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

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Red really wouldn't matter too much unless you have Captain America because it'd only matter if you have a case that looks something like



That is, being able to see the trap would always let you know which red to destroy, but there's a 25% chance you might miss the trap if you can't see it. You obviously will immediately try to make all the available red matches as soon as it hits and since only Captain America can do precise tile elimination at a reasonable price it'd only matter against him. Sure you can think of some farfetched scenario like if you have Twin Pistols and you guessed wrong on which red to hit so we get the benefit out of the trap being hidden, but these are very farfetched scenarios.

I think you're greatly underestimating the value of it being a trap on defense, because theres a large opportunity of spending your turn to match-3 red if the trap wasn't there, especially if you don't have a good red on your team (rare as you normally say outside of ladythor). Just as an easy example, lets say that there's a red match-3 available with 9 red tiles on board: do you go for the 33% chance to destroy the trap, or do you ignore it? If it was a cd, you'd obviously destroy it since you know it will be destroyed, but since its a trap, you might decide to either not go for it and have it be there, dealing additional dmg, or go for it and have it not be there, leading you to make a potentially suboptimal match.

Let's just say the opponent magically always have 3 1 strength strike tiles to steal. At 7 purple AP that's 3 match range and probably not better than Battleplan or Judgment by a meaningful amount if at all, and of course that's ignoring both Battleplan/Judgment doesn't need this borderline nonsensical board state to be used. Even compared to Settlement it's not necessarily better because Settlement works on more stuff, and assuming you're not making your own special tiles, it's pretty much the same as stealing 2 strike tiles too and yet Settlement is a very borderline ability.

I think the point is that you use it right after a judgement or battleplan. Battleplan is 525 damage worth of strike tiles in value (damn seriously? that's pretty good). Stealing 3 battleplan tiles gives you ~1k damage in strike tiles while removing theirs, which also has additional value. Even in the case of the daken sniperinos, + 600 damage in strike tiles for you and - 150 damage for them is clearly above the curve. I would think that her ability is better than settlement simply because settlement messes with your own tiles if you cast it with tiles out, and elektra's doesnt.

Agreed that she seems like a filler 3*. Dino probably has more utility than her, unfortunately.

I found the only team that skimps out on red are the X Force teams but X Force + The Hood synergizes so well that their synergy makes up for not having a red power, and X Force can easily outrace Elektra not to mention two of his move completely shakes up the board. Most transition teams are going to have a usable red just because there are so many strong red/green 3* characters, and Thor (4*) obviously covers red well too. Red is no longer a very strong color, but it should be usable for everyone besides X Force and X Force sure isn't going to be afraid of Elektra despite not having a red power.

For her purple, of course you're supposed to wait until the enemy uses a Judgment/Battleplan before you use her purple but that's how Settlement was designed too and Settlement works on all special tiles and Settlement never saw much usage because it's still very limited. The problem is that not only do you have to beat the AI in a race, but after you beat them to the color, then the AI has to choose to get the strike tile color. As we all know, the AI has no particular priority on which color to get as long as it's one of its strong colors, so it is perfectly happy to ignore the tiles unless you want to setup some match 4s for them, which is dangerous at best. For that matter you might not beat the AI to purple anyway for whatever reason and end up taking significant damage before you're able to steal it, not to mention the AI also has nothing against destroying its own strike tiles so don't expect their strike tiles to stick around for very long for you to steal them.

dkffiv

Her purple should really steal all strike tiles + improve them, then give opponent 3 **** ones. Against a non-strike tile team you end up giving your opponent 5 tiles for your 1 for 2 purple casts and due to the random placement your tile tends to get matched and they still have one or two of the freebies you gave them. Would also make her very scary against Daken/Blade teams.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

Her purple should really steal all strike tiles + improve them, then give opponent 3 **** ones. Against a non-strike tile team you end up giving your opponent 5 tiles for your 1 for 2 purple casts and due to the random placement your tile tends to get matched and they still have one or two of the freebies you gave them. Would also make her very scary against Daken/Blade teams.

