Okay, sorry I lost track of this thread. I've been looking for it because I like this discussion.
You've got some good points, awp832. And honestly, I'm having trouble thinking of a defense for Expatriette. But really, I can't rank any of the heroes. They can all be good, and they can all be bad. I'm in favor of Expatriette because I like her, and I've seen her be good, and I know she can be better once I get the hang of manipulating the ammo better. But you can argue weaknesses for just about every hero. And like lynkfox said; you gotta take into account the co-op aspect of the game. Expatriette can get to hitting things pretty quickly compared to other heroes that take more set up. If you need immediate action, she's the way to go. That's why her base power allows an extra card played. I guess it's hard for me to look at the heroes objectively without teams. But I just like her.
my one complaint for Expatriette out of the gate is Load. It's a good power, it's not particularly strong in the beginning. If you have Tactical Shotgun in your opening hand, you can get to work quickly. Assault Rifle can do the same depending on the villian you are up against. But if it takes you a while to get the shotgun, then by the time you get it than 4 damage doesnt seem so impressive anymore, when compared to what other heroes are doing. Same goes for after an equipment wipe.
In a perfect world, when your team has built up a little bit and you have your shotgun/rifle out, that's about the time that your ammo SHOULD be kicking in to high gear. But that often gets stalled as well. Without Speed Loading, you have no reliable way to keep yourself stocked full of ammo, with speed loading you're not making your way through your deck. I suppose you could use Speed Loading and NOT use the part of it that lets you replace an ammo card on top of your deck, it might be worth trying, but I dont know if it would work out. But she has no reliable way to actually *get* to speed loading. Or Unload. The two cards that make the character powerful and neither can be searched for with Arsenal Access. Nor can she depend on large amounts of card draw to garuntee that she eventually picks one of these strong cards up (the way Fanatic can).
She can play well with others, I'll give her that. If you have someone who lets people draw cards all the time (team leader tachyon) and/or someone who lets others use powers out of turn (Argent Adept) then she could shine. But you have to ask yourself, "Okay, So I'm letting her use powers and draw a lot more cards here... but is she doing better than say, Ra or Wraith might be, if I had them on my team instead and was letting them draw cards and use extra powers?" The answer in my experience is ususally 'no'.
see, the issue i have with your statements awp is the same issue i had when I used to play wow - Just because you're not doing the max damage possible every turn (Ie, just cause you arent leading the DPS meters) doesnt mean you arent useful, and doesnt mean that you are inhereintly weaker than anyone else. It may mean you arent doing as good as you could be doing, or any number of other things, but in a team situations its really annoying to judge someone because they aren't putting out their max damage right away. ((Yes yes, dps meters can be a good tool, but they shouldnt be the end all end all of comparison... and im getting off topic)
I played expat last night in a playtesting game. Sure I got Tac shotgun out in the first turn, and it was nice. I also lost it in the second villain turn, and was reduced to the assault rifle. Did it suck to loose out the shotgun so quickly? Yeah. Did I still manage to be effective and between Argent Adept and Nightmist did we win? Heck yeah. Its not about who can do the -best- its about can you work together to win. And while some hereos have some limitations to how effective they can become, they are none the less /useful/ and if worked right with your teammates (no matter who they are playing, but properly aiding one another) All can do the job.
Is some combinations harder than others? Most certainly. But that is an added challenge. Is working together the name of the coop game? Heck yeah. Are you going to have an easier time against certain villains with certain hero combinations? Certainly. Does that inherently make another hero weaker? I do not think so. You stack the deck (metaphorically, selecting a certain team agianst a certain villain) and certain heroes are going to shine more than others in that situation. I do not think that because in some situations where you make sure everything is lined up right and heroes can shine makes any other hero who doesnt shine outside of those situations weaker. Just more reliant.
Talking about DPS meters, it would be interesting to keep track of all damage done by each hero in a number of games and look at Expatriette's rank after enough games. I bet she would be higher than what most people think. It was the same thing in WoW : doing big damage once in a while is impressive and marks memories, doing good damage all the time is less visible - but you end up in the first places on the DPS meter at the end. Expat is a reliable damage dealer, in my experience.
It works for Bunker too : a fully charged Omnicanon at the end is impressive. Flak canon or grenade launcher each turn is more efficient. Especially if there are multiple low hp targets.
I honestly think Quick Draw should let you draw a card, and Arsenal Access should let you put both equipment cards into play or in hand. Neither of those are changes that would make Expatriette overpowered, and they'd do something about her big weakness. And Load is a good Power, but at the same time Expatriette basically makes worse use out of it than almost any other character would.
I totally agree about Arsenal Access. For the longest time, I thought that was what the card was supposed to do, so I always took both. Recently I realized that's not what it does, and I really don't like that. If it got you two equipment cards, it'd make her much better so she didn't have that problem taking too long to get both guns and ammo. It'd much more help to contribute to the idea that Expatriette (I think) is supposed to be able to get to doing damage quickly, so more people would like her.
