Daredevil217's 5* Character Ranking and Analysis 2.0 (Updated 06/20/2022)

Daredevil217

dianetics said:

Nice to see the updated rankings here.
A few qualms, I think Gargantos is probably rated too high. His best partner is an old old 5* and I am not seeing him too often in PvP yet.
I also think Jean could move up a few spots. It is probably still too early to rate Kamala but she will certainly be better than the middle of the pack.

Still, great job I really like jumping in here and reading your impressions.

I think Gargantos might surprise folks. I really want to try him with Hawkeye/Elektra as a defensive team. It will be very hard to deny red/blue with those one turn countdowns going off. Once Garg goes invisible once, he is dropping double countdowns, and you won’t be able to match both. I like elektra because no matter what red the AI fires, it’s coming with a short countdown to make more AP. If they fire Elektra’s, that could mean your Scarlet Witch or Colossus being stunned and eating full Garg damage (plus I super heart Elektra’s yellow). Deadpool also works as a third (trading an excellent yellow for that scary black).  If it’s just pick two, I still like Hawk/Garg. They won’t get play against boosted characters because unboosted are just too squishy (especially Barton), but on an even playing field against other unboosted toons, I think those two could be better than Profslaught. Again though, mine is like 4 covers so I could be way wrong. 

Agree on Jean. She catapulted up the rankings but could still probably go higher. I REALLY love her. 

Kamala is too soon to be ranked, yeah. I think she is another one that will be scary good as people find ways to exploit her passive damage for every special friendly that gets destroyed. 

LavaManLee

ShangChi should be rated higher than #1.  :-) 

Just kidding, sort of.  He does single handedly let you punch WAY above your weight in both PVE and PVP, especially with boosts. 

As always, appreciate your rankings and glad to see the updates.

atomzed

LavaManLee said:

658_2 said:

Pleased to see Sersi rated so highly. Imo, she’s easily Shang Chi’s best partner, well ahead of Onslaught. They kill anything quickly and efficiently, boosted or not, and she has tremendous defensive capability when you the player are in control of her. And if there is a more deadly trio than SC, Sersi, Onslaught I have no idea what it is. Even the Sinister, Medusa, Carnage node is quite manageable with them

How are you running Sersi with him?  I've tried her before and it took way too long for things to happen for me to keep doing it.  I'm probably doing something wrong.

Personally, I still find 50GladThor/SC to be the quickest pick 2 for me.  Obviously horrific on defense but they get going fast.

In the past, my Scl10 team is always Thor (50% health) with other partners. It was Okoye and then apoc. 

After I got Sersi and SC, they are my go to SCL10 team. With Onslaught, this team is much faster than my apoc and Thor. 

I start with 2 purple ap boost and 1 all ap boost. When the game starts, I will user Sersi purple and select black. With black being deny from the board, the remaining colours are all useful to the trio (except for yellow).

this trio has a lot of options for board manipulation. SC red and purple can be used to create match 5. Onslaught blue and Sersi green can also create additional colours for match 5. 

There has been many games which Sersi purple denial lead to big cascades on the first turn. 

It is an excellent team. 

LavaManLee

atomzed said:

I start with 2 purple ap boost and 1 all ap boost. When the game starts, I will user Sersi purple and select black. With black being deny from the board, the remaining colours are all useful to the trio (except for yellow).

this trio has a lot of options for board manipulation. SC red and purple can be used to create match 5. Onslaught blue and Sersi green can also create additional colours for match 5. 

There has been many games which Sersi purple denial lead to big cascades on the first turn. 

It is an excellent team. 

Thanks so much for the detailed write up.  I will definitely give this a try in ShieldSim.  Sounds very fun.  Appreciate it.

ThaRoadWarrior

I always use Sersi's purple to remove black for whatever reason when I'm running her with Shang-Chi/Onslaught. Otherwise on that team I'll remove yellow. 

658_2

I was goofing around with Okoye/Polaris/and my 1/1/1 KK in Sim. Nuke city. Just absurd damage. 

Vhailorx

Continued appreciation for all the work that goes into this list.

My current thoughts (in no particular order) :

(1) Garg might be a bit too high. I think he belongs alongside carnage/ghostpool.

