*** Psylocke (Classic) ***

Unknown

Is there any debate right now that Psylocke is outclassed in almost every single group category?

Pwuz_

mischiefmaker wrote:

13. Psylocke, +3



All right, I'm just going to come out and say it -- I'm continually baffled by why Psylocke keeps getting ranked so far below Punisher. If we compare power for power:

- his green generates more strike tiles, but her red does more direct damage, and gets cheaper with more tiles on board. Only having one tile is a major downside, but multiple casts of his green have less marginal benefit than multiple casts of her red. Advantage: Punisher, but it's closer than people think.
- her black does more damage to a single target up front, guarantees attack tile damage immediately, and is quicker to get off. Advantage: Psylocke, and it's not as close as people think.
- his red is mediocre; in the current PvE format, you'll rarely need to use the auto-kill option, which makes it a run-of-the-mill direct damage power. Her blue is more or less terrible -- you can build a team around it to make it marginally playable, and every once in a while you'll get something good out of it (like 12 black AP), but it's not something you want to rely on. Advantage: Punisher.

Looking at just the powers, it's clear Punisher comes out ahead, but not by much. The kicker is, Psylocke plays significantly better with most of the top characters, because she doesn't compete for green, and as such makes a much better sidekick for a top-tier team.

All that being said, I actually think she's around where she should be (I had her at #11 personally), and I'm pleased to see her rising in the rankings; I just think Li'lbunny should be down around here too. I'd love to hear from someone who plays him regularly defending his position.

Since she really hasn't been affected by any of the changes since the 6/14 rankings came out, these points still stand. She's not top tier, but she isn't that bad either.

dkffiv

Blue at 10 feels ridiculously overpriced. If it was 5 AP to steal up to (10 or 12) it might be decent.

As it stands her red feels underpowered, especially when compared directly to HT. I would argue that straight up it might be slightly weaker than Punisher's red and Punisher is stronger overall as a character.

If they did a color swap and turned red to purple and made a minor tweak to her blue I could see her being moved up a tier. Would probably need to change her strike tile color to purple as well, then she'd play better with Daken and 2* Wolverine to boot.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

Blue at 10 feels ridiculously overpriced. If it was 5 AP to steal up to (10 or 12) it might be decent.

As it stands her red feels underpowered, especially when compared directly to HT. I would argue that straight up it might be slightly weaker than Punisher's red and Punisher is stronger overall as a character.

If they did a color swap and turned red to purple and made a minor tweak to her blue I could see her being moved up a tier. Would probably need to change her strike tile color to purple as well, then she'd play better with Daken and 2* Wolverine to boot.

There are roughly 3 kinds of environment characters are tuned in: Sentry, Punisher, and IM40. Psylocke seems to have her ability damage tuned like IM40 but her ability selection is Punisher tier (IM40's abilities not only do not enough damage but they also have stupid requirements on top of being weak). I think the problem with her red is that although it looks like you can do something cool with it, most of the time it just ends up costing 8 AP for a haflway decent strike tile, and often that strike tile gets destroyed before you can even use a 7 red AP Psychic Knife. After all, you need 15 red AP to fire off 2 Psychic Knives and that's a lot of red tile that are destroyed which makes it pretty hard for the first strike tile you place to survive. Her blue is the result of a massive over-correction of how powerful The Hood and OBW's AP stealing abilities are. I don't think D3 is stupid and they know these abilities are out of whack, so they must have swore to never make the same mistake again by making sure no ability after Aggressive Recon that steals AP can ever be good. Note that Escape Plan is a good ability overall but it's AP stealing aspect is more like a bonus since stealing strongest color usually gets you even less AP because that color will definitely be spent unless it's Daken/Falcon (passive on highest strength).

Phaserhawk

Seeing her boosted in PvE and PvP I have realized how very weak she is. I would have her red create a smaller strike tile but 2 of them. Her blue needs to have the cost reduced, like when they originally had it much less, black is very good and should remain as is. Do those minor tweaks and her value goes up greatly.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Seeing her boosted in PvE and PvP I have realized how very weak she is. I would have her red create a smaller strike tile but 2 of them. Her blue needs to have the cost reduced, like when they originally had it much less, black is very good and should remain as is. Do those minor tweaks and her value goes up greatly.

