Review Jessica Jones: Marvel Avengers Alliance, Guide for best characters for PvP.

Jessica has 2 major issues and these are both classic design issues which often result in a negative outcome for the character, having both of course makes her unplayable.

1 - Licence character

The first one really annoys me becasue its a classic, "licence game issue". While she and the rest of all the characters are of course licence by Marvel-Disney. She is still really shows of a classic Licence game problems. By this I mean, that its generic and bad. As most licence games are horrible tryng to just sell on the licence alone, this is a very classic issue, Et being the prime example of the whole game industry crash, if anything I would say that bad licence game is probably the most iconic issue a game can have.
 So while all the characters are licence here by the same company, Jessica Jones clearly is still released to support her new netflix tv-series. Nothing wrong with that, as long as its not so obvious its just a cop out to have something with the tv-series. She is very boring, very weak overall a very generic and useless heroine.

But if there is one thing tat really shows of her as a prime example of this is that she cannot fly in the game. Canon Jessica Jones from the comics can fly and are overall psychical stronger then the Tv-series one.
 So its clear they are designing after the show and then they made another big mistake. Its balanced after the show...just WTF. The show is way more down to earth, like all the marvel films and especially these netflix shows. This means Jessica is by defualt is supposed to be just a little better than a normally trained human. And the are keeping it like that...

I truly make no logical sense on a gameplay level. Look at e.g Marvel Vs Capcom 3. If they had followed the comics literally, Thor would never lose to Spider-Man as he would just 1 shoot him with 1 punch. What you do instead is that Thor is a slow strong character, spider-man is fast but weak etc. OF course that game is not perfectly balanced, just like any other game. But it would make no gameplay if the characters where impossible to play in a 1v1 match up kind of game based on a literal adaption from the comics/movies.

That only works in a game like Europa universallis where you can for example start as France and have a huge advantage over most countries or start as Byzantium and likely die from the Ottomans in a few years.
 This game follow real life history and it was unfair, life was unfair. But that works in a game as its a challenge to survive then as Byzantium. Other games that follow a book like the lords of the rings can e.g feature you playing the halfings "army" and trying to beat the orcs which will be way harder, maybe they have some cool passives and weird strategies one can use and so on.
 This particularity works because advanced strategy games ca feature other kinds of meta gameplay, alliances etc. n

 But a straight 1v1 game where the 2 sides will automatically fight each other the game has to try and be as balanced as possible of course to work. Marvel Avengers Alliance works a little better then MvC as is 3v3 and some characters can be really weak alone but good with certain teams etc. But a character that is just blatantly weak because of following a tv-series that is just bad.

And I don't really get it, why not make her sell. If you compare to Boomarang the next character, he is vastly better and he is a really uninteresting character so I guess they made him be better, while not caring about Jessica.
 But to me, it would make more sense that she is supposed to draw you into the show or be really cool that fans of the show needs to have her. And its not so dam hard, for example why is her fire hydrant attack debuffing waterlogged. That is one of the worst debuffs in the game, I get that she has to look street thuggy from hell's kitchen so she cannot have like Deathfrost, Deathfrost would make no sense as its a magical thing. But why not have chilled over waterlogged, they could even have waterlogged and chilled the ability would still be crap.
 Its all those mistakes on each of her ability, she could have had 1-2 debuffs on each ability and still not be a good character then she would be ok.

For me its clear licence cash grab with no brains behind it.


2 - To many abilities.

Second issue she has is something that is very common in games. I wrote about this in my old Elise and Jayce reviews in League of Legends like 3 years ago. This is something that is super common in games (Note that Elise is really good now in LoL but a lot of new items, map changes patch changes to her has happen since then), where the game characters has a set decided number of abilities
 normally.

In both LoL, Dota etc its 4 just like in Marvel Avengers Alliance. And then often when a designer works on creating more abilities for those few characters who have 5 or more, often what happens is that all these abilities are bad. Instead of having 4 great ability, the character ends up with 8 horrible abilities. There is a lot of games that do this, JRPGS where all characters have around 20 spells and then suddenly one has like 75 where 65 is useless and so on (Than we also have like Cid in Final Fantasy Tactics, who could do what all other knight class could do while also doing it better, he has like 40 abilities where the rest has 10 but all of his are also better then the ones with 10, that is what we call super broken).

 A good example to Balance this is e.g Akuma in Street Fighter where the otehr cahracter has 3 abilities he has 10 or more. But he the lowest health in the game and the ability who overlaps with others like Shouryuken (him and Ryu). Ryu does higher damage, but he still has it so he can use it as a close high prio move or as an Anti Air.
  This can work, but many games has this issue and its further really bad in a turn based game, as Marvel Avengers Alliance. Characters with multi functional abilities that are Quick Action aren't effected than but characters with just several crappy abilities that you can only pick 1 from is just really, really bad.

This is why tool box characters in general aren't good in MAA, you rather spend your turn doing 1 good attack then having 6 different to choice from where maybe 1 of them is good in some specific scenario.

To many abilities is a common issue in MAA but it especially bad on Jessica Jones.

Because she is a anti class toolbox options, which is probably the most crystal clear bad toolbox options to have.
 So Jessica has 4 abilities that each counter 1 class right, it gives them the counter debuff to that class + does some weak debuffs as well. Well the game has disadvantage, that debuff will auto set the correct debuff. Clearly its 10x times better to have disadvantage + good debuffs. That counters any class and you can then also have nasty stuff with it as well. She would have to have way, way better debuffs + the specific counter debuff to be good, for example her 3.1 has open wound this is a really good debuff so that is one is better then having like Generalist and nothing more like Silk has.
 But than we have an attack like the primary attack of Cloak and Dagger which has generalist and purged (which is really good in this meta), that counters any class + adds a very good debuff.
 When Domino was new her whole thing was that she uniquely had Disadvantage and that was years ago, Jessica has a worse version of disadvantage spread over bad combo debuffs, look at it compared to just the newest character when writing this - Nova (Richard) who has AoE disadvantage he has not seen any PvP play yet but that is clearly a really, really good attack. Which also shows how forgotten Domino is.
 Basically his 2.1 is better then any of Jessicas options (2 and 31.32.33), he counters any class right away, all enemies and adds in random debuffs which are equal or better to what Jessica does to 1 enemy + He also still got his 2.2.

