Character Rankings February 2016 Edition: The Results

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  • mgallop
    mgallop Posts: 120
    The more I think about it, the worse the top of the 4* rankings look. This kind of reminds me of the last ranking where LThor got the #1 slot despite being in the process of dropping into mediocrity. JG is not the best 4* character in the game, she's not even the best Green and Purple + a Passive 4* in the game. She is just worse than Ice and Rhulk, and she is less useful than HB and Cyke, just because there are 3 good Green/Purple 4s and only 2 good R 4s. Honestly, she might be worse than 4Pool at this point just because of how good his passive is at killing 5s.

    Also, Nova should be higher, though I think he just suffered from no one having him fully covered at this point. His yellow is basically an Overdrive into a Repulsor punch for 7 AP! And he has two other useful abilities!
  • Antlion
    Antlion Posts: 19
    mgallop wrote:
    The more I think about it, the worse the top of the 4* rankings look. This kind of reminds me of the last ranking where LThor got the #1 slot despite being in the process of dropping into mediocrity. JG is not the best 4* character in the game, she's not even the best Green and Purple + a Passive 4* in the game. She is just worse than Ice and Rhulk, and she is less useful than HB and Cyke, just because there are 3 good Green/Purple 4s and only 2 good R 4s. Honestly, she might be worse than 4Pool at this point just because of how good his passive is at killing 5s.

    Also, Nova should be higher, though I think he just suffered from no one having him fully covered at this point. His yellow is basically an Overdrive into a Repulsor punch for 7 AP! And he has two other useful abilities!

    I feel that these rankings are a lagging indicator of the most powerful characters. I can't really comment on how far off the 4* transitions are b/c I'm still transitioning, but from the comments and pop I'm beginning to see more rhulk popping up. Ebolamonkey has mentioned that he will be looking at how transitioning players like me (4* transitional) have skewed results for the 4* based on his question on player level, but my guess is that will just shift the lag a bit closer to present. Perhaps having regular 1300+ PVP players would give the most accurate present ranking.

    That being said, the ranking seems to tier the characters fairly well. Getting a fully covered and ISO'd character in the top 7 4*s is one of my goals. I'm also skeptical that a better ranking could be made with the same amount of work.
    Plus, the discussion would be less fun to read if the rankings were perfect. icon_e_wink.gif
  • Sandwichboy
    Sandwichboy Posts: 193 Tile Toppler
    Have to agree that the top 7 4*s are way off in terms of pvp viability. JG is a very strong character, but Ice, Rhulk and IMHB are far more self sufficient and faster than she is on her own. What really surprises me is how even after IM40s buff he's still so low ranked (personally I'd put him at #1 for anyone in the 4* transition), and what the hell is Miles doing so far down? It's been a few months since he was released so I would think a decent number of people have him complete, and now that Spider Gwen is out as the perfect partner for him I had expected to see him much higher.
  • Carpark
    Carpark Posts: 15
    There's no way JG should be this high, especially when her direct counter (Rulk) and a much better character (Iceman) are not directly behind her. All three share two colors and Iceman shares all colors. Let's think about this, Rulk has a cheaper purpleflag.png and he drains her greenflag.png , so he is already beats her on that alone. You basically have to skip fighting Rulk if you use JG. Now Iceman has a better AoE than JG, for the same price no less and he also has a single target stun/nuke, AP drain and AP generation (or I should say tile generation). So the only thing she has over Iceman is special tile creation/destruction and a failry easy to avoid passive? So outside of getting "cascaded" to death she seems inferior every time.

    From my personal experience I have no real issues beating her Jeanbuster teams, at worst she does 1 AoE attack before dying, and even that's when the AI gets lucky. Rulk is super annoying to fight by comparison, as I never seem to kill him before he does his greenflag.png , sometimes a couple of times too because of his high health. And Iceman's does a lot more damage compared to JG, not to mention his spammable stun that slows down the game a lot more than JG passive and given enough AP almost oneshots a character.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Carpark wrote:
    There's no way JG should be this high, especially when her direct counter (Rulk) and a much better character (Iceman) are not directly behind her. All three share two colors and Iceman shares all colors. Let's think about this, Rulk has a cheaper purpleflag.png and he drains her greenflag.png , so he is already beats her on that alone. You basically have to skip fighting Rulk if you use JG. Now Iceman has a better AoE than JG, for the same price no less and he also has a single target stun/nuke, AP drain and AP generation (or I should say tile generation). So the only thing she has over Iceman is special tile creation/destruction and a failry easy to avoid passive? So outside of getting "cascaded" to death she seems inferior every time.

