Character 'classes'

There's not really THAT much healing in the game. At least, not enough for a whole role to be based around it. You can't really cross-apply roles from MMOs because the way characters are composed and the way villains behave is completely different. This isn't raid decks in WoWTCG. Heroes might have a specialty, but pretty much every deck does a little of all of this, and I can't think of any that can't participate in more than one role. Even really focused decks like Expatriette or Ra have some options, and there are decks explicitly designed to do a little of everything.

It seems to me that the main roles are:

- Defense: Tanking and healing both fit this role. Basically, some characters excel at keeping the team alive and based on the way the villains work there's little difference between harmlessly absorbing that damage themselves and healing it. AZ is one of the best tanks because he has huge self-heals, but there's also the traditional "redirect to me and then mitigate it" style that Legacy can pull off.

- Damage: Self explanatory. Although there's somewhat of a divide between early game and late game damage. Unity or Wraith are useful in different ways than Ra or Haka.

- Control: Manipulating decks and otherwise preventing the villain or environment's stuff from ever going off. Visionary is the poster child for this role. I'd also include stuff like ongoing/environment destruction here.

- Support: Making other heroes better. Argent adept is the touchstone here, but the idea is letting other heroes activate powers, draw cards, give damage boosts, etc.

When picking characters, I generally try to have a little bit of each of these things but because the heroes are so flexible team comp can be flexible as well. The decks are versatile enough that you don't need a dedicated controller every game, but if you don't have any answers to Forced Deployment Voss is going to be pretty rough.

Related question: What are the hardest combinations of heroes vs. villains/environments?

I'm with Zero: some of those MMO categories can't exactly be applied to SotM. Sure, we use terminology like those sometimes, but it's still different for here. Usually, the "classes" I see in SotM are just 2: attackers and supporters. But those are very broad categories, obviously. When I say attackers and supporters, each hero within those two does their own kind of attacking/supporting, and there are still some kinds that are common. Tempest and Ra are both attackers, but Ra does focused damage and Tempest does AoE damage. Visionary and Argent Adept are both supporters, but Visionary focuses on deck manipulation and Argent Adept focuses on hero manipulation.

Similarly there are villain classes as well. My group has broad categories of sprint and endurance.

Baron Blade, Mad Bomber Blade, and Ambuscade are examples of sprint villains. There's no time to do magnifcent setups, you have to do damage and you have to do it now. Blasters/strikers/early game sweepers are a must and rock these villains.

Endurance villains are like Spite, Dawn, Voss. Individually, the villain cards aren't too bad, but if the villain gets set up, it's lights out. Deck control is very appreciated and required to avoid the hardest hitting cards in the game. Support and end game sweepers generally do well here because they slow the villain from getting out of control and can obliterate the villain in a single shot before things get too nasty.

I tend to group my heroes into "Support" (those who can buff the team - Legacy, Adept, for example), "Damage" (Ra, Expatriette, etc), and "Deck Control" (Visionary, Nightmist), even though the latter fits into the former. Plus, as mentioned, most heroes overlap any categories you'd put them into anyway. About the only character I refer to in relation to any kind of RPG-type-thing is that I refer to the Adept as a Bard, since based on my EQ experiences he fits such a title really well - plays instruments and sings songs to do a little bit of everything and be really good at supporting the group whilst also able to deal damage :D.

What i tend to do is grade them on a 30 pts basis. I grade 3 trees to do this. 

We have the offensive tree the defensive tree and the utility tree.

Most heroes can apply pts into all 3 but excel more in 1 then the rest. 

For Example Ra rits into the offensive tree at 23 pts and 5 in the defensive tree the 2. As Ra is filled with offensive ablities has some defensive abilies and very little utility. 

Then we have Nightmist She runs high in defensive tree at 15 pts. 10pts in the offensive tree and 5 pts in utility as she has some utility.

Then the Argent Adept with 20pts in utilty 7 pts in offensive tree and 3 pts in defensive.

I like this system. Do you have scores for everyone? I'm guessing this is largely subjective.

Though it would be interesting to assign each card in a deck to a category (with ties splitting the point, like motivation charge is .5 attack and .5 defense) so out of a scale of 40, we can see what a hero deck's numerical flavor is...

Did you score Mr. F around 10 across the board?

If you think Argent Adept is more offensive than defensive, you're probably playing him wrong.

Hmm abstract points may be fine but i prefer when we actually use numbers from the data we have, not just having a a hunch. I will try to look at all decks with this system and tell you how many points each hero have in each category.