She is terrible.

More abilities has never been a key for being good in this game and then to have it to around turning of a class where its an debuff that does that versus any class. Mind blowing bad.


Passive:


First she has this "Short Fuse" which is horrible. This passive is the chance to after being attacked gain counter to attacks.

 There are characters who just have counter on always (as passive not as infiltrator). Or like coordinated defence where everyone in the team can counter an attack.

This is a blatant example of under powered design that I am talking about where it seems its way to much focused on being like in the tv show.


Her other passive is that she at random puts Target focus which is UTTER CRAP. That is just to fit her tv character this does nothing in the game.

 However, it does also sometimes random that she gains fatal intel which means her next attack has fatal blow and that is actually strong.

The way I see it she has this passive to get Fatal intel on luck and the rest is just nonsense, a 4/20 in passive power


Abilities:


Her first ability is actually quite good is a good primary attack.

For example its pretty much the same thing Kamala has but it also adds in targeted (as well as combo setup and wide-open), that makes it automatically better. But it also adds Grit to her.

And this is great as Grit goes up to 5 stacks and gives a stat increase to all the 4 primary stats + is used for her ultimate, gaining a stack buff on a primary attack is strong as its then increased by each follow up attack, each counter each coordination attack etc. This is her only good move and it is quite important that its her primary but she cannot be carried only by this.
 6/10

Her second ability is just a part of her toolbox stuff, it might as well be called 3.4 or the 3.x moves could be called 2.2 etc. And that speaks volumes to it not being very good (as explained above).
 This one turns of infiltrators but its a little better then the other 3 moves, as is a stealth move. That is always good to have but on the same time its not like she has any real benift of that being a Bruiser. I gues its more like, if an infiltrator has counter on they cannot counter this ? I am pretty sure if you attack into someone who has counter on but you have an anti counter move like off-balance they don't counter anyway, so yeah. Its ok.
2/10

So her third ability are 3 moves split with a multi function option, the 3.2 counters 2 classes, while the other 1 counters 1 each.
 The only good move here is 3.1 which does open wound that randomizes bleeding + ravage which can be really strong, it also strangely does tenderize that increase slash damage even do she has no other slash abilities, it really looks like they just took a Wolverine or X-23 move and put it on her + anti Blaster.
 Its good do that as she is a Bruiser the anti blaster move is likely your first pick regardless.

But all the other options are really bad, and if you are facing a none blaster? or actually does not care about removing class buffs as its not usually such a big deal except for Tacticians that really can utilize having 2 turns.

3/10


Ultimate:

Her ultimate is the most generic thing she has as its the most generic and over used thing in this game.

Throwing an object, since the game was released several character has had the throw a car, satellite, ston etc for a stun effect. Always stun and bad damage.

This ultimate is no different it do user up her grit to do more damage but it has a horrendous base damage and it stuns that's it.

And I don't get why it cannot also have a debuff like intimidation, if its supposed to be more like in the series more down to earth, then intimidated would be a reasonable outcome if a normal criminal got a car thrown at them,

1/10



Verdict:

Her score is: 4+6+2+3+.5 = 15.5 of 55.

She is a generic license character with no interesting gameplay at all. She is weak and there is no combo character for her and so on, just boring and bland.

1/10 (Because I do like the jokes like car-astrophic and private eye passive name etc, the names are good but the effect of the abilities are just so weak and unimaginative)

Marvel Avengers Alliance: Best Team PvP: Guide for best characters for PvP. Review Kamala Khan

So I feel its to late to discuss the muslim / pc issue that people love to talk about with Kamala.

But I do think its funny how people complain "how they made" Ms marvel muslim... Carol Danvers had already abandon that title and was now Captain Marvel. And god dammit, Captain Marvel is suuuuper feminist +. I like Carol and I read Captain Marvel on a monthly basis and I really, really liker her redesign like its literally my favorite type of aesthetic appearance for a women. (People that read this blog way back or perhaps some of my other blogs etc, knows I am a big fan of Tomboys in general). Carol was awesome but---man was that series sometimes super cringe worthy. They where literally throwing it in your face, looooook women can fly air planes, looooooook women can shoot aliens nazis just as good if not better than men. And so on. So why people complain about Kamala being a forced islamisation of Ms marvel they are completely wrong, she was long gone from the ms marvel title and was by then instead feminism+ as Captain Marvel...

However, I do agree that the throwing minority for PC points is tedious but I do not mind Kamala as it was not some retarded killing of Carol that could make her a exist. One thing to really note with Kamala is that she does not have the exact same powers as Carol, she actually has completely different powers, they are nothing a like she just idolized Carol since she was a child and that is why she wants to call herself Ms.Marvel. This is nothing like Miles Morales becoming Ultimate Spider-man that was just retarded and was plainly done to just force in a minority into an already established character. Exact same powers, very similar personality and backstory but Latino, really lame and forced.

Kamala make sense, her comic is actually quite excellent. . If she had the same powers I would be annoyed by it absolutely, but that's not the case at all and Carol Danvers was not removed or anything like that.
 I think everything is fine with Kamala Khan.

The only issue with her which I agree with is the overall PC overhaul of a lot of characters or new stories, which in the end (or already has) will diminishing the potential for the best stories and characters.

