4Thor vs. 3Thor

Raffoon

So.... after these nerfs will 4* Thor still actually be better than 3* Thor? I think she will be, but it sure seems to be a close call now.

Unknown

I'm leaning towards no. Just like Hulk isn't actually better than Thor for having 4k more HP.

Unknown

If Lthor is boosted, maybe not. If he isn't, yeah she is. even after the nerf she can still spit out charged tiles and deal progressively more damage, and 3 turn stuns are not bad.

ZeroKarma

This i a good question. I bought covers for my 4hor and brought her to 190 where my XF is despite the coming nerf.

In terms of straight damage dealing, Thor can bring it with the best of them, but he does take a while to get going, even with boosts. 4hor is going to need a single blue match to turn on Surge and facilitate a quick red boost for Smite, while Thor is going to need a couple of yellow matches to hit Thunder Strike and look for enough green collateral to go straight into CoTS. The third ability for both characters is underwhelming. Mjolnir's Might enables Thunder Strike with yellow, in the same way that Striking Distance enables Smite with charged tiles for a higher cost.

Where I think the difference lies is in health (of which 4hor stills has loads) and the meta, when pairing with XF. You aren't going to use CotS with XF around normally, so this becomes redundant. (At least I always use XForce over CotS). When you put XF and 4hor together you have 4 colors featuring powerful abilities. With standard Thor and XF, you have 3. This makes it more likely that you can get powers on rainbow colors with the featured.

The other point to note is specialized support. If you want red for Smite, you can bring Cyclops with you. I don't know that Thor can bring anyone that focuses on yellow and green, aside from GSBW, so you accelerate with Hood but so can everyone else.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

If Lthor is boosted, maybe not. If he isn't, yeah she is. even after the nerf she can still spit out charged tiles and deal progressively more damage, and 3 turn stuns are not bad.

3 turn stuns aren't bad, but dead 3 turns earlier is better.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

If Lthor is boosted, maybe not. If he isn't, yeah she is. even after the nerf she can still spit out charged tiles and deal progressively more damage, and 3 turn stuns are not bad.

3 turn stuns aren't bad, but dead 3 turns earlier is better.

How are you killing anything 3 turns earlier than GT with LThor?

Arondite

Not even really a question, or much of one.

If 3Hor is a boosted / featured guy, he's gonna eclipse virtually everything.
If 3Hor is not boosted, he's going to be outgunned by 4Hor by leagues.

Unknown

Thor 3* is a much better character than Thor 4* in a vacuum, but since Thor 3* covers green and Thor 4* does not, this is an important advantage in favor of Thor 4* given X Force absolutely has green covered already.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

If Lthor is boosted, maybe not. If he isn't, yeah she is. even after the nerf she can still spit out charged tiles and deal progressively more damage, and 3 turn stuns are not bad.

3 turn stuns aren't bad, but dead 3 turns earlier is better.

How are you killing anything 3 turns earlier than GT with LThor?

You are kidding right? Even just 12 yellow into enough green for XF to face stab someone, with a nice 3200 damage cherry on it, kills something faster than the new 19 AP for 7350 damage of TGT. Not even counting the times you can get 14 green off of Thunderstrike and Call the Storm. Only because we are comparing Thor to Thor here, otherwise IF/XF kills stuff WAAAAY faster than TGT.

Arondite

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

ark123 wrote:

If Lthor is boosted, maybe not. If he isn't, yeah she is. even after the nerf she can still spit out charged tiles and deal progressively more damage, and 3 turn stuns are not bad.

3 turn stuns aren't bad, but dead 3 turns earlier is better.

How are you killing anything 3 turns earlier than GT with LThor?

You are kidding right? Even just 12 yellow into enough green for XF to face stab someone, with a nice 3200 damage cherry on it, kills something faster than the new 19 AP for 7350 damage of TGT. Not even counting the times you can get 14 green off of Thunderstrike and Call the Storm. Only because we are comparing Thor to Thor here, otherwise IF/XF kills stuff WAAAAY faster than TGT.

