Best Characters for Two Colour Combinations (Updated 06/16)
Pylgrim
Posts: 2,332 Chairperson of the Boards
(UPDATE June/16) I think at this point I'll just admit that these updates will come every 6 months or so! Anyway, finally, I have fully entered the 4* tier so my writeups on 4*s will be more hands-on. Also, I'm finally adding 5*s, in addition to all those new 4*s. Additionally, I'll be replacing the characters' ranking with the sum of scores of each ability as voted by players here (remember, lower is better). Finally, several old entries that were the result of poor understanding of the abilities and the meta or that have been made obsolete have been rewritten. Content that is new for this update will be in this classy green colour. NEW in this update: All 5*s, Drax, Ghost Rider, Howard, Kate Bishop, Miles Morales, Moon Knight, Nova, Quake, Spider-Gwen, 4* Hulk and Punisher, Venom, War Machine, and Winter Soldier.
I thought I'd do this for myself as I'm always wondering which character makes for a best "third" when I have two characters I want to play with and I quickly want a rainbow team. I'm putting it here so maybe someone else will find it useful. No 1*s included.
3* Cyclops (7+4=11) While his black is much more powerful than his yellow and red, this combination is still quite good, allowing you to spam his red shamelessly. However, as a hole-filler I have trouble picturing using any other black ability than his, at least in 3* land.
4* Cylops (9+3=12) While it's arguable that you only want 3 covers in his Yellow as you want 5 covers in his other two colours, Yellow and Red are an impressive one-two punch that in the right conditions can very quickly dish enormous damage for comparatively little. I hesitate, but this may be the current best character to fill this combination of colours.
5* Wolverine (1+12=13) Let's admit it, OML is so strong that you'd likely consider bringing him in even in this combination with two passives that can't ever become active as you are using another black power. Still, the fact that you are giving up two actives in your team may give you pause to consider.
3* Luke Cage (2+11=13) Yellow and red are arguably his best powers and though red is passive, it is so useful that may very well warrant missing on a red active. His yellow is straight out devastating.
3* Iron Man (1+16=17) While his Yellow at only two covers can be really strong, if he's filling this hole, then you'd have to spend that AP in his relatively mediocre red ability (and only until he un-stuns). Useful to recharge Blue, I guess, but thing is that good blue abilities don't even cost that much, anyway, as to include this big metallic oaf and gather 8 yellow just for that.Scratch that! IM40 was greatly improved, especially his yellow, which is now widely believed to be the best ability in the game. Red is still costly and has a somewhat annoying drawback, but it is now one of the hardest hitting powers in 3* land.
5* Iron Man (6+12=18) At max level his red can be crazy powerful with the caveat that you need the right team. Similarly, his yellow is the highest damage-dealing yellow in the game (as it could be expected, but the damage is impressive even for a 5*) additionally doubling as protection against giant nukes.
4* Thor (21+5=26) Any of her colour combinations including her yellow is weak, except in specific scenarios involving enemies with lots of special tiles. Even so, since you want to keep her yellow at 3 covers, is not going to be all that great. Similarly, her red without the charge tiles of her blue is not going to be very impressive.
3* Magneto (21+8=29) Yellow is decent but unexciting. Red is very good, but it's hard to think of a blue ability you'd rather use other than his, so he'll hardly ever be used just to fill in for red and yellow.
5* Captain America (18+20=38) Good ol' Cap lost the Civil War, at least in MPQ. His answer to 5* Tony's absurd yellow power is a rather mediocre, easily disruptible power, while his red is decent but also completely overshadowed by Tony's especially in the quality of bonuses received by each for bringing the correct teammates. Obviously, if for some reason you got a decently covered one and don't have Tony, he'll overshadow any other character in this combination.
3* Captain America (36+2=38) Arguably one of the best red abilities in 3* land, but his yellow is abysmal. Much better used to fill a red and blue hole.
4* Nova (13+26=39) A cheap, decently powerful damage ability in yellow is a rarity and this one has an upside on top of it. The fact that it enables his cheap and already decent red ability to become a power that can constantly keep an opponent out of the game while taking big chunks out of their life is much more than a cheery on top.
3* Thor (3+37=40) If you are using him to fill a red and yellow "hole" that means that you have another great green ability that you'd prefer to use. His yellow is strong and greatly helps get green AP, but his red is way into the weak side.
3* Colossus (20+21=41) A character I personally consider underrated, is a great hole-filler for these colours. Tanking those two colours he can soak up lots of damage thanks to his yellow and his red can be game-ending, at least in 3* land.
2* Ares (14+30=44) It's no secret that other than his 2*-capped HP and damage, Ares is almost as good as a decent 3*. His yellow is the best power in his tier and red is decent and as one out only 3 AoE attacks available in 2* land, always deserving of consideration.
4* Sam Wilson (19+26=45) I'm usually down on protective-only abilities, but well over 1k worth of protect tiles on his yellow ability it's nothing to sneeze at... however, taking in account that this is clearly the 3-cover ability of this character, it's never going to go that high. Still, for that level of protection you'd be either paying 19 AP (3* Cap) or skipping a turn (SG), so not at all bad. Taking in account that it helps enable his powerful red (an ability that can potentially match in power, if not in ease of use, Hulkbuster's own legendary red), and that you get his decently useful passive for free, I would consider Falcaptain a decently good option in this pairing.
4* The Thing (21+27=48) It's no secret that the Thing's Yellow is the biggest draw to play the character. However, it is a passive ability and in this combination you get to use only his Red, his worst ability and arguably one of the least efficient Red activated abilities in 4* land, though still decently powerful.
3* Patch (30+20=50) While normally he has lots of potential, his red will not be very good if he's not tanking many colours, and yellow, while great at keeping him alive is a passive that has no impact on the board.
2* Wolverine (14+38=52) Passive healing abilities are always great though his is perhaps the least good in the game, so not sure it is worth missing on having a yellow active. Red has top-notch damage output for its tier, though, so it's not an entirely dismissible choice for 2* players.
Spider-Gwen (38+16=54) While healing yellow passives are usually great, healing active abilities are usually terrible and this one may take the cake of awfulness. On the other hand, in the right conditions, her red has the highest AP-damage ratio in the game! Still not good enough to compensate that abysmal yellow.
Miles Morales (25+39=64)Miles red is cheap and decently powerful while providing a bit of utility with the stun, but it's nothing really worth writing home about. Yellow, on the other hand is perhaps the most useless power in the game as it has almost no effect whatsoever, other than setting up the passive side of the ability and some added power to his purple (or to a few other character's powers), which you wouldn't be using in this combination. Walk away.
2* Captain Marvel (29+40=64) Her red is terribly weak, though offers a rather premium service removing protect tiles, which is relevant against one of the most annoying opponents in the tier, Bullseye. Yellow is a decent board-shaker and TU-AP producer which gives her some use in battles where you are relying in a powerful team-up for a quick or more certain win).
4* Star-Lord (29+40=69) He's decent as a build-around me character in these colours, but the AI horribly sucks at playing him. Fun and theoretically powerful in the right team but not reliable enough, especially as a random hole-filler when his Yellow, more often than not will be useless unless it's at 5 covers, which I don't recommend... unless you play him for one of those cute combos of super cheap powers and the abilities that trigger off them. If so, break a leg.
3* Captain Marvel (40+20=69) Red is decent to weak, especially if you only put 3 covers in it to maximise her better abilities, and only decent" against opponents that spam protect tiles. Yellow is powerful but passive and if you're using her to fill a hole, chances are that she wont be tanking all her colours, greatly diminishing its usefulness. It bears mentioning that the recent health buff actually made her Yellow better as she now can take many more triggering hits before dying.
3* Sentry (30+40=70) Once a main-liner if there ever was one, now he's actually ok at filling holes. His yellow is a powerful support ability that you can use to power up other characters' abilities and while you'd seldom want to use his red while playing, it is super strong defensively and a deterrent to attackers when buffed. It also may be used as a desperation grab for the win if things go south while attacking. The nerf to 3*s' buffed levels hit an already ailing Sentry particularly hard as now the damage output of his red and yellow abilities is too paltry for the significant added cost you are paying.)
3* Vision (32+39=71) Unless you really, really care about sustainability (i.e. taking as little damage as possible) and dealing with opposing special tiles, you don't need to bring this guy around.
2* Thor, and Captain America. Only worthy of consideration if you are early in the transition and similar enough to their 3* counterparts not to merit further analysis except mentioning that Cap's values are nowhere near to his 3* version in comparable levels.
4* Peggy Carter (unrated) Peggy's red is efficient if unexciting, especially in our power-crept reality. While her yellow is just a passive it may be game-breaking enough to consider bringing her to fill this hole, but this is definitely her "worst combination"
Personal picks: 5*: Iron Man, 4*: Cyclops, Nova, Sam Wilson (in that order), 3*: Cyclops, Iron Man, Colossus 2: Ares. There's plenty of choice in these colours for all tiers and even the middle-class characters in this combination are useful in the right conditions. This has never been a hole hard to fill.
4* Cyclops (9+5=14) His yellow and blue are powerful and useful, but you are missing his best power. If you can get past that (i.e. you're bringing an even more powerful red ability) he's a very good option for this combination of colours.
3* The Hood (4+11=15) Blue may be just passive, but what a passive! His yellow is now a very powerful finisher that also can get rid of dangerous special tiles, so even if you miss a blue active, you may consider him.
5* Iron Man (6+11=17) This includes his two powerful utility abilities but misses his obscene red nuke. What are you collecting all that red for if not for his own red? Only reason to use this character as a hole filler is if for some reason you got several of his yellow and blue covers and none or one of his red.
4* Professor X (2+17=19) It is really a pity not taking advantage of his Purple, but his passives are so good that he's still a good fit if the rest of your team can exploit them reliably, even if you miss having actives in two colours and have to actively avoid matching tiles of those colours to not expose fragile ol' prof to harm. In fact, this is how the popular "winfinite" combo plays him.
4* Nick Fury (16+4=20) There is some division in opinions about whether yellow or purple should be his 3-cover ability. I personally prefer purple, but if you like to have 5 yellow covers, then he's an excellent hole-filler for these two colours.
3* Iron Man (1+27=28) If red is mediocre, blue is almost self-defeating and while having access to his yellow actually gives a faint chance of gathering all the AP you need, the ability is so bad that it's almost a waste of time. His yellow is now the best ability in the game (as voted by players) but his blue, although vastly improved, is still quite bad. Nevertheless, bringing him here means that you are feeding a great red power which means that you don't mind too much having a subpar blue.
4*Quake (13+16=29 In what is a sort of a theme for characters in this yellow-blue, this combination lacks the nuke, including the greatly useful but not very powerful utility power and a passive. Still, her yellow provides a great amount of relief against the most prevalent and powerful abilities in the game. Against certain opponents, it may even be worth sacrificing having an active yellow
4* Ant-Man (10+19=29) While both these abilities are decently useful and powerful, blue is situational at best. Still, it's a better combination than for most characters in this category, especially if you have tasty target for his stealing ability.
3* Magneto (21+8=29) Blue is by far his best ability (and arguably the best blue power in 3* land) and is so powerful that you might as well not care about getting saddled with his ultra-meh yellow power.
4* Thor (21+9=30) This is her worst possible combination, both colours placing down lots of charge tiles (and one of them only conditionally!) but with no way of taking advantage of them.
3* Falcon (15+17=32) filling the blue-yellow hole with falcon may rate between awesome (in the very specific case of having in your team strong special-tile users and also facing a team with a strong special-tile user) and pretty bad (if none of those conditions are met). Even in the best case scenario, you are still renouncing having two active abilities, so you really have to rely on the strength of his teammates. He's actually best when you have all his colours covered (with the possible exception of purple) and he just can sit back and support.
3* Rocket and Groot (13+20=33) A better combination than green and yellow for sure, but still, far from ideal. That's the bad thing about passives: they make characters have only 1 "good" combination. That 1 is potentially awesome as you benefit from free passives without sacrificing abilities, but what if one of the activated abilities is ****?
2* Storm (2+36=38) Not as ideal as green and blue could be, but if you have ways of exploiting her blue, you definitely want her in, regardless (in 2* land and early 3* land, that is).
5* Captain America (18+24=42) He'd suffer from the same problem as 5* IM in this combination if it wasn't for the fact that misleadingly, his red is not his most efficient damage power. Yellow, although slow and unreliable is and does a better job at setting up blue for another powerful hit afterwards than red does, making this his best combination.
4* Sam Wilson (19+23=42) Like 4* Cyclops in this combination of colours, Falcap is missing his powerful nuke. Sadly, unlike those two, (and like Mr. Fantastic) his Yellow is defensive and his Blue is a passive that won't do particularly much unless you're bringing characters that place the right special tiles. In other words, not great at filling a random hole in your formation.
3* Black Panther (5+37=42) Black Panther is great but there's little point in having him if you're not going to use his black. Even though I dislike purely defensive abilities with an AP cost, Black Panther's actually fairly costed and potentially decent if it keeps going, but not enough for consideration as a hole-filler.
4* Invisible Woman (19+24=43) While this combination doesn't move you much closer to victory, their lower cost and added functionality makes it beastly at slowing down the game and protecting your HP. If you are aiming for a slower game with a big finisher (Whales, anyone?) this may keep you alive in the interim. Better than Yellow+Green now, if still not ideal. The trouble with using IW to fill holes is that she has one power that is good (if not great) always--her yellow--and two other powers that need each other not to be useless (but not great). So you either get her better stand-alone power and nothing or her two powers that combine into one ok effect, while missing the better one.
3* Captain America (36+8=44) Possibly his weakest combinations of colours. Blue is great but not enough to pull the weight of a basically non-existent yellow. Maybe good enough for PVE, though, where his blue does double duty against goons.
Vision (32+14=46) This combination is just stupid. You either want to deal lots of damage or play a defensive, slower game. Either way, you'll be only needing one of these abilities throughout the game, can only have one at the time and you don't even have red to nuke.
3* Beast (27+23=50) His blue is now good and cheap enough to warrant consideration, but his yellow is still one of the worst activated abilities in 3* land, even after the buff. So he's no longer deserving of derisive laughter, but rather a click of the tongue at the wasted potential.
3* Spider-Man (29+31=60) This is Spidey's best take at hole-filling. He gets to use both his activated abilities (one of which is quite, the other horrible) and enjoy the benefits of his purple passive. Stillllllll... nah.
4* Mr. Fantastic (35+30=65) His Blue is one of the most efficient purely defensive abilities, which I'm often down on, but this packs quite a decently powerful effect with a small cost. However, with a Yellow passive that does little to advance you towards the win, this character wouldn't really be adding much value when filling this particular hole.
2* Bag-Man (40+38=78) His most useless combination of colours and that's saying a lot. You might as well start looking in 1* territory to fill this hole.
2* Captain America Even the 3* version fared poorly in these two colours. 'nuff said.
4* Peggy Carter (unrated) Her blue deals (potentially) massive amounts of damage, setting a new record for a blue ability in 4* land. her yellow, as mentioned above is so good, that you may definitely consider bringing her in, especially taking in account that the other options in these two colours are not particularly great.