IF she was the only character like this it would be good, maybe even quite great.
 So Kamala out of context I actually like.


In the game on the other hand...she is just kinda meh. She has survive ability some utility but no real damage. So she lands in that bad category where the have lowered her from having good damage because she can do other stuff as well, but that is of course really imbalanced as many characters have high damage while having great utility, or support characters who also can do damage when needed and so on.

Kamala seems to be weak in the offensive aspect because they thought her avoidance would be so strong, that's my guess. I actually do like how her abilities and passive works, I think that its pretty good adaption from the comics, but its just so weak. She should have more debuffs, more buffs better stats etc to be playable.


Passives:

Her first passive is Malleable which is a copy from Mr Fantastic. And this is a pretty horrible passive, it makes sense that she has it so I think this right away comes to her core design, does it comically fits that she has malleable yes to a 100% degree, is malleable useful in the game? No, its 100% shit.

What it does is that it has a chance to reduce non energy attacks, if we ignore that energy attack is actually really common, with attacks that are psychic energy and so on.

Even if all attacks where flat reduced this would be bad, because it does not affect their debuffs, the secondary effects etc.
 Mainly it does nothing versus a modern agent. For example Spirit Blade does really low damage than it drains Health and Stamina, it does like 500 damage then +2000 drain. Even if Kamala would 100% flat remove damage this would still be a 2000 damage attack, only removing 500, of the total 2500 damage. And of course that is nothing when we also include that the attack randomize 1-12 dots..and also drain stamina. Signpost it does nothing versus etc.
 One could argue and say, well that is not so bad she is still good versus x and y character. Sure, but the agent will be in every battle. And most of the best characters have really good debuffs on their attacks or secondary effects, that is the obvious reason why they are top characters.

Basically Malleable does nothing versus any good characters and absolutely nothing versus the standard agent and the thing is that Kamala is already a bad Agent pick as she is as scrapper when the by far most common agent is a Bruiser.

Compare this passive to a complete avoidance passive, that is night and day. Completely avoiding an attack is 10x better then just taking less damage. + All the characters who have passive % chance to avoid always avoid everything to or all melee/range. Where in this case she is still hit 100% by energy attacks (and I do believe psychic even if the aren't energy and that is not said)


Her second passive is also really bad, first of all it has recharge menas also gaining health back, very little but some health. This is just like the iso that does this and which is a good iso in PvE, while its horrible in PvP. No one ever goes out of Stamina in PvP I wrote an article about this year ago how the stamina on characters is far from balanced, this has been better adjusted over the years but its far from workable. Sure I love the stamina drain teams and they work now because it so much stamina abilities. But even when facing that kind of team, you have lost when you are in the stamina lock down so how would gaining very little life back do anything?

This part is clearly one of the worst passives in the game.

Then she also gains a little life each turn regardless which is by far to low to make any effect, this things to stack up to any importance.

Lastly it does also remove 1 damage over time effect which is ok, but compare that to Emma who removes all debuffs and gains 25% stat increase.


Kamala really has no passive (this is also the issue of Elsa Bloodstone so more on that on my next article as well).

For any character lacking passives is a huge deal, all new characters (excluding failed release like this) are put out with amazing passives these days. While old characters since years back have gained new suits that gives them good passive(or they stayed useless because the passives where not good enough) furthermore some characters have iso e.g invisible women that further improves their passive and then make them playable (well she is really low tier but with no iso and no passive she is utter crap so still a huge difference).

This is why Elsa does not work(spoiler for next article) good abilities no passive, but Kamala has NO good abilities and no passives.

These passives are completely indifferent to other characters and than as I will cover her abilities suck as well.

And this really annoyed me, she could have the same passive but they would need to be like 3x stronger at least. That really should not be hard for Playdom to realize.


-What I would do is have her remove all damage over time effects each turn, yeah that is still not an amazing passive but a decent passive (1 is a joke). Then I would have malleable be something completely else, because she has one of these "active passives" like Spider-man etc on her second ability which is a QA.
 So I wouldn't make it a defence passive but an offensive passive that would make her attacks be uncounterable and stealth because she is could reach from different places (kinda like Boomerang) and then add some kind of giant effect to her attacks like all attacks have ignore defence.


Abilities:

As I mentioned then she starts off the battle of course by using her Quick actions.

This QA works like a third passive for Kamala.

This is the only good thing about Kamala, she either has really high chance to avoid single target attacks or the team gets a high chance to avoid aoe attacks.
 But this is on rotation, so you will only have 1 active per round, this makes her team or herself be vulnerable to any player with a slim of intelligence. If the avoidance AoE is one you simply attack her or use aoe in the other scenario.

When activating the passive she also gains rising up - random chance for 4 basic stat buffs.

And after having activate this passive ---- well then she does not do anything.

All her other abilities are 3 horrible attacks that are useless.


First ability and her primary attack has weak point and combo set up.

Combo set up is very generic scrapper as it means she will do it for herself again on a infiltrator but its really, really low tier as its from the first version of the game and the game has gone over like 20+ power creep steps since then. Weak point is decent, next attack will critical. But both of these thing is pure damage and something any good team can shrug off with ease.

Then her third ability is wind up....next attack does 25% more damage (this shows she is so generic scrapper for that matter) + wide-open on the enemy so they take a little more damage from unarmed.

Clearly like many, many character this means you are supposed to go 1-3-4 so in 3 turns she can deal really mediocre ultimate damage to 1 target.
 While laying out no good debuffs nor any good things for herself at all.


Ultimate:

This ultimate is so lackluster.

It only exploits what one could guess, the buffs from rising up and combo exploits. It leaves them with combo setup for w.e reason.

This is horrendous by today's standard. Kamala really feels like a character that was released back in season 0.



