So I recently ran a series of polls to find out what abilities do the community think are best in each colour. As a fun exercise, I’m going to sum the positions of each ability for each character to get a character ranking. Do what you will out of this data! I also decided to factor in the max health of the characters in the sum. There are six “tiers” of maximum health:
Hulk, X-Force
Colossus, Nick Fury, Thor, Sentry, She-Hulk, Ragnarok (if he could go up to level 166)
Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Iron Man M40, Captain America, Invisible Woman, Doctor Doom (if he could go up to level 166)
Gray Suit Black Widow, Falcon, Human Torch, Loki (if he could go up to level 166)
Hood, Storm
Since most colour sets had 12-14 abilities, I’ll be doubling these values to make it fairer (so, for example, Storm won’t get one “sixth position” out of the HP rank but rather, 12th). I’ll do the same with the purple abilities rank for obvious reasons and characters with no third ability will get an automatic 12 for it. Remember that a smaller number is better. So without further ado, here we go!
Nick Fury
4 +
1 +
2 +
4 = 11
X-Force
3 +
1 +
6 +
2 = 12
Sentry
7 +
2 +
3 +
4 = 16
Thor
12 +
1 +
1 +
4 = 18
Black Panther
2 +
8 +
2 +
6 = 18
Patch
4 +
5 +
3
8 = 20
Captain America
2 +
2 +
10 +
6 = 20
Daken
2 +
8 +
4 +
8 = 22
The Hood
5 +
1 +
5 +
12 = 23
Punisher
5 +
6 +
4 +
8 = 23
Magneto
9 +
6 +
3 +
8 = 26
Deadpool
3 +
4 +
11 +
8 = 26
Human Torch
6 +
1 +
10 +
10 = 27
Doctor Doom
5 +
4 +
12 +
6 = 27
Psylocke
9 +
10 +
3 +
8 = 30
Hulk
9 +
15 +
4 +
2 = 30
Falcon
5 +
5 +
10 +
10 = 30
Colossus
8 +
10 +
9 +
4 = 31
She-Hulk
10 +
10 +
8 +
4 = 32
Captain Marvel
7 +
13 +
7 +
6 = 33
Spider-Man
10 +
6 +
10 +
8 = 34
Iron Man M40
6 +
15 +
7 +
6 = 34
Doctor Octopus
8 +
9 +
10 +
8 = 35
GS Black Widow
6 +
15 +
7 +
10 = 38
Ragnarok
13 +
10 +
12 +
4 = 39
Storm
12 +
8 +
8 +
12 = 40
Invisible Woman
12 +
10 +
12 +
6 = 40
Loki
8 +
10
12
10 = 40
Beast
13 +
10 +
12 +
8 = 43
Daredevil
12 +
11 +
12 +
8 = 43
This seems quite accurate in my experience (and not taking in account things like Sentry-bombing) with a few exceptions. I believe GSBW and Spiderman should be a little higher, and Doctor Doom and She-Hulk, a little lower. What do you think? Discuss!
Also, there are now 8 health classes based on lvl 270 stats.
1 Storm (super-squishy) + Invisible Woman, Hood, Bullseye, classic Hawkeye
2 Black Widow (squishy) + Yelena, Nick Fury, Human Torch, Falcon, Loki, modern Hawkeye
3 Wolverine (standard) + Punisher, Daken, Daredevil, Magneto, Psylocke, Deadpool, Beast, Octopus, Spider-Man
4 Iron Man (sturdy) + Moonstone, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Doctor Doom, Black Panther
5 Thor (tank) + Ares, Sentry, Ragnarok, She-Hulk, Colossus, Venom
6 Hulk (super-tank)
7 Devil Dino (super-tank)
8 Juggernaut (omega-tank)
Hulk, Dino and Juggs are separate classes by themselves. Only Hawkeye has his versions belong to different classes thanks to the mHawkeye ‘buff’.
4* Thor will be the same health class as 2* and 3* Thor, beating Hulk’s hitpoints (but not with both at lvl 270).
Nice work - this seems to generated pretty reasonable results. The ones that stick out a little for me are that Doom seems a little high (just because he doesn’t have a 3rd ability), Captain Marvel seems much lower than I perceive her. The others I think are all pretty close to accurate (meaning that I might put them 3 or 4 higher or lower, but not 10 higher or lower - no need to quibble over 1 or 2 spots in a list this large).
