So I've noticed...

DFiPL

puppychow wrote:

DFiPL wrote:

I'm debating real hard whether I want to take anybody to 166, since I play far more PVE than I do PVP. I'm moving cautiously with training my 3* because I don't want to find myself in a situation where I have a bunch of leveled 3* and get "rewarded" with PVE nodes beyond my ability/patience level as a result. Groot is 141 for me, and as great as he is, and as badly as I'd like to max him, I'm just not sure it's a good idea.

As a player who consistently lands on the top page of the leaderboard in pve events, I agree that your caution in leveling anyone to 166 is warranted. If you do not use shield in pvp events, then there's really no point for you to max out 3* characters because w/o shielding you will not keep your points no matter what you use for defense.

For a pve oriented player, your focus should be on having as many characters in your roster as you can comfortably carry. For the just ended Dark Avengers Heroic event, were you able to clear every single node? Or were you missing an essential character and unable to do so? The ideal roster mix for pve should include 1*, 2*, and 3* characters. I should also note that for the last pve event and this new Hulk event, D3 has made a 4* character (Invisible Woman and Fury, respectively) an essential; it may be a new trend. Second, having a larger roster of usable characters mean you could avoid using up your heal packs and play pve longer.

I don't have Invisible Woman. I only have a couple of 4*. I had She-Thor, but only a single cover, and I'd had that for months without having gotten another. After she got 'nerfed,' I ended up selling her off to make room for a 3* cover I'd pulled that I didn't already have.

I still have Nick Fury, I still have XFW, and I have Hulkbuster. I don't have IW, don't have She-Thor any longer, don't have Devil Dinosaur, etc.

I have nearly all of the 2* and 3* characters, though, so I was able to do 2/3 of the essentials in the Heroic, and going forward I expect I'll be able to hit 2/3 with regularity if they're sticking to 2/3/4.

But honestly? Part of the issue I had with progression rewards in PVE is that they felt unreachable without essentials, and I regularly was having events where I couldn't hit ANY essential. Being able to hit 2/3 is an improvement on that, and that 2/3 capability got me a top 100 finish and a couple Colossus covers. I'm happy with that. I don't chase placement rewards in PVE, but I managed to get one anyway.

DFiPL

morph3us wrote:

DFiPL wrote:

Well, again, as we've already discussed upthread - I feel like the "terrible" nomenclature that gets hung on a lot of these characters comes from high-level PVPers who are looking for the next metagame. It's not that the characters are terrible. It's that they're terrible for that one specific purpose - tearing through PVP teams as quickly as possible so you can climb before a shield hop.

Doesn't make 'em useless, and a number of the "terrible" characters I've used in PVP and found them quite satisfactory

This same argument comes up again and again in the character ranking threads, too, particularly about 3* Cap, since he's arguably the #1 PvE character out there, but wouldn't make the top ten in PvP. Always ends up causing all sorts of consternation if he ends up in the top ten.

To follow your point through, Doc Oc and Squirrel Girl are terrible in PvP, but can have their uses in PvE. Does that make them terrible? Probably not, but I think in order to qualify for top tier status, a character needs to be good or great in PvP. The problem is that in PvP, there's no room for anything but good or great.

Well, again, I don't think Doc and SG are "terrible" in PvP so much as not useful for top-tier PvP players. And that's not the same thing. Not being useful for people who are chasing top 50 (or better) PvP finishes is not the same thing as being "terrible."

At least not to me.

Dauthi

dkffiv wrote:

DFiPL wrote:

Vision is one, certainly. But he also feels like one who needs to be at max covers before he starts being useful. He's not someone you'd want to use if you had any choice while he's, say, 1/1/0 (which mine is), but I can see a 5/5/3 Vision being in my A Team rotation.

There are others. Some of them are characters who have been rebalanced somewhere along the way. Some of them I don't know if people think they're actually "bad," so much as they just seem to be frequently the target of derision. Storm as an example. I frequently see her get run down, but Hailstorm has saved my **** on numerous occasions. Of course, she's also one who didn't get REALLY useful until she hit max covers and close to level 100 for me.

