Keeping 3*s relevant in the new 4*-5* world

Pylgrim

As everybody knows, MPQ is firmly stepping beyond 3* land and 3* characters are being left behind, 40 characters that the players work hard to acquire and build and had fun playing with are quickly becoming a nostalgic ornament. This was made worse by the nerf to their buffed levels introduced with the champion feature and although they will be very powerful in the long term, once max championed (and buffed) they will still be obliterated by the then abundant max-championed 4*s and maxed 5*s.

However, there's a few exceptions to this rule. 3* characters with such unique utility that they are still widely used along with 4* and 5*s. Well, since it's clear that 3*s are not supposed to compete in raw power with 4*s, we could make sure that they are still capable of offering some kind of utility in tomorrow's world. The following is just some musings on how to improve each 3*'s unique strengths in a way that can remain useful for 4* players while not becoming overpowered for their level.

BEAST
Mutagenic Breakthrough and Animal Inside are both "raw power" than utility. They are now decently powerful, but there would be no way of tweaking numbers to make them more relevant among many similar abilities in 4* land that are much more powerful. One way could be significantly increasing the number of tiles destroyed by a full Animal Inside, fulfilling an improved Juggernaut's Unstoppable Crash role in the higher tiers. However, I'm more interested in making his yellow something relevant. Beast is the only medic in MPQ so his healing ability should be the best in the game... but in fact it's one of the worst! How to make it significant? First, obviously, it needs to be "true healing". Then it needs a way to stop it from being abused. My suggestion would be to make it a passive that triggers when an ally is damaged for X or more, placing a 1-turn countdown that heals that character by a good percentage of the damage taken... and creates protect tiles if there's a friendly blue special tile, to keep the theme, I guess. Yes, he'd be targeted first because of that, but in combination with certain 4*s, it would force the opponent into slower and different strategies.

BLACK PANTHER
BP is one of the best 3*s thanks to his powerful yellow and black abilities. However, after the champion nerf, they scale terribly when buffed, compared to similar abilities of 4*s at the same level. It is out of suggestion to improve those two powers as they are already above average in 3* land so we once again should look at replacing his completely useless blue ability. After mulling around on his character design in comics (as the cunning king of a wealthy nation) and in the game, I came up with an activated ability that allows him to "trade" resources, more specifically, convert a certain amount of Team-Up AP into a certain amount of AP of the colour of your choice. An AP generating ability is a sure way of ensuring that a 3* character remains relevant in the higher tiers.

BLACK WIDOW (GREY SUIT)
GSBW is already one of the 3*s that remains relevant in the higher tiers thanks to her unique capacity to generate at will several 5-matches, plus a very decent AoE. The only thing I'd improve a bit is her red, making it more focused in utility than damage, lowering the cost, removing the paltry added damage and increasing the amount of "shoots", becoming instead a tool of targeted board destruction.

BLADE
I actually think that Blade already has the potential to stay relevant, but few people notice because by all purposes and intents, his "correct" build maxes his admittedly strong green and purple abilities. However, in 4* land where the raw power of 3*s is insignificant, it is his maxed black ability that shines. Stealing 3 AP per turn can be huge and its only downside is that being so good, means that the enemy is soon entirely drained of their strongest colour, rendering the ability useless. A simple fix for this would be to make it so if there's 0 AP in the strongest colour the CD drains from the 2nd strongest colour instead and so on. Giving up the initial damage of the ability and perhaps allowing only one of those tiles at a time would be a fine way of balancing it.

BULLSEYE
Bullseye's abilities are a lot of fun in my opinion, though he's low-powered even in his native 3* land. That's fine, though. Emphasising the utility nature of his powers will help him become more relevant in all tiers. His purple deals decent damage for the cost, but it needs to remove special tiles, which the opponent doesn't always contribute, forcing you to sacrifice your own or just not casting the ability, greatly diminishing its usability and power. A good way to go could be removing the capability of choosing your own tiles, in exchange of lowering the cost and increasing the amount of tiles he can target, becoming the cheapest and more efficient way in the game to remove special tiles. Yes he'd become narrower than he is, but the truth is that he's already too narrow to see play. Making him a full-on specialist will actually increase his chances of being included in teams some times. Second, his green is really useful and fun to use, but it's horribly overcosted. Yes, you can plan cascades or gather some AP from calculated matches, but in reality, the board rarely cooperates to give you any remarkable outcome. Aggressively costing this ability will greatly increase his usefulness without adding any raw power. I'm thinking 4 AP for 3 destroyed tiles, 6 for 4 or 8 for 5 would be fair.

