Worst 4* character in the game?

turbomoose said:

Black widow is only useful for recharging the health of her teammates. But when you reach 5* matches health bonuses don’t really help much 

While she's not great, she offers more than that.  Lowering power costs is nothing to sniff at.  And her ability to remove special tiles comes in handy.  In the current Valkyrie PVP tournament, I've used her to force a few Professor X's out of hiding.

Talos.

Most of that group I wouldn't put on the list to pick from to begin with. Jubilee, Namor, Lockjaw, Prowler, all niche, none horrible; Black Widow can reduce power costs, which makes her a powerful support character with the right teams. Kingpin is great with countdowns (throw in Carol, Coulson, Goblin, just a shame KP's black isn't as good as it used to be).

Emma's problem is that she's slow. She would benefit from getting to use the effect of the repeater and then placing a repeater that does it again, so you don't have to wait for that first use. And she could use some sort of toggle on her black power. Like have it break a fortified tile each turn, so she eventually turns back on her own. She's a pretty solid third with Panther/Shuri (it's a shame that engine-oriented teams like that don't have hard/long nodes to really shine against). I think the only reason people hate her so much is because she was highly requested, so they had a stronger reaction to her lackluster kit.

Sam Wilson... now he's not great. He makes a lot of protects for firing a power, which is not an exciting use of AP. When it is, it's because of other things going on (4* Panther makes fortified protects, and gets bonus damage when you match protects, and pairs well with Shuri who gets bonus damage for matching fortified tiles; and 3* Falcon's protects come with an AoE, and 3* Magneto's protects can overlap enemy specials and appear on a variety of colors). His red is a fantastic nuke, but it's hard to set up (23 AP for him alone), and it's not exciting to set up either (because protects). His blue isn't awful, but the buff isn't as good as his 3* version, and the countdown speedup isn't super exciting (especially since his release more countdowns have come out that you want to protect, and repeaters were added to cover some of those effects, etc). If he could speed up repeaters he might be nice.

Still, like Emma, you can make teams that work with Sam. There are countdowns worth speeding up. You can run him with people that make powers cheaper to make it easier to afford his two-power nuke. You can also run him with someone else to generate protects. Generally you're going to run other characters, but you CAN work with Sam (similar to Emma, really).

But Talos?

He's like Kraven without a really useful gimmick (Kraven's being that special tile nerf).

Talos can place traps to steal a strongest color when you match it. But matching it means there's less for the opponent to match. Meaning there's less to steal. So trying to steal more means there's going to be less to steal. It's a self-defeating ability against tile movers. Not too bad against goons who can auto-generate their AP and aren't competing with you for that AP on the board. But... who needs a 4* that's better at goons? You'd be better off running 3* Strange by a mile. His blue has potential as a stun, but it's more expensive to give you a countdown to AP drain (meaning the steal isn't guaranteed, lowering its value). But you're destroying the enemy team's strongest color. Which means there's a 1/3 chance it overlaps with his purple power (you don't want to destroy that AP if you're trying to steal it from them). Higher if two or more characters have the same strongest color. It's a bummer that you might not want to stun someone because stunning means removing AP you might steal with a different power. It's more self-defeating stuff, he's stepping all over his own feet. His black has potential to tie it all together. Bonus damage for having more AP in the enemy's strongest color than they do. Combined with a stun that can delete enemy AP in that color, and a trap that (if you target an opponent who has the same strongest color as the team color, easy enough) lets you steal some AP when you match it, so you can destroy most of that color, match some of your own, and steal a little along the way (both lowering their total and upping your own), all on the road to making that gap between your total and theirs as high as possible.

Except I've never managed to use those powers to generate enough of a damage boost that it felt like it was "worth it." And you're still stepping on your own toes on the road to get there. And there aren't really any clear partners to use him with to make him functional (the way you can at least attempt with Emma and Sam).

Nothing Talos does stands out as being worthy of starting a team, nor as being useful enough to support an existing team. I think he's too caught up with strongest colors, so he's not free to provide broader AP denial that would be more useful for virtually any team you'd put him on.