Which five 3 or 4 stars you never use unless required?

ZootSax

DAZ0273 said:

The really frustrating one is Mystique because in the hands of the AI she is a constant pain in the backside but as soon as she is on my team she just seems sadly useless.

The AI has the benefit of purple and/or black feeders, to keep her powers constantly cycling.  She's got a decent stun, AP theft and nuke...there's just a lot of better options, even at just the 3* level.

As for me, I don't bother rostering a lot of characters I don't like, but of the ones I have, I never find myself using:
3*:
Angel, Daredevil, Doctor Octopus, Elektra, Hulk (which is sad, as I enjoyed Hulkbombing until I got more 4* champs...I may need to run it again soon), Magneto & Thor (I have no good reason for not using the last two...they're good, they just also never leave the bench).
4* (only counting champs, as my under-covered 4*'s are mostly worthless): 
Hulkbuster (I honestly just forget about him, as he wasn't champed until the meta had long-since passed him by), Nightcrawler, Nova (I have no idea why I don't use him more...he's fun, but I just never use him), and Sam Wilson.  Elektra probably deserves to be on this list, but just because she was the first 4* I ever won from an event I use her more than she merits...

abmoraz

Easier to list the ones I actually use, since I have them all:

3 Star

• Deadpool (whales, baby)
• Doc Oc (when boosted, in teams with Medusa)
• Iron Fist (against bosses when he's boosted with X-force and/or SWitch)
• Iron Man (still a decent battery for other chars, especially when using Red Nukes so Vulture isn't as useful)
• Loki (he pairs real well with 4* CapMarvel against Dark Avenger teams)
• Quicksilver (for Kaecillius only, paired with Coulson and Mr. Fantastic)
• Scarlet Witch (purple generation)
• Thanos (Speed running, since I don;t have the 5* built up)
• Hood (paired with Gambit in certain scenarios to super slowdown opponents, like in the PvE Simulator)

4 Star

• Capt Marvel (Especially when boosted)
  
• Gamora (not as often as I used to)
  
• Coulson (I have 5* Hawkeye champed.  Together they form a slaughter house that is fast [in terms of the number of rounds] but slow [it terms of actual real time])
  
• Star Lord (nice against harder goon teams, especially when paired with R&G and CaptMarv)
  
• Medusa (not as much as I used to)
  
• Rocket&Groot (free bonus match damage)
  
• Carnage (mainly in the Medusa/Carnage/Mr.Fantastic "it's not hard but it will take you forever to beat this team" PvP defense)
  
• Thor (generally only when boosted)
  
• Cloak & Dagger (to pump Vulture, mainly)
• Prof X (with SWitch or Wasp)
  
• Mr. Fantastic (with Carnage & Medusa)
  
• Wasp (with ProfX)
  
• Vulture
  
• Luke Cage (occasionally against symbiots and mindless ones when I want to conserve health packs)
• Teen Grey (Goon squad control, espially if Gambit is low and/or I am out of health packs)
  
• Chavez
• Nico (with R&G)
  

Jarvis_Jackrabbit

DAZ0273 said:

Having Doctor Octopus as an essential for Apocalypse v X-Men pretty much nailed on why I never use him. I guess having a green stun is different.

I thought 3*Ock's req'd side nodes in the most recent Apocalypse vs. X-Men were consistently the easiest of the whole event if the was teamed with Nico and Carnage.

BoyWonder1914

No order on these

3-Stars

Doctor Doom - Oh boy, I remember the days when this guy legit didn't have a 3rd power, and it was just Blue & Black. Back when I was hurting for roster slots and just starting to build a 3-star roster, I was tossing this guys covers like nobody's business. Even now, I just can't get with a power that requires you both wait on a number of trap tiles to be present, as well as gathering enough AP of the color that the trap tiles land on. Literally only use this guy as a black battery when forced to put him in the lineup. 

She-Hulk - While all of her powers are nice to some extent, they are all overshadowed. A power that steals SOME special tiles based on how many the opponent has is obsolete. Furious Charge is a nice cheap use of 6 green AP, but destroying AP is nowhere near as lucrative as stealing it. Green is also a rather popular color for nukes and AOEs, which is often preferable over an ability that doesn't damage your opponent or net you AP. Her red is just meh in terms of damage output, and also runs the risk of destroying some of your own stuff. 

Elektra - The 3-star came first.....so rather than the 4-star just being a "lazy" character, they decided to just make an Elektra that wasn't as good. Not a good start when the 4-star character is already not highly regarded. Even with that being said, she's still a far cry from her 4-star version. Her purple at 5 covers still only steals strike tiles, whereas her 4-star counterpart steals any kind of tile at 5 covers. Her red creates a visible CD that only deals damage, her 4-star counterpart produces a trap tile that of course can't be seen by the opponent, also steals 3 different kinds of AP, and of course does pretty decent turn-by-turn damage for the AP cost. Her black isn't even worth bringing up, as she's definitely not tanking anything since she isn't even in the 266 Club yet. 

