Why do some heros feel under powered?

[Bastila Shan]

Some characters feel super powerful like blade who can get bleed and do a ton of damage and others feel super weak like the staff of one chick. Im only like 5 hours into the game but do the weaker heros get more powerful when you level them up and get better cards?

[Ferrsai]

RamboRusina a écrit :

Few are just objectively worse than others and/or some have terrible scaling. I don't think I ever felt Captain America for example had time to shine. Just average across the board with single good card made me never wanna bring him voluntarily. Or Captain Marvel who felt like god at start only fall off completely into mediocrity if not below. On ultimate difficulties many heroes just feel total no-go material while on heroic you can still play pretty much anything and not feel too handicapped by them. They still don't feel good to have in team knowing how much better alternatives you got tho. Blade I would say was quite stellar hero from start to end.

Heroic seems like a good spot for me to sit. Like you said, it keeps the roster wide open. It also still allows you some flexibility to play your way most of the time, but does force you to be at least somewhat efficient. Any higher and you start to narrow the solutions down to the most optimal, but those solutions don't feel nearly as powerful as they do on Heroic, because everything has more HP.

[Spooky]

snuggleform a écrit :

Blade is very very useful early in the game due to his shield shattering ability and spreading bleed around, but he feels mediocre to me later in the game when there are less shielded enemies and there are faster methods of doing damage than waiting for bleed.

I would disagree with this purely because his damage without bleed is still very good. But, Reaper is a boss killer. If you get the right cards, he’ll 100-0 high health targets easily. Make ‘Em Bleed > Daywalker > Reaper is insanity.

Get him the right mods and you’re golden. Make ‘Em Bleed (Free Mod) > Strike (Apply 1 Bleed mod) > Daywalker (Apply 1 Bleed mod) > Reaper (More damage if not full/taken damage mod) and you’ll annihilate targets that normally take a few turns to down.

I’ve beaten a good few missions in 2 turns at higher difficulties just because I got the right card draws for Blade.

[Deviant]

When the cards align Ghost Rider is OP
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2899098392

[djconner]

I had the same initial reaction. Many early fights felt like basically everyone's just standing around trading punches, and the heroes' edge is just that they hit a little harder and have more hit points. But a lot of characters change tremendously just from a few early card replacements or upgrades, especially in terms of defense. Captain Marvel, for example, starts out with some Taunt abilities, but can't really take the heat. But with just a couple ways to generate Block, she's an instant powerhouse.

[paulblopez88]

its not that more learning how use the effectively you may not have a card set that make that happen

[Cutlass Jack]

If someone feels underpowered, bring them along on missions to get them more cards & options. Also go to their character sheet and read the extended gameplay tips on their design. They almost all have some non obvious mechanics that make them amazing when you play them well.

I thought Robbie was a liability with his abilities that hurt himself until I learned how to use his souls mechanic properly. Nico is really good too if you can work the random in your favor.

[Bastila Shan]

ok after upgrading nico she is now one of my heavy hitters :)

[RaelM]

Blade is DoT which is pretty weak in this game, while yes you can stack a lot of bleed stacks on a target and then use Reaper to do some very good damage, the fact you have to set it up by either modding an ability to have bleed or using Make 'em Bleed then one of the chain skills then Reaper means he's very inefficient. You can improve on this if you're willing to run both him and Wolverine and mod Logan to use bleed as his skills are more efficient. Eviscerate with apply bleed is more efficient then using the Blade method of applying bleed and sets up Reaper nicely.

Captain Marvel is a Tank and is very good at it, she can also deal some really good damage if set up right and you go Binary. Photon Beam is always a useful ability as you want targets to be taunted. Rain of Blows is good but it's not Annihilation good, it's damage is about on par with Patience. Supernova is a very efficient way of clearing groups of enemies given it's low cost.

Captain America is a Tank but not as good as Marvel in my opinion due to a lack of damage potential. However it does have a better way of taunting with Shield Bounce making him a better overall Tank but I prefer a more offensive approach. His Shield Charge can be damaging in the right situation but it takes a lot of prep to hit it's peak damage.

Doctor Strange is a power house if used right, Astral Meditation is up there as one of the best abilities, there's some really powerful items and this makes it so you don't lose them. Vishanti is also a really powerful card, with just those two cards I'd say Strange is up there as one of the best heroes. Axe of Angarruumus is powerful when enhanced and Seven Suns can at max enhancement does some pretty decent AoE and can be paired well with Magik due to her crowd control.

Ghost Rider if used right can do a hell of a lot of damage with Hell's Fury, Judgement and Penance Stare. It's all about getting the kill with Robbie to get those souls and dealing and taking damage with Hell's Fury in your hand. I've had Hell's Fury do over 2k damage and Penance hit over 4k, don't forget that buffs like Strengthen and Vishanti affect those damage numbers.

