Are any of the 4s released in the last few months worth chasing?

Rockwell75

It seems to me that ever since they started releasing 4s along with character specific supports the quality of the characters has taken a bit of a dip.  Or is it just my imagination?  I remember from the anniversary last year (during the "class of" event) it was apparent how many solid characters were put out that year.  I don't think this one will measure up.

Jwallyr

1) No, most of the recent 4stars are not super impressive. I can't easily find the list of recent characters, but the only one that stands out in my mind is Ghost. In combination with, say, America Chavez, Ghost can be a heavy hitter, but lots of the other 4s have been lackluster IMO.

2) It's functionally impossible to chase 4s due to dilution outside of dumping money into hero points to buy vault/store pulls, so it's probably not even worth trying to chase specific 4s other than setting them as BH and hoping for the best.

Rockwell75

2) It's functionally impossible to chase 4s due to dilution outside of dumping money into hero points to buy vault/store pulls, so it's probably not even worth trying to chase specific 4s other than setting them as BH and hoping for the best.

In addition to setting as a BH there are other little things you can do to target specific 4s, namely hoard tacos until a cover you want appears.  You can also put more effort/planning into PVP/PVE events when they're offered as placement.  I'm after Shuri covers right now so I caught a late flip of Webbed Wonder on the last day and wound up placing second.  I had to sacrifice prog for that event but the 3 Shuri covers (plus the LT) were worth it imho.

The rockett

Valkyrie is good.  
Some say Shuri is good.   
MEH for his PVP was awesome but he was really boosted. His purple is insane.

Bad/underwhelming:
Emma
Ghost
Wiccan
Jubilee-really bad
Iron Spider
Black Panther
Black Widow

The last 4* that was a hit was one with NO active powers, American Chavez.   

smkspy

If you're in the 4-5 transition, then absolutely not. I'd never waste a BH on building a new 4 in lieu of borderline LT reward fours (especially those potential five star feeder levels) on my roster.

I'm 100% content to let my 2/4/4 Iron Spidey waste away to get better rewards from other 4s.

Vins2

I just chase the 4s that arent at 11 covers yet so they can be ready for Shield training.

Waddles_Pines

You have to look at your roster.  A lot of the new 4* aren't individual powerhouses, but are synergistic with others.  In other words; the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

For example BP by himself is a little slow, but run him with Shuri and they feed off of each other.  You just have to find the right team for them.  I think the developers are trying to stay away from meta defining standalones (looking at you Gambit).  But, then again I like Kraven, so what do I know 

Phumade

The rockett said:

Valkyrie is good.  
Some say Shuri is good.   
MEH for his PVP was awesome but he was really boosted. His purple is insane.

Bad/underwhelming:
Emma
Ghost
Wiccan
Jubilee-really bad
Iron Spider
Black Panther
Black Widow

The last 4* that was a hit was one with NO active powers, American Chavez.   

Meh Hulk, Valkyrie, Nico was be a near unstopable rampage machine in sim.  especially if you could use purple supports to boost purple match damage into the top slot.

spidyjedi84

ME Hulk is impressive, especially when he was paired with an unboosted Grocket and Nico Minoru. Nico is one (I don't know if she was in this year's class or last) who gets overlooked as a strong support character. 

BoyWonder1914

Jubilee - Meh. Her yellow is honestly her best power in my opinion, but it relies on her having taken a bit of damage, and tanking her colors - which probably ain't happening with this pack dilution. Her purple is too expensive for what it does, and unless you have someone else creating charged tiles, you'll need to fire her green twice to get anything out of it. They tried to make her powers flashy to go along with her persona, but failed miserably IMO. 

Spider-Man - Another victim of the dilution problem, as you get the most mileage out of him when he tanks his colors. His green is useless about 9 times out of 10, his blue as mentioned requires tanking, and the strength of his red is based on how much you've gotten out of his green and blue up until that point. Perhaps he can still be decent on the right Spider-Team, but not currently with Gwen's & P5rker's red being so much better. 

Blonde Widow - She's actually not too bad on the right team, but still not worth chasing. You'll probably be using her for her yellow to make your other abilities cheaper, which is ALWAYS useful. Her black is a nice little punch and stun, with the added effect of destroying "random" AP. You only get any use out of her purple when dealing with special tiles for the most part, and I find it preposterous that Enfilade doesn't do it's own damage on top of whatever she gets for destroying the special tiles, which is a love tap. Give her purple and black some more significant damage and she'd be a lot better, but as it stands she's pretty underwhelming. 

