***** Abigail Brand (Commander of S.W.O.R.D.) *****

TheRiddler

HoundofShadow said:

I didn't see your post initially. Yes, Wanda's repeater is alway there passively and does damage, and you need to gather 7 purple aps for Lizard. But she can't do what Lizard can do: synergise with Odin regarding abilities related to fortification and maximise Abigail's healing more easily. On top of that, he has a 3-turn black stun which can be helpful. Again, Wanda can be better than Lizard in certain scenarios, like against iHulk, Juggernaut or any other AoE teams. When your board is full of foritified tiles, Odin is taking 1 damage per nuke.

I haven't tried 4Torch yet and he could be good too because he can fortify friendly repeater tiles and create strike tiles.

I just beat a couple champ 5 teams with Apocalypse and 4Torch. Interesting team. Torch puts his green replicating repeaters out. Apocalypse yellow boosts the damage of those repeaters plus his red and black attacks and creates his own repeaters to put out protects. You are getting Abigail triggering her passives. Abigail can use her purple for boosted damage and targeted AP reduction. And her blue is putting out attack tiles.

Srheer0

When I champ Abigail in like 3 months (and yes I will), I am sure there will be some combination that makes her useable.  

She has a typical supporter powerset. Fortifying countdown / repeaters against destruction or matching. Healing or burst healing allies and no big nuke. Maybe similar to Antivenom in terms of how they can work with the healing focus. 

I could see her maybe working with m5gneto and or b5nner. Just because she can fortify or accelerate the repeaters / countdown tile that makes them function well. 

Obviously she lacks the damage and damage boosting ability of Apoc, the damage reducing abilities of W5nda + Colossus or the big match damage of Shang Chi. She's a support character. 

Bad

I think I will champ her too. She fits in my main team apoc and SW. A lot of repeaters, she can keep in check AP'foe, minimize first damage taken by wanda thanks to all the healing, and after WTMR she even can fire her purple for more AP destroyed.
For relaxed pve clearing nodes, and for pvp SIM.
She is not like odin who works eating a health pack per battle.

DAZ0273

entrailbucket said:

The power level of new characters is random.  It's the only way this adds up.

Not necessarily. I can't speak for all releases but when Captain America (Worthy) was released, Ice specifically said that he might be broken and so it proved. I found that interesting that they knew and let it happen anyway. It was a very rare admission which is what makes it so intriguing.

entrailbucket

There are good support characters and bad support characters.  A good support character provides exactly as much value as a good damage dealer.  "Well, it's a support character! Of course they don't do anything!" is not an excuse to release bad characters.

Abigail is a bad support character.

HoundofShadow

Support characters can be sub-classified into different areas of supports. In the case of Abigail, she's specialises in repeaters/cds based healing, and minor in some aps controls and attack tiles creating repeaters. She's bad because she doesn't fit your idea of what a support character should be. That's fine because usage of such characters are subjective.

Players have been complaining about "DOA" or underwhelming characters for years and the dev continues to release them. So, in the future, we'll be talking about this topic again. Anyway, you can simply roster just one cover of her without using any cps and save your cps for other characters. 

entrailbucket

Again.  Again.  Again.  I will roster her, champion her and use her.  I *want* to use these characters.  I *always* use the bad characters because just using the good characters all the time is not fun.

The difference is that I choose not to lie to myself and convince myself that a bad character is good.  When I use bad characters I am well aware that they are bad and I choose to use them anyway.

Many, many other players will ignore her, never use her for anything, and will miss out on absolutely nothing.  For a 5* character who requires so many resources to acquire, that is unacceptable.

ThaRoadWarrior

"DOA" characters are just champ reward factories for me. I like weird support characters more than some, I like this particular one less than I wanted to. We know that somebody up there knows how to design compelling 4* characters still, but the 5*s have been in a strange state. Abigail and Odin have very comparable damage output, only around 10k active damage. Those are 4* numbers, and I'm just curious why those choices get made.

entrailbucket

It's not just damage output though.  A support character can do things that don't do damage at all and still be good.  Kitty doesn't directly do damage and she's very good.  Thor is a support character at this stage in the metagame and he's very good.

The difference is that buffing tiles passively or generating AP and cascades passively are things that are good.  They help you win matches.  Passive burst healing and AP drain are not.  The additional fact that Abigail is limited to supporting CD/repeater teams makes her even worse.

HoundofShadow

Basically, you prefer support characters who buff other characters, whether it's increasing the strengths of friendly special tiles or increase ap gains. Obviously, both are meant to help to win matches faster. 

I enjoy the different mechanics that the developers bring into the game instead of focusing on only offensive tactics. To me, all characters have the potentials to be good in their respective ways. The only thing that stops them from actualising their full potentials is the number of available partners in the game.

With that being said, are there other teams being used with Abigail? 

Breadsticks

The problem isn't Abigail. The problem is lack of modes and characters that allow that style of play. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Right now all I'm seeing are teams of boost list characters, or a single boost character+ Thano5, or the usual suspects of wanda/Colossus or Shang-Chi + whoever. These to me are not indicative of who people would be running with champed Abigails on purpose to do Abigail stuff because the loaner is too weak to survive in this MMR. So we will have to see if anyone uses her on purpose after champs start showing up and with whom.

