**** Blade (Modern) ****

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Cthulhu
Cthulhu ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 410 Site Admin
edited March 2017 in Character Details
Blade (Modern) icon_blade.png
4 Star Rarity (Legendary) Wiki Link
At Max Level: HP: 13995 Tile Damage: 11/85/13/12/74/65/3.0x
    The Hunger 0 redtile.png AP
    (PASSIVE) Blade resists his thirst for blood. If there are 10 or more Red tiles on the board, Blade steels his resolve and converts a random basic tile to a strength 37 Strike tile at the beginning of the turn. When Blade's team reaches 9 or more Red AP, this power transforms into The Bloodlust.
    Level Upgrades
      Level 2: Creates strength 56 Strike tiles. Level 3: Creates strength 67 Strike tiles. Level 4: Creates strength 93 Strike tiles. Level 5: Creates 148 Strike tiles.
    Max Level
      Level 3: Creates strength 130 Strike tiles. Level 4: Creates strength 180 Strike tiles. Level 5: Creates strength 288 Strike tiles.

      Alt: Bloodlust:
      (PASSIVE) Blade can no longer resist his thirst for blood. Every turn, Blade consumes 1 Red AP and deals 380 damage to a random enemy. When Blade's team falls below 7 Red AP, this power transforms back into The Hunger.
      Level 2: Deals 494 damage.
      Level 3: Deals 684 damage
      Level 4: Deals 950 damage.
      Level 5: Deals 1520 damage.
      Max Level
        Level 3: Deals 1332 damage. Level 4: Deals 1850 damage. Level 5: Deals 2960 damage.


      Tools of the Trade - 9 greentile.png AP
      Guns, blades, and fangs. Blade never leaves home without his tools. Blade attacks with his arsenal, dealing 315 damage to the enemy team. If Blade's team has 7 or more Red AP, Blade uses his fangs in the attack, healing himself for 241 health.
      Level Upgrades
        Level 2: Deals 441 team damage. Heals Blade for 362 health. Level 3: Deals 567 team damage. Heals Blade for 458 health. Level 4: Deals 819 team damage. Heals Blade for 651 health. Level 5: Deals 1355 damage. Heals Blade for 1036 health.
      Max Level
        Level 3: Deals 1103 team damage. Heals Blade for 891 health. Level 4: Deals 1594 team damage. Heals Blade for 1266 health. Level 5: Deals 2636 team damage. Heals Blade for 2017 health.


      Supernatural Sense - 11 blacktile.png AP
      Blade can sense the supernatural, and he doesn't much care for it. Blade destroys 4 AP from the enemy team's strongest color. If Blade's team has 7 or more Red AP, Blade also creates 2 Red tiles.
      Level Upgrades
        Level 2: Creates 3 Red tiles. Level 3: Creates 4 Red tiles. Level 4: Creates 5 Red tiles. Level 5: Creates 6 Red tiles.
      Max Level
        Level 3: Creates 4 Red Tiles. Level 4: Creates 5 Red tiles. Level 5: Creates 6 Red tiles.
      «13456

      Comments

      • Punisher5784
        Punisher5784 Posts: 3,845 Chairperson of the Boards
        edited October 2016
        I would love to pair him with JG and SW.. he looks like my missing 3rd member.

        Edit: Eh after using him in the Loaner node I am not impressed
      • Pylgrim
        Pylgrim Posts: 2,332 Chairperson of the Boards
        Black seems super overcosted at 11 AP. Unless the placement of the tiles is not random? The description doesn't say random, could you please confirm, Chthulu?
      • udonomefoo
        udonomefoo Posts: 1,630 Chairperson of the Boards
        Pylgrim wrote:
        Black seems super overcosted at 11 AP. Unless the placement of the tiles is not random? The description doesn't say random, could you please confirm, Chthulu?

        I thought the same. I guess adding those red tiles is valued higher because of the mechanic of how his red works? Can you even imagine the destruction if he could place them? I don't think that's the case.
      • OzarkBoatswain
        OzarkBoatswain Posts: 693 Critical Contributor
        Red passive #1 gives out surprisingly strong strike tiles. 3* Blade puts out 116 per turn at max level. This is around 2.5 times that.
        Red passive #2 is most similar to HT green without having to spend AP on the tile. Also a bit like a mini-Black Bolt. Looks good.

        Green damage is somewhat low (879/AP with 3 enemies), but remember that there will likely be strong strike tiles on the board. Team attacks go great with strike tiles.

        Black is mostly a red accelerator to power his other moves, but there are much better ones available -- IMHB (2), Cyclops (both), Phoenix. Also the AI will probably waste AP by using this with under the required red AP.

        5/5/3 and never use black.
      • Smudge
        Smudge Posts: 562 Critical Contributor
        She-Hulk at 5 covers destroys ALL AP in two colors for 6 green AP. No limitation on quantity at max covers, so she can potentially destroy 60 AP in one go.

        Iron Fist at 5 covers generates 7 random black or does X damage if over 12 AP for 5 purple AP.

