*** Mystique (Raven Darkholme) ***

simonsez

... and her purple is pretty underwhelming too. Let's say on average, the cd tile survives 5 turns, and on average, the AI makes 1.5 matches per turn. So, on average you spend 8 purple for 7.5 AP. Not nearly as good as what you get from OBW.

simonsez

ark123 wrote:

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.

Getting 1 AP if the AI matches black doesn't seem like it'd get you there pretty fast at all.

atomzed

simonsez wrote:

... and her purple is pretty underwhelming too. Let's say on average, the cd tile survives 5 turns, and on average, the AI makes 1.5 matches per turn. So, on average you spend 8 purple for 7.5 AP. Not nearly as good as what you get from OBW.

I value the steal for the delay/denial it has on the opponent, and less so for the ap acceleration.

AR is the second best AP steal, right behind dormannnu aid. Will shapeshifter be better than the 2? Unlikely, but it is *still* another ap steal skill. I rate it better than blade ap steal.

CrookedKnight

A 3* power that lets you trade purple AP for damage-dealing AP at a nearly 1:1 ratio sounds pretty good to me. Plus it blunts the impact of crazy AI cascades.

Kolence

Has anyone who has her purple skill tried to see what happens if there are two shapeshift countdowns out? Do they stack, or just steal 1 AP as long as there is at least one countdown on the board? Is it possible to place more than one CD? And does her black destroy a random CD if 2 or more are present or all of them. All these are not as clear to me just reading the skill descriptions. It sounds like it would steal just 1 AP no matter the number of tiles, but who knows...

simonsez

CrookedKnight wrote:

A 3* power that lets you trade purple AP for damage-dealing AP at a nearly 1:1 ratio sounds pretty good to me.

... until, like I said, you compare it to Aggressive Recon. I don't see why a 3* should have an ability that's inferior to a 2*

Phaserhawk

Kolence wrote:

Has anyone who has her purple skill tried to see what happens if there are two shapeshift countdowns out? Do they stack, or just steal 1 AP as long as there is at least one countdown on the board? Is it possible to place more than one CD? And does her black destroy a random CD if 2 or more are present or all of them. All these are not as clear to me just reading the skill descriptions. It sounds like it would steal just 1 AP no matter the number of tiles, but who knows...

That's a good question, as the skill reads it says as long as the CD tile is out, but depending upon how it's programmed, does the tile trigger the steal? If so then the more you would have out, each tile would steal the AP, thus being able to steal multiple.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

CrookedKnight wrote:

A 3* power that lets you trade purple AP for damage-dealing AP at a nearly 1:1 ratio sounds pretty good to me.

... until, like I said, you compare it to Aggressive Recon. I don't see why a 3* should have an ability that's inferior to a 2*

like half the 3* abilities are inferior to mnmags purple and cstorm blue. 2*Thor yellow... Well we know what happens when he scales to 166. Instant top 5 characters in the game.

Hell if colossus had a. Wolverine yellow as his black he would probably be the best tank in the game.

You are vastly underestimating how powerful 2* abilities can be.

obws purple is one of the best abilities in the game.

Unknown

I think that the blue is being underrated... much like many abilities for other characters that add certain colour tiles to the board...

Here's my logic...

xforce's black attack eliminates literally all the strongest tiles of the opposing team. when that happens there is a higher chance of matches because of an increase in ratio of other color tiles. Anyone who has used xforce's black attack will probably have seen how often it can cause long lasting cascades. Another one is 2 star Ms Marvel's yellow, this when used with a lot of teamup tiles already on board is actually quite devastating, probably not in actually damaging the opposing team but generating various AP and clearing out a lot of opposing special tiles (which is quite useful coupled with Black panther's yellow). Characters like Magento Now and Grey Suit BW (Capt America to a much lesser extent) have more control over clearing the board with more specific placement of color tiles. The downside to mystique's ability like 2 star Ms Marvel (or even Thor) is its very random and can literally do nothing in terms of cascades.

When I look at Mystique's blue power I see it in the very same vain as (a weaker version of) xforce, in the sense that she denies the opposing team of more chances of matching green, red and yellow, all of which tend to lead to devastating attacks on many characters. So in that sense she is much more situational than xforce. Where she might actually shine is actually slowly feeding deadpool's purple or xforce's black with this ability. If anything I see it like an anti-Daken ability (indeed I see her as a very anti daken character), and given how often we face him in story events, that's a bonus!

Overall not the greatest 3 star introduced but certainly one that has some interesting combos with other heroes when leveled up, right now I think her best partner in crime is probably Deadpool despite the overlap on purple, but I wouldn't use her on defense in Verses though, hood will outshine her in that regard.

NorthernPolarity

skydivearcher wrote:

I think that the blue is being underrated... much like many abilities for other characters that add certain colour tiles to the board...

Here's my logic...

xforce's black attack eliminates literally all the strongest tiles of the opposing team. when that happens there is a higher chance of matches because of an increase in ratio of other color tiles. Anyone who has used xforce's black attack will probably have seen how often it can cause long lasting cascades. Another one is 2 star Ms Marvel's yellow, this when used with a lot of teamup tiles already on board is actually quite devastating, probably not in actually damaging the opposing team but generating various AP and clearing out a lot of opposing special tiles (which is quite useful coupled with Black panther's yellow). Characters like Magento Now and Grey Suit BW (Capt America to a much lesser extent) have more control over clearing the board with more specific placement of color tiles. The downside to mystique's ability like 2 star Ms Marvel (or even Thor) is its very random and can literally do nothing in terms of cascades.

