So I like Karla as a character, especially the later years of Thunderbolts-Dark Avengers - "New Dark Avengers issues".
As a boss in the game she was kinda boring and looked just like Ms.Marvel, I also found it so really, really weird that she was not the Dark Ms Marvel during the Dark Avenger special operation(think I ranted on this before to but I am still annoyed about it so---). I mean she was Ms.Marvel in Norman Osbourn's Dark Avengers...she jokes that men have some fetish always forcing her to dress like Ms.Marvel etc. I also don't get why she was recruited during this Arcade special operation, just feels like they are running out of Lockbox characters, that Nico was the Reward for task make sense as she is one of the main character of Marvel Arena(Arcade's latest ruse which is kinda what they tried to implement into the game unsuccessfully if u you ask me)
Anyway, Luckily Playdom altered her moves because the boss would just be Ms Marvel version 2.
Moonstone is decent, her biggest issue is her ultimate. It simply just bad. Her ultimate is something I think is easy to compare with Pokemon. Its a gameplay patter(I went over this pattern in my research). Her ultimate first charge up and then the next turn the user can attack with her. So its a 2 turn attack.
The thing is, this is just like for example Solar Beam in Pokemon, were Hyper beam is much better. Why?. Well Hyper beam works in the opposite way, sure it also cost 2 turns for the Pokemon but it does huge damage and then the next turn the Pokemon cant move. This means the Pokemon pays the turn later on which is much better as they can defeat the opponent with that attack, but even more so as they can be interrupted.
While Moonstone do have Phase, so she can first go in Phase mode and then use this. She is a Tactician so if a Blaster is present she can first attack get Phases and then do the ultimate so its not 100% worthless. But the biggest issue is that the attack is simply not that strong.
Fundamentally is worse then for example Phoenix Flare(which works just like Hyper Beam). But the bigger issue is that it really does not do enough damage to make it a value of 2 attacks.
The thing with Moonstone is that its not just this ability that lacks a punch. Her other moves are also very low damage wise, so overall her damage output is then of course low.
Her first ability is an attack with Phase Advantage that one do deal high damage as with Kitty and Vision. But, its one time deal really. Phased is such a long cooldown on the character. So the player cannot spam this ability, well they can but not with the extra damage.
Also using the ability removes her Phased, which is of course something you wan to keep. Simply not very good.
However, dont get me wrong, she is a phase character so she is very, very strong in attack. The AI cant deal with that at all, but Phased has been nerfed and she cant start as it. Also her attack is not as smooth into it like Vision but shes still solid for attack.
Moonstone stronger ability is her passive, but(yes a lot of buts in this one) its a very luck based passive. It is far better in afk defence, were her Phased ability will be much less effective(I mean really much less effective).
Her passive gives out varied number of debuffs, most noticeable is Disoriented so the enemy will attack another enemy instead.
She also got damage reduction from her Blind debuff(second ability) her first one has Immobilized and the third one increases her damage gives exhausted(removes extra turn) and removes enemy flight ability(really useless debuff).
In the grand spectrum shes a really good support character. Which further makes her not very useful in afk defence, but as I mentioned the fact she got several debuffs a good player can utilize and Phased she is pretty good in attack when the player controls.
6/10. I do think shes pretty coherent with her Comic self, but Playdom designed her kinda iffy she got a lot of contradiction good points(in regard to playing vs afk).
Nico Minoru:
Nico has always been the best character from the Runaways overall Runaways is a great comic and I am fan of Brian K. Vaughan. To me its no surprise(Well I read Y:the last man before I read Runaways)
True to her abilities Nico got the Staff of One. Where she can only use one magic ability once in the comics the ability its pretty much limited to her fantasy of what she want to do. To use it she has to cut herself.
I think that designers did a really good job with her for the game. She got load of abilities and she has to cut herself(get debuff bleeding) to be able to sue some.
She also very fragile in the comics(physically fragile) so her HP in the game is crazy low she got no defence what so ever. Which makes it a great game design because she is a typical glass canon with a lot of offensive abilities but no defence.
However, she is a lot like the cube. Not only in the sense that she got multi functional abilities. But that her third ability of the third abilities Lets do this matrix style- 3.3 is a debuffer most like probability field but worse. 3.4 is the cubes 4th. Does not feel very original if you ask me. Nevertheless its a great ability of course, set her up with 3.3 just like the cubes 3th and then finish of with 3.4. She can also give her self more stats with 2.4 which is an lesser version of Cable ultimate its 1 more turn for someone + stat boost. If she does it to herself she wont gain a turn like Cable does(not it does not have quick action effect) but she will gain more stats similar to 3th of the cube. So essentially you can combo the cube 3-4.
