Idea on how to fix Thor/Wolv combo without over nerfing

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

Having a green battery in a game that has so many strong green abilities isn’t really stable. A team with Wolverine, Daken, Thor becomes ridiculous due to him producing so much green that both abuse for strike tile creation.

Likely either a color yield reduction or a color change should take place. If they made his yellow ability produce something like more red with a reduced payout compared to his current green payout and swapped the color of his red and green abilities it would honestly go a long way. That would mean he couldn’t fuel strike tiles or reproduce yellows for more attempts. It breaks the loop of red feeds yellow then yellow gives out green which wolverine uses to make things broken.

Anyone here care to troubleshoot this idea? I know it yields red which Wolverine could use for Adamantium Slash , but if the red payout wasn’t huge it would work without over nerfing IMO.

2

It’s not really the combo that’s overpowered, Thor and Wolv on their own already are. Thrown together they aren’t really that much more dangerous, at least on defense. Thor has an outright amazing cost/damage ratio for all his skills, plus tile conversion that helps those skills thrown in as well, no strings attached. Changing tile conversion color won’t help, there’s going to be cascades, which will benefit your team unless your setup is really messed up. An interesting way to balance Thor while keeping skill costs and damage the same might be to make his skills a turn ender, with tile conversion benefits going to the opponent. He’s ** after all, right now Ragnarok would be overjoyed to get his skill set.

3

Thor is mainly played because he’s rumored to be a very good tank as IA plays with him. I’ve seen that this theory is too much based on luck in cascades as his powers are way too expensive to be spammed early. My OBW builds purple faster and he can’t even play his red power. He’s way less dangerous than previously un-nerfed Raganarok, or an enraged Ares, but people have too much faith in what they could read.
Thor/wolverine are not the best teams ever but we’re condemned to see only damage teams in tournaments. Most Players don’t care about variety, they only want to farm iso & covers.

4

Nah, most players won’t read character guides, or even visit the forum. Thor is really an obvious pick, readily available, very high life, very high damage output. Skill costs are amazingly low, especially compared to Iron Man(*) you are most likely replacing. Sure, it takes a couple of matches to get the engine running, but once your red hits the board the fight is about done. Pre-nerf Ragnarok wasn’t dangerous, he was an “I win first turn, without the opponent ever getting a move in”-button.

5

Guess that depends on what you play with. IME Thor is just a huge body that sits there never getting any AP to work with. in every so many games the AI gets a lucky cascade providing a ton of AP, then obviously he will work as intended. But in general the cost are high enough to be preventable – I often overlooked yellow in the past, but since Ares gets on speed I hunt it for myself.

Overall I’d say the AI is fairly neutral with thor (and the one character it plays well actually is spiderman).

6

Either remove base damage from feral claws or increase cost to 4 ap or decrease strike tile damage.
Thors red should either create less yellow, do less damage or cost 7ap
Also nerf healing slightly.

7

Perfect nerf for Thor without touching either damage, costs or anything

“the exposure to iso-8 made Thor godly powers extremely devastating, so that they come with a huge recoil” : the red skill and yellow skill end your turn.

Practically, their huge damage and tile creation comes at the costs of a match of yours (3+ ap and damage), often gifting the opponent with a 4 or 5 match in yellow or green.

8

I can’t imagine many people voluntarily playing Thor if his abilities ended your turn. Unless his ability killed between 1 and 3 of your opponents, it wouldn’t be worth seeding a field with tiles and ceding your turn just to do 1 or 2 thousand damage.

They can just drop the number of tiles created (by one or two) or increase the AP cost (by 1 or 2) and his power would be more in line with the other characters. Likewise, if Wolverine’s Feral Claws cost 3 or 4 he would no longer be super-dangerous. Let’s hope a lighter touch is used in balancing these two guys than was used on Ragnarok.

9

Wolverine’s claws DO cost 3 or 4 (level 5 and 4, respectively).

10

If they make Thor skills a turn-ender, they will certainly over nerf him.

My suggestion would be, in a simple attempt:

THOR
Red skill:
costs 1 AP more at all levels, generates 4 yellow (i.o. 5). Same damage.

Yellow skill:
generates 4 green (i.o. 5). Same damage and AP cost

Green skill:
Costs 1 AP less at all levels, same (or a bit more) damage.

WOLVERINE:
Just simply make Feral Claws cost 4 AP (at lvl 5) or 5 AP with increased base damage.

These changes would nerf them (of course icon_rolleyes.gif
) but they would still be playable.

11

I’m sure this has been addressed before… but…

Are they actually overpowered? I haven’t seen evidence of this, but that’s because they’re my highest level characters. I don’t have enough cover depth beyond the two of them to actually max anything else out. Cap is my only other 2* that’s in range and outside of using boosts in every match for him he is essentially unusable because of the prohibitively high cost of his abilities (which would be pretty sweet if they weren’t so expensive).

My concern, primarily, is individual game length. I don’t know if the devs have the capacity to track this, but any time I set aside Wolverine (whose low cost abilities make things start to happen in the first turn with boosts and in the second or third without), my game times blow up (in a bad way).

