There’s always match-4, but none of us can guarantee a match-4 of the colour of our choice right at the start of the turn, unless we are using certain characters. Generally, it’s all RNG.
Apocalypse red deals damage immediately but you can’t choose who you want to deal the damage to because it’s default to the lowest health enemy. And he can’t stun opponents. As for Elektra’s red getting matched, it’s up to the player’s skills to ensure the success of her red power. If you fire her power when there’s a red match-3 available and the AI is likely to chase red, then it’s on the players.
Since we are comparing Apocalypse with Elektra, using 1v1 will be easier. If we start using 3v3, there are a lot of possibilities to discuss and it will never end.
If players start using their feelings to gauage how much damage should be dealt, then it’s as good as saying you want more power creep faster. Her red deals 2316 damage ap, which is better than many other powers, using damage per ap as a comparison. Reduce her power to 7 ap and it’s 2978.71, which would be higher than meta’s.
Only time will tell how good a character is, but I compare characters by how many and how good their powers are. For example:
Power assessment:
Shang - 3 Great powers
Ultron - 1 Good
Gamora - 2 Good
Sersi - 1 Great + 2 OK
Big Wheel - 1 Great + 1 OK
Abby - 2 OK powers
Elektra - 1 Great + 2 Good
For comparison:
Apocalypse - 3 Great
BRB - 3 Great
Thor - 1 Amazing power + 1 Good
Okoye - 1 Amazing power + 1 Good
IHulk - 1 Amazing power
Kitty - 2 Great + 1 OK
Wanda - 1 Amazing + 1 OK
Colossus - 1 Great + 1 Good
Why isn’t that a fair comparison? Does Apocalypse have more stars than those characters? Is he more rare than they are?
In fact, Apocalypse is a super old Classic legend, while those characters are much newer. If you believe there’s power creep, we should expect the newer characters to be much better than he is.
How dare you, sir ! No one here likes statistical data or facts. Today’s player understands only one thing , AP cost. We don’t want to wait for 1 extra color match for an active power. Any character the devs have the audacity to give us with 9+ AP is instant trash.
It’s difficult to compare characters if they aren’t in the same category.
Odin is a tank for allies, and creates fortified and strong strike tiles when certain conditions are met. He heals allies. He also has some ap controls with his red. His red deals 1420 damage per ap.
Gamora counters defensive characters and she’s anti-Elektra. Her yellow repeater will override Elektra’s trap tiles. You can even bring Valkyrie in against Elektra and all her trap tiles will be overwritten with yellow strike tiles.
As for Ronan, he’s probably the closest to Elektra since both are kind of tactical, but Ronan is much more offensive than Elektra.
If we compare only one power of one character with one power of another character, there’ll never be a fair comparison.
Except it’s not at all difficult to compare characters from different categories. There are at least two quite popular threads in the characters forum that rank all of the characters in order.
Are you saying that any attempt to rank characters is invalid? In a game with limited resources, players must decide where to spend those resources, and they often decide by comparing them.
As a stun power, 2 turns is meh. It finish too soon.
And as a damage cd, 20k is nothing. And in 2 turns anything can happen.
So I fail to understand how it can be considered a good power, per 9 AP.
Something to consider for those saying “both take 3 matches” is that that is the first fire; you have 2 AP banked up towards your second fire with Apocalypse’s 7 AP, and…0 banked up with a 9ap power. So it’s 3 red match’s followed by a 2-turn fingers crossed wait every time. That power is demonstrably not as good.
I do think the purple is stealing 3 passively, and the active component is just so that it does the passive effect immediately when you change the type.
Yes, we need to compare characters but comparing them is still difficult given the huge amount of variables involved. We can compare individual powers but a character’s powers are meant to be played together. We can try to compare similar characters such as offensive, defensive, batteries, board control, special tiles, etc …. but we’re still comparing apples to oranges.
