How much improving would Thanos (The Mad Titan) need, to be viable with a weekly boost?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Character Discussion
1

With Ghost Rider and Phoenix reworks and especially with sort of a promise of more coming later this! year :o , I’ve noticed discussions about other possible candidates for a rework and the degree of it, popping up in a few places on the forum.

Talking about this in our team chat, we kinda also agreed similar buffs to Jean’s could definitely work for a few more older (like, 1st year of 5-star releases old) characters, and it made me curious what would forum have to say about it, if anything.

The plan is to have a new poll for each character every week or two, should there be interest in discussing all this, and I’ve been allowed to post a poll in the general discussion forum initially, before they would be moved to their appropriate sub forum as a newer poll is made.

OK, now about the poll options.
As a help or guide, I’d classify the past buffs we’ve had so far, over the years, like this:

Phoenix - option 4. Pretty much the standard example of it.

GRRR - option 5 or 4, depending on how you view his Green.

Ock - option 7 or 6, depending on how you view his Black.

Archangel - another 4.

Cap FA - … honestly, I forgot how his Red and Blue looked before, but Yellow went from a hot mess to his best power, so a 5 at minimum. Probably a 7.

Surfer - kinda option 4 too.

So, I was planning to start with the oldest chars, Surfer or OML and complete the first year with Black Widow or Dr. Strange.

But since Panthos is right after that, and a bit of a discussion has already started about him in Jean’s thread (if I haven’t mixed them up), I thought we could get things started with Thanos. He’s showing up as a boss again, also, so another reason to give him the honors.

Personally, I think he’s great for pve (CL 9 or under) and even has some niche uses in pvp still, so I wouldn’t want any major changes. But a slight buff to Purple or even Green, could be nice. Match damage and health buffs pretty much go without saying. :slight_smile:

How much improving would Thanos (The Mad Titan) need, to be viable with a weekly boost?
  • No need for a rework
  • Updating match damage and health
  • The above plus powers damage
  • The above plus minor tweaks in power costs or other numbers
  • Needs a rework in 1 power
  • Needs a rework in 2 powers
  • Needs a complete rework
  • Something else, please elaborate in a post
  • I’m not sure
0 voters
2

To be viable when boosted? He’s totally viable already when boosted. He actually kinda shreds when he’s boosted.

I do have him at a really high level (boosted Court Death is like 70k for me, I think) but I have other characters higher than him that are much worse.

I wouldn’t turn down a buff, obviously, but if he got too much better he’d be getting into “usable unboosted” territory.

3

As far as tweaking his powers I would just fortify his purple and green and make them cheaper. Purple just down 1 or 2 and green down to like 7 or 8. Conversely the green could stay same cost but be fortified and do 1.5 - 2x the damage.

4

The only tweak I’d give him is make his Purple CD timer increase by 1 if Thanos makes a match each turn. This would would the same way as YellowJackets invisibility does.
That way you could keep the tile on the board forever (or at least until it got matched/destroyed) esp since he’d likely tank 3 colors with his match damage increase.
That would give him 2 good powers (on most teams you probably have a better green outlet than his given it’s cost and vulnerable CD and if you change that too much he becomes too good of a character).

KGB

5

Thano5 has aged better than most. Court Death is still great, and to me it’s his whole identity. I’d hate for him to get a GR style boost and have that get changed, so I’d rather a general number pump than risk CD getting changed.

If I could trust his good parts would stay good, I would hope his purple could be a start of battle passive, maybe on a unique tile like Checkov’s Gun that is only out till it gets matched away the one time.

6

Multi-coloured powers to represent each infinity stone.

7

A match damage and health boost would definitely be welcome. Give him health somewhere in between Apocalypse and Knull, and match damage equivalent to Ultron.

Court Death is quite good as it is.

Infinite Power: @KGB’s suggestion is a good one. Alternatively, fortify it and make the match damage increase much bigger (in the realm of 200-300%).

Come and Get Me: personally I’d scrap this and give Thanos an Infinity Gauntlet power. Let Thanos choose one of the 6 colours and each colour has a different effect, akin to Prof X’s Purple.

8

I say option 4 but make his purple a 5/6 turn passive that starts off the match. And up the bonus match damage to 130%.

The green can stay as is for all I care. Court death is amazing. And making purple immediately threatening would probably have to make his green stay the same or be even worse.

