Interim character rankings - the results

morph3us

papa07 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

And blade is wayyyy too higH

How do you figure? There are only 6 on that list that I would consider moving ahead of Blade and I don't think any of them are sure things to be ahead of him

I'd agree that Blade deserves his high ranking. With the nerf of X-Force green, and with the health shifts, Blade moves up the rankings as a fast attack character, particularly as a counter to AP stealers like Hood, for instance. Yes, he's still very board dependent, but I think the context of the meta has changed enough with the rebalancing that his value has gone up.

rixmith

I ranked Blade pretty darned high. He can be really awful to attack, you're sure to take a lot of damage because of his cheap abilities, and he doesn't need large cascades to be extremely dangerous. If his Nightstalker CD gets placed well he can completely hamstring the opposing team. I've lost to Blade enough times to rank him pretty close to 3* Daken.

Unknown

rixmith wrote:

I ranked Blade pretty darned high. He can be really awful to attack, you're sure to take a lot of damage because of his cheap abilities, and he doesn't need large cascades to be extremely dangerous. If his Nightstalker CD gets placed well he can completely hamstring the opposing team. I've lost to Blade enough times to rank him pretty close to 3* Daken.

This.

People get too caught up in his green - sure, THAT ability is board dependant. But you know who else is board dependant? Daken for . Hood for . Everyone. I still stand by what I said if Blade only had his he'd be top tier.

morph3us

raisinbman wrote:

As for the actual list - people laughed at me for saying 3* Thor was better than 4*. Yet the people have spoken.

It surprises me a little to see 4* Thor rated so highly still. I don't think she's terrible, but I think 3* Thor and Fury are both better than her now. If we take Fury, as an example, Demolition does more damage than Power Surge -> Smite, for a lot less AP, plus he gets a three turn stun in Avengers Assemble (which also has the flexibility to proc other effects, depending on how long you want to wait before setting it off), whilst still having a very significant health pool at 13K. Personally, I'd downrate 4* Thor to within the top ten, at least until she gets a decent charged tile partner.

Spoit

Everyone agrees that IF is underrated, but IMO, PX is also criminally low. With the character changes, it will be really annoying to dig out his invisibility tile, while all the while only doing 1 damage and taking hundreds of damage a turn from his strikes and attack tiles.

He's really good in pve too

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Everyone agrees that IF is underrated, but IMO, PX is also criminally low. With the character changes, it will be really annoying to dig out his invisibility tile, while all the while only doing 1 damage and taking hundreds of damage a turn from his strikes and attack tiles.

He's really good in pve too

Prof X is 4th - hard to be criminally low when there are only 3 people ahead of you. Not sure how good he really is, but think it is safe to say that he is behind XF (at least for 2 more days) and IF. 3Thor would be a question that I am not qualified to answer.

Personally, I think Kingpin is low at 19th. He was a blast to play in his intro node of the PvE that just wrapped.

morph3us

Spoit wrote:

Everyone agrees that IF is underrated, but IMO, PX is also criminally low. With the character changes, it will be really annoying to dig out his invisibility tile, while all the while only doing 1 damage and taking hundreds of damage a turn from his strikes and attack tiles.

He's really good in pve too

Daibar's done a re-analysis part-way down on the first page, and Prof X moves up from sixth to fourth, once you remove the 5 default votes, so top five is fair, I think. I do think we tend to see a reasonable amount of "lack of use" bias for the newest characters in these polls. The vast majority of players haven't played with or against many 4*s apart from XF and TGT. Same goes for newer 3*s like IF.

jimstarooney

jimstarooney wrote:

Kamala khan is waaayy too low.

I helped shut down the unqualified character ranking,yeah i feel vindicated:)

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Everyone agrees that IF is underrated, but IMO, PX is also criminally low. With the character changes, it will be really annoying to dig out his invisibility tile, while all the while only doing 1 damage and taking hundreds of damage a turn from his strikes and attack tiles.

He's really good in pve too

ppl probably don't realize his power because he's not X-force killing everyone directly, and needs a more specific team but also because all other 4* are being nerfed - Professor X/Kingpin are best 4* after nerfs

Unknown

39 people rated 3* Thor > 4* Thor.
72 people rated 4* Thor > 3* Thor.