Personal picks: 5*: Captain America, 4*: Cyclops, Nick Fury, Ant-Man (against the right opponents), 3*: Iron Man, 2*: Nope. As you can see, there's a whole bunch of characters in this combination. And yet, it has historically not been a great combination. There's not a single character whose two best powers (and good, powerful ones) are in these colours and the only one that arguably does (Fury) has been around for two years. In fact, if it wasn't for the reworking of 3* IM, there would have not been any addition to this list of personal picks other than a 5* character.
3* Kamala Khan (14+7=21) Kamala is awesome but this is definitely her worst combination, unless you specifically are bringing her in to feed green to another character's ability. The thing is that there are no better green powers than hers in 3* land and all the great green powers in 4* land belong to characters that also have good purple abilities.
4* Professor X (9+17=26) Since he has two passives, any combination that includes his active Purple is good. Good enough to miss on a yellow active ability? I think that's up to you depending on the circumstances. He's still very powerful, especially with the right allies.
5* Green Goblin (17+11=28) While you are missing here his obscenely strong black, and his purple is quite situational, he is still really strong, especially if you get to take advantage of his yellow.
4* Kingpin (7+21=28) This is one of the two possible good combinations for him. If you really like his Yellow and would like to play it fast and soon, this combination will be your favourite. Even if it's not, it is undeniable strong.
4* Ant-Man (10+23=33) These colours include his two active powers which are also his best powers (unless you are maxing his blue to make him a niche but crazy efficient anti-special-tile character,) so this is his best combination and a decent one among the rather poor offerings in this combination.
4* Nick Fury (16+18=34) Yellow is a rather complicated power to judge as you have to do a lot of work before unlocking its "true power". However, when you do, it's quite a game changer. Purple can be quite strong too, but it is very likely that you'll have only 3 covers in one of those 2 colours as 5 blue, his best, is a must. As such, he's kind of both wasted and insufficient at the same time when filling a purple and yellow hole and if you are not using his blue, then whose?
4* Miles Morales (25+26=51) As described previously, his yellow is pretty useless, but at least in this combination you get his purple which actually benefits (slightly) from a previous use of his yellow. Still nowhere near good.
3* Falcon (36+15=51) His yellow is a passive that requires a specific condition in order to be great. Purple is decent but won't particularly help you win the game. Worthy of consideration only if your other characters reliably place numerous attack, protect or strike tiles.
4* Star-Lord (29+31=60) Arguably his worst combination, missing his strong Red while depending on his build-around Yellow and slow Purple. I'd only consider this if I have 5 yellow covers and build a team with cheap abilities around him. But that's not hole-filling.
3* Spider-Man (29+31=60) I am of the belief that Spidey gets a little bit more flak than deserved, but attempting to fill a purple-yellow hole with him would not make you think so. Purple is quite nice at protecting your life totals, but it's a passive that doesn't win games, and his yellow is just disgusting.
3* Squirrel Girl (34+28=62) I despise purely defensive or healing abilities that cost AP and her yellow ends the turn, on top of it, begging for more contempt. Her purple packs a punch but only in the right conditions and some characters do something similar but better (i.e. removing the special tiles). In other words, her worst combination, stay away.
4* Spider-Gwen (38+33=71) By far her worst combination, combines inefficient, mediocre healing with efficient but random stuns. That's not winning you any games.
2* Bag-Man (40+40=80) These two are arguably his two best colours, or maybe I should say least awful. Conceivably useful in PVE but only if you have no other options to fill this hole, and even then, it might be better just to renounce to have a rainbow team and pick someone objectively good.
Personal picks: 5*: Green Goblin, 4*: Kingpin, Ant-Man, 3* and 2*: nope. This is a combination that has always ailed in both numbers and quality, and I'm sad to say that other than the inclusion of a 5*, this hasn't changed in almost a year, since the release of Ant-Man.
3* Thor (5+2=7) Here is where Thor really shines. With someone else taking over the duties for red you can just focus on having him chain yellow into game-ending green. This used to be the most devastating one-two punch in the game but has as of late lost much of its lustre.
3* Kamala Khan (2+7=9) As I stated before, I believe that her green is top notch, but both missing the ability to feed it and giving up on having a Yellow active (as useful as her passive may be) makes me hesitate to recommend her as a hole-filler in these colours.
2* Ares (14+14=28) Unlike the Red and Yellow combination, Ares completely rocks this one. It's too bad that his 2* HP will most likely mean that tanking two colours he'll need a health pack at the end of the game, but in the meantime, he dished out damage like crazy. Great even in the later stages of the 3* transition. Best paired with 3*s with either passive or bad Green and/or Yellow abilities that will tank for him.
3* Patch (9+20=29) It's no secret that his green is excellent but unless your every breath is immediately condensed in gold that you can use to buy health packs, you want to include him in a team that can negate or at least greatly minimise its drawback. That means that you'll usually build your team around him and not the other way around. Besides, as mentioned above, his yellow is an impact-less passive.
3* Rocket and Groot (20+13=33) While his yellow is a passive, it has a big impact on the board and can be gamed to trigger almost at will at the start of a game! Having said that, his green is not particularly strong, specially if you only have 3 covers in it, as many prefer.
4* Quake (19+16=35) Quake's green packs quite a punch (with a tiny bit of added utility) while as mentioned above, her yellow can be a deciding factor against certain opponents, enough to consider missing a yellow active.
4* Venom (11+28=39) This is Venom's best combination. While both his abilities are decently powerful, he doesn't pack that much more punch than the main competitor in this colour, 3* Thor. To make it really worth his inclusion, you have to be facing characters that place down reliably several special tiles.
4* The Thing (26+14=41) His Green is arguably better than his red, and decently powerful among the rather few Green abilities in 4* land. His Yellow is still great but still passive. In other words, better than his Yellow-Red but still not his better combination and still not good enough to dethrone 3* Thor, at least offensively. I'd happily switch to the Thing when I need to float.
3* Storm (26+17=43) Her abilities in these colours are both board-shakers so you can conceivably pick her in games that for one reason or other, you want the board shaken a lot or to capitalise on the AP acquisition with charge tiles. On the other hand, both powers suck damage-wise, so you really need to make sure that your other two characters can bring in the hurt.
2* Storm (10+36=46) cStorm is a quite powerful 2* but only if you can reliably fire her blue quickly to compensate her extremely low health. Having her tanking two colours and not even using her blue is unthinkable.
4* X-Force (14+34=48) Once the undisputed king, X-Force was the best Green ability in the game hands-down; now it may very well be one of the worst, especially if you made the right move to have 5 Yellow covers instead of 5 Green. A pretty horrible filler for this combination.
3* Beast (27+26=53) Interestingly, he's exactly the same as IW: he's been greatly improved but this particular colour combination is still so bad that you'd hardly notice it. Green is no decent but for that it needs the activating blue.
4* Invisible Woman (19+35=54) Even after a significant improvement, IW is still bottom rank among 4*s and this is not a great combination, as her Green is mostly useless without the locked tiles from Blue.
2* Wolverine (21+38=59) As stated above, his yellow is not great and while his green is decently serviceable in its tier, there's no point going there with Thor and Ares around.
3* Squirrel Girl (34+29=63) Again, I cannot get past her yellow. Her Green is decent but I would hesitate using her Yellow even having the AP. It is that bad.
3* Sentry (30+40=70) Opposite to Thor, he's much poorer at filling in Yellow and Green than Yellow and Red. Green, once a force to be reckoned, has been nerfed into irrelevance, and while having access to Sacrifice to make it potentially game-ending, it's now too slow and unreliable to even be attempted. But hey, from time to time you'll get very very lucky and get an easy win out of it!
2* Thor A much weaker version of his 3* counterpart but he fills the same role and has a relatively similar level of power in an early transition.
Personal picks: 4*: Venom, The Thing, 3*: Thor, 2*: Ares, Thor. When I first started making this thread year and a half ago, things were very different. There was only a handful of 4*s, 3*s were still being released and 3* Thor was universally acclaimed as the second best character in the game (after a very broken post-buff/pre-nerf X-Force). I noticed then that since his release a year before, Thor was the undisputed champion of the yellow-green combination and I predicted that it would likely never be topped. Well, year and a half later, we have champions, dozens of 4*s, 5*s and a lot of character reworks... and my prediction still holds true, even accounting for the fact that the heavy-handed nerf to boosted 3*s has stolen much of Thor's thunder (pun intended). There's a couple 4*s now that are technically better when you factor HP and AP-to-damage ratio in ideal circumstances. But in practice, you'll still play a 270 3* Thor over any similarly levelled 4* in those colours. That's not really a testament to the power of his abilities, but rather a depressing outlook on the development of this colour combination through MPQ's history that keeps a 2.5 year old character as the best choice.
5* Old Man Logan (2+4=6) In all honesty, is hard to think of 5*s as "hole fillers". If you have them and they are decently covered, they will be the cornerstone of your team, not someone you call after the fact. OML is the one where this is most evident. That said, either of the combinations that include his black makes him a consideration even at low number of covers, thanks to his insane power level and the ability to transform. Yellow-black also happens to be the very best of them both.
3* Black Panther (5+2=7) This right here is value town. Both of his abilities in these colours are powerful and aggressively costed. There's not much else to say really, this is the kind of stuff you look for when trying to fill a two-colour hole.
3* Cyclops (7+1=8) At first blush this may seem like a poor combination as you don't get the red ability which you accelerate into, but if you have a red user with a better red ability you can feed it, while also indirectly powering up Cyclops's brutal black which cares for red on the board for full effect. This may actually be his best combination.
3* Luke Cage (2+7=9) This is his best possible combination while filling holes. Two good to great (depending on the amount of covers) powerful actives and you still get to enjoy his great red passive. Having the only red passive ability in the game means he comes in handy to tank red for feeble characters with good red actives as long as red is not their strongest colour.
4* X-Force (14=3=17) This is now X-Force's best combination. There's really little point to try to keep using his green. On the other hand, yellow now either heals almost full life from 1 HP or deals close to 4k damage plus boardshake (this sounds almost like his old green!) Black may have lost 2/3s of it utility but it is now one of the greatest pure-damage abilities that also has boardshake and colour-denial incorporated. This combination is not just passable, it is superb if, understandably, not as broken as his old green+black.
4* King Pin (7+12=19) Arguably, this is also his best combination. You get his massive (if slow) army moving out, plus his cheap black dealing over 4k damage from sacrificing some random minion.
5* Green Goblin (17+8=25) Perhaps not his best combination, but still quite powerful, you get one of the best raw damage powers in the game in his black and a really good utility power in his yellow.
4* Nova (13+17=30) Nova is one of those rare characters where it's hard to go wrong as all his three abilities are potentially powerful and useful abilities. Although I'm personally partial the combinations that include his red that can keep enemies airborne, this is still a superb choice, especially if you have 5 covers in these abilities.
3* The Hood (11+27=38) Another character with two actives in these colours plus a great passive. Although black is on the weak side, it constitutes a nice bonus to the insanely good blue passive and finishing-move yellow. Ideal in 3* land teams with R&G who tanks his yellow and provides a blue active to his passive and a yellow passive to his active for tons of value (and his black helps R&G's Blue!).
3* Storm (26+13=39) Black is her best ability but yellow is often subpar and hardly ever brilliant. This may be a more damage-focused than her Green-Black combination, but the utility provided by her green greatly outweighs the rather paltry damage of her yellow, though perhaps is worth considering when buffed.
3* Colossus (20+25=45) Both powers are decently useful (if somewhat overcosted) but having to renounce to his by far best power in red, and with much better alternatives in these colours, this is not Colossus time to shine, as much as he may polish himself.
2* Captain Marvel (24+23=47) Black is potentially powerful, especially with strike tiles producers, as AoE powers are rare in 2* land. Similarly, her yellow can help you fire a strong Team Up ability plus it has the chance of generating cascades, though you rarely want the first half of the effect especially more than once per game. It's arguable whether the black-red combination is more powerful, but it's not like neither are stellar; only serviceable whilst in middle of transition.
3* Captain Marvel (20+29=49) Not particularly great as you can't do anything with yellow since it's passive. Black is decent but you want to somehow have her tanking several colours if you want her yellow to be useful at all.
4* Venom (11+40=50) Venom's black is the most disliked passive ability in the game as it's useful only circumstantially and self-harmful most of the times that it is not being useful. His yellow is decent but not enough reason to skip on having a good black active just to have that passive.
4* Mr. Fantastic (35+38=73) Better than his yellow/blue combination as his black helps you somewhat win a game, but still it's not good enough to compensate that with a passive yellow you are missing on bringing an ability which is silly, when you are filling this colour combination as his black encourages you to do Yellow matches, gathering Yellow AP for nothing. Then you remember that there are so many superior alternatives in this colours and wonder why did you ever waste time considering this.
Personal Picks: 5*: OML, 4*: X-Force, Nova, Kingpin, 3*: Cyclops, Black Panther, Luke Cage, 2*: Ms. Marvel. This is a combination extremely rich, which is easy to notice by focusing on the powers' scores compared to other combinations. There's no shortage of great characters with great abilities with whom fill this hole which is rather fortunate as it very frequently formed from teams with a red/blue character plus a green/purple one, both also very common combinations. With so many good characters in this combination, it is very likely that one or more will be buffed at any given time, making the choice more obvious.
4* Cyclops (3+5=8) Blue, is like his Yellow, an useful support ability that helps you fire his devastating Red. Unlike Yellow, it doesn't encourage you to gather TU AP, but the additional damage, cascade possibilities and chance to remove special tiles more than make up for that.
3* Captain America (2+8=10) His best, most useful combination, once completely over-shadowed by an overpowered 4* Thor, now it has recovered it's place under the spotlight. Literally capable of winning a game on its own, if slowly and with a bit of luck.
3* Magneto (8+3=11) The best possible combination of a very powerful character in his tier. There's really little else to say here.
4* Thor (5+9=14) Her best, more synergistic combination, though it may leave a bitter taste in the mouths of those who knew these powers when they were unspeakably stronger. Still quite strong, though.
4* Iron Man Hulkbuster (1+21=22) Hulkbuster gets his ridiculously strong red here, but also his unremarkable, yet serviceable blue. If you have him well covered and levelled up you may want to bring him in for his red alone, while feeling tempted all the time to use his black instead of whatever other black ability your team has.
5* Iron Man (12+11=23) While yellow and red are his best damaging abilities, I actually like this combination better, as his blue is a fun ability that supercharges his insane red power.
3* Daredevil (11+12=23) On paper, his best combination. However, his red, as powerful as it is for its cost is too luck dependant. Sometimes you get lucky and get the best AP-to-damage nuke in 3* land right away. (Most?) other times the tile goes to a corner and does literally nothing for the rest of the game. There are few other things more depressing and infuriating in the game that spending AP in a power and getting 0 effect out of it. Blue, as discussed previously is quite good, so I guess this combination ranges from ok to great? Problem is that other options in this combination are so overwhelmingly more reliable that I don't know why I am still typing in his entry.
3* Vision (19+14=33) Unarguably his best combination, Blue makes him pack a real punch when maxed while red's "heavy" version is quite decent. Unfortunately in a meta with so many undeniable better characters in these colours, poor Vision is not getting anywhere even when doing his very best.
4* War Machine (21+15=36) Arguably his best or at least more reliable combination, it includes his devastating (and useful) blue and his great-if-you-get-lucky red. Unfortunately the competition in this combination is savage so he makes no kinds of cuts at all.
