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

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Comments

  • Davidk777
    Davidk777 Posts: 76 Match Maker
    I don't think Sighclops is great, but not as bad as everyone say.  People think hes F tier character,  But I think hes a solid D. Profonslaught alone makes him playable. Which puts above people like kingpin, cable, Jean, Captain Marvel and so on.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2021
    I ran Sighclops/Thor/Ghost Rider Robbie Reyes together, and it was...I don't know, interesting as a change of pace. Since the tanking relationship between the wingmen stays the same, pumping their match damage is actually kind of cool when Thor is involved. His 50% tile break starts scaling it's damage up as well, and Ghost Rider's Hell Ride tiles do 300% of their base damage every nibble, so that all starts to really get out of hand. It's not a fast team, if anything it felt like Blad3/Falcon/Fist scaled up to 5* levels. But since GRRR and Thor are low health characters, it was hit or miss against the Mindless Ones on the final node of Honor Among Thieves Sub1 at SCL10. I'll have to try it on a node against tile movers and see how that goes.

    Also it seems Sighclops's Red will overwrite any kind of tile, since I watched it roll over a critical too.
  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,297 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2021
    I champed Collossus in his special store because I wanted to get my apocolypse bigger and didn't think that I would really use collosus if not required.  I haven't really found him useful in pvp but he's actually great in pve.  On challenge nodes in scl 10 when there's a lot of big match damage he is great to mitigate that and his blue actually can be clutch to get rid of minion nuke countdowns that aren't matchable.  I use him with thorpocalypse.

    He was also great against Kaecilious with his huge health and match damage reduction.  I use him with 4 star elektra and sabretooth.  He tanks for them and keeps their much lower health pools safe.
  • Anon
    Anon Posts: 1,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    I didn't think much of AW when he released, but I warmed up to him a bit. My main issue with him is he kills himself and drains the black ap that Apocalypse could use to better effect.
  • Djbob101
    Djbob101 Posts: 21 Just Dropped In
    After trying knull in his event I think he is ok. His black is horrible tho. He needs a nuke of some sort in his kit.
  • Jacklag
    Jacklag Posts: 316 Mover and Shaker
    edited May 2021
    Djbob101 said:
    I agree Sighclops is a abomination of a character. His only good ability is his black which requires both characters to die already and that rarely happens.
    About 5clops' black, I don't know it it's a bug but I found out that if both his teammates are stunned, his black will activate and it doesn't revert to Yellow once they wake up. Doesn't work if they go airborne, though. It's hard to test that again now that there are no more Bishops and Hammercaps to be found. But if it doesn't revert when his team mates are stunned, it probably doesn't revert when they are ressurected either. So maybe Phoenix + iHulk?

    Edit: Doesn't work with iHulk either. He doesn't stay dead until the start of the round of something.
  • Yepyep
    Yepyep Posts: 954 Critical Contributor
    Tiger_Wong said:
    The Phoenix 5 duo (Colossus/Cyclops) are actually great together. I’m about to champ Colossus in a couple days and champed cyclops for about a month and they go well together. 

    Colossus is a better match damage character than AW. The boost hits harder and stays the entire match and I don’t have to be so specific with board control and team makeup. His damage prevention is just as good, allowing 4*s and fragile 5*s to survive if they make matches in colors Colossus doesn’t tank. This is important in matches in pve against teams with 5* Green Goblin and 5* Carnage where both are at lvl 600+. Knowing you’ll be able to survive longer from match damage cascades allows you to go after whatever power you want to fire and not be so worried about miracle cascades on the AI’s turn. Taking crit match damage becomes easy to sneeze at as well. His Black is VERY cheap and a great finisher/pre-finisher before another match in his tanked colors. His blue can be VERY clutch to clear the field for 1-turn combos and get rid of problematic repeaters/CDs as well. 

    Cyclops figures in early in matches with his yellow. Fire off 2 of those and Colossus tanks over practically every 4* you can have. The board shake of the yellow is only icing. His green is underrated. It allows you to not worry about the board be filled with enemy strikes/shields and is great after you kill the first 2 enemy characters. Stun the last enemy for 2 turns, enjoy the cascades, and then fire off his red. The repeaters off his red mostly suck and that’s why I proc Cyclops at 3/5/5. The damage jump on his red from lvls 3 to 5 aren’t enough to justify maxing it out. 