I can't figure out why you go around calling it 19Ap for 7k damage when that's far over simplified.

19 AP does 7k, 9 charged tiles, 3 turn stun.
If you wanna isolate the damage, isolate the ap too.
10 AP does 4k+(0);(3.5k).

simonsez

Arondite wrote:

I can't figure out why you go around calling it 19Ap for 7k damage

... and I can't figure out why go around disavowing math. They're talking about KILLING ONE OPPONENT. Doesn't matter how awesome and valuable you think charged tiles and stuns are. If you're looking to KILL A CHARACTER, GT can't do squat until you have 19 AP, so stop pretending otherwise.

Arondite

simonsez wrote:

Arondite wrote:

I can't figure out why you go around calling it 19Ap for 7k damage

... and I can't figure out why go around disavowing math. They're talking about KILLING ONE OPPONENT. Doesn't matter how awesome and valuable you think charged tiles and stuns are. If you're looking to KILL A CHARACTER, GT can't do squat until you have 19 AP, so stop pretending otherwise.

Not relevant - they're still improperly valuing the skill to the damage.
You don't get a flat 7K damage for 19 AP. That's like saying the current power surge (4 turn stun 12 tiles) is a bad skill because it costs 9 and does 0 damage.

If you're saying 19=7k and discounting everything else, you're improperly costing. And at this point, it's most likely intentional so those who are upset can exaggerate the sense of loss and woe.

simonsez

Just answer the question, and stop talking like you're running for office. If I want GT to kill one character, how many AP do I need? It's a really, really simple question.

Chirus

To be fair, if we wanted to be mathematically and statistically accurate, charged tiles need to be accounted for (making the resulting ratio a range of numbers or an average number rather than a set value like 7k:19ap), but this is a double edged sword. Either you acknowledge that it's roughly 7k damage for 19 AP (or roughly 7 matches of 3), or less damage for fewer matches (technically still 19 AP, but charged tiles help you get there faster). But fewer charged tiles also mean less damage when smite goes off. So 7k sets the maximum damage for this ability's first firing.

Now, we also need to account for the situation following the first firing. At this point, you likely have more charged tiles available and firing the combo will take even fewer turns and may do more damage. It also may not. Really to be correct about the value of 4 thor, we need an average of probabilities of the ability feeding into a second firing and how quickly that can decimate the opposing team rather than the individual since that's really what's most valuable. Kill by person rate is not as dependable since the chance of a bad dry board should be considered a definite possibility. We also need this same probability run on 3 Thor as well (how often can 3 thor's yellow lead to enough cascades to hit his green or x force's green, etc.?)

I'm no mathematician or statistician, so someone else can interject here who has expertise and tell us all how wrong we are.

Heartburn

First off you don't need to get all twisted when people use a very useful comparison of two different heroes. We don't add on a board shake and AP drain/gain when converting wolvie's damage/AP rating. Because that is what it is a damage to AP cost comparison.

Chirus

Well, the damage to ap cost value only has limited usefulness when limited to the first move for a few select toons. This is especially relevant to 4 thor. This value fluctuates as the game progresses and you are able to chain off more charged tiles (thus result in greater smite damage). Now the damage to AP ratio is different than with the very first firing. I don't think the answer is as clear cut as many (myself included) would like it to be.

Unknown

4Thor is better in a vacuum

Pairs is more complicated as - even though Lazy has a green ability, his Yellow is actually his best ability and maybe the best yellow in the game or close second at the least. It accelerates XF green a lot, causes crits etc.

He plays very differently than 4Thor so it really requires you to think about team composition now that she's been neutered.

3 turn stun with the 5 charge tiles is still good and maybe 10 red for 4k damage without stun isn't terrible since it creates more charges but she's a far cry from where she once stood, now probably 2nd tier 4* because he enormous health.

One caveat people forget with those charges is that they worked for you and against you. They might seem really strong but that can kill you if you're not careful which forces you to sit on that blue ap frequently until you also had the 10 red to unload. Devs definitely went overboard on her nerf but how else can they push you to buy the new hotness if the old one is better?

