*** Mystique (Raven Darkholme) ***

ThatOneGuyjp189512

to quote my alliance mate "doesn't matter what her health is, they all sentry bomb the same" and until(if?) he gets nerfed then literally no characters will matter ever, cause at the end of the day, they'll always be sentry waiting to bomb them.

now onto actual opinion, she does almost seem like the 3* version of OBW, but....slightly worse, i'd rather her have OBW's purple over...this thing. Torch level health but....a decent looking damage ability. probably going 5/3/5 cause transforming tiles just isn't as good as stealing ap or dealing damage.

IamTheDanger

Pwuz_ wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

RefinedBean wrote:

You forgot your smiley. Otherwise D3 might read that and think they need more 3* characters.

I'm more worried they DO get the sarcasm and think we want more 2's and 4's.

Yeah, it's pretty universally agreed upon by all people of history that MPQ NEEDS MORE characters! Yelena and Venom just look so lonely down there...

I don't know. I wouldn't mind a few more 1 . I would love to see a 1 Logan with Bone claws. He would have to be weaker because he would not have his adamantium skeleton. On the other hand, when he lost it, he became more primal and his healing factor actually worked better. So he would take more damage, but have healing like Patch, only stronger. And his attacks would need to be more savage and random. But I still think a 1 Bone Claw Logan would be great. I mean, heck, we got a 2, 3, and 4 Wolverines. Why not have 1 to complete the set?

Unknown

Do you think she will be a top-tier or tier 1.5 character with the info we have on her so far?

simonsez

KevinMark wrote:

Do you think she will be a top-tier or tier 1.5 character with the info we have on her so far?

Not even close

Spoit

Better than at least

Unknown

Now that I think about it, maybe her purple is meant as a cascade deterrent. If you have the purple tile out there, and the AI cascades like crazy you also get a bit of AP. Further, if they did it on their regular move, you get to use your abilities before they do!

Definitely better than but her abilities are too complicated for most to use. She'll probably be relegated to tier.

Spoit

Probably not annoying enough to be an actual deterrent in pvp, but I dread how much of a pain her nodes will be in the simulator and gauntlet

mags1587

Got my blue cover. First thoughts? Her icon needs to change. It's both ridiculous and ugly. That was the best they could do? Ugh.

Unknown

The sneering mouth icon where you select her powers is strange. I don't want to be fingering her mouth to get her to use a skill... Just sayin'

atomzed

Colog has got her cover and iso max. When her purple is max, the CD has 8 turns, and it steals one AP of whatever color the opponent match. It also has 2 turns of stun.

For black, it deals around 3k dmg without CD tile. If there is a CD tile, it deals an additional 7k dmg.

I will say she seems like a decent support character. Her blue should be max. Her black does sweet dmg, though it's 19 AP, it's spread out over 2 colors so it is probably easier to get.

Unknown

If the opponent makes only 1 match a turn then you're using 8 purple to steal about 8 random AP which isn't a great deal. If they're consistently getting more than that, you're going to have problem anyway not to mention if the AI is making big chains then your CD might not survive its full duration. The black damage is respectable but hardly relevent compared to Rage of the Panther or Surgical Strike. Even Inferno likely compares favorably and HT has the same base class HP. It looks like they've a pretty good grasp on the limit of how strong AP steal can be except they always forgot there's this guy called The Hood. The purple functions more like as a dump for otherwise useless AP (purple tend to be not very useful), or a way to soften the blow when an impending beatdown is about to come (enemy makes a huge cascade, but at least you stole a couple AP and maybe come out of that mess in one piece).

atomzed

Phantron wrote:

If the opponent makes only 1 match a turn then you're using 8 purple to steal about 8 random AP which isn't a great deal.

This is correct, 8 ap isn't a big deal.

But I think it slows down the opponent a lot more. Imagine myst on defence and she cast a CD in hard to reach place.

As you are trying to build up your green to cast Xforce, you take 3 turns slower because the green is stolen so instead of 3 matches for 9 green, opponent needs 4 matches for 8 green. That is quite a substantial delay.

NorthernPolarity

atomzed wrote:

Phantron wrote:

If the opponent makes only 1 match a turn then you're using 8 purple to steal about 8 random AP which isn't a great deal.

This is correct, 8 ap isn't a big deal.

But I think it slows down the opponent a lot more. Imagine myst on defence and she cast a CD in hard to reach place.

As you are trying to build up your green to cast Xforce, you take 3 turns slower because the green is stolen so instead of 3 matches for 9 green, opponent needs 4 matches for 8 green. That is quite a substantial delay.

In reality, the attacking player enters with a GB booster, matches 2 green before Mystique gets anywhere close to 8 purple, and downs her before she can do anything, so i's going to be rare that it does anything substantial on defense. On offense, it's as Phantron said where it's just kinda meh.

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

As you are trying to build up your green to cast Xforce, you take 3 turns slower because the green is stolen so instead of 3 matches for 9 green, opponent needs 4 matches for 8 green. That is quite a substantial delay.

