*** Psylocke (Classic) ***

Phaserhawk

I love the Simulator as you are forced to play with character combonations you normally wouldnt'. Anyway I accidently and happily found a great combo of Psylock, Ares, and The Hood.

The nice combo of Hood is that his black speeds up counters, so Ares Sunder becomes even better, but so does Psylocke's Bewilder (blue). I would use Ares Onslaught(green) especially after having cast a Bewilder a turn or two ago, Cast Hood's Intimidation(black) which makes Bewilder go off very soon, and you steal back all the green you gave them from Ares to cast Onslaught again, it was a nice 1:2:3 punch that let me KO Three guys in one turn

Unknown

She shined very well in this event, mine was 4/3/5 and those blacks got me first place in both sub events. Level 128 pre-buff, level who-cares-1600-damage-blacks-and-300-plus-damage-attack-tiles post-buff.

mischiefmaker

theapropos wrote:

No you don't need 26 red. As any decent psylocke user knows, you NEVER use that skill until you get three two or three strike tiles out. So it's a s fast as six green later for 2 star wolvie.

Huh. I guess I'm not a decent Psylocke user then, cause I like having a 200 damage strike tile out as early as possible.

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

theapropos wrote:

No you don't need 26 red. As any decent psylocke user knows, you NEVER use that skill until you get three two or three strike tiles out. So it's a s fast as six green later for 2 star wolvie.

Huh. I guess I'm not a decent Psylocke user then, cause I like having a 200 damage strike tile out as early as possible.

I'll concur with mischief on this one. If you can shape the board to reasonably prevent the lone red strike tile from being easily matched off the board, the damage potential of entire team rises considerably. Add a lone attack tile from a psi-katana that is also reasonably protected from easy matching, the tide of battle is easily in your favor for the match.

Psylocke + Ares exemplified this in the first round of the Simulator. Granted both were buffed, but the two of them were capable of dishing out ludicrous amounts of damage.

That said, if a multiple strike tile producer is on the team, letting them go first on strike tiles is advantageous. Psylocke performs quite well as a character who follows up behind someone else's lead. If I am in a situation where there are 3 or more red strike tiles on the board from another character, I will simply hold onto the red until there are 2 or less strikes tiles remaining through attrition and then use her psychic knife as a reinforcement late in the match. In this role, Psylocke is more about holding onto her AP for the right moment to devastate the enemy team via any of her colors.

Unknown

Psylocke's red strike tiles are tricky to do in combination with others. If you pair up with Wolverine 2* then you must have a sequence that looks exactly like:

Get 6g 3r
Feral Claws
the two strike tiles created must NOT be on your next red match
match red
Psychic Knife

For Daken it's slightly easier:

Get 6r before two total green matches
Psychic Knife on the next green match (or right away, if two red strikes are already up).

Most of the time you just end up paying 8r for a 180 strike tile, which is significantly worse than Judgment, though Judgment itself is pretty overpowered too, so being worse than Judgment isn't really underpowered, just not overpowered.

Dormammu

Mooseman22883 wrote:

Does anyone else just love Psylocke? I get that she isn't as fast as people think, but I think believe she has more utility value than punisher... I have been playing around with her and a lot of other character combos and she just seems to fit well with any team... Psylocke+Daken+OBW is tons of fun

I really like Psylocke too. Sure, her blue is sort of a throw-away (I've never even used it) but if you get 3-4 of her attack/strike tiles out you just start evaporating enemy health. I realize she isn't the only one capable of doing this, but I prefer her red/black because both are relatively cheap and pack a decent punch beyond the tiles.

Unknown

Psylocke is a great pair with patch because of her cheap black and reasonable red. Especially if you're like me and prefer patch 5/3/5. Where psylock also really shines is that she is a fantastic counter to patch in pvp. You need to kill her before she gets out an attack tile or berzerker rage is going to hurt you a lot, stun or not. Thus, put her on a team with spidey, the hood for defense and I would guess that patch teams might leave you alone or be forced to boost. But for better offense sub the hood for patch.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I love the Simulator as you are forced to play with character combonations you normally wouldnt'. Anyway I accidently and happily found a great combo of Psylock, Ares, and The Hood.

The nice combo of Hood is that his black speeds up counters, so Ares Sunder becomes even better, but so does Psylocke's Bewilder (blue). I would use Ares Onslaught(green) especially after having cast a Bewilder a turn or two ago, Cast Hood's Intimidation(black) which makes Bewilder go off very soon, and you steal back all the green you gave them from Ares to cast Onslaught again, it was a nice 1:2:3 punch that let me KO Three guys in one turn

Takes a long time to set up, and a lot of planning but it is very fun! And effective...