Gamora and Star-Lord are a couple others, though I'm in the process of building the former and have yet to even get a cover of the latter on PC. I mean, I get that they're not going to be as powerful as the boosted trainer variations that we get in the PvEs, but those are both characters I would love to have fully covered, and yet the majority of the comments I read about those two are dismissive.

Go to the specific character threads to see the breakdown of why things don't work.

I'll be nice and side with the OP. I still feel there is hope for this character, though I do not believe he will reach top tier status.

Vision sucks because #1 he's reliant on being maxed leveled and preferably boosted to ensure he tanks his colors (so that blue and yellow work). Assuming you get the composition right (either bring no other yellow/red/blue users or make sure they follow his strength progression) he suffers from being unable to place his tiles so there's a good chance the AI will end up matching it and reducing its potential effectiveness. Third, if you do get the red and blue combo off its not all that different than the other good AoEs (DP, BP, KK). PvP wise he's a mess and there's no way the AI will use him properly.

I feel like this is a character who's powers are not going to be able to be interpreted well until everyone maxes/levels him. There are too many variables to what may/may not happen. On the positive side, he could be like Gamora where you have to take him out first because leaving him last may hurt really bad. Also, since his "buffs" to himself are very cheap, this will be quite annoying to play against because he will shift from massive match damage (come on, 723 bonus damage is insane! That is a possible 2900+ damage for 5 ap!). If you try to focus him down because that sounds awful, he might switch back to defense, good luck with that.

But let's consider he may end up bad at PVP, this leaves PVE to be considered. He can switch from tank/damage making him more strategic to use. I think he will definitely be fine here.

In the end I think he has Quicksilver syndrome, where many folks are jumping on the bandwagon of hate because they want to believe D3 will fail. He's not going to be the best, but he isn't going to suck either.

3* Storm probably benefited the most from the Xforce nerf and HP boost, she's decent in PvE now. She may actually be a better partner than XF for 4hor now since 4hor still does pretty decent damage whereas Xforce is kinda useless once his black goes off. I'm not rushing to max her but I have used her a decent amount, especially last PvE when she was boosted.

I believe her yellow is under appreciated. With it, you are guaranteed use of any TU you equip. That is strong considering the amazing TUs you can equip...

Gamora is bad. Her red does decent (but not stellar) damage at 5 covers, at 3 it barely tickles. Her green can be useful but its very expensive. Her black is terrible, way worse than BP's yellow. Tons of AP and its not even game ending when it goes off. Her problem is that she can't really reduce damage (either via reliable stuns, AP steal, or defense tiles) and she lacks the damage to knock someone out. She's slow and has no benefits to make up for it so you end up either losing or taking massive damage when the game drags on and the AI starts firing off moves. I've had her 553 and 535 at 166 and the only time she's somewhat useful is when she's super buffed to 260.

You must not have accidentally cornered a Gamora (keep her as the last enemy standing) and had her unleash her black. It sucks. God help you once she unloads those "weak" reds afterwards. It isn't pretty. The solution? Target her first? Well that sucks, she isn't that great but you have to target her first? Well played.

Unknown

After reading a good bit of this thread I figured I'd weigh in with my own opinions, finally got 2 covered 3*s, lots of almost but not quite covers, and a slew of 1-8 covers... So take what I say with a grain of salt.

Gamora

Gamora Can be devastating if left till last, but otherwise its really hard to make sure you're getting 12 AP worth of damage from her consistently, a lot of times I'll just bring someone with flat values because I know exactly what I'm getting when I use it and don't have to worry about pairing her with specific people to maximize her usefulness, though for me she's hardly covered anyway, got about 8 and haven't even used her once because I've always had better options at that level.

