**** Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw) ****

Unknown

I busted my butt for #1 in PVE, 5 SL covers...but meh...countdown tiles...

Unknown

Switchman wrote:

I busted my butt for #1 in PVE, 5 SL covers...but meh...countdown tiles...

I applaud your effort but.....well, its not like this info wasn't already out there, my friend. It seems like X-Force/Thor are still King/Queen and will be for a while unless something drastic changes.

Unknown

Switchman wrote:

I busted my butt for #1 in PVE, 5 SL covers...but meh...countdown tiles...

It's not like you didn't know he was going to be garbage.

I imagine purple might not be completely awful at 270, but then again only 3 or 4 players will even know, probably. Getting the chance to play him in PvE made it clear that every negative post in this thread is absolutely on the money. He's useless.

Phaserhawk

ark123 wrote:

Switchman wrote:

I busted my butt for #1 in PVE, 5 SL covers...but meh...countdown tiles...

It's not like you didn't know her was going to be garbage.

I imagine purple might not be completely awful at 270, but then again only 3 or 4 players will even know, probably. Getting the chance to play him in PvE made it clear that every negative post in this thread is absolutely on the money. He's useless.

Really? Given the Freelord they let us play with was 5/3/5 but I really like purple, being able to overwrite is nice. Red I was not impressed and with yellow at such a low level not sure how great it will be. Overall 5/5/3 is shaping up to be the best build. I think he's a solid character. I would place him above Fury becaue of the hitpoints, he's not going to be doing rapid damage and the characters he was paired with sure didn't help, but I see him being a solid off pick in PvP when you don't want to run 4hor/X-Force

PuceMoose

I enjoyed using him quite a bit in the free node - That purple deals nasty damage (the animation is amusing also) and red is no slouch either. I think that if they changed red to allow you to target a basic red tile for the effect it would make quite a difference. Regarding yellow... it didn't seem to do much, to be honest. I think it should have some sort of ability when it resolves, like the other powers. Since it's a long countdown, I think that when it resolves, awarding the player 1 AP in all colors except for black would be reasonable, 2 AP in all colors except for black at max level.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

a solid off pick in PvP when you don't want to run 4hor/X-Force

Come on. There is no scenario where this guy does well in high level pvp. Given the choice between a 221 221 xf/gd team or a team with this guy at 270 and literally anyone else I'll pick the team with starlord 100 times out of 100.

Fury outright kills someone with his blue, maybe more than one. His yellow, if the other aps are up, will make the match really really hard to win.

This guy can either make my surgical cost 12 or deal 7k damage to one of my guys the turn after I killed your entire team. This is not a competitive character.

NorthernPolarity

ark123 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

a solid off pick in PvP when you don't want to run 4hor/X-Force

Come on. There is no scenario where this guy does well in high level pvp. Given the choice between a 221 221 xf/gd team or a team with this guy at 270 and literally anyone else I'll pick the team with starlord 100 times out of 100.

Fury outright kills someone with his blue, maybe more than one. His yellow, if the other aps are up, will make the match really really hard to win.

This guy can either make my surgical cost 12 or deal 7k damage to one of my guys the turn after I killed your entire team. This is not a competitive character.

Phaserhawk probably meant "a solid pick in PvP assuming that XF / GT don't exist". Your entire explanation is "XF / GT is better than him so he is trash". In a world without XF / GT, he's as good as Fury, and a high pick in PvP: red is really cheap at 8 AP and has the potential to do 7k damage on defense, and if purple goes off, does CtS levels of damage. It's not like Fury is THAT much better on defense: all of Fury's skills cost 10+, and avengers assemble has just as good of a chance to do nothing except spawn useless defense tiles as starlord's abilities have of being matched away. An XF / GT less world consists of probably Fury / LazyThor / BP at top tier, and Starlord is easily as good as them on offense and very comparable on defense. Such is the tyranny of XF / GT.

