Re balancing Health on 5* Characters

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
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1

It seems that with each newer 5* character, not only are they more powerful than the original set of releases, but they have more health. I don’t know why, but it bothers me that Okoye has a lot more health than Jean Grey.

Anyway, just for fun, I did a list of a fantasy health re-balances for all of the 5*'s.

I stuck to the formula that a “weak” 5* character has 35,000 health and the cosmic level ones have 65,000 (and everyone else is in between)

60,000 - 65,000
Jean Grey

Loki
Silver Surfer
Thanos
Hulk (Banner)
Thor

55,000 - 59,999
Black Bolt

Cable
Dr Doom
Iron Man

50,000 - 54,999
Captain America
Green Goblin
Spider-Man

45,000 - 49,999
Archangel
Black Panther
Daredevil
Gambit
Kingpin
Kitty Pryde
Old Man Logan

40,000 - 44,999
Black Widow
Doctor Octopus
Hawkeye
Okoye
Star Lord

35,000 - 39,999
Doctor Strange
Jessica Jones
Wasp

Of course there would have to be certain character changes I guess, Banner would easily be under 40,000 health, but maybe you could implement something where if he changes to Hulk, his health doubles. Wasp is small with not much health, but a change where she is very hard to hit (to make up for the small health) would be nice. That kind of thing.

What do you guys think? I know a health re-balance will never happen as too many people would complain that their Jessica Jones or Okoye were getting nerfed with a heath drop. It’s all subjective, but let me know how badly wrong I have gotten things and give you own suggestions. (or don’t)

yay!

2

I believe the devs have learned that players get upset when they change good characters, so I think they purposely try to keep characters the same unless they have a really good reason to change them. Changing the health of everyone is outside the realm of possibility, I think. Plus, I think health pools are based on character mechanics more than anything else. You can add this to the list of good ideas that will never happen.

3

Allow me to throw something on here while its fresh.

You’re gonna get a lot of nay-sayers to this. People who dont wanna ‘rock the boat’ and like the formula they’ve been given. You’ll also just plainly get some that wont accept it because they dont believe the devs will ever implement it - so why bother even speaking it…

Personally, I welcome it. There should be a change to the HP of those characters. To reflect upon the characters more ‘correctly’ would be awesome. This also should be done for the rest of the characters, no matter where the star levels are.

But then again, I worry more about the balance of the roster, so that’s a completely different take on this. :slight_smile:

4

They have actually done a large scale character rebalance in the past. I think it was a little before 5* characters were a thing, and increased the health of almost every character except 2* Storm, and the Daken/Wolverine variants.
There was also tier wide nerfs of all 2* and 3* characters when the champion feature was added to the game (so you’d need some champion levels to get back to the power levels the old maximum level gave you).
It seems unlikely that they’d do a full tier rebalance, but it isn’t without precedent.

5

The one thing I’d disagree with there is that Jessica Jones does have superhuman durability as well as strength. She was able to take hits from Luke Cage when he was being mind controlled. She should be on par with Daredevil at the very least.

6

Good point. I suppose it could happen, but I would never bet on it. There are dozens of things i would like to change about the game, but I’m very doubtful about them happening. I’m not saying don’t speak up, but I’ve seen so few player suggestions get implemented that I don’t get my hopes up.

7

I’m not sure why Cable is so high? Yes he does have a metal arm but otherwise he is no more robust than any other mutant who doesn’t have armour etc.

Likewise Kitty and Gambit being mutants doesn’t make them any more physically robust than Widow or Hawkeye both of who are peak level athletes.

On the otherhand Archangel is superhumanly strong and so should probably be in Spider-man’s category and Jessica is definitely too low also.

Ock should be bottom tier - he isn’t even a peak athlete.

8

Good point, they may also be filled with things that provide extra protection, only Rob Liefeld knows for sure. I always suspected that he kept packed lunches for the team in them in case they got hungry during their extreme violence.

9

Isn’t cable like The Most Psychic Man though? he just uses it to keep his #MetalStuff contained to that one arm?

I didn’t see Gho5t Rider on the list - since he’s a for realz demon, is he up in that cosmic range?

