Why is 5* Strange worse than 3* and general 5* questions

Aldaen

I am a solid 4* player and have only recently gotten a couple of 5*s ready for serious use.  Unfortunately, my highest ranked 5* is Strange:  currently level 360 1/3/3

First, I realize that Strange isn't great for PvP, so I'm talking mostly PvE.  3* Strange is GREAT for dealing with goons.  In short, there is no real reason for me to use my 360 5* Strange over my 200+ 3* Strange.  Yes, it has more health (but low for a 5*) and does more match damage, but in most situations, my 3* is better.  I only end up using my 5* if my 3* is too wounded, which really makes me unhappy for investing in the 5*.

Most importantly, 3* has the yellow auto-heal.  If anything, I'd think the 5* would add that... not take it away.  If they just added heal to the 5*, most of my concerns would be gone.  Then his relatively low 5* health would make more sense, too.  The direct yellow damage on 5* is nice, but relatively weak and hard to pull off at 14 AP.  NOT a good trade for the heal.

Purple isn't great for 3* or 5* but you can make the case that 3* has its advantages unless you're playing against a really slow special tile generator.  5* would be an obvious win over 3* if it destroyed 2 tiles each turn.  Removing countdown tiles would also make him even more usual for PvE.

Blue is a wash, but is fine.  (Both good).  Eventually when I level up, 5* blue will do a lot more damage than 3* blue.


So here are my general 5* questions based on this situation:

Right now my 3* is better than my 5*.... even when the 5* is well over 100 levels higher.  3* does more yellow and blue damage and has an amazing free heal! 

Is this common with 5*s?  What level will the 5* be better than a 3* counterpart (generally)?  

dr tinykittylove

You need both covers and levels. While 5*s are more dependant on levels, covers are still important. Try clicking on the higher covers to see the difference in the stats. 

roberts_2

Try to see someone's 5* Strange promoted + 34 more levels (same as your 3* Strange) and compare the damage numbers again

[Deleted User]

Went against a 5* Strange in PVP the other day.  Fairly blase about it, not many 5*s are that scary so I didnt think twice.

10k damage every time I fired a power very quickly changed my opinion about him!

roberts_2

Stunt must be your first power fired. Strange 5* is very dangerous but he's a low health char.

Aldaen

Again, I'm just talking PvE... I just didn't think I'd have to champion my 5* Strange to make it worth using over a championed 3* Strange.  I'd understand it being closer between a 4* and 5*, but didn't expect it with a 3*.  But maybe it is just that 3* Strange is so good in PvE.   

But I'm not asking for a nerf on 3* Strange!   Just unhappy that I have no reason to use a 7-cover 5* Strange.  Maybe I can look at it again when I hit 10 covers?

Compared to my 5* Hawkeye which I find very useful at 5 covers (2/1/2 lvl 330).  He works great with Coulson and C4rol even in PvP.

[Deleted User]

PVE I dont use any 5*s at all. I have all rostered (except Thor) and some at around 10 covers, but not found any useful at all. THe only one I occasionally turn to is Green Goblin. Combined with Deadpool and Scarlett Witch I am able to win matches with Whales! when I just cant win any other way.

DAZ0273

I have a similar situation where at present my Lvl 210 3* Thanos with 5 levels in green and black can out damage my lvl 255 5* Thanos with 2 covers in green and black each.

I don't think any 5* players will say that remains the same as you add covers and levels though.

thedarkphoenix

While it doesn't heal it does have an active ability which for a yellow is kind of rare. It also hits hard.

So 5 strange does more damage while 3 strange adds a bit more survivability  

DAZ0273

5* Strange's blue at 5 also kicks out 19k damage over 3 turns (obviously if the tile isn't matched) as well as stunning and AP destroying, does any other stun power have that high damage also apart from Court Death? I'm glad Gambat doesn't feed blue!

Dormammu

At 1/3/3 your 5strange is severely under-covered and operating at 50% capacity. That makes a huge difference.

broll

DAZ0273 said:

I have a similar situation where at present my Lvl 210 3* Thanos with 5 levels in green and black can out damage my lvl 255 5* Thanos with 2 covers in green and black each.

I don't think any 5* players will say that remains the same as you add covers and levels though.

And this is exactly why they power levels are different.  The 5/3 copy system would be even more broken if the 5* out leveled the 3* without putting any ISO in.

When I recently leveled my 5* Thanos with 5 in black to 360 I watched for the break even point and it was somewhere around 300 that it matched my 180-200 3* version's power.  So you need to have about 100 more levels to reach the same damage amount (assuming linear scaling which they don't have, scaling is an exponential curve).  But when you factor in that Thanos 5* can level up to 550 and Thanos 3* can only go to 266 (outside of BOP) 5* wins in the long run by quite a lot.

This conversation made me wonder if 3* Thanos is actually better than 5* during BOP when both are at 550.  The data is interesting.  3* has slightly better damage on Court Death, slightly more HP, but half the match damage)

Level HP (Top 3 Match damage range) Court Death

5* 140407 (1128-1450) 30260 enemy, 7504 team
3* 163124 (522-674) 34922 enemy, 8935 team

Aldaen

Good info aesthetocyst and thanks all.  I'm just not used to 5* land yet.  I'll have to continue to be patient.

