darkSpyro

I'm trying older Skylanders out in the Switch version of Imaginators. I read in several posts here that the older characters (all the Skylanders but Senseis) are nerfed to the point where they are unusable. I've encountered some that are super hard to use, but I've been surprised to find some that are still awesome. Which Skylanders have you guys tried and liked in this game? Which ones are unusable?

So far, I've been really impressed with Gearshift, Short Cut, and Snap Shot of the Trap Masters I've tried in-game so far. Normal Skylanders who I've tried and have held up well are Trail Blazer and Echo.

Skylanders who have not held up well so far and are insanely hard to use are Flameslinger and Cobra Cadabra.

I plan to try more characters. We'll see how it goes. It's a slow process getting through them because I'm taking them through the Undead Sensei Zone to get them enough gold to upgrade them so I can see their full potentials.

Blitz Spyro was overnerfed since swap force

I did this long ago, a comparison of the average stats of the different Skylanders types.

"Regular" (Core, SWAP Force, Trap Masters and SuperChargers)

• Health – 810 (Trap Masters – 880)
  
• Attack – 58
  
• Defense – 29
  

Giants

• Health – 1290
  
• Attack – 64
  
• Defense – 37
  

Senseis (including Villains)

• Health – 850
  
• Attack – 80 (+10)
  
• Defense – 52
  

The only ones relatively close to Senseis are Giants, but they're slower and don't have Sky-chi, which is the main problem. Without Sky-chi, it's almost impossible to do anything in front of tons of enemies attacking at the same time with "legacy" Skylanders. I'm talking always in Normal Mode, in Hard Mode is not even fun to try, and I did a lot. You'll spend at least five times more time dealing with a challenge by using non-senseis, and that's everything but fun, it makes the game a suffering experience.

Can you play using non-sensei or imaginators characters? Of course. Is it fun and attainable? Nowhere near. If you enjoy playing that way despite of it, perfect! But be ready not to find yourself in that situation.

Gearshift is such an overpowered Queen! I can get through SC with just her and a few trap crystals on the hardest difficulty. It was a little harder on Imaginators though, I had to use the team of her and Aurora to beat the game on normal difficulty. So she was a little tweaked but not too much.

I love Hex and used to play only has her in Giants and SSA (plus Stealth Elf as an assist for when she dies), so I noticed how badly she got nerfed in the other games. I know she's a slow ranged type character but enemies in newer games are not designed for her type of play. They are way faster than her. They either blow right though her bone shield or walk around it. Plus she takes forever to charge up her skull spell and it does very little damage. So I end up using her rapid spell tossing but those were nerfed down to something like 8-12 damage per hit while most newer Skylanders can do over 100 DPS. Plus she's ultra squishy. Even at max, she's a 1 to 2 hit death character which makes her useless against any mob. She'd be nice if you had a second player to tank for her but is basically useless on her own.

The combination of Magna Jet was super OP in Swap Force. I could pick up baddies and toss them over the side. He was insanely quick with a very long distance dash. He could rapid shoot for a ton of damage. I had to retire him in Trap Team as he was almost a new character entirely. Luckily I discovered Gearshift and never looked back on Magna Jet.

Of course the Trap Crystals were nerfed to the point where you couldn't even play as the baddies. They were quite useful as pow blasts in SuperChargers driving stages (cuts right though baddies if you have a dozen crystals to use) but I cannot remember what the heck they do in Imaginators. Same thing with those stage unlocking figures of buildings and stuff like dragonflies, shields and gems. They used to be good but I think they were nerfed down to giving a small handful of coins or something.

Sadly with the last 3 games, I've not really experimented with many characters as I stuck with what worked before (usually my favorite characters). I would try out some of the new years characters of course but rarely went back to try out others because I had learned in Swap Force that there was little point in trying. It's sort of a shame as I have probably 90% of a complete collection (over 300 figures?) but only about 30 that I would actually use.