Agatha Harkness (Coven Leader) 5*

Painmonger

@Jinx said:
She is 100% meta. Best character to pair with any team that has high match damage and has a chance at cascades. (Hence the Colossus/Mthor pairing) Would be good with Juggs/Grocket, but wouldn’t caved as many colors. Always looking for new suggestions though.

I have been using her for the past 2 events with 4Jugg5, adding MThor when it was a pick 3. Pretty solid team, I could get through challenge nodes with minimal risk. Her % boosts don't change with her being boosted, so I don't see it being vastly different when she goes back to regular levels.

tonypq

I paired her a few times with Onslaught and that worked well with match 4s and some devastating cascades. Not sure if he's better or worse than other potential partners but he was decent when I gave him a shot.

Also tried using her with Shang which which worked well. His match damage got up there after a few matches. With red you can try to manually trigger cascades on many boards.

Karnak worked well too. Between his high match damage after few turns then being boosted with her yellow. The crit tiles thrown in can cause serious damage as well, especially if one or both triggered a cascade. Once his match damage boosts after a few turns you can just about one-shot enemies, especially if matching one of his crit tiles. He was one shooting everyone in the challenge node.

She's one of the most versatile characters released in ages with how many teams she can fit in with. She seems kind of future proof as well since she should work great with any new characters down the road, especially anyone with a march damage game.

bluewolf

I haven’t tried her with anyone who’s not boosted but it seems like her match dmg boost happens between the match and the dmg applied, so she’s not making them tank necessarily.

Agreed? If so, it’s kind of a bummer because I was hoping she’d sort of be a cheat code for getting all these people who work best when tanking, to do so.

Domitronas

@entrailbucket said:

@Jinx said:

@entrailbucket said:
Seems like Agatha is very highly regarded.

I'll ask the dumb question -- is she good enough to replace any of the current "meta" characters? Which ones, and how?

Edit: for an awful lot of folks this isn't a "dumb" question at all, and I don't mean to put them down. In fact it's probably the most important question for many of you! It feels weird just asking it, though, and I don't know how meaningfully I can contribute to the discussion.

She is 100% meta. Best character to pair with any team that has high match damage and has a chance at cascades. (Hence the Colossus/Mthor pairing) Would be good with Juggs/Grocket, but wouldn’t caved as many colors. Always looking for new suggestions though.

Is she just a third with those pairs in pick-3, or would she, say, replace Shang-Chi (or m'Thor?) in the m'Thor/Shang-Chi pick-2 team?

If someone new is going to be widely used, they'll have to push someone old out!

I actually replaced mThor by Agatha in SC team. The match damage gets insane so quickly

tonypq

@Domitronas said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Jinx said:

@entrailbucket said:
Seems like Agatha is very highly regarded.

I'll ask the dumb question -- is she good enough to replace any of the current "meta" characters? Which ones, and how?

Edit: for an awful lot of folks this isn't a "dumb" question at all, and I don't mean to put them down. In fact it's probably the most important question for many of you! It feels weird just asking it, though, and I don't know how meaningfully I can contribute to the discussion.

She is 100% meta. Best character to pair with any team that has high match damage and has a chance at cascades. (Hence the Colossus/Mthor pairing) Would be good with Juggs/Grocket, but wouldn’t caved as many colors. Always looking for new suggestions though.

Is she just a third with those pairs in pick-3, or would she, say, replace Shang-Chi (or m'Thor?) in the m'Thor/Shang-Chi pick-2 team?

