Are 4 Stars worth it for defense?

Unknown

Title says it all. I've got a lvl 170ish XF and lvl 170 ish IW that can both get to 270, but due to fears of PvE scaling, never did. With XF being neutered , and non of the other 4 stars seeming as '4 star' as he did, its got me wondering, is it worthwhile to build up 4 stars? Are they at least valuable on defense? I mean even with the buff IW is underwhelming, XF is no longer nearly as scary, but still pretty dmging, HulkBuster and Kingpin both look promising, but not terrifying. I'm getting ready to just sell what I have for Star-Lord...

I just can't figure if I should invest ISOs into these end game 'trophies' or not.
- Unreall

JamieMadrox

Professor X with 5 blue covers can completely ruin your day. One good cascade by the AI and it's game over.

Malcrof

When going through to find winnable battles in PVP, i leaned one hard lesson, skip Elektra/Blade matches. If she gets her red off, with his strike tiles, it is game over.

babinro

Hard to say with pvp being revamped again thanks to buffed weekly rosters.

They offer the advantage of having more health than any other type and thus making them more threatening on defense at high tiers of play (people would rather have a short shield hop than a long one).

Damage wise they've lost a lot of their edge. Look at boosted Cyclops and tell me he isn't stronger than any given 4* this week. Course that might not be the case every week depending on whose chosen.

I think the best defensive 4* hands down is hulkbuster. I haven't finished him personally but in theory he's as good as it gets. Why? The AI can't possibly play him wrong. If they waste his blue then they still get protect tiles. There's no wasting the black ability and he can't possibly misplay red. He's got Thor levels of health to boot. I fully expect to see HB dominate pvp over time for this reason.

The runner up is probably Xavier on defense but that's entirely luck dependent. He'll either do nothing or devastate you with crits or possibly a lucky invis tile placement. That constant potential threat makes him a high priority target to down though.

dfields3710

I think elektra and Nick Fury has the best defense. When you see Demolition pop up on your screen, you might wanna count your blessings. The fear to swap a tile in risk of losing a teammate puts chill in your bones. And elektra leaves serious damage to anyone who dares making a match. But honestly thoughs are the only to that have defensive abilities. The rest are either pure offense or have powers to fuel there offense. But since you don't have them I would say level xforce and starlord.

Starlord red is good enough to down or seriously hurt an opponent while his purple can help down a enemy with low health and damage another enemy.

Xforce yellow is nice. It gives the enemy a lose-lose situation and his black is deadly with enough tiles to completely down an enemy in one shot. Don't care for IW, PX, Kingpin, and Devil Dino. But that's just my opinion.

Unknown

PX and that... that... purple.

First time I've actually sworn out loud at my phone since starting MPQ.

DBC

JamieMadrox

babinro wrote:

Look at boosted Cyclops and tell me he isn't stronger than any given 4* this week.

I have to agree. Cyclops is a solid performer unboosted and is just deadly when he is boosted. A 535 cyclops can ruin your day as easily as an unboosted Thor.

babinro wrote:

I think the best defensive 4* hands down is hulkbuster. I haven't finished him personally but in theory he's as good as it gets. Why? The AI can't possibly play him wrong. If they waste his blue then they still get protect tiles. There's no wasting the black ability and he can't possibly misplay red. He's got Thor levels of health to boot. I fully expect to see HB dominate pvp over time for this reason.

I thought the same at first, but I've yet to lose to him and I've faced him about a half dozen times. That said, he's also never been able to get a power off before I've killed him so he could be absolutely devastating.

babinro wrote:

The runner up is probably Xavier on defense but that's entirely luck dependent. He'll either do nothing or devastate you with crits or possibly a lucky invis tile placement. That constant potential threat makes him a high priority target to down though.

Agreed. He's inconsistent, but when he happens he's a force. He's generally top priority for me too when I face him.

dkffiv

Jamie Madrox wrote:

babinro wrote:

I think the best defensive 4* hands down is hulkbuster. I haven't finished him personally but in theory he's as good as it gets. Why? The AI can't possibly play him wrong. If they waste his blue then they still get protect tiles. There's no wasting the black ability and he can't possibly misplay red. He's got Thor levels of health to boot. I fully expect to see HB dominate pvp over time for this reason.