Verdict:

Kamala really pisses me of in this game as all her moves make sense, just that they need to be vastly stronger.

She would not even be good as a starter character, she is in the level of Basic Iron Fist. But basic Iron Fist had better ultimate, well actually he has utility as he can heal himself or others. ..(Note that non suited IF is buffed then what he was pre season 0..).

She is another 0/10 character.

Marvel Avengers Alliance: Best Team PvP: Guide for best characters for PvP. Review Misty Knight

Misty knight is another pure damage character who does not do damage, sure she is not the weakest character in the game purely on the damage perspective but there are clearly a lot of character that dish out way higher damage, then their is characters who deal lower damage but way better debuffs, or characters that do the same damage but also has 10x better utility, defence abilities etc.

Basically she is a very uninteresting character to play with, she is only damage and she does not even excel at that.
 I was very disappointed having her as a PvP reward, PvP rewarded character has in the past been really good, then they have seen a huge decline to w.e name they could pull out of a box but then Cloak And Dagger was an amazing reward followed by Beetle who is a very meh character.
 Its been up and down the last 10 or so seasons.

Misty Knight is one of those low points.

 And I do think this is quite a big deal, compare her to for example the next character, Kamela Khan, that's  a 90 CP character, that does not mean anything. Just a new character for command points, its on PvP reward or/and Special operation heroes you expect them to be good. Right now when writing this, its a new quest for Moondragon, which is not hard but tedious as its to do 21 daily missions. And she seems to be a really strong character, I am actually thinking about writing an article about her, Mantis and the bunch of new psychic stuff. In her case it makes sense shes a daily hero reward, Mantis also seems pretty good, make sense as a SO Reward. Misty Knight is horrible so she in returns is a huge let down for a PvP reward and that was clear even before anyone even unlocked her.
 The thing is that as always when a character is like that in Marvel Avengers Alliance is usually because they don't make any sense, just some kind of half ass meshed together stuff. She has no coherency in her design and then no coherence in her gameplay ability.



( I won't bother going into her comic character, she turned fake evil or something before that she was just Iron Fist girlfriend I ever found her any interesting, overall Heroes for Hire where pretty bad but Luke Cage and Iron Fist has always been good addition to the main storyline of the avengers hmm, they are kinda weird like that)

Passives:


First of all really unfitting passive unexploited-able, which kinda goes for her exploit theme (then I just assume its some kind of reference to her being a Sassy Black Women...)

But it just makes zero sense in the game. This is a 100% tank passive, it makes exploit attrition and other exploit attacks have no effect on her based on the debuffs on her (the attack still does it base damage). Would be way cooler if she was truly immune to attacks with exploit.

Shes a Blaster and they rarely can tank. Blaster after Tactician is the worst tank class in how they are affected by other classes, a tactician tank triggers stealth on infiltrator's so that's pretty bad. But that's the class versus buffs, on the stat wise, Blaster followed by Scrappers are the worst tanks. Because low defence as Blaster has the lowest, but they also have really low evasion. And a lot of people miss out on that having low evasion means not only that you do not avoid attacks as often but that you also get critical hit more. So obviously blaster sucks as tanks, the only Blaster that have survive ability are characters like Amazing Spider-Woman who just have a very high evasion chance regardless of her actual stats.
 In Misty knight case she has a heavy damage reduction passive towards a lot of characters. But she still take high damage, so its just really bad. She do have a shield ability on herself but no other utility. For example compare her to Baron Mordo who has immune to fatal, but he also has astral form and random chance for shields. So he can hide away that makes him hard to kill even if hes a blaster and he has a better shield then her QA move.

She is a 100% offensive character and it really does not fit.

Her other passive is just a copy of classic Gray Widow. Where she will put mark for revenge on characters that attacks her which purely increase the damage, clearly these 2 passives have zero synergy.

Right away here we see that there is no coherency in the way she operates.

Note: Her passive is also worse for her over having it on Gray Widow. Because Widow can always retaliate against any given target as all her attacks are stealth. While Misty Knight may be attacked by a character protected by a tank and then she (nor her team if they cant go pass) cannot utilize this passive.


Abilities:

Misty Knight has a multi functional QA ability her third one.

Well her first option is not a QA and the best one, but the other 2 is.

So like many other characters she has 4 moves + some available QA. Clearly you either use her 3.2 or her 3.3 move as they are QA followed by either her 3.1 or any other ability.

3.2 is then a shield, which is a really bad shield is just a the most plain kind of shields where it blocks some damage until it is destroyed and only protects her, still quite common to start with but yeah this is bad. No heal, no extra damage no immunity to x.

3.3 the thing is that 3.3 is bad, its just really fucking bad. This could be one of the most redundant moves in the game, it does generalized. Which is Ok, it turns of someone class and that as a QA is kinda weak but ok. However, it also does winded and off-balance which is just the turning of scrapper and infiltrator respectively. So......it just doubles turn of those 2 classes, sure there are more characters who are e.g Tactician and can counter, like Cyclops with combat expertise but generally this is uber redundant.

Practically you will either shield yourself or generalize someone. That's how she starts her game.

Ultimate:

After this all her game plan is about using the ultimate as it has exploits on everything and critical, cannot miss etc but it only has it on marked targets......
 And she cannot fucking but marked on by herself. I mean really WTF. So you have to randomize the mark on someone as they attack her, then debuff them and then be able to attack them, hoping they don't have tanks or similar moves. Or you know just remove her mark.

Sure in a perfect world they will take a huge damage from this ultimate but realistically it never extremely hard to get in. Especially on any primary target, say you face a Nul or Pestilence you have to kill fast but they never attack her. Well then she never can ultimate them, that is horrendous. She has one of the worst ultimate in the games if not the worst. That she cannot focus the mark like Widow is just astonishing.


