5* Ghost Rider - First impressions

GrimSkald

Ok, so unless I missed something they never gave us a preview of Robbie.  Regardless, he appeared as a "ghost" (heh) in our rosters as Noon (EST) today.  What is your first, off the cuff impression?  For those of you who haven't seen this before, you can preview any power by clicking on it's space (so the 3th, 4th, or 5th place,) and a level 255 character's powers do roughly 1/4 damage of a 450 - so multiply any number by 4.  I'll give  a dime-store summary as my first post, but I don't want to clutter this up too much.

GrimSkald

He looks solid, probably on the low end of top tier

To simplify your math, here's what a 450 Reyes is capable of.  I'm not going to bother putting in the description, just summarize.

Green - 9ap

3 covers - 3 repeater that every other turn destroy 3 surrounding GRB tiles, 2x Damage

4 covers - 3 repeater that every other turn destroy 3 surrounding GRB tiles, 3x Damage

5 covers - 3 repeater that every turn destroy 3 surrounding GRB tiles, 3x Damage

Red - 7ap

Stun 1 turn, 6 turn CD, whenever targeted character makes a match take 1648 damage ALT do 8348

Stun 1 turn, 7 turn CD, whenever targeted character makes a match take 2620 damage ALT do 9740

Stun 1 turn, 8 turn CD, whenever targeted character makes a match take 3656 damage ALT do 12520

Black - 10 ap

Deal 9768 or 13448

Deal 11396 or 15692

Deal 14652 or 20176

GrimSkald

He looks solid, probably on the low end of top tier

BlackBoltRocks said:

His Green is amazeballs. It's the default five-cover power, destroying max 9 tiles every turn, doing 3x its usual tile damage, AND generating AP (I presume). It could be crazier than GladiaThor's passive.

Red and Black are the variables. 5 Red works best with other stunners to ensure the targeted enemy is the only one making matches, while 5 Black is more for boss battles, although it can also punish heavy hitters.

I think I agree with you - his Green is pretty fantastic as an AP generator and the fact that it generates more than one repeater gives it some staying power.  That plus cascades will make it pay off very quickly, easily it's his best power.

His red and black are interesting - both are fairly reasonable in cost for what they do.  His black compares very favorably to Natasha's - does good damage normally, outstanding damage if a condition is met.  Same cost and about the same damage too.  I know, Natasha isn't even close to a top tier character anymore (if she ever was,) but black is almost certainly her best power so there's that.  I don't have a solid grasp on his Red - it's very different and looks like it combine well with, say, Hawkeye.  It might be his weakest power but at least it's cheap.

All in all, as you can see by my vote, I put him somewhere in the top tier, probably on the low end.  Does not change our current Gambit meta, but that's not a surprise - neither did GladiaThor or Archangel.  We'll leave the arguing over the Gambit meta to another thread.

hopper1979

He looks awesome, probably on the high end of top tier

With the exception of WWIII they have been on a roll with their recent 3's.  Gambit is Gambit but there is no arguing he is the best 5 to date, 5Thor is top tire and this new GR looks very solid, very fast high damage and ap generation.  I expect to see him a lot.  He is still not gambit but like 5Thor he looks like a well crafted character that is not broken.

Starfury

He looks awesome, probably on the high end of top tier

Up to 9 AP + 1500 damage for each, with a potential for cascades.

With three possible colors it shouldn't be impossible to keep them in range of at least 2 tiles each.

Of course that only works until Gambit gets 11 purple...

RunningMan

Which would be best?  I currently have Thor (465), Gambit (456), and DD(455) champed (out of 8 total champs).  Better to spend accumulated CP (~5K) on latest to add champ levels to Thor and Gambit?  Or spend it on the Engines of Vengeance store to try and get a champ GR while he's still boosted and extra champ levels for DD?

DrDevilDinosaur

He's got a nice cover

Vhailorx

I am a little cooler on his green.  9ap means it isnt super fast.  And it is both fragile (tiles unfortified) and takes another turn to start having effect.  But it will do lots of damage and collect lots of ap.  So it may play up in practice. 

Red also looks solid, being cheap and able to do decent damage on a double cast.  

Black seems pretty underwhelming.  Too pricey, too conditional for that damage.


Overall maybe top of the pretty good tier or bottom of the very good tier?  So a solid addition to 5* land.


(Edited to correct my misunderstanding of the green power.  Thanks runningman.)

RunningMan

What do you mean his green takes 3 more turns to have effect?  At 1-4 covers, it's a 2-turn repeater, at 5 covers, it's a 1-turn repeater.

@Brigby
With respect to his black power, is the condition that the target has done the most damage of the remaining enemies still alive?  ie: would the black power always do max damage on the final enemy?

fork1977

First impressions:

Interesting, but other 5*s do his work better.  

The Good:
He powers his own colors
Red is cheap and effective for a stun and extra damage. That's a great ability relative to its cost, assuming you do not have Gambit.
It is true to the character
His health is pretty good, so he's a bit less squishy than Natasha or Goblin (other 5* black burst toons)

The Not-so-Good:
Green does NOT live up to its billing.  Like  @Vhailorx said, the green is not cheap, so it takes a while to get started.  Plus, the repeaters ONLY target his colors, so they can go off with no effect.  The damage they do is somewhere between 1.2K and 5K, depending on if it hits 1, 2, or 3 tiles.  That's not bad, but not worth 9 green unless you have no other 5*s who use green.  But hell, even a boosted rogue would be a better damage option for green.  In practice, it was not the AP battery that it appears.  

