Character Rankings February 2016 Edition: The Results

Cousin Simpson

Wow @ Fishnets!

mgallop

2* Thor over Ares is a scandal!

Also, I wish this poll had been 1 week later, since I didnt rank IM40, and now I'd give him a 10. I'm pretty sure he's now the best 3*.

cardoor

Raist818 wrote:

cardoor wrote:

In order to develop any latent mutant powers I wish I had, I will now try to prognosticate the top ranking for each * lvl currently under the black veil of mystery.

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Seems like a solid list. I'm fairly certain the top 3* will be IF and I have no idea about the 5*s, but the rest seems spot on.

Vhailorx wrote:

Iron fist is stronger than 3* cyclops

Iceman is stronger than Jean grey in 4* land (but jg might still win because she is covered/maxed on many more rosters).

Otherwise it's a good list.

The reason I am predicting an upset with Cyclops over IF is that I am guessing (and did a very imprecise counting/guesstimating of 4+ * respondents) that most of the people taking the survey will be 4* transitioners or under. In that group, I am again guessing that Cyclops raw power will edge out IF. If I am wrong about who is taking the survey, then you are probably right and IF will hold on to the top. It would blow my mind if Cyclops isn't # two in that case though.

cardoor

Nomadhero wrote:

Nah nah nah

4* Cyclops seems like a risky prediction, but if you pull it off mutant powers would be strongly suspected.

ronin_san

mgallop wrote:

2* Thor over Ares

Pure madness. I tell myself it's because we don't want more people championing him. The AI plays him so well on defense.

Pwuz_

HOW DARE YOU ALL PLACE MOONSTONE ABOVE THE GREAT AND POWERFUL BAGMAN?!?!!

This injustice will not stand!

Having Championed my Bagman (what? I want that Legendary Token), I've been using him more frequently in the DDQ nodes as he's one of two 2* over level 40 (Wolverine got the bump to 50 on a particularly bad day in DDQ months ago.)

I can honestly say he's got some fairly nice uses. I like to pair him with Bullseye & Wolverine (though Ares has been filling that spot with this rash of nodes fighting Patch.)

Combining Switcharoo, Deadly Precision, & Murderous Aim is usually enough to down two of the three characters in Third Time's the Charm. Yes, it's hella expensive (do people say "hella" anymore?) at 45 AP for that combo. Yes, his Blue is almost always totally useless (though in PvE I've tossed him in with Quicksilver for some fun occasionally). His Yellow serves no purpose on most of my teams (though I suppose there is that small handful of characters who create Countdown tiles that you WANT to keep on the board.)

Let's compare that to Moonstone.

Gravity Warp is useless most of the time, and the few times it's not...how many of those times has there been more than one color of special tile it's RANDOMLY choosing to move?

Photon Blast can be seriously powerful when the board is saturated with Red. I guess if you have a 3* Cyc or 4* IM without their Red covers, she could use their abilities to flood the board...but why?

Then there is Control Shift...personally, I miss the old Control Shift. I know it was the center of way too many game breaking glitches back in the day. But now in it's current form, what? It'll steal up to 3 special tiles? Unless she's going head to head with someone like Sentry who makes tiles that are worth stealing, it's usually not worth the effort.

Now, let me be clear here. I by no means am advocating that Bagman is better or more useful than ANY other 2* besides Moonstone... but I do argue that he IS better than Moonstone. He has his skills, and if you're using those skills to assist another more useful character, he is hands down better than Moonstone.

Head to head, 1 on 1, Bagman vs Moonstone, he doesn't have a prayer though. Oh, that does sound fun though. On the non 4* days of DDQ, can we start having 1* & 2* 1 on 1 battles like the 4*'s get?

Kolence

Pwuz_ wrote:

<snip>

Now, let me be clear here. I by no means am advocating that Bagman is better or more useful than ANY other 2* besides Moonstone... but I do argue that he IS better than Moonstone. He has his skills, and if you're using those skills to assist another more useful character, he is hands down better than Moonstone.

Head to head, 1 on 1, Bagman vs Moonstone, he doesn't have a prayer though. Oh, that does sound fun though. On the non 4* days of DDQ, can we start having 1* & 2* 1 on 1 battles like the 4*'s get?

I'm not sure if you're beeing serious.

In the off chance you are, I'd be happy to fight any team you can come up with that uses Bagman and just swap him with Moonstone to battle it.

On topic, Moonstone, Bullseye and Ms. Danvers are grossly underrated in my opinion. They all can have their uses even with 3*/4*s in pve.
I do agree even Bagman has a use or two, so I didn't rate him 1 (at least I think I didn't) even if he did get the lowest score of all the 2*s from me.

