*** Black Panther (T'Challa) ***

Unknown

Zhirrzh wrote:

Until we see how the abilities evolve with extra covers, Black Panther looks situational to me. If you're against a team where the strongest match 3 color is not paired with a dangerous active ability (or you can one-shot the guy with the ability with BP's Black) then BP's black is the business. I'm not sure about his yellow, even though it's kind of "yay active yellow!"- situational for matches where you haven't got a better use for environmental tile matches like the city playfield- that's the one which I really need to see at 3 yellow or 5 yellow to know if it's worth it, it's not very good at 1 yellow. The blue is like the anti-Molotov, only without an AOE heal (unless that comes later).

+1
need to see his max abilities, right now. it's better using psylocke. fast and efficient

Unknown

@IceIX: would be much appreciated if you can post the description of the 5 skill levels for black panther and the max 5 cover stats.

got some HP burning a hole in the pocket and wondering what's past lvl 2 on his skills.

over_clocked

I stumbled on 'Marvel girls' publications on imgur and they say Storm has divorced Black Panther in the comics and is now seeing Wolverine.
Dat Wolverine.

IceIX

Just snagged these from our debug build. His level scaling isn't set right at the moment (he should not have 11 Yellow damage at max level) so I don't have max stats. But here are his base level stats for each level. Note as always: This is off the debug build, he's not released yet and we may change things before he's in player hands.

9 AP - Battleplan
Converts one random basic Yellow tile into a strength 9 Strike tile for each 15 environment AP the team has, consuming the AP in the process. (min 1 tile)
Level 2: Increase strike tile strength to 13.
Level 3: Increase strike tile strength to 16.
Level 4: Increase strike tile strength to 20.
Level 5: Increase strike tile strength to 23.

8 AP - Defense Grid
Places a Blue Countdown tile that converts a basic color tile to a strength 9 Protect tile every 2 turns. If 3 or more Protect tiles are in play, conversion is suspended.
Level 2: Max 3 protect tiles out at a time
Level 3: Increases Protect strength to 14.
Level 4: Max 5 protect tiles out at a time
Level 5: Increases Protect strength to 18.

12 AP - Rage of the Panther
Deals 248 damage to each enemy, but the enemy team gains 5 AP in their strongest color.
Level 2: 347 damage.
Level 3: 446 damage.
Level 4: 546 damage.
Level 5: 645 damage.

7250 max health, so tanky on the level of Iron Man (Model 40)

Unknown

Looking over those stats, I'd tend to say 5/3/5, but I tend to value offense over defense. I could also see 5/4/4 or 4/4/5.

Edit: On further reflection, I'm liking his yellow less and less. Maybe 3/5/5.

Unknown

The enemy ai almost always fire off environmental tiles once they it, right? So its really good on certain types of stages. Black is insane....that's to ALL btw. if you can kill them before they even get to use their 5 ap...they can have 15 ap if that's the case. Maybe it'll need a slight change like "ends turn" or something after use. For how it is now...definitely a strong contender in defense, strike tiles and pure damage with huge HP tankiness.

He's good. very good.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

Looking over those stats, I'd tend to say 5/3/5, but I tend to value offense over defense. I could also see 5/4/4 or 4/4/5.

Edit: On further reflection, I'm liking his yellow less and less. Maybe 3/5/5.

If Defense grid lets you choose where to place the countdown tile, I think 3/5/5 is definitely the way to go. If it's random, it's more iffy because even though I think his blue would still be better than his yellow, there's a lot of good Blue abilities I'd rather use and not many good yellow abilities.

Unknown

Saint Matthew wrote:

The enemy ai almost always fire off environmental tiles once they it, right? So its really good on certain types of stages. Black is insane....that's to ALL btw. if you can kill them before they even get to use their 5 ap...they can have 15 ap if that's the case. Maybe it'll need a slight change like "ends turn" or something after use. For how it is now...definitely a strong contender in defense, strike tiles and pure damage with huge HP tankiness.

He's good. very good.

+1 to this whole comment.

I'm curious if he will be considered an avenger (could go either way I suppose).

Even if he's not, Hulk, IM40 and Black Panther would be an awesome defensive team.

Phaserhawk

Holy **** are these numbers legit?

At Max Level:
HP: 7250
Tile damage: 99/12/99/11/10/99

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Holy **** are these numbers legit?

At Max Level:
HP: 7250
Tile damage: 99/12/99/11/10/99

Don't think they are. IceIX above just said he shouldn't have 11 damage in yellow. 99? no 4 star even has 99 damage per tile. If he is...Black Panther will be the new meta to break.

Phaserhawk

Saint Matthew wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Holy **** are these numbers legit?

At Max Level:
HP: 7250
Tile damage: 99/12/99/11/10/99

Don't think they are. IceIX above just said he shouldn't have 11 damage in yellow. 99? no 4 star even has 99 damage per tile. If he is...Black Panther will be the new meta to break.

thank god

Nonce Equitaur 2

Phaserhawk wrote:

Holy **** are these numbers legit?
Tile damage: 99/12/99/11/10/99

I don't know what the values are yet. I'll update those when they are available.

