Character rankings 12/14 edition: the results!

Unknown · February 2015

Actually, I think we're only going to see X-Force and 4* Thor get top ten, and maybe Nick Fury (though probably not). I doubt any of the other 4*s will get top ten.

Unknown · February 2015

raisinbman wrote:

daibar wrote:

It doesn't really matter how many 3* OBW and Ares are better than unless you're placing some Vegas style bets

But it does matter which 2* are better than 3* because there are some really, really bad 3*.

And again, are you volunteering to do this? The person who runs this already said they were time stretched as is.

Removing the 1-2* from the survey could cut down the work by 10-20%. At this point there are 34-3*. It's easier just to avoid the bottom 10-3*, as you're going to get covers for the 2* first anyways.

If I had access to the data I wouldn't mind doing the extra graph. My suggestions don't have to be taken as a whole or nothing. Look at the tools that he's using; perhaps create yourself a free account and create a survey.

With regards to new interactions: I found Star-Lord + AWolverine +Daken quite interesting. Feral Claws at 4 AP and Chemical Reaction at 3 just destroys. I don't think it'll change AWolverine's rank at all though.

Unknown · February 2015

daibar wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

daibar wrote:

It doesn't really matter how many 3* OBW and Ares are better than unless you're placing some Vegas style bets

But it does matter which 2* are better than 3* because there are some really, really bad 3*.

And again, are you volunteering to do this? The person who runs this already said they were time stretched as is.

Removing the 1-2* from the survey could cut down the work by 10-20%. At this point there are 34-3*. It's easier just to avoid the bottom 10-3*, as you're going to get covers for the 2* first anyways.

If I had access to the data I wouldn't mind doing the extra graph. My suggestions don't have to be taken as a whole or nothing. Look at the tools that he's using; perhaps create yourself a free account and create a survey.

With regards to new interactions: I found Star-Lord + AWolverine +Daken quite interesting. Feral Claws at 4 AP and Chemical Reaction at 3 just destroys. I don't think it'll change AWolverine's rank at all though.

I seriously don't agree with what you're saying, but you just said you're willing to do the work so I can't stop you.

Greggles · March 2015

I can't wait for the next edition of these rankings. I've found them to be super helpful in the past in guiding me towards which characters I should level up first. And now I finally have a forum account and a robust enough roster of 3 and 4 stars to have a valid opinion. How does the voting usually work? Will there be a post on here somewhere? A poll perhaps or something else?

whitecat31 · March 2015

Why the Troll voting for Invisible Woman? The Bag woman.
By troll voting I mean, there was votes with attempts to deliberately skew the voting.
Their is one first place vote, the nine second place votes, and 12 other voters who put her in the top 5.
Even though these troll votes were counted she still BARELY beat the worst three stars of Doctor Octopus and Beast.
Of course maybe I should pretend that the Beast troll votes of 11 people choosing him for 6th place don't exist.

I think we are due for another one of these Character rankings.
Is it possible that we create a normalization algorithm that rejects votes 10 standard deviations away from the mean after the final tally?

stevenbrule · March 2015

whitecat31 wrote:

Why the Troll voting for Invisible Woman? The Bag woman.
By troll voting I mean, there was votes with attempts to deliberately skew the voting.
Their is one first place vote, the nine second place votes, and 12 other voters who put her in the top 5.
Even though these troll votes were counted she still BARELY beat the worst three stars of Doctor Octopus and Beast.
Of course maybe I should pretend that the Beast troll votes of 11 people choosing him for 6th place don't exist.

I think we are due for another one of these Character rankings.
Is it possible that we create a normalization algorithm that rejects votes 10 standard deviations away from the mean after the final tally?

I just assumed they were newbies who saw 4* and thought that it was inherently a good thing, but troll voting seems equally if not more likely.

Also, I'm another one hoping for a new poll soon.

Unknown · March 2015

Greggles wrote:

I can't wait for the next edition of these rankings. I've found them to be super helpful in the past in guiding me towards which characters I should level up first. And now I finally have a forum account and a robust enough roster of 3 and 4 stars to have a valid opinion. How does the voting usually work? Will there be a post on here somewhere? A poll perhaps or something else?

The new poll will come out around March 14th.

Mischief Maker has done it once every 3 months for the past year or so.

