The importance of roster construction
IKON
Member Posts: 1,359 ★★★★★
I consistently see posts asking who to rank up, and normally those people get really good advice in a vacuum. This game isn't played in a vacuum though, so we need to do a better job with our advice.
It is extremely important to build a roster that can handle different types of content.
So instead of should I rank this character or this one, ask yourself these questions.
1. What class are my current high ranked champs?
Reason: Clearly we would like to avoid ranking only one class. KM, Blade, and GP are all great, but if you rank them all up at the expense of the other classes, you may find some things become more difficult then if you diversified. This has become even more important with Variant difficulty release.
2. Do my current champs rely on buffs or debuffs?
Reason: We don't want to have problems when we face champs immune to debuffs. If your highest champs all rely on bleed, you face issues on immune nodes
Solution: Rank a champ that buffs themselves to diversify your roster
3. What are you trying to achieve with the rank up?
Reason: Not all good champs are good at all things. Are you looking for AW Offense? Defense? Do you need to make your questing life easier? Are you looking for an lol champ?
Have a goal that your rank up achieves
4. Do you like the champs play style?
Reason: Even if the champ is great, if you don't like playing them, its a bad choice. Do try them out at lower ranks so you can get used to them though.
There are almost certainly other questions I missed, that maybe others can suggest.
Just remember that decisions are not made in a vacuum, and ranking the best champs you have may not be the optimal move if you already have a strong character who already accomplishes the same thing.
It is extremely important to build a roster that can handle different types of content.
So instead of should I rank this character or this one, ask yourself these questions.
1. What class are my current high ranked champs?
Reason: Clearly we would like to avoid ranking only one class. KM, Blade, and GP are all great, but if you rank them all up at the expense of the other classes, you may find some things become more difficult then if you diversified. This has become even more important with Variant difficulty release.
2. Do my current champs rely on buffs or debuffs?
Reason: We don't want to have problems when we face champs immune to debuffs. If your highest champs all rely on bleed, you face issues on immune nodes
Solution: Rank a champ that buffs themselves to diversify your roster
3. What are you trying to achieve with the rank up?
Reason: Not all good champs are good at all things. Are you looking for AW Offense? Defense? Do you need to make your questing life easier? Are you looking for an lol champ?
Have a goal that your rank up achieves
4. Do you like the champs play style?
Reason: Even if the champ is great, if you don't like playing them, its a bad choice. Do try them out at lower ranks so you can get used to them though.
There are almost certainly other questions I missed, that maybe others can suggest.
Just remember that decisions are not made in a vacuum, and ranking the best champs you have may not be the optimal move if you already have a strong character who already accomplishes the same thing.
27
Comments
There are layers to this that I use to evaluate champs for rank up (or, say, going for in arena) and at some point it becomes very specific and personal to me, but at a high level and on broad strokes I tend to look at champions in terms of a few basic categories:
1. Power control. More generally, if you face something that gains a lot of power, what can the champ do to deal with that. There are obvious answers: Magik can power lock and power drain, for example, while Vision and Dr. Voodoo can power burn. But there are also sometimes unobvious answers: Iceman can just let them get to SP3 and eat the special with Ice armor, because he can't take more than 5% damage from it anyway.
2. Immunities. Are there effects the champ is immune to, or resists, or otherwise shakes off that would be useful. Iceman is the obvious one here: triple immune to bleed, poison, and incinerate. Of course robots are immune to bleed and poison. Less obvious are champs like Rogue that shake off all debuffs, including damaging ones, very fast. When Iceman eats Domino's SP3, not only can he reduce the damage to almost nothing, he's immune to that killer bleed that comes afterwards.
3. Damage. Not just how much damage in general, but how that damage gets delivered and how quickly and in what way. Star Lord can deal a ton of damage, but he needs to build a lot of combo. In anything other than a very long fight, you'll never see all that damage. That's (one reason) why people like Sparky a lot: you can build up poise way faster than Star Lord can build up combo, and he can crit very often. But then there's Void. The damage he deals from attacks is actually not that great. But he can deal damage without even attacking the opponent. He slowly builds degeneration debuffs just standing there, and it is almost impossible for the computer AI to hit you often enough to build combo to erase them. Eventually, he can just watch a target disintegrate. That can be very valuable when fighting things that are hard to attack, think evade champs like Spiderman or Autoblocking champs like MODOK or IMIW. And then there's Archangel. Depends on bleed and poison to get full damage, but if the target isn't immune to either, AA will straight up murder them.