I too am confused a little confused by Blade's ranking and am guessing the following:
1. I think he's gotten more use in PVE, particularly with Falcon against Dark Avengers that don't use red. He destroys goons.
2. XFist doesn't use red, so against them you can leave it on board easily. With lots of black, you could suck up their green as well or use Surgical if you're using Blade/XForce.
3. More people have really started maxing their Blades compared to last ranking.

I think IF's ranking was about right at 8th. I keep thinking he's underrated, but then look at the characters above him.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

39 people rated 3* Thor > 4* Thor.
72 people rated 4* Thor > 3* Thor.

I too am confused a little confused by Blade's ranking and am guessing the following:
1. I think he's gotten more use in PVE, particularly with Falcon against Dark Avengers that don't use red. He destroys goons.
2. XFist doesn't use red, so against them you can leave it on board easily. With lots of black, you could suck up their green as well or use Surgical if you're using Blade/XForce.
3. More people have really started maxing their Blades compared to last ranking.

I think IF's ranking was about right at 8th. I keep thinking he's underrated, but then look at the characters above him.

Regarding Blade

Should be behind:
1 4* Wolverine (X-Force)
2 3* Thor
3 4* Thor
4 4* Professor X
5 3* The Hood
6 4* Nick Fury
8 3* Iron Fist
9 3* Wolverine (Patch)

Debatable above or below:
7 3* Daken
11 3* Black Panther
12 3* Magneto (classic)
13 3* Luke Cage
14 3* Captain America
15 3* Loki
18 3* Cyclops
19 4* Kingpin

By my calculations Blade should be somewhere between 9th and 17th. At 10th, he is on the high end of that range, but he is still in the range. I don't get why there is so much complaining about Blade's ranking.

Regarding Fist

I think he is low - personally I have him above Daken, 4Thor, and ProfX (subject to debate). Comparable to Hood and Fury, so I would put him in the 3rd to 5th range. He is driven down by unfamiliarity from the masses, same issue I have in properly rating Prof X.

Spiritclaw

Thanks to everyone involved in gathering and/or processing the data!

Arondite

papa07 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

And blade is wayyyy too higH

How do you figure? There are only 6 on that list that I would consider moving ahead of Blade and I don't think any of them are sure things to be ahead of him

He's got very little of the most important high-end pvp qualities
He's not fast.
He's not consistent.
He's got no in-built sustainability.

Out of the heroes ranked lower than he is, I'd say he's definitively less useful on the high-end than

Black Panther
Magneto
Luke Cage
Loki
Deadpool
Cyclops
Kamala Khan


and he's questionably or situationally less useful than

Captain America
Hulk
Rocket and Groot
Doctor Doom

It's not that Blade is a bad character or anything, but I'm pretty sure a lot of voters voted on him with their hearts instead of their heads.

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

papa07 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

And blade is wayyyy too higH

How do you figure? There are only 6 on that list that I would consider moving ahead of Blade and I don't think any of them are sure things to be ahead of him

He's got very little of the most important high-end pvp qualities
He's not fast.
He's not consistent.
He's got no in-built sustainability.

He... IS fast and consistent, though.

Arondite

gamar wrote:

Arondite wrote:

papa07 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

And blade is wayyyy too higH

How do you figure? There are only 6 on that list that I would consider moving ahead of Blade and I don't think any of them are sure things to be ahead of him

He's got very little of the most important high-end pvp qualities
He's not fast.
He's not consistent.
He's got no in-built sustainability.

He... IS fast and consistent, though.

Is he though? Because in the version of the game I play Blade only starts rolling when there are 10 or more Red Tiles on the board, and last I checked relying on the state of a randomized board is the opposite of consistent, even if the odds are slightly favorable. Even more to the point, since the average color distribution on a randomized board is under 10 per color and Blade has no in-built color manipulation, he is very inconsistent.

C'mon. You can argue fast. If you make a salient point, I might even concede that one to you. But there is NO argument in hell for consistency.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Arondite wrote:

papa07 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

And blade is wayyyy too higH

How do you figure? There are only 6 on that list that I would consider moving ahead of Blade and I don't think any of them are sure things to be ahead of him

He's got very little of the most important high-end pvp qualities
He's not fast.
He's not consistent.
He's got no in-built sustainability.