I always thought Settlement and this ability should work like 'create some strike tiles of weaker strength if no eligible tiles exist on the board'. Can be something modest like 100X2, which would make it weaker than abilities that strictly create strike tiles but at least you're not sitting on an ability that cannot be used, and I consider requiring 14 purple AP to get any benefit against a team that does not generate strike tiles to be effectively unusable. I guess this could in theory make AI a bit weaker, but realistically if you're fighting against She-Hulk you either won't bring a special tile generator or you don't care if they can steal yours, probably because your special tiles are so good the game's likely to end before they can steal it.

Phaserhawk

Currently the only character I see her pairing well with is Patch, make sure you have enough green and purple and do the combo Bezeker Rage/Double-Double Cross. She is on the wait and see list for me (not that I have the covers) I will for sure attempt to get her red, but I will take the purple and black as they come. Unless a character comes out that has a Blade or Daken passive that does say 2 strike tiles for you and 1 for the enemy or a cheaper Bezeker Rage like skill I just don't see the value of purple, but...with Surgical Strike, Rage of the Panther, etc. I'm not sure I see a whole lotta use of Shadow Step.

Now with the upcoming Hand as well as Wolverine being the enemy, I have a feeling though her Double-Double Cross is going to be very, very usefull in that PvE, which is my point, I think Elektra is our first true PvE only 4*. X-Force, 4hor are desinged for PvP, Fury can play in both and while slow, when I see a 270 X-Force and a 270 Fury I know it's going to be a hard match because it's hard to cover all those colors, but unless X-Force sees a nerf, I'm not seeing a use for Double-Double cross or Shadow Step because of how the game is currently, but in PvE I could actually see Elektra being top tier.

thedarkphoenix

Wouldn't you just use her purple make 3 strike tiles and then use her purple again and make 3 crazy powerful strike tiles? Granted that would make it a 14 cost AP power but if the strike titles really are THAT strong then it's not that bad. I mean deadpools whales are also 14 purple ap.

Unknown

I gotta say I'm having fun in the PVE using Spidey to clog up purple so when I double cross the enemy gets nothing

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

So after seeing her abilities...
...In PvP, everyone is using XF / LadyThor, so the only time you would ever run her in PvP is in Daken / Blade's tournament. You aren't going to get reliable strike tiles any other way, and thus would never use her over XF / LadyThor.
In PvE, she is good against... Daken / Blade nodes, and pretty terrible otherwise.

5 purple seems obvious by this reasoning. You can go 3/5/5 to make her "better in general", but she still ends up mediocre compared to XF / Ladythor, so you might as well optimize her as the counter to strike tiles and go 5 covers in the 1 ability that she has better than anyone else.

TLDR: she snipes Daken / Blade, and is pretty poor otherwise compared to XF / LadyThor.

TYVM for the info.. on hi level pvp, daken/blade rarely found.
For PVE purpose, there's a dozen other playable 2*/3* duos/trios.
So she's totally not worth any iso.

Demiurge_Miles wrote:

I noticed there was some confusion going on...
Hopefully that will help your discussion. If you're not sure you like her, just wait till you can play with her! Hopefully she can win your appreciation.

Yes, very confusing 4* ... even reflected in in her blurry comic art cover.
I hope i'm wrong, but she's in par with Invisible Woman or doc.ock if she's a 3*.

tldr : dang! i delete my 5/5/3 beast for her.

NorthernPolarity

thedarkphoenix wrote:

Wouldn't you just use her purple make 3 strike tiles and then use her purple again and make 3 crazy powerful strike tiles? Granted that would make it a 14 cost AP power but if the strike titles really are THAT strong then it's not that bad. I mean deadpools whales are also 14 purple ap.

Well first of all, unless you have a trap, it's gonna be 2 strike tiles. Secondly, max level elektra steals + adds 200 power, which means that if you're casting it twice, you're getting a whopping 500 damage worth of strike tiles for 14AP (700 if you have a trap out?). By comparison, BP gives you 575 in tiles for 9 AP.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

thedarkphoenix wrote:

Wouldn't you just use her purple make 3 strike tiles and then use her purple again and make 3 crazy powerful strike tiles? Granted that would make it a 14 cost AP power but if the strike titles really are THAT strong then it's not that bad. I mean deadpools whales are also 14 purple ap.