4. Sustainability. Basically, healing, although sometimes in special cases damage mitigation. There are lots of places in the game where you have to fight one fight after the other in a very long path. You might be able to win every single fight but if you're ending those fights at half health that might mean you need potions to keep going to the end. Champs with regeneration can basically run paths continuously while gaining or not losing much health This can save you resources, on top of just being a good thing to have in a single fight. Wolverine is the most commonly recognized here, but his regeneration while extremely powerful also has a bit of a random element to it, which means you can get unlucky and just not have it. Rogue on the other hand is very dependable because you control the healing using SP1 and it always works. Bonus points: it scales with your attack, which means anything that boosts you attack also boosts your healing. Rogue loves the flare node.
5. Special utility. This is a general catch all for "does this champ do something that I know from experience is very valuable in many situations the game likes to throw at players?" For example, Magik nullifies all buffs when using SP3, and the more buffs nullified the more damage you deal. Think about all the content with hard to kill champs that just stack tons of buffs to kill you. Void can stop and even reverse healing as part of his stacking degen debuffs. Think about all the content with champs you can't kill because they just keep healing everything back. Killmonger can become indestructible for a couple hits when using SP2. Think about how you might control that to completely ignore one big attack.
This category eventually becomes the whole game when it comes to thinking about roster. Ronan's buff-boosting stun. Mephisto's soul contain. Ghost's ... whatever she's doing with the backslide and attack. Eventually, the first four become training wheels you discard, and you start seeing every champ as individual pros and cons. Not just what they do, but how they do it, and when they can do it, and what you need to master to get them to do it.
Awesome advice. Power control and immunities for sure need to be considered as well.
Kabam has been making buff nullify obsolete you say. Fascinating.
Nontheles is also important to consider our own style of playing, as an example stark spidey is an awesome champ but no many people enjoy building those charges, same thing with Sentinel or maybe sabretooth. That said I think it's very important have a time to use that champ you're thinking on rank up and see if he matches your style.
In my alliance there's a guy with 4/55 guillotine which most people wouldn't advice to rank up, yet he is absolutely amazed by his guillo and there's pretty much nothing he couldn't achieve with her.
quake in a nutshell(with the exception of 2). all of these traits have been culminated into one beautiful being.
AA for ability reduction (didn't have others back then) and general major damage. MVP in a lot of solo content!
Blade + Spark + GR for war attack and A5, also core team for EQ. I waited until I had all 3
Rulk for poison immunity and uncomplicated damage. He isn't bad anywhere.
Gulk for poison immunity, anti-degen and synergy with my 5* Hela
KM + ST for the synergy + both are great tools in their own right
Magik for power control
Took 5* Sentinel to R3 5* for double immunity + war def, over 5* SL because I already had enough hard hitters. Will get to SL when I go for LOL.
5* NC to R3 as well, same for 5* Blade, who, upon reaching R4, will replace my 4*.
And Hela to R4, AQ queen for me with Gulk + 4-40 Rags.
And yes, I have Wolverine, Iceman, Venom, Carnage, VtD, GP, Voodoo and a bunch of others. Thing with them is that I wouldn't use them often (although honestly, 5* Venom is going R3 next)
My top champs are : Blade, Medusa, GR, Nebula (6*), LC
As you can see they all are from different classes: Skill, Cosmic, Mystic, Tech, Science and they serve different purposes
Poison Immunity: Medusa, Nebula
Bleed Immunity: GR, Nebula, LC
Regeneration : Blade, Ghost Rider
Heavy Hitters: LC, Medusa
Ability Accuracy Reduction: Blade, LC, Nebula (robots), Medusa (robots)
I need a power drain and a mutant champ now.
Kabam has been making buff nullify obsolete you say. Fascinating.
Always interesting when people say that. I think generally this refers to Passive effects and abilities becoming more prevalent. It is interesting to hear that they're making them 'obsolete' though, lol. Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to say obsolete. Not useful against certain champs, sure. Obsolete. Not quite.
This does tie in nicely to the root purpose of the thread. Rank ups. As the OP and @DNA3000 laid it out quite nicely, I'm not going to do into extreme depth with this. Simply said, your long term goals for your roster should be kept in mind when ranking someone up. Especially when a greater amount of resources are needed i.e. 5* R5s and 6* R2s.
Also will the champion maintain their usefulness in the grand scheme. Some champs are generally amazing and are often 'choice' in rank ups. However certain champs (i.e. Ghost, Quake) require specific playstyles to max out their usefulness. Certain champs thrive on synergies or mastery setups. Some require their sig ability to shine. Some are simply great out the box as it were.
At the end of the day, eveyone will have their opinions as to who's best for what. Always a good idea to try them out before committing to a rank up as said prior. While some may rave about how great X champ is, if you don't like the way they function, it's not exactly worth while to rank them. Also, as previously mentioned, will they stand the test of time. A prime example of such is Magik. Still one of the top Mystics in the game and has been around for QUITE some time.