9

Turning his active purple into passive will literally nerf all the goons, especially Sentries and Mindless Ones. Wanda, Ronan, Polaris, and BRB etc will be rendered useless as well. :o I think turning it from a cd tile to a character tile when fired is better. Think Gwenpool, Dr Strange, Silver Surfer etc.

I think the standard buff would be health and match damage. But I find his health fine.

Then, pump his purple match damage percentage to 300-600%.

As for the green, they can do anything with it, but keep the tanking. Maybe they could add a passive to his green where if his purple and green tiles are on the board, reduce all damage by a certain percentage.

10

A lot of this stuff would make him Tier 1 if they kept Court Death the same, and especially if they also boosted his (already high) health and his match damage.

Part of why Court Death is so good is that PvP typically includes one essential character with low health. Buffing Thanos’s match damage and giving him a way to shut off damage reduction would make it much more powerful.

I’d personally be ok with that! Every character should be Tier 1.

But for everyone else, do you want Thanos to be usable unboosted, like Shang-Chi, SW, Colossus, Apocalypse, etc? Or just usable when he’s boosted?

11

What really makes a difference is the health of the featured pvp events chars. In a new character pve, He’s still devastatingly good.

12

Imo he needs a complete rework.
He needs to be as powerful as the character deserves, but first of all he needs to be funny.
His 3 powers aren’t funny at all imo.
His purple is hateful but to the point I know the character never did something like that.
And the green is extremely expensive and totally obsolete, on top on that not funny.

And he has the same powers than the 3*.
A 5* should be somewhat different and funny, I think the most powerful artifact in the universe should do interesting and totally different things in the game.
The black power I would change it for the same reasons but I understand that wouldn’t completely make happy all the players.
The 4* version is from endgame 2 and still his green talks about the Infinity gauntlet: he didn’t had the Infinity gauntlet yet so it should be changed too for to be loyal at the character.
So mine is a radical suggestion, according to the character.

13

I think you’ve never used his purple before. With his purple cd out, SC won’t be able to destroy tiles or create critical tiles. Likewise, Wanda, Apocalypse, Polaris etc won’t be able to create their special tiles as well. All you can do is make matches and still fire powers, but those effects that relate to modifying tiles will be negated.

With that said, turning his cd tile to character tile means powers that remove special tiles won’t be able to target him. Give him some Wanda’s active blue treatment and his purple will be better.

14

Making that purple passive and first turn will be a nightmare when facing him on defence so no thanks - it would shut down Apoc’s yellow for starters.
A numbers buff and do something with his green - I really like @BlackBoltRocks idea above but otherwise at least just fortify the tile and maybe reduce AP cost by 1.

15

I voted for no changes needed.

He works, he does what he does (on death aoe dmg) and his pink is VERY STRONG. Seeing as it also increases his match damage, that is why I don’t think he needs a base match damage change.

Better that things like W5sp, Rescue, Banner and Ironman get attention before Thanos.

16

We must admit that the only purpose of thanos 5*(and 3* too) is in order to get cheesy quick wins, on low levels pve or when appears a new 4* who should have low health because nobody has him yet.

It’s not because his toolkit was great, or funny, or interesting, or even viable nowadays.
A rebalance should finally make great this character and bring him the respect he deserves.

17

Does his purple negate changing the colors of tiles?

18

Thano5 + Apocalypse + Onslaught were an excellent pick-3 anti-hulk team before Wanda was introduced. I’m curious - why so insistent he be “funny?” Thanos is not what I would call a comedy character, not even really absurd like Doctor Octopus (classic) or Big Wheel.

19

After reading hundreds of his posts, I’m pretty sure he means “fun”. Thanos is not a fun character to play (which I could agree with, depending on one’s definition). English isn’t his first language.

20

Yes, it negates all board manipulation not caused by Thano5. There was a time when GE Doom’s yellow could still shuffle the board with it out, but I’m not sure what the state of that is.

Regarding Shang-Chi - his match damage would still improve with every combo point you got, you just wouldn’t be able to cast his red or purple actively. So he could still ramp his damage significantly depending on board conditions. I’m not entirely certain what would happen with Sersi’s powers or Domino’s passive regarding the changing of percentages on drop-in powers.

Morbius should still be able to remove a Character Tile, no? I’ve never put him up against Gwenpool because she is a never-see in pvp or pve for me.

Depending on a given power’s order of operations, sometimes they partially work when Thanos has his purple out. For instance Okoye’s yellow will heal her but not create any team up, and I believe BRB’s blue behaves like it does if there is nowhere for the tile to go and does the damage without dropping a countdown.