nodes. I almost never match red until I absolutely have to. The more you have out, the quicker he lays down the strike tiles, and soon every red is covered in them, making it impossible for the enemy to lay down CD tiles. Meanwhile, I prioritize purple and black so I can cover up the purple and start whittling the red down before Gorgon shows up. With Patch & LCap, I managed to get it to the point where all the purple and red were blocked from CD tiles and Patch could just throw out BR at his leisure. I beat some of the survival nodes faster than regular nodes once I got Blade working his mojo.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

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.

This bit of math is useless. It completely ignores the number of turns it would take to build up the AP for certain abilities, and only accounts for damage. It also assumes you can find 3 or 4 purple matches every time.

You could get a black out as soon as turn 3, and from there on, it's draining you 3 AP per round. Against those particular nodes, that meant another black every 2 turns, which in turn meant the opponent never had move than 1 red or black AP. Until the node ends, you absolutely will be getting black AP every single turn, regardless of your ability to find matches.

There's no comparison. If you can make sure black is draining more black, it's 5/3/5 is going to outpace 3/5/5 every time.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

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.

This bit of math is useless. It completely ignores the number of turns it would take to build up the AP for certain abilities, and only accounts for damage. It also assumes you can find 3 or 4 purple matches every time.

You could get a black out as soon as turn 3, and from there on, it's draining you 3 AP per round. Against those particular nodes, that meant another black every 2 turns, which in turn meant the opponent never had move than 1 red or black AP. Until the node ends, you absolutely will be getting black AP every single turn, regardless of your ability to find matches.

There's no comparison. If you can make sure black is draining more black, it's 5/3/5 is going to outpace 3/5/5 every time.

Ok, but how many times can you make sure it's draining black? Vs. Daken, Punisher, and select Goons only basically. Any that aren't goons you can't guarentee he even has black to drain. I don't build characters to slay goons, goons die without my help. Also even if it IS draining black, at 3/5/5 you still get 2 black a round, and you can add in the damage for black to your purple death machine.

NorthernPolarity

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.

Seems win more.
1. The goon team actually has to be generating 3 AP per turn.
2. Even if the goon team is generating 3 AP per turn, is keeping them permanently at 0 that much better than giving them 1 AP per turn? 1 AP per turn still gives you 7 turns before they do anything meaningful, at which point you should be able to kill the enemy team or start building up more black instances.

Purple, on the other hand, boosts the tile damage from ~1.3k to 2.5k assuming 10 red strike tiles out, which is just going to end games a lot more quickly and consistently than the extra AP you get from 5 black will.

ark123 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

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.

This bit of math is useless. It completely ignores the number of turns it would take to build up the AP for certain abilities, and only accounts for damage. It also assumes you can find 3 or 4 purple matches every time.

You could get a black out as soon as turn 3, and from there on, it's draining you 3 AP per round. Against those particular nodes, that meant another black every 2 turns, which in turn meant the opponent never had move than 1 red or black AP. Until the node ends, you absolutely will be getting black AP every single turn, regardless of your ability to find matches.

Your math is also useless because it completely ignores the fact that the 3/5/5 blade player has access to black as well. If we consider a standard blade game as one that say, first casts black into purple, the real question "is stealing 1 more AP per turn and 700 extra damage early on better than getting 1k extra dps on your attack tiles once they get online". In survival mode games, probably not, because the math is simple: in a long game with both attack tiles and drain tiles out, your choice is either 1 extra AP per turn or 1k extra damage per turn. Given how even the best, normal abilities have an AP ratio of 500, it's obvious that the damage is better in an extended game.

ark123 wrote:

There's no comparison. If you can make sure black is draining more black, it's 5/3/5 is going to outpace 3/5/5 every time.

Yeah I don't really understand this at all. Both builds get a black out on turn 3. 5/3/5 drains 8 AP in 3 turns, 3/5/5 drains 8AP in 4 turns. 2 Blacks are now out, but most goons teams only generate say 4 black / turn anyways, meaning that 6AP vs 4 AP drained is the same in most cases. So now both builds are draining the same amount of AP, but 5/3/5 did an extra 1.5k damage and got out its second tile one turn faster? How is this better than even like 3 turns of extra purple.

I mean sure, 5/3/5 is obviously better when you use blade on noob stomp teams and can't reliably cast purple. But when you use Blade in survival nodes where you CAN reliably get purple out, 3/5/5 seems like a no brainer.

Unknown

The color chosen to drain for a goon is random amongst the colors they have abilities in when the goon is the highest, which makes draining 3 or 2 matters in a survival mode because you're usually only draining half or a third of that for hitting the wrong colors.