Unknown

I guess i'm in the minority that likes her in 4/5/4.
I pair her up with patch and c.mags.
4 blacks all thats needed as 5 only adds a bigger punch tile, patch adds the most damage anyways.
20 red gets you 2 dead guys usually, 1 from bti and the next from a low cost red.
What I really like is 2 turn steals, as long as you keep blues out of reach. I tend to start when they have gotten near 10 ap of something.
You can make use of all colors except yellow, I guess you could if u swap lazy thor for patch but he's not cover capped for me yet.
That and you can pop rage once u have 6 blues and some blue tiles on point, let cascades of 5 n 5 blue matches do a ton before overriding the enemies strike tiles with protect tiles.
Have got psy/patch/c.mags at 141 and i haven't regretted not building a tank as of yet.
Been great on pvp even without a healer as i don't have to slow things down to stun lock with spidey.
Would have been even more insane before but they've nerfed the mana cost to 10 already.
Before that 2 blue matches n you can activate, which is just nice as 4 rounds in puts it at about 12 or so.
Either they play around it by spamming small abilities or they'll never get to activate their big ones like call the storm or panther rage. Cept for thor i don't see any big yellow so I can't imagine they'd actively go for yellow.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Psylocke's red strike tiles are tricky to do in combination with others. If you pair up with Wolverine 2* then you must have a sequence that looks exactly like:

Get 6g 3r
Feral Claws
the two strike tiles created must NOT be on your next red match
match red
Psychic Knife

For Daken it's slightly easier:

Get 6r before two total green matches
Psychic Knife on the next green match (or right away, if two red strikes are already up).

Most of the time you just end up paying 8r for a 180 strike tile, which is significantly worse than Judgment, though Judgment itself is pretty overpowered too, so being worse than Judgment isn't really underpowered, just not overpowered.

Spot on. The problem is op judgement skewed it for everyone. You surely cannot expect low cost AND high power strike tiles? That's just unrealistic. The ability to keep the minimum strike tiles at 2 or 3 is great, thanks to low cost. See, if psylocke was out first then perhaps there won't be so much grousing

Unknown

4/5/4 for Psylocke doesn't make much sense right now given Spiderman and Magneto completely dominates the blue color. It's a good build with a balanced game in mind, but right now the game is very far from balanced.

After watching the stats on a level 230 Psylocke I think she's fine. It's just Judgment is way overpowered. It's a net +300 strike tile, and the second highest ability is +180 (Psylocke). Note that Patch is net +0 (both side gets the same amount). I'm pretty sure when they made Judgment they just say 'what are the odds all 3 tiles survive for a while?' Well it turns out that the odds are very, very good!

Unknown

Help a girl out:

Whyyy would you use Psylocke with Astonishing Wolverine...? That seems like negative synergy (Phantron's phrase for another team) to me. Am I playing Wolvie differently than anyone else? I don't do feral claw until I can do most if not all of the reds on the board. Way more than five, let's say. And Adamantium Slash is a really good burst ability. So why would you divert red to Psylocke and take up precious red tile space when she's limited? Is this a thing with 5/x/x Psylocke build?

Unknown

Ooops, double post...or something...

mischiefmaker

Viorala wrote:

Help a girl out:

Whyyy would you use Psylocke with Astonishing Wolverine...? That seems like negative synergy (Phantron's phrase for another team) to me. Am I playing Wolvie differently than anyone else? I don't do feral claw until I can do most if not all of the reds on the board. Way more than five, let's say. And Adamantium Slash is a really good burst ability. So why would you divert red to Psylocke and take up precious red tile space when she's limited? Is this a thing with 5/x/x Psylocke build?

You're not wrong; Wolverine/Psylocke isn't that great of a pairing, for exactly the reason you mention -- you're either going to play Wolverine green/Psylocke red, in which case you don't get full benefit from the green and you're bringing Wolverine along for just one ability, or you're playing Wolverine green/Wolverine red, in which case you're bringing Psylocke along for 1 (or 1.5, depending on how you rate the blue) ability.

That being said, going Wolverine/Psylocke with 3 green/2 red is kind of a nice way to spin up fast. Match green, match red, Feral Claws for 2 strike tiles, match red, Psychic Knife, and you've got a pretty big +damage lead. Worked really well in the last round of the simulator, when both Wolvie and Psylocke were buffed.

Unknown

Good info, thanks. That's cool but that really isn't necessary unless you're fighting something like the Modern Thor + goons team in the Simulator where you need to ramp up really quickly. Most teams you play against you have a grace period to build up some AP.

