**** Thor (Goddess of Thunder) **** [PRE 2015-03]

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

With real stats, I'm saying 4/5/4. Reasoning is this: 12 charged tiles means the enemy is getting some, and the yellow doesn't have that much of a drop off between 5 and 4. Real experience might change this in several months, but that's what my gut says.

Admittedly, this may be completely academic, because I have trouble imagining I'll have a usable one before mid-2015.

Edited to add: given the interaction between the red and blue, I could see 5/3/5 if you're going to focus on blue followed by red. But there are lower-AP ways to do that much damage to a single target.

I'm not really sure what to do with blue because the charged tile is a mechanism that hurts you if you're winning so having more of them on the board is giving your opponent a chance to come back. I'd say if the level 5 simply increased the stun duration without adding the charged tile it'd be a no brainer to go 5/3/5, but having more charged tiles arguably makes the ability worse. At any rate, even ignoring the avaiability of her covers, she's not going to be competitive at the top end because top end is not about making sacrifices. Characters that dominate the high end simply have everything and never need to give up anything (Sentry's self damage cannot be considered as a meaningful tradeoff given the power he packs), so you'd have no reason to use another guy who at best is pretty good at killing one guy (plenty of those around) but must take significant risks. Also her moves are 4/4/3 matches and the 3 match move doesn't directly do damage, so she's another 'dies to Hood' and 'must be with Hood' but there are better characters to pair up with The Hood. So unless there's a significant shakeup to the top end of the game coming up you really don't have to make the sacrifices yet to accomodate her.

CrookedKnight

If you're putting charged tiles on the board, then on the same turn you should be downing one enemy outright and taking another out of play for 2-4 turns (and if it's less than 4 then the number of tiles is not significant). At that point the increased match damage from the remaining enemy does fall under the same umbrella as Sentry's self-damage, I think. It stings a bit but you come out ahead given how much it speeds up the win.

Unknown

I'd say there are good arguments to be made for 4/5/4, 5/3/5 and 5/5/3. Congrats to D3, sweet design.

Unknown

That's 12109 on a max blue plus max red if anyone's wondering - meaning a 4 cover blue+5 cover red will deal 7034(aka not enough to kill a maxed fury or x-force or even a hulk), but a 5-3-5 will kill them in one combo. That's gotta count for something.

GrimSkald

loroku wrote:

I'll "go nuts" and say her name is not Lady Thor. It's actually specifically not Lady Thor - not even a little. (See the Marvel announcement about her character.)

But yeah, 4* Thor is pretty cool. I also think the double-edged charged tiles are an interesting new twist. And yes: she is 10x better than anyone I can field, so I'm just using her to smash the other teams completely.

I'm going to call her Thora. It's an entirely legitimate Scandinavian name. Besides, "Lady Thor" abbreviates to LT, which we already use for LazyThor. We could call her Godess Thor (GT) I suppose.

I like her a lot. Her powers work together very well -she's going to be a monster at 270. Is she better than Nick Fury or X-Force? I dunno, Fury probably (he's a bit too much of a mixed bag of powers,) X-Force she seems about on par with. I'd say she's definitely a great addition to the 4* character pool.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

That's 12109 on a max blue plus max red if anyone's wondering.

637 damage/AP, but that will also overkill anybody but certain buffed characters, so it's functionally going to be a bit less.

simonsez

12k seems like overkill. Starting to think there are better options that 5/3/5, but have no idea which...

Unknown

CrookedKnight wrote:

If you're putting charged tiles on the board, then on the same turn you should be downing one enemy outright and taking another out of play for 2-4 turns (and if it's less than 4 then the number of tiles is not significant). At that point the increased match damage from the remaining enemy does fall under the same umbrella as Sentry's self-damage, I think. It stings a bit but you come out ahead given how much it speeds up the win.

If they're down to two guys and you can do a 4 and a 3 match move back to back the game would be pretty much over with any of the standard powerhouse characters anyway. The match damage from charged tile isn't a big deal, but the triple AP is. When the enemy is down to just one last guy, it's generally not too hard to play an effective denying game since the number of colors you got to watch for is at most 3 and chances are your opponent doesn't have a strong ability in all 3 colors. But having charged tile around means any of the color you fail to deny is just going to be that much more devastating and that might be enough for that remaining guy to pull something crazy, or at least knock one of your guys out. Yes charged tile helps you too, but the most likely scenario to use Power Surge is generally in a 3on1 situation where you shouldn't need the extra help to begin with, so it's risky to your team.

Now I'm not saying this is necessarily bad. It's good to have some risk in this game, but this won't be viable in the current game because a character like Sentry or X Force has almost no risk so why would you even take a small chance of a skill backfire on yourself versus none? It's hard to see how you can lose a game for using Surgical Strike, and it usually hist just as hard as Thor's moves would, but both Power Surge (especially the 12 charged tile version) and Smite could cost you in the game if you get an unlucky cascade later, so why take the risk?