It doesn't matter against normal villians, but the hardest combination of enemy to face is usually some combination of goon + villian. Now normally that doesn't as much because you don't care if they pile up 30 AP in a color they can't quite use, and whatever color they can use immediately it tends to be a just mad race, but this isn't true in survival mode where the extra AP they piled on earlier can be used by someone later. I think people are not seeing how devastating the extra APs matter because the last event is very tame on the enemy combination. If you have 3 guys who can move the board come in at the last 2 waves instead of just Gorgon or just Wolverine, you'd definitely be hurting from the massive amount of AP the computer piled up. Yes once you have 4 Nightstalkers out there it probably doesn't matter, but a lot can happen while getting the first 2 Nightstalkers out. It is also significantly less likely to have multiple Nightstalkers out if the goon/villian mix is more heavily slanted toward villian since now the opponent can move the board and destroy your Nightstalkers. The '1 villian every other wave' format can usually be won easily by Captain America alone, but if the opponent has even 2 villians coming in at once, not even 30 red/30 blue is enough to ensure you can stop them on sufficiently (level 200+) high scaling because 2 Star Spangled Avengers is only 8000 damage and you can only stun 2 guys for 2 turns with 30 blue AP and yet it is quite possible 30 red AP can't take out either guy if they're strong enough.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

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.

This bit of math is useless. It completely ignores the number of turns it would take to build up the AP for certain abilities, and only accounts for damage. It also assumes you can find 3 or 4 purple matches every time.

You could get a black out as soon as turn 3, and from there on, it's draining you 3 AP per round. Against those particular nodes, that meant another black every 2 turns, which in turn meant the opponent never had move than 1 red or black AP. Until the node ends, you absolutely will be getting black AP every single turn, regardless of your ability to find matches.

There's no comparison. If you can make sure black is draining more black, it's 5/3/5 is going to outpace 3/5/5 every time.

Ok, but how many times can you make sure it's draining black? Vs. Daken, Punisher, and select Goons only basically. Any that aren't goons you can't guarentee he even has black to drain. I don't build characters to slay goons, goons die without my help. Also even if it IS draining black, at 3/5/5 you still get 2 black a round, and you can add in the damage for black to your purple death machine.

What do you build them for? PvP? Then only xforce and 4thor matters. If blade is boosted, then obviously 5/3/5 is the superior build for a variety of reasons (in pvp). If you're talking pve, then you can tailor your team to use the strongest color - those colors are matched in 3's usually. So I don't get the confusion.

I like my drains to come in 3's, in this match-3 game.

over_clocked

I had a 5/4/4 Blade, then got a purple cover, specced to 4/5/4 and when I got a lucky green cover, moved to 3/5/5 (needed some reassurance that that was indeed the wiser spec). Damn you, Phantron, with your obfuscating posts

Are you sure Blade is stealing 'random' colours? As far as I know he steals the strongest colour as the description says, for goons usually the colour of their first skill (e.g. Lieutenant - purple, Commander, Muscle, Thug, Don - yellow, Pyro, Assassin, Sniper - green, etc.). And if that colour is drained, Blade moves on to another colour tank (that part I am not 100% sure about). Most PvE enemies tend to have any colour but black as their strongest as black indeed belongs to Daken, Blade and Punisher and I can't remember any goon with strongest black right now.

The damage of 3/5/5 is out of this world. Mine's not maxed yet but he rips. With Grocket's strike tiles and Blade's attack tiles out I did 3000+ in one turn. Neither maxed!
I recommend 3/5/5 to transitioners as well as the more versatile build (meaning they need all the damage they can get, and for AP denial there are other, better options).
Hint hint still Hood/oBW/XF.

simonsez

locked wrote:

And if that colour is drained, Blade moves on to another colour tank (that part I am not 100% sure about).

Yes, I often get multiple cds out at once, and it steals a whole rainbow of AP.

vudu3

ark123 wrote:

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.

The lesson here is don't ever try to tell someone who purchased a cover with HP that their build is wrong. It's not an argument that you're going to win.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

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.

This bit of math is useless. It completely ignores the number of turns it would take to build up the AP for certain abilities, and only accounts for damage. It also assumes you can find 3 or 4 purple matches every time.

You could get a black out as soon as turn 3, and from there on, it's draining you 3 AP per round. Against those particular nodes, that meant another black every 2 turns, which in turn meant the opponent never had move than 1 red or black AP. Until the node ends, you absolutely will be getting black AP every single turn, regardless of your ability to find matches.