I'll be doing this in batches of 5. If you have ideas or suggestions regarding characters I haven't mentioned yet, I'll ask you to please hold it until I do.

Starsaber

Pylgrim wrote:

BLACK PANTHER
BP is one of the best 3*s thanks to his powerful yellow and black abilities. However, after the champion nerf, they scale terribly when buffed, compared to similar abilities of 4*s at the same level. It is out of suggestion to improve those two powers as they are already above average in 3* land so we once again should look at replacing his completely useless blue ability. After mulling around on his character design in comics (as the cunning king of a wealthy nation) and in the game, I came up with an activated ability that allows him to "trade" resources, more specifically, convert a certain amount of Team-Up AP into a certain amount of AP of the colour of your choice. An AP generating ability is a sure way of ensuring that a 3* character remains relevant in the higher tiers.

I actually had an idea for a similar power for a 4* Phil Coulson, but it would work for Black Panther too. I'm still solidly 3* just peeking a bit into useful 4*s, but I like the idea for this thread.

Buret0

They just need to scale back the nerf a bit on boosted 3*s. There are about 30 3*s who, even when boosted, don't find their way onto my teams.

The only real use for 3*s now is when they fuel 4*s, because their health and damage outputs are just so stunted, even when compared to unboosted 4*s.

I still use Switch/IF/IM40/Marvel (if she's boosted and a red/black 4* is boosted) with my 4/5* teams because they have powers that work well with higher * characters.

IF works well with OML, HB, or even Phoenix because of the constant attack tile and the cheap black generation for cascades and crits.

Switch is still the best purple supplier in the game, which can do great things with a boosted JG or RHulk (PX too).

IM40's new fuel up makes him a ton of fun with any RBG power and can very quickly stunlock/kill with Thoress.

Marvel, when boosted, can tank one color when the enemy is using a big move or for any AoE team to quickly power up R/B for a hulkbuster or a transformed OML.

For almost everyone else, there is just too little damage per AP to make them useful when you are facing 38K health boosted 4*s or unboosted 5*s (or the 90K health combined level 420+ Gorgon and Wolverine in the last EotS test).

wirius

You don't see 3* rosters trying to use 2's right? Why should 4's be trying to use 3's? What needs to be done is create an easier transition into 4* land now. DDQ was implemented for 3* covers when there were LESS 3* champs then there are 4* champs now! 4* needs to become the new 3*, 5*'s need to become the new 4*'s, and we should see our first six stars in a couple of months. Its not hard, they just need to keep the pattern up.

Mawtful

Firstly, thanks for your work. I love a good bit of design discussion, so threads like this are always welcome.

It's just that I think I disagree with your core objective in this particular endeavour.

I think that, rather than making 3*'s relevant, there should be more focus on making 4*'s relevant. There's a lot at play here, so I'll try and break this down.

Concept 1: The 3* Tier is complete
This old chestnut. Yep. The last word on this from the developers is that the 3* tier is complete. 40 characters is a lot, and from that perspective alone I would have to concede that they are correct. Of course you may have guessed that my opinion is somewhat different. I don't agree that the 3* tier is complete in its current form. I'm not necessarily advocating for more 3* characters - although if that's what it takes, so be it - but rather that conceptually and mechanically, there's a lot missing at the 3* tier.

