Oh my god Banner is so bad.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Character Discussion
1

Disclaimer: This is a useless complaint thread. Go and and click Back now if you don’t want to read one of those. Unless you’re on the dev team, then PLEASE keep reading.

So I recently re-entered the 5* fray - the bugged Mes Amis tokens let me champion Phoenix, and shortly after I pulled a 14th Banner. Now, I had heard that Banner was bad, but I figured he was “bad” in the same way as post-nerf OML - not utterly gamebreaking like Thanos, but certainly not the worst character ever.

Oh my. So incorrect. So very incorrect.

Obviously, Bannerform is borderline useless. Gamma Ray Experiment is laughable, as the board is rarely so green-starved that it even triggers, and even then it only creates 1-2 tiles. The piddly amount of damage it does is negligible at the 5* level as well. So this might as well not even be there.

Smartest Guy in the Room’s friendly attack tiles are actually pretty beastly - 1300ish per turn, each - except that the enemy attack tiles are a long way from negligible, so it’s dangerous to fire unless the match is nearly over anyway. And of course, the friendly attacks always seem to land dead center, while the hostile ones tend to end up wedged in a cozy, unreachable corner.

But the true awfulness doesn’t come out until he transforms. Oh no, dear reader.

His auto-matching. It’s cleverly disguised as an extra match to let you capitalize on high 5* match damage. However, its failure to gain AP means it’s actually a frigging sleeper agent of stupidity and awful designed to cost you matches and healthpacks and erode your very soul.

See, it’s an auto-match. Controlled by the AI. You know, the same AI that we beat 98% of the time because it’s really freaking dumb. So while Hulkform is ostensibly throwing out free punches, what he’ll actually do is waste every good match on the board and happily gobble up all your friendly tiles.

There’s a green match-5 that you could use to fire Smash? Nope, he’s gonna match that for you.

Cage put out some handy protects to keep you out of harm’s way? Ha! Nah, he’s gonna match those for you.

You’ve got some of Banner’s own freaking attack tiles munching enemy HP? HE’S GONNA MATCH THOSE FOR YOU.

Your damned Phoenix went down and will revive on the next turn? LET ME GO AHEAD AND ^$@%&! MATCH THAT FOR YA, GOOD BUDDY.

You thought you were getting free moves. What you actually got was a drunk toddler grabbing your phone every 20 seconds and shrieking I’M HALPING! I’M HALPING!

The year is 2106. I haven’t won a single game in decades.

His green is okay, I guess. It’s nothing special but it gets the job done.

2

I feel you. It’s the same with 4R&G, you have to put down the Nuke tile if, and only if, you can guarantee that he can’t mess it up for you.

3

But rocket & groot gains the ap while banner doesn’t. Big difference there

4

I’m thinking of giving him the moniker of Bag-Hulk, since he is the 5* Bagman.

I’m also thinking about saving 720CP to complete mine (2/5/5) because the recent changes have soured my experience in this game a lot and I’m thinking Hulk could be an answer to at least give me some laughs.

And I am hopeful that he gets a Ragnarok re-work/buff soon. He’s close to being really fun (though maybe never competitive). I’m also scared that he doesn’t get a buff, but they release another 5* Hulk with the gladiator garb and make Banner completely irrelevant (which isn’t quite the case for Spidey, but 2 5*s of one character was a shock when it happened).

5

Yeah, and with some of his strikes usually still alive by that time, he tends to do more damage as well.

6

“Bagner” seems like the obvious portmanteau.

7

Isn’t that what we’re going to call Nightcrawler?

8

Yeah… I covered Phoenix and Banner on the bugged classic odds day. Since that day I’ve covered Thanos, Parker, Ock, and Daredevil. I champed Phoenix right away. I’ve champed Thanos, Parker, and Ock. Currently building the iso to champ Daredevil… Banner… Still sitting at 330 fully covered… I’ll get to him… Eventually…

9

Lol this post made my morning!

10

It’s true, 5* Hulk is really, really bad. His only really great element is that he gets about 50% of his Banner health in his Hulk form, and can potentially convert to the Hulk many times, as long as he isn’t taken out in Banner form. This gives him nearly unlimited health… in theory. But like many characters that have neat ideas but don’t actually work (I’m looking at you, Doc Ock), this is a selling point that makes no sense in a game meta where remaining truly competitive requires speed.

Others have already made the obvious comparison of Hulk’s auto matches to Groot’s, where those at least generate AP. Even if he generates a cascade, none of the matches resulting from his passive move generate any AP. Hulk’s truly feel like a waste of board control without enough damage done to the opponent to make it worthwhile. So there’s an easy way to fix this skill: the Hulk form should have truly epic match damage. In both deliberate and automated matches, Hulk should be doing serious harm. We’re talking Thanos with his purple countdown out match damage. That alone might save Hulk from the trash pile.