Unknown

Also it should be pointed out that you can use her abilities without comboing, and that red at 5 is actually a legit damage dealing skill on it's own

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

With real stats, I'm saying 4/5/4. Reasoning is this: 12 charged tiles means the enemy is getting some, and the yellow doesn't have that much of a drop off between 5 and 4. Real experience might change this in several months, but that's what my gut says.

Admittedly, this may be completely academic, because I have trouble imagining I'll have a usable one before mid-2015.

Edited to add: given the interaction between the red and blue, I could see 5/3/5 if you're going to focus on blue followed by red. But there are lower-AP ways to do that much damage to a single target.

I'm not really sure what to do with blue because the charged tile is a mechanism that hurts you if you're winning so having more of them on the board is giving your opponent a chance to come back. I'd say if the level 5 simply increased the stun duration without adding the charged tile it'd be a no brainer to go 5/3/5, but having more charged tiles arguably makes the ability worse. At any rate, even ignoring the availability of her covers, she's not going to be competitive at the top end because top end is not about making sacrifices. Characters that dominate the high end simply have everything and never need to give up anything (Sentry's self damage cannot be considered as a meaningful tradeoff given the power he packs), so you'd have no reason to use another guy who at best is pretty good at killing one guy (plenty of those around) but must take significant risks. Also her moves are 4/4/3 matches and the 3 match move doesn't directly do damage, so she's another 'dies to Hood' and 'must be with Hood' but there are better characters to pair up with The Hood. So unless there's a significant shakeup to the top end of the game coming up you really don't have to make the sacrifices yet to accomodate her.

I disagree. Focus on or boost blue to get charged tiles on the board and her skills are now between 1-2 matches each. Blue has the potential to be like the spidey stunlock of the old days. Getting 9 ap for a match 3 makes her a stuns hood (or tank), matches blue, stuns someone else, then ends the game with yellow and red. And it means you can bring along someone with damaging green and black powers.

I'm having lots of fun Berserker Rage into Power Surge, then Striking Distance for damage and turn those purple around, Smite, Recon, and/or Espionage gameover.

Unknown

She's been fun to play with and can sure pack a punch. Having the second highest total health in the game is also nothing to scoff at. I haven't decided which build I think I would lean towards either yet. I think I probably like her less than Fury, though.

Unknown

By the way, her health. Wow.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

CrookedKnight wrote:

If you're putting charged tiles on the board, then on the same turn you should be downing one enemy outright and taking another out of play for 2-4 turns (and if it's less than 4 then the number of tiles is not significant). At that point the increased match damage from the remaining enemy does fall under the same umbrella as Sentry's self-damage, I think. It stings a bit but you come out ahead given how much it speeds up the win.

If they're down to two guys and you can do a 4 and a 3 match move back to back the game would be pretty much over with any of the standard powerhouse characters anyway. The match damage from charged tile isn't a big deal, but the triple AP is. When the enemy is down to just one last guy, it's generally not too hard to play an effective denying game since the number of colors you got to watch for is at most 3 and chances are your opponent doesn't have a strong ability in all 3 colors. But having charged tile around means any of the color you fail to deny is just going to be that much more devastating and that might be enough for that remaining guy to pull something crazy, or at least knock one of your guys out. Yes charged tile helps you too, but the most likely scenario to use Power Surge is generally in a 3on1 situation where you shouldn't need the extra help to begin with, so it's risky to your team.

Now I'm not saying this is necessarily bad. It's good to have some risk in this game, but this won't be viable in the current game because a character like Sentry or X Force has almost no risk so why would you even take a small chance of a skill backfire on yourself versus none? It's hard to see how you can lose a game for using Surgical Strike, and it usually hist just as hard as Thor's moves would, but both Power Surge (especially the 12 charged tile version) and Smite could cost you in the game if you get an unlucky cascade later, so why take the risk?

I don't see how a 3 on 1 charge tile situation is risky unless that one girl left is Thor. Chances are, the last man standing isn't going to be RYB, which means that you can easily deny the charged tiles in the colors that are relevant to that one person. I also disagree with the them being down to 2 guys logic: the most standard scenario in team right now is Featured / Sentry / Hood. What happens in most of my matches is that I burst down Hood, and now I have no AP left over to kill Sentry / Featured. No two match 3 + 4 move in the game is enough to take out 20k+ hp. Surgical into Whales and X-Force might come close, but I don't think anything is as efficient as Thor's blue into red. Hell, even if you just use her blue, that's probably enough to win the game. Getting 12 tiles at level 5 means more than likely that a majority the RYB tiles on the board are going to be charged. If you get a single match-3 blue with 2 charged tiles, you're one blue match away from another stun. This means that effectively, with 12 blue AP, you can probably stun both guys on the enemy team for 4 turns, giving you all the time in the world to make 2 red matches, smite a guy down, so on and so forth. I'm pretty sure that most of you are overstating the drawbacks to charged tiles, since I think that as long as you use it smartly, it'll easily win the game for you. You just can't throw it out all willy-nilly, and then you should be able to easily exploit it infinitely more than your opponent can.