Concept 2: Relevance
I guess this is the sticking point for me. What reason is there for 3*'s to remain relevant once players have moved beyond them? What about 1* characters? They're not really relevant to players in the 3* tier, maybe we should be buffing them?
There's the argument of Team Ups - 1* Black Widow is "relevant" because her stun can be sent as a Team Up. This is a) meta-gaming at its finest (not necessarily a bad thing), and b) why I also think that Team Ups are a bad idea. I think maybe Demiurge also realised that Team Ups are a bit of a bad idea - eg. every "boss" is immune to stun - but they're too far in the hole and don't have a better alternative. The MPQ we have does include Team Ups, so I guess I have to consider them. Perhaps every character should have 1 good power that can be sent as a TU - would that be a good enough criteria for relevance?

Concept 3: The 4* tier is (probably) nearing completion
This is really an extension of the first concept, I guess, but ultimately not quite as important to the discussion of 3* characters. In terms of game mechanics and colour representation, I think the 4* tier is certainly much more complete than the 3* tier already. It could still use a bit of work. But it is the looming character count which I think is spurring increased discussion on the future of the game if Demiurge do draw another line after the 4* tier hits 40 characters.

A Possible Solution?
I can't really just waltz in, say you're barking up the wrong tree, and waltz right out again - that would be rude. The least I can do is offer my own suggestion. How about changing the way teamups work?

Here's the concepts behind this idea:

• Character Archetypes - Something that Demiurge have started playing around with in the 5* tier. There's even been a kind of suggested promise that there's more to see as the 5* tier grows.
• Maintaining roster relevance - Assuming that I can't change the way anything else works, I need to come up with something that doesn't diminish the "need" to roster lower tier champs. I think this is probably a big issue that Demiurge themselves are facing. Currently DDQ is really the "best" reason to keep characters rostered once you've graduated from that tier of play.
• Don't break the meta - Team Ups do have the potential to be broken, and so far the solution has been to simply restrict some abilities from being sent. I want to avoid reducing that number even further.

"New" Team Ups
This is very much "off the top of my head", so expect it to be fairly conceptual - there might be some kinks to iron out. Here's the way my Team Ups would work.

• All characters are given an archetype (possibly a sub-archetype or "sub-class").
  eg. both Hawkeye and Black Widow might be "Infiltrator" archetype, but Hawkeye would be "Assassin" subclass and Widow would be "Spy".
• All characters send a specific team up power based on their Archetype/Sub-class.
  eg. the Assassin power might be "convert up to X special tiles into critical tiles" and the Spy power might be "steal up to X AP from the enemy's strongest colour". In both cases, X would be equal to the star-level of the character sending the power; 4* powers should be stronger than 1* powers.

These changes would bring team ups into line as the "supplementary" type powers that I think they were designed to be. Each power should offer a very singular/specific mechanic, it should scale according to the tier of the sending character, but should otherwise be "weak" when compared to a "full" ability in the same tier. The idea of archetypes vs sub-classes should be that each sub-class should be unique, but similar sub-classes would be grouped under the same archetype (possibly only 3-5 archetypes are required). I think the Spy/Assassin example highlights these similarities and differences. In theory, the total number of sub-classes is only limited by the number of "base" mechanics in the game. However, for the sake of argument we could assume 20 possible sub-classes which would keep at least half of the 3* tier relevant. Additionally, it would be possible for some characters to have a different variant for each sub-class - 1* and 2* Black Widow might be a Spy, but 3* Black Widow might be an Assassin - which could be reason to keep multiple variants rostered.

LuciferianX

First, this.

I've been talking about classes for ages (not always on the boards, but it's in there). Red/Blue/Yellow tend to be 'Utility Strikers,' -- Magneto, Flaptain, Steve Rogers, TGT, and so on. Blue/Purple/Black are your infiltrators (see: Mystique), although both Daken and Doom break this rule, but that's more their specific design than a change to the meaning of those colors. The nature of the imperfection is more in the current meta than it is in concept. Point being (he said, stopping his own ramble).

There's a lot that can be done, and needs done, to improve the game that doesn't include deploying new characters every two weeks. I want to point out that I fundamentally disagree that 3*s should be rendered irrelevant with the advance to four; they just become less relevant, and even then only under specific circumstances. Here's the problem, and I think you mentioned it:

New people don't start with 10 cover 230 level four stars with one 5 cover power. They start with a 1 cover 1 star. Woot. Without spending a ton of money, how long is it going to take to have a functional 1 star roster? Then a functional (and fun to play) two star? How long until they have a reasonable group of 3s?