True story.

Unknown

If we are doing raw damage to ap calculations why not do 20 AP for a double smite. 10225 Damage much better than 7k for 19. Oh wait its easier to get two separate colors...and you can boost 12 of that 19 from the start if you are so inclined, and her abilities build off themselves so she gets better in longer matches and has the health and stuns to draw the match out that longer than most. But despite all that people are going to be upset if she can't one shot someone asap.

mohio

I think it's close enough that you might now want to bring 3*Thor when surgical is going to hit yellow, which is what I always did back before 4hor was everywhere and I had my own. However as lorenyc states 4hor is definitely better in a vaccum.

As for 4hor, the nerf really is quite large since even if surge + smite stuns the last enemy and kills the second (only happening with xfist or hood/Loki type teams), only having 8 tiles means the chances of chaining directly into another surge or directly into another smite (which will do same or less than the first since you definitely had to match 3+ of those charged tiles away most likely) go way down barring surgical on blue or red, in which case you were winning easily anyway. It's still a very valuable move since 3 extra turns should give enough advantage to win easily, it's just not the auto win it used to be.

@cryptobrancus - I know it's not directed at me, but I'm not super upset she can't one shot xforce just by itself. I'm upset that because she can't stun 4hor and one shot xforce, games are going to take an extra 5+ turns while I find 3 more green matches or 3 more blue matches to power up smite damage further. This means I can't climb as fast, and I take more damage, which means I use more health packs. Also as we all know longer matches just means more people can hit you during that last match you need to get the progression reward.

It's fine, she was too good before and I'll adjust, but almost all changes d3 makes to the game are to elongate games and cause people to take more damage. They (and maybe you) cry out "it's for roster diversity so people use more chars", but most of us here have played the game at the highest level and realize that's not how things play out. Maybe this new PvP test will actually hit that goal, I certainly hope it does.

Unknown

I think people are so used for Thor 4* being overpowered while being carried by X Force/boosts that they can't see she's just not that good after the nerf. In MPQ the first kill is the most important one. She can do at best 4K per 10 AP or 7K per 19 AP, and the latter you need to have your AP in a precise way not to mention using it this way renders the stun portion irrelevent (no stun lock possible while downing the first person). This ratio is pretty forgettable and nothing interesting and pretty much any decent character to do better. Damage done on the guy past the first guy is increasingly irrelevent even if Smite damage goes up. Realistically all charged tiles do is give you the possibly of handing the game back to your opponent that you should've won after the first downed character. It hardly matters if you picked up another Smite or Power Surge with your own charged tile because you're not supposed to lose after downing the first major threat. For example in PvP X Force is likely the strongest character in the forseeable future and should be downed first (or a Loki or The Hood). If you downed X Force the game should be reasonably secure at this point, but not if an opponent gets lucky on a cascade on your charged tiles. The reverse doesn't help you because you're already at a huge advantageous position after having downed X Force.

Compared to this, Thor 3* can generally do 6000 damage to one person with 12 yellow AP with a Thunder Strike into Call the Storm (and 4K to the other 2). It's not certain but it's really hard to miss that combo unless you've no green AP, and that's just what you can do by himself. If you do go all-in on green with X Force then you can usually do much more than 6000 to one person. Thunder Strike also picks up massive amount of other AP in the board destruction so you'll probably be able to do something else with the AP you collect. Barring freak accidents none of Thor 3*'s move is going to make your situation worse and is just as applicable when you're ahead (or behind).

MarvelMan

Phantron wrote:

For example in PvP X Force is likely the strongest character in the forseeable future and should be downed first (or a Loki or The Hood). If you downed X Force the game should be reasonably secure at this point, but not if an opponent gets lucky on a cascade on your charged tiles. The reverse doesn't help you because you're already at a huge advantageous position after having downed X Force.

A huge caveat to this is if you are bringing your own XF AND the opposing XF has the strongest color. At that point, race for black and you have massively neutered their team.