Unknown

In a world without Thor/X Force, Star-Lord would still be nowhere as good as Fury because Fury came first and his covers are more available. 4* covers don't just grow on trees.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

In a world without Thor/X Force, Star-Lord would still be nowhere as good as Fury because Fury came first and his covers are more available. 4* covers don't just grow on trees.

Really? Come on Phantron, you're losing your touch. That's like saying "LadyThor was nowhere near as good as X-Force because X-Force came first and his covers are more available", and is completely separate from the current discussion of character's relative power levels assuming fully covered.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In a world without Thor/X Force, Star-Lord would still be nowhere as good as Fury because Fury came first and his covers are more available. 4* covers don't just grow on trees.

Really? Come on Phantron, you're losing your touch. That's like saying "LadyThor was nowhere near as good as X-Force because X-Force came first and his covers are more available", and is completely separate from the current discussion of character's relative power levels assuming fully covered.

Problem is that not only is he going to be hard to cover, but he needs to be high level to do much, and the only people who will do that are people who have hundreds of thousands of iso just lying around.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In a world without Thor/X Force, Star-Lord would still be nowhere as good as Fury because Fury came first and his covers are more available. 4* covers don't just grow on trees.

Really? Come on Phantron, you're losing your touch. That's like saying "LadyThor was nowhere near as good as X-Force because X-Force came first and his covers are more available", and is completely separate from the current discussion of character's relative power levels assuming fully covered.

Phantron isn't wrong - his covers, despite being suckier than 4*Thor/X-Force will have to be gained with nearly the same amount of effort/iso/HP. And you're doing it all for less results.

Because it's a game of limited resources, many players will have to ask themselves "Do I choose, Xforce or 4*Thor or Star-Lord?"

NorthernPolarity

raisinbman wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In a world without Thor/X Force, Star-Lord would still be nowhere as good as Fury because Fury came first and his covers are more available. 4* covers don't just grow on trees.

Really? Come on Phantron, you're losing your touch. That's like saying "LadyThor was nowhere near as good as X-Force because X-Force came first and his covers are more available", and is completely separate from the current discussion of character's relative power levels assuming fully covered.

Phantron isn't wrong - his covers, despite being suckier than 4*Thor/X-Force will have to be gained with nearly the same amount of effort/iso/HP. And you're doing it all for less results.

Because it's a game of limited resources, many players will have to ask themselves "Do I choose, Xforce or 4*Thor or Star-Lord?"

The original topic was discussing Star-Lord's absolute power level relative to the other characters, which is obviously useful to know. Once that is established, then you can consider things like "is it worth investing a ton of HP / iso into starlord given that he's a 4* and costs a ridiculous amount of money". Phantron entered the "how powerful is starlord discussion", ignored all the points being made, and just straight up derailed it to the "is it worth investing into starlord discussion given these factors", which is completely separate. If we were discussing that, then there's obviously no meaningful discussion to be had because X-Force / LadyThor OP, and its not worth investing in like 99% of new characters released until that changes.

Unknown

I never think of character discussion in the context of 'what if you have infinite HP/iso to level up every single character'. Even if Thor and X Force doesn't exist, it's not clear to me if he's better than Fury, and he'd be more costly to level than Fury because Fury covers have been around longer while Star-Lord stuff you have to start from scratch. In a hypothetical world without Thor/X Force, you'll probably be running some kind of support as your third character (Loki, The Hood, whatever), so if he's not even as good as Fury, you might as well not bother. I don't see him offering any special matchups that are any better than what Fury already gets you. Maybe his purple is a bit better than Fury's best ability but Fury has 3 great abilities while Star-Lord only has 2. At a very rough glance, I'd say:

Demolition ~= Switchroo
Escape Plan <= Oldest Trick
Avengers Assemble >> Everyone With Me

