*** Blade (Daywalker) ***

over_clocked

Phantron wrote:

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.

Something's still not right there.
From my experience, Blade drains exactly the same strongest colour that Black Panther, Octopus and X-Force operate with on their skills, against real opponents.
E.g. if you look at the enemy comp and they are lvl 166 cMags, Patch, Hood with Patch being center, their strongest colour is green. If it's cMags in the center, their strongest colour is blue. If it's Hood, it's yellow. Until the character in the center is dead, the strongest colour for the team STAYS THE SAME. Then it switches to the left character's strongest colour. And only then to the right one's. Compare the AI's comp to yours to see how they are placed, center > left > right to determine priority.
Red is Ragnarok's strongest colour and I never had Blade drain green from him, at least not yet, even though he does appear to have same strengths for red and green colours.
Now, against goons, Blade does indeed drain random colours that goons have abilties in. Still the highest level goon has the indisputable priority and even if all three goons are same level, the center goon has priority.

Bowgentle

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.

What Phantron meant to say was yes, it drains the whole team's strongest colour, not the target enemy.

Unknown

You have to write down your AP at the start of your turn when you've an exact tie situation and it'd be obvious that he can get any color tied for highest match strength that has an ability. Trying to eyeball Blade's drain doesn't work and you'll just lose track of it. It's easier to see if you have multiple Nightstalkers out. Exact tie situations are not common in this game. 1* appears to always have a tiebreaker over 2* if same level, and of course 1/2* will always own highest match over a 3*. In PvP there is almost always a character that is higher level than anyone else, and in PvE you have a mix of 1*/2*/3* and scaling randomly gives someone an extra level compared to rest. It's easiest to see this in the Simulator Hard node that was Kishu/Commander/Don. They're all level 395 so they're always tied, and Kishu is not in the center position (think it's Don), but you'll definitely know when you drained red because delaying Caltrops for 2-3 turns can be the difference between winning easily and utter wipeout.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

You have to write down your AP at the start of your turn when you've an exact tie situation and it'd be obvious that he can get any color tied for highest match strength that has an ability. Trying to eyeball Blade's drain doesn't work and you'll just lose track of it. It's easier to see if you have multiple Nightstalkers out. Exact tie situations are not common in this game. 1* appears to always have a tiebreaker over 2* if same level, and of course 1/2* will always own highest match over a 3*. In PvP there is almost always a character that is higher level than anyone else, and in PvE you have a mix of 1*/2*/3* and scaling randomly gives someone an extra level compared to rest. It's easiest to see this in the Simulator Hard node that was Kishu/Commander/Don. They're all level 395 so they're always tied, and Kishu is not in the center position (think it's Don), but you'll definitely know when you drained red because delaying Caltrops for 2-3 turns can be the difference between winning easily and utter wipeout.

Nah, if you're on mobile, if you watch the enemy AP, it usually has a -AP indicator showing which one was stolen (or 1 AP gain if they matched that color and you're stealing 2)

over_clocked

Blade vs goons is funky, I need to look into it, but against real enemies, he behaves same as other characters with strongest colour mechanic, stealing exactly the strongest colour the enemy has, which never changes unless you kill the character that determines the colour. Nothing random to it whatsoever.

Unknown

I'm not sure why I'm arguing guys who knock Nightstalker without even using the ability because it's fairly obvious it doesn't work like what's claimed if you ever used it, but I just fired up a SHIELD simulator match against:

Nick Fury level ??? (center)
Wolverine level 94 (2* left)
Thor level 94 (2*, right)

Downed Nick Fury with Nightstalker

First turn I stole 3 green AP (Wolverine's strongest)
Next turn I stole 3 red AP (Thor's strongest)
Third turn the opponent has 0 red 3 green AP, but I got no AP (so must have attempted to steal red)

At this point Thor was downed so I cannot continue testing but I stole 3 red and 3 green AP while both Wolverine and Thor are still up. That simply cannot happen if it works like any standard 'strongest color'.

over_clocked

Then Nightstalker is bugged and should be reported. I will get to it later. I don't want this ability to be effing random, it's weak enough as is, I want clear expected results from it.

Edit: oh I guess that's why I couldn't place my finger on Nightstalker this Heroic while using it often enough, it's random while it shouldn't be, so never felt as useful as it potentially could.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Then Nightstalker is bugged and should be reported. I will get to it later. I don't want this ability to be effing random, it's weak enough as is, I want clear expected results from it.

