***** Crystal (Crystalia Amaquelin) *****

dianetics

Just checked it, and yep...wow thats pretty crazy.
So she legit has more dance partners than anyone else on the 5* roster besides Okoye.
Carnage will be a force with her, Phoenix, Apoc, Ultron will be pretty good, BRB, Electro to a degree, JJ, Kitty, Knull, SW, Odin, Elektra some, D5ken, BB, Mehneto, and more.
She may be the best third in the 5* tier, and I expect to see her in simulator quite a bit.

Warbringa

bbigler said:

Warbringa said:

bbigler said:

I think you misunderstood me.  I was saying that Shang is easy on defense; so if you climb with him, you’re a PVP target.  But if you combine Shang with Crystal (who has a very defensive passive), then your team is less of a target.  My mistake there, I did misread your thought there.

I also think you misunderstand Crystal: I do understand her, I just don't value her much.

- she’s not meant to deal high match damage, so it’s pointless to compare her to Shang; her match dmg increase is to make her tank most colors in case you want to play her defensively by making frequent blue matches to heal her 4K each time.  Agreed, I only compared her to SC because that is perhaps the best character in the game, certainly top 3 right now.  I could compare her to every character that I believe is better in 5* than her, and it would easily be 10+ characters without even thinking for a minute. I probably should have used 5Thor as a better comparison I admit.  
 
I have never found small, non-permanent incremental healing to ever be any good in this game, especially when it is conditional like hers.  They have used it in several characters and I never once have had it be a significant factor in a match.  Permanent healing on a large scale (or damage prevention) is what is important (ie Shang Chi, Okoye, Colossus, etc).  Otherwise burst healing is nearly useless.

- she’s not meant to be a great AP generator, so it’s pointless to make those comparisons.  Her yellow passive is meant to be a big defensive deterrent, which sometimes helps on offense.  AP generation drives victory in this game and passive healing is not a defensive deterrent.

- her tile buffing can be exponential under the right conditions.  A single special can be nearly doubled in strength with each green match.  Yes conditionally it can be good, hence why I feel she is ok as a buffer but not as good as some other tile buffing characters.

- her green AOE actually has very good damage output, being 3,315 per AP. Average on par with 5Thor, who I consider is average as an AoE dealer in today's environment (it is better than his slightly since it is cheaper in AP cost overall).

- her extra dmg on red matches is just simply good Yes it is, no argument there but not a primary reason to use her.

- her red power is not meant to be a nuke, but a decent hit that allows her to start tanking or having specials to buff 

Too many times people judge a character by what they want them to be instead of what they are I meant to be.  

I responded in italics and aren't these forums made for judging characters, hence discussion?  I admit I could be wrong and she is awesome, but I have seen many characters like her that try to do a bit of everything and they have generally, always not be useful to me, nor considered meta.

I think she is good, not meta, and can do a lot of things, just none of them great.  My play preference is to have a character that does something great, even if it is limited.  That is what defines really good characters in this game vs. just good characters. 

Haven’t you played against Medusa before where she would constantly burst heal the team making it impossible to down anyone?  I’ve lost matches that way.  Add in Mr Fantastic and it gets really bad.  

Let’s say you hit someone for 10K and then get a cascade match.  That simple cascade could trigger Crystal’s burst team healing 3 times, undoing the damage you just did, plus damage done previously to others.  So, don’t underestimate the power of burst healing on defense (she is like Medusa in 5* land).  

No I have not although, I have been a 5* player for quite some time.  I do know incremental healing abilities are annoying but when I fight a 5* scaled Medusa in PvE (Inhumans SCL 10 node  for example), I target her second because of her tile damage not her healing.  I hit BB first due to his passive damage and leave Lockjaw until last.  Perhaps that does change our reference points though as I have not looked at it from 4* perspective.  Perhaps I am wrong and in 4* incremental healing can change a battle due to the fact that 4* damage does not out scale 4* incremental healing.  In 5* play, large damage nukes are easy to come by and incremental healing cannot outpace this (5* Wolverine, Daredevil, Doom, Rescue, Odin are some incremental healers in 5* that come to mind)?  Only Odin is a risk for healing because he does have other features that protect your teammates better, which are the more important parts of his kit.  

