Character Investment - THe Changing Meta

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Seems to me the current meta is moving towards slowing the game down which they’ve stated. This topic is to help players decide on teams and who to invest in and hopefully help with team diversity and make the game more interesting.

Characters with big health pools and consistent damage or that have utility (load abilities faster) seem to be the big thing.
With Speedy burst damage going out the window these guys seem like solid investment till at least we see the entire scope of the nerfs/buffs
imho utility characters are in

Solid investment characters (good on practically any team or great counters to most of the cast)
Original Black Widow (espionage, recon, new lockdown with cost increase, best utility character in the game currently)
IM40 (Recharge, High HP, High late game damage)
Daredevil (especially with the slowdown and cost increase, traps are dangerous)
Hood (Hard to get covers but blue ability is a great battery, yellow ability is nice, works well with any team)
Hulk (Very High HP, scary Passive, Decent late damage)
Dr. Doom ( Solid HP, Consistent damage, board changing abilities, uses black tiles for damage lol)

Niche Character investments (requires combo with other characters to be effective)
Patch (With spiderman getting nerfed this guy is a wild card you can easily/randomly get wiped using him)
Loki (Good board changer, mostly want to pair him with Patches)
Daken (Incredibly good passive’s but need to commit to green generator characters)
Grey Black Widow ( great damage and incredible green generator, downside she’ll be eating your energy quickly)
Ragnarok ( High HP, decent Red damage, still one of the better green generators)
Magneto Marvel now ( crazy good purple ability, decent board clearing abilities with red and blue, countdown tiles icon_e_sad.gif
)
Classic Storm (Good ability generator, has a decent stun, still a good passive, Low HP, paints a bullseye on her whenever used though)
Punisher Dark Reign ( Solid HP, Good Damage, Decent Utility, works well with most teams, problem is other character outclass him in what he does and he uses red and green)
Invisible Women Classic (High HP, Game Changing abilities, great damage, She doesn’t used red, Covers are extremely hard to get)

Average investment - aka token damage dealers
Thor (Solid character, Solid HP, better as a green generator character now, Solid damage, very slow)
Ares (Solid damage, Solid Hp, Healing token eater, need to build around him)
Astonishing Wolverine ( Solid damage, sucky HP, sucky Healing factor)
Captain America ( Decent Hp, Ok damage, decent utility, icon_e_sad.gif
countdown tiles, abilities cost to much for what they do)

Characters to watch if you want to wait
Hawkeye Modern (depending if he gets buffed or nerfed he could possibly be the most amazing character)
Magneto Classic (Solid investment character now but he’s on his way to get nerfed)
Spiderman Classic (Will probably still a good investment and be the best healer in the game but the nerf to stun and lack of respec could hurt whether or not you want to invest)
Wolvering X-Force (Incredible tile damage and High HP, abilities kinda suck, extremely hard to acquire. Changes INC)

What do you guys think? Post your opinions and ideas.

2

You can say that you can get nuked using patch, but he’s gotta be the fastest winner.

I would put him in the first category. Ahead of daredevil and the hood for sure.

His regen is great for tanking early damage, but the star of the show is putting all those strike tiles up. 9 green plus 2 aoe or a couple of attack tiles and the game is basically over. Pair it with a level 5 anger Hulk (as I do) and you always have a nuclear option to turn unexpected losses into costly wins.

Spiderman is great, and Magneto has that crazy purple, but they are both destined for the nerf hammer.

Patch to me is the best offensive weapon you can have. Pair him with hulk and Punisher or IM40. Pretty tough.

Spiderman is still king for a little while longer though.

3

Daredevil is a solid character investment???

edit: IM40 is a solid ISO investment???

edit2: DR DOOM???

4

I was just categorizing the characters in no particular order and Dr.Doom I believe will be a solid investment with the coming changes.

The idea is that they’re moving towards forcing you to match and play the game rather than taking the game out of an opponents hands via fast nuking and stuns (unless you have a boat load of money and constantly use boosts) with the increased costs.

Ability generation and consistent damage seem to be the big thing with the increased health pools or at least that what it seems like.

