Gambit doesn't need to be nerfed; the other 5*s need to be fixed.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Character Discussion
1

Everyone without a fully-covered/champed 5* Gambit (such as yours truly) is wondering the same thing: When will 5* Gambit get fixed/nerfed?

Actually that’s not entirely true. I mean I am asking that, but only because he’s probably going to be my first 5* champion - at 2/4/3 he’s my best covered 5* at the moment - but what I’m really wondering is…does he even need to be nerfed? And my answer to that is ‘no’. Please, hear me out.

Both Gambits have already been reworked, and while it did ‘fix’ the Gambattery problem (and make 3* Gambit arguably one of the worst 3s in the game) the changes to 5 Gambit made him even stronger. And in my opinion that’s how it should be. By that I mean the 5s are the strongest characters in the game. At least they should be. But while Gambit is arguably the strongest playable character in the game, there are some 5s who, even when fully covered & championed, are still considered weaker/less of a threat than the top tier 4*s.

In my opinion, 5* Gambit is exactly what a 5* should be; he is a force to be reckoned with. Gambit doesn’t need to be nerfed, the rest of the 5*s need to be fixed.

2

Do we really have to go through this again? We have a 15 page thread about why Gambit needs to be nerfed.

3

Yeah it’s far easier to tone down one then try and make 20 as strong as the one. Gambit is definitely stronger than everyone and is meta defining at the 5* level.

In my experience he is not worth trying to fight unless you have him too. That needs tweaked.

4

If it’s just Gambit and two 4-stars, I’m taking him down with the same anti-meta team that I use to consistently beat Medusa, Gamora, and R4G. Remember how everyone cried that they were the only teams you saw in The Simulator? How they were broken and unbeatable and needed to be nerfed. I go hunting for them now in The Simulator. I’ll climb to 1700-1800, shield (if I need to do), queue up 5 of their teams, then use them to complete my run to 2000.

If it’s Gambit and another champed 5-star, that’s a different matter, but again, they’re LEGENDARY characters, they’re supposed to be legendary. Look at the three Latest Legends we have at the moment. One is top tier, and the other two are mediocre, at best. Archangel is even considered bottom tier by many.

The Devs seriously need to stop pushing out new characters, especially the 5-stars, and concentrate on fixing those we already have to make them as Legendary as Gambit.

But they won’t. They’re going to announce the new 5-star within the next few days and whoever it is could very well be a true anti-Gambit. And then everyone will cry about her and how OP she is.

5

And how about we start a 15 paged thread about why Gambit should NOT be nerfed??? I for one, think that nerfing him (again) would be the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to this game.

I think a lot of you that are complaining about him, probably have not been playing this game as long as I have. I have been playing this game since the BETA stages and I continue to pay daily.

I have seen some of the most nasty, ghastly changes come to this game. When the developers of this game nerf someone, they REALLY nerf them into oblivion.

Case in point, OML. OML is a character that has only 1 power at the start of the game. In order to unlock his other powers, you literally need to obtain 12 yellow (an impossible task) AND 9 black AND lose a whole turn before you’re able to unlock his powers.

When he used to heal a lot, he was slow because getting all that AP would take a tremendous amount of time and effort in order to unlock his powers. Now that his healing has been taken away, assuming you’re the one playing him, you’ll be dead before you even unlock his powers.

Having seen the movie, I agree that OML should not be a massive healer. With that said, if they were going to take his healing away the way they did, they should have unlocked all of his powers right at the start of the game, instead of having us collect 21 AP AND lose a turn, before we have a fighting chance to stay in the game.

He got nerfed with a nerf bat and he’ll never be useful again and he’ll never stand up to the likes of other 5 stars in the game, even the bad ones.

Did OML deserve a nerf at all? NO!!! Absolutely not! Have you guys forgotten that he was nerfed at a time when nobody was using him anymore anyway? (Despite that whole ridiculous 10% argument, which everyone knows was completely made up and untrue). During the time of his nerf, everyone and their grandma was using Thanos/Black Panther. Nobody was using OML. And what’s worse is that during that whole time that everyone was using Thanos/Panther, OML did not stand a chance at beating them. THEN, he was nerfed and any chance that he could have possibly stood against Thanos/Panther was completely gone. Not even if you added match damage and other boosts, would you be able to stand a chance against them. It was completely unnecessary and ridiculous to have him nerfed, ESPECIALLY that bad. Like I said before, take his healing away, but at least unlock his powers. Don’t take his healing away and still only have 1 power. That makes no sense at all.