NorthernPolarity

So for reference,

19 Strike tile strength (Punisher) level 4 green = 102 strike tile strength at 141. BP's 4 yellow would be slightly more than this.

532 damage (GSBW level 5 green) = 3336 at max level. Black Panther's level 5 would do 4044 if it scaled the same way.

I'm pretty sure he's very powerful just off of the black alone. I'm actually looking at 4/4/5: blue gets a 66% boost going from 3->4, and a ~28% boost from 4->5, so I'd prefer having his strike tiles being as strong as Punishers over a marginal defensive boost. 5 black is a must for obvious reasons.

IceIX

Saint Matthew wrote:

Don't think they are. IceIX above just said he shouldn't have 11 damage in yellow. 99? no 4 star even has 99 damage per tile. If he is...Black Panther will be the new meta to break.

Just to clarify, he shouldn't have 11 in Yellow at *max level*. 11 at base is fine.

Nemek

NorthernPolarity wrote:

So for reference,

19 Strike tile strength (Punisher) level 4 green = 102 strike tile strength at 141. BP's 4 yellow would be slightly more than this.

532 damage (GSBW level 5 green) = 3336 at max level. Black Panther's level 5 would do 4044 if it scaled the same way.

I'm pretty sure he's very powerful just off of the black alone. I'm actually looking at 4/4/5: blue gets a 66% boost going from 3->4, and a ~28% boost from 4->5, so I'd prefer having his strike tiles being as strong as Punishers over a marginal defensive boost. 5 black is a must for obvious reasons.

I don't think I'll believe it until I actually see it, but that currently looks insane.

mischiefmaker

Based on existing scaling, I'm guessing max level stats will look something like (warning: these are just guesses!):

145 damage L5 yellow strike tiles (100 @ L3)
110 L5 blue protect tiles (85 @ L3)
4000 L5 black damage (2750 @ L3)

So yeah, that's crazy. Particularly surprising is that black is so cheap compared to sniper rifle; I mean, yeah, it's got a drawback, but you can't spend AP if you're dead.

I've been trying to muster an argument for anything other than 5/3/5, since I also have a heavy bias for offense over defense, but I just can't see it. Based on the above guesses, at max level, blue takes 2 turns to do anything, after which you'll still take some match damage (max level PvP opponents will do ~150 per match; L230 PvE opponents ~200), regardless of whether you're L3 or L5.

With two tiles on board, they're still equivalent for PvP, but slightly better for PvE, but at three tiles they're basically the same again (match damage completely protected, won't protect you much against a decent direct-damage ability). At L5 the comparison is ~550 protection vs. 240, which is a big difference on paper, but practically speaking, I'm not sure the extra protection makes a big difference -- you're still going to take non-trivial damage from good abilities. Also, your countdown tile has to survive an ungodly long time to get that many protect tiles out, or you're casting multiple times, which isn't impossible but isn't that easy, either.

The gain from L3 to L4 blue looks so monster though. Someone please point out where I've made an error so I can convince myself to go 4/4/5.

Unknown

Has anyone noticed that he gives 4 Environment points for each tile, not 3? Is he the only character that does this?

mischiefmaker

Punisher, Spider Man, Bag Man, grey Widow, and Invisible Woman all do too.

Mawtful

mischiefmaker wrote:

The gain from L3 to L4 blue looks so monster though. Someone please point out where I've made an error so I can convince myself to go 4/4/5.

That gain is huge, but I think you're correct in your observation that it will just take too long to reach that stage.

Protect tiles clearly offer more during the early stages of a match. It seems unfair to make a comparison with Spider-Man right now, but I can start getting protect tiles at turn 1. Unboosted, BP won't have a protect tile on the board until ~turn 6. Additionally, BP probably won't pair too well with other Protectors - it seems BP's cooldown counts all friendly protect tiles, not just ones it has created.

I saw a suggestion earlier that essentially came down to "if rank 5 has a heal, then it will be worth considering". I think that could have definitely made for something interesting. Imagine the last two ranks of Defense Grid were like this instead:

Level 4: Max 5 protect tiles out at a time.
Level 5: Increases Protect strength to 18. Whenever Defense Grid cannot place any more Protect tiles, it heals all allies for X.

That way, you've still got to decide if you want to go all in, but you'll need to get more tiles out before the healing starts. You could pair him with Spidey to rush out protect tiles, but then you're kind of doubling up on roles (and colours).

In any case, I've gone right off on a tangent. Against the current metagame, 5/3/5 seems to be the best choice. But who knows who the next hero will be? Punisher is a great example (the best?) of a character that can perform a number of roles, and fits well onto a lot of teams. It's highly likely that going 4/4/5 is going to better set you up to integrate with more varied teams.

eidehua

I'm thinking of running Black Panther with an ap stealer and a damage character.
Probably OBW, so you can sort of negate the ap given to enemies from BP's black. Possibly Patch, to add damage through strike tiles.
Not much color clash. Only Blue. I supposed getting up early protect tiles to dampen the enemy strike tiles from Patch, and then heals towards the end of the fight.

A little bit of everything in this team:
Heals, Protects, Strike tiles, AP steal, AOE damage. Only big thing missing are attack tiles, but not much of an issue I think.