balancing the Big 5

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Hi All
I just wanted to post about the big 5: Lthor, Daken, Sentry, Patch and Cmags. Firstly to see if we as a community can come to a census of what we would like to see and secondly to come up with viable solutions. Please note all of my thoughts and suggestions below are purely to initiate healthy discussion and see if we as a group agree on what we would like to see.

I’m no expert but the way I see it the problems with each are:

LThor: I see as being the combo of tank and massive damage he gets his green and just wrecks the damn place, I had an AI Lthor last night grab 30+ green Ap first turn from ridiculous cascade then sit on the AP for 3 turns before double call the storm to the face. Do not pass go, do not collect 3 health packs.

Daken’s strike tiles are free, not overpowered, and just that they are free, I feel even just 3 purple to activate his ability would be fine. Thoughts?

Patch: the health regen and the strike tiles? I don’t think it’s that bad mainly because I’ve seen the AI use berserker’s with about 1 green on the board and heaps of purple, like hey thanks for the win, but the combo of berserkers with AOE like panthers rage is a two combo win. I dunno maybe less strike tiles?

Magneto: Way too under cost and a self replicating blue. I think if his abilities were more expensive and you couldn’t place his blue he would kinda be where he needs to.

Sentry: leave the best till last. Here is the rub, how to make this character not the best in show for: offence, defence, speed, ease of use, blah blah blah. I think straight up don’t make his World Rupture work off strike tiles would be the simple but probably unviable fix. Maybe have less world rupture countdowns? Maybe much more expensive abilities. The dude is supposed to be Marvels answer to Superman so yes overpowered, but any strategy game environment really makes inequalities stand out like dog’s balls.

2

With Daken, it sounds like you mean his strike tiles should work like Falcon’s blue. It only activates if you have the minimum amount of Ap. If so, then that sounds like a great idea.

As for Sentry, maybe it would be better if his attacks were individual, and not affect the whole enemy team. So WR and Supernova will only damage the opponent in front.

C Mag should stay exactly the same except for one tiny detail. When he turns a tile (can still over write Any tile), into a protect tile, it does NOT turn blue. It should stay the same color it was, just put a shield on it. That would solve his problem. For his red, it would be best to just lower the damage amount.

Big Thor is, IMO, fine like he is. Thor is a God after all.

That’s how I would nerf them anyway.

As for Patch. Well of course he’s a bad @$$, he’s Wolverine for cryin’ out loud. When does the old canuckle head Not kick @$$ ? Patch’s healing makes him hard to kill, which is part of what makes Wolverine who he is. And his strike tiles are evened out by the generation of enemy strike tiles. Which, again, is part of who Wolverine is. When he goes into his Berserker Rage, everybody in sight gets hurt. Then again, I may be a little bias toward Wolverine, he has always been one of my favorites, but I’d leave Patch just like he is.

Not only would I leave Patch the same, I’d add a 1* Wolverine with bone claws.

JJ

3

I tend to agree that the big 5 mostly just need tweeks, I think the real test is who gets the most dodges on defense which would have to be sentry. It is like if I lose to Lthor or patch I have not played well for the most part. Dakens free strikes are not on their own broken, they just accelerate too many other abilities too easily. Cmags can self replicate which is always broken and sentry is just a train wreck.

4

Sentry - World Rupture needs to only benefit once from Strike Tiles.

Daken - Phermone Rage moved to trigger on purple, strike tile value lowered. Simple math suggests it should work out that you need 6 Phermone Rages to match a Judgment in tile strength since Phermone Rage works on all matches, and that’s not even considering the fact that you aren’t spending any AP.

Magneto - Red increased to 5 AP and do more damage. Blue I don’t know what is the intended function of this move, so I can’t offer a suggestion.

Thor - Needs to do less damage on yellow/green.

Patch - Unclear because his power is largely derived from being with Magneto.

5

I don’t know you, but if I had to guess after reading your narrative, I’m going to go on a limb and guess you don’t have any of these five characters.

Second, no one would argue that c mags needs a Nerf. Everyone knows it’s coming.

