Dauthi's 3* Guide - Who to level and how to build 'em! 03/09
Dauthi
Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
****Updated****
03/09/17 - Added Thanos and Doctor Strange to top tier
10/19/16 - Trying to fix the updated characters/links! Updated Iron Man 40 (moved to top tier) Quicksilver (moved up 2 ranks) and Vision (surprisingly little changes to him, so he didn't go anywhere)
The first thing I look for when entering a forum for a "collectable" type game is a guide letting me know a character's general worth so I don't "noobishly" throw away an amazing character. I noticed we don't really have one, so I decided to throw one together.
This guide should help budding 3* rosters with deciding who to keep/level along with possible builds. Moving into the 3* realm can be daunting with the numerous 3*s gathering in your roster, so hopefully this can help you make a better, informed decision. Feel free to debate or question any of the recommended builds, this is only to help everyone.
Glossary
Damage/AP ratio = This is how much damage you get for spending 1ap. The higher this number, the better the raw damage power of any ability is. AOE's will tend to be higher as they damage 3 characters at once, but keep in mind they will be a lot lower if they damage less than 3 enemies.
Special Tiles = Countdown, Attack, Protect, or strike tiles
Countdown Tiles = Tiles that count down every turn, unleashing an effect at 0
Attack Tiles = Does damage at the end of your turn
Strike Tiles = Adds damage to your matches
Protect Tiles = Reduces all damage against you
These tags can help you form a team, try hitting CTRL F on your keyboard and search for them to go directly to Characters tagged as such if you are looking for one.
AOE = Area of effect, damages multiple characters at once.
AP Drain = Steals opponents AP.
AP Reduction = Reduces opponents AP.
AP Generator = Creates AP for the team.
AP Shake-up = Shake-up that gives AP for tiles destroyed.
Nuke = Single target damage.
Shake-up = Destroys tiles, "shaking up" the board.
Swap = Swaps tiles.
Healing = Heals self or others
Tank = Character jumps in front to protect others.
Tile steal = Steals special tiles.
Tile Remove = Removes special tiles.
Tile Buff = Increases strength of special tiles.
(X) Production = Creates color (X) on board.
(X) Charge Tile = Creates a charge tile of color (X) Charge tiles do triple damage and give 3 of that color when matched.
Categories are in ascending order, and each category is ranked in ascending order of how good a character is generally. This is to give you a better idea when making decisions against two characters. I need more play time to form a good opinion on new characters from Quicksilver and up.
Disclaimer - These are opinions, though I believe much of this is generally agreed upon.
Low Tier
These guys should be put on the wait list for your ISO. Characters are listed in worst to best (again, in my opinion).
Ragnarok - 
3 
5 
5
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Shake-up/Blue Production/Green Charge Tiles/Healing
HP - 10,710 High
AP/damage ratios - Red (nuke) - 195 Green (AOE) - 487 Rank 7th of low tier
His green's damage is a decent AOE (comparable to Thor) and it does a line of shake-up, however it also damages your team. I guess the developers believe that terrible shake-up is worth 435 damage to your other team members? His red is his best ability and it does fairly low damage for 6 but it does add 4 blue to the board. It gives him a use for someone who has a better blue ability. His blue makes heals himself and creates 3 green charge tiles, a possible use for a character who needs green too. Red and blue give him the ability to stay alive, the problem is there is little purpose in keeping him around in the first place since his green will continue to harm your own team for marginal gain.
Spider-Man - 
3 5 
5 - Rank 5th of low tier
Offers - Stun/Protect Tiles/Healing
HP - 8,670 Average
His purple is a much stronger version of 2* Bullseye's, but only initiates on your matches. His blue can help for spot stunning, or can be unloaded for a 6 turn stun if you save 15 blue, which isn't too bad. Yellow isn't that great as health bursts are just not very valuable, and his is unusually expensive too unless you take the time to set up web tiles.
He is an easy target in PVP, so expect to get attacked if you use him there. I would only suggest using him for PVE if you do at all, since he can be occasionally useful for survival matches.
Hulk - 5 3 
5 - Rank 4th of low tier
Offers - Nuke/Shake-up/Green Production
HP - 11475 Very High
AP/Damage ratio - Red (Nuke) - 208 (no green) 332 (5 green) Green (Nuke) - 119
All he has is his black, which is amazing for green production, but you have to get him hit fairly hard to trigger this. It will provide some nice cascades with just a few triggers in one turn. He popularly combos with Patch, this combo can take down almost anything, but Hulk will take a lot of damage. His red is pretty bad; it costs a lot, can hurt you, doesn't do much damage, and dumps your precious green. His green does low damage but offers decent shake-up, so it is pretty average. He is easily beaten so be prepared to be attacked if you use him in PVP.
Sentry - 5 3 5 - Rank 3rd of low tier
Offers - AOE/Shake-up/Strike Tiles
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage ratio - Red (AOE) - 1092 (9 tiles) 925 (7 tiles) Green (AOE) - 728 (16 tiles) 370 (8 tiles)
Sentry has a great yellow as it is cheap and creates a very strong strike tile, making him useful for damage support, however the damage he inflicts on himself makes him eat healthpacks. His green is expensive and takes 3 turns to go off so many tiles will be destroyed. This ability also becomes useless if the enemy has protect tiles out to negate each countdown going off.
His red ability boasts amazing numbers, but will harm your team quite a bit too. If you want less damage to your team fire it when there aren't many red tiles for him to turn into cannon fodder, however this will significantly lower the damage. He is good when you want to beat a node that is too hard, and you don't care if you get seriously injured.
Black Widow - 5 3 5 - 2 Rank 2nd of low tier
Offers - AOE/Shake-up/Green Production
HP - 8,075 Average
AP/Damage ratio - Red (nuke) - (about 133) Green (AOE) - 617
Her purple creates multiple criticals and gives you green. Her green is expensive, but obtainable thanks to her purple. Her red is nice targeted shake-up, but her green is so good it would be a shame to not invest in purple and green. Keep in mind the AI cannot use her purple correctly, her red is not a threat, and her green will likely never go off. I have to bump her down a notch for this. She is an oustanding PVE character though.
Doctor Octopus - 5 5 3 or 3 5 5 - Rank 1st of low tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Swap/Attack Tiles/Tile Buff/Stun
AP/Damage ratios - Blue (Nuke) - 220 (3 tiles) 441 (6 tiles) Green (AOE) - 126
He is a special tile removal specialist, and when fighting characters who create special tiles, he easily ranks top tier. His blue can do decent damage, removes special tiles, and swaps the board around like Loki. With only 3 covers in blue, it loses a lot of its bite, as the damage increases dramatically from 3 to 5. His black is his best ability, dropping two very strong attack tiles when you match any special tile. His green is mediocre, it tries to do too much so it doesn't do any of it great. If you need a green and want to make him generally better, it is viable at 5, but you lose blue which is more focused on his specialization.
He ranks low only because he is only viable towards specific targets.
Mid Tier
These guys are pretty good, and when buffed can really shine, so dumping some ISO into them isn't terrible. Characters are listed worst to best (again, in my opinion).
Falcon - 5 5 3 - Rank 11th of mid tier
Offers - Tile Buff/Protect Tiles/Tile Remove
HP - 8,075 Average
He works well with any team that makes strike/attack tiles because his yellow will buff them, and shouldn't be underestimated. Falcon can be great for PVE thanks to his passive blue. His pink is a bit counter productive since he will put so many protect tiles out that he will buff those rather than offensive tiles.
I ranked him low because as a new player, you may not have Daken/Blade (etc) to pair him up with to see what he can really do.
Captain Marvel - 3 5 5 - Rank 11th of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/AP Generator/Tile Remove
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 133 Black (Nuke) - 278
Her yellow is a decent ability allowing her to accumulate red/black ap for you when she tanks abilities, however it takes a strong hit to activate and instead of spawning tiles and creating deadly cascades like Hulk, she just provides it directly to your AP pool. Her red has very low damage, so it's only use is removing protect tiles from the board, which you won't see very often. Her black has fairly poor damage as well so it is all about the 2 turn stun. If that weren't bad enough, it also drops a weak strike tile for the enemy.
Squirrel Girl - 3 5 5 Rank 10th of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/Protect Tiles/Shake-up
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratio - Purple (Nuke) - 567 (5 tiles) 807 (8 tiles) Green (Nuke) - 575 (if all tiles go off)
She is another specialist vs special tile creators, and her cheap protect tiles through yellow make her great for survival too. For general use, she isn't that great however her purple is a great cheap nuke if your opponent creates special tiles. As you can see, it grows very fast the more special tiles the enemy has. Her green is a good ability in general, it is consistent damage and shakeup for 3 turns, and if the tiles survive they do substantial damage.
Storm - 3 5 5 or 5 3 5 - Rank 9th of mid tier
Offers - Attack Tiles/AP Shake-up
HP - 7,565 Low
AP/Damage Ratio - Yellow (Nuke) - 171
She is a carbon copy of the 1* you may have played with. Her black is obviously her best ability, offering some cheap attack tile damage to chip away at your opponent. Green or yellow is really up to you, I prefer yellow because it allows you to activate any of your team ups quickly, and I keep lots of great TUs. It also does more damage. Note the shake-up offered by yellow is better due to it targeting a single tile type, lowering it's concentration. Alternately, green gathers AP while shaking up the board.
Quicksilver - 5 5 3 - Rank 8th of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/Tile Swap
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 161 (2 locked tiles) 226 (4 locked tiles) Blue (AOE) - 7596 Green (Nuke) 140 (2 locked tiles) 168 (4 locked tiles)
Another underrated character, Quicksilver has one of the best ap/damage ratios for an AOE in the game because it is free
. His green and black abilities are cheap, and do horrible damage, but both allow you to manipulate when his AOE goes off. This makes him especially fun during mirror matches which, when controlled, can allow you to fire off a lot of his blue AOE.
Colossus - 5 5 3 or 5 3 5 - Rank 7th of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Tank/???