Storm

Storm. I really wanted to love storm, I remembered the good old days of playing 1* storm and absolutely destroying the board over and over, but unfortunately, with team-up tiles they changed both her ability colour from red to yellow, and hard capped it at a really inconsequential amount of shake up, only to give the actual ability to CMags. The truth now is that so many characters are based entirely around having or buffing or dealing with special tiles, that to have someone that can, and will, break everything on the board is really bad to have around(also why not a lot of people use Punisher that I see). Ultimately, I'd rather use Dr Doom for attack tiles because his kit is less destructive while still pumping out a lot more direct damage than Storm overall. Unless I had a team with her that somehow covers everything, I also rarely want to spare 10 green to get a whole bunch of random AP and hope for favorable cascades(not something I've seen lately)

Vision

Vision sounds great on paper but as people have said, you're running the risk of bringing someone along that covers too many of his tiles so that nice cheap 5AP heavy hitter becomes exponentially less likely to happen. His red means you're probably going to have to sit on AP till you have enough to use them both in sequence, which makes it finicky for mediocre AoE damage, though undoubtedly strong if you have plenty of red lying around and can cast it twice before the CD tile gets matched or destroyed. I wouldn't say he's beyond hope, but definitely could use a little tweak.

Quicksilver

Quicksilver has the problem of relying greatly on random blue matches without the bots constantly matching every Team Up tile like a crack addict looking for their stash. I've used him a fair number of times under-covered or the free one from required nodes, but for a character that could easily dismantle a team, his kit is really and doesn't really focus on any one thing, so he's kinda a bit good at everything, but also outclassed by everyone. I rarely ever saw his Supersonic go off, because of the insatiable hunger that the AI has for Team Ups. With that gone, we're left with the rest of his kit, swapping two whole tiles CAN set up 5 matches and whatnot but usually for me meant taking out a CD tile, or attack, etc. However Cap can do that far easier and for a whole lot more damage. His green is realistically only a bit better than Gamora's red and will rarely cost 6 AP, so really you're looking at 8-10AP for about 2.1k damage, which is also outclassed by a lot of characters.

Lazy Cap

Cap is really solid, best PvE character in the game in my opinion, but his yellow is worthless in PvP, you'll never use it which cements him in PvE, if they cut costs/protection in half I swear he'd be everywhere, but they haven't so he'll be judged on his PvP performance which is average, but needs someone with a strong yellow.

Not sure who else is considered junk tier but here's how I see a few other sub-par characters

Ragnarok

I hate the new Ragnarok, he was once god tier before getting butchered, and frankensteined into the freak show we see now. I, and apparently everyone else too, hates self damage, and when you're rocking 1300(!) damage to your team for LESS damage than Thor's green, at the same cost, why in the world would you ever use it? If his self heal were true healing, I could see his potential, but he's still killing the rest of your team. Just no, on every level, no. I can appreciate the charged tile meta and all, since it balances things out because either team can match it, but it's not enough to justify this atrocity.

Sentry

Sentry just slaughters everything in sight, including your team, never liked the idea of him, even when he was super broken because it meant starting every fight with at most, half health, and that was before true healing was removed and he became a cancer to your roster.

Psylocke

Psylocke has always been burdened by a mostly useless blue, sure, stealing 15+ AP is amazing but it wont necessarily do anything for you. That aside, she's been completely eclipsed by Blade. Everything that Psylocke did well, is now being done better by Blade, getting out 2k+ damage attack/strike tiles in potentially 6 turns is insane.

IM40

No surprises here, I'd consider him to be one of the least useful 3*s for everything but his recharge, I just posted in another thread about why I think he's so terrible but the short of it is that his abilities cost so much that he's actually literally out classed by 2* characters.

Spidey

Oh how the mighty have fallen, when I started the game, Spider Man was a must-have, every single team in the top25 had CMags and Spider Man, then they "adjusted" him right around the time they removed true healing, which made him useless, now his protect tiles are his best ability, they wanted to remove perma-stun from the game but what actually happened is they just moved it to a new character. Daredevil's stun can be permanent if you have the AP and patience for it.

Can't really comment on SG read a lot of flak getting thrown her way, but all I can say is : protect tiles ending your turn is garbage, the rest of her kit seems functional if situational


Anyway, that's the longest post I've made in a while, hope any part of it helped

stowaway

I do think people tend to have a binary attitude where characters are either "top tier" or "junk tier." And the message boards definitely skew toward PvP when making these evaluations.