(2) your whole heimdall write up does not include the word "shuri." This is a huge oversight.  She can passively reduce his blue cost to a mere 3ap (for just doing the thing your are going to do with Heimdall anyway: fortifying tiles), which makes him play like a whole different character.

(3) It surprises me to say this, but i would put colossus ahead of halfthor. He is like 3* cage back in 2014, but with 4x the relative match damage. Just incredibly useful to have around, especially for smaller rosters. And while halfthor remains a wonderful battery, actives are as unimportant as they have ever been,  so his value had dipped just a little bit.  plus colossus is even better relative to the field when boosted (unlike halfthor) because his match damage becomes truly absurd, like "50k for a match4" levels of crazy. 

(4) it's too early to say for sure, but i would expect 5KK and fosthor to both end up in the top 10 (maybe even top 5 for fosthor if her damage output is high enough) , so I expect some big shake ups to this list in the near future.

(5) I think you are a bit too low on many of you top ~25-35 characters (sersi, Crystal, big wheel, heimdall), and too high on many of your top 16-25 (KM, GED, yellowjacket, JG). So my tier 2 might look a fair bit different than yours.  (eg: I like KM more than most,  but his crit lock thing is broken as you point out. and you list his best partner as sinister, your own #47. that's not a top 20 character,  even if boost weeks are fun.)

(6) the Moonknight hatred is a bit over the top. he is bad,  but not this bad!  If KM is a top 20 because he is good when boosted, then what do we say about MK? his powers hit above average before boosting, and absolute stun immunity counters a lot of meta teams. IMO you have him 10-15 spots too low.

atomzed

Reading Vhailorx post got me thinking… Daredevil, maybe you should add in a tier list for your ranking. Something like Tier 1 (useful everytime), Tier 2 (useful when boosted) and Tier 3 (trash, not even useful when boosted). Then at least, the players don’t need to quibble over the ranking lists because there’s a huge variance within each tier. 

I think it will also helps as the 5* continues to grow, for a new player to make sense of this list. 

658_2

I’m going to pull tomorrow so my Garg is only 1/1/1, but I’ve messed with him enough to get a good feel for his powers and (while recognizing you’re adjusting his ranking already), I don’t think he’s a little too high at 10, he’s WAY too high. The limiters on all 3 of his powers are so heavy. Tentacle Thrash will only do damage once or twice a match, black’s problems are obvious (the damage component should work whether there are opposing specials or not), and the blue draining all blue leaves you out in the wilderness after the cast. He doesn’t play well with anyone but Hawkeye or AB, not even Okoye (because TT will almost always hit a color that has ap, so she has nothing to boost). And even with Hawkeye, it’s healthpack city because it’s so slow. I’ll hit that team all day long boosted. Get rid of Hawkeye quick and then Garg does…nothing?

Looking at the list, who is he better than? He’s not better than Ronan. He’s not close to better than Crystal. He’s not clearly better than Havok (I think he’s probably worse). You’re in the 40s before you get to characters he’s definitely better than.

Vhailorx

658_2 said:

I’m going to pull tomorrow so my Garg is only 1/1/1, but I’ve messed with him enough to get a good feel for his powers and (while recognizing you’re adjusting his ranking already), I don’t think he’s a little too high at 10, he’s WAY too high. The limiters on all 3 of his powers are so heavy. Tentacle Thrash will only do damage once or twice a match, black’s problems are obvious (the damage component should work whether there are opposing specials or not), and the blue draining all blue leaves you out in the wilderness after the cast. He doesn’t play well with anyone but Hawkeye or AB, not even Okoye (because TT will almost always hit a color that has ap, so she has nothing to boost). And even with Hawkeye, it’s healthpack city because it’s so slow. I’ll hit that team all day long boosted. Get rid of Hawkeye quick and then Garg does…nothing?

Looking at the list, who is he better than? He’s not better than Ronan. He’s not close to better than Crystal. He’s not clearly better than Havok (I think he’s probably worse). You’re in the 40s before you get to characters he’s definitely better than.

You don't think he's better than elektra?  I think he retains value in that his blue hits WAY harder than any other unmodified power in the game (i.e. to match his damage/ap efficiency you need to have a weekly godboost or a damage booster like Apoc/Okoye/Kitty, etc). That has value even if Garg's limitations are painful.

