Character Rankings May 2015 Edition: The Results!

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

dreadlington wrote:

Why are you taking such offence at me suggesting someone with more time do it next time? I didn't criticise you in any way but you're choosing to take it badly. My sympathies for the death in the family, that's always rough. Wasn't attacking you!

It's always been a slow process. Keep your pants on and don't be a jerk.

I don't know why everyone got bent and decided to attack this guy. It was just a polite question/comment. And I'm sure he wasn't the only person thinking it. No need to bring out the firing squad!

Unknown

Ultron504 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

dreadlington wrote:

Why are you taking such offence at me suggesting someone with more time do it next time? I didn't criticise you in any way but you're choosing to take it badly. My sympathies for the death in the family, that's always rough. Wasn't attacking you!

It's always been a slow process. Keep your pants on and don't be a jerk.

I don't know why everyone got bent and decided to attack this guy. It was just a polite question/comment. And I'm sure he wasn't the only person thinking it. No need to bring out the firing squad!

we stand ready to defend

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

If you would take Falcon's over HT's then you just don't understand how truly bad Falcon's really is. To get the damage HT does with ONE fireball you would need 36 activations of Falcon's boosts. He does do 3 at a time and they do persist for rounds so while not impossible it's unlikely. Plus in those rounds HT just lauched off another fireball.

Falcon is OKish in very distinct circumstances, i.e. when paired with Daken against goons. Outside that niche he is terrible. GSBW OTOH is an alright character and good support for certain heroes, which is why I only said MAYBE better. HT isn't that under rated on the list, just very slightly.

HT gets a bad rap, partly because he was released literally days before Thor and Captain America made him irrelevant. For the 1 week he existed as the primary source of red damage in 3* land he was great. Then Thor crushed his dreams with his golden locks and super huge thighs. Despite this HT is still actually good, just not A-List.

It is a team game, if you compare characters, the general assumption is that they are on teams built for them. I'm not going to have a team of 3hor, Falcon, DDino, and use that for comparing against HT. HT is much better straight up 1v1, no question, but if I'm using falcon, he's teamed with Blade or Daken or Cage or Patch...there is a reason to have him on board. With Blade (or to a lesser Daken), he boost 3 strikes at a time as well as those ridiculous purples...3 tiles at a time at 94, so each round you are doing 300 more per match, and it stacks quickly, and is a CONSTANT increase. No it's not a OHK type of situation, but over the course of a game, between the actual dmg and the effort spent trying to clear those buffed strike tiles, he becomes a big hindrance.

HT does get a bad rap - because of timing, you are spot on, but even in the current meta, he boils down to just a solid black user and a solid red user, with sporadic green usage...all popular colors that someone better can use. The best thing about Falcon is that his two important powers are really just passives...I can have him on a team with Cage, buffing the red tile, while feeding Cage's yellow. I used to run Falcon/blade/CMags for Goons & Deadpool (switched up to Steve recently, better use of red), and yellow became shields from magneto while buffing the hell out of blade and those same def tiles, the blue for CMags is a no brainer as well, literally Falcon just stands there and boost the team without consuming any resources.

HT has red (which is very undersold, a cheap high dmg red that unfortunately destroys those same reds you need to use it). As I alluded to a few pages back, black is the strongest color in the top 25, most likely he is teamed with a better black user, he burns through green, leaving him with red (which he is getting outclassed in lately).

We are splitting hairs and I'm arguing unnecessarily I admit, but I'd much rather have a max Falcon than a max HT.
- Unreall

Ebolamonkey84

2* Bullseye, Ragnarok, GSBW, and Juggernaut up.

Ebolamonkey84

Hulkbuster up.

Unknown

Unreallystic wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

If you would take Falcon's over HT's then you just don't understand how truly bad Falcon's really is. To get the damage HT does with ONE fireball you would need 36 activations of Falcon's boosts. He does do 3 at a time and they do persist for rounds so while not impossible it's unlikely. Plus in those rounds HT just lauched off another fireball.

Falcon is OKish in very distinct circumstances, i.e. when paired with Daken against goons. Outside that niche he is terrible. GSBW OTOH is an alright character and good support for certain heroes, which is why I only said MAYBE better. HT isn't that under rated on the list, just very slightly.

HT gets a bad rap, partly because he was released literally days before Thor and Captain America made him irrelevant. For the 1 week he existed as the primary source of red damage in 3* land he was great. Then Thor crushed his dreams with his golden locks and super huge thighs. Despite this HT is still actually good, just not A-List.