Categories are:

Damage - All cards that deal damage(not to yourself) or increase damage ( P1)

Utility - All cards that support hero in a way other than defence does (P2)

Defence - All cards that redirect damage , reduce damage, prevent damage,  or decrease atack of the opponent, or heal the hero, or deal damage when hero is damaged (P3)

Support - All cards that support other heroes in any way or hinder villain in ways other than defence does (P4)

Control - Cards that destroy non hero cards, lock the decks, reveal cards on the decks, rearange decks, Return card to the deck, Move a card of the deck into other zone (ike moving a card from villain zone to player zone) (P5)

If card is in more than one category i will check it`s priority (P). Higher priorities beats lower ones. After that i will add bonus of two points based on the character card base power and one point for each of the incacipated powers. 

So here we go -

Mr Fixer - 13 damage , 13 utility, 8 defence, 4 support, 2 control ( Bonus +2 damage , +1 support, +1 control)

ExPatriette - 17 damage, 15 utility, 5 defence, 0 Support, 3 control (Bonus +2 utility, +1 bonus, +1 support, +1 damage)

Absolute Zero - 16 damage, 10 utility, 9 defence, 2 support, 2 control (Bonus +1 damage +1 defence +1 support + 1 damage +1 control)

Nightmist - 7 damage, 11 utility, 10 defence, 3 support, 9 control (bonus +2 utility, +1 defence, +1 support, +1 control)

Bunker - 13 damage, 15 utility, 9 defence, 0 support, 3 control (bonus +2 utility +1 support +1 defence + 1 support)

Visionary - 12 damage,0 utility, 8 defence, 4 support, 16 control (Bonus +2 support +1 control +1 control +1 control)

Fanatic - 5 damage, 12 utility, 11 defence, 5 support, 7 control (Bonus +2 damage, +1 support +1 support +1 damage)

Tachyon - 9 damage, 16 utility, 6 defence, 3 support, 6 control (Bonus +2 control, +1 support + 1 support + 1 support)

Legacy - 7 damage, 5 utility, 14 defence, 12 support, 2 control (Bonus +2 support +1 support +1 support +1 defence)

Wraith - 11 damage, 9 utility, 12 defence, 2 support, 6 control (Bonus +2 defence +1 support + 1 defence +1 control)

Ra - 15 damage, 12 utility, 9 defence, 2 support, 2 control (bonus +2 damage +1 support +1 control + 1 control )

Tempest - 16 damage, 4 utility, 5 defence, 8 support, 7 control (Bonus + 2 damage, + 1 support + 1 defence + 1 support)

Haka - 15 damage,6 utility, 17 defence, 0 support, 2 control (Bonus +2 damage +1 support +1 defence + 1 support)

I know this data is very inacurate but is fun to know which deck has how many cards of each type. I think the results are so flawed because utility is too broad category. But overall if i look on this numbers it seems that almost every hero is really well rounded in each of the categories.  Some results are quite interesting - lets look on visionary for example she is called the most controlling one type but she still has 1/4 of her deck full of damaging cards. 

The problem with making "objective" lists is that you can't just list how many support CARDS they have; there is also the relative effectiveness of the cards in question.

For instance, comparing Precognition and Infrared Eyepiece. They both do basically the same thing, but IE has the added benefits of a) being a power, and therefore being usable multiple times, and b) giving you a card draw on top of it.

There's kind of an intangible quality of "goodness" that each hero has in varying quantities that can't really be measured objectively.

I like the break down, but what's an example of a utility card? Where does drawing and playing extra cards fit?

I'm not sure what the bonus is in your categorization, so I'm ignoring them.  Here's a graph of each character:

Hmm... I'm not sure why there isn't a line from Control back to Damage, but I'm not going to bother fixing that now.

Well, for Expatriette, soul31 seems to be counting Arsenal Access, Reload, Quick Draw, Speed Loading, Incendiary Rounds and Unload as Utility cards.

There are many cards that can fit in multiple categories - rather than forcing them to fit in only one with prioirites, I think it would be more accurate to have be counted in every one of them. RPG Launcher does damage and control, and is a well liked because it does both, for instance. Or Invigorating Charge, Savage Mana, Twist the Ether, etc.

A problem we will have with any "typology" of heroes and/or cards is that we are trying to make them fit each in one "type" a posteriori, when there are no such restrictions in their design and game play a priori.

