THIS. SO MUCH THIS. Maybe they're not all balanced, but whatever. Doesn't doesn't really matter becuase they're all fun and in the right circumstances any one of them can be MVP.
Seconded!
I'm curious, for those of you saying that Bunker/Expatriette are NOT the weakest characters in the game... name someone who you feel is less powerful.
Less powerful in terms of pure strength or application?
i'm not sure what distinction you're trying to draw here. You'd need to be more specific for me to answer your question.. What I meant is... in general.
Suppose you are playing a new villian that you have never played before, and you know absolutely NOTHING about them except that "they are very difficult to beat". You have no other information. for one reason or another, you REALLY want to win this game. There's a million dollars on the line or something =p. Which hero/ heroes are you least likely to take in this game? Who is below bunker/expatriette on the list?
That is what I mean by weakest hero, I suppose.
Well, that's a very specific scenario, but under those terms.....
I wouldn't bring Absolute Zero until I know about his damage types and/or equipment destruction.
I wouldn't bring Unity until I know about his AE damage ratio.
I probably wouldn't bring Visionary until I knew whether or not manipulation really helped.
I probably wouldn't bring Tachyon until I knew whether or not he had minions.
I think my power team at this very moment would be:
Argent Adept for Sarabande of Destruction and his ability to buff others.
Ra for consistent damage.
Expatriette for consistent damage and Ongoing/Envrionment destruction.
Right now, probably The Scholar, for reasons I can't talk about on this forum.
I wouldn't say any of the heroes are weaker than any other. All of them have situations where they shine or don't. There have been multiple people my group introduced to the game who didn't like Tachyon when they first played her, I wasn't her biggest fan either. I gave her a couple more tries and grew to really like her. Against a new enemy, I would probably take a team consisting primarily of characters who have inherent damage powers, just in case there are targets I need to destroy. The only two I would make exceptions for is the Argent because Sarabande of Destruction is one of the most useful cards ever, and maybe Visionary because she's like a swiss army knife.
yes, well lets not add heroes that aren't released yet into the equasion, ok?
I dont think its a specific scenario, no, on the contrary that scenario was designed to be as general as possible. If I said a specific villian it would just open the door to "Yeah well this hero is good against this villian, this hero is not good against this villian." I'm talking about general strength here. In a take all-comers sort of way. If you don't like that scenario, what if you were going to play every (released) villian, in a row, and you cant change your team? (with similarly high stakes, you want to win as many games as possible)
You're telling me that your top 3 hereos in that respect are Argent Adept (solid choice), Ra (another solid choice) and Expatriette? Are you even serious? Tempest outperforms expatriette in every scenario that I can think of. Why not him? why not legacy with his massive team buff skills? Why not Tachyon with her unparallelled nukeing ability and Hypersonic Assaults? Why not wraith with her easy acess to rediculous damage, stun bolts, smoke bombs, and the eyepice? (Wraith is another hero that outperforms Expatriette on every level) Why not Haka with the ever-useful Savage Mana? Why not Visionary, the best villain manipulator in the game? What makes you put expatreitte on your "power team"? So… to be clear, you think that every released hero, with the exception of Argent Adept and Ra, are weaker than expatreitte?
No, I don't think they're weaker. That's kind of the whole point of this discussion. I personally think they're all roughly equal and some shine in various situations. I love taking Haka (Savage Mana) to Matriarch or Chairman or Voss, but in other scenarios, I don't think he's as strong. He doesn't have any Ongoing or Environment destruction. He's just not as versatile. The main reason I would take Expatriette is that with 1 card (Tactical Shotgun) she can deal 4 damage on turn 1. With another 1 card (Assault Rifle), she can deal 2 damage to 3 targets on turn 1. Even Wraith takes 2 cards (Impromtu Invention and Throwing Knives) to pull that off. Similarly, if Wraith is hit with an equipment wipe, she will take rounds to recover. Expatriette just puts down a new gun and keeps on plugging. Shes also got RPG Launcher, which provides the same utility as Grappling Hook, with some damage tied on. Don't even get me started on Hairtrigger Reflexes.
Do I think Expatriette is stronger than lots of other heroes? No. But what she lacks in raw power, she makes up for in very low startup time. Play gun. Fire Gun. Easy, peasy.
