Worst solo 5*? (Phoenix?)

throvolos

Of course, I have more covers of her (7) than any other 5*, so it aggravates me that she is so useless. I have 2 /1 /4

Her red power just plain stinks. It puts Strike tiles on the board that are just plain weak, and the Attack tiles it gives the other team are way too strong.
Her green revive power can often be matched away.
Her purple power doesn't put enough red on the board.

By herself, she's essentially useless, especially at level 270. Really don't understand why she's a 5*. I've looked at people who have her Championed and by herself she still doesn't seem that viable.

My friend has 7 covers of OML and is wrecking face.

Anyone else feel the same way?

amusingfoo1

Saying she isn't as strong as the best character in the game isn't exactly a huge indictment. Anyway, she needs more levels and, even more, more purple covers. She's quite strong when she gets them.

Jarvind

throvolos wrote:

My friend has 7 covers of OML and is wrecking face.

Regarding the above: OML is fairly unique in that he's potentially very usable with 5-6 covers, depending on how they fall. The other 5*s generally need more before they start melting faces.

Vhailorx

There are more than a few vets/whales who think Phoenix is the best 5* in the game (though opinions are pretty fractured up there. I think only a handful of people have all the 5*s, and many others are, like everyone else, heavily influenced by their own roster bias).

In any event Tc: your Phoenix is weak because you only have 1 purple cover. Phoenix is unusually dependent upon that power. And that power really needs 4+ covers to become great. Without 6 or 7 tiles transformed, she just doesnt cause enough cascades. Her green is situational at best, and her red is good, but aggressively self limiting UNLESS you can get match 5s. So purple is the engine that makes her work.

GrumpySmurf1002

You can't really judge the 5* characters on limited covers, especially when you're limited in key covers.

A 7 cover OML build 0/2/5 is considerably weaker than one built 2/4/1, etc...

Mitchjewitz

Use her with switch. Switch will get you the match 5s that will strengthen friendly tiles and weaken enemy tiles. Or use antman to steal the attack tiles.

wymtime

There is a reason people play OML with Phoenix and that is because you want to take them both down last. Her purple to red can be quite Nasty. If you look at some of the other 5* like BSSM, IM, Cap they can also take a while to get going.

Here is another character people thought was worse then hey really were. Gamora. When she came out people thought her black was poor. Once she was paired with IF and in position to tank she was awsome. It is a different tier but once you leveled Gamora and had her covered you realized how good she really was.

Vhailorx

wymtime wrote:

There is a reason people play OML with Phoenix and that is because you want to take them both down last. Her purple to red can be quite Nasty. If you look at some of the other 5* like BSSM, IM, Cap they can also take a while to get going.

Here is another character people thought was worse then hey really were. Gamora. When she came out people thought her black was poor. Once she was paired with IF and in position to tank she was awsome. It is a different tier but once you leveled Gamora and had her covered you realized how good she really was.

I think that's a poor example. Gamora is just what people though when she came out: middle tier And a solid b-team centerpiece. She has to tank for her black to work, but she can't survive very long when tanking. And he black rarely adds more than 1k in strikes. It should be stronger or cost a lot less. I bet you could fins comments to that effect in December 2015. The community was spot on with her.

I think 4*cyclops and rulk are better examples of characters that played much better than they looked on paper, the community was cool on both when announced. But they were clearly very strong once in the wild.

wymtime

Vhailorx wrote:

wymtime wrote:

There is a reason people play OML with Phoenix and that is because you want to take them both down last. Her purple to red can be quite Nasty. If you look at some of the other 5* like BSSM, IM, Cap they can also take a while to get going.

Here is another character people thought was worse then hey really were. Gamora. When she came out people thought her black was poor. Once she was paired with IF and in position to tank she was awsome. It is a different tier but once you leveled Gamora and had her covered you realized how good she really was.

I think that's a poor example. Gamora is just what people though when she came out: middle tier And a solid b-team centerpiece. She has to tank for her black to work, but she can't survive very long when tanking. And he black rarely adds more than 1k in strikes. It should be stronger or cost a lot less. I bet you could fins comments to that effect in December 2015. The community was spot on with her.

I think 4*cyclops and rulk are better examples of characters that played much better than they looked on paper, the community was cool on both when announced. But they were clearly very strong once in the wild.

