*** Psylocke (Classic) ***

Phaserhawk

does anyone have a Psylocke 4/5/4? If they do, how does she play? My covers have come oddly for her having obtained a lot of Bewilder early. She is currently 4/4/3. I now received a blue, black, and red cover. Should I scrap the blue cover and build 5/4/4 and hope for a black to go 5/3/5 or do I scrap the red and build 4/5/4 choosing to go max blue. I know 5/3/5 is the prefered build, but was wondering for those that have her 4/5/4 how she plays and if they like her.

Unknown

Hey guys with my recent new 3 Psylocke covers I'm finally debating leveling her up.

Whats her best 2 partners in the game atm?

How do you think she fairs at lvl 141 compared to other characters?

Its either her or Lazy Thor I'm going to level and I know Thor is a "better" character. But someone make the case for her instead since I have a couple more covers for her than Thor.

Phaserhawk wrote:

does anyone have a Psylocke 4/5/4? If they do, how does she play? My covers have come oddly for her having obtained a lot of Bewilder early. She is currently 4/4/3. I now received a blue, black, and red cover. Should I scrap the blue cover and build 5/4/4 and hope for a black to go 5/3/5 or do I scrap the red and build 4/5/4 choosing to go max blue. I know 5/3/5 is the preferred build, but was wondering for those that have her 4/5/4 how she plays and if they like her.

I think a lot of this depends on your team you plan to pair her with. Personally I dont think i've seen many times the AI just has that much AP waiting to be stolen. But hey maybe try that build fist a few games and see what you think. If you see that trend then use the final cover(s) waiting to be used. If it was a character like punisher id say take whatever build but her blue seems like it would be super rare to fire it off and have 3,4 or 5 covers react that differently.

Unknown

Psylocke is kind of a mid-tier attack character. A good third-wheel if you are going to go all offense.

I haven't played it yet, but my alliance members say that Patch/Psy/Dakan are a really good combo.


I would prioritize leveling Thor before I would Psylocke.

over_clocked

I think I have seen a maxed Psylocke exactly once outside of her events and it was Flash from S.H.I.E.L.D. He has her at 5-3-5, so that should tell you something. Might be someone else though.
Personally I am of a firm belief that stuns and AP steal are something a player relies on, that's why these abilities need to be consistent to be good (pre-nerf Spidey, cStorm, Cap and mBW's stun, Hood and oBW's AP stealing). Daredevil and Psylocke do not excel at AP stealing (neither DD excels at stunning) - it's their high risk/reward card and, well, consistent damage pays off more than high risk/reward support ability.

Unknown

locked wrote:

I think I have seen a maxed Psylocke exactly once outside of her events and it was Flash from S.H.I.E.L.D. He has her at 5-3-5, so that should tell you something. Might be someone else though.
Personally I am of a firm belief that stuns and AP steal are something a player relies on, that's why these abilities need to be consistent to be good (pre-nerf Spidey, cStorm, Cap and mBW's stun, Hood and oBW's AP stealing). Daredevil and Psylocke do not excel at AP stealing (neither DD excels at stunning) - it's their high risk/reward card and, well, consistent damage pays off more than high risk/reward support ability.

I think 2 people in my alliance have her at 141 actually. One of them said she pairs nicely with patch.

I suppose this means you dont think her damage is good enough because her low AP certainly keeps it consistent enough.

Reading her red ability I would think she would pair interesting with Daken. Her red would cost 5 ap almost all the time with Daken tiles out even if it means she wasnt getting out strike tiles herself as often. On top of that her black is cheap at 6 and dakens blue is cheap at 5 ap as well.

NorthernPolarity

bonebreak wrote:

locked wrote:

I think I have seen a maxed Psylocke exactly once outside of her events and it was Flash from S.H.I.E.L.D. He has her at 5-3-5, so that should tell you something. Might be someone else though.
Personally I am of a firm belief that stuns and AP steal are something a player relies on, that's why these abilities need to be consistent to be good (pre-nerf Spidey, cStorm, Cap and mBW's stun, Hood and oBW's AP stealing). Daredevil and Psylocke do not excel at AP stealing (neither DD excels at stunning) - it's their high risk/reward card and, well, consistent damage pays off more than high risk/reward support ability.

I think 2 people in my alliance have her at 141 actually. One of them said she pairs nicely with patch.

I suppose this means you dont think her damage is good enough because her low AP certainly keeps it consistent enough.

