How things will change after the gambit nerf goes live (discussion)

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
41

I have limited champed 5*: Gambit, SS, OML, BSSM, HE5, Phx. Next best is DD at 420, Thanos at 405. I could bring some others up to around that level, most notably Bolt to 420.

I have to play him in PVP; there are no other halfway good options with my roster. I’m using him with HE5, as I have been. Matches are usually slower, which means fewer matches per hop. I am winning almost everything, so he still has the offense.

I lost one match to a Thanos, because I had a “cat nerf” (cat got into stuff he shouldn’t have, and when I looked away, Thanos dropped a green and I didn’t notice.) Thanos is definitely a threat. Most of the other teams I thought would be bad (JJ/Thor/Okoye etc.) are still easily beatable.

The big pluses I see:

  1. I see a wider variety of teams.
  2. I can really use HE5’s blue now, and it’s really a much better team.

I actually think Gambit/HE5 or Bolt might be better teams, and perhaps the best teams to use him with. 3 10k CDs fortified quickly is pretty strong. He also feeds back to Bolt and makes Bolt faster. I may bring Bolt to 420 for Sim: Gambit/HE5/Bolt.

He’s different, he’s slower, and he’s still good. Every once in a while I still even get a D win.

Despite his position as the best in my roster, I have wanted the nerf. The variety of teams out there was boring. I think they got it about right with the last minute adjustments.

42

Yeah I think he’s still good, slower though. Puzzle quest has gone back to being some what random for me again…I had forgotten how random the game could be because gambit offered just that much control.

I’m really not use to people firing off powers so much.

Him and hawkeye were really strong for awhile. Might see more of that again on defense. He’s one of the better defense characters because of his purple and you still kind of need to fight him 1st.

He might kill your team put he’s going to make use use health packs if you don’t take him out 1st.

43

Can’t bring myself to sell him for 13 covers that won’t help me, but he just falls into that “if you’re not first, you’re last” position where i could win matches with him, but why do so when there are almost always better options?

44

A lot more variety and a lot more fun, however the people who only got gambit on their side will suffer because I played a couple of matches against him and managed to match the repeater tile three times after that he was downed!

45

Tried him once and nope. At this point I am not selling but will not use him for now. We will see when I get a chance to use him more in PVP. I never use in PVE unless it isn’t a 5E node that I needed him for, Mindless ones/InHumans. Otherwise thats it. My Gambit is level 494

46

HE + Gambit + Carol were a pretty strong pvp team. But how is he + Gambit without an 4* that synergizes as well?

Overall Gambit seems slower but still useful. His red is still usable at 8ap. 10 would have killed him. He is no longer the meta. And those who relied on him for pvp viability will suffer without a good teammate (he might be good enough, bolt definitely is, especially when facing fewer other gambits). And Thor/jj/okoye seems like the meta.

47

Its like im playing a whole other game now after the nerf

48

Who are all these other characters? I have a level 496 Thanos that I can actually use now!!

49

For this PVE, Heart of Darkness, you have the hands down hardest non goon 5E node, InHumans. With Medusa’s passive, Black Bolts passive and Lovkjaws Health and passive, this node can be very dicey. In the past, this node was made for Gambit with the free charged tiles from B.B. Now i really don’t use Gambit per nerf for PVE since he can be a bit slow but I did for this node. This is what I found out.

Level 494 Gambit, 482 Thor and 592 boosted PHX.
What shocked me on the first 2 clears is how slow this was. It worked but man Gambit got hit so very hard and very slow. His red at 494 hits like a whiffle ball bat. It was so weak and that was with the charged tiles. So I switched to this team.

Level 482 Thor, 474 Okoye and PHX.
I cleared the last 2 clears, with going against higher levels, in the time in took me to do 1 clear with Gambit.

It is very clear how slow and ineffective it is. What a waste of money, time and energy That a lot of people spent on this character and game.

50

Reading this, and my own experience playing and using nerfed Gambit - where his Repeater tile was so easy to match away - vindicates my decision to sell him for 13 5* tokens. #NoRagrets

51

I have been thoroughly underwhelmed by Gambit since his nerf, versus his orginal design, versus his buffed AP denying version of the last months and as a standalone design.
His black rarely generates any AP, yet locks out 2 colors as a trade off. His red does half the damage, with a set-up cost, at a higher AP cost, with less reliable AP generation. His purple has reduced utility, but is touted as strong CD based damage skill. Guess what, so are Goblin’s CDs, which is more flexible in its effect and cheaper, and has built in fortification.
So, I have been feeling very unhappy about having a level 496 Gambit on my roster that would rarely see play. My next highest leveled characters are 480 Phx, 474 OML. Both of whom are obsoleted and/or nerfed. The actual next strongest characters are all in the mid 460 level. Meaning Gambit towers over them by 30 levels thanks to a judicious use of BH. But he is less useful to my roster than them. I’ve been trying various combinations to make him work as his level should, but he’s consistently worse than any 30 level lower option.

I have however been outspoken on how poor this compensation is. 59 tokens would get me an average of 2-3 levels per character in the packs, which does not compensate equally the strength loss on my roster.
And I had still hopes for him as a role player in PVE. In particular in this node, custom built for him. Then the above reports from S1 came in. And it crushed all hope that he could ever be a useful character to my roster anymore.
And when my turn came around, Thorkoye cleared that node faster and more reliable than full-glory-Gambit has ever done.

So, with a heavy heart.. I have sold Gambit. As did several other players on the fence about it.

And the results weren’t overall good.

