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

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  • IlDuderino
    IlDuderino Posts: 427 Mover and Shaker
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    I agree. I also don't understand why it says Carol is the best character since Medusa when she is ranked 8 places above Medusa
  • TheWerebison
    TheWerebison Posts: 431 Mover and Shaker
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    Oooh, I am super excited to see where Vulture falls. He has to be one of the best self-contained 4* they've come up with yet. His black feeding into his green while fully protecting him, his green doing pretty good team damage when coming out of his black. Just using the lvl 191 loaner for the Hulk team-up node was awesome.
  • talleman
    talleman Posts: 444 Mover and Shaker
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    No ranking om Vulture? To early? Wanna know if hes worth spending iso on :)
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    talleman said:
    No ranking om Vulture? To early? Wanna know if hes worth spending iso on :)
    Yeah, I haven't played with him except my 2-cover Vulture being dead weight in the Hulk essential node. My thinking based on the teamup node and alliance feedback is that he'll probably be quite high, since he generates buttloads of AP and can stay airborne almost constantly.
  • DesertTortoise
    DesertTortoise Posts: 392 Mover and Shaker
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    talleman said:
    No ranking om Vulture? To early? Wanna know if hes worth spending iso on :)

    He'll undoubtedly be worth spending iso on. 
  • DarthDeVo
    DarthDeVo Posts: 2,176 Chairperson of the Boards
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    You'll have the rebalances for Riri and Mordo to consider, too. New numbers for them are up in the Mind Gem Season Updates thread. 
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    ERMAHGERD, ERPDERT.

    - Riri now ranked at #30 and Venom (Eddie Brock) ranked at #37 post-rework.

    - Mordo description updated, but rank unchanged as I don't feel his usability was significantly changed by his rework.

    - Replaced the overly-negative Dumpster Fire category with a Not Yet Rated category, as I've decided it's just too hard to accurately rank a character before I've played them (or played against them) champed. This category is currently occupied by Sandman, Vulture, and Mockingbird. Overall feeling is that Sandman will be low-end mediocre while Vulture and Mockingbird will both rank pretty highly.
  • D4Ni13
    D4Ni13 Posts: 745 Critical Contributor
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    Jarvind said:

    - Mordo description updated, but rank unchanged as I don't feel his usability was significantly changed 
    I suggest you play more with Mordo's Purple. It's easily one of the better abilities in the game. Try him as 3-5-5, not for the AP, but for damage. He can deal a lot of damage to teams that gather AP. Also no need for his black since there are far better black powers in 4* land.
    I'm not saying you should change his rank, but his utiliy has changed big time. At least for me. 
  • DarthDeVo
    DarthDeVo Posts: 2,176 Chairperson of the Boards
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    D4Ni13 said:
    Jarvind said:

    - Mordo description updated, but rank unchanged as I don't feel his usability was significantly changed 
    I suggest you play more with Mordo's Purple. It's easily one of the better abilities in the game. Try him as 3-5-5, not for the AP, but for damage. He can deal a lot of damage to teams that gather AP. Also no need for his black since there are far better black powers in 4* land.
    I'm not saying you should change his rank, but his utiliy has changed big time. At least for me. 
    For what it's worth, when I opened PvP Simulator at the start of this season, champed Mordo was on at least two teams right off the bat. Maybe even a third, I can't remember exactly right now. I don't think I'd ever seen him before that. Could just be people trying out the new build, but it was enough to make me notice.
  • csista
    csista Posts: 17 Just Dropped In
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    D4Ni13 said:
    Jarvind said:

    - Mordo description updated, but rank unchanged as I don't feel his usability was significantly changed 
    I suggest you play more with Mordo's Purple. It's easily one of the better abilities in the game. Try him as 3-5-5, not for the AP, but for damage. He can deal a lot of damage to teams that gather AP. Also no need for his black since there are far better black powers in 4* land.
    I'm not saying you should change his rank, but his utiliy has changed big time. At least for me. 
    Agreed. Against a non-rainbow team that's forced to store AP it can't use, his purple can be brutal. Also good against characters that store a lot of AP before spending, like Red Hulk or Hulkbuster. 
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    D4Ni13 said:
    Jarvind said:

    - Mordo description updated, but rank unchanged as I don't feel his usability was significantly changed 
    I suggest you play more with Mordo's Purple. It's easily one of the better abilities in the game. Try him as 3-5-5, not for the AP, but for damage. He can deal a lot of damage to teams that gather AP. Also no need for his black since there are far better black powers in 4* land.
    I'm not saying you should change his rank, but his utiliy has changed big time. At least for me. 
    Yeah, I misread this - I was thinking that it only did damage for the destroyed AP, rather than dealing damage for the whole pool and then destroying 5. I'll have to mess around with it and update again.
  • JarvisJackrabbit
    JarvisJackrabbit Posts: 232 Tile Toppler
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    I think D4Ni13 is totally right about Mordo post-rework. That purple is the real deal and is downright scary at five covers. Drop his black to three, team him with Riri and C4rol, and you could basically let a monkey swap tiles for you until you want to start firing powers because there are enough active abilities among the three of them to start a second lap around their rainbow road. They are surprisingly versatile, effective, fast, and fun to use.

    If you want to have more black AP than you know what to do with, try him at 5/5/3 and team him with 3* IF and 5* BP. Fire Mordo's black or blue to get some charged tiles on the board, then fire IF's purple a time or two to cash in all that Black AP and get some sick BP critical match damage. Repeat. It's also fun to switch Switch with BP to keep generating purple.

    Great job on the list and discussion generation, fellow Jarv. Tons of fun.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
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    The relative position of War Machine and Riri interest me. Removing invisibility can't be that useful.
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Jaedenkaal said:
    The relative position of War Machine and Riri interest me. Removing invisibility can't be that useful.
    Riri will definitely be going higher next update, now that I've played a few events with her new version and gotten a handle on just how great she is now. 
  • Milk Jugz
    Milk Jugz Posts: 1,122 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Jarvind said:
    Jaedenkaal said:
    The relative position of War Machine and Riri interest me. Removing invisibility can't be that useful.
    Riri will definitely be going higher next update, now that I've played a few events with her new version and gotten a handle on just how great she is now. 
    Don't forget about the increase in health too. Finally on level with an iron man
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
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    So I like the concept of the list, but I'm curious. What criteria are you using to generate the rankings? Would you use the guide as a reference for which characters to target and champion next (if you were a hypothetical new player with few/no 4*s). All other things being equal, would you champion Cyclops before Cloak and Dagger, C&D before Medusa, Medusa before Rocket & Groot, R&G before Star-Lord, Spider-Gwen before Luke Cage, etc...?

    (That said, I think it's also meaningful that the "Solid" category goes all the way down to #40. Not too bad a tier when 80% of the characters rate Solid or better)

    It seems to me that in general, it's a lot harder for an established character to slide down than it is for new characters to place high. Cyclops, for example, hardly seems meta-defining to me. I haven't seen him in PVP for ages. Is that an artifact of the "vaulting effect" where more people have championed 4*s, but only of the latest 12? Maybe, maybe not, it's hard to say. I still see Carnage, Mr F, Hulkbuster, Ant-Man... etc... I guess we'll have to see in a few seasons if anything changes. Same goes for Punisher, actually. I agree he looks good, but I just don't see him that much. On the other hand, Medusa seems to fit the concept of "Meta-Defining", as she is on many teams and must be at least accounted for when building one's own team (or skipped every time)

    Anyways, on the whole I'd say the tier distribution is pretty reasonable, and my biggest disagreement on placement (aside from Riri, who you've addressed above) is Agent Venom, who (in my opinion) absolutely does not deserve to place last. He's got to be at least as good as Wolverine.
  • Milk Jugz
    Milk Jugz Posts: 1,122 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Jaedenkaal said:
    So I like the concept of the list, but I'm curious. What criteria are you using to generate the rankings? Would you use the guide as a reference for which characters to target and champion next (if you were a hypothetical new player with few/no 4*s). All other things being equal, would you champion Cyclops before Cloak and Dagger, C&D before Medusa, Medusa before Rocket & Groot, R&G before Star-Lord, Spider-Gwen before Luke Cage, etc...?