4*Winter Soldier (21+19=40) I'll start by saying that WS is kind of underrated in the scores he got, which is understandable as the voting came around the time of his release. He's a character with three solid powers and in this combination he has two great damaging abilities. Blue is specially devious in the way that there's no downside to the effect being CD-based. Perhaps not the best colour in this combination but definitely above many others up there.
3* Iron Man (16+27=43) Two super expensive, super mediocre abilities without the enabler that allows you to get all that AP? No, thanks. These powers have been significantly improved but they are still expensive enough that is unthinkable to use them while not relying in his yellow.
5* Captain America (20+24=44) His red is still rather unimpressive for the tier, but his blue can be the highest damage-dealing ability/team healing in blue, though it needs some setup.
5* Silver Surfer (30+15=45) His blue is the best self-healing ability in the game, but it is super un-exciting. Similarly bland (and rather weak for its tier) is his red power.
3* She-Hulk (26+32=48) This is potentially stronger (in damage) than her Green and Red combination against enemies that place special tiles, quickly overturning the tables, though in practice this is badly hindered by its randomness. And against enemies that place no special tiles the ability is literally useless.
4* Sam Wilson (26+23=49) In this combination you get his Red but without the enabling Yellow, and only have a passive Blue to show for it. Nowhere near any of the best characters for this combination of colours.
2* Magneto (16+33=49) No purple, no service. His blue is laughably weak compared to his red, even though they are very similar powers when maxed.
2* Captain America (36+29=65) The only way to ever play this character; as mediocre as he is (nowhere near in comparative power to his identical 3* counterpart), he's actually the best filler for this two-colour hole all the way through transition to 3* tier, until you get one of the top three in this list levelled up high enough. On the other hand, it's bad and slow enough that I'd rather play 2* Storm if I needed stuns or almost any other character if I needed a strong damage-dealing ability.
2* Hawkeye (40+34=74) His best possible combination, as he gets to use his two active abilities and enjoy his powerful passive... except that both of his actives are rather sucky so that's not saying much, really. He's great only on teams where he's tanked in all colours and that make 5 matches easy to come by.
3* Ragnarok (40+39=79) Theoretically you chain red into blue... Exciting! But you only get...some (untrue) health and a few scattered charge tiles out of it that the enemy is as likely to exploit as you? Yeah, you are not "chaining" that into anything else and the biggest benefit you got from this chain came from the red ability. Yuck. Annoying as hell defensively, though.
3* Psylocke (40+40=80) Her red is ok-ish, but her blue is just disgustingly bad. She doesn't have a snowflake's chance in hell in this category of powerhouses.
4* Peggy Carter (unrated) Surprise, surprise! Another character with their best combination in these colours! Once your heart has calmed down from this terrible shock, let's just say that Cyclops got a bit of serious competition in the 4* tier.
Personal picks: 5*: Iron Man, 4*: Cyclops, Peggy Carter, Thor, 3*: Magneto, Captain America, 2*: Nope. This is one of the best and richest combinations in the game (look at those scores!)... past 2* land, that is. There's lots of choice and even the middle-ground characters for each tier in it are perfectly playable if you are missing the top ones.
4* Deadpool (5+8=13) His red packs a lot of punch and provides a very decent amount of /true/ healing. This is the combination that includes his other active power, cheap and strong but sort of unreliable Purple, while enjoying his annoying passive, so this is his best combination and a really powerful one if your other characters have powers that help take advantage of his purple.
5* Phoenix (10+14=24) Phoenix can be overwhelmingly powerful and this is her best combination, including an excellent red battery/utility power with an excellent damage/utility power, while enjoying of her unique and annoying green passive.
3* Deadpool (26+1=27) This is best possible position for the Merc with a Mouth. A decent red, a literally game-ending purple and an ok (if some times counter-productive) black passive make him the hero to go in 3* land when you have a red and purple hole (which in my experience happens a lot in teams with The Hood, who incidentally benefits from being quickly one-shot in defence thanks to DP's black.)
2* Magneto (16+12=28) 2* Mags is rather underrated and mostly used for his ability to feed blue with his purple. However, at 5 covers his red is surprisingly powerful and many people seem to not realise that it generates loads of AP. If you have a great blue ability that you want to feed he's actually a great hole-filler for these colours in 2* land and even in 3* land when buffed and championed.
4* Red Hulk (4+33=37) His Red would be weak even in 3* land, but his Purple is arguably the best Green battery in the game. If you bring him to fill this combination, you better are bringing a very strong Green ability, though is hard to think of a stronger green power than his, especially if the cost is giving up a red active power.
3* Daredevil (11+31=41) Blue is arguably the best ability of the new and improved DD. Purple can be great but only conditionally and red is literally luck-based. So, unless you really need him to counter a special-tile spammer enough to not mind the unreliability of red, this is his worst two-colour combination.
4* Winter Soldier (21+23=44) Selective stealing plus lots of damage. Nothing too fancy but tons of utility and raw power.
3* Black Widow (40+5=45) Even if you don't plan on using Sniper Rifle (used to be inconceivable, but now there are better green skills), her purple is awesome at feeding other green abilities or creating 5-matches for the characters who care about that. However, her red is one of the worst red abilities in the game (except maybe in PVE, where is one of the best targeted "board cleaners", second only to Twin Pistols). If you really can make use of her purple, you may not mind having a red power that you can use if you happen to gather enough AP.
4* X-23 (21+26=47) Her Red is a passive, and if you take in account how unreliable (if savagely strong) her Purple is, she's be a rather bad option to fill this combination. Especially since you'd be missing one of the many strong Red powers in 4* land.
4* Spider-Gwen (16+33=49) Finally Gwen's one good combination. Her red is one of the powers with best AP-to-damage ratio which makes ok having an useful but random power to assist like her purple is (and we can pretend she just doesn't have a yellow power).
2* Hawkeye (40+23=63) Hawkeye's new and hot purple trick, Speed Shoot is absurdly powerful for a 2* power with no cost. However, his two active powers are quite mediocre outside of 2* land and as such there is very little incentive to use his fragile little body to fill holes. He's best left as a third wheel for a 2-character rainbow team that can tank all of his colours.
4* Miles Morales (39+26=65) Like Gwen, this is Miles's best combination. The active part of his yellow is so bad that it may as well be counted as a passive ability only and in this combination he gets his two decently powerful active abilities.
4* Elektra (30+37=67)Her Red, like Daredevil's is highly reliant in luck but unlike his, it is very unlikely to deal as much damage (on the other hand, it is more likely to deal /any/ damage at all. Her purple relies on the opponent team's setup and casting it twice to get one cast worth of effect is not the best plan, so this is her worst possible combination as you are missing her best power.
4* Drax (35+35=70) Like 3* Deadpool's, Drax's red is good value but of limited use. His purple can also potentially have good value but the fact that it ends the turn is very unattractive. In sum, decent but there are better options in this combination.
4* Star-Lord (40+31=71) If you are not interested in reducing the cost of your allied abilities, but just want damage, damage and more damage (always a good plan) this is his best possible combination. As such, this is his least "build-around-me" combination that you'd be more comfortable throwing in as a hole-filler without worrying about setups, though still too slow and unreliable for consideration.
2* Moonstone (37+38=75) Her red is actually quite powerful for her tier, but her purple is unreliable as hell. Now that her black ability is actually powerful, the only reason to consider this is if you are solidly in 2* land and for some reason don't have Magneto.
4* Devil Dinosaur (40+39=79) Since red and green are basically the same ability any of them with purple will be similarly useful (that is, not very). Purple is deceptively powerful (or at least annoying), especially when you can spam it and have characters that benefit from it, though it is a shame that most characters will tank purple for him and not the other way around.
Personal picks: 5*: Phoenix, 4*: X-Pool, Winter Soldier, Spider Gwen, 3*: Deadpool, Black Widow, 2*: Magneto. This combination is one of the few that got lots of attention in the past year. It used to be a small collection of terrible to mediocre characters where 3* Deadpool reigned uncontested. Now there's lots of variety and a relative increase of proportional quality as well!
5* Phoenix (10+8=18) In this combination you are missing the enabling purple for a green passive... however if she dies, you'll have the opportunity to cast her devastating post-resurrection green power, so it's all good.
3* Human Torch (8+20=28) While a good number of people advocate for 5 Black covers, I'm a 5 Green cover man myself, making this his best two-colour combination in my eyes. Once upon a time I'd have said that as good as this combination is, I couldn't recommend it due HT's little-girl-like HP. It's no longer the case as he is, along with GSBW and MoStorm the winner of the HP increase lottery.
3* Patch (9+20=29) Unarguably his best combination. You still are going to want some way to mitigate the drawback of Berserker Rage, which usually means that you'd be building the team around him and not the other way around, but in a pinch he can be used to fill this hole and just use his powers as finishers or combined to make other powers into finishers.
4* The Thing (21+14=35) His better possible combination. As mentioned above, his active powers are on the mediocre side, but when you can bring both of them and free Yellow for another character's active while enjoying of his great passive, he is a really good option.
2* Wolverine (14+21=35) His best possible combination, you get two interactive and decently powerful abilities plus a weak but sometimes useful passive.
4* X-23 (26+11=37) Her Green is not particularly strong in 4* land, being barely a notch more powerful and efficient than 3* Human Torch's Red. Coupled with a passive Red, this is not the combination where the new Wolverine is going to shine.
3* She-Hulk (26+11=37) While considerably improved, She-Hulk is still bottom tier, even in this, her best combination of colours. Red is a mediocre AoE that at least is not to expensive, but her green is just too unreliable. Sometimes it will win you games (or save you from losses, rather) and sometimes it will do literally nothing of value.
4* Red Hulk (33+5=38) In this combination, you still get his depressingly bad Red passive, but gain his monstrously strong Green... by missing the Green battery that his Purple is and that makes it possible. The only reason I ever see to use him in this combination is if you are also bringing GSBW or other great green battery and you don't mind your opponent gathering Green.
4* War Machine (21+20=41) WM has great potential, but it's a potential that is realised (maybe) over time and in specific circumstances. This is the combination that lacks his, heh, signature move so it's also his worst.
3* Thor (37+6=43) His comparatively terribad red, plus losing the chance to chain yellow into green make this otherwise staple hero into a really poor choice to fill this hole.
3* Black Widow (40+3=43) No purple, yes red? Game will be over (likely in a loss) before you manually get all the AP for these powers. Only worth of consideration if you have a more efficient green battery.
3* Punisher (12+32=44) As with many others in this combination of colours, this is his best. His abilities are not very flashy but relatively cheap and ultimately efficient, at least for mid-early transitioners (and his red remains an asset for vets battling enemies with 30k+ HP).
2* Ares (30+14=44) Not as good as yellow-green, but green alone can very literally take down maxed 3*s, so a decent option should you have nothing better. (And in all honesty, in 2* land the only real competition is Wolverine.)
4* Carnage (21+26=47) His best possible combination even though is not generally liked. You probably won't care much for his green as it's not like you'll be trying much other than blasting his Red as much as possible to see the whole world burn, but it's good to have options.
3* Hulk (40+20=60) In theory, his best combination, as you get both his actives and still enjoy his passive black. His red is quite bad and green is not particularly the strongest ability either, for the cost, but if he's going to tank colours for your other characters and biting the big bullets (and get helpfully angry while doing so) then he's still an excellent option, even if you'd be collecting red as an afterthought and spending your anger-born green AP in mediocre claps.
3* Gamora (30+31=61) This is not her most powerful combination but my be at least the most reliable, especially if hole-filling. However, it's usually not enough punch to consider bringing her in.
4* Ghost Rider (40+35=75) GR seems designed to be a top notch 3* character. Sadly, in a 4* world, his abilities other than his black are merely decent and that doesn't make this cut. This is precisely the combination that lacks black, too.
4* Devil Dinosaur (40+37=77) In this combination you lose the random utility ability to have two cheap, but very mediocre damage abilities. Probably much less fun to play than his combinations with purple, and more often than not, you'd wish you'd have any of the many better red or green abilities. However, it is somewhat annoying in defence when the opponent will get bitten and mauled repeatedly as they try to lower his freakish HP.
3* Sentry (40+40=80) As stated above, his green is now too unreliable and expensive, compounded by the fact that without his yellow you need to be bringing another strong strike-tile producer to even hope getting anything out it, and that red is only to be used as a desperation attack, and you have a recipe for not a great hole-filler.
3* Ragnarok (40+40=80) Once his only possible colour combination, now it is his best, but sadly, that's not saying much. Red is decently powerful but doesn't chain directly into his Green, and his Green, while able to put the hurt on the enemy is appallingly subpar compared with similarly costed abilities.
2* Thor and Human Torch As always, the poor-man's choice of their 3* counterparts, but as good/decent in 2* land as their big brothers are in 3* land.
Personal picks: 5*: Phoenix, 4*: The Thing, 3*: Patch, Human Torch, 2*: Wolverine. There are lots of characters in this combination and for many of them, this is their "best combination"... however, as you can infer from the scores, most of them are mediocre characters whose "best combinations" rarely make the cut. Other than the addition of Phoenix, the best character in the combination, the Thing has remained king for over a year now and he's not really one of the best 4*s! We need an injection of awesome in this combination, stat.
3* Cyclops (1+4=5) This is deceptively worse than the combinations involving his yellow. Yes, you get both of the damaging abilities and not the utility ability, but thing is that both of the damaging abilities are heavily reliant on the utility one. Without it, the abilities are slow or require some setup. Still, they are some of the best abilities in these colours and having access to both is incredible.
4* Iron Man Hulkbuster (1+6=7) The unarguable king in this combination. His Red has the ability to one-shoot down anyone from full health. His black facilitates that while adding even more hurt with strike tiles.
4* Deadpool (5+13=18) Like 3* Deadpool, you still have access to his red active, but black as passive means that you are missing on bringing some of the really strong black abilities in the game. The big difference is that X-Pool's red is superb, a great power for sustained climbing and an annoying and decently powerful passive. Probably not enough to pick him over others, but worth considering.[/color]
3* Luke Cage (7+11=18) Arguably his worst combination, you lose on his devastating yellow and can't do anything with red. Not even the guaranteed protect tile each turn seems like a pull strong enough to fill this hole with him. It says something that even in this, his worst combination, he's still eminently playable.
3* Human Torch (8+26=34) As said above, some people actually prefer Torch's black over his green. If you put 5 covers on his black, he's a decent choice for this combination, even though it costs you AP of other colours.
Nova (26+17=43) Black is Nova's best (or at least most damaging ability) and while his yellow is slightly more reliable, his red is more fun and potentially stronger, so this is my favourite combination of his.
Ghost Rider (40+5=45) His red and green are similarly mediocre, but any combination that includes his cataclysmic black is worth considering. I believe his red is slightly superior, so this is his best combination.
4* Elektra (30+16=46) Black is definitely her best ability and unconditionally so. Red is ok against people who cannot easily overwrite tiles (there's a good number of them) and Purple is basically good against those who make her red bad. Depending how you covered her and the enemies you'll face, the combinations using her black are equally good, or at least decent.
3* Colossus (21+25=46) A more aggressive combination than his yellow and red, his red will need a bit of work-around without the yellow ability but still very feasible. Black, again, is very dependant on the rest of your team but potentially a really good deal.