Wiccan - He's 2nd best in this recent class of newer 4s after Ghost, but as someone who truly loves his Power of The Demiurge ability, it's quite depressing that I can't get the mileage out of it I want to due to him not tanking. He'd be AMAZING with America, but she takes both Green and Yellow from him. Also be amazing with Mockingbird and MEHulk, but they once again take green and yellow away from him. My best bet so far has been running him 3/5/5 with Carnage, to make the most of his green. He'd be a beast if I could get him in the 300 champ level range, but as it stands he's relegated to whenever I feel like having some fun with his green. 

Ghost - Very, very fun character to play, but again takes a hit due to not being able to get her in the same champ level range as everyone else. Enhanced match damage (300%) with no pre-requisites at all kinda automatically makes her a beast. Sure you need to be invisible to get the most out of her nuke, but you're essentially playing with 5-star level match damage until then. Her red also doesn't stipulate that she has to be responsible for making herself invisible, so you can have another character turn her invisible and still do the extra damage with red. Her purple does have a true heal, so at least you can potentially get something out of it if the placement of tile screws you into having to match it. Her blue might reduce that match damage temporarily, but you can potentially get enough red ap out of it to fire the ability. 

Emma Frost - Incredibly disappointing swing and a miss. A character that creates and removes special tiles is the absolute last thing I would have expected Emma Frost to be, and she doesn't even do it efficiently. No one likes repeater tiles, I can't express enough how much I miss these being regular countdown tiles so that characters like CM4, Drax, and Coulson could at least offer another advantage if they don't last long.......which they usually don't. So you get usually very little if any return on the investment that went into placing these repeater tiles. On top of that, her only other power requires 11 Black AP to fortify a bunch of tiles, which then gives her a match damage boost that pales in comparison to Ghost's AND doesn't let her fire anymore powers. Black AP is responsible for some pretty frickin cool powers at the 4-star level, I HIGHLY doubt your preference will be Emma's. 

Nebula - Still a bit early to tell I guess, but not too impressed with her either. Especially considering that her powerset is ALL colors that someone else in the 4-star tier uses better. Yet another repeater tile power for her blue to create special tiles. Her red creates attack tiles based on how much Green AP you have, and her green nuke, her strongest attack, relies on you having a pretty hefty number of special tiles on the board. Even with the full 10 tiles on the board, the damage from the attack just isn't impressive. I honestly think her best ability is the strong strike tiles, but that requires you waiting on a repeater. Meh. 

LavaManLee

What Boy Wonder said (great writeup, Boy!).  They are all just ok and none really worth chasing.  Plus, chasing is much harder now that there aren't the Latest Legends for 4*.  Just as easy to chase for the better 4*s as it is the newest ones.

Jwallyr

Rockwell75 said:

2) It's functionally impossible to chase 4s due to dilution outside of dumping money into hero points to buy vault/store pulls, so it's probably not even worth trying to chase specific 4s other than setting them as BH and hoping for the best.

In addition to setting as a BH there are other little things you can do to target specific 4s, namely hoard tacos until a cover you want appears.  You can also put more effort/planning into PVP/PVE events when they're offered as placement.  I'm after Shuri covers right now so I caught a late flip of Webbed Wonder on the last day and wound up placing second.  I had to sacrifice prog for that event but the 3 Shuri covers (plus the LT) were worth it imho.

In fairness, you do get taco tokens for free just for playing DDQ, but ultimately they're another vault pull, and a horribly dilute vault at that. Unless you have hoarded up 300 tokens (which is hard to do if you're pulling whenever a desirable 4star is present) the odds are stacked massively against you.

So I stand by my assertion that the only ways to "chase" a specific 4star are:
1) BH and hope for the best
2) Dump a bunch of HP into vault/store pulls *if* they have those characters at increased odds (which is infrequent at best)
2.5) Buy a lot of HP to do the above and/or buy Heroic tokens

None of those are effective ways to chase a particular 4, but yes, you can do them. Shrug.

shardwick

Nebula looks pretty solid to me. You can run her with Medusa and Carnage  and rack up enough greens for her red pretty easily plus get blues from Medusa. Carnage spitting out special tiles, Medusa generating ap for Nebula, Medusa burst heal for everyone, Nebula's blue repeater giving herself a true heal and spitting out a strike tile here and there to add damage to her aoe. And if things get dicey you have Medusa flip enemy tiles. I'm pretty excited for her.

Phumade

A lot of them are good starter 4*.  By that they need to be the biggest chars in your roster.  In your at that newbie stage ie. 3 to 4, then this group is solid.

think fro this per spective.  If you were picking 4 chars that have to start at 27, then this pool is pretty good.   