I thought the same at first, but I've yet to lose to him and I've faced him about a half dozen times. That said, he's also never been able to get a power off before I've killed him so he could be absolutely devastating.

If black goes off you just instantly lose, pretty sure its worse than any other ability generate by a bad cascade. One character is more than likely dead from red the following turn and you'll be taking 1k x number of cascades per turn if the strike tiles are inaccessible.

Drummerboycroy wrote:

PX and that... that... purple.

First time I've actually sworn out loud at my phone since starting MPQ.

DBC

For the most part purple is the least of your worries. If the AI decides to generate a 5 match from the top you're very likely to lose at least 1 character plus give the AI enough AP to cast a move or two the following turn. I've had this happen within the first few turns several times and its by far the least fun mechanic they've ever introduced. Until you kill PX you're just praying that they decide not to fill all the pieces that were destroyed with the same color.

dfields3710

I am more scared of Demolition than Prof. X passive because if you get a minor cascade you're whole team would regret it. And the crazy things about both they're it always happen to your most important character. A demolition tile will always be on a tile that you need for best character to do his best move.(Sigh) I hate them days.

snlf25

I don't fear or avoid XForce anymore, but I still stay away from Elektra. Her black power makes it a colossal **** to corner and kill her and having her Ballet of Death gank you for a thousand a turn is no fun either. You gotta be sure you can get her quick.

dfields3710

But overall 4*s are useful in a lot of ways. Its just a lot of 3*s fill there roles. Even though I hated them at my 1* to 2* transition but now I don't fear them anymore and its kinda sad. But I would still use them even after the nerfs. And when I have xforce, Starlord, Elektra, Thoress, and Nick Fury maxed I will look at the newbies like a god and say "Started from the bottom now I'm here."

Unknown

I figure PX will get 'fixed' at some point. I myself have never been hurt by him, so I can't pretend ot understand, but everyone tinykitties about it as if he was Sentry.

I guess my thing is the wal lbetween 3* and 4* seems to really be mostly health and slightly better damage for - especially after patch - WAY more ISO. So am I better of dumping ISO in my 3*s, or should I work on actually leveling all the 4* I have? It made sense with XF, now I'm just like 'meh' about them.
- Unreall

dkffiv

dfields3710 wrote:

I am more scared of Demolition than Prof. X passive because if you get a minor cascade you're whole team would regret it. And the crazy things about both they're it always happen to your most important character. A demolition tile will always be on a tile that you need for best character to do his best move.(Sigh) I hate them days.

Professor X super 5 cascades happen randomly and you can't do anything to stop it, with Nick Fury you can see him building blue and can work toward denying it. Demolition takes a long time to cast (barring some insane cascades which would've killed you anyway if they had PX), Professor X has the chance to down someone on turn 1 or 2 if the AI decides to screw you.

Unknown

PX has way too much of a variance on defense. A lot of games he's going to do nothing useful besides popping out a couple of weak special tiles before rolling over, or even doing one of the patented AI 'make an invisibilty tile and then immediately match it' move, and then there's going to be the game where you see a giant floating head on the enemy's first turn and even though you're not aware of it, your guys are already all dead.

dfields3710

dkffiv wrote:

dfields3710 wrote:

I am more scared of Demolition than Prof. X passive because if you get a minor cascade you're whole team would regret it. And the crazy things about both they're it always happen to your most important character. A demolition tile will always be on a tile that you need for best character to do his best move.(Sigh) I hate them days.

Professor X super 5 cascades happen randomly and you can't do anything to stop it, with Nick Fury you can see him building blue and can work toward denying it. Demolition takes a long time to cast (barring some insane cascades which would've killed you anyway if they had PX), Professor X has the chance to down someone on turn 1 or 2 if the AI decides to screw you.

