Asymptomatic

Good luck with this project, I dont know that much about Marvel but it seems fun

Not sure how feasible this is but I think best way to deal with how completely game deciding opening roll is to have a snake turn order going into turn 2. Player who goes first on turn 1 then goes 2nd after turn 1. I actually think the no re-roll system doesnt decrease player 1 advantage it actually just makes it even worse because the variance can completely take you out of the game. So player who goes first only goes first for the first turn and then goes second the rest of the game. The reason I think this is necessary is because first strike is just so devastating in this game, especially in large multi man fights where AoE is in play, on a good turn 1 you can KO 1 or 2 of enemies biggest threats before they even get a turn and on top of it you get the first full turn of the game when they are scrambling. Another way to decrease first player advantage would be to have same turn order but restrict turn 2 for player with advantage to 3 actions to match round 1 but then let player 2 have full actions. Or alternatively remove player 2 restriction on actions on turn 1.

Cant speak to how many times I win a skirmish get rewarded 5 bonus stars for the next fight only to have a fight which is 5 on 5 with a max star rating of 5 or something with 30 star restriction. It completely undermined the advantage I worked for and puts me on even terms with the AI.

Support Tier List This is ordered and will be included in this post when finalized. S ---------- A ----------- Agent Fortuno B ---------- Dreamstate C --------- Eagle Lad Doctor Wonderful Chimera D -------- Ceasefire F ------ Dupin

Alright I can just write if off as bad luck then(which after many years of playing card games is not abnormal for me). Was just wondering if there was a secret AI advantage.

I had a large scale finale with Fortuna about a half hour after reading this and she was by far the most powerful character in that fight. I settled on A for her as well because I almost lost my attackers to ridiculous RNG and realized if I did she couldn't win. Actually quite like her with Master Phoenix, who in my experience seems to strictly outclass Chimera despite being a star under him.

Is the randomness in this game true? It seems I have a lot of games where villains are comically lucky. My last fight my opponent from an incredibly disadvantaged position hit double 6 4 times in 6 rounds. I rolled snake eyes twice in a row(them zero). I've had fights where on defensive roll of 5-6 enemy has gotten it 5 times in a row without failure. These are just really statistically improbable...