    From my personal experience I have no real issues beating her Jeanbuster teams, at worst she does 1 AoE attack before dying, and even that's when the AI gets lucky. Rulk is super annoying to fight by comparison, as I never seem to kill him before he does his greenflag.png , sometimes a couple of times too because of his high health. And Iceman's does a lot more damage compared to JG, not to mention his spammable stun that slows down the game a lot more than JG passive and given enough AP almost oneshots a character.
    I'd much rather fight Iceman than Jean Grey in PvP because I can usually kill him Before he gets any damaging moves off. Jean is also fairly fast to kill but that passive can really screw you over if you are unlucky and you need to play accordingly - that's where it's true value is, that it forces the opposition to play differently or suffer the consequences. Rulk is definitely the top dog for PvP purposes as you note, his high Health makes a lot of difference.
    Jean is very useful in PvE though with her ability to just wipe out countdowns, and Rulk is definitely less useful there. Iceman is also a great PvE guy though, so I am unsure who would get the top spot.
    In the end I Think it mostly has to do with exposure. Even if you haven't played the character yourself you have probably played against it, and the more you see it the better you may feel it is. Jean is all over PvP simply because more people have her fully leveled, ergo more people know what she can do. Rulk and Iceman may not be as well known.
  • TxMoose
    TxMoose Posts: 4,319 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think ice is a better character. more versatile. however, I find myself using jean more. ice is very limited unless you can get him to 12 green (to me). jean can still mess stuff up with 10 purple, which seems to be considerably easier to hit than 12 green (my experience, unless you run im40). also, against ice, you can run any accelerator out there with no worries. now that they're boosting 4/week, it will all come down to who is boosted. my rulk is still awaiting his 3rd red, but I know boosted ice and boosted jean are both nutso.

    also, jean is an easy character to play. no special order things have to be done in. gather ap. deal damage and some extra stuff. she is very AI friendly unlike ice or rulk. ice needs purple-green and double blue to be most effective. rulk needs extra ap that the AI never waits for. that ease of play is worth something too, even though somewhat less versatile/strong. also, since she has 2 aoes, she gets a bump in effectiveness when used with big strike tiles (i.e. hb).
    Sandwichboy wrote:
    What really surprises me is how even after IM40s buff he's still so low ranked (personally I'd put him at #1 for anyone in the 4* transition), and what the hell is Miles doing so far down?
    many voted (me included) before im40 changes hit. that's why he should get a big asterisk for this one. I'd rank him t5 in the 3* bunch and #1 for 4* transition too. While many have miles, yes. nobody has played with him because we're all still working our better 4*s up - hb/jean/ice/cyke/rulk/xpool/thing/x23/4thor/kp - all will come ahead of miles for most everyone. not to mention OML and the 5*s, for those lucky enough to get him usable. this is where the iso shortage hits the most. miles may very well be a great character - I'm very interested in nova too. unfortunately it will be months before I can even consider doing anything with them (miles, nova, venom, x23, gwen, etc.) other than getting them to my ddq level of 145.
  • stowaway
    stowaway Posts: 501 Critical Contributor
    Quebbster wrote:
    Jean is very useful in PvE though with her ability to just wipe out countdowns, and Rulk is definitely less useful there. Iceman is also a great PvE guy though, so I am unsure who would get the top spot.

    PvE is generally sidelined in these discussions, and a few weeks ago I would have said that Jean is the best 4* for PvE, and deserves a little inflation in the rankings because of it (like Steve Rogers in the 3* tier). IM40 changed that for me. Heck, Jean is buffed in the current PvE, and Iceman isn't, and I'm still using Ice ahead of her. 3 Recharges, collecting blue along the way, and it's stun-kill-stun, with 4 leisurely turns to figure out what to do next.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    stowaway wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    Jean is very useful in PvE though with her ability to just wipe out countdowns, and Rulk is definitely less useful there. Iceman is also a great PvE guy though, so I am unsure who would get the top spot.

    PvE is generally sidelined in these discussions, and a few weeks ago I would have said that Jean is the best 4* for PvE, and deserves a little inflation in the rankings because of it (like Steve Rogers in the 3* tier). IM40 changed that for me. Heck, Jean is buffed in the current PvE, and Iceman isn't, and I'm still using Ice ahead of her. 3 Recharges, collecting blue along the way, and it's stun-kill-stun, with 4 leisurely turns to figure out what to do next.
    I'm just using IM40 and the X-force twins. One Recharge and it's game over with them too.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    How do people feel about x-23 now that she has been out for a while?

    She is just outside the top 10 in these rankings, and characters in that range often go up a bit in their second ranking as more people get them covered.

    Her purple and green aren't great, so she is clearly behind rulk/ice/jg in the 4* tier. But she has passive true healing, which is always an incredibly strong power, and she does have decent damage potential. Does she belong slightly above 4* thor and kingpin? Just outside the top tier of 4*s?
  • Pylgrim
    Pylgrim Posts: 2,332 Chairperson of the Boards
    Quebbster wrote:
    stowaway wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    Jean is very useful in PvE though with her ability to just wipe out countdowns, and Rulk is definitely less useful there. Iceman is also a great PvE guy though, so I am unsure who would get the top spot.