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 379 (AOE) - 569 Black (Nuke) - 133
Use his yellow when you know you will be hit with an attack next turn and he will halve it, then halves any more damage for the next 5 turns. It is confirmed this includes strike tile damage! His red does good damage, while maxing it adds some AOE damage. His black is great for when you need one, as you can siphon black into other character's abilities. Throwing a character who has strong abilities across the board (Thor for example) works great, and it adds damage to the attack. The problem is that this removes a character through the duration, however 5 black puts this down to only 1 turn. At 3 you could use it defensively to get a hurt character out, but I don't see this nearly as useful as using the ability offensively.
Psylocke - 5 3 5 - Rank 6th of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Strike Tiles/AP Reduction
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 141 (0 strike tiles) 226 (3+ strike tiles) Black (Nuke) - 188
Her red does low damage cheap but creates strong strike tiles. Her black does low damage, but creates a strong attack tile and can be brought out very fast for 6 ap. Her blue is a bit pointless to raise to 5 other than drop the countdown tile to 2 (you aren't realistically going to get 19 ap from anyone). She specializes in taking down low hp high priority targets or activating strike tiles. She can pair up with strike tile creators to double up on their damage with her black and cheap red.
Vision - 5 5 3 - Rank 5th of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Tile Remove/Shake-Up
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 271 Yellow (Nuke) - 491 Blue (AOE) - 677
Vision is a character who gets very little credit, and part of this is because the AI will never control him competently. In your hands however, he can be quite powerful. His blue I believe really makes him strong if you can get him to tank all his colors (all his colors have vision's symbols on them on the board). Blue activates at a minuscule 5 ap, and make his matches create an extra 1040 damage, which is no joke. If he cascades, he can easily create thousands of damage, so pairing him with characters who swap/shake-up works well. His AOE when his blue tile is on the board actually does some of the better AOE damage out of all the 3*s too, as you can see by the numbers.
His yellow countdown tile is also great damage reduction, but most of the time when playing this game you will want to finish battles as quickly as possible making offense typically the better choice. His yellow can do some decent damage, but only if there are 2 enemy tiles on the board.
His red fired with none of his countdowns on the board does poor damage and poor shakeup, so I wouldn't advise using it without his countdown tiles on the board.
Gamora - 5 3 5 or 3 5 5 - Rank 4th of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Strike Tiles/Stun
HP - 9,690 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 343 Green (AOE) - 287
Gamora's ace is her black, so try to get her to tank all 3 of her colors so she has plenty of her symbol on the board so she will drop a lot of decent strike tiles. Anyone fighting your team will have to defeat her first too, because the less characters on your team, the more of her tiles are showing, and the bigger the threat of her black has. Red at 3 is banking on her, or other's, strike tiles to do better damage, while 5 makes the damage competent even on its own. Her green is decent at 5 if you need one, because if 2 opponents are left it will stun both for 2 turns (though this means less damage output). Otherwise the damage is poor for an AOE.
Punisher - 5 5 3 or 3 5 5 - Rank 3rd of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Attack Tiles/Strike Tiles/Shake-up
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 217 Black (AOE)- 335
His green is great thanks to moderately strong multi-color strike tiles and board shake-up. His black is decent area damage for a cheap 7 while spawning a countdown tile that generates attack tiles. These two abilities can combo well with other characters/each other. Buffed characters/over scaled PVE nodes can have a truck-load of HP, making his red a great way to go also, while 5/5/3 is great for a general build. One thing to note however, is that characters health is always divided into 3 pieces thanks to the plus shaped health bar. When a character gets their health slightly below that last line on the plus shaped health bar, they are ready to be downed. If you bring red to 5, get a calculator ready because there is no way to figure out otherwise how much 40% of their hp is.
Warning his forums pages has not been fully updated !
Daredevil - 5 3 5 or 3 5 5 - Rank 2nd of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/Stun/Tile Remove
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 380 (you match) 680 (they match) Purple (Nuke) - 287
Henchmen cannot activate traps making his red useless in parts of PVEs, however it should not be underestimated, it deals a lot of damage. Keep in mind traps are destroyed if any other tile type is set on it (example: Daken's strike tiles). The problem with his red is it becomes lodged in the an untouchable part of the board and becomes a waste. His purple is situational but in those situations can be helpful, this ability also allows him to combo well with Patch. His blue is a good stun and with 2 down, it can stunlock an opponent, but is still out shined just a bit by Captain America's because his creates protect tiles too.
Bullseye - 5 5 3 - Rank 1st of mid tier
Offers - Nuke/Strike Tiles/Tile Remove
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Purple (Nuke) - 419 Green (Nuke) - 175
This character is surprisingly fun to play, and strong if played well. Most of this is because of his black, which turns any game in your favor when activated. This power dominates in survival nodes. Since his purple is cheap at 7ap, you can easily down an opponent with him once they are low. This puts the battle strongly in your favor, and making it easy to activate it second time, creating a landslide effect. Green has poor damage, so putting it at 3 doesn't hurt it much, and you only lose 1 tile removal (I rarely use all 5 tile removals anyways).
High Tier
Don't worry about dumping ISO into any of these guys, they are a good investment. Characters are listed in worst to best (again, in my opinion).
Wolverine - 5 3 5 - Rank 15th of high tier
Offers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Healing
HP - 6800 Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - (about) 144 (tanking 1 color) 289 (tanking 2 colors) 433 (tanking 3 colors) Green (Nuke) - 231
He creates very strong strike tiles because he makes them for both teams (very high risk/reward) this makes him circumstantially good based on his team, alternatively you can save up a lot of AP for one giant attack (make sure it finishes them!). Combos with anyone that can remove negative strike tiles Wolverine creates making this skill a game ender. Since henchmen do not match tiles, he can be amazing for certain PVE nodes. His red is pretty expensive and even when tanking all 3 colors the damage is mediocre. His true healing every turn however can give you the sustain to push PVEs and PVPs, which can be much more useful.
He comes in last for high tier characters because you should use characters like Daredevil, Loki, or Hulk to make him the most effective. His low HP also makes him an easier target in PVP.
Deadpool - 5 5 3 - Rank 14th of high tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Tank
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 549 purple (AOE) - 871
His red is no joke, the damage on it is amazing for only 6 ap meaning you can activate it very fast to topple those low HP characters, but unfortunately only once/twice as it loses effectiveness based on how low the enemy's HP is. His black forces you to attack him first, which is very frustrating. His purple is very expensive but provides very high AOE damage. Every day you use him you gain points too, and when saved you can unleash it all as damage to insantly kill any 3 enemies you fight (no it doesn't take out an entire wave).
Mystique - 4 4 5 - Rank 13th of high tier
Offers - Nuke/AP Drain/AP Reduction/Purple&Black Production
HP - 8,075 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 284 (not shapeshifted) 663 (shapeshifted)
Her blue creates purple/black, which are great colors to generate. If you can get her purple up early it really slows down the opposing team (think of it as a 30%ish AP siphon), note it takes 1 ap from every cascade they make on a turn too. If you put it at 3 instead of 4 you lose 2 colors, so I favor 4/4/5. Just make sure to drop her purple after you have matched all the purple on the board. Her black does some of the best damage in the game when her purple is out, and drains the enemies red/green/yellow ap by 2!
Beast - 5 5 3 - Rank 12th of high tier
Offers - AOE/Attack Tiles/Strike Tiles/Protect Tiles/Shake-up/Healing
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (AOE) - 676
His blue is fun and cheap to throw down, creating 3 decent special tiles. His green is definitely his selling point however, as it has decent ap/damage ratio and can be activated early assuring you hit all 3 opponents, plus amazing shakeup! His yellow is your standard health boost, which is only really useful in survival matches.
Hood - 5 5 3 - Rank 11th of high tier
Offers - AP Drain/Nuke/Shake-up
HP - 5100 Very Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Yellow (Nuke) - 380 Black (Nuke) - 131
His Yellow does some decent damage once maxed with a lot of specific board shake-up which is very useful for PVE, remember however it does end the turn making this ability less useful. His blue is his best ability hands down, stealing virtually random AP every turn. By collecting specific colors either side can manipulate what AP he gathers. It is not affected by TUs, so the less TUs on the board, the more AP this ability gathers. His black is terrible in comparison though, as it is nearly useless and the damage is pathetic. His HP is terrible making him bad on defense, but random chance can still wreck an opponent making them think twice. He is outstanding in PVE, and good in PVP.
Loki - 5 3 5 or 4 4 5 - Rank 10th of high tier
Offers - AP Drain/Swap/Tile Steal
HP - 5950 Very Low
His purple is one of the best activated purples in the game, especially when there is a low/high concentration of any colors which his green will help with. Black at 4 still converts 5 special tiles, still making it very useful and allowing you to keep his purple at 4 for maximum "swappering", after testing 5 in purple is overkill on swapping. His green allows you to smirk when the AI stumbles upon 4 matches. Make sure to let them have 4 matches that won't help them. His only problem is the same as Hood's, his HP is extremely low.
Human Torch - 5 3 5 Rank 9th of high tier
Offers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/AP Shake-up
HP - 8,075 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 423 (1st use) 565 (2nd use) Green (Nuke) - 360 (first turn used at 8 ap saved) 450 (10 ap saved)
His red does a great amount of damage/per ap, and upon use it destroys 2 red giving you the ap for them, reducing the cost of his next cast to 6. This can be good, but the end result will be lowered concentration of reds on the board, so have someone paired with him that has shake-up to drop more red down. His green has an insane amount of damage/per ap spent if you can keep the green countdown tile alive. Match all possible greens on the board before dropping it for best results, I usually start it at 8-10 ap and focus on matching only greens when the matches appear to keep the flames stoked. His black would be great if it didn't take your blue purple and yellow ap too, but regardless it can do decent damage and many times you may not have much yellow, blue or purple ap for it to take anyways.
Rocket & Groot - 3 5 5 or 5 3 5 Rank 8th of upper mid tier
Offers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Shake-up/Healing
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (Nuke) - 333 (5 covers) 108 (3 covers)
They have a lot of HP and can heal through their yellow by removing TU tiles from the board when matching yellow below 25% health. This creates free cascades for you too. If you want to go offensive, put his yellow at 3 so his heal is smaller, allowing him to use it again soon. Defensively at 5 it will give him nearly a full heal. Putting his green to 3 makes it a nearly useless ability, while at 5 it is one of the best damage + shake-up abilities in game. Note that this shakeup will avoid breaking your special tiles (except the giant 2x4 hole in the middle which will always happen). His blue is his best color, it drops some very strong strike tiles for cheap, giving you lots of consistent damage support.