If he continues that trend, the poll will come out as a new post sometime around next Saturday.

It will take you to an outside polling service where you drag and drop every character in the list.

He accumulates everyone's poll results and posts the order, as well as writing a little blurb about them.

In the rankings from last September, it took him a month or so to write everything, at which point he resolved to only really write a long entry for new or re-made characters.

A lot of characters see no change between rankings, so writing a large paragraph about each isn't all that useful. Just checking the previous rankings tells you everything you need to know about it.

Then, when he's all done compiling the rankings and writing the descriptions, he releases them over an agonizingly long 10 day period.

It's a lot of fun.

Unknown · March 2015

With the changes to some of the characters i dont expect to see Thoress in 2nd place anymore, heck i'd probably not put her in top 5. For me its,
1.XF
2.Luke Cage
3.Iron Fist
4.Cyclops
5.Thor 3*

Unknown · March 2015

akiratang wrote:

With the changes to some of the characters i dont expect to see Thoress in 2nd place anymore, heck i'd probably not put her in top 5. For me its,
1.XF
2.Luke Cage
3.Iron Fist
4.Cyclops
5.Thor 3*

Hood and Loki need to be somewhere in the top 5.

Cyclops is decent, but Thor's nerf hurts him as well.
Same with Luke Cage. His best match was with 4 star Thor.

My top 5 would be:
1. XF
2. Hood
3. Iron Fist
4. Loki
5. 3 star Thor

Remaining top 10:
Daken
Luke cage
Cyclops
Classic Magneto
Black Panther

Then I would drop 4hor and Fury right outside of the top 10, along with Patch, Deadpool, Hulk Captain America, and Blade.

Those are, I would say, the top 17. It goes down hill very quickly from there.

rixmith · March 2015

I was asking myself the other day "Why do I rank 3* Thor so high?" I mean, there are many other 3* heroes that I use much more often than him both in PvP and PvE. And I don't see him on other teams all that much in PvP. And I certainly never worry about attacking him since his good abilities are so slow. Don't get me wrong, he's fun to play, and a Call the Storm is a ton of fun to let loose with. But I'll hesitate to attack Hood, Loki, Blade, Daken, Patch (to say nothing of the occasional Iron Fist I've seen now), and for a slow moving character I find Cap to be more versatile because of his Stun and recurring 4K red damage. So what do you think? Why does Thor consistently top the 3* rankings?

atomzed · March 2015

rixmith wrote:

I was asking myself the other day "Why do I rank 3* Thor so high?" I mean, there are many other 3* heroes that I use much more often than him both in PvP and PvE. And I don't see him on other teams all that much in PvP. And I certainly never worry about attacking him since his good abilities are so slow. Don't get me wrong, he's fun to play, and a Call the Storm is a ton of fun to let loose with. But I'll hesitate to attack Hood, Loki, Blade, Daken, Patch (to say nothing of the occasional Iron Fist I've seen now), and for a slow moving character I find Cap to be more versatile because of his Stun and recurring 4K red damage. So what do you think? Why does Thor consistently top the 3* rankings?

Sometimes despite you trying your best to restrict the AI from yellow and green, they get lucky from cascades to fire off yellow and then green. When that happens, it can be game ending, or at the very least, you need to spend 2 health packs for the next battle.

Because of these random but memorable losses to LT, I always dread attacking LT. This dread may be the reason why I rate him high, despite me prefering to use characters like cage and groot over LT.

Unknown · March 2015

rixmith wrote:

I was asking myself the other day "Why do I rank 3* Thor so high?" I mean, there are many other 3* heroes that I use much more often than him both in PvP and PvE. And I don't see him on other teams all that much in PvP. And I certainly never worry about attacking him since his good abilities are so slow. Don't get me wrong, he's fun to play, and a Call the Storm is a ton of fun to let loose with. But I'll hesitate to attack Hood, Loki, Blade, Daken, Patch (to say nothing of the occasional Iron Fist I've seen now), and for a slow moving character I find Cap to be more versatile because of his Stun and recurring 4K red damage. So what do you think? Why does Thor consistently top the 3* rankings?