I would still disagree on the quality over quantity point even if you only have two characters, because often if you choose two weaker characters and lose the dice roll for first turn advantage your weakest character simply gets killed or crippled on the first turn and you end up in a 2 v X anyway. Very good point however regarding the abilities changing with health states, always something to look out for. Now onto some of the heroes. I want to talk about Supports first. S Tier - Always pick if available, even if overused, these are broken/overpowered characters who are undervalued by several star levels and are nearly always good. A Tier - Pick unless they are overused or overkill or there are broken options available, sometimes they also can be bad for synergy or bad against certain enemies, but in a general sense these are some of the strongest Supports. B Tier - Generally good. Can be picked or not depending on other options or synergies, they won't feel too bad in most cases but also won't feel too good. C Tier - Situational. Only use to enable very specific strategies, for very specific counterpicks or location buffs, or as filler if stronger heroes are not needed. D Tier - Pure filler. These characters are weak and should only be picked if they are of no consequence to the fight at all. F Tier - Underpowered character, never pick, these characters are so bad that you'd rather pick nothing over them. *TBA characters need further testing and will be added at a later time. Agent Fortuna - 6 Star Mutant Hero Base Location - Boom Town Tier - A Arguably one of the best pure support characters in the entire game. Fortuno has just decent stats but combines it with one of the most overpowering kits in the entire game. Firstly, she has 16/16/20 defensive stats, which on their own are average, but at Health Level 1 combines with her Amazingly Lucky Dodge to give her a compound probability of 24 percent to be hit while In The Open. Even if you manage to hit her, her ridiculous bulk of 8HP will make it incredibly difficult to put her away, however she does lose quite a bit of defensive prowess on her dodge abilities as she goes down in health level. Her passive ability to give you more attacks is also one of the strongest in the game and enables swarm strategies to be possible where they would not be otherwise. Her free abilities are ok, but intentionally made to not be reliable, when they hit, they are absolutely gamechanging however, and they cost nothing to use. The real star of the show however in terms of her actives which is her Gives You Awful Luck ability, reducing enemy defenses by 2 for an entire turn with 83 percent probability of success with no checks. In addition, in the unlikely probability she fails an action she has a whopping 10 re-rolls. As contributor The Quartz Burro has pointed out however, she is a near offensive zero, and cannot solo win battles or win battles without an alive attacker, which diminishes her value in late stages of combat, and this keeps her out of S tier narrowly for her cost. Strategy - There is no actual reason to ever have Fortuna out of Cover, she has no real attacks and her only active ability has no stat check, keep her in ranged, throw her freebies out and see if they hit and debuff anyone you want to kill that turn. While fully in cover, she has virtually no chance of being hit by anything and is also nearly impossible to Outsmart or attack indirectly, from there she can provide passive benefits to your team while gimping enemy villains. However if you lose all of your attacks you will have problems, because Fortunas only attack deals 2 damage with a melee skill of 9, and she cannot heal or buff allies. Bee Girl - TBA Ceasefire - 3 Star Mutant Hero Base Location - San Habbershon Tier - D Even for a 3 star to me Ceasefire is unusually useless owing simply to his incredibly poor defensive stats. He has the utility to be closer to a situational pick but his stats really let him down in his role. The positives about Ceasefire is that he has a position change free ability, the ability to fly and has a 2/1 primary attack on a Support character. Unfortunately, his ability to fly is ruined by his paltry 16 melee defense with no defensive passives or damage mitigation. Against an average villain, he will be hit with a melee attack between 42 and 58 percent of the time, and when he gets hit, he is effectively crippled. He loses his 2/1 attack on his second health form, loses his ability to fly, and most importantly loses his ability to Carry to Safety, essentially becoming a terrible healbot who can only heal 1HP to humans and mutants only. The only thing saving him from F tier is the utility of Carry to Safety in health form 1 making him usable if absolutely necessary, but he should almost never be picked. Strategy - Resist the urge to Fly with this character, his Melee attack is too poor to really ever use outside of killing fodder villains or tokens, and again if he gets hit even once he's no longer a hero. Just simply keep him in Cover to maximize his defensive stats so you can teleport your actual useful heroes back to backline at the end of your turn. You can also heal for 1 since it doesn't take up an attack action. Chimera - 5 Star Alien Hero Base Location - Principal City Tier - C Chimera isn't necessarily a bad hero, however he is, in my opinion, quite overcosted for what be brings to the table, and could arguably be considered a D tier hero for how inefficient he is. Sure he is better than Ceasefire for example in every way, but you also pay 2 stars extra for that. He is also decent in puzzles, so you if you using him in puzzles and he gets a star increase because of it he is nearly unpickable in combat as 5 is already probably too much. The one niche that Chimera has is that he has access to the exceedingly rare Mental Attacks, although his mental attack stat is only 11 and probably will not hit most characters. Against characters with abnormally low Mental Defense, he can essentially stunlock them with his 1/1 Psychic attack. Outside of this, he has virtually no free actions, and a lot of his non-attacking actives use Outsmarting instead of Psychic, and his Outsmart Attack is a terrible 10. At full health, he can avoid ranged attacks 50 percent of the time and melee attacks 33 percent of the time, however, he is another character who depreciates heavily in value based on damage, and has no way of healing himself or others even as a support. At level 2, his ranged passive decreases to a 33 percent role from 50, and he loses a stat point on his already middling Mental Attack, which is the primary reason for using him. He also has a mental attack which moves enemies to "In The Open" but this requires a Mental Attack/Defense check and doesn't do any damage as well as counting as an attack. Strategy - Pick him against characters with low Mental Defense . The main ones that arent fodder characters are Doctor Yan , Metal Miss and some of the "berserker" type physical attackers that may wonder in from other cities. Against the characters he's good against, just abuse his 1/1 stun since that is really the only