It is a team game, if you compare characters, the general assumption is that they are on teams built for them. I'm not going to have a team of 3hor, Falcon, DDino, and use that for comparing against HT. HT is much better straight up 1v1, no question, but if I'm using falcon, he's teamed with Blade or Daken or Cage or Patch...there is a reason to have him on board. With Blade (or to a lesser Daken), he boost 3 strikes at a time as well as those ridiculous purples...3 tiles at a time at 94, so each round you are doing 300 more per match, and it stacks quickly, and is a CONSTANT increase. No it's not a OHK type of situation, but over the course of a game, between the actual dmg and the effort spent trying to clear those buffed strike tiles, he becomes a big hindrance.

HT does get a bad rap - because of timing, you are spot on, but even in the current meta, he boils down to just a solid black user and a solid red user, with sporadic green usage...all popular colors that someone better can use. The best thing about Falcon is that his two important powers are really just passives...I can have him on a team with Cage, buffing the red tile, while feeding Cage's yellow. I used to run Falcon/blade/CMags for Goons & Deadpool (switched up to Steve recently, better use of red), and yellow became shields from magneto while buffing the hell out of blade and those same def tiles, the blue for CMags is a no brainer as well, literally Falcon just stands there and boost the team without consuming any resources.

HT has red (which is very undersold, a cheap high dmg red that unfortunately destroys those same reds you need to use it). As I alluded to a few pages back, black is the strongest color in the top 25, most likely he is teamed with a better black user, he burns through green, leaving him with red (which he is getting outclassed in lately).

We are splitting hairs and I'm arguing unnecessarily I admit, but I'd much rather have a max Falcon than a max HT.
- Unreall

Each round that you match . Which is an AP color you can't convert to damage with Falcon/Blade/Daken. You would be way way better off bringing Cage/Thor/Groot/Patch/BP/Cyke/KK/Hood/PX than Falcon. That's a pretty long list for "this guy is supposed to be good in this situation". If you have Blade/Daken and you get a 6 boosted x2 out, you've already won. Falcon isn't going to actually help you win this game any faster. If you DON'T get the out, and you aren't hitting Thirst, you have probably already lost, and Falcon isn't going to turn this around either. So even in his element he is bad.

I get that Falcon is 90% passive and that's pretty cool (see Professor X), but his passives are not great. Even his main thing that he does (boost tiles) isn't that great by comparison (again, see Professor X). If PX boosts tiles by 238 and we buy the statement "4*s are roughly 160% of a 3* in power" then Falcon should be boosting tiles by at least 150, over 50% more than he currently is. Ignoring the fact that PX actually boosts 4 at a time due to needing invisibility first, just call that fair trade off. This brings me back to " you just don't understand how truly bad Falcon's really is."

When Falcon ran with just Daken he was kinda ok, because Daken can't pump out the large tiles by himself. The argument could be made that Blade actually made Falcon much worse because you no longer really need him. Tiles are getting larger over time. Blade started it off with the potential for 1k attack tiles, then Groot busted out some 250 strike tiles, and lets not forget Cage/IF with their basically 400+ indestructible tile. Boosting a 1k attack tile by 94 is meaningless. Boosting it by 40% tho... *whistle*. Now that people actually have falcon and leveled him, perhaps it's time to go back to boost by % (which he originally was for like 4 days before they changed him).

Really Falcon has but a single job, and that job is goon node CD management, a niche that is more and more difficult to fill recently so.. useful, but not really more useful than, say, GSBW.

TLCstormz

Ebolamonkey84 wrote:

dreadlington wrote:

Reading the amusing descriptions of the character's placing on the list was a lot of people's favourite thing about these forums. I've been logging in every day to read them and two weeks later we still only have two characters done. I appreciate your time on this but perhaps next time someone else can be in charge of writing it up. Any takers?

Sorry my full time job, three year old child, and a death in the family have taken precedence. I will try to readjust my priorities.

Well, THAT was unnecessary......

Sorry to hear about your family, though. God bless.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

Each round that you match . Which is an AP color you can't convert to damage with Falcon/Blade/Daken. You would be way way better off bringing Cage/Thor/Groot/Patch/BP/Cyke/KK/Hood/PX than Falcon. That's a pretty long list for "this guy is supposed to be good in this situation". If you have Blade/Daken and you get a 6 boosted x2 out, you've already won. Falcon isn't going to actually help you win this game any faster. If you DON'T get the out, and you aren't hitting Thirst, you have probably already lost, and Falcon isn't going to turn this around either. So even in his element he is bad.