I tend to think of heroes using broad "roles", but did not write a full list - things like focused damage, spread damage, target elimination, damage management (of damage done by villains), environment management, ongoing management, card recycling, etc. Don't know if it can be helpful.

Utility is all cards that helps heroes who played them but in other way than defence or damage does. Playing extra card , using extra power, searching deck for an x card and ecetera. Bonus is categorization of character card - first his base power is treated like a card twice (because basic power is pretty big deal) and then each of incacipated powers are loosely categorized. If we add it all total is 45 (1 for each card and 5 for character card).

Ok i will try to do my next data collection but now without priority. Instead this is how it will be done. If card is belonging to only one category its worth 10 points , if to two categories each of category is worth 5 points, if to more than two each category each category is worth 3 points.  Also i will add new category - sacrifice. Now bonus will be calculed like this - category of base power = 10 points,  category of each incacipated powers - each for 5 points.

Sacrifice - All cards that you must pay for to use them by destroying cards, discarding them or dealing yourself damage or otherwise making you weaker like limiting your choice, unless bonus that they will give you is bigger than their cost. For example discard one card to draw one card is  a sacrifice card. Draw two cards and discard one - its not. 

Ok here we go:

Absolute zero - 135 damage , 70 utility, 90 defence, 20 support, 10 control, 75 sacrifice (defence +3 sacrifice +3 damage +3 defence, + 5 support + 5 damage + 5 control ) 

Bunker - 120 damage, 105 utility, 60 defence, 0 support,  30 control, 85 sacrifice (+10 utility  +5 support +5 defence +5 support)

Fanatic - 120 damage,  55 utility, 95 defence, 25 support,  35 control, 65 sacrifice (+10 damage, +5 support, +5 support, +5 defence) 

Haka - 145 damage, 105 utility, 115 defence, 0 support, 10 control, 25 sacrifice (+10 damage, +5 support +5 defence +5 support)

Legacy - 100 damage, 35 utility, 140 defence, 90 support, 10 control , 25 sacrifice (+10 support +5 support +5 support +5 defence)

Ra - 182 damage, 80 utility, 47 defence, 35 support, 30 control , 22 sacrifice (+10 damage,+ 5 support , +5 control + 5 control)

Tachyon - 130 damage, 135 utility, 45 defence, 15 support, 60 control, 15 sacrifice (+10 utility , +5 support +5 support +5 support)

Tempest - 181 damage 51 utility 40 defence 65 support 45 control 16 sacrifice (+10 damage +5 support, + defence + 5 support)

Visionary - 126 damage, 20 utility, 56 defence, 41 support 130 control 25 sacrifice (+10 support +5 control +5 control +5 control )

Wraith - 125 damage, 120 utility, 65 defence ,50 support, 30 control, 10 sacrifice (+10 defence +5 support + 5 defence + 5 control)

I got to say that results are more than interesting and it seems that are a little more precise than last time. I will finish it with expansion heroes tommorow.

Great job, soul31.

One point that as nothing to do with cards or powers, related to tanking damage : by virtue of the "highest HP" target selection, some heroes are "tanks", wether they have or not special abilities related to tanking. Expatriette, for instance, is often taking damage, while not having much to tank long effectively. It makes her what I would call a "first rounds tank", often taking damage for the team while more long time tank heroes build their defenses.

This leads me to another thing I would like to point : many heroes may change "role" in a given game, some even seem built around this concept. It makes classifying them even harder - except of course if the classification has the main goal of giving to players a rough idea of the kind of function a hero can have in a team.

Ok a little late but here they are - expansion heroes.

Mr fixer - damage 170 , utility 100, defence 50, support 50, control 10, sacrifice 20 (Bonus damage +5 Utility +5 ,support +5,  support +5, control +5)

ExPatriette - 180 damage , 165 utility, 25 defence, 0 support, 15 control, 15 sacrifice (Bonus Utility +10, Support +5, Control +5, Damage +5)

Argent Adept - 30 damage , utility 182,  20 defence, 116 support, 26 control, 22 sacrifice (Bonus +10 utility, + 5 defence, + 5 support, +5 damage)

Nightmist - 53 damage, 78 utility, 70 defence, 15 support, 35 control, 143 sacrifice (Bonus +5 sacrifice +5 utility, +5 defence, + 5 support, +5 control)

I do not have unity so i cannot do her yet - i will check her deck in may.

If someone wants to make up nice looking Spread graphs of those on a decent size (say... maybe 100x100 pixels?) Ill put those on the wiki.

Also would need a very detailed explination on how you got the numbers too.