    The 2 biggest problems with these 2 characters are bad boards and taking damage from powers. Well, that’s what the 3rd character is for. 

    Phoenix 5 Duo/America Chavez 3/5/5:

    probably my most favorite team with the PH5Duo. Use a boost and the crits are on the field for your 2nd turn. You’ll kill every 4* with a crit match, no matter how high their level is (well.... unless there’s a colossus on their team I suppose..... and maybe Thing will survive too?). Match 4s with crits in yellow/black/blue hit stupidly hard. Like..... Shared Strength+Survival of the Fittest. The strategy becomes: match crits in a PH5Duo color or leave it alone and match a color that will keep you getting more crits. If the enemy matches a crit, you won’t care because Colossus mitigates the damage anyway. 

    PH5Duo/Valkyrie 3/5/5:

    you’re gonna be firing Cyclops’ yellow a WHOLE LOT because Colossus’ yellow is the strongest color. 

    PH5Duo/5*Switch:

    turn TUPs into yellow and if you’re going against Hulkoye, use her blue before firing a power that does damage but vs a BRBitty team, use Colossus’ blue to wipe away their CDs. 


    PH5Duo/Rogue:

    Probably my favorite tank team vs ProfX/Onslaught teams. Use Rogue’s green on ProfX and marvel at the match damage on simple match 3 in blue. Also marvel at how your characters laugh off cascade damage. An annoying thing to remember though is that Rogue jumps in front of red/green/yellow matches so Colossus won’t be in front as much as you’d like. 


    Absolutely fantastic post — much appreciated!

    I could use some help on how to spec and use 5*Switch. I just champed her and find her kit pretty confusing, in the abstract. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2021
    So i've got my 5Witch spec'd at 5/3/5, and I generally run her with either Okoye or Apocalypse. I put her on the far right, on the premise that she receives the damage last in that position, and I typically put true healers or damage reducers in the other slots so that that whoever eats the first and second hit isn't totally hosed after a couple shots. If paired with Okoye, I use her purple on Yellow so that Okoye can stay firing off her yellow, and if it's Apocalypse, I'll use it on red, since i'm not chasing yellow on him as much. I've tried using blue-generators like BRB and prioritizing her blue, but I just haven't found a killer play style yet to justify it. In pick 3, you can actually run ThorKoye or ThorPocalypse with thor in the far right spot and be relatively sustainable even against Hulk teams, but eventually he is going to bite it. Hope that's sort of helpful.
  • jp1
    jp1 Posts: 1,081 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2021
    I keep Wanda at 4/4/5 and use her mainly in…

    Okoye/IHulk/Wanda - Boosting green here. Also she tanks for a champed IHulk and her extra damage speeds things up nicely. Really reducing health pack usage on this team.

    She makes a more consistent third than ProfX in my opinion.

    Edit: Need to caveat this to add she tanks for my champed IHulk when she is boosted, or with the proper support. Not naturally, however she is still better than ProfX here as she is less reliant on board control.

  • Djbob101
    Djbob101 Posts: 21 Just Dropped In
    So is this tier list just never going to be updated. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think there has been some speculation going on about if and how to factor in the new 100 level boost mechanic to this list, since there are more than a few mid tier characters that become very good with a 100 level infusion whereas at base level they're kind of average. But I don't know if that's the only reason.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,967 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2021
    My issue is two-fold. 1) yes, I’ve been insanely busy moving across the country and beginning a new job that has been very time consuming. 