12

I think the main issue all stems from the rag nerf and how the devs want to move forward. Clearly rags was overpowered. So they had to nerf him. While doing that they undoubtly decided it was time to make the game as intended, where rarity actually represents the power of a character. Hence them fixing IW, at least partially, and the upcoming changes to X-Force. So with that in mind clearly Thor and wolverine are way overpowered for 2* characters. Now had rags been a 2* character and gotten nerfed to where he is now I don’t think people would mind but Thor and wolverines damage output is way to high for the AP cost. If I were to guess I think we’ll see a damage reduction on Thor across the board and an AP increase. That would make the most sense given how they have nerfed in the past. For wolverine I think it’ll be a AP increase as well as reduced damage from his strike tiles. I think in the long run that everyone will like the changes but who knows icon_e_smile.gif

13

I’m pretty sure the damage will get nerfed hard …maybe 50% or more and it’ll most likely cost like +1 red to use his thunderclap and +2 yellow to use his thunder strike..the devs are aiming for longer games so the damage needs to go down. 1100 for only 6ap is pretty op right now

14

Go look at the max stats in the character thread and do some simple math.

15

Wow… they’ve got exactly the same top stats as the other l85 max 2* characters…? Was I supposed to learn something or were you just assigning busy work?

16

I think he meant the abilities.

AP for AP, Thor and Wolverine have the best powers of the 2* characters. High Damage per AP, plus strong side benefits (Tile generation).

17

If you change their utility you will over nerf them.

Just reducing thors damage 1/4 but with the same cost and generation, will be enough to avoid over crowd of thunder gods.

The magic of wolverine is his 3ap cost, making 4 slow him a lot and destroy the OBW synergy. Reducing his green damage and yellow regen will be enough.

18

Wolverine is powerful but not overpowered in my opinion. I would be OK with removing the casting damage on Feral Claws or raising its AP cost by one (but not both!).

Thor: Given that Thor is supposed to be a god, I would like the strength of his attacks to remain the same. Raise the red/yellow AP costs by 2 or 3, or have them generate fewer tiles. Green can stay the same, it is definitely his worst power.

19

Wolverine and Thor are both great tanks in team, but I don’t see them as dangerous opponents really. They are my last target when playing PvP (I target Widows and Storms first, since their theft or break the board and take the colors are quick to turn the tables)

I think the reason they see so much use isn’t that they are overpowered, but that they are perfectly balanced for what they do. I personally think that the reason we see less use of other characters is because other characters simply aren’t useful enough.

Cap A is one of the ones I look at in this. In theory he’s great. Defense, stun, damage; all with a return on your investment, and if you get them high enough, all with the ability to counter (replace) enemy tiles. Problem is, all his abilities have to be near lvl five to do this (I don’t know if Liberty yellow thingy can replace, mine’s not that high) and they cost too much to be worth it. Serious, standard Black Widow can stun better, for less cost. Terrible hat Magneto can replace enemy tiles for half the cost in gems, and Thor can hit twice (and collect yellow gems) before Cap A has thrown his shield once.

Same can be said about most of the characters collecting dust. The Hood’s attack ends his turn. Why? It’s not that great. Yellow heal with Spider-Man is stupid expensive, and only useful if he’s webbed the board up. I’m getting better out of Classic Black Widow for only eight or nine blue. Iron Man 40; man everything about 40 is just. You know what I mean.

In short, I think the problem isn’t the characters that people are using. I think a good look over the characters that aren’t being used is in order. If a power costs more than 12 of anything, it’s not worth the effort unless it kills everyone, or clears the entire board. If another character has a similar effect for cheaper, people are going to use the other character. It’s just the way it is.

Thor, Wolverine, Classic Black Widow, modern or classic Storm. You see these characters used quite often because they are all great at what they do. Thor right out kills folks. Wolverine does too, plus he helps the rest of your team do the same. Classic Black Widow heals up your team, and keeps your opponent from using their powers. Both Storms mess up the board, and collect colors doing it. All of them do their jobs.

Finally, most people might want to remember that your most useful character in attack is often your weakest link in defense. Classic Black Widow is mine. She’s the topping of my cake. She’s the reason I haven’t had to use a heal in PvP in forever, save for some bad luck, or cockyness on my part. I’m willing to bet though that she’s the first one killed when someone is attacking my team. Your best is not your best in defense.

And your Wolverine and your Thor are the least of my concerns when I face you. My opinion of course.

20

My issue with Thor is that he hits too dang hard while having that much health. You can nuke, you can be tanky, but you can’t be both unless your costs are extremely high. 6 and 11 aren’t high.

Wolverine I don’t have nearly as many issues with. He makes strike tiles and has a decent nuke at 10 (same damage as Thor’s nuke), I view him as an attrition character. He doesn’t generate board control with tile generation, although I would possibly consider capping it at 2 strike tiles per 1 frenzy, as it gets a bit out of hand if you’re in a long-winded battle and just saving your reds to unload and finish the fight.