Leftover X-men: Nightcrawler

ronin_san

This guy rocks. He's an ambassador for the poor and the needy. He's a helping hand. He's a swashbuckler. He's an immediate exit strategy. And he's aaaaawfully agile.

Nightcrawler
7650 HPs.




Aggressive benevolence. 8 AP.

Kurt takes a donation from the enemy, whether they like it or not. Place a timer tile of three turns in duration. While in play, he steals a AP on matches. If no AP can be stolen, Nightcrawler stuns a random enemy one turn.
Rank 2. Steal AP on matches. If no AP can be stolen, Kurt generates a tile of strength 90.
Rank 3. Steal AP on matches. If no AP can be stolen, Kurt generates an tile of strength 120.
Rank 4. Timer duration up to four turns.
Rank 5. stun duration to two turns. up to 120. up to 160.

Rapid Egress. Passive.

Sensing danger, Nightcrawler teleports in and removes his teammate from harm. If your team has more than 8 AP, and more than 5% damage would be dealt to a teammate, Nightcrawler teleports in and protects his teammate from damage. Damage dealt is reduced by half, and the 8 is spent.
Rank 2. AP requirement down to 7.
Rank 3. AP requirement down to 6.
Rank 4. create a protect tile of strength 150 for every 2 blue consumed.
Rank 5. Zero damage taken.

Capa Fero lunge. 11 AP.

Nightcrawler's swordsmanship is unparalleled in the Marvel Universe. You might need to read that again. Go ahead.
The agile elf lunges forward, dealing a vicious blow. Deal 450 damage to the enemy and destroy a row of your choosing.
Rank 2. Deal 650 damage.
Rank 3. Deal 950 damage and destroy two rows of your choosing.
Rank 4. Deal 1350 damage.
Rank 5. Deal 1950 damage and destroy three rows of your choosing.

Malcrof

Ok, taking this one seriously, because we may actually get him at some point. BTW Once again on-point with cover choices! (will upvote you when it allows again)


I like the fact that this can almost force you into making matches you don't want or need just to avoid the effects.. feed them or die!


as is, it may be a touch OP unless he is a 4*, taking 0 damage on a skill use so far is only Elektra, and it is most definitely not a passive! 3 shield tiles, also like Thing, a 4* ability.. so if he is truly a 3*, need some compromise here. Max covers say 2 protects and 25% damage? Love the redwing type mechanice, need x blue before it activates, should be an easy tweak to create this ability in game.

This one could be fun! one question.. is he dealing damage for destroyed tiles on top of the slice? Maybe make the tile damage aoe, in 3* land many 10+ ap abilities are AOE. or do significantly more damage and have a bonus attached (pistol, thunderstrike, etc...) I like the row destruction.. but an homage to Zorro would be nice, but instead of 3 slices making a Z, could have them make an N (a z on it's side!)!!!!!!!! Left column, diagonal top left to bottom right, right column.

Lidolas

I haven't played Avengers Alliance is over a year now, but Swashbuckling Nightcrawler was my absolute favorite.

I approve this hero!

Buret0

To me, Nightcrawlers powers are:

Teleportation;
Stealth;
Agility/Flexibility;
Swordsmanship; and
His Tail.

His religious convictions and his demonic appearance are an interesting contrast that can also be played with.

These are the possible abilities that I thought of for Nightcrawler.

Teleportation:

Bamf! (Passive) At the start of each turn, Nightcrawler teleports in and randomly changes the position of two tiles on the board.
Level One: Two tiles
Level Two: Three tiles
Level Three: Four tiles
Level Four: Five tiles
Level Five: Four pairs of tiles (8 total)

Note: at four covers this ability takes five tiles and rotates them around, while at five covers four pairs of two tiles are randomly selected, each of them swapping places with the other.

Stealth:

Wait. 6 AP . Nightcrawler hides in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Place a "Wait" trap tile to the board. At the start of the player's turn, if a "Wait" trap tile is on the board, gain 1 random AP. While this trap tile is on the board, this ability becomes "See".

Level 1: Gain 1 random AP.
Level 2: Gain 1 AP.
Level 3: Gain 1 random AP and 1 AP.
Level 4: Gain 2 AP.
Level 5: Gain 2 AP and 1 AP in your strongest color.

Note: Multiple trap tiles increases the chance of survival, but not the number of gained AP.

See. 12 AP . Nightcrawler has seen the enemy's weakness and moves in at the right moment to strike. Destroys X tiles in the enemy's strongest color, dealing Y damage for each tile. Destroys all friendly "Wait" trap tiles and all critical tiles on the board, dealing Z damage for each.