That's my feeling as well.

Never before have I been so unintimidated by a level 249 character than this PVP.

And on PVE, never has a featured character been so useless.

Granted, my psylocke is 5/5/1 and she is only level 135 in the pve for me.

But the fact that the red doesn't even do 1000 damage with 5 covers and level 135 is sad.

That is truly truly sad.

vudu3

onimus wrote:

Granted, my psylocke is 5/5/1 and she is only level 135 in the pve for me.

The problem is your Psylocke is under-leveled and under-covered in black. My maxed 5/3/5 Psylocke has been kicking **** and taking names in PVE. Like Polaity, I'm pairing her with a 1Y IM40 and it's amazing what she can do.

over_clocked

IN this Heroic, my maxed Psyduck exists to use Katana and tank red for Torch who does the real damage job.

HairyDave

locked wrote:

IN this Heroic, my maxed Psyduck exists to use Katana and tank red for Torch who does the real damage job.

That works but OBW and and Torch double-dipping (or more) off her strike tile has helped me so much more than a fireball could. Granted that could be because my Torch is only boosted to L130...

Unknown

HairyDave wrote:

locked wrote:

IN this Heroic, my maxed Psyduck exists to use Katana and tank red for Torch who does the real damage job.

That works but OBW and and Torch double-dipping (or more) off her strike tile has helped me so much more than a fireball could. Granted that could be because my Torch is only boosted to L130...

Torch at 196 will do more damage than Psylocke at 256 against anyone with more than 5K HP in a consistent basis. Yes Psychic Knife will sometimes ends up doing more, but this event tends to feature someone that has to die immediately and then the fight gets much easier because it's either 1 villian + 2 goons (kill villian), 2 villians + 1 goon (kill goon to stop AP pump), or 3 villians but only one of them is exceptionally dangerous (usually Daken), so you're still better off doing a Fireball to immediately get rid of a problematic character immediately. Besides, the strike tile could get matched and then you'd come out behind, and Fireball costs effectively 6 AP compared to Psychic Knife which starts at 8 AP, and if you can get it down to even 7 AP, 2 Fireballs will get rid of almost anyone immediately and is generally far more useful.

Pwuz_

I had both HT & Psylocke maxed both in levels and in Red, and I leaned on her Red a little more than HT. The reason was because of Flame Jet and those big beautiful attack tiles I was throwing out as well. IF HT's Fireball would finish either the last character or the last non-goon, I would use it. But most of the time I spent grinding against a wave of goons or through 3 normal characters.

Especially in the goon fights those Strike tiles can stay for almost the whole match if you planned your moves well enough. When fighting against a team of normal villains, I would try to plan when I used Psychic Knife, only using it when I was relatively confident that no matter where it ended up, the strike tile would remain for a few turns. I also had an unleveled IM40 dropping recharge tiles to fill up my red, minimizing how many strike tiles were cannibalized for their AP/match damage.


All said and done though, Psylocke just feels like a shadow of Punisher, and as I level more 3* characters, he too is falling by the wayside for more powerful teammates.

LuciferianX

I'd like to see a change to Pyslocke.

Not a dramatic one. But a major one. Also, purple butterflies are cool. Yep. You guessed it. Changing her Blue to Purple. "But Lucifer, why would we do that?" A few reasons:

* Purple is 'the color' of manipulation save for Deadpool, but he breaks rules anyway.
* Her Red/Blue/Black has too many conflicts, and while 10 blue is easy, it's just far far better spent elsewhere, even on 2* Storm
* You have no idea what you'll get by the time the countdown expires and in most cases, what you end up with is the color the other team didn't cover -- which at that point is wholly useless to you (unless it's black, then hilarity ensues).
* There just isn't enough active (note: I said active) purple coverage at the 3 star level; there's three off the top of my head, and that's it; Deceptive Tactics, Whales and Bird Strike. We need variety.