reason to ever pick this character. Against Doctor Yan especially you can stop him from using his powerful team buffs if you keep him stunlocked, and 11/15 Mental roll should hit 83 percent of the time before modifiers. You can also pick him against 16 Mental Defense characters but you are really pushing the boundaries of his usefulness here. Doctor Wonderful - 6 Star Mutant Hero Base Location - Centenary City Tier - C Doctor Wonderful is a character who may increase in my eyes depending on the more I found out about him, but as a baseline he is a very overcosted character. Wonderful has a few really good things going for him, the first being a very good Outsmarting stat of 13. The second thing is Wonderful suffers basically no stat or ability depreciation up until he is knocked out of combat, and the third thing is his Quick Thinking ability is one of the most overpowered free actives in the game and his I've Got a Plan is game changing if you can land it 33 percent of the time. However, Wonderful loses a lot of value when you look at his only real active ability being an Outsmart for a single power, which really isn't all that to write home about. The real problem with Wonderful is his complete lack of defensive utility, only having 16/16 defensive stats with no defensive passives. He is absolute fish food and if he gets dragged into the Open he has no means of defending himself. Ultimately, Doctor Wonderfuls entire usefulness comes down to his Mutant Imprint Ability, one of the most unique abilities in the game, if you have a good Mutant Imprint angle he may be able to provide a ton of value in battle. Strategy - Generally speaking, you want to keep him in Ranged Cover to hide his poor defensive stats, in venues where this is not allowed he probably is not pickable. Additionally, his upside is really only unleashed with his copy ability, I will update this at a later time to potentially go over abuse cases of this ability. Dreamstate - 4 Star Mutant Hero Base Location - Principal City Tier - B Dreamstate is a character I'd describe as "High B". She is nearly an A character that is held back by a few flaws that stop her from being truly autopick. First thing however is Dreamstate is an incredible pick for her cost, and would still be pickable even at 5 or 5 and a half stars. She has GREAT stats across the board, 18 Physical and Ranged Defense with 33 Percent Auto-Dodge on Physical and 50 percent on ranged at Health 1. This gives villains with standard Physical and Ranged attack of 11 a compound probability of 20 percent to deal ranged damage and 26 percent to deal melee damage to Dreamstate while she is In The Open with no modifiers. In addition she has an Outsmart Attack of 12 which is decent, and Physical Attack of 10 which is decent for a support. On the utility side, she has a free action which can outsmart enemy powers, and has automatic ability to close distance on characters in ranged positions. Her Teleport Allies ability being an active is one of the only thing that stops her from being A tier, while this is a very good ability, if she had the ability to gap close then teleport away in the same turn she would be a near overpowered hero, but as of now she will have to choose between the two, still the ability to change THREE ally position including herself without a roll is incredibly powerful. Now Dreamstates other critical flaw is that her health 1 form only has one health, and while she isn't crippled in her health form 2 and 3, she does lose her outsmart free ability and loses some defensive power. At health 3 she loses an additional 1 point on both melee and ranged defense as well as losing a 5-6 to 6-6 on her melee defense dodge. Still, she is tremendously useful, and the fact that you only pay 4 for such a powerful character makes her a strong option in most situations. I could even see an argument for A tier for her. Strategy - At level 1 health you want to Outsmart the enemy teams most problematic power every turn if possible, and while she still has this ability I'd prefer to keep her as healthy as possible and in Cover. With the defensive bonuses from defensive positioning, she will nearly be untouchable, and instead of attacking with her id just abuse her teleport to get all of your melee characters aggressive hits in with no downsides. She is one of the few supports in the game however that can be used in battles with no cover because of her standalone defensive skills are so good. Keep in mind, her gap closes have no dice role so she will be effective at stopping turtling characters and token spawners as well. Dupin - 4 Star Human Hero Base Location - Ravenholme Tier - F Dupin is intended to be puzzle character, in combat he provides virtually nothing. He has horrendous stats at all levels, he provides no real utility, and his health form 1 ability only lasts for 1 damage. After he is hit he inexplicably loses his gun and his 2/1 attack becomes a 1/1 melee attack with a base Melee Attack of 9. His only useful ability comes when he has literally and exactly 1 HP, where he can then boost ally ranged attack by 1 at the cost of an action. Outside of that he has a pretty good Outsmart Attack at 12 and can outsmart a power each turn as an active ability. Do not pick this character ever, unless you can only pick exactly 3 characters and he is one of them, but if that is the case, you probably already lost unless your partner is Captain Fantastic or Mr Infinity or someone like this. With the new feature which debuffs teammates with teammate deaths I would not even pick him as a fodder character anymore. Strategy - Use him in puzzles. If you absolutely must fight with him the only thing you can do is Hide In The Shadows for his 33 percent defensive passive to kick in and spam Street Smarts. Eagle Lad - 4 Star Metahuman Hero Base Location - Principal City Tier - C Eagle Lad is essentially a non-pathetic version of Ceasefire for 1 more star. Their kits are functionally very similar with the ability to fly, a freebie positioning ability and low attack, however Eagle Lad is superior in all other cases. He has solid defenses of 17/18 with 33 percent avoid on both melee and ranged. Giving standard enemies roughly a compound hit rate of 27 percent while hes in the air. He has a 1/1 Stun using Sonic energy on a relatively solid 10 Ranged Attack stat, as well as his primary active which is a guaranteed +1 buff on Melee Attack for a single character. In addition, unlike Ceasefire, he doesn't lose his ability to fly or move teammates around until he has 1 HP, meaning he doesn't fall off too hard with damage. Overall this character is nothing special but is a solid option for the cost, and could be argued to be closer to low B. Strategy - Keep him in the air unless it is too risky or he is getting closer to 1HP, and use his ability to buff a potent melee attacker to end fights quickly. He doesn't provide too much overall, but with a powerful front line ally he can get them in and out with buffed odds of dishing out damage. Avoid picking this character without a primary frontline attacker, and/or you need more offense and utility out of your supports.