I've been playing since beta; I also stopped playing at times because the basic game design drives me nuts, but I enjoy matching three things of the same type then using powers. That's alot of fun for me, so I keep coming back. I have exactly one 4 star Champion, and I still don't have OMLs regen. That's saying something.

If new people must go through the same progression chain as we did, then it only follows that their rosters must remain relevant for a very long time, and not just for DDQ.

It'll take them however long to rank up to 2 stars, then slowly start to build a 3 roster.

Nightglider1

Pylgrim wrote:

BLACK WIDOW (GREY SUIT)
GSBW is already one of the 3*s that remains relevant in the higher tiers thanks to her unique capacity to generate at will several 5-matches, plus a very decent AoE. The only thing I'd improve a bit is her red, making it more focused in utility than damage, lowering the cost, removing the paltry added damage and increasing the amount of "shoots", becoming instead a tool of targeted board destruction.

This x 1000

Pylgrim

Buret0 wrote:

For almost everyone else, there is just too little damage per AP to make them useful when you are facing 38K health boosted 4*s or unboosted 5*s (or the 90K health combined level 420+ Gorgon and Wolverine in the last EotS test).

That's precisely the intent of this thread: Acknowledge that 3*s cannot possibly compete directly in raw power with 4*s, so the only possibility for them to remain relevant is to have decent utility abilities, as some widely played 3*s prove possible.

Mawtful wrote:

I guess this is the sticking point for me. What reason is there for 3*'s to remain relevant once players have moved beyond them? What about 1* characters? They're not really relevant to players in the 3* tier, maybe we should be buffing them?

The thing is that from the very beginning, 2*s look like merely a transition phase, a necessary rite of passage to be able to compete for 3* covers, the first tier that feels like a "goalpost" for a player. Maxing a few 2*s is only question of few months for dedicated players. On the other hand, getting the covers of 3*s and maxing them is a huge investment of time and effort that shouldn't be entirely scrapped the moment a player has advanced enough for the goalpost to move to 4*s. In fact, the poorly planned and chance-based current rewards scheme that randomly puts 4* and 5*s into the hands of beginners makes it so that the lucky ones get almost to skip the 3* tier. Making 3*s being able to stay relevant even in a 4*-dominated world encourages players not to entirely skip that tier.

Nevertheless, this, like many other posts of mine remains but a mere academic exercise for my own amusement and to spark some discussion, as I don't even entertain the thought of this being entertained by Demiurge. Hundreds of people yelling at them an urgent matter such as "that PVE test you are about to run is horribly and obviously flawed" were blatantly ignored (and then proven categorically right), what is one random dude musing about granular design improvements? Anyways...

Captain America
Ol' good captain's red and blue abilities are moderately powerful and with two unique kinds of added utility: overwriting tiles and returning AP. However, the numbers, especially the costs make him too slow to be any good in 4* land. I think that he'd benefit from a tweak to his values reducing the AP cost (and obviously, the AP returned) by 3-4. Star-Spangled American should lose some damage in the process, (but not too much as his AP-damage ratio is no longer stellar, even for a 3*), but Peacemaker should still stun for 2 turns as the game in general has moved to a much more efficient and aggressive costing for stun abilities. And obviously his yellow still needs a rework. It still has to be a defensive move as it would make no sense that a guy with a shield doesn't have one. It occurs to me that it could be a passive that creates a not too big yellow protect tile each turn and gains one red and blue AP whenever an enemy destroys a friendly protect tile. AP acceleration is always a good way to make a character good and fast enough to be included in 4* teams.