But I also wonder how many people are playing the loaner versions in that one node in their introductory PvE, and getting some unrealistic expectations. The fully covered loaner Vision was boosted to 170, and he was fighting level 100 goons. Any character who doesn't look powerful in that setup truly is garbage.

Malcrof

SlamDunc wrote:

Can't really comment on SG read a lot of flak getting thrown her way, but all I can say is : protect tiles ending your turn is garbage, the rest of her kit seems functional if situational

Her yellow is best used when you have limited or only 1 option for a match, and it will set the AI up for something they need, or a 5+ ... use it to end the turn without having to do anything, and get some protect tiles.

That being said.. this is why hers is cheaper then Caps.

Unknown

Malcrof wrote:

SlamDunc wrote:

Can't really comment on SG read a lot of flak getting thrown her way, but all I can say is : protect tiles ending your turn is garbage, the rest of her kit seems functional if situational

Her yellow is best used when you have limited or only 1 option for a match, and it will set the AI up for something they need, or a 5+ ... use it to end the turn without having to do anything, and get some protect tiles.

That being said.. this is why hers is cheaper then Caps.

I can get why, but I also think Cap's could use a cost/defense reduction. Looking at someone like Magneto, he can shield for 500 or realistically 300 for the same AP cost as SG without ending the turn. If anything, make her 5 yellow not end the turn so if you plan on using her for her protect tiles, you can get them out and not give up a turn

My standard for protect tiles has become comparing them to Luke Cage, they need to offer something significantly better than 270 free for the whole match. Obviously he only gets one vs the chance to cast multiple times, but your protect tiles also get matched as the game goes along so you're probably only replacing the original value most of the time. I personally dislike seeing an ability and thinking "yup, that's the 3 cover right there" It would vary gameplay a lot more if all 3 skills were viable

DFiPL

stowaway wrote:

I do think people tend to have a binary attitude where characters are either "top tier" or "junk tier." And the message boards definitely skew toward PvP when making these evaluations.

But I also wonder how many people are playing the loaner versions in that one node in their introductory PvE, and getting some unrealistic expectations. The fully covered loaner Vision was boosted to 170, and he was fighting level 100 goons. Any character who doesn't look powerful in that setup truly is garbage.

While true, that's only +4 to his regular max anyway. That's not THAT much more powerful than what you might expect from a fully-covered, maxed Vision. If he were boosted to 200 or something, yeah, that could seriously skew things.

Not sure 170 skews the view enough to matter.

stowaway

DFiPL wrote:

While true, that's only +4 to his regular max anyway. That's not THAT much more powerful than what you might expect from a fully-covered, maxed Vision. If he were boosted to 200 or something, yeah, that could seriously skew things.

Not sure 170 skews the view enough to matter.

You're right that four levels doesn't mean much. But level 100 goons, to my mind, is a job for a 2* team. My intuition about Vision is that he's not great. I only have five covers for him, so I don't consider myself remotely experienced yet.

My imperfect memory about Quicksilver is that he was fully twice the level of his enemies in the loaner node of his introductory PvE. Quicksilver has one good ability (black), but he's not a good character. I somehow already have twelve covers for him, and through two Ultron events I've used him dozens and dozens of times. If you think he might be good because you had fun playing his fully covered loaner against enemies half his level, I promise that under normal circumstances he will seem weak.

DFiPL

stowaway wrote:

DFiPL wrote:

While true, that's only +4 to his regular max anyway. That's not THAT much more powerful than what you might expect from a fully-covered, maxed Vision. If he were boosted to 200 or something, yeah, that could seriously skew things.

Not sure 170 skews the view enough to matter.

You're right that four levels doesn't mean much. But level 100 goons, to my mind, is a job for a 2* team. My intuition about Vision is that he's not great. I only have five covers for him, so I don't consider myself remotely experienced yet.

