How much improving would Thanos (The Mad Titan) need, to be viable with a weekly boost?

HoundofShadow

Character tile and special tile belong to two separate categories. So, characters whose abilities trigger based on enemy special tiles won't trigger for matching character tiles. However, for certain bosses in alliance events, it might be a little inconsistent, based on my memory. I think it has to do with Kitty and non-playable Thanos.

SC could still fire his red but it will only heal him. If I had a R5 support that gives 6 purple aps at the start of the game, I'll boost another 2 purple aps to take care of Bullseye, Daken, Sentries and whatever goons who spam special tiles with Thanos. He's a unique mechanic that's super useful. But he's known for only Court Death.

DAZ0273

Thanos purple has caused me plenty of problems in past battles - yes it can definitely be improved but it isn't a useless power by any means (perhaps the match damage element is not so good). His green is his most problematic power in that it gets matched away so often and is expensive.

Tony_Foot

No need for a rework

No need, but if they make him more powerful then I'd make his court death a 1 turn countdown to give you the chance to match the tile before he whups you.

Thanos had his turn, I would rather they gave Gambit his power back if we are revisiting ex meta characters!

ThaRoadWarrior

HoundofShadow said:

Character tile and special tile belong to two separate categories. So, characters whose abilities trigger based on enemy special tiles won't trigger for matching character tiles. However, for certain bosses in alliance events, it might be a little inconsistent, based on my memory. I think it has to do with Kitty and non-playable Thanos.

SC could still fire his red but it will only heal him. If I had a R5 support that gives 6 purple aps at the start of the game, I'll boost another 2 purple aps to take care of Bullseye, Daken, Sentries and whatever goons who spam special tiles with Thanos. He's a unique mechanic that's super useful. But he's known for only Court Death.

It does seem inconsistent. Vulture at 4+ blue will destroy boss thanos and boss Doc Ock tiles when he goes airborne, as well as "neutral" tiles I believe. I'm not sure if it's implemented per-character. Somebody run Gwenpool in PVP for me so I can test it with Morbius lol.

ThaRoadWarrior

Tony_Foot said:

No need, but if they make him more powerful then I'd make his court death a 1 turn countdown to give you the chance to match the tile before he whups you.

Thanos had his turn, I would rather they gave Gambit his power back if we are revisiting ex meta characters!

moving Court Death to a Cd would absolutely be a ghost rider style up-nerf lol. I would hate that so much.

HoundofShadow

You can look for Dr 5trange, Silver Surfer, 4* and 5* Dr Ock as well because they have character tiles.

Turning his court death into 1-turn cd is a nerf. 

Bad

I'm sure all 5*s had their time. But we are talking about the present and making viable 5*s.
He has the most powerful artifact in the universe with all the gems. He should be a character to be afraid. And he should do more original things than to share exactly the same powers as his 3* version with minor upgrades.
I would change even his art. Not just a gauntlet with the gems for to know if he is the 5* or the 3*.

entrailbucket

No need for a rework

Funny story about Thanos purple -- when it was released it was really buggy.  It stopped some powers but not others and it was just generally really inconsistent about what worked and what didn't.  Nobody could figure out why it was working like that.

At the same time, a bunch of other, completely unrelated, really weird bugs with other characters were introduced.  Over the years all the weird bugs and edge cases got fixed.

Years later, the mystery was solved by one of the developers on Discord or Reddit or wherever they were posting.

When Thanos was released, *every single power* in the game had to be updated.  Every power had two effects assigned to it internally -- one effect happened in normal situations and one effect  happened when Thanos's purple countdown was on the board.

I'm not sure if this is still the case.

ThaRoadWarrior

There seem to be quite a lot of powers that are implemented inconsistently in that way. Wakanda Forever/Shared Strength have done a lot of heavy lifting on making them apparent.

