5* cap marvel - Powers discussion

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
21

Phew, so many differing opinions on poor 5* Carol…

Well, these are mine, after playing her almost every pvp since champing her (or at least trying), starting from 4* Gamora’s Sworded Affairs, end of April.

She’s definitely too slow for any serious pvp (800-900 pts and beyond), unless maybe when the featured character is very very good already and has synergy with her abilities (like Gamora is and does).
She’s nowhere near Wasp levels of bad.
Red repeater is matched away without accomplishing anything too often for her to be reliable enough and build up her green for a stronger hit it is capable of.
Green is fine at 5 covers and if the board is relatively filled with friendly tiles. If they are too sparse it is more of a gamble, and it won’t hit as hard as I feel it should considering all the time and effort it takes to get there.
Yellow is ok damage, but again delayed. What’s worse though, it takes one of your characters out of the game for a couple of turns, suspending any beneficial passives they might have or pausing the CD or repeater based powers. Herself included.

Fixes I believe would help:

-fortifying red repeater
-yellow dealing damage initially

These two would make her a bit more playable for pvp.

-choosing the row she’ll blow up / choosing where to place the (fortified?) CD

This would make her green much better. For the player anyway. On defense, AI wouldn’t use it as well.

-reducing friendly repeaters by 1 or 2 when she returns from airborne

This would reduce the sting of using yellow on herself a little. Also could help other characters with repeaters, some of which could really use any help they could get. :slight_smile:

-having something beneficial happen on matching the green repeater, like a few extra strike/special tiles for her
-destroying friendly strike tiles giving more AP, in one or both of her other strong colors (red and green)

These might make her more dangerous on defense / faster on offense.

She kinda works with JJ, for pure 5* duo. Make her 3/5/5 and use JJ’s red.

Here’s what I’ve seen playing her (with last month’s pvp featured or 5s I paired her with in parentheses):
She benefits from special tiles spammers for better green (4 Gamora and Ant-Man), from continual healing because she tanks too tinykitty much (5* Ock or Kamala), from stuns to protect her fragile repeaters (again Gamora or Strange) and from AP drain or blocking because she’s slow and those can give more time (Archangel, Beard Cap). Also having a rainbow covered is good, as she’s already slow as it is, without getting stuck matching 1 or 2 useless colors if the board so chooses.

22

I don’t see anything so great about her current design that it needs to be kept. I would not object to a complete rework, and that might actually be easier than shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic that is any mpq character built around delayed-action effects like repeaters.

Edit: autocorrect thought that the word “deck” was supposed to be “decided.” Now fixed.

23

I think focusing this convo on CM5 is a bit myopic. CM5 and all repeater characters are bottom-middle to trash tier because repeaters are a bad mechanic, if not irredeemably so.

Since Rescue is a foregone conclusion, just let the next 5 do the following, and we’ll be all good:

  • Speed up repeaters & fortify at higher covers (now you have a support class, and repeater characters aren’t merely a roster slot tax)

  • Send stunning enemy character airborne if any party member is stunned (now there’s a graceful counter to Bishop that requires no ham-fisted nerf attempts)

24

Great! You go make a new topic about this idea!

I’m fairly sure not only Rescue but the next couple or even more 5*s are all (but) foregone conclusions for the devs, at this point. They just haven’t told us yet, which characters are those going to be. But after that, sure, why not?!

As for “all repeater characters are bottom-middle tier” (paraphrasing), I feel the need to point out how both Thor and Kitty have a repeater that look pretty good to me. And Daredevil has a CD that wishes it was a repeater, but alas… Also good! :stuck_out_tongue:

25

Well now I want to look through all the characters and find good repeater powers lol. Well repeaters that have a cost tied to them, repeaters that pop out for free are fine.

The sad thing is I actually like Emma frost. But I’m not going to try and convince anyone she is good.

26

I feel the need to point out that both Thor and Kitty’s repeaters, which look pretty good, only do because they’re a) fast b) fortified with investment. Sounds strangely familiar.

27

Those two repeater powers are among the best in the game. But even so, Thor and kitty are both meta for reasons entirely unrelated to their repeater powers.

