*** Mystique (Raven Darkholme) ***

Spoit

Lerysh wrote:

Shapeshift is promised to go into the other 4 colors at higher levels. It may be the first TU steal as well possibly. I could see it stealing 2 per match at 5 covers, but I doubt it, given 4 advancement levels and added stun and colors.

Masterstroke at level 2 drains less Green, implying that it will drain less of all colors at 5. This is the main canidate for 5 covers I think, as her damage ability and promised 1 shot of 6800 characters if used with Shapeshift. Infiltration and Shapeshift are both kinda meh... I could see 4/4/5 or any combination of X/X/5 being valid build strategy. Really it depends if 5 blue is 100% conversion rate, similar to Dr. Doom or not. 100% conversion of 3 colors would be powerful. Less than 100% conversion, and just adding a tile at 4 or 5 covers would be less powerful.

We know what 5 blue is, it was in the pictures in the article

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I find it interesting that her Intimidation is counterproductive with Shapeshifter in terms of stealing red,yellow, green

Unless purple drains 3 per match (which does seem unlikely) you're still better off not giving those color at all if the point is to be anti-Sentry.

But I don't think getting rid of R/G/Y for 9 black AP with very little else to show for it is worth it.

Unknown

Except it's 9 blue AP? If you are talking about master stroke, there is the damage to show for it. What should be about 3k without and about 7k with

Converting 10 tiles as opposed to 8 in a random distribution of 2 colors is not great. Of the 27 or so R/Y/G tiles converting even a small number is likely to make the rest unmatchable ayway. Information provided leans me towards 5/3/5 as build preference so far. Reserve judgement until the playtest of her next PvE tho.

MarcusGraves

looking at the character more, I believe the design goal was to have her keep the other team suppressed through drain and stun on shapeshift (CD tile has a 8 turn duration btw) and taking away colors on the board they might need through infiltration then obliterate the R/G/Y user or anyone with a dangerous power in that color with masterstroke when 11 black is gathered. infiltration will even if it random, speed you up in gathering AP to feed the combo.

masterstroke until we get the full stats may end up not having any penalty for the user at all at rank 5 making it the must max for her since who wants to lose AP if you can help it? i'm purely basing this on the rank 2 of it saying it won't take any of your green away. she does seem to actually have a flow to her that makes her probably not really need much help from her team to do her stuff.

I could see an argument for pairing her with deadpool since he should be able to tank black for her and maybe purple but I keep forgetting the rule for when 2 character share the same color tile strength. LotP can provide some cover vs burst damage, ALotT is super cheap at 6 red to get off even if you're taking red off the board and can help masterstroke kill off those really beefy characters by softening them up. only real issue is that AI might be really stupid and try to hang onto the purple needed for infiltration +masterstroke to try and drop whales instead.

Sandwichboy

granted we need to see what her rank 5 abilities look like, but I could easily see her making CMags and XForce end matches a lot faster.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

Except it's 9 blue AP? If you are talking about master stroke, there is the damage to show for it. What should be about 3k without and about 7k with

Converting 10 tiles as opposed to 8 in a random distribution of 2 colors is not great. Of the 27 or so R/Y/G tiles converting even a small number is likely to make the rest unmatchable ayway. Information provided leans me towards 5/3/5 as build preference so far. Reserve judgement until the playtest of her next PvE tho.

Oops, wrong color. But it's still 3 matches for something that is very unlikely to even refund a value of 9 blue AP which would make the move just completely pointless.

Converting 4 or 5 (expected average) in one color just isn't going to lead to anything interesting, even if you did it twice. I don't see the value in making it hard to get R/Y/G matches unless your team has no use for it either, and it's hard to see how you'd possibly construct a team that doesn't need those colors. Even Falcon + Daken needs to make yellow/green matches at some point.

NorthernPolarity

I am really excited now. So remember that simulator thing I posted yesterday? Well, I ran a simulation of Mystique's ability, and here are my results. My interpretation of the ability was to choose N tiles out of the entire set of RGY tiles, and change each individual tile to Black 50% of the time, and purple 50% of the time. TLDR: Suck it Phantron! I kid, I kid, but the ability does cause a decent amount of cascades, which goes against what most people here have posted. If you care about purple / black, the ability seems pretty good at fueling that up, converting 9 blue AP to 3 black, 3 purple, and one other AP on average for level 5.