658_2

He might be. I think they’re both in the usable when boosted camp. Garg is a lot better with Hawkeye than Elektra is with anyone, but I don’t see that team as scary unless both are boosted. In a vacuum, his blue is a little better than her yellow, I think (her yellow is more exploitable), but her other two powers are better than his. I think Garg is in the Doom and Sinister camp of he can hit really really hard, especially when boosted, but more often he’ll do pretty much nothing.

Ftr, I was curious how often TT actually does hit an empty pool, so I played the 5e 5 times. Strange was on the other team so I held off on using powers and hence these were long matches. Results were 2, 1, 1, 3, 2. Obviously not a big enough sample to say much of anything, but I’m guessing it’s going to be quite rare for it to hit enough to greatly impact a match. The destruction is barely noticeable also. If you’re boosting and playing with Hawkeye, maybe you can squeeze an extra hit or two with decent frequency.

Vhailorx

658_2 said:

He might be. I think they’re both in the usable when boosted camp. Garg is a lot better with Hawkeye than Elektra is with anyone, but I don’t see that team as scary unless both are boosted. In a vacuum, his blue is a little better than her yellow, I think (her yellow is more exploitable), but her other two powers are better than his. I think Garg is in the Doom and Sinister camp of he can hit really really hard, especially when boosted, but more often he’ll do pretty much nothing.

Ftr, I was curious how often TT actually does hit an empty pool, so I played the 5e 5 times. Strange was on the other team so I held off on using powers and hence these were long matches. Results were 2, 1, 1, 3, 2. Obviously not a big enough sample to say much of anything, but I’m guessing it’s going to be quite rare for it to hit enough to greatly impact a match. The destruction is barely noticeable also. If you’re boosting and playing with Hawkeye, maybe you can squeeze an extra hit or two with decent frequency.

Huh, I think you expect a lot more damage from TT than I do. In my experience it will hit 1-3 times per match for damage (maybe more against goons), and otherwise is just a small delay on enemy activity.

As for Garg's blue v. doom and sinister, I don't love those analogies (or rather, I don't find GED and sinister very similar, so using both as examples confuses me).  GED's black is a decent nuke (and was even better when released) that did near 30k damage for 9-12 ap. the ap drain is only slightly annoying, and his passive ap theft means that the nuke hits noticeably faster than a standard 9ap power.  it's a solid nuke that has been power-crept into low Tier B. Sinister is very different, IMO: he is a case of huge potential damage that is too cumbersome to convert into actual damage. You need a lot of traps out, and the behold tiles need to be in the right position to be matched, etc. Sinster's damage cap is high enough that he would be viable now if he could use it; you will just almost never reach that cap.

I think Garg's blue is just a modern version of GED's black. it's a nuke that hits VERY hard for its day, but doesn't play especially well with the current meta teams, and is thus a bit harder to use than the likely alternatives. Accordingly, as I did with GED at launch, I find garg to be in the "just-behind-the-meta" crowd of good but not quite good enough characters.

658_2

Yeah, I agree with basically all of that. Comparing Garg to Doom and Sinister was simply that both of them have a power that hits very hard but you almost never get hit with those powers when playing against them in pick 2, and since they don’t have other damage powers, in most matches against them you can usually skate and come out almost fully healthy. I suspect Garg will end up like that.

ThaRoadWarrior

I think Sinister and Gargantos are probably a bit more comparable than Doom personally - they both want huge amounts of Blue to be truly dangerous, and both suppress AP passively to varying degrees of effectiveness. Gargantos having a direct-damage blue as well as creating an army of 1 turn CDs means that he actually does synergize with the best blue engine the game still has post the Bishop nerf, so to me that puts him above Sinister who doesn't do anything with anyone else that would really enhance either one. Maybe he would work well with Sersi in the player's hands since you could control colors you don't care about, but that's not nearly as AI proof as Gargantos/Hawkeye. 

Tiger_Wong

Gargantos is high because with Hawkeye he’s meta. When you play against HawkEyeball, you’re playing against a clock. It is quite tough to prevent that team from getting their engine started and getting 9+ blue. You’re gonna get hit with Ineffable Horror without a stunner, a CD destroyer, or AP denial power (or unless you have a team even faster I suppose?) There is/was no GEDoom team that could get you enough AP for Fallen Favor as fast as Ineffable Horror AND offensively, I would argue there isn’t a one hitter nuke in the game that hits as hard. At 15 AP you’re killing every character under lvl 480. At 18 AP, almost every character at 510 either doesn’t survive or dies after you make a match after the nuke. And that’s with a baby champed Gargantos (lvl 450-455).