Captain Marvel
Cap's yellow passive is her best move and one that would make her worthy of being included in a 4* team if it wasn't for the fact that in such a team, she's likely not to tank enough of her colours to make it worthwhile, so an ability must be given to her to facilitate her tanking big hits. Since her red is near useless, it is prime for a rework. I'm thinking of making it quite cheap (4-5 AP) and instead of the added effect of removing protect tiles, it puts Captain Marvel on the front of the team until the next turn, like a one-shot Immovable Object. Then maybe make her yellow passive also produce yellow so it can serve as a battery for another character's yellow power. Her black is ok as it is, thanks to the added stun.

Colossus
Immovable Object really needs to prevent more damage at 5 covers. Perhaps 75% is too much, but at least 66%. It's a CD-based power which means that you are rarely getting the full duration advertised, anyway. His red is a raw damage power and it's fine as it is, at least for 3* land. Fastball Special, on the other hand, is badly overcosted. To increase its utility perhaps the damage component of the ability could be removed to be able to make the ability as cheap as possible to make it enticing for 4* players to potentially get great 4* powers at a reduced cost.

Cyclops
He's perfectly fine as it is. He's not that outstanding in 4* land, but that's a fair price for being the hands-down best "stand-alone" character in 3* land.

Daken
Sadly, his regeneration and strike tile generation which are quite decent in 3* land scale horribly, and that combined with his ****-tier HP makes his inclusion in a 4* team unlikely even when he's buffed. The only area where I can see a chance of utility-improving is allowing Chemical Reaction to transform many more blue tiles into green, effectively making it into a battery power, which is fair even maintaining its low cost given that it triggers Heat instead of Healing for the following turns.

TxMoose

wirius wrote:

You don't see 3* rosters trying to use 2's right? Why should 4's be trying to use 3's? What needs to be done is create an easier transition into 4* land now. DDQ was implemented for 3* covers when there were LESS 3* champs then there are 4* champs now! 4* needs to become the new 3*, 5*'s need to become the new 4*'s, and we should see our first six stars in a couple of months. Its not hard, they just need to keep the pattern up.

I used mnmags and obw a lot as a 3* player. and when boosted, ares and storm got used some too, although not as much as mnmags and obw.

Dayv

After discussing this with the OP, I'm moving this thread to Character Discussion. The poster is more interested in player discussion than in directing this to the developers.

TLCstormz

Mawtful wrote:

*snip

What on earth are you ever talking about??? Team Ups? lol. Wot?

Uhm.....anyways.....Thanks again Ply, for your hard work and dedication to sparking up these wishful thinkings and conversations.

Crowl

Judging by how easily my roster with no usable 5*'s get stomped in pvp, perhaps the first task should be how to keep 4*'s relevant in a 5* world?

DeNappa

While I don't disagree with some of your proposed changes to 3* characters, there's an easier way to keep 3*s 'relevant': introduce special tiered events where you lock out characters from other tiers. This way you can organize 1* to 5* tournaments or PVEs. Additional benefit is that you can suit rewards to be relevant for the tier being played. To avoid abuse, run the different tiers at the same time and allow the player to pick only one tier to play in.

KGB

As someone who is in the 3* transition I 100% agree with Crowl.

The 4* world is the irrelevant one. The covers are VERY hard to come by for new players like myself (5* rates are equivalent to 4* % in LT's). Even if we get a DDQ that gives a 4* cover daily reward (ala the 3* DDQ) it means that in 365 days you get 10 covers for 36 characters (roughly how many 4* there are now) so it will take a year to accumulate a fully covered 4*. Then factor in the addition to the several hundred K of ISO to level just 1 4* means new players are going from 3* to 5* land and skipping 4* land entirely since a 3* roster can generate plenty of CP's for LT's.

It's not logical to for new players to invest in a 4* character when 5* is the current meta and there will be 10+ 5* characters in 6 months time.

KGB

Pylgrim

KGB wrote:

As someone who is in the 3* transition I 100% agree with Crowl.

The 4* world is the irrelevant one. The covers are VERY hard to come by for new players like myself (5* rates are equivalent to 4* % in LT's). Even if we get a DDQ that gives a 4* cover daily reward (ala the 3* DDQ) it means that in 365 days you get 10 covers for 36 characters (roughly how many 4* there are now) so it will take a year to accumulate a fully covered 4*. Then factor in the addition to the several hundred K of ISO to level just 1 4* means new players are going from 3* to 5* land and skipping 4* land entirely since a 3* roster can generate plenty of CP's for LT's.