Well first of all, unless you have a trap, it's gonna be 2 strike tiles. Secondly, max level elektra steals + adds 200 power, which means that if you're casting it twice, you're getting a whopping 500 damage worth of strike tiles for 14AP (700 if you have a trap out?). By comparison, BP gives you 575 in tiles for 9 AP.

It's easier to just look at what other purple powers are available for that cost. For 12 purple AP, you get Escape Plan. For 14 purple AP, you got Whales. Even if you get 20 uses out of your strike tiles, 400*20 = 8000 damage and is still less than what Whales do up front. Likewise Escape Plan is almost certainly going to do more than 8000 damage on average under this assumption (strike tile always survive to do 20 hits once they made it to the board), though the number of hits on the strike tile doesn't even matter because Escape Plan's strike tile is bigger. The only case Escape Plan would do worse is if the CD gets destroyed but that's a well-known risk.

Unknown

JCzarnik wrote:

The best I've found is a 4/4/4 250,
level 5 : steals 2 enemy strike tiles, steal 3rd if friendly trap is present, strength +199. Converts 3 random basic into strength 18 enemy strike tiles (Level 250)
level 5 4 traps that generate AP and deal 840 damage, if Elektra would take damage (Level 250)
level 5 random red trap tile that deals 1126 damage at the beginning of every turn (Level 250)

So basically, she is who we thought she was.

A low tier character with no surprise cherries at level 5.

Swing and a miss, D3.

It's a testament to how bad she is that I can't find a single person who bought out all of her covers.

Hell, I can't even find a 1/1/1 Electra. So I obviously am not looking in the right spots.

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

thedarkphoenix wrote:

Wouldn't you just use her purple make 3 strike tiles and then use her purple again and make 3 crazy powerful strike tiles? Granted that would make it a 14 cost AP power but if the strike titles really are THAT strong then it's not that bad. I mean deadpools whales are also 14 purple ap.

Well first of all, unless you have a trap, it's gonna be 2 strike tiles. Secondly, max level elektra steals + adds 200 power, which means that if you're casting it twice, you're getting a whopping 500 damage worth of strike tiles for 14AP (700 if you have a trap out?). By comparison, BP gives you 575 in tiles for 9 AP.

It's easier to just look at what other purple powers are available for that cost. For 12 purple AP, you get Escape Plan. For 14 purple AP, you got Whales. Even if you get 20 uses out of your strike tiles, 400*20 = 8000 damage and is still less than what Whales do up front. Likewise Escape Plan is almost certainly going to do more than 8000 damage on average under this assumption (strike tile always survive to do 20 hits once they made it to the board), though the number of hits on the strike tile doesn't even matter because Escape Plan's strike tile is bigger. The only case Escape Plan would do worse is if the CD gets destroyed but that's a well-known risk.

Add to the fact all the colors you are giving up to match Purple and it doesn't really make sense. To me she is 100% a counter character. Shadow Step is the one I'm having a hard time evaluating, it seems really good when you read it, but just playing with it a little and it just doesn't seem to work. Even if I wasn't running her with X-Force I'm not sure I would actively seek out black as it's not guarenteed damage and it requires you to match purple, black, or red to activate and if she's my only black user I don't want to match black again, and if nothing is out to steal for purple I won't want to be matching that so it would be me going for red which as Phantron stated isnt as much of a threat nowadays. I think 5/3/5 is the way to go just because if you need to hide from the damage you still get that, they extra dmg you get from blowing up the tiles seems average at best where as Double-Double cross I see this

Daken counter
Blade Counter
Patch Counter or Combo
Black Panther Counter
Captain Marvel Combo
She -Hulk Counter or Combo
Sentry Counter
Rocket/Groot Counter
Fury Counter
Beast Counter (lol)
Gamora Counter
Psylocke Counter
Punisher Counter
Elektra Counter