Reading her red ability I would think she would pair interesting with Daken. Her red would cost 5 ap almost all the time with Daken tiles out even if it means she wasnt getting out strike tiles herself as often. On top of that her black is cheap at 6 and dakens blue is cheap at 5 ap as well.

I think she just feels mediocre overall. Her black is pretty great at doing consistent damage, but her blue is incredibly unreliable and her red seems meh. Even if you had daken tiles up, youre paying 5ap for 1k damage + strike tile trigger, which isnt that good. Ap efficiency wise, it probably come out a out equal to wolvies a slash, which is okay but unexciting. I think she just gets out utilitied by punisher in most cases.

over_clocked

It just happens all the time.
Prodigal Sun enemies were A.Wolverine, GSBW and some useless third (IM 40?). They started collecting green, presumably for Sniper Rifle. They had like 11 when I laid down Bewilder, and green was their highest colour pool. Behold - they get 13 yellow and Bewilder steals yellow instead. I could use the yellow, but still, Bewilder is impossible to plan around, 2 turns CD or not.

Unknown

Psylocke is my favorite character, and I like her red & black skills, but blue is kinda bad. I don't try to get AP for it & use it only when there're no other characters which could use blue AP. 3 turn CD, 10 AP cost, and stealing 15-19 AP. Kinda the worst combination for AP stealing. Even if they just halved the skill cost & AP steal, it would be better. IMO, CD should be reduced to 2 on lvl 3 & to 1 on lvl 5. Also, it could be changed to always steal 7 AP, but create 2 tiles on lvl 2 & 3 on lvl 4. But I would prefer lower cost.

Unknown

locked wrote:

I think I have seen a maxed Psylocke exactly once outside of her events and it was Flash from S.H.I.E.L.D. He has her at 5-3-5, so that should tell you something. Might be someone else though.
Personally I am of a firm belief that stuns and AP steal are something a player relies on, that's why these abilities need to be consistent to be good (pre-nerf Spidey, cStorm, Cap and mBW's stun, Hood and oBW's AP stealing). Daredevil and Psylocke do not excel at AP stealing (neither DD excels at stunning) - it's their high risk/reward card and, well, consistent damage pays off more than high risk/reward support ability.

4/5/4 Psylocke user here.

You won't see Psylocke in PvP outside of her own events, because as others have already mentioned, is because she is an excellent third wheel, as she should be as a support character. Outside of her own events, she is highly impractical to use, as all Versus events are 2 characters + 1 forced character. The only PvP tournament styles that she would be effective in would be No Holds Barred (seemingly banished to Elite buy-in only nowadays) and No Holds Barred (banished because themed events do not sell cover packs well).

If her Blue was more reliable, people would be screaming that she would be the 3*** OBW. In her proper role, she already does a fairly sick amount of damage, leveraging off another character's alpha-deployed ability. From the Fresh Cut event, there were many tales spun of mass vehicular carnage from Patch/Daken/Psylocke teams. Her red is quite potent enough for 5 AP when stacking off of Daken's strike tiles, let alone stacking her black attack tile on top of that every round. Her Blue is a nice plus, but as stated many times before, requires a rainbow team that really doesn't exist as of yet for her. Stealing Yellow AP is very nice for Modern Thor, I have to say. Pretty much a game ender when that happens.

Unknown

Her Blue is terrible against CMags - he keeps on matching yellow (as it's his strong colour), so she usually ends up with stealing the colour both the AI and me don't need

I still love her - occasionally Bewilder can be helpful, but I have this tendency when looking at char's skills to treat 1 of the skills as a "bonus skill" - something You don't bother with, but when got enough AP for it, just launch it and maybe it'll do some good.

Her black and red on the other hand, combined with a good cascade in the beginning to fuel them or with Patch Berzerker Rage at lvl5 wreaks havoc.

I tend to hoard black and red till I can launch Zerker. It's literally double the damage then for cheap cost.

over_clocked

You probably meant No Man's Land second time, Lyrian.

I dunno, Bewilder usually steals yellow/purple/black. Black she covers alright, but having both good yellow and purple on a team is so difficult it's next to impossible.