Failing that, there are some other ideas I’ve had for this passive to be more interesting:

  • While the random matches don’t gain AP, they instead cause the enemy team to lose half the AP Hulk’s team would have gained. This is Hulk’s destruction smashing the enemy’s plans and resources.
  • Add bonus damage for any special tiles Hulk matches away.
  • For every automated match Hulk makes, also destroy one basic tile of this color. Might as well really shake the board up.
  • Instead of having damage decrease with subsequent matches in a cascade (as cascades normally do), make it increase. I love this idea.
    Enough about that though, let’s move on to his other disappointing powers:

Banner’s black is probably the only skill that doesn’t require a huge change.

Banner’s passive purple is so unbelievably bad. Obviously they’re trying to keep it from fueling green so well that he’s Hulk all the time, but they went overboard. The green tile threshold on the board is terrible. It’s the same number of tiles that formerly made 4* Amadeus Cho’s black skill functionally impossible to use. We’ve all compared Banner’s auto matches to Groot’s, but for a real head scratcher, compare his passive tile generation to Cloak and Dagger’s black/yellow generation. They can generate three tiles per turn at a threshold of eight or fewer already out, where Banner’s best is generating two if there are fewer than seven. And if it doesn’t generate tiles because of the threshold, C&D do something else useful instead. Banner purple does nothing far more often than it does something.

How do we fix this?

  • Simplify. Remove the damage and the ability to maybe overwrite special tiles, and just generate more green tiles passively.

  • Simplify and improve: have it always generate green tiles, and more below a threshold. Banner converts one basic non-green tile or Team-Up tile to green per turn. If there are fewer than eight green tiles on the board, Banner generates three green tiles. If there are fewer than four green tiles on the board and no “The Other Guy” countdown, Banner generates twelve green tiles and generates a one-turn “The Other Guy” countdown.

  • Make it an active power instead. Spend 8 purple to generate 8 green tiles. Or whatever, they have the math to balance it.
    Finally, give his Hulk form a third skill. Suggestions include:

  • A passive that generates green AP when hit for X damage. This would help to offset his relatively weak AoE by being able to use it more often.

  • An inexpensive active skill doing random tile destruction. Benefits and theming are obvious.

  • Something new and unique? For real, Hulk should be awesome, not a trophy case character that occasionally spits out champ rewards.

  • Make it a less-functional version of the active purple I suggested for Banner. If Banner converts eight basic tiles to green for 8 purple AP, Maybe Hulk converts six basic or friendly special tiles to green for 8 purple, or he converts five basic tiles for 6 purple AP and also destroys one or two AP from friendly red, yellow, blue, and black AP pools.

Alternatively, just completely replace him with a new Planet Hulk/Gladiator Hulk design that existing owners immediately benefit from, and put him back into Latest tokens for those that missed out.

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I’ve recently been running 5* Hulk, 5* Doc Ock, and 5* Star-Lord as a Sim team in the hopes of just confusing people when they see the retaliation node.

“Why… why would he use that team? Is there some synergy there that I don’t understand?”

12

Honestly, if they just:

  • Make Gamma Ray Experiment either always generate 1-2 green tiles per turn, or else greatly increase the green threshold for it to trigger
  • Let the automatches gain AP

He’d be fine. I like all of these suggestions but I think it’s unrealistic to hope for a rework on an old character to include brand-new mechanics they could use to sell a new one.

Here’s hoping they rework BannerHulk at roughly the same time as the release of WhateverTheNewMovieIsHulk as an effort to improve Hulks overall. Hell, might as well fix 3* Hulk’s awful red while they’re at it.

13

Completely agree. All they need to do is have him gain AP like they do with a 4* character we all know and have him automatically generate green tiles every turn. He then becomes a quasi-green battery that is somewhat more scary since he could conceivably just keep turning into the Hulk with more green tiles out there on a reliable basis.

14

I’m just surprised that all the Hulks in game are trash. He seems to be an easy character to represent. He smashes stuff. Hard. Then he smashes more, and harder. He should be a tank, with a nuke, and he should smash harder when he takes damage (at certain thresholds). You can add that clap he likes to do if you want him to have an AOE.

15

Well, Red Hulk and Cho are pretty good, though Cho was an embarassment too before his rework. But yeah, OG Bruce Banner can’t catch a break.

16

Sorry, all Banners was my meaning. Rhulk, and to a lesser degree Cho deserve respect. Even She-Hulk has more utility than either Banner Hulk.

17

3* Hulk was pretty good when he was first released.

He was never stellar though, and he is showing his age.

18

3-star Hulk is broken.

19

I’m hoping with the start of the next season and the release of the thor movie next week. Or next character fixes are

3-sentry
4-Xforce
5-Banner

20

Lol I use banner all the time in PVE. I use him with OML and use his auto match to double dip on strike tiles. Also if Hulk gets hit with a power I don’t use a health pack. He is fun to use. Is he great no but he is not awful