I’m back with another installment of rating two Marvel Heroes characters that I’ve leveled up to 60. Last time I looked at Squirrel Girl and Cyclops, and so today I’m going to turn my attention to two fascinating and powerful female characters that many players have picked up over the past couple of years: Scarlet Witch and Rogue.
I had a great time for different reasons going on the leveling journey with each of these heroes. I hadn’t even heard of Scarlet Witch prior to Age of Ultron coming out in theaters (that should tell you how anemic my Marvel knowledge is these days), although I will admit to a schoolboy crush on Rogue from the ’90s X-Men animated series. I’ve tried to get my wife to call me “sugar,” but no go on that front.
So how do these two ladies stack up? Let’s run down the categories and find out!
Scarlet Witch
Powers and Abilities: Scarlet is a ranged magic dealer who specializes in damage-over-time area-of-effect attacks with lots of pink and red effects. She’s remarkably effective in dealing with large packs of enemies and laying down DoT fields on bosses, which makes her useful in, oh, every situation you’ll ever find yourself in this game. Her chaos magic passive triggers spirit and health regen so often that spirit depletion is rarely an issue with her. And did I mention that her use-every-minute signature ability flat-out erases all non-boss enemies in a wide radius?
Movement Ability: Her hand-spheres (or whatever you call those pink circles) help her fly all magic-like over the battlefield. There is a spirit cost associated with this, so be careful you don’t run out right as you’re about to attack a boss!
Costumes: Having been in the game for so long, Scarlet Witch has plenty of costume variants — eight in the store alone. Her Age of Ultron outfit is more realistic than her other ones, although I’ve seen many players pick up the enhanced Wiccan outfit to gender-change into a guy while keeping the powerset.
Voice and Personality: Musician and actress Kate Higgins gives a gravitas to Scarlet Witch that’s in line with her “I could destroy the universe with a thought on a bad day” powers. I wasn’t entirely enamored with her; too serious for my tastes.
Ultimate Ability: If unmaking most of the battlefield wasn’t enough of a capper, Scarlet’s No More… is an a-bomb of magic that blows pretty much everything away. It’s incredibly well animated, with Wanda falling on her knees as a magical buildup eventually explodes out in a shockwave.
Synergies: As might be expected, both her synergies have to do with bumping up DoT damage. This is great if you are a DoT dealer… and completely unnecessary otherwise.
Personal Rating: A+ There’s a very good reason why Scarlet Witch is right at the top of most players’ lists of overpowered characters. She destroys armies at a distance, can be bought for a song in the shop, has terrific spirit regeneration, can gender-bend, and looks fantastic doing anything. Her sheer popularity is probably the most annoying thing about her, in my opinion.
Rogue
Powers and Abilities: Rogue is a vastly different type of character and her powers take some explaining. While she does have a traditional melee tree, most players use her ability to capture powers from friends and foes to integrate them into a build. This means she’s incredibly flexible, although not as much as you might hope: She can only borrow one set power from characters and can only equip a certain number of each type. I built her as a summoner with Squirrel Girl’s squirrels, Iceman’s golems, and Mole Man’s moloids. But you can really play her however you like.
Movement Ability: Flight. Works good. Woosh. Incurs spirit cost.
Costumes: Rogue’s been neglected in the costume department, with only three available in the store. Fortunately, her Age of X outfit is amazingly detailed and there’s also the ’90s costume if I want to regress to my youth.
Voice and Personality: Catherine Taber (Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) does a passingly well job with Rogue, although your enjoyment of it will definitely be influenced by how much you like (or dislike) the accent. I’m… not so much a fan. Although it’s not nearly as annoying as her boyfriend Gambit’s.
Ultimate Ability: Probably the strangest thing about Rogue is her ultimate, Final Form. I get what the devs were going for here, but making Rogue into a mishmash of X-Men (Wolverine, Colossus, Angel, etc.) visually while supplanting the hotbar with a new set of powers is probably the weakest aspect of her character. I never liked using it.
Synergies: Rogue’s 25 synergy restores health on hit, which is nice, but it’s her level 50 synergy that restores spirit on hit that should make her beloved by most builds that depend on spirit as a resource. Great synergy, no question about it.
Personal Rating: B. If you had the money to buy only one character, I’d say to go with Rogue because you can at least sample every other character through her. However, I have to stop short of a full recommendation. While she has the incredible flexibility to make a wide range of builds and allow players the freedom to be creative in this respect, she is also confusing and sometimes annoying to set up (I really wish that the game would “save” past captured skills in case you wanted to swap back to them) and has a lackluster ultimate.
