Crystal worth it or skip ?

tonypq

For those with *5 Crystal champed, do you feel she's absolutely worth pulling for ?

I was curious for anyone with a champed Crystal how worthwhile you feel she is. If you even use her much since champing or if you think she'll only get much use when boosted.

At first I wanted her quite a bit with her unique skill set. However I'm not sure I want or need her bad enough to waste a bunch of LL/CPs to also get Moon Knight who I don't care for.  I don't mind Elektra so much  but I could live without her. If LLs was Crystal/Elektra and one other I kind of liked I'd probably pull. 

As far as Gargantos coming, he's ok. Wouldn't mind pulling for him but again not big on Moon Knight, Knowing I kind of wanted Crystal and was leaning towards pulling for Gargantos, that's a ton of LL/CPs I'd have to blow through to cover Crystal and Gargs. And possibly getting killed by RNG getting tons of Moon Knight making me have to pull even more. 

Currently I have all the *5 metas champed. That being said I'm not sure how often I'd even use Crystal or Gargantos. I'm debating if I even want to bother pulling for any of these 5s or just keep pooling my resources. Wait for a bwtter *5 that would crack my rotation on a regular basis instead of only when boosted. 

MegaBee

Crystal plays real nice with Apocalypse.

LavaManLee

Personally, I think Gargantos might become a big PITA in meta-PVP.  A champed Gargantos is pretty foolproof for the AI and I think he could be someone to leave out while climbing without using a shield.  But, I do not have a champed one yet so can't see.

I'm not big on Crystal but I know others who are.  One of my faster teams is 50%Thor/ShangChi so I don't need Crystal to constantly heal Thor.  :-)

Borstock

I don't have her champed.

I really like Crystal's healing. It's legit. But she has a fatal flaw.... A decent Apocalypse can one-shot her at baby champ levels. If you can't get her over that hurdle, it's a bit difficult to justify the cost for a healer. Damage-first metas are still where it's at, imo.

shardwick

I have her champed and I've only really played with her when she was featured in Deadpool vs MPQ so with that said I had a lot of fun with her. I personally wouldn't skip her as I think she'll be a pain whenever she's god boosted in pvp.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

I have her champed but like many of my champs (Gamora, Electro) I haven’t figured out how to use her yet . Her power set is more confusing than most characters. I’ll try combinations all next month and see what clicks 

bbigler

Since you have all the 5* metas champed, I would get Crystal & Gargantos as well just to have more boosted 5* options.  There’s no guarantee that someone better will come along.  I think the devs were being generous with their stats.  

Crystal can be used with Thor & Shang against all goons since they don’t match tiles.  Thor+Okoye+Crystal should be good against goons, as well as Thor+Apocalypse+Crystal.  Boosting her passive dmg and AOE is the key.  

When she’s boosted, she’ll be a big pain in PVP.  Just like Gargantos 

Vhailorx

I don't have her champed.

As far as I can tell, she is not meta now because, as far as i can tell on paper, her best teams are not better (i.e., faster, better on defense, or more sustainable) than the current best teams. so she isnt someone i wouled expect to become a regular part of my non-boosted rotation (which is currrently SC, thor, thanos, polaris, okoye, ih, and sometimes heimdall/shuri, DD, brb, kitty, and apoc). So she would] only be someone to use when boosted or when I felt like going out of my way to use her.

All that being said, I think that Crystal is in the "nice to have" category in that her

kit is relatively unique in her tier and does stuff that is valuable in mpq (true heal, lots of passive, boostable damage ticks, etc).  That means that, even without a rework from demi, she could become valuable if the right partner is released.

HoundofShadow

I've her champed and played with and against her. Her heal can be a pain, so she's good with another defensive character. Her green passive is also good for extra damage. I used her with defensive characters like Wanda/Colossus or Wanda/Odin, and Adam Warlock to maximise his passive damage. 1/2 Thor will dislike her a lot, but 1/2 Wasp will like her for the free Swarm tiles. One negative/positive point is that she could tank for other characters if you have many different types of friendly special tiles. 

I'm still thinking how to maximise her passive charged tiles creation. I think there's potential for this part of the ability.

If you use only meta characters, then you can skip her. There's approximately 2 meta a year, so I'm not sure how long more you want to wait. Gargantos will be the first meta of 2022 and if the next 1-2 5* synergise with it, you can start pulling. Alternatively, you can wait for 550 players to unload their LTs and CPs and you know it's time to unload yours.

Bad

I will break a 250 hoard for her when gargantos will appear. 
There are always hidden details which make a character great.
Like piercing through colSW.

MegaBee

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

I have her champed but like many of my champs (Gamora, Electro) I haven’t figured out how to use her yet . Her power set is more confusing than most characters. I’ll try combinations all next month and see what clicks 

Do you have Apoc or Okoye champed? Crystal's "match red for permanent damage" passive gets boosted.

dianetics

I really like her. I stick her with apocalypse and watch chaos ensue. If you have a way to force red onto the board they can melt a lot of teams very fast.

