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

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.

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. 

BlackBoltRocks

I feel the best use of her Yellow is to forget about the active part. Bring it along solely for its passive, because once you get going, it will trigger on average every other turn (or every turn if you use Abigail with Wanda).

HoundofShadow

The dev seems to value repeaters highly and it's probably due to an average reduced ap cost until the end of the match.  So, that explains what I think would be a higher ap cost for immediate activation. Sometimes, that extra early trigger can save your team from eating a nuke.

But as of now, it's better not to focus on her active yellow power because it is random and most importantly, it doesn't exclude Brand Loyalty cd from getting processed by another Brand Loyalty cd,  based on the current wording. If we can spam her yellow without having to worry about that matter, I think she can be worth teaming with Electro and another third against Juggernaut or iHulkoye to spam her cd.

From 4* level and below point of view, that team healing can be easily triggered with the likes of Hulk or Deadpool against Juggernaut or R4G/Polaris etc.

DAZ0273

I ran her with Apoc and 4* Torch. It is OK but I don't think I will chase her. And as mentioned before the space station power just makes me sad.

Srheer0

Is her best partner Sentry? He makes the most countdowns at once iirc. 

Sekilicious

HoundofShadow said:

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

I have been crushing BRB/Polaris with Apocalypse and Mantis in her PvP. I haven’t even been able to get to fire Apoc’s yellow out but still.

HoundofShadow

I think it's because Mantis is stunning the team with her passive?

Sekilicious

HoundofShadow said:

I think it's because Mantis is stunning the team with her passive?

Yes though Brand heals and Apoc would be better at boosting if I bothered to bring yellow ap. Mantis can also damage stunned opponents which is great when boosted. Brand does some good things with Kitty and Polaris as well. She likes to remove Kitty’s red and BRB’s blue countdown so that is awful. 

HoundofShadow

Bringing +4 yellow ap boost will speed up the process by 2 turns. So, Apocalypse can trigger those heals more often.

I was playing against Kitty and while she was overriding my tiles, her Abigail also healed the team. A champed Abigail will heal for about 50% of the strongest match-3. 

So characters like Mantis, Kitty, etc are excellent with Abigail to trigger her team heal easily. I guess it's good for those healthpack-conscious?

Sekilicious

HoundofShadow said:

Bringing +4 yellow ap boost will speed up the process by 2 turns. So, Apocalypse can trigger those heals more often.

I was playing against Kitty and while she was overriding my tiles, her Abigail also healed the team. A champed Abigail will heal for about 50% of the strongest match-3. 

So characters like Mantis, Kitty, etc are excellent with Abigail to trigger her team heal easily. I guess it's good for those healthpack-conscious?

Yeah Kitty’s red isn’t all that great so who cares. It is more of a deal breaker with BRB, but it is awesome when the opponent does it. Her and Mantis have mitigated a couple Clash of the Worthys on Apoc so that was nice. 

Bad

I think her yellow repeater is just another way to heal more.
Abigail is quite annoying fighting SC, I've lost many battles because she runs out the precious red AP.
On the other hand SC when he restores turns his "green " health healed by abigail into normal red health. 
I'm a big sersi fan, if I skip abigail I can't level her more, same with BW. So I will pull for her.

HoundofShadow

Kitty's red is great against AoE, like Juggernaut or iHulk.  I remember using Kitty's red against Juggernaut as a 4* players. 9 attack tiles were created per match by Juggernaut, and he can't reduce damage from attack tiles. It was also great against iHulk because  she can potentially turn basic green tiles to special green tiles. Nowadays, since Wanda's release, there's not much opportunity to use her red, unless you want to trade damage with Wanda.

Her best partners are those who can create 1 turn cd or or 1 turn repeater easily. I think there are quite a number of options out there. I'm looking forward to testing her next month and see if there are any new experiences out in shield sim.

Sekilicious

HoundofShadow said:

Kitty's red is great against AoE, like Juggernaut or iHulk.  I remember using Kitty's red against Juggernaut as a 4* players. 9 attack tiles were created per match by Juggernaut, and he can't reduce damage from attack tiles. It was also great against iHulk because  she can potentially turn basic green tiles to special green tiles. Nowadays, since Wanda's release, there's not much opportunity to use her red, unless you want to trade damage with Wanda.

Her best partners are those who can create 1 turn cd or or 1 turn repeater easily. I think there are quite a number of options out there. I'm looking forward to testing her next month and see if there are any new experiences out in shield sim.

Yeah, I've done the same. I just have a special hate for attack tiles so am completely biased. Mostly because I never need more than one and end up wishing the rest were strikes.