*** Loki (Dark Reign) ***

Unknown

Puce Moose wrote:

I think that 5 / 3 / 5 is going to be a winner - even at only 3 protect/strike at level 3, you effectively neutralize six strike tiles (since your three protects cancel out an additional three strikes, of course), which, unless things are going really poorly, is probably about the max you'll have on the board fighting an ornery enemy lazy Daken. I can't speak much for PvE, since I generally don't play it beyond beating each node once for the story.

Assuming Illusions picks the colored tiles first there's no reason to have 5 in Illusions. It moves 26 pairs of colored tiles (52) at level 4 and 32 pairs (64) at level 5, but it can't move TUs. Since on average 9 tiles are expected to be TUs, that means level 5 will move exactly 2 more tiles on average.

Unknown

355 for me. Illusions is a great ability and even when you're facing level 300 daken the difference between 3 and 5 in Trickery doesn't end up being THAT much, for practical purposes. As for his green, I can't wait to get a cool 16 or 24 AP off of my opponent's **** cascade

Pylgrim

Ozark Boatswain wrote:

Still the only 3* character with no abilities that improve with character level. The only other characters like this are 1* Black Widow, *1 Hawkeye and 0* Bag-Man.

This is actually awesome. It means that you can keep him at lowish levels and have everybody tank for him. I run him in a team with Patch and Daken, who keep regenerating and Loki is never hurt. I was hoping for an active yellow third ability to make it a perfect rainbow team, but I will gladly take this as well.

And really, any idea that Illusions is much better at 5 covers than at 3 is purely anecdotal over a very small pool of samples. NPolarity's simulation over hundreds of thousands of runs is more reliable. We're talking of a mere 0.01% increase in cascades.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

Ozark Boatswain wrote:

Still the only 3* character with no abilities that improve with character level. The only other characters like this are 1* Black Widow, *1 Hawkeye and 0* Bag-Man.

This is actually awesome. It means that you can keep him at lowish levels and have everybody tank for him. I run him in a team with Patch and Daken, who keep regenerating and Loki is never hurt. I was hoping for an active yellow third ability to make it a perfect rainbow team, but I will gladly take this as well.

And really, any idea that Illusions is much better at 5 covers than at 3 is purely anecdotal over a very small pool of samples. NPolarity's simulation over hundreds of thousands of runs is more reliable. We're talking of a mere 0.01% increase in cascades.

It also helps with stale boards and putting enemy special and CD tiles where they can be dealt with. Cascades ain't everything.

Unknown

Illusions is used to get a hard to reach tile too. For example if a nasty CD or strike tile is on the bottom right corner, it is important to move it out of there since the chance of any cascade hitting that spot is very low. At level 3 there is a decent chance it won't move the tile you need while at level 5 it will definitely move it. However I think level 4 is sufficient because there are usually only 27 pairs of colored tiles to move (54) assuming 9 are TUs on average. Well, maybe D3 can clarify how Illusions work but it sure looks to me it just picks X eligible colored tile pairs on the board.

Unknown

Leaning towards 4/4/5, but it's going to be a while until I have enough green covers to force me to make up my mind.

MarcusGraves

I often use loki with mag so I really feel rank 5 illusions on a cleared out board after polarizing force, its not unusual for me to end up using illusions 2-3 times in one turn because of all the AP being gathered from match 3s.

PuceMoose

Phantron wrote:

Puce Moose wrote:

I think that 5 / 3 / 5 is going to be a winner - even at only 3 protect/strike at level 3, you effectively neutralize six strike tiles (since your three protects cancel out an additional three strikes, of course), which, unless things are going really poorly, is probably about the max you'll have on the board fighting an ornery enemy lazy Daken. I can't speak much for PvE, since I generally don't play it beyond beating each node once for the story.

