mThor dillemma.

Mr_F

I wanted to post it from quite some time as I really, really dislike mThor and yet want and do not want a nerf here. Let me hear.

Why I believe something has to be done with mThor? Because there is no equivalent of Electro here.

What I mean is that, the differences between OR vs Electro and mThor vs. Her counters are:
1. on offence, mThor beats easilly every of her counters
2. on offence, OR CAN beat Electro but it’s not even near as easy like in point 1.
3. when you ask for OR counters „Electro” is simple answer. When you do that for mThor… well when I was researching what are her counters, I’ve seen only ONE responce in FEW HUNDREDS (in few places) that has mentioned anything specifing and not just „she is easily beaten” (and the question was WITH WHAT not HOW HARD).*

And here comes the dillemma. We all know: if we do to her what was done to Chasm, we will have to do same to Omega Red. And then to Aunt May. And Phylla. And to whatever which comes next. And despite my strong disliking mThor, I’d rather endure her than risk that the solution (nerf or whatever) will bring even worse disaster. But the solution is simple: a 5* character with a kit which will be lile Electro is to Omega Red. Trivialise the match up yet allowing mThor to be still relevant.

What I think is that Shaw CAN be such character, when ascended, but he may be not. Time will tell. What bothers me about him is that, he is 4*. I don't want to be forced to chase ascension cause' it's a solution for higher tier problems.

• and for anyone wanting to know (from memory, cause I cant find that reddit post anymore)/ The few examples are:
  -Jeff’s green eats all charged tiles on board (but you have to repeat that every few rounds)
  -Colossus mitigates much of her cascades damage (but not from powers)
  -Chasm drains her and flood boards with abyss/web tiles which mThor blows for his benefits (but he is double edge sword)
  -Kang/Deathlock + whatever to send everything away

Even though, they are like Polaris counters: did nothing to stop her dominance).

bluewolf

Patience.

The devs have her on their radar, and nerfing her would be extremely unpopular because many players who are not vets with dozens of champed 5s have her as one of their few tools/champed 5s, as they focused on her, understandably. But, many players do have her champed, hence her ubiquity.

Possible avenues to counter Thor:

1. Punish enemy team when charged tiles are on the board (possibly OP, also hurts characters which are far weaker but make charged)
2. Punish characters who make cascades happen passively (would be truly annoying if you got lucky with board drops and weren't running Thor, probably hard to accomplish in terms of interactions)
3. Punish removal of some/all special tiles (maybe a new one, maybe the existing ones)

The most direct course is the "remove special tiles" bit, because that is the thing that really neuters so many characters, and something only she does at the scale she does it, at least for free/passively every turn.

So what if a character punished you for removing their special tiles? Seems like an unexplored avenue of development.

We shall see what unfolds in the coming months.

entrailbucket

I don't have high hopes for a m'Thor counter. It's possible, but I haven't seen them do it enough to believe they can make it happen.

Just to skip ahead a bit, and avoid rehashing the same argument...assuming something happens to Thor that knocks her off the Undisputed Best at Everything perch, I don't really see an extended reign of dominance for anybody else who exists right now.

Omega Red is probably our most obvious candidate, but he's got a couple counters that he can't beat -- besides Electro, Scarlet Witch exists, shuts him down pretty well, and is common on high end rosters. Beta Ray Bill will spam a ton of protect tiles off his AoE. Shang-Chi's board manipulation also works to destroy his tile.

Seph1roth5

If they had just made shaw a 5 it would've been fine.

kuntilanak

Problem with mThor is that her cascade on defense is insanely good, in which she collects tons of AP and wipe you immediately/ next turn (on offence, i rarely get that, thus i almost never use her) (and don't tell me to use 5* Colossus because he is not protected from power damage). There is no way the dev can do anything about that without breaking the game (cough" sentry bots *cough). If you limit her passive tile destruction, the folks will march in droves with torches and pitchforks to the dev.

So, i don't see how the dev can address her 'issue' properly (read: without inviting criticism) . So far some of the new characters seemingly want to address it by dealing with charge tiles but personally, that's band aid at best.

tiomono

My thought has been with a change to her is to just don't let her destruction prioritize special tiles. If she still has a chance to destroy them but didn't prioritize it would slow her up just a bit.

Otherwise chasm and shaw stop her cold imo. My shaw is not even champed and I can face a pick 3 team with her and leave her for last because with no charged tiles she is no good.

revskip

If they just remove the passive from the blue she'll be in the A+ tier unboosted and S tier when boosted. That much free board shake is just not balanced.