It's not logical to for new players to invest in a 4* character when 5* is the current meta and there will be 10+ 5* characters in 6 months time.

KGB

Eh, a maxed, buffed 4* is better than a 5* with few levels/covers which is the state of most (non-whale) veteran players' rosters. The addition of more 5*s only will dilute the chances of getting a specific 5* meaning that while you wait for that, you might as well build up your 4* roster which will allow you to get more CPs to accelerate your 5* acquisition. Anyway...

Daredevil
Daredevil is almost "there" with 2 utility abilities. Blue is already, in my opinion, an excellent ability in any tier that would probably make him see more play if his purple wasn't so situational and his red so chance-based. As I've already proposed that Bullseye should fill the role of best special-tile-remover, I'd like to turn Daredevil's purple into something that helps his red while being generally useful. I propose the ability to turn a small number of chosen tiles to red. That would not only accelerate your cast of Ambush, but also help "set" a match for the trap tile (a 4-match to tempt the AI, for example). To keep the thee of Radar Sense, it could be made so it can overwrite attack and/or strike tiles. 4 tiles for 8-9 AP sounds good to me.

Deadpool
Deadpool already sees play even in higher tiers thanks to his "certain win" ability. While I could argue that his red could use higher raw power as it is on the low side even in 3* land, I'm more interested in improving his utility ability, the black one. The more immediate improvement that comes to mind is making it so it heals a percentage of the damage dealt if he intercepts it instead of the current fixed (low) amount.

Doctor Doom
While Doom's purple has the potential to deal over a dozen thousand damage, his black is really weak but even if it was efficient and powerful, it would be weak in 4* land. I'd much rather have it as a passive that creates attack tiles given certain circumstances, leaving his blue be a battery for other characters, like Iron Fist's purple. At that, though, it needs to be more efficient. I like a lot the idea of turning all the tiles of a colour to another colour but the fact that it interacts with the very colour that you were gathering, means that the results are often less than stellar, compared to better powers in the same guise such as Inhuman Stretchiness or Mutant Revolutionary. Perhaps converting all yellow (or another non-Doom colour) to black would be better?

Doctor Octopus
Doc Ock is one of the most dedicated "specialists" in the game. As such, he's very fun against certain teams, but extremely narrow. In his case I don't think he should be made any less narrow, but rather, he needs a great increase in his values to make sure that the few times that you'd play him, you are getting the best deal. Also, I propose that his blue, in addition to destroying enemy tiles that are shuffled, should also improve friendly tiles that get shuffled. Finally, his green needs a complete overhaul. The potpourri of mediocre effects that he's been given every time that power has been remade needs to go. In the comics, Doc Ock started his criminal career as a thief and this power should reflect it stealing special tiles and/or AP.

Falcon
Falcon is another character that is already a good specialist with lots of utility and only needs a bump to make him usable among 4*s. The easiest and most immediate improvement that could be made to him is having his yellow increase special tiles by a percentage of the tile's strength instead a fixed value. That way he's good along both 3* and 4*s as the relative improvement is the same. The only other thing is to replace his off-colour, off-flavour purple ability. In the comics, Falcon uses the flock of birds to spy and some times to attack, not to protect. To go with his theme of interacting with special tiles, and to make his yellow passive auto-sustainable, it could create a good number of really weak strike tiles and have a passive effect where whenever an enemy matches a strike tile, Falcon steals 1 AP of that colour from them.

Pylgrim

Gamora
Gamora is another character that's almost there. I wouldn't touch her red (besides making it deal slightly more damage) as it has the solid schtick of being the cheapest direct damage ability. As for her green, 2 turns of stun for 2 characters is quite sweet but feels overcosted. Perhaps it should lose the AoE component, dealing damage only to the "target" while stunning the other two characters (like Peggy's blue) and be slightly cheaper. Finally, her black power can be a powerhouse, but the limitation on the colours that she tanks is a bit too much, especially in 4* land. Like Captain Marvel, I suggest giving one of her other abilities the added effect of "putting her in front" and tanking her own colours for a while.

