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.