Iron Man is a bit of a tricky one, he's really good early on but tends to trail off as the mobs get more and more powerful. His entire gimmick is the redraw mechanic, if you build around that and one of my hunter builds does, you can seriously buff Hellfire Beam as there doesn't seem to be a damage cap. Surgical strike can deal some pretty good damage if you have enough Iron Man cards in your hand and as for Air Superiority its good for clearing minions but on higher difficulties and later in the game you get less and less of them, it can be set up to apply debuffs although I think Wolverine is a better option for that. Mark Target is really powerful though, especially since you can roll Free on it and if you use redraw on it, it then becomes an AoE.

Magik in my opinion is a tad on the weak side while trying to utilise her on her own but if you pair her with someone who does AoE then she can be a very good utility character. Pop a portal down near a group of enemies, kick stragglers through it, gather the rest and then nuke with an AoE like Strange's Seven Suns. Use Limbo's Grasp to increase damage when using portals and it's a pretty good combo.

Nico is god tier in my opinion, or goddess tier in her case as she has so much utility. Swarm is really powerful if it rolls high damage, blood for blood is a very good heal, empower is good if you aren't set up for generating lots of heroism or if you're using Patience or the Hulk but the best skill in my opinion is Blood Magic. If you're running Cpt. Marvel or America and you get a counter then you're laughing, strengthen on Hunter with 10 heroism and an Annihilation in your hand? Then you're looking at over 2.5k AoE damage easily, got Wrath as well? Then bye bye bosses.

Spiderman in my opinion, on harder difficulties he struggles just like Iron Man. He relies too much on the environment and on the higher difficulties and later in the game enemies tend to have to much health for him to contribute in a meaningful way since you don't get enough things for him to use unless you build out Hunter to spam Deadly Ground. Other than that, Up Here is his best ability and you can even mod it with quick which is very handy. Infernal Spider is a close second for best ability due to the fact it can make Up Here free.

Wolverine suffers from the fact he can't deal as much damage as much damage as some of the others as efficiently as they can but he does have the nice caveat of not needing a healer to focus on him. You can combo him nicely with Blade by modding his abilities to apply bleed or as I like to do with him, apply weak or vulnerable and use Eviscerate to spread it around or stack 4 turns of it on a boss. Due to the fact most of his attacking abilities chain, he can become a very good debuffer.

Scarlet Witch, on her own she's not that great but like Spiderman, if you build Hunter for Deadly Ground and you use 2 Detonate in her build as well as Unleashed to increase the AoE size then you can clear an entire map just using Detonate due to it's range and all the explosives. No More is great at lower difficulties but to get the most out of it on the hardest difficulty relies on using both items and Strange as you can't just revive her like you can on Normal for example, you'll need to use a Phoenix. This is why I don't use No More with her anymore, I just spam Detonate and Unleashed and redraw her other cards most of the time.

The HULK, great burst damage dealer if you build your party for it, you don't need others to stun but you do need them to either generate heroism or negate the cost entirely, this is why the HULK + Nico combo in my opinion is OP, the HULK + Nico + Hunter combo is even more OP. Use Nico to lower the cost of the Hulk's abilities, especially Thunderclap with a moderate increase to width mod and stun everyone and then proceed to Mighty Blow the crap out of them. Also be sure to use Always Angry which can be modded with free to save on card plays and becomes a very good panic button heal for the Hulk. The Hulk also pairs well with Magik by using her ability to bundle everyone together and then use the Hulk's Seismic to hit them all.

... and lastly the Hunter, if built right can be absolutely devastating as a damage dealer. A lot of their support cards can be modded with free or come with free, Wrath, Fortify, Call to Arms and Deadly Grounds are the ones I use to great effect. A very good combo is to use the balanced collar, fortify, wrath and call to arms all with free on them and you can keep spamming them over and over. In my case since call to arms is free when upgraded I decided to pop +2 heroism on it making it 2 free heroism and if I then pop some power cards like fortify and wrath for example I can then pop it again for 4 heroism and if I'm lucky again for another 4, giving me 10 in one turn if things went my way. Now if you have patience, that means you can pop a critical Patience without waiting for the cost to go down for some very nice damage or even better, if you have Annihilation then you can drop a max damage, critical one right on top of a boss for mega damage.

I hope the above helps you lot but that's what I personally think of each character, some people may have found a different way to utilise them that I haven't discovered yet.

[Zebedee]

Wanda's the one I feel isn't quite there. She's got a couple of useful cards, and obviously the bolt spell is a slow burner over time which cuts both ways for being useful, but she's so situational for much of her deck that I really struggle to do much with her - or at least with how I play. That her legendary ability also KOs her just is the icing on top of everything else.

Genuinely open to suggestions on how to build her deck (mods too) to make her more than 'story mission only' character. If only to make story missions a little less reliant on two other heroes doing the hard work on my NG+.

[crabsmack]

Wolverine is the only one that feels way below the curve. I really don't get what the designers were going for with him, he's super simplistic but you get him pretty far into the game. As a tank I prefer Cap in every single way and I don't feel like Wolverine brings more damage to make up for it. Cap puts block on his team, draws cards, and feels more survivable on top. I'll take a big block stack over hoping I get a heal next turn any day. And if you're using Berserk that's 2 of your 3 card plays just to heal Wolverine back up. Cap can sit there with literally double health while Wolverine will die before he gets a chance to heal.