So her other abilities then, yes Now I started with her ultimate but its all about it in the end as her other abilities are crap and do zero damage. They are all about setting up the ultimate finisher which may not mark the target you are debuffing.


Her first ability, Is just pain train, which is really really horrible. As with Gwen its a bad debuff that stacks up and becomes slightly better, its nothing like the soulfire from Ghost Rider and even that is bad today.
 She has a high chance to do another attack. which then makes her trigger the second stack of pain train, which is still bad.
 She also puts om target focus that slightly increase damage taken, this combos with the next attack by herself so that's like the basic scrapper combo from back pre season 1 level of power.


Her second ability has Hobbled,,,again is she supposed to tank? Which is that it turns of stealth moves. It really has zero value for Misty Knight. It also gives them fumbled so people counter attack them an ok debuff but worse then flanked (+follow up attack) and then it has immobilized turning of melee attacks. This is actually pretty good, but the attack has low damage and only the immobilize debuff is interesting. Rest is crap and these stuff don't really boost her ultimate.

So her last thing is 3.1 This is an Aoe that does rattled which increase follow up stuff, w.e debuff and superior firepower which can random shell shocked which is good and some other stuff.

Really that's it?


She cant even set up the debuffs for her ultimate. Her ultimate is hard to use even ignoring the huge lack of concept on her marked for revenge.

Verdict:

0/10. the worst PvP reward to date.

Marvel Avengers Alliance: Best Team PvP: Guide for best characters for PvP. Review Spitfire

I have zero relation to Spitfire, I know shes from the UK team of heroes, shes a human bit by a vampyr and that gave her super speed...makes no sense, that's about it so unfortunately I got no comic rant for this character which I otherwise like to do. Except that her powers makes no sense.

 She has heightened healing etc by becoming some kind of mutate vampyr, but why super speed? It makes even less sense after the years of all other kind of vampyr stories in the same universe.

See back then as she is a very old character, it made more sense when no other character had a similar story. But for example what comes to my mind is the Jubilee story-line when she becomes a vampyr. And the whole vampyr x men story. After this Jubilee and Wolverine had a limited adventure series where he is to teach her to control her bloodlust which had some excellent parts when they also interacted with X-23(Laura - Daughter/clone of wolverine). But she never developed super speed, no one of the vampyr has it, Wolverine did not develop it when he was temporarily a vampyr etc. Sure they are all faster then normal humans but they are far from a speedster powers. Spitfire was a louse kind of explanation back 60+ years ago. But now its way worse with several vampyr stories, Blade, Morbius etc. I found very illogical, quite the plot hole kind of character. I know that she is supposed to be some kind of science / vampyr fusion but it just meh. 

Gameplay wise that definitely shows, she is just Quicksilver + power creep. I am not a big fan of the word power creep, but she is the definition of power creep. She is almost exactly like him, just better in all regards. She is very none unique because of this. 

 However, she is very good in the actual game, QS was always a top character and obviously than she is a top character +. So while he has become less and less prominent instead of buffing him they gave him tits and put him in a yellow dress. 

I really do think it shows that the designers of the game had not much to work with, in their defence. Because she have had so little story over decades, I can imagine their meeting. 

 Well here is a female Quicksilver,,,,and shes like fast and so on....Well she is also a vampyr.

Not much to work with and they ended up with the expected result of Quicksilver + a vampyr thingy. But also than extremely clear power creep,  its QS + Vampire healing + 2 in power. // End of Review we know what she is. 

Passive:

First of all she has the exact passive that defines Quicksilver. Which is that she takes 2 turns instead of 1 turn each round. And she also goes first each game (its something like a 95% chance to go first). 

Because of this she just like QS. Is great in PvP, always going first is amazing and while her power is not so high in PvE (but going first there is broken for perfect score) as she does 2 weak attacks. But in PvP with great stat boost she instead does massive damage.

(I did this exact math example for QS like 3 years ago)

So if another character does 1x damage per turn. She does 0.75 damage x 2 per turn. That's 1.5x damage per turn in total. Way better freaaking 50% more damage. And that is how its compared to mediocre character, because character like Iron Patriot does 3x damage turn 1. Hes clearly higher on the damage aspect.

 But yeah she does way more damage than most characters, and having a full pvp set for damage of course makes that X huge. 

She is one of the most played character right now and its this passive(and I suppose her concept of doing 2 turns in general) that makes it work. 

She is also of course a Scrapper, because she literally is just Quicksilver gender bendered. And is of course horrible for any infiltrator as then she can hit them 4 times in their face.

 And all her moves are stealth(just like QS,,jesus christ) and having stealth is by far the best on tacticians because than they are just immune to infiltrators. But scrappers are second best for it, as both are triggered heavily on attacking in single target, so being able to always go in safely and attack the opponents infiltrator is huge. And shes does 4 straight punches on them, where QS does 1 single - aoe, 1 single - aoe. He does more total damage but she does more damage to 1 target and for the kind of team she is played in that is actually a lot better. Much easier to finish 1 person of and that helps her other moves especially assassination move. 

But it does not end on this.

She also has offensive coordination!

That is really, really good. It works exactly like the classic avengers offensive, meaning that anyone in her team or herself can follow up on allies attack. Of course this further empowers her massive damage to single target, she also does 2 turns per round that is more trigger chances and she goes first so you might easily kill someone.

This is extremely broken, a classic team was just Quicksilver + Psylocke, where Psylocke would start with the coordination passive(and before this just vanilla QS + PSY in season 3-4 was the best team as well, even with no coordination ) this would mean QS attacks first and have a chance to trigger allies and 1 enemy could be killed turn 1. 

 Well Spitfire has that by herself, its a very clear reason why she is such a good character for hyper aggressive teams. 

This 2 passives together are, I will not say the best character self combo, but its top 5 at least. Because while Ares has both offence and defence coordination, that does not matter when you always go first. 

