Colognoisseur's Ranking of 4* Updated: 10/19

kewlguirarist

Nice list. Where would Jean Grey and Deadpool come do you think?

simonsez

Here's where rankings can get tricky. From what I can tell, the general consensus is that JG is clearly better than XDP, but the pair of XDP and Thing is probably as good as any other pairing you might put together.

GrumpySmurf1002

simonsez wrote:

Here's where rankings can get tricky. From what I can tell, the general consensus is that JG is clearly better than XDP, but the pair of XDP and Thing is probably as good as any other pairing you might put together.

I presumed the synergies are incorporated, since the PX-GSBW thing is one of the strongest and on his own PX is probably not quite as good as Kingpin.

I think Jean and XDP are probably both top 5-6, with order depending on preference.

Unknown

I've had a lot of fun running XF Wolvie and XF DP together lately. I like the ability to heal and their purple/black combo is incredibly efficient.

I'd personally put XF Wolvie higher than he is on the list. Especially with XFDP around now.

Unknown

I am sure people have already done it, but Thing + X-Wolv + XDP seems really legit. I would expect all 3 of these guys to be high up the list.

simonsez

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

I presumed the synergies are incorporated, since the PX-GSBW thing is one of the strongest and on his own PX is probably not quite as good as Kingpin.

This particular synergy between XDP and Thing is based on a mechanic that's so specific and limited, I don't think it's quite the same. If I had no 4s, and you told me I could have one, I'd never choose XDP or Thing. But if you told me I could have two, they'd be a really good choice. I don't know how you'd convey this via simple character rankings.

Tilesmasher

The only 4 star I have maxed is xforce, everyone else (in my 4 star group) is 1-2 covers. Which 4 star would pair up well with XF? I was thinking x force dead pool.

How about which two 4 stars? (with xforce as the 3rd)

Thanks!

mjh

less than a month after this post and not only do we have two more 4*s to the list with a third on the way (FalCap), but formidable ones. I never thought i'd be happy to see another garbage 4* like or

Blahahah

As someone who appreciates the finer things in life, I can agree Kingpin is great.

Pair him with Black Panther, and get that big RotP swipe with Kingpin to take back any AP they gained from it and fuel his own devices with some chunky yellow.


As a question though...

If Star Lord stacks 2 of his Everyone With Me tiles, can Devil Dinosaur dance for free?

spectator

It doesn't stack

Blahahah

rip dancing dino, you were never allowed to live

Colognoisseur

I updated the character rankings including Jean Grey and X-Force Deadpool.

Jean Grey is currently in fourth but there is a real chance she will move up to third. She has a lot of utility and there are a couple of combos with her that I haven't seen others begin to use which might mover her to a solid number three. Right now fourth feels right to me.

X-Force Deadpool I have in sixth right after Thing. As someone above suggested if I was ranking pairs of 4* X-Force Deadpool and Thing would be right up there near the top. As a stand alone he doesn't have the overall flexibility of any of the 4*'s in the top four. He is a powerful support with the right partner....and there are more than Thing out there which make X-force Deadpool a gigantic annoyance.

The other change is Carnage has moved up ahead of 4* Thor and Ant-Man. Again there are now more advantageous partners for him which makes him more useful more of the time.

I'll keep updating these rankings after every two 4* releases after I have some time to play with both the new 4*'s.

Hayek

Colognoisseur wrote:

I updated the character rankings including Jean Grey and X-Force Deadpool.

Jean Grey is currently in fourth but there is a real chance she will move up to third. She has a lot of utility and there are a couple of combos with her that I haven't seen others begin to use which might mover her to a solid number three. Right now fourth feels right to me.

X-Force Deadpool I have in sixth right after Thing. As someone above suggested if I was ranking pairs of 4* X-Force Deadpool and Thing would be right up there near the top. As a stand alone he doesn't have the overall flexibility of any of the 4*'s in the top four. He is a powerful support with the right partner....and there are more than Thing out there which make X-force Deadpool a gigantic annoyance.

The other change is Carnage has moved up ahead of 4* Thor and Ant-Man. Again there are now more advantageous partners for him which makes him more useful more of the time.

I'll keep updating these rankings after every two 4* releases after I have some time to play with both the new 4*'s.