I like Ex-Patriette, and I've had some really good games with her. Even though she's heavily relient on equipment, that equipment itself can be useful against a wide variety of situations. The Tactical shotgun is the only card with a power that does a base of 4 damage. She has other guns that can attack multiple targets and ammo that can reduce damage. She also has cards that allow her to retrieve equpiment should they be destroyed. There's a wide variety of things she can do that make her a good choice for any team. The only reason she wouldn't be in my top pick for an unknown villain is that I don't know about equipment destruction, that being said, I would be hesitant to bring heavy equipment users to an unknown villain fight, and that includes Wraith. I don't really like to say which heroes are weaker and stronger simply because I've been in games where I was a character like Ra and someone else was Mr. Fixer, or AZ, or Ex and they ended up contributing way more to the war effort than I did. Whichever heroes do the best for you is really more dependent on personal preference or style.
I know everyone is good in certain situations.
I know expatriette has good games.
I know even powerful heroes have bad games.
I know a lot is dependent on player skill/experience.
It's not that I don't like Expatriette and Bunker. It's not that I don't enjoy playing them. It's not even that I think they're not "good." BUT..... in general, just about everyone else is better. I'd place them both in the bottom 4. Try it sometime. Just take a look at your hero box and rank them 1-15 in terms of their relative usefulness in ALL possible games (they must be able to deal with any villian, work well in any environment, regardless of who is or is not on their team). Some of them are close, you'd might waffle whether (for example) Ra or Tempest is the better hero. Each of them have their merits. All I'm saying is that you'll probably find that certain heroes like Legacy, Tachyon, Wraith, maybe Argent Adept in the hands of a skilled player, are going to be towards the top of that list. And Bunker and Expatriette are probably going to be near the bottom.
when we fight a new Villain its iether
a) Take your favorite (which has little in our group to do with power and more to do with how we prefer to play the game - That usually means in a 4person game its Argent, Nightmist, Tachyon, and Fanatic) or
b) Build a solid team (One Deck control, one buffer, one damage, one tank - so like Visionary/Wraith, Legacy/Adept, Ra/Tempest, Bunker/AbZero)
c) Or use the randomizer and go!
My playgroup may dissagree with me, but I don't find any one of the heroes any more weaker than any other. I find them all /situationally/ weaker or stronger, but I wouldnt classify such and such deck as weaker in general terms than any other deck.
I /dislike/ playing as AbZero ... but only cause I didnt like his base power. His Elemental Wrath version probably will have me liking him sooo much more when I get a chance to try him out. But even beyond that I don't really stop playing anyof them. I almost always use the randomizer before a game unless we're gunning for someone - even if they dont follow it it gives me a random choice of a hero. I switch around who I'm playing all the time, though Fanatic is my favorite.
I disagree that they'll always be at the bottom four. The fact that there are situations where they perform better than heroes you'd consistently put at the top means that they are incapable of always being at the bottom. Context is everything, and in this game, the most important thing is having the right team for the job. It's like not valuing your safecracker because your guy with explosives can also open the safe, but then the cops surround and capture you because instead of making traps and blowing a way out for everyone to escape he was busy blowing up the safe. Yeah, your safecracker is really only good for opening the safe, but you NEED him or her specifically to get the job done efficiently.
See tho… Tis is a Coop game. Your -ment- to play it with a team. Thats how it was balanced, thats how it was created in design intent. Saying that on their own Expatriette isnt good against all comers without taking into account her support is a bit of a misnomer… She is never going to be alone in a proper game. She is going to always have her friends along, and they are always going to be providing some sort of support. Is Expatriette better with the right team? Hell yeah. Have I seen Expatriet without any carddraw support still wipe the floor against villains? Sure have. Thats the -other other- thing. The game is basec around a psuedo randomizing factor that is Decks. How one draws into their cards is going to effect how well they do in a game. You could put Argent Adept on the top but if fate contrieves and he never draws an instrument or one of his deck cylcing cards… hesin trouble! (As what happened to me the very first game i played with him), in that same vein of thought if Expat draws into Pride, Pred, Hollow Points and Speed loading on her first turn, daaaayuuummm the baddy is in for a hell of a lot of pain. Between teammate synergy and deck randomization factors, heroes work better or worse, so Its (in my humble opinion) impossible to classify any one as inhereintly weaker than another
Also, Bunker in the hands of a skilled bunker player who isnt just waffling for the Omni cannon beatdown, is going to do some -serious- damage. Especially those not afraid to jump in and out of modes to make things work. Ive seen some pretty insane bunker days where Grenade Launcher and one of his other weapons are all he was working with. Skilled player being the words you used, so I used them as an example here.
And finally! One of the things Ive taken to heart is what Christopher said in a late podcast. Every playgroup he encounters has diffrent opinions on heroes and villains based on their playstyle. What one group considers a weak hero is strong in another group because of the way they play the game. I can see which heroes are 'weaker' in our group based on our playstyles, but I also know that with the right person coming in they anturn that hero int a strong one suddenly just by understanding them and their style much better. Hence my opinion that not any one hero is weaker than any others inherentily
I could say something like that :
Tachyon only does one point damage except for a few cards : weak if villains have any kind of damage mitigating effect.
