What determines an opponents “Strongest Color”? As in XForce’s Surgical Strike or Kingpin’s The Fisk Defense. I am often surprised by what the AI determines strongest color to be.
If you look at the enemy and check the tile match attack strength for the group you are fighting, the one with the highest value is the one that gets hit.
Ignore downed characters.
I don’t know if they ignore stunned characters.
Someone sticky this answer, i have been trying to figure this out pretty much since i started playing.
It starts to get confusing in case of a tie. I’d like to see ability descriptions get an upgrade. Where it currently says “strongest color” I’d like it to say “strongest color (X)” where X is the color currently holding that position. While at it, things like “number of tiles bearing this characters symbol (X)” or “if the target is below 40% of hp (true/false)” would also be nice.
Phantron wrote a good post about this.
Was this following the changes to how strongest color worked?
IIRC there was some change to the tiebreaker, but I would have to go back to the patch notes to figure out when that occurred.
What I want to know is how in the hell you determine which character is the middle/left/right for a tiebreaker in the middle of a battle.
I use SS in DDQ every day, so I will try to start taking note of who gets hit in tiebreaker situations and report back.
I am thinking that since for us, it is whoever is in the middle when we make the team, it would be the same for the enemy.. check their positions on the match screen?
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/29051
R75 had the change I was thinking about:
- Abilities that check for the opposing team’s strongest AP will no longer choose an empty pool in the case of a tie.
They don’t show up on the match screen in DDQ though because it is a staged battle, or whatever they call them. It just tells you how many waves and the level window.
I checked in a simulator battle and the character orientation in battle seemed different from the preview screen. So say I used characters A, B, and C where A was in the middle, B on the left, and C on the right. When I was in battle they appeard as A on the far right (up front, facing the enemy - makes sense) then C in the middle, then B on the far left in the back. The enemy however had characters X, Y, Z, where X was in the middle, Y on the left, Z on the right - in the battle they appeared in the same order, Y on the left (up front, facing the enemy), X in the middle, Z on the right in the back. This leads me to believe that when facing a group of enemies the “Strongest” player is the one in the middle when they spawn, 2nd strongest on the left right in front of you, 3rd strongest in the rear. Will continue to investigate though.
After the nerf to the insane match damage for extra high level characters (guys above 166 generally) there’s some weirdness in how match damage goes. Before the nerf, you can be assured that two guys with the same rarity, a guy that’s one level higher always has the highest match and that makes sense. Now, there’s a range of levels where people are exactly tied. For example for 3*, they have identical match damage from level 240-260 (240 for weekly boost, 260 for reinforcement and you can easily see this by switching them around in heroic events). Note that a level 290 3* still has a higher match damage than either a 240 or 260 3*, so there’s no way to know this except by experience. In particular, this means if you have say a level 261 and a level 260 3* and they appear to have the same match damage, you cannot tell whether the level 261 has a higher damage in a decimal place you cannot see, or if this is still in the range where 3*s gets no match damage increase due to the high level match damage nerf. This makes it tricky to figure out enemy’s strongest match when they’re in the range of level 200-300 or so. After that point there ceases to be levels where characters are getting no match damage so it’s easier to figure this stuff out, though trying to figure difference across rarity levels is still mostly a wild guess.
So my DDQ experience today is different from what I thought above…
I face Luke Cage (strongest color was yellow at 58), Punisher (strongest was black at 58), and LCap (strongest was red at 57). Luke Cage was up front on the far left, Punisher in the middle, Cap in the rear. When I fired off SS it hit yellow indicating that when the enemy team spawns in a survival wave that the strongest enemy is up front like your characters. Based on today’s battle I would now think that the enemy team is laid out like my team, strongest on the left, next strongest on the right, weakest in the middle. Still need more battles to be sure - hopefully tomorrow I get one where the last two characters are tied.
I’m also interested to see if can change the tie breaker based on who is targetted. If the first two characters are tied tomorrow I will try that.
Why don’t they simply SHOW US the strongest colour on activation with an ‘ok’ or ‘cancel’ button?
You’ve done similar things with other skills so why make SS such a needlessly confusing mess?
Make this happen D3. Please.
When you are on the screen to select boosts/team ups, the people you are fighting are at the bottom (you can even click on them) with the center one brought forward just like an essential. I was thinking this was like us placing someone in the middle to tank.
I don’t think this is the case for survival nodes.
I got it figured out and wrote a guide - mostly so I never have to take the time to figure it out again if I forget. 
If you could check it out and let me know if I missed anything or worded anything confusingly I can edit it.
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/30394
Thanks!
How about just having an * next to the team’s current strongest color on the swipe screen? That would take out all the guess work. It should obviously update as characters get downed/stunned. There should be indicators for stuff like this.
…or have the tiles glow when the ability is highlighted?