I'm wondering the math on getting the strike tiles out early rather than getting started on Adamantium Slash, pausing for 6 gr, and then slash slash slash.

mischiefmaker

Yeah, you tend to want to spin up fast either when you're playing someone who has relatively cheap powers that spin up fast (Psylocke, Punisher, Patch, e.g.) or when you're fighting teams way higher level than you are, and you need to get your damage output above theirs ASAP because you can't trade match-3s and you can't let them get off a power.

Also, math? I love math! Let's do some.

Let's assume you have 9 red and no green. Let's also assume it will take you an average of 2 turns to get 3 more red (sometimes there will be a red match, sometimes you'll have to wait) and 4 turns to get 6 green.

Option 1: Cast Psychic Knife, go for green
Turn 1: 965 damage up front, create strike tile, match damage + 192
Turns 2-4: match damage + 576 from strike tile. Now you have 6 green.
Turn 5-7: Feral claws for 732, make 1 strike tile, match damage + (192+40) * 3.

Total: 3161, 232 strike tiles. You can also go for red first; that gives you 80 less damage but 40 more damage in strike tiles going forward, so is worth it if you think the game will go at least 2 more turns.

Option 2: Wait for Feral Claws, then Claws + Psychic Knife
Turn 1-4: match damage
Turn 5: Feral claws for 520, making 4 strike tiles. Psychic Knife for 1125 + 192 strike tile. Match damage + 352.
Turn 6-7: match damage + 352

Total: 2701, 352 strike tiles. Again, you can go for red first, but this is a pretty bad option as it takes away 704 damage in return for 40 more strike tile damage, which only makes sense if you think the game is going to go at least another 18 turns.

Option 3: Wait for Adamantium Slash, pretend Psychic Knife doesn't exist
Turn 1-4: match damage
Turn 5: Feral claws for 520, making 4 strike tiles. Match damage + 160.
Turn 6: Match damage + 160
Turn 7: 2884 + 160 damage

Total: 3724 damage, 160 strike tiles.

So which should you do? It depends on how much health your opponents have and how much longer you think the game is going to go, how conducive the board is to red/green (it might take 3 turns to get what you need, it might take the 6 we assumed, or it might take more), and what other powers are on your team. In general, though, if you think the game is going to be short or your other powers are also expensive and bursty, go for option 3; if you think the game is going to be long or your other powers are cheap, go with option 2.

Unknown

Wolverine 2* + Psylocke would make sense if you plan to use boosts. If you start with 6g 3r, you can do a Feral Claws whenever you've a red match on board, and hope that none of the red match has the strike tiles, and Feral Claws into a 6 AP Psychic Knife is a very fast start. But if you want fast strike tile starts, just doing 6g and match green for Judgment is about the same total amount of strike tiles, and do not require any luck on where the strike tiles fall.

I used that combo in heroic Jugg just because you don't have Punisher there so having a chance for a great opening is better than nothing.

Unknown

Damn, that post is brilliant, Mischiefmaker.

But here's another thing with Option 2: Psychic Knife will overwrite itself, I saw this happen when I had unlimited red AP and spamming it. I'm assuming she can also overwrite Wolvie's strike tiles, but I don't know if that's left up to chance or the AI knows better than to do it. (I doubt the latter based on other things the AI does.) So that's a possible risk that would bring down the damage numbers even more.

eta: Er, I think. I can't remember what led me to think it was overwriting and not like, just doing the damage and no strike tile because it couldn't.

mischiefmaker

Phantron wrote:

Wolverine 2* + Psylocke would make sense if you plan to use boosts. If you start with 6g 3r, you can do a Feral Claws whenever you've a red match on board, and hope that none of the red match has the strike tiles, and Feral Claws into a 6 AP Psychic Knife is a very fast start. But if you want fast strike tile starts, just doing 6g and match green for Judgment is about the same total amount of strike tiles, and do not require any luck on where the strike tiles fall.

I used that combo in heroic Jugg just because you don't have Punisher there so having a chance for a great opening is better than nothing.

I did this combo for heroic Jugg too, for the same reasons, but slightly differently: Start with 6g 4r (woo! A fun trick you can only do with the new stackable boosts!), then cast Feral Claws immediately to get 2 strike tiles. If one of them lands on a red match, no big deal, you match it anyway, now you've got 7 red and 1 red strike tile on board. For just 40 more ISO, you can start with 5r, and then even in the worst case (both strike tiles land on the one available red match), you can still cast PK, although obviously in that case you're not really gaining anything from Feral Claws.

Viorala: are you sure it's overwriting? I'm pretty sure it just gives you damage and no new strike tiles if they're all taken.

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

Viorala: are you sure it's overwriting? I'm pretty sure it just gives you damage and no new strike tiles if they're all taken.

Something led me to think that, the only thing I can think of is that it was placing the new Psychic Strike tiles on a different tile and taking away the old one. I'd have to test to be sure because I don't remember.