    2) I don’t experiment with combos in the same way I used to since most of my MMR is dual boosted 5*s. I can’t really take two non-boosteds to a fight and get accurate results. So… I’m thinking about revamping the ENTIRE rankings. And instead of the “pairings” section maybe doing a “what to expect when boosted” section. I’ve gotten feedback that the pairings were a lot of people’s favorite part, so it’d be sad to see that go. But, my pairings these days include whoever is boosted.  For example, this week was a strong one for me with Doom, Pool, and Thanos being three of my highest characters, and I basically used Doom in every match and the other three characters evenly (Yelena during the climb, Thanos against any non-boosted or loaners, and Deadpool near the end for defense). The fact that Doom got played in every single match on a strong week means he plays up boosted in my experience. I don’t know if I’d end up repeating more of the same in a section like that (this character does more of what I mentioned before… but better!), but the bottom line is I think the game has changed, so how I do the rankings needs to adapt too. 
    Open to suggestions!
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm not sure what I'd suggest for that - there are more than a few powersets that are going to seem dead on arrival in the face of dual boosted 5s but are probably plenty strong boosted. I guess there's always the Simulator during a season, since pick-3 unboosted only really exists there now. I am curious if an how boosting has affected the lower say third of the list at this point. When properly boosted is Banner moving around at all for instance? Obviously Ghostpool and Adam Warlock were some (to me anyway) suprise hits since their biggest drawbacks to use are relatively low health pools. 
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,967 Chairperson of the Boards
    I don’t really play sim like that. Usually a mad scramble with metas around the the last day to get the cover lol. 
    As for the mega boost (which I hope never leaves!)
    I’ve noticed Yelena punches up big boosted because in the pre-boost meta, people just relied on characters that did damage passively, but in the mega-boost meta, if the best boosted characters actually rely on firing powers, she all of a sudden gets some utility. 

    I think Deadpool doesn’t play MUCH better boosted. I just think people became aware of what a good character was already there. He was just outshined by the passive metas. 
    The bottom of the bottom I admittedly didn’t even play boosted, but did have some minimal experience playing against. 
    Anyone with pumped up match damage didn’t surprise me as tier 1 boosted. That’s sort of the boosted characters best offensive weapon if they have nothing else. So of course a colossus or Warlock or Yellowjacket doubling down on that will be brutal. Warlock specifically is outclassed by Colossus. But put 100 levels on him and of course he looks much shinier (even though Colossus is metal). 
    I have a bunch more random thoughts on how characters have fared with extra levels, but it’d be extra long, lol. 
  • Djbob101
    Djbob101 Posts: 21 Just Dropped In
    I would rather have Warlock then Colossus on my team cause of the heal he has and the team damage. I agree that match damage characters are the best when they are boosted compare to others. I will say the most annyoing boosted 5 star i faced was Carbage so far. His extra move really packed a big punch. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,456 Chairperson of the Boards
    I am definitely in the camp that Carbage is a very underrated character by most players, probably because he has self-harm and relies on a very under-appreciated tile type (attacks) to do what he does. But he is pretty dangerous actually. For me he hovers around Iceman in that same category of "overlooked for not doing any big damage, but good actually."
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,850 Chairperson of the Boards
    I wonder if it's worth asking people what they want out of a list like this.  The game has changed, significantly, but a lot of people still seem to be concerned with how good a character is without the boost.  I think this is about people who are moving up to the 5* tier.

    For the very short time when boosted 4* ruled the game, my advice to 4* transitioners was to work on one pair of top-tier guys that was somewhat usable unboosted, then go as wide as possible.  An unboosted pair won't ever be *good* in this meta (at any level, sorry mega-hoarders!), but certain characters will at least be usable all the time.

    I don't think you'd need to rank all of them this way, but some discussion or a separate list about that aspect might be useful.


    As for the rest of the list, we kind of discussed the new ranking strategy in another thread awhile ago, but I see three tiers now:

    1 - Usable all the time
    2 - Usable when boosted
    3 - So bad they're not usable even when boosted

    Most of them are tier 2.  I'm not sure if it's even possible to rank them within these tiers because it's going to be really subjective, but I guess rankings are always subjective anyway.
  • LavaManLee
    LavaManLee Posts: 1,436 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    As for the rest of the list, we kind of discussed the new ranking strategy in another thread awhile ago, but I see three tiers now:

    1 - Usable all the time
    2 - Usable when boosted
    3 - So bad they're not usable even when boosted

    Most of them are tier 2.  I'm not sure if it's even possible to rank them within these tiers because it's going to be really subjective, but I guess rankings are always subjective anyway.
    Thoughtful write up.  I wonder if tier 2 is actually two tiers: (a) usable when boosted all of the time and (b) usable when boosted but only with certain other boosted 5*.  I'm not thinking of any right now but are there any 5*s who would only be usable when boosted with certain other boosted 5*?

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