    PvE is generally sidelined in these discussions, and a few weeks ago I would have said that Jean is the best 4* for PvE, and deserves a little inflation in the rankings because of it (like Steve Rogers in the 3* tier). IM40 changed that for me. Heck, Jean is buffed in the current PvE, and Iceman isn't, and I'm still using Ice ahead of her. 3 Recharges, collecting blue along the way, and it's stun-kill-stun, with 4 leisurely turns to figure out what to do next.
    I'm just using IM40 and the X-force twins. One Recharge and it's game over with them too.

    Uh? I'm not getting it. How's recharge useful with those two if it doesn't produce black and not that much purple?
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Pylgrim wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    stowaway wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    Jean is very useful in PvE though with her ability to just wipe out countdowns, and Rulk is definitely less useful there. Iceman is also a great PvE guy though, so I am unsure who would get the top spot.

    PvE is generally sidelined in these discussions, and a few weeks ago I would have said that Jean is the best 4* for PvE, and deserves a little inflation in the rankings because of it (like Steve Rogers in the 3* tier). IM40 changed that for me. Heck, Jean is buffed in the current PvE, and Iceman isn't, and I'm still using Ice ahead of her. 3 Recharges, collecting blue along the way, and it's stun-kill-stun, with 4 leisurely turns to figure out what to do next.
    I'm just using IM40 and the X-force twins. One Recharge and it's game over with them too.

    Uh? I'm not getting it. How's recharge useful with those two if it doesn't produce black and not that much purple?
    Out of Bullets. It does 15000 damage boosted, and Recharge makes it a lot easier to pull off.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    That's always been true Quebbster. My 5/5/1 im40 was a frequent partner for xpool pre-buff, but only in low value nodes. Im40 was too much of a liability otherwise.

    But post-nerf that's still true. Recharge is great for xpool's red, but that blue still sucks, and recharge doesn't help xfw's black at all. Doesn't seem like a great combo for difficult nodes to me.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx wrote:
    That's always been true Quebbster. My 5/5/1 im40 was a frequent partner for xpool pre-buff, but only in low value nodes. Im40 was too much of a liability otherwise.

    But post-nerf that's still true. Recharge is great for xpool's red, but that blue still sucks, and recharge doesn't help xfw's black at all. Doesn't seem like a great combo for difficult nodes to me.
    It works for me against level 300 Juggernaut/Ares combos, so I'm not going to complain. Game is usually over Before Iron Man unstuns himself, but if he happens to come back it's nice to have a blue outlet at least, not to mention that both Ballistic Salvo and X-force can help destroy Countdown for What? tiles...
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Quebbster wrote:
    Vhailorx wrote:
    That's always been true Quebbster. My 5/5/1 im40 was a frequent partner for xpool pre-buff, but only in low value nodes. Im40 was too much of a liability otherwise.

    But post-nerf that's still true. Recharge is great for xpool's red, but that blue still sucks, and recharge doesn't help xfw's black at all. Doesn't seem like a great combo for difficult nodes to me.
    It works for me against level 300 Juggernaut/Ares combos, so I'm not going to complain. Game is usually over Before Iron Man unstuns himself, but if he happens to come back it's nice to have a blue outlet at least, not to mention that both Ballistic Salvo and X-force can help destroy Countdown for What? tiles...

    I am not sure that events with boosted 4*s count. My champ xpool is doing 14.7k with his red, and almost 7k when his black does go off (hard getting someone to do enough damage to trigger it). 4* champs (and 5*s) break the current pve meta.
  • PeterGibbons316
    PeterGibbons316 Posts: 1,063
    Carpark wrote:
    There's no way JG should be this high, especially when her direct counter (Rulk) and a much better character (Iceman) are not directly behind her. All three share two colors and Iceman shares all colors. Let's think about this, Rulk has a cheaper purpleflag.png and he drains her greenflag.png , so he is already beats her on that alone. You basically have to skip fighting Rulk if you use JG. Now Iceman has a better AoE than JG, for the same price no less and he also has a single target stun/nuke, AP drain and AP generation (or I should say tile generation). So the only thing she has over Iceman is special tile creation/destruction and a failry easy to avoid passive? So outside of getting "cascaded" to death she seems inferior every time.