My proposition then is:

Change her Blue to Purple; at three covers:

3 Covers: Steals 7 AP from the largest, 7 AP from the strongest
4 Covers: Steal 8 AP from the largest, 8 AP from the strongest
5 Covers: Steal10 AP from the two strongest color pools, reduce countdown to 2

Why am I recommending this bizarre hybrid?

* Because each power should have a reason for 5 covers; currently no one needs 19 purple save for very few characters
* Having the power change over time into something really nasty is cool, and not enough covers do that in a creative way
* You could easily argue to keep the 'largest' marker on it, and I wouldn't wholly disagree
* Purple creates far more character synergy; Red/Purple/Black is already out there (Deadpool) so it makes more sense to align them
* Finally at 5 levels, you can't ignore her countdown tile; in most teams, the largest pool is the least utilitarian (again, commonly, purple, especially for me).

Thoughts?

* Edited as my brain put 'Drain' instead of 'Steal' which is wrong. Steal is what it should be.

wymtime

2 things. #1 you are going from stealing to draining which is a big difference. It would actually make level 3 better thank at level 5.
#2 my opinion has always been on Psylock to just make her red ability cost 6 Red AP. To fire her 4 times will cost 1 AP less, but would make her much faster and playable. I do like the change from purple to blue especially since OBW steals with purple.

LuciferianX

HA!

My fault. I meant Steal. Brain leak. You are correct, post will be updated.

LuciferianX

If I were really feeling OP -- and I'm not certain this is wrong -- it could be updated to:

Steal X AP synchronous with your team's strongest colors.

Even then, 'OP' is strong; who uses Rogers 19 Yellow on a regular basis? Very few. But if you're going in that direction, and Psylocke would be a good choice for a change like this, suddenly her Blue (recommended to Purple) becomes not just super usable, but blue grab worthy early on to deny your opponent their strongest (in most cases, Green/Red/Black) and fuel your powers equivalently.

YMMV, but the more I think on it, the more sense it makes.

Unknown

Okay, whoever is in charge of the color pie in this game: why is this skill blue? Look at it! It does exactly one thing (badly): steal AP. I realize there aren't many purple abilities in the 3* canon, but there is nothing more traditionally purple than stealing AP. We have a huge dearth of playable purple skills, and exactly zero characters (okay, one with blade) that covers both purple and black. Why not fix that?

over_clocked

Loki? Outside of 3*s, Moonstone, Venom. I know that none of them are super-playable and I dearly support giving Psylocke a purple skill as well. Originally I thought making Bewilder purple would improve her but the trouble is that the skill is too weak itself and stealing 15-19 purple to feed another Bewilder is about as fun as being sent to read on sepulcas. Whichever skill of hers gets a colour change to purple though, it can't make her worse than she already is.

Unknown

I like that idea of making it purple too for a bit more diversity in character colours and like you said it fits the ability

Zen808

And while you're at it, change it to drain either a) a random color, or b) opponent's strongest color (same definition of "strongest" as Surgical Strike)

Unknown

I just had an interesting idea for Bewilder while sitting here playing Psylocke along side Daken because her is terrible. (and will always BE terrible, no matter the current meta game)First off, change it to like many others have suggested, because Psylocke is purple. Second, have it target a color by use of a chosen countdown tile on a basic tile.

Bewilder - Purple 10 AP
Psylocke steadies and channels her telepathic power, reaching into the minds of the enemy to disrupt their attack. Converts a chosen basic tile to a 3 turn Countdown tile that steals up to 6AP from the chosen tile color of the enemies color pool.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Steals 8 AP. Level 3: 2 turn CD. Level 4: Steals 10 AP. Level 5: 1 turn CD.

This is your basic "convert one color to another color" power, except it drains it from the enemy. Targeted AP acquisition makes it go from most horrible power ever to reasonably useful as an AP denial tool and AP boost to yourself. Hell, I'd use this power even if all it did was destroy AP. The CD can't reliably be hidden in a corner either, because the chosen color affects what you steal.