Tuning hard PvE encounters

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I’m going to avoid scaling issues in this thread because that’d be an entire thread of its own. For the moment we’ll assume scaling somehow makes sense across different roster so that a hard encounter is roughly equally hard for everyone. It’s not remotely close to the truth but we got to start somewhere. I’ll put a rough definition of hard as ‘an encounter where enemy levels is 100 or more levels higher than your highest 3*/2*’. Yes this doesn’t quite work for boosted level and stuff but this is just a rough definition that can be refined later. Some common things I can think of for such encounters:

  1. All characters should receive a burst of healing equal to 50% of max health at the start of every fight. If you beat a level 395 encounter while taking less than 50% damage on everyone that’s usually a very solid victory but you’d still be down 3 health packs because you’re not going to attempt to the next one with 50% health. Retreating should subtract from your base health if it doesn’t do so already to prevent people from just immediately retreating and try to cycle good boards.

  2. The Hood needs to be balanced so that he’s not a mandatory presence in such fights. This needs its own thread too but I’m just putting this as a reminder.

  3. Match damage/HP needs to be standardized so that 4s at 395 aren’t significantly weaker than a 1s of the same level.

  4. Goons need to be significantly weaker in match damage. In The Hood + 2 Dons, the Hood only matched one color (yellow) and rest are all goons. A level 395 goon has 175 on all colors while a 3* is somethig like 180/160/140. A goon should have about 100 damage on all colors at that level, which is roughly equal to a 3* character’s TU damage. They’re supposed to be weaker than the real thing.

  5. Character specific tweaks for the character when faced as an enemy. Most of them involve a cover nerf for the fast characters because at level 395, almost any move kills you instantly which negates the weakness of such moves (not doing enough damage).

Daken - 4/5/4 for 3*, 5/5/4 for 2*
OBW - 5/5/4 so that Espionage doesn’t end up doing AP consuming move like damage, possibly even 5/5/3.
Ares - 5/3/5 (not sure if Onslaught needs 7 or 6 AP at that level, 7 would be preferable).
Juggernaut - 3/3.
The Hood - 5/4/5.
Psylocke - 5/5/3 or 4/5/5 so that she doesn’t get extra ability damage on both of her quick moves.

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AI Daken’s healing should be 3 cover or lower. Its nearly impossible to deny his healing which should be his bot weakness.

Jugg spams his abilities and its very hard to deny that as well. I suppose Ares could be a problem but I don’t really mind him. Sentry needs fixing but that’s more a Sentry problem and not a PvE problem.

Venoms pink is extremely annoying. Frequently he’s paired with a goon and its Venom team stun, match a pink on your stunned turn, Venom team stun + all countdown tiles go off downing someone.

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I know the hood was mandatory for me on the last dozen or so gauntlet fights because any single ability going off would be devastating, but isn’t that more a product of scaling/difficulty rather than the hood himself? If a single RotP or CtS didn’t essentially down my whole team then I might be able to take other people, but as is I’m stuck with hood or obw and obw wouldn’t have lasted very long just due to match damage against those 300+ enemies. Even with the hood though you still have to get a favorable board against someone like juggs or psylocke or else their 6ap moves will destroy you pretty quickly