Human Torch
HT is another decent, damage-oriented 3*. His green and red abilities are quite efficient in 3* land (and with lots of green, Flame Jet can actually make an impact in 4* land) that needn't tweaking. Inferno, on the other hand, is quite lackustre, especially given its hefty drawback. I'd happily replace it with an utility power, perhaps a green battery of sorts.

Iron Fist
Already sees heavy use in 3* and 4* land. Yes, his green is meh, but improving it in any way would be way too much.

Iron Man
It is no secret that he's the new darling of MPQ and has already surpassed IF's ubiquity in 3* and 4* teams. His (still) overcosted blue is a necessary balance measure.

Kamala Khan
Well, this batch happened to have precisely some of the 3*s that are most useful even in 4* land. Kamala is a very solid package that translates neatly to 4* land when she's buffed and needs not to when she is not.

elwhiteninja

I posted a similar topic a long time ago

https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34801

3* Along with a large portion of 4* are outdated and over nerfed I fully agree that the tiers should increase in power but not to the point that it does. With how the scalling works there is no reason not to use X team (such as lady:thor: 40) because all the other 3 stars are just not worth using anymore. Look at 3* thor, he used to be the unanimous best character in the 3* pantheon now he is rarely used.

jobob

Until 4* feature PVP... 3* are still more relevant than 4*.

Pylgrim

jobob wrote:

Until 4* feature PVP... 3* are still more relevant than 4*.

How so? because you /have to/ play with a featured 3*? And yet, past a certain amount of points, all you see are two 4*s (or even 5*s) plus that featured 3*. Anyway...

Loki
Loki is fine as it is. The one thing holding it back is that once upon a time, back when there were few characters with powers dealing over 6k damage, AP stealers were "balanced" with low HP. However, in our 4*+ reality, that's not a balancing factor but an outright sentence to not being playable. His HP needs a good increase.

Luke Cage
Cage is another character good enough to hold his ground in 4* land when buffed and needs no improvement.

Magneto
Magneto is a quite good character in 3* land but somehow his powers don't scale up that greatly in damage when buffed, especially when there are so many great 4*s in his colours. I'd look into giving him back a purple power instead of the current yellow, restoring his capacity of being a blue battery (of which there are only two, very unreliable other in the game above 2* land). Obviously not at the power level he once had it.

Mystique
Mystique was not a great character to begin with, and then she got nerfed to stop a combo with other characters. As it is there's barely any reason to play her in 3* land, let alone in 4* land. All her powers are geared to deny AP of the colours that she's not, but it is all so random and weak, that perhaps you hadn't noticed it. Additionally, her powers barely make sense flavour-to-mechanics. Shapeshift should give you a free cast of an opponent-owned power in the same way that Colossus gives you one of your own team. That alone would guarantee playability in higher tiers, but it would have to be carefully balanced in cost. Infiltration could be changed so it only turns tiles of a selected colour into purple or black to reduce the crippling randomness of the ability. Masterstroke could pretty much remain as it is, in its better version.

Psylocke
Her red and black powers are fine, only badly underpowered even for 3* land. Improving them and changing Bewilder into a more reliable AP stealer (or drainer) could suffice to make her more playable in 3* land and when boosted. I'd like to see something akin to OBW's purple that takes a bit from each colour. Going by the name of the ability, it could also be a team-stunner.

jobob

Pylgrim wrote:

jobob wrote:

Until 4* feature PVP... 3* are still more relevant than 4*.

How so? because you /have to/ play with a featured 3*? And yet, past a certain amount of points, all you see are two 4*s (or even 5*s) plus that featured 3*. Anyway...

Basically, yes. Though I should've said that once you get to the 5* tier, 4* are irrelevant. But even at the 4* tier, they become irrelevant outside of about 8 - 10 characters. You almost never see anyone running a champed Star Lord, Fury, Elektra, Cho, Mr F, Drax unless they only have a couple champ 4*. I have a champed Cho for some reason... he will never see the light of day in PVP unless there's a 4* feature. But I have to trot out every **** 3* once in awhile when they are featured.