59 tokens
Champed characters:
JJ - 2
Okoye - 2
BP - 3
GG - 4
Thanos - 3
Bolt - 3
Phx - 5
OML - 4
CW Cap - 3
IM - 3
DD - 2
SS - 2
Strange - 1
BW - 2
Spiderman - 2
HE - 1
IW Cap - 3

I got 0 BSS and worse 0 Thor covers..

But it gets worse for my unchamped characters. I have several 9-11 cover Classic 5s and a 9 cover Wasp.

AA - 3 (not champed, 11 covers now, 2 saved)
SL - 5 (not champed, 12 covers now, 2 saved)
Banner - 3 (not champed, still 11 covers, 4 saved, because already one saved from Dailies)
Wasp 3 (not champed, 10 covers, 2 saved)
GR - 1 (3rd cover).

So I wasted 9 pulls because all Classics were pretty much one color, the highest one.

With the resulting LTs (I’m keeping the CP for new release store), I was able to finish Wasp with 2 covers and 2 Ant-Man getting the last one, and added 2 more Okoye and IW Cap. SL will be finished in 10 more Drax levels.
So I still have 6 wasted covers waiting after that, until AA and Banner get level 300 feeders.

At least I got my Gambit from hoarding, and not whaling..

52

And that is what pisses me off more than anything. They were told how OP he was before he was released. They didn’t care. Didn’t listen. Then they “nerf” him after 50 pages of people saying he is broken, and the Devs were like “really?”, which was a buff. They let him like this through digital day and made a TON of money off of him, including from myself, since it was a great deal and he was that good. Then now since they rode this horse until it was dead now they change him to the current state. They knew full well what they were doing OR they are that incompetent with his design. Either way they made out in a big way now we have to deal with a character that a lot of people are selling because he is that bad.

Now if they would have released him to start in this state, I would think no way that they would have made te coin they did on digital day that they did with him being OP. Bait and switch.

53

After trying one last time Gambit, I’ve come to the realization that I can no longer use him in both PVE and PVP so I sold him.
The sellback has been…not bad but not so good.

Got 1 Gthor (the 12th cover)
2 IWCap (Champed him)
1 PParker
2 unusable Okoye (now at 7/1/1 )
3 usable Strange (now at 2/3/5)
2 Starlord
1 IM
1 SS (unusable)
1AA

Bittersweet…RIP my ole friend Gambit :cry:

54

it’s a 1:1 cover compensation and we all have had over 6 months to play with him. How is that an absolute joke? Over-powered characters will eventually get nerfed to keep the game healthy - every games does this. I’m still super happy about his nerf and how much more fun the metagame is. Next up, is a Thor rebalance… Make it so D3, make it so…

55

It’s a joke in the sense that there are almost no circumstances in which selling gambit makes sense. 1:1 cover compensation is a nice talking point. But X number of specific covers is worth a hell of a lot more than X number of covers randomly distributed over more 15 other characters (this is why direct buying a 4* cover costs 120cp, but a legendary token only costs 20/25).

So a 1:1 cover compensation, plus a significant net iso loss is a fairly big value hit for players. As you point out, some of that lost value is presumably intended to correspond to the value extracted from gambit in-game during his pre-nerf reign. And maybe it does, more so for those who had him champed longer. But I can definitely see why this compensation (which is, btw, more than they offered for previous nerfs like OML, and WAY more than they used offer in the 3* and 4* meta days) still feels paltry compared to the assets being sold.

I have always felt that post-nerf compensation should not be an all-or-nothing sale. punishing players on essential nodes seems excessive. Demi should let players extract iso/covers from champions (so that a 5* would return to 13-covers, level 255, a 4* to 13-covers, level 70, etc). that way, when they nerf someone into the ground (like sentry or xfw), players can reinvest those resources elsewhere without hampering their ability to play PVE in the short term.

56

What you all are ignoring is the fact that Gambit is still decent, he just isn’t over-powered like he used to be. He is still in the top 1/3 of the 5*s

57

I never offered an opinion on Gambit’s utility post-nerf. I don’t think it’s directly relevant to discussion. The same fair compensation should be offered for all character changes, then players can choose individually to take it or not based on post-nerf utility

58

Mod Mode: ON

Please keep the discussion civil and on topic. Thank you.

*Mod Mode: OFF

59

The devs did something, but the solution was not effective. To say they took months to do something about Gambit is not true. The feedbacks from players couple years back mentioned that they don’t want nerf to be the first option. That’s why you had 5* characters like cap america to counter Gambit instead. The solution was not effective and they ackknowledged that.

You had your fun and victories with Gambit. Time to be realistic about the compensation.

60

Both AA and Cap depends on CD to stop the generation of AP. Any one can see that this is an awful way to counter Gambit.
If that means they singled out the AP gen as the issue in their counter character, then maybe .. change the AP gen on Gambit? And leave the rest? Then see if it works?
Or if you want them to work as a counter with CDs, then remove CD overwriting, and see if that opens up the meta?
Or do both and throw in an extra nerf on red, because it was too strong with AP generation that’s no longer there?

Maybe .. buff both counters to not use CD, but a proprietary tile that’s not included in Gambits overwrites (like Apocalypse Horsemen tiles for instance) and a few extra changes. And make 2 characters better.

There’s lot of ways to fix a problem.

(Also can everyone please stop harping about the Gambit victories and gains. It reeks of jealousy and adds nothing to the discussion. Players also had Panthos, Bolt, OML, XBusters, CageFist, … etc.. victories. Gambit is not an isolated incident, but one stop on a long road. Thor and Okoye are already complained about. There’s always a best character. But you’ve got wins hybrid now. So at most you lose out on some 4star covers in a hard bracket. Those are barely relevant if you’re a 5star tier player complaining about a hard match)