***** Mister Sinister (Nathaniel Essex) *****

atomzed

Was fooling around with Sinister in sims, playing him with BRB-Carnage. 

I was chasing after worthy cap and HE since they are likely to trigger sinister purple a lot, and I could then try to steal their ap. 

Strangely, Sinister secret (purple passive) doesn’t seem to trigger when he is stun. But his black passive and blue active traps are working when he is stunned. 

Wonder whether this is a bug. 

HoundofShadow

Did the enemy have at least 1 ap in that trap tile colour?

atomzed

Yes, I was watching the enemy ap (3ap) because I was hoping to steal it. But the ap count remained as it is... no change. 

My purple is at 5.

ThaRoadWarrior

So do we like any 5*s yet with Sinister? I don't have tons to choose from, but the ones I've tried so far haven't been mega awesome. I do like him with my lvl 350s Chavez and Okoye some - the critical chaos plus trap spam she makes really help him get moving, and his AP steal can keep the balance of your AP bank accounts in better shape.

I tried him with Iceman to see if the dual reduction in damage works well, but you end up with Iceman vomiting all your blue out onto the board whether he can make his CDs or not, and then you're left trying to do damage with his green mostly. Which you can do, but you need it to be all over the board to work.

With Doom he works pretty well as mentioned above - you can help keep black fed pretty well.

I tried him with Ghost Rider at 5/5/3 and Doom, but it's not a very fast team waiting for the trap animations and the repeaters to burn down. they eat a lot of damage too.

HoundofShadow

I used Sinister with 5* Storm. I find it works well. Storm will ensure that you have tons of black ap so that Sinister can reduce damage taken. After setting his blue power traps,  you can use Storm's yellow to more easily match his trap tiles.

I used Sinister and Starlord as well. Starlord's AoE will help you to bring down your trap tiles to the ground. I didn't have the chance to use Storm with Starlord yet.

However, it's not a fast team. 

Daredevil217

I’m not loving Sinister. Like I said in my character ranking thread, the lack of partners/synergy hurts. It’s still early but I’m wiping a lot with him and not even hitting meta teams. When I manage to win it seems like his partner usually does the heavy lifting. I might actually drop him some in the rankings but want to see how he plays with Yelena and Storm (one of my top picks but she’s locked out in Category 5). Havok on the other hand while more straight forward, has been BEASTING. I’d say Carnage has been my favorite Sinister partner so far. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I haven't found a good buddy for my Sinister now that he's actually champed either; Chavez is a good play-up, but I find that he is slow in PVE and is about as survivable as Ghost Rider in PVP

Bad

Finally champed him. I really love him. He is the smart play embodiment, needing to analise each move for ripping the enemy of all his efficacy. For that is the embodiment of slow play too. Good partners for him are those that cover the rainbow for his AP stealing. If wanting to play sinister at this way.
Anyway he shines mostly at long matches.

atomzed

Bad said:

Finally champed him. I really love him. He is the smart play embodiment, needing to analise each move for ripping the enemy of all his efficacy. For that is the embodiment of slow play too. Good partners for him are those that cover the rainbow for his AP stealing. If wanting to play sinister at this way.
Anyway he shines mostly at long matches.

I like him too, because he is different from the typical game play. Or mostly I am just a trap person, haha. 

@Daredevil217, I been pairing him with Britty in sims. Britty protect tiles will drag out the game, so he has more chance to use his ability. Having some Black AP will protect the team from opponent cheap powers or passive. And BRB passive generate blue, so I have more chance at using Behold! I mostly use Behold! towards taking down the second or third character, because it’s a much bigger nuke than BRB blue. 

There’s a huge sense of satisfaction when I match 2x Behold traps and 1 shot a PX or a Thor. (Though it’s all luck based where the traps will fall)

RickOShay

I like Sinister quite a bit - against certain enemies. With just a bit of black, he makes Professor X's match-4 passive damage a joke, and you get traps left and right. You are also very well protected against BRB's green (with 8 black on hand) for example, since each hit is just above Sinister's threshold. 
But overall, he seems to work for me better against enemies that have cheap or unavoidable abilities. It's excellent if you can plan to match a blue trap to steal a perfect amount of AP to fuel you own (or if they match it!). 
He is definitely situational, but I think he could get more play than he gets currently. 
Sure wish he had even a weak damage targetable ability though. It's not always easy to plan how you want the small ticks of damage to hit specific enemy health pools. I usually try to line up one enemy so that his blue is a 1-shot if possible.  

Daredevil217

For those who like him/are having success, what build do you have him at?

Sure he can be a good third in sim when paired with two top-4 characters in the game. But, I mean... who wouldn’t thrive there?

Also, as I said in my character ranking thread, I find the whole he’s a “smart” character to be largely false. Puzzley characters are ones that actually give you control and have you plan out your moves strategically like chess. Tile swapping, pick a power, etc. those are in my opinion the smart play characters. Sinister is RNG on RNG. As I wrote:

“Mr. Sinister was designed to be a “strategy” character... someone you have to put thought into to use effectively. A character that brings the puzzle element back to puzzle quest. However, that is not how he operates in practice... a shame given how much of a strategist the source character is. Most of his powers rely on luck and on the enemy doing stuff. He waits to get hit with enough powers and damage (things outside your control) to flood the board with traps. You then fire his one active and hope the damage dealing traps land in matchable spots (again, out of your control).”

