The Top Tier aka 4* Thor and Wolverine

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

People unreasonably skip or fight certain characters and that shouldn't be part of the balance. There was a time where Hulk by himself was considered to be a deterrent, during the days where you had pre nerf Spiderman and Magneto! Thor gives you a pretty decent defense in a shield hop situation since she has a ton of HPs and that's pretty much the only thing that can somewhat slow down a top team with boosts, but other than that she's not an especially hard matchup to defeat for anyone who can otherwise defeat X Force. Once X Force is dealt with (and if you can't deal with X Force then Thor doesn't come into the picture either, as you'd just lose to any X Force team) you literally only have to defend red and you'd never lose the fight. I'm pretty sure I have less losses that can be solely attributed to Thor compared to The Hood, and my losses to Thor can only be summed up as incredibly dumb like letting myself get Smited 3 times in a row, while The Hood certainly doesn't need you to do anything stupid for him to work his magic. For whatever reason Thor is a huge mental block for most players to overcome in PvP, but that's not because she's really that hard to beat in PvP so you can't use the resulting scores as an example of how powerful she is. Remember for a long time, people didn't think The Hood was that strong, even though The Hood is a terrible mismatch to attack if you're not using him, especially during the pre X Force days. Nobody can possibly win defense more than 50% of the time, so if you've a character that people think is tough that is as good as having a tough character because anyone who attacks you with >50% win rate is likely a net loss of points in the long run, but people's perception does not make the character. Hulk was never a strong defense character even if he was always thought of as one for a very long time.

Perception is a major contributor to balance.

I played a game called League of Legends for a while and there was always a new "flavor of the month" character. A character that had a play percentage of 40-50% that wasn't necessarily overpowered, but definitely had the perception of being overpowered.

In those cases, they had to be nerfed, just so they didn't completely take over the game.

And even if they are not overpowered, they shift the meta to their will because you will start having to base your strategies around beating that character, since they are so common in the game.

The same principle applies here.
Is 4hor overpowered? Maybe. She certainly seems to be.

But let's say she isn't.

She is still altering the meta of the game drastically.

If players think a character is overpowered, players will treat that character like she is overpowered, hence making them more overpowered.

Almost a self fulfilling prophecy.

Perception is reality.

Unknown

onimus wrote:

You're forgetting the 10.5K difference in health between the two.

Mystique teams are gifts in PVP.

Thor's health may not be a big deal to you. But for people who don't have maxed Thor/Xforce teams, it is a huge difference.

Firstly... there has never been a meaningful correlation between health and damage in this game.
Secondly... what are the odds i'm finding a meaningful ability comparison who just happens to have the same health progression?
Thirdly.... Infiltration happens to be miles better than striking distance and puts Mystique int he camp of "support" hence the lower health. It is still, however, by far the best 3* to compare to Thor for abilties alone.
Fourthly.... You're comparing 3* health to 4* health, your argument should be that 4Thor has just over 6k health more than Fury, who has the appropriate health progression (IIRC).
Fifthly.... Not comparing Mystique and 4Thor as PvP heroes, i'm trying to look at the damage 4Thor does in context of 3* heroes and how much of an improvement it is over them.

I think you've completely missed the point......

Also... just FYI, her 16k health is a complete irrelevance to 4* teams hitting her. The fact it matters to 3* teams is a bit like complaining Lazy Thor's health is hard for 2* teams to chew through. It is a DIFFERENT tier...