*** Daken (Classic) ***

Phaserhawk

Well Phantron using some of your math and theorycrafting. Lets assume the 9 tiles of each color with enviro being the one with 10. Lets assume you avg. 3.5 tiles cleared per turn, and lets assume the .5 tile is enviro and in order of droppage yellow, red, blue, purple, green, black. So basically 1 full turn me then AI each clearing 3.5 tiles we in theory of equality would have one tile of every color replenish the board. So if my first move is match 3 blue, I have a 3.5/7 chance of a blue tile falling and on AI's turn another 3.5/7 chance. So again all things equal after 3 full turns, Me then AI, I would in theory have 3 of every color back on the board. So in perfect world every full turn puts 1 of every color back on the board. So assuming the game is always trying to balance itself out unless you are constantly matching the same color, you should always have 7-9 tiles of any color out on most times. Assuming Phantron's numbers are correct if lvl 5 black you have about an 86% chance of regenerating. So lets assume again it's 8 tiles, well that's a 14.2% decrease of an 86% chance or if it was 8 tiles you in theory would have a 75% of regnenerating, assuming 9 tiles that's roughly 65% regeneration, this numbers are obviously theory based but it does lend a little credibility that the game attempts to balance itself.

I think the odds of having 9 tiles out on anyone turn is definetly higher than 50%. So what I am trying to say in all this randomness is that Daken will easily heal more than 1/2 the time and my gut says that at lvl 1 heat, and from experience that he heals 2/3 turns. The issue is at that lvl you aren't making any gains. 5% heal =290 health 7% heal is 406 and 3% heat is 174.

5% Heal==As long as you heal 2 times to every 3 heat, you come very close to breaking even, but at a 2:3 ratio it's close to even. This bodes well since you probably have a 65% anyway of healing anyway

7% Heal==As long as you heal once you can Heat slight more than twice, and at this ratio you are probably healing 75% of the time anyway, so basically you do well with lvl3 -lvl5 Heat/Heal anyway.

The issue for Daken shouldn't be Black, the issue is how to make blue most effective. 5/4/4 is ****, we established that, so it does come down to 5/5/3 or 5/3/5. 5 blue does 666 more dmg, fact. But it takes one extra strike tile. If it's Daken's strike tile that's 57 and it would take you 11.68 turns to make up that difference, but if that's Patch's tile it's 4.5 turns and anyother guy and they only get less than that. But lets assume Patch since he's probably the best strike tile creator other than Daken. If you have a 5/5/3 Patch using green, which created you six Daken tiles, and then you create 6 Patch tiles. Your odds when removing tiles are even chance of Patch or Daken. So 1/2 the time you would remove Patch the other Daken avg their dmg you get 102.5 that Avgs to 6.5 turns. Also that's very close to another strike tile creators tiles, Punisher whose 104. So...It's safe to say that if you play 5/3/5 Patch and you cast Chemical Reaction, after 6.5 turns it would have been better had you been 5/5/3 Patch because you lose out on the tile Dmg. For you 2*'s that run a lot of OBW, that number is halved.

Summation once again. Depending on your deck's speed and comp 5/5/3 or 5/3/5 is personal choice, but if you run OBW religiously and plan on doing so with new Daken then you better make Daken 5/5/3

Unknown

My numbers are correct if you follow its assumption. That is, the board is equally likely to have 8, 9, or 10 blue tiles (and nothing else). Blue matches have 1/7 chance to be taken by both the human and the AI. This obviously falls apart if you use Magneto, where the human player usually has 100% chance to take a blue match if one is available, but should be a reasonably good approximation for anyone else. By the way, if your enemy doesn't have Magneto and only has a modest blue power, like say Bewilderment, then if you can get them to match blue to deny your regen, that's still a pretty good deal anyway.

Note that since you lose health when you don't heal, regenning 4% is closer to an 8% difference, because you lose health for those 4% of the time you don't regen. There's no danger in not breaking even if you're not using/facing Magneto, but for regen power we're usually more interested in how far ahead we can get, not just breaking even.