Blade - Another character who suffers from just not being as good as their 4-star counterpart. Red is very popular color for user and AI alike, so if you do happen to have a board with enough red to trigger the passive, good luck keeping it that way. At least in the case of his 4-star counterpart, if you're forced to match the red, Blade still benefits. It's also tricky managing the Black and Purple powers. With the black being a repeater now, you can no longer wreak havoc with characters such as Captain Marvel and Drax. There's also diminishing returns, where you essentially have the tile for nothing if the opponent isn't regularly matching their strongest color, or generating it somehow. It's nice that his purple power counts all strike tiles and not just the ones he produces, but spending so much AP to produce 2 attack tiles seems silly these days when so many characters create them passively, or produce more/stronger ones for less AP. 

Punisher - I often find his red trickier to pull off than I feel it should be. Rather noting characters beginning health and calculating what 40% of that should equal, I try to play it by health bar and use it when it appears they are past halfway dead. Somehow I often end up wrong. Or also just as often, by the time I have the AP to use it, the base damage of the ability is enough to finish the person off anyway. His green would be better if you didn't have to worry about it potentially destroying your own stuff. His black is decent, but the bang you get for your buck is determined by how long you can keep the repeater tile on the board, which with my luck, usually isn't very long. 

4-Stars

Invisible Woman - The funny thing is that her powerset isn't half bad at all, it's just that there are characters who make better use of blue and green. Notice I didn't say yellow, because I do still feel like that ability holds its own when looking at the active yellow abilities in the 4-star tier. Her blue is what really hurts her, that's quite a popular color in the tier. Some examples: Build/Punch a Snowman, Centaurian Archery, Called Shot, Incapacitate, Do As Peggy Says.....the list goes on. She's probably not getting the call if you've got those kinds of abilities at your disposal, considering that her blue does no direct damage, and the tile-locking ability is more of a stall than a solution. Her green suffers the same problem of power creep, though not to the same extent for sure .

X-23 - People definitely over-emphasize the whole '9 Red AP' aspect of her, but that's seriously not a big deal if you have another character on your team that you are collecting Red AP for anyway. The issue is needing to fire her green more than once to trigger the power change, and that her purple can easily become useless if the "random" placement is bad enough. It's nice that there are effects regardless of who matches it, but being a trap tile it falls victim to similar "random" placement of enemy special tiles. She could easily be made better by having her purple produce more than 1 trap tile, or causing her green to flip automatically once you've built up 9 Red AP. 

Thing - The powers have great effects, but the damage output leaves quite a bit to be desired. Red and Green are popular colors for nukes, and Thing got left by the wayside quite a while ago. There are characters like Vulture and Iceman who do similar levels of damage with green, but as an AOE. The random board destruction also always has a potential to be harmful. Again, it's nice that the red offers a stun, but with a color as popular as red you can get way more damage or cooler effects. 

GwenPool - Her powers are actually pretty cool overall too, and even can do a pretty hefty amount of damage. However, I'm far from interested in needing to keep a cheat sheet handy to get the best use I can of her purple every time. I'm also not a fan of how the damage is randomly allocated for her green. It CAN be quite devastating, but it can also end up distributing the damage in a completely different way than what you hoped. Not to mention the pre-requisite of getting rid of the Chekhov's Gun tile, which just might end up costing one of the uses of your purple. Simply being good or at the very least "not bad" no longer works at the 4-star tier. They release characters way too often, and the meta is too fragile from power creep for characters like GwenPool to have a consistent place on anyone's top tier lists. 

Flaptain - It was tough finding just the right person to give this last spot to, as there are quite a few characters that have become obsolete. Flaptain on the other hand I feel has been an obsolete characters since I learned of his existence. There are characters that are still bad even after a rework, but I don't think this guy got even that much attention. His red can be quite devastating since it accounts for all protect tiles rather than just yellow ones, but good luck finding someone who DOESN'T make better use of 14 Red AP. It's nice that his blue passive can affect countdown tiles too, but his 3-star counterpart affects more tiles, and individually strengthens by essentially the same amount. Yellow is a decent form of protection, but protection doesn't win matches. It's arguably more lucrative to try to flip these tiles via Wasp or Iron Fist. 

Orion

Which 3*s or 4*s do I use when they're not essential?  America.  That's it, that's the list.  Even boosted, none of the others compare to the 5*s that I have.