5* Steve Rogers: Why He Needs Fixing & How to Fix Him

jobob

I've had 5* Cap champed since the second run of the Civil War. I also have all of the ohter 5*s champed. And poor Cap is, IMO, at the bottom of the pile. I put him even with or slightly below Silver Surfer (at least SS accelerates with charged tiles, has true healing, and is the only un-stunnable playable character). At the very least, Cap is the most disappointed character, as SS's place at the bottom can be somewhat forgiven due to him being D3's first try at a 5* character.

He is especially poorly equipped when compared to his release counterpart, 5* Iron Man, who is an excellent character. On paper, I thought he looked pretty good, but after playing with him... I just haven't found a way to make him effective.



Cap's problems stem from two sources: First and foremost his powers; Second, and to a much lesser extent, and his "Team Cap" roster.

First, the abilities. The major problem with Cap isn't that just one ability needs a tweak... all 3 are subpar and have core problems that need to be addressed. They also don't effectively feed one another.



THE PROBLEM WITH:
YELLOW:
First off, it's expensive at 13 AP, which isn't necessarily a problem itself, but it's on the high end. It also ends the turn, which is another turn you are prevented from getting AP. Furthermore, it's a countdown as opposed to an instant ability, so you don't even get the benefit of the attack tiles or damage that turn. The stun is essentially worthless at 1 cover even in 1 v 1, since you effectively "lose" a turn to gain 1 back, and due to the CD tiles, your attack tiles aren't even out to get in a free hit. Furthermore, these tiles are removed if you want to use his blue. Even worse, they only power his blue up to 50%- if you are planning to go that route, you need 26 yellow AP and lose 2 turns just to fire the blue at max power. By contrast, IM blue does a good job of doing damage, board shake, AND accelerating his red power.

RED:
The damage itself is subpar. 9729 for 9 AP (1081/AP) is actually lower on a per AP basis than the much-lamented SS output at 8178 for 7 AP (1171/AP). And while Cap can make up to 2 shield tiles... that requires having two "Team Cap" teammates, who unfortunately synergize poorly with Cap for the most part. Furthermore, with AP generation being so critical, I am not sure that the charged tiles from SS aren't at least as valuable as the protect tiles. And, once again, it pales in comparison to his 5IM counterpart, as Iron Man does increasing amounts of damage for each additional team member. While both start at around 9k, Cap's damage stays there, while 5IM's nearly triples on a full "Team IM" team. Finally, for some reason, Cap isn't counted as a member of Team Cap, so no shield tile for just him (IM Red by comparison does base damage just for 5IM)

BLUE:
What seems like a great ability is, in practice his most damning one. Don't get me wrong- you can make it work, and it hits hard... but it requires building a team completely around that one skill, and you would come out ahead just putting together a standard team. So far, the best team I have found to use the blue is IM40/MoStorm, to power up Cap Red & Blue, and allow him to feast off Storm's huge number of attack tiles. This is a squishy team, however, and none are Team Cap. Also, for max effectiveness, 8 tiles is a lot to have out at once. Carnage seems like a good choice, but in reality Cap doesn't provide enough protection and healing to offset the damage Carnage does to your own team. Professor X puts out a lot of tiles, but you need someone with low AP moves in the third slot, and if you are running Xavier as a special tile factory, you are losing out on his ability to strengthen those tiles as you are just going to remove him. OML and Phoenix can put out special tiles at a decent clip... but that is the strategy for those characters, so you don't really want to remove them. Waiting on Cap's yellow to go off, which is so expensive, just so you can use blue at 50%. This power also suffers from the lack of synergy with Cap and his "Team Cap" mates. There are not a lot of special tile factories on Team Cap, and the better ones (Nova, Flaptain, Ant-Man) overlap at least 2 colors. Finally- and perhaps most frustratingly- this power has 0 base damage or healing. Meaning you CAN NOT fire it without a special tile on the board. I have gotten into situations where I have enough AP to fire it multiple times, but have already used up my special tiles, and don't have enough red or yellow AP to make more- very frustrating.


...So that's what's wrong. Now here is one man's humble opinion on a few different ways to remedy these shortcomings... on some powers, just one of these one suggestion might fix it, on others, it might require a combination of tweaks. Obviously implementing ALL the suggestions would make him overpowered, but a few of these changes would bring him into balance nicely with the other 5* characters. The most important aspect of this character to change is that you need to allow him to generate more tiles himself to accelerate his blue power.

HOW TO FIX:
YELLOW:
The triple penalty on this power (high cost, CD tiles, and ending the turn) should be reduced. Any two are probably okay, but not all 3.
--- Alternatively, at 5 covers, have the CD tiles be fortified, so that they at least all go off.
Reduce the strength of the tiles, but make more of them. Follow the precedent of OML black strike tiles, which become weaker but more numerous as covers are added. This power should not generate a best-case scenario of 50% of the required tiles for his blue power, ESPECIALLY considering his blue power negates all of these tiles.