When I look at Mystique's blue power I see it in the very same vain as (a weaker version of) xforce, in the sense that she denies the opposing team of more chances of matching green, red and yellow, all of which tend to lead to devastating attacks on many characters. So in that sense she is much more situational than xforce. Where she might actually shine is actually slowly feeding deadpool's purple or xforce's black with this ability. If anything I see it like an anti-Daken ability (indeed I see her as a very anti daken character), and given how often we face him in story events, that's a bonus!

Overall not the greatest 3 star introduced but certainly one that has some interesting combos with other heroes when leveled up, right now I think her best partner in crime is probably Deadpool despite the overlap on purple, but I wouldn't use her on defense in Verses though, hood will outshine her in that regard.

Shameless plug, but you can find the cascade potentials here: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18598.

TheHueyFreeman

Nothing about the fact that if shapeshifting is up for three turns, the team is essentially stunlocked?

simonsez

ark123 wrote:

like half the 3* abilities are inferior to mnmags purple and cstorm blue. 2*Thor yellow... Well we know what happens when he scales to 166. Instant top 5 characters in the game.

I'm not looking to compare apples and oranges, and what happens when a 2* is overscaled in a pve has nothing to do with this. I'm strictly talking about two skills that steal AP and cost 8 or 9 purple. Within this narrow comparison, I see no reason why the 2* should have the better version of that ability.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

ark123 wrote:

like half the 3* abilities are inferior to mnmags purple and cstorm blue. 2*Thor yellow... Well we know what happens when he scales to 166. Instant top 5 characters in the game.

I'm not looking to compare apples and oranges, and what happens when a 2* is overscaled in a pve has nothing to do with this. I'm strictly talking about two skills that steal AP and cost 8 or 9 purple. Within this narrow comparison, I see no reason why the 2* should have the better version of that ability.

You ARE comparing apples and oranges. This skill has a countdown tile, steals when the opponents match, and has a two turn stun tacked on. Literally the only thing it has in common with obws purple is that it steals. Might as well compare it to blade's black.

Obw's purple isn't overpowered for a single reason: it's on a character that has very little health. Scale obw to level 166 and she outclasses 85%+ of the characters in the game.

We don't want more characters with stealing abilities as good as AR. It makes for a bad game.

Unknown

People complain about scaled ares and daken in pve? Imagine if we had to fight a bunch of lvl 300+ OBWs, healing for 3k+ and dealing double match damage. Imagine if she was paired with a strike tile generator.

atomzed

Phaserhawk wrote:

Kolence wrote:

Has anyone who has her purple skill tried to see what happens if there are two shapeshift countdowns out? Do they stack, or just steal 1 AP as long as there is at least one countdown on the board? Is it possible to place more than one CD? And does her black destroy a random CD if 2 or more are present or all of them. All these are not as clear to me just reading the skill descriptions. It sounds like it would steal just 1 AP no matter the number of tiles, but who knows...

That's a good question, as the skill reads it says as long as the CD tile is out, but depending upon how it's programmed, does the tile trigger the steal? If so then the more you would have out, each tile would steal the AP, thus being able to steal multiple.

I have tested it. You only can have ONE CD tile out. When you use shape shifter the second time, the first CD tile gets destroyed.

vudu3

TheHueyFreeman wrote:

Nothing about the fact that if shapeshifting is up for three turns, the team is essentially stunlocked?

Huh?

Unknown

I thought about the issue with support character in general and I think it's a lack of HP in most characters in this game that makes this concept not work.

Let's say we now have fraction of an AP and The Hood steals 0.5 AP on Dormammu but now has double the HP. While I'm not going to pretend this is remotely well thought out, this at least seems remotely plausible to have double the HP to make up for losing half of your ability. Well, Shapeshift is easily less than half of Dormammu's Aid, and I don't think Mystique's other two abilities are even better than The Hood's other two abilities, so why shouldn't Mystique have double The Hood's HP? Except she can't because there's this philospohy of 'skinny looking guys can't have high HP' built into the game so the prospect of this happening is even less than Magneto getting a purple power. But if we want to talk consistency to the character design I thought Magneto can create a force field so shouldn't he have a passive that reduces damage taken by 75%?

Mystique's ability seems to be designed for a slower paced game. The AP steal isn't going to matter in the early game since you'll rarely be able to afford to side track into purple while the major damage colors are still heavily contested. Masterstroke also isn't something you can immediately get the full damage, and yet she has the second lowest HP class. A character built for a slow game should at least have enough HP to slow down the pace.

It seems to me sticking to their original counterpart really limits the game at times. Why does X Force have double regen when he's already at least the second best character in the game for straight up damage? Because Wolverine has regeneration. I remember a lot of the Thor arguments revolve around 'but this guy is a God!' It seems like some of the character design is made the same way. If a character's portrait does not exceed a certain size, don't expect to ever get more than 6000 HP no matter how much sense it'd make.

Unknown

vudu3 wrote:

TheHueyFreeman wrote:

Nothing about the fact that if shapeshifting is up for three turns, the team is essentially stunlocked?

Huh?

He probably thinks the CD stuns a target 2 turn each turn it's out? Although that's not the first thing I thought of when I read the ability I can certainly see how someone can read it that way.

TheHueyFreeman

Phantron wrote:

vudu3 wrote:

TheHueyFreeman wrote:

Nothing about the fact that if shapeshifting is up for three turns, the team is essentially stunlocked?

Huh?

He probably thinks the CD stuns a target 2 turn each turn it's out? Although that's not the first thing I thought of when I read the ability I can certainly see how someone can read it that way.

Does it just stun someone once?

CrookedKnight

I'd be very surprised if it doesn't just stun the current target when the power is cast.