*** Blade (Daywalker) ***

simonsez

bonfire01 wrote:

At 4 covers it would make 2 tiles in your description

That's not what I said at all. If you're not even bother to read what I wrote, there's no reason to continue. Although if you're going to continue to harp on "total tiles created" as a metric, even though I keep telling you that this is the WRONG metric, it's a lost cause anyway. I don't need a math lesson, thanks. I'm not disputing your math. I'm disputing your belief that "total tiles created" is a useful metric in this instance. Try reading my previous post again. In my hypothetical, 5 covers yields twice as many tiles as 4 covers (2 vs. 1, over a million moves). Duplicating your blade methodology on my hypothetical would cause one to assert that 5 covers is 100% better, when clearly the difference between the two is negligible.

simonsez

Spoit wrote:

"red is generally getting filled one way or another"

That was presented as a benefit of the daken pairing, not a cause for concern.

over_clocked

Lol, ignore simonsez, folks, please. I can understand going 5/3/5 with Blade if you only care for speed and only use him on easy nodes where 5 purple is too slow and is too much of an overkill, but 5/5/3 is just wrong.

Remember that x/x/5 Blade is plenty good without Daken and is a good counter to Dr Doom or 4or since he can occupy all red tiles very fast. And if you do combo him with Daken, you don't want Blade's tiles to be strong, but less numerous, since Chemical Reaction wants the opposite! Builds with anything less than 5 in green make no sense whatsoever, it's like going 5/3/5 with the Hood.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Lol, ignore simonsez, folks, please. I can understand going 5/3/5 with Blade if you only care for speed and only use him on easy nodes where 5 purple is too slow and is too much of an overkill, but 5/5/3 is just wrong.

Remember that x/x/5 Blade is plenty good without Daken and is a good counter to Dr Doom or 4or since he can occupy all red tiles very fast. And if you do combo him with Daken, you don't want Blade's tiles to be strong, but less numerous, since Chemical Reaction wants the opposite! Builds with anything less than 5 in green make no sense whatsoever, it's like going 5/3/5 with the Hood.

don't make fun of my purely-from-tokens-and-top 100-and-progression-prizes hood

Phaserhawk

Once again


1 of a given color 99.99%
2 of a given color 99.93%
3 of a given color 99.64%
4 of a given color 98.64%
5 of a given color 96.10%
6 of a given color 91.00%
7 of a given color 82.66%
8 of a given color 71.14%
9 of a given color 57.45%
10 of a given color 43.26%
11 of a given color 30.25%
12 of a given color 19.61%
13 of a given color 11.78%
14 of a given color 6.55%
15 of a given color 3.38%

The odds of there being 10 red is 43% on a random board, the odds of having 11 is 30% chance. So in theory, after 10 turns, lvl 5 Thirst triggered 4 times and lvl 3 triggered 3. Thats 8 tiles generated vs. 3 tiles generated, that's where the power comes from. Now if you compare lvl 4 to lvl 5, well than ti's 8 tiles vs 6 and you have a more resonable arguement.

So as you can see, lvl 5 vastly increases your chances of getting max damage out of keep your enemies closer.

If you run him exclusively with Daken and only Daken then I 100% agree 5/5/3 is the better build. If you want speed and run him in PvP then 5/3/5 is better, but for any other situation 3/5/5 is far superior and 3/5/5 is still really good in PvP.

trat73

What is the general consensus on a Blade build when pairing him with XForce? Is it good to have an extra outlet for Surgically acquired black or better to have the purple maxed? My Blade is at 3/5/5 now with another black cover coming.

NorthernPolarity

trat73 wrote:

What is the general consensus on a Blade build when pairing him with XForce? Is it good to have an extra outlet for Surgically acquired black or better to have the purple maxed? My Blade is at 3/5/5 now with another black cover coming.

3/5/5 and it isn't close. You're going to universally get value out of purple because it's the only purple outlet on your team. 5 black blade only matters with XF if surgical is on black, and that's an extremely edge case. Most of the time, the better play is to just surgical black, kill the character on the team that had the strongest black, and then immediately surgical another color.

over_clocked

I'm afraid Blade and X-Force mix poorly owing to the fact that all Blade skills rely on special tiles and all X-Force skills blow up the board.
Best Blade partners are similar minded special tile players or those with more limited board smashing: Patch, Spider-Man, Daken, lazy Thor, LC, Cage, Grocket, Punisher, Psylocke, etc.

Spoit

locked wrote:

I'm afraid Blade and X-Force mix poorly owing to the fact that all Blade skills rely on special tiles and all X-Force skills blow up the board.
Best Blade partners are similar minded special tile players or those with more limited board smashing: Patch, Spider-Man, Daken, lazy Thor, LC, Cage, Grocket, Punisher, Psylocke, etc.