Level 1 - 5 tile colors changed
Probability of a cascade occurring: 0.40357
Average tiles destroyed: 2.79847
Average Tiles destroyed by color:
GREEN: 0.144645 tiles destroyed
PURPLE: 0.988965 tiles destroyed
BLUE: 0.197105 tiles destroyed
YELLOW: 0.14456 tiles destroyed
TEAMUP: 0.196405 tiles destroyed
BLACK: 0.98514 tiles destroyed
RED: 0.14165 tiles destroyed

Level 2 - 6 tile colors changed
Probability of a cascade occurring: 0.47714999999999996
Average tiles destroyed: 3.534995
Average Tiles destroyed by color:
GREEN: 0.174155 tiles destroyed
PURPLE: 1.25528 tiles destroyed
BLUE: 0.249835 tiles destroyed
YELLOW: 0.17296 tiles destroyed
TEAMUP: 0.25289 tiles destroyed
BLACK: 1.256795 tiles destroyed
RED: 0.17308 tiles destroyed

Level 3 - 7 tiles changed
Probability of a cascade occurring: 0.546075
Average tiles destroyed: 4.356165
Average Tiles destroyed by color:
GREEN: 0.20703 tiles destroyed
PURPLE: 1.55399 tiles destroyed
BLUE: 0.31593 tiles destroyed
YELLOW: 0.205615 tiles destroyed
TEAMUP: 0.31733 tiles destroyed
BLACK: 1.55187 tiles destroyed
RED: 0.2044 tiles destroyed

Level 4 - 8 tiles changed.
Probability of a cascade occurring: 0.6090249999999999
Average tiles destroyed: 5.24024
Average Tiles destroyed by color:
GREEN: 0.23634 tiles destroyed
PURPLE: 1.87576 tiles destroyed
BLUE: 0.388435 tiles destroyed
YELLOW: 0.239535 tiles destroyed
TEAMUP: 0.38246 tiles destroyed
BLACK: 1.88098 tiles destroyed
RED: 0.23673 tiles destroyed

Level 5 - 10 tiles changed
Probability of a cascade occurring: 0.71912
Average tiles destroyed: 7.28177
Average Tiles destroyed by color:
GREEN: 0.3083 tiles destroyed
PURPLE: 2.619425 tiles destroyed
BLUE: 0.55659 tiles destroyed
YELLOW: 0.310495 tiles destroyed
TEAMUP: 0.556525 tiles destroyed
BLACK: 2.623495 tiles destroyed
RED: 0.30694 tiles destroyed

Turns out that level 3->5 blue increases the cascade potential by 17% and almost doubles the average amount of tiles destroyed.

MarcusGraves

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Turns out that level 3->5 blue increases the cascade potential by 17% and almost doubles the average amount of tiles destroyed.

mmmmm, cascades

Unknown

Err, that math just works out 9 blue AP for 3 blue 3 black 3 other at best, or you can just... match the black and other colors in the first place. Spending 9 AP to get 9 AP back is borderline useless. I guess blue is less valuable than other color but it's just not that hard to get 'any color but blue'.

Unknown

Ok,sure, but it improves it from a pretty decent 60% to an overkill of 71%. I am pretty sure I'd much rather have whatever 4 purple covers does. Maybe even 5 purple.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

Err, that math just works out 9 blue AP for 3 blue 3 black 3 other at best, or you can just... match the black and other colors in the first place. Spending 9 AP to get 9 AP back is borderline useless. I guess blue is less valuable than other color but it's just not that hard to get 'any color but blue'.

That logic is faulty in that the choice isn't binary: being able to convert 3 blue matches into 1 black and 1 purple match is pretty useful if you don't have any black or purple matches available on board and wanted to rush the colors. That is, if you had a use for black / purple to begin with, which is unlikely but eh.

MarcusGraves

I really wish they would just give us the rank stats on release, this is always so annoying having to guess.

NorthernPolarity

Lerysh wrote:

Ok,sure, but it improves it from a pretty decent 60% to an overkill of 71%. I am pretty sure I'd much rather have whatever 4 purple covers does. Maybe even 5 purple.

Since when is more cascades ever a bad thing? I feel like you need to reserve judgement until what the abilities actually do at those covers are released before saying anything about the characters potential build. Under your logic you'd say Ares was an easy 5/3/5 because red sucks, while the way the abilities scale make 4/4/5 the clear choice.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Spending 9 AP to get 9 AP back is borderline useless. I guess blue is less valuable than other color but it's just not that hard to get 'any color but blue'.

