**** Elektra (Unkillable) **** [PRE 2015-04]

eidehua

Seems like 4*s get most of their power through cover upgrades, so it's definitely wait and see.
Might be some big change like the 5 -> 12 charge tile for 4thor 4 blue - > 5 blue

Unknown

Avoiding a 10K hit with black isn't much given there's a 11 black move (Surgical Strike) and 12 black move (Rage of the Panther) that can do that much damage and it's always better to be the aggressor in this game. You have to be able to avoid two moves for this to come out ahead and I just don't see that happening on a reliable basis because the AI collects their AP in a very unpredictable pattern unless you just handed them a miracle cascade.

BillyBobJoe

Phantron wrote:

Looking at the way the ability is described I don't think she's going to be all that good even without seeing the exact numbers. Purple is dependent on certain type of special tiles (enemy strike tiles) which may or may not be applicable. The black at 10 AP is pretty costly to neutralize a special move so unless it creates something like 25 trap tiles it'll probably be limited to taking one major hit but for 1 more black you can usually try to end the problem instead with Surgical Strike. I guess it can be better after the enemy have a monster cascade but that's not the kind of situation you want to be in. The red looks okay but quite a few attack tile ability can push that range of damage (Inferno can do more), and the AI never tries to destroy any special tiles on purpose anyway. Even when the role is reversed there's nothing particularly harder about not seeing the trap unless you have Captain America who can remove any special tile whose location is known. Otherwise you'd just be matching whatever red you can and use whatever board shaking ability you may have.

I think the ability works like a CD tile but has the hidden capability of a trap. It's kinda a synthesis of the two. While the trap tile is on the board, Elektra cannot take damage, and instead reverses it onto the opponent. The reason it's a trap tile, is so when you're faced with this ability, you don't know where the trap is to eliminate it (a la Colossus and his protect tile). This ability seems pretty potent. Two hidden trap tiles that allows Elektra to evade damage for two turns where she would take damage, unless you match the trap tiles.

I forsee a 3/5/5 build, since yes, the purple requires opposing strike tiles to exist.

Xenoberyll

Nefesh wrote:

Have devs read any comics? An absolutely non popular character, a common martial artist and 4*?
Who next? 5* Squirrel Girl?

I'm voting for Peter Porker, the spectacular Spider-Ham!

Vhailorx

onimus wrote:

That's not going to get her playing time.

If I were to rank the 4 stars on a scale from 1 to 10 it would look a little something like this:
10. Xforce, 4hor
9.
8. Nick Fury
7.
6. Devil Dinosaur
5.
4.
3.
2. Invisible woman
1.

It's early, but unless her abilities scale like crazy, Elektra is somewhere around a 3 or 4, in my opinion.

Sort of off-topic, I would put Xforce at 10 and 4* thor at 9 simply because of true healing and faster regen times.

As for elektra, we can't be sure without having seen her abilities at max, but it's very hard to see how she could be premier. Damage mitigation is awesome, but not automatic (requires tiles to stay on the board and elektra to be out front). And her damage dealing abilities seem second tier (1000 a round in strike tiles is nice, but that's nothing compared to xforce of 4*thor nukes), and stealing strike tiles requires strike tiles to be present. Seems like a better plan to just nuke everything with the top tier 4*.

Unknown

BillyBobJoe wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Looking at the way the ability is described I don't think she's going to be all that good even without seeing the exact numbers. Purple is dependent on certain type of special tiles (enemy strike tiles) which may or may not be applicable. The black at 10 AP is pretty costly to neutralize a special move so unless it creates something like 25 trap tiles it'll probably be limited to taking one major hit but for 1 more black you can usually try to end the problem instead with Surgical Strike. I guess it can be better after the enemy have a monster cascade but that's not the kind of situation you want to be in. The red looks okay but quite a few attack tile ability can push that range of damage (Inferno can do more), and the AI never tries to destroy any special tiles on purpose anyway. Even when the role is reversed there's nothing particularly harder about not seeing the trap unless you have Captain America who can remove any special tile whose location is known. Otherwise you'd just be matching whatever red you can and use whatever board shaking ability you may have.

I think the ability works like a CD tile but has the hidden capability of a trap. It's kinda a synthesis of the two. While the trap tile is on the board, Elektra cannot take damage, and instead reverses it onto the opponent. The reason it's a trap tile, is so when you're faced with this ability, you don't know where the trap is to eliminate it (a la Colossus and his protect tile). This ability seems pretty potent. Two hidden trap tiles that allows Elektra to evade damage for two turns where she would take damage, unless you match the trap tiles.