        Blade combines the cost of BOTH of She-Hulk's green and IF's purple and is weaker than both in every way.

        Remind me why I would ever use his black ability?

        *Sigh* ... so continues the trend of making sure a character has at least one garbage tier power out of its three available. I'm not angry. Just disappointed.
      • zodiac339
        zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
        I was hoping blackflag.png would get a reasonable power spike at 5 covers. Boost tiles coverted, increase AP destruction. The primary component, AP destruction, REALLY needs to go up. Increase the base amount at some level, or add a smaller destruction amount to random enemy color pools. Something to justify that cost. He's Legendary tier. She Hulk was mentioned, (along with Iron Fist) as having much better capabilities for what they do for much less cost. And Iron Fist is an even better example as his passive color pool blacktile.png gives his purpletile.png and greentile.png even better effects (unless you really wanted the cascades from filling the board). Then there's Black Widow, who steals 4 AP from every pool at rank 5, FOR 11 AP! And she's a 2 star! Why is this Legendary being provided such a poor power!? It's like looking at release CHulk's Hot Dog Stand all over again. I hope we don't have to wait a year for blackflag.png to be given a proper boost in usefulness.
      • seraphiel
        seraphiel Posts: 56 Match Maker
        It would be really nice if I didn't have to go digging through a forum post to figure out what his alternate power was. icon_e_smile.gif
      • Vhailorx
        Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
        He looks decent when can collect a lot of red. But without at least 7 red he is absolutely awful.

        His green costs 9ap and does less than 3k damage. Even with the healing its quite weak.

        Black is pathetic at its baseline, costing as mucb as surgical strike tk destory just 4ap. And as a tile shifter its also too pricey for just making 6 tiles.

        Red is decent, though it wont proc as often as 3* blade. But bloodlust is a good passive.

        Basically he needs lots of red to be abive trash tier, but i dont know that he ever gets great, and he doesnt fuel hinsepf very well. Pair with a strong red battery seems like the only option.
      • NickHewitt12
        NickHewitt12 Posts: 116 Tile Toppler
        Creating strike tiles is good. Double dipping on damage is good. Doing both at once is phenomenal, and the damage output on the transformed passive is actually quite amazing, especially when you consider how prominent strike tiles are in the top-used characters in the game. We all also saw how wrong we were on evaluating Black Bolt.

        The green isn't very good, but as others have pointed out, he will almost always have strikes on the field. However, at the end of the day, he's kind of just a middle of the road support character in an age where damage needs to be sky-high and he'll die to any reasonably covered 5*s first ability after match damage.

        He is a good partner for Phoenix/OML though, but really, don't we already have a surplus of those? He's a good unique design, but he just doesn't contribute enough to the current meta.
      • Tromb2ch2
        Tromb2ch2 Posts: 301 Mover and Shaker
        Hey look at it this way at least lowest cover for top 100 and alliance cover for top 100 from the hunt isn't his black so he won't be useless in the next event. Oh wait...
      • Polares
        Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
        Nicholas Hewitt wrote:
        Creating strike tiles is good. Double dipping on damage is good. Doing both at once is phenomenal, and the damage output on the transformed passive is actually quite amazing, especially when you consider how prominent strike tiles are in the top-used characters in the game. We all also saw how wrong we were on evaluating Black Bolt.

        The green isn't very good, but as others have pointed out, he will almost always have strikes on the field. However, at the end of the day, he's kind of just a middle of the road support character in an age where damage needs to be sky-high and he'll die to any reasonably covered 5*s first ability after match damage.

        He is a good partner for Phoenix/OML though, but really, don't we already have a surplus of those? He's a good unique design, but he just doesn't contribute enough to the current meta.

        I was thinking he could be a decent partner for Phoenix/OML too, but then I realized, that the power that creates more red tiles is black, so it limits a lot its use (most of the time you will use OML's black), and he creates strike tiles that are probably worse than the ones from either PH or OML, so this limits the amount of times PH can fire her red. So, no, I don't think he is going to be a good partner for PH and OML anymore. Maybe if you have just PH.

        I don't think he is very good. It is a bit like CapFalcon that has slightly worse abilities than his 3 counterpart. Red is probably his best color, green is okeish when the condition is met, and black is too expensive, just in 4 land, for the same cost IMHB gives you 9 AP and two very good strike tiles, IMHB blue also produces 7 red for much less, and also for much less KP destroys more AP and also gives you more AP. If we compare black to PH's red or IF purple the comparison is even worse...

        He might be one of the worst 4s created lately... Just barely ok when buffed ( his numbers are not that good so they wont scale as high as the other recent releases ).


        PS: What do you mean with BB, everybody said he was great from the beginning, people just complained about his yellow... We still complain about his yellow icon_razz.gif
      • Vhailorx
        Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
        I think he/she means that when BB came out we all looked at his 'signsture' yellow power and said, "meh." Then we all looked at his blsck again and said "wait a minute: thats awesome!"