I get that Falcon is 90% passive and that's pretty cool (see Professor X), but his passives are not great. Even his main thing that he does (boost tiles) isn't that great by comparison (again, see Professor X). If PX boosts tiles by 238 and we buy the statement "4*s are roughly 160% of a 3* in power" then Falcon should be boosting tiles by at least 150, over 50% more than he currently is. Ignoring the fact that PX actually boosts 4 at a time due to needing invisibility first, just call that fair trade off. This brings me back to " you just don't understand how truly bad Falcon's really is."

When Falcon ran with just Daken he was kinda ok, because Daken can't pump out the large tiles by himself. The argument could be made that Blade actually made Falcon much worse because you no longer really need him. Tiles are getting larger over time. Blade started it off with the potential for 1k attack tiles, then Groot busted out some 250 strike tiles, and lets not forget Cage/IF with their basically 400+ indestructible tile. Boosting a 1k attack tile by 94 is meaningless. Boosting it by 40% tho... *whistle*. Now that people actually have falcon and leveled him, perhaps it's time to go back to boost by % (which he originally was for like 4 days before they changed him).

Really Falcon has but a single job, and that job is goon node CD management, a niche that is more and more difficult to fill recently so.. useful, but not really more useful than, say, GSBW.

I wouldn't necessarily play Daken/Blade together - its actually not a strong team IMO, you max out the red tiles fast, and have no actual reason for those greens that you are matching. I agree wholeheartedly about Lhor, Cage, etc. Yolu want a yellow user to take advantage of the ability.

I also wouldn't dare compare anyone to PX, him and IF are very possible nerfs, especially PX, his strength is out of line. As well, this isn't really about Falcon vs PX, its Falcon vs HT. Comparing Falcon to PX is like comparing HT to Cyclops, both are ranked higher for a 'real' reason.

Anyways, I don't disagree about Falcon's strengths losing weight over time, I actually feel he's in need of an adjustment, he has synergy problems with his purple, and his yellow should be a little stronger, but I feel the exact same way about HT. He needs adjustment, he's a solid dmg dealer, but the current trend right now with dmg dealers like say Cyclops is that they can build AP for themselves either through shake-up, or outright changing colors (GSBW, Cyclops, Lhor, etc). I think is out right STUPID that HT's red attack actually DESTROYS red tiles. If anything it should do the opposite and create MORE red tiles. So while yes Falcon is falling, so is HT, which takes me back to the original point, I'd take falcon over HT, especially when not boosted *dynamics change a bit when boosted, might go HT in that situation*. I just feel that the passives that Falcon adds are worth more than the direct dmg that HT adds. You have to 'work' to make his black worth anything, you have to store up green for his green to be worth anything, and both of those are stronger colors elsewhere, he really reduces to just red, which in his range, is best used by other characters as well, especially since as mentioned he wipes his own color off the board. With Falcon, especially being passive, he doesn't detract from any one else, and he strengthens all tiles a total of 300 per yellow match. If it wasn't a passive - I'm with you 100%, but being a passive means its essentially 'Free' AP. I can boost Cage's red protect tile and some of Blade's strikes, while really just building towards Cage's yellow. I can build towards CMags or CapA's respective blues, while keeping the board clear of all the **** being thrown out there, especially when one of Blade's purple tiles falls to a hard to reach place.

Neither are top tier, and I'm not calling HT trash or horribly out of place, just I feel Falcon is of more use to a team than HT.
- Unreall

Ebolamonkey84

Beast and Docock up.

Unknown

You get AP for those destroyed Red tiles as HT, so your second Fireball only costs 6 basically. There are maybe 2 red powers with a better damage ratio in the 3* tier. One of them just happens to be a regenerating monster on offense (Patch) which makes HT look weak when he really isn't, and the other has a scaling damage ratio depending on how many bounces you can get out of it (L.Cap).

Also the whole point of Blade/Daken is to throw Daken as much as possible to keep those red tiles free to keep generating strike tiles.

Unknown

Unreallystic wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Each round that you match . Which is an AP color you can't convert to damage with Falcon/Blade/Daken. You would be way way better off bringing Cage/Thor/Groot/Patch/BP/Cyke/KK/Hood/PX than Falcon. That's a pretty long list for "this guy is supposed to be good in this situation". If you have Blade/Daken and you get a 6 boosted x2 out, you've already won. Falcon isn't going to actually help you win this game any faster. If you DON'T get the out, and you aren't hitting Thirst, you have probably already lost, and Falcon isn't going to turn this around either. So even in his element he is bad.