I forsee a 3/5/5 build, since yes, the purple requires opposing strike tiles to exist.

It's any damage so a two cascade would destroy two of them, and the AI is a cascade machine in general, not that it'd matter given how few tiles it creates. The only way you're using her black is if you see the opponent's about to Headbutt you and you pop a black down, and if by some miracle it's still up for a second move consider yourself lucky. But, negating one move for 10 black is a bad deal. In all but the most extreme cases of scaling you're better off using 11 black for Surgical Strike or 12 black for Rage of the Panther and boht have a high probability of solving whatever move you're trying to avoid by killing the opposing side. Of course when dealing with high end scaling then pretty much any move you need blocked is likely to cost less than 10 black, so you're just delaying the inevitable, because you're collecting a color for the sole purpose of defending, but it costs you more to collect those AP compared to the AI.

Omega Red

Nefesh wrote:

Have devs read any comics? An absolutely non popular character, a common martial artist and 4*?
Who next? 5* Squirrel Girl?

Well, have YOU read the comics? The Elektra saga is easily among the top five myths/definitive stories in the history of the Marvel Universe.

Unknown

Omega Red wrote:

Nefesh wrote:

Have devs read any comics? An absolutely non popular character, a common martial artist and 4*?
Who next? 5* Squirrel Girl?

Well, have YOU read the comics? The Elektra saga is easily among the top five myths/definitive stories in the history of the Marvel Universe.

What? Lol, what are you talking about.

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

and stealing strike tiles requires strike tiles to be present. Seems like a better plan to just nuke everything with the top tier 4*.

Read the ability again. Only the first use requires a strike tile present.

To me she seems fine. I bet red becomes a really big problem at 5, specially if they don't go away after she dies.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

and stealing strike tiles requires strike tiles to be present. Seems like a better plan to just nuke everything with the top tier 4*.

Read the ability again. Only the first use requires a strike tile present.

To me she seems fine. I bet red becomes a really big problem at 5, specially if they don't go away after she dies.

But there are a lot of teams that cannot even generate a strike tile if they wanted to, rendering the ability useless. Unless I'm reading the ability wrong, you can't use this at all if there are no strike tiles present. It should be reversed, you give them 3 weak ones and then you steal one back and improve it. Yes this would make it weaker against guys who have extremely strong strike tiles (e.g. Nick Fury) but it should still be a general improvement just because there are far more characters who don't make strike tiles.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Nefesh wrote:

Have devs read any comics? An absolutely non popular character, a common martial artist and 4*?
Who next? 5* Squirrel Girl?

Well, have YOU read the comics? The Elektra saga is easily among the top five myths/definitive stories in the history of the Marvel Universe.

What? Lol, what are you talking about.

He's talking about how Elektra's death and resurrection is one of the greatest Marvel storylines ever and made the relatively unknown Frank Miller a household name among comics fans?

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

onimus wrote:

That's not going to get her playing time.

If I were to rank the 4 stars on a scale from 1 to 10 it would look a little something like this:
10. Xforce, 4hor
9.
8. Nick Fury
7.
6. Devil Dinosaur
5.
4.
3.
2. Invisible woman
1.

It's early, but unless her abilities scale like crazy, Elektra is somewhere around a 3 or 4, in my opinion.

Sort of off-topic, I would put Xforce at 10 and 4* at 9 simply because of true healing and faster regen times.

As for elektra, we can't be sure without having seen her abilities at max, but it's very hard to see how she could be premier. Damage mitigation is awesome, but not automatic (requires tiles to stay on the board and elektra to be out front). And her damage dealing abilities seem second tier (1000 a round in strike tiles is nice, but that's nothing compared to xforce of 4*thor nukes), and stealing strike tiles requires strike tiles to be present. Seems like a better plan to just nuke everything with the top tier 4*.

Agreed completely.

Vhailorx

ark123 wrote:

Read the ability again. Only the first use requires a strike tile present.

To me she seems fine. I bet red becomes a really big problem at 5, specially if they don't go away after she dies.

Not sure what you mean about her purple power. I don't see anything in the text of the ability or the reveal interview suggesting that purple does anything at all if there are no enemy strike tiles on the board. And that's a huge weakness: not all, or even most, enemy teams produce strike tiles.

Characters that require specific conditions to do have any effect are the very definition of situational characters, and they are generally thought of as lower tier (think pre-buff loki, she-hulk, doc oc, gamora, pre-buff daredevil, etc).