And yeah, she doesn't need to do big damage necessarily, though some of the best support characters certainly can (Onslaught, Shuri, Thor, Coulson), but by definition they should be doing something in support of SOMEbody, right?

I just keep coming back to how her yellow power works - that absolutely should have been a passive (either like Flaptain where you match a color, or like Coulson where it burns down a banked color) if it was only going to affect one random CD/repeater, and if it was going to be active it should have been Goblin King level of "affect everything" even if it only dropped them down by 1. If that was all she did I'd definitely use her with Ronan on purpose at least.

entrailbucket

Everyone is just evaluating Abigail on the wrong axis.  A desire to win fights is just a preference, and one that not everyone shares.

For example, one player might prefer to win fights, while another player prefers to use swarm tiles.  For that player, Wasp is the best character in the game. 

Who's right?  We can't possibly say.  All characters are equally powerful on different dimensions.

HoundofShadow

Indeed, context changes how characters are ranked.

As for her yellow, it's pretty weak, due to it affecting random cd/repeater tiles. If you fire her yellow power twice, potentially, she will make the other yellow cd goes off early, which makes it a waste.

If her yellow power is a 2-turn repeater  and targets other non-Brand Loyalty tiles, it can be more useful. That's why I ignore her yellow power and focus on the other two instead.

If it's an active power like Goblin that triggers immediately, I believe the ap cost would be higher, probably a 7-8 yellow cost. Value of repeaters > values of cds.

It reminds me of Ultron. He introduced the new mechanic of bypassing all forms of damage reduction. Then, Gamora was released, and the mechanic is better. 

I believe some future characters will be able to do a better job than Abigail in terms of counting down repeaters.

dianetics

I have been running her with Wanda and Apoc. It works decently well.
I'm sure when she is champed the healing will be more valuable, but there are so many other characters I would prefer over her with those two. But, hey at least she is a mutant so stun resistance for Apoc.

ThaRoadWarrior

HoundofShadow said:

Indeed, context changes how characters are ranked.

As for her yellow, it's pretty weak, due to it affecting random cd/repeater tiles. If you fire her yellow power twice, potentially, she will make the other yellow cd goes off early, which makes it a waste.

If her yellow power is a 2-turn repeater  and targets other non-Brand Loyalty tiles, it can be more useful. That's why I ignore her yellow power and focus on the other two instead.

If it's an active power like Goblin that triggers immediately, I believe the ap cost would be higher, probably a 7-8 yellow cost. Value of repeaters > values of cds.

It reminds me of Ultron. He introduced the new mechanic of bypassing all forms of damage reduction. Then, Gamora was released, and the mechanic is better. 

I believe some future characters will be able to do a better job than Abigail in terms of counting down repeaters.

7AP for a Goblin King-esque power that operates on repeaters in bulk immediately upon fire would be great, I'd abolutely run that. Goblin King costs 9ap, but has the passive that fortifies CDs and Repeaters. Maybe if GG ever gets a rebalance, Goblin King will be adjusted to aso do repeaters. That would be great.

entrailbucket

HoundofShadow said:

Indeed, context changes how characters are ranked.

As for her yellow, it's pretty weak, due to it affecting random cd/repeater tiles. If you fire her yellow power twice, potentially, she will make the other yellow cd goes off early, which makes it a waste.

If her yellow power is a 2-turn repeater  and targets other non-Brand Loyalty tiles, it can be more useful. That's why I ignore her yellow power and focus on the other two instead.

If it's an active power like Goblin that triggers immediately, I believe the ap cost would be higher, probably a 7-8 yellow cost. Value of repeaters > values of cds.

It reminds me of Ultron. He introduced the new mechanic of bypassing all forms of damage reduction. Then, Gamora was released, and the mechanic is better. 

I believe some future characters will be able to do a better job than Abigail in terms of counting down repeaters.

I don't understand how you can say that her yellow power is weak.  Your expectations for it must be incorrect.

What if another player's goal is to watch a large chain of yellow countdown tiles go off at once?  For that player, this would be the strongest power in the game, and their goal is equally valid compared to players who only want to win fights.

ThaRoadWarrior

This yellow power that will shorten a repeater makes me want to bring a countdown shortener to shorten this countdown...

HoundofShadow

That's possible as well. I like watching things trigger one after another sometimes. 

As for the ap cost, I meant 7ap cost to bring one repeater or countdown from x to 0 immediately.

C4rol's yellow: 5 yellow aps to reduce a chosen cd count to zero immediately.

Abigail's yellow: 5 yellow aps to reduce a random cd or repeater to zero after your second turn.

Choice + immediate trigger was traded away to also potentially bring a repeater down to zero. However, it became a 2-turn cd instead. So, that's how I concluded that it will cost more aps to bring a chosen cd or repeater. If we are talking about mass cds/repeaters activations, I'm not sure if that will happen. Probably there will be a cap of 3 repeaters or cds for 10-12 aps?

ThaRoadWarrior

There are currently no single repeaters worth triggering immediately for a price that high. If you consider that it takes 2x turns to gather the AP fire this one, then two more turns for it to burn down to 0, we are talking about a minimum of 4 turns to get a random single repeater to go off. Currently the longest repeater takes what, 3 turns to proc? You are better off gathering AP to add another repeater so they fire in tandem.  I wonder if a bad interaction with Wanda’s repeater is why this doesn’t proc immediately? Like if you fire it, and her repeater has no charges, that is a feels bad.