Thanos as Essential

Dartmaster01

I can't believe no one else has suggested this yet. I recruited a second one cover purple 3nos from the first progression cover to use for essentials. So I have a 3/5/4 and a 0/1/0 Thanos. I haven't been taking any damage on the Thanos essential and can still work toward champing him. I know it's not ideal for most people but if you have the room to spare it's working for me until we get some official word on him.

GurlBYE

This character is bad and no amount of fully covered OTHER characters changes that he is dependent on other characters to not hurt your team lol.

Sometimes posters here are so busy trying to be contrary to every single thing that opposes the games design that they argue themselves in circles.

"fully cover someone who's covers appear at less than a tenth the frequency of even a single thanos cover, and pair them together exclusively, collect double the ap to save health pack, duh"

"how about this method that doesn't work because of how the game handles self damage"

Moon Roach

Dartmaster01 wrote:

I can't believe no one else has suggested this yet. I recruited a second one cover purple 3nos from the first progression cover to use for essentials. So I have a 3/5/4 and a 0/1/0 Thanos. I haven't been taking any damage on the Thanos essential and can still work toward champing him. I know it's not ideal for most people but if you have the room to spare it's working for me until we get some official word on him.

I did a variant of this. I sold my 1/2/2 Thanos and replaced him with a 0/1/0.

Tiger_Wong

Summer Glau wrote:

Tiger Wong wrote:

Guys guys guys......

Use Elektra with him. Activate her before killing a character. She doesn't take the damage, and you deal more to whoever is left.

it's not enemy damage, which is why Captain marvel's energy absorption won't work either

Uhhhhh, no. It doesn't have to be enemy damage. It doesn't say anything about enemy damage.

If Elektra would take damage....

Or you could just try it like I have and watch as she doesn't take any damage, the black tile goes off, and the opponent in front takes damage.

Tiger_Wong

BoyWonder1914 wrote:

Tiger Wong wrote:

Guys guys guys......

Use Elektra with him. Activate her before killing a character. She doesn't take the damage, and you deal more to whoever is left.

I applaud your out-of-box thinking, but Elektra isn't a character that most people are going to have covered/leveled well enough to pull that off. I'm also not seeing where on her black it says that teammates are protected from the damage.

Her teammates aren't protected but she is. So that means only 1 of your characters get hit by Courtship of Death.

As for not having her covered enough.... idk what to tell you. I guess I'm lucky enough to have her st 5/3/2 lvl 188. Just like other people are lucky enough to have 5 covers with Quake, while I'm st 3/0/5.

Let's try to find solutions guys.

JHawkInc

Smudge wrote:

revskip wrote:

I don't particularly like 3Thanos but he does add a puzzle aspect to matches which is a nice departure from some of the fire and forget 3*s. Bring 4* Punisher and stun him before downing enemies, or bring Colossus and send him flying before downing enemies or pair him with a good AOE character and down everyone at once. Actually adding more Puzzle to Puzzle Quest can't be a bad thing. He definitely at least captures the flavor of the character.

When you start talking about ways of using a character that involve not using that character, it's a badly designed character. I agree with the puzzle aspect being good, but you're specifically trying to circumvent the character. I also agree that it captures the flavor of Thanos; he shouldn't play nice with others. This is a poor design choice of that in my personal opinion; he shouldn't play well with others, but the fact that he plays so poorly with others means I'll never want to use him.

Ways of using a character that involve not using them is bad design? Like, the entirety of Iron Man Model 40, and using his Recharge to power someone else to bypass the drawback of his self-stun?

There's nothing wrong with playing around a character's built in weaknesses or drawbacks. We bypass IM40 by using the AP with another red/blue user (I'm partial to 4* Thor, myself). We get around Carnage by pairing characters that can pick off his special tiles (3* Bullseye? Doc Ock? Medusa? Falcon?). We pair Patch Wolverine with Loki so Loki can steal his enemy attack tiles. And you can get around Thanos' friendly team damage by avoiding setting it off, whether by stunning Thanos, or sending him airborne, or taking out the enemy team in one sweep.

Having to work around a drawback doesn't automatically make a character poorly designed.

