Welcome to the sixth round of character rankings!
We had 555 responses this time, which is way more than I was expecting. I mixed things up a bit, using a ten star ranking for each individual character rather than having you rank each character relative to each other.
The last official rankings were back in December, and a lot of things have changed in the game since then. I won’t really get into player reaction for most of them, but you can assume a lot of negativity with a few sprinkles of positive feedback.
New Characters
We have had 12 new characters released since the last rankings: Elektra, Luke Cage, Squirrel Girl, Star-Lord, Cyclops, Iron Fist, Professor X, Kamala Kahn, Kingpin, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Hulkbuster Iron Man. 5 of those 12 were 4*, which is the same amount released in the first year of the game. This increased number of legendary characters has made it more difficult to quickly get covers for a single character, as it now takes longer in the PVP rotation for character to appear again. There was a streak of pretty good characters in the middle of this bunch, and very few outright duds (Vision was not released when voting began).
Shield Cooldowns
Shield hopping may have been getting a little out of hand at one point. People would drop a 3 hour shield, queue some good targets, break to hit 1-3 targets (depending on how lucky they felt), re-shield until the hits came in, and repeat. Most forum users knew that you could achieve those same scores with a little time, effort, and money, but to the average player, scores over 2000 could be a little daunting.
So D3 decided to introduce 8 hour cooldowns for each shield type. This has changed shield strategy considerably. Getting sniped or wiping during a hop can ruin a lot of hard work, as you have less shields to use. It has become more difficult to find high value targets near the end of events, as people stay shielded for longer periods of time. Out of game communication is crucial to help find worthwhile targets without spending a ton of ISO on the skip tax. Many people will try to use one 3 or 8 hour shield at most. This means you should try to avoid being unshielded at 3 and 8 hours before the end of an event, as that is when the zombie horde is loose. I like to hop at somewhat irregular intervals, even though I may waste a few hours of shields, as that can help avoid too many hits.
New Abilities for Doom and Ragnarok
Loki’s new green passive changed him from a joke to one of the best support characters in the game. It was time for D3 to give third powers to the rest of the three star cast. Doom was the next villain to get an upgrade. His purple can be pretty damn powerful with the right board, so the devs were batting 1000. Then Ragnarok got his much anticipated third power. No one is perfect, devs.
Boosted Match Damage Reduction
Prior to this change, match damage for boosted lower tier characters would continue to grow at the same rate as it did within their normal limit range. This led to some ridiculous match damage from overscaled Juggs and the other Dark Avengers. It also meant that the featured PVP character would typically tank all three of their colors if maxed out.
Now, match damage scales at a much slower rate once a character is past their natural level limit. This is good for when you are facing 3 200+ level characters in PVE or when the featured in PVP is someone you don’t want tanking, such as Hood. This was potentially bad for you if you had your characters purposely underleveled to try to manipulate color tanking. Goon match damage was unchanged, though, which means at high levels the goon + character nodes still have ridiculous match damage.
Lowered PVP Progressions
PVP progressions were finally lowered after a few weeks of playing with shield cooldown. Players who could previously hit 1300 with the old system rejoiced; players who couldn’t get that high in the first place were still upset.
8 Hour PVE Refreshes
PVE refreshes were changed from 3 hours to 8 hours, and the number of stacks per node were increased from 5 to 6. Most people were happy with this change, as setting alarms in the middle of the night to get optimal clears is not fun. This change has shifted where the point separation occurs. The final grind before the end of a sub has increased value since more people can stick to the optimal schedule beforehand. The hardcore PVE player will play 2-3 hours at the end of a sub, followed by another half hour to an hour of clearing the next sub. This was particular brutal during events with overlapping subs or events with 12 hour subs.
Deadpool’s Daily Quest
One of the best additions to the game. There is a little something for players at every stage of the game. It does force you to save a few roster slots for 1* and 2* characters, but that is a small price to pay in the long run.
Team Up Changes
There have been multiple changes to Team Ups since the last ranking.
Characters can still be used after you send them as a TU, which allows you to send your more powerful characters to alliance mates.
TUs received from PVE can no longer be a higher level than a character’s natural level. Congratulations on defeating a level 300+ Ares/Daken/Venom team! Take this useless level 40 Devour TU as rewards.
On the flip side, underleveled TUs will be scaled to the average level of your top 4 characters, up to the max allowed level for that character’s tier. This sounds good in theory, but since the number of covers the AI has for a particular power in PVE is based on the level, you usually end up with high level undercovered TUs.
Nerfs and Buffs
These will be discussed in more detail in each individual character ranking. The major metagame altering changes were obviously those made to XForce and Thoress. They are no longer the undisputed champions of PVP. Some feel the nerf hammer came down a little too hard on these two, while others feel like they are still perfectly good characters.
These changes have put them in line with most of the other 4s in terms of power relative to 3 characters. Most veterans feel that the ISO and time investment needed to get a usable 4* character is disproportionately high compared to their power levels when compared to the 3* tier. If a 4* character seems worth investing HP into, be careful, because that might mean a nerf is coming.
Death of MMR, Boost Reduction, HP Increases
D3 no longer uses a hidden MMR rating to determine who you see in PVP. This rating could be intentionally manipulated to allow you to find lower level opponents and stomp all over them. Now, the match ups are based on your roster strength until you hit a certain point total, where you become visible to anyone. Most vets are fighting maxed 3/4* teams immediately after seed teams.
AP boosts can only be stacked twice instead of three times.
Health was increased for the majority of characters above two stars, with a few noteworthy exceptions. Support characters and true healing characters were indirectly nerfed by having a lower health pool than everyone else.
All three of these changes have slowed down the pace of the game tremendously. It is much more likely for the AI to get a power off and force you to eat a health pack or three.
Point loss reduction
The point loss formula is now based on a score of 1000 instead of 800, reducing the amount of points lost in PVP by 20%. Alliances quickly picked up on ways to use this to their advantage to make the climb a bit easier.
Weekly Buffed Characters
Multiple characters from each tier are now buffed each week for all PVE and PVP events. This has technically created more roster diversity at the high end, as you will now see combinations of 4-6 different characters instead of the same two over and over. This has also contributed to the slowing of the game.
ISO Costs Reduction
3* characters now cost 30% less ISO to max. 4* characters cost 15% less ISO overall. The bulk of the ISO reduction was applied to the earlier levels of the characters, allowing transition players to get 3* characters to a usable level more quickly. This should be considered a good move for the health of the game. ISO shortages very quickly outrank cover shortages as impediments to game progression, so any reduction in ISO costs should be met with approval.