Level 1: X = 5, Y = 65, Z = 350
Level 2: X = 5, Y = 75, Z = 450
Level 3: X = 6, Y = 95, Z = 550
Level 4: X = 6, Y = 120, Z = 600
Level 5: X = 8, Y = 140, Z = 750

Max Level 3: X = 6, Y = 260, Z = 1,465
Max Level 4: X = 6, Y = 330, Z = 1,600
Max Level 5: X = 8, Y = 385, Z = 2,000

(423 damage per AP if 1 trap/crit, 750 damage per AP for 3 trap/crits, much less if you factor in the first 6 )

Agility:

Die Walküre. (Passive) Nightcrawler effortlessly flips out of danger, slicing at his opponent at the same time. Whenever Nightcrawler is going to be dealt more damage than 7% of his max health, prevent X damage and do X damage to the opponent.
Level 1: X = 75
Level 2: X = 100
Level 3: X = 125
Level 4: X = 150
Level 5: X = 200

Max Level 3: X = 340
Max Level 4: X = 410
Max Level 5: X = 550

Swordsmanship:

Tail Strike. 6 AP Nightcrawler grapples with his opponent, lashing at him with his tail. Deals X damage. If there are any friendly strike tiles in play, this ability becomes "Fencing".

Level 1: X = 300
Level 2: X = 375
Level 3: X = 500
Level 4: X = 600
Level 5: X = 850

Max Level 3: X = 1,350
Max Level 4: X = 1,650
Max Level 5: X = 2,300

Fencing. 6 AP . Nightcrawler disarms and strikes at his opponent. Randomly destroy X enemy special tiles and deal Y damage.

Level 1: X = 1, Y = 300
Level 2: X = 2, Y = 375
Level 3: X = 2, Y = 500
Level 4: X = 3, Y = 600
Level 5: X = 5, Y = 850

Max Level 3: Y = 1,350
Max Level 4: Y = 1,650
Max Level 5: Y = 2,300

Religious Nature:

Divine Conviction. 9 AP . Nightcrawler blesses the party, protecting them, strengthening them, and comforting them. Nightcrawler randomly puts out a protect and strike tile of X strength and heals the party of Y damage.

Level 1: X = 25, Y = 245
Level 2: X = 35, Y = 395
Level 3: X = 45, Y = 545
Level 4: X = 55, Y = 630
Level 5: X = 70, Y = 900

Max Level 3: X = 125, Y = 1,500
Max Level 4: X = 150, Y = 1,750
Max Level 5: X = 200, Y = 2,500

ronin_san

The religion and fencing are great.

GundamY

I have a feeling he and Wolvie will make such great synergy

Malcrof

i doubt they would put a religious element into the game, but it is a huge part of who he is, so i approve of the power, but i would rather a ^* version of OBW with the CD tile increase, over the tile personally.

Teleportation is nifty, the issue is going to be this.. animation and tile move time is going to make matches take forever. I like the idea though, instead of a passive, how about a tiny 3-4 ap skill, so we can trigger it as needed, don't like the board, shuffle it some.. Nightcrawler is intelligent and would NOT purposely mess up a match 5+ .. so as a passive , it can sometimes do more harm.

ronin_san

What if we do a toggled ability, where nightcrawler either deals more damage or heals, based on whether you have more or tiles in play?

Malcrof

Had an odd thought on an ability for him.. when triggered, tiles start flashing randomly, select a flashing tile for a random effect (strike, shield, attack, destroy tiles for AP, etc...)

Adds a nice random bonus to him..

Lidolas

ronin-san wrote:

Nightcrawler's swordsmanship is unparalleled in the Marvel Universe. You might need to read that again. Go ahead.

It's been a while since I've taken geometry. This just means that, at some point, some one else's skill intersects with his, eh?

Malcrof

Lidolas wrote:

ronin-san wrote:

Nightcrawler's swordsmanship is unparalleled in the Marvel Universe. You might need to read that again. Go ahead.

It's been a while since I've taken geometry. This just means that, at some point, some one else's skill intersects with his, eh?

Psylocke, Deadpool, Arkon and Lady Sif would like to challenge him, straight swordfighting, no mutant powers

ronin_san

Malcrof wrote:

Lidolas wrote:

ronin-san wrote:

Nightcrawler's swordsmanship is unparalleled in the Marvel Universe. You might need to read that again. Go ahead.

It's been a while since I've taken geometry. This just means that, at some point, some one else's skill intersects with his, eh?

Psylocke, Deadpool, Arkon and Lady Sif would like to challenge him, straight swordfighting, no mutant powers

But part of his swashbuckling comes from his deftness; his agility. I am not talking bamfing. The tail adds a LOT to his already impressive kit.

ronin_san

Also consider deadpool, silver samurai, gorgon, shatterstar, and the mustachioed Goof in Thor's troupe. I put him against ANY of them.

