So, in the last battle I fought in PvP vs XF/GT, I hit Kingpin’s purple and he drained green; then I hit SS, and it wiped out red.
First, wtf??
Second, especially in light of the upcoming SS nerf, this is UNACCEPTABLE! Hitting abilities shouldn’t be like pulling the arm of slot machine. We ought to be able to know what they’re going to do before we actually trigger them.
Did you make sure that his Purple wasn’t conditional on which enemy he was attacking?
Sounds like that’s a reasonable answer, but in the case of SS, by the time I’m in the middle of a battle, I’m not remembering what the initial order was, to know what the tie-breaker order is. This is just as aggravating as when we couldn’t tell which countdowns belonged to whom. Make the colors blink or something when you cycle over to a power like this.
…or change the description of the power. I’d like to see self-updating descriptions like “strongest color (currently red)” or “damage per tile with his symbol on it (currently 12).”
A couple months ago they mentioned the issue in one of their video Q&A sessions, that there should be some kind of better display for strongest color. I guess they had more pressing matters to attend to, like soul crushing character updates and PvP armageddon.
Easier way to tell is watch Blade’s Black ability do it’s ap drain. I’ve fought 3*Thor and it would drain Yellow sometimes or Green the others…when he’s the only character left. So I don’t know.
See the problem is that that requires bringing Blade…
Your speaking like he’s a bad character. Now I didn’t say bring Beast did I?
Definitely wording issues here. Seems XF black is based on highest match damage on team and others are highest total of acquired AP. The wording is far to similar though.
Blade’s ability says “Strongest” color as does X-Force. If it said largest AP color, that’d be different, so I don’t know what’s going on. Sometimes Blade’s black will drain nothing even when they have a ton of AP in other “strong” colors for them.
The problem is that there are two flavors of ‘strongest color’. X Force is strongest color decided by tiebreaker. An ability like Blade’s black is ‘random amongst all tied for strongest color’ and no tiebreakers are used. If Kingpin’s drain AP is of the latter type then it explains the outcome.
To put this in concrete terms, suppose your team is Thor (4*), XF, Professor X and they’re all level 270 and here Thor is in center. If an opponent used Surgical Strike on you, it is always red (Thor’s strongest color). but if your team made a match 5, you get 4 AP in green/red/blue randomly because Professor X’s ‘strongest color’ is random amongst ties. This also means if Blade is stealing AP he’s equally likely to steal green, red, or blue from you. There is no way to know which abilities under which rule though you’ll usually found out they’re of the latter type when you didn’t get the color you were expecting.
Blade’s black absulutely takes in accound the highest match damage and not largest pool, or else it would never drain off 0 AP after a few rounds.
Then I used a bad setup to test. Used against goons and that was what happened. Either way, D3 needs an indicator of some sort. Goons do have the same match score across the board though.
Kingpin is the same as Blade: the strongest color is determined randomly if there is a tie for tile match damage.
Just remember who was in front when you started, and the order works itself out in combat. It goes Front (Center), Back (Left), Middle (Right) if everyone is tied.
If Kingpin’s Fisk Defense 
is based on targeted enemy that makes it pretty fricken’ sweet. Drain any of 3 particular color? Heck yea.
Sounds like X-Force’s handling of strongest color is quickly becoming the exception and not the rule, which is stupid. A pre determined tie breaker order for strongest color makes the most logical sense, why would you want any ability that can be “Random” in nature anyway? Especially Prof X’s blue, if it generated blue AP because of himself it’s secondary function becomes almost useless in nature. I want any team combination to spit out a “This is your highest match color” and stick to it, not a “these are your highest match colors” and select one at random.
Wait a minute, does a 270 Professor X prioritize himself on match 5’s for Strongest Color or something? That has been something I never thought about. That would make things a bit weird when using 166’s with him.
If he’s level 270, he’d always have a higher match damage than another 3* level 166 so it’d always be his color. Otherwise he still picks randomly out of any ties, which is probably not what you want most of the time.