KGB

shardwick said:

Nebula looks pretty solid to me. You can run her with Medusa and Carnage  and rack up enough greens for her red pretty easily plus get blues from Medusa. Carnage spitting out special tiles, Medusa generating ap for Nebula, Medusa burst heal for everyone, Nebula's blue repeater giving herself a true heal and spitting out a strike tile here and there to add damage to her aoe. And if things get dicey you have Medusa flip enemy tiles. I'm pretty excited for her.

I posted this in another thread but that team makes no sense.

First off, Carnage Red (AoE) is much better than hers esp given you'll have all the special tiles you need from Carnage.

Secondly, her Green also overlaps with Carnage (his Green is a decent nuke with board shake) which means she may only be bringing one new color (Blue) that doesn't do any damage thus leaving you with no Black coverage and no active Yellow.

Lastly, Medusa's heal can prevent her true heal from happening because she won't heal if she's full of burst heal which is going to be likely because of all the special tiles. Also a *lot* of players are going to have Carnage at a higher level so he'll be tanking Green/Red so she'll only ever be damaged on Blue matches or enemy AoE's anyway.

There are better team mates for Cardusa and for her.

KGB

shardwick

KGB said:

shardwick said:

Nebula looks pretty solid to me. You can run her with Medusa and Carnage  and rack up enough greens for her red pretty easily plus get blues from Medusa. Carnage spitting out special tiles, Medusa generating ap for Nebula, Medusa burst heal for everyone, Nebula's blue repeater giving herself a true heal and spitting out a strike tile here and there to add damage to her aoe. And if things get dicey you have Medusa flip enemy tiles. I'm pretty excited for her.

I posted this in another thread but that team makes no sense.

First off, Carnage Red (AoE) is much better than hers esp given you'll have all the special tiles you need from Carnage.

Secondly, her Green also overlaps with Carnage (his Green is a decent nuke with board shake) which means she may only be bringing one new color (Blue) that doesn't do any damage thus leaving you with no Black coverage and no active Yellow.

Lastly, Medusa's heal can prevent her true heal from happening because she won't heal if she's full of burst heal which is going to be likely because of all the special tiles. Also a *lot* of players are going to have Carnage at a higher level so he'll be tanking Green/Red so she'll only ever be damaged on Blue matches or enemy AoE's anyway.

There are better team mates for Cardusa and for her.

KGB

Her aoe at 270 with 10 tiles required, which will be easy to meet with Medusa, Carnage plus any special tiles the enemy puts out, does 6,340 damage to all enemies. Carnage's aoe at about the same level does roughly 5,000 damage to the enemy in front and 1800 damage to the other enemies plus it does team damage if you don't have 10 red. With so many tiles out and Medusa generating greens you'd be able to get Nebula's aoe off more often unless you got a heavy red board. And honestly if that's the case I think I'd rather have her making strike tiles. Not to mention that Carnage is destroying tiles with his green, too random for me, and I like to have some control over what special tiles stay on the board.

Burst heals don't prevent true heals from healing. If I have a team that consists of Strange, Medusa and Bl4de and Bl4de theoretically is almost dead because he took a lot of damage early on but he's back to "full" health because of Strange and Medusa's burst health, and then he does his aoe (with enough reds banked) then the health bar that shows his actual health is going to keep increasing with every aoe he does until he doesn't have burst health anymore. I should know because he was my first champed 4* and Medusa was my second and I used them together, oh, a few times.

And, yes, a lot of older players will have Carnage at a higher level but you have to keep in mind that he was vaulted for awhile so many players won't and now with dilution back new 4* players definitely won't be getting him champed anytime soon.  My Bl4de is almost at 300 whereas my Carnage is at 271 right now. There's a reason why Grocket dominates Cardusa teams. And really if you think about it Cardusa and Mr F should be one of the most prevalent teams out there in 4* pvp right now but I hardly ever see them because a lot of players will have Medusa champed, and probably at a decent level, but they won't have Carnage and/or Mr F champed as well. Not to mention that if you're a player with a high level Carnage you're probably more likely to be transitioning to the 5* game and wouldn't care as much about playing with a Cardusa team if you have a decent covered or champed Thor and/or Okoye.

swordfishdata

For Nebula, I think it's worth noting that her green doesn't care who owns the special tiles, making her a great candidate for an anti-meta team along with Medusa and Kraven (plus she can use all that green and blue AP Medusa generates)

Yepyep

Jwallyr said:

Rockwell75 said:

2) It's functionally impossible to chase 4s due to dilution outside of dumping money into hero points to buy vault/store pulls, so it's probably not even worth trying to chase specific 4s other than setting them as BH and hoping for the best.

