*** Blade (Daywalker) ***

Pwuz_

homeinvasion wrote:

I think Blade's green is really underwhelming, it's like Deadpool's black in that it is way too unreliable so PVE only. So if you want him for PVE then 3/5/5 or 5/3/5 (also a great Hood killer with Daken, probably great with sentry for PVE only)

But PVP is a lot to do with what your team will do on defense, and you also find that you hit a threshold with Daken and Blade where you leave so much red on the board you are not refreshing the table and creating match 5 and wicked cascade mechanics for an AI that is already looking for them. in all of my games I had this massive heap of strikes, not doing an amazing amount of match damage then the AI goes yep I'll have that and generates a 10 turn cascade wiping them all off.So I think 5/5/3 because; the synergy with Daken is obvious, but I am tempted to look at a Daken build that leverages off Daken's Blue at 5 and leave Blade's green on 3 so minimize the damage for matches but maximize the number of strike tiles being generated. The problem with Daken's blue is you are always hesitant to use it and wipe your tiles off the board but 5 blue for 2774 is not to be sneezed at. Chuck in Thor, you have 2 green generators (3 if the opponents strongest color is green) generate more strikes from all those green matches and you are not scared to match away red. Lets face it if you are using Thor's abilities and clearing out the board you don't care if you lose a few strikes.

You also get a viable rainbow with genuine threats on all 6 colors. Only one ability of each color, which guarantees the Ai will work the way it is supposed to.

I think you are underestimating what Blade's Green means on defense. Do you want to prevent Blade's Strike tiles? Better Prioritize Red. Oh, does that mean that you are not prioritizing Green or some other color that not only could you use but your opponent's team can use as well?
"Nut's to that, I'll ignore the skill and prioritize what I want (probably Green.) *3 turns later* OH GOD WHY ARE THERE SO MANY STRIKE TILES!!!!"

homeinvasion

Pwuz_ wrote:

I think you are underestimating what Blade's Green means on defense. Do you want to prevent Blade's Strike tiles? Better Prioritize Red. Oh, does that mean that you are not prioritizing Green or some other color that not only could you use but your opponent's team can use as well?
"Nut's to that, I'll ignore the skill and prioritize what I want (probably Green.) *3 turns later* OH GOD WHY ARE THERE SO MANY STRIKE TILES!!!!"

Im not underestimating anything, I am under valuing it, 11 red on the board is easy to avoid, just like deadpools black is easy to avoid with the occasional match adjustment here or there. You go ahead and leave a color on the board regardless of the threat and you are inviting cascades. if you go ahead and soak up all the green there will be few green strikes anyway. I am saying his green is way too inconsistent to be a threat. 11 red means it just doesn't happen when you want it to. Super fast start yes, but will run out of legs when the chips are down. Anyway I was just voicing a possible build and opinion, build yours however you want. But if Blades strike tiles were on a different color to dakens I might agree with you. But they are both on green the most sought after color. For them to make a difference with all the match damage you need to be leaving way too much of one color, that all settles near the bottom of the board.

Unknown

Although red lost its status as the top damage color it's far from being useless. The board doesn't just randomly have 10+ red tiles and keeping it below 10r just means taking any good red matches you see most of the time. Here are a list of characters who range from usable to dominant that can use red in PvP:

Sentry, Thor, Magneto, Punisher, Captain America, Human Torch, Patch, Deadpool.

There's also roughly a 50% chance that whoever is featured will be able to use red (6 colors, 3 abilities per character).

The list gets far bigger for PvE since the AI has 5 covers in every color and red is often the color that isn't maxed out for a human player. Sentry with 5 red hits plenty hard. Even Thor's red hits for a very respectable amount when you get to cheat on covers.

