Poll: Rank the 5*

Polares

jobob wrote:

Polares, I played more with Bolt/IM/Phx... and it is more powerful, less consistent. If you can get purple/blue early... look out, it goes quickly. If Bolt is charging other colors, you can run into problems. With GG, you don't have the auto-murder-ness that comes with a pink/blue board, but you have more options. Either team is great though.

Yeah GG purple is so convenient, even though I guess most of the time you will use red. Maybe PH+Spidey+BB might be also a very good team for BB (even though there is no black active, and just BB yellow active -> I guess it can be used with Spidey).

And I also agree that championing levels have changed a bit how you can construct your team. Before champions, with everybody capped at the same max level, it was much easier to know how good a char was when you started to play with him at his max level. Now everything is relative, someone can be very good, but if you already have 30 extra champion levels from someone else it might be better to use that someone else. But look the bright side, when you finally get everybody to 550 like KDN then it will be much easier

OneLastGambit

Personally whenever I use GG purple I always pick purple first. The steal pretty much ensures you win the match barring an ai super cascade

Polares

OneLastGambit wrote:

Personally whenever I use GG purple I always pick purple first. The steal pretty much ensures you win the match barring an ai super cascade

Purple is very good, specially if your GG is not champed, but when GG is champed, this 3 * (10k dmg + strikes tiles) is so good it is really hard to pass. This can easily kill a 5, and it can do damage to more than one target.

I guess it depends a bit about how fast you can get the 10 purple AP, and which AP has the AI gathered. Thing is, even though most of the time red might be the best option, you can still decide if purple, blue or any of the other colors might be more useful in your current situation (even yellow - shields might be useful because maybe the AI has a lot of strike tiles on the board and you need more time to launch your other attacks, so who knows), it is great having the option to chose.

jobob

Polares wrote:

I guess it depends a bit about how fast you can get the 10 purple AP, and which AP has the AI gathered.

This... I would say I use red most frequently, but if I get the AP early on (especially before the AI uses a power), I will typically go purple (sometimes have to wait a couple turns though if you get it too fast). Stealing 27 AP early tends to cement a victory... the opponent can't recover and you can usually fire multiple powers. Unless you are running a very monochromatic team, in which case you may just be getting a lot of useless AP.

Tile placement also dictates it somewhat... you don't want those babies getting matched away the first turn. Black is the toughest for me to use, because it requires 6 black on the board (3 for CD, 3 for strikes) but not close enough to match.

FaustianDeal

Its telling that 2 of the characters ranked highest in this poll are among the original 3 released. I think the mistake being made here is that people are mistaking commonality for power.

I have 10 covers on Surfer (drew a 11th I couldn't use)
I have 12 covers on Phoenix (drew a 13th & 14th I couldn't use)
My next best covered 5*s have 7 or 8

Meanwhile I have collected 20 covers for OML - and all were usable.

Why do I run OML every match? 2 reasons:
1 - He is the best covered 5* I have.
2 - MMR and Scaling demand that I do.

I get matched against champed 5s because I have one. If I don't run him I'm not even in the match most fights. Not because he is overpowered, but because he is the only thing I have in that weight class.

I'm not alone here.

FaustianDeal

There are awkward truths in 5* land.
* The only cover(s) that dramatically increase a 5*'s power is the first in the color. The rest are much smaller bumps.
* Power comes from levels. Covers only indirectly confer power because they let you add levels.
* Older characters are going to be bigger because of their age. Age allows for more draw opportunity.

There is a widely held conception that OML/Phoenix are the strongest 5*s in the game. Not necessarily true. They are just the oldest. I've pulled hundreds of classic legends by now. The only person who has been in the classics longer than OML is Surfer. I've drawn hundreds of tokens with OML in them. I have drawn fewer than a dozen with Black Widow. My widow isn't going to compete with my OML soon. Because of token odds and other factors OML may already have an insurmountable lead over Widow that she won't easily overcome until she has a few champ levels added to her; not necessarily because she is a weaker character, she's just under-leveled.

The economics of legendary tokens will likely drive most people to draw classic tokens. Which means every draw you pull has an equal chance of either:
- finally giving you the your first purple Goblin cover, or
- extending the cover lead OML already has on your goblin (and IM46, BB, Hulk, etc.)
There is no chance of a classic helping my Widow she isn't in classics. OML will continue to build his lead on Widow. So we have to switch gears to compare a more recently added 5* that is now in classic tokens. I mentioned my Goblin just now; let's let him pick up the baton...

My dilemma is simple. Let's continue this example:
OML is 457 for me
Goblin only has 7 covers
By the time I get to 13 covers on Goblin (+6 covers) My OML will also likely be +6 levels (because: 'odds'). So best case I will be picking between a 466 OML and a 450 goblin on that day. OML will still have more health, and better match damage - so does me continuing to choose OML (with a dozen cover advantage) still make him overpowered? Or does it just make him more powerful because he is better covered or higher level?

Until other 5*s are adequately covered to allow people to have options they will continue to run what they have.

OML being better than Surfer doesn't make him OP; it just makes him better than surfer.

Polares

FaustianDeal wrote:

The economics of legendary tokens will likely drive most people to draw classic tokens. Which means every draw you pull has an equal chance of either:
- finally giving you the your first purple Goblin cover, or
- extending the cover lead OML already has on your goblin (and IM46, BB, Hulk, etc.)
There is no chance of a classic helping my Widow she isn't in classics. OML will continue to build his lead on Widow. So we have to switch gears to compare a more recently added 5* that is now in classic tokens. I mentioned my Goblin just now; let's let him pick up the baton...

My dilemma is simple. Let's continue this example:
OML is 457 for me
Goblin only has 7 covers
By the time I get to 13 covers on Goblin (+6 covers) My OML will also likely be +6 levels (because: 'odds'). So best case I will be picking between a 466 OML and a 450 goblin on that day. OML will still have more health, and better match damage - so does me continuing to choose OML (with a dozen cover advantage) still make him overpowered? Or does it just make him more powerful because he is better covered or higher level?
.

I agree this is a big problem we will face until CL10 or something else adds some other way of winning 5s. If we win covers with a normal distribution SS, OML and PH will always have more covers than the rest. So most people will continue using those even when they finally max other 5s just because they have more covers.

It also doesn't help that OML+PH play great together, so you might get GG to the same level than those if you start pulling covers form him but at the same level a PH+OML team is probably stronger than a GG+OML or GG+PH. Spidey is a bit different, specially Spidey+PH can work, and with so many strike tile creators I expect to see him a lot when people finally maxs him just for his purple (and it is very easy to see now in Sim as the third wheel of the OML+PH team).

Don't think the SS buff is going to change nothing in the short run, maybe more IM+Spidey+SS will appear in Sim, but I don't expect to see him more than now in PvP (even though PH+SS is probably a valid team now).