*** Psylocke (Classic) ***

jjfyahpowah

Billigoat wrote:

tuscan panty raider wrote:

She isn't bad in event mode and given she's supposed to appear in an upcoming movie she'll probably get a push like all other characters do in this game.

That being said, compared to someone like Beast or Doc Oc, she is far from the most useless 3 star character.

Get a few select characters fully upgraded as your core team and then get as many others at 120 as you can. Psylocke falls into the secondary category, and I can't imagine any upgrade short of some biblical buffing that would change that.

Have you used Beast lately? Compared to their pre-buff versions, she's not bad, but I'd take current Beast into a match any day over Psylocke. His blue output outshines her black and red, he has a heal (with added protect tile), and AOE team damage (with cascade potential).

We can all probably agree that Doc Oc is a very situational. But for what he does, he does very well. Psylocke can't really say that. There's a lot of characters who drop attack/strike tiles these days.

I think Beast mk2is great. 0 complaints.

hesjingixen

Seeing her boosted in the current PvE, I think she could use a boost. I've got her max (166) because those were some of the first 3* covers I got, but I never use her. I admit, at her current boost level (240+), she's a little OP, but I think if they kept her HP the same (as a normal 166) and made her abilities an average of their normal and boosted values, she'd see more play. When she's at her normal values.....she's pretty weak.

She might have been stronger in the past, when it wasn't so easy to neutralize and/or steal special tiles, but in the current meta, her abilities just don't quite cut the mustard.

Unknown

I feel bad commenting when I only have 3 covers for her, but she feels -really terrible- early on, and even in the demo node for Hulk where she is an essential, she's next to useless, it feels like. She's making me continue my hatred of any countdown tile mechanic in player hands that has a number higher than 1, definitely.

Turbosmooth

Her blue should be changed to steal up to 13 AP from the enemy based on your team's strongest 3 colors.
e.g. if your strongest are red, green, yellow: and the enemy has 2 red, 5 green, and 20 yellow, you would get 2 red, 5 green, and 6 yellow.
If the enemy had 12 red, 0 green, 5 yellow, you would get 12 red, 1 yellow.

This would be a game changer and make her at least a tier 2 3*.

As others have pointed out, the 19 AP is not going to hurt the enemy as it's coming from the unused junk AP color and also a chance you don't need it either.

Quebbster

Turbosmooth wrote:

As others have pointed out, the 19 AP is not going to hurt the enemy as it's coming from the unused junk AP color and also a chance you don't need it either.

There was this one time in Thick as Thieves when I was running GSBW, Captain Marvel and Psylocke and was getting a whupping from Hood, Bullseye and Daken. Captain Marvel had already fallen and Psylocke and GSBW was badly hurt. The Bewilder countdown I had thrown out just to do something about the blue AP resolved and gave me 19 green AP. Sniper rifle time! That time Bewilder definitely won me the game.
...but yeah, a lot of the time it is very unnecessary AP you get. It did work well in ISO-8 Brotherhood since Subjects (I think) generate black AP without using it (or they used to, at least), so you were almost guaranteed to get black AP with Bewilder and could then use it for Psi-Katana...

DCUDCU

For The Hulk pve, my 5/3/3 Psylocke level 122(before buff) was a good partner for Cage and IF, offering red and blue. There were many fights were the AI didn't have good color coverage, and if you can send out her blue with no logical matches on the board it can really swing the fight.

Her red was also very good, and gets cheaper if you cast IF green first(obviously).

Malcrof

Psylocke, Daken, KK. Daken makes strikes to cheapen Psy's red, and he tanks black and blue for her, KK gets all her own colors, and with Dakens cheap blue, and Psy's cheap black and red, heals keep coming.

One of my new favorite teams. my Psy is 5/4/4 though, going to get that last black from the cage PVP if it kills me.

Vhailorx

Malcrof wrote:

Psylocke, Daken, KK. Daken makes strikes to cheapen Psy's red, and he tanks black and blue for her, KK gets all her own colors, and with Dakens cheap blue, and Psy's cheap black and red, heals keep coming.

One of my new favorite teams. my Psy is 5/4/4 though, going to get that last black from the cage PVP if it kills me.

Great team malcrof! Just tried it out in the sim for a bit. I don't think it has quite enough health to really play in the new 3*/4* endgame (without weekly boosting). One bad ai cascade can wreck this team, but that's true of many teams. And otherwise this team has great synergy and a little of everything except protect tiles and an active yellow)

Good luck with sticks and stones.