Edit: oh I guess that's why I couldn't place my finger on Nightstalker this Heroic while using it often enough, it's random while it shouldn't be, so never felt as useful as it potentially could.

It is rarely random in this heroic event because 1* always own the tiebreaker over 2* if they're at the same level, and if not the same level the higher level person always own the tiebreaker between 1*/2*. Given Ragnarok never has the highest match (his match strength is lower than any 3*), the only scenario you can have a 'random' result with the DA lineup is:

Ares (green) + Moonstone or Bullseye (purple) or Daken (black), and no 1*s (Yelena/Venom/Juggernaut)
Juggernaut or Venom (green) + Yelena (purple) + anyone else that isn't higher level

In all possible other scenarios, there will only be exactly one highest color. It's not very easy to generate a 'random' scenario. I had to go to SHIELD training to find one, because the scenario I describe is true for all DA themed event, and in other PvE events you'd need 3 characters of the same level and star rarity which isn't actually very common. In PvP events someone almost always have the sole tiebreaker for highest match (either a 4* or a featured most likely). I've been saying drain 3 AP is important because the result can be random. If it's not random of course there's no reason to need to drain more than 2 a turn. It's because you can whiff on your AP drain that draining 1 more when you hit the right color does matter.

Kolence

Phantron wrote:

I'm not sure why I'm arguing guys who knock Nightstalker without even using the ability because it's fairly obvious it doesn't work like what's claimed if you ever used it, but I just fired up a SHIELD simulator match against:

Nick Fury level ??? (center)
Wolverine level 94 (2* left)
Thor level 94 (2*, right)

Downed Nick Fury with Nightstalker

First turn I stole 3 green AP (Wolverine's strongest)
Next turn I stole 3 red AP (Thor's strongest)
Third turn the opponent has 0 red 3 green AP, but I got no AP (so must have attempted to steal red)

At this point Thor was downed so I cannot continue testing but I stole 3 red and 3 green AP while both Wolverine and Thor are still up. That simply cannot happen if it works like any standard 'strongest color'.

Were you attacking the same character while Thor and Wolvie were both alive?

Unknown

Kolence wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I'm not sure why I'm arguing guys who knock Nightstalker without even using the ability because it's fairly obvious it doesn't work like what's claimed if you ever used it, but I just fired up a SHIELD simulator match against:

Nick Fury level ??? (center)
Wolverine level 94 (2* left)
Thor level 94 (2*, right)

Downed Nick Fury with Nightstalker

First turn I stole 3 green AP (Wolverine's strongest)
Next turn I stole 3 red AP (Thor's strongest)
Third turn the opponent has 0 red 3 green AP, but I got no AP (so must have attempted to steal red)

At this point Thor was downed so I cannot continue testing but I stole 3 red and 3 green AP while both Wolverine and Thor are still up. That simply cannot happen if it works like any standard 'strongest color'.

Were you attacking the same character while Thor and Wolvie were both alive?

I tried to attack Thor all the time, but due to The Thirst doing too much damage I had to switch up at some point. It didn't help that I had Loki with Mischief going off multiple times so I didn't keep data from all the turns Mischief fired (too hard to keep track of the animation to tell which ability drained what). I'm guessing it is possible that here 'the enemy' actually refers to whoever you've targeted? That said I really can't imagine why I'd normally be switching targets around in PvE events so it seems very unlikely, but I'll try to verify it on this heroic if an opportunity presents itself. Ares + Moonstone is probably the simplest case to verify if they're equal level, since Ares takes forever to kill but should be killed before Moonstone, so if you ever drained purple while having Ares targeted then it can't be dependent on who is targeted.

Unknown

Running test on something with a lot more HP.

Level 208 Ares + Ragnarok + Moonstone

Target = Ares

Position is Ragnarok (center) Ares (left) Moonstone (right), so expected AP drain is green from Ares (Ragnarok's match damage is lower than any 2* in the game).

First drain - drained 1 green AP (all they had)
Nightstalker tile destroyed, a few turns later I was able to get it back on
Second drain - drained 3 purple AP
Third drain - drained 3 green AP

Switched target to Moonstone (because Ares is about to die, but I still want their green AP)

Fourth drain - drained 2 green AP (all they had)

At this point Ares has enough to Sunder so I quickly downed him, and Moonstone now owns the tiebreaker over Ragnarok so nothing interesting there (drains purple as expected)

Eventually Moonstone is downed and only Ragnarok is left. Note that Ragnarok is tied for red/green, but red is the top color and the color you get for abilities like Surgical Strike.

