Daredevil217's 5* Character Ranking and Analysis (Updated 2/14/2021)

jackstar0

Hoping there's an update soon. I think playtime with BRB has shifted my ranking of his utility.

Also, worth considering the new ones, too...

Daredevil217

Ask and you shall receive!

The rankings have been updated with write-ups for Sinister, Havok, and Hulk, none of which I have champed yet, so are subject to change in the future.

I've updated many character descriptions and/or rankings to reflect new pairings, the introduction of CL10, and as I've actually champed some characters I've experienced them to be slightly more or less useful than initially ranked. Take a look at the "Summary of Character Rankings" to see how characters rose or fell compared to initial rankings. As always, comments are welcome.

Also, @fight4thedream, anyway to get this stickied?

ThaRoadWarrior

@Daredevil217 Some comments on my experiences with a few of these guys:

Rescue's obvious pick 2 is BRB for sure, but in pick 3, put her between BRB/Carbage and you get a spectacular all-red board, as seen here:

Sinister I'm on my way to covering, but I really liked him in PVE with Okoye/Chavez for nodes with goons on them in SCL10. I can beat him in PVP without issues when he turns up, but he can hit pretty hard. If BRB's gimmick weren't flooding the board with specials, leaving less room for traps, I'd say his blue-earning ways could be very helpful at fueling sinister. Once I get him over, I'll follow up if I find anyone interesting to use with him.

Daredevil217

I played my 2/2/5 Sinister god-boosted flanked by Thorkoye against all goons in CL10 PVE (which is pretty much the optimal situation for him), and just wasn’t impressed. The board was indeed full of traps due to all the countdown spamming the goons did, but all those trap animations were super slow, and I was just wishing I could bring unboosted Iceman instead. So if Sinister was sort of “built for PVE”, there are unfortunately tons of way better, way faster options. And like I said, he’s too luck-dependent for my liking.

fight4thedream

@Daredevil217 said:
Ask and you shall receive!

The rankings have been updated with write-ups for Sinister, Havok, and Hulk, none of which I have champed yet, so are subject to change in the future.

I've updated many character descriptions and/or rankings to reflect new pairings, the introduction of CL10, and as I've actually champed some characters I've experienced them to be slightly more or less useful than initially ranked. Take a look at the "Summary of Character Rankings" to see how characters rose or fell compared to initial rankings. As always, comments are welcome.

Also, @fight4thedream, anyway to get this stickied?

It has been done. Looking forward to reading your insight on the latest 5 stars.

XandorXerxes

Thanks for the write-up. I'm getting close to "crack the hoard and move to 5* land" with saved tokens, so it's pretty invaluable. I probably won't quite have enough to compensate for my luck before Sinister is removed from rotation, so there are two questions from me:

1) Given how much Havok/Hulk overlap, if the next 5* is decent would it be worth waiting until Havok rotates out? Or would it be worth having both because I can use Hulk for quicker-wins/defense when needed and Havok be a decent R/B for everything else?

2) This one may not be readily answer-able, but if the next two are sub-par is Hulk worth it on his own or is there enough of a power creep going on that odds are good a character as strong will come around in the near-ish future?

ThaRoadWarrior

@Daredevil217 curious about your hot take on Yelena, and if another 5* trapper is helpful to Sinister. I have a feeling at 3/5/5 they might be “fun” if not good together.

Daredevil217

Two things...

1) I’m 25 shards from champing Havok (he’ll be 450) and 173 shards from champing Sinister (he’ll be 453). So these next two events are awesome for me with regards to progression rewards. We’ll see if my thoughts change at all pairing them up with different fun combos in PVP.

2) “Mister Sinister’s ideal partner in 5* land is some yet to be released character that spams friendly traps to fuel blue. Since that person doesn’t exist...”

Didn’t take them long to get on that! Lol.

ThaRoadWarrior

Nice! I’m currently scrounging iso for my own Sinister; need about 470k more lol.

I’ve been using my freshly champed Carbage at 3/5/5 with Profe$$or X and Okoye in SCL10 Pve. That extra move makes sure you don’t overlook any match-ns, and you have AOE on 2 colors fueled by WF!. It’s pretty fun when you can pick 3.

Glockoma

I wish there were more pick 3 in pvp. And @Daredevil217 , I have been really enjoying Sinister and Doom together. Yelena will make a very pleasing 3rd!

Daredevil217

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
@Daredevil217 curious about your hot take on Yelena, and if another 5* trapper is helpful to Sinister. I have a feeling at 3/5/5 they might be “fun” if not good together.