SummerGlau

I know My Elektra is seriously undercovered (0/1/2) so once i get through the first clear at my scaling back to Punisher Max, Regenerators or Just trying to finish the whole enemy team at once
Truth be told Thanos and Elektra are in the same boat for me, only using them when I have to

Smudge

JHawkInc wrote:

Smudge wrote:

revskip wrote:

I don't particularly like 3Thanos but he does add a puzzle aspect to matches which is a nice departure from some of the fire and forget 3*s. Bring 4* Punisher and stun him before downing enemies, or bring Colossus and send him flying before downing enemies or pair him with a good AOE character and down everyone at once. Actually adding more Puzzle to Puzzle Quest can't be a bad thing. He definitely at least captures the flavor of the character.

When you start talking about ways of using a character that involve not using that character, it's a badly designed character. I agree with the puzzle aspect being good, but you're specifically trying to circumvent the character. I also agree that it captures the flavor of Thanos; he shouldn't play nice with others. This is a poor design choice of that in my personal opinion; he shouldn't play well with others, but the fact that he plays so poorly with others means I'll never want to use him.

Ways of using a character that involve not using them is bad design? Like, the entirety of Iron Man Model 40, and using his Recharge to power someone else to bypass the drawback of his self-stun?

There's nothing wrong with playing around a character's built in weaknesses or drawbacks. We bypass IM40 by using the AP with another red/blue user (I'm partial to 4* Thor, myself). We get around Carnage by pairing characters that can pick off his special tiles (3* Bullseye? Doc Ock? Medusa? Falcon?). We pair Patch Wolverine with Loki so Loki can steal his enemy attack tiles. And you can get around Thanos' friendly team damage by avoiding setting it off, whether by stunning Thanos, or sending him airborne, or taking out the enemy team in one sweep.

Having to work around a drawback doesn't automatically make a character poorly designed.

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean. Aside from Carnage who you can't really control, every other character you mentioned is a character who you're trying to activate powers for. You aren't deliberately avoiding triggering their powers. IM40 powers himself and not just other characters, and I can't tell you the number of times the rest of his buddies have been destroyed while he's been stunned for me only to have him come back and finish the job himself because his red/blue are still powerful. Besides that, 99% of us here aren't bringing IM40 to recharge other characters to bypass his self-stun, we're doing it because he powers other characters who are more efficient and more powerful than he is with red and blue... like 4Thor... he's a bad example for this scenario. Carnage still wreaks total havoc with his red and green, and he self-fuels his green damage with his black passive (something Thanos, as I previously mentioned, does not do - he still has no self-fuel or self-synergy). Patch is probably the only obvious one with huge, immediate repercussions unless you're properly prepared, but you still aren't actively avoiding triggering his powers.

When one power is that devastating to your own team that your primary response is to completely prevent it from happening more often than not (especially because it inconceivably deals more damage to your own team than the opponent at 3-4 covers), that is bad design. Passives that actively harm your own team are in a completely different league from actives that do the same since you can make a more conscious decision to bypass them or bring someone who uses the active color better.

I have no issues working around drawbacks for characters, but Thanos is a miss on all levels. His purple is vastly outclassed by Vision's blue, his green relying on a CD makes it a bit iffy unless you aren't up against green-using foes, board shakers like Juggernaut, or are only facing goons (the damage appears to be pretty good at least), and his black dealing that much damage to only two opponents at best just makes it meh when it's slapping your team for the same amount or more.

With my favorite villain being added to the game, I feel like I should want to add covers, champ him, and use him. I don't really want to do that with Thanos. I don't ever use Sentry even when he's boosted, and I see Thanos falling into the same garbage bin as Sentry. Not all characters can be best-in-class, especially for vet players, but Thanos doesn't really even benefit newer players who are just now building rosters. I love my 2 cover 5* Thanos (and yes, I have his black). I hate my 3* Thanos.

Edit to mention that scaling can easily cause your workarounds for Thanos's buddies to fall flat. Bringing Colossus to chuck Thanos before his black activates and then having Colossus get demolished by overscaled DAs with 20-30k life doesn't really do much if you can't chuck him before chipping through that amount of life.

Smudge

Smudge wrote:

JHawkInc wrote:

Smudge wrote:

revskip wrote:

I don't particularly like 3Thanos but he does add a puzzle aspect to matches which is a nice departure from some of the fire and forget 3*s. Bring 4* Punisher and stun him before downing enemies, or bring Colossus and send him flying before downing enemies or pair him with a good AOE character and down everyone at once. Actually adding more Puzzle to Puzzle Quest can't be a bad thing. He definitely at least captures the flavor of the character.