If they ever make a character that has an "9 purple: gain 9 green" or "9 blue: gain 9 red/yellow" ability that character will be used all the time.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Ok,sure, but it improves it from a pretty decent 60% to an overkill of 71%. I am pretty sure I'd much rather have whatever 4 purple covers does. Maybe even 5 purple.

Since when is more cascades ever a bad thing? I feel like you need to reserve judgement until what the abilities actually do at those covers are released before saying anything about the characters potential build. Under your logic you'd say Ares was an easy 5/3/5 because red sucks, while the way the abilities scale make 4/4/5 the clear choice.

I did reserve judgement. You see that post up there reserving judgement? I did that. Speculating is part of the fun.

Also, anyone who can read Ares' green 5 knows that it's worthless. Reducing the cost on an ability to 5 from 6 of an ability you regularly cast with 10 or more anyway has no point.

Right now we know: Blue 5 is 10 swaps, Purple 2 is a Stun, and Black is supposedly crazy damage and lesses your AP drain as you cover it up. Given those facts, X/X/5 is obvious. Unless purples 4 and 5 cover abilities turn out to be terrible, I want to lean 4/4/5 right now is all I'm saying. But I will reserve judgement, again, until her max cover abilities are known.

NorthernPolarity

Lerysh wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Ok,sure, but it improves it from a pretty decent 60% to an overkill of 71%. I am pretty sure I'd much rather have whatever 4 purple covers does. Maybe even 5 purple.

Since when is more cascades ever a bad thing? I feel like you need to reserve judgement until what the abilities actually do at those covers are released before saying anything about the characters potential build. Under your logic you'd say Ares was an easy 5/3/5 because red sucks, while the way the abilities scale make 4/4/5 the clear choice.

I did reserve judgement. You see that post up there reserving judgement? I did that. Speculating is part of the fun.

Also, anyone who can read Ares' green 5 knows that it's worthless. Reducing the cost on an ability to 5 from 6 of an ability you regularly cast with 10 or more anyway has no point.

Right now we know: Blue 5 is 10 swaps, Purple 2 is a Stun, and Black is supposedly crazy damage and lesses your AP drain as you cover it up. Given those facts, X/X/5 is obvious. Unless purples 4 and 5 cover abilities turn out to be terrible, I want to lean 4/4/5 right now is all I'm saying. But I will reserve judgement, again, until her max cover abilities are known.

Can we generally switch from a "I think 4/4/5 build is optimal" to something more along the lines of "I think black is going to be really strong, and purple and blue are going to be support abilities but not used as much?". I think thats what you mean when you say that X/X/5 is obvious, and it makes a lot more sense than randomly throwing builds out there when we don't know how the black/purple covers work at all.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Spending 9 AP to get 9 AP back is borderline useless. I guess blue is less valuable than other color but it's just not that hard to get 'any color but blue'.

If they ever make a character that has an "9 purple: gain 9 green" or "9 blue: gain 9 red/yellow" ability that character will be used all the time.

They already have this. It's called GSBW. She isn't used that much. Although it's 11 Purple for more like 12+ green.

over_clocked

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Spending 9 AP to get 9 AP back is borderline useless. I guess blue is less valuable than other color but it's just not that hard to get 'any color but blue'.

If they ever make a character that has an "9 purple: gain 9 green" or "9 blue: gain 9 red/yellow" ability that character will be used all the time.

They already have this. It's called GSBW. She isn't used that much. Although it's 11 Purple for more like 12+ green.

You know who's used all the time? MMN. Match purple 3 times, Windstorm. 11 purple for GSBW is a 4-match move.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

ErikPeter wrote:

Cool. Skull Belt?

You guys read the end of the article there?

Mystique’s not the last you've seen of the Marvel Universe ladies this year either, especially if you’re into the more rough and tumble types as opposed to Raven and Natasha’s black ops style combat.

If that's not Rogue I'm going to be disappointed. Unless it's just another Spider-Woman hint.

i'm hoping it's the dazzler!

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Spending 9 AP to get 9 AP back is borderline useless. I guess blue is less valuable than other color but it's just not that hard to get 'any color but blue'.

If they ever make a character that has an "9 purple: gain 9 green" or "9 blue: gain 9 red/yellow" ability that character will be used all the time.

They already have this. It's called GSBW. She isn't used that much. Although it's 11 Purple for more like 12+ green.

The difference between 9 and 11 ap is gigantic.