In Alex's playgroup, for reference. I was probably the biggest non-believer about Mr. Fixer and Expattriette, and that was due to some extremely, extremely unsatisfying games when I got Rook City. Seeing Alex play Mr. Fixer was enlightening, though, and the other night we had a game where Expattriette was using Speed Loading to always have ammo, and Argent Adept to let her draw and play other cards, as well as using Vernal Sonata and the like to give her more Unloads.
Load can be used defensively too. Play ammo cards to get ready for equipment wipes and protect other heroes' equipment. Only applicable to villains that wipes (H) equipments. Useless against Devastating Aurora.
I didn't say that. Actually I fully agree with your statement. Some of the best heroes IMO are Legacy, Visionary, and Argent Adept, all of which have low personal "dps" but high potential team benefits.
But in Expatriette's case, what does she do besides damage? The answer is not much. She doesn't have any cards that directly help other players. The best she's got is RPG launcher. so in other words, Expatriette is a nearly pure dps character, with 3 ongoing destroyers in her deck. In this case, DPS is actually a VERY good judgement of how strong this character is.
Compare Expatriette to Wraith: Wraith has either 3 or 4 ongoing destroyers in her deck, I forget how many grappling hooks there are. Anyway, so she's on equal footing or maybe slightly ahead in the ongoing/environment control department. Since that is equal, Expatriette can claim no advantage. So then who has the higher dps? Wraith does. Therefore; Wraith > Expatriette. And that's utterly ignoring the fact that Wraith DOES have team utility in her deck, in the form of Eyepiece and Smoke Bombs.
You can do the same with Tempest. Expatriette has 3 RPG launchers, Tempest has 2 flash floods and 2 ball lightnings. Roughly equal in terms of ongoing/environment control. So who has better DPS? Tempest does. Expatriette loses big time because again, Tempest a lot of useful non-dps things in his deck which Expatriette simply lacks. He has villian control, he has team healing, he has card drawing, he has trash retrieval. So Tempest > Expatriette.
Whoops forgot Wraith only heals herself. I meant it as in group heal*.
Think the only heroes capable of group heal is All 3 Legacy (Greatest best at healing), Tempest, Argent Adept, do not remember about ReedemeerFanatic and someone i probably forgot.
I will concede to your point, Awp: Expatriette is one of the weaker heroes. Truth be told, I've never had her be the "star" of any game.
Does that mean I don't like playing as her? Not at all. I'd love to play as her more and maybe have a few good games with her. I mean, I hate Absolute Zero, but I see his value. I guess it just depends on who you like.
I have seen some amazing improvement on Fixer's deck over the past few villains that have been released, and I can only imagine that Expatriette's deck will get a similar treatment as the game grows.
I don't necessarily think that comparing heroes to Wraith and having them come up short means that the hero is weak, considering how OP Wraith is.
I mean, Expatriette feels a little unversatile compared to a lot of the other heroes. If I had to rank them by effectiveness I'd put her on the lower end, but it's not like she doesn't pull her own weight. I've had games where Hairtrigger Reflexes alone was worth bringing her along. Considering that the villains are clearly meant to vary in strength, as long as they're fun to play I'm kind of okay having the heroes vary in strength as well.
Well thats comparing DPS to Healers and Buffers - my smilie breaks down at that point.
She has some great utility. its masked into her damage.
Nitro rounds can save your team from quite a bit of damage - especialyl if you dump it on Submachine gun with a lot of minions in play - potentially saving a lot of damag ea turn. 5 villian targets doing damage? 5 damage saved. If any of t hem hit multiple targets? +1 for each target. It can easily reach up to the double digits in saved health. In this game where damage is so prevalant Damage Reduction/Prevention is much more powerful then healing.
Shock rounds though not the best ammo in her deck, is a nice way to dump an area amount of damage on her off a single attack gun. Give a damage buff or two and you can wipe the board with a single shot of Pride or Prejudice
Pride+Prejudice means you can do both a specialty shot for utility (Nitro for isntance) and damage something. You can also reliably hit two targets with armor with these two. The combination of this and Unload? Means you can play an ammo even on the turn you Unload (Unload, have x powers, but to activate pride and prejudice you only use one power activation. Therefor you can use Load to play an ammo on one of your other guns. These two guns give her a ton of utility in how she applies her damage to targets. Yes Wraith has Throwing knives+targeting computer to reach similar damage, but she doesnt get to use the utility that ammo can provide in the same situation.
I would indeed like to see an overall Damage per Game chart with expat. I did that once in a DnD4th game where i was getting made fun off cause i wasn't doing the big hits everyone else was. Turns out I was putting out more constant overall damage every fight thent hey were.
I'm willing to bet that she will be putting out comparable damage in most sitations, and in the right ones (Against minion decks) she can put out a lot more.