10

As with tier rating, just because someone is strong in the comics doesn’t necessarily mean they should be strong in game. There’s more in game balance to worry about as well. You want Okoye to tank, so her health should be high. But then again she has true heal so maybe not too high. Phoenix and Loki can revive, Surfer can’t be stunned and has true heal. Iron Man and Panther can negate damage. Those types of mechanics are usually reflected in their health as well. And at this point, I don’t see any reason for anyone to have so little health. Maybe they could bring back OG Gambit as a glass cannon, but Dr Strange needs more health

11

I think I fundamentally disagree with this statement. What’s the point of using this IP if you aren’t going to respect the source material in your game mechanics? 5*s, even the bad ones, are more powerful than lesser tiers if only in match/critical damage, so it stands to reason the tier should consist of people more in-universe powerful than those at lower tiers.

12

Yeah but coz Cable has to use his Telekinesis to keep the whatsit virus thing at bay, he (normally) only has fairly low level powers. X-Man was basically Cable on crack.

Ghost Rider should definitely be in Black Bolt zone. I actually think that Loki could even come down a tier as though he is an Asgardian he doesn’t have the same level of physical power as Thor.

13

Marvel Puzzle Quest characters especially reference Marvel lore via their powers names. Unless you were steeped in Marvel history there is no way you would understand the reference for “Duck, duck, loose” for Howard the Duck for instance.

So I definitely think that history/lore is taken into account and should be taken into account when they are designed.

14

I only know HtD from the movies, so I always assumed that was a Duck, Duck, Goose! reference (is that an american only kids’ game? or is that a ubiquitous reference? Duck, duck, goose - Wikipedia)…

I think this is where character variations come in to play though - we shouldn’t have any character variations within the same tier in my opinion. But if you want to for instance reserve Black Suit Spider-Man editBSSM can’t have a colon between the s’s without getting censored it looks like*/edit* (canonically stronger than other non-symbiote-equipped spider-men) for the 5* tier so that there is a spider-man there, that’s great. Just make sure that within the tier, C-lister’s like Gambit are scaled appropriately to cosmic threats like Thanos, Dark Phoenix, or Silver Surfer.

15

It is a play on that but has an actual comic book history to it.

Basically Howard’s creator Gerber had a big falling out with Marvel, partly because of a Disney mandated redesign of Howard following possible legal action by Disney over similarities to Donald Duck and for other reasons also. Gerber left Marvel but created a Howard parody called “Destroyer Duck” which he used to raise money for his legal fees back to him in a moment.

Eventually the dust settled and Gerber returned to writing for Marvel in the mid 80’s but he had hated pretty much everything done with the character. He was scheduled to write the relaunched Marvel Team Up book where Howard would appear with Spidey and at the same time he was working with Erik Larsen on a Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck crossover. Gerber suggested to Marvel editor Tom Breevort that they do a sort of “unofficial” crossover between the two - the characters wouldn’t appear in the others books but the stories would interconnect. As Breevort had no control over the other book he was a bit nervous but trusted Gerber.

However, what really happened was that when Gerber wrote the SD/DD issue, he featured a scene where Howard is surrounded by lots of other ducks/clones and during this scene Howard (and Beverly) are snatched away by Destroyer Duck & Savage Dragon and taken to their universe. They are then put in a “witness relocation” program! Howard’s feathers get dyed green!

The inference was that any future Howard stories published by Marvel would be fake and feature one of the duck clones!

When Tom Breevort found out, he was not best pleased as you can imagine!

16

The only rule I tend to stick to with health pools is I’m okay with lower health if they have a good self heal. Like in 3* land, Patch has awful health, but his heal-every-turn essentially grants him more than he has in total.
It’s why I was okay with GE Doom having less health, he can self heal as a passive.

Someone that bucks this trend in 5* land is Okoye, with an amazing self heal and high health to begin with.

17

God tier >>> Cosmic tier. I mean he one-shotted Phoenix and Thanos. If you don’t want him to have that because he heals, then at least give him god-level match damage and let the man tank!

18

Not to go all super-geek on this, but it has been established that mutants are physiologically superior to humans (in most cases) in their classification as Homo Superior. While never fully quantified, there are many references throughout the X-Men books. There are specific examples, like Danger Room scenes when the X-Men talk about honing their genetically-enhanced stamina/endurance and the fact that all Mutants are immune to most conventional illnesses, viruses, and diseases (immunity to HIV was famously referenced by Angel).

19

Kitty can dis-apperate though, so you could skin that HP pool as just her being hard to actually connect with

20

Plus his feet and lower legs are invulnerable, since they are always behind cover. . .