The way I seee it, he has one of the best kits in game: red(sort of) feeds yellow, which feeds green, which hurts alot. This formula is so simple even the AI can't mess it up. I like Cap, but he's only hurting one person and his

is garbage. The amount of times I've gotten destroyed by AI 2* Thor makes me think of not even trying to fight 3* Thor. If cap ever gets buffed(IN THE NEXT 3 YEARS MAYBE????) I could see it.

Unknown · March 2015

Also because Thor moves so slow and has so much hp, you're usually not targeting him first, you're taking out the support. However, it only takes a few bad drops for the AI to be able to fire multiple Thor powers at you. On offense he can win games easily and relatively consistently, he's just not that fast. I can't think of many matches where I've taken Lazy Thor in and lost. I just usually take someone else because they're faster or use less health packs.

Considering the major changes coming, I hope we don't get a rankings survey until 2 weeks after they're done and people have actually tried the new versions out a bit.

Unknown · March 2015

The reason I continue to rank Thor so high isn’t because I use him more often than other characters (I use almost every character I have maxed more often than him). That’s mainly because he really doesn’t work all that well with Xforce.

His yellow works great for Xforce and his red is a good outlet if you are SSing a 4hor (won’t have to worry about that starting next week). But overall, there are many more characters that mesh better with Xforce.

The reason I rank him so high is because I recognize his value for people who don’t have Xforce.

Every team I build nowadays has Xforce + someone who complements Xforce. For example:

When I’m climbing, Daken is great for strike tiles while I’m collecting green and his regen makes for no health pack requirements.

When I’m ready to set my defense, Hood makes people pause all the time.

When I’m about to take down a big boy team, Loki gives me insurance versus crazy cascades spiraling the game out of control.

When I run out of health packs for my supports, Deadpool is a great outlet for red and is a reliable “end game” button if I get purple flooded from SS or cascades. Same goes for Nick Fury.

Then, when I have no health packs left at all for Xforce, I’ll do one or two more matches with Hulk and Patch.

Thor never really comes into the equation.

But if I didn’t have Xforce, I would do the same thing. Except I’d sub Thor in for Xforce. Thor + a good support to Thor.

So while I don’t personally use him that often, I still rank him in the top 5 because he has one of the most complete kits in the game and is a cornerstone for non-Xforce teams.

And once Xforce gets nerfed (Don’t freak out, nothing has been announced, I just know it’s coming), Thor will likely be my new cornerstone.

logan0071 · March 2015

It has taken forever to get the character configuration down as far as winning combos with the combined element of "Random" tile placement? Now you have robbed us of power strengths needed to win battles that were still difficult before but made Impossible now ! If people spend money to build their characters up then you take it away that is not right and need to be credited what was spent to earn those powers also the enemy can now defeat you with one move VS 20 from us that IS NOT BALANCED! - POWER it favors the game and system instead of the players who are going to stop playing soon if these issues are not fixed ( it has to be challenging and fair) 60% player 40% game and (random pay outs) It is way to programmed and robotic right now ! FIX IT - or GIVE MY MONEY BACK! - Thank You!

logan0071 · March 2015

Some good characters to see soon :
1. Rogue
2. Iceman
3. Nightcrawler
4. Scarlet Witch
5. Vision
6. Thing
7. White Queen
8. Phoenix
9. Gambit
10. Longshot
11. Magik
12. Ultron
13. Dr. Strange
14. Mephisto
15. Alpha Flight

Unknown · March 2015

I'm still lost at the Loki love, he's much improved, but I don't fear him...in the slightest. Yes I have X-force, but he's a heavy part of the meta-game, can the person survive getting kicked in the nads by Xforce? If not, I don't trust them, factor in no dmg dealing powers, a black power only good in a LONG game (and competes with much better black powers for less), and he's just his purple, which at least for me is "OK".

Sentry continues to intrigue me. With the way my roster shakes out, I have an 'A' team which has a couple moving parts between LThor/XForce/LDaken/Hood, then I have my Bteam which would include Patch/Hulk/Blade (with whomever isn't being used from the A Team). I'm finding more and more that Sentry with the right combo of pieces from the A team or the B Team, forms a very solid C Team, a throw away squad that can get you a win or two without health packs or give you a different vibe in PvE...great forthose real annoying nodes. Doing Patch/Sentry/Hood or Hulk/Patch/Sentry, has helped me get past some real nasty nodes, or some variant with Daken/Sentry/Hood when going against a team with Wolverine in it. SuperNova just 'works' for real good dmg, and isn't too hard to get to. He's still useful on defense when paired with another hard hitter, people don't liek the idea of trying to down X-Force, only to have a Sentry dropping Sacrifice -> SuperNova. So while I think he might still get too much credit, I might be too harsh on him at the same time. I'd still take Hulk over him for instance, but he does still get some decent mileage now that I've gotten over the nerf entirely.