28

Well, ok. If we’re being so serious…

Fortifying repeaters support character? There’s one already in the game - Green Goblin. And potentially Cable. Also technically Emma Frost can do it. And one that’s actually great to use - Shuri. There might be one or two more I’m forgetting, as I’m not too sure what some newer 4*s abilities do.( And there’s just so many of them anyway)

As for speeding up repeater tiles, I’ve already suggested the same for Carol just a couple posts earlier in this very thread. And elsewhere, both for Carol and Loki. Loki first got me thinking of it with how bad his green was.

Repeaters that cost actual AP to put into play, definitely need to be weighed differently than those that pop up automatically for free. They could have protection in several ways we already have seen in the game. Jumping to a different spot when matched or destroyed. Still having some other effect if matched or destroyed. Being fortified. Returning part of the AP cost back if lost.

But go ahead, make a thread to discuss why repeater based powers are (often? mostly?) bad in the game. Here, I’d like to be able to vent about how Carol could be so much better, but sadly isn’t, and now it’s too late for her, thank you very much. Hmph!

29

I would not be apposed to a reworking Marvel at all. I gave my ideas on what her powers set was and what would make her playable. Think bout it if her red fired then placed a repeater. You would always get value. Or if the repeater tile was only 1 instead of 2 you would get value more often than t now the devs have over valued repeaters compared to direct damage powers. I personally would love to see the statistics on how often some of theses 5* repeater tiles actually fire. I would imagine the lack of resolving and limited resolving proves they are bad powers.

30

I would love it if they reworked Marvel and several other of the poorer five stars too. Personally I think they should have fixed Wasp a long time ago and I don’t understand why it’s taken so long. Sadly, It just doesn’t seem like a priority for the powers that be.

31

Some spoilers for those who haven’t seen Captain Marvel

I believe that CM’s powers are actually not bad but as mentioned simply too slow in the current meta to be viable for realistic use when much other better options are available. The solution isn’t to change her but to release a character that has great synergy with her, aka speeding up her repeaters and maximizing airborne traits. Repeater tiles are really good in theory but just too slow to really impact a match. The solution is to make them faster and more secure. They will eventually turn the tide of the battle, once again in theory, but are just far too slow in this game as of now. The other issue is that you would probably need to nerf Kitty’s ability to remove repeater tiles if you wish for repeater tiles to be viable. Consider this as an example for another 5* (perhaps Yon-Rog, the Kree guy from the movie who was her squad leader) to pair with her. His powers would be very espionage based and takes advantage of CM, which makes sense:

Blue/Purple/Red (AP strength order) - he would have lower health for a 5* (not Strange bad but lower tier overall health)

Blue Power - 6 AP - early ranks reduce repeater countdown, middle ranks fortify countdowns and highest rank instantly reduces all repeater tiles to 0 - Passive - whenever Captain Marvel takes damage, gain 1 black AP.

Purple Power - 8 - AP - create a 4 round fortified countdown tile, replace any non-special tile on the board - this tile steals red, green and yellow AP from the opposing team when it reaches 0 (amount progresses as skill is leveled) eventually stealing up to 8 AP from the enemy team at max level - if the enemy team doesn’t have 8 AP to steal, steal all possible AP then stun the enemy team for 1 turn - Passive - Render Yon-Rog invisible for 1 round when the countdown tile reaches zero, eventually increasing to two rounds at level 4

Red Power - 9 AP - red moderate direct damage ability that drains black AP for additional damage (ala 4* Iron Man but better in that the AP is bonus damage not solely dependent on the primary AP like Hulkbuster’s power is) - Passive power that causes extra damage when Yon-Rog lands from returning airborne that increases with covers

All of his powers have an additional passive but are not so powerful individually. In fact several of them are only decent when specifically paired with 5* Captain Marvel.

32

@Warbringa
Kitty doesn’t overwrite repeaters.

33

Ok, thanks just countdowns I see.

34

Warbringa:

I think the problem I have with your approach is that the distinction between “slow” and “bad” in MPQ is meaningless. Slow IS bad. Even fast repeaters are rarely very impactful because a ton of matches are decided in less than 10 turns, even if the mop up takes a bit longer.