I think the positioning abilities are easily underlooked, but they are among the stronger of the "free" abilities in the game. Regarding support characters in general, they are VERY strong if you can protect them adequately, unfortunately, I've seen quite a few games where they get blown up on the first turn, but if you can pair them with a character with Leadership and get first turn advantage you should be able to set up defensively and have a huge advantage in the fight. One character off the top of my head I know with such an ability is the generally overpowered Captain Awesome, who, for the most part should be taken in almost any situation barring overuse with the star system, he can nearly solo win battles on his own, which brings me to my next point. Quality over Quantity! It can't be stressed enough, if you have the option for one overpowered character versus two middling ones, always choose the overpowered characters even if you are severely outnumbered in a vacuum unless the stronger character is severely anti-synergetic with the team or enemy composition! For a practical example, if you are in Ravenholme and you have the option of taking either a combo of Rachael Noir and Risktaker for 8.5 stars or a single Soul Harvester, you should nearly always take Soul Harvester. Action limits in this game make outnumbering strategies much less effective, and under the current patch defensive stats are simply overpowered. (along with at least 2 roll invulnerability passives) It is worth noting that Soul Harvester is just in general one of the most overpowered characters in the game for his cost, and I will go into him specifically at a later time.

Hello fellow CBU enthusiasts. I have spent quite a few hours since the game released and reading the forums noting people struggling with the difficulty even on easier settings. I will note CBU is significantly harder than both CBH and most GD games to play but I will go over a few basic things to make the game play easier. Here is a few general rules to live by. Pre-Assess Every Battle This is probably the biggest thing players will have to overcome, spending more than 3-4 minutes on team selection is a very unique thing and the urge to just jump in and press stuff is overwhelming, but trust me, the games auto team chooser will prove to be a liability in the long haul, I would not use the auto team builder outside of easy mode or mods where the game world is much more hero favored for multiple reasons. 1: The Auto-Selector Completely Ignores Synergies In your team selection pool you will often have characters with either direct or indirect synergies with each other the auto-selector is not sophisticated enough to account for. Indirect synergies are like champions who heal only Technological characters , or characters which have guaranteed non actives to boost range attack. Direct synergies take form in devastating team attacks, which tend to be among the most powerful attacks in the game. The City Sweeper-Dark Justice combo for example can completely turn the tide of a fight even when heavily outnumbered, as BOTH get extremely powerful AoE attacks while partied together. 2: The Auto-Selector Overuses Characters Which Increases Their Cost One thing to be wary of in a long term game is your star costs, after 2 issues of use the characters will start to have a heavier costs of use and therefore lower your power budget you can allocate to certain fights, its for example very important to not 'overkill" certain battles by using powerful combinations or iconic heroes when unnecessary. ESPECIALLY avoid overkilling puzzle fights, as the auto-selector values raw stats it may put your big bad melee fighter in a 3 v 1 puzzle and increase his star costs by 1 for the actual hard boss fights. Pay Attention to Health States One of the most interesting things about CBU is the implementation of dynamic move and ability sets in relation to character health. While the initial thought of most turned based strategy players is to simply focus fire down enemies one by one and then outnumber, that is not ALWAYS the best idea in CBU for multiple reasons. Enemies generally do more damage at their peak health, most characters who are quite strong can do about 3 damage on full health, slowly dwindling down to 1 at lower health totals, if characters have AoE abilities, its even more important to lower them down to lower health states to weaken their output, as they can ended up wiping you out very quickly. Additionally, not all characters get weaker when low HP, some characters actually become very potent with last stand and special desperation mode type of abilities, so be wary of those. Pre-Plan Your Turns Before Moving The one thing you will want to do is make sure you are planning out your entire turn before you act for the most part, especially in these extremely convoluted battles where up to 20 people can be fighting at once, the information overload, limit on attacks and the intricacies of non active implications on turns is way too large to just hit things and go. Several characters have stat altering buffs or nerfs which can completely change calculations for an entire turn, and the last thing you want to do is miss 3 straight dice rolls only to find out your 6th character had a guaranteed buff to all melee skill users that turn as a non active. You may also want to plan to use weaker characters to knock your opponents out of the air or out of cover before laying the big kabosh on with your primary damage dealer. Positioning Matters You'll also need to drill in your head to be always wary of your positioning in each fight, while each character has their default bias of where they would like to be, positioning can be changed on every turn, and multiple characters have underrated abilities to cheat positioning at will with non active abilities. You'll pretty much never want to be "In The Open" on any character, so either get in your opponents face and bash them or make sure to get in cover or the air to avoid powerful AoE effects. In addition, closing the distance pulls the enemy into the open from out of cover permanently(until they move again) so exploit this with characters with boosted or automatic abilities to gap close to get rid of their defensive bonuses! I'll be updating this thread periodically with more specific assessment of the characters by region, after Ive gotten enough experience with them to give my impression of them, and potentially share ideas with other players on how these characters can be effective!