Godzillafan67

I like mThor as-is. As a baby 5-star champ player, I have faced her many times and rarely does my Shang-Chi lose. She is not on my A-team for PvP, but she is my paper when I need to cover rocks like Omega Red. (Speaking of, I've noticed that most of the pick-2 combos I face in LRs are Chasm/OR, Colossus/OR, Chasm/iHulk, and iHulk/OR.) For PvE, she is Shang's partner on the essentials because Omnipotence City makes it more likely that I'll have enough red to keep the party rocking, and her charge tile creation/destruction mechanic is such a wonderful swiss knife solution.

ThaRoadWarrior

Cosmo was a strange 4* attempt to shut her down, but it isn't very good. Worthy Cap punishes charged tile matches, mine isn't ascended so i don't know if it works or not. X-Force Deadpool (mine is ascended) would be great if there was a decent purple battery at the 5* tier. Aunt May punishes yellow matches, I don't know if that will be enough but I guess we will see as champs show up.

WilliamK1983

I've yet to get locked in a 30 minute mthor v mthor battle like with Chasm. Mthor is a great character, maybe to great, but leave her alone. So you take the occasional L against her, at least it didn't take half an hour. Regroup and get the next one.

Riri green, keep mthor stunned for cheap. Paired with mthor you can stun lock opponent mthor.

Daredevil217

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
Cosmo was a strange 4* attempt to shut her down, but it isn't very good. Worthy Cap punishes charged tile matches, mine isn't ascended so i don't know if it works or not. X-Force Deadpool (mine is ascended) would be great if there was a decent purple battery at the 5* tier. Aunt May punishes yellow matches, I don't know if that will be enough but I guess we will see as champs show up.

Add Shaw to the list and what you have is a bunch of 4 star counters. They’ve yet to make a 5 star counter for her. They easily could but I think see her more as a 4* problem right now. Hopefully they give the complainers something in way of a counter at the 5 tier. Heck I’d take a nerf just to not hear the same tired arguments over and over again derailing every thread! That’d probably be worth it to me, and I actually love her kit.

Mr_F

Definetly no nerfing mThor! To add to what was just said, she is not that much probolem as many cases before were. She is just omnipresented and limits choices given how many characters she just can easily defeat both on offence and defence. I have 40 5* champions and everytime when I look who to pick against her, at best, being generous, she shuts down ~30 of them or they are too risky like Storm. Just she alone in any given pairing.

That is why I want a 5* partner, not ascended 4*, to smash into mamy combos that will make life easier like Electro does to OR. Somethimg with 4 aspects:
1. making mThor easier to beat on offence.
2. being beatable by her easily enough so people will still use her (so no meta change)
3. 5*
4. flexible enough so it can be squeezed to many teams.

Scofie

I think something like Lockjaw's jump in front and take no damage from special tile matches mechanic, but for charged tiles is a perfect solution.

Put it on Bishop for his nerf reversal... 😉😈

Mr_F

@Tony_Foot said:
I’m not a fan of the character, mines at 500 but I rarely use her. I hit her all the time though. Pretty much all of my PvP fights are her and I beat it 95% of the time with Shang and half Thor. Yep I get the 5% of wipes where it’s out of control but whatever. My only problem is how she shuts down so many other characters playing the game with her tile removal. I would like it to be more specific but a good 5* counter would be fine too.

Doesn’t really register for me as a problem as much as my god boosted 5* having less than half the health of a god boosted ascended 4*. I know what I’d rather them balance.

Her problem is precisely what ya described. If one character is so versitile and popular that 80% (made up number) is useless then that is a problem.

Just to clarify: useless means here "they can not or its very hard to execute their kit" not "there are better options". OR makes many character "useless" but they can still try to execute their kits.

Daredevil217

I agree with the general consensus here- counters over nerfs. We have yet to even have an attempt at a 5* counter and I believe that is because she isn’t as oppressive as Bishop or Chasm were. The 1/2 hour matches, not being able to match 3, etc. Those were real problems. Lack of variety is absolutely a problem, but much less severe.

Thoress is no different than Thorkoye, Steel Witch, Hulkoye, Hulkgasm before, or even Omega/Colossus currently. It’s a symptom of the game’s structure. There will always be a unboosted team that clogs up a lot of the queues. Mr. F is right, that if you cut off Thor‘s head another will take its place. That’s what the complainers don’t understand. This isn’t an issue about this specific character, but the players themselves and the games structure. Anyone who has been around long enough should have figured this out.

But let me explain…

There is no way realistically to max every character unless you are hardcore with your time/money. Especially if you are a new player. I don’t remember the % of people who have even a single champed 5, but wasn’t it like 2%? That means that 98% of the base doesn’t have hoards of 550s, because they are playing much more casually.