There are very few scenarios where I would rather amortize the strength of a power over several turns when I could just have it all right now and move my team’s strategy forward immediately. (There are a few exceptions of course, like Carol’s black, but that is mostly useful because it has the flexibility to be a fast or delayed power via her yellow).

A battery helps slower characters to be sure. But if there were a good red/green/yellow battery to pair with Carol (and there actually is: coughhalf-Thorcough), you would just be better off using the battery to charge powers with instant effect.

And your example yon-rog sounds fun, but would not be nearly enough to make Carol useful. 8 purple ap to make a 4-turn CD to steal AP or team stun? That will take 6-7 turns to resolve. Thorkoye or gritty will have won by then. 6 blue AP to proc repeaters once (which also means you must have created the repeaters already. . .)? Meta teams will have ended the match by the time you get enough repeaters out on the board to make proc’ing them at all meaningful. And I think even rescue’s red is substantially better if you just want a cheap red damage power.

As long as scoring and rewards in MPQ work the way they do now, Carol, or any other character in mpq, will always be crippled relative to the meta by a reliance on repeater powers. Those repeater powers with value are ones like Thor’s, Kitty’s, 4* grocket’s, and 3* blade’s that are useful background powers to fire and forget while you focus on other, better primary abilities that are the true reason to run those characters.

35

I doubt that they will completely rework her power set for the simple reason that it is essentially the same work to produce a new character without the corresponding revenue.
One anti-pattern in her design is that she looks even worse when undercovered, and that’s where most people’s first impressions will be formed. She’s got a 3 turn countdown on her green that could easily be matched, and a long 3 turn repeater for her red. Granted the countdown goes away, and the red repeater speeds up, but it makes it harder for players to gauge the potential. It’s not quite as bad as Agent Venom, where his undercovered form often turns out to be actively harmful for the team, but it’s not great.
As far as repeaters in general go, one simple change would be to trigger the repeater’s power once on cast. This would mean you’d at least see some return from the AP if the repeater gets matched away before firing. It probably wouldn’t be overpowering in most cases either.

36

All these repeater characters get 100% better at least as soon as a character drops that can advance a repeater the way countdowns can be advanced. Or a support with a %chance or something

37

For this event I teamed CM with Doom and Vulture for some fun synergy. I send Vulture airborn with either CM’s yellow (prefered) or using his own black ability. Doom help speed up yellow and black. Then I abuse her Green received from Vulture and her own Repeater.

38

I only have her half covered, but using her in Venom Bomb has been noticeably frustrating. Her green, at 5 covers, is OK. I wouldn’t mind it if her other two powers were decent. Wouldn’t hurt to bump the damage up a bit with more covers, tho.
Her red is frustrating. It will help (eventually) that the Repeater gets faster with more covers, but it’s still up there with Loki’s green as a poster child for how not to implement Repeaters*.
Her yellow is weird. It’s doing three different things, that are sometimes at odds with each other, and I kinda feel like you need to be getting value from all three for it to be worthwhile. And the number of situations/characters where you can get value from sending your own dudes airborne is pretty small.
Torch and Blade also seem like good uses of Repeaters to me, in addition to the 5 that have been mentioned. Probably because they didn’t really change in functionality, just lost their synergy with C4rol.

39

As I still play with animations on (yeah, yeah, I know) I would be extra happy if they at least didn’t do the Carol fly-by thing twice. Thanks for taking my character to space hospital Captain Marvel, I don’t really care how they come back, you can throw them outta the plane just so as long as they still break enemy faces when they land, I don’t need to see your hand gesture thing again, cheers.

40

I had animations on during a match where I was testing out whether CM sending 5BP Airborne would trigger Move…or Be Moved. (It doesn’t, but some people thought it would.)

CM sent BP Airborne…then was downed. But! Her animation lived on and confused the heck out of me when BP came back. I thought maybe CM wasn’t actually downed…she was, though.

Less weird but still annoying: Event Horizon’s banner pops up every time you have used enough green to make the repeater eligible to be placed, but on the turn BEFORE the turn when it is actually placed. So it’s basically doing nothing except slowing down that turn.