        As for blade, his design is fine, but i think the damage numbers and ap costs given to his powers makes him bad. He would be a relatively easy fix. +50% damage on his green power when not healing, and bump his healing value up slightly. Make black cost 7ap but it doesnt spawn tiles if you have 10+ red.

        Now blade is 4* iron fist for red. He spawns red quickly which gets his passive going and lets him heal.
      • Smudge
        Smudge Posts: 562 Critical Contributor
        The more I browse current characters and look back at black, the worse it appears.

        Iceman destroys 4 enemy red AP and converts 7 red tiles to blue for 8 AP at 5 covers.

        Blade destroys 4 of a random color for 11 AP. That's it. Period... unless you meet the condition of having 7 red AP banked already. Then he generates 6 random red tiles. By this point, you're most likely already draining your own red AP from his red passive, and if the board is already red-starved, it's not going to do you much good.

        Yes, this could easily end up being a gross under-evaluation of the ability/character. I don't think on the whole that he's poorly designed. His black though... cut it down to 7-8 AP tops, especially if you're going to tie in that red condition.

        All this said though, he could be a pretty nice partner for Fistbuster at the 3-4* tier of play!
      • simonsez
        simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
        I think you guys are missing the point of black. It's meant to keep Bloodlust fueled. If you generate two red matches on average from casting black, you're spending 11 black AP for about 18k worth of Bloodlust damage. Plus AP drain. How is this a bad deal?
      • Tromb2ch2
        Tromb2ch2 Posts: 301 Mover and Shaker
        simonsez wrote:
        I think you guys are missing the point of black. It's meant to keep Bloodlust fueled. If you generate two red matches on average from casting black, you're spending 11 black AP for about 18k worth of Bloodlust damage. Plus AP drain. How is this a bad deal?
        Where are you getting 18k damage from? I'm guessing strike tiles? Also if you get to choose were the red tiles go then you can use it like that and would make this ability a little better but I'm not sure you can place them yet.
      • tdglory49
        tdglory49 Posts: 56 Match Maker
        Tromb2ch2 wrote:
        Where are you getting 18k damage from? I'm guessing strike tiles? Also if you get to choose were the red tiles go then you can use it like that and would make this ability a little better but I'm not sure you can place them yet.

        Assuming you're in Bloodlust mode, every turn is 3k. If you do get 2 red matches, you just got 6 extra turns of Bloodlust.

        I'm coming around on him a bit. I can't see him being the star of a team, but his damage does seem like it will add up, help whittling down opponents.
      • SangFroid
        SangFroid Posts: 177 Tile Toppler
        edited October 2016
        I think a big issue for him is that at 5/5/5 he is just ok but 3 in any of his three skills makes them terrible..

        I am going to start with the basic assumption that you are mainly bringing him for his red so you will want that at 5 to maximize bloodlust and his 3K per turn.

        You are obviously not bringing him because of his green as the damage is pretty weak but at 3 covers the damage and heal are terrible... Black at 3 is also really bad as 4 tiles is not going to cause many cascades and will more than likely be way worse than the Fisk Defence (4 ap less), throw in the fact that the AP generation has a condition an the skill is way over priced! Both black and green are 5 covers or you literally wont even cast them..

        I think 553 with the plan to bring someone with a good black is likely the best option or maybe you use him to support someone like Phoenix or IM46 and go 535.
      • Polares
        Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
        simonsez wrote:
        I think you guys are missing the point of black. It's meant to keep Bloodlust fueled. If you generate two red matches on average from casting black, you're spending 11 black AP for about 18k worth of Bloodlust damage. Plus AP drain. How is this a bad deal?

        I guess you are multiplying 3k x 6, so it needs 6 turns to do the 18k damage AND hope the AI doesn't match red tiles so it goes under 10 red AP on the board.

        But If instead of using Blade's black you use IMHB's black for the same cost you get 9 turns and two very strong strike tiles to add on the damage. And he also can use blue to get some red on the board so the +10 it is met all the time. So basically if you use Blade+IMHB you would never use Blade's black.

        Blade's red is nice, but black is very very meh. Green at least is cheap and can heal you a bit...
      • Cthulhu
        Cthulhu ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 410 Site Admin
        Pylgrim wrote:
        Black seems super overcosted at 11 AP. Unless the placement of the tiles is not random? The description doesn't say random, could you please confirm, Chthulu?

        Yes, it's 11 AP for the Black power.
      • simonsez
        simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
        Polares wrote:
        I guess you are multiplying 3k x 6, so it needs 6 turns to do the 18k damage AND hope the AI doesn't match red tiles so it goes under 10 red AP on the board.
        No you don't. Board state doesn't flip it back.
        Polares wrote:
        So basically if you use Blade+IMHB you would never use Blade's black.
        But you wouldn't use IMHB with him. The whole point of Blade is to NEVER use a red power. It'd be silly to waste a slot just to get an incrementally better battery. You're way better off adding a battery on a non-redundant color.

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