 And then she also has health regen. This is crappy passive, she just gains very low max health each turn And she likely has very low max health, its almost completely indifferent but its better then nothing and she already has I arguably the best passive double turn, but its more like double turn is the whole character just like with QS so hard to call it a "passive" in the same sense. But she has that and offensive coordination, great combo, so the little extra health really has nothing to do with her other abilities but is still there and maybe it will win a game or 2. 

Overall she has amazing passives. I can say right away that shes a 10/10 power character and if she did not have the health per turn she would stil be 10/10. (And no she wont be a 11/10 with it as she does have glaring weakness so the 10/10 is only in the correct teams and those team do make the healing worthless).

Abilities:

She has stealth on all her moves, which kinda like having a passive +. This is very important not just for the scrapper but for her third ability. 

Her first move is a single target attack, that has a chance for disoriented, same with her second ability. Shes so fast or something that people get confused.

You do not want to start with this ability unless if they have an infiltrator. It does not do that much, it does some damage, maybe it disoriented them, which is a good debuff. Then it also give her a stack buff, that increase attack and defence just like QS has,,,,,,yes wow so original, well QS is better as he gains accuracy over defence which increase damage and as they are both uber damage oriented that way better. But she stil gains attack which is by far the important stat.

So you want to invest time in building up that somewhat and spread around the disoriented. Its a decent move and often isoed with bleeding as that will stack with her 2 and ultimate.

Her second ability is the money start move.

This is the typical move that many character has that you always start with, even against many infiltrator teams this can be the better start.

It does terrible damage, but its a very simple good debuff. I will say that it would probably actually suck if it cost 1 whole turn for her. But she can use this and then attack with her first ability or even sometimes the ultimate right away. It makes it really nasty.

What it does is that it sets up open wound which bleeding 1-3 + random chance for ravaged (x2 on bleeding) that is just really good dot damage for an AoE attack that cannot be blocked. It also does tenderize which is like w.e some lower defence. But it can also disoriented. Bleeding on all is very good start. 

You wanna stat with bleeding and then do 1 to stack up.

Her basic plan goes like this 2-1-1-4, 4(ultimate) exploits bleeding from 2, but also consumes the stack gathered from using 1. Great simple way to kil of almost any characters.

Ultimate(s): 

She is ridiculous strong, becasue its like she has fucking 2 ultimate. I mean honestly WTF. She has the 4 as a finisher ultimate that does HUGE damage and its super easy set up as she does 2 turns per round against some players just going 2-4 can be a kill. Especially if the team helps her with coordination. 

But then she has the assassin ultimate of Electra, X-23 etc Where you simply kill someone at 20% or lower life. That is a typical ULTIMATE. So yeah she has 2 dam ultimate. 1 that is good after set up and 1 that can finish of anyone. 

The 4 is pretty simple, it just an exploiter. Bleeding exploit is great as it can stack over 1, using this one late with 5 stack  and it does insane damage on bleeding 3 targets. It also triggers the bleeding stacks for some extra damage...

However, its her 3 ability, the assassination move that's her best move. 

Its literally just X-23 classic kill move but BETTER. 

Its Stealth(X-23 / as War got this - that's the suit + move) having stealth on it was what made Electra trump X-23, that was her "power creep". Now we get this third women with it, that has stealth + 1 more move before, to lower their health + better effect afterwards. 

Assassination moves are strong moves as they kill a target for sure, they are preventing resurrect effects. And back then when it was a new thing it actually only was effective versus the Agent as Phoenix got nerfed and the agent with resurrect kinda faded out. But now! NOW that is super important to have. In this meta for last 4-5 seasons healing preventing and 100% death is extremely important. So she has that just like the Ultimate for other characters. 

Note: That's the only thing their ultimate does(and War is a top character), but Spitfire has it way better

Excluding that she can first take 1 turn to lower their health making it easier to trigger. She gains FULL LIFE.

Not just some life, no no. Full HP and Stamina, and uses her stamina a lot and is extra weak versus straining etc, so gaining stamina can be the game changer. For me a Spitfire in defence getting this off can be the wining move just because she goes form 10% stamina to 100% stamina. 

Even without gaining anything afterwards fatal blow + stealth its great. And having freaking full hp its so, so good in PvP. 

Lets not forget she can combine these moves.

Have full stacks, do 4 to almost kill someone in a 2v1, than eat them and go back to full hp. Broken, so broken.

Verdict:

She is easily 10/10 for offensive teams, this is still her big drawback. While she does insane damage and can heal herself she also does damage, she goes first sure and can trigger coordination etc. She is the best character in the game for Lucky pvp AI starts that just kills 1 enemy right away. But her problem is still that she has zero utility outside of damage or boosting te damage of the team.

She is 10/10 clearly, but the team has to be aggressive. The team with her is almost always full on attack stat and low on the defence, this makes them auto lose versus heavy defence teams and versus ethereal plane, diamond blocks, life drain(agent), w.e all those kind of super passive that makes you damage immune so to speak.

I found her interesting in this meta, sure she the best for aggressive oriented teams, but those teams SUCKS. They really do suck a lot, for a long time. I do think as I wrote in the recap that for example Cloak and Dagger + Spitfire is a nightmare because they both have so insane damage and then CD survives and shit kills you so easily. Other than that or getting lucky at start she will lose.

Because in the end she is so, so. Weak versus 1 character. And that's the Agent!

In general she takes on almost everyone with like 9-1 or 10-0 Which his amazing but, and that is a big but. She 0-10 versus the agent. The by far most popular Bruiser style agents just heal themself on her and she cannot even damage them and her kind of teams are so weak vers life drain Agents in general it does not help that she actively heals the agent more.