RED:
Count Cap as a member of "Team Cap" so that this power always creates at least 1 shield tile
Have the damage increase with more "Team Cap" members (again, see 5IM red)
--- Alternatively, give the power something extra... when I see the animation, I always thing an enemy getting bashed with that shield would be stunned, so make it a stun attack.
Replace the shield tile part of the active with passive shield tile generation. Model this power either on the precedent of Luke Cage, and have Cap create a single shield tile at the beginning of the turn (to a max of 1, 2, or 3 depending upon Cap's team members)... OR model it after the OML precedent of adding 1 - 2 tiles when an ally fires a power.
Change the way the "shield" part of the power works completely, and use the fortify mechanic instead to allow Cap to fortify friendly attack, strike, or protect tiles. This could either be done passively, one per turn (increase the max number of total fortified tiles as covers increase), or it could fortify multiple tiles on the board when the power is fired (number increasing as covers increase)

BLUE:
Allow base damage/healing for this power so that it can be fired with no special tiles for a small % of the total possible damage.
Reduce the maximum requirement of 8 friendly tiles to 6 at 5 covers (assuming no other fixes are implemented to allow Cap to create more tiles)
Change the requirements for the type of tile Cap can remove. Options could include friendly Invisibility or Countdown tiles, netural tiles like web tiles or locked tiles... or even allow him to remove enemy tiles to power up this move.


Now, on to the lesser problem of the "Team Cap" roster. Let me say that the problem is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Cap's power (unlike Iron Man) does not get much stronger with more mates on his side. Regardless, with Cap requiring lots of cheap special tiles to be of use, and with no good way of generating them himself at the moment- compounded by the issue that Iron Man has 5* teammates while Cap does not- the "Team Cap" roster needs addressing.



THE PROBLEM WITH:
HIS 5* TEAMMATES:
Well... this is obvious- he has none. Iron Man and BSS is stronger by itself than almost any 3-man Team Cap combination.

HIS 4* TEAMMATES:
There is not a lot of synergy between Caps abilities (mainly his blue one) and the abilities of his teammates. When you look at the 4* "Team Cap" roster, you have some characters that generate a decent number of special tiles... Sam Wilson (Yellow), Nova (Yellow, Red, Black), Ant-Man (Blue, Yellow, Purple), Ghostrider (Green, Red). There is, however, a major lack of synergy between these abilities and Cap. For starters, most of these tiles are ones you want to keep out on the board and not use for cannon fodder for Cap's blue. But more importantly... every single one of those characters has a special-tile generating power that overlaps with one of Cap's abilities, leaving only Ant-Man purple, and Ghostrider green as complementary abilities. The only other 4* Team Cap characters with active special tile generation (Punisher, Invisible Woman) only have one color... and it's blue, which directly conflicts with the power you are trying to accelerate. I'm not saying his teammates are bad- quite the contrary, some of the best 4*s are on Cap's side (Nova, PMax, Thoress), just that they offer very little in the way of being a true "teammate" to poor Steve.

HIS 3* TEAMMATES:
First of all, in PVP, you are going to get blasted if you take a 3* along in most cases. Again, you have very strong 3* characters (IF, SW, KK)... but they don't add anything specifically to a Cap team. CageFist will ensure that Cap's blue can always fire at 25% power, which I suppose is better than being locked out completely. Falcon can put out a lot of special tiles... but his bread and butter move is strengthening tiles, which is negated by Cap's blue power which will remove those strengthened tiles. Blade is a slow source of special tiles, but unfortunately you have to forego red AP to get them.


...So that's the smaller issue in a nutshell. Thankfully, this would be much less of an issue (outside the 5* problem) if you fix Cap's blue power. That said, here are a few thoughts...

HOW TO FIX:
HIS 5* TEAMMATES:
Just give him one! While this was obviously an event tied to the Civil War movie- and therefore not necessarily linked to comics- there are a couple choices that make sense. Iron Man has a 5* teammate... Cap needs one as well. In my opinion there are two options that are best suited from the source material (though not necessarily particularly synergistic).
--- Black Suit Spidey. I completley understand the reasoning behind 1*, 2*, and 3* Spider-Man being team Iron Man. However, during the Civil War, Spider-Man switched allegiances, and came over to Captain America's side for the remainder of the Civil War. In fact, it was the seriousness and the weight of the situation that led Spidey to ditch his red and blues and go back to the black suit. This particular version of Spider-Man makes more sense on Team Cap. (To offset, you have to move another 5* to Team Iron Man... a good candidate might be Silver Surfer, who was originally slated to be on Team Iron Man.
--- Old Man Logan. This choice is much more difficult to tie to Cap, as OML obviously doesn't exist yet at the time of Civil War. But the image of Old Man Logan taking up the long-dead Cap's shield to stop Red Skull (who recoils in terror at his nemesis's "return")- and his subsequent decapitation of the villain with Cap's shield- is a highlight of the OML story arc.


HIS 3* and 4* TEAMMATES:
This is harder to fix, as you have to find a way to justify putting the characters who can create a lot of special tiles (the best ones probably being PX, Carnage on the 4* level, and MoStorm, DocOc, Daken, on the 3* level) on "Team Cap, some of whom are obviously villains. I think the argument for the X-Men leaning "Pro Cap" is easy to make, as they have been against any form of superhuman registration for some time, but they made it a point to stay out of the Civil War, so it's hard to justify making them "Team Cap." I really think this becomes a moot point if you simply fix Cap's powers... then you won't be so boxed in by their abilities when it comes to your choices of teammates.


Again... these are just my thoughts on the matter. Would love to hear others' experiences and opinons on Cap, and any thoughts they might have.