Gambit was OP in the beginning, although… for a 5 star, can anyone truly be OP? Isn’t that the whole point of a 5 star? Aren’t 5 stars supposed to be “Epic?” Aren’t they supposed to obliterate 4 stars? That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Gambit was fast and he was deadly. It seemed that every turn, he’d have enough AP to fire his powers over and over. Was he OP truly? Well… like I said, for a 5 star that’s supposed to deadly, I think he lived up to the 5 star tier for sure.

Now that he’s been nerfed, he’s slow. I don’t think people realize just HOW slow. I have him and it takes FOREVER to use his powers. Even if all you ever match are red/purple, it still takes 3-4 turns before you can cast a power. By then, the enemy has done extensive damage to you. And if there are no red/purple matches to be made on the board, then it feels like you’re playing an eternity to wait for you to be able to fire your power.

And let’s not forget that the first cast of red does no damage. You literally have to fire red twice to be able to start doing damage and then by then, the enemy has already had a chance to get rid of one or both of your charged tiles, thus, forcing you to have to start over before you can do any damage.

Is he bad after the nerf? Not necessarily “bad.” He went from being “perfect” (For having a 5 star tier) to being just “ok.” He’s tremendous slow. He can definitely and EASILY be beaten.

And now, you all are wanting him to be nerfed yet again? How bad do you guys want him to get??? Do you want him to be so useless that nobody will ever want to play with him ever again? What is the agenda here? You all saw how his 3 star counterpart is now THE worst 3 star in the entire game. Is that what you want for the 5 star? For him to be the worst 5 star in the entire game, so much so that people would RATHER use 4 stars than to even use him at all? Just how bad do you guys want him to be? He’s already pretty bad (slow) with his current nerf. Let’s not nerf him into complete oblivion. We should not have any 4 stars that are better than a 5 star and yet, it sounds like you guys want him to be worse than 4 stars.

If anything, I think there should be a ton of rebalancing of the current 5 stars.

Start with Banner and Doc Ock and Angel and Doctor Strange (who has no health) and all the others. Let’s make them better. Let’s make them worthy of the “5 star” title. Let’s not make an “ok” 5 star just plain terrible! And let’s fix OML! Unlock his powers! Spider-man BIB needs a major overhaul too. Again, these are supposed to be 5 stars: THE BEST OF THE BEST! Let’s make them amazing!

The answer is not nerfing ok/bad characters. The answer is to make 5 stars great! That’s what 5 stars were supposed to be all about.

6

Heh. They didn’t even wait a few days, just a couple of hours. Welcome, Jessica Jones.

7

Really? He wasn’t nerfed. He was ‘re-balanced’. ‘Changed’ is a better word. Maybe ‘buffed’. And every time someone popular is nerfed all the rage-quitters and naysayers jump out of the woodwork predicting doom, yet the game keeps trucking along just fine.

8

The oml 10% was not exclusively the 5 star tier. Even one yellow cover and he instantly was the go to character for every player from 2*-4*. And many people in 5* land were still using him.

He was literally everywhere. If you were already in 5* land you may not have noticed how prolific he was in lower tiers. He was an amazing meat shield that almost never needed healthpacks.

They did go overboard on oml though. I always thought he was fine to leave as is at max covers but just tone down his healing at the lower covers so all the lower tiers wouldn’t abuse him as much.

Gambit is a whole different beast. He does not need nerfed to oblivion, he needs toned down a bit.

Out of curiosity @Druiz23 @JSP869 what is your gambit buster team, that has you actively hunting him since he is so easy to beat?

9

“Hi, my name is Rix and I’m a Gambiholic”

“Hi Rix!”

“It’s not that I don’t want to use other characters in PVP, it’s just that when it comes to clicking on those character icons, I just can’t stop myself from clicking on Gambit.”

“We understand. Let it all out, man.”

“I wasn’t always this way. I used to use Thor and Daredevil in PVP. But then I champed Gambit, and everything changed. Once I tried Gambit I was no longer losing 500 points overnight in PVP. My float point was no longer 250 points. And then I just couldn’t go back. No matter how much I wanted to.”

“Amen, brother!”

“And now, whenever I see a team that doesn’t have Gambit in it, I just can’t stop myself. I have to attack it. Even if it is only worth 23 points. It’s not that I hate people that don’t have Gambit, but I can beat those teams quickly and without needing health packs. Okay, maybe I hate them just a little…”

“Haters gonna hate!”

