The Eventual *** or **** Thor Better be >>>Ragnarok

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Character Discussion Speculation and Concepts
1

As things stand, Ragnarok is the most powerful character in gameplay terms.

While his attacks are weak relative to Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, etc. The speed and the resulting cascades result in overwhelming control and quick victories.

How then to go about designing a rarer Thor that improves upon the usability of the ** version without rendering it obsolete?

Frankly, simply increasing the hit point/level threshold of ** Thor will make for a superlative character!

But here is a mechanic I’m considering:

Inflating cost of highly useful powers; to control spam.

Sample:

Lightning Spam 1 Red, does XXX damage at 5 covers at max level.

1st use: 1 red, base damage
2nd (consecutive): 2 red, damage + X%
3rd: 3 red, damage + X%

Up to five consecutive uses. If the turn ends or any other action is made, reset to 1st use.

Other elements can be added or subtracted from this (tile manipulation, etc., but that’s for smarter people to figure out).

In the mean time, this will be something strong to replace Mjolnir’s Might. The next power can be a powerful finisher that’s costlier than Call the Storm, and the 3rd can be a passive power (adds red tiles randomly, etc.).

In any case, I’m just concerned how the next Thor iteration must be clearly better than Ragnarok.

Hulk isn’t.

2

Hah, a 4* that’s better than a 2* (much less Thor)

3

My theory why Punisher and Hulk are caca: RagMag nerf incoming.

4

I can understand Ragnarok, but Magneto isn’t broken at all!

5

Personally, I just don’t understand how a clone of Thor is more powerful than Thor himself. That makes no sense to me… I mean, they couldn’t even finish his face… Rags must have been assembled in China. (I’m Chinese, I can say that.)

6

And I thought I was misguided…

7

He can’t dominate from the first turn the same way Spiderman and Ragnarok do.

Spiderman has to stunlock for him as he gathers purple tiles.

I don’t have a high level Spiderman, so I struggle against *** teams using a 102 Magneto. I beat them, but it’s a slog. I don’t get intimidated by Magneto on defense, so I assume people with ** teams attack me with impunity (and they do; my other guys are still Thor and Wolverine; I use a 41 Ragnarok with 1 red cover during Lightning Rounds).

So no, I don’t think a character is broken if so many other conditions have to be met for dominance using the character is to occur.

8

The reason why Magneto isn’t scary on defense is that the AI universally uses any ‘select tile’ ability at random, which negates the ability for Magneto to lock you down with his blue ability since it’s usually pretty trivial to form a match 4 with every application of it.

You really shouldn’t have a skill that generates a predictable color of AP that costs less than the AP you put in instantly. Iron Man 40’s ability is okay because at least the other side can try to stop it. Yes, it’s possible to not generate any green AP with Thunderclap, but the chance of that is extremely small. Thor is probably the most you can go toward generating colored APs without being totally broken. There’s just no real consistency in the way these skills are balanced. For example Black Widow generates 6 green tiles for 11 purple. Let say you were able to turn these into 9 APs, then it’s 11 purple for 9 green. Compared to this, it’s hard to imagine using 10 red for Thunderclap without generating more than 9 green AP, not to mention Thunderclap also does damage, or that you can get your first Thunderclap the moment you matched a red while it takes 4 purple matches to use Deceptive Tactics. It’s true red AP is more valuable than purple AP in general, but it’s not THAT valuable.

9

Yes, he can, as I pointed out in General. It does, however, take a bit more luck on the initial board.

And I don’t get intimidated by anyone on defense anymore (except in Lightning rounds). The computer uses Mags (and BLGS) on defense particularly poorly though, since it doesn’t use the tile placement to create crits and cascades like humans do, so only Mags purple (and BLGS green) are of danger. It also doesn’t chain Rags, Spidey, or Mags powers like humans, making all of them less effective as well.

Ultimately, however, calling them overpowered is… disingenuous. Would you take on a team of good high level 2s with 1s? No more than you would take on high level 3s with 2s. Rags is hideously overpowered in Lightning Rounds, no question, but that’s entirely due to the idiotic 200% boost. Outside of LR he is powerful, but he has his weaknesses (and they are significant). Same for Mags, same for Spidey.

I’d much rather see some of the other 3*s improved than anyone nerfed.

10

If other 3 star characters are brought to Ragnarok’s level of power then nobody would ever have a rating higher than whenever they stop generating free rating points once you get to the 3 star level, because with Ragnarok it’s already pretty close to attacker always wins. If you’ve characters comparatively as strong that just means the attacker will always win (and in a decisive manner) and that’d make tournaments a joke because there’s no way you can hold onto your rating when everyone wins all of their games decisively. Whoever has the highest rating will simply get instantly knocked down, and nobody would fear that guy since everyone always wins on attack.

Being able to win decisively is not good for competitive playing because everyone winning decisively is the same as nobody winning decisively.

11

So, uh, just like the rest of the game without Ragnarok. Gotcha.

12

Your views on winning decisively are fine but Rags is not the reason for this issue and more powerful *** characters wouldn’t change this for the better or worse.

How many times have you lost a battle? And from those how many times did you lose on your second try?

13

^^ These two points x 100

14

I don’t think you want every 3* as strong as Ragnarok and Magneto, but I’d be in favor of toning them down a little and improving the others (excepting Spidey) as opposed to a heavy nerf. I’d like to see Doom and Loki get third skills. The two doom has are actually pretty good, if he had a direct damage ability to go with.

15

All good points comrades.

The future Thor must be created in the spirit of making characters stronger as opposed to impairing them in some way then crippling Ragnarok and then Magneto.

I’m still for adjusting other characters to improve their competitiveness (by virtue of activation cost improvement).