Enemy's Strongest Color : 'Nightstalker' Clarification

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Billigoat
Billigoat Posts: 71
edited March 2015 in MPQ Tips and Guides
I've been using Blade for awhile now and until today I've always thought his 'Nighstalker' ability stole AP from the enemy's highest AP pool... which now I realize is wrong.

purpleflag.png Nightstalker - Blade mercilessly makes a precision slash with his sword, dealing a crippling blow to his enemy. Deals 257 damage to the target, and then creates a Green Countdown tile that activates every turn, draining 1 AP from the enemy's strongest color.

I browsed a few of the forums and the wiki, but there doesn't seem to be clarification on what exactly this ability does. I know the 'strongest color' has to do with the damage output when a tile is destroyed, but...

1. Is the enemy singular? If I use 'Nightstalker' on Magneto does it steal from his strongest color and ignore his teammates?

2. Does the countdown tile switch colors? If you knockout/stun one of the enemies that had the strongest color does the drained color switch?

3. In the case of a tie, is it randomized every turn or is the color-type locked onto the tile at creation?

4. In AI matches, which takes precedence when there is both an AI and a Hero on the enemy team (in PVE mode)? What happens when the AI spawns multiple colors?

If anybody has some insight into any of these, that'd be great icon_e_biggrin.gif

Comments

  • morph3us
    morph3us Posts: 859 Critical Contributor
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    1. No, strongest colour is determined by the highest match damage rating amongst the enemy team as a whole, so it doesn't matter who you use it on in terms of the AP steal.

    2. That's a really good question. I don't know the answer to that. Anyone else?

    3. I believe strongest colour is randomised at creation, in terms of a tie.

    4. It doesn't matter what colours the AI spawns, the AI has hypothetical match damage ratings too, but these are pretty much also lower than the hero match damage ratings, so strongest colour is usually pretty much determined by the hero's highest match damage rating.
  • rdevil32
    rdevil32 Posts: 36 Just Dropped In
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    morph3us wrote:
    2. That's a really good question. I don't know the answer to that. Anyone else?

    Good questions from OP. Re #2, am pretty sure the answer is NO, i.e. if the enemies' strongest colour has no AP available, then it steals nothing.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    2. Yes. Eg: If you're fighting a X-Force(black) + Cap America(yellow) + Ares (green) and you take out x-force, you'll switch from draining black to yellow.

    4. In absence of a hero, they appear to have tweaked goon numbers so that AP they generate is the only that will be drained, and all the numbers appear to be tied. Eg, with a Don, you can get Yellow, Blue or Black AP. With a Mutant Subject you can only drain Green.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    There are two flavors of 'strongest color'. The first kind follows the positional tiebreaker of middle > left > right in the case of a tie, like Surgical Strike. The second is simply any color that contains an ability (passive counts too) that is tied.

    So let's say you fight 3 level 395 3*s and they're Patch (green, middle), Thor (red, left), and Captain America (yellow, right). When using an ability like Surgical Strike, it will always hit green tiles because Patch owns the tiebreaker. It will steal from green even if there are no AP available, but it will not be used if there are no green tiles available.

    On the other hand, for Nightstalker, it is equally likely to steal from green/red/yellow because they're all tied for value and Nightstalker doesn't care about the positional tiebreaker. It'll steal from those 3 colors at random and again it doesn't care if some of those colors may have no AP in them.

    There is no way to know which kind of 'strongest match' is which, but so far from my testing only Professor X and Blade's 'strongest color' uses the latter behavior. All other abilities appear to use the former behavior.

    Since no goons I know of has a passive as their first ability, this means they will always generate AP for their strongest color under the first rule. But for Nightstalker you can end up stealing black on a Teisatsu, who has red active/black passive and does not generate black AP, and end up with nothing. Note that in case of goons, you can have many ties for strongest match. If there's a level 395 Kishu (red, purple, black), Empircist (green, blue, purple), and a Thug (yellow) it is equally likely to steal AP from any color. Well, I don't know if an ability that's doubled up (like purple in the above example) is slightly more likely, as that'd be awfully hard to verify.

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