I agree because the AI usually gets at least one critical match but that at max level deals 4000+(assuming they just get one). But let's say you don't deny Fury his blue and he casts it. At max level, Demolition deals 7 X 1505= 10,535. Dropping a hurt xforce, seriously injuring Thoress and killing 95% of the 3* roster(at full health) in one shot(assuming he doesn't match any of his own). Now honestly with Prof. X invisibility tile it is a lot more likely to get a critical match or two leaving all of the 3* and 2* seriously damaged(at full health) or dead. But if he Fury casts demolition, tell me you wouldn't think twice about making any match for your character's sake. I do have a bias leaning toward Nick since he is my 2nd fav character but I'm not using it for this debate.

Quick Question: let's say we have Nick on a team and Prof. X on the other. If you have Prof. X himself match 5 tiles but one has a demolition tile and the effects go off ,before Prof. X dies can his passive still go off?

Unknown

dfields3710 wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

dfields3710 wrote:

I am more scared of Demolition than Prof. X passive because if you get a minor cascade you're whole team would regret it. And the crazy things about both they're it always happen to your most important character. A demolition tile will always be on a tile that you need for best character to do his best move.(Sigh) I hate them days.

Professor X super 5 cascades happen randomly and you can't do anything to stop it, with Nick Fury you can see him building blue and can work toward denying it. Demolition takes a long time to cast (barring some insane cascades which would've killed you anyway if they had PX), Professor X has the chance to down someone on turn 1 or 2 if the AI decides to screw you.

I agree because the AI usually gets at least one critical match but that at max level deals 4000+(assuming they just get one). But let's say you don't deny Fury his blue and he casts it. At max level, Demolition deals 7 X 1505= 10,535. Dropping a hurt xforce, seriously injuring Thoress and killing 95% of the 3* roster(at full health) in one shot(assuming he doesn't match any of his own). Now honestly with Prof. X invisibility tile it is a lot more likely to get a critical match or two leaving all of the 3* and 2* seriously damaged(at full health) or dead. But if he Fury casts demolition, tell me you wouldn't think twice about making any match for your character's sake. I do have a bias leaning toward Nick since he is my 2nd fav character but I'm not using it for this debate.

Quick Question: let's say we have Nick on a team and Prof. X on the other. If you have Prof. X himself match 5 tiles but one has a demolition tile and the effects go off ,before Prof. X dies can his passive still go off?

Let's just say that statistics show you automatically lose to Professor X 10% of the time (as in, you start the game and it immediately ends with you lose, no question asked) and you always win the other 90% of the time, and Hulkbuster wins 15% of the time through actual gameplay. It is possible to want to avoid Professor X over Hulkbuster because first, you might be convinced that you're better than the average person where this statistics is taken from, while your skill has no effect on the Professor X scenario. Even if you do not think you're any better than the average player, you can say maybe I should run AP+2 all boosts to make my odds better than average, while again this has almost no impact on Professor X. Now let's say you're totally rational and you analyzed every possible variable and still come to the conclusion that you're just an average guy that is expected to lose to Hulkbuster 15% of the time, but even then, you can say 'then for this game maybe I should take more time to think about every move and pick the guys that can neutralize Hulkbuster's strengths and improve my chances'. After all, it's not hard to analyze what are Hulkbuster's strengths and then change your game to deal with his abilities. On the other hand, there's really nothing you can do to adapt to Professor X since the match 5s pretty much just happen randomly. Yes there are some obviously bad moves that you can make like handing opponent a match 5, but assuming you're at least good enough to not make that mistake, everything else regarding Professor X is outside of your control. For most characters you can at least believe that there are things you can do to mitigate that character's power moves, and even if you believed wrong this is better than going against something that just happens randomly/unconditionally, and if you're good enough there is almost always something you can do to improve your chances fighting a character whose power doesn't come from random/unconditional elements.

Buret0

A lot of these characters would immediately become more useful if the AI would favour making 5 tile matches over 4 tile strings.

Or if the AI would actually use the crit tiles that were generated intentionally, even if they would forgo a 4 tile match to use them.

Or if the AI would avoid using their powers in a situation where the special tiles are easily destroyed... or prevent the AI from destroying their own special tiles unless forced.