Silver Surfer (30+20=50) SS's red deals what would be an impressive amount of damage for 8 AP... if he was a 4*! As a 5*, it is rather bland, and while his black is fun and novel, it is also badly overcosted and impactless (barring tons of luck in random cascades)
3* Gamora (30+20=50) This combination is fairly reliant in how many colours you can make her tank. Her red is good value but rather unimpressive and green has loads of added utility, but if you manage to put her in a team where she tanks 3-4 colours, her black is the ability that actually will be putting the hurt on the opponent. Then again, if you are trying to achieve that, you want to base your team around her, not use her as a hole-filler.
3* Punisher (32+19=51) His black is an ability entirely meant to work with his green. Without green (or other similarly powerful strike tiles) his black is near worthless. Red is still good enough especially against buffed enemies with over 10k HP, to consider bringing him in even if you are not planning to use his green (and really, neither his black).
3* Hulk (40+15=55) Even though you only get here a terrible red and a passive black, if he's tanking several colours, this may be his better combination as you'd be using all the green you collect from his anger in a better green ability. Then again you'd not really be "filling a hole".
Drax (35+24=59) His red is quite decent but of limited use and his black is potentially powerful but requires lots of setup. That's a lot of ifs and buts that keep Drax from being a competitor even with this, his arguably best combination.
3* Captain Marvel (40+20=60) The best possible use you can give to Ms. Danvers. Make sure that she's tanking both red and black and see her yellow giving her multiple uses of those two abilities. Too bad that her Red is really, really unimpressive and black is barely above average.
4* Carnage (21+40=61) Another 4* with a ridiculously powerful red. However, his black is passive. That coupled with the fact that his team-damaging abilities means that you don't want to throw him wily-nily in any team, so he's not a good hole filler.
3* Deadpool (26+37=63) "Not having access to my loyal whales while having me uselessly hitting for black is not the best way to play with the old D-Pool, forum friends. As a devout player of myself, I know this."
2* Ms. Marvel (40+23=63) Her red is as godawful as the 3*'s, but her black may be comparatively slightly better, as it's the second best AoE power in 2* land, where there aren't even that many.
2* Moonstone (37+29=66) These are her two most powerful colours and I feel she's now underrated and carrying much of the bad reputation her old self earned. New and improved Control Shift is the most efficient and direct way of stealing tiles; it can be really crippling against enemies that use few but powerful special tiles. She's perhaps one of the 2*s that benefit the most from being buffed + championed in the weekly rotation, bringing 3* quality powers and numbers to the field plus a strange, massive HP that's actually higher than most 3*s.
3* Psylocke (40+27=67) The only way to play Psylocke. She's not the strongest character around, but her abilities are quite cheap and every use of them makes next use a bit better so she's ok in the first stages of 3* transition.
2* Human Torch He's relatively as powerful in 2* land as his 3* counterpart is in later parts of the transition, but quickly obsoleted as you start the transition into 3* land.
Personal picks: 5*: Silver Surfer (if only for being the only one), 4*: Hulkbuster, Nova, Ghost Rider (strictly in this order), 3*: Cyclops, Human Torch, Colossus, 2*: Moonstone. A /lot/ of mediocre and a few really good pairs in this combination. As it could be expected, Hukbuster reigns supreme and it's hard to imagine it ever losing the crown.
4* Jean Grey (3+5=8) Definitely, not such a strong option if you are not using her Green (and there are not many better Green activated abilities), but her passive is so useful that if you expect the opponent to happen into 5-matches (due tile-colour changing powers), you may as well bring her even if you miss on having a blue active.
3* Scarlet Witch (7+3=10) You still get Purple from her passive to use her nuke and you get to use someone else's, likely much more powerful Green active. If you don't mind missing a Blue active, this combination is no much worse than her Purple/Green. (Note that she gets a misleading high score here due including the score of her passive.)
2* Black Widow (6+6=12) Her best combination, famously strong enough to carry you all the way through the latter stages of the transition, it's only once that you are firmly planted on 3* land that she's too squishy to be relied on unless someone can tank for her. Her ability to "double-dip" on strike tiles with her passive or trivialising goon nodes in PVE is unparalleled and will forever remain useful, though.
4* Iceman (1+17=18) This combination is far from being as devastating as his Purple-Green, but it's an awesome support combination, especially if the opponent is bringing a strong red ability to the field. Only makes sense,
I thought I'd do this for myself as I'm always wondering which character makes for a best "third" when I have two characters I want to play with and I quickly want a rainbow team. I'm putting it here so maybe someone else will find it useful. No 1*s included.
3* Cyclops (7+4=11) While his black is much more powerful than his yellow and red, this combination is still quite good, allowing you to spam his red shamelessly. However, as a hole-filler I have trouble picturing using any other black ability than his, at least in 3* land.
4* Cylops (9+3=12) While it's arguable that you only want 3 covers in his Yellow as you want 5 covers in his other two colours, Yellow and Red are an impressive one-two punch that in the right conditions can very quickly dish enormous damage for comparatively little. I hesitate, but this may be the current best character to fill this combination of colours.
5* Wolverine (1+12=13) Let's admit it, OML is so strong that you'd likely consider bringing him in even in this combination with two passives that can't ever become active as you are using another black power. Still, the fact that you are giving up two actives in your team may give you pause to consider.
3* Luke Cage (2+11=13) Yellow and red are arguably his best powers and though red is passive, it is so useful that may very well warrant missing on a red active. His yellow is straight out devastating.
3* Iron Man (1+16=17) While his Yellow at only two covers can be really strong, if he's filling this hole, then you'd have to spend that AP in his relatively mediocre red ability (and only until he un-stuns). Useful to recharge Blue, I guess, but thing is that good blue abilities don't even cost that much, anyway, as to include this big metallic oaf and gather 8 yellow just for that.Scratch that! IM40 was greatly improved, especially his yellow, which is now widely believed to be the best ability in the game. Red is still costly and has a somewhat annoying drawback, but it is now one of the hardest hitting powers in 3* land.
5* Iron Man (6+12=18) At max level his red can be crazy powerful with the caveat that you need the right team. Similarly, his yellow is the highest damage-dealing yellow in the game (as it could be expected, but the damage is impressive even for a 5*) additionally doubling as protection against giant nukes.
4* Thor (21+5=26) Any of her colour combinations including her yellow is weak, except in specific scenarios involving enemies with lots of special tiles. Even so, since you want to keep her yellow at 3 covers, is not going to be all that great. Similarly, her red without the charge tiles of her blue is not going to be very impressive.
3* Magneto (21+8=29) Yellow is decent but unexciting. Red is very good, but it's hard to think of a blue ability you'd rather use other than his, so he'll hardly ever be used just to fill in for red and yellow.
5* Captain America (18+20=38) Good ol' Cap lost the Civil War, at least in MPQ. His answer to 5* Tony's absurd yellow power is a rather mediocre, easily disruptible power, while his red is decent but also completely overshadowed by Tony's especially in the quality of bonuses received by each for bringing the correct teammates. Obviously, if for some reason you got a decently covered one and don't have Tony, he'll overshadow any other character in this combination.
3* Captain America (36+2=38) Arguably one of the best red abilities in 3* land, but his yellow is abysmal. Much better used to fill a red and blue hole.
4* Nova (13+26=39) A cheap, decently powerful damage ability in yellow is a rarity and this one has an upside on top of it. The fact that it enables his cheap and already decent red ability to become a power that can constantly keep an opponent out of the game while taking big chunks out of their life is much more than a cheery on top.
3* Thor (3+37=40) If you are using him to fill a red and yellow "hole" that means that you have another great green ability that you'd prefer to use. His yellow is strong and greatly helps get green AP, but his red is way into the weak side.
3* Colossus (20+21=41) A character I personally consider underrated, is a great hole-filler for these colours. Tanking those two colours he can soak up lots of damage thanks to his yellow and his red can be game-ending, at least in 3* land.
2* Ares (14+30=44) It's no secret that other than his 2*-capped HP and damage, Ares is almost as good as a decent 3*. His yellow is the best power in his tier and red is decent and as one out only 3 AoE attacks available in 2* land, always deserving of consideration.
4* Sam Wilson (19+26=45) I'm usually down on protective-only abilities, but well over 1k worth of protect tiles on his yellow ability it's nothing to sneeze at... however, taking in account that this is clearly the 3-cover ability of this character, it's never going to go that high. Still, for that level of protection you'd be either paying 19 AP (3* Cap) or skipping a turn (SG), so not at all bad. Taking in account that it helps enable his powerful red (an ability that can potentially match in power, if not in ease of use, Hulkbuster's own legendary red), and that you get his decently useful passive for free, I would consider Falcaptain a decently good option in this pairing.
4* The Thing (21+27=48) It's no secret that the Thing's Yellow is the biggest draw to play the character. However, it is a passive ability and in this combination you get to use only his Red, his worst ability and arguably one of the least efficient Red activated abilities in 4* land, though still decently powerful.
3* Patch (30+20=50) While normally he has lots of potential, his red will not be very good if he's not tanking many colours, and yellow, while great at keeping him alive is a passive that has no impact on the board.
2* Wolverine (14+38=52) Passive healing abilities are always great though his is perhaps the least good in the game, so not sure it is worth missing on having a yellow active. Red has top-notch damage output for its tier, though, so it's not an entirely dismissible choice for 2* players.
Spider-Gwen (38+16=54) While healing yellow passives are usually great, healing active abilities are usually terrible and this one may take the cake of awfulness. On the other hand, in the right conditions, her red has the highest AP-damage ratio in the game! Still not good enough to compensate that abysmal yellow.
Miles Morales (25+39=64)Miles red is cheap and decently powerful while providing a bit of utility with the stun, but it's nothing really worth writing home about. Yellow, on the other hand is perhaps the most useless power in the game as it has almost no effect whatsoever, other than setting up the passive side of the ability and some added power to his purple (or to a few other character's powers), which you wouldn't be using in this combination. Walk away.
2* Captain Marvel (29+40=64) Her red is terribly weak, though offers a rather premium service removing protect tiles, which is relevant against one of the most annoying opponents in the tier, Bullseye. Yellow is a decent board-shaker and TU-AP producer which gives her some use in battles where you are relying in a powerful team-up for a quick or more certain win).
4* Star-Lord (29+40=69) He's decent as a build-around me character in these colours, but the AI horribly sucks at playing him. Fun and theoretically powerful in the right team but not reliable enough, especially as a random hole-filler when his Yellow, more often than not will be useless unless it's at 5 covers, which I don't recommend... unless you play him for one of those cute combos of super cheap powers and the abilities that trigger off them. If so, break a leg.
3* Captain Marvel (40+20=69) Red is decent to weak, especially if you only put 3 covers in it to maximise her better abilities, and only decent" against opponents that spam protect tiles. Yellow is powerful but passive and if you're using her to fill a hole, chances are that she wont be tanking all her colours, greatly diminishing its usefulness. It bears mentioning that the recent health buff actually made her Yellow better as she now can take many more triggering hits before dying.
3* Sentry (30+40=70) Once a main-liner if there ever was one, now he's actually ok at filling holes. His yellow is a powerful support ability that you can use to power up other characters' abilities and while you'd seldom want to use his red while playing, it is super strong defensively and a deterrent to attackers when buffed. It also may be used as a desperation grab for the win if things go south while attacking. The nerf to 3*s' buffed levels hit an already ailing Sentry particularly hard as now the damage output of his red and yellow abilities is too paltry for the significant added cost you are paying.)
3* Vision (32+39=71) Unless you really, really care about sustainability (i.e. taking as little damage as possible) and dealing with opposing special tiles, you don't need to bring this guy around.
2* Thor, and Captain America. Only worthy of consideration if you are early in the transition and similar enough to their 3* counterparts not to merit further analysis except mentioning that Cap's values are nowhere near to his 3* version in comparable levels.
4* Peggy Carter (unrated) Peggy's red is efficient if unexciting, especially in our power-crept reality. While her yellow is just a passive it may be game-breaking enough to consider bringing her to fill this hole, but this is definitely her "worst combination"
Personal picks: 5*: Iron Man, 4*: Cyclops, Nova, Sam Wilson (in that order), 3*: Cyclops, Iron Man, Colossus 2: Ares. There's plenty of choice in these colours for all tiers and even the middle-class characters in this combination are useful in the right conditions. This has never been a hole hard to fill.
4* Cyclops (9+5=14) His yellow and blue are powerful and useful, but you are missing his best power. If you can get past that (i.e. you're bringing an even more powerful red ability) he's a very good option for this combination of colours.
3* The Hood (4+11=15) Blue may be just passive, but what a passive! His yellow is now a very powerful finisher that also can get rid of dangerous special tiles, so even if you miss a blue active, you may consider him.
5* Iron Man (6+11=17) This includes his two powerful utility abilities but misses his obscene red nuke. What are you collecting all that red for if not for his own red? Only reason to use this character as a hole filler is if for some reason you got several of his yellow and blue covers and none or one of his red.
4* Professor X (2+17=19) It is really a pity not taking advantage of his Purple, but his passives are so good that he's still a good fit if the rest of your team can exploit them reliably, even if you miss having actives in two colours and have to actively avoid matching tiles of those colours to not expose fragile ol' prof to harm. In fact, this is how the popular "winfinite" combo plays him.
4* Nick Fury (16+4=20) There is some division in opinions about whether yellow or purple should be his 3-cover ability. I personally prefer purple, but if you like to have 5 yellow covers, then he's an excellent hole-filler for these two colours.
3* Iron Man (1+27=28) If red is mediocre, blue is almost self-defeating and while having access to his yellow actually gives a faint chance of gathering all the AP you need, the ability is so bad that it's almost a waste of time. His yellow is now the best ability in the game (as voted by players) but his blue, although vastly improved, is still quite bad. Nevertheless, bringing him here means that you are feeding a great red power which means that you don't mind too much having a subpar blue.
4*Quake (13+16=29 In what is a sort of a theme for characters in this yellow-blue, this combination lacks the nuke, including the greatly useful but not very powerful utility power and a passive. Still, her yellow provides a great amount of relief against the most prevalent and powerful abilities in the game. Against certain opponents, it may even be worth sacrificing having an active yellow
4* Ant-Man (10+19=29) While both these abilities are decently useful and powerful, blue is situational at best. Still, it's a better combination than for most characters in this category, especially if you have tasty target for his stealing ability.
3* Magneto (21+8=29) Blue is by far his best ability (and arguably the best blue power in 3* land) and is so powerful that you might as well not care about getting saddled with his ultra-meh yellow power.
4* Thor (21+9=30) This is her worst possible combination, both colours placing down lots of charge tiles (and one of them only conditionally!) but with no way of taking advantage of them.
3* Falcon (15+17=32) filling the blue-yellow hole with falcon may rate between awesome (in the very specific case of having in your team strong special-tile users and also facing a team with a strong special-tile user) and pretty bad (if none of those conditions are met). Even in the best case scenario, you are still renouncing having two active abilities, so you really have to rely on the strength of his teammates. He's actually best when you have all his colours covered (with the possible exception of purple) and he just can sit back and support.
3* Rocket and Groot (13+20=33) A better combination than green and yellow for sure, but still, far from ideal. That's the bad thing about passives: they make characters have only 1 "good" combination. That 1 is potentially awesome as you benefit from free passives without sacrificing abilities, but what if one of the activated abilities is ****?
2* Storm (2+36=38) Not as ideal as green and blue could be, but if you have ways of exploiting her blue, you definitely want her in, regardless (in 2* land and early 3* land, that is).
