Mordo (purple) vs. Nightcrawler (blue).

[Deleted User]

Who's the winner?
These skills are very similar but Mordo calculates the damage from the enemy's "highest" AP pool while Nightcrawler calculates from the "strongest" AP pool. Who's more likely to deal S I C K damage? In what scenarios will Nightcrawler be the winner?

One point goes to Power With Purpose because there are not very many purple high-caliber skills in the 4* tier.
Blue skills... Hmmmm... Not as rare. But to be honest this was a dumb comparison since they both got good blue and purple skills respectively.

jamesh

Nightcrawler steals AP rather than destroying it, so if you've got an active power in your enemy's strongest colour you'd want to account some of that damage to Nightcrawler's blue too.

Jaedenkaal

I had a huge post written up comparing the two, but...

Fun fact I just noticed: Everywhere At Once does basically the same damage per enemy AP as Surgical Strike does per tile destroyed. It costs 1 AP more, but steals 4 AP instead of destroying tiles. Also, wolverine has less health than NC, isn't immune to team damage (heals, technically), and can't generate his own Black AP. I think Surgical Strike is a much better, although perhaps less obvious, comparison.

In terms of actual damage, I believe it's fair to say that for 4* powers we start getting interested in powers that do around 7000 damage or more (at 270, about double that when boosted to 366). That's Ultimate Soldier or Fist of Khonshu damage. Everywhere at Once gets to that level if there is 8 AP in the enemy's strongest pool. Power with Purpose requires 9 AP in the enemy's largest pool, although this threshold is likely easier.

It doesn't actually seem that unlikely that an enemy team would have 8 AP in their strongest color, so getting reasonable damage from EoA doesn't actually seem that hard, although, getting your own Blue AP up to 12 is definitely a priority, and get ready to use that enemy AP against them.

Anon

I'm going with Power With Purpose.

Spoit

I disagree, It's far more likely for the enemy to get 9 AP in their largest pool (especially since many teams aren't rainbows and the AI will always go for the 4-matches) than for them to actually get to 8 in their strongest without using it on the power.

Jaedenkaal

Spoit said:

I disagree, It's far more likely for the enemy to get 9 AP in their largest pool (especially since many teams aren't rainbows and the AI will always go for the 4-matches) than for them to actually get to 8 in their strongest without using it on the power.

I believe that's what I stated. Additionally, bear in mind that if the enemy team has only powers that cost 8 or more in their strongest color (not terribly unlikely), there will nearly always be a turn where they have 8 or more AP in that color and you have a chance to act. You also have to have your 12 Blue by that point, as I also stated.

TheHungryPet

Clear win for Mordo. 

Any power that requires 12AP better be amazing. The other problem I see with Nightcrawler is that Everyone at Once is a blue power. I digress, but I much prefer blue stuns from Peggy, Iceman or G4mora. 

Even unboosted, Mordo is a damage beast with his purple power. 

As pointed out by others, reliability is key. "Strongest" color is a catch 22 for me as it's unlikely they will tank it unless it's a passive, of course. Too many ifs. 

sambrookjm

My Carnage/Medusa/Mr F team has yellow as their strongest color, and it's due to two passive abilities.  No way to get rid of it, so either of those abilities is really, really bad.  But overall, I'd say Mordo is the clear winner here.

Dayv

Power With Purpose, definitely.  Strongest color will be good against some teams and terrible against others.  Power With Purpose will always have a good moment to be used.

Nightcrawler gains some ground against teams that have a high cost or passive-only strong color, but if the strong color has an inexpensive skill, get used to it doing almost nothing.

Mordo will fire his skill more often with the lower cost, and has six pools to choose from for best damage instead of NC's one.  I just can't see 4 AP theft as being worth the much lower chance of serious damage.

Nightcrawler's red and purple are both really great, I just can't prioritize his blue at all.  It gets fired only if there's nothing better to do with blue AP.

jamesh

Of course, if the enemy team's strongest colour is blue then Nightcrawler will be able to fire his power more often than Mordo.

Dayv

jamesh said:

Of course, if the enemy team's strongest colour is blue then Nightcrawler will be able to fire his power more often than Mordo.

Will they, though?

You have to get 12 AP, then wait for the enemy to have four or more blue if they don't immediately, then fire it and steal four, needing eight more.  For two uses of it, you're at an average cost of 10 AP, and that's only if you assume the enemy always has 4 or more blue.  At three uses, the average cost drops to 9.3, still more expensive than Mordo's purple.  Only at 4 uses in a single match does the cost drop to 9 AP, achieving parity -- again, this assumes the enemy had four blue every single time, and at no point did you down the strong blue enemy and change the targeted color.

If you fire it eight times and steal 4 blue every time, you've gotten the cost down to 8.5 AP.

Make mine Mordo.

When it comes down to it, Nightcrawler blue is the weakest of Kurt's three skills, while Mordo purple is probably the strongest of his.  Both are good characters, but for this specific niche, Mordo is the winner.

Side note: when they first redesigned Mordo, his purple was incorrectly set to steal 5 AP instead of destroying it.  That was straight-up incredible.

vinsensual

Make it AOE and I think it fixes a lot.  It's unique, and limited in damage with the way AI spends AP.  And it would fit since the name is "everywhere at once."