HoundofShadow

As a reference, when boosted to 569, her aoe healing is ~8290 per match that meets the requirement.

I think the reason why you can't feel the frustration of Medusa's healing is because she isn't teamed up with Polaris + BRB or R4G in CN.

Does anyone remember one of the special pvp with Carbage/Medusa/Polaris?

tonypq

Does Okoye or Apoc boost healing done by Medusa ? 

I never experimented with that before to find out, but was curious if they boost Medusas healing if Crystal's would get boosted as well. If Crystal got boosted green AOE damage and yellow healing she could a pain in the behind to deal with. 

mdreyer93

tonypq said:

Does Okoye or Apoc boost healing done by Medusa ? 

I never experimented with that before to find out, but was curious if they boost Medusas healing if Crystal's would get boosted as well. If Crystal got boosted green AOE damage and yellow healing she could a pain in the behind to deal with. 

Okoye does not boost Medusa's healing.

Vhailorx

tonypq said:

Does Okoye or Apoc boost healing done by Medusa ? 

I never experimented with that before to find out, but was curious if they boost Medusas healing if Crystal's would get boosted as well. If Crystal got boosted green AOE damage and yellow healing she could a pain in the behind to deal with. 

Pretty sure they only boost damage. I think karolina is the only character that boosts healing, but maybe I am am forgetting someone else.

helix72

I had an idea but ended up disappointed-4* Anti-Venom has a passive that deals up to 100% of ally healing to the enemy, but it only works if he does the healing. Would make for a neat team idea if it worked no matter who did the healing. So all you’d have to do is heal your own team to damage the enemy.

HoundofShadow

Is there any other character in the comics/Marvel who turns healing into damage, besides Anti-Venom?

MadScientist

5* Wasp places a swarm tile if healed. No idea if it works with Crystal. Then again, why would it matter?

wymtime

After playing some of her PVP I can see her value as a 3rd.  The healing can add up especially when she is at level 5 and boosted.  

I also compare her to AB and Electra who will be in LL with her.  I think AB and Electra are better.  AB with a repeater or multiple repeaters will add more health and Electra spamming those yellow tiles feel like better options.

she will be interesting when boosted, but I think it will depend on who she is buffed with.  There could be much better options boosted at the same time

Tiger_Wong

She’s gonna be hard to kill on certain teams. Really hard. 

tonypq

Just PVPd to 700 points and it feels to me Crystal could be a pain to deal with in a lot of teams. Her heal seems to go off frequently enough to be a sizeable factor. When champed and covered or boosted it looks  like there will be a lot of tug o war with the health bars. That alone seemingly will make her tough in a lot of teams and defensive ones. She appeared to be a nice counter to passive damage dealers like Ihulk or Polaris. Anytime the passive damage hit it seemed to follow a wave of healing most times. I can imagine how much better she'll be fully covered and or boosted.

It looked like when no other characters had green abilities to use, the AI was firing her green and choosing the green element. I seen that happen multiple fights, be interesting how she plays put on defense when you're not controlling hher. Maybe it will vary which element is chosen if she fires green while on defense controlled by the AI depending on which characters she's teamed up with. 

bbigler

This PVP has confirmed to me everything I was saying about her.  Her team bursts go off very often and would certainly be a big problem on defense when she’s champed.  Her Fire element dmg also fired frequently as well as her 1 AP gain on match 4*s.  Her green AOE is certainly usable and good and benefits from any kind of boost from strikes, Apoc or Okoye.  

I think the true sign of a new meta character is when they are useful even as a 1/1/1.  She’s causing enough problems on defense that I take her down 1st or 2nd.  