Maybe his low-damage chain hits are useful on lower difficulties, but on ultimate he's not killing anything that's not a minion. You can bring Strange to buff his chain abilities, which helps, but he's not worth that investment. I'm considering dropping Berserk from his deck entirely and just bringing two Rapid Healing. Still though, I'd take Cap any day. Or even better a high damage character like Ghost Rider to kill enemies before they even do the damage.

[RaelM]

crabsmack a écrit :

...Maybe his low-damage chain hits are useful on lower difficulties, but on ultimate he's not killing anything that's not a minion...

If you think of him as something other than a damage dealer he can become quite useful, I agree that Berserk is crap, Rapid Healing is much better. If you mod his chain abilities with apply weak or vulnerable, you can apply those debuffs across the entire field or stack it all on one enemy as each hit applies the debuff. It's quite useful to have 2 Eviscerate in his deck, one with weak and the other vulnerable and try and apply it all onto one boss. This makes bosses so much easier to deal with as they deal half their damage if weakened and take more if vulnerable and it'll last for more than 1 turn. You can also add bleed and pair him with a double Reaper Blade, I've used that to great effect as well.

[Ulthar]

I think we may find that some heroes in early stages are not "As good", but I am guessing as you start getting advanced cards and understanding how to play certain heroes they are all viable and can be awesome.

[crabsmack]

RaelM a écrit :

crabsmack a écrit :

...Maybe his low-damage chain hits are useful on lower difficulties, but on ultimate he's not killing anything that's not a minion...

If you think of him as something other than a damage dealer he can become quite useful, I agree that Berserk is crap, Rapid Healing is much better. If you mod his chain abilities with apply weak or vulnerable, you can apply those debuffs across the entire field or stack it all on one enemy as each hit applies the debuff. It's quite useful to have 2 Eviscerate in his deck, one with weak and the other vulnerable and try and apply it all onto one boss. This makes bosses so much easier to deal with as they deal half their damage if weakened and take more if vulnerable and it'll last for more than 1 turn. You can also add bleed and pair him with a double Reaper Blade, I've used that to great effect as well.

Interesting, I'll try that. I feel like he's the only character that straight-up doesn't function without mods, whereas for everyone else they're a nice boost. But I can see how his chain hits would be way, way stronger with debuffs attached. I still feel like I'd rather have Blade for chain attacks but I'll mod some abilities and give him a fair shake.

[Bruxae]

RaelM a écrit :

Blade is DoT which is pretty weak in this game, while yes you can stack a lot of bleed stacks on a target and then use Reaper to do some very good damage, the fact you have to set it up by either modding an ability to have bleed or using Make 'em Bleed then one of the chain skills then Reaper means he's very inefficient.

Gonna disagree on this one, Blade is an interesting one because he felt good in the beginning and then fell off mid-game but suddenly he is growing on me again. Currently my blade does 54 damage per hit with 'Strike' (chains 3 times) however the bleed application is 109 damage per round for 2 rounds which means he actually does 54+109+109 x 3 = 816 damage with a single strike - this means he can dish out 1632 damage in one round with 2 Strikes and a 'Make them bleed'.

The obvious downside is that you have to invest some time since it takes 2 rounds for the full damage to apply so you want to use it on tougher enemies, Blade is not the strongest character around but he excels at wearing enemies down and dots are great.

So basically what you want to do with Blade is just apply bleed on as many things as possible (and possible use chain attacks to take out oneshot minions), his 'Hunger' card combos great into this since it's a free cast that allows Blade to heal for each bleeding enemy and apply mark.

So if you want to make Blade work you need to stack chain attacks and make them bleed, throw a hunger in for utility. I will agree that the rest of his kit being kind of crap though and cards like Reaper is generally a waste of an action since it only applies damage you would have gotten anyway a little faster, and it takes away utility from Hunger by consuming bleed.. It has a very situational worth.

Forgot to mention that he particularly excels against soulbound enemies since he can easily bleed them all at once and 'Blood Hunger' (the enemy ability that makes them always attack the last enemy that had a bleed applied) applies to allies as well, meaning they will start attacking each other.

Blade's purpose is to spread the damage to let his allies finish them off, don't try to burst single targets with him.

[RaelM]

Bruxae a écrit :

...Blade's purpose is to spread the damage to let his allies finish them off, don't try to burst single targets with him.

While you make a very good point about his ability to inflict damage and about Blood Hunger, the higher the difficulty the quicker you want to take out the enemies as they inflict a lot more damage which is why I brought up Reaper. While his DoT can do some very good work if you're willing to wait it out, the fact that you need to clear quickly to reduce how much damage you take means he's not as useful on the higher difficulties. That's why I only bring him when I have to when I play on Ultimate III and then I have to bring Wolverine along with a bleed build to supplement him.