Legacy depends on card draw to do any kind of regular damage by himself.
Wraith needs to have multiple cards down to be useful, or hides in a corner.
Mr Fixer is the only hero that can make all his attacks irreducible damage. And attack all ennemies at once. Or kill an heavily armored ennemy without even having to reduce him to 0 hp.
Expatriette's Shotgun is better than any other single card attack power. Assault rifle is the same for all one card three target powers. Compare card by card, power by power and she is at least equal to any other hero, often better.
You can "rank" heroes by looking at only a few parameters. You can't rank them if you look at all parameters.
In your scenario, awp, Mr Fixer would be one of my choices. He can adapt his base power to any situation, and can help all other heroes to get back lost equipment cards - perfect if you don't know what an ennemy is capable of.
Your mileage may vary. If you're used to play a given hero, you see all his awesomeness. If you are not, you see his failures.
Yeah, me, too.
Omg we had a really epic game earlier - Ab'Zero and Visionary versus Plague Rat. I was thinking "I'll play Ab'Zero so I can heal myself, since Infection and his end-of-turn attack can whittle us down pretty well". First Infection card to come into play, I took. Then Visionary had Twist teh Ether come up. And OMG it was EPIC. So, Twist the Ether on Ab'Zero. Nul-Point Calibration Unit. Infection damage changed to cold damage. Therefore auto-heal at the start of my turn. Every turn for the rest of the game :D. Twist the Ether also helped a lot to boost Cold Snap and the one copy of Impale that turned up during the game. I finished up on 26/29hp, and only because in my final turn I used my innate power on myself to deal three fire damage (one plus another one for each of the two copies of Twist the Ether that were on me by then), then do the resulting cold damage (caused by Isothermic Transducer) to Plague Rat, who had two or three hp left by then. Woot, that was most fun :D.
Anyway, to chip into this discussion I'll agree with those who say that every hero can be uber in their own way, and can also be crap as well, from time to time, depending on the situation. Some more than others - for example, Expatriette is gonna suffer a lot more from equipment destruction than Tachyon, but then she has plenty of cards that let her get out more guns and stuff so she can recover pretty quickly. Some heroes are pretty good by themselves, while others are dependent on having team-mates around to help them. Which, of course, they'll always have since unless you're playing solo that's kind of the point of the game ;). And some heroes just work even better in a particular combo, if you can get the right cards out (see above ;)).
Just because everyone can be awesome in their own way doesn't mean some heroes don't inherently have an advantage. I agree that, in my experience, Bunker and Expatriette consistently perform at a lower level than some other heroes. It's possible I share opinions with awp because we play together a lot.
That said, I have an anecdote. I had arranged two other people, and they wanted to fight Voss. I don't remember who they chose, but they weren't big damage characters. One might have been Tachyon. For some reason or another, I was choosing between Haka and Expatriette. I was going to use Expatriette, but one of the others insisted I choose Haka, possibly due to some perceptions about Expatriette's strength. We fought tooth and nail throughout the game, and came pretty close to a victory, but the deciding factor was likely that we had to tolerate one of the Dreadnaughts for several rounds, partly because our main damage dealer, Haka, couldn't hurt it. In the post-game dissection, the player who had told me to use Haka said, "You should have used Expatriette!"
I don't know how much that has to do with the conversation. But we laughed.
I'd second that many heroes are dependent on their team mates to show their true power. Fanatic is a good example - with damage boosts from other players (Ra, Legacy, etc) her base power becomes ridiculous.
In the case of the original Power team proposed by broccoli, I think the strength of Expatriette is that Argent Adept is on the team. I can't think of any hero who consistently has more to gain from out-of-turn powers and card play. Her ammo is what makes her go from just okay to really really good, but it's hard to be using much ammo when you're working with just your own turn. If AA can give you out of turn card play (assuming some way to improve your card draw), then you can actually make use of double-loading Pride and Predjudice.
Thinking of a solid, take all-comers team, I think you could do worse than having Expatriette and AA as a couple. Fill the team out with Leader Tachyon and Youngest Legacy, and you've got most of your bases covered. (Visionary gets an honourable mention, but deck stacking mechanics are no good if you're playing a villain for the first time and don't know their cards)
I think my favourite out of turn plays for Argent Adept are Grease Gun, Overdrive/Salvage Yard, Prayer of Desperation, and Zealous Offence, although he's good for any slow-build Hero. Expatriette does really like the extra card draw from the Accompany text on Counterpoint Bulwark, though.