A Mostly Accurate 4* Ranking (Final Update 8/11/18)

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Comments

  • zodiac339
    zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think Hobo is a character whose suggested build depends totally on the team he's on. 5/5/3 if he's generating black for someone else, 5/3/5 if you have a better green user, 3/5/5 if there's a strike tile generator elsewhere on your team. I think that versatility makes him so interesting. 
    My personal though is that if you don't have another strike tile generator, then you shouldn't bother using Chi Focus. Until there are enough that he can start fortifying them and generating AP, it's a waste of AP to get one single strike. Of course, that opinion comes from the number of times that strike gets destroyed pretty much immediately.
  • DesertTortoise
    DesertTortoise Posts: 392 Mover and Shaker
    zodiac339 said:
    I think Hobo is a character whose suggested build depends totally on the team he's on. 5/5/3 if he's generating black for someone else, 5/3/5 if you have a better green user, 3/5/5 if there's a strike tile generator elsewhere on your team. I think that versatility makes him so interesting. 
    My personal though is that if you don't have another strike tile generator, then you shouldn't bother using Chi Focus. Until there are enough that he can start fortifying them and generating AP, it's a waste of AP to get one single strike. Of course, that opinion comes from the number of times that strike gets destroyed pretty much immediately.
    Without another strike tile creator, there's no point in using Chi Focus at 3 covers. At 5 covers it's not so bad since you only have to fire it twice to start fortifying and generating AP. Boosted Hobo should definitely be 3/5/5 to take advantage of his damage boost on his green and black. Paired with 5/5/3 Nova and 4Star-Lord is one of my favorite teams in the game.
  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,208 Chairperson of the Boards
    I agree with most of the list, but Sam Wilson is a lot better than most people give him credit. He can catch you off guard here and there. 
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    Erpdert:

    Added Yondu to Not Yet Rated.
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
    The more I play them, Rocket & Groot feel pretty essential. I underrated those strikes. They can get matched away, but they usually last long enough to down one enemy. PVE easy nodes are a breeze and Grocket, Gamora, Medusa is almost unbeatable. I could only beat them by using them. Given a friendly board with a couple critical matches at the start and you can take out the most annoying enemy in one turn.  I would probably lower Punisher, Medusa, and Wasp, raise up Cyclops and Grocket. Here's how I'd shake up the top ten.
    4 Carol
    5 Cyclops
    6 Blade
    7 Punisher
    8 Grocket
    9 Medusa
    10 Wasp
    I'd also lower Hobofist and Mordo, and raise Gwenpool and Gamora, but they are in the same tier and there are lots of good characters.
  • LogamericanSpidey
    LogamericanSpidey Posts: 3 Just Dropped In
    If you have the luxury of using OML at level 400+ I find it hard to find a better 4-star pair than Blade and Medusa.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    zodiac339 said:
    I think Hobo is a character whose suggested build depends totally on the team he's on. 5/5/3 if he's generating black for someone else, 5/3/5 if you have a better green user, 3/5/5 if there's a strike tile generator elsewhere on your team. I think that versatility makes him so interesting. 
    My personal though is that if you don't have another strike tile generator, then you shouldn't bother using Chi Focus. Until there are enough that he can start fortifying them and generating AP, it's a waste of AP to get one single strike. Of course, that opinion comes from the number of times that strike gets destroyed pretty much immediately.
    I want to add a caveat: if you're feeding him blue/green (which is easy since both vulture and IM40 do so), you can easily double, sometimes even triple cast it. Though at that point, I find that getting the green AP a cast earlier is a lot more useful than a stronger black. At least at the 4* level, I was usually able to leverage a 5/5/3 build into taking out a character and a half with the green, even before the green generated enough AP to use the black. That probably wouldn't work so well against 5* health pools, though
  • Steellatch
    Steellatch Posts: 86 Match Maker
    Lockjaw is not the first non-human playable character in MPQ
  • Lemminkäinen
    Lemminkäinen Posts: 378 Mover and Shaker
    On Gwenpool, just learn the "destroy random tiles" code. It does good damage and board shake and is always relevant. I mean, choosing from her toolbox would be better but it's a hassle and what you get isn't all that much better much of the time. Highly recommended.
  • ValekBoss
    ValekBoss Posts: 106 Tile Toppler
    mexus said:
    Lockjaw is not the first non-human playable character in MPQ
    But, but... Devil Dino? And I wouldn't call Thanos human. And Groot, and Rocket as well. Drax maybe.
    Dr. Doom, is he human or man-made?
    I hope you are joking about Dr.Doom...!?
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    Lockjaw is not the first non-human playable character in MPQ
    I mean, if you read the rest of that sentence, I immediately acknowledged that.