Taking 2 turns and doing to low damage to go over the Bruiser iso + signpost use, interestingly makes her have amazing overall win ratio character to character but she is countered by the mandatory character in the game. Not only does she not damage the agent he will drain her stamina faster as she takes 2 turns and than she cannot anything and it does not help that she is also weak versus Angrir, or for example yesterdays review Baron Mordo, both of them further removing stamina. (Obviously the team I talked about yesterday with that exact combo - BM+Angrir + Drainer Agent, is a 1000% win versus a Spitfire team). 

In het end she is playable absolutely, she is great in AI Defence becasue she is one of those lucky type that can win right away. ( I wrote an article about just that a few years back and she is just QS+2, so she is one of the top AI characters in general).  But she is hard countered by the agent, so I would not recommend using her. Still shes a 10/10, sure she so not a 10/10 versus the current meta, but in general she is possible the strongest offensive hero, so its hard not to say that she is top tier. 

 Doing what she is intended to do, pure damage she the best. 

Marvel Avengers Alliance: Best Team PvP: Guide for best characters for PvP. Review Baron Mordo

I have always liked Baron Mordo as a character and I love Dormammu and clearly there is no fucking way he would ever work with the good side hes another lockbox hero that makes absolute no sense. 

 I am not gonna go into his character to much, I just wanna say how much I always loved the Spider-man tas episode (2 parter) when Venom Returns, the creation of Carnage + then the return of Baron Mordo with Dormammu. Really one of those cult classic episodes. 

Baron Mordo is the classic Rival to Dr.Strange and to no surprise he shares some game mechanics with Dr.Strange while he mainly keeps his boss abilities, the astral plane attacks.

Right away one can see that Baron Mordo is an excellent character for 1 obvious reason, he is a better Kitty Pryde. Kitty has been one of the best character in PvP since season 1 and while she has become weaker and weaker, with the addition of more psychic attacks she was still really good. However, she has fallen a lot now with the ethereal becoming strictly weak versus magic. And there is a lot of magic users, still the ethereal iso is one of the best in the game, its still one of the best passives in the game(the one Kitty has).

But sure I would not play with Kitty these days, the reason why is becasue she only has Astral plane + 1 high damage attack with no good debuffs or utility, well she counters really hard during the start of the game, she still hard counters Nul etc, so she is not bad just not as broken as before. 

All that being said, Baron Mordo is just way better then her and they do make a really good team togheter even more if you use the old school weapon that gives astral plane to the agent as well, then the whole team is immune to most damage for 3 turns. That is a 100% win versus a lot of teams in the meta. 

 I think its pretty obvious that Baron Mordo is strong, hes biggest weakness is that his Ultimate is crap, really crap. The ultimate is just Invisible Women's ultimate. I mean 100% copy and she has one of the worst in the game, especialy for AI Defence so that is a real downer for him. However, it is still not that bad as Astral strategy is by far usable in attack, as you wanna hide away in astral plane sometimes longer and just recharge, there is no way the AI will do that anyway. So its a moot point in a way, you are not gonna run Baron Mordo in defence(I do see it sometimes even at high rank), of course the ultimate still sucks in attack as well, but it a massive negative to have in defence so just don't. 

Passives:

Astral Form: This is not his starting passive but just like Kitty(without suit) it is what you are gonna jump into right away and just like Kitty (now days, in the beginning of the game Kitty would leave Astral form with all attacks) he can attack from the astral plan while keeping his Astral Form, this makes him immune to all attacks except psychic and magic. 

First passive of Baron Mordo a unique passive, which is that he is immunity to fatal attack, attack that kill you at 30% hp or less or attack that kill you at 20% form the debuff that makes all attack fatal but at a lower percentage threshold. Hes also immune to insta death in general this means that if e.g Phoenix is in the team and can resurrect you cant kill Baron Mordo without getting a resurrect even if the attack damage was enough to kill him. This makes Baron Mordo amazingly strong with the resurrect iso.

 With it you cannot kill him pretty much. He cannot be prevented to trigger it by despair(most likely) and then after resurrecting at half life he can go and hide in the astral plane again. Hes extremely hard to die with. 

I used him in attack with Emma Frost 4-5 seasons back and it was unstoppable, Emma with Diamonds last forever so she takes no damage either from straight up attacks and the they both never die pretty much. And that was before the resurrect iso existed!

Right away here from these 2 passives, the way the interact with each other and how just ridiculous hard he gets to kill makes him extremely potent in attack.

The resurrect iso is the best iso for Kitty as well as being able to hide away after 1 death is so favorable, the timing it takes to die will let her phasing cooldown very likely be off cooldown again. 

 Baron Mordo than being immune to fatal attacks is really broken. 

To make it even better he has Desperation passive for all attacks.

Desperation is when an attack deal more damage based on life missing.

Baron Mordo has that on all attacks!

With a character like him that can be immune to damage at 10% health, yeah that is extremely dangerous for the opponent team not to kill him from full life when he is vulnerable, this of course works great with not being able to be fatal blown (and than even better with resurrect on top of that)

Furthermore this passive also gives him Measured, which was a unique ability for Baron Mordo that attacks do more damage when high on stamina (until Cloak and Dagger got the same thing and they can pick either desperation or measured) This is not fantastic, the damage is boost is low, really low. Otherwise it would be way to strong in the start of the game, but like many passives its better then nothing.

Lastly he has the same passive as Dr.Strange has, he can summon shields for himself or allies before they are attacked. Which a decent passive. 

Overall he has very heavily passives for survive ability all of them together does make him tough to get rid of, this with more damage the lower health he has is a great combo.

Abilities:

First of all you always start with his second ability. This has multi functional, but its more like he has 5 moves.