Assuming Illusions picks the colored tiles first there's no reason to have 5 in Illusions. It moves 26 pairs of colored tiles (52) at level 4 and 32 pairs (64) at level 5, but it can't move TUs. Since on average 9 tiles are expected to be TUs, that means level 5 will move exactly 2 more tiles on average.

Oops, I had his color order mixed up - yep, I think 5 purple / 3 black / 5 green is going to be an interesting build. ** Hawkeye's speedshot made him a lot more fun to play, and I suspect Mischief will have a similar impact on Loki. Mischief also has the nice effect of turning a "tinykitty, I overlooked a matched four!" into a grin.

Unknown

That's a hard 5/5/3 for me. The passive is cute and all but I'm using the trickster for his trickery along with his patchy pal. I'm happy he can go to 166 now, but his actives are what I'm going for when I reach for him.

People not going for 5 black might want to consider the existence of falcon, cmags, spiderman, bullseye etc. You rarely go "Oh **** 5 strike/protect tiles". You go "Stupid screen is covered in tiles!"

Unknown

Beyond a certain point extra shuffles do not increase cascades meaningfully. Let us imagine you can move 62 tiles or 64 tiles and we'll consider the two magical tiles that aren't moved in the former case. So if we move those two we get more cascade abilities. Problem is, we already moved the rest of the world around those two tiles so in the perspective of those two tiles, the world was moved around them which also creates new cascade opportunities too. There's no difference between moving the tile to a new place in the world, or moving the world around a tile, and even at level 3 you're moving enough the world that every tile is likely either moved or the world is moved around them and those two effects are interchangeable.

Now, there is a difference in that high level ensures you will get certain tiles that are in difficult to reach spot. Like mentioned before it does matter a lot if you can move the tile in the bottom right/left corner because you sure don't expect a cascade to hit that no matter what. In this case you're very interested in moving that tile to a hopefully better spot that you can deal with. I'm thinking 4/4/5 too but it'll most likely be 5/5/3 for a while unless green cover just starts raining.

IamTheDanger

So, Loki's black only changes 5 enemy tiles now? Just wondering about this. Because I use him with Patch. Before I could cast Berserker Rage and then change all 6 of the enemy strike tiles. Now it will leave them one. If it were changed to a minimum/maximum of 6 tiles stolen/changed at 5 covers it would be perfect. Oh well. Still good though. The enemy only having 1 strike tile while I have 6 strike and 5 protect won't really matter much. Also, I really like the passive green too. That power is just perfect fof Loki. Plus it's an awesome idea.

Unknown

His new black represents a huge nerf for me. I only have him at 2 covers but I was still able to berserker rage into trickery. I'll get his covers soon enough but just thought I would point that out.

Unknown

PPPlaya wrote:

His new black represents a huge nerf for me. I only have him at 2 covers but I was still able to berserker rage into trickery. I'll get his covers soon enough but just thought I would point that out.

No you weren't.

If your basic combo was 9 green plus 13 black, this was a huge favor for you. It's the devs telling you you're doing it wrong.

Chrono_Tata

Am I the only one who isn't so excited about his new power? All other random AP stealing/draining powers are generally regarded as poor (Bewilder, Reprieve). And when I'm using Mawkeye, I find that a lot of the time, one or two of the countdown tiles get matched away before they get to activate, but at least with Mawkeye I have certainly to know what I'm getting (xx damage on the enemy in front per tile). Stealing random AP is much harder to predict and plan for.

The thing it does have going for it is that it is free, but I'm not sure that it will activate enough on an average match for it to be sufficiently useful. You could set up match-4 for the AI to force it to activate but... do we really want to do that most of the time? A match-4 clears out the entire row/column and that's 8 AP for the enemy in some colours. You're giving the enemy 8 AP... in order to steal 8 AP (if you're lucky)?

I guess I'll have to wait to try him out at 5 Green to see.