My imperfect memory about Quicksilver is that he was fully twice the level of his enemies in the loaner node of his introductory PvE. Quicksilver has one good ability (black), but he's not a good character. I somehow already have twelve covers for him, and through two Ultron events I've used him dozens and dozens of times. If you think he might be good because you had fun playing his fully covered loaner against enemies half his level, I promise that under normal circumstances he will seem weak.

1) he's going to do the same damage against level 100 goons as he is against level 180 villains. What's going to be different is the level 180 villains may (or may not) have the HP to absorb more of his attacks before they fall. If you make the mistake of going LOOK HOW FAST HE TOOK THE GOONS OUT HE'S AMAZING, yes, disappointment may follow.

But if you look at it from the perspective of "here's how much damage he's doing with his red/blue" and can divorce that from who you're fighting, you may have a different perspective.

2) It's pretty unusual for me to tackle anything above 160 or so in PVE, and as I've mentioned here and elsewhere, I've really cut back on how much PVP I do because I don't have the patience to start from 3x100+ teams the second I set foot inside the event. I don't mind fighting those teams eventually, but the drastic increase in the amount of time it would take me to reach the 300 point goal I used to go into events with means that, nope, I'll fight a few rounds, get a standard and some ISO, and hope I finish high enough to get a 2* cover reward I can sell for some more ISO. It isn't worth it to me anymore to fight my way to 300 for a token that is 80% likely to be a 2* cover anyway.

So however "weak" he's going to seem in PVP just...doesn't matter to me. What can he do in PVE, where I'm more concerned with the completion of the node than the speed of that completion? From what I've seen with the fully covered loaner, I'm happy with what I can expect if and when I finish covering my Vision.

stowaway

DFiPL wrote:

2) It's pretty unusual for me to tackle anything above 160 or so in PVE

[. . .]

I'm happy with what I can expect if and when I finish covering my Vision.

If you finish covering Vision, and then bring him all the way up to 166, so his power is about the same as what you experienced with the loaner, you will be tackling enemies in PvE much higher than 160. I don't know how PvE enemy levels are determined. There's a lot of contradictory information on the forums. But if you play PvE regularly, and you play it with stronger characters, you can definitely expect the enemies to get stronger too.

Unknown

DFiPL wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Care to provide a specific example? Or are we talking about Vision here? Because Vision is legitimately terrible despite how he might look good on paper.

Vision is one, certainly. But he also feels like one who needs to be at max covers before he starts being useful. He's not someone you'd want to use if you had any choice while he's, say, 1/1/0 (which mine is), but I can see a 5/5/3 Vision being in my A Team rotation.

There are others. Some of them are characters who have been rebalanced somewhere along the way. Some of them I don't know if people think they're actually "bad," so much as they just seem to be frequently the target of derision. Storm as an example. I frequently see her get run down, but Hailstorm has saved my **** on numerous occasions. Of course, she's also one who didn't get REALLY useful until she hit max covers and close to level 100 for me.

Gamora and Star-Lord are a couple others, though I'm in the process of building the former and have yet to even get a cover of the latter on PC. I mean, I get that they're not going to be as powerful as the boosted trainer variations that we get in the PvEs, but those are both characters I would love to have fully covered, and yet the majority of the comments I read about those two are dismissive.

use whoever you want. When we talk about the meta-game, we're talking about the fact that we want the best results for as little as possible. Our ISO, HP, time and money are limited.

There are plenty of people who use bad characters and get away with it. Hell, even pro players can specialize in bad characters, becoming 'character specialists' and surpassing any expectations someone has.

No one will stop you from doing what you want to in this game. You may run into problems in PVP, but hey, that's your prerogative.

Dauthi

After playing my vision who is fairly well covered, he is absolutely like gamora. You can't wait until last to fight him because if he uses blue it will hurt really bad.

The kicker though, like I thought, is his offense. If he is your last man standing, imagine all that bonus damage triggering for any cascade with blue. It really adds up. If you don't have blue matches you can turtle up with his yellow too. He pretty much ensures worst case scenario you don't lose matches, just health packs.