Malcrof

IM40, if the survey was done after his re-work, would have been much higher..also Why no love for Rags? He is great to use!!

simonsez

Malcrof wrote:

IM40, if the survey was done after his re-work, would have been much higher..

I gave him an anticipatory 10. Figured other people might too...

Sluggo

With the bottom half of the 3*s released, I decided to take a whack at predicting the top 20. Disclaimers to follow!

1-5: Iron Fist, Cyclops, Luke Cage, Black Panther, Thor
6-10: Kamala Khan, Scarlet Witch, Hood, Magneto, Blade
11-15: Steve Rogers, Human Torch, Daken, Deadpool, Doom
16-20: Loki, GSBW, Patch, Rocket & Groot, Hulk

Disclaimer 1! This is not how I think they should be ranked, just a prediction on how the community ranked them.

Disclaimer 2! As I made this list, I realized I have absolutely no clue how the community feels about certain characters. How do people feel about Magneto these days? Steve Rogers? Thor?

So as far as community rankings, who am I way off on? Is there anyone I've predicted for the low teens who might end up top five? Or vice versa? I'm fascinated to see how the rankings turn out.

cardoor

Sluggo wrote:

With the bottom half of the 3*s released, I decided to take a whack at predicting the top 20. Disclaimers to follow!

1-5: Iron Fist, Cyclops, Luke Cage, Black Panther, Thor
6-10: Kamala Khan, Scarlet Witch, Hood, Magneto, Blade
11-15: Steve Rogers, Human Torch, Daken, Deadpool, Doom
16-20: Loki, GSBW, Patch, Rocket & Groot, Hulk

Disclaimer 1! This is not how I think they should be ranked, just a prediction on how the community ranked them.

Disclaimer 2! As I made this list, I realized I have absolutely no clue how the community feels about certain characters. How do people feel about Magneto these days? Steve Rogers? Thor?

So as far as community rankings, who am I way off on? Is there anyone I've predicted for the low teens who might end up top five? Or vice versa? I'm fascinated to see how the rankings turn out.

I think you have Hulk right, but after that there are so many good characters its really hard to say. My gut says Steve Rogers, Switch and GSBW are probably too low. I wouldn't be surprised to see Switch in the top 5. BP, Blade and DP are probably too high. The funny thing is you could have all 20 right though - we shall soon know!

Edit:
Screw it, I am a prediction addict (and I can admit it):

1-5: Cyclops, Iron Fist, Scarlet Witch, Luke Cage, Steve Rogers
6-10: Thor, GSBW, Loki, Kamala Khan, Magneto
11-15: Black Panther, Hood, Patch, Human Torch, Daken
16-20: Deadpool, Doom, Rocket & Groot, Blade, Hulk

Edit II: 4/20

ErikPeter

I'm surprised that Punisher and Falcon rank anywhere near as high as they are. I'd say it's because they "Have their uses" but poor Doc Ock, people must not use him. His black is great and blue is fun against the right team. Mohawk Storm is awful too but I guess Hailstorm is bumping her rank a lot.

And yeah, I'm surprised Rags in in last place. Come on, he's at least better than Sentry. And maybe Psylocke.

What I think this list proves is that 3* are more established which gives people more grounded opinions. i.e. the top of the 3-star list makes sense, all the big hitters are accounted for in a fair order, while the bottom (less common or more situational characters) is kind of a **** shoot.

Especially at the 1- and 2-star tiers you often stick with what you have. It's a waste of ISO to max more than a few. So there are some surprising spikes; Why are Moonstone (HP, ST damage, one of the better tile stealers) and 1* Spider-Man (one of the best purple powers in the game) so low?

I think if people had played around with more 2*, I feel most of them would be in the 5-7 range, if that's "average". Storm, Mags, OBW (and Thor) are strong, and Bag-man bites, but the others are pretty balanced. A 3-point-plus spread seems bigger than it should be. On the 1-star front, Juggs is insanely overrated. A 10? A lot of people keep him for Daily but that doesn't make him good. Spidey has effectiveness beyond his tier and can help win the Big Enchilada, but I get the feeling many players voting were beyond that point when he was released.

stowaway

ronin-san wrote:

mgallop wrote:

2* Thor over Ares

Pure madness. I tell myself it's because we don't want more people championing him. The AI plays him so well on defense.

I think I rated 2* Thor 1 point higher than Ares (it's possible I had them even). Thor is the one I actually use every day on the 2* DDQ nodes. Ares I only use when one of my other 2* is locked out.

There's an inevitable thing that happens in your rankings of characters after you've moved past their tier. It's a "What have you done for me lately?" effect. As a PvE essential, Ares is complete dead weight to me (I won't use Sunder for fear of having to waste a heath pack on him). Thor at least accelerates someone else's green.