I don't have a high Cyclops - only 78, but I just keep thinking that him and XForce will share in their love of all things Jean Grey once I finish leveling him. I wonder if he is one of those, 'because of XForce' gets a real high ranking.

The other character I'm torn on is Blade. I've been pushing hard to level mine, finally got my last cover this morning ironically, so I'm doing the final march from like 153. where I feel uneasy - he DOMINATES PvE for me...for the Deadpool wave (we need more events with waves in them btw) I use CMags/Falcon/Blade and its just hilariously fun. Yet for PvP, I NEVER use him. He doesn't have the health to keep up with the heavy hitters and regeners, and he takes a while to get traction - like Steve Rogers, so how effective is he really in PvP? When I fight one, he annoys me - like Loki, but he still gets peace'd out pretty easily.
- Unreall

Unknown · March 2015

Unreallystic wrote:

I'm still lost at the Loki love, he's much improved, but I don't fear him...in the slightest. Yes I have X-force, but he's a heavy part of the meta-game, can the person survive getting kicked in the nads by Xforce? If not, I don't trust them, factor in no dmg dealing powers, a black power only good in a LONG game (and competes with much better black powers for less), and he's just his purple, which at least for me is "OK".

His green is his best ability by far.
It mitigates cascades, one of the biggest "'randoms" in this entire game. I've lost entire games because there was a really bad cascade where their Xforce gets 11 black on turn 2 or 3. Using Loki would greatly make up for that risk.

That's his biggest use offensively. He makes the AI's only real chance of winning pretty much null.

On defense, he makes people take three matches when they want to take 4 or 5 matches. It may not result in defensive wins, but it definitely slows down games.

I don't know what point in the game you're in, but when you're jumping from 900 to 1000 and beyond, you don't really have time to **** with Loki making you skip cascades and 4/5 matches. And then his purple takes like 5 to 10 seconds each time he casts it. It's a huge deterrent.

It isn't fear as much as "I don't feel like dealing with that right now."
Obviously, if the point total is high enough, you'll attack anyway.

But here's the kicker. When you're in a rush, a lot of people may risk taking the 4 or 5 match, and then Loki can steal some key AP and get an ability or two off that, at best, delays the game, and at worst, costs you health packs and possibly even a loss at the worst possible time in the game.

Losing when hopping to 1000 kills your entire PVP.

And plus, his purple causes, on average, 1 to 2 matches every time you cast it. And if you have a **** board, it is a great way to get a chance to find a better match option. Do you have any idea how many times I've had 5 or 6 green, need one more green match to win the fight and there isn't one? Cast purple. You got a good chance of a possible match 3 in green becoming available. It is, in my opinion, the second best purple ability in the game, next to IF's purple. And it's close.

Sure, his black is niche, But its great on PVE nodes with Daken and Bullseye leveled to 395. It is also a great pair with Patch, or a counter to Patch as well.

There is a ton to like about Loki.

Unknown · March 2015

Some of you are ranking chars based on how the AI plays them, i.e., whether you fear them or not.

I guess that is an aspect of the game, but I don't factor that into my ranking whatsoever. The AI is stupid. Top level play has 0 dependence on AI Char strength. You are either shielding or attacking. Maybe this doesn't hold as much weight now that 4Thor is RIP. But honestly, I have 0 fear of 166+ 3Thor. I know I will kill him before he ever gets an attack off.

Loki ranks so high simply because he is the ultimate support character. He denies enemy AP while simultaneously generating AP for you. In addition he shakes the board to provide an opportune color match. Plus the dude can turn offense into defense and defense into offnese. I don't care how the AI plays him. He will set up my attackers for a home run.

I'd love to comment more on IF, Cmags, Luke Cage, Cyclops etc...but I don't have them at 166. I don't think anyone can rank them unless they have played with 166 versions on a routine basis.

Character rankings 12/14 edition: the results!

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