5* Captain America (18+24=42) He'd suffer from the same problem as 5* IM in this combination if it wasn't for the fact that misleadingly, his red is not his most efficient damage power. Yellow, although slow and unreliable is and does a better job at setting up blue for another powerful hit afterwards than red does, making this his best combination.
4* Sam Wilson (19+23=42) Like 4* Cyclops in this combination of colours, Falcap is missing his powerful nuke. Sadly, unlike those two, (and like Mr. Fantastic) his Yellow is defensive and his Blue is a passive that won't do particularly much unless you're bringing characters that place the right special tiles. In other words, not great at filling a random hole in your formation.
3* Black Panther (5+37=42) Black Panther is great but there's little point in having him if you're not going to use his black. Even though I dislike purely defensive abilities with an AP cost, Black Panther's actually fairly costed and potentially decent if it keeps going, but not enough for consideration as a hole-filler.
4* Invisible Woman (19+24=43) While this combination doesn't move you much closer to victory, their lower cost and added functionality makes it beastly at slowing down the game and protecting your HP. If you are aiming for a slower game with a big finisher (Whales, anyone?) this may keep you alive in the interim. Better than Yellow+Green now, if still not ideal. The trouble with using IW to fill holes is that she has one power that is good (if not great) always--her yellow--and two other powers that need each other not to be useless (but not great). So you either get her better stand-alone power and nothing or her two powers that combine into one ok effect, while missing the better one.
3* Captain America (36+8=44) Possibly his weakest combinations of colours. Blue is great but not enough to pull the weight of a basically non-existent yellow. Maybe good enough for PVE, though, where his blue does double duty against goons.
Vision (32+14=46) This combination is just stupid. You either want to deal lots of damage or play a defensive, slower game. Either way, you'll be only needing one of these abilities throughout the game, can only have one at the time and you don't even have red to nuke.
3* Beast (27+23=50) His blue is now good and cheap enough to warrant consideration, but his yellow is still one of the worst activated abilities in 3* land, even after the buff. So he's no longer deserving of derisive laughter, but rather a click of the tongue at the wasted potential.
3* Spider-Man (29+31=60) This is Spidey's best take at hole-filling. He gets to use both his activated abilities (one of which is quite, the other horrible) and enjoy the benefits of his purple passive. Stillllllll... nah.
4* Mr. Fantastic (35+30=65) His Blue is one of the most efficient purely defensive abilities, which I'm often down on, but this packs quite a decently powerful effect with a small cost. However, with a Yellow passive that does little to advance you towards the win, this character wouldn't really be adding much value when filling this particular hole.
2* Bag-Man (40+38=78) His most useless combination of colours and that's saying a lot. You might as well start looking in 1* territory to fill this hole.
2* Captain America Even the 3* version fared poorly in these two colours. 'nuff said.
4* Peggy Carter (unrated) Her blue deals (potentially) massive amounts of damage, setting a new record for a blue ability in 4* land. her yellow, as mentioned above is so good, that you may definitely consider bringing her in, especially taking in account that the other options in these two colours are not particularly great.
Personal picks: 5*: Captain America, 4*: Cyclops, Nick Fury, Ant-Man (against the right opponents), 3*: Iron Man, 2*: Nope. As you can see, there's a whole bunch of characters in this combination. And yet, it has historically not been a great combination. There's not a single character whose two best powers (and good, powerful ones) are in these colours and the only one that arguably does (Fury) has been around for two years. In fact, if it wasn't for the reworking of 3* IM, there would have not been any addition to this list of personal picks other than a 5* character.
3* Kamala Khan (14+7=21) Kamala is awesome but this is definitely her worst combination, unless you specifically are bringing her in to feed green to another character's ability. The thing is that there are no better green powers than hers in 3* land and all the great green powers in 4* land belong to characters that also have good purple abilities.
4* Professor X (9+17=26) Since he has two passives, any combination that includes his active Purple is good. Good enough to miss on a yellow active ability? I think that's up to you depending on the circumstances. He's still very powerful, especially with the right allies.
5* Green Goblin (17+11=28) While you are missing here his obscenely strong black, and his purple is quite situational, he is still really strong, especially if you get to take advantage of his yellow.
4* Kingpin (7+21=28) This is one of the two possible good combinations for him. If you really like his Yellow and would like to play it fast and soon, this combination will be your favourite. Even if it's not, it is undeniable strong.
4* Ant-Man (10+23=33) These colours include his two active powers which are also his best powers (unless you are maxing his blue to make him a niche but crazy efficient anti-special-tile character,) so this is his best combination and a decent one among the rather poor offerings in this combination.
4* Nick Fury (16+18=34) Yellow is a rather complicated power to judge as you have to do a lot of work before unlocking its "true power". However, when you do, it's quite a game changer. Purple can be quite strong too, but it is very likely that you'll have only 3 covers in one of those 2 colours as 5 blue, his best, is a must. As such, he's kind of both wasted and insufficient at the same time when filling a purple and yellow hole and if you are not using his blue, then whose?
4* Miles Morales (25+26=51) As described previously, his yellow is pretty useless, but at least in this combination you get his purple which actually benefits (slightly) from a previous use of his yellow. Still nowhere near good.
3* Falcon (36+15=51) His yellow is a passive that requires a specific condition in order to be great. Purple is decent but won't particularly help you win the game. Worthy of consideration only if your other characters reliably place numerous attack, protect or strike tiles.
4* Star-Lord (29+31=60) Arguably his worst combination, missing his strong Red while depending on his build-around Yellow and slow Purple. I'd only consider this if I have 5 yellow covers and build a team with cheap abilities around him. But that's not hole-filling.
3* Spider-Man (29+31=60) I am of the belief that Spidey gets a little bit more flak than deserved, but attempting to fill a purple-yellow hole with him would not make you think so. Purple is quite nice at protecting your life totals, but it's a passive that doesn't win games, and his yellow is just disgusting.
3* Squirrel Girl (34+28=62) I despise purely defensive or healing abilities that cost AP and her yellow ends the turn, on top of it, begging for more contempt. Her purple packs a punch but only in the right conditions and some characters do something similar but better (i.e. removing the special tiles). In other words, her worst combination, stay away.
4* Spider-Gwen (38+33=71) By far her worst combination, combines inefficient, mediocre healing with efficient but random stuns. That's not winning you any games.
2* Bag-Man (40+40=80) These two are arguably his two best colours, or maybe I should say least awful. Conceivably useful in PVE but only if you have no other options to fill this hole, and even then, it might be better just to renounce to have a rainbow team and pick someone objectively good.
Personal picks: 5*: Green Goblin, 4*: Kingpin, Ant-Man, 3* and 2*: nope. This is a combination that has always ailed in both numbers and quality, and I'm sad to say that other than the inclusion of a 5*, this hasn't changed in almost a year, since the release of Ant-Man.
3* Thor (5+2=7) Here is where Thor really shines. With someone else taking over the duties for red you can just focus on having him chain yellow into game-ending green. This used to be the most devastating one-two punch in the game but has as of late lost much of its lustre.
3* Kamala Khan (2+7=9) As I stated before, I believe that her green is top notch, but both missing the ability to feed it and giving up on having a Yellow active (as useful as her passive may be) makes me hesitate to recommend her as a hole-filler in these colours.
2* Ares (14+14=28) Unlike the Red and Yellow combination, Ares completely rocks this one. It's too bad that his 2* HP will most likely mean that tanking two colours he'll need a health pack at the end of the game, but in the meantime, he dished out damage like crazy. Great even in the later stages of the 3* transition. Best paired with 3*s with either passive or bad Green and/or Yellow abilities that will tank for him.
3* Patch (9+20=29) It's no secret that his green is excellent but unless your every breath is immediately condensed in gold that you can use to buy health packs, you want to include him in a team that can negate or at least greatly minimise its drawback. That means that you'll usually build your team around him and not the other way around. Besides, as mentioned above, his yellow is an impact-less passive.
3* Rocket and Groot (20+13=33) While his yellow is a passive, it has a big impact on the board and can be gamed to trigger almost at will at the start of a game! Having said that, his green is not particularly strong, specially if you only have 3 covers in it, as many prefer.
4* Quake (19+16=35) Quake's green packs quite a punch (with a tiny bit of added utility) while as mentioned above, her yellow can be a deciding factor against certain opponents, enough to consider missing a yellow active.
4* Venom (11+28=39) This is Venom's best combination. While both his abilities are decently powerful, he doesn't pack that much more punch than the main competitor in this colour, 3* Thor. To make it really worth his inclusion, you have to be facing characters that place down reliably several special tiles.
4* The Thing (26+14=41) His Green is arguably better than his red, and decently powerful among the rather few Green abilities in 4* land. His Yellow is still great but still passive. In other words, better than his Yellow-Red but still not his better combination and still not good enough to dethrone 3* Thor, at least offensively. I'd happily switch to the Thing when I need to float.
3* Storm (26+17=43) Her abilities in these colours are both board-shakers so you can conceivably pick her in games that for one reason or other, you want the board shaken a lot or to capitalise on the AP acquisition with charge tiles. On the other hand, both powers suck damage-wise, so you really need to make sure that your other two characters can bring in the hurt.
2* Storm (10+36=46) cStorm is a quite powerful 2* but only if you can reliably fire her blue quickly to compensate her extremely low health. Having her tanking two colours and not even using her blue is unthinkable.
4* X-Force (14+34=48) Once the undisputed king, X-Force was the best Green ability in the game hands-down; now it may very well be one of the worst, especially if you made the right move to have 5 Yellow covers instead of 5 Green. A pretty horrible filler for this combination.
3* Beast (27+26=53) Interestingly, he's exactly the same as IW: he's been greatly improved but this particular colour combination is still so bad that you'd hardly notice it. Green is no decent but for that it needs the activating blue.
4* Invisible Woman (19+35=54) Even after a significant improvement, IW is still bottom rank among 4*s and this is not a great combination, as her Green is mostly useless without the locked tiles from Blue.
2* Wolverine (21+38=59) As stated above, his yellow is not great and while his green is decently serviceable in its tier, there's no point going there with Thor and Ares around.
3* Squirrel Girl (34+29=63) Again, I cannot get past her yellow. Her Green is decent but I would hesitate using her Yellow even having the AP. It is that bad.
3* Sentry (30+40=70) Opposite to Thor, he's much poorer at filling in Yellow and Green than Yellow and Red. Green, once a force to be reckoned, has been nerfed into irrelevance, and while having access to Sacrifice to make it potentially game-ending, it's now too slow and unreliable to even be attempted. But hey, from time to time you'll get very very lucky and get an easy win out of it!
2* Thor A much weaker version of his 3* counterpart but he fills the same role and has a relatively similar level of power in an early transition.
Personal picks: 4*: Venom, The Thing, 3*: Thor, 2*: Ares, Thor. When I first started making this thread year and a half ago, things were very different. There was only a handful of 4*s, 3*s were still being released and 3* Thor was universally acclaimed as the second best character in the game (after a very broken post-buff/pre-nerf X-Force). I noticed then that since his release a year before, Thor was the undisputed champion of the yellow-green combination and I predicted that it would likely never be topped. Well, year and a half later, we have champions, dozens of 4*s, 5*s and a lot of character reworks... and my prediction still holds true, even accounting for the fact that the heavy-handed nerf to boosted 3*s has stolen much of Thor's thunder (pun intended). There's a couple 4*s now that are technically better when you factor HP and AP-to-damage ratio in ideal circumstances. But in practice, you'll still play a 270 3* Thor over any similarly levelled 4* in those colours. That's not really a testament to the power of his abilities, but rather a depressing outlook on the development of this colour combination through MPQ's history that keeps a 2.5 year old character as the best choice.
5* Old Man Logan (2+4=6) In all honesty, is hard to think of 5*s as "hole fillers". If you have them and they are decently covered, they will be the cornerstone of your team, not someone you call after the fact. OML is the one where this is most evident. That said, either of the combinations that include his black makes him a consideration even at low number of covers, thanks to his insane power level and the ability to transform. Yellow-black also happens to be the very best of them both.
3* Black Panther (5+2=7) This right here is value town. Both of his abilities in these colours are powerful and aggressively costed. There's not much else to say really, this is the kind of stuff you look for when trying to fill a two-colour hole.
3* Cyclops (7+1=8) At first blush this may seem like a poor combination as you don't get the red ability which you accelerate into, but if you have a red user with a better red ability you can feed it, while also indirectly powering up Cyclops's brutal black which cares for red on the board for full effect. This may actually be his best combination.
3* Luke Cage (2+7=9) This is his best possible combination while filling holes. Two good to great (depending on the amount of covers) powerful actives and you still get to enjoy his great red passive. Having the only red passive ability in the game means he comes in handy to tank red for feeble characters with good red actives as long as red is not their strongest colour.
4* X-Force (14=3=17) This is now X-Force's best combination. There's really little point to try to keep using his green. On the other hand, yellow now either heals almost full life from 1 HP or deals close to 4k damage plus boardshake (this sounds almost like his old green!) Black may have lost 2/3s of it utility but it is now one of the greatest pure-damage abilities that also has boardshake and colour-denial incorporated. This combination is not just passable, it is superb if, understandably, not as broken as his old green+black.
4* King Pin (7+12=19) Arguably, this is also his best combination. You get his massive (if slow) army moving out, plus his cheap black dealing over 4k damage from sacrificing some random minion.
5* Green Goblin (17+8=25) Perhaps not his best combination, but still quite powerful, you get one of the best raw damage powers in the game in his black and a really good utility power in his yellow.
4* Nova (13+17=30) Nova is one of those rare characters where it's hard to go wrong as all his three abilities are potentially powerful and useful abilities. Although I'm personally partial the combinations that include his red that can keep enemies airborne, this is still a superb choice, especially if you have 5 covers in these abilities.
3* The Hood (11+27=38) Another character with two actives in these colours plus a great passive. Although black is on the weak side, it constitutes a nice bonus to the insanely good blue passive and finishing-move yellow. Ideal in 3* land teams with R&G who tanks his yellow and provides a blue active to his passive and a yellow passive to his active for tons of value (and his black helps R&G's Blue!).
3* Storm (26+13=39) Black is her best ability but yellow is often subpar and hardly ever brilliant. This may be a more damage-focused than her Green-Black combination, but the utility provided by her green greatly outweighs the rather paltry damage of her yellow, though perhaps is worth considering when buffed.
3* Colossus (20+25=45) Both powers are decently useful (if somewhat overcosted) but having to renounce to his by far best power in red, and with much better alternatives in these colours, this is not Colossus time to shine, as much as he may polish himself.
2* Captain Marvel (24+23=47) Black is potentially powerful, especially with strike tiles producers, as AoE powers are rare in 2* land. Similarly, her yellow can help you fire a strong Team Up ability plus it has the chance of generating cascades, though you rarely want the first half of the effect especially more than once per game. It's arguable whether the black-red combination is more powerful, but it's not like neither are stellar; only serviceable whilst in middle of transition.
3* Captain Marvel (20+29=49) Not particularly great as you can't do anything with yellow since it's passive. Black is decent but you want to somehow have her tanking several colours if you want her yellow to be useful at all.
4* Venom (11+40=50) Venom's black is the most disliked passive ability in the game as it's useful only circumstantially and self-harmful most of the times that it is not being useful. His yellow is decent but not enough reason to skip on having a good black active just to have that passive.