This is purely for offense consideration. On defense, Fury would be significantly better because AI tends to use CDs very poorly and both of his abilities are CDs. He'd have an advantage in that he covers red, though if your third character is support you don't have green covered with either and that's a bigger problem. If your third character isn't a support then red/green coverage is very easy to get out of the 3*s.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

I never think of character discussion in the context of 'what if you have infinite HP/iso to level up every single character'. Even if Thor and X Force doesn't exist, it's not clear to me if he's better than Fury, and he'd be more costly to level than Fury because Fury covers have been around longer while Star-Lord stuff you have to start from scratch. In a hypothetical world without Thor/X Force, you'll probably be running some kind of support as your third character (Loki, The Hood, whatever), so if he's not even as good as Fury, you might as well not bother. I don't see him offering any special matchups that are any better than what Fury already gets you. Maybe his purple is a bit better than Fury's best ability but Fury has 3 great abilities while Star-Lord only has 2. At a very rough glance, I'd say:

Demolition ~= Switchroo
Escape Plan <= Oldest Trick
Avengers Assemble >> Everyone With Me

This is purely for offense consideration. On defense, Fury would be significantly better because AI tends to use CDs very poorly and both of his abilities are CDs. He'd have an advantage in that he covers red, though if your third character is support you don't have green covered with either and that's a bigger problem. If your third character isn't a support then red/green coverage is very easy to get out of the 3*s.

Back on track! I would argue that Oldest Trick is a decent amount better than Escape Plan, considering oldest trick is 9 ap and escape plan costs 12, not to mention that oldest trick does significantly more damage provided that you cast it without any available matches. This would make the power level a lot more similar between Fury and Starlord compared to say, LadyThor / Fury. I'm pretty sure that the featured 3* would then become the deciding factor on which one you wanted to use: Fury would be better when the featured has a good active red and no good active blue (Deadpool, Torch), and Starlord would be better when the featured has a good active blue but no good active red (Mystique, Daken, Grocket). I'd do a further analysis if it weren't due to time constraints, but the gist of it is that the balance between the two characters is closer and would result in a more diverse metagame based on the featured character than it is now (which again, is LadyThor + featured + support).

Phaserhawk

There are going to be PvP's where 4hor or Xforce are locked out and Starlord is a very viable option assuming you have him covered. Taking Thorverine out of the equation, I think he's top tier, Thorverine is S tier power, but Starlord, Fury, Thor etc are A level guys, and while Fury has more raw power, come PvE Starlord will be far more useful. Purple to s by far his best skill. Not sure where the other two rate since yellow is under covered in current PvE. However he plays like I thought, purple is all but guaranteed albeit delayed damage and red is widly inconsistent. Yellow isn't very good at level 3, but Has been useful, to me 5/5/3 is the best build and seeing as how his yellow has accelerated play at level 3, I can only imagine level 5. Purple doing 6.5k to target is solid at 10, possibly 8. If you have me all the characters maxed and head into SHIELD, A Xforce/4hor/Starlord comp would definitely be one I would pick

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Back on track! I would argue that Oldest Trick is a decent amount better than Escape Plan, considering oldest trick is 9 ap and escape plan costs 12, not to mention that oldest trick does significantly more damage provided that you cast it without any available matches. This would make the power level a lot more similar between Fury and Starlord compared to say, LadyThor / Fury. I'm pretty sure that the featured 3* would then become the deciding factor on which one you wanted to use: Fury would be better when the featured has a good active red and no good active blue (Deadpool, Torch), and Starlord would be better when the featured has a good active blue but no good active red (Mystique, Daken, Grocket). I'd do a further analysis if it weren't due to time constraints, but the gist of it is that the balance between the two characters is closer and would result in a more diverse metagame based on the featured character than it is now (which again, is LadyThor + featured + support).