So she can at least counter those characters by stealing their strike tiles, or combo with Patch/Captain Marvel (this would be nice as Marvel could feed her red and black), and She Hulk by altering the enemy strike tile to your favor. I'm not saying Double-Double cross is the be all end all, but I think it has more practical uses than Shadow Step which pales in comparison to Surgical Strike, Rage of the Panther, Masterstroke etc, because if you are racing in PvP are you going to throw down a defense

NorthernPolarity

onimus wrote:

JCzarnik wrote:

The best I've found is a 4/4/4 250,
level 5 : steals 2 enemy strike tiles, steal 3rd if friendly trap is present, strength +199. Converts 3 random basic into strength 18 enemy strike tiles (Level 250)
level 5 4 traps that generate AP and deal 840 damage, if Elektra would take damage (Level 250)
level 5 random red trap tile that deals 1126 damage at the beginning of every turn (Level 250)

So basically, she is who we thought she was.

A low tier character with no surprise cherries at level 5.

Swing and a miss, D3.

It's a testament to how bad she is that I can't find a single person who bought out all of her covers.

Hell, I can't even find a 1/1/1 Electra. So I obviously am not looking in the right spots.

Harsh. She's low tier compared to XF / LadyThor, but who isn't low tier compared to XF / LadyThor? Try actually placing her on a tier list: she probably ends up somewhere in mid-mid high tier. 10k hp, and an average red/black ability, and a situationally powerful purple ability must make her at least say, as good as a standard mid-tier character like Punisher.

Unknown

For the red coverage issue I decided to write down the teams I face on the current Deadpool event in the 500 range. This likely undercounts the red powers because Deadpool already covers red which might make you use no other red instead (I'm not counting Deadpool for the red, of course). I also eliminated any X Force + The Hood team simply because I can't possibly imagine anyone say, "The Hood + X Force? Easy win for my Elektra", though no X Force + The Hood teams were actually seen at this low number of points. Here's the teams I see:

IM40 + Psylocke
X Force + Thor (2*)
BP + Hulk
Hulk + X Force
Storm (2*) + Magneto (2*)
X Force + Captain America (3*)
Hulk + X Force
BP + Sentry
X Force + Captain America (3*)
Thor (3*) + Dr. Doom

Now these teams aren't necessarily strong in red but it's not like any of these teams will be like "oh no we have to start matching red? What will we possibly do?" when you put a Ballet of Death on. As you move higher you'll probably see more Thor (4*) who covers red strongly. X Force slightly increases the chance red won't be covered, but he's hardly weak against Elektra so I don't think that matters here.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

onimus wrote:

JCzarnik wrote:

The best I've found is a 4/4/4 250,
level 5 : steals 2 enemy strike tiles, steal 3rd if friendly trap is present, strength +199. Converts 3 random basic into strength 18 enemy strike tiles (Level 250)
level 5 4 traps that generate AP and deal 840 damage, if Elektra would take damage (Level 250)
level 5 random red trap tile that deals 1126 damage at the beginning of every turn (Level 250)

So basically, she is who we thought she was.

A low tier character with no surprise cherries at level 5.

Swing and a miss, D3.

It's a testament to how bad she is that I can't find a single person who bought out all of her covers.

Hell, I can't even find a 1/1/1 Electra. So I obviously am not looking in the right spots.

Harsh. She's low tier compared to XF / LadyThor, but who isn't low tier compared to XF / LadyThor? Try actually placing her on a tier list: she probably ends up somewhere in mid-mid high tier. 10k hp, and an average red/black ability, and a situationally powerful purple ability must make her at least say, as good as a standard mid-tier character like Punisher.

Beast and Storm aren't all that bad until you compare them to other 3 stars either.

Power and balance are relative.

And when you have 2 uber strong 4 stars, another strong 4 star and another 4 star with spammable damage and extremely high health, just another 4 star with, as you said, an average red and black ability and a situationally powerful purple, won't do much for the game.

Compared to 3 stars, Elektra is mid tier. But will cost over twice as much ISO and twice as much HP to get her maxed.

When you consider her covers will be, by design, difficult to get, and the ISO price is insane, you got a character that no one but the most hard core players will bother hunting down and leveling.