The second abilities are so vastly different this is just a way to put 5 moves on him, but on the same time. This move is not do anything except triggering his "real" passive. I would say its way to not make him overly broken as he then does not start with Astral like Kitty does, but I am sure that one day we will get a alternative costume for Baron Mordo that does start in the astral plane. 

Anyway as soon as its his turn you active astral plan, always no reason not to its a Quick Action as well so it really is just a pure activation thing. Kinda like Spider-man's spider sense, double evasion and QA this you also likewise always active as fast as possible.

After this you will not use his first ability except just before the astral form runs out of time.

 This is exactly like how Kitty works. The other moves will not turn it of and the first attack instead exploits the other abilities debuffs.  

Because of this lets look at the other 2 moves before. 

His second attack than, is a weak damage wise attack but it does 2 things. It does not turn of his astral so you are safe while hitting people with it, then it also adds in straining, which is the debuff that drains stamina.

This is very interesting as Agent with astral form + signpost as for long been one of the best combos in the game, in the first seasons of the game (season 2+) the fury demon set up with astral form was the best agent equipment by far. Baron Mordo fits great for the agent, you hide with both of them and he helps out with removing stamina so when you have to go out of astral form they cannot attack you anyway.

Now, its not that good of a stamina remove so don't count on it by himself but stacking i with other characters and it will effect the game.

However, it also gives them despair, the debuff that turns of healing and resurrect, read my latest recap about Despair. Its one of the most crucial debuffs to have right now with so much self healing characters especially to kill an agent. While its only single target its excellent to have it. Its so good that for example Angrir can still have it isoed when in a team with Baron Mordo as then you can for sure always prevent them from healing. 

The damage of this attack is very low but it has a great synergy with the Agent and despair is always top notch debuff. 

Then we have "sinister summoning"

This is a fantastic ability. It does no damage but its stealth summoning, it will hit everyone cannot be blocked etc. All of that is awesome then it 2 of the absolute best debuffs in the game, it has chaos shoot like Wanda, where it randoms all kind of debuffs and it also has breakdown where it randoms other debuffs. Both of these stack and the opponent can get like 1-10 debuffs and its on all opponents with unblockable. 

Its broken, this is broken. You will for sure do huge damage in total PER TURN!

+ They will have their stats reduced, you can get stuff like deathfrost that reduces stamina and of course soulfire that removes all buffs. Breakdown is extremely potent as we can see with the new agent weapon Spirit Blade. This attack is kinda like spirit blade I suppose but a little weaker, but you can use them both. IF you are gonna use Baron Mordo today, you would for sure combo that with Sprit Blade and Signpost on the agent. And that is gonna be stamina damage like crazy.

And he can do this without leaving Astral form + with iso this ability is a free action. '

This ability is amazing the debuff utility is insane and he is still safe, this the move you start with after going astral and then you wither them with the second ability. 

His first ability then exploits attrition this means it deals more damage on the number of dots on the enemy. While it also exploits straining the debuff from his second attack. So yeah its very simple you debuff them and before astral runs out you attack the main target with this. Its not amazing damage and actually its very random as its based on number of successfully placed dots, but his other attacks dels no direct damage so this is the go to finisher move. It also does no damage at the start when they have no debuffs on them.

This again also makes him so strong when the Agent is using similar item sets e.g Spirit Blade also sets up for this attack. 

Ultimate:

The ultimate is that 1 enemy character is locked away, they cannot do any attacks(except the bes ones like signpost) and they cannot be attacked. 

I was a little to hard on this move before, while it is a crappy ultimate and exactly the same as Invisible Women, it is better for Baron Mordo to have it. They are equally bad, they are 100% the same, but Baron Mordo can still hit over the shield as he can use magic attacks that passes over it. So while Invisible women can do nothing and will 100% lose in a 1v1 Baron Mordo AI can still do something. 

 However, even with that many top characters especially the agent is not effected by this wall and than Baron Mordo just wasted a turn for nothing. 

Baron Mordo does also of course have a huge number of damage over time effects, so where invisible woman really cannot utilize this ability att all with Baron Mordo you can dot them and then wall them of so they die in a 1v1 slowly, its not optimal but its way better then her. He also does shield, and avoid attacks, so hes like a far superior version of Invisible woman.

Verdict:

Baron Mordo is a top character 10/10 in power!!!

Hes extremely strong, he has huge debuffs, can random like all the different dots while he can also turn of healing/resurrect which is a vital thing to have in the game meta. 

He also immune to damage from like 90% of the game, which means like 50% of the characters in PvP. Even if he cant avoid an Angrir at all, he can avoid e.g Spitfire, or Rocket Raccoon so those games are 100% win. 

I will say do, that people are using more and more magic iso for their attacks because a standard iso for Cloak and Dagger, and Nul etc is the ethereal plane iso. That really works in a disfavor for the viability of Baron Mordo. And a big reason why I wont use Kitty as she is 100% on he phased.

However, Baron Mordo has great utility in his offensive debuff play, where Kitty is just pure damage. Kitty is actually pretty bad she is all about the phased, Baron Mordo even when they can hit him. He will do so much for the team, in right kind of team at least.

The combos for him are quite simply, you either use more immunity, for example than Kitty. Or other characters that can go immune to damage all the time, he does work good with Cloak and Dagger, they have extremely high evasion + damage over time. But he is best teamed by far with Angrir. Agent with Life/stamina drain + Angrir with that as well and then Baron Mordo with more stamina drain and also damage imunity, immunity to fatal and if isoed resurrect, just like the agent and Angrir aslo has. Yeah that is hard to kill, a lot of debuffs and a lot of stamina drain so they cant move,

Hes only problem is of course that poor AI cant use him efficiently, it does not break the Astral that often so its not terrible but just like with Invisible Women it may wall them off with no dots on them for example and that is often just a 100% wasted turn.

But he is one of the best attack heroes in the game by far.