There's no comparison. If you can make sure black is draining more black, it's 5/3/5 is going to outpace 3/5/5 every time.

Ok, but how many times can you make sure it's draining black? Vs. Daken, Punisher, and select Goons only basically. Any that aren't goons you can't guarentee he even has black to drain. I don't build characters to slay goons, goons die without my help. Also even if it IS draining black, at 3/5/5 you still get 2 black a round, and you can add in the damage for black to your purple death machine.

What do you build them for? PvP? Then only xforce and 4thor matters. If blade is boosted, then obviously 5/3/5 is the superior build for a variety of reasons (in pvp). If you're talking pve, then you can tailor your team to use the strongest color - those colors are matched in 3's usually. So I don't get the confusion.

I like my drains to come in 3's, in this match-3 game.

If Blade is boosted and you have an XF, then 3/5/5 is superior in PvP than 5/3/5. Boosted 5 purple is CRAZY attack tile strength and the only time I'd use Nightstalker is when I use SS to take all the black again and Blade is still alive.

If you want to steal 3 AP, that's cool, do what you want. But unless the enemy team matches that color EVERY TURN your Nightstalker tile is doing nothing some turns, so 2 AP and 3 AP steal wind up being the same. Even in PvE vs non goon teams (which is what I build some characters for btw) 3/5/5 has better damage output because you can't guarantee Nightstalker will steal ANY AP at all since the team has to first actually match their strong color.

I agree you should tailor teams that use Blade to use the enemies strongest color, I agree you should probably use Nightsalker as soon as possible in a match, I only disagree that 3 AP is better than 2 AP when you steal it every turn. Over time both tiles steal all the AP. 2 per round is enough to suppress goons typically especially once they start dying, and the mere fact the tile sometimes does nothing if the AP tanks are empty to me suggests 3 cover build for black.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

locked wrote:

And if that colour is drained, Blade moves on to another colour tank (that part I am not 100% sure about).

Yes, I often get multiple cds out at once, and it steals a whole rainbow of AP.

This only happens vs goons, who are tied for top color strength in all colors. If they have 2 powers 2 Nightsalker tiles will steal 2 different colors.

MarcusGraves

I still can't understand people's fascination with maxing nightstalker and crippling the other half of blade with his attack tiles which are the most powerful in the game when maxed out. KYEC is junk at rank 3, it really is, however at rank 5 it just explodes with damage and has improved chances of staying on the board with 2 tiles. nightstalker just doesn't get that much better at rank 5, just little more damage and one more steal.

nightstalker can get away with being rank 3, KYEC lags behind too hard for its cost at rank 3.

Unknown

I think the fascination with AP drain is folks trying to figure out a way to play without going DAMAGE DAMAGE

Unknown

If a goon has the highest match, the color Nightstalker steals is random amongst colors the goon has a skill in. That's why stealing 3 matters here because you have a good chance of stealing the wrong color so you getting 3 when you hit the right color does make a difference. In Enemy of the State, all the ninjas have red as their top color but you won't always get red, which is probably a good thing because after a while you'd only be stealing 1 or 2 from red while leaving them to accumulate black, which is what you want to pump out more Nightstalkers.

5/3/5 is only better than 3/5/5 in survival nodes because those are the only type of nodes where it is possible to have a goon as the strongest match while not being trivial, since normally an all goon node is trivial and you don't care, but in survival nodes the highest matches can definitely be a goon at some point of the fight before changing to something else. I estimate survival nodes account for at least 75% of all my points in Enemy of the State, and assuming the scoring remains consistent (survival nodes are basically like 4-5 nodes in one after all), it is relevent to have a character built for a type of gameplay that can often decide the outcome of a PvE event. Assuming survival nodes are going to feature a mix of villians and goons and that at some point we'll have more than one villian per wave, it is necessary to empty all the goon's AP whenever you have the chance. If you have a new wave in Enemy of the State that begins with both Wolverine and Gorgon, you're going to be taking some serious damage because you can't reliably stun two guys that long (maybe Thor can do it, but Thor would have problem going straight up against a bunch of Kishus, for example). Speaking of Kishus, note that if Kishus are present you'll rarely have time to collect AP without Blade (who can drain all the red to prevent Caltrops) even if the fight started out as all goons. Just look at all the AP of the wrong color your opponent tends to pile up on the dead colors, and remember that in a survival mode eventually someone is likely to be able to make use of those colors, and this is without any kind of AP pump. In the Simulator Hard node of Don/Kishu/Commander, usually after turn 10 the enemy is sitting on 30 purple and 30 black. Now that's no problem because goons have a limit to how fast they can use abilities, but what if this is a survival node and the second wave features 3 villians? How do you even defend against 30 purple/black if they can do anything with it? But you can't drain 30 black/purple AP without Blade, and even with Blade draining 3 versus 2 does matter when you're talking about such high numbers.

