*** Blade (Daywalker) ***

yogi_

Latest thoughts on 4-5-4 vs. 3-5-5?

Quebbster

yogi_ wrote:

Latest thoughts on 4-5-4 vs. 3-5-5?

4-5-4 seems like the worst of both worlds. You are crippling both abilities with little gain.
I like 3/5/5, personally. There's only so much AP you can drain after all.

himatako

Just made a switch from 4/5/4 to 3/5/5 yesterday and he's so much better now. His green kicks in more often & thus more useful. It also synergise nicely with his purple. Don't rely on draining AP with his black. It's just too situational.

MarcusGraves

deep in this topic from when he first came out, there is a post from me with hard math convincing people that purple must be maxed for it to not be garbage and become the fantastic murder machine it is and why green must be maxed in tow to get the maximum benefit.

Unknown

3/5/5 is the most flexible build - period.
2 strikes
2 attacks

anything less is just a waste of your time. I considered going for 5 in black and then slapped myself back to reality.
- Unreall

yogi_

Thankyou everyone above. Very helpful.

Makes the decision easy now.

Unknown

Unreallystic wrote:

3/5/5 is the most flexible build - period.
2 strikes
2 attacks

anything less is just a waste of your time. I considered going for 5 in black and then slapped myself back to reality.
- Unreall

4 green alredy gives 2 strikes tho.

MarcusGraves

ShionSinX wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

3/5/5 is the most flexible build - period.
2 strikes
2 attacks

anything less is just a waste of your time. I considered going for 5 in black and then slapped myself back to reality.
- Unreall

4 green alredy gives 2 strikes tho.

do you not want to lower the trigger requirements of a free 116 damage boost that can cause his attack tiles to crank out 2.3k damage per turn or cause out of control damage on cascades when they happen?

3/5/5 blade is the only one that actually deters me from fighting a team with him on it because not only will I possibly take big amounts of unwanted damage from his passive damage boost but should that purple ever come out full force I will for sure be using up some precious health packs.

TxMoose

ShionSinX wrote:

4 green alredy gives 2 strikes tho.

the difference from it requiring 11 tiles and 10 tile is actually pretty big. there are several more times in a game that there will be 10 reds on a board than 11, making the purple, when you build it up, devastating.

Warbringa

TxMoose wrote:

ShionSinX wrote:

4 green alredy gives 2 strikes tho.

the difference from it requiring 11 tiles and 10 tile is actually pretty big. there are several more times in a game that there will be 10 reds on a board than 11, making the purple, when you build it up, devastating.

Blade is one of my most used characters and I am constantly scanning the number of red tiles since it is important to know how many are on board when you are matching. I have found 4/5/4 to be my favorite. In my experience, the 10 vs. 11 tiles rarely pops (around once every three games or so) up compared to the number of times I use his black power and I find the extra damage in Nightstalker is far more effective for me. I suppose that team selection can impact your style of play as well as to the best fit on your particular roster but I think too many people downplay 4/5/4 making it seem worse than it is. I think people are relying on math that isn't necessarily correct as people have admitted on previous posts, the math is only theory based in a void which the game isn't played in. The player matching choices and/or playing him with certain characters (ala Cyclops) far greater impact the chance of his green firing vs. the 1 extra tile needed from his green at 4 vs. 5. I had him at 3/5/5 for quite a while (months) and really didn't seem to get much value for that last extra green, so I switched him to 4/5/4 which I now prefer. Most of the match there are fewer than 10 tiles or many more. The only time that having 4 green vs. 5 green really, really hurts you is if there are 10 tiles on the board for multiple turns in a row. This has happened but is extremely rare in my experience. I have found 2 strike tiles doesn't make or break a match most of the time (example if you fired it once at 10 tiles and then red tiles dropped to 8 let's say etc.) Much more often is that when you hit 10 tiles it then goes beyond ten or less than ten the next round.

I do not doubt that he will fire his strike tiles more often at 5 green, however I think people need to understand that it isn't necessarily as clear as he has to have 5 in green like he does in purple for example. The stats of 30% (4 green) to 43% (5 green) don't hold up in my experience with this guy over an extended period of time now as I haven't seen a 43%+ diminish in the skills effectiveness (13 is a 43% increase from 30) since that is what those stats would seem to indicate.

lukewin

Warbringa wrote:

I have found 4/5/4 to be my favorite. In my experience, the 10 vs. 11 tiles rarely pops (around once every three games or so) up compared to the number of times I use his black power and I find the extra damage and 1 extra AP drain from one more in Nightstalker is far more effective for me. The initial 3 AP vs. 2 AP drain is important because 3 AP drain truly shuts down one color whereas with 2 AP I have still seen enemy gain in strongest color, especially with minions in PvE. I suppose that team selection can impact your style of play as well as to the best fit on your particular roster but I think too many people downplay 4/5/4 making it seem worse than it is.

Unless I am wrong, the extra AP drain is at 5 black covers. 4 black covers only adds damage.

Unknown

I'm at 5-4-4 which is good, but honestly I should go with 5-3-5 when I have the chance.

His black power and his green power are the ones I like and take advantage of the most. In my personal experience I've had terrible luck of having pink attack tiles getting picked off almost immediately, so I've never leaned on that power. I'm happier with a bitchin black power and the best chance to get booster tiles.

On passive enemies like thugs or lab rats, blade's green and black powers combine to be very nasty. At least for me in my roster, his black power is the one to use ( say versus cage, wxf, human torch ). If I get a chance to use his pink, fine, but it's a secondary thing, especially if I'm using IF, because IF happily feeds black with his pink.

For passive enemies patch is good, but honestly lately I've been using IF, Blade and mohawk storm and it kicks wang.