Doctor Doom - 5 3 5 or 3 5 5 - Rank 7th of high tier
Offers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Black Production
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Purple (Nuke) - 565 (4 traps out) 791 (6 traps out)
His blue at 4 converts 9 tiles, and how often is there more than 9 blue tiles? Considering this I prefer to keep it at 4 to improve his black, which is a decent ability though it seems a bit overkill to summon 6 attack tiles with his black, as they tend to get matched, but 5 seems to be a good compromise so his black can still be useful. His purple is why he ranks so high, and is easily one of the best nukes in the game (the numbers speak for themselves), and it is especially easy to keep traps out against henchment in PVE who can't move tiles.
Daken - 5 5 3 or 5 3 5:- Rank 6th of high tier
Offers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Healing
HP - 6800 Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Blue (Nuke) - 398 (3 covers) 554 (5 covers)
He is a great character to help you save healthpacks, and has a great color profile. His black at 5 ensures he survives almost any encounter, and his purple is great for constant damage through any match. His blue costs 5 and does a lot of damage however at the price of red strike tiles already on the board. Putting it to 5 is viable if you want larger nukes but it will cost you an extra strike tile (4 vs 3 used) and compromise his auto healing and make him more likely to harm himself. Use his blue when you want to thin out the strikes on the board because there is an incoming shake-up ability or strikes that can be matched.
He is one of the best characters you can max because of his vitality/damage/versatility/color profile, and possibly the character I have used the most overall.
Captain America - 3 5 5 - Rank 5th of high tier
Offers - Nuke/Stun/Protect Tiles
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 366 (1st throw) 4031 (second throw if 1st countdown survived)
He brings with him arguably the best red in the game, as it gives back all the ap used to activate it minus 1. While the first use of his red is mediocre, repeated use (if the tile survives) can do insane damage as the numbers show , though the cost is a tad high so getting started takes a bit of gathering. It sounds overpowered, however you have to wait 3 turns between throws too. This combined with its fairly high cost forces it out late game, making it better for long term battles. His blue returns ap in the same way, and is one of the best stuns in the game, because it creates decent protect tiles every use. His yellow is overpriced, though the protect tiles are very strong, creating them late game is not very helpful . The major downside to him is that the AI will misuse his abilities, if they play them at all because of the high cost.
Kamala Khan - 5 5 3 or 3 5 5 - Rank 4th of high tier
Offers - AOE/Green Production/Healing
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (AOE) - 847
Her yellow is very unique, and I personally love it. Maxed out it can be very annoying on your defense, and on offense it can save health packs for PVE/PVPs. Pair her with other characters with low cost abilities for best results. If you rather put her on the offensive, her purple is fun/strategic while creating greens. This chains up to her green, which can easily be compared to Thor's. It does some serious AOE damage, though spread out rather than partially focused on one character. It can be argued that she should rank higher, however her problem is she only has one damaging ability and it is an AOE, so after 1 or 2 enemies die she becomes less effective.
Black Panther - 5 3 5 - Rank 3rd of high tier
Offers - AOE/Attack Tiles/Protect Tiles
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (AOE) - 927
His black is one of the best AOE's in the game, as the number above shows however it does give the other team 5 ap of their strongest color. It is great for a game finisher when AP doesn't matter, or if the character who used that color to begin with falls to this attack. His yellow is a great strike tile creator, providing cheap and strong strikes (very strong if you have 12 TU gathered). His blue is pretty cheap and drops shields over time. If wedged into a corner can keep stop all incoming match damage. It's not the best blue, but if you need one it's not terrible.
Magneto - 3 5 5 - Rank 2nd of high tier
Offers - Nuke/Shake-up/Swap/Protect Tiles
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 228 (7 TU tiles) 326 (10 TU tiles) Blue (Nuke) - 449
Magneto's red is cheap and can deal decent damage while shaking up the board, and since it completely removes an entire tile type, the shake-up is more likely to create matches. His blue does a lot of damage and mixes reds and blues, possibly causing cascades. His yellow's protect tiles barely increase in strength from 3 to 5, and it only drops 9 tiles making it highly unlikely you will drop them on enemy tiles.
Luke Cage - 5 5 3 or 5 3 5 - Rank 1st of high tier
Offers - Nuke/Stun/Protect Tile
HP - 9,690 Above average
AP/Damage Ratios - Yellow (Nuke) - 549 (when both allies are still alive) AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 448 (2 uses) 540 (3 uses)
He comes close to a top tier character, but I just don't fear him in PVP enough to put him up there. His yellow is a great single target damage dealer, one of the best in the game and in the form of a yellow which is a color that can be difficult to find a decent ability for. His black can do decent damage and a stun if you put it to 5, making him more of a damage dealer.
Personally though, I believe his red is a rare ability, and extremely annoying for opponents. It essentially reduces all standard matches against you to 1 damage, so the opponent has to resort to abilities only to down your team. A miscalculation can result in them having to use an ability to down somone with 100 hp left.
Top Tier
If you have any of these guys finished/nearly finished, pat yourself on your back. Prioritize leveling them, as they are 100% worth it.
Iron Man - 5/3 5/3 5 - Rank 9th of top tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/AP Generation
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage ratio - Red (Nuke) - 521 Blue (AOE) - 606
This ranking may be hotly contested, but this is because his yellow works the same no matter what level he is, and his other two abilities that are affected by his level went from really bad to OK. This means he isn't really a priority to level/champion unless you end up with less than 5 yellow when finishing his covers.
His yellow only costs 6 AP, but creates 36 AP! He is arguably the best AP gatherer in the game, so he pairs well with many of the best characters from the entire game. A good yellow ability is hard to find as well, so this makes him viable for most teams, and in turn a great character even when you move to the 4* characters. His red and blue are both nice, and comparable to the damage of some of the better characters, but unfortunately they drain your AP. Even so, both abilities could save you in a pinch, or if you are simply missing a blue or red ability. You could make a case to bring either red or blue to 5 depending on his team.
She-Hulk - 4 5 4 - Rank 8th of top tier
Offers - AP Reduction/AOE/Shake-up/Tile Steal
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (AOE) - 548 (5 covers) 420 (4 covers)
Her green is an amazing support ability. For 6 ap it can save you from a potential ability firing off by draining the AP before they use it, or if you wait for 12 you can drain 4 pools of AP essentially resetting their game. Her blue is virtually useless at 3, but at 4 it doubles its effect making it take 2 enemy strike/protect/attack tiles and improves them. There are plenty of characters who create these special tiles now, so chances are this will be useful. Her red does some great damage for cheap with good shake-up, but I feel the gain from blue is more beneficial and all you lose is a bit of her damage and a tiny bit of shake-up.
She is scary to fight against, with high HP, chances are you are going to get hit with her green. Just pray it isn't AP you needed. I have lost games from this.
Doctor Strange - 5 3 5 - Rank 7th of top tier
Offers - Nuke/Stun/Tile Remove
HP - 6800 - Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Blue (Nuke) - 591 (Countdown Survives)
Doctor Strange's yellow makes him amazing in PVE where henchmen drop countdown tiles. This makes it go off up to 3 times per turn in some instances, doing a lot of nuke damage. It's not as great in PVP unfortunately, but still a solid ability. His blue does a great amount of damage however, while destroying a specific color of an enemy AND doing a stun. This is an amazing skill for what it brings to the table. His purple is 7 ap to remove 2 special tiles. It is nice that it can remove invisible and trap tiles too, but this won't be helpful if it randomly destroys a different special tile instead since it is random. This makes his optimal build pretty easy. Thanos and Dr. Strange make excellent parners in PVE, and I urge everyone to test out this combo!
Blade - 3 5 5 - Rank 6th of top tier
Offers - Nuke/AP drain/Strike Tiles/Attack Tiles
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 234 (5 covers) 136 (3 covers)
His black, when wedged into a hard to reach part of the board, can end the game especially if it is siphoning a color you both need. You won't really need it at 5 because taking 2 ap of one pool every turn will be more than enough to drain it to 0, and the jump in damage is fairly insignificant as it does minuscule damage to begin with. His green at 5 will create strike tiles for free pretty often. What makes him truly strong though it's his purple that creates strong attack tiles, and when strike tiles are out to make it stronger, it will end games fast. This is especially useful in survival nodes.
Thor - 3 5 5 - Rank 5th of top tier
Offers - Nuke/AOE/Green Production/Yellow Production
HP - 10200 high
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 266 (5 covers) 171 (3 covers) Yellow (Nuke) - 207 Green (AOE) - 645
His red does some damage but creates 3 yellows which will occasionally match leading into his yellow. His yellow drops a truckload of 9 tiles that likely will match and create cascades, while doing some damage as well. This leads into his green which does good AOE damage. What makes this ability nice is it dealing a majority to one target making it useful when other opponents are downed as well.
His numbers don't show how deadly he can be, however what makes him strong is his red chaining his yellow, and his yellow chaining to his green. If he gets going your team is assured to get hit by all of his abilities.
Scarlet Witch 5 3 5 - Rank 4th of top tier
Offers - AOE/Purple Production/Stun/AP Shake-up
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Purple (AOE) - 471
With Scarlet Witch you can expect a constant supply of purple AP and shakeup, what makes this strong is that it does it passively. As long as you protect that 3 turn blue countdown you are highly likely to get a purple 5 match. This can be siphoned into another strong purple ability, like Iron Fist, or used by her own which is strong as well. It is like a stronger version of 2* Storm's blue. It offers decent AOE damage, but the 5 turn stun is what really makes this ability.
Her green does a small bit of shake-up, and gives you the ap from tiles destroyed using it. This isn't that helpful, but useful if you don't have a green as it siphons green into other colors. It does destroy enemy special tiles, so I find myself using it occasionally for that. Bringing it to 5 only offers 1 extra destroyed tile and the ability to destroy any special tile in the game. This was obviously oriented towards Ultron, but her other abilities are so great I wouldn't even consider putting green to 5.