It's why so many people don't understand what the fuss is about Scarlet Witch (who I'm surprised didn't edge Magneto out for top 5). Her very best partners are all 4*. . . if you don't have them on your roster in working order, then no, you don't see the fuss.

stowaway

ErikPeter wrote:

I'm surprised that Punisher and Falcon rank anywhere near as high as they are. I'd say it's because they "Have their uses" but poor Doc Ock, people must not use him. His black is great and blue is fun against the right team. Mohawk Storm is awful too but I guess Hailstorm is bumping her rank a lot.

At first I was going to say, "Punisher is bottom third, how much lower do you want him?" But no, you're right, he should be bottom 4. People will argue about how useful his red can be, but most of the time if I've dropped an enemy's health by 60% already, and I have 8 or more red AP on hand, it's not going to be hard to finish them off the normal way.

Doc Ock and Carnage, plus whomever (Luke Cage, Kingpin, Hood) is a fantastic suicide team for sending against Gauntlet nodes where your best characters (and therefore the reason your scaling is so high) are locked out. And I'll stick up for Mohawk, because ditto for her, Kamala and CMags (and on that team, you almost never want to use Hailstorm).

jimstarooney

Surprised about hood,the guy effectively lets u shut out a maxed 4 star team so you can trounce them with a 3 star team.i suppose with more and more usable 5 stars poppin up around the place his extremely low health is attractive to them.still great but less viable the more the meta shifts

Hendross

jimstarooney wrote:

Surprised about hood,the guy effectively lets u shut out a maxed 4 star team so you can trounce them with a 3 star team.i suppose with more and more usable 5 stars poppin up around the place his extremely low health is attractive to them.still great but less viable the more the meta shifts

I think you said it. In a 3* bubble he would be higher but since he goes down with a single repulsor punch his squishiness is more so a problem than before.

PeterGibbons316

ronin-san wrote:

mgallop wrote:

2* Thor over Ares

Pure madness. I tell myself it's because we don't want more people championing him. The AI plays him so well on defense.

I prefer Thor to Ares for several reasons.....

• Thor will never kill himself
• Thor doesn't feed your enemy green AP
• Thor is more sustainable for climbing
• Thor can thrive with a board that isn't starved of green - just use yellow....no yellow or green? no problem - use red...no red, yellow, OR green? You've already Windstormed your way to victory
• Thor rarely gets locked out of PvE nodes because you have to fight YET ANOTHER Dark Avengers team
• Thor's yellow can actually be useful to feed green in higher tier play as not many characters can turn yellow into green (and none as efficiently as Thor can)

So while Ares clearly wins the damage/AP battle I find Thor to be the better character. In 2* PvP land I'd use Thor for climbing, and Ares on Defense.

PeterGibbons316

4* will be IMHB, and IMO Iceman is a VERY close 2nd....

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I'd put Iceman first if not for JG and Rulk being such strong purple/green users as well. IMHB works well with Iceman/JG/Rulk, but none of those 3 really work well together at all.

JG will probably come in 2nd though because she is so overrated by the community.

The Bob The

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

ronin-san wrote:

mgallop wrote:

2* Thor over Ares

Pure madness. I tell myself it's because we don't want more people championing him. The AI plays him so well on defense.

I prefer Thor to Ares for several reasons.....

• Thor will never kill himself
• Thor doesn't feed your enemy green AP
• Thor is more sustainable for climbing
• Thor can thrive with a board that isn't starved of green - just use yellow....no yellow or green? no problem - use red...no red, yellow, OR green? You've already Windstormed your way to victory
• Thor rarely gets locked out of PvE nodes because you have to fight YET ANOTHER Dark Avengers team
• Thor's yellow can actually be useful to feed green in higher tier play as not many characters can turn yellow into green (and none as efficiently as Thor can)

So while Ares clearly wins the damage/AP battle I find Thor to be the better character. In 2* PvP land I'd use Thor for climbing, and Ares on Defense.

Your PVE reason is a solid one I hadn't considered. I'd still go with Ares because I'm no longer a 2* player. For exactly the same reason I preferred Thor then - can't stand self-damage - I give Ares the edge now because I'm only gonna use him, what, once a day? Twice maybe?

Mortalo

2* Bullseye with such a low score is a crime. At 2* times, on PvP, his purple is a health pack saver. His black might be expensive, but it can hit really hard when placed in right spot (though with black maxed, for 2 critical tiles) and it also produces ap that way. He is really good.

Moonstone should be higher. She is just lovely, who can deny her charm? Karla should get at least 3 more points based on that