Many times character’s powers are a mix of the types stated above. This Elektra is a good example. Then it’s like we’re comparing a pasta salad with a stir fry.
P.S. Colossus is a potato, he’s bland & boring, but gets the job done
This is a pretty poor comparison. You are ignoring a lot of variables that have a huge effect on the value of the powers (e.g., Elektra takes 2 turns to resolve and only does damage of the CD survives, and you are assuming that all 3 trap tiles are up when apoc’s red is cast). Plus you also ignore that apoc’s damage boost can apply multiple times once cast, so it’s value will go up as matches progress.
This is like claiming 5* Doc Oc’s green is the most efficient power because it could do infinite damage for “just” 18ap. Technically true if you ignore all the steps required to achieve that outcome.
Sort of? Ranking characters in the middle tiers can be pretty difficult. Ranking characters with complex powersets or characters that rely on specific synergy can be complicated.
I don’t think it’s at all difficult to say that Apocalypse is a better character than Elektra, though. That doesn’t mean Elektra is garbage or useless, I actually think she’s just fine. But she is objectively not as good as Apocalypse, and I don’t see that as a controversial opinion in any way.
That’s why it’s difficult to compare characters. What players have are preferences for certain styles.
Many players, based on comments in past characters threads, prefer direct, cheap and high damage. They hate unfortified cds and repeaters tiles. They hate anything that takes more than 1 turn to activate. They don’t like trap tiles either. I would say it’s pretty easy to predict the responses.
If the dev were to use the above as critieria to create characters’ powers, I find that the game would be boring, and power creep will creep up even faster with such type of power design.
Anyway, meta characters should be coming around April-June, based on past two years’ meta releases. In the meantime, you’ll still be stuck with one or two more mediocre or average 5* releases.
Elektra can be objectively worse than Apocalypse and still be a perfectly enjoyable character for you to use. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. She’s not better than him but she doesn’t have to be, because you don’t care about that.
I really like using bad or mediocre characters because it’s fun. It’s a challenge to use them but I can usually still win. That doesn’t mean they’re not mediocre! The game is much easier, and much more boring, when you only use the good characters.
I’ve been trying to use the term “less good” to avoid trigging people who hear “worse” and want to assume we mean “trash tier.”
Counter-play characters like all versions of Elektra mostly are are neat, but I would say that the only one that’s truly good is probably 5* Wanda. I’d like this character to work, and I think she’ll be fun enough though.
I would also say that Apocalypse is a rarity, a character worth playing for all three of his powers. most of the super good characters in this game have one power that is so useful that it doesn’t even matter what else they do (okoye, kitty, really Thor is like this, i’m sure loads of others)
Thinking of her red repeater just reminds me of how when I’d use 5Carol, her repeater would never go off. I wanted to like her red, but at least for me it was a nightmare to use. It would either get matched or destroyed before it could do anything. Quite often the repeater would get dropped right next to other red tiles and match itself before a single tick could happen, that was always a whole lot of fun.
In this case at least you get 2 turns of stun if Elektras repeater is matched. Still not great for 9 AP and even less so if you’re constantly missing out on the chunk of damage lost if the repeater is destroyed.
I agree with others purple is expensive but the passive portion adds more value. Yellow is a pretty nice defensive ability and Swiss army knife. How good she’ll ultimately be on her own or with others really revolves all around her yellow, I don’t think red/purple will sway battles a whole lot.
As cheap as her yellow is, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used my Apoc and was dumbfounded why it was taking me so long to get the AP to fire his yellow. Bad boards happen very often and or AP tug of war if there are characters on the enemy team prioritizing yellow matches. It’s nice her yellow nets AP when traps are destroyed to help self fuel it. But there may be plenty of times she might not be helping out a whole lot if you struggle for a while to get the yellow AP needed. With Shang-Chi and other nukers in game, she could get burned down pretty fast before her yellow has any impact at all.
She’s still pretty interesting with her yellow possibly making an some fun defensive team with others.
