Character rankings 3/2014 edition: the results!

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

6-10: The best of the rest

6. Black Widow (original): +9, SD 3.75 by Celerity

Let's imagine you took any one of her powers and gave it to Bullseye (ignore color overlap and thematic appropriateness for the moment), who's easily the worst 2* in the game and one of the worst characters overall.

Sorry to be "that guy", but you've contradicted yourself here. According to your own ranking (and most people would agree) Bag-Man is surely the worst 2* in the game... Please don't let that detract from what a great write-up this is though!

mischiefmaker

Oh ha! You are of course correct, Bag Man is the worst 2* in the game. I totally forgot he existed!

I suppose what I meant was, "Bullseye is the worst 2* in the game (that you might ever actually consider using for anything other than tanking)". I think my point is still valid, though.

Unknown

Bags is a 1*, hell only his tile strengths and hp are affected by his 2* status.

So actually for most people he is worse than a 1*.

Let Bullseye keep his 'worst 2*' designation. It's all he will ever get from us

Thanos

Quick clarification , classic mags red ability only destroys basic tiles so its very safe to use when you have your own special tiles out.

Unknown

Bag-Man is the one and only 0* character.

Unknown

Bag-Man is the BEST 2 star character! When he's on the opposing team

over_clocked

^ Well he does prevent you from using your own Spidey when on enemy PvE team, I'd say pretty OP.

Unknown

I think these rankings are crafted with the thinking that any character in the game is available. While I have no problem with that as a presupposition, the truth is that most people are playing with 1*'s and 2*'s (and thus AGAINST 1*'s and 2*'s in PVP)...and I think that shifts things around a bit. Thoughts:

OBW's best build seems really dependent on who you run her with. I usually have her paired with 2*Wolverine, and having her at 2/5/5 seems perfect; I'm pretty much guaranteed to get 2 3AP Recon casts out of 4 purple matches, whereas 3/5/5 would mean likely 5 matches for same. There's no good active Black skills in the 1*-2* range (mStorm's is okay, I suppose), so I haven't bothered to use her third cover. Think you need a leveled Punisher or Black Panther before 3 is worth it. There's absolutely no reason to go 5P at this level as Espionage is too good.

Daken is ridiculous at the 2* level, as he counters the two most common 2* heroes, Thor and Wolverine. My defensive team is frequently Thor/Daken/X, and gets more wins then I'd expect.

MHawkeye is better than advertised. For PvE missions that lock out OBW, I use him to cover purple/blue (sometimes Daken for purple/black), and find that I frequently save the day with him when my primary character gets cascaded.

Unknown

What you said about the black abilities is very true. When I was a 2* player I felt stealing black was kinda pointless.

Now that I'm transitioning to a 3* roster, where I see Punisher or Panther a lot more (mostly Punisher at the moment, but that could change eventually), the ability to deny black becomes a lot better.

mischiefmaker

Alarron wrote:

I think these rankings are crafted with the thinking that any character in the game is available. While I have no problem with that as a presupposition, the truth is that most people are playing with 1*'s and 2*'s (and thus AGAINST 1*'s and 2*'s in PVP)...and I think that shifts things around a bit. Thoughts:

OBW's best build seems really dependent on who you run her with. I usually have her paired with 2*Wolverine, and having her at 2/5/5 seems perfect; I'm pretty much guaranteed to get 2 3AP Recon casts out of 4 purple matches, whereas 3/5/5 would mean likely 5 matches for same. There's no good active Black skills in the 1*-2* range (mStorm's is okay, I suppose), so I haven't bothered to use her third cover. Think you need a leveled Punisher or Black Panther before 3 is worth it. There's absolutely no reason to go 5P at this level as Espionage is too good.

Daken is ridiculous at the 2* level, as he counters the two most common 2* heroes, Thor and Wolverine. My defensive team is frequently Thor/Daken/X, and gets more wins then I'd expect.

MHawkeye is better than advertised. For PvE missions that lock out OBW, I use him to cover purple/blue (sometimes Daken for purple/black), and find that I frequently save the day with him when my primary character gets cascaded.

Actually, I don't give any guidance to the voters -- I just ask them to rank the characters, and people can weigh them however they like and/or make whatever assumptions about which characters are available. It is true though that many of the voters do have most if not all of the characters at max covers and/or max levels, which tends to shift the rankings towards the perspective of having all characters available. That seems like the most broadly useful long-term perspective anyway; I've seen a few people planning their future rosters by ignoring the lower-ranked characters.

I do love getting fresh perspective from people at different stages of the game though! Some thoughts in reply:

- I'm not convinced that OBW is better at 2/5/5. For PvP against people in your own tier, sure, maybe. But as a wise coach once said, don't gameplan to beat bad teams; gameplan to beat good teams. By which I mean, eventually you're going to need to compete against higher-level teams, right? Black isn't the wasteland it once was -- there's Doom (who's a fixture in lightning rounds), Punisher (lots of him in PvP), Black Panther (not so much yet, but he's new) and Psylocke (same). Also, don't forget that there's a lot of Venom in PvE, and he's a great target for Recon because his black does so much damage and is so expensive.