Maybe you are right, but when the game centered around 3* I personally thought Gamora was going to be bad. I had gotten 13 covers and her PVP came up and I decided to max her. Once she was maxed and leveled the right way I felt she was fairly good. The OP is saying Phoenix is the worst 5* when the reality is she needs the right covers and the right team and she is amazing.

OneLastGambit

Much as I love cap his 5* variant is possibly the weakest in the tier.

He does have uses and he can be great but it requires using some team mates which will die very quickly in a 5* fight. Alone he struggles a lot, so does im46

An argument could be made that BW is the weakest of all since her best uses rely on the AI playing smart against you, which it never does.

But Phoenix? No she's actually solid on her own and that's coming from someone who isn't a fan of her

HxiiiK

OneLastGambit wrote:

Much as I love cap his 5* variant is possibly the weakest in the tier.

He does have uses and he can be great but it requires using some team mates which will die very quickly in a 5* fight. Alone he struggles a lot, so does im46

An argument could be made that BW is the weakest of all since her best uses rely on the AI playing smart against you, which it never does.

But Phoenix? No she's actually solid on her own and that's coming from someone who isn't a fan of her

IM46 may struggle alone with his red power, which isn't too strong without any team ironman people on his team, but his blue is a solid self-fuelling ability and with yellow to negate high damaging powers, he's pretty good as a standalone

Polares

Vhailorx wrote:

wymtime wrote:

There is a reason people play OML with Phoenix and that is because you want to take them both down last. Her purple to red can be quite Nasty. If you look at some of the other 5* like BSSM, IM, Cap they can also take a while to get going.

Here is another character people thought was worse then hey really were. Gamora. When she came out people thought her black was poor. Once she was paired with IF and in position to tank she was awsome. It is a different tier but once you leveled Gamora and had her covered you realized how good she really was.

I think that's a poor example. Gamora is just what people though when she came out: middle tier And a solid b-team centerpiece. She has to tank for her black to work, but she can't survive very long when tanking. And he black rarely adds more than 1k in strikes. It should be stronger or cost a lot less. I bet you could fins comments to that effect in December 2015. The community was spot on with her.

I think 4*cyclops and rulk are better examples of characters that played much better than they looked on paper, the community was cool on both when announced. But they were clearly very strong once in the wild.

Yeah I think most of us misjudged PH and also Spidey when they were annunced. Now those two are maybe two of the strongest 5s of all, and there is a big parallelism with Rhulk and Cyclops.

PH is one of the best 5s, her purple is super good, it lets you fire red a lot, because it also recycles a lot your own strikes so you never meet the 5 special tiles restriction. And then green helps you keep playing with her without the need to use health packs (specially in PvE, in PvP is a bit more dangerous).

The only problem of PH is that she really needs 5 in purple, THIS IS A MUST, so if you get the covers as me that I had a 5/1/5 PH for a long time she is useless (this is why I champed her straight away when I got the final 5/3/5 cover, so I could respec to 3/5/5). But when correctly coverd, she is super great!

Orangecrush

Your pheonix feels weak because she is level 270, not because of the covers. 5* characters scale with levels much more than with covers. Max her out and you'll change your mind about her. She is a much better offensive character than OML.

Vhailorx

Orangecrush wrote:

Your pheonix feels weak because she is level 270, not because of the covers. 5* characters scale with levels much more than with covers. Max her out and you'll change your mind about her. She is a much better offensive character than OML.

This is true, especially with damage numbers. the power curve on 5*s is very exponential. 255-->355 matters a whole lot less than 400-->450.

But phoenix is also unusual in that he most important ability is the tile shifting aspect of her purple. and that power scales with covers, not levels. As a result phoenix really does need an x/5/x build to be at her best.

Chrono_Tata

For some reason, the game has decided to give me 18 Phoenix drops, so after the SHIELD rank ISO windfall, I decided to champ her. Note that none of my other 5-star are even levelled.

Ignoring the fact that this seems to have put my MMR to matching me with other 5-star teams all the time, she's actually stupidly good on offence. Paired with another red accelerator like Hulkbuster, she's really fast. Also, she saves you a ton of health pack as you almost never need to heal her. When she is low on health, just let her die and activate her resurrection.

I think her biggest downside though is not being very dangerous on defence. She's a relatively squishy character if you don't take into account her "bonus" health from resurrection, but anyone who fights against her on defence knows to kill her last so she doesn't get to use it.