Third, patch and l daken are powerful but have draw backs. Patch is only really op note BC of c mags, so when he’s nerfed, patch’s use will go down. Your argument for strike tiles and aoe is true regardless of lots of characters. Punisher for one can do the same thing but with lower ap costs without drawback of enemy strike tiles. Also, daken and patch have regeneration, but lower overall health. Last, daken only had one active ability, and it hinders both of his passives to use. Daken gets used a lot just BC he meshes well with lots of characters kind of like obw and any one.

Sentry is powerful but at a high cost. He damage his himself and the whole team. So, you run out of health packs quicker.

Lt can’t be the same strength as 2* Thor, so he has to be more powerful. Moreover, his abilities have higher so costs.

Overall, the problem is also exacerbated by too many players using the same strategy no matter who they face, just attack head on.

6

Hi Mate, I have all of them max cover except Cmags who I only need a few more for,I just haven’t invested in him knowing the nerf bat is on its way. I have experience with all of them, it is more the common themes on these forums of the characters that peeps are asking for a nerf of. Again it is only opening the discussion I am not pointing fingers at anyone or trying to create conflict. My hope is that a collective decision by the fan base would create a plan of action for the devs. I equally don’t believe that your opinion or my opinion is of greater worth or more accurate, I believe it is the discussion that is of worth.

7

Daken

I had an idea for a Daken redesign a little while back to give Healing a minimum required AP before it kicks in - similar to the minimum required AP for Redwing. The post is here, so you can read it if you like. I did get a little bit of feedback on the idea, mostly that I hadn’t really made myself clear, since I think a few people misunderstood exactly what I meant, but also that I had slightly misconstrued the idea of the drug Heat. It is my understanding that, essentially, Heat increases Daken’s combat prowess but inhibits his mutant healing power.

Daken is already “pretty good”, since he’s mostly self sufficient, and I think the idea of using a “minimum required count” is probably all that’s needed to bring him into line. I’ve given the idea another thought and I can’t help but think, what if Daken’s natural healing was limited by the number of Strike tiles? I think that would more accurately capture that balancing act between dishing out damage and recovering health. All that would really be needed is to change his Black Passive.

Heat & Healing (Black, Passive)
Daken’s healing factor allows him to recover 3% of his health every turn. If there are greater than 2 friendly Red Strike tiles, the terrible drug “Heat” kicks in, and he loses 3% of his health instead.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Heals 5% per turn.
Level 3: "Heat" kicks in at 5 friendly Red Strike tiles.
Level 4: Heals 7% per turn.
Level 5: "Heat" kicks in at 7 friendly Red Strike tiles.

It’s not perfect, but I think this is about the most strategic I can make the balance between damage and healing. It definitely captures that feel of burning up Strike tiles in order to “take a breather” and recover some health. Keeping CR on blue means you still might have to scramble to stop the health loss (or let someone else take the front of the fight). All in all, I think this also gives both players a sense over being able to control/counter Daken, yet still keeps him dangerous - if you want to drain his health through Heat, you need to keep those Strike tiles on the board, which is dangerous for you.

Patch
I feel that Patch is fine as is. No change required.

Others
Not really thought about the others, mostly just wanted to update my Daken concept, so I’ll give them some time and see what turns up.
LThor is probably okay. I don’t really like that he’s tanky AND hits hard AND rushes his own AP. I don’t like it because it’s boring, not because it’s broken.
What if CMags’ Red shattered friendly protect tiles, dealing bonus damage equal to protect strength?
I have the least experience with Sentry. I think maybe he just needs some costs tweaked slightly.

8

Lthor is fine as is, he’s strong but slow.
I agree that daken should have a minimum ap to create strike tiles.
Patch is fine as is, he gives lots of strike tiles for his enemy to use with their own nukes.
Cmags red should cost 5 with proportionally increased damage. Still fast, still works well with strike tiles, no longer spammable. His blue should cost 8 or 9 as is or keep it the same but don’t change the color of the tile when his protect is dropped.
Sentry green should only activate strike tiles once or be consolidated into far less countdowns. Or it should cost a hell of a lot more.