I get that Falcon is 90% passive and that's pretty cool (see Professor X), but his passives are not great. Even his main thing that he does (boost tiles) isn't that great by comparison (again, see Professor X). If PX boosts tiles by 238 and we buy the statement "4*s are roughly 160% of a 3* in power" then Falcon should be boosting tiles by at least 150, over 50% more than he currently is. Ignoring the fact that PX actually boosts 4 at a time due to needing invisibility first, just call that fair trade off. This brings me back to " you just don't understand how truly bad Falcon's really is."

When Falcon ran with just Daken he was kinda ok, because Daken can't pump out the large tiles by himself. The argument could be made that Blade actually made Falcon much worse because you no longer really need him. Tiles are getting larger over time. Blade started it off with the potential for 1k attack tiles, then Groot busted out some 250 strike tiles, and lets not forget Cage/IF with their basically 400+ indestructible tile. Boosting a 1k attack tile by 94 is meaningless. Boosting it by 40% tho... *whistle*. Now that people actually have falcon and leveled him, perhaps it's time to go back to boost by % (which he originally was for like 4 days before they changed him).

Really Falcon has but a single job, and that job is goon node CD management, a niche that is more and more difficult to fill recently so.. useful, but not really more useful than, say, GSBW.

I wouldn't necessarily play Daken/Blade together - its actually not a strong team IMO, you max out the red tiles fast, and have no actual reason for those greens that you are matching. I agree wholeheartedly about Lhor, Cage, etc. Yolu want a yellow user to take advantage of the ability.

I also wouldn't dare compare anyone to PX, him and IF are very possible nerfs, especially PX, his strength is out of line. As well, this isn't really about Falcon vs PX, its Falcon vs HT. Comparing Falcon to PX is like comparing HT to Cyclops, both are ranked higher for a 'real' reason.

Anyways, I don't disagree about Falcon's strengths losing weight over time, I actually feel he's in need of an adjustment, he has synergy problems with his purple, and his yellow should be a little stronger, but I feel the exact same way about HT. He needs adjustment, he's a solid dmg dealer, but the current trend right now with dmg dealers like say Cyclops is that they can build AP for themselves either through shake-up, or outright changing colors (GSBW, Cyclops, Lhor, etc). I think is out right STUPID that HT's red attack actually DESTROYS red tiles. If anything it should do the opposite and create MORE red tiles. So while yes Falcon is falling, so is HT, which takes me back to the original point, I'd take falcon over HT, especially when not boosted *dynamics change a bit when boosted, might go HT in that situation*. I just feel that the passives that Falcon adds are worth more than the direct dmg that HT adds. You have to 'work' to make his black worth anything, you have to store up green for his green to be worth anything, and both of those are stronger colors elsewhere, he really reduces to just red, which in his range, is best used by other characters as well, especially since as mentioned he wipes his own color off the board. With Falcon, especially being passive, he doesn't detract from any one else, and he strengthens all tiles a total of 300 per yellow match. If it wasn't a passive - I'm with you 100%, but being a passive means its essentially 'Free' AP. I can boost Cage's red protect tile and some of Blade's strikes, while really just building towards Cage's yellow. I can build towards CMags or CapA's respective blues, while keeping the board clear of all the **** being thrown out there, especially when one of Blade's purple tiles falls to a hard to reach place.

Neither are top tier, and I'm not calling HT trash or horribly out of place, just I feel Falcon is of more use to a team than HT.
- Unreall

I played Daken/Blade as my first 3* team its perfectly fine, Falcon was pretty clutch with Cage vs Ultrons

Ouroboros9999

Thanks for posting these. It's pretty helpful for a noob like myself when allocating which covers to buy.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

You get AP for those destroyed Red tiles as HT, so your second Fireball only costs 6 basically. There are maybe 2 red powers with a better damage ratio in the 3* tier. One of them just happens to be a regenerating monster on offense (Patch) which makes HT look weak when he really isn't, and the other has a scaling damage ratio depending on how many bounces you can get out of it (L.Cap).

Also the whole point of Blade/Daken is to throw Daken as much as possible to keep those red tiles free to keep generating strike tiles.

I know how to run Blade/Daken, it just seems real half-tiny-kitty no matter how I slice it. It 'works', but there are few things that don't 'work'. If you 'focus' on blowing up things with strikes, then Blade is making all the strikes , his black is almost never used (IMO his consistent power) and his purple will never become the beast it is meant to be. On the flip, if you are using both for strike tile generating, you are gunning for blue and green, which still sort of leaves Blade out.