Out of my two games against Blade (who has 5/5/5 obviously) in Gauntlet, his passive triggered just once, and I was running a team without a red power.

homeinvasion

Phantrons posts always intelligent

Chirus

Ok, so something I never understood is how strongest color was determined. I see that they say they take the color with the greatest damage points, but what happens when you have multiple color with the same number of damage? is the result chosen randomly?

homeinvasion

Chirus wrote:

Ok, so something I never understood is how strongest color was determined. I see that they say they take the color with the greatest damage points, but what happens when you have multiple color with the same number of damage? is the result chosen randomly?

which color does most match damage, in the case of a tie it is who started middle then left then right

ThatOneGuyjp189512

one interesting quirk i've found for his black, going against goons in the gauntlet, i killed two of them and only a lieutenant was left, it kept steal his yellow AND pink ap every turn, so i guess it's like ROTP in that if their strongest colors are equal it just takes both. But it's something you'd only see in PVE

HailMary

homeinvasion wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

I think you are underestimating what Blade's Green means on defense...

Im not underestimating anything, I am under valuing it, 11 red on the board is easy to avoid, just like deadpools black is easy to avoid with the occasional match adjustment here or there. You go ahead and leave a color on the board regardless of the threat and you are inviting cascades. if you go ahead and soak up all the green there will be few green strikes anyway. I am saying his green is way too inconsistent to be a threat. 11 red means it just doesn't happen when you want it to. Super fast start yes, but will run out of legs when the chips are down. Anyway I was just voicing a possible build and opinion, build yours however you want. But if Blades strike tiles were on a different color to dakens I might agree with you. But they are both on green the most sought after color. For them to make a difference with all the match damage you need to be leaving way too much of one color, that all settles near the bottom of the board.

Ummm, Blade's strikes appear on , and are dependent solely upon count. doesn't factor in at all. It's called a "Green" ability simply to indicate Blade's third-highest match-damage color.

Unknown

ThatOneGuyjp189512 wrote:

one interesting quirk i've found for his black, going against goons in the gauntlet, i killed two of them and only a lieutenant was left, it kept steal his yellow AND pink ap every turn, so i guess it's like ROTP in that if their strongest colors are equal it just takes both. But it's something you'd only see in PVE

I don't remember 'strongest color' mechanism ever worked like that, and there are a lot of goon only nodes that have ties for strongest color. If it works like that for Blade it must be unique to him, because I sure don't recall a case where Surgical Strike wiped out two colors at once or ROTP gave the enemy 5 AP in multiple colors.

over_clocked

Phantron wrote:

ThatOneGuyjp189512 wrote:

one interesting quirk i've found for his black, going against goons in the gauntlet, i killed two of them and only a lieutenant was left, it kept steal his yellow AND pink ap every turn, so i guess it's like ROTP in that if their strongest colors are equal it just takes both. But it's something you'd only see in PVE

I don't remember 'strongest color' mechanism ever worked like that, and there are a lot of goon only nodes that have ties for strongest color. If it works like that for Blade it must be unique to him, because I sure don't recall a case where Surgical Strike wiped out two colors at once or ROTP gave the enemy 5 AP in multiple colors.

Agreed, if it ever happens it's a bug and I fully expect a fix soon.

over_clocked

I don't even have a purple cover yet but I am leaning towards 3/5/5 as the more viable PvP build.
Have only been able to use black twice so far (it was matched away immediately the first time and is easily outclassed by Surgical Strike on harder nodes).
5 in black could be viable in goon PvE but we already have so many characters that can deal with goons. 2*s can deal with goons just fine. Boring. Maybe 5 black is never necessary period, it just can't compare to Hood/oBW/X-Force anyway so why bother?
AP steal, Blade doesn't excel at; but damage he does. Meaning his pure damage powers should probably be maxed and an active, decent purple is always welcome. Attack tiles are super nasty when there are guaranteed strike tiles around, and vice versa.

Oh and I don't see how 10 red is any different from 10 yellow/10 green/10 black on a board which Hood happily proceeds to steal all the time. 10 tiles is a very powerful condition, absolutely same as maxed Dormammu's Aid, whether you can focus red or not, some free strike tiles are inbound regardless.