Patch does incredible damage but one lucky cascade can wipe your team and with spiderman being nerfed I don’t think there will be a consistent way to lock down your opponent, with patch you will be force to use tokens. Using Loki will mitigate the damage hence the idea of more niche characters for scenarios or teams like Bagman.

Oh the idea with Daredevil is that with the game slowed you’re going to be forced to match tiles and since daredevils abilities aren’t incredibly high they’re just the right cost to force at an important juncture to think about what you’re matching to try and win, that being said he’s terrible at PVE, I should have mentioned he’s purely a vs Hero Investment because of his traps.

IM40 is fairly boring but think about it the guy has High health and ability to recharge when used wisely in a post nerf eras his fairly good. His damage abilities are second in terms of usefullness but if left alone long enough he can easily wipe a character or two.

These are just my opinions on the matter feel free to post your ideas, this discussion only helps people think about the game.

5

Imagine if storm’s health was 4500+ unbuffed . . . That would be my worst nightmare. No more single shoting her. I also think obw was placed great as well as gsbw. Is it worth leveling ares to 85? I have him at 43 5/5/3.

6

Aston Wolvie and Ares or Thor are solid investments IMO, since you need that good team of 2*s to compete for 3s. They pay good dividends in the long run.

7

Ares is awesome, if a little dangerous. I try to avoid using his green except as a finisher (or in the very rare chance that my opponent has no green user). I’ve maxed mine out with 4/4/5. His yellow is pretty solid, especially if you time a heal right after it. His red can be a little underwhelming but it’s still (half) decent damage. It could do to be a little cheaper though. I’ve only ever seen the big boy version once. I maxed mine during the steam sale and haven’t regretted it. He’s pretty good for the lightning rounds.

I still can’t decide who I like better though: Max Thor at 5/3/5 (would prefer 3/5/5 or 4/4/5 but I’m not rebuilding for it) or Ares as described above. Thor is slower but much safer.

I do agree with the list of apart from one thing. I don’t agree that IM40 is a “solid” character. There is too much competition for red and blue abilities. His recharge can be nice but it’s hardly worth bringing him just for that.

I also would have placed Captain America higher up on the list. His biggest strength is being to place his countdown tiles wherever you want/need them. He is a little slow to get going but he can spam his red and blue abilities every few turns with proper countdown tile placement (where they will likely go off); they refund most of the cost used. I have mine at 3/4/5 and am chasing my tail trying to get his last red cover. (I have seen at least four blue covers since getting it to five. Ugh!) He’s my next project once Spider-Man gets to his soft-cap.

8

So a couple of points here:

  1. This list needs to be split up based on where the player is at in the game. OBW / Thor / Wolvie / Ares are amazing 2* investments, but you don’t really want to be pumping iso into ares when you have the covers to make the transition into 3s. I guess OBW is arguably a good investment even in a 3 roster, but meh. I would separate these lists by whether or not the characters are good on a 2* roster vs a 3* roster.

  2. I really like punisher as a 3* investment. Even though red/green are common colors, a good black is very hard to find, and punisher’s black is pretty solid when used with strike tiles (potentially from his own green). His red/green are also above average (although not amazing), and do the job when your team is lacking those colors. I just feel like he is solid enough in all respects to bring on your team a large majority of the time.

  3. IM40 seems like a pretty meh investment. You’re never casting blue (even with the slow meta), red drains your other colors which feels very bad for little benefit, so recharge+tankiness is the only reason to have him, meaning that I guess he’s not the worst on defense, but you have hulk for that anyways. I’d put him as niche.

I feel like Ares is far better than Thor in terms of dps now. If you’re still in 2* land, he seems like a solid investment. I feel like once you get into 3*s he gets a little outclassed,but still can be used on the B team as an offensive powerhouse. The best thing about this is that your B team wont be used all of the time, so you dont even care if his yellow makes him take damage.

9

IMO the current meta is ending the round with high health so you can get more wins in before using health packs. After the Rag and Thorverine nerfs, that means being able to cast a heal near the end of a fight. This makes OBW and Spidey extremely valuable.