This comes closer to how I would rank them. Certain characters are good not because they are strong all around, but because they fill a niche very well. For instance, trying to make your climb from 0 to 800 with Carnage will make you hate him, but if you're pushing from 800 to 1k with the intent to shield, Carnage is one of the best scarecrows against the 800-1k crowd and is also extremely fast when being fed red by a hulk buster. If D3 gave me a new account and said I could have any 5 maxed fully covered 4*s, for me, Carnage would be one of them.

The only other disagreement I would have with this list is IW/SL/Elektra. I've had SL and Elektra fully covered at 167 for a while now. I leveled her (after her buff) because I really thought I could make her useful. What I found is that her black is way too expensive for an "emergency" dodge of a strong ability, and I have a hard time keeping her traps on the board. Also, even though an enemy cascade will pop multiple traps, the damage doesn't trigger right away. It is applied at the end of the opponent's move in a lump sum. So you don't even get synergy with strike tiles. Her red's damage is underwhelming and the trap is even tougher to keep around than SL's 3 turn countdown red, because Daken (the one character in PvE whom Elektra is decent against) overrides it with his strike tiles. And her purple is situational.

Starlord on the other hand, I've found extremely useful. You absolutely have to have him at 5 yellow for him to shine though, any less and he's dead weight. But when you get 12 purple and all of a sudden you can cast IF purple 4x back to back, it's game over. He's not a situational counter to a Daken node like Elektra, he actually has synergy with a good number of top tier characters. If his yellow is out, you can cast KK purple twice for 12 ap, and then her green twice for 20 ap (which 2 casts of purple almost guarantee). When KK is buffed, that's 13k AoE damage.

IW I haven't had a chance to use much, but even by just theorycrafting, I would say she's better than Elektra as well. Elektra covers red/black/purple, colors in which there are plenty of powers waaaaay better than hers. IW covers the exact opposite - yellow/blue/green. She brings a green nuke with board shake (something you listed as one of Thing's big +pros), her yellow (like px purple) can win you a match you would have otherwise lost in defense and offense, and her blue has good uses, like locking a SW cd tile before it goes off possibly costing you the match, or cloning your Cage/IF passive tiles.

Unknown

I also think IW is under rated on this list, even if she will never see heavy play in PvP (although she contests "Thing is the only green hitter in 4* land") she is invaluable at PvE. SOOOOO good.

Star Lord tho... I got him to 13 covers REALLY quick after his release. Like a month. I really want him to be good and he just isn't and here's why. ANY team that gets 12 AP of one color and 7 of another color is PROBABLY going to decisively end the match. He doesn't speed up games (significantly anyway), he doesn't ACTUALLY save AP unless you save up a crazy amount, he just basically converts yellow into not yellow.

The only thing I would change is move IW up above Elektra and Star Lord, since Elektra's position is based on niche PvE utility anyway, and IW's utility is greater. Even if it's just in a "she kicks Ultrons ****" kinda way.

Vhailorx

I remain skeptical that Carnage is actually that useful as a scarecrow (disclaimer, it's all thought experiment as I still don't have my carnage in a useful state). He needs a red battery to function well, and the best pvp red batteries are cyclops and IMHB. IMHB's red is straight up better than carnage's in that it can spike much higher and one-shot anyone, and also doesn't do any self damage. Cyclop's red might not be better than carnage's (unless boosted), but it isn't bad, and using it rather than carnage gives you a different character that can do useful things like provide defense or accelerate black. I just don't see how carnage's actual abilities are ever really worth using. And that leaves only his psychological value as a scarecrow.

And I would suggest that he really has no such value. I know for a fact that I prefer fighting carnage to some of the new 4*s like jean grey or thing. He's relatively easy to play around (except maybe when he is boosted and has 20k+ health), just burn him down with IF's attack tile until he can be dropped in one shot. Even a small number of attack tiles are insignificant, so he's really only threatenting if the ai can spam powers repeatedly, or gets some red). All in all I maintain that carnage is an utter failure as a design. He doesn't work as is, and if his abilities were buffed but mechanically similar he would be game-warpingly overpowered.

As for Elektra v. starlord: both are underpowered (maybe because they came right after the over-powered 4* thor and demiurge was a bit gun-shy?). Elektra's red trap desperately needs to be on a different color (or have some effect when matched away/overwritten). Her purple needs to have some guranteed benefit for a single cast, and black should be a little cheaper or generate more black when matched-away. It would also be useful to put a damage floor on the traps, so a trivial cascade won't waste 10ap. All that said, I really like the concept of her design, it's just the implementation that fails. She would be great in a one-on-one game mode, if such was ever introduced.

