5* Tier Guide and Ranking (new poll opened - 12 Mar 18)

Colognoisseur

The point I am making is the context of these rankings is unknown. the only reference we get is this at the end of the first section of the OP:

"I did a quick survey with my SSOLU friends from Skynet, Singapore and S1. The sample size is small (18), but the concentration of players with 5* is higher in SSOLU, and hence their opinions are more informed."

Since he says Skynet 2.0 is where he is taking his sample from how do they regularly place in PvP and PvE?
are they hardcore, casual? Who knows? The only thing I can look at is Alliance standings and they are not t20 in either. The concentration of 5* players in SSOLU being higher is only a supposition without any support. I probably agree but again other than kings of the worl and piro_plock who I know and have competed against the other 16 voters don't seem to be on that level. I only know both of them from PvP; as far as PvE goes i have no idea. Which again maybe adds a bias to their ranking or not. These might be the best 5* PvP ranking or the best 5* PvE rankings.

It also seems like there was no effort to reach out to alliances which compete at the top in both styles.

The context is missing behind walls of text which seemingly are providing an unofficial guide. Everyone's vote counts but it is the context which provides their value. There is none of that here

To answer @Piro_plock question; should someone rate something they have no experience with? That's what is happening here. Yes I have all of the older ones champed and yes my experience with them is why I am laughing at the low rankings some of them receive. The people ranking can't use them and so they rank them low. The people ranking say I never see them when I play PvP so they must be bad. That's not a rating that's just confirmation bias at its worst.

atomzed

Finally finished all the write ups and ranking! all 20 characters are shown! 

i will try to update the new 5* as they are rolled out, but i probably may not do another survey. It is hard to get good survey data. 

atomzed

@Colognoisseur, i agree with your criticism about the rankings not being an accurate reflection of the characters. If you look at my description, you will also see that i am amazed at how low IM46 and Steve were rated. 

But that is what the data has shown, and hence i reported it dutifully. 

Could I have done a bigger and more detailed survey? Yes i could. In fact my ideal survey would attempt to look at player demographics (such as the numbers of champ 5*) and separate ranking for PVP and PVE (eg i am pretty sure Strange ranking for PVP will be lower than that of PVE). But it is hard to do that using a forum survey as the options are limited. 

Should I have reach out to other established alliances or players? i did that, by sending the survey link to my Battle chat mates. What about other players not in my BC? I have done that before and i found that it is often very tedious to try to collect very rigorous data. and in this case, even if i has ranking from all major alliances, i am certain that people will argue over the validity of different group of players and the actual ratings. 

My own reflection for this exercise is that: 
1) In my humble opinion, there are 4 tiers of 5*. Trash tier, Good tier (rank 9 to 18), Very Good tier (rank 4 to 8) and excellent tier (rank 1 to 3). In reality, Gambit is in a class of his own and to lump him with thanos and BB is underclassifyinf him. 
2) People often have very different opinions about the characters. A short guide is never intended to cover all nuances of the characters and play style. 
3) I underestimated the amount of time needed to write such a guide, even though i intended it to be short. Kudos to many players who write a detailed comprehensive guides. A shoutout to people such as @Colognoisseur
@aesthetocyst @Jarvind

Anon

Dr Strange in top 5 just doesn't sit well with me. I'm not a 5* player admittedly, but still, there's no way he ranks above Daredevil or Spiderman to me.

atomzed

Anon said:

Dr Strange in top 5 just doesn't sit well with me. I'm not a 5* player admittedly, but still, there's no way he ranks above Daredevil or Spiderman to me.

My opinion is that Strange is better than DD or spidey in PVE, but DD and Spidey are way better than him in PVP. So this is the problem for my survey when i asked people to rate the character usefulness in PVE and PVP together. 

vudu3

A few months ago I would agree that Strange has no place in PVP but I find that I use him quite a bit with Gambit.

Bolt is obviously a great pairing with Gambit but when I go up against an enemy Gambit in PVP then I often leave Bolt on the bench because I don't want to give enemy Gambit charged tiles to use. 

With Strange, I chase red and hopefully get 14 AP or close to it by the time the AI gets 7 red. Enemy Gambit fires red first for minimal damage and then purple. Strange zaps him for 6,000 damage each time. Then my Gambit fires red twice in a row and finishes him off. 

Starfury

vudu3 said:

A few months ago I would agree that Strange has no place in PVP but I find that I use him quite a bit with Gambit.

Bolt is obviously a great pairing with Gambit but when I go up against an enemy Gambit in PVP then I often leave Bolt on the bench because I don't want to give enemy Gambit charged tiles to use. 

With Strange, I chase red and hopefully get 14 AP or close to it by the time the AI gets 7 red. Enemy Gambit fires red first for minimal damage and then purple. Strange zaps him for 6,000 damage each time. Then my Gambit fires red twice in a row and finishes him off. 

Yeah, for Gambit v Gambit matches, an enemy Strange is a big minus to me.