10

Doom is actually a good investment long term since it’s been stated that they want to give him, Loki, and Rags third powers at some point. Could be a long time, but still. Doom is already an okay character who is fairly strong during villain LRs and with Patch.

IMO top tier investments are:

Hulk
Punisher
Patch
Spider-Man (no matter what they do to him, he’s still going to be the best character in the game for clearing high-level PVE, which they seem to want to shove in our faces a lot)

OBW would not be on this list because she’s very likely to get nerfed. D3 has already stated that Espionage is not working as intended (with strike tiles), and they seem to want healing to be less potent, so she might be taken in a new direction at some point.

Other good investments, for general usefulness or from being powered up a lot:

Doom
Thor
Ares
Astonishing Wolvie
CStorm
Magneto (either one)

11

You are currently under rating patch.
How I used my 135 patch.
Gain red green and yellow tiles (I have im40)
Pick lowest health to basic attack.
Patch can absorb basic tile damage.
Once you have 14 red n 9 green, the fun starts..
One shot any major threat. Punisher, hulk, spidey.
Beserk the guy you haven’t been attacking. (Use Beserk when A: u can make an immediate purple match.
B: you can create multiple cascades.
C: your 5 black hulk can make a match.
Game over within 2 turn mostly.
Is he volatile yes. But he’s only as dangerous as you allow.

12

Only way I see doom ever being worth the ISO is if they give him a 3rd move or allow his red to overwrite other red tiles. I doubt the second happens and it will be a ling time before the first happens. As such, no point in considering him “worth the ISO” now that lr are no linger villian based. At least befor he was a nice damage sponge in the lr.

13

DD isn’t very reliable

Tile overwriting (Attack tiles from Punisher/Storm/Doom, strike tiles) kills his red

M.Stor completely negates his purple

4+ match kills his traps

tile destruction skills (juggs, storm, punisher, etc) kill his traps

He really isn’t that good. Mid tier at best. He’s usable, but shouldn’t be anywhere near Hulk.

14

I thought they said LRs were just alternating now. Anyway, Doom’s abilities are still very strong, even if he only has two of them. Hood could be considered better, but he’s more difficult to work into a team.

15

How has Hood been for you? I’m considering leveling him as my 3rd 141 (after Hulk/Punisher), but am not sure if the iso is better spent elsewhere.

16

I keep seeing people saying this. Are you sure? I seem to recall the quote was something more like “yes, we know that espionage currently works with strike tiles, so you’re double-dipping”, but I don’t remember seeing anything definitive about whether this was a bug or not. I tried digging up the quote to look at it again, but phpbb’s search function is horrible so all I found is this quote from Veracity:

which is how I read it too.

17

I don’t have a high leveled Hood, I only know that he’s probably the most annoying defensive character right now next to Hulk, and they probably work very well together. You couldn’t pay me enough bonus ISO not to skip a team with a maxed Hulk+Hood on it. That team kills slowly, though, and I think you need someone who can benefit from at least 3 colors of AP sinking. Patch doesn’t work because he gives your opponent a way out from the lock. Hood+Hulk+Punisher/IM40/Magneto would be a good team that you could use in both types of LRs and would net you tons of skips, plus some random defensive wins.

I’m not sure where I read it, but I thought I remember the quote being something like “We didn’t plan for it to work this way, but we’re aware of it.” Whether they actually want to change her or not, I don’t know.

18

Hmm… I guess Hood is now a prime candidate for me to level: I’m glad I got that 5th yellow cover: 5/5/1 means that hes very viable coverwise. I love defensive characters, so he seems like a good fit for me.

19

Hm, I like where you’re going with this. Hood/IM40/Hulk sounds horribly slow, but Punisher (cheap casts fueled by Hood plus the OHKO from Retribution) might not be terrible, although he might make it hard to use Hood’s yellow due to all the special tiles. Magneto seems like a nice pairing too – super cheap casting costs and huge damage output.

Definitely need to get myself a couple more Hood blues (currently only at 3) and take him out for a spin.

20

Hmm… do you guys think that I should level Hood from 51->100 first, or go Hulk/Punisher 120->141 first?