In addition to setting as a BH there are other little things you can do to target specific 4s, namely hoard tacos until a cover you want appears.  You can also put more effort/planning into PVP/PVE events when they're offered as placement.  I'm after Shuri covers right now so I caught a late flip of Webbed Wonder on the last day and wound up placing second.  I had to sacrifice prog for that event but the 3 Shuri covers (plus the LT) were worth it imho.

In fairness, you do get taco tokens for free just for playing DDQ, but ultimately they're another vault pull, and a horribly dilute vault at that. Unless you have hoarded up 300 tokens (which is hard to do if you're pulling whenever a desirable 4star is present) the odds are stacked massively against you.

So I stand by my assertion that the only ways to "chase" a specific 4star are:
1) BH and hope for the best
2) Dump a bunch of HP into vault/store pulls *if* they have those characters at increased odds (which is infrequent at best)
2.5) Buy a lot of HP to do the above and/or buy Heroic tokens

None of those are effective ways to chase a particular 4, but yes, you can do them. Shrug.

So this is the thing that makes the original poster's point -- i.e. that the latest several 4* releases are unexciting -- palatable to me. To wit, I just don't really care whether or not I get them covered, let alone champed. I was hot for Valkyrie, who's good fun, and I want Ghost, but otherwise I don't really even notice that they're on my roster. If required in PvP, I'm happy with a loaner.

tiomono

But the power creep is real, right.... Right?
I think the devs like to keep us guessing so we do not get settled into strict patterns. 

Plenty of the older characters have downsides too that if they had a support tailor made for them you could make the same argument.

Imagine some supports for older guys in the 4* area

Falcon or Sandman getting a percentage chance at free protects on matches.

Lockjaw getting extra charged tiles

X23 having a chance at generating red on green matches.

The list could go on. The newer characters are fine.

KGB

shardwick said:

Her aoe at 270 with 10 tiles required, which will be easy to meet with Medusa, Carnage plus any special tiles the enemy puts out, does 6,340 damage to all enemies. Carnage's aoe at about the same level does roughly 5,000 damage to the enemy in front and 1800 damage to the other enemies plus it does team damage if you don't have 10 red. With so many tiles out and Medusa generating greens you'd be able to get Nebula's aoe off more often unless you got a heavy red board. And honestly if that's the case I think I'd rather have her making strike tiles. Not to mention that Carnage is destroying tiles with his green, too random for me, and I like to have some control over what special tiles stay on the board.

Burst heals don't prevent true heals from healing. If I have a team that consists of Strange, Medusa and Bl4de and Bl4de theoretically is almost dead because he took a lot of damage early on but he's back to "full" health because of Strange and Medusa's burst health, and then he does his aoe (with enough reds banked) then the health bar that shows his actual health is going to keep increasing with every aoe he does until he doesn't have burst health anymore. I should know because he was my first champed 4* and Medusa was my second and I used them together, oh, a few times.

I didn't know true heal over rode burst heal. That's a nice feature of true heal.

Still, Carnage Red > Nebula Red so all she's bringing offense wise to the team is her Green.

Not sure why you think a newly released character is going to pass one that's been out for years. Even if Carnage was vaulted the majority of players will have some covers for him (even if it's just 6-8) so he'll always be ahead of her since all covers are distributed equally now.

I truly *hope* people switch to this team from Cardusa + Mr F because I HATE facing Cardusa + Mr F (or some of the other solid additions to Cardusa). Nebula on that team would be much easier to handle due to lack of color coverage and power overlap.

KGB

shardwick

tiomono said:

But the power creep is real, right.... Right?
I think the devs like to keep us guessing so we do not get settled into strict patterns. 

Plenty of the older characters have downsides too that if they had a support tailor made for them you could make the same argument.

Imagine some supports for older guys in the 4* area

Falcon or Sandman getting a percentage chance at free protects on matches.

Lockjaw getting extra charged tiles

X23 having a chance at generating red on green matches.

The list could go on. The newer characters are fine.

But red iso is so scarce that it takes forever to even level up one support. Plus supports don't even work in pvp so you'd be using them in pve. Let's say that Elektra or Banner got a character specific support that made them pretty decent. Who would even want to put in the time to get the support leveled up just so that they could play with them? I'd rather see more character reworks. I mean imagine if Banner got a rework that made him into an absolute 5* powerhouse. Not to the point that he's blatantly OP but where people would seriously think about skipping the fight. That's what I'd like to see and not just "oh sweet this support gives me a 12% chance of generating two purple ap whenever I do a match 5."