It is a let down to have my highest "level" hero always sitting on the bench and beaten out by a 3*.  In reality, I should have just saved the ISO. 

I guess that would be a useful lesson for somebody wanting to raise a 5trange... how many covers does it make sense to start leveling?  It sounds like until you get 10 or 11 covers, don't bother using ISO?

DAZ0273

broll said:

DAZ0273 said:

I have a similar situation where at present my Lvl 210 3* Thanos with 5 levels in green and black can out damage my lvl 255 5* Thanos with 2 covers in green and black each.

I don't think any 5* players will say that remains the same as you add covers and levels though.

And this is exactly why they power levels are different.  The 5/3 copy system would be even more broken if the 5* out leveled the 3* without putting any ISO in.

When I recently leveled my 5* Thanos with 5 in black to 360 I watched for the break even point and it was somewhere around 300 that it matched my 180-200 3* version's power.  So you need to have about 100 more levels to reach the same damage amount (assuming linear scaling which they don't have, scaling is an exponential curve).  But when you factor in that Thanos 5* can level up to 550 and Thanos 3* can only go to 266 (outside of BOP) 5* wins in the long run by quite a lot.

This conversation made me wonder if 3* Thanos is actually better than 5* during BOP when both are at 550.  The data is interesting.  3* has slightly better damage on Court Death, slightly more HP, but half the match damage)

Level HP (Top 3 Match damage range) Court Death

5* 140407 (1128-1450) 30260 enemy, 7504 team
3* 163124 (522-674) 34922 enemy, 8935 team

Interesting stuff, the match damage difference shows you that probably 5* is still the way to go I would think despite him being outperformed.

Those figures though are why we must never let 3* Thanos join the Dark Avengers...scary.

Straycat

It is a little disappointing that my fully covered non leveled 5* is still worse than my 3*. My lvl 255 5* Strange is almost on par with my 237 3* Strange, both at 5/3/5. ~1500 vs ~2000 damage. And 8917 health vs 9640.

monsieurmojo

Aldaen said:

I guess that would be a useful lesson for somebody wanting to raise a 5trange... how many covers does it make sense to start leveling?  It sounds like until you get 10 or 11 covers, don't bother using ISO?

A 5* character's stats (health, match damage, and power damage) roughly double from 255-360, and double again from 360-450.  Just from observation, with no math crunching involved:  a 5* is roughly the equivalent, purely from a health standpoint, to a boosted 4* at 360, and will have far superior health (40k-55k not including the Thanos outlier) at 450.  In terms of match damage, the 5* will always have an edge.  In terms of power damage, level matters, but so does coverage; a 5*'s power damage at 5 covers is in a similar ballpark to a boosted 4*'s powers at 450, and become useable around 405 (10 covers). 

(But!  Once leveled, that 5* at 450 is like a permanently extra-boosted 4*; you don't have to wait ~3 months and increasing between boosts)

I wouldn't consider leveling your 5s unless you have 4 or 5 covers in their key power(s); Strange blue or yellow, Bolt green or black, Thanos black or green, Parker red or green, etc.  Like @aesthetocyst said, it's all situation dependent.  

Warbringa

sh81 said:

Went against a 5* Strange in PVP the other day.  Fairly blase about it, not many 5*s are that scary so I didnt think twice.

10k damage every time I fired a power very quickly changed my opinion about him!

Strange, 3* or 5* is very easy to beat in PvP.  His low health makes him easy to be one-shot with several nuke powers. Even if you get hit once by his power, its usually no big deal.  You just don't want to fire off many smaller powers because then it adds up.  Tile generators like Medusa and Grocket (4*) make him easy to kill off fast too.  I view him a lot like Hood in the older 3* meta.  He is initially a pain but pretty easy to knock out of the fight in the first few rounds. 

Copps

I'm thinking him paired with bolt and gambit should do me well in sim though. Since gambit is higher priority and he does match damage and has a useful ability on the missing blue as well as a damaging yellow. 

DeNappa

My Dr. 5trange is one of my better covered 5*s, but unfortunately the covers fell at 3/5/2 (actually, 3/6/1, but amended by CS because he was in latest then). While sitting at level 300, I find I almost always use his level 202 3* counterpart because:

• Strang3 does 1800ish damage with his yellow, vs 800ish for the 5* version.
• As mentioned, Strang3 gives burst heal.
• Because of his high match damage, 5trange has to tank a lot of colors unless you can hide him behind other 5*s. But my 5* roster is not developed enough to justify this in most cases.

Because of reason 1, I find I can often not dispose of countdown spammers quickly enough with the 5*, and because of 2 and 3, both 5trange and his team generally tend to lose more health.

Also, fine and dandy to have his purple at 5 covers, however even at 5 covers it's bad. It's relatively expensive and even if you do manage to fire it, it's very slow. 

It's a big bummer considering I spent just about my entire stockpile to cover Strange well when he was released.

Qubort

You're comparing apples to oranges since your 3 star is champed and the 5 isn't even covered. If they both were champed you'd clearly prefer the 5 star.

DAZ0273

And of course as the 3* is champed, it is optimally specced power wise, not so 5*.