9

Which gives the pay-for-play guys a huge advantage in PVPs. The speed with which Sentry attacks if you use the +3 AP boost with red/yellow and green/black means that you can take out most enemy teams in as little as 3 turns. That means less time exposed during shield hops. It also puts tremendous pressure on other players to use Sentry to minimize the time they are exposed to attacks between shields, which is why at 1000+, you probably see 95% of the teams with Sentry and we’ve had players getting insane scores with just Sentry/Daken or Sentry/Hood maxed in their rosters.

For the Devs, it’s great because it fuels sales of boosts. health packs, and shields. From a gameplay standpoint, it makes winning PVPs more a matter of how much HP someone wants to spend than anything else.

10

Patch is fine. His strike tiles are the main limiting factor in his gameplay.
Thor is fine. He’s really slow and easy to deal with outside massive cascades.
CMags will most likely end up with a new skill set.

I find Sentry or Daken bad as a team, not as a singular unit. If I has to split them apart, Daken is just slightly stronger than Sentry to me. They need to figure out a way to split these two up but still remain playable.

My 2¢.

11

Sentry would be fine if World Rupture didn’t benefit up to 48 times from strike tiles. Sacrifice and World Rupture would still be too good but it wouldn’t be game-breaking powerful, and Supernova would actually provide a bigger hit which makes sense given its ‘ends the turn’ restriction plus higher AP cost. Sacrifice suffers from the problem of all strike tiles ability tend to be too good, since apparently they’re treated as the same strength as an attack tile.

For Thor all you have to do is look at how his ability damage scaled from the 2* to the 3* damage to see where the problem is. It’s not like he was a weak 2* (he and OBW are probably still the best 2*), and his ability damage roughly doubled when he made the jump to 3* for the same character level. Conceptually, Thunder Strike should be a game over move in conjunction with another green character, but right now it’s a game over move in conjunction with himself. If you have to put someone like GSBW at least you’re giving up a lot in terms of durability.

Daken and Patch’s healing runs counter to the true healing concept and it’s strange they haven’t been nerfed already. They’re also incredibly dominant in PvE for the same reason, but not so much in PvP because PvP is more about shielding and once you start shielding there’s always enough time to heal up. Although both of their regeneration are too good, it’s not particularly relevent to PvP in its current form. Of course if the top characters get nerfed and you’ve a game that’s more about sustainability as opposed to just coming out of your shield and bomb 3 teams to oblivion that would make healing overpowered too but it’s probably best to fix one problem at a time.

12

Can we stop all these..

13

Cause that worked so well for gold bagman

14

Power creep of new characters introduced to the game, along with the (inevitable?) expansion of 4* rewards will make balancing for the currently ‘overpowered’ characters redundant IMO. LThor was a terrifying beast when he was first released, but nowadays he’s just ‘top tier’.

15

Sentry: Make all world rupture tiles go off at once. You could also make an argument for reducing his strike tile by 10%.

Daken: They should just have went with their earlier announced nerf. The timing was just bad.

Magneto: Change Level 3 from -1AP to with increase shield strength by 25%. (Combine a nerf with a buff).

16

Please for Magneto just make it so that the blue doesn’t match with blue. Instead make it spawn a purple or another colored tile. It’s then in line with the two star magneto purple skill. It stops the big problem of unlimited cascades while still allowing blue to be a valuable skill.

17

So, after all these nerfs, what are we supposed to do the next time we get a PvE node with something like a lv395 Hulk in it? I’m getting weary of people acting like this game is all about PvP, and that for some reason, PvE doesn’t really count for anything.

18

Spidey protect tile will reduce the hulk match dmg to 1.

Use stun, which Lcap, Cpt Marvel, Classic storm and Modern BW can do.

You don’t need cmag infinite turn to beat hulk.

19

Then I agree with phantron. All CD’s should go off simultaneously so the strike tiles only affects once. You still have board shake so wr, Just not op. Send his red, not green, is supposed to be his most powerful attack any way since it the the turn. This shouldb make him more in line, since self damage is still there at well.

You typically know more than most on these things, do you think this would be adequate and stop these 1-2 minute wins?

20

I agree there are a lot of options, not even counting Tup’s. However, without c mags and sentry op, who is to say scaling hits 395.