Orion

It's kind of sad because Psylocke was one of my highest covered 3*s when I first moved to that tier. Weak as she may be compared to other 3*s, she was awesome compared to my 2* roster. Then months went by and I didn't see another cover for her. When I finally got her to max covers, I already had a bunch of level 166 guys who were much better than her. So she sat on the bench. With her in an essential node, I finally dusted her off to play her and realized, yeah, she is that bad.

As others have send before, her red and black damage needs to be increased badly.

StevO-J

Just an idea I had if they ever decide to tinker with her blue power. Maybe it could just steal red and black AP to accelerate her own powers, more in line with other characters that accelerate their own powers (Cyclops, Kamala Kahn, etc.).

hesjingixen

This has been a hot topic lately, what with her being featured in PvEs and now a PvP. In the comics, she was always one of my favorites, and in-game, she was one of the first 3*s I got covers for, way back when. I just thought I'd compile a few ideas from myself and others.

I mentioned this is Phasehawk's thread, but in the comics and her art, purple has always been her signature color, whether it's butterflies or katanas, they've always been purple. This provides an opportunity to solve one of her biggest problems. Both Psychic Knife and Psi-Katana should create PURPLE special tiles. This would give a her a nice thematic flair and solve her biggest problem, which is that denying her colors by matching red and black yourself, always "incidentally" removes her special tiles. It's not even a choice for an opponent. "Oh, I can remove your annoying special tiles AND steal matches you'd like? Okay." If both abilities created purple special tiles, an opponent would have to decide whether denying the abilities or cleaning up after them was more important. Additionally, it would make for interesting team compositions, because you'd have to consider whether or not you want to include a purple user or forgo that to keep her tiles out longer.

StevO-J has a good idea for Bewilder as well. Instead of having it steal random, have it specifically steal Red and Black. It would make an good accelerator for her, and it would make her a specific counter-pick against people that make use of Red and Black; specifically, it would increase her utility in PvE, because she could keep Juggernaut and Venom from getting their big hits.

Her Red and Black could probably also use a boost to either their base damage and/or the strength of their special tiles, but just moving them to purple would help them stick around longer, and maybe if Bewilder sufficiently accelerated Red and Black, they wouldn't need as much help.

TL;DR - Have Psychic Knife and Psi-Katana generate purple special tiles, have Bewilder steal specifically red and black, maybe tweak numbers.

over_clocked

I'm afraid her problems are larger than that; Bewilder needs to be changed entirely since a CD-based steal that does nothing if matched just doesn't work. Blade and Fury at least do damage and Fury, good damage at that, Blade's procs immediately on the next turn. Mystique stuns and her steal also procs immediately for the next turn.
Red and black just do almost no damage in the current 3* landscape. She doesn't have to be a Kamala or a Cyclops or a Black Panther but she needs something better than relying on special tiles completely.

Unknown

over_clocked wrote:

I'm afraid her problems are larger than that; Bewilder needs to be changed entirely since a CD-based steal that does nothing if matched just doesn't work. Blade and Fury at least do damage and Fury, good damage at that, Blade's procs immediately on the next turn. Mystique stuns and her steal also procs immediately for the next turn.
Red and black just do almost no damage in the current 3* landscape. She doesn't have to be a Kamala or a Cyclops or a Black Panther but she needs something better than relying on special tiles completely.

166 luke cage is more effective than a fully powered up Psylocke. Disgusting.

Vhailorx

Well, cage and psylocke serve different purposes. But iron fist is the real problem.

Both are squishy 3* that generate cheap(ish) strike and attack tiles. But iron fist destroys padlock in every way.

Which would you rather have : a 4/4/4 iron fist at 153, or a 5/3/5 psylocke at 240?

I think that quest is basically a toss up, and that's a huge balance problem for 3* land. (This is not a call to nerf iron fist. This is a plea to rework some older 3*s, or reduce the need for the weakest ones a la bagman).

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Well, cage and psylocke serve different purposes. But iron fist is the real problem.

Both are squishy 3* that generate cheap(ish) strike and attack tiles. But iron fist destroys padlock in every way.

Which would you rather have : a 4/4/4 iron fist at 153, or a 5/3/5 psylocke at 240?