Sounds like OBW.

Unknown

If you want to account for boosts even The Hood can die pretty quick to just 3 green + 2 green matches into X Force (or 1 if you use AP+3 all) or just a Sentry bomb so I don't think that should be a strike against Mystique. But let's say that Mystique's shapeshift tile lasts forever and cannot be destroyed. After you get 3 purple matches to start it, it's still likely worse than Dormammu's Aid since it's going to usually steal 1 random AP a turn and occasionally more, while Dormammu's Aid is almost certain to do considerably better than 1 AP a turn once it gets going. Of course then there's consideration like Shapeshift in fact has a time limit and the tile it creates can be destroyed. To be fair anything that can come close to Dormammu's Aid is going to be way overpowered, but since Dormammu's Aid exists, why would you bother with a lesser version of it?

Her abilities are actually quite fine if PvP games actually took a while to complete, but that's just not how it works right now. Sentry and X Force has too much offense in general, and there's a good number of characters that can go through 5K HP in a hurry. For her ability set I think she should have at least Thor level of HP if not Hulk, but it seems like making a support character that has a ton of HP is something that's fundamentally not going to happen in this game. From the game design point of view, support characters with low HP is fundamentally broken. Either you have a guy like The Hood whose support ability is so strong that even though he goes down in one move half of the time, he's still a top character. Or, if you don't have a strong support ability then you're just wasting space by using a character that can die in one move. I guess the design philsophy is that support characters should be fragile but bring powerful abilities, except that doesn't work because you can pick who you want to attack on offense. Devil Dino is a good model of a support character. His support abilities, if Prehistoric Arms can even be called that, sure aren't really great but if you leave him alone long enough something bad might happen, but attacking him first is also pretty futile, so you end up taking your chances.

over_clocked

So, if Ice or someone else could post the full stats, that would be appreciated
Adding a poll so that people can vote for preferred builds.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

looking at her maxed stats(hattip to the awesome colog) her black is absolutely crazy, 3k damage base, adds another 4k if she has a shapeshift tile out. playing her....i like her...not as good as blade in my opinion, but good enough to max cover her and bring her up to usable level(level 100 is what i consider a usable level) and her pink provides a good stun, and it takes an ap away from anything the AI matches as long as her CD's out and considering it's an 8 turn, could be a while.

atomzed

Phantron wrote:

If you want to account for boosts even The Hood can die pretty quick to just 3 green + 2 green matches into X Force (or 1 if you use AP+3 all) or just a Sentry bomb so I don't think that should be a strike against Mystique. But let's say that Mystique's shapeshift tile lasts forever and cannot be destroyed. After you get 3 purple matches to start it, it's still likely worse than Dormammu's Aid since it's going to usually steal 1 random AP a turn and occasionally more, while Dormammu's Aid is almost certain to do considerably better than 1 AP a turn once it gets going. Of course then there's consideration like Shapeshift in fact has a time limit and the tile it creates can be destroyed. To be fair anything that can come close to Dormammu's Aid is going to be way overpowered, but since Dormammu's Aid exists, why would you bother with a lesser version of it?

Exactly, Dormammu Aid is the BEST passive support ability. I would even claim that DA is OP. If anything reaches his level, it will be also OP.

Is D3 likely to balanc it? Unlikely, since you are less likely to see raging posts about DA, since it's effects are more subtle than WR or Xforce. And any change would likely incur the wrath of the players (as with all changes).

In that light, I say that shapeshifter is a good power.

it seems like making a support character that has a ton of HP is something that's fundamentally not going to happen in this game. From the game design point of view, support characters with low HP is fundamentally broken.

I don't know, it is not just the HP of the support character which matters, but the HP of ALL characters matter. Just look at the fastest characters, Torch, DP and even modern storm; their HP is seem as a liability.

Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say 3* storm has the same skill set as old modern storm (5 AP red ability), BUT still has 3.9k HP.... she would still be low tier. A glass cannon, or a glass support character will always be seen as a disadvantage.

On the other hand, a high HP character with poor skill set will still be seen as a poor character. Look at shehulk, classic example.

What I'm saying is that HP is a way that D3 try to balance the character. You can't have all high HP characters.

simonsez

ThatOneGuyjp189512 wrote:

looking at her maxed stats(hattip to the awesome colog) her black is absolutely crazy, 3k damage base, adds another 4k if she has a shapeshift tile out.

Sounds good at first, but 19 AP for 7k damage really isn't all that awesome compared to abilities like DP or HT's red, and with her health, she could be long gone by the time you get 19 AP.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

ThatOneGuyjp189512 wrote:

looking at her maxed stats(hattip to the awesome colog) her black is absolutely crazy, 3k damage base, adds another 4k if she has a shapeshift tile out.

Sounds good at first, but 19 AP for 7k damage really isn't all that awesome compared to abilities like DP or HT's red, and with her health, she could be long gone by the time you get 19 AP.

Except she will make you get to 11 black pretty fast once that shapeshift tile hits the board. She seems really good imo, maybe better than blade.