Current state of the meta: tankiness

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

As we are more or less all aware now, event-related buffs seem to be permanently changed to add both additional damage and additional health to buffed characters.

It’s well-documented that in some cases, especially in lightning rounds, that the additional health gets insanely high, in excess of 10,000 (Obviously, this change was in no way related to some dumb idiot squawking all over these forums about how, at one time, the meta was all about speed, which meant that the best way to play the game was by targeting squishy characters to fit in as many victories as possible within a given span of time, but if it was related, I hope they find that fool and hang him upside down and beat him like a pinata. What a dufus.)

Anyway, let’s use this thread to suggest additions to the game that could counter or at least mitigate this factor to add more variety.

These are all just stream-of-consciousness thoughts so as always feel free to shoot it all full of holes icon_razz.gif

  • Random bonus damage (“critical hit”) ability - Have a 2-star that can randomly deal additional (double?) damage with an ability to whittle away at those massive health bars. Can’t really call this a “critical hit” since we already have crit tiles in the game though. I’m thinking a Scarlet Witch / Domino / Longshot (probability manipulation) type character could have this.

  • Temporarily remove from game / partial perma-stun - Basically an offensive version of Invisible Woman’s ability. Character removes itself and one enemy teammate from the game for XX turns, turning the match into a 2v2. Could belong to a Nightcrawler or Kitty Pryde type character.

  • Health inhibitor - A high-cost skill where, for this match only, all characters’ max health (your characters and also the opponent’s) is immediately reduced, either to a flat number (5,000 or so) or by a certain percentage. Any characters whose current health is higher than the new max has their current health changed to the new max. (e.g. a 15,000/17,000 health Ragnarok whose max health gets reduced by, say, 50%, immediately goes to 8,500/8,500). Might make sense for a character with cosmic or reality-altering powers, like a Beyonder.

  • “True damage” abilities that deal XX% of total health amount rather than a scaling number figure - I would see this as a 4-star character ability. I would’ve given this to a 4-star Wolvie but there already is one. icon_razz.gif

2

Related to health inhibitor: high gravity. Higher health equates to slower movement, meaning either reduced attack damage or increased AP costs.

3

I really like the idea of temporarily removing two characters from combat for a certain number of turns. That would give us a new worthwhile strategy to use.

4

Vampiric % health drain - I’m thinking maybe some kind of vampiric ability that works off of % current health for a Michael Morbius or Cloak&Dagger type character, and returns the stolen health to the one vampiric character. This would be especially punishing for enemies with high health (higher health means larger percentage stolen and healed).

Damage “tax” - OK, I might be reaching really hard here icon_razz.gif
but I’m thinking of an ability, possibly a constant passive, which triggers whenever a large quantum of health damage is dealt (i.e. every time you do a total of, like 2000 damage to the enemy team). The triggered ability could be an auto AP gain for your team, a full-team stun for the enemy, an AP drain for the enemy, or whatever. So for example, you hit your opponent’s level 100 Rag / Magnus / Model 40 team with, let’s say, Thor’s red to do 1500 damage, then immediately also use Thor’s yellow to do another 2000. This is a total of 3500 damage, which is greater than 2000. The ability then triggers, giving you a bunch of free AP / stunning the whole enemy team / removing AP from the enemy AP pool / whatever, and after you deal an additional 500 damage to the enemy team, the ability triggers again (3500 + 500 = 4000, another multiple of 2000). The idea is that the tax will trigger more frequently against enemy teams with high health (Grey Widow at 3000 health will trigger it once before she dies, Ragnarok with 7000 will trigger it 3 times before he dies).