See the title, only 3 and 4
s characters included. Also, Nick Fury has almost 10k life (that’s why I grouped him with the 10200ers). Definitely not squishy.
Surprisingly, Doom places that high even giving him a hypothetical bottom-of-the-barrel ability (12!). By the way, I just got owned by level 165 Doom at PVE. It might be the case that Doom is actually that strong, but people just don’t play him that much because the lack of third ability and gimped HP and damage due only going up to level 140.
Boosted Doom in this recent PvE was quite powerful (and mine’s only 5/2 and not soft capped yet).
I found that Doom + Falcon got me through most matches; Inspired Demons made short work out of most of the nodes.
Although I haven’t really seen anyone talk about it, Black has become the new hotly contested colour. You’ve got Surgical Strike, Rage of the Panther, Molotov and Psi-Katana all vying for Black AP (there could be whole books written about comparing Punisher and Psylocke; that’s for another time). But each of those characters also brings something else - particularly when you compare Doom to X-Force or Panther since their black powers are similarly costed. Technopathic Strike is just a kind of nothing ability. Like Moonstone’s Photon Blast, it suffers from using the colour that you’ve just about finished matching off the board. Anyway, rambling. Giving Doom a “direct damage + some kind of support” type ability would make him a considerable threat.
Here’s a possible example ability. I don’t really want to hijack the thread into “fixing” characters, but I can’t help but try to design abilities:
Purple ability so that you don’t have to change his tile strengths. Make it something like, “destroy X friendly attack tiles, dealing damage. For each tile destroyed, convert a Green basic tile to Blue basic tile.”
Then you can either tweak number of tiles or types of special tiles effected as you rank up. This ability would essentially make Doom self-sufficient: Technopathic strike to convert blues to black, gather black to Summon Demons, use purple to sacrifice demons, which generates blue, gather blue, rinse and repeat.
There was some discussion about Black’s quality in the poll for Black abilities. It certainly is the colour with most depth, unlike the much touted Green, which is very shallow beyond the 3-4 widely used super-powered abilities.
the problem with this poll is some skills are multiplicative of others. Sentrys Green with Yellow make them both 1 since used together it’s the best combo on a character by a country mile.
And there are indeed cases where you use fury over sentry, - lots of them, but this isn’t the thread for that . .
This is a great way to look at the characters, and should be referenced for 3* transitioners. The deal being that when in transition everyone will live for long periods with characters that don’t have ‘ideal’ builds. Those with multiple mid-level 3*s should look at their covers they are strong in, and see if those are the better ranked colours or worse, then spend ISO accordingly.
For example right now - my Lthor 4/1/4 - he’s ranked high on lots of lists, BUT the reason he’s high is yellow and green, and my yellow sucks, so my Thor build isn’t worth the ISO, yet.
Lcap for me - 5/4/3 - again my best covered ability is the weakest ranked ability - so he doesn’t rank as high. Not having 5 in Red & Blue limits their effectiveness, so even though I could bump him way up to level 153 - he’s not yet worth it.
Therefore my Punisher - 4/5/4, Laken 4/4/3 or Psy 5/3/5, better covered in their stronger colours would artificially bump up my personalised roster rankings.
Taking it further it’s probably doable to create a base formula to multiply value each ranking at 25% (this could be taken a step further to weight certain colours per character), then 1 cover = 5%, so you get the full value of the ranking if you’re max covered. you’d have to flip the rankings so that 12 is best and 1 is worst as a bigger score would be better. But you get the idea… off to ponder further
This is true; looking at the characters in a holistic way has more immediate and relevant practical applications. However, exercises like this provide a skewed point of view that might grant a different perspective, such as the points remarked by Punter below your post.
@Punter, the problem with what you suggest towards the end is that most abilities don’t scale gradually as you add covers (e.g. sniper rifle is basically worthless through the first 4 covers). More often than not, the 5th cover is much mite valuable than the others.
GSW is a fantastic character on offense, and a terrible character on defense. And yes, you need 5 green. So I can see why she’s low on the list. Especially since her red is one of the least-activated powers ever (even though it occasionally comes in incredibly handy for CD destruction when things go south.)
Great list. It reminded me again how bad Storm is now, and what a shame that is, because me and one-star Storm used to be best buds back in the beginning.
Thanks a lot
As I said, it was mostly a fun exercise rather than something scientific, but I think it’s somewhat useful on its own, at least as a discussion starter.