I think whether to take healing & heat to level 5 is a matter of PvP versus PvE. It's the same issue as Patch. Daken's regen is more than enough for PvP given the fact that a high level featured character will always tank at least 3 colors, but in PvE you can easily arrange a team where Daken does most of the tanking, and it is also more crucial in PvE where super high level enemies can dish out 300+ damage from match 3s. Since I built Patch for PvP (3 on regen), I'll probably go with a PvE built for Daken (max regen). It seems to me the blue is only very good at dealing with characters like The Hood or OBW, characters that are dangerous but have low enough HP that it is worth sacrificing some strike tiles to get rid of them immediately. Otherwise, you're usually expected to do better on your strike tiles unless it's the finishing blow, but Chemical Reaction isn't anything special for finishing attack either. That being said, being able to get rid of these two characters matters a lot for PvP too.

Unknown

Has it been mentioned by the devs if cDaken will work in the DA PVP tournies, even though he is labeled Classic instead of Dark Avenger?

Unknown

Just had a random thought pop into my head about Gold Daken...

I'm not big on the concept of intentionally neutering characters, but what about the viability of a 115 5/0/5 build?

With 0 in H+H, Daken won't regen, but he also wont suffer from Heat. If he doesn't suffer from Heat, then outside of sacrificing strike tiles, wouldn't that negate the down side to Chemical Reaction? And with only being 115, wouldn't Daken be able to hide behind other characters to tank for him, negating the need for regeneration?

Odd logic, but it would seem that gimping Daken by not covering Black is potentially more beneficial than harmful?

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Just had a random thought pop into my head about Gold Daken...

I'm not big on the concept of intentionally neutering characters, but what about the viability of a 115 5/0/5 build?

With 0 in H+H, Daken won't regen, but he also wont suffer from Heat. If he doesn't suffer from Heat, then outside of sacrificing strike tiles, wouldn't that negate the down side to Chemical Reaction? And with only being 115, wouldn't Daken be able to hide behind other characters to tank for him, negating the need for regeneration?

Odd logic, but it would seem that gimping Daken by not covering Black is potentially more beneficial than harmful?

Using my estimation of regen 90% of the time with H&H at 5 and 86% of the time with H&H at 3/4, here's what we get for healing numbers on average:

H&H level 3: 0.86 * 5 - 0.14 * 3 = 3.88% per turn
H&H level 4: 0.86 * 7 - 0.14 * 3 = 5.60% per turn
H&H level 5: 0.90 * 7 - 0.1 * 3 = 6% per turn

So if you're healing around 5% per turn on average for H&H at level 4+, it seems like taking an occasional extra bad round is okay. You'd only use Chemical Reaction either very early (to try to knock someone out) or very late (to finish the game). In the first case, the game is still early so there should be plenty of time for the regen to balance out. In the latter case, the loss of health is mostly irrelevent (game is about to end). On defense, Daken is likely not going to be targeted until the end anyway, which means any early loss of health due to Chemical Reaction should be balanced out by the time the enemy is ready to attack Daken. It'd still be foolish to switch to Daken first just because the number of blue tiles have decreased some unless you got Magneto (who ensures they'll never go up).

Now I guess the interesting question is what about 5/0/5 versus 5/3/5? But I'd say after looking at these number, taking the 4th black seems like a no brainer because your healing improves by about 44%, and if you have at least 4 in black, you shouldn't be worried about an occasional hit since 7% is a ton of regen and more than covers that over the long run.

Unknown

after few PVP run with my little Daken, in most case both side always take away the blue title, I feel Healing & Heat 4+ are needed, there are so many character need blue AP bad, and Chemical Reaction kills blue title too, for me, I think 5/4/4 or 5/5/3 will be a good choice.

over_clocked

I run cMags and my Daken keeps killing himself at 3 black.

Phaserhawk

I agree with his black needing to be 4, the theory numbers show that the jump from 3 to 4 is like a 44% increasing to healing in general. But therein lies the problem, if you opt 5/4/4 you are hurting your dmg output big time. Lets assume a board with 3 tiles from Patch and 3 tiles from Daken. We will assume with lvl 4 and 5 blue that you will take 2 tiles from Patch and 2 tiles from Daken. Lvl 3 blue will run the scenario of taken 2 patch and 1 daken, and 2 daken and 1 patch.