Unknown

I did some testing on the Kishu/Commander/Don node (all are level 395 and equal strength in everything). Don is in front, but I've gotten red, purple, black, yellow, and blue with a Nightstalker out while all 3 are alive. So if the goons are tied for highest match, it's actually any of their colors, unlike the players.

Again, that scenario doesn't really matter in a normal node, but it matters a lot if there's a next wave where these 3 goons can hand off 30 AP to some villians.

wymtime

WOW the Blade argument reminds me so much of the Patch Argument, what is better 5 in green or 5 in red. So I will throw my 2 cents in on Blade and here it is. Blade has 3 really good powers, and depending on what you want him to do and how you want to play him 5,3,5/ 3,5,5 or something crazy like 5,5,3 can be really good (Just bring Daken and or Patch).

My Blade is at 5,3,3 and my personal preference is aiming for a 5,3,5 build with a possible starting point of 5,4,4. The reason why is not becuase his purple is not really string, it is becuase it costs 10 AP. So to match 4 purple to start doing 2k in damage takes a long time. It is also putting all my eggs in the purple basket. If I go after Black and green then I have Blade who can do 1800 in damage with black and start stealing AP and have another character use the green that I collect. If I get 10 Purple in the process great I can still get a really good strike tile. If I don't get 10 Purple then I am ok with that as well becuase I have gotten the colors that I need for other powers. With 3 characters in each battle I look to use 2 colors at most, and the 3rd is a cherry on top. So please feel free to run Blade as you see him. I think he has the most versital powers in the game currently and can be built multiple ways and still be very dangerous. Let's just thank D3 for building a 3* character with balance.

Spoit

Half the point of 5 purple is that you're NOT putting all your eggs in one basket, because you have 2 s

john1620b

Phantron wrote:

I did some testing on the Kishu/Commander/Don node (all are level 395 and equal strength in everything). Don is in front, but I've gotten red, purple, black, yellow, and blue with a Nightstalker out while all 3 are alive. So if the goons are tied for highest match, it's actually any of their colors, unlike the players.

Again, that scenario doesn't really matter in a normal node, but it matters a lot if there's a next wave where these 3 goons can hand off 30 AP to some villians.

Just to note, if Ragnarok is the only character alive (or Rags + Goons) then Nightstalker will drain red or green, since Ragnarok's strengths are the same in those colors. I've verified this in-game.

Unknown

john1620b wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I did some testing on the Kishu/Commander/Don node (all are level 395 and equal strength in everything). Don is in front, but I've gotten red, purple, black, yellow, and blue with a Nightstalker out while all 3 are alive. So if the goons are tied for highest match, it's actually any of their colors, unlike the players.

Again, that scenario doesn't really matter in a normal node, but it matters a lot if there's a next wave where these 3 goons can hand off 30 AP to some villians.

Just to note, if Ragnarok is the only character alive (or Rags + Goons) then Nightstalker will drain red or green, since Ragnarok's strengths are the same in those colors. I've verified this in-game.

From my testing, Blade steals AP at random from all color ties on match. So if you have 3 characters that are exactly the same level with say R/G/Y as their strongest colors respectively, he will steal from those 3 colors at random. This doesn't happen as often as you'd think because in PvP, usually the 4* is the highest match and if someone has 2 4*s, their featured character is probably high level to have sole possession of the highest color, and in PvE there are a lot of nodes where a guy is just one level higher for no reason which makes that guy the sole owner of the highest match.

This means steal 3 instead of 2 actually matters a lot if you run into a case where your opponents have ties because you can get 3 from multiple colors, and also getting 3 at a time helps to make up the times where you steal the wrong colors. However, I don't see this happening very often in PvP in the current format at the high end, so it's likely restricted to PvE and even then you're dependent on the game not randomly having a character that's one level higher.

over_clocked

Ragnarok's strongest colour is red as evidenced by BP and X-Force. So at least red should be drained first from Rags by Blade.

Fine, max your Blades' black. Can't wait for his PvP (we are overdue one) so that our 3/5/5 Blades rip yours apart. He's also a good support in a pinch, better than Daken outside of true healing.