And like I said... once you get to the 5* tier, the 4* are nearly completely irrelevant in PVP. 5* are so much better, there is basically no reason to run a 4*, even the good ones, once you have multiple champed 5*, ESPECIALLY since you are already locked into using one 3*. At least in offseason events where you have a choice on all 3, you can fit a 4* in nicely between two 5*. But with a 3* feature, there's usually not a place for a 4* too.

SnowcaTT

jobob wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

jobob wrote:

Until 4* feature PVP... 3* are still more relevant than 4*.

How so? because you /have to/ play with a featured 3*? And yet, past a certain amount of points, all you see are two 4*s (or even 5*s) plus that featured 3*. Anyway...

Basically, yes. Though I should've said that once you get to the 5* tier, 4* are irrelevant. But even at the 4* tier, they become irrelevant outside of about 8 - 10 characters. You almost never see anyone running a champed Star Lord, Fury, Elektra, Cho, Mr F, Drax unless they only have a couple champ 4*. I have a champed Cho for some reason... he will never see the light of day in PVP unless there's a 4* feature. But I have to trot out every **** 3* once in awhile when they are featured.

And like I said... once you get to the 5* tier, the 4* are nearly completely irrelevant in PVP. 5* are so much better, there is basically no reason to run a 4*, even the good ones, once you have multiple champed 5*, ESPECIALLY since you are already locked into using one 3*. At least in offseason events where you have a choice on all 3, you can fit a 4* in nicely between two 5*. But with a 3* feature, there's usually not a place for a 4* too.

I think most of my team-mates realized this early on as well, and after having some of the good 4*'s they finished the 3*'s. You'll end up using Psylock whenever she's featured - you'll never use the "good" 4*'s like KP/Carnage/Nova/X23 over the "best" 4*'s like IM/JG/Ice/Cyc/Rhulk/DPXF/Quake/Punisher/Peggy.

With MMR it seems like you can go:
3*/buffed 4* (or ~350 5*)/"best category" unbuffed 4*.
3*/buffed "best category" 4*/375+ 5* (never using unbuffed 4* again)
3*/375+ 5*/375 + 5* (never using any 4* again)

Even when I was in that first category, I found using decent to poor options that were buffed (XF/Thor) were only equal at best to using the best options unbuffed.

I'm now in that second category - I don't have the covers for the newest three "best" ones (Quake/Punisher/Peggy), the rest I have champed and can almost always use one. I see many others doing a similar thing - on the weeks you don't have a buffed best one you use DPXF/Rulk/Ice or the like and do the best you can.

Last season I champed KP since I had three covers in queue, this week I'm running him since none of the "best" ones are buffed. Will it help me? Maybe a little. Do I regret "wasting" this ISO? Yeah, a bit. When will I -ever- be needing a champed KP again? PVE scales to high for him to be useful except when boosted - but I'll always hope to have another character boosted instead of him. I can run his DDQ without a champ level character.

I'm in the same scenario right now - getting close to ISO to champ Nova and a cover in queue - should I bother? Seems like it would be better to keep that ISO and champ whichever 4* I have covers for if a week comes along that I don't have another option. Or an even better option is simply keep that iso for the "best" ones and 5*'s I don't have covers for yet - since those are primarily the only ones you'll use in the long run.

I think the same thing happened in 3* land though - you only ever saw half a dozen 3*'s used once people had the bulk of them. The thing that changed that use was balance - it changed their use again when IM was recently buffed.

I think buffs/changes will help (and sadly, may be done). But I think the only way to keep them relevant is run more "essential" events, perhaps like the DDQ gateway where the character is mandated to go further. Or run capped events, like the first DDQ gateway is a 3* capped, the big enchilada could easily be a 3* capped level. 4*'s could be dealt with the same way - put in a DDQ 4* gateway and a daily 4* reward node, put in capped levels that include 4*'s but exclude 5*'s (and could be scaled accordingly!)