New Character - Celestial BrawnBuster (Amadeus Cho) 6*

[S0kun]

Celestial BrawnBuster (Amadeus Cho) is joining MPQ as our next 6-Star character!

With this release, we’re trying something different. Once numbers are finalized, we’ll start sharing character information earlier to give players a first look, gather balance feedback, and hear how the community thinks upcoming characters may fit into the current meta.

As we get closer to launch, we’ll update the preview with additional visuals once VFX are fully implemented in-game.

Until then, let us know how Amadeus Cho’s celestial-sized brain and brawn might shake up your roster before he fully lands in MPQ.

Health & Match Damage

Lvl 500 / 700

Feeder Flow

Abilities

Ability: Celestial Gamma Missiles

Color: Red
AP Cost: 7

Celestial BrawnBuster fires a volley of Gamma Irradiated missiles at… everything? Create 3 3-turn Countdown Tile(s), deal 1530 damage.

Each countdown tile does 1224 damage per turn.

(PASSIVE) Reduce AP gained by enemy matches in their team’s strongest color by 2 . Reduce AP gained by matches in your team’s strongest color by 1 .

Ability: Galactic Hulk-Out Punch!

Color: Green
AP Cost: 7

Celestial BrawnBuster unleashes a mighty Galaxy-spanning punch, mathematically formulated to strike its target. Destroy 2 , 3×3 sets of random tiles. For each tile destroyed, deal 536 damage. Any Celestial Missile Countdown tile destroyed in this way explodes, dealing 918 damage to a random enemy. Do not gain AP for tiles destroyed.

(PASSIVE) At the start of the turn, for every Celestial Missile Countdown tile on the board, heal BrawnBuster for 245 .

Celestial BrawnBuster cannot be sent Airborne.

Ability: Gamma Ray Absorption

Color: Blue
AP Cost: 6

Celestial Brawnbuster absorbs the surrounding Gamma Rays to strengthen himself. Absorb randomly selected Countdown Tile(s) up to 2 for every tile absorbed, gain 1 AP in your team’s three strongest colors. Do not gain AP for Cascades.

(PASSIVE) If there are more than 3 Countdown tile(s) on the board, Celestial Brawnbuster gains a 25% increased match damage, and Celestial Brawnbuster cannot be stunned.

*All character abilities are subject to change.

[Hellblazer666]

Finally a 6 star I don’t care about not getting.

But seriously give us more of a way to earn 6 star shards

[ThisisClemFandango]

@S0kun where are we with frankencastle? Are his numbers correct and there seems to be an issue with his green passive? Is this being looked at?

[Tiger_Wong]

I understand that showing the numbers and powers before releasing them can give you information on how the character may be received.

However…

I would like to bring to the attention that most (if not all) of the characters that have been released over the years have some either hidden tweak or unseen addition (or subtraction) to their moveset. So maybe instead of showing the intro of a character a few days before release… how about let the players practice with the beta of the character before it’s completely released?

[bluewolf]

The kit looks pretty good, could be interesting vs CD spammers etc for obvious reasons. As things stand it doesn’t feel onerous or meta-defining, just a good counter and a character with reasonable acceleration opportunities along with decent offense.

I may have suggested this before, but it would be a good idea to stick 6s in to Welcome to Shield - if that can be somewhat easily done - so we can play as and against them and get a taste. You can call it something else, like Sixtravaganza! . It’s just good marketing; this is at least partly why you get new character loaners in PVP, I assume.

This is the 3rd 5in a row with the same reduced match dmg vs Galactus and Cosmic Spidey. I assume (?) nerfing them is off the table for a long time, but it’s a big reduction - about 45% ish. Can this be explained at some point? Is there an intentional design choice happening?

6s are supposed to be the Ultimate Chase Characters, or were. If we’re assessing him do we consider him in a fight vs Galactus? vs Your standard 550 toons/meta folk like Nova and M’baku Namor teams? Sam/Juggs? as a single cover toon vs low level champ 5s?

If you want us to seriously assess them we need to know the intended use and design space; now and over the remainder of the year.

[amigopdude22]

@S0kun

might shake up your roster before he fully lands in MPQ

We’ll let you know in a few years when we finally get him

Really though, I know releases are scheduled months in advanced but please, please, stop with these 6’s or make it easier to get shards. At the very least let us target which 6 we get the minimal shards for.

[amigopdude22]

*Sees the affiliations

[bluewolf]

Run him with Sword Master so you can lock more tiles; total win.

[F0nt]

Thanks for the thoughts! In general, we’re attempting to shift the meta gradually with these new characters by targeting specific team combos and making them more challenging to go winfinite with right away, or to always have the same rinse-and-repeat play. We’d rather go this way than with, say, any directed nerfs, as those are never received well.

We want to see some gradual changes in how players build their rosters to get more of the nearly 400 existing characters used, rather than just a few select characters that are the known best.

6-stars in general need to feel impactful from the get-go but still feel like they’re beatable with your existing roster. With BrawnBuster, we want him to reflect that raw Hulk-like power in his ability to destroy and change large swaths of the board state and be able to hold his own against other 6-stars while being a powerhouse for your team.

[Daiches]

Hi,

If you are trying to shake the meta, you forgot one crucial step: availability.