    From my personal experience I have no real issues beating her Jeanbuster teams, at worst she does 1 AoE attack before dying, and even that's when the AI gets lucky. Rulk is super annoying to fight by comparison, as I never seem to kill him before he does his greenflag.png , sometimes a couple of times too because of his high health. And Iceman's does a lot more damage compared to JG, not to mention his spammable stun that slows down the game a lot more than JG passive and given enough AP almost oneshots a character.
    I agree with you. I have IMHB, Rulk, Iceman, and JG all champed - IMHB/Rulk is usually my A-Team when none are boosted. With IceBuster getting the nod against OML teams. JeanBuster is just too slow in comparison, and I typically only use her as a counter to SW or IF teams. Her greatest strength lies in PvE and outside of winfinite she is the single best character for PvE IMO. So I get the high rating - best PvE character and a damn good PvP that the AI can't screw up on defense (unlike Rulk/Iceman who rarely get full damage from their green/blue attacks), but I would still put IMHB and Iceman both ahead of her.

    Also, I find Rulk works pretty well in PvE too. I run Hulk/Rulk/SWitch or Rulk/Thor/SWitch pretty often with success. I find nodes with 2 or 3 enemies pretty close to the 7k that you get from 18+ green to be pretty common making him the perfect speed for these.
  • jimstarooney
    jimstarooney Posts: 576 Critical Contributor
    Pylgrim wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    stowaway wrote:
    Quebbster wrote:
    Jean is very useful in PvE though with her ability to just wipe out countdowns, and Rulk is definitely less useful there. Iceman is also a great PvE guy though, so I am unsure who would get the top spot.

    PvE is generally sidelined in these discussions, and a few weeks ago I would have said that Jean is the best 4* for PvE, and deserves a little inflation in the rankings because of it (like Steve Rogers in the 3* tier). IM40 changed that for me. Heck, Jean is buffed in the current PvE, and Iceman isn't, and I'm still using Ice ahead of her. 3 Recharges, collecting blue along the way, and it's stun-kill-stun, with 4 leisurely turns to figure out what to do next.
    I'm just using IM40 and the X-force twins. One Recharge and it's game over with them too.

    Uh? I'm not getting it. How's recharge useful with those two if it doesn't produce black and not that much purple?
    1.it produces green
    2.xfdp pink is fairly low ap.
    1+2=hurty cascades
    3 it produces reds
    1+2+3= hurty cascades+hurty reds+heal
    You're welcome
  • rkd80
    rkd80 Posts: 376
    I too find these rankings to be odd at best and conflicting/contradictory with every other ranking done by the high end players.

    Thor4* and XF appear to be way too high. XF especially is very low tier and his usage is extremely limited in pvp/pve, even when boosted people opt for better choices. One can easily debate the top 5 and whether or not JG deserves the coveted top prize, but I am much more perplexed by the remainder of the list. Something just does not quite add up here.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    rkd80 wrote:
    I too find these rankings to be odd at best and conflicting/contradictory with every other ranking done by the high end players.

    Thor4* and XF appear to be way too high. XF especially is very low tier and his usage is extremely limited in pvp/pve, even when boosted people opt for better choices. One can easily debate the top 5 and whether or not JG deserves the coveted top prize, but I am much more perplexed by the remainder of the list. Something just does not quite add up here.

    I think age and nostalgia are two big factors complicating these rankings.

    People have more covers for older characters, so they are likely to rank them higher due to more experience. This is why JG and IMHB are favored relative to rulk/iceman/cyclops.

    And rankings are also very much a lagging indicator, so the effects of needs/buffs take ages to register and may never completely go away. This is why 4*thor and xfw are higher than they should be: they used to be the best team in the game by a vast margin and people have a hard time ignoring that nostalgic feel (and it also feeds #1, since lots of people bought them and this still use them frequently).
  • Tatercat
    Tatercat Posts: 930 Critical Contributor
    rkd80 wrote:
    I too find these rankings to be odd at best and conflicting/contradictory with every other ranking done by the high end players.

    Thor4* and XF appear to be way too high. XF especially is very low tier and his usage is extremely limited in pvp/pve, even when boosted people opt for better choices. One can easily debate the top 5 and whether or not JG deserves the coveted top prize, but I am much more perplexed by the remainder of the list. Something just does not quite add up here.

    They are two of the oldest 4*'s out there. More people have them fully covered and leveled than they do of ones that were released in the last 7 months, and so they rely on them more. And then vote accordingly. If you notice for Iceman, RULK, and Cyclops, there's more numbers in their No Opinion/Experience column. It takes forever to get get a 4* leveled to their true fighting shape, so a lot of people still haven't been able compare yet.

    And these polls are (by the nature of the necessary time needed to conduct them), out of step with the most recent changes, so that plays a factor too.
  • TxMoose
    TxMoose Posts: 4,319 Chairperson of the Boards
    personally I think after the im40 redo, 4thor will be climbing the rankings if more people take her out for a spin with stark. she's still very strong, but slow on her own. but no longer slow if you add im40 in the mix. she still needs a lot of ap to get going, but there's a very effective solution to that now.

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