Best Friends Forever (Tile Strength Partners)

akboyce

So I am sure we have all been playing a match and noticed when two characters have perfectly matching tile strengths. Classic example is Astonishing Wolverine and Original Widow. Wolvie handles the Yellow Red and Green while Widow handles Blue Purple Black. This got me wondering what pairs existed. A quick trip to the wiki and glancing at Psylocke reward shows us who the Best Friends are! Remember this is attack tile strength which can differ from special attack colors (I am looking at you Classic Magneto and GS Widow!). This also means (most) two color power people get to have three color fun.

Yellow Blue Green

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Red Purple Black
Invisible Woman****

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Moonstone**
Classic Storm**

Yellow Red Green

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Blue Purple Black
Wolverine X Force****----Black Widow GS***
Patch***

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Doom***
Thor***

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Black Widow Original**
Ares**

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Yelena Belova*
Thor**
Wolverine Astonishing**

Red Green Black

---

Yellow Blue Purple
Devil Dinosaur****

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Spider-Man***
Hulk***

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Bag Man**
Punisher***

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Black Widow Modern* (weird huh)
Juggernaut*
Modern Storm*

Yellow Red Blue

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Purple Green Black
Iron Man 40***

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Loki***
Classic Magneto***

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Bullseye**
Captain America**

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Daken**
Iron Man 35*

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Venom*

But akboyce, there are more characters than that! That brings us to our Lonely Hearts Club.

Yellow Blue Black

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Red Purple Green
Hood***

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</3
Black Panther***

Yellow Red Purple

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Blue Green Black
Classic Hawkeye*

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</3

Red Blue Purple

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Yellow Red Black
Daredevil***

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</3
Modern Hawkeye**
Magento MN**

Red Blue Black

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Yellow Purple Green
Psylocke***

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</3

Observant readers will notice that we are still missing a character. It is a small list but here we have the Forever (?) Alone Club.

Red Green

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Yellow Blue Purple Black
Ragnarok***

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</3

Will our lonely hearts ever find partners? Doesn't Yellow Blue Purple deserve more than Modern Widow? Doom is the only male Blue Purple Black and all the Yellow Red Greens are men. Purple Green Black is clearly evil. Other thoughts or observations?

EDIT: Added Devil Dinosaur. Please forgive me oh great Dino!
EDIT2: Black Panther joins the lonely hearts club with The Hood
EDIT3: Small not bump worthy change of Thor***

Unknown

Devil Dinosaur is red/black/green too I think.

akboyce

Phantron wrote:

Devil Dinosaur is red/black/green too I think.

Wow. How right you are! I am ashamed I left out the dino and hope he can forgive me. I shall edit my first post to correct this injustice.

Mawtful

You've also got Red Green Black <-> Yellow Blue Purple in there twice.

Punisher + the Spider-Men can be moved up to the other group.

akboyce

Mawtful wrote:

You've also got Red Green Black <-> Yellow Blue Purple in there twice.

Punisher + the Spider-Men can be moved up to the other group.

Whoops! Fixing! Thanks!

Mawtful

Oh, in addition to correcting you, I meant to say: this is pretty cool.

I understand, form a design perspective, why it's better to have certain types of powers tied to colours, rather than assigning them to colours that each particular hero wears. I still find it somewhat annoying; especially Daredevil - his strongest tile strength is purple even though his entire costume is red. I can't help but wonder if a little bit of the "stagnation" we're seeing would be resolved if colours were assigned differently.

For example:

What if we changed Loki to Black/Green/Yellow (and at the same time, change his powers to Black/Green or Black/Yellow)? Currently, Purple represents mostly "villainous" or sneaky powers and Yellow represents mostly "heroic" powers (most seem to be some form of protection). Loki doesn't wear purple, but his crown is kinda yellow, and certainly denying Yellow AP is kind of villainous in it's own way.

Anyway, that would give us a partner for Blue/Red/Purple.

I'd suggest changing Moonstone to Black/Red/Yellow to match her costume, but since she's the Dark Avengers Ms. Marvel, maybe purple is for the best - that way Black/Red/Yellow can be reserved for someone heroic like the real Ms. Marvel, whenever she shows up.

Unknown

Psylockes opposite should be Yellow / Green / Purple.

So Thor / Ares are a reasonable match. Throw a Loki in there, or a Widow, for all sorts of shenanigans. But no true 'partner' that I can think of.

Unknown

This is actually a pretty useful list to figure out which characters can act as 'meat shields' for your favorite damage dealing character

Unknown

It seems to me that there's some merit to determining which colors are actually passive abilities and could synergize well together. For example, hood has a passive blue and classic storm has a passive yellow so the two characters go well together, even though they "compete" for tile strength.

user311

Not sure if this fits into your thoughts, but Modern Storm + GSBW is a pretty deadly combo for those interested in the infinite turn on the Forest/Desert levels. For me its just a race to get the 5 reds twice to activate the environment bonus and then its and infinite turn (using boosts makes this insane). I can use Storms green attack to grab all the purple tiles and then GSBWs purple to generate green tiles, etc, etc. The Environments then stack up in case I dont get enough purples to make greens. Makes for a long match, but I think its very complementary. If the turn ends then use Storms black that should be saved up or any third characters Blue/yellow ability. The only problem with this -- is that the AI will not play the same as you will so it sucks on defense.

over_clocked

user311 wrote:

Not sure if this fits into your thoughts, but Modern Storm + GSBW is a pretty deadly combo for those interested in the infinite turn on the Forest/Desert levels. For me its just a race to get the 5 reds twice to activate the environment bonus and then its and infinite turn (using boosts makes this insane). I can use Storms green attack to grab all the purple tiles and then GSBWs purple to generate green tiles, etc, etc. The Environments then stack up in case I dont get enough purples to make greens. Makes for a long match, but I think its very complementary. If the turn ends then use Storms black that should be saved up or any third characters Blue/yellow ability. The only problem with this -- is that the AI will not play the same as you will so it sucks on defense.

mStorm is still scary on defense as many players attested, 5red for Mistress rules them all, but GSBW, indeed, doesn't compute on defense.
By the way Spidey and mStorm are best buddies and the only colour they actively miss is purple.