Cyclops 5 3 5 - Rank 3rd of top tier
Offers - Nuke/Yellow Production/Shake-up
HP - 9,265 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 428 (5 covers) 207 (3 covers) Black (Nuke) - 628 (10 red tiles on the board)
He is a damage powerhouse since his yellow fuels his red, and his black does amazing damage. His black has some of the best damage/per ap spent in the game if you can get red on the board with his yellow. This isn't a problem since his yellow is cheap. It converts team up tiles to red, lowering the concentration of one color and heightening another, thus has a high chance to cascade. You only gain 2 red conversions if you put yellow to 5, and you may not even need them if there isn't enough team up tiles on the board anyways. Either way, it fuels his red which does some good damage while offering just a bit of shakeup.
Iron Fist - 3/5 5 3/5 - Rank 2nd of top tier
Offers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Black Production
HP - 7650 - Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (Nuke) - 115 Purple (Nuke) - 822
Iron Fist's purple that can create 7 tiles for 5 ap, and even if used for damage it does 4k damage for 5 ap, which is an incredible nuke! Another huge ace up his sleeve is his black, which will passively keep an attack tile out that does nearly 500 damage a turn. This adds up fast since it starts from turn one. His green isn't as spectacular when you compare it to these other two, but it is also a great ability when compared to all abilities since it does a bit of damage and puts out competent strike tiles. Switching some black covers to green is perfectly viable if you need a green ability on your team.
Thanos - 3/5 3/5 5 - Rank 1st of top tier
Offers - AOE/Tank
HP - 12,325 Very High
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (AOE) - 1069
Thanos black is extremely nice for killing easy groups of enemies. Other than that, it speeds up all battles greatly. Thanos green is a very high damage AOE. Not only that, it serves as a method for Thanos to Tank, which he should because his HP pool is enormous. These 2 abilities would leave him as an AOE specialist, however his purple allows him to deal decent single target damage as well if need be, pefectly complementing his other 2 abilities.
Black and Purple can be swapped if you need Thanos to do single target damage or you need a purple. His green is amazing though, so I would only substitute it if you have a better green.
They did a great job making someone as infamous as Thanos this strong, get him
AP/Damage Ratio Chart for Area Attacks
How good is your characters AOE attack? Here is a good idea with an overlook of everyone!
#1 -- Quicksilver ---- 7596
#2 -- Sentry
1092
#3 -- Black Panther - 927
#4 -- Deadpool
871
#5 -- Kamala
847
#6 -- Vision
677
#7-- Beast
676
#8 -- Thor
645
#9 - Iron Man
606
#10 -- Black Widow -- 617
#11 -- Colossus
569
#12 - She-Hulk
548
#13 - Ragnarok
487
#14 - Scarlet Witch - 471
#15 - Punisher
335
#16 -Gamora
287
#17 - Doc Oc
126
03/09/17 - Added Thanos and Doctor Strange to top tier
10/19/16 - Trying to fix the updated characters/links! Updated Iron Man 40 (moved to top tier) Quicksilver (moved up 2 ranks) and Vision (surprisingly little changes to him, so he didn't go anywhere)
The first thing I look for when entering a forum for a "collectable" type game is a guide letting me know a character's general worth so I don't "noobishly" throw away an amazing character. I noticed we don't really have one, so I decided to throw one together.
This guide should help budding 3* rosters with deciding who to keep/level along with possible builds. Moving into the 3* realm can be daunting with the numerous 3*s gathering in your roster, so hopefully this can help you make a better, informed decision. Feel free to debate or question any of the recommended builds, this is only to help everyone.
Glossary
Damage/AP ratio = This is how much damage you get for spending 1ap. The higher this number, the better the raw damage power of any ability is. AOE's will tend to be higher as they damage 3 characters at once, but keep in mind they will be a lot lower if they damage less than 3 enemies.
Special Tiles = Countdown, Attack, Protect, or strike tiles
Countdown Tiles = Tiles that count down every turn, unleashing an effect at 0
Attack Tiles = Does damage at the end of your turn
Strike Tiles = Adds damage to your matches
Protect Tiles = Reduces all damage against you
These tags can help you form a team, try hitting CTRL F on your keyboard and search for them to go directly to Characters tagged as such if you are looking for one.
AOE = Area of effect, damages multiple characters at once.
AP Drain = Steals opponents AP.
AP Reduction = Reduces opponents AP.
AP Generator = Creates AP for the team.
AP Shake-up = Shake-up that gives AP for tiles destroyed.
Nuke = Single target damage.
Shake-up = Destroys tiles, "shaking up" the board.
Swap = Swaps tiles.
Healing = Heals self or others
Tank = Character jumps in front to protect others.
Tile steal = Steals special tiles.
Tile Remove = Removes special tiles.
Tile Buff = Increases strength of special tiles.
(X) Production = Creates color (X) on board.
(X) Charge Tile = Creates a charge tile of color (X) Charge tiles do triple damage and give 3 of that color when matched.
Categories are in ascending order, and each category is ranked in ascending order of how good a character is generally. This is to give you a better idea when making decisions against two characters. I need more play time to form a good opinion on new characters from Quicksilver and up.
Disclaimer - These are opinions, though I believe much of this is generally agreed upon.
Low Tier
These guys should be put on the wait list for your ISO. Characters are listed in worst to best (again, in my opinion).
Ragnarok - 3 5 5Offers - Nuke/AOE/Shake-up/Blue Production/Green Charge Tiles/Healing
HP - 10,710 High
AP/damage ratios - Red (nuke) - 195 Green (AOE) - 487 Rank 7th of low tier
His green's damage is a decent AOE (comparable to Thor) and it does a line of shake-up, however it also damages your team. I guess the developers believe that terrible shake-up is worth 435 damage to your other team members? His red is his best ability and it does fairly low damage for 6 but it does add 4 blue to the board. It gives him a use for someone who has a better blue ability. His blue makes heals himself and creates 3 green charge tiles, a possible use for a character who needs green too. Red and blue give him the ability to stay alive, the problem is there is little purpose in keeping him around in the first place since his green will continue to harm your own team for marginal gain.
Spider-Man - 3 5 5 - Rank 5th of low tierOffers - Stun/Protect Tiles/Healing
HP - 8,670 Average
His purple is a much stronger version of 2* Bullseye's, but only initiates on your matches. His blue can help for spot stunning, or can be unloaded for a 6 turn stun if you save 15 blue, which isn't too bad. Yellow isn't that great as health bursts are just not very valuable, and his is unusually expensive too unless you take the time to set up web tiles.
He is an easy target in PVP, so expect to get attacked if you use him there. I would only suggest using him for PVE if you do at all, since he can be occasionally useful for survival matches.
Hulk - 5 3 5 - Rank 4th of low tierOffers - Nuke/Shake-up/Green Production
HP - 11475 Very High
AP/Damage ratio - Red (Nuke) - 208 (no green) 332 (5 green) Green (Nuke) - 119
All he has is his black, which is amazing for green production, but you have to get him hit fairly hard to trigger this. It will provide some nice cascades with just a few triggers in one turn. He popularly combos with Patch, this combo can take down almost anything, but Hulk will take a lot of damage. His red is pretty bad; it costs a lot, can hurt you, doesn't do much damage, and dumps your precious green. His green does low damage but offers decent shake-up, so it is pretty average. He is easily beaten so be prepared to be attacked if you use him in PVP.
Sentry - 5 3 5 - Rank 3rd of low tierOffers - AOE/Shake-up/Strike Tiles
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage ratio - Red (AOE) - 1092 (9 tiles) 925 (7 tiles) Green (AOE) - 728 (16 tiles) 370 (8 tiles)
Sentry has a great yellow as it is cheap and creates a very strong strike tile, making him useful for damage support, however the damage he inflicts on himself makes him eat healthpacks. His green is expensive and takes 3 turns to go off so many tiles will be destroyed. This ability also becomes useless if the enemy has protect tiles out to negate each countdown going off.
His red ability boasts amazing numbers, but will harm your team quite a bit too. If you want less damage to your team fire it when there aren't many red tiles for him to turn into cannon fodder, however this will significantly lower the damage. He is good when you want to beat a node that is too hard, and you don't care if you get seriously injured.
Black Widow - 5 3 5 - 2 Rank 2nd of low tierOffers - AOE/Shake-up/Green Production
HP - 8,075 Average
AP/Damage ratio - Red (nuke) - (about 133) Green (AOE) - 617
Her purple creates multiple criticals and gives you green. Her green is expensive, but obtainable thanks to her purple. Her red is nice targeted shake-up, but her green is so good it would be a shame to not invest in purple and green. Keep in mind the AI cannot use her purple correctly, her red is not a threat, and her green will likely never go off. I have to bump her down a notch for this. She is an oustanding PVE character though.
Doctor Octopus - 5 5 3 or 3 5 5 - Rank 1st of low tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/Swap/Attack Tiles/Tile Buff/Stun
AP/Damage ratios - Blue (Nuke) - 220 (3 tiles) 441 (6 tiles) Green (AOE) - 126
He is a special tile removal specialist, and when fighting characters who create special tiles, he easily ranks top tier. His blue can do decent damage, removes special tiles, and swaps the board around like Loki. With only 3 covers in blue, it loses a lot of its bite, as the damage increases dramatically from 3 to 5. His black is his best ability, dropping two very strong attack tiles when you match any special tile. His green is mediocre, it tries to do too much so it doesn't do any of it great. If you need a green and want to make him generally better, it is viable at 5, but you lose blue which is more focused on his specialization.
He ranks low only because he is only viable towards specific targets.
Mid Tier
These guys are pretty good, and when buffed can really shine, so dumping some ISO into them isn't terrible. Characters are listed worst to best (again, in my opinion).
Falcon - 5 5 3 - Rank 11th of mid tierOffers - Tile Buff/Protect Tiles/Tile Remove
HP - 8,075 Average
He works well with any team that makes strike/attack tiles because his yellow will buff them, and shouldn't be underestimated. Falcon can be great for PVE thanks to his passive blue. His pink is a bit counter productive since he will put so many protect tiles out that he will buff those rather than offensive tiles.
I ranked him low because as a new player, you may not have Daken/Blade (etc) to pair him up with to see what he can really do.
Captain Marvel - 3 5 5 - Rank 11th of mid tierOffers - Nuke/AP Generator/Tile Remove
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 133 Black (Nuke) - 278
Her yellow is a decent ability allowing her to accumulate red/black ap for you when she tanks abilities, however it takes a strong hit to activate and instead of spawning tiles and creating deadly cascades like Hulk, she just provides it directly to your AP pool. Her red has very low damage, so it's only use is removing protect tiles from the board, which you won't see very often. Her black has fairly poor damage as well so it is all about the 2 turn stun. If that weren't bad enough, it also drops a weak strike tile for the enemy.