Fifth drain - drained 0 AP (enemy has 3 red + 0 green AP), so must have attempted to drain green.
Six drain - drained 0 AP (enemy still has 3r + 0g), so must have attempted to drain green.

So whoever you target doesn't matter.

On a side note, during the second drain for 3 purple AP, the enemy had 5 green AP which is enough for an Onslaught and that plus a good cascade could've easily terminated this experiment. Luckily the AI skipped Onslaught in the name of science.

Quebbster

So I just got my thirteenth Blade cover from the season tenpack and he is now level 166 with a 5/3/5 build. Is that any good? I was always leaning towards 3/5/5, but the covers come as they will...

Phaserhawk

Quebbster wrote:

So I just got my thirteenth Blade cover from the season tenpack and he is now level 166 with a 5/3/5 build. Is that any good? I was always leaning towards 3/5/5, but the covers come as they will...

Well you have 5 in the most important category and that's The Thirst. 3/5/5 is the most popular, but many hardcore PvP players like 5/3/5 because purple is too slow and black's extra damage and tile steal is nice. My covers fell 4/4/5 until I got lucky to pull another purple and the upgrade and 5 purple is spectacular and I don't miss the damage on black, but that's me, either way, you have 5 in green which is the most important, but if you find yourself wishing purple did more damage, ask yourself, would you be willing to give up some initial damage on black? If so, then aim for 3/5/5

Unknown

Quebbster wrote:

So I just got my thirteenth Blade cover from the season tenpack and he is now level 166 with a 5/3/5 build. Is that any good? I was always leaning towards 3/5/5, but the covers come as they will...

Yup, as Phaser said, anything with 5 green is going to be really good.

mjh

Phaserhawk wrote:

Now if you compare lvl 4 to lvl 5, well than ti's 8 tiles vs 6 and you have a more resonable arguement.

with this in mind I'm going to run him 4/5/4. I can see no reason not to for me. Even using XF most of the time, as is almost everybody.

The odd time I use Nightstalker will be beneficial with the extra damage. 1 less on the board to trigger Thirst is not worth it. If it was 2 less then it would be no contest.

Unknown

With the recent change to match damage that will make goons generally own the highest damage it also indirectly increases Nightstalker's power since you don't have to worry about goons running out of AP when they own the highest match versus a villian. I'm also seeing a lot of weirdness to determine the 'highest match' in general (e.g. Surgical Strike) after the match damage change, like sometimes a character that's one level lower still has the highest match for the same rarity which never happened before, so this will probably make it even harder to determine the color Nightstalker drains from until more data is available.

NorthernPolarity

HawkeyeSucks wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Now if you compare lvl 4 to lvl 5, well than ti's 8 tiles vs 6 and you have a more resonable arguement.

with this in mind I'm going to run him 4/5/4. I can see no reason not to for me. Even using XF most of the time, as is almost everybody.

The odd time I use Nightstalker will be beneficial with the extra damage. 1 less on the board to trigger Thirst is not worth it. If it was 2 less then it would be no contest.

700 damage is miniscule in the grand scheme of things though, getting the thirst off more reliably matters far more than that. As phaser and others have shown, it's a pretty big difference between 4 and 5 green.

Unknown

HawkeyeSucks wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Now if you compare lvl 4 to lvl 5, well than ti's 8 tiles vs 6 and you have a more resonable arguement.

with this in mind I'm going to run him 4/5/4. I can see no reason not to for me. Even using XF most of the time, as is almost everybody.

The odd time I use Nightstalker will be beneficial with the extra damage. 1 less on the board to trigger Thirst is not worth it. If it was 2 less then it would be no contest.

The difference between 3 and 4 for his black is 300 damage.

Go 3/5/5 or 5/5/3.

There is no other build that is worth anything.

ruinedcause

After a disappointing result in Coversquirrel (scored 620 and still placed out of the T100). I decided to buy the two covers I needed to max green. Since he is a solid character and the two-three star transition is harder than ever, I didn't mind ponying up the bucks. My question is with all of the "good" two stars maxed, what would be a good pairing for him to help carry my two star team?

Thanks

Unknown

ruinedcause wrote:

After a disappointing result in Coversquirrel (scored 620 and still placed out of the T100). I decided to buy the two covers I needed to max green. Since he is a solid character and the two-three star transition is harder than ever, I didn't mind ponying up the bucks. My question is with all of the "good" two stars maxed, what would be a good pairing for him to help carry my two star team?

Thanks

Daken for sure. Then probably Ms.Marvel