I really haven’t had much time to delve into her and theorycraft. My initial impressions are:

1) Won’t shake the meta. Quick powers and passive powers still rule, which she does nothing against. She’d be awesome against the “old guard” of 5s, where building up large AP pools to fuel the big nuke was the move.

2) I think she absolutely ups Sinister’s value.

3) Her overall damage output seems really low.

4) Her floor seems to be slightly higher than Angel level. Suppression character who can’t keep up with the enemies she tries to suppress and dies.

5) Her ceiling seems to be around Carnage level. Annoying to play against; therefore people might want her.

6) Ultimately her powerset is about simultaneously denying their strong color (which people are focusing too much on- the Angel aspect) while loading up on their weakest color to fuel the red passive (which people aren’t focusing enough on- the Carnage aspect). The denial is more of a cherry on top. The main course is loading the enemy with AP they hopefully can’t use, and punishing them for it.

7) Definitely a creative/ strategy character. Something Sinister tried and failed at. And again; if not for an OP meta she’d be a great old school rock/paper/scissors character, where you have to bring a rainbow team to nullify her antics; but then other teams could beat your rainbow team.

Fun; but ultimately forgettable if you need to be selective on who to chase in this new accelerated release era.

Some fun questions.

1) Who is the best 5* full rainbow active pair? Is it Hela or Ghost Rider and Strange? Havok or Parker and Goblin? Yeesh. Good thing you get to drag around a 3* to unload some AP!

2) In Hollowpoint Kiss, 3* Natasha’s weakest color is yellow. If Kitty’s yellow also happens to be my team’s strongest color, would her AP swaps do anything at all?? (Need to ask this one in the character thread.

Teammates I’d like to try: Sinister (duh), Carnage (provides weak enemy tiles to fuel the AP swapping green), Kitty (though only as a third in sim with someone who puts tiles out faster), Surfer (5/6 colors covered .. just want to see what happens against Bishop), Okoye (can up the low damage output), Doom (rainbow match damage; and Doom seems to pair well with most everyone).

ThaRoadWarrior

I think Sinister's AP denial/accrual along with his damage reduction is his slept on X factor personally. I have a feeling that paired with Yelena's nonsense that will add up to a quite effective team - particularly as you say with Carbage's extra turn.

As for whose color ultimately counts as "weakest," it's probably going to just put all the numbers in aggregate and see which one doesn't "override" the others. I do wonder if the UI for that power is dynamic, and tells you what the colors are before you fire it off though.

Glockoma

@ThaRoadWarrior I personally wouldn’t want to lose trap tile to Carnage’s SAP spam. Another straight damage dealer would optimize Yelena’s more powerful purple though an argument could be made both ways seeing as she counters enemy SAP’s. A distinct set of one approach vs another would suffice. I.e. Sinister/Yelena/Doom (5/6 active) vs Carnage/Yelena/(insert preferred 3rd)

ThaRoadWarrior

He won’t blast existing traps with SAP spam like he would Jessica Jones’ since they are friendly. It’s more about that extra turn helping you match them more often and steal AP while creating enemy SAPs for Yelena to wrk with if they don’t otherwise have any. But I also think Doom would be a good 3rd here.

Glockoma

I concur. I’m pretty excited about the synergy with Sinister overall. And good 3rds are the plenty nowadays.

atomzed

Glockoma said:

I concur. I’m pretty excited about the synergy with Sinister overall. And good 3rds are the plenty nowadays.

I agree... I think sinister mechanics means he may be a sleeper hit. If he gets a good trap partner he can be a scary proposition. 

After seeing thanos video, I am not so sure that yelena will be that partner... but still going to give it a try nonetheless. 

ThaRoadWarrior

So....we tentatively putting Apocalypse at the top of the list?

Kolence

ThaRoadWarrior said:

So....we tentatively putting Apocalypse at the top of the list?

Why tentative?
Apocalypse is giving me the same impression I had when seeing Sentry or Gambit 2.0 "nerf". And I'm not entirely sure I understand exactly how his yellow will work...  

Jacklag

One thing you didn't mention about pairing 5* Thor and BRB, which I think is their best sinergy, is the fact that BRB puts out Defense tiles faster that Thor's repeater tile, albeit weaker. To a point that if you pop his repeater tile mid match it might be a good call to match it straight away, converting all protect tiles into strike tiles and turning brb's green (which benefits from those strike tiles multiple times) into pure hellzone.

ThaRoadWarrior

Another good thing about that pairing (which to a lesser extent works with P4nther) is that it puts a repeater on an off color to help create more protect spam, since Kitty can’t do anything about repeaters.