Bad

Daredevil217 said:

For those who like him/are having success, what build do you have him at?

You then fire his one active and hope the damage dealing traps land in matchable spots (again, out of your control).”

For me purple power is 5, other powers optional.
Fighting with him on pvp is accepting that you will take powers, and not cds, for that reason he is not much popular.
If he could control all things he would be invencible, you would dry off the enemy AP you wanted or stealing what you need. Or place behold traps for killing anyone(on that aspect red power like karnak could help).
But yes on defense he can support well plus against him the traps are invisible.
Like rickoshay said lessening the damage a lot and providing AP for the team is not a tiny thing. 
The worst moment playing him is when they disarm your trap. The 2 glorious moments are stealing enemy AP just before they fire the power, and when they action a behold trap and do the service of killing themselves.

Daredevil217

Bad said:

If he could control all things he would be invencible,

I definitely don’t think he should “control all things”. I just think the characters who have more control are the ones that are more strategic. And they are also by nature slower characters. But being slow is the only thing I think Sin and an actual strategy character have in common. Figuring out which tiles to swap, where to place that crit tile, which pick a power is right for this specific situation, etc. that’s strategy imo. It’s also time consuming. Waiting for the enemy to hit you so random traps spawn in spots you hope are matchable... not very strategic to me. 

I was playing him 3 black (so your optimal build). Weirdly I switched to 3 purple this morning and have had better results. Yesterday his record with various partners against non-meta teams was 8-5. Today I’ve gone 3-0 with Okoye and 4-0 with Thor. So way better.

Thor tanks all his own colors which sucks, but he also saps the board of them making it easier to both collect blue to place traps, and to put them on blue/purple/black where they are more easily matched.  He also gives outlets for AP in 3 colors (Storm in her PVP is adding a 4th). So not too shabby.  

Bad

His concept is not bad, just a bit pasive. Maria hill or yelena are more active and easy to activate trap users. But sin traps have more potential.

atomzed

Daredevil217 said:

For those who like him/are having success, what build do you have him at?

Sure he can be a good third in sim when paired with two top-4 characters in the game. But, I mean... who wouldn’t thrive there?

Also, as I said in my character ranking thread, I find the whole he’s a “smart” character to be largely false. Puzzley characters are ones that actually give you control and have you plan out your moves strategically like chess. Tile swapping, pick a power, etc. those are in my opinion the smart play characters. Sinister is RNG on RNG. 

I use 3/5/5 for my sinister. 5 purple is crucial because you get 3 traps when an opponent fire a power and more importantly you steal 3 ap when the opponent has 3. That is a scary ability because the opponent think he getting 3 ap and bam he loses 3 ap. Or you match the trap yourself and you gain 6 ap instead. To me this is his best ability. 

Black is a 3 for me, because only the damage reduction gets scaled with cover. The no of traps remain the same. And the no of black ap drained remains the same. Reducing another 2k dmg isn’t that big a deal. 

I won’t say sinister is a strategy character. He’s a controlled chaos character. You never know what you get with him and that is what makes him fun and frustrating. 

If you fight against him you can’t play around him since you can’t see his traps. That’s what frustrates ppl when he was a level 650 enemy in pve c

Bad

It all depends of the board. Playing him like dumb AI would do, he is just a guy spamming traps without a reason. Now, adapting and reacting to those traps is smart play. If things go really smoothly then he can be played strategically.
His better use uses to be another layer of supportive rol to his star partners. Until he strikes hard.

LavaManLee

Figured I'd resurrect this thread as 5inister is boosted for this PVE.  Anyone found a good set of partners for him since May?  Thanks!

HoundofShadow

Use Shuri to reduce his blue power ap to 5 and fortify his trap tiles. Use IM40 to feed his blue and feed Shuri's red. Once you spam the board with his trap tiles, watch him deal multiple heavy damage to his opponents via his trap tiles. It's beautiful.

If you have Shuri's support (even at R1), you can gain free aps every turn when there are 3 or 4 fortified tiles of the same colour.

Bad

I used apoc and yelena versus the challenge and I could beat the first 3. Even with event horizont they suffer badly of AP lossing. And sinister champed plus apoc deals 73k with a behold trap, taking advantage of yelena traps spammed.
Still it is really strange sinister is the 5E for gaining DP shards and ranks for heimdall shards. It could mean that we are going to have DP more time than usual?.

mdreyer93

BlackBoltRocks said:

I wonder how irritating a trio of Wanda/Odin/Sinister would be.

Just fought one in shield sim and it was SUPER irritating! Was that you, I forgot to look? I barely won with my Colossus/Switch/Cyclops. I have no idea what Sinister does so maybe that was part of the problem, lol