Squirrel Girl - 3 5 5 Rank 10th of mid tierOffers - Nuke/Protect Tiles/Shake-up
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratio - Purple (Nuke) - 567 (5 tiles) 807 (8 tiles) Green (Nuke) - 575 (if all tiles go off)
She is another specialist vs special tile creators, and her cheap protect tiles through yellow make her great for survival too. For general use, she isn't that great however her purple is a great cheap nuke if your opponent creates special tiles. As you can see, it grows very fast the more special tiles the enemy has. Her green is a good ability in general, it is consistent damage and shakeup for 3 turns, and if the tiles survive they do substantial damage.
Storm - 3 5 5 or 5 3 5 - Rank 9th of mid tierOffers - Attack Tiles/AP Shake-up
HP - 7,565 Low
AP/Damage Ratio - Yellow (Nuke) - 171
She is a carbon copy of the 1* you may have played with. Her black is obviously her best ability, offering some cheap attack tile damage to chip away at your opponent. Green or yellow is really up to you, I prefer yellow because it allows you to activate any of your team ups quickly, and I keep lots of great TUs. It also does more damage. Note the shake-up offered by yellow is better due to it targeting a single tile type, lowering it's concentration. Alternately, green gathers AP while shaking up the board.
Quicksilver - 5 5 3 - Rank 8th of mid tierOffers - Nuke/Tile Swap
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 161 (2 locked tiles) 226 (4 locked tiles) Blue (AOE) - 7596 Green (Nuke) 140 (2 locked tiles) 168 (4 locked tiles)
Another underrated character, Quicksilver has one of the best ap/damage ratios for an AOE in the game because it is free
. His green and black abilities are cheap, and do horrible damage, but both allow you to manipulate when his AOE goes off. This makes him especially fun during mirror matches which, when controlled, can allow you to fire off a lot of his blue AOE.Colossus - 5 5 3 or 5 3 5 - Rank 7th of mid tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/Tank/???
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 379 (AOE) - 569 Black (Nuke) - 133
Use his yellow when you know you will be hit with an attack next turn and he will halve it, then halves any more damage for the next 5 turns. It is confirmed this includes strike tile damage! His red does good damage, while maxing it adds some AOE damage. His black is great for when you need one, as you can siphon black into other character's abilities. Throwing a character who has strong abilities across the board (Thor for example) works great, and it adds damage to the attack. The problem is that this removes a character through the duration, however 5 black puts this down to only 1 turn. At 3 you could use it defensively to get a hurt character out, but I don't see this nearly as useful as using the ability offensively.
Psylocke - 5 3 5 - Rank 6th of mid tierOffers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Strike Tiles/AP Reduction
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 141 (0 strike tiles) 226 (3+ strike tiles) Black (Nuke) - 188
Her red does low damage cheap but creates strong strike tiles. Her black does low damage, but creates a strong attack tile and can be brought out very fast for 6 ap. Her blue is a bit pointless to raise to 5 other than drop the countdown tile to 2 (you aren't realistically going to get 19 ap from anyone). She specializes in taking down low hp high priority targets or activating strike tiles. She can pair up with strike tile creators to double up on their damage with her black and cheap red.
Vision - 5 5 3 - Rank 5th of mid tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/Tile Remove/Shake-Up
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 271 Yellow (Nuke) - 491 Blue (AOE) - 677
Vision is a character who gets very little credit, and part of this is because the AI will never control him competently. In your hands however, he can be quite powerful. His blue I believe really makes him strong if you can get him to tank all his colors (all his colors have vision's symbols on them on the board). Blue activates at a minuscule 5 ap, and make his matches create an extra 1040 damage, which is no joke. If he cascades, he can easily create thousands of damage, so pairing him with characters who swap/shake-up works well. His AOE when his blue tile is on the board actually does some of the better AOE damage out of all the 3*s too, as you can see by the numbers.
His yellow countdown tile is also great damage reduction, but most of the time when playing this game you will want to finish battles as quickly as possible making offense typically the better choice. His yellow can do some decent damage, but only if there are 2 enemy tiles on the board.
His red fired with none of his countdowns on the board does poor damage and poor shakeup, so I wouldn't advise using it without his countdown tiles on the board.
Gamora - 5 3 5 or 3 5 5 - Rank 4th of mid tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/Strike Tiles/Stun
HP - 9,690 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 343 Green (AOE) - 287
Gamora's ace is her black, so try to get her to tank all 3 of her colors so she has plenty of her symbol on the board so she will drop a lot of decent strike tiles. Anyone fighting your team will have to defeat her first too, because the less characters on your team, the more of her tiles are showing, and the bigger the threat of her black has. Red at 3 is banking on her, or other's, strike tiles to do better damage, while 5 makes the damage competent even on its own. Her green is decent at 5 if you need one, because if 2 opponents are left it will stun both for 2 turns (though this means less damage output). Otherwise the damage is poor for an AOE.
Punisher - 5 5 3 or 3 5 5 - Rank 3rd of mid tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/Attack Tiles/Strike Tiles/Shake-up
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 217 Black (AOE)- 335
His green is great thanks to moderately strong multi-color strike tiles and board shake-up. His black is decent area damage for a cheap 7 while spawning a countdown tile that generates attack tiles. These two abilities can combo well with other characters/each other. Buffed characters/over scaled PVE nodes can have a truck-load of HP, making his red a great way to go also, while 5/5/3 is great for a general build. One thing to note however, is that characters health is always divided into 3 pieces thanks to the plus shaped health bar. When a character gets their health slightly below that last line on the plus shaped health bar, they are ready to be downed. If you bring red to 5, get a calculator ready because there is no way to figure out otherwise how much 40% of their hp is.
Warning his forums pages has not been fully updated !
Daredevil - 5 3 5 or 3 5 5 - Rank 2nd of mid tierOffers - Nuke/Stun/Tile Remove
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 380 (you match) 680 (they match) Purple (Nuke) - 287
Henchmen cannot activate traps making his red useless in parts of PVEs, however it should not be underestimated, it deals a lot of damage. Keep in mind traps are destroyed if any other tile type is set on it (example: Daken's strike tiles). The problem with his red is it becomes lodged in the an untouchable part of the board and becomes a waste. His purple is situational but in those situations can be helpful, this ability also allows him to combo well with Patch. His blue is a good stun and with 2 down, it can stunlock an opponent, but is still out shined just a bit by Captain America's because his creates protect tiles too.
Bullseye - 5 5 3 - Rank 1st of mid tierOffers - Nuke/Strike Tiles/Tile Remove
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Purple (Nuke) - 419 Green (Nuke) - 175
This character is surprisingly fun to play, and strong if played well. Most of this is because of his black, which turns any game in your favor when activated. This power dominates in survival nodes. Since his purple is cheap at 7ap, you can easily down an opponent with him once they are low. This puts the battle strongly in your favor, and making it easy to activate it second time, creating a landslide effect. Green has poor damage, so putting it at 3 doesn't hurt it much, and you only lose 1 tile removal (I rarely use all 5 tile removals anyways).
High Tier
Don't worry about dumping ISO into any of these guys, they are a good investment. Characters are listed in worst to best (again, in my opinion).
Wolverine - 5 3 5 - Rank 15th of high tierOffers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Healing
HP - 6800 Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - (about) 144 (tanking 1 color) 289 (tanking 2 colors) 433 (tanking 3 colors) Green (Nuke) - 231
He creates very strong strike tiles because he makes them for both teams (very high risk/reward) this makes him circumstantially good based on his team, alternatively you can save up a lot of AP for one giant attack (make sure it finishes them!). Combos with anyone that can remove negative strike tiles Wolverine creates making this skill a game ender. Since henchmen do not match tiles, he can be amazing for certain PVE nodes. His red is pretty expensive and even when tanking all 3 colors the damage is mediocre. His true healing every turn however can give you the sustain to push PVEs and PVPs, which can be much more useful.
He comes in last for high tier characters because you should use characters like Daredevil, Loki, or Hulk to make him the most effective. His low HP also makes him an easier target in PVP.
Deadpool - 5 5 3 - Rank 14th of high tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/Tank
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 549 purple (AOE) - 871
His red is no joke, the damage on it is amazing for only 6 ap meaning you can activate it very fast to topple those low HP characters, but unfortunately only once/twice as it loses effectiveness based on how low the enemy's HP is. His black forces you to attack him first, which is very frustrating. His purple is very expensive but provides very high AOE damage. Every day you use him you gain points too, and when saved you can unleash it all as damage to insantly kill any 3 enemies you fight (no it doesn't take out an entire wave).
Mystique - 4 4 5 - Rank 13th of high tierOffers - Nuke/AP Drain/AP Reduction/Purple&Black Production
HP - 8,075 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 284 (not shapeshifted) 663 (shapeshifted)
Her blue creates purple/black, which are great colors to generate. If you can get her purple up early it really slows down the opposing team (think of it as a 30%ish AP siphon), note it takes 1 ap from every cascade they make on a turn too. If you put it at 3 instead of 4 you lose 2 colors, so I favor 4/4/5. Just make sure to drop her purple after you have matched all the purple on the board. Her black does some of the best damage in the game when her purple is out, and drains the enemies red/green/yellow ap by 2!
Beast - 5 5 3 - Rank 12th of high tierOffers - AOE/Attack Tiles/Strike Tiles/Protect Tiles/Shake-up/Healing
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (AOE) - 676
His blue is fun and cheap to throw down, creating 3 decent special tiles. His green is definitely his selling point however, as it has decent ap/damage ratio and can be activated early assuring you hit all 3 opponents, plus amazing shakeup! His yellow is your standard health boost, which is only really useful in survival matches.