Personally, I think 5/3/5 is a no brainer because of the ridiculousness that is 12 charged tiles + smite. Yellow is more of a PvE move, but it makes her much weaker in PvP than just focusing on her red/blue combo, since special tiles matter a lot less in PvP. Also, you want to generally optimize for PvP more than PvE, since PvP is more important.

Unknown

fakeaseizure wrote:

I disagree. Focus on or boost blue to get charged tiles on the board and her skills are now between 1-2 matches each. Blue has the potential to be like the spidey stunlock of the old days. Getting 9 ap for a match 3 makes her a stuns hood (or tank), matches blue, stuns someone else, then ends the game with yellow and red. And it means you can bring along someone with damaging green and black powers.

I'm having lots of fun Berserker Rage into Power Surge, then Striking Distance for damage and turn those purple around, Smite, Recon, and/or Espionage gameover.

If you're going to boost there are all sorts of more interesting stuff you can do with other characters. You know that charged tile only counts for the charged tile and not the whole match? The only way you're getting 9 AP in a match 3 is if all 3 tiles are charged. Normally it'd be 5 AP (2 normal + 1 charged). Power Surge is going to have a hard time stun locking even one person let alone anything more than that, and you don't need any fancy plan to win a 3on1 99% of the time.

People seem to be way too optimistic about using charged tiles in their favor, even though making good matches is the computer's strength.

Spoit

We should bring back the fatthor name (FT) for 3* thor, because those abbreviations won't be confusing at all

simonsez

fakeaseizure wrote:

Getting 9 ap for a match 3

That's only going to happen if all 3 are charged, which isn't going to be very common.

Unknown

I expect the most common build for a long time to be 1/0/0 since her covers probably won't rain from the sky like Dino. Gonna take some time (and investment) before we see much of Ms. Thor in the wild.

Unknown

Let's say you have a matchup of featured + Hood + Thor (4*) versus featured + Hood + (Sentry/Thor 3*/BP/X Force) since those are roughly the top PvP characters. We'll assume the featured isn't a particularly powerful character that can be counted on for significant offense relative to the big hitter, which is generally true.

Thor's only move that'd take out The Hood is a 4 match move, and it's simply not very fast even factoring in boosts. Unless the featured character happens to be very good at killing The Hood, you don't even have any very interesting early game options. The quickest move to boost to is obviously Power Surge, but in this lineup, only X Force cannot make use of RBY charged tiles. Since at this point stunlock is not possible it means as long as your opponent isn't X Force they can all get a lot out of your Power Surge depending on whatever they happened to match and hit you back very hard with these colors. To even contemplate using Power Surge safely you'd have to get the opponent down to two characters, but Thor 4* isn't particularly good at killing The Hood so you're totally dependent on whoever your featured character is. And even if you do take out The Hood, you still need another Smite + Power Surge to reliably take out the second character. If you used a Smite to take out The Hood that means you'd need 7 red match 3s. If the featured character killed The Hood then it's not as bad but there just aren't many normal characters that can take out The Hood quickly so this is not going to be norm. Yes the charged tiles do reduce the requirement on number of matches you need for your moves but it also works for them. Out of the 4 top PvP characters, 3 out of 4 have a devastating yellow, and 1 out of 4 has a devastating red (Sentry) while Thor 3* has a usable red, and then there's still the featured character who may be able to fill some gaps.

By the time you've enough to stunlock someone with Power Surge, the game must have gone on long enough for that team to fight back because Thor just isn't very fast, unless you went with an early Power Surge but Power Surge can help the other team as well.

FaustianDeal

I was thinking about this 'single-character' format for lightning rounds and wondering if it is repeatable. One notion I had:

What if the build of the featured character changed with each round (rather than being the same every time)? So for these rounds you could rotate through:

5/5/3, 5/3/5, 3/5/5, 5/4/4, 4/5/4, 4/4/5... they have 6 options to introduce us to built-out options for the character... This way we could form opinions about optimal builds based on empirical data rather than educated guessing. (it cuts down on respec too, which may or may not be deemed a 'good thing'.)

they could even give different variants of the character... one set of rounds with them at a base level (like these where Goddess is lvl100) and another set where the character has an additional 25-50 (or even 100) levels. These rounds have made me very interested in the character... I want to have the character in my roster. What these rounds haven't done is teach me to fear and respect the Goddess. With my roster, these rounds are too much like other PVP events with new characters... 2-on-2 fights with a new 3rd in the middle. Put some levels on her so that Smite can really *SMITE* someone.. then we will really know what is at stake when she is offered as a prize.

TheHueyFreeman

Now that we know her powers, i am definately not going with 535. Yellow gets hurt the most by under covering it. Red and blue are both useful anyway. I would consider either 454 or 553.