Force multipliers and CL 10

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

So now that level 650 opponents are a regular occurrence in mpq, the pve meta is shifting to account for the need to burn down 500k or more health reliably. Even cheap, efficient powers that used to be seen as high-damage nukes (e.g., Loki purple, GED black, etc) seem a little underwhelming when they need to chew through 250k health goons.

As a result, abilities that can produce open ended damage (or at least damage with extremely high caps) efficiently are more important than ever (and they were really really already); I e., characters than can produce Super-Damage™ for lack of a better term.

The most obvious 2 are okoye and kitty. Okoye can stack massive damage on top of any direct damage powers, making passives and low cost abilities that can regularly tick damage way way more useful (e.g., sabertooth red or Medusa’s cd), and she is great because she turns otherwise small scale powers into cl10 ready nukes. Kitty can take cheap-to-produce strike tiles and add ~+3000 damage per turn ad infinitum. Best of all, these two produce big damage without consuming ap, so you can spam away though those massive enemy health pools.

There are a few other characters out there that can also scale up to the massive amounts of damage necessary for cl 10

Lumbercap: red can scale up to 60-100k damage against single targets. His purple is also good for suppression which is extra valuable against over-leveled targets where many enemy powers will be one-hot kills. Also, his yellow is best used on true healer tanks like DD and okoye that can heal up after being revived.

5* BP and DD both have nifty powers that allow for double-dipping damage. So even though these powers powers don’t do the 20-30k damage ticks that are necessary to handle 650 opponents, they can take a more modest damage tick of 3-5k, and then proc 5-10x per turn if you are clever, and that can be good enough.

4* Carol. When boosted her tile buffing is actually better than kitty per-turn. And you can proc her many many times per turn with the right partners. IMO, boosted Carol is the single best way to get massive damage output very quickly. To a lesser extent, Nico can do this too, but her buff is much less powerful than kitty or Carol until you get many dozen tiles out on the board. Magik does this too, but she is very slow and dilutes her boost with protect tiles. (4* Prof and 3* falcon can also boost tiles, but they are much harder to use in 5* play for a variety of reasons).

4* Thor, flaptain, 4* Peter Parker, miles Morales, 4* cage and 4* pun all have nukes that can scale per tile type on the board without any cap (meaning the theoretical cap is 64, and the practal cap is 20-30). Nightcrawler and mordo both have nukes that scale to enemy AP, and therefore cap at 30. Domino has a nuke that caps at 20-30.

Karnak is new, but he seems to have high damage potential with all those criticals. 5* PP sits in this same area of having very high damage potential, and also pretty high variance.

And I am sure that I am forgetting some options out there (I will add anything good from the comments below).

How do people feel about this development? Are there enough options in the game to generate really high damage output? Are we now restricted to just a handful of viable characters in cl10?

[Edits: added 4* Cage; thanks TPFAlexis!]
[Edits: added 4* Prof and 3* falcon; thanks Pongie!]

[Edits: added miles Morales; thanks tiomono!]

2

This is a good topic and one I was actually thinking about earlier.. I feel like my character ranking guide might see a significant shift as I take into account CL10. Originally, I gave PVE very little weight in the rankings as it is was way easier to speed grind PVE than in PVP since human-made teams are generally tougher than the AI ones. Well, when facing level 650s, PVE is now way harder than PVP, and some of the “old tools” (looking at you Thanos) just don’t cut it.

By the way, Thorkoye/Iceman is the best team I’ve found for clearing big health. The key is:

  1. Collect close to 30 Team-Up AP

  2. Spam Bobby’s green (not Thor’s… common mistake) as often as you can.

  3. Let the repeaters fall to the floor with Thor’s board smash

  4. Use Okoye’s red (not Thor’s… another common mistake) to spear a row full of repeaters.

  5. Watch the enemy team fall as you get 30k+ AOE damage for EACH tile you destroy.

3

Good suggestion Daredevil, although I think I would file it under ‘okoye’ as this is one of the many many good teams designed to take advantage of her black.

I don’t have ice champed, so I can’t comment on that combo, but in the meantime, I have been loving thorkoye + 2099.