“And ever since I champed Gambit a little over two months ago, I don’t think I have done a single PVP fight without him. Not for seed teams. Not for climbing. Not for the final push to 900 points. Not for Lightning Rounds. Not for Shield Simulator. Not for nothing. Because if I don’t use Gambit then I become the one who is smashed to a bloody pulp by every single team that wants to avoid fighting Gambit. And it sucks that my two options are to either use Gambit in every battle or be absolutely decimated by everyone else.”

“Suck it up, buttercup!”

“It isn’t that I want him nerfed…”

“Nerfing is bad!”

“It’s just that it is easier to bring him down to the level of the others than to change all of the other characters.”

“Boo!”

“Well, thanks for listening…”

10

When you say he needs to be “toned down a bit” what is your idea? What change would you make? Cause he’s already been toned down a ton. They made him super slow. So, what is your idea of toning down?

I never said that I “actively” go hunting for anyone, ever. I just fight the fights as they appear on my screen. I don’t like to skip any fights because it costs ISO to skip fights, so I try my best not to do it if possible. My team for any team, is almost always the same: Champion Peter Parker, Champion Rogue and Champion America. Obviously America creating critical tiles every round helps accelerate match damage and Peter Parker himself makes critical tiles too. And Rogue acts as a shield to protect herself and the entire team. As you know, all match damaged is decreased and all power damage is decreased when she’s around. So yeah, I don’t even use Gambit all that much even though I have him, simply because he IS so slow now. So again, I don’t understand why people are so afraid of him. Maybe it’s just because they don’t have him as a usable character on their roster and they fear what they don’t know? That’s the only reason I can think of.

11

No no no no no no no no no no… no?

Gambit is broken and absurdly stronger than any of the other 5*'s, there is no debating this, you can frig right off.

He is the problem, not the rest of the whole 5*'s.

12

In the same camp as @Druiz23 I don’t hunt for Gambit teams, they’re just…there. If Gambit is the sole 5* he’s usually a sub-400 with Gamora and R4G, so I’ll just RHulk Bomb them. It works just as well, if not better, than RHulk Bombing Medusa + GotG. If Gambit is with two other 4s I’ll use my own partially covered Gambit and America with The Hood and watch the other team explode. If it’s a 400+ Gambit with another 400+ 5, those teams I will skip. For now. Once I get America champed though, along with a couple of my own 5*s, it’s ‘go time’.

Yes, of course I’ll still be a target. But everyone is to someone. That’s just like real life though. It doesn’t matter how big and tough you are, there’s always someone bigger, or tougher, or just plain meaner.

@sinnerjfl I absolutely agree that Gambit is the strongest of the 5s, but that doesn’t mean he’s broken. Someone has to be the top dog and, for now, that’s Gambit. That does not mean he’s broken, but there absolutely are some, bottom-tier 5s who are broken and they are very much in need of a buff/fix.

13

My idea is to make him not prioritize overwriting special tiles with his purple. It still could overwrite them but won’t hunt them.

Same for red, it can pop charged tiles but won’t hit them always.

This I feel would still leave him strong but would make him a more reliant on charge tile spammers like bolt. I have a fully covered gambit. He is not yet champed. He just feels like he has too much utility along with really good damage.

If he is meant to be the damage train then he should have less utility. If he is meant to be more utility then trim his damage a tad on red and leave everything else alone.

And how is your America making crits when gambit is generating a 6 ap favor for himself passively every turn?

I’m not saying 5*s should not be strong or even that none of them should be the strongest. But when the best way to deal with a character is to attack it with itself and every other strategy is a bit risky something is a bit too strong.

14

On a tangent, many of the benefits that Aussie workers enjoy (such as protected leave, paid vacation, etc.) are a result of the Aussie government deciding that it was more fair to achieve parity among the workforce by mandating non-union workers receive the same benefits as union workers, than to take away those benefits from the union workers. More fair, but also a darn sight easier to give than take away, especially when you’d be trying to take away benefits from union-protected employees :wink:

Sadly, as an Aussie, I’m also equally familiar with what we call the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ or the crab bucket syndrome as it’s known in other countries. The ‘crab bucket syndrome’, for those unfamiliar with it, is when a crab tries to escape from the bucket of crabs, but as it tries to climb out it’s dragged back down by all of the other crabs also trying to climb out, and so none of the crabs are able to escape the bucket. The ‘tall poppy syndrome’ is essentially the same thing. Aussies love a battler and love helping out their less fortunate neighbours, but we will not hesitate to cut down the tall poppy.