Hadronic

I only have Gambit/Hawkeye/Strange/Thanos

I know from experience that Gambit/Hawkeye/Strange can mop the floor against the following teams
Gambit/not BlackBolt/not Strange

I didnt vote in this poll but i would have put Strange pretty high too.

jackstar0

I'd love to see a companion ranking for the PVE side. With the 5* Essentials and and the top CLs being an occasional challenge, it would be nice to see those rankings for people looking ahead to how that side of the game will be affected for them and who gives the biggest bang/iso/healthpack/etc.

I enjoyed this thread a lot though. Thanks for doing it!

GrimSkald

I hadn't seen this before, good thread and I more or less agree with the rankings with one notable exception - Thor is ranked way too low.  That's not exceptionally surprising as he was very new at the time, but he's proven himself as a solid top-tier character, I think.  Thorbit has replaced Gambolt as the most common team I see in PVP (heck, I use it myself,) mostly because Thorbit is really good against Gambolt - the disadvantage to bringing Bolt in PVP is he benefits your opponent's Gambit as much as yours...

Archangel is probably ahead of Ock and Banner, but probably not anyone else.  I don't have a good grasp on the Rider, but after playing a four cover version of him I don't think he's great - his green repeaters do not reap the full benefit most of the time.  He's probably somewhere around BW and GG...

Jurippe

I think people are really sleeping on Archangel. He works really well with Gambit, at least at the early champ levels. His AP denial is amazing, he'll shut down a BB or Gambit really quickly with his black, and not matching it away means big damage (even if it's just supplementary damage). When coupled with a Ragin Cajun the AI is going to eat it pretty quickly. His blue and green are kinda expensive, but Gambit will feed it relatively quickly. Maybe the best thing though is having a Blue match that you won't regret or loathe matching. There's so many times I've killed a gambolt or thorbit and I only have to throw a single health pack of archangel and seek the next match. He's really underrated support. 

jackstar0

Overall, I like what JJ is bringing and would put her solidly into the mid-tier at this point, though maybe on the lower end since she lacks for any kind of health regen or low-health benefits, so I think she'll suck up healthpacks a bit.

If I do manage to luck into some covers for her, I'll certainly give her a fair shake while she's super-boosted.

atomzed

jackstar0 said:

I'd love to see a companion ranking for the PVE side. With the 5* Essentials and and the top CLs being an occasional challenge, it would be nice to see those rankings for people looking ahead to how that side of the game will be affected for them and who gives the biggest bang/iso/healthpack/etc.

I enjoyed this thread a lot though. Thanks for doing it!

ooh, thanks for the compliment! i thought no one was really paying attention to the thread. 

I was thinking of releasing separate community surveys for PVP and PVE. i agree that their usages will differ according to the game mode. 

@GrimSkald, i also feel that thor is ranked lower than what he is really like. To some extent, Thor below 50% plays very differently from his full health version, so some people may be skew by this perception. I really like him at 50%, and he is currently my fave character in pvp and pve. 

Anon

Thor deserves top 3 status. Behind Gambit and maybe Black Bolt, but certainly not ranked lower.

atomzed

I have created another survey to poll MPQ players of their opinion of the 5* tier. 

Key changes include (1) separate rating for PVP and PVE, (2) use a 5 point rating to simplify the survey since the questions are doubled (3) add in some questions to find out the respondents playing style and roster strength. 

https://goo.gl/forms/zkljBVMkoYGMVJ9X2

i had sent the survey link to SSOLU members too, which hopefully should see more 5* players answering. 

Colognoisseur

atomzed said:

I have created another survey to poll MPQ players of their opinion of the 5* tier. 

Key changes include (1) separate rating for PVP and PVE, (2) use a 5 point rating to simplify the survey since the questions are doubled (3) add in some questions to find out the respondents playing style and roster strength. 

https://goo.gl/forms/zkljBVMkoYGMVJ9X2

i had sent the survey link to SSOLU members too, which hopefully should see more 5* players answering. 

Atomzed thank you for reaching out to a wider group of players for this version; much appreciated.

atomzed

Colognoisseur said:

atomzed said:

I have created another survey to poll MPQ players of their opinion of the 5* tier. 

Key changes include (1) separate rating for PVP and PVE, (2) use a 5 point rating to simplify the survey since the questions are doubled (3) add in some questions to find out the respondents playing style and roster strength. 

https://goo.gl/forms/zkljBVMkoYGMVJ9X2

i had sent the survey link to SSOLU members too, which hopefully should see more 5* players answering. 

Atomzed thank you for reaching out to a wider group of players for this version; much appreciated.

No problem! I took the comments from the previous version to heart. Hopefully this survey findings will be more representative.

atomzed

Quick update on the survey - thus far, 117 people has responded to the survey. That is more than 3 times the sample size of the last survey! Hopefully, this gives a better picture of how people feel about the 5* tier.

I will still keep the survey open for a few more days. After which i will analyse the results and post the details on this thread.

Player1575

Just saw this and voted. 

atomzed

thanks for voting!