Black or blue matches proc okoye black (which makes this team a pocket 5* prof x), and 2099 provides a blue and black outlet that can both boost damage significantly (either with the +% damage CD, or with a 5x proc of okoye black). Plus he even has a stun to disable super dangerous adversaries.

4

C4ge is also worth keeping in mind. Like the rest of your 4Thor category, his yellow only caps with the number of Fortified tiles on the board, so it’s another that can theoretically go to 64.

I do worry about bringing even one 4* into these nodes, tho. Well, other than Grocket, because they do their job right at the start. It really doesn’t take much bad luck at all on some of these to drop even a high-health 4*.

5

Yeah… Its a tricky thing, these challenge matches. But i look forward to them too. I have to actually think a little! Cant just blindly move tiles.

Depending on the situation, and your options on the board, sometimes you’re chasing one color AP, or sometimes you’re denying the enemy a color, or sometimes you dont care about color and just want person X to tank the next hit.

I like this. Its a step closer to old-school classic Puzzle Quest, where sometimes your killer build doesnt cut it, so you gotta restructure your character a bit, and change your mindset.

6

4* px also boost special tiles but you have more hurdles to jump through. He has to be invisible and you have to match his tile (hard to do when the 5* are tanking). Risky to run wininfinte with 3* sw and bw.

7

Thorkoye with Sabretooth can do some serious damage on these nodes

8

No love for miles? You need lots of web tiles but he gets crazy with 2099 and spidergwen. When miles is boosted look out.

9

CapHawk + Okoye can do mega damage once you flood the board with charge spam. Prioritize wCap’s powers, hawkeye is there as a battery, chase team up. That blue will multi-tap a truly ludicrous amount of damage.

10

Very true, but IMO this is filed under okoye (like okoye + Iceman above). Sabertooth is a good tool for proc’ing her black, but she is the one one doing the Super-Damage™!

11

I think a little granularity on Support Class characters might be interesting. Like is a Damage Trigger “better” than a “Bottomless AP Well” or a “Meat Shield” or what have you? Like for instance neither Okoye nor Kitty are really even the primary damage dealer in their own respective scenarios.
I think Sinister is going to be a very interesting new variable in this equation.

12

WCap doesn’t have an uncapped force multiplier, but his blue has an uncapped number of micro hits based on charge spam, so he can really be a stellar catalyst.

13

This is very true. He can be shockingly effective when combined with even modest damage boosts (okoye, bp, DD, strike tiles, etc).
Perhaps, as per your earlier suggestion, we need a bit more granularity for Super-Damage™ to organize the discussion. So how about the following categories:

(1) Tile Boosters: When X happens, boost Y special tiles by Z. (Kitty, Carol, hela, Nico, 4* X, both falcons, etc).
(2) Damage Augmentors: When X happens, passively apply Y damage. (Okoye, DD, Prof X, JJ, bp, obw, 2099, America, Medusa, etc,).
(3) Damage Stackers: When X happens, apply Y stacks of Z damage. (BRB, Hela, Rescue, sabertooth, wolfsbane, Worthy, etc).

#1 (specifically strikes tiles) can generally combine with #2 or #3 effects (with some exceptions, like sabertooth) but #2 doesn’t often combine with #3, EXCEPT for okoye, who remains a relatively unique super augmentor, as her black can actually augment almost any other #2 or #3 effects, leading to exponential damage growth (this is how 12 teamup ap + 6 red and sabertooth can do ~60k). Okoye basically never works with #1 effects.

14

I was looking around at some of the lesser seen 4*s for this too:

MrF: on blue does N damage for every 4 friendly specials (also stuns)
Dazzler and Nebula have nearly identical green powers: deal N damage for every friendly special - max 10 (dazzler) and deal N damage for every sAP on the board regardless of ownership (Max 10). There is a subtle but distinct difference there, also nebula’s costs 3 more
Shuri: her red is pretty interesting As a damage stacker on its own, but the AP games that come with it are also great
Main Event: Gamma Powerbomb is buck wild with a 5* like professor X
Karnak: similar to main event with cascade potential/critical production