Lvl 5 Blue --2363 dmg plus (148 + 57 strike tiles left) = 2568
Lvl 4 Blue --2055 dmg plus (148 + 57 strike tiles left) = 2260
Lvl 3 Blue --1697 dmg plus (148 +57x2 st left) = 1959
Lvl 3 Blue --1697 dmg plus (148 x 2 + 57 strike left ) = 2050
Avg Lvl 3 Blue Dmg = 2004

As you can see we have Lvl 5 > 308 >Lvl 4 > 256 > Lvl 3

Factor in a tile Match right after, lets just assume 3 tile match for 150 dmg

Lvl 4&5 blue = 150 tile match (148+57) = 355
Lvl 3 blue = 150 tile match (148+57+57)= 412
Lvl 3 blue = 150 tile match (148+148+57) 503
Avg Lvl 3 blue = 457
That's an average of an extra 107 dmg. Factor that in

Lvl 5 > 308 >Lvl 4 > 149 > Lvl 3

That's only 457 difference between lvl 5 and lvl 3 blue. Not to mention your heal on 5/5/3 over 5/3/5 is insanely better. Leaving strike tiles is good, with the avg extra (148+57/2) 102 strike tile dmg. It takes 4.48 turns to recoop the dmg loss between lvl 5 blue vs. lvl 3 blue and 1.45 turns for lvl 4 blue vs. Lvl 3 blue. That only takes into account tile matches, assume you cast an ability between now and then it's even shorter.

If you go at least 4 into black, you best go 5/5/3 as you are going to be hurting yourself more and as you can see in 1 1/2 turns you are better off with 5/5/3 anyway. You can argue 5/3/5 I wont' disagree as it is clearly the more offensive build. Sometimes 4.5 turns will be too long to get back the missed dmg, and if one doesn't care about the regen, then 5/3/5 is abosolutely the best way to go. 5/4/4 though while everyone says is the most balanced build is wrong. 5/4/4 is worse than either 5/5/3 or 5/3/5 with no positives to claim. 5/5/3 obviously heals better, and while the blue does slightly less dmg, you leave an extra strike tile which as shown within less than 2 turns outstrips the 5/4/4 build in dmg. And 5/4/4 to 5/3/5 the increase in black is much better, yes, but you reduce your blue.

It's funny, though as people who think 5/3/5 is the superior build, are okay losing 308 dmg to heal 44% better, but people who like 5/5/3 think 5/4/4 is terrible as you actually **** your healing and dmg.

john1620b

Phantron and Phaserhawk, thanks for the discussion on Daken builds. It helped me pick what to do -- I was going to go 5/4/4 to try and get both regeneration and damage, until I read your discussion. I went 5/5/3 instead, and found that I like keeping my strike tiles over the direct damage. Keep up the good work!

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

It's funny, though as people who think 5/3/5 is the superior build, are okay losing 308 dmg to heal 44% better, but people who like 5/5/3 think 5/4/4 is terrible as you actually **** your healing and dmg.

in my option, Daken's 5/4/4 not terrible, if you combine it with GSBW Deceptive Tactics>Sniper Rifle or LT Thunder Strike>Call of storm, in those case I don't care about Daken's blue damage output, but if I fire it next will be a finish move by GSBW or LT.

Phaserhawk

Joeblack wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

It's funny, though as people who think 5/3/5 is the superior build, are okay losing 308 dmg to heal 44% better, but people who like 5/5/3 think 5/4/4 is terrible as you actually **** your healing and dmg.

in my option, Daken's 5/4/4 not terrible, if you combine it with GSBW Deceptive Tactics>Sniper Rifle or LT Thunder Strike>Call of storm, in those case I don't care about Daken's blue damage output, but if I fire it next will be a finish move by GSBW or LT.