The reason that 95% of the teams that are great on offense just bite hard on defense is because the AI just has no idea how to use the characters.

Like using Polarized to just randomly assign blue tiles on the board instead of actively looking for making multiple match fours or fives. Same with GSBW.

Or how about saving up black AP when using Iron Fist in combination with Luke Cage? Then how about using multiple Jab, Jab, Cross moves... AFTER using Shou-Lao Fang Strike and Iron Fist of K'un-Lun?

If the AI wasn't so terrible in this game, many of these characters would be totally useful in a PvP team. Instead, you largely look for damage dealing and 'idiot-proof' characters that even the AI can't really screw up.

The offense already has all of the advantages (human brain, ability to use multiple skills at once, ability to read one move ahead, ability to select the target of the damage while determining which of your characters will take the incoming hit through match damage...), an update to the AI would really be appreciated.

puppychow

babinro wrote:

I think the best defensive 4* hands down is hulkbuster. I haven't finished him personally but in theory he's as good as it gets. Why? The AI can't possibly play him wrong. If they waste his blue then they still get protect tiles. There's no wasting the black ability and he can't possibly misplay red. He's got Thor levels of health to boot. I fully expect to see HB dominate pvp over time for this reason.

Ask Puerto Rico how many times I took down his max HB defense in pvp.

puppychow

Buret0 wrote:

The reason that 95% of the teams that are great on offense just bite hard on defense is because the AI just has no idea how to use the characters.

Like using Polarized to just randomly assign blue tiles on the board instead of actively looking for making multiple match fours or fives. Same with GSBW.

Or how about saving up black AP when using Iron Fist in combination with Luke Cage? Then how about using multiple Jab, Jab, Cross moves... AFTER using Shou-Lao Fang Strike and Iron Fist of K'un-Lun?

If the AI wasn't so terrible in this game, many of these characters would be totally useful in a PvP team. Instead, you largely look for damage dealing and 'idiot-proof' characters that even the AI can't really screw up.

Excellent point there. AI certainly doesn't know how to use its defense. This is why I'm not afraid of facing a IF/Cage defense, because I know the AI will screw it up! On the flip side, characters with passive trigger abilities like Professor and Hawkeye are deadly to face because the AI occasionally runs nasty cascades, and can't screw up the passive abilities.

dkffiv

Buret0 wrote:

A lot of these characters would immediately become more useful if the AI would favour making 5 tile matches over 4 tile strings.

Or if the AI would actually use the crit tiles that were generated intentionally, even if they would forgo a 4 tile match to use them.

Or if the AI would avoid using their powers in a situation where the special tiles are easily destroyed... or prevent the AI from destroying their own special tiles unless forced.

The reason that 95% of the teams that are great on offense just bite hard on defense is because the AI just has no idea how to use the characters.

Like using Polarized to just randomly assign blue tiles on the board instead of actively looking for making multiple match fours or fives. Same with GSBW.

Or how about saving up black AP when using Iron Fist in combination with Luke Cage? Then how about using multiple Jab, Jab, Cross moves... AFTER using Shou-Lao Fang Strike and Iron Fist of K'un-Lun?

If the AI wasn't so terrible in this game, many of these characters would be totally useful in a PvP team. Instead, you largely look for damage dealing and 'idiot-proof' characters that even the AI can't really screw up.

The offense already has all of the advantages (human brain, ability to use multiple skills at once, ability to read one move ahead, ability to select the target of the damage while determining which of your characters will take the incoming hit through match damage...), an update to the AI would really be appreciated.

Unless they revamp the health kit / healing system, an unconditional hell no on updating AI. I don't care if I win 35%+ on defense, taking damage and being unable to play due to your characters being downed is not fun. PvE especially will come down to who buys more packs.

Unknown

I never get why people ask for revamping the AI, as if they don't notice that the AI is purposely handicapped to give players an edge. For example, they can never choose who to attack first. It's not because the AI can't just say pick whoever has the least HP that cannot regen. It's because they chose not to do it. If you want a challenge, just allow the AI to pick one person to attack first. On second thought, let's not do that unless you want to use a lot of health packs.