Yeah, for blade to work, you want a stale board (as long as it has enough red)

NorthernPolarity

I wonder how all the 5/5/3 people are faring in this heroic, can't imagine it being as good of a time as 3/5/5.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I wonder how all the 5/5/3 people are faring in this heroic, can't imagine it being as good of a time as 3/5/5.

How are you even able to use Blade effectively against an enemy mix that punishes you heavily for leaving red on the board? Ares/Juggernaut/Ragnarok will easily outrace you with their inflated levels and generally superior stats/moves if you don't deny red. Even Moonstone and Daken are fairly dangerous if a large number of red is sitting around. Most of the times I ran blade I end up with 0 strike tile created if the opponent can move the board and AR is a lot more useful than a 0 strike tile strength Keep Your Enemies Closer. Nightstalker is pretty good in combination with Flame Jet since Juggernaut gets the tiebreaker on a level tie over all except Yelena though I didn't have Flame Jet maxed (maxed Inferno instead) so that doesn't work quite as well as expected.

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I wonder how all the 5/5/3 people are faring in this heroic, can't imagine it being as good of a time as 3/5/5.

How are you even able to use Blade effectively against an enemy mix that punishes you heavily for leaving red on the board? Ares/Juggernaut/Ragnarok will easily outrace you with their inflated levels and generally superior stats/moves if you don't deny red. Even Moonstone and Daken are fairly dangerous if a large number of red is sitting around. Most of the times I ran blade I end up with 0 strike tile created if the opponent can move the board and AR is a lot more useful than a 0 strike tile strength Keep Your Enemies Closer. Nightstalker is pretty good in combination with Flame Jet since Juggernaut gets the tiebreaker on a level tie over all except Yelena though I didn't have Flame Jet maxed (maxed Inferno instead) so that doesn't work quite as well as expected.

The key to running Blade is to run with Wolverine, that way all the red you accumulate allows you to create massive strike tiles with his green which in turn feeds Blades purple, that's how I run it and it's working pretty well. Not to mention Wolvie's red hurts

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Phantron wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I wonder how all the 5/5/3 people are faring in this heroic, can't imagine it being as good of a time as 3/5/5.

How are you even able to use Blade effectively against an enemy mix that punishes you heavily for leaving red on the board? Ares/Juggernaut/Ragnarok will easily outrace you with their inflated levels and generally superior stats/moves if you don't deny red. Even Moonstone and Daken are fairly dangerous if a large number of red is sitting around. Most of the times I ran blade I end up with 0 strike tile created if the opponent can move the board and AR is a lot more useful than a 0 strike tile strength Keep Your Enemies Closer. Nightstalker is pretty good in combination with Flame Jet since Juggernaut gets the tiebreaker on a level tie over all except Yelena though I didn't have Flame Jet maxed (maxed Inferno instead) so that doesn't work quite as well as expected.

The key to running Blade is to run with Wolverine, that way all the red you accumulate allows you to create massive strike tiles with his green which in turn feeds Blades purple, that's how I run it and it's working pretty well. Not to mention Wolvie's red hurts

If you have enough for Adamantium Slash you also have enough for Star Spangled Avenger which is way better.

I got a lot mileage out of Flame Jet in this event, even though it is definitely very fickle.

NorthernPolarity

Phaserhawk wrote:

Phantron wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I wonder how all the 5/5/3 people are faring in this heroic, can't imagine it being as good of a time as 3/5/5.

How are you even able to use Blade effectively against an enemy mix that punishes you heavily for leaving red on the board? Ares/Juggernaut/Ragnarok will easily outrace you with their inflated levels and generally superior stats/moves if you don't deny red. Even Moonstone and Daken are fairly dangerous if a large number of red is sitting around. Most of the times I ran blade I end up with 0 strike tile created if the opponent can move the board and AR is a lot more useful than a 0 strike tile strength Keep Your Enemies Closer. Nightstalker is pretty good in combination with Flame Jet since Juggernaut gets the tiebreaker on a level tie over all except Yelena though I didn't have Flame Jet maxed (maxed Inferno instead) so that doesn't work quite as well as expected.

The key to running Blade is to run with Wolverine, that way all the red you accumulate allows you to create massive strike tiles with his green which in turn feeds Blades purple, that's how I run it and it's working pretty well. Not to mention Wolvie's red hurts

I dunno, I did a clear through the heroic and 3/5/5 seems like a no brainer. The 700 damage on nightstalker is completely irrelevant against 180 guys with 6-10k hp, and all of the AP drain didn't matter after the 3rd turn the CD tile was out because it already drained it.