Hood - 5 5 3 - Rank 11th of high tierOffers - AP Drain/Nuke/Shake-up
HP - 5100 Very Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Yellow (Nuke) - 380 Black (Nuke) - 131
His Yellow does some decent damage once maxed with a lot of specific board shake-up which is very useful for PVE, remember however it does end the turn making this ability less useful. His blue is his best ability hands down, stealing virtually random AP every turn. By collecting specific colors either side can manipulate what AP he gathers. It is not affected by TUs, so the less TUs on the board, the more AP this ability gathers. His black is terrible in comparison though, as it is nearly useless and the damage is pathetic. His HP is terrible making him bad on defense, but random chance can still wreck an opponent making them think twice. He is outstanding in PVE, and good in PVP.
Loki - 5 3 5 or 4 4 5 - Rank 10th of high tierOffers - AP Drain/Swap/Tile Steal
HP - 5950 Very Low
His purple is one of the best activated purples in the game, especially when there is a low/high concentration of any colors which his green will help with. Black at 4 still converts 5 special tiles, still making it very useful and allowing you to keep his purple at 4 for maximum "swappering", after testing 5 in purple is overkill on swapping. His green allows you to smirk when the AI stumbles upon 4 matches. Make sure to let them have 4 matches that won't help them. His only problem is the same as Hood's, his HP is extremely low.
Human Torch - 5 3 5 Rank 9th of high tierOffers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/AP Shake-up
HP - 8,075 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 423 (1st use) 565 (2nd use) Green (Nuke) - 360 (first turn used at 8 ap saved) 450 (10 ap saved)
His red does a great amount of damage/per ap, and upon use it destroys 2 red giving you the ap for them, reducing the cost of his next cast to 6. This can be good, but the end result will be lowered concentration of reds on the board, so have someone paired with him that has shake-up to drop more red down. His green has an insane amount of damage/per ap spent if you can keep the green countdown tile alive. Match all possible greens on the board before dropping it for best results, I usually start it at 8-10 ap and focus on matching only greens when the matches appear to keep the flames stoked. His black would be great if it didn't take your blue purple and yellow ap too, but regardless it can do decent damage and many times you may not have much yellow, blue or purple ap for it to take anyways.
Rocket & Groot - 3 5 5 or 5 3 5 Rank 8th of upper mid tierOffers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Shake-up/Healing
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (Nuke) - 333 (5 covers) 108 (3 covers)
They have a lot of HP and can heal through their yellow by removing TU tiles from the board when matching yellow below 25% health. This creates free cascades for you too. If you want to go offensive, put his yellow at 3 so his heal is smaller, allowing him to use it again soon. Defensively at 5 it will give him nearly a full heal. Putting his green to 3 makes it a nearly useless ability, while at 5 it is one of the best damage + shake-up abilities in game. Note that this shakeup will avoid breaking your special tiles (except the giant 2x4 hole in the middle which will always happen). His blue is his best color, it drops some very strong strike tiles for cheap, giving you lots of consistent damage support.
Doctor Doom - 5 3 5 or 3 5 5 - Rank 7th of high tierOffers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Black Production
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Purple (Nuke) - 565 (4 traps out) 791 (6 traps out)
His blue at 4 converts 9 tiles, and how often is there more than 9 blue tiles? Considering this I prefer to keep it at 4 to improve his black, which is a decent ability though it seems a bit overkill to summon 6 attack tiles with his black, as they tend to get matched, but 5 seems to be a good compromise so his black can still be useful. His purple is why he ranks so high, and is easily one of the best nukes in the game (the numbers speak for themselves), and it is especially easy to keep traps out against henchment in PVE who can't move tiles.
Daken - 5 5 3 or 5 3 5:- Rank 6th of high tierOffers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Healing
HP - 6800 Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Blue (Nuke) - 398 (3 covers) 554 (5 covers)
He is a great character to help you save healthpacks, and has a great color profile. His black at 5 ensures he survives almost any encounter, and his purple is great for constant damage through any match. His blue costs 5 and does a lot of damage however at the price of red strike tiles already on the board. Putting it to 5 is viable if you want larger nukes but it will cost you an extra strike tile (4 vs 3 used) and compromise his auto healing and make him more likely to harm himself. Use his blue when you want to thin out the strikes on the board because there is an incoming shake-up ability or strikes that can be matched.
He is one of the best characters you can max because of his vitality/damage/versatility/color profile, and possibly the character I have used the most overall.
Captain America - 3 5 5 - Rank 5th of high tierOffers - Nuke/Stun/Protect Tiles
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 366 (1st throw) 4031 (second throw if 1st countdown survived)
He brings with him arguably the best red in the game, as it gives back all the ap used to activate it minus 1. While the first use of his red is mediocre, repeated use (if the tile survives) can do insane damage as the numbers show , though the cost is a tad high so getting started takes a bit of gathering. It sounds overpowered, however you have to wait 3 turns between throws too. This combined with its fairly high cost forces it out late game, making it better for long term battles. His blue returns ap in the same way, and is one of the best stuns in the game, because it creates decent protect tiles every use. His yellow is overpriced, though the protect tiles are very strong, creating them late game is not very helpful . The major downside to him is that the AI will misuse his abilities, if they play them at all because of the high cost.
Kamala Khan - 5 5 3 or 3 5 5 - Rank 4th of high tierOffers - AOE/Green Production/Healing
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (AOE) - 847
Her yellow is very unique, and I personally love it. Maxed out it can be very annoying on your defense, and on offense it can save health packs for PVE/PVPs. Pair her with other characters with low cost abilities for best results. If you rather put her on the offensive, her purple is fun/strategic while creating greens. This chains up to her green, which can easily be compared to Thor's. It does some serious AOE damage, though spread out rather than partially focused on one character. It can be argued that she should rank higher, however her problem is she only has one damaging ability and it is an AOE, so after 1 or 2 enemies die she becomes less effective.
Black Panther - 5 3 5 - Rank 3rd of high tierOffers - AOE/Attack Tiles/Protect Tiles
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (AOE) - 927
His black is one of the best AOE's in the game, as the number above shows however it does give the other team 5 ap of their strongest color. It is great for a game finisher when AP doesn't matter, or if the character who used that color to begin with falls to this attack. His yellow is a great strike tile creator, providing cheap and strong strikes (very strong if you have 12 TU gathered). His blue is pretty cheap and drops shields over time. If wedged into a corner can keep stop all incoming match damage. It's not the best blue, but if you need one it's not terrible.
Magneto - 3 5 5 - Rank 2nd of high tierOffers - Nuke/Shake-up/Swap/Protect Tiles
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 228 (7 TU tiles) 326 (10 TU tiles) Blue (Nuke) - 449
Magneto's red is cheap and can deal decent damage while shaking up the board, and since it completely removes an entire tile type, the shake-up is more likely to create matches. His blue does a lot of damage and mixes reds and blues, possibly causing cascades. His yellow's protect tiles barely increase in strength from 3 to 5, and it only drops 9 tiles making it highly unlikely you will drop them on enemy tiles.
Luke Cage - 5 5 3 or 5 3 5 - Rank 1st of high tierOffers - Nuke/Stun/Protect Tile
HP - 9,690 Above average
AP/Damage Ratios - Yellow (Nuke) - 549 (when both allies are still alive) AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 448 (2 uses) 540 (3 uses)
He comes close to a top tier character, but I just don't fear him in PVP enough to put him up there. His yellow is a great single target damage dealer, one of the best in the game and in the form of a yellow which is a color that can be difficult to find a decent ability for. His black can do decent damage and a stun if you put it to 5, making him more of a damage dealer.
Personally though, I believe his red is a rare ability, and extremely annoying for opponents. It essentially reduces all standard matches against you to 1 damage, so the opponent has to resort to abilities only to down your team. A miscalculation can result in them having to use an ability to down somone with 100 hp left.
Top Tier
If you have any of these guys finished/nearly finished, pat yourself on your back. Prioritize leveling them, as they are 100% worth it.
Iron Man - 5/3 5/3 5 - Rank 9th of top tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/AP Generation
HP - 9,690 Above Average
AP/Damage ratio - Red (Nuke) - 521 Blue (AOE) - 606
This ranking may be hotly contested, but this is because his yellow works the same no matter what level he is, and his other two abilities that are affected by his level went from really bad to OK. This means he isn't really a priority to level/champion unless you end up with less than 5 yellow when finishing his covers.
His yellow only costs 6 AP, but creates 36 AP! He is arguably the best AP gatherer in the game, so he pairs well with many of the best characters from the entire game. A good yellow ability is hard to find as well, so this makes him viable for most teams, and in turn a great character even when you move to the 4* characters. His red and blue are both nice, and comparable to the damage of some of the better characters, but unfortunately they drain your AP. Even so, both abilities could save you in a pinch, or if you are simply missing a blue or red ability. You could make a case to bring either red or blue to 5 depending on his team.
She-Hulk - 4 5 4 - Rank 8th of top tierOffers - AP Reduction/AOE/Shake-up/Tile Steal
HP - 10,710 High
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (AOE) - 548 (5 covers) 420 (4 covers)
Her green is an amazing support ability. For 6 ap it can save you from a potential ability firing off by draining the AP before they use it, or if you wait for 12 you can drain 4 pools of AP essentially resetting their game. Her blue is virtually useless at 3, but at 4 it doubles its effect making it take 2 enemy strike/protect/attack tiles and improves them. There are plenty of characters who create these special tiles now, so chances are this will be useful. Her red does some great damage for cheap with good shake-up, but I feel the gain from blue is more beneficial and all you lose is a bit of her damage and a tiny bit of shake-up.
She is scary to fight against, with high HP, chances are you are going to get hit with her green. Just pray it isn't AP you needed. I have lost games from this.
Doctor Strange - 5 3 5 - Rank 7th of top tierOffers - Nuke/Stun/Tile Remove
HP - 6800 - Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Blue (Nuke) - 591 (Countdown Survives)
Doctor Strange's yellow makes him amazing in PVE where henchmen drop countdown tiles. This makes it go off up to 3 times per turn in some instances, doing a lot of nuke damage. It's not as great in PVP unfortunately, but still a solid ability. His blue does a great amount of damage however, while destroying a specific color of an enemy AND doing a stun. This is an amazing skill for what it brings to the table. His purple is 7 ap to remove 2 special tiles. It is nice that it can remove invisible and trap tiles too, but this won't be helpful if it randomly destroys a different special tile instead since it is random. This makes his optimal build pretty easy. Thanos and Dr. Strange make excellent parners in PVE, and I urge everyone to test out this combo!