I'm NOT saying it doesn't work, I'm not saying you can't win with it, its just not a great 'team' beyond "it sounds cool to have two strike tile makers". Heck these days I'm one of the three people who seem to still like Laken it feels like. Team would just be better off with someone else in place of Blade. Heck I'd be interested to try out Bullseye 3* (what is his agreed upon shorthand anyway?) with Laken.

My interest in Bullseye is growing more and more after dealing with Carnage...I'm so sick of the attack tiles and want to just wipe them off the screen somehow.
- Unreall

Unknown

I have many times had 10 purple and 6 strike tiles to use Blade only to follow up with Daken . They are a good duo. Great even. Daken even tanks black and purple for Blade, saving on health packs. Add in Thor (3*) and you have a very solid team. One of the best teams out there IMO, that rounds out the best character on the list.

AXP_isme

I know I'm risking the wrath of the forum but...
I'm really enjoying the character write ups - kudos to all involved, really excellent work - please could we have some more?

Unknown

AXP_isme wrote:

I know I'm risking the wrath of the forum but...
I'm really enjoying the character write ups - kudos to all involved, really excellent work - please could we have some more?

why would that make forums cast wrath?

u were polite, thanked everyone

Pwuz_

So I know this is a very niche skill set, but I think I found the best use for Doc Ock: Ultron's Sentries.

They are constantly spitting out tiles to match for Insult to Injury, let too many build up and Manipulation can deal some impressive damage while clearing them out, and Armed & Dangerous can boost your attack tiles as well. While I've been planning to respec from my 5/5/3 to 3/5/5, for as useful as he is against Sentries, I'm considering keeping him where he's at.

Luke Cage paired with him and the required Hero has been working out well for me against those Ultron recharge nodes. Give it a shot, I think you may rank Doc Ock a little higher than last time.

Unknown

Pwuz_ wrote:

So I know this is a very niche skill set, but I think I found the best use for Doc Ock: Ultron's Sentries.

They are constantly spitting out tiles to match for Insult to Injury, let too many build up and Manipulation can deal some impressive damage while clearing them out, and Armed & Dangerous can boost your attack tiles as well. While I've been planning to respec from my 5/5/3 to 3/5/5, for as useful as he is against Sentries, I'm considering keeping him where he's at.

Luke Cage paired with him and the required Hero has been working out well for me against those Ultron recharge nodes. Give it a shot, I think you may rank Doc Ock a little higher than last time.

I'd agree with you if already good characters didn't completely outshine him in ultron, as well. Black Panther instantly clears waves, Luke Cage mitigates damage completely, boosted Falcon with iron fist/luke cage = gg, patch is as patch does

Unknown

Pretty much what raisin said.

I was leveling up my BP finally for the Ultron event, only for Patch to negate the need for anybody else really. Patch + Cage is pretty much unkillable.

It's not fair to compare Ock to Patch of BP - they are 'premium 3*s' if you will, but his strength in really this + Carnage PvP IMO isn't a strong enough case to make him worth owning (>_<)'

To me he is Loki who does dmg and has no AP theft.
- Unreall

Pwuz_

raisinbman wrote:

I'd agree with you if already good characters didn't completely outshine him in ultron, as well. Black Panther instantly clears waves, Luke Cage mitigates damage completely, boosted Falcon with iron fist/luke cage = gg, patch is as patch does

I did mention I've been pairing him with Luke Cage to mitigate damage significantly.

Also Black Panther could only clear a whole wave till around Round 3-4 for me. And with Luke Cage dropping over 1k followed by 6k on a single target for the same amount of AP, it seems redundant to me. Yes I know that math doesn't make it sound impressive, but save up to 18 and now you've got 1k, 6k, & 6k dropping.

Boosting with Falcon certainly helps any team dropping strike or attack tiles.

Patch requires paying a little more attention to the board, it always sucks to use Berserker Rage without noticing that last lonely strike tile hiding in the corner. That and it honestly feels like Sentry Flyer is not the most common Sentry they keep throwing at me. Sentry Fighters are probably the most common I see, and they don't leave my special tiles on the board for that long. And let's not overlook the times that too many tiles on the board are filled with enemy specials to get the full benefit of Berserker Rage.

Use what works for you, because honestly what covers have fallen your way make a big difference what's going to be effective for you. I do stand by that my 5/5/3 Doc Ock is surprisingly effective against this type of opponent who spams special tiles for him to convert.