I remain dubious of starlord (again, just thought experiment here). lower cost powers are nice, but since his yellow skill costs 7ap itself, and has a very limited duration, actually leveraging the lower cost isn't very easy to do. And his red is too hard to protect in most circumstances. purple is a very nice power, but not good enough to carry the other two. Elektra just needs her powers to be tweaked a bit, but is otherwise ready to go. Starlord needs more help. I like the design ideas, but these mechanics are stupid. I would replace ap-cost manipulating powers with passives, something like 3* falcon's purple, so collect X yellow ap and he automatically spawns a tile that reduces ap costs for other powers (say a 3 or 5 turn countdown tile that consumes 1 yellow ap per turn). That sort of power would be self-limiting and (with tweaking) not game breakingly overpowered, but much much easier to use.

simonsez

Vhailorx wrote:

I remain skeptical that Carnage is actually that useful as a scarecrow

Does he qualify as a scarecrow if I'm afraid to use him myself? Even with Antman at 5 blue, I usually don't exit a fight able to go again without health packs. And he's not fast enough to hop with, so at this point, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with him.

GrumpySmurf1002

Vhailorx wrote:

I remain skeptical that Carnage is actually that useful as a scarecrow (disclaimer, it's all thought experiment as I still don't have my carnage in a useful state). He needs a red battery to function well, and the best pvp red batteries are cyclops and IMHB. IMHB's red is straight up better than carnage's in that it can spike much higher and one-shot anyone, and also doesn't do any self damage. Cyclop's red might not be better than carnage's (unless boosted), but it isn't bad, and using it rather than carnage gives you a different character that can do useful things like provide defense or accelerate black. I just don't see how carnage's actual abilities are ever really worth using. And that leaves only his psychological value as a scarecrow.

Psychological value is strong in this game. Lots of players still think Hulk is scary. Honestly, as I'm getting a little more comfortable, Jean's more of a psychological scarecrow too, albeit a (much?) stronger one than Carnage.

I can tell you since I leveled him (just 229 right now) my equilibrium point moved about 100 points upwards, and attacks are generally reduced below 1k if I have him out there. Carnage red does 1217 per AP compared to IMHB and boosted Cyclops (both ~630), it's just not targeted damage. It's very good for bursting down opponents. Of course on defense the self-damage means little. Though not a priority, if you stumble into 11 green later in the match, it hits like a brick.

Add in 15k health unboosted, and Carnage-IMHB can be pretty annoying, especially with his passive constantly triggering and health packs always a mitigating factor. Against a 4* roster, it doesn't do much because the players know better, but lots of 3* players won't bother when they can pick on easier opponents.

Vhailorx

smurf,

I strongly suspect that carnage's psychological value will drop significantly as more people start fighting him. He can be annoying, but no more so than other 4*s (I would argue less so than most other 4*s).

Sure, the ap/damage ration on his red is better. But he still isn't doing all that much damage to anyone except the main target and 5k won't down any mainline tank, PLUS he does self damage. and the AI will never use it optimally, so it's defensive value is basically just that it only costs 7 ap. But it costs 7 ap in a color that most offensive teams want very badly, so it's heavily contested and relatively easy to deny. It's not a bad red, it's just not as good as other options that are near to the same level and self-accelerated.

Green can hit hard, but it's expensive and situational. So it's no real threat in the ai's hands. Same with the black. If you play like an idiot against the black, it can get really painful very quickly. But the offensive player basically controls how bad it will get, so it's not that threatening on defense.

Carnage isn't worthless. He's just not very good relative to his peers, and given the very high resource investment necessary to build a 4* I don't think he's worth the cost.

As for jean grey, I have only fought maxed greys a few times, but she seems more or less manageable too with two relatively slow powers and no real acceleration. The difference is that IF she gets a lucky string of purple matches or you make an unplanned match 5, she hits the whole team quite a bit harder than carnage, so it's much harder to hide your supports.

simonsez

Nefarious foes is pretty odd, given these ratings. At the high end, it's pretty much all Carnage and Jean, with a little bit of XDP thown in. Hardly seeing KP at all. I'm not arguing that he's not good, but I'm finding Carnage and Jean to work better than KP and anyone else I put him with, even though my Jean is way underleveled and undercovered compared to my KP. Is anyone having good success with him against high-end teams in this event?

Unknown

I am a consistent 1000 in pvp and I have never seen KP really played. Does he show up in the climb from 1000 to 1300 or something? Or is his ranking high for PVE purposes?