Blade - 3 5 5 - Rank 6th of top tierOffers - Nuke/AP drain/Strike Tiles/Attack Tiles
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Black (Nuke) - 234 (5 covers) 136 (3 covers)
His black, when wedged into a hard to reach part of the board, can end the game especially if it is siphoning a color you both need. You won't really need it at 5 because taking 2 ap of one pool every turn will be more than enough to drain it to 0, and the jump in damage is fairly insignificant as it does minuscule damage to begin with. His green at 5 will create strike tiles for free pretty often. What makes him truly strong though it's his purple that creates strong attack tiles, and when strike tiles are out to make it stronger, it will end games fast. This is especially useful in survival nodes.
Thor - 3 5 5 - Rank 5th of top tierOffers - Nuke/AOE/Green Production/Yellow Production
HP - 10200 high
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 266 (5 covers) 171 (3 covers) Yellow (Nuke) - 207 Green (AOE) - 645
His red does some damage but creates 3 yellows which will occasionally match leading into his yellow. His yellow drops a truckload of 9 tiles that likely will match and create cascades, while doing some damage as well. This leads into his green which does good AOE damage. What makes this ability nice is it dealing a majority to one target making it useful when other opponents are downed as well.
His numbers don't show how deadly he can be, however what makes him strong is his red chaining his yellow, and his yellow chaining to his green. If he gets going your team is assured to get hit by all of his abilities.
Scarlet Witch 5 3 5 - Rank 4th of top tierOffers - AOE/Purple Production/Stun/AP Shake-up
HP - 8,670 Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Purple (AOE) - 471
With Scarlet Witch you can expect a constant supply of purple AP and shakeup, what makes this strong is that it does it passively. As long as you protect that 3 turn blue countdown you are highly likely to get a purple 5 match. This can be siphoned into another strong purple ability, like Iron Fist, or used by her own which is strong as well. It is like a stronger version of 2* Storm's blue. It offers decent AOE damage, but the 5 turn stun is what really makes this ability.
Her green does a small bit of shake-up, and gives you the ap from tiles destroyed using it. This isn't that helpful, but useful if you don't have a green as it siphons green into other colors. It does destroy enemy special tiles, so I find myself using it occasionally for that. Bringing it to 5 only offers 1 extra destroyed tile and the ability to destroy any special tile in the game. This was obviously oriented towards Ultron, but her other abilities are so great I wouldn't even consider putting green to 5.
Cyclops 5 3 5 - Rank 3rd of top tierOffers - Nuke/Yellow Production/Shake-up
HP - 9,265 Above Average
AP/Damage Ratios - Red (Nuke) - 428 (5 covers) 207 (3 covers) Black (Nuke) - 628 (10 red tiles on the board)
He is a damage powerhouse since his yellow fuels his red, and his black does amazing damage. His black has some of the best damage/per ap spent in the game if you can get red on the board with his yellow. This isn't a problem since his yellow is cheap. It converts team up tiles to red, lowering the concentration of one color and heightening another, thus has a high chance to cascade. You only gain 2 red conversions if you put yellow to 5, and you may not even need them if there isn't enough team up tiles on the board anyways. Either way, it fuels his red which does some good damage while offering just a bit of shakeup.
Iron Fist - 3/5 5 3/5 - Rank 2nd of top tierOffers - Nuke/Attack Tiles/Black Production
HP - 7650 - Low
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (Nuke) - 115 Purple (Nuke) - 822
Iron Fist's purple that can create 7 tiles for 5 ap, and even if used for damage it does 4k damage for 5 ap, which is an incredible nuke! Another huge ace up his sleeve is his black, which will passively keep an attack tile out that does nearly 500 damage a turn. This adds up fast since it starts from turn one. His green isn't as spectacular when you compare it to these other two, but it is also a great ability when compared to all abilities since it does a bit of damage and puts out competent strike tiles. Switching some black covers to green is perfectly viable if you need a green ability on your team.
Thanos - 3/5 3/5 5 - Rank 1st of top tierOffers - AOE/Tank
HP - 12,325 Very High
AP/Damage Ratios - Green (AOE) - 1069
Thanos black is extremely nice for killing easy groups of enemies. Other than that, it speeds up all battles greatly. Thanos green is a very high damage AOE. Not only that, it serves as a method for Thanos to Tank, which he should because his HP pool is enormous. These 2 abilities would leave him as an AOE specialist, however his purple allows him to deal decent single target damage as well if need be, pefectly complementing his other 2 abilities.
Black and Purple can be swapped if you need Thanos to do single target damage or you need a purple. His green is amazing though, so I would only substitute it if you have a better green.
They did a great job making someone as infamous as Thanos this strong, get him
AP/Damage Ratio Chart for Area Attacks
How good is your characters AOE attack? Here is a good idea with an overlook of everyone!
#1 --
Quicksilver ---- 7596#2 --
Sentry
1092
#3 --
Black Panther - 927#4 --
Deadpool
871
#5 --
Kamala
847
#6 --
Vision
677
#7--
Beast
676
#8 --
Thor
645
#9 -
Iron Man
606
#10 --
Black Widow -- 617#11 --
Colossus
569
#12 -
She-Hulk
548
#13 -
Ragnarok
487
#14 -
Scarlet Witch - 471#15 -
Punisher
335
#16 -
Gamora
287
#17 -
Doc Oc
126
1
Comments
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Love the guide, thank you!
One thing, you have BP's aoe nuke as , it is !! 0 -
Thanks, just finished it up for now, still need to test drive the newer characters more before I can judge them effectively 0
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very good guide, thanks! never thought shulk would be top tier tho0
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hexad_2808 wrote:very good guide, thanks! never thought shulk would be top tier tho
Thanks!
Fighting boosted She-Hulks was nearly as frustrating as fighting boosted Blades. I think I may have died more in the She-Hulk event though, it's just too hard to deny 6 ap to a character with high health. She can deny AP while your damage dealers finish the team off. She doesn't have the big numbers, she sits in the back and lets everything run smoothly.0 -
Dauthi wrote:Thanks!
Fighting boosted She-Hulks was nearly as frustrating as fighting boosted Blades. I think I may have died more in the She-Hulk event though, it's just too hard to deny 6 ap to a character with high health. She can deny AP while your damage dealers finish the team off. She doesn't have the big numbers, she sits in the back and lets everything run smoothly.
I do remember that nightmare... i have her fully covered at 553 currently sitting at level 100, might try up her to 120 and see what she can do in the gauntlet!0 -
Nice guide.
IF health is only 7650 however0 -
One more color miss.. Kamala, you have a black for her.
As soon as i get a couple more yellows for cyclops (may break down and buy some), IF, Cyclops, DD as a team. It worked so well in the Shield Sim, and so far in a few nodes in the guantlet. Just need to finish covering them. IF is sitting at 2/3/5, DD at 2/5/5, and Cyclops at 5/1/4
I did notice IF turning trap tiles black, but they kept the trap on it, which does it's damage when it matches on the cascade, then pops onto a red tile for cyc to hit on a yellow.
Took out simulation 17 (beast, doom, marvel) in under 10 turns, taking only minimal match damage.. was a sight to see! (had one cascade that netted over 35 AP!)0 -
changing the color doesn't affect the trap. adding a strike to it with IF green will disable it though. I hate losing dd traps with a passion, so, for me personally, I wouldn't pair dd with IF (or cage, doom, storm, daken, blade, axwolvie, etc). he is awesome with Cyclops tho - my cyc is 1/4/4, so hes just a red feeder with a black nuke, but that's perfect for cap or dd.Malcrof wrote:One more color miss.. Kamala, you have a black for her.
As soon as i get a couple more yellows for cyclops (may break down and buy some), IF, Cyclops, DD as a team. It worked so well in the Shield Sim, and so far in a few nodes in the guantlet. Just need to finish covering them. IF is sitting at 2/3/5, DD at 2/5/5, and Cyclops at 5/1/4
I did notice IF turning trap tiles black, but they kept the trap on it, which does it's damage when it matches on the cascade, then pops onto a red tile for cyc to hit on a yellow.
Took out simulation 17 (beast, doom, marvel) in under 10 turns, taking only minimal match damage.. was a sight to see! (had one cascade that netted over 35 AP!)0 -
TxMoose wrote:
changing the color doesn't affect the trap. adding a strike to it with IF green will disable it though. I hate losing dd traps with a passion, so, for me personally, I wouldn't pair dd with IF (or cage, doom, storm, daken, blade, axwolvie, etc). he is awesome with Cyclops tho - my cyc is 1/4/4, so hes just a red feeder with a black nuke, but that's perfect for cap or dd.Malcrof wrote:One more color miss.. Kamala, you have a black for her.
As soon as i get a couple more yellows for cyclops (may break down and buy some), IF, Cyclops, DD as a team. It worked so well in the Shield Sim, and so far in a few nodes in the guantlet. Just need to finish covering them. IF is sitting at 2/3/5, DD at 2/5/5, and Cyclops at 5/1/4
I did notice IF turning trap tiles black, but they kept the trap on it, which does it's damage when it matches on the cascade, then pops onto a red tile for cyc to hit on a yellow.
Took out simulation 17 (beast, doom, marvel) in under 10 turns, taking only minimal match damage.. was a sight to see! (had one cascade that netted over 35 AP!)
Yah, i mostly ignored green on the board, unless it was a defensive to keep the ai from getting it (4 match etc..), but good point!0 -
Malcrof wrote:One more color miss.. Kamala, you have a black for her.
As soon as i get a couple more yellows for cyclops (may break down and buy some), IF, Cyclops, DD as a team. It worked so well in the Shield Sim, and so far in a few nodes in the guantlet. Just need to finish covering them. IF is sitting at 2/3/5, DD at 2/5/5, and Cyclops at 5/1/4
I did notice IF turning trap tiles black, but they kept the trap on it, which does it's damage when it matches on the cascade, then pops onto a red tile for cyc to hit on a yellow.
Took out simulation 17 (beast, doom, marvel) in under 10 turns, taking only minimal match damage.. was a sight to see! (had one cascade that netted over 35 AP!)
Thanks! Fixed it.