    (That said, I think it's also meaningful that the "Solid" category goes all the way down to #40. Not too bad a tier when 80% of the characters rate Solid or better)

    It seems to me that in general, it's a lot harder for an established character to slide down than it is for new characters to place high. Cyclops, for example, hardly seems meta-defining to me. I haven't seen him in PVP for ages. Is that an artifact of the "vaulting effect" where more people have championed 4*s, but only of the latest 12? Maybe, maybe not, it's hard to say. I still see Carnage, Mr F, Hulkbuster, Ant-Man... etc... I guess we'll have to see in a few seasons if anything changes. Same goes for Punisher, actually. I agree he looks good, but I just don't see him that much. On the other hand, Medusa seems to fit the concept of "Meta-Defining", as she is on many teams and must be at least accounted for when building one's own team (or skipped every time)

    Anyways, on the whole I'd say the tier distribution is pretty reasonable, and my biggest disagreement on placement (aside from Riri, who you've addressed above) is Agent Venom, who (in my opinion) absolutely does not deserve to place last. He's got to be at least as good as Wolverine.
    I'm not arguing with anything you're saying, just want to point out that Thursday's coming boost list includes Cyclops so I would expect to see him in the season PVPs for the next week. As far as simulator goes I usually see about 3-5 teams a season that have him involved. Unboosted I would say he is not defining, boosted he is an absolute monster!
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2017
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    Jaedenkaal said:
    So I like the concept of the list, but I'm curious. What criteria are you using to generate the rankings? Would you use the guide as a reference for which characters to target and champion next (if you were a hypothetical new player with few/no 4*s). All other things being equal, would you champion Cyclops before Cloak and Dagger, C&D before Medusa, Medusa before Rocket & Groot, R&G before Star-Lord, Spider-Gwen before Luke Cage, etc...?

    (That said, I think it's also meaningful that the "Solid" category goes all the way down to #40. Not too bad a tier when 80% of the characters rate Solid or better)

    It seems to me that in general, it's a lot harder for an established character to slide down than it is for new characters to place high. Cyclops, for example, hardly seems meta-defining to me. I haven't seen him in PVP for ages. Is that an artifact of the "vaulting effect" where more people have championed 4*s, but only of the latest 12? Maybe, maybe not, it's hard to say. I still see Carnage, Mr F, Hulkbuster, Ant-Man... etc... I guess we'll have to see in a few seasons if anything changes. Same goes for Punisher, actually. I agree he looks good, but I just don't see him that much. On the other hand, Medusa seems to fit the concept of "Meta-Defining", as she is on many teams and must be at least accounted for when building one's own team (or skipped every time)

    Anyways, on the whole I'd say the tier distribution is pretty reasonable, and my biggest disagreement on placement (aside from Riri, who you've addressed above) is Agent Venom, who (in my opinion) absolutely does not deserve to place last. He's got to be at least as good as Wolverine.
    As the start of the guide states, these are just my opinions and anyone is free to disagree with them. I think I've mostly done a good job of processing everyone's feedback, though there are a few areas where I've stuck to my guns. 

    That said, I'll lay out the following:

    A: I just don't think about older characters nearly as much as newer ones, so their rankings change more slowly. For instance, Hulkbuster probably should have slid down out of the top tier sooner than he did. It's much easier to make an evaluation of "wow, this new character blows away all but ten of the existing ones" as opposed to "hmm, in the context of newly introduced mechanics and ever-present power creep, this character isn't as dominant as they used to be." Thing is a good example - he's been steadily sliding downwards a place or two at a time almost every time I revise, as opposed to just dropping like the rock that he literally is.

    B: Some characters are probably a bit higher than they'd be from a purely objective standpoint simply because I like them for whatever reason. X-23 is a good example - I've only recently realized that she isn't a particularly amazing character and should probably be lower than she is, I just really like her for my particular playstyle. I try to take this into account, but, y'know, nobody's perfect.

    C: Just because a character gets used a lot, doesn't necessarily mean to me that they're all that great. They may just be the new hotness. This is especially true lately what with vaulting having been a thing.


    To address the specific examples you cited - Cyclops, Medusa and Punisher - I see boatloads of Cyclops when he's boosted (even the best characters mostly gather dust unless boosted) and he's an absolute monster, as well as highly self-sufficient.

    Medusa is kind of a special case, in my opinion, in that A: she can be potentially obnoxious to deal with even unboosted due to her healing and B: she does passive damage from turn 2 which makes her very appealing to a lot of players. In my 3* days I saw Iron Fist on nearly every team just for his attack tile, even though I found him to be a very easy target and not all that threatening. I will, however, probably bump Medusa up to the top tier in the next revision.

    Punisher, in my opinion, suffers simply from the fact that he's always boosted at the same time as Iceman. While Frank is a beast, Bobby is just objectively better and they share two colors, so there's no reason to bring both. Punisher can still handily wreck an entire team all by his lonesome, which is why I've kept him as high as he is.


  • DesertTortoise
    DesertTortoise Posts: 392 Mover and Shaker
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    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. 

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