**** Blade (Modern) ****

Landale

I championed Blade a week or two ago and he has been my go-to guy since.  His Bloodlust does just under 3k damage unbuffed, and his Green does a little over 2k to the enemy team + a 2k true heal to Blade when Bloodlust is on (saved me several health packs).  

His strike tiles when in Hunger mode are around 296 strength, which is great.  I like using him with IM40 to throw him into Bloodlust faster and get his Tools of the Trade faster as well.

It's not crazy damage without several of the strike tiles down, but it's nothing to sneeze at either.  One can't really argue with 2900+ damage every round to a random enemy for only 1 red AP.

hopper1979

One of my new go to pve teams is 4Blade/4Cage/Wasp super flexible, good damage and requires little to no health packs for a long time.  The only down side is deciding who gets to use yellow Wasp or Cage.  

Vhailorx

He is one of the few 4*s that can do meaningful damage even unboosted.  And 6k+ per turn when boosted is just awesome.

Still totally dependent on a red battery.  But one of the top 2 offensive 4*s when played with a battery (i think carol is the only 4* that comes close for pure single target offense but maybe i am forgetting someone)

Daredevil217

He's next on my champ list. Wondering who pairs well with him of my other champs:

Ant-Man (Scott Lang)
Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers)
Deadpool (Uncanny X-Force)
Iron Man (Hulkbuster)
Jean Grey (All New X-Men)
Miles Morales (Spider-Man)
Nova (Sam Alexander)
Peggy Carter (Captain America)
Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross)
Sam Wilson (Captain America)
Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw
The Hulk (Totally Awesome)
The Punisher (MAX)
Wasp (Janet Van Dyne)
Wolverine (X-Force)
X-23 (All New Wolverine)

Buster accelerates red but there's a lot of color overlap, and Peggy can buff strikes on a red heavy board with a Countdown maker (Ants/SL/DP) but not seeing too much synergy.

Edit: When Star-Lord has a countdown out does the Bloodlust become 0 AP???

Vhailorx

Daredevil217 said:

He's next on my champ list. Wondering who pairs well with him of my other champs:

Ant-Man (Scott Lang)
Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers)
Deadpool (Uncanny X-Force)
Iron Man (Hulkbuster)
Jean Grey (All New X-Men)
Miles Morales (Spider-Man)
Nova (Sam Alexander)
Peggy Carter (Captain America)
Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross)
Sam Wilson (Captain America)
Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw
The Hulk (Totally Awesome)
The Punisher (MAX)
Wasp (Janet Van Dyne)
Wolverine (X-Force)
X-23 (All New Wolverine)

Buster accelerates red but there's a lot of color overlap, and Peggy can buff strikes on a red heavy board with a Countdown maker (Ants/SL/DP) but not seeing too much synergy.

Edit: When Star-Lord has a countdown out does the Bloodlust become 0 AP???

He plays well with anyone who (1) can generate red, and (2) doesn't use red.  failing that, someone who can double dip in strikes is also a decent pairing.  So Carol and wasp are good pairs.  A 3/5/5 IMHB is probably the best pure red battery in 4* land, and Blade's black is ****, so it's a solid pairing.

And no, his red is a passive, so SL has no effect on it.  1ap per turn for 3k (or 6k boosted).

Vhailorx

I quite like the idea of passively generating red with each strike.  But his red is already so strong that it's hard to justify making it better.

All he really needs is a black rework.  I would flip the red conditional so that it generates red tiles if you don't have 7+ ap.  That makes his black a safery valve against a really bad board.  I might also drop the cost to 9.  That makes it too expensive to spam, but cheap enough to be a fallback source of red.

iron-n-wine

Just curious how people use Blade's red: do you avoid making red matches to get the strike tiles, or just go straight out for the red matches to get Bloodlust activating? and then keep prioritising red matches like Human Torches green to keep it rolling?

iron-n-wine

@mexus - ah yes the best of both worlds!

Rick_OShay

I generally let the board dictate whether I go for red or let them build up strikes. If there's a red match-4 to start, well I'm definitely prioritizing red for that match. If there's plenty of red scattered around safely, I like to get at least 3-4 strikes out before matching red.
It also depends greatly on your enemies. Many dark avengers do not match red (only Ares and Moonboobs do, and you rarely see Juggs/Sentry).  So against most enemies, it's safe to just let the red sit and build strikes. Even if red is low on the board, it is sure to slowly build as you match other colors. 
Essentially, if there's a tough red user on the enemy team, you had probably prioritize gathering red for yourself.