Malcrof

ronin-san wrote:

Also consider deadpool, silver samurai, gorgon, shatterstar, and the mustachioed Goof in Thor's troupe. I put him against ANY of them.

Baldur.

And i feel a new type of event coming on.. 1vs1 PVP !!!

Mawtful

There's already a lot of good ideas in this thread. I feel like my own ideas are just expanding upon someone else's concepts. I liked Buret0's analysis of the character, and tried to boil that down further to three traits which I wanted to portray as skills. I decided on:

Agility/Teleportation
Swordsmanship
Hybrid Striker/Support Role

The 3* tier is getting crowded, and although I think it would be interesting to compare him to some of the hybrids and full supports in that tier (especially Kamala, and Falcon) he should probably end up in the 4* tier. Supports are squishy by nature, but his agility and teleportation should help his survivability, even with BAMF as a passive skill. I think that the 13015 health tier (Fury, IW) is probably the best suited.

***
BAMF!(Passive)
When Nightcrawler would take damage from any source, reduce damage by X and create a trap tile on purple.
Whenever a trap tile is matched, Nightcrawler deals Y damage to target enemy and moves to the front of the team.
Rank 2: can create traps on blue.
Rank 3: can create traps on yellow.
Rank 4: can create traps on any basic tile (including team ups).
Rank 5: creates two traps.

This is the skill that has to feel right in order for Nightcrawler to work, and I played around with a few different variations before this. Nightcrawler uses his teleport both offensively and defensively, so I knew this ability had to both as well.
BAMF! acts as a kind of passive protect tile for Nightcrawler, since the defensive part will trigger whenever he takes damage. I would think that rank 4/5 would reduce by ~250; enough to reduce match damage to 1. Whenever a trap is matched, Nightcrawler BAMFs in to hit them. This triggers regardless of which team matches the trap. This is not a Crotchkick, but more like death by 1000 cuts, so the damage should be minimal. The average match damage for 4*'s is just less than 42, so if each trap deals 126 damage from Nightcrawler that's an "average" match.

This ability has potential to play havoc with cascades. Enemy cascades which trigger even 1 trap, would bring Nightcrawler to the front and reduce the overall damage. Friendly cascades could result in Nightcrawler popping in and out.

***
Defensive Strike (Active, 7 AP)
Nightcrawler deals a small amount of damage and disarms his opponent, converting enemy Strike tiles to basic tiles.

Photonic Blasts is a niche ability which provides Protect removal, and this is essentially a Strike tile variation. This ability still needs a few tweaks of its own. Firstly, it converts Strikes back to basic tiles. This is an important distinction, since Photonic Blasts actually destroys the tiles. Since it will be missing out on that slight chance at cascades, it should probably get a damage bump.

***
This third ability was also tricky to nail down. By this stage, I wanted to include a pure Support type ability; more than likely something which included healing and protect tiles. That would mean a yellow ability, which would mean another character with the colours Purple, Blue, and Yellow.

Conviction (Active, 9 AP)
Nightcrawler's conviction strengthens the resolve of his teammates.
Provides a burst of healing to the team for X.

Rank 2: also improves 2 friendly special tiles by Y.
Rank 3: also adds a yellow protect tile of strength Z.
Rank 4: adds a 2nd protect tile.
Rank 5: improves 2 friendly special tiles for each character healed.

I did borrow this idea from Buret0, but dropped the "Divine" prefix just for the sake of not offending anyone who hasn't read the character. It's a little bit of a "do everything" ability, but I feel that support really needs to do a lot more in MPQ in order to be considered worthwhile. Fake healing is a tough sell; Kamala is just about the only character where a fake healing ability is worth considering, and that's mostly because it's free. In game terms, as a 3 turn ability, this is still faster than either Beast or Spider-Man (equal to Anti-Gravity Device). Creation of protect tiles and improving friendly tiles are both solidly Yellow type traits. The tile improvement should be strong compared to either Falcon or PX, who can do it for free. Also, note that the tile improvement kicks in before the protect tiles are created.

As you see, I decided to stick with Yellow; although I think I'd re-order his abilities to be Purple, Yellow, Blue - that particular ordering hasn't been used yet. As stated, he shares a health tier with Fury, who is certainly more offensively focused. It also puts him in between Professor X and Ant-Man. By himself, this Nightcrawler should be annoying enough that you don't want him getting too involved in the fight, and with an active Yellow and passive Purple he would actually make an interesting team mate for Kamala.

Unknown

Malcrof wrote:

ronin-san wrote:

Also consider deadpool, silver samurai, gorgon, shatterstar, and the mustachioed Goof in Thor's troupe. I put him against ANY of them.

Baldur.