Especially as her Passive is like Sabretooth's, if she dies she dont the first time and gain 2 turns instead of 1. She also gain full life not like with the other revive characters. But most importantly is that she goes back to full life at her next turn and is immune to death for the otehr turns and debuffs. This means that she cannot be killed by multiple attacks like other characters can.
She has to best resurrect passive in the game.
This gives her the ability do chain 2.4-3.3-3.4 on the same turn after she died.
She also gains extra damage from Bleeding and as her ultimate is a Quick Action that gives her 3 bleeding stacks, use this first to gain a lot of damage increase + with her huge base Strength. She does ridiculous damage while being one shotted by pretty much everyone, even more so of they got a bleeding exploit attack(wolverine,sabretooth etc).
She do take reduced damage from bleeding so ravage on her has less effect but Exploit Bleed will kill he from full Health.
That her abilities(the multi functional ones) can only be used once is not such a big drawback as PvP ends quickly. They sometime to stuff even on the second use and the otehr abilities I have not gone over 2.1.2.2.3 and 3.1.3.2. They all have different debuffs and are not so good they are like with Dr.Voodoo a lot of debuffs spread over several moves which is not very suited for PvP. When she has 2 turns is of course more playable but what I do is that I save her 3.4 and 3.3 for a double turn so I can assure that I get the massive damage attack like with the cube. (2.4 is something I often use on other characters right away).
Overall Nico is a decently well balanced characters, while she owns a lot of character she is completely destroyed by a couple of characters. Shes very vulnerable to direct high damage characters, which many of them have stealth. Shes a Blaster to....so yeah extra vulnerable and extra bad in AFK defence.
Shes also weak to long battles, which are not common in Marvel Avengers Alliance. But still I would say she get countered by people with very high PvP bonuses + tanky/support team as well.
Of course on the other hand if someone rolls 64x60 offensive items with her she will pretty much always kill everyone with her 3.4.
9/10. I really like her design but it fails in the end as to me its very obvious they copied stuff from the Cube.
Dr.Doom:
..........First of all why is he a playable character.... it makes no sense, Especially as everyone refuse to fight with him. Makes him interesting as he can then have more stats etc to make him playable only with the agent.
But, the coherency of the game.....come on Playdom this is just stupid. I don't mind Dr.Doom being playable to a degree as he do help the heroes from time to time. But if he is restricted to not being able to play with no one,,which actually when you think about it does not make sense even at that step.
Because, why cant Sabretooth work with Dr.Doom? he got no moral issues with him, why cant Juggernaut, Constrictor, Moonstone etc. Most of the Lockbox as they are ex-villains should be able to fight with him.
And then even if we accept they cant because well Playdom wants a 1 man show guy.
Then my second issue is, well why don't enforce more imitation to them then. Not for balance or anything like that but, why can I take Wolverine and Sabretooth in the same team. Why can I take Cable and Bishop and so on. A lot of those things does not feel right. Its not like I need the good and evil side to work together to beat a common threat. I am just gonna go and farm some random item from street thugs, not really a time for archenemies to fight together.
Lastly Dr.Doom is hell of annoying to train as you cant bring anyone....
Anyway, first of all Dr.Doom then is a 2 character in 1 deal. This is something that is not common but are in otehr RPGs as well. For example Ogre Battle(I am wondering if this is a gameplay pattern - note to self add otherwise in research)
In Ogre Battle, Cerberus, giants and Griffins are counted like 2 units while an army can have up to 5. So in that game one army can have 3 humans 1 giant or 1 human 2 giants(1 human has to lead).
The context here is that, those armies always sucked, except the Dragons who also toke 2 spots but were actually really strong so they were worth it. The Suikoden Franchise does the same, were the Hero got a group of him +5 more. Were e.g a Unicorn takes up 2 spots. Its also bad in these games. There is one beast synergy group that is ok in Suikoden 2, having a beast master guy(cant remember his name) with 2 +size monsters as they then get some epic uber combo attack that can one shot all enemies in the game except bosses.
The reason why this happens is because, the game cant have a character that has truly twice the amount of power that another character has(if we compare to "real" characters and not some bonus/story character etc) then that character would simply one shot every other character. This ends up being usually that size+1 becomes some sort of 1.5 character. Which is roughly what Doom is.
Tl:dr there is no game that really makes this size characters worth it. They are always underpowered because they are far from having the stats of 2 characters and they damage the do is never the damage 2 character does.
Dr.Doom is the same.
Especially as Dr.Doom got the worst ultimate in the game. YES the worst. Sure it does the most damage in the game. It starts out with a whooping 11 turns cooldown. Ye good luck using that when most games at most goes to turn 4. 11 Turns I haven't played a 11 turn PvP Battle since season 2. If you got Decent stats thats never gonna happen.
Even more with Dr.Doom as his HP and Defence is not nearly what 2 character has. To survive for 11 turn as 2.5(I think we can call agent and Doom 2.5 sounds fair). Its even lower.