When you start talking about ways of using a character that involve not using that character, it's a badly designed character. I agree with the puzzle aspect being good, but you're specifically trying to circumvent the character. I also agree that it captures the flavor of Thanos; he shouldn't play nice with others. This is a poor design choice of that in my personal opinion; he shouldn't play well with others, but the fact that he plays so poorly with others means I'll never want to use him.

Ways of using a character that involve not using them is bad design? Like, the entirety of Iron Man Model 40, and using his Recharge to power someone else to bypass the drawback of his self-stun?

There's nothing wrong with playing around a character's built in weaknesses or drawbacks. We bypass IM40 by using the AP with another red/blue user (I'm partial to 4* Thor, myself). We get around Carnage by pairing characters that can pick off his special tiles (3* Bullseye? Doc Ock? Medusa? Falcon?). We pair Patch Wolverine with Loki so Loki can steal his enemy attack tiles. And you can get around Thanos' friendly team damage by avoiding setting it off, whether by stunning Thanos, or sending him airborne, or taking out the enemy team in one sweep.

Having to work around a drawback doesn't automatically make a character poorly designed.

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean. Aside from Carnage who you can't really control, every other character you mentioned is a character who you're trying to activate powers for. You aren't deliberately avoiding triggering their powers. IM40 powers himself and not just other characters, and I can't tell you the number of times the rest of his buddies have been destroyed while he's been stunned for me only to have him come back and finish the job himself because his red/blue are still powerful. Besides that, 99% of us here aren't bringing IM40 to recharge other characters to bypass his self-stun, we're doing it because he powers other characters who are more efficient and more powerful than he is with red and blue... like 4Thor... he's a bad example for this scenario. Carnage still wreaks total havoc with his red and green, and he self-fuels his green damage with his black passive (something Thanos, as I previously mentioned, does not do - he still has no self-fuel or self-synergy). Patch is probably the only obvious one with huge, immediate repercussions unless you're properly prepared, but you still aren't actively avoiding triggering his powers.

When one power is that devastating to your own team that your primary response is to completely prevent it from happening more often than not (especially because it inconceivably deals more damage to your own team than the opponent at 3-4 covers), that is bad design. Passives that actively harm your own team are in a completely different league from actives that do the same since you can make a more conscious decision to bypass them or bring someone who uses the active color better. You are talking about ways to stop this power from ever activating, not ways of mitigating what it does. How is that not bad?

I have no issues working around drawbacks for characters, but Thanos is a miss on all levels. His purple is vastly outclassed by Vision's blue, his green relying on a CD makes it a bit iffy unless you aren't up against green-using foes, board shakers like Juggernaut, or are only facing goons (the damage appears to be pretty good at least), and his black dealing that much damage to only two opponents at best just makes it meh when it's slapping your team for the same amount or more.

With my favorite villain being added to the game, I feel like I should want to add covers, champ him, and use him. I don't really want to do that with Thanos. I don't ever use Sentry even when he's boosted, and I see Thanos falling into the same garbage bin as Sentry. Not all characters can be best-in-class, especially for vet players, but Thanos doesn't really even benefit newer players who are just now building rosters. I love my 2 cover 5* Thanos (and yes, I have his black). I hate my 3* Thanos.

Edit to mention that scaling can easily cause your workarounds for Thanos's buddies to fall flat. Bringing Colossus to chuck Thanos before his black activates and then having Colossus get demolished by overscaled DAs with 20-30k life doesn't really do much if you can't chuck him before chipping through that amount of life.

Dragon_Nexus

Dammit, I'm going to need to find another gif.

On the subject though, I don't see the usual kind of strategising here. This isn't "Hey, have you conidered using him with X? If you used that ability with X's ability, it might cause this".
Instead the discussion seems to be damage control. Or more specifically damage mitigation. Trying to figure out how to twist and bend the character to fit a mould. Other characters have slotted in nicely to several roles and with other characters and sometimes we discover new things about them weeks after. Thanos is straight away "How do we stop his passive going off?"