Then I'm guessing you really like 5/3/5 but don't want to lose out on the healing. However, while you may play blue to be a finisher, the AI will not, so defensively you may want to reevaluate your choice, but 5/4/4 is fine

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Joeblack wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

It's funny, though as people who think 5/3/5 is the superior build, are okay losing 308 dmg to heal 44% better, but people who like 5/5/3 think 5/4/4 is terrible as you actually **** your healing and dmg.

in my option, Daken's 5/4/4 not terrible, if you combine it with GSBW Deceptive Tactics>Sniper Rifle or LT Thunder Strike>Call of storm, in those case I don't care about Daken's blue damage output, but if I fire it next will be a finish move by GSBW or LT.

Then I'm guessing you really like 5/3/5 but don't want to lose out on the healing. However, while you may play blue to be a finisher, the AI will not, so defensively you may want to reevaluate your choice, but 5/4/4 is fine

yeah, 5/4/4 or 5/5/3 all are good build, it depending who you wanna put him with, but 5/3/5(glass cannon?) will never be my option, cause 4+ black its a must to me.

Phaserhawk

Joeblack wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Joeblack wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

It's funny, though as people who think 5/3/5 is the superior build, are okay losing 308 dmg to heal 44% better, but people who like 5/5/3 think 5/4/4 is terrible as you actually **** your healing and dmg.

in my option, Daken's 5/4/4 not terrible, if you combine it with GSBW Deceptive Tactics>Sniper Rifle or LT Thunder Strike>Call of storm, in those case I don't care about Daken's blue damage output, but if I fire it next will be a finish move by GSBW or LT.

Then I'm guessing you really like 5/3/5 but don't want to lose out on the healing. However, while you may play blue to be a finisher, the AI will not, so defensively you may want to reevaluate your choice, but 5/4/4 is fine

yeah, 5/4/4 or 5/5/3 all are good build, it depending who you wanna put him with, but 5/3/5(glass cannon?) will never be my option, cause 4+ black its a must to me.

Then I recomend 5/5/3, if you are going for the health anyway, 5/5/3 is the better build

Unknown

I think people are a bit too paranoid about how the AI may use your strike tiles poorly. With Spiderman nerf you can say in general in PvP you do not expect to find all your oppoennts at 100% health when they're attacking you. A 4 strike tile Chemical Reaction will hit for around 2000 at level 141 and may possibly replace some of them with the ensuing green cascade. 2000 damage is a pretty decent chunk of health against a character that is already wounded. Even while running Magneto I find myself starting fights with 4K or 3K health and 2000 can push someone really close to dying. Basically the only way Chemical Reaction can be bad is if you used it on someone who can regen but that's really no different than doing a Retribution on someone who can regen that is above 40%. I haven't decided whether to take black to level 5 instead of 4 but if the covers favor 5/4/4 then I'll do that (and it's obviously more likely to get covers for 5/4/4 than 5/5/3) and I'll worry about whether to switch when that last black cover comes in.

NorthernPolarity

I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but in order for Daken to actually match blue on defense, you need another blue user on your team: blue is one of Daken's offcolors, so the AI will never match blue if you aren't running someone else.

Unknown

Not sure if this is discussed, but Daken's blue does get rid of other ally's strike tiles, so it'll get rid of Sacrifice (which would be a very bad idea).

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

Not sure if this is discussed, but Daken's blue does get rid of other ally's strike tiles, so it'll get rid of Sacrifice (which would be a very bad idea).

Right, which is why I think I'm leaning towards 5/5/3 build

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Not sure if this is discussed, but Daken's blue does get rid of other ally's strike tiles, so it'll get rid of Sacrifice (which would be a very bad idea).

if this is true and not a bug, then 5/5/3 is better than 5/4/4.

vudu3

It's not a bug--read the description.

Daken springs a trap, but his addiction to "Heat" threatens to push him over the edge. Damages the target for 99, converts two blue tiles to green, and converts up to 2 friendly strike tiles to basic tiles doing 50 damage per strike tile converted.

Any friendly tile is fair game.

john1620b

Phantron wrote:

Not sure if this is discussed, but Daken's blue does get rid of other ally's strike tiles, so it'll get rid of Sacrifice (which would be a very bad idea).

The only way this would mean 5/3/5 is the better build is if you're playing in Latveria. Then you can get rid of cheap strike tiles (if you're lucky) to get great damage!