Building Powers from the Bottom Up

by Madam Marvelous
#26130

Hi. As a BADGE probationary field agent, I'm working on earning my training badge. Part of that comes from helping heroes understand how to utilize the different tools available from BADGE to help them be more effective during combat. Today, I want to talk about how powers work.

First, let's start with some thing basic. +1 level = +15 Power Cards

Divine Fire: Tier 5

Every time you gain one level, you can add 5 Attack Power Cards, 5 Defense Power Cards, and 5 Movement Power Cards to your available power counts. 

Level One: 5/5/5

Level Five: 25/25/25

Level One-Hundred: 500/500/500

Level Five-Hundred: 2500/2500/2500

and so on and so on...

Power Cards each have three stats on them. Attack in Red, Defense in Blue, Movement in Green. They can be tiered up from Tier One to Tier Five by paying variable Morphon Point costs. Tier Five gives the card twice the original values in each statistic. A Power Card, like Divine fire goes from being worth 70/25/30 to 140/50/60 if raised to its maximum tier.

Through time and effort, your collection of Power Cards will grow. The question is, how do you best make use of the cards you have. Is tiering every card worth it? It tiering any card worth it? How do Power Cards determine your overall ability score?

Let's start there. A very useful tool you have to answer that question is found under your Powers tab. This is where you can purchase Power Cards for your character. The second option is Train tab, where you will find an option for Power Counts. Select that, and in order, you can find the Power Cards listed from highest value in each of the three categories; Attack, Defense, Movement.

For each of the three categories, your highest value Power Cards for each type of card will be used. So, for a level 100 character, the top 500 ATTack Power Cards will be used to determine your ATTack value, the top 500 DEFense Power Cards will be used to calculate your DEFense number, and your top 500 MOVe Power Cards will add together to form your MOVe. This is all based on the highest value number for the card based on the tier of the card. 

Looking further down on the Power Count list, under the MOVe Power Cards, you can see that the bottom cards being used are very low in value. Two of the bottom three Movement Power Cards are differently tiered Crafty Dodge. There are also 53 Tier 5 Crafty Dodge Power Cards slightly higher up. The highest tiered Crafty Dodge Power Cards have a value of 36/40/50 and there are an additional 31 card with lower values.

Light as Air is a Bux Power Card that if tiered fully would have 20/18/84. It is an option to purchase the Light as Air Card to replace any number of the 84 (53+31) Power Cards with a lower MOVe and gain 2856 toward the Movement total, but it would cause loss of some ATTack and DEFense. Depending on the event, this might be an advantageous option. Remember, all of the total value from Power Cards is modified by the bonuses granted by gear. 

This character being used as an example is below level 60. Even at this level, it is clear to see that Power Cards gained in Fight Clubs, such as Crafty Dodge, Pure Force, and other cards like Ice Shield don't take long to fall into disuse and might actual be best not tiered. 

As you play, you will find that Power Cards come in many different ranges. Which Power Cards you tier, and how much you pay to tier a card is a very important consideration. Cards that have a MP cost of 10MP to tier/level(such as the Teamwork Power Card from League Wars and Ice Kinesis from the Frostuary Event) will cost a total of 40MP to take to Tier 5.

 

They are both ATTack cards, but Ice Kinesis is 38 points higher than Teamwork ATTack value, 3 points lower in DEFense, and 8 points higher in MOVement. That means after tiering, it would be 76 better in ATT, 6 worse in DEF, and 16 better in MOV.

Compare that to the higher value Strong Team Power Card given to higher divisions during league wars. That Power Card costs 20MP to tier one level.

Tiering Strong Team costs twice as much, but the end result is 70 lower in ATT than Ice Kinesis, 12 better in DEF, and 8 lower in MOV at to tier values at a cost of 40MP more.

As long as a player is gaining levels, it is worth considering not tiering cards at all. Often times, the saved MPs can go to purchasing spins on the Nova's Mystery Shuffle and winning quality Gear and Power Cards or be used during BOOST sales to purchase larger quantities while prices are low.

The value of tiering power cards comes competitively when you remain at one level or have all quality cards in your inventory and can essentially double the effective game value of a card.

The exception to this is the top 5 and 20 cards in your deck during Duel or Brawl challenges. Then only the value of the top 5 Power Cards in each category are used for a Duel, or the top 20 Power Cards in a Brawl. Otherwise, tiering your cards may not bring you the best value for your MP collecting efforts.