HoundofShadow

That's a very interesting information. That probably explains a lot of inconsistencies found in the game. Given today's number of characters, that's over 600 powers to be updated for future characters with such similar ability.

entrailbucket

No need for a rework

HoundofShadow said:

That's a very interesting information. That probably explains a lot of inconsistencies found in the game. Given today's number of characters, that's over 600 powers to be updated for future characters with such similar ability.

I would hope that by now they don't have to do that much work anymore!  That was many years ago and they've had plenty of time to rework the power since then.

On the other hand, players aren't testing Thanos now in the same way we did then, so maybe there are some new bugs or inconsistencies that nobody's noticed. 

I still use that power, but mainly as a counter to SW and to Beta Ray Bill.  It works well for that purpose.  Enemy Beta Ray Bill will still cast his blue, and it does damage, but he can't create the CD tile.

HoundofShadow

I remember the last bugged interaction was with Valkyrie's cd. What happened was her cd continues to get processed after hitting the required damage but it was not removed and it stacked a lot of free aps. I didn't use this team but I saw it being spoken of. I can't remember who the third was though. However, that bug has been fixed.

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm sure there is a "do it like this from now one" code pattern for powers, but I highly doubt a pass was made on any powers that were done differently prior to that law was laid down outside of high profile bugs. That's why some powers that do damage then destroy tiles (in their flavor text at least) benefit from Wakanda Forever and some don't, similar to how some powers that heal then affect the board or do damage then affect the board work or not with Thano5' purple.

Tony_Foot

No need for a rework

Bad said:

I'm sure all 5*s had their time. But we are talking about the present and making viable 5*s.
He has the most powerful artifact in the universe with all the gems. He should be a character to be afraid. And he should do more original things than to share exactly the same powers as his 3* version with minor upgrades.
I would change even his art. Not just a gauntlet with the gems for to know if he is the 5* or the 3*.

They didn't all have their time, far from it!  And he's still viable. And are we still after all these years stating comic/film powers to in game levels and what they should be.

entrailbucket

No need for a rework

The other interesting thing about Thanos purple is that it's one of very few (is there another?) *symmetrical* powers in the game, which limits its power a little bit and makes it more complicated to use.

Something like Black Suit Spiderman's power reduces enemy strike tiles to 0, but not friendly ones. 

Thanos purple stops *anybody* from changing the board, friendly or enemy.  I think a lot of people ignore it because casting it means that a lot of stuff you want to do doesn't work anymore.  If they made it asymmetrical, that would be a lot easier to use but it'd also be a lot more powerful.

ThaRoadWarrior

Yeah the only things I can think of that are like that are potentially Gambit’s power lockout and then things like Nico, Eddie Brock Venom and I think Knull with their benefit from strikes but not protects passives.

entrailbucket

No need for a rework

I'm actually surprised they haven't done more stuff in that space.  One way to make really powerful effects that aren't overpowered is to have them affect both sides. 

For example, if a guy had BSS's ability to set strikes to 0, but for strike, attack, and protect tiles, that power is too good.  But if it applies to both friendly and enemy tiles that's a lot more reasonable.  It shuts off enemy Polaris but it also shuts off your Polaris. 

Another fun one might be preventing all AP gain on anything besides matches.

ThaRoadWarrior

An expensive character who straight prevented match damage might force the use of power-based characters, though it would more likely just signal the return of Hulkoye based teams I guess.

mdreyer93

Needs a rework in 1 power

Besides health/damage increases to bring them in line with newer releases and AP reduction on green, I think purple needs the start of battle character tile treatment that @ThaRoadWarrior suggested. We already have a unique infinity gauntlet tile that's used in the boss event that would be perfect!

Of course, as others have said, he's already usable when boosted. So if that's the only goal, he needs nothing. The above changes would make him usable unboosted imo. 

LavaManLee

I use him every day in DDQ to speed clear the two nodes on the right hand side.  I also use him in Lightning Rounds and to whittle down 5Thor as needed.  He actually gets more use daily than most of my other 5*s so I would say he is pretty useful to how I play.