We have purple in Magneto (both), oBW, GSBW, Loki, Moonstone, Daredevil, Falcon. There's no point in running Psylocke/Magneto and Psylocke/oBW for the sake of Bewilder, and little to no point in running those other purple users for the sake of Bewilder. Obviously Falcon is the best purple user for Psylocke, and LT/Sentry are ready to cover the rest of the rainbow, but it's all so suboptimal anyway: Psy wants Daken, Sentry/LT want Daken over Falcon. Which means that Bewilder will stay a wild card for quite some time now, none the better than traps.

You may get something good and game-ending out of it. But there's a good chance you might not. I'm surprised you went 4/5/4.

Unknown

I run a 141 Psylocke. I tried 4/5/4 for a little bit but the difference in damage from 4 to 5 red is too much. I switched over to 5/4/4 because I didn't have the black to make it 5/3/5. In fact every Psylocke ability has a significant increase between level 4 and 5. I could maybe imagine 5/5/3 because the strike tiles boost the damage of attack tiles which somewhat makes up for the reduced damage of black.

I do miss not having 5 in Blue. I'm realising this now that I've sold 2 Blue in the last week

Anything but 5 in blue makes it useless. I'm not sure I've ever seen the 3 turn CD Bewilder go off. 3 turns is too long and blue is an important colour for most teams which means that it will get matched when possible. It always gets removed for me at 3 turns. At 2 turns I was seeing a lot more success.

The main downside is that it steals yellow most of the time and I don't have a good yellow user.

EDIT: The way to make Bewilder better is to add X damage for each AP stolen. That improves the risk-reward factor and compensates a little bit if a useless colour is stolen. I think this damage should be capped at 1.5K if 19 AP is stolen at level 141 Psylocke. It needs to be a very small amount of damage.

Unknown

locked wrote:

You may get something good and game-ending out of it. But there's a good chance you might not.

I think we just got the best Bewilder description.

Unknown

Bewilder is fine if you have the right team to build around it. The problem is that there is only a very specific way to build a team around that. The most likely color you'll steal is either purple or yellow because they're the worst covered colors at 3*, but by the same token that means you also got to have someone who can use yellow/purple and that pretty much means Sentry + Thor for yellow and Magneto for purple. To complicate things, though, if you're in a standard featured event where one person is locked, and assuming the locked person isn't one of the aforementioned character, it is pretty much never correct to include Psylocke. Let's analyze every possible scenario:

Sentry - You want Daken as your 2nd guy almost always.
Magneto - Magneto + Psylocke would mean you've no green coverage if the featured character isn't a green user, which is like starting the fight with one hand tied behind your back.
Thor - Thor + Psylocke + featured might be borderline workable in some scenarios (like say featured character is Daken), but is generally not a great team.

I saw some Sentry + Daken + Psylocke team in Starfall, which is actually pretty decent, but it's only possible to form this team is one of those 3 characters are featured.

over_clocked

yadda, yadda. Daken doesn't cover purple actively which makes Bewilder useless in 1/6 cases assuming in the first place it EVEN steals more than 5 AP and assuming it even procs, 2 turns or 3.

Unknown

locked wrote:

yadda, yadda. Daken doesn't cover purple actively which makes Bewilder useless in 1/6 cases assuming in the first place it EVEN steals more than 5 AP and assuming it even procs, 2 turns or 3.

While you want to steal a color you can use I wouldnt say its useless if you cant. Preventing a call of storm is worth while even if your not using a green user.

over_clocked

Unfortunately, with Thor around, you need to deny both yellow/green and moreso yellow... And better have a use for that yellow yourself, of course.

Unknown

In the current simulator hard mode with pyslocke and the 2 mutants, she is generating black ap without matching black and has used the psi-katana with just 4 ap.
it may not be psylocke, but the mutants generating black ap even though they have not black ability.

Unknown

she is generating 2 ap without matching in simulator hard mode with the 2 mutants. i posted this in the bugs forum as well. it may not be psylocke, but the mutants generating black ap even though they have not black ability.

Unknown

kevind722 wrote:

she is generating 2 ap without matching in simulator hard mode with the 2 mutants. i posted this in the bugs forum as well. it may not be psylocke, but the mutants generating black ap even though they have not black ability.

What are their levels? I think some of the goons don't get all of their skills as they scale up, and may generate AP regardless of whether they have that skill at the level they are.

Edit: AT level 135 the Empiricists have 3 skills.
Green - Merciless Crush
Black - Inject ISO
Blue - ISO-8 Conversion

So I think they should be generating black, green, and blue AP, regardless of whether they're leveled up high enough to actually have all of those skills.