Well actually Doom does so much damage anyway that I usually win fast with him. Its a lot of factors but the game is not gonna be 11 turns that just does not happen. And if it happens its like 1 game in 1000. Someone is probably think that, "butt that happens to me every like 10 battle", if it does. You are doing it wrong, the battles are supposed to be won quickly. Only way to get to 11, is to have really bad stats and play a heavy support team that cant finish the enemy. But even doing so there is no room for Dr.Doom then.
Sure like Season 1 people were using Emma and Colossus and the game did take ages for real back then but its since a long time ago nerfed and out dated.
Bottom line: Battles wont be 11 turn ergo Dr.Doom's Doom cannon is useless.
OK, Its established that a +size character cant even use his ultimate. Not a good start.
Well luckily Dr.Doom has multifunction abilities, which seems to be what Playdom wants to give any new rare character now..
But yeah that is very needed, hes 2 characters in one so he needs to have at least 8 abilities kinda. And with no ultimate......I like the idea of its DOOOOOM happening in the near future but its just unplayable.
Dr.Doom do have 1 thing going for him, well 2 things. But first of all hes a Tactician, great class and then he can gain the class bonus of Bruiser,Scrapper or Blaster. Not AND, OR. Which is sad. He gains this from doing his summoning ability, his third ability summons different servobots. Summoning abilities are uncounterable so its safe using it. The player can always pick 1 extra class bonus(I prefer the Bruiser for most cases) and as Dr.Doom has 2 turns its easy to do the next attack with added effect.
The second thing he has is Full of Doom. The old good item the player can get from the Epic Doom boss battle.
This means Dr.Doom will steal someones stats, by a pretty large margin and boosting himself. He can gain a lot of extra stats both by becoming Enraged and this and then having 2 turns.
This attack is also Stealth so he can easily steal someones stats and gain one extra turn if they are Blasters. Very strong anti Blaster start.
Well I do feel that they should remove the cooldown on servoboots, not round cooldown but turn cooldown so the user can use 1 summoning each turn.
Another issue Dr.Doom has its from the Meta, as pretty much everyone is using the Mystic. They can neither be stunned etc but also he cant lower their stats with Drained Energy.
Dooms 1.2 attack is also pretty bad its like Mr.Fantatic ultimate(called Trifurcator instead of Bifurcator). As with Reed its not a very good PvP ability, while it do give Stamina(this is less worth for agent has always been that and as its a 2 man team AoE heal is not as good...) the damage is really low and diminishes over the battle time as the enemy loses life.
Doom's other attack are strong and he do have 2 turns. But they don't have much meaningful debuffs. 1.1 Is a impaired and weakened, that guy is gonna do low damage but it don't help him protect him from infiltrator, mental attacks dots etc. Its mainly an anti blaster ability and hes already inherently anti Blaster, icing on the cake.
2.1 is a random dot attack like with Nico, but only agaisnt 1 person. It deals low damage and put maybe the dot you want on them. OK if u got agent with Cube(which you likely have running Doom) but not very good.
The servobots dont have meaningful debuffs, they have stun(don't work anymore) staggered nonsense no one avoid by evasion anyway and pummeled,,,which is just a worse version of staggered(it also reduces evasion but were staggered is static = cant avoid, pummeled is reduce chance to avoid) Really funky why they put pummeled on the 3.3 when 3.1 got a better version of that debuff....
Lastly doom puts a dot on all enemies each turn(similar to how Magneto reapplies magnetized so even if removed he will put it on them again).
These makes sure that the game will eventually end as it removes all enemies HP each turn, well in most a cases not the first turn as they almost always have mystic shroud.
While this is really good -_- Lets not forget about his Ultimate. Having this passive its very counterproductive if you ever want to have a game last so long to have the chance to use it.
It do also gives them Cower(20% chance to not attack). Like a soft Heimdall effect but for each turn.
I mentioned earlier that Doom is around 1.5 characters stat wise and he don't have the ability of 2 (good) characters. Not even of 1 if we compare to the best of the best. But thats kinda overkill I guess. But it still like he got decent ability not the best( I have to act as the ultimate does not exist as it does not exist).
Hes not a very good character.
Tier list wise, I am lazy but its more of why put him in there. Yes it can reveal some of his glaring weakness better. But obviously hes is better then all other characters, well except like Emma Frost(not even joking I much rather have Emma with her Psychic Tap and Mental Trauma. And actually Cosmic power is pretty sweet to, then Iron Patriot got a Doom ultimate turn 1. Thats pretty good, Thor as well, Cable is nice with his Time Shift especially with those Massive ultimate guys.
Oh yeah all of them also gets in 1 more character.
Only reason for playing Dr.Doom would be because hes Dr.Doom clearly reason enough.