Most people with limited resources are going to invest them wisely. What is the best return on my investment? How often in a game do you see on message boards people ranking, the best characters, armor, weapons, vehicles, etc. In a game like this, it is no different. There will always be a best. Always. It may change. But there will always be a best. The top players figure it out and everyone chases that.

The best teams are usually ones that can punch 100+ levels up like Chasm/Hulk who never die or Thorkoye who put out insane damage especially for their time. Or one punch man Shang-Chi currently. They do this because even if they don’t have the best boosted option champed or at high levels, they can still compete with these offense-only glass cannons.

The game has also always rewarded this system and encouraged it via vaults and stores. How often are Thor/Shang featured compared to other 5s? Same as Okoye before them. The development team is well aware of what they are doing. And it has clearly been profitable/successful.

I know some people have been predicting nerfs. I highly doubt that happens without at least one attempt at a five star counter. It would be so easy to do without breaking the game as well.

I say wait and see because ultimately this isn’t a new problem. Lack of diversity in the meta has been a thing forever. This too shall pass and the complainers will soon have something else to gripe at in every thread soon I’m sure (and if it’s another chasm… I’ll probably be be head complainer to be fair!)

KGB

I'll say it again, a single 5 star character counter won't help. Sure it will help on offense but everyone here says they don't have a problem beating her. The real problem is that that everyone 'sees too much of her in PvP'. So how can a single character counter help with that because she'll still be used against every other team but the one with the counter.

Putting a counter on a support is the only way it's going to work (other than changing her powers) since that support can then go on every team so that she's likely to be used.

KGB

Mr_F

@Daredevil217 And that is why I don't want a nerf here. I know that nerf will ruin much of the player base. I know that too strong counter will do that do. That is why I want a counter that will allow mThor to beat her not to easy nut not yo hard. Like 60-65% of time. Or whatever.

Many times I was thinking how to nerf her, and every time I have ended with her being too useless. her kit does not allow IMO for simple tweaks. Either we left it as it is or we simply put completly rework her - and the latter is not a good idea, given how often she was and will be in various vaults etc. and how many lesser roster rely on her. It's easy to take that lollipop but the aftermatch os not worth that.

WilliamK1983

I'm completely against what I'm about to say, I'm just saying it for conversations sake. Instead of a nerf or counter, keep her as is but bump her AP cost +2 across the board. This way she'll need an extra turn before she has enough ap to fire a power.

Against AI mthor, that first blue passive fire followed by the actual match move has her set to fire a power on her next turn after the passive again. She almost always seems to have enough to fire a power, keep the board shaking and her turn going. Slow her start to firing powers should make her easier to handle. And she's still as deadly as ever, just takes an extra turn to get her rockin'.

entrailbucket

There's no other competitive game where the high end metagame has no diversity. Fighting games, deck builders, shooters, MMOs, even board games all have multiple "best" characters/strategies/teams/decks/whatever.

All of the developers of those games regard balance as an important issue to be addressed, and every other player base I've ever interacted with applauds balance changes to create diversity.

The fact that the previous MPQ devs were lazy and terrified of a few entitled veterans, and allowed an Undisputed Best at Everything to exist for so long...is not an argument to let that keep happening forever. These devs care about metagame diversity, and they've talked about it several times already.

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket [Official Forums]
Question: In high end PvP, the metagame is basically 100% Mighty Thor now. What do her usage/winrate numbers look like from your side, are you watching her, and/or is she on a list to get rebalanced anytime soon?

Answer: Mighty Thor is in the top 10 as far as character usage is concerned. As for win rate, they are in the top 3. The character is talked about in conversations concerning balance in general (though it should be said that there are many avenues we consider ahead of a rebalance).

Mr. F, I don’t know if you’ve seen this from the developer Q&A back in January, but it seems that they are in agreement with you and a lot of players, so I wouldn’t worry too much about a nerf. She is clearly a top character (though I was surprised to hear she’s not THE top character and wonder who tops her in usage and wins). The only other avenues I can think of other than a nerf are 1) a counter or 2) a character even more OP that has everyone move on to that meta. It’ll be interesting to see what comes down the pipeline.

entrailbucket

Lol, you must've skipped the part of that quote that says "we'll never nerf her, we promise, feel free to go all in then use her for everything!"

I read that as exactly what they did with Chasm. They recognize that there's a problem, and they're going to try to counter their way out of it first. With Chasm it didn't work, so eventually they fixed him. We're about to find out what happens with m'Thor.