    And Doom is human, he just wears the tin man mask because his face is disfigured.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    mexus said:And I wouldn't call Thanos human. [...] Drax maybe.
    Thanos is a Titanian Eternal, which is an advanced offshoot of humanity. So he is as much human as a non-human looking X-man (Nightcrawler?) at least from a genetical perspective. On the other hand, the fact that he was raised on Titan may mean he doesn't feel much attachment to humanity.
    Drax... in the MCU he is obviously an alien. In the comics I believe he is the mind-wiped soul of a deceased Earthman occupying an artificial body. Unless they retconned that away, it seemed unnecessarily complex.
  • ZeroKarma
    ZeroKarma Posts: 513 Critical Contributor
    I assume that these rankings are in a 4* vacuum and not being considered in terms of viability in the current meta and paired with (or replacing) 5*. When looked at through the lens of playability for 5* players I think that the tiers change significantly. 

    From my perspective, I'm viewing how they play as max champs, and whether they get any use boosted. Simply from that standpoint, I don't know how Captain Marvel is lower than #2. I can understand placing Peggy on the top, but Marvs can wipe out a 5* in one shot with her black, sped up by her yellow. 

    I used to have Iceman way up there as well, but there are others  that are better, such as Cyke who feeds his own abilities quite well, can take out a 5* with his red boosted and is a great pair with Black Panther through their yellow/TU synergy. 

    Also, thanks to the changes in PvE, you really have to consider Rocket and Groot top 5 in the group. The strike tiles, when paired with a member of the Guardians let you slice through teams very quickly. PvE is still half of the game, and with cl9 perhaps the most lucrative part of the game in terms of rewards.


  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    ZeroKarma said:
    I assume that these rankings are in a 4* vacuum and not being considered in terms of viability in the current meta and paired with (or replacing) 5*. When looked at through the lens of playability for 5* players I think that the tiers change significantly. 

    From my perspective, I'm viewing how they play as max champs, and whether they get any use boosted. Simply from that standpoint, I don't know how Captain Marvel is lower than #2. I can understand placing Peggy on the top, but Marvs can wipe out a 5* in one shot with her black, sped up by her yellow. 

    I used to have Iceman way up there as well, but there are others  that are better, such as Cyke who feeds his own abilities quite well, can take out a 5* with his red boosted and is a great pair with Black Panther through their yellow/TU synergy. 

    Also, thanks to the changes in PvE, you really have to consider Rocket and Groot top 5 in the group. The strike tiles, when paired with a member of the Guardians let you slice through teams very quickly. PvE is still half of the game, and with cl9 perhaps the most lucrative part of the game in terms of rewards.


    Per the intro, this assumes the characters are at or near the freshly-champed level. I agree that if you assume everyone is max-championed the ranking changes dramatically, but since that's 0.2% of players I didn't feel it would be very useful as a general guide.

    To your final point, though, R&G will probably be getting bumped to top tier in the next revision, as I find myself using Medusa/R&G/Gamora to clear all trivial, all-goon, or 2-goons-and-one-mover nodes in PVE, even when none of them are boosted.
  • Tintaiwan
    Tintaiwan Posts: 172 Tile Toppler
    Can you add an index/rank list at the top?
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    Tintaiwan said:
    Can you add an index/rank list at the top?
    I gotta be honest, it's already a pretty big pain rearranging the doc whenever I change a ranking. I'm not wild about the idea of doing it twice every time I make a change. 

    Unrelated: Added Rogue to Not Yet Rated.

    Some may have noticed the Not Yet Rated category is getting a bit lengthy - like a lot of folks, I'm hoarding until Fat Ock leaves Latest, so I haven't yet been able to champ and mess with these characters. Since they're new, I haven't had a chance to go heads up with them much either; a few Vultures and Sandmen here and there, but not enough to really make an accurate assessment. I promise they'll get their due once I get them champed and a boost week rolls around.
  • smkspy
    smkspy Posts: 2,024 Chairperson of the Boards
    Haven't read it all, but you might have included just in the descriptions, but I would add a sub section of must have support 4s that would deserve champing over others if you have certain characters champed.

    Carnage is a top ten character if you have a champed medusa for example. His value is way higher than someone like Thoress in that situation.
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
    smkspy said:
    Haven't read it all, but you might have included just in the descriptions, but I would add a sub section of must have support 4s that would deserve champing over others if you have certain characters champed.

    Carnage is a top ten character if you have a champed medusa for example. His value is way higher than someone like Thoress in that situation.
    I don't think there are enough situations like that to warrant an extra section. They are ranked on their overall usefulness, and Thor is much better than Carnage when paired with anyone other than Medusa. Specific pairs are generally well known enough, and if they aren't known they probably wouldn't change the ranking that much.
  • Tintaiwan
    Tintaiwan Posts: 172 Tile Toppler
    hey
    techinical stuff warning

    if you use google docs Table of contents it will do it for you.  

    simple example at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fca37I6Uub2tOyNQDDWN2LC1XN3UohuKx-XfUnX1RJA/edit?usp=sharing

    https://support.google.com/docs/answer/116338?co=GENIE.Platform=Desktop&hl=en

    make each tier level Header 1
    make each character title header 2

    top of doc insert table of contents done

    Then in future just refresh after you reorganize