I think that quest is basically a toss up, and that's a huge balance problem for 3* land. (This is not a call to nerf iron fist. This is a plea to rework some older 3*s, or reduce the need for the weakest ones a la bagman).

yeah but D3 only releases counters/new characters instead of fixing characters now...so only thing we can hope for is X-force psylocke who doesn't suck

ErikPeter

OK, here's my total overhaul for Psylocke. It's designed to keep the mechanical flavor of her powers intact, but amp them up a lot. She should be fast and scary. I turn her red cost around completely so on a clean board it's best-of-tier damage for cheap.

Psychic Knife 3 *
Maintaining intense concentration, Psylocke fluidly chains attacks together. Deals 59 damage and creates 2 strength 8 Red Strike tiles. Costs 1 more for each friendly Strike Tile on the board (max cost 8).

Level 2: Increases Strike tile strength to 12 Level 3: 94 damage Level 4: Increases strike tile strength to 20 Level 5: 153 damage

Level 166: Deals 1131 damage, creates 2 Strength 140 Red strike tiles.

Bewilder 10
Psylocke steadies and channels her telepathic power, reaching into the minds of the enemy to disrupt their attack. Converts a basic Blue tile to a 4-turn Countdown tile that destroys up to 2AP from the enemy team's largest color pool each turn.

Level 2: Destroys 3AP/turn. Level 3: Destroys 4 AP/turn. Level 4: Destroys 5 AP/turn. Level 5: Countdown increased to 6 turns.

Psi-Katana 6
Psylocke carves the enemy up with her psionic katana. Deals 59 damage and leaves the enemy bleeding, converting a friendly Strike tile to an Attack tile and increasing its Strength by 14.

Level 2: Deals 94 damage Level 3: Increases attack tile Strength by 22 Level 4: 153 damage Level 5: Increases attack tile Strength by 36

Level 166: Deals 1131 damage and converts a friendly Strike tile into an Attack tile, increasing its Strength by 270.

Blahahah

Seems like she'd be a monster with someone like Flaptain. Match blues, just start eating AP

ErikPeter

Yeah, that would be pretty sweet, you could get more out of the CD before it possibly gets matched away, and boost her special tiles as well.

I was thinking she'd be really fun with Daken since you could fire red, match green, fire Daken's Blue, then start over with Red for insanely fast and cheap damage dealing.

Her big weakness is Protect tiles which dampen the slow drip damage approach. Which is good--she needs weaknesses.

Edit to add: I think her Blue would be less scary then it looks. It's brutal, for sure, and would slow down the game and get more use out of her special tiles, but hard to compare against, say, CMags' blue, which deals a ton of damage and accelerates red/blue AP. I think it's pretty comparable to She-Hulk's Green. You don't want her to get 10 Blue... But if she does you can match unused colors to try to mitigate the effects.

Blahahah

I don't know about Daken because that would make her red inevitably clunky, and both of their need for blue might mess with Daken's healing.

Add also that you'd need someone to cover yellow and green, which there aren't many good options that combo well with them. Maybe wolverine, but again this makes Psylocke's ability too expensive.

ErikPeter

Blahahah wrote:

ErikPeter wrote:

Psychic Knife 3 *
Maintaining intense concentration, Psylocke fluidly chains attacks together. Deals 59 damage and creates 2 strength 8 Red Strike tiles. Costs 1 more for each friendly Strike Tile on the board (max cost 8).

Level 2: Increases Strike tile strength to 12 Level 3: 94 damage Level 4: Increases strike tile strength to 20 Level 5: 153 damage

Level 166: Deals 1131 damage, creates 2 Strength 140 Red strike tiles.

I don't know about Daken because that would make her red inevitably clunky, and both of their need for blue might mess with Daken's healing.

Add also that you'd need someone to cover yellow and green, which there aren't many good options that combo well with them. Maybe wolverine, but again this makes Psylocke's ability too expensive.

It's funny to worry that red would become "too expensive", because at worst it is equivalent to the her existing red power's current output.

Just goes to show how completely behind the curve she has been ever since the max Health upgrades.

Anyways, I'm glad to hear that kind of feedback--my rationale in buffing 3s is to give them some beyond-tier utility like IM40 and Switch have. They don't need to be king of the tier but if they can find their way into a couple powerful combos--like FalCap/Psylocke--that's great.