NorthernPolarity

onimus wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

onimus wrote:

JCzarnik wrote:

The best I've found is a 4/4/4 250,
level 5 : steals 2 enemy strike tiles, steal 3rd if friendly trap is present, strength +199. Converts 3 random basic into strength 18 enemy strike tiles (Level 250)
level 5 4 traps that generate AP and deal 840 damage, if Elektra would take damage (Level 250)
level 5 random red trap tile that deals 1126 damage at the beginning of every turn (Level 250)

So basically, she is who we thought she was.

A low tier character with no surprise cherries at level 5.

Swing and a miss, D3.

It's a testament to how bad she is that I can't find a single person who bought out all of her covers.

Hell, I can't even find a 1/1/1 Electra. So I obviously am not looking in the right spots.

Harsh. She's low tier compared to XF / LadyThor, but who isn't low tier compared to XF / LadyThor? Try actually placing her on a tier list: she probably ends up somewhere in mid-mid high tier. 10k hp, and an average red/black ability, and a situationally powerful purple ability must make her at least say, as good as a standard mid-tier character like Punisher.

Beast and Storm aren't all that bad until you compare them to other 3 stars either.

Power and balance are relative.

And when you have 2 uber strong 4 stars, another strong 4 star and another 4 star with spammable damage and extremely high health, just another 4 star with, as you said, an average red and black ability and a situationally powerful purple, won't do much for the game.

Compared to 3 stars, Elektra is mid tier. But will cost over twice as much ISO and twice as much HP to get her maxed.

When you consider her covers will be, by design, difficult to get, and the ISO price is insane, you got a character that no one but the most hard core players will bother hunting down and leveling.

Im much happier with that analysis than your original one, which pegged her as beast tier. To be fair, mohawk is significantly better than most forum people are giving her credit for: she has been a pve staple for me these past couple events, and is basically one of the best support chars available for ladythor. Agreed on her being not worth it, but hey, at least a pve b or c teamer is better than beast tier.

Unknown

Elektra would be a fair character if her covers are as available as Devil Dino during the anniversary week. Not every 4* needs to a world beater but the ones who aren't shouldn't have covers as a rare as the ones that are world beaters.

Update on the red power prevalence. After 15 or so more games here are the teams I've encountered in the Deadpool event that has no red (not counting Deadpool):

many teams of X Force + The Hood
1 X Force + OBW
1 X Force + Spiderman

Every other team I've ran into so far has another red power even though Deadpool covers red fairly competently. Of those teams, I suppose you can say Elektra has an advantage on X Force + Spiderman or X Force + OBW, but those two teams seem to have something else in mind and might not even be chosen in the first place if Deadpool did not cover red.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Im much happier with that analysis than your original one, which pegged her as beast tier. To be fair, mohawk is significantly better than most forum people are giving her credit for: she has been a pve staple for me these past couple events, and is basically one of the best support chars available for ladythor. Agreed on her being not worth it, but hey, at least a pve b or c teamer is better than beast tier.

Mohawk has always been very good at killing goons, specially if you have falcon with you. Her black will make most tiles special, so a bunch of times goons can't place theirs, and the other that do come up are taken by birdie - then you can match yellow to make her attack tiles huge.

But that's about it. That's about all she does.

Elektra is not good. Her black can do filthy things but both her other abilities are "meh" tier. Definitely the worst 4* other than Baglady.

Unknown

I was just using her in the lightning rounds along with hulk and patch .. I noticed her Red ballet of death activated each time hulks anger was triggered .. I tried to cast sentrys world rupture and ballet of death but didnt have enough time .. can anyone confirm if her red dealss damage everytime with each countdown tile

Unknown

I don't have her black and the intro node is non repeatable but it seems like ALL her black traps activate the first time she's damaged? That's different than the dscriptions say and is way worse. Can anyone confirm?

wymtime

gamar wrote:

I don't have her black and the intro node is non repeatable but it seems like ALL her black traps activate the first time she's damaged? That's different than the dscriptions say and is way worse. Can anyone confirm?

In the lightning rounds I didn't notice this. Also in the lightning rounds red feels like her best and only good power. Purple was nice if I faced LDaken, but otherwise I just used her as a meat shield since she was a loaner character.