In that vein, without a doubt it absolutely would be easier to cut down Gambit. It would be a lot more work but ultimately better IMO if the other 5*s were raised up to his level.

15

He is broken because he passively generates his own AP (there are no counters to this) and with no conditions whatsoever, he also destroys enemy AP too! As soon as he can double cast red (thats not very long thanks to black), its 15k dmg + he generates AP as well and theyre charged tiles! Then his purple overwrites every kind of special because sure why not. He also has standard health.

Now, he does about everything and has no weaknesses, that’s why he is broken. Everyone uses him, if you dont use him youre a target, he can beat other 5*'s that are at 500+ level etc.

Top-tier characters that are powerful but are not absurdly broken, look at Daredevil and Thor, that should be what the best 5*'s should be like. They’re strong, they’re fun to play, they require a bit of strategy and playing against them is actually enjoyable.

16

Real talk, I didn’t read anything but the OP, sorry if I repeat anything.

Generally agree with the OPs sentiment, but Gambit is monumentally overpowered to the point that they would need to majorly rework the other 22 5s to catch up with him. That’s not practical, even if they did 2 reworks a month (the most they’ve ever done) it would be almost a year before they were all reworked. On top of that I think it would be ridiculously game breaking if every other 5 was as OP as Gambit. Matches would be over in 1 or 2 turns everytime and it wouldn’t really be a game you play anymore, just a game where you click 1 button to win.

No thanks. This is the first case since I’ve started playing where I feel a nerf is legitimately justified #NeverNerf #OKMaybeThisOnce

17

There are other threads discussing how OP Gambit really is and how much he does (or for some) doesn’t need a nerf so I’ll try to avoid that subject as much as I can here.

With regards to the OP, boosting other 5s may resolve the issue to an extent, but the problem with this is that it would not be worth the development time to do this - the developers only have limited time and resources, and this is more likely to be spent on endeavours that will bring in more money. I’m sure there would be ways to do this (such as rereleasing an improved 5 into new token packs) but the devs seem set in their ways of a 4/4/5 release schedule.

The only easy adjustment I wouldn’t mind seeing is the health and match damage in the 5* tier. That would be a gentler way of taking Gambit down a peg or two, but still might not be enough imo.

As to the comment that Gambit is slow now - yes he is undoubtedly slower than when on release he generated 3 red/purple. However he is still quicker than nearly every other option and in Sim at least he can make other combos even quicker (Gambit, Thor, Chavez is a popular team at the moment).

As an illustration of how quick he still is, I late joined a PvP last season (can’t remember which but it gave out BP covers for t5/10) and ran up 1400 score in 50m. Even if every match was 70+ points that’s still 2.5m a match which is plenty quick enough. Using Thor/Gambit, matches can be even quicker, even against very high level opposition.

18

I think I see why your experience is different. If you’re seeing sub-400 Gambits, you probably don’t have any champed 5’s. Undercovered Gambits aren’t that powerful, especially if they’re lacking black covers.

Champed Gambits on the other hand are much more powerful than other 5’s. If Gambit was a little more powerful than other 5’s it would be fine, but the gap is too big.

19

Really just take away his 2 AP destroy, he already gets to pull free AP out of thin air, why the hell does he need to also freely suppress the enemy team every turn on top of it? Even if it’s randomly hitting different colors it’s SOOOO strong in the early game of the match because makes it pretty easy for his team to be 2-3 turns ahead of you unless you’re getting early 4-5 matches, on top of the fact it has no activation conditions.

I know he’s a 5* star but this effect is just silly on him while also gaining free AP in his colors, either needs to lose it or have replaced with a weaker effect than free AP destroy.

20

@Pants1000 I see 400+ Gambits, and others, but with my own Gambit being only 390 and still needing 4 more covers, I’m not going to take on champ’d 5*s, so I skip them and continue looking for targets I know I have a fighting chance against. I’m not looking for easy targets (but I’ll hit them if I find them) just easier. Of course that doesn’t mean RNGesus won’t still mess with me and give the AI a cascade on their first turn that leaves me scrambling, but that is how this game goes. Sometimes the AI gets those cascades, and sometimes we get them :slight_smile:

@MarcusGraves It’s the AP suppression that makes me see his fix as a buff. When he was first introduced I don’t believe he had that, then they nerfed him by slowing down his AP generation a little bit, but they buffed him by adding the enemy suppression. IMO the buff from the enemy suppression outweighs the nerf from reducing his own generation, so overall that’s why I see his fix as being a buff. He got tweaked a little bit but the sum of the changes was a buff IMO.