Is 3* Thanos worth champing?

froggerjohn

I currently use Thanos only for the easy PvE nodes, so I've left him at L90 (enough to kill the goons, and keep self-damage low). But I have the full 13 covers now, plus one on the vine, and wondering if I should champ him?

My initial thoughts are to leave him and sell the extra cover, because I occasionally use him with Dr Strange. When the goons cast a power on the second turn, it makes for really fast clears, and Strange's yellow offsets much of Court Death. Also sometimes use Daken when boosted, who can heal the effects. Neither of those will work as well if Court death is notably boosted, and it doesn't seem like I need any extra enemy damage right now (I play SCL6, or sometimes SCL5).

Are there other scenarios where it's worth having more than 3 in Court Death and/or champ leveling?

TPF Alexis

First off, it's worth champing anyone you can, just for the rewards.

That said, tho, yeah, his damage can get up to the point where you can make first or second clears of the harder nodes basically just on the strength of Court Death, and he's the best you're going to get for a while for beating seed teams quickly in Lightning Rounds to farm ISO.

After he's champed, as I recall, he pretty quickly hits the point where he'll take out any of the "main" character loaners in a Lightning Round except Ragnarok, so they usually go in just a couple of matches (often just one match if you've got a single cover 5* with him), down one of the 1* that's backing them up, and he clears everyone else. That's how you get to 8, 9, 10 seed teams.

ThaRoadWarrior

 If you put 5 covers on Court Death, the self-harm to them-harm ratio skews a bit more in your favor, though it still does more empirical damage. I believe 3 covers is actually the worst ratio of self to them damage, even though the numbers may seem more palatable to you for how much self inflicted harm you're willing to eat. 


3* Rocket, Patch, Dak3n, anybody with a good true heal can run with him for a bit, or if you want to get tricky, there are a very few characters who can actually mitigate the self-harm damage. Vision can do it if you have the correct density tile out, or if somebody is airborne they avoid it. I don't recall if Colossus's yellow will help you, but Fastball Special will take at least one of your allies off the table if you time it right. But friendly defend tiles won't help you against self-harm, just fyi.

Also: if/when you do acquire a 5* thanos, his Court Death has a stun component to it that prevents anybody from doing anything about reducing the damage because it resolves first. Only way to dodge that is to be airborne or dead.

froggerjohn

Ah, lightning rounds. That's a great idea, thanks. 

I'll champ him, and then deal with whatever changes I might have to make in PvE. Worst case, just rotate fodder. Love having the advice of this forum. Much appreciated.

ThaRoadWarrior

Some thoughts on Thanos generally: Court Death is actually the point of having thanos on roster; his other moves don't do much or are too expensive. I'll play him one of two ways: Try and take out the person Court Death won't kill in a single hit first and let it kill the other two straight up, or attack the weakest link right away then finish off the other characters - you run the risk of firing CD off a few times though, which isn't great for health pack usage. An alternative would be to soften everybody up to the point that court death will kill them first, then drop the weakest link; the point is just to make sure you don't have to eat it multiple times per match if you don't have to. My roster is deep enough now that I'm not worried about the health drain, but I remember the days when characters who did self harm were just not getting used.

One team idea if you're trying to conserve health packs would be to run him with Kamala Khan and Dak3n: Spam Dak3n's blue to create Green for KK and trigger her burst healing, use KK's purple over thanos's to make more green, court death everybody and finish them up with KK's AoE green. Depends on how hard the enemy team is if you'll be collecting that much AP or not though.

I switched over to 5* Thanos once i got a few covers in Court Death, so I'm not as familiar with playing the 3* version anymore. My Thano5 is 3/0/2, lvl 315, and Court death is doing 4516 | 1571, with the added benefit of stunning everyone for a turn which then triggers my 0/0/1 5* Panther to Move or Be moved and finish the job or trigger it again. this is great on the easy wave nodes where you can pretty regularly make a single match and then auto-win just off of the interaction with those two powers.

At lvl 236, my 5/3/5 3* thanos is doing 4736 | 1210, but he won't trigger Panther without the stun. So even though the damage is slightly in my favor, I prefer Thano5 over 3anos, but only because my roster is what it is. 

froggerjohn

What a difference on the LRs! Got to use newly-champed Thanos today, and he cuts through seed teams so quickly. I had all but abandoned LRs for being too tedious and repetitive, but now they're worth doing again. With a few 3*s waiting for iso, it's a welcome benefit.

Interestingly, I also just pulled a 0/0/1 5* Panther. A long time still before I have Thano5, but he might be usable in niche scenarios for dodging nukes.

DAZ0273

Thanos will also destroy the Big Enchilada wave node in DDQ - you can chuck in a 1 cover 5* or 2 with him if you have them for some match damage to get things going and to absorb Court Death if they aren't needed elsewhere/Essential.

Heartbreaksoup

Following up RoadWarrior, my 3* Thanos is level 197 and doing 4370 damage with Court Death.  So what I do against symbiotes is set the weakest link (Call it A) to the side, and knock the next one (Call it B ) down below 4370, and then go after A.  Once A is downed, Court Death finishes off B and does 4370 damage to C.  That way Court Death only fires once per round.