The repeaters can be matched away easily, and I found the AP gain to be too erratic.  Thor, Gambit and BB all generate AP with more effectiveness.

Black is just costly enough to be middling, but trying out his green generated a lot of it, so I found myself using it more than I thought I would.  But it is expensive enough to make double-taps unlikely.

Red should have a shorter CD and 2 turns of stun, though that would hinder the match damage component.  

Mostly, I can't figure out who he synergizes with.  His green COULD feed Gambit, but Gambit feeds himself.  As I said earlier, Gambit is a much better red user.  

I don't see him making many pvp rotations, as he doesn't do anything really valuable that isn't done better by someone else.

Jarvind

He looks solid, probably on the low end of top tier

I went with "purty gud." Definitely better than a lot of what's out there, but unfortunately is marred by the ever-present specter of "lol I invalidate any power that relies on special tiles" Gambit.

Polares

He looks awesome, probably on the high end of top tier

fahq1977 said:

First impressions:

The Not-so-Good:
Green does NOT live up to its billing.  Like  @Vhailorx said, the green is not cheap, so it takes a while to get started.  Plus, the repeaters ONLY target his colors, so they can go off with no effect.  The damage they do is somewhere between 1.2K and 5K, depending on if it hits 1, 2, or 3 tiles.  That's not bad, but not worth 9 green unless you have no other 5*s who use green.  But hell, even a boosted rogue would be a better damage option for green.  In practice, it was not the AP battery that it appears.  

The repeaters can be matched away easily, and I found the AP gain to be too erratic.  Thor, Gambit and BB all generate AP with more effectiveness.

Well thing is, you get 9AP back on the first turn (not all green obviously) plus cascades plus damage so in a way it is 5k dmg on the first turn for free, and after that is 5k more damage plus more cascades. It blows SS black hole in every possible sense.

Even if you loose one repeater every turn for 9AP you would get 18AP, plus cascades, plus 10k dmg.

It might not be as good as Gambit or Thor, but it looks like quite good. I wonder how crazy can it be if played WITH Thor :P

Black also think is very good, if you always fire against the max dmg dealer it is 20k for 10AP. That is really good.

fork1977

OJSP said:

Polares said:

Well thing is, you get 9AP back on the first turn (not all green obviously) plus cascades plus damage so in a way it is 5k dmg on the first turn for free, and after that is 5k more damage plus more cascades. It blows SS black hole in every possible sense.

Even if you loose one repeater every turn for 9AP you would get 18AP, plus cascades, plus 10k dmg.

It might not be as good as Gambit or Thor, but it looks like quite good. I wonder how crazy can it be if played WITH Thor :P

Black also think is very good, if you always fire against the max dmg dealer it is 20k for 10AP. That is really good.

You are assuming that all 3 repeater tiles are surrounded by enough Red, Green or Black tiles.

I've run 20 pvp battles with him, and that hasn't happened once

fork1977

RunningMan said:

What do you mean his green takes 3 more turns to have effect?  At 1-4 covers, it's a 2-turn repeater, at 5 covers, it's a 1-turn repeater.

@Brigby
With respect to his black power, is the condition that the target has done the most damage of the remaining enemies still alive?  ie: would the black power always do max damage on the final enemy?

I ran him for several PvP battles, and found the following about his Black Power:

The black power does NOT always do max damage to the final enemy.  I ran PvP tests and regularly had one final enemy who I downed and the text under the pointer tip for Damnation read: "(nobody has done the most damage)".  I usually downed these people right after downing the next to last person.  I did have a match where I couldn't down two on the same turn, the last target made a match, and then damnation hit for full.

It seems as long as any of the three made a match at some point, damnation would hit for full.

RunningMan

So it sounds like even if they were the last enemy, they have to have done SOME damage for black to hit for full?  But even if the other two (who are now downed) had previously done more damage than the remaining enemy, it would still hit for full after they made a match?

What were your general impressions after using him for 20 or so pvp matches?  How well covered is your GR and what level?

Quebbster

Ghost Rider and Phoenix could be an interesting combo, let Phoenix spam the board with red so Ghost Rider has AP to collect. Too bad it's likely to wipe out the repeater tiles...

fork1977

RunningMan said:

So it sounds like even if they were the last enemy, they have to have done SOME damage for black to hit for full?  But even if the other two (who are now downed) had previously done more damage than the remaining enemy, it would still hit for full after they made a match?

What were your general impressions after using him for 20 or so pvp matches?  How well covered is your GR and what level?

Yep, they need to have done some damage for it to hit for full. But if they have, even one match, it hits for full and is a good finisher. OJSP is right, account is sandboxed testing account so he is 450 and now boosted to gross levels.  I run him to test abilities, not viability as regular 5*.  But my original estimate still stands. He’s good, but definitely not top tier; more middling level and better than several other 5*s.  For example, I could tell Gambit and Thor were meta-level even while boosted as new 5*s and that Doc Ock very much was not. 
He is also one of those 5*s whose level makes a difference.  Unlike gambit or Thanos who could be run undercovered and slightly undrleveled, GR needs all the power he can get