Do I have bad luck or is Alopex an underwhelming character?
So I really want to like Alopex - a character focused on evasion to make the most of e.g. Adrenaline sounds fun. Every time I pick her, though, I have to burn through all of my dice to barely get two powers in time for the first boss battle. Does she have some kind of bad luck curse or is it just me? I've got the Dreamer Coin upgrades for power selection maxed out, and every other character I pick gets a choice in powers where she only gets boost or scrap.
Aside from that, I can't seem to find her groove. Her attacks have abysmal range, her Special takes forever and a day to charge, Kunai get power from Ninja Shuriken upgrades so at some point Shurikens are just a better choice, her Crits are worse than Raph's, I haven't yet encountered any Mastery that's specific to her that would feel like a great unlock for her. Her unique trait seems to be evasiveness, but a 12% bonus to Movement Speed isn't noticeable in a game where four dashes regen in all of 2 seconds and her Dodge Chance bonus is not something that feels safe to lean into with her small health pool (it's still better for her to get Light Shell, which renders her inspiration moot).
Leo is better at Shurikens and he can also build for Final/Master Strikes that can synergise with his superfast charging Special via Casey's inspiration, he has an amazing dash attack and huge range to all of his moves. Raph is better at criticals even when just comparing the inspirations, has a mastery that boosts his crit damage off the charts, and his special melts through enemy health bars. Mikey, Donnie, Casey, MH all have their own specific gimmicks that when you find them the characters just click. What's Al's thing?
I tried building her for Special to max out the evasiveness, but it's so slow to charge that even late in the run it will sometimes be down when you need it. As far as I can tell the one thing she can do that no one else can is abusing the i-frames in it, so that's where I'm looking to try to figure her out. So far, however, with other characters I'm doing 7 or 8 portal runs while doing a 5 portal run with her risks not being fun at some more demanding moments. What am I missing?
Edit: Just finished an 8 portal run with her. Stacking the 30% faster Special regen Mastery with Special Recharge on Light Shell (Ancestral something) finally did the trick and made her Special come back online pretty fast (then adding Leo's Inspiration to that was icing on the cake).
She does seem a bit flat to me, which I guess shows how difficult it is to come up with such a huge amount of different characters that are all balanced and fun to play. It seems her thing is being able to downplay positioning - both defensively (due to Special i-frames and supported by Dodge Chance) and offensively (small hitboxes but fast attack speed so you can rely on Utrom Lightning Chains or Water Splash Damage or shurikens to spread damage ticks all around). She seems to need specific upgrades for her Special to be reliable, which I don't like.
Leo and Casey are still the most fun to me, especially with each other's inspirations. :D