Vhailorx

Is her healling really an issue? We have all done the inhuman royal family challenge node, and a lvl 650 medusa does something like 8k team heal every time you match an enemy special. And that is barely a speed bump against meta teams; it is certainly not the difficult thing about fighting that node.

HoundofShadow

As far as healing is concerned, the royal family node isn't a big deal because you hardly trigger their healing. Medusa heals only when you match their SAP tiles. Only Medusa and Lockjaw can create SAP tiles.  The probability of triggering her heal via her cd tile per match in that node is (1/64*1/32) x 3 = 0.146%. Lockjaw has a 1/6 probability of creating 3 SAP tiles. 

For Crystal, her aoe healing triggers immediately when you make your first move at the start of the game, which is 100% trigger. This means that as long as you have the same number of aps in x colour or more aps in x colour before you make that match, it will trigger her healing and there's no cap the number of times it can heal as long as it fulfils the requirements.

Bad

As always, is hard to predict if a character will be meta. But as I bet on SC, I'm beting on her too.
When a character is so versatile and has so many good things, as a defensive character she will have her role. There always will be fastest characters than her but if players figure out a good and quick way to climb with her, plus adding her defensive and supporting role, I think there is no-brainer in here.
Also, being her fire passive active since start of battle makes it the cherry on top. As I said before, she herself is the best counter to herself and AB.

tonypq

Unlike Medusa's healing, Crystal doesn't have to rely on tiles being matched or any kind of repeater, it's not dependent on the other team firing off a power either. Crystal's healing can't be taken away when characters like Morbius or others remove special tiles in bunches. Now a days most new characters have cheap powers which get used a lot, the enemy team having more AP than you should be something that happens fairly often which would trigger her healing quite a bit IMO. Being a 5* she'll have quite a bit more health than others with a healing ability. If she happened to buff some protect tiles along the way, that and her healing could bog things down for the opponent. I'm sure there will be some annoying defensive teams with her. 

Will also be interesting to see if there are many scenarios or team combos where you'd pick her water element to heal when making matches. There could be some oddball team setup that works or become exploitable at some point. As far as her passive healing, it's not going to be a game breaker but seems like it will still be very handy. The loaner did a pretty good job mending up a bit from Polaris or Ihulks passive damage when I played against them and Carnage's attack tiles. She also helps heal often enough to help against match damage types. 

Using her in PVP at 1/1/1, didn't really get a good feel for the rest of her kit. Plus I was using Shang so none of the fights lasted long enough to experiment with her Red/Green too much. When champed the damage on red matches will be nice especially with Shang. Her air element could work well with Shang adding charged tiles. Seems like things could get out of hand even faster than usual with Shang and Crystal churning out charged tiles. If you know how to play Shang, getting up to 10 combo points isn't tough at all. She should be able to fire green pretty early on  and if she happens to generate some red/purple/green charged tiles that will fuel both of them. 

As far as her red it deals the most damage up front, gets tiles out to boost her match damage and possibly buff her tiles with green. If she's on a team that doesn't have a better red it will will be decent and cheap. I think she seems interesting with her versatility between red/green. Whether you want to try and use her in a special tile team or focus more on her green/yellow healing to fit in with other team set ups where special tiles or buffing aren't needed. If the next 5* is very good Crystal/Elektra and whoever's next could be a decent LL trio. 

mani82

Is anybody else getting no permanent damage with red matches with crystal to me it seems inconsistent sometimes it pops the red slash on the health bar of the enemy sometimes it does not I am not sure if I am reading the description right but I feel it says the power defaults to red (fire element ) but shoudl we get the green going first always 

mani82

Also not sure if I have to post it in bug s column the mods can help if they can 

DAZ0273

Having played through her PvP I really like her although I haven't yet got a total handle on everything she does. Sadly I don't have a huge pile of CP right now after the two recent very good special stores but as I also need Iceman I will probably chuck it all at her store tomorrow.