Unknown

user311 wrote:

The only problem with this -- is that the AI will not play the same as you will so it sucks on defense.

The bigger problem is that any team with Grey Widow/Modern Storm on it is an insta-attack from high(er) MMR topponents in PvP.

akboyce

allorin wrote:

Psylockes opposite should be Yellow / Green / Purple.

So Thor / Ares are a reasonable match. Throw a Loki in there, or a Widow, for all sorts of shenanigans. But no true 'partner' that I can think of.

Oops thanks for the correction.

I am just wondering if there are plans to fill in the missing color combinations.

There also seems to be some untapped (thus far) design space in color combinations. Maybe we will see more 2 color or even some 4 color characters down the line.

These partnerships are also helpful to keep in mind for leveling up. If you have a high level BFF pair then in the standard featured character tournaments you can use the BFFs and the featured and be sure you have all colors covered. This is especially useful on defense when the AI does not seem to prioritize good colors and you want to make sure all 6 colors pack a punch.

I love the pair of Spidey and Punisher.

Mawtful

akboyce wrote:

allorin wrote:

Psylockes opposite should be Yellow / Green / Purple.

So Thor / Ares are a reasonable match. Throw a Loki in there, or a Widow, for all sorts of shenanigans. But no true 'partner' that I can think of.

Oops thanks for the correction.

I am just wondering if there are plans to fill in the missing color combinations.

There also seems to be some untapped (thus far) design space in color combinations. Maybe we will see more 2 color or even some 4 color characters down the line.

These partnerships are also helpful to keep in mind for leveling up. If you have a high level BFF pair then in the standard featured character tournaments you can use the BFFs and the featured and be sure you have all colors covered. This is especially useful on defense when the AI does not seem to prioritize good colors and you want to make sure all 6 colors pack a punch.

I love the pair of Spidey and Punisher.

There is at least one BFF where either pair are not currently available: Red/Yellow/Black <-> Blue/Green/Purple.
It all comes back to their power types = colours design, so an RYBk hero needs to have a big hit, a protection ability, and (probably) a damage tile ability. A BuGP hero would need a Stun, a quick, stacking attack (maybe strike tiles?) and a sneaky ability.

I think they still have a lot of interesting things they could do - what about a character who's tile strength is the opposite of their abilities? For example, they have strong matches on Red, Green, Blue but have powers that use Yellow, Purple, Black.

Unknown

Lol at the Forever Alone status of Rags. He was once the most popular boy at school.... Anyway... There is hope for our cyborg Casanova - he will get a third power someday

akboyce

pandaberry6 wrote:

Lol at the Forever Alone status of Rags. He was once the most popular boy at school.... Anyway... There is hope for our cyborg Casanova - he will get a third power someday

But will he get a third tile strength? You will notice most of the people with 2 powers still have 3 strong tile colors. Ragnarok is the only character in the whole game with only 2 strong tile strengths. Kinda odd really.

Unknown

akboyce wrote:

Ragnarok is the only character in the whole game with only 2 strong tile strengths. Kinda odd really.

Cloning is all fun and games until someone loses a color strength...

akboyce

Updated the list to include the newest hero Black Panther. Sadly he joins Hood in the lonely hearts club.

Unknown

akboyce wrote:

pandaberry6 wrote:

Lol at the Forever Alone status of Rags. He was once the most popular boy at school.... Anyway... There is hope for our cyborg Casanova - he will get a third power someday

But will he get a third tile strength? You will notice most of the people with 2 powers still have 3 strong tile colors. Ragnarok is the only character in the whole game with only 2 strong tile strengths. Kinda odd really.

Yessir! Not anytime soon but it will happen.

IceIX wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Now that these changes are in place, im still not sure if rags is in a good position compared to thor: shouldnt rags have better abilities since its a 3* cover and should be a sidegrade to thor? As is it still seems like thor is superior.

Keep in mind that Ragnarok is also still missing a third ability which will help him in utility and bring his power up another 26 levels.

akboyce

pandaberry6 wrote:

akboyce wrote:

pandaberry6 wrote:

Lol at the Forever Alone status of Rags. He was once the most popular boy at school.... Anyway... There is hope for our cyborg Casanova - he will get a third power someday

But will he get a third tile strength? You will notice most of the people with 2 powers still have 3 strong tile colors. Ragnarok is the only character in the whole game with only 2 strong tile strengths. Kinda odd really.

Yessir! Not anytime soon but it will happen.

IceIX wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Now that these changes are in place, im still not sure if rags is in a good position compared to thor: shouldnt rags have better abilities since its a 3* cover and should be a sidegrade to thor? As is it still seems like thor is superior.

Keep in mind that Ragnarok is also still missing a third ability which will help him in utility and bring his power up another 26 levels.

That says he will be getting a 3rd power but there is no indication that it will come with them increasing the damage of any of his tile matches. GSBW and Magneto show they are not afraid to have match strengths differ from ability colors so it will be interesting to see if he gets a third color matching strength or if he stays the only 2 color match strength character.