And that's fair enough if we were talking about an enemy Thanos. No-one here was trying to figure out how to stop their own Stephen Strange's passive from going off.

fanghoul

I'm usually in the camp for finding the positive in a character. Thanos isn't presenting a trade off though: an effect that I really want with a side effect that I have to work around. He's just presenting pure downside to being on my team. Even without his black, I would never ever bother to put him on my team. If I wanted a better green AoE, I'd go with KK or Thor. If I wanted to hit people with high match damage, I would go with Vision. Heck, if you already have Vision's blue active, he'll also have a better AoE than Thanos. If I just wanted a purple/green/black character I'd go with Blade or Iron Fist or Bullseye.

He's no good without his black power, and he's even worse with it.

Mechahamster

A passive with a trigger you want to avoid at all costs. A purple that does nothing. A green that takes 3 turns to resolve with a high chance of doing nothing. He really is the worst

He's bizarro Kamala Khan. It's like the devs had a challenge where they took a random good character and held a competition to see who could come up with the worst mirror.

At least Sentry's yellow helps your other dudes. Thanos ranks at the absolute bottom in 3 star land.

broll

One change they could do to his black that I think would really help is change it so it only triggers if Thanos downs a character. Then you could easily mitigate the damage by making sure he doesn't make killing blows. When I first read the power this is how I expected it to work, but was shocked when it fired regardless of who landed the final hit.

Beastwood

I just paired him with punisher max, when the enemy got close to death i let off punishers green n stunned him for 2 turns, not a choice for everyone but it kept him quiet enough for me to do finish up the node without getting done in by that ridiculous power.

Aside from that i don't really see what's stand out about him, chances of the cd timer reaching 0 are slim, the match damage is ok but i usually find the tiles he does higher damage on are few n far between subs bench for him maybe he'll stand out at champ but i dont plan to find out anytime soon

I can understand the 5* one having it simply because his purple shuts down alot of powers so he needs a drawback but for the 3* i really don't see what outstanding move he has that needs such a drawback, could at least half the damage it does to my squad or something just seems like a healthpack eater to me "appease death with heroic points"

Dragon_Nexus

broll wrote:

One change they could do to his black that I think would really help is change it so it only triggers if Thanos downs a character. Then you could easily mitigate the damage by making sure he doesn't make killing blows. When I first read the power this is how I expected it to work, but was shocked when it fired regardless of who landed the final hit.

I see this said a lot, but with his purple boosting his damage that simply means you don't want to activate his purple in case he downs someone.

Re-read that sentence. You don't want to use your ability that helps you win...because if that character downs the enemy...you'll be in a worse possition.

Jam_Adams

lol I didn't think about that.

his purple in turn makes his black even that much more awful. what a terribly designed character......

Crnch73

yea I still can't get on board with this character design. Basically, you have to either stun him/send him airborne, or hit the enemy with an AOE attack that knocks out everyone. And, as previously mentioned, his black actually hurts your team more than the enemy team at certain levels, which is ridiculous. Granted, his black will not KILL your team most times, but it makes the nodes impossible to escape without using a health pack. At least with all other characters who have a drawback, you can work around those issues by using them at specific points in a match. Using patch and loki works, but obviously you don't fire the green until you have enough black. And then, those 2 powers combined make for a great match. There is no pairing for Thanos to actually be good. You only try to avoid his powers, you never really want to use them.

Is this what the developers wanted? to force us to use health packs? Or to pair him with only certain team mates to work around his terrible power? Or are they taunting us, giving us a character many people have wanted badly, but then making him terrible as a gesture of yet another big middle finger?

broll

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

broll wrote:

One change they could do to his black that I think would really help is change it so it only triggers if Thanos downs a character. Then you could easily mitigate the damage by making sure he doesn't make killing blows. When I first read the power this is how I expected it to work, but was shocked when it fired regardless of who landed the final hit.

I see this said a lot, but with his purple boosting his damage that simply means you don't want to activate his purple in case he downs someone.

Re-read that sentence. You don't want to use your ability that helps you win...because if that character downs the enemy...you'll be in a worse possition.

You're in a worse position by default by being forced to use this turd. Just trying to make things a little better, but cover a turd in all the chocolate you like, you still won't like the results. He needs a ground up overhaul.

byc

I hate 3* Thanos.

I love 5* Thanos.

Xenoberyll

Vhailorx wrote:

fmftint wrote:

Speaking of 3nos black, why do covers 3/4 hurt YOUR team more than the enemy team?

Only explanation is that they want to incentive 5-black builds.

I think they just bugged the numbers. Hopefully he'll get a fix soon.