Cyclops is a beast, when he was buffed I think his black could do something like 12-13k damage. Insane!0 -
Do you have any thoughts on builds and placement for any of the new characters? (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Bullseye or Vision, I think I have them all)
GREAT and useful guide BTW - Nice work. You have my vote for a sticky.0 -
Great work, Dauthi!CptnNerd1979 wrote:Do you have any thoughts on builds and placement for any of the new characters? (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Bullseye or Vision, I think I have them all)
GREAT and useful guide BTW - Nice work. You have my vote for a sticky.
I'll comment on Scarlet Witch. I have her level maxed at 166. She's probably a top tier character, or at the upper end of high tier at worst. Her blue is outstanding. It's a passive that requires minimal babysitting, and provides phenomenal purple acceleration at 5 covers. It usually procs a match 3 at a minimum, but very frequently will proc a match 4-6, and occasionally anything up to a match 9. 5 covers in blue is a must - pair her with Blade or Deadpool for their purple actives, or pair her with Professor X for Master Plan shenanigans. Following on from that, it's either 5 in purple or 5 in green.
Her purple provides reasonable AE damage (2198), and a random 5 turn stun. Because it's random, and the stun applies before her damage is applied, it's possible to stun a character, then down then with Reality Crush, which is suboptimal.
Her green on the other hand at max covers provides a semi-targeted form of minor AP generation, and special tile removal.
Whether you choose to max her purple or green depends on whom you're planning to pair her up with. I chose purple because a five turn stun is too good to pass up on, but five covers in green is equally as viable.0 -
Awesome, this should get a sticky next to the Polarity guide.0
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Thanks for the great guide! I find myself referring to it whenever I get a 3* cover for a character I don't have covered correctly, just to be sure. Great advice and well done, thank again!0
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Thanks for the support everyone!
I am waiting for the new characters to be featured so I can fully test them out, but here are my current feelings towards some of them.
Scarlet Witch - She is very strong. Anyone who generates a color consistently (let alone passively!) will always be useful. Her purple is an upgraded 2* Storm blue ability, and anyone who has gone through the 2* tier knows how great she is (I still love her blue as a TU). Her green is decent in a pinch by providing AP and shakeup, though it is a bit of a gamble.
Quicksilver - He is going to be above Psylocke probably, but his abilities are more useful but a bit more expensive. Don't believe the hype, he is better than people say, though he will wind up mid tier. His blue isn't reliable, don't count on it (though useful in mirror matches). His other abilities are actually a lot of fun (black is one of the most fun abilities to use), and can turn a battle.0 -
Great guide Dauthi!, though I do disagree on a few points.
I would definitely not put She-Hulk above Cage. Both of them have abilities that are annoying to face, giving them defensive value (Cage's red, Shulk's green), but Shulk's other two abilities are very situational at best, and red is mediocre. Cage's other two abilities are solid offensive powers that work well with almost any team. He has a clear edge IMO.
Patch is way too low relative to Daken, and too low overall. His auto-regen at 5 yellow is awesome, especially for transitioners. He will save more healthpacks than daken, and is neer more than 30 minutes away from full health. Yes, the enemy strikes tiles from berserker rage can be annoying, but there are more than enough way to deal with them (even if you don't have a dedicated team mate) and the damage acceleration he offers for 9ap is massive.
Khan is also much too low. She is a great all around character. purple and green is a useful combo given the number of very solid red/blue and yellow/black users in 3* land. she has a very respectable self-accelerated aoe nuke, and her burst healing is actually useful when paired with low-cost teammates like psylocke (or cage's black).
Beats is too high. he is not nearly as bad as he was, and blue is actually quite useful now, and green does respectable, but conditional, aoe damage. yellow is useless. But having him above khan is insane.
I see that you are waiting to add Switch, vision, and quicksilver to the list. I don't have any of them fully covered yet. Switch will clearly be very strong for her passive alone, and her actives are both quite usable in their own way. Vision is terrible when undercovered, but I am coming around on him a little bit now he is boosted again in ultron. I think he will end up like gamora: useful when you build a team to use his powers well, but not great. And he is **** on defense, since he just overwrites his own countdowns. I have no idea what to make of quicksilver. Both of his skills have good effects. But they are overpriced. And blue is quite cumbersome to use without IW feeding him locked tiles. I think he will be mid tier at best.0 -
I'd suggest a transitioning player to build Patch 3/5/5 and eventually switch to 5/3/5. When Patch is your main guy TBTI can be a game ender, but the strike tiles from level 5 Berserker Rage may be too much to deal with at that point.0
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Quebbster wrote:I'd suggest a transitioning player to build Patch 3/5/5 and eventually switch to 5/3/5. When Patch is your main guy TBTI can be a game ender, but the strike tiles from level 5 Berserker Rage may be too much to deal with at that point.
Patch was the second 3* I leveled above 94 and I can say that I had no trouble using 5/3/5 patch to great effect. He fueled the first half of my transition almost single handed and was an absolute staple that I used in just about every match right up until the health shift kinda related him to specialist duty.
It's true that the enemy strikes can be dangerous. But there are several ways to fix them. While transitioners may not have every character that can do this, most players will have at least one of moonstone, shulk, daredevil, bullseye 3*, loki in a usable state.
Plus patch's strikes pair so well with OBW that the two of them together can take on level 300 goon nodes by themselves.
Patch can also be paired with anyone that has a cheap attack power (gamora, torch, ms. marvel, psylocke, cage's black). Just save up 9 green and enough ap for multiple attack casts and alpha strike the enemy team all at once.
saving berserker rage for multiple uses at the end of a match can take a bit a longer, but so long as you have 5 yellow and patch is tanking his colors, who cares! he just heals right back up.
Not saying that 3/5/5 is bad at all, just that 5/3/5 is more versatile because 1k+ of strike tiles makes every subsequent attack so much better. I was skeptical as well before I got all the covers for patch myself, but I haven't ever looked back since getting my 4th and 5th green.0 -
Thank you, I will explain my setup:Vhailorx wrote:Great guide Dauthi!, though I do disagree on a few points.I would definitely not put She-Hulk above Cage. Both of them have abilities that are annoying to face, giving them defensive value (Cage's red, Shulk's green), but Shulk's other two abilities are very situational at best, and red is mediocre. Cage's other two abilities are solid offensive powers that work well with almost any team. He has a clear edge IMO.
Cage is great, however his black is pretty mediocre when it comes to damage/ap ratio (448 damage per ap spent), so unless you really like that stun, it isn't much. If you put it at 3 black, it is nearly unusable at a pathetic 281 damage per ap spent. I recommend this build since his black is pretty meh anyways. So what does he end up offering? His yellow takes awhile to wind up, but it does 550 damage per ap spent, which is on the high side, but what makes it great is the lack of good damaging yellows. His red I believe is what makes him so useful, as it will prevent damage in climbs through PVE or PVP, and is amazing in Ultron/Survival.
She-Hulk however guarantees me a win in pretty much any battle. I usually can hit 12 green which, as I said, basically resets all their AP. It's like they have to start over while I am usually about to start unleashing abilities. Her blue is becoming a lot less situational with more and more characters dropping special tiles, and when she can use it it is very strong. Taking Hulkbuster's strike tiles from his black for instance and then buffing them, can completely turn around a battle. This ability was recently nerfed however (or should I say the bug removed), so I may reevaluate her. Her red is just a bonus to me, some nice cheap shake-up and a bit of damage.Patch is way too low relative to Daken, and too low overall. His auto-regen at 5 yellow is awesome, especially for transitioners. He will save more healthpacks than daken, and is neer more than 30 minutes away from full health. Yes, the enemy strikes tiles from berserker rage can be annoying, but there are more than enough way to deal with them (even if you don't have a dedicated team mate) and the damage acceleration he offers for 9ap is massive.
The problem with patch is you have to have a character ready to remove the negative tiles or you will end up losing health packs by your other characters getting smashed. Worst case scenario you end up unlucky and wiping because the AI cascaded after you use his green. New players should avoid him unless they have the characters that can pair well with him at a high level.
I suppose Moonstone is an option, but I wouldn't suggest her in PVP. You would be a real easy target. Leveling her also seems like a bit of a waste perhaps.Khan is also much too low. She is a great all around character. purple and green is a useful combo given the number of very solid red/blue and yellow/black users in 3* land. she has a very respectable self-accelerated aoe nuke, and her burst healing is actually useful when paired with low-cost teammates like psylocke (or cage's black).
I will probably hop her up a bit, I do think she is better than beast. The problem is she takes some synergy by pairing her with characters that have low cost abilities for her best performance. But regardless her other 2 abilities are amazing.Beats is too high. he is not nearly as bad as he was, and blue is actually quite useful now, and green does respectable, but conditional, aoe damage. yellow is useless. But having him above khan is insane.
With his blue costing 6 I wouldn't call his green conditional at all. Every time I have played with him I never have issues getting 6 blue before 9 green, and it creates 3 tiles with strength of 174, quite strong. Any combination of attack/strike tiles allows you to start doing 500 damage a turn for free, and of course the added damage from strike tiles in matches. His green does 400 damage per ap spent, plus 12 tiles destroyed. Lets compare this to Xforce's green, which many consider a good ability still, and does around 237 damage per ap spent and destroys 15 tiles. It's that shake-up that is valuable, and I would easily say beast's green is at least as good as XForce's. His yellow is pretty bad, but so is Magnetos, and with 2 other great abilities, he is still amazing.I see that you are waiting to add Switch, vision, and quicksilver to the list. I don't have any of them fully covered yet. Switch will clearly be very strong for her passive alone, and her actives are both quite usable in their own way. Vision is terrible when undercovered, but I am coming around on him a little bit now he is boosted again in ultron. I think he will end up like gamora: useful when you build a team to use his powers well, but not great. And he is **** on defense, since he just overwrites his own countdowns. I have no idea what to make of quicksilver. Both of his skills have good effects. But they are overpriced. And blue is quite cumbersome to use without IW feeding him locked tiles. I think he will be mid tier at best.
Vision's blue is really strong, especially paired with IF. I think it is a bug, but his blue actually effects attack tiles damage. So dropping a blue in the ultron even with my buffed Vision at 200 made IF do 1200 damage a turn...
He is alright probably high rank mid tier if this bug isn't fixed, I have to test him out a bit more.0 -
Fix first of Storm builds, it misses two covers (in black, I suppose): 3 5 3
Otherwise, good work!0
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