You can’t change the meta if literally no one can play the meta changing characters.

Stop trying to design 6s and first figure out how to distribute them. It’s been 8 months. There is one single player in the game with a legit 6s star covered. And that is only due to a clerical error on your part by putting up a HP only vault that could be reset and a stockpile of millions and millions of HP.

Finishing t5 or t10 every single SCL10 PVP for those 8 months has left me with a total of 10 covers across 4 characters. The most being 4 on Galactus who hasn’t been able to grow for 4-5 months now due to complete lack of opportunities to do so.

Figure out how we actually can play with these characters and THEN I’ll comment on how they are designed. No one cares about hypotheticals that can never ever happen.

And if you do want a meta critique:

(PASSIVE) Reduce AP gained by enemy matches in their team’s strongest color by 2 . Reduce AP gained by matches in your team’s strongest color by 1

Ponza may shake up metas, but it is not a fun one. If you go after winfinite teams your predecessors made by mistake and you continued to let fester like a blight, adding in more AP denial isn’t going to make anything better but pure match damage teams.

[bluewolf]

His blue reads as more CDs is more match dmg, without specifying whose, so any CDs.

None of the other 6s use CDs.

I mean he can do some stuff but it would be more interesting if he became useful vs a 6 who made CDs. To me, anyway.

If the idea is we start using 6s against each other then things are hopefully changing soon. My Valkyrie has 400 shards

[Grantosium]

There’s a number of positives here

• Anything other than radio silence
• Willingness to open up to players for feedback before things go live
• Intent to shake up the meta without nerfing
• Perhaps this is a reaction to the dissatisfaction with Frankencastle? We can hope.

Unfortunately with 6s there’s nobody in that meta at the moment so it’s difficult to predict whether the numbers are solid.

Quite keen to at least understand the logic of the abilities to make sure nothing actively works against Amadeus but there’s at least one sentence in the powers description that makes no sense to me:

Absorb randomly selected Countdown Tile(s) up to 2 for every tile absorbed, gain 1 AP in your team’s three strongest colors.

So absorb 2 countdown tiles for every countdown tile absorbed? What? What does this do? Is it supposed to be absorb up to 2 CD tiles, gain 1 AP for each absorbed?

Applaud the intent to stop turn 1 wins with new characters but other than Galactus I’m not seeing much that stops that. Maybe I need to reread some of the others since I never use or see them in game, but I also don’t really see them doing much to stop Sam & Juggs or Frankie & supports.

[LuxAurae]

@Grantosium

Absorb randomly selected Countdown Tile(s) up to 2 COMMA For every tile absorbed, gain 1 AP in your team’s three strongest colors.

Added the comma to make it make sense. But even then the “up to 2” should be after Absorb to make a correct sentence.

[Grantosium]

Just adding that on another read through, the red passive AP suppression is most likely an attempt to stop 1 star Hawkeye.

It’s nice, but all that’s needed to work around it is having a colour other than Purple be the most powerful colour. Not a big deal if you’re on comparable levels, but probably it will slow down players trying to dramatically punch up.

Edit: which, in case it isn’t clear, means I think it could be very well done.

[MegaBee]

Shouldn’t he have the Gamma affiliation since he uses the stuff and is a Hulk?

[CNash]

I fully agree with the sentiment that while it’s great that you’re asking for feedback on characters, it’s pointless to do so for 6-stars because there is no 6-star meta and nobody can actually run a fully covered one - let alone a team of three. At the rate they’re being made available it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to for years yet. So their powers and stats really don’t matter at this point - they’re trophies, not usable characters.

[TheVulture]

Well it’s an interesting kit! He looks like a very hard counter to the things he counters, but also a bit inert without countdowns being provided by someone else. Eager to see what the art is.

[Gymp28]

If it’s to shut down Hawkeye it’s ridiculous! He only gets some of his AP generation from matches, much of it is passive from firing his powers, though I agree it will have some impact (once anyone finally has enough of Cho to run him.

Plus a 6 star countering a meta 1star is laughable in itself…

As @Daiches said, the following passive strikes me as very un-fun. Why reduce your own teams strongest AP gain? Because it’s so powerful fully negating match 3s for your opponent? (At 4+ covers)

@S0kun

(PASSIVE) Reduce AP gained by enemy matches in their team’s strongest color by 2 . Reduce AP gained by matches in your team’s strongest color by 1 .

Maybe, but there are so many passive ways most teams generate AP now, perhaps it won’t have much impact at all?

Plus, doesn’t Rogue’s Green do this for only 6AP?, and you don’t see Rogue all over the meta (though I don’t deny she’s somewhat good)

[LuxAurae]

This has to be a set up to reopen the Agents of Atlas vault! Thanks @TheMigz

[Grantosium]

Still thinking about that red passive.

While it probably works great against a 1 star Hawkeye, it either won’t do anything or is going to be overkill against many other teams while also making Cho less appealing to play due to the self drain it does.

If it’s not too late to change it to something like this it could be a really helpful to the meta:

At the start of battle (after supports have resolved) drain up to 6 AP from the enemy, prioritising their strongest colour. For each 2 AP drained from the enemy drain 1 friendly AP, prioritising your strongest colour.