And when I say “killing” I mean FULL HEALTH champed 5* characters. Fallen Favor has NEVER done that with one shot. And neither has Sinister since there’s a cap on Behold! (damage max out at 8 trap tiles). Strategically, offensively, this changes a lot. With Elektra as the 3rd, i can keep Wanda stunned and crush a full health, lvl 480 Colossus with 15 blue, which you can get VERY EASILY by turn 4. Unboosted. Lvl 455 Gantgantos.

No, I think the comparison to GEDoom/Sinister isn’t good at all. Even with pre-nerf Bishop, Sinister was never that scary, offensively or defensively. 

atomzed

Tiger_Wong said:

No, I think the comparison to GEDoom/Sinister isn’t good at all. Even with pre-nerf Bishop, Sinister was never that scary, offensively or defensively. 

I agree with Tiger Wong analysis. Gargantos + HE would always have a place in the meta, because of how straight forward the team engine is PLUS that you can store the ap and one-hit KO any similar level 5*. Heck, they can punch above the weight so much, that you could take on a level 500 opp with only a level 450 HEyeball.

But on the question on whether Gargantos is rank too high… I think he is tier 1, but not among the top 10. Maybe top 20. If you have Gargantos and HE as your first 2x champ 5*, they would really change a player experience, in either pvp or pve. However, if you don’t have them, you would still be fine in pvp and pve. Missing them out isn’t the end of the world. That’s why I said they are Tier 1 but not indispensable. 

658_2

Lol, clearly I screwed up and should have made this point more generally. Typically,  one damage power characters are easy to defend against and Garg will be no different, (although I definitely agree it’s to a lesser extent with Garg when he’s with HE). That’s the extent of the comparison with Garg and Sinister or Doom. Some portion of the time, Garg will be effective defensively with Hawkeye, but that will be mitigated by the AI opting to use HE’s blue a significant portion of the time, and it will waste a turn using Hawkeye’s red a significant portion of the time. In addition, the only time you’ll eat Garg’s blue twice is when he’s being fed by Hawkeye, since the blue completely drains. Offensively that combo is great, perhaps even elite, but great offensive combos are a dime a dozen at this point. 

dianetics

Since they have all been in the wild now, I’m inclined to believe KK should around the 19-21 spot and Gargantos 20-22. Jane is looking to be elite though probably top 10.

Chasm should get a special place because he broke the entire game when he arrived.

Jimsta_rooney

658_2 said:

I’m going to pull tomorrow so my Garg is only 1/1/1, but I’ve messed with him enough to get a good feel for his powers and (while recognizing you’re adjusting his ranking already), I don’t think he’s a little too high at 10, he’s WAY too high. The limiters on all 3 of his powers are so heavy. Tentacle Thrash will only do damage once or twice a match, black’s problems are obvious (the damage component should work whether there are opposing specials or not), and the blue draining all blue leaves you out in the wilderness after the cast. He doesn’t play well with anyone but Hawkeye or AB, not even Okoye (because TT will almost always hit a color that has ap, so she has nothing to boost). And even with Hawkeye, it’s healthpack city because it’s so slow. I’ll hit that team all day long boosted. Get rid of Hawkeye quick and then Garg does…nothing?

Looking at the list, who is he better than? He’s not better than Ronan. He’s not close to better than Crystal. He’s not clearly better than Havok (I think he’s probably worse). You’re in the 40s before you get to characters he’s definitely better than.

Theres absolutely no way you can tell hes bad at 3 covers sorry.
As with all new 5 stars hes a monster boosted and he doesnt just have one good power he has two.

dianetics

He’s not bad per se, but he does have synergy issues. Hawkeye is his best partner by far and not everyone has hawkeye. I still hit that team when I see them though, because I don’t feel they are that dangerous.
I wouldn’t say say Ronan is better than him but Crystal probably is, just because she pairs so well with many other characters and teams.
He’s definitely not in the 40s, but he is probably in the low to mid 20s.