Is Nightcrawler bad?

Dormammu

I've only used loaners but in the past I've been able to see from loaners whether a character is good or not. Nightcrawler seems kind of sucky to me. His purple is... weird. It can create cascades I guess but seems like a really unreliable power overall. His other two powers feel like they cost too much AP.

I don't know. Glad I'm not a huge Nightcrawler fan, Rogue had me far more excited, but I know how beloved this character is and I'm scared he's not good.

hopper1979

I was thinking the same thing, I was not overly impressed when I finally tried him in the loaner node.  I like his purple power but the problem is whatever color you spawn after the first cast it is likely that will be the color from that point forward so team selection is very important that smell like niche to me especially if you are not careful when you cast it.  I will reserve judgment for the time being but some of the posting I have seen really sound like hyperbole to me especially when compared Rogue and Gambit.  He looks like a very good battery for one color, I would love to see the possible cascades when paired with somebody like C&D, Scarlet Witch, Sandman or Phoenix, people who can affect the board composition.

Dormammu

OJSP said:

Get 14 purple AP and wait for the board to have more purple tiles than others with a reasonable spread.

The match could be over by then.

granne

That ... really doesn't sound like fun. *Yawn*

Jarvind

He doesn't seem great. I could see his purple being useful with some gimmick teams, but red and blue are both pretty lackluster.

I will say that his AOE immunity has caught me off guard a few times in his PVP. It doesnt matter since it's just a weakling loaner, but I could see it being really annoying once he's widely champed and used.

Jaedenkaal

Jarvind said:

He doesn't seem great. I could see his purple being useful with some gimmick teams, but red and blue are both pretty lackluster.

I will say that his AOE immunity has caught me off guard a few times in his PVP. It doesnt matter since it's just a weakling loaner, but I could see it being really annoying once he's widely champed and used.

Well its tough, because he can (technically) generate his own Red and Blue AP, so he can potentially fire those powers more often or more easily than it might appear.

At least they've boosted/patched his blue to actually higher damage/(enemy) AP than Mordo's, so at least it's kind of comparable.

broll

He has limited winfinite potential, outside of this he's not all that useful.  Think of him as Chuck X class, except you can champ him.

DesertTortoise

I'm having a hard time even projecting the guy. His purple is flat out useful, but that really ties him into being on a rainbow team that uses all of the colors. That, on its own, is fine of course but his red and blue means he can't really represent any color that well. His red isn't worth firing unless you hit its second qualifier and that's pretty steep to demand that you have 10 of your strongest AP to go along with the 9 red AP it takes to fire (unless it works similarly to Agent Venom's red, which I suspect, meaning that if red is your strongest color and you fire this power with 10 AP it'll do the higher damage). Blue might be flat out bad, as far as practicals powers go, I imagine most teams you face won't have a passive color as their strongest color but that's the best situation for this power to really get some miles out of it. 12 blue AP is very expensive for a power that does conditional damage. 

broll

OJSP said:

It depends. When I have him championed, I'd like to try fighting 3 5* champs (except BB or Strange) with Nightcrawler Scarlet Witch and my dupe Prof X. It might take a while, but I think it requires little to no thinking and just tapping the power again and again.

Pretty much this.  The nice thing about this is it makes Prof less tied down.  As long as Nightcrawler is higher leveled than Chuck you should be able to champ him vs leaving him low level like old winfinite.

JarvisJackrabbit

Nightcrawler
+
Switch
+
Chuck
=
Bamfinite

Honestly, I'm okay with him being gimmicky or niche or whatever. That purple is pretty fun when you can spam the mini kitty out of it.

Tiger_Wong

Oh no. He’s not overpowered. He must be bad. 

Dormammu

No one is overpowered. But certain characters set the curve and I'm wondering where Nightcrawler is going to appear on that curve. I'm concerned its at the bottom.

Tiger_Wong

You do realize there is a thread called “Nightcrawler, you’re bonkers!” about 5 threads down from this one right?