Quebbster

Chrono_Tata wrote:

For some reason, the game has decided to give me 18 Phoenix drops, so after the SHIELD rank ISO windfall, I decided to champ her. Note that none of my other 5-star are even levelled.

Ignoring the fact that this seems to have put my MMR to matching me with other 5-star teams all the time, she's actually stupidly good on offence. Paired with another red accelerator like Hulkbuster, she's really fast. Also, she saves you a ton of health pack as you almost never need to heal her. When she is low on health, just let her die and activate her resurrection.

I think her biggest downside though is not being very dangerous on defence. She's a relatively squishy character if you don't take into account her "bonus" health from resurrection, but anyone who fights against her on defence knows to kill her last so she doesn't get to use it.

Phoenix is more dangerous than OML on defense. Cascades from her purple can wreck anyone and her green means you need to kill her last.

Ludaa

When you have zero 5's, you want OML. Once you have him, you realize Phoenix is the one to be scared of. She's a powder keg waiting to blow, and must be killed last.

Cousin Simpson

Vhailorx wrote:

As a result phoenix really does need an x/5/x build to be at her best.

*Looks at his 5/0/4 Phoenix*

*cries*

CCW1208

I have 1/5/4 lv 359 pheonix, 2/3/2 Lv 360 OML and some champion 4 star. I really want to say that phenoix is really powerful. In the CW3 pve several days before, I could not pass the final wave node of mile moralis. The level was around 346. I dont have feature champion 4 star. So it was really difficult to do the wave fight. Finally, I used phenoix+Scarlet+ MM(3/0/4, origin LV 111) damage boost, critical boost. The phenoix did not use her green power . My phenoix has done more than 100k damage in the wave node.

Chrono_Tata

Quebbster wrote:

Chrono_Tata wrote:

For some reason, the game has decided to give me 18 Phoenix drops, so after the SHIELD rank ISO windfall, I decided to champ her. Note that none of my other 5-star are even levelled.

Ignoring the fact that this seems to have put my MMR to matching me with other 5-star teams all the time, she's actually stupidly good on offence. Paired with another red accelerator like Hulkbuster, she's really fast. Also, she saves you a ton of health pack as you almost never need to heal her. When she is low on health, just let her die and activate her resurrection.

I think her biggest downside though is not being very dangerous on defence. She's a relatively squishy character if you don't take into account her "bonus" health from resurrection, but anyone who fights against her on defence knows to kill her last so she doesn't get to use it.

Phoenix is more dangerous than OML on defense. Cascades from her purple can wreck anyone and her green means you need to kill her last.

I dunno but personally I've been killed a lot more often by a stray OML managing to go into berserker mode than a cascading Phoenix. And once OML gets a few strike tiles out, even without berserker mode, his cascades are also pretty dangerous.

Quebbster

Chrono_Tata wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

Chrono_Tata wrote:

For some reason, the game has decided to give me 18 Phoenix drops, so after the SHIELD rank ISO windfall, I decided to champ her. Note that none of my other 5-star are even levelled.

Ignoring the fact that this seems to have put my MMR to matching me with other 5-star teams all the time, she's actually stupidly good on offence. Paired with another red accelerator like Hulkbuster, she's really fast. Also, she saves you a ton of health pack as you almost never need to heal her. When she is low on health, just let her die and activate her resurrection.

I think her biggest downside though is not being very dangerous on defence. She's a relatively squishy character if you don't take into account her "bonus" health from resurrection, but anyone who fights against her on defence knows to kill her last so she doesn't get to use it.

Phoenix is more dangerous than OML on defense. Cascades from her purple can wreck anyone and her green means you need to kill her last.

I dunno but personally I've been killed a lot more often by a stray OML managing to go into berserker mode than a cascading Phoenix. And once OML gets a few strike tiles out, even without berserker mode, his cascades are also pretty dangerous.

Have you played against both an equal amount? Have they both been high level?
Aside from the fact that OML is a lot more common in PvP in general (and at lower levels), Phoenix doesn't start to really shine until the higher levels when match damage is starting to go truly insane. Also, OML is relatively easy to manage by denying him black (or failing that, yellow so he at least doesn't pop his claws). It's a lot harder to stop Phoenix from getting 8 Purple AP, and once the Cascade machine gets going things can really go South.
As I saw someone mention here: Most fights against Phoenix work out just fine. But when things go wrong they tend to do so catastrophically. There's very Little margin for error.