Polares

Phantron wrote:

Although red lost its status as the top damage color it's far from being useless. The board doesn't just randomly have 10+ red tiles and keeping it below 10r just means taking any good red matches you see most of the time. Here are a list of characters who range from usable to dominant that can use red in PvP:

Sentry, Thor, Magneto, Punisher, Captain America, Human Torch, Patch, Deadpool.

There's also roughly a 50% chance that whoever is featured will be able to use red (6 colors, 3 abilities per character).

The list gets far bigger for PvE since the AI has 5 covers in every color and red is often the color that isn't maxed out for a human player. Sentry with 5 red hits plenty hard. Even Thor's red hits for a very respectable amount when you get to cheat on covers.

Out of my two games against Blade (who has 5/5/5 obviously) in Gauntlet, his passive triggered just once, and I was running a team without a red power.

But even if you are right I think it is better to go 5 in green. 5 in black makes allmost no difference to 3, a little bit more of damage and faster stealing, but it not that important. And even if you don't leave red on the board, with characters like XForce (green, black), CMags (red), Sentry (green, red->shatters red), LThor (yellow) that can shake the board with their abilities, I think it is going to be 'easy' to get to 10 red after these abilities get triggered, and maybe, a difference from 11 to 10 could be important. This is something that needs to be play tested to know how important it really is.

It is really very difficult to decide which is the better build. Right now I am leaning towards 3/5/5 just because going from 3 to 5 in black is so minor, but allmost all 5 configurations make sense in some situations.

I dare to say that 3/5/5 is the best build if you played him alone (of course this is never going to happen), or if you play him with XForce, which is for me the top charater now.

Unknown

I had a strange issue last night where I used his and it was stealing from a character who's strongest color was Anybody else have this come up?

As for his I've had several matches so far where I wound up with at least 7 strike tiles on the board before dropping my and wiping the floor with the enemy. I might just be leaning toward 3/5/5 at this point. The Steal is nice, but it's starting to look more and more situational.

Phaserhawk

Sandmaker wrote:

For those curious about the math on Green Lvl 1-4 vs Green Lvl 5.

You can use a binomial distribution to calculate the probability K Red tiles occurring, given a trial size of 64 (the size of the board) and probability of red occurring at 1/7=0.1429.

So the probability of exactly K Red occurring on the board is:

P(K=10)=0.1301
P(K=11)=0.1065
P(K=12)=0.0784
P(K=13)=0.0523
P(K=14)=0.0318
...
P(K=64)= 0.0000..... (lots of zeros)

To find out the probability of K>=11 and K>=10, you sum the individual discrete probabilities from that point upwards to K=64.

So:
P(K>=10) = 0.1301 + 0.1065 + 0.0784 + 0.0523 + 0.0318 + ....
P(K>=10) = 0.4330

P(K>=11) = 0.1065 + 0.0784 + 0.0523 + 0.0318 + ....
P(K>=11) = 0.3029

This is all assuming a totally random board of course. Player actions will naturally skew these probability. However, they still give you a sense of the upgrade at Green Lvl 5.

Thanks for this, so assuming perfect scenario's Green has a 30% chance of triggering at 11 and a 43% chance at at 10, that's interesting. So that then gives a player the choice in the 5/5/3 vs. 3/5/5

Is 800 Dmg and 1 more AP steal > or < then a 13% chance increase of getting strike tiles of which they will be 2 x 58 instead of 1 x 89?