Jaedenkaal

Rick OShay said:

I generally let the board dictate whether I go for red or let them build up strikes. If there's a red match-4 to start, well I'm definitely prioritizing red for that match. If there's plenty of red scattered around safely, I like to get at least 3-4 strikes out before matching red.
It also depends greatly on your enemies. Many dark avengers do not match red (only Ares and Moonboobs do, and you rarely see Juggs/Sentry).  So against most enemies, it's safe to just let the red sit and build strikes. Even if red is low on the board, it is sure to slowly build as you match other colors. 
Essentially, if there's a tough red user on the enemy team, you had probably prioritize gathering red for yourself.

Definitely this, although I do hope to get a Strike or two out first, but clearly you can't just leave that match-4 lying around.

Once Bloodlust gets rolling I definitely try to keep it that way. Supernatural Sense is actually decent at that point for adding a few more Red to the board to either make another match, or keep the Red count high so you get some strike tiles once your Red AP drops below 7. Assuming you don't have anything else to spend Black on, of course.

Jaedenkaal

mexus said:

Rick OShay said:

I generally let the board dictate whether I go for red or let them build up strikes.

I totally for a moment thought you meant the "board" as this discussion board.

We really need that LOL button RIGHT NOW. I lol'd

Elric_VIII

I'm getting him to a playable level now and I really wish his black wasn't 90% garbage. It either needs to cost less AP or do something better when you meet its bonus criteria. He's really great, but he essentially has an active green and a semi-active red with a black you use if you have no other choice.

Anon

Using Blade with 4Clops is really fun. Scott generates Red without matching red so Blade can put down strikes. When Bloodlust starts pumping you can easily continue feeding him red ap. Once there's one enemy left, just use Scott's red to clean up. Actives on 5 colors as well. Great synergy.

Tiger_Wong

I don't get the complaints about Blade's black. I mean..... do you want it to cook your dinner too?

its mostly just for him. It's great in longer battles if you only get 9-10 red and you only get 2 bloodlusts off. Or you exhaust most of the red on the field, and you're stuck on 7-8 Red AP and no way to either get another match or get a strike tile on the field. 

I like it. It's just not OP. It's far from "90% worthless". 

Jaedenkaal

Tiger Wong said:

I don't get the complaints about Blade's black. I mean..... do you want it to cook your dinner too?

its mostly just for him. It's great in longer battles if you only get 9-10 red and you only get 2 bloodlusts off. Or you exhaust most of the red on the field, and you're stuck on 7-8 Red AP and no way to either get another match or get a strike tile on the field. 

I like it. It's just not OP. It's far from "90% worthless". 

This has been my experience as well.

jgomes32

Can be useful, just rarely is.

DrDevilDinosaur

Black absolutely needs another look. Fisk's Purple, at a cost of 8 ap, does

rank3: destroy up to 5 enemy strongest, generate 5 yellow

rank4: destroy 6, generate 5

rank5: destroy 6, generate 8

Very straight forward, nothing is conditional.

Blade's Black is a cost of 11 AP to destroy 4 AP, if you already have 7 red AP it will generate 4/5/6 red tiles. More expensive, less ap destruction, no guaranteed ap gain.

I think it could probably benefit from just being given the clause "this ability costs 1 ap less for each enemy special tile on the board, for a maximum of 5 tiles". This is probably everybody's 2nd least favourite clause (after "ends the turn") but I think it fits the flavour of the ability. At most, the ability is getting reduced to 6 - but it doesn't clear enemy tiles away, so you've still got to deal with whatever they have on the board - so it could be used to try and accelerate Blade's Red in the hopes of finishing the fight sooner rather than clearing off those enemy tiles.

Skrofa

The only thing I would change about his black is sort of invert the condition for creating red tiles.
As it stands, you need to have red AP to generate red tiles. What if the clause was "if below number of red AP, generate number of red tiles"?
I feel that this might be a bit more useful...

Tiger_Wong

It's fine. Why do you guys want it to be OP so badly?

Elric_VIII

Tiger Wong said:

It's fine. Why do you guys want it to be OP so badly?

Because in 4* land 11 AP (4 matches, even if you get a match 4 in there) should have impact. I want to see something comparable to Overdrive.

But realistically, I think a cost reduction to 8-ish would make it just right. I see this skill as closest to a combination between She Hulk's Furious Charge and 3*IF's Iron Fist of K'un-Lun. Hulk's is the less powerful of the two skills, obviously, but I don't think adding AP drain to IF's skill is worth another 6 AP, especially because the AP creation is conditional on you already having ap of that color.


Another possibility would be to make it an AP generation skill with the drain as the conditional part to at least make it a counter to a bad board.  

EDIT: Actually, just thinking about this, there are a lot of parallels between IMHB and Blade. Making it an AP battery that turns black into red would be directly comparable to IMHB. They wouldn't even compete with each other since Blade is a sustained damage dealer and IMHB is a burst damage dealer. This skill could even be like Hulkproof with conditional AP drain instead of protect tiles.