Conversely, the stronger characters are the self-sufficient ones with complementary powers, pre-nerf sentry, lthor, lcap, xforce, 4*thor, BP (not to suggest that all these are equally good, just that they all can be played alone to decent effect).

With the information we have now, elektra is looking more like the former than the latter (which is not to say that she will be trash-tier, just that she isn't going to be at the top of the heap).

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Read the ability again. Only the first use requires a strike tile present.

To me she seems fine. I bet red becomes a really big problem at 5, specially if they don't go away after she dies.

Not sure what you mean about her purple power. I don't see anything in the text of the ability or the reveal interview suggesting that purple does anything at all if there are no enemy strike tiles on the board. And that's a huge weakness: not all, or even most, enemy teams produce strike tiles.

Characters that require specific conditions to do have any effect are the very definition of situational characters, and they are generally thought of as lower tier (think pre-buff loki, she-hulk, doc oc, gamora, pre-buff daredevil, etc).

Conversely, the stronger characters are the self-sufficient ones with complementary powers, pre-nerf sentry, lthor, lcap, xforce, 4*thor, BP (not to suggest that all these are equally good, just that they all can be played alone to decent effect).

With the information we have now, elektra is looking more like the former than the latter (which is not to say that she will be trash-tier, just that she isn't going to be at the top of the heap).

I'm not sure, but I think what he's saying is you cast it once, you get nothing and they get 3 **** tiles.

Then you cast it again and steal one (or most likely more as you get more covers) of those small one, then give them more small ones etc.

Basically, the cost is doubled against people who don't use strike tiles.

Vhailorx

onimus wrote:

I'm not sure, but I think what he's saying is you cast it once, you get nothing and they get 3 tinykitty tiles.

Then you cast it again and steal one (or most likely more as you get more covers) of those small one, then give them more small ones etc.

Basically, the cost is doubled against people who don't use strike tiles.

That may be the case, and if so, it would definitely be a step up. But it also creates the gamora problem: at max, you can use "bad reputation" to generate 1k in strike tiles, which is a good combo with her cheap, spammable red. But it requires both a lot of black AP, decent red AP, and gamora to be tanking many colors, and a lot of yellow tiles on the board. With that many conditions you might as well just use black panther or xforce (if available).

So with elektra, if it takes 14 red AP to do anything worthwhile with her purple power against most teams, then (1) you won't be casting it any time soon since you don't want to cast once without immediately being able to cast a second time to steal the tiles, and (2) you really better hope that her other powers are totally awesome. otherwise, you should have just brought deadpool or fury.

Sandmaker

I'd wait before judging black. I can see the damage scaling well enough to make it competitive. For example if at lvl5 it puts out 4 tiles at 4-5k damage each. That's easily on par with SS.

Also people seem to be forgeting that both xforce and ****Thor have a situational ability in their yellows. So her purple being situational doesn't make her low teir by default. Really depends on the scaling in the other two abilities.

Vhailorx

I agree that several thousands of damage per turn would make black look quite a bit better. But int he reveal interview, the devs said "This tile then acts like an Attack tile, dealing damage at the start of each turn. At max level, this single tile will be dealing over 1000 damage a turn."

that is ambiguous. She might produce multiple traps, or only one trap. We will have to wait and see, but only one trap sounds underwhelming.

As for both 4* thor and Xforce having situational abilities, I concede the point in general, but I would argue that the main reason xforce is better than 4* thor is that his "situational ability" is so much better.

Thor needs the enemy to put out some type of special tile (that is usually possible, even if any particular type of special tile is less than a 50/50 probability), and if there are no such tiles, striking distance still does a bit of aoe damage.

xforce's yellow only comes into play if (1) he wants more healh, and/or (2) wants to do damage if the countdown tile is destroyed. I would say those conditions exist in basically every match.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

I'd wait before judging black. I can see the damage scaling well enough to make it competitive. For example if at lvl5 it puts out 4 tiles at 4-5k damage each. That's easily on par with SS.

Also people seem to be forgeting that both xforce and ****Thor have a situational ability in their yellows. So her purple being situational doesn't make her low teir by default. Really depends on the scaling in the other two abilities.

I don't think a countdown tile can be considered a situational ability. Especially one that gives true healing.

Polares

I have a question regarding trap tiles. Do they trigger when you are stunned? Because if they don't trigger when you are stunned, then she can't counter the Thor combo...

turul

It works when stunned, but post-player turn, stunned hero will not be in front, unless other heros are downed/also stunned