Oldest trick was hard to evaluate compared to Escape Plan but that's about the closest abilities to line up on a 1on1 basis. I think Star-Lord has more matchup issues because someone with a 8/9 red AP would get used 50%/near 100% of the time over him on defense, so in a world without Thor/X Force (if both are around he's obviously never viable) you can't do say Star-Lord + Thor (3*) which would be the simplest straight up power team because you lose the red 50% of the time versus Fury. I think the difference in their third abilities is also rather significant. Only Thor and X Force are top tier with a very weak third ability (Recovery/Striking Distance) but they're absolutely game breaking abilities on their other two, and obviously Star-Lord isn't on that level.

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Back on track! I would argue that Oldest Trick is a decent amount better than Escape Plan, considering oldest trick is 9 ap and escape plan costs 12, not to mention that oldest trick does significantly more damage provided that you cast it without any available matches. This would make the power level a lot more similar between Fury and Starlord compared to say, LadyThor / Fury. I'm pretty sure that the featured 3* would then become the deciding factor on which one you wanted to use: Fury would be better when the featured has a good active red and no good active blue (Deadpool, Torch), and Starlord would be better when the featured has a good active blue but no good active red (Mystique, Daken, Grocket). I'd do a further analysis if it weren't due to time constraints, but the gist of it is that the balance between the two characters is closer and would result in a more diverse metagame based on the featured character than it is now (which again, is LadyThor + featured + support).

Oldest trick was hard to evaluate compared to Escape Plan but that's about the closest abilities to line up on a 1on1 basis. I think Star-Lord has more matchup issues because someone with a 8/9 red AP would get used 50%/near 100% of the time over him on defense, so in a world without Thor/X Force (if both are around he's obviously never viable) you can't do say Star-Lord + Thor (3*) which would be the simplest straight up power team because you lose the red 50% of the time versus Fury. I think the difference in their third abilities is also rather significant. Only Thor and X Force are top tier with a very weak third ability (Recovery/Striking Distance) but they're absolutely game breaking abilities on their other two, and obviously Star-Lord isn't on that level.

Obviously StarLord is the better support of the two as he could enable some pretty fun tricks but looking the skills I would rank them this way.

1.)Demolition
2.)Sleight of Hand

here's where it gets tricky and situational (lets' assume all skills to their fullest and do go off)

3.)Oldest Trick in the Book
4.)Escape Plan
5.)Avengers's Assemble/Everyone with me.

Both of the yellows have their strengths and are hard to evaluate. Now, in reality of the skills not getting matched away it would look more like this.

1.)Demolition
2.)Sleight of Hand
3.)AA/Everyone with me
4.)Escape Plan
5.)Oldest Trick in the Book

In a stand alone 1v1 fight I would probably go with Fury, however....in a team comp I think Star Lord is stronger due to Everyone with Me. The fact that this accelarates Sleight of Hand into 8 and other skills 2 less is scary good as in current PvE I was able to get I got a Plan/Lightning Strike (not good to use with this skill btw), and Hailstrom out much sooner, and firing off lethal damage quicker is huge.

To me Starlord would be far better for beginning players over Fury, buecause of how he can vastly improve your 3*'s to higher power levels. The synergy with Captain America and Starlord is scary, and...Starlord plays stronger in PvE then Fury IMO which with Thorverine alive is not a bad spot to be good in.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

To me Starlord would be far better for beginning players over Fury

I'd much rather have a 3*(namely Hood) than Starlord. Hood is also more accessible(barely) than Starlord.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

To me Starlord would be far better for beginning players over Fury, buecause of how he can vastly improve your 3*'s to higher power levels. The synergy with Captain America and Starlord is scary, and...Starlord plays stronger in PvE then Fury IMO which with Thorverine alive is not a bad spot to be good in.

Here's the question: Assuming unlimited ISO/HP (Sorry Phantron ) and a fully covered Star Lord, would you go XF/Thor/Star Lord or XF/Thor/Hood in PvE? If the answer is XF/Thor/Hood then Star Lord needs work.