MarcusGraves

Chrono_Tata wrote:

Am I the only one who isn't so excited about his new power? All other random AP stealing/draining powers are generally regarded as poor (Bewilder, Reprieve). And when I'm using Mawkeye, I find that a lot of the time, one or two of the countdown tiles get matched away before they get to activate, but at least with Mawkeye I have certainly to know what I'm getting (xx damage on the enemy in front per tile). Stealing random AP is much harder to predict and plan for.

The thing it does have going for it is that it is free, but I'm not sure that it will activate enough on an average match for it to be sufficiently useful. You could set up match-4 for the AI to force it to activate but... do we really want to do that most of the time? A match-4 clears out the entire row/column and that's 8 AP for the enemy in some colours. You're giving the enemy 8 AP... in order to steal 8 AP (if you're lucky)?

I guess I'll have to wait to try him out at 5 Green to see.

its basically a bounce back for when it happens with the possibility of better returns and has a better proc condition than speed shot since match 4's can happen pretty often, sometimes AI gets multiple match 4's in one turn which means more AP steal tiles in one turn. also technically gets the board moving once the tiles pop and disappear which can net more AP from possible cascades.

NorthernPolarity

One minor caveat to my simulations: level 4 illusions swaps 52 tiles, level 5 swaps 64. An average board has 9ish tu tiles, so what ends up happening is both levels swap 53ish tiles, since it cant swap tus. The cascade potential goes up for level 5 if there are no tu tiles on board (say, after a polarizing force), so i need to run some simulations for that case.

Unknown

I like it!

Maybe on offense I will not have space for him in my roster because I need more direct damage to end the fight as quick as possible. But, I can see 1 place where he is going to come in handy.Defense!

Although I do not agree that he can counter MNmags+Hawkeye because think about it, if MNMags gets his purple off and speedshot is on the board, you just don't care for AP anymore because it is almost game over in most cases. However, having him as an enemy makes you think of how bad really do you need that 4 or 5 match. It's going to be interesting to see.

Quebbster

Lerysh wrote:

A 3 Trickery Loki works with a 3 Berserker Rage Patch.

3 Patch is a suboptimal build though. And it won't help that much against someone like Magneto, Falcon or even Bullseye.

Unknown

I really don't like his new ability. It punishes you for playing well. Now if you chain 4's, you're hit with multiple rounds of AP steal, which could also lead to cascades for the AI.

On offense, he's interesting. Now there's more strategy in leaving the AI a match 4. Also really surprised illusions wasn't nerfed, at least by 2 AP.
On defense, this totally sucks for me. This now makes Loki my first target, since I like heavy strike tiles. My other preference is a druid set (color transformation with many criticals), which looks weak against Loki. Have to hope that he gets killed with the critical damage.

Seems like IceIX is really trying to push the TrickyClaws (Patch/Loki) combo.

X-Force/CMags/Loki looks really fun to play too.

Unknown

Loki is becoming viable! The new power's trigger looks quite similar in intent to the one Nonce proposed! (You Fell for It)
New

Mischief - PASSIVE
(PASSIVE) Loki is consumed by a cold rage as he moves to undermine his enemies. If the enemy team makes a match-4 of any color, Loki converts 2 basic tiles of that color into 4-turn Countdown tiles which steal 2 AP of a random color.

Level Upgrades Level 2: Countdown tiles last 3 turns. Level 3: Loki creates 3 Countdown tiles. Level 4: Countdown tiles last 2 turns. Level 5: Loki creates 4 Countdown tiles.

Possible partners:
X-Force+CMags: outlet for every color. The least synchronous power is CMags shields, which gets cut up by Wolverine's X-Force anyways.
Patch+BP: Gives you a better outlet for if you don't have Berserker Rage ready
Patch+Fury: Illusions can help you match traps that are unlikely to go off during the match.
Mystique: match up a lot of Pink and Black after an infiltration. Gives another Black outlet. Lots of AP steal! (Too squishy for defense though)

Still good with other cascaders, eg Storm, Rags.