I rather think he means Fandral.

Anyway, Nightcrawler is my absolute favourite Marvel character. There are some really nice movesets suggested throughout this thread and I'd be happy to see any of them. I would however lean away from letting Nighty create protect tiles: I'm not hugely up to date on the recent comics, but I've read all of the 70s and 80s X-Men issues and if there was one thing consistent about Kurt it was that he wasn't known for being able to take hits. Generally he either dodged a hit or was downed in one. While I'm not going to suggest we give him a single hit point, generation of protect tiles ought to be left to people who can take a lot of hits like Thing and Colossus as much as possible if you want my opinion.

I've only been playing the game for about 3 months so I don't expect to be great at balancing characters but here are my thoughts if anyone's interested.

"Shadow Blend" (Passive) & "Shadow Strike" (Active)
Passive: If there are no shadow blend countdown or shadow blend trap tiles create a 3-turn shadow blend countdown tile at the beginning of your turn. At the end of the countdown remove countdown tile and create shadow blend trap tile. While trap tile is in play Nightcrawler has a 30% chance of avoiding any attack (including area of effect). While trap tile is in play "Shadow Strike" active power becomes available. (If this is too powerful make the fuzzy elf take damage when the trap tile is matched by an enemy.)
Active: 5 AP: trap tile becomes a critical tile, choose 1 more tile to become a critical tile.
With increased covers chance of dodging (receiving NIL damage) increases, number of critical tiles created increases, countdown tile reduces to 2 turns. (You won't be able to spam this active so possibly at max level Shadow Strike consumes all purple AP and deals damage proportional to purple AP reserve.)

I don't think we have any characters with a probability of dodging an attack outright. I'd much rather that than protect tiles which could potentially make him a tank that he's not supposed to be. This obviously would be his stealth ability.

"Bamf"
Passive: At the beginning of each turn if there are at least two special tiles swap up to 1 pair of special tiles not including traps plus an additional 1 pair of special tiles for each AP you have (subject to a maximum of 3 pairs of special tiles swapped for 1 cover, increase to 8 pairs for 5 covers) not including traps. Consumes blue AP equal to number of , and matches made as a direct result of the swaps (at high covers just and matches). Deals 50 damage (or whatever a balanced amount of damage for the level is) for any special tiles destroyed. If there are no special tiles at all create a attack tile. (At 3 covers if there are less than 2 special tiles create a attack tile and a strike tile.)

I'd love to see Kurt's 2 special tiles bamfing around the board each turn. It'd double as a random chance of removing enemies pesky protect tiles. Shouldn't threaten usage of Iron Fist's Exquisite Technique as Kurt's attack and strike tiles can (if needed) be scaled lower than Fist's and if the enemy has a special tile or two in play it will stop Kurt's tiles appearing at all until enemy tiles have been dealt with. I'm making this a black still as black skills often tend to be ones that create multiple small attack or strike tiles, but I feel if it is to use AP it should be blue AP as Kurt is blue and it's his energy he's using to chain Bamf!

Finally keep or tweak Capo Fero Lunge as original post but at full covers we get to pick a row and a column rather than three rows to destroy.

Edit: Typical an idea strikes just after I post the post:
"Blindside Blitz"
Active 12AP: Stuns front enemy for 2 turns, another random enemy for 1 turn, stuns Nightcrawler for 1 turn deals guaranteed 900 damage to front enemy and deals 900 damage three times to random enemies. Actually possibly damage needs to be scaled up to keep pace with 2 Storm's but you get the idea. (eg the average result of this power would to deal 1800 to front enemy and 900 to each of the other enemies, but you could for example end up dealing 900 to front enemy, 1800 to 2nd enemy and 900 to back enemy or even just 3600 to front enemy and none to back enemies)

ErikPeter

I like the swordsmanship one that has a better effect when teamed with a strike user. That's a cool idea for a 'team support' guy like Nightcrawler to have.

When I specced Nightcrawler in the old thread--i'll just link it here instead of reposting--I gave him what I thought was an interesting form of special tile punishment. Basically a cheap red attack, like Gamora's, which destroys a couple of tiles at random and does decent damage. However if the tiles destroyed are enemy specials, it instead does a TON of damage. Like a sneak attack. The damage I suggested is a bit low by today's standards, but it could be tweaked.

For teleportation, I had a blue power that was defensive or offensive--unlike any power in the game currently it punished tile destruction. It makes a couple traps, that when matched by either team, create nice protect tiles. OR, if the trap gets destroyed, it does a ton of damage to the enemy.

Finally, his acrobatics was a passive defensive power that made him immune to damage under a certain percentage of his current health--so to even scratch him you had to hit him with a power of some kind, and even match damage would be ignored until he's looking pretty rough.