- Agree that Daken is very good at the 2* level. Not sure he counters Wolverine all that well, for two reasons: 1, Wolvie's much more of a direct damage guy now since his strike tiles are so weak, so stopping him from placing his strike tiles isn't quite as good as it once was, and 2, Wolvie still heals, albeit gimpily, so having a direct damage power you can use to finish him off once he gets in healing range is fairly important. I also don't see how he counters Thor at all, who has the big direct damage powers you want to chop through Daken's regeneration. Finally, same point about Daken as 2/5/5 OBW -- he's good for the niche of "2* roster playing against 2* roster" but he doesn't stack up well against, or help you transition to, 3*.

- I do think Mawkeye is a touch underrated, but his variance is so high because so much of his utility is tied up in fragile countdown tiles.

Arogntbastrd

Also, as previously stated, if you just let opponent get first purple match 8 purple only requires 2 matches so 255 isn't necessarily faster. For me 355 is that safe warm happy zone. It's in most cases the same speed as 255 but you take black and you get more hp but to each their own

ChrisV82

I first wanted to say thank you for putting together this list. I relied on the prior list quite a bit in determining which covers to build with and which to sell.

I am confused about OBW, though. Perhaps this question is better suited to the OBW thread, but I'm not sure what you mean by the fact she double dips with strike tiles. Does she steal more AP of colors which display strike tiles? What am I missing?

Also, I understand the idea of going 3/5/5 on her, but when you have L5 purple, you end up stealing back purple, thus allowing you to get off another steal sooner, and at L5, the steals are pretty devastating to the opponent and greatly beneficial to your team.

Arogntbastrd

ChrisV82 wrote:

I first wanted to say thank you for putting together this list. I relied on the prior list quite a bit in determining which covers to build with and which to sell.

I am confused about OBW, though. Perhaps this question is better suited to the OBW thread, but I'm not sure what you mean by the fact she double dips with strike tiles. Does she steal more AP of colors which display strike tiles? What am I missing?

Also, I understand the idea of going 3/5/5 on her, but when you have L5 purple, you end up stealing back purple, thus allowing you to get off another steal sooner, and at L5, the steals are pretty devastating to the opponent and greatly beneficial to your team.

Strike tiles do their damage on top of any other damage, so when espionage hits an extra time the strike tiles also hit an extra time. They also add to attack tile damage for example

as far as 3 vs 5, stealing the purple is obviously great. It has the downfall though that it can be inefficient bc the opponent won't have 5 ap of every color. Even at 3 i find myself holding it until the opponent gets a color I actually want. If your play style fits 5 better then cool, most people prefer speed though. Stop the other guys before they can get started

Unknown

^ Agreed, I feel speed is key for OBW. That and the fact that it costs 11ap to steal 4 purple isn't really good if, say, the enemy doesn't have much purple anyway or she gets blown up before she can even execute her aggressive recon.

Loving the results, am happy I was not wrong about Ares when I first saw him

Ronfar

mischiefmaker wrote:

By the way, those who are wishing for a 3* Gold mStorm should be careful what you wish for. If you thought Ragnarok Thunderclapping everything into oblivion or facing endless cookie-cutter Thorverine teams was bad for the game, wait until you see what having a bunch of 3.5k health Storms would do.

Agreed, 3 star gold mStorm is obviously a horrible idea. She needs to be a 4 star character!

Unknown

Great list and great post! I really enjoyed reading this!

vudu3

I have a random character question that probably doesn't deserve its own thread, so I'm going to ask it here--hope no one minds.

I keep reading comments on this board of people asking for third abilities for characters like Daken and Dr. Doom. I'm just wondering if there's any precedent for this--has it ever happened before? I only started playing in January so I'm not very familiar with any character changes that took place before then.

Unknown

vudu3 wrote:

I have a random character question that probably doesn't deserve its own thread, so I'm going to ask it here--hope no one minds.

I keep reading comments on this board of people asking for third abilities for characters like Daken and Dr. Doom. I'm just wondering if there's any precedent for this--has it ever happened before? I only started playing in January so I'm not very familiar with any character changes that took place before then.

OBW was introduced with 2 abilities but a 3rd was announced at the same time the character was, it just hadn't been implemented yet.

After Rags was made more fun IceIX made a comment about eventually adding a 3rd power for him to make him more viable going forward.

jojeda654

vudu3 wrote:

I keep reading comments on this board of people asking for third abilities for characters like Daken and Dr. Doom. I'm just wondering if there's any precedent for this--has it ever happened before?

Many, and it looks like they were all done at the same time. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=118&p=495

vudu3

Those patch notes are crazy!

No daily rewards
20 level for abilities
You could upgrade abilities for 1* heroes with Iso
Magneto without Magnetic Translocation

It's like we're not even playing the same game now!