So 3 out of ten vs. 4 out of ten that would mean 3 strike tiles vs. 8 after ten turns, yeah, you really do need that double strike tile to get purple to work efficiently, and in PvE there are many times where you are going against Daken, meaning you would want Blade to take up those red and block Daken (just realized that) perhaps 4/5/4 isn't as bad as I thought, you lose out only on 500 dmg instead of 800

MarcusGraves

locked wrote:

Oh and I don't see how 10 red is any different from 10 yellow/10 green/10 black on a board which Hood happily proceeds to steal all the time. 10 tiles is a very powerful condition, absolutely same as maxed Dormammu's Aid, whether you can focus red or not, some free strike tiles are inbound regardless.

this is a strong argument right here for 5 in green, its true, if hood can easily do it then so can blade, its the same condition just a different effect. can't always reach those reds in matches either, so there will be times where you can quickly ramp up from the strike tiles going down and probably have +348 in damage by turn 3-4 before you know it.

it is also pretty nice that we don't have to make any matches to get them, freeing you up to make your matches like usual.

Unknown

The reason why The Hood can operate with the same condition is because he does it to all 6 colors. If Dormammu's Aid steals only when there are 10 green tiles you'll be finding yourself waiting for a very long time for this to trigger as well.

MarcusGraves

Phantron wrote:

The reason why The Hood can operate with the same condition is because he does it to all 6 colors. If Dormammu's Aid steals only when there are 10 green tiles you'll be finding yourself waiting for a very long time for this to trigger as well.

maybe, maybe not, we actually need more people to come in and tell us how often rank 5 green is proc'ing for them. we can throw numbers and theories around all day for fun but we need to see what people are getting in practice, of course that is probably going to take a month or two unless there are a lot of people shelling out cash to rank up a 1/1/1 blade to 3/5/5. probably are some people that did it already, they just aren't coming here where we need them to comment for us.

Unknown

well I must say (just completed gauntlet) the levels where I cannot bring my daken to the fight, Blade was truly a great replacement even at 1/2/1 L134, he gave my Sentry enough to win without having sacrifice triggered.

P.S also pulled a Blade purple cover from the event token. It has been quite long since I pulled a feature character. Yay

Phaserhawk

I think the character is designed so that green triggers some of the time on an average, and if you go 5, well then it triggers a little more than some of the time. This then forces the player to evaluate their needs, Blade truely is a balanced build as depending on what you need his build can fit it that way. If I was a transitioning 2* and I don't have a Daken, I would for sure want my Blade 3/5/5, if I was a stellar PvP player like Phantron I see all the arguements for 5/5/3 as for reasons he stated. The one thing no one seems to be arguing I have noticed is 5 in purple. So we can state our opinions all we want, the fact of the matter is that whatever your prefered Blade build is, is probably because it fits your play style, play type, and roster. I'm leaning on 3/5/5 more so because black is becoming a crowded color, and when you have X-Force, BP all wanting that black too you have to give it up somewhere. As long as X-Force is what he is, Blade doesn't serve much of a purpose other than free strike tile generation and an okay purple damage skill. Nightstalker is truly a defensive skill, it keeps your opponent from gathering the AP needed to woop you, and if you are able to turn around and use it, sweet. Playing in the simulator, purple hurts and quickly depletes life bars it is better than I thought and while I will be going for sure 5 in purple. I like Blade, I think he's a well desgined character, one of the better ones in awhile, and with his odd color combination he does fit well into other team comps. He feels to be in Punisher power category and since that seems to be the baseline of a well balanced character, I think D3 did alright with him.

MarcusGraves

yeah after I ran the numbers for purple it became quite apparent that at rank 3 it is just too much of a clunker power, but once you get it to 5 it just transforms into attack tile death. closest thing I could probably compare it to in 3* range is HT's inferno, same cost in AP amount but w/o the downsides of if the center of the board is clogged up with TU/special tiles and draining 30% of Y/B/P. also has higher potential damage of 2024 per turn instead of inferno's 1808 really making blade no slouch on the attack tile burn, but I guess part of the tradeoff is that blade can only make 2 instead of inferno's 8.

I agree he honestly seems better than I originally thought and does kinda seem along the lines of punisher in power, just need to think of who to pair him with. daken I guess and I believe have daken for the middle char to tank black/purple for blade (not super sure how that works again) and pump out strike tiles along with thirst for purple and I guess have thor to fill the R/Y/G need, really just spitballin here.