Warbringa

lukewin wrote:

Warbringa wrote:

I have found 4/5/4 to be my favorite. In my experience, the 10 vs. 11 tiles rarely pops (around once every three games or so) up compared to the number of times I use his black power and I find the extra damage and 1 extra AP drain from one more in Nightstalker is far more effective for me. The initial 3 AP vs. 2 AP drain is important because 3 AP drain truly shuts down one color whereas with 2 AP I have still seen enemy gain in strongest color, especially with minions in PvE. I suppose that team selection can impact your style of play as well as to the best fit on your particular roster but I think too many people downplay 4/5/4 making it seem worse than it is.

Unless I am wrong, the extra AP drain is at 5 black covers. 4 black covers only adds damage.

Yes you are correct, I had played with him at 5 black for a period of time too, but I had to go down to 3 green where I really saw a difference. Thanks for catching my error!

Warbringa

Warbringa wrote:

lukewin wrote:

I have found 4/5/4 to be my favorite. In my experience, the 10 vs. 11 tiles rarely pops (around once every three games or so) up compared to the number of times I use his black power and I find the extra damage and 1 extra AP drain from one more in Nightstalker is far more effective for me. The initial 3 AP vs. 2 AP drain is important because 3 AP drain truly shuts down one color whereas with 2 AP I have still seen enemy gain in strongest color, especially with minions in PvE. I suppose that team selection can impact your style of play as well as to the best fit on your particular roster but I think too many people downplay 4/5/4 making it seem worse than it is.

Unless I am wrong, the extra AP drain is at 5 black covers. 4 black covers only adds damage.

Yes you are correct my mistake, I had played with him at 5 black for a period of time too, but I had to go down to 3 green where I really saw a difference and 4 green is certainly worth it. For some reason I have earned/lucked into far more Blade covers than any other 3* character so I have had the chance to play with several of his builds. Thanks for catching my error!

TxMoose

I only recently got him covered and last pve I played with him and daken on the thing essential node and blade and daken work very well together, especially when daken tanks. its taken me a long time to get on the blade train but I'm certainly a fan. he can work well with fist too, double dipping on his strikes. if you are on a goon only node and they only have one or two colors, getting a couple of green cds down from his black will basically shut that color down. and he is just nuts on the big enchilada with cap and falcon.

Spiritclaw

While his green power won't properly feed his pink with only three covers, there's more than one solution to that problem. Consider who you want to team him with. If your chosen team has another strike tile generator and no active black, 5/5/3 might be the way to go. If you don't have another strike tile generator and do have another active black, 3/5/5 is probably a better choice.

Unknown

Spiritclaw wrote:

While his green power won't properly feed his pink with only three covers, there's more than one solution to that problem. Consider who you want to team him with. If your chosen team has another strike tile generator and no active black, 5/5/3 might be the way to go. If you don't have another strike tile generator and do have another active black, 3/5/5 is probably a better choice.

Reality of the situation, there are only a few strike tile generators with ANY noticable speed in creating strike tiles...
Laken who has fallen off due to health...but covers Blade a bit with True Healing
BP isn't too bad, but they will fight over black...
Patch works to a point. Due to feeding Blade purple, usually the purple tiles left o nthe board are in hard to reach places, and that's where those purple strike tiles will pop up...hard to match, and takign up sapce that YOUR attack tiles need....
Gamora, though I admit to not having her...
RnG...solid synergy, though nothign scary...
Psylocke bumps heads at 4 strike tiles...and needs red to get those...
Punisher is cheap, but blows up the board, possible erasing the strikes you already have...and fights for black use...and these days, people put 5 in red for Punisher, so they plan to use it...


And the rest don't make enough tiles (Sentry) or are slow about it. So it really boils down to Laken, RnG, and possible Patch (worse defense than Laken, will kill quicker though). That's pretty limiting. But if you go 3/5/5 with Blade...it hardly matters...all that's important is that you can get to the I thin kit was 6 strike tiles you want....which is as little as 3 moves.
- Unreall

optimus2861

I just switched from 5/4/4 to 4/4/5 (still seeking that elusive 5th purple) and think the faster generation of that 5th green is definitely noticeable, especially if you're not running Blade with a board shaker (you probably shouldn't be anyway) and those reds just sit out there, pumping your damage up each & every turn.

No regrets thus far.

Unknown

I can only speak for myself in this regard, but there are two scenarios with Blade that I encounter.
I have a better black user on the team (XFW/BP/etc)
He's there for strikes/atks/AP drain, and I'm actually focused on OTHER colors (purple for Blade, Blue for say CMags orr CapA, Yellow for Falcon, etc)

In both situations, his black is a 'bonus'. I'd rather work on his purple for dmg, and all I REALLY need is AP drain from black. I've tried other situations, now that I have a maxed IF, I've been teaming him up with all my black users to see who he synergizes with the best (I had fun in the SWitch PvP, purple battery to a black battery). I even tried feeding Blade blacks to see how effective it was...and it simply wasn't, both Punisher and Psylocke are better in that 'range' for black attacks, those low to medium, almost spammable with a black battery - attacks.

So I really can't justify 355. Even when BOOSTED, the dmg on black can be CREAMY, but I still find it better to focus on his purple or save the black for others.
- Unreall

Unknown

MarcusGraves wrote:

ShionSinX wrote:

Unreallystic wrote:

3/5/5 is the most flexible build - period.
2 strikes
2 attacks

anything less is just a waste of your time. I considered going for 5 in black and then slapped myself back to reality.
- Unreall

4 green alredy gives 2 strikes tho.

do you not want to lower the trigger requirements of a free 116 damage boost that can cause his attack tiles to crank out 2.3k damage per turn or cause out of control damage on cascades when they happen?

I never said 4 green is better than 5 green, I just said that for 2 strikes 4 green alredy does the job.