D4Ni13

Dormammu said:

I've only used loaners but in the past I've been able to see from loaners whether a character is good or not. Nightcrawler seems kind of sucky to me. His purple is... weird. It can create cascades I guess but seems like a really unreliable power overall. His other two powers feel like they cost too much AP.

I don't know. Glad I'm not a huge Nightcrawler fan, Rogue had me far more excited, but I know how beloved this character is and I'm scared he's not good.

His purple is very strong. But the loaner one in PvP only converts 4 tiles so he doesn't do much. But at 5 covers & a bit of timing he is very strong. BAMF with purple most on the board can create winfinite in 1 turn. You need 7 AP and at least one cascade and your bassically BAMF your way from there.

Red is decent and blue is awful. So I wouldn't say bad. Middle tier.

DrDevilDinosaur

They just hotfixed his Blue, bringing it to just a little stronger than Mordo's purple (I'm calculating ~850 damage per enemy AP for Kurt at lv270, compared to my lv278 Mordo with 815 damage per enemy AP). This seems about right. Nightcrawler's blue costs more, and only targets the enemy's strongest colour rather than largest pool. It will be quite good for enemies with passive primaries, but outside of that scenario, I think it'll end up a little lower than Power with Purpose in terms of average damage output.

10_EFX_01

JarvisJackrabbit said:

Nightcrawler
+
Switch
+
Chuck
=
Bamfinite

Honestly, I'm okay with him being gimmicky or niche or whatever. That purple is pretty fun when you can spam the mini kitty out of it.

Sorry who's Chuck?

JarvisJackrabbit

10_EFX_01 said:

JarvisJackrabbit said:

Nightcrawler
+
Switch
+
Chuck
=
Bamfinite

Honestly, I'm okay with him being gimmicky or niche or whatever. That purple is pretty fun when you can spam the mini kitty out of it.

Sorry who's Chuck?

Charles Xavier

Dormammu

Tiger Wong said:

You do realize there is a thread called “Nightcrawler, you’re bonkers!” about 5 threads down from this one right?

Sure. But I wasn't worried about him being bonkers. I was worried about him being bad.

mega ghost

I don't think he's top tier, but he's certainly formidable, maybe top 25. As @D4Ni13 noted, at 5 covers his purple actually converts 8 tiles — the loaner is at 1 cover and only converts 4. Potential winfinite aside, pair him with a character that also converts tiles to a color (Cloak & Dagger?) and this could get insane fast. The only thing his purple needs ASAP is an update to the description field that tells you what color you'll be converting tiles to, that way you're not sitting there trying to count when there's no clear front-runner. @Brigby Is this an update that's already in the works, and if not can you point it out to the developers?

With his purple at 5 covers, it's much easier meeting the requirements for his red. Similarly, if you give the enemy a board full of tiles in their strongest color and they match them, that sets you up to deal serious damage with his blue.

Also of note, his blue is better than Mordo's purple in that in addition to the damage it doesn't just destroy the AP, it steals it.

Also ALSO of note, his purple passive rocks. Being immune to team damage is a big asset. There could potentially even be situations where the enemy can only take you down with match damage.

Anon

I don't think Nightcrawler is great, nor is he terrible. He's average. And the meta doesn't like average characters.

Nightcrawler is not a bad character. His problem is that he was released after Carol, Medusa, Blade, 4* Rocket & Groot, Mockingbird among others.

He's not bad, he just doesn't change the meta, and that's his weakness.

Dormammu

Rogue isn't a meta-defining character either but they really got her right and she's a ton of fun to play. I'm ok with Nightcrawler being a gimmick winfinite or use when boosted 4-star, if that's all he is. He just deserves better than the deep 4-star bench.

I love these forums and the ingenuity of its players. I'm guessing someone is going to come up with some killer Nightcrawler team combo. It may even be the switch/charley combo mentioned above.