He... IS fast and consistent, though.

at this point the board should just realize that arondite is Anti-Blade. There's no point in discussing it further with him.

Arondite, the people have spoken: we like Blade.

So there's two scenarios happening here:

Either A) You're a genius and everyone else is stupid by wasting iso/HP/character slots on a "bad" character like Blade.

or Blade is useful as the majority has declared and you, PERSONALLY do not like him.

If A is true, you should be happy, you're a more efficient, more intelligent player than the schmucks that play MPQ.

If B is true, no one is losing anything and you're welcome NOT to use Blade.

Arondite

raisinbman wrote:

gamar wrote:

Arondite wrote:

papa07 wrote:

How do you figure? There are only 6 on that list that I would consider moving ahead of Blade and I don't think any of them are sure things to be ahead of him

He's got very little of the most important high-end pvp qualities
He's not fast.
He's not consistent.
He's got no in-built sustainability.

He... IS fast and consistent, though.

at this point the board should just realize that arondite is Anti-Blade. There's no point in discussing it further with him.

Arondite, the people have spoken: we like Blade.

So there's two scenarios happening here:

Either A) You're a genius and everyone else is stupid by wasting iso/HP/character slots on a "bad" character like Blade.

or Blade is useful as the majority has declared and you, PERSONALLY do not like him.

If A is true, you should be happy, you're a more efficient, more intelligent player than the schmucks that play MPQ.

If B is true, no one is losing anything and you're welcome NOT to use Blade.

I don't dislike Blade. I think he's awesome as a character and he even has decent use in PvE.

But he's no shield hopper, and so he's not a good PvP character.

And I never said he's a bad character. I even rank him top 20. That's not "bad" by any stretch of the imagination. And no one is a schmuck. They're just overrating a character because of the ease of his strike tile generation.

Don't put words in my mouth, raisin bran.

Unknown

Blade is high risk, high reward, but I use him a lot. Way more than most of the other characters below him in the ranking.

On Fast: I think he is. If you catch a board, all you need is 10 and its game over. And even if you ignore chasing purple, Blade speeds up everyone else by adding strike tiles with zero effort. When I want to blaze through low to mid level opponents quickly, Blade is on the A-Team. Against high level targets or waves, he steamrolls as fast as nearly anyone. In the DPD, I almost always can get out two KYEC before the third wave, and they obliterate the last two waves. I can do that faster than saving up for two Rage of the Panthers, or COTS. Faster than Magistique math.

Consistent? Nope! But if I luck out he's super fast, and if I don't he's no weakness. I think of him as a high offense support character. Sometimes, I just ignore his colors and focus on building up my other characters, and before I know it I've got several strike tiles out and enough purple for a KYEC.

Penalizing him for his reliance on a red board doesn't seem fair to me. For most characters, getting a board devoid of their desired color is going to slow them down, too. If I play LDaken and don't get green matches early, he's slow. Same with Grocket and Blue. Or LThor or GSWidow and Green. Same for Cap without Red or Blue, etc. And no, Blade can't really build up his weapons across colors in the same way that Cyc or Thor can, but building the right sequence of AP growth with those characters can be slow, too. That's why rainbow teams are a good strategy. If the board is bad in red, it's good in something else!

Bottom line is for me, for all but the high end PVP climb, Blade is among my fastest and most efficient team members, which is why I rank him high.

(Plus he's fun)

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

papa07 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

And blade is wayyyy too higH

How do you figure? There are only 6 on that list that I would consider moving ahead of Blade and I don't think any of them are sure things to be ahead of him

He's got very little of the most important high-end pvp qualities
.

But this isn't a ranking of high-end pvp, this is an overall character ranking and Blade is very good at PvE, one of (if not the best) at waves, solid for pvp climbing, and he heals at double speed.

Nick441234

Thanks for the guys that compiled and voted on the rankings. I find these incredibly useful for deciding who to upgrade, whether someone should be 7th or 15 is irrelevant really. It still gives us all a good idea on which characters are more valuable than others.