For me, the key to using blade red was just to evaluate the board and make calculated risks on when to activate it or not. This was my experience on how my build, and a 5/3/5 blade build would have played out:
1. Vs Juggs / Rags / Feeder. Rushed red to fireball the feeder. Blade generates no strike tiles for first half of the match. Towards the middle of the match the board becomes saturated with 10 red tiles and I have 10 purple for KYCE. I wait till 4 strike tiles before KYCEing and then start to deny red again. KYCE ends up dealing over 7k damage throughout the rest of the fight because of the two attack tiles being spawned, and 1 ultimately surviving. I casted nightstalker at some point during the middle of that. Juggs / rags green was being constantly denied, and the 2 vs 3 ap wouldn't have mattered at all after the first turn the CD tile was into effect because they didn't generate enough AP.
2. Rampage: just completely ignore red. Strike tiles build up, analyst uses all the red AP on useless pistols. Kill the enemy team by getting ~6-7 strike tiles out before somewhat denying red to set up for torches fireball. Casted inferno so nightstalker did nothing, 6 strike tile KYCE killed the enemy team. If Ares somehow got 10 red, presumably stun Ares with spidey so the goon wastes it. I think that game I prioritized spidey blue, as once you stun ares you can build enough damage typically to end the game.
3. Smash and Grab - I ignored red this game, but juggs managed to get 6 red out. Proceeded to unload 3 spidey stuns, burst Daken down with fireball, and stunlock venom / juggs just long enough to kill them with a combination of inferno and flame jets, souped up from blade red tiles.

In all three games, getting strike tiles active were critical in me winning the game, of which there were times (didn't count, I'll start doing that) where there were exactly 10 on board.
In the games where i cast KYCE, getting 2 strike tiles per turn was extremely in making sure that the ability did enough damage to actually win me the game, since I got an extra 250ish strength x2 = 500 damage per turn just from the green passive giving me 4/6 tiles respectively instead of 2/3. None of the hard matches I played had the board completely fill up with strikes, so getting the single, more powerful strike tiles didn't ever matter.
In the games where I cast nightstalker, the extra 700 damage and 1 ap drain that I had if it was 5 black would have been completely irrelevant.

I'm going to keep on keeping track of how the games end up, but any build that isn't 3/5/5 is going to sacrifice a ton of damage on KYCE in heroic scenarios, and since KYCE is one of your main paths to victory, that seems like a huge price to pay to gain that one extra AP drain for survival mode. I'm like 99% convinced that 3/5/5 is optimal for heroics by a huge margin.

over_clocked

So, max Nightstalker, you say? But then you won't be able to cheese your way to victory with something like this:



Spidey took damage on the previous node.

No blacks the entire round for either team. Often, I end up using Inferno over Nightstalker when scraping enough black AP. Nightstalker is THAT irrelevant when big guns are in play. Oh sure I bet it's alright against goons. Have fun killing helpless goon squads while 3/5/5 Blade deals with lvl 150-210 Juggernaut.

Edit: another game to illustrate KYEC + Thirst:

Unknown

locked wrote:

So, max Nightstalker, you say? But then you won't be able to cheese your way to victory with something like this:



Spidey took damage on the previous node.

No blacks the entire round for either team. Often, I end up using Inferno over Nightstalker when scraping enough black AP. Nightstalker is THAT irrelevant when big guns are in play. Oh sure I bet it's alright against goons. Have fun killing helpless goon squads while 3/5/5 Blade deals with lvl 150-210 Juggernaut.

Edit: another game to illustrate KYEC + Thirst:

Excellent observation, when there is no color for an ability, it's useless.

In that fight you get either black or green, depending on who's alive. Both of which fuel abilities that you desperately want to use.
Then there's the fact that you have juggs in half these fights shaking the board every 6 green, and being fed by goons.

I love blade. When he gets going, he might just be the best 3* around. But when board shake is constant, his only really relevant ability is his green passive.

Unknown

To make his Heroic go a bit smoother, do you think it's worth buying a green cover to bring my 333 Blade to 334, or should I stick with LazyCap/Spidey + Torch + OBW?

Unknown

gamar wrote:

To make his Heroic go a bit smoother, do you think it's worth buying a green cover to bring my 333 Blade to 334, or should I stick with LazyCap/Spidey + Torch + OBW?

It does speed up the max damage KYOCs, since you only need 3 turns of thirst to fire off max damage. If you can max his level too, it should make a difference.

wingX

I curious about Blade's Nightstalker attack, when he drain enemy's strongest colour, is it drain the target enemy's strongest color or the whole team strongest color? I recall there is a instance where I use this attack on an enemy and then he drain the strongest AP from another enemy instead.

Unknown

wingX wrote:

I curious about Blade's Nightstalker attack, when he drain enemy's strongest colour, is it drain the target enemy's strongest color or the whole team strongest color? I recall there is a instance where I use this attack on an enemy and then he drain the strongest AP from another enemy instead.

Unlike all other abilities that operates on 'strongest color', Blade drains any color an enemy has an ability in provided they're an exact tie, so if you've say 3 3*s that are the same level with red, blue, and green as their strongest color, he'll drain one of those 3 colors at random. For someone like Ragnarok that has a tie in his match damage (red = green), you'll randomly get red or green. Same applies to goons in all their ability colors. Note that he can pick a color with 0 to drain even when other colors have AP available.