ISO Builds - The Phoenix 5 - Part 1

There's been a lot of interest, it seems, in ISO strategy, so, I thought I'd go a bit deeper and show you mine. I do not profess to be a master of ISO strategy, as it's personal your style of play. As you know, my style for most characters involves fast aggression and tries to avoid prolonged fights. Let's kick off this new feature with some P5 suits. I have earned Magik and purchased Cyclops (tactian), Emma (tactician), Phoenix (tactician), and Colossus (bruiser... betcha thought I was gonna say tactician). This is part 1... Cyke and Emma, sitting in a tree...

Cyclops

Basic Cyclops is like a weak Captain America (which makes sense... 15 CP versus 90 CP). He's pretty balanced, with Evasion lacking a bit, so, once upon a time, I had a dream of keeping that balance and putting five bars in all stats, or at least everything but Evasion. Well, I did that on Basic Cyclops, and this is what I got:

Modern Cyclops Base Stats Health:   4595 Stamina:   4595 Attack:   922 Defense:   922 Accuracy:   1005 Evasion:   840 Effects: Cost and Requirements: 15 , or as a reward for unlocking PvP Organization/s: X-Men Bio: {{{bio}}}

Which wasn't bad, especially since he can boost his own evasion. That got me thinking though. Maybe unbalanced would be better.

What I came up with:

1. 4x Robust
2. 2x Masterful
3. 2x Steady

Phoenix Five Cyclops Base Stats Health:   4653 Stamina:   4653 Attack:   962 Defense:   826 Accuracy:   977 Evasion:   744 Effects: Phoenix Potential: Flames of Destruction - • Allies have a chance to unleash Phoenix power every turn • All attacks are critical hits and ignore defense Cost and Requirements: 42 Organization/s: X-Men Bio: {{{bio}}}

What I've done is gotten more Health and Stamina, more ATK at the cost of Defense I don't really want to use, and Evasion, which he self-boosts. I could tweak this a bit to reduce the Health or the Stamina and convert to some improvement to attack and accuracy. If only there were a non-gold buy ATK-ACC crystal without health or stamina.

Emma Frost

With Emma, I wanted to boost her damage, health and accuracy, with assumptions that her damage would be primary and her stamina wouldn't be much of an issue. So, 4x Steady, then 4x Chaotic (to build everything evenly). That wound up looking like this:

Modern Emma Frost Base Stats Health:   4298 Stamina:   4363 Attack:   1025 Defense:   957 Accuracy:   942 Evasion:   792 Effects: Diamond Body Cost and Requirements: Complete Special Operation 2 Organization/s: X-Men Bio: {{{bio}}}

As I've played Emma more, I've decided that those Chaotic crystals were a waste of time. Her Diamond Body takes care of a lot of her defense, and she's got decent stamina to start with, and unless you like to spam her Mental Trauma skill, you will not run out of stamina (oh, and she can refill stamina with Unlock Potential). So, a revised build uses:

• 6x Steady
• 1x Sturdy
• 1x Focused

And it looks like this:

Phoenix Five Emma Frost Base Stats Health:   4472 Stamina:   4131 Attack:   1011 Defense:   932 Accuracy:   951 Evasion:   744 Effects: Diamond Body Phoenix Potential: Cosmic Power - • Allies have a chance to unleash Phoenix power every turn • Raises all stats for one round • Removes most debuffs when applied Cost and Requirements: 50 Organization/s: X-Men Bio: {{{bio}}}

I wanted to build her Defense a touch, to reduce damage when the diamond body doesn't fire (or has already fired), but mostly I want her to hit and crit and apply stun with her War Diamond. I'm not really concerned with her damage on her L1 skill (as I don't believe her ATK effects the Mental Trauma damage), but I also like the L9 skill to hurt. But connecting with both hits of the War Diamond is important to me.
Part 2 will cover Colossus (Bruiser) and Phoenix (Tactician) and will be coming shortly. I'm sure you can understand that there are fairly labor intensive to assemble, so will respect that I can't chunk all 37 characters, with alt suits into one post. Let's go slow, right?