Star Lord Pros: Purple can overwrite tiles. Has a purple for those times you SS Moonstone. Does better damage than Hood. Red might save your bacon once or twice. Accelerates your best colors (Green, Blue, Red)
Star Lord Cons: Doesn't accelerate black. Doesn't really accelerate much (IMO) unless you luck into some yellow, or save all your AP to finish the match right after using Yellow

Hood Pros: Accelerates all colors passively. Does decent yellow damage for those times you SS Maggia Goons.
Hood Cons: No purple on the team. Accelerates colors you are not matching (typically) so you get lots of purple and yellow AP. Low HP. Tanks Yellow/Blue with his low HP.

Given that I'm not convinced Star Lord's yellow is all that amazing, I would go with Hood. Star Lord's main advantage here is his 10,000 HP. Secondary advantage is Purple damage.

Phaserhawk

Lerysh wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

To me Starlord would be far better for beginning players over Fury, buecause of how he can vastly improve your 3*'s to higher power levels. The synergy with Captain America and Starlord is scary, and...Starlord plays stronger in PvE then Fury IMO which with Thorverine alive is not a bad spot to be good in.

Here's the question: Assuming unlimited ISO/HP (Sorry Phantron ) and a fully covered Star Lord, would you go XF/Thor/Star Lord or XF/Thor/Hood in PvE? If the answer is XF/Thor/Hood then Star Lord needs work.

Star Lord Pros: Purple can overwrite tiles. Has a purple for those times you SS Moonstone. Does better damage than Hood. Red might save your bacon once or twice. Accelerates your best colors (Green, Blue, Red)
Star Lord Cons: Doesn't accelerate black. Doesn't really accelerate much (IMO) unless you luck into some yellow, or save all your AP to finish the match right after using Yellow

Hood Pros: Accelerates all colors passively. Does decent yellow damage for those times you SS Maggia Goons.
Hood Cons: No purple on the team. Accelerates colors you are not matching (typically) so you get lots of purple and yellow AP. Low HP. Tanks Yellow/Blue with his low HP.

Given that I'm not convinced Star Lord's yellow is all that amazing, I would go with Hood. Star Lord's main advantage here is his 10,000 HP. Secondary advantage is Purple damage.

What's interesting is that if you can get his yellow out you make Dormammu half as effective, yes they get the AP, but you need less to have your skills go off. I guarentee though you will win more games with XF/4hor/SL than you would XF/4hor/Hood.

I think what is being lost is what Star Lord does but isn't listed in his skill set and that's he helps with bad boards more so than Hood. What's a bad board? Well it's usually 1 of 2 things, there isn't a lot of the colors you need on the board, or the colors you need are unmatchable. Hood won't help you if the colors you need aren't on the board, and if they are but not matchable, the AI more than likely doesn't have very many to steal. Star Lord can, if you can get 7 yellow, smooths out the problems and only tanks purple. How many times do you Smite then get a 3 match 9 red but need 1 more, Star Lord fixes that issue, because I usually have tons of yellow.

For anyone that plays Magic the Gathering, there were a set of articats in Tempest that were Medallions. The cost 2 colorless mana and depending on Saphire, Emerald, Ruby etc. it reduce the specific colors' costs by 1. They were so powerful in limited that they had to restrict them to 1 a piece because of how strong they were. Why, because it required you to have less resources thus more spells and higher winning.

Star Lord's yellow reminds me of this very much so, sure it's costs you 7 yellow, but it saves you 2 AP across the board. Sure this skill could blow up the next turn, but someone could have destroyed that arfifact in Magic. Given it's the AI but how many of us would purposefully match yellow to destroy that tile when going up against Star Lord? Why? Because we don't want 4 cost Headbutts, or 6AP X-Force's hitting us in the face. This skill turns every single AI cascade into +2 AP on everything but black and I do not like that. Sure a perfect scenario Hood will be stronger as he will slowly shutdown the team while you match green/black/blue/red and then obliterate the team but to think Star Lord's yellow has no value, yeah just dead wrong on that