I don’t have the iso to cap her but I do have all her covers right now. Once she hits 450 that heal can be pretty nasty.

HoundofShadow

If you are going for the boosted damage route, Kitty + Valkyrie will be awesome. Your strongest colour will likely to be red. Then, you can finish off the match with Valkyrie's red if the strike tiles are strong enough.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

HoundofShadow said:

If you are going for the boosted damage route, Kitty + Valkyrie will be awesome. Your strongest colour will likely to be red. Then, you can finish off the match with Valkyrie's red if the strike tiles are strong enough.

I went with this and it’s nice 👍 except I have no Kitty so went Okoye or Apoc

HoundofShadow

Wanda/Ultron or Wanda/OMD are fine too, in terms of boosting her passive red. 

tonypq

I just champed her and she's not bad. Haven't been able to use her much yet, but as others said she does pair well with damage boosters like Okoye or Apoc. Using her with Okoye her extra damage on red matches was very nice, at times over 17k, in addition to boosting her cheap red and green active damage.

One thing that's tricky is picking different elements with green. You don't always have a good amount of the color tiles you need on the board. So while you might like to pick earth for boosting tiles or water to heal her up, it's very board dependent. It's really hard to IMO use her as a special tile booster as you're not always going to have lots of green tiles on board. Same with trying to heal her up, if there's few blue tiles then you're not going to get as much health back as one may have hoped for. The same also goes for the other elements of course, but at least green has the AOE damage which is nice. 

I also liked using her with Kitty and Polaris. Doesn't take long to get enough red AP to fire Crystal's red and get some tiles out for Kitty and Polaris. 

She'll be really fun when boosted. She's decent all around and fun to use. I haven't tried her in any defense teams yet, but sure she's a good option for some of those teams as well 

fight4thedream

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tonypq

After using her more last couple days I like her quite a lot, I wouldn't personally suggest skipping or sleeping on her. Her damage on red matches is great, especially when boosted by Okoye, or Polaris putting tiles on board. Crystals powers are so cheap you can spam them quite a bit, even without Polaris I've been able to use her red enough to get quite a bit of special tiles out and the bonus red damage. The fact that her red/green do other things but also instant damage is very nice, especially as cheap as they are and even better with partners that increase their damage thresholds. 

Her yellow I have at 3 covers and I really like the ability. It makes quite a bit of a difference every match. Yes it's not true healing for the whole team but it's very handy. Even after cutting through the tougher nodes in SCL10 and Crystal and her teammates taking a bit of a beating, you can start the next clear with your team at half health and quickly before you even realize everyone is almost full health or close to it. It also is great for nullifying match and ability damage as often as her yellow kicks in. 

She has to be played with a bit of strategy regarding her green. Before you fire it off, depending on what element you want to utilize you want to make sure there's some colors you nee don board or that you see 2 or 3 possible matches that can be made. Also have to consider if the color/element you want to use is one the other team will be chasing. So far with her green the fire element is obviously the best and auto pilot. Water is ok if you need to heal up fast and you see enough matches on board. Earth isn't too great as it only buffs one lone tile and often it gets matched or destroyed before gaining any benefits. Air I haven't used much but doesn't seem too bad adding 3 charged tiles every yellow match, if you need charged tiles. 

Non-boosted she's still darn good IMO and can put quite a bit of pressure out with cheap abilities, active damage red/green, bonus match damage using fire element. Her yellow is very helpful as well. When boosted and fully covered/champed, I think she'll be one of the most fun characters to use and a pain going against teams with her in it. Her abilities will fire many times as well as her yellow passive doing lots of healing, add in a damage booster or tile spammer to compliment her and she'll be pretty deadly. Especially boosted then getting even higher match damage once special tiles flood the board. She seems to fit well with offense and defensive teams which makes her a ton of fun, more so then most characters. At the *5 level she's truly unique for all she brings and one of the best 5s they've released this year. 

Vhailorx

Love the ongoing commentary tonypq. Thanks for keeping this discussion alive and offering useful data to us fence sitters!

VizMantis

It seems like most commenters recommend to not skip Crystal.  I’m curious if those recommendations hold if pulling Crystal means skipping Kamala?

Crystal seems better to me, but Kamala seems to be looking relatively better to everyone else.  I don’t totally get the positive reception for Kamala, she mostly seems like a good 3rd for a team (brb, Polaris) that already has a good 3rd (kitty).  But my track record at gauging characters on paper is pretty bad, so I assume I’m wrong.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

Of course Khan will be popular, 90% of players are tinykittys that can’t win without BRolaris. ANY new character that answers yes to “ Is she a good third ?” is going have those players foaming at the mouth to bust their hoard. This is their Christmas. That being said, I’m seeing a lot more of the skilled players already using Crystal in PvP and she is a defensive nightmare.