4* Mr. Fantastic (35+38=73) Better than his yellow/blue combination as his black helps you somewhat win a game, but still it's not good enough to compensate that with a passive yellow you are missing on bringing an ability which is silly, when you are filling this colour combination as his black encourages you to do Yellow matches, gathering Yellow AP for nothing. Then you remember that there are so many superior alternatives in this colours and wonder why did you ever waste time considering this.
Personal Picks: 5*: OML, 4*: X-Force, Nova, Kingpin, 3*: Cyclops, Black Panther, Luke Cage, 2*: Ms. Marvel. This is a combination extremely rich, which is easy to notice by focusing on the powers' scores compared to other combinations. There's no shortage of great characters with great abilities with whom fill this hole which is rather fortunate as it very frequently formed from teams with a red/blue character plus a green/purple one, both also very common combinations. With so many good characters in this combination, it is very likely that one or more will be buffed at any given time, making the choice more obvious.
4* Cyclops (3+5=8) Blue, is like his Yellow, an useful support ability that helps you fire his devastating Red. Unlike Yellow, it doesn't encourage you to gather TU AP, but the additional damage, cascade possibilities and chance to remove special tiles more than make up for that.
3* Captain America (2+8=10) His best, most useful combination, once completely over-shadowed by an overpowered 4* Thor, now it has recovered it's place under the spotlight. Literally capable of winning a game on its own, if slowly and with a bit of luck.
3* Magneto (8+3=11) The best possible combination of a very powerful character in his tier. There's really little else to say here.
4* Thor (5+9=14) Her best, more synergistic combination, though it may leave a bitter taste in the mouths of those who knew these powers when they were unspeakably stronger. Still quite strong, though.
4* Iron Man Hulkbuster (1+21=22) Hulkbuster gets his ridiculously strong red here, but also his unremarkable, yet serviceable blue. If you have him well covered and levelled up you may want to bring him in for his red alone, while feeling tempted all the time to use his black instead of whatever other black ability your team has.
5* Iron Man (12+11=23) While yellow and red are his best damaging abilities, I actually like this combination better, as his blue is a fun ability that supercharges his insane red power.
3* Daredevil (11+12=23) On paper, his best combination. However, his red, as powerful as it is for its cost is too luck dependant. Sometimes you get lucky and get the best AP-to-damage nuke in 3* land right away. (Most?) other times the tile goes to a corner and does literally nothing for the rest of the game. There are few other things more depressing and infuriating in the game that spending AP in a power and getting 0 effect out of it. Blue, as discussed previously is quite good, so I guess this combination ranges from ok to great? Problem is that other options in this combination are so overwhelmingly more reliable that I don't know why I am still typing in his entry.
3* Vision (19+14=33) Unarguably his best combination, Blue makes him pack a real punch when maxed while red's "heavy" version is quite decent. Unfortunately in a meta with so many undeniable better characters in these colours, poor Vision is not getting anywhere even when doing his very best.
4* War Machine (21+15=36) Arguably his best or at least more reliable combination, it includes his devastating (and useful) blue and his great-if-you-get-lucky red. Unfortunately the competition in this combination is savage so he makes no kinds of cuts at all.
4*Winter Soldier (21+19=40) I'll start by saying that WS is kind of underrated in the scores he got, which is understandable as the voting came around the time of his release. He's a character with three solid powers and in this combination he has two great damaging abilities. Blue is specially devious in the way that there's no downside to the effect being CD-based. Perhaps not the best colour in this combination but definitely above many others up there.
3* Iron Man (16+27=43) Two super expensive, super mediocre abilities without the enabler that allows you to get all that AP? No, thanks. These powers have been significantly improved but they are still expensive enough that is unthinkable to use them while not relying in his yellow.
5* Captain America (20+24=44) His red is still rather unimpressive for the tier, but his blue can be the highest damage-dealing ability/team healing in blue, though it needs some setup.
5* Silver Surfer (30+15=45) His blue is the best self-healing ability in the game, but it is super un-exciting. Similarly bland (and rather weak for its tier) is his red power.
3* She-Hulk (26+32=48) This is potentially stronger (in damage) than her Green and Red combination against enemies that place special tiles, quickly overturning the tables, though in practice this is badly hindered by its randomness. And against enemies that place no special tiles the ability is literally useless.
4* Sam Wilson (26+23=49) In this combination you get his Red but without the enabling Yellow, and only have a passive Blue to show for it. Nowhere near any of the best characters for this combination of colours.
2* Magneto (16+33=49) No purple, no service. His blue is laughably weak compared to his red, even though they are very similar powers when maxed.
2* Captain America (36+29=65) The only way to ever play this character; as mediocre as he is (nowhere near in comparative power to his identical 3* counterpart), he's actually the best filler for this two-colour hole all the way through transition to 3* tier, until you get one of the top three in this list levelled up high enough. On the other hand, it's bad and slow enough that I'd rather play 2* Storm if I needed stuns or almost any other character if I needed a strong damage-dealing ability.
2* Hawkeye (40+34=74) His best possible combination, as he gets to use his two active abilities and enjoy his powerful passive... except that both of his actives are rather sucky so that's not saying much, really. He's great only on teams where he's tanked in all colours and that make 5 matches easy to come by.
3* Ragnarok (40+39=79) Theoretically you chain red into blue... Exciting! But you only get...some (untrue) health and a few scattered charge tiles out of it that the enemy is as likely to exploit as you? Yeah, you are not "chaining" that into anything else and the biggest benefit you got from this chain came from the red ability. Yuck. Annoying as hell defensively, though.
3* Psylocke (40+40=80) Her red is ok-ish, but her blue is just disgustingly bad. She doesn't have a snowflake's chance in hell in this category of powerhouses.
4* Peggy Carter (unrated) Surprise, surprise! Another character with their best combination in these colours! Once your heart has calmed down from this terrible shock, let's just say that Cyclops got a bit of serious competition in the 4* tier.
Personal picks: 5*: Iron Man, 4*: Cyclops, Peggy Carter, Thor, 3*: Magneto, Captain America, 2*: Nope. This is one of the best and richest combinations in the game (look at those scores!)... past 2* land, that is. There's lots of choice and even the middle-ground characters for each tier in it are perfectly playable if you are missing the top ones.
4* Deadpool (5+8=13) His red packs a lot of punch and provides a very decent amount of /true/ healing. This is the combination that includes his other active power, cheap and strong but sort of unreliable Purple, while enjoying his annoying passive, so this is his best combination and a really powerful one if your other characters have powers that help take advantage of his purple.
5* Phoenix (10+14=24) Phoenix can be overwhelmingly powerful and this is her best combination, including an excellent red battery/utility power with an excellent damage/utility power, while enjoying of her unique and annoying green passive.
3* Deadpool (26+1=27) This is best possible position for the Merc with a Mouth. A decent red, a literally game-ending purple and an ok (if some times counter-productive) black passive make him the hero to go in 3* land when you have a red and purple hole (which in my experience happens a lot in teams with The Hood, who incidentally benefits from being quickly one-shot in defence thanks to DP's black.)
2* Magneto (16+12=28) 2* Mags is rather underrated and mostly used for his ability to feed blue with his purple. However, at 5 covers his red is surprisingly powerful and many people seem to not realise that it generates loads of AP. If you have a great blue ability that you want to feed he's actually a great hole-filler for these colours in 2* land and even in 3* land when buffed and championed.
4* Red Hulk (4+33=37) His Red would be weak even in 3* land, but his Purple is arguably the best Green battery in the game. If you bring him to fill this combination, you better are bringing a very strong Green ability, though is hard to think of a stronger green power than his, especially if the cost is giving up a red active power.
3* Daredevil (11+31=41) Blue is arguably the best ability of the new and improved DD. Purple can be great but only conditionally and red is literally luck-based. So, unless you really need him to counter a special-tile spammer enough to not mind the unreliability of red, this is his worst two-colour combination.
4* Winter Soldier (21+23=44) Selective stealing plus lots of damage. Nothing too fancy but tons of utility and raw power.
3* Black Widow (40+5=45) Even if you don't plan on using Sniper Rifle (used to be inconceivable, but now there are better green skills), her purple is awesome at feeding other green abilities or creating 5-matches for the characters who care about that. However, her red is one of the worst red abilities in the game (except maybe in PVE, where is one of the best targeted "board cleaners", second only to Twin Pistols). If you really can make use of her purple, you may not mind having a red power that you can use if you happen to gather enough AP.
4* X-23 (21+26=47) Her Red is a passive, and if you take in account how unreliable (if savagely strong) her Purple is, she's be a rather bad option to fill this combination. Especially since you'd be missing one of the many strong Red powers in 4* land.
4* Spider-Gwen (16+33=49) Finally Gwen's one good combination. Her red is one of the powers with best AP-to-damage ratio which makes ok having an useful but random power to assist like her purple is (and we can pretend she just doesn't have a yellow power).
2* Hawkeye (40+23=63) Hawkeye's new and hot purple trick, Speed Shoot is absurdly powerful for a 2* power with no cost. However, his two active powers are quite mediocre outside of 2* land and as such there is very little incentive to use his fragile little body to fill holes. He's best left as a third wheel for a 2-character rainbow team that can tank all of his colours.
4* Miles Morales (39+26=65) Like Gwen, this is Miles's best combination. The active part of his yellow is so bad that it may as well be counted as a passive ability only and in this combination he gets his two decently powerful active abilities.
4* Elektra (30+37=67)Her Red, like Daredevil's is highly reliant in luck but unlike his, it is very unlikely to deal as much damage (on the other hand, it is more likely to deal /any/ damage at all. Her purple relies on the opponent team's setup and casting it twice to get one cast worth of effect is not the best plan, so this is her worst possible combination as you are missing her best power.
4* Drax (35+35=70) Like 3* Deadpool's, Drax's red is good value but of limited use. His purple can also potentially have good value but the fact that it ends the turn is very unattractive. In sum, decent but there are better options in this combination.
4* Star-Lord (40+31=71) If you are not interested in reducing the cost of your allied abilities, but just want damage, damage and more damage (always a good plan) this is his best possible combination. As such, this is his least "build-around-me" combination that you'd be more comfortable throwing in as a hole-filler without worrying about setups, though still too slow and unreliable for consideration.
2* Moonstone (37+38=75) Her red is actually quite powerful for her tier, but her purple is unreliable as hell. Now that her black ability is actually powerful, the only reason to consider this is if you are solidly in 2* land and for some reason don't have Magneto.
4* Devil Dinosaur (40+39=79) Since red and green are basically the same ability any of them with purple will be similarly useful (that is, not very). Purple is deceptively powerful (or at least annoying), especially when you can spam it and have characters that benefit from it, though it is a shame that most characters will tank purple for him and not the other way around.
Personal picks: 5*: Phoenix, 4*: X-Pool, Winter Soldier, Spider Gwen, 3*: Deadpool, Black Widow, 2*: Magneto. This combination is one of the few that got lots of attention in the past year. It used to be a small collection of terrible to mediocre characters where 3* Deadpool reigned uncontested. Now there's lots of variety and a relative increase of proportional quality as well!
5* Phoenix (10+8=18) In this combination you are missing the enabling purple for a green passive... however if she dies, you'll have the opportunity to cast her devastating post-resurrection green power, so it's all good.
3* Human Torch (8+20=28) While a good number of people advocate for 5 Black covers, I'm a 5 Green cover man myself, making this his best two-colour combination in my eyes. Once upon a time I'd have said that as good as this combination is, I couldn't recommend it due HT's little-girl-like HP. It's no longer the case as he is, along with GSBW and MoStorm the winner of the HP increase lottery.
3* Patch (9+20=29) Unarguably his best combination. You still are going to want some way to mitigate the drawback of Berserker Rage, which usually means that you'd be building the team around him and not the other way around, but in a pinch he can be used to fill this hole and just use his powers as finishers or combined to make other powers into finishers.
4* The Thing (21+14=35) His better possible combination. As mentioned above, his active powers are on the mediocre side, but when you can bring both of them and free Yellow for another character's active while enjoying of his great passive, he is a really good option.
2* Wolverine (14+21=35) His best possible combination, you get two interactive and decently powerful abilities plus a weak but sometimes useful passive.
4* X-23 (26+11=37) Her Green is not particularly strong in 4* land, being barely a notch more powerful and efficient than 3* Human Torch's Red. Coupled with a passive Red, this is not the combination where the new Wolverine is going to shine.
3* She-Hulk (26+11=37) While considerably improved, She-Hulk is still bottom tier, even in this, her best combination of colours. Red is a mediocre AoE that at least is not to expensive, but her green is just too unreliable. Sometimes it will win you games (or save you from losses, rather) and sometimes it will do literally nothing of value.
4* Red Hulk (33+5=38) In this combination, you still get his depressingly bad Red passive, but gain his monstrously strong Green... by missing the Green battery that his Purple is and that makes it possible. The only reason I ever see to use him in this combination is if you are also bringing GSBW or other great green battery and you don't mind your opponent gathering Green.
4* War Machine (21+20=41) WM has great potential, but it's a potential that is realised (maybe) over time and in specific circumstances. This is the combination that lacks his, heh, signature move so it's also his worst.
3* Thor (37+6=43) His comparatively terribad red, plus losing the chance to chain yellow into green make this otherwise staple hero into a really poor choice to fill this hole.
3* Black Widow (40+3=43) No purple, yes red? Game will be over (likely in a loss) before you manually get all the AP for these powers. Only worth of consideration if you have a more efficient green battery.
3* Punisher (12+32=44) As with many others in this combination of colours, this is his best. His abilities are not very flashy but relatively cheap and ultimately efficient, at least for mid-early transitioners (and his red remains an asset for vets battling enemies with 30k+ HP).
2* Ares (30+14=44) Not as good as yellow-green, but green alone can very literally take down maxed 3*s, so a decent option should you have nothing better. (And in all honesty, in 2* land the only real competition is Wolverine.)
4* Carnage (21+26=47) His best possible combination even though is not generally liked. You probably won't care much for his green as it's not like you'll be trying much other than blasting his Red as much as possible to see the whole world burn, but it's good to have options.
3* Hulk (40+20=60) In theory, his best combination, as you get both his actives and still enjoy his passive black. His red is quite bad and green is not particularly the strongest ability either, for the cost, but if he's going to tank colours for your other characters and biting the big bullets (and get helpfully angry while doing so) then he's still an excellent option, even if you'd be collecting red as an afterthought and spending your anger-born green AP in mediocre claps.
3* Gamora (30+31=61) This is not her most powerful combination but my be at least the most reliable, especially if hole-filling. However, it's usually not enough punch to consider bringing her in.
4* Ghost Rider (40+35=75) GR seems designed to be a top notch 3* character. Sadly, in a 4* world, his abilities other than his black are merely decent and that doesn't make this cut. This is precisely the combination that lacks black, too.
4* Devil Dinosaur (40+37=77) In this combination you lose the random utility ability to have two cheap, but very mediocre damage abilities. Probably much less fun to play than his combinations with purple, and more often than not, you'd wish you'd have any of the many better red or green abilities. However, it is somewhat annoying in defence when the opponent will get bitten and mauled repeatedly as they try to lower his freakish HP.
3* Sentry (40+40=80) As stated above, his green is now too unreliable and expensive, compounded by the fact that without his yellow you need to be bringing another strong strike-tile producer to even hope getting anything out it, and that red is only to be used as a desperation attack, and you have a recipe for not a great hole-filler.
3* Ragnarok (40+40=80) Once his only possible colour combination, now it is his best, but sadly, that's not saying much. Red is decently powerful but doesn't chain directly into his Green, and his Green, while able to put the hurt on the enemy is appallingly subpar compared with similarly costed abilities.
2* Thor and Human Torch As always, the poor-man's choice of their 3* counterparts, but as good/decent in 2* land as their big brothers are in 3* land.
Personal picks: 5*: Phoenix, 4*: The Thing, 3*: Patch, Human Torch, 2*: Wolverine. There are lots of characters in this combination and for many of them, this is their "best combination"... however, as you can infer from the scores, most of them are mediocre characters whose "best combinations" rarely make the cut. Other than the addition of Phoenix, the best character in the combination, the Thing has remained king for over a year now and he's not really one of the best 4*s! We need an injection of awesome in this combination, stat.
3* Cyclops (1+4=5) This is deceptively worse than the combinations involving his yellow. Yes, you get both of the damaging abilities and not the utility ability, but thing is that both of the damaging abilities are heavily reliant on the utility one. Without it, the abilities are slow or require some setup. Still, they are some of the best abilities in these colours and having access to both is incredible.
4* Iron Man Hulkbuster (1+6=7) The unarguable king in this combination. His Red has the ability to one-shoot down anyone from full health. His black facilitates that while adding even more hurt with strike tiles.
4* Deadpool (5+13=18) Like 3* Deadpool, you still have access to his red active, but black as passive means that you are missing on bringing some of the really strong black abilities in the game. The big difference is that X-Pool's red is superb, a great power for sustained climbing and an annoying and decently powerful passive. Probably not enough to pick him over others, but worth considering.[/color]
3* Luke Cage (7+11=18) Arguably his worst combination, you lose on his devastating yellow and can't do anything with red. Not even the guaranteed protect tile each turn seems like a pull strong enough to fill this hole with him. It says something that even in this, his worst combination, he's still eminently playable.
3* Human Torch (8+26=34) As said above, some people actually prefer Torch's black over his green. If you put 5 covers on his black, he's a decent choice for this combination, even though it costs you AP of other colours.
Nova (26+17=43) Black is Nova's best (or at least most damaging ability) and while his yellow is slightly more reliable, his red is more fun and potentially stronger, so this is my favourite combination of his.
Ghost Rider (40+5=45) His red and green are similarly mediocre, but any combination that includes his cataclysmic black is worth considering. I believe his red is slightly superior, so this is his best combination.
4* Elektra (30+16=46) Black is definitely her best ability and unconditionally so. Red is ok against people who cannot easily overwrite tiles (there's a good number of them) and Purple is basically good against those who make her red bad. Depending how you covered her and the enemies you'll face, the combinations using her black are equally good, or at least decent.
3* Colossus (21+25=46) A more aggressive combination than his yellow and red, his red will need a bit of work-around without the yellow ability but still very feasible. Black, again, is very dependant on the rest of your team but potentially a really good deal.
Silver Surfer (30+20=50) SS's red deals what would be an impressive amount of damage for 8 AP... if he was a 4*! As a 5*, it is rather bland, and while his black is fun and novel, it is also badly overcosted and impactless (barring tons of luck in random cascades)
3* Gamora (30+20=50) This combination is fairly reliant in how many colours you can make her tank. Her red is good value but rather unimpressive and green has loads of added utility, but if you manage to put her in a team where she tanks 3-4 colours, her black is the ability that actually will be putting the hurt on the opponent. Then again, if you are trying to achieve that, you want to base your team around her, not use her as a hole-filler.
3* Punisher (32+19=51) His black is an ability entirely meant to work with his green. Without green (or other similarly powerful strike tiles) his black is near worthless. Red is still good enough especially against buffed enemies with over 10k HP, to consider bringing him in even if you are not planning to use his green (and really, neither his black).
3* Hulk (40+15=55) Even though you only get here a terrible red and a passive black, if he's tanking several colours, this may be his better combination as you'd be using all the green you collect from his anger in a better green ability. Then again you'd not really be "filling a hole".
Drax (35+24=59) His red is quite decent but of limited use and his black is potentially powerful but requires lots of setup. That's a lot of ifs and buts that keep Drax from being a competitor even with this, his arguably best combination.
3* Captain Marvel (40+20=60) The best possible use you can give to Ms. Danvers. Make sure that she's tanking both red and black and see her yellow giving her multiple uses of those two abilities. Too bad that her Red is really, really unimpressive and black is barely above average.
4* Carnage (21+40=61) Another 4* with a ridiculously powerful red. However, his black is passive. That coupled with the fact that his team-damaging abilities means that you don't want to throw him wily-nily in any team, so he's not a good hole filler.
3* Deadpool (26+37=63) "Not having access to my loyal whales while having me uselessly hitting for black is not the best way to play with the old D-Pool, forum friends. As a devout player of myself, I know this."
2* Ms. Marvel (40+23=63) Her red is as godawful as the 3*'s, but her black may be comparatively slightly better, as it's the second best AoE power in 2* land, where there aren't even that many.
2* Moonstone (37+29=66) These are her two most powerful colours and I feel she's now underrated and carrying much of the bad reputation her old self earned. New and improved Control Shift is the most efficient and direct way of stealing tiles; it can be really crippling against enemies that use few but powerful special tiles. She's perhaps one of the 2*s that benefit the most from being buffed + championed in the weekly rotation, bringing 3* quality powers and numbers to the field plus a strange, massive HP that's actually higher than most 3*s.
3* Psylocke (40+27=67) The only way to play Psylocke. She's not the strongest character around, but her abilities are quite cheap and every use of them makes next use a bit better so she's ok in the first stages of 3* transition.
2* Human Torch He's relatively as powerful in 2* land as his 3* counterpart is in later parts of the transition, but quickly obsoleted as you start the transition into 3* land.
Personal picks: 5*: Silver Surfer (if only for being the only one), 4*: Hulkbuster, Nova, Ghost Rider (strictly in this order), 3*: Cyclops, Human Torch, Colossus, 2*: Moonstone. A /lot/ of mediocre and a few really good pairs in this combination. As it could be expected, Hukbuster reigns supreme and it's hard to imagine it ever losing the crown.
4* Jean Grey (3+5=8) Definitely, not such a strong option if you are not using her Green (and there are not many better Green activated abilities), but her passive is so useful that if you expect the opponent to happen into 5-matches (due tile-colour changing powers), you may as well bring her even if you miss on having a blue active.
3* Scarlet Witch (7+3=10) You still get Purple from her passive to use her nuke and you get to use someone else's, likely much more powerful Green active. If you don't mind missing a Blue active, this combination is no much worse than her Purple/Green. (Note that she gets a misleading high score here due including the score of her passive.)
2* Black Widow (6+6=12) Her best combination, famously strong enough to carry you all the way through the latter stages of the transition, it's only once that you are firmly planted on 3* land that she's too squishy to be relied on unless someone can tank for her. Her ability to "double-dip" on strike tiles with her passive or trivialising goon nodes in PVE is unparalleled and will forever remain useful, though.
4* Iceman (1+17=18) This combination is far from being as devastating as his Purple-Green, but it's an awesome support combination, especially if the opponent is bringing a strong red ability to the field. Only makes sense,
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Comments
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@ OP - Cool idea / rundown. Probably more useful once you have a number of levelled characters, though. I know at the moment I just choose based on reasonably levelled / coloured, rather than 'where do you fill a spot'. (Luckily, my best levelled are Thor and Blade, so the colour issue sorts itself out there, I suppose.)locked wrote:Great topic, may I pile on a bit? -snip-
That's quite a bit more than a bit, isn't it? It looked like this was going to be done in an order?
Look forward to more, Pylgrim.0 -
Lystrata wrote:locked wrote:Great topic, may I pile on a bit? -snip-
That's quite a bit more than a bit, isn't it? It looked like this was going to be done in an order/
Edit: will try to comment once the OP finishes their work.0 -
Mods, Feel free to remove this post as it no longer has any relevant content.0
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I have to strongly disagree with your assessment of Daredevil. His blue is too short a stun for the price and depends on an unreliable CD tile to be any use and if you're waiting for your opponent to match your ambush tile you're doing it wrong. Ambush is at its best when you can match it, ideally more than once. That's why I'm excited to try pairing him with Cyclops' yellow.0
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Trilateralus wrote:I have to strongly disagree with your assessment of Daredevil. His blue is too short a stun for the price and depends on an unreliable CD tile to be any use and if you're waiting for your opponent to match your ambush tile you're doing it wrong. Ambush is at its best when you can match it, ideally more than once. That's why I'm excited to try pairing him with Cyclops' yellow.
Hey, it's cool, I definitely invite discussion. I was down on blue initially as well, but it's grown on me. There's something nice about a power that you cast once and then it kind of keeps going on, even if every three turns you don't get it. Once you have one going on, you can try to gather more blue. If you manage to have two of them going alternately, that's one character permastunned as long as the CDs are around. On the other hand, I am very much aware that the best use of his red is to match it yourself (unless there's a super-obvious spot for the AI, such a 4-match). However, more often than not, I've found that after one match or even from the start, the trap goes to a red tile on a bottom corner where no one can ever match it and there it remains until the end of the game.
Moreover, Daredevil is, generally speaking not the strongest character so you don't really want to make him your front-liner. He's better used in a supportive role against special-tile spammers or along Patch, filling the very common blue and purple hole. You surely will have a better, more reliable red ability in your team, so it's better to maximise his support abilities, in my opinion.0 -
is sad you left him off Red/Green.0
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Pylgrim wrote:Trilateralus wrote:I have to strongly disagree with your assessment of Daredevil. His blue is too short a stun for the price and depends on an unreliable CD tile to be any use and if you're waiting for your opponent to match your ambush tile you're doing it wrong. Ambush is at its best when you can match it, ideally more than once. That's why I'm excited to try pairing him with Cyclops' yellow.
Hey, it's cool, I definitely invite discussion. I was down on blue initially as well, but it's grown on me. There's something nice about a power that you cast once and then it kind of keeps going on, even if every three turns you don't get it. Once you have one going on, you can try to gather more blue. If you manage to have two of them going alternately, that's one character permastunned as long as the CDs are around. On the other hand, I am very much aware that the best use of his red is to match it yourself (unless there's a super-obvious spot for the AI, such a 4-match). However, more often than not, I've found that after one match or even from the start, the trap goes to a red tile on a bottom corner where no one can ever match it and there it remains until the end of the game.
Moreover, Daredevil is, generally speaking not the strongest character so you don't really want to make him your front-liner. He's better used in a supportive role against special-tile spammers or along Patch, filling the very common blue and purple hole. You surely will have a better, more reliable red ability in your team, so it's better to maximise his support abilities, in my opinion.
Much as I like Daredevil, I agree he`s not frontline material. I typically use him with Patch (obvious) or Hulk to tank red for him. At nearly half the price of TBTI or Smash, Ambush is great. I do like Billyclub I just find there are better and cheaper stuns and I don`t really have another strong purple user at the moment.0 -
Grizzlegom wrote::devildino: is sad you left him off Red/Green.0
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Time to comment now! Again, terribly sorry about being inconsiderate at first.
Star-Lord feels like a weak yellow/red user: yellow is pure support, and not as good as anything oBW, Loki and Hood offer, at that, although probably fine for longer PvE games. Red is 3 turns past 2 covers, and you can't place it, so it might hinder the enemy a bit but not actually resolve. It's comparable to Recovery/lvl 3 Escape Plan/Bewilder/other unplaceable 3-turn CDs. Which are wildly unreliable and are often used under staged conditions, or as an afterthought if at all. Purple is most definitely Star-Lord's best skill.
Falcon is a weak purple user. I don't remember when I last used his purple over Blade who's usually the logical third on Falcon/Daken or Patch/Falcon teams. Or over most other purple users. I also left mine perpetually underleveled so that oBW would have purple over him, but again, having both oBW and Falcon does nothing terribly exciting and is overkill against goons except the very fastest ones.
Star-Lord feels like a definite #2 behind Fury if not #1 due to being faster. SG is likely a solid #3 due to even her weakest skill, yellow, being decent at 3 covers. Ending the turn is not that bad when the same character has a damaging CD skill.
As I already mentioned in the PM, Mohawk Storm is actually a very strong choice for this combination, only for PvE of course. She's as good if not better than even the best there is, X-Force, to combo with 4or. Bring Loki as 3rd and you are all set: Mohawk yellow to clear away pesky TUp tiles (surprisingly, her yellow is actually worth maxing just for this), then 4or blue, then Mohawk green to collect as much AP as possible, and Loki purple to get you out of bad boards. Loki purple looooooves skills that remove TUp tiles. 4or is the single most powerful character in the game, so enabling her is the best thing you can do if you have her, and Mohawk excels at that.
Other PvE teams I like Mohawk on: cMagneto/GSBW/Mohawk (two skills to remove TUp tiles to better enable game-winning Deceptive Tactics? Sold!); 4or/GSBW/Mohawk. LoreNYC used to promote She-Hulk/GSBW/Mohawk (and probably still does, although he replaced She-Hulk with 4or too). Black is the weakest, least usable and least wanted colour on all these teams since it suffers from Mohawk's own green and hinders friendly DecTactics/Power Surge which are way to strong to treat like that.
I used to hate Mohawk due to trying to find a use for her in PvP, and I used to have her at her 'most damaging' build, 3/5/5. She was kinda almost alright with old cMagneto who had strong blue, red, purple, and Patch to actually use green AP. She provided a way to clear away TUp tiles, black was awesome with strike tiles (still is btw), and Patch tanked green/yellow for her. But then 4or arrived, I accepted that black is not, indeed, Mohawk's best ability at all, respecced her to 5/5/3 ASAP and couldn't be happier with her now. Black is fine as a trap remover but her true potential is not there.
Do try cMagneto (3/5/5), GSBW (5/3/5) and Mohawk (5/5/3) in PvE sometime if you don't have 4or. With slight ISO boosts, they are nigh unstoppable, and without boosts, still accelerate themselves with incredible speed. She doesn't need to be maxed for PvE at all, only enough to tank occasional AoE powers.
Gamora is probably alright for this if you happened to spec her 5/5/3 thinking of never relying on her black and never intending to make her the core character. Likely very decent on Black Panther/oBW teams, since other black users would render her green/red moot, except Hulk, lol. Very good with Hood/oBW but with Hood/oBW she always tanks all her colours anyway so you could max her black as well. She's a tricky one to choose one build for, but her green and red are very decent with strike tiles, however specced. I tend to favour green due to the nice 2x2 stun.
I like new Daredevil! Of course nowhere near as strong as other choices, but his red and blue are practically free after the first use, so you can stack them for great profit. Just try him with Punisher/Gamora/Patch/lazy Thor as the main damage options and Hood to help cast his cheap skills even faster and/or establish a stunlock with Billy Club. If you play him against teams that do not overwrite or destroy red/blue special tiles, or maybe even have some of their own, he's a force to be reckoned with, and matching Ambush for repeated damage for no AP is one of the most satisfying things ever. Patch/Daredevil are just mouthwateringly powerful, especially if Patch is 5/3/5. Thor can help self-match Ambush due to the powerful board conversion he does. Gamora/Punisher have cheap, strong reds to use along with cheap Ambush. Refer to my post about beating lvl 395s with boosted Daredevil here.
I specced my Gamora 5/3/5 so I will try to play with her some more and let you know if that was a mistake... Thinking is, her red is not that great without strike tiles, but if I do have strike tiles, doesn't matter what level her red is.
As for Mystique, depends on what you use her for. However, there's NO argument that blue is her best skill and not using her blue is no better than using a loaner in PvP. If she is boosted, you likely want her Shapeshift-Masterstroke combo to deal insane amounts of damage, but her blue still gets you there. If she's charging other black or purple users (like Black Panther or Deadpool) you still need her blue to be maxed. Her purple is her weakest skill, and to enable the purple > black combo, it doesn't merit more than 3 covers.
Teams that she gets to be used on: X-Force/MMN (she uses all her skills, depending on the exact situation); Black Panther/MMN (double ROTP will usually level enemy teams faster than tediously doing purple > black single target damage with Mq, so she's likely to only use her blue); Deadpool/X-Force (again, likely to only use her blue, although her own black and purple can still be usable in a pinch if you need to drain some of the enemy's RGY AP urgently or need to stun someone just for 1 turn while you get more green/black/red/blue AP). She's awesome (for PvE) and her blue skill is very similar to lazy Thor's yellow, which is widely regarded as one of/simply the best yellow skill in the game. Don't call it mediocre, since it can carry you even if your Mystique is built 0/5/0.0 -
locked wrote:Time to comment now! Again, terribly sorry about being inconsiderate at first.
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback, even when too eagerStar-Lord feels like a weak yellow/red user: yellow is pure support, and not as good as anything oBW, Loki and Hood offer, at that, although probably fine for longer PvE games. Red is 3 turns past 2 covers, and you can't place it, so it might hinder the enemy a bit but not actually resolve. It's comparable to Recovery/lvl 3 Escape Plan/Bewilder/other unplaceable 3-turn CDs. Which are wildly unreliable and are often used under staged conditions, or as an afterthought if at all. Purple is most definitely Star-Lord's best skill.
I cannot factually agree or disagree until I have played more with him (so ask me again in a year haha.... ha). I only know I like the possibilities of his yellow. It sets my creative juices flowing, and one of the crazy possible combinations may be strong and reliable enough for competitive play, who knows! Also, while I agree that purple is strong and powerful, I'm not convinced it's his best. It's basically a Star Spangled Avenger that costs 1 less and deals 1k more, but doesn't return your AP, and more importantly, if the CD tile is destroyed, you don't get anything.Falcon is a weak purple user. I don't remember when I last used his purple over Blade who's usually the logical third on Falcon/Daken or Patch/Falcon teams. Or over most other purple users. I also left mine perpetually underleveled so that oBW would have purple over him, but again, having both oBW and Falcon does nothing terribly exciting and is overkill against goons except the very fastest ones.
Star-Lord feels like a definite #2 behind Fury if not #1 due to being faster. SG is likely a solid #3 due to even her weakest skill, yellow, being decent at 3 covers. Ending the turn is not that bad when the same character has a damaging CD skill.
Definitiely agree that Falcon is in the lower end of the purple abilities, but this thread is planting the scenario where you don't have those two colours in your team (Punisher + Daken? Imagine the double duty Inspiration would be doing on those attack and strike tiles!). Fury is definitely number 1, but I cannot put any stakes on Star-Lord yet. SG's yellow is a Falcon's purple that ends the turn and that is easier to get rid of, so even with an attack ability, I'd not choose her over Falcon.As I already mentioned in the PM, Mohawk Storm is actually a very strong choice for this combination, only for PvE of course. She's as good if not better than even the best there is, X-Force, to combo with 4or. Bring Loki as 3rd and you are all set: Mohawk yellow to clear away pesky TUp tiles (surprisingly, her yellow is actually worth maxing just for this), then 4or blue, then Mohawk green to collect as much AP as possible, and Loki purple to get you out of bad boards. Loki purple looooooves skills that remove TUp tiles. 4or is the single most powerful character in the game, so enabling her is the best thing you can do if you have her, and Mohawk excels at that.
Other PvE teams I like Mohawk on: cMagneto/GSBW/Mohawk (two skills to remove TUp tiles to better enable game-winning Deceptive Tactics? Sold!); 4or/GSBW/Mohawk. LoreNYC used to promote She-Hulk/GSBW/Mohawk (and probably still does, although he replaced She-Hulk with 4or too). Black is the weakest, least usable and least wanted colour on all these teams since it suffers from Mohawk's own green and hinders friendly DecTactics/Power Surge which are way to strong to treat like that.
I used to hate Mohawk due to trying to find a use for her in PvP, and I used to have her at her 'most damaging' build, 3/5/5. She was kinda almost alright with old cMagneto who had strong blue, red, purple, and Patch to actually use green AP. She provided a way to clear away TUp tiles, black was awesome with strike tiles (still is btw), and Patch tanked green/yellow for her. But then 4or arrived, I accepted that black is not, indeed, Mohawk's best ability at all, respecced her to 5/5/3 ASAP and couldn't be happier with her now. Black is fine as a trap remover but her true potential is not there.
Do try cMagneto (3/5/5), GSBW (5/3/5) and Mohawk (5/5/3) in PvE sometime if you don't have 4or. With slight ISO boosts, they are nigh unstoppable, and without boosts, still accelerate themselves with incredible speed. She doesn't need to be maxed for PvE at all, only enough to tank occasional AoE powers.
You'll have a hard time selling me Mohawk because I deeply resent her and what she stands for. I love Storm (the character) and loved her 1* during transition. I was super excited when they announced the gold one. Then they introduced her along with a sizable nerf to both versions. Then they horribly, horribly nerfed her red into her current yellow. Then they gave Magneto her old red and costed it cheaper than they initially did hers. Grrr.
But I guess that not either here and there. I wasn't aware that destroying charge tiles via skills also triggered their effects, so that's good. However, in your scenario, you say that her main use is clearing away TU tiles, which is something that she does mediocrely. cMags would be much better in that role even if it is in red. It is cheap and you only need to cast it once after Thor's blue to then let Illusions go crazy. You'll get enough Smite red right away. And if it's her green what you want, wouldn't cStorm be better with her scalable green? Similarly, I only very very infrequently have a situation with TU tiles that really cripples my Deceptive Tactics. Whenever that happens, I just make a match that will improve the tiles position and use it next turn. I don't feel the need to bring another super-squishy character to expose herself whole collecting 9 yellow to make my 11 purple ability slightly better, especially taking in account that I don't plan to use her green or black. beast and Doc Ock are the only other characters I'd not bring in her stead in that team. I really don't get why you need her if you have cMags in that team anyway and he's better at removing TU tiles.I like new Daredevil! Of course nowhere near as strong as other choices, but his red and blue are practically free after the first use, so you can stack them for great profit. Just try him with Punisher/Gamora/Patch/lazy Thor as the main damage options and Hood to help cast his cheap skills even faster and/or establish a stunlock with Billy Club. If you play him against teams that do not overwrite or destroy red/blue special tiles, or maybe even have some of their own, he's a force to be reckoned with, and matching Ambush for repeated damage for no AP is one of the most satisfying things ever. Patch/Daredevil are just mouthwateringly powerful, especially if Patch is 5/3/5. Thor can help self-match Ambush due to the powerful board conversion he does. Gamora/Punisher have cheap, strong reds to use along with cheap Ambush. Refer to my post about beating lvl 395s with boosted Daredevil here.
I must be particularly unlucky because everybody keeps talking dreamily about matching the ambush trap over and over. Me? I consider myself fortunate when it doesn't outright appears in a bottom corner and I get to match it once. I have never matched it twice or more. Definitely great with Patch and against Daken or Bullseye (which I'm pretty sure it's an intended flavour connection) which is why I keep him at 5 purple.As for Mystique, depends on what you use her for. However, there's NO argument that blue is her best skill and not using her blue is no better than using a loaner in PvP. If she is boosted, you likely want her Shapeshift-Masterstroke combo to deal insane amounts of damage, but her blue still gets you there. If she's charging other black or purple users (like Black Panther or Deadpool) you still need her blue to be maxed. Her purple is her weakest skill, and to enable the purple > black combo, it doesn't merit more than 3 covers.
Teams that she gets to be used on: X-Force/MMN (she uses all her skills, depending on the exact situation); Black Panther/MMN (double ROTP will usually level enemy teams faster than tediously doing purple > black single target damage with Mq, so she's likely to only use her blue); Deadpool/X-Force (again, likely to only use her blue, although her own black and purple can still be usable in a pinch if you need to drain some of the enemy's RGY AP urgently or need to stun someone just for 1 turn while you get more green/black/red/blue AP). She's awesome (for PvE) and her blue skill is very similar to lazy Thor's yellow, which is widely regarded as one of/simply the best yellow skill in the game. Don't call it mediocre, since it can carry you even if your Mystique is built 0/5/0.
Same here? I haven't had that many really favourable Infiltration outcomes (and I have it at 5 covers) and in fact I've learned not to use it against teams with strong purple and black abilities because they end benefiting from the sudden wealth of those colours in the board as much as me. You cannot plan for it like you'd do with Technopathic Strike, and the fact that the tiles are split randomly in two colours make it less reliable than Thunder Strike. I think a 4/4/5 version is better, allowing her to also steal purple and black.0 -
Well, you have stated you wanted opinions of developed roster owners, so I'm talking from this very position.Pylgrim wrote:Also, while I agree that purple is strong and powerful, I'm not convinced it's his best. It's basically a Star Spangled Avenger that costs 1 less and deals 1k more, but doesn't return your AP, and more importantly, if the CD tile is destroyed, you don't get anything.Pylgrim wrote:Definitiely agree that Falcon is in the lower end of the purple abilities, but this thread is planting the scenario where you don't have those two colours in your team (Punisher + Daken? Imagine the double duty Inspiration would be doing on those attack and strike tiles!). Fury is definitely number 1, but I cannot put any stakes on Star-Lord yet. SG's yellow is a Falcon's purple that ends the turn and that is easier to get rid of, so even with an attack ability, I'd not choose her over Falcon.Pylgrim wrote:You'll have a hard time selling me Mohawk because I deeply resent her and what she stands for.
...
However, in your scenario, you say that her main use is clearing away TU tiles, which is something that she does mediocrely. cMags would be much better in that role even if it is in red. It is cheap and you only need to cast it once after Thor's blue to then let Illusions go crazy. You'll get enough Smite red right away. And if it's her green what you want, wouldn't cStorm be better with her scalable green?Pylgrim wrote:Similarly, I only very very infrequently have a situation with TU tiles that really cripples my Deceptive Tactics.Pylgrim wrote:I haven't had that many really favourable Infiltration outcomes (and I have it at 5 covers) and in fact I've learned not to use it against teams with strong purple and black abilities because they end benefiting from the sudden wealth of those colours in the board as much as me. You cannot plan for it like you'd do with Technopathic Strike, and the fact that the tiles are split randomly in two colours make it less reliable than Thunder Strike. I think a 4/4/5 version is better, allowing her to also steal purple and black.
In fact, while vets might only use it in PvE, I got attacked twice for 90 points (thanks to me retaliating) by an X-Force lvl 110, maxed MMN and _base_ level Mystique in Identity Theft!
My team was maxed Mystique/4or/X-Force, for the combined health of 36k+. And it was beaten twice by the team with the total health of 10-11k, tops.
With X-Force likely lacking green and black covers. It can be slow against humongous opponents, but it is extremely effective.
It is indeed very vulnerable to overscaled oBW, but other purple/blue/black opponents like Doom/Blade, etc., not as much. I am using Mystique and Deadpool to great effect right now in the Brotherhood PvE despite enemies often being strong in purple/blue/black: Hood, Doom, Moonstone, Venom, Yelena.
That's what the right covers on Mystique do. And by right covers, I mean 5 blue. 5 black is strongly preferable because her purple is really weak and non-impactful outside of Shapeshift > Masterstroke.0 -
locked wrote:Well, I don't consider Falcon a user of yellow, since he has it on passive. He's a fairly weak choice compared to Squirrel Girl when you need actual board control or AP generation. They both benefit from strike tiles around, but SG actually has the game-winning potential and outlets for 3 kinds of AP.
But since in this particular thread we're analysing only their usefulness in a certain colour pair (i.e. you don't want to use SG's green because you have a better green ability) that's a marginal advantage for this particular argument. Also, for the reasons previously stated, I don't particularly feel like considering SG a yellow user, either . We'll have to agree to disagree here, but I'll give you that there are specific conditions in which SG is definitely superior.No, Mohawk's best skill is still her green, but yellow is perfectly serviceable. cMags conflicts with 4or on all colours, and 4or's mediocre colour (yellow) is his worst, but Mohawk's second best. cStorm directly conflicts on blue, I hate the thought of using either cStorm or cMags with 4or (although I have to run XF/4or in Magneto's event just because the meta requires it). Besides, cStorm wants someone to charge green for her in the first place, since at 12 green AP it's strictly worse than Mohawk's. Come to think of it, old modern Storm was quite OP and people regularly used her to take on lvl 230 PvE enemies or much stronger PvP opponents in Desert and Forest environments. Mohawk is still one of the best PvE characters, you need to try her with teams I mentioned to see her potential (5 green, of course, and 5 yellow, preferably).
I guess I'll have to try that Storm green + 4hor blue combo, then, whenever I get a maxed 4hor, to test your agrument. I am extremely sceptical that she's as good as X-Force in that combination, as you claim, but time will tell. I won't budge on her yellow, though. It is a terrible ability 9 yellow for 7 AP and some middling damage is an appalling deal and the cascade possibility is greatly **** compared to Magneto's red, which, hilariously is cheaper and much, much more damaging. How Storm had that ability replaced with the current piece of **** one when she was already a generally weak character is a grudge I'll carry right to the tomb.Please please no, 4/4/5 is destroying Mystique's true potential. If you feel you are unlucky with Infiltration, try saving 18 blue and then spamming it twice. It's an extremely efficient combo (5 blue Mystique, 5 purple MMN).
This is actually a cool combo that I was unaware of. I've been having lots of fun with it!0 -
Bumping this thread for others to see, since it's been really helpful to me several times.0
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Arondite wrote:Bumping this thread for others to see, since it's been really helpful to me several times.
Thank you! I myself was planning to do an update to take in account the new characters, buffs and nerfs. I'm waiting until having the chance to play with the newly buffed characters.0 -
Thanks for this, it's been really helpful!0
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Awesome write up man, I can only imagine the time its took u to do all this.0
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While Iron Fist and Kamala Khan may still be the best picks for filling a hole, I think GSBW was one of the top beneficiaries of the Hp increase, and I still a good choice.0
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Why is this thread not stickied? It probably belongs in Tips and Guides but it is an amazing resource.0
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CrankyDay wrote:While Iron Fist and Kamala Khan may still be the best picks for filling a hole, I think GSBW was one of the top beneficiaries of the Hp increase, and I still a good choice.
Definitely agree. The HP overhaul most assuredly will be a big factor to consider when I write the next update.stochasticism wrote:Why is this thread not stickied? It probably belongs in Tips and Guides but it is an amazing resource.
Aww shucks, thanks. And yeah, you may be right, perhaps this belongs in the T&G sub-forum. Any mod able to do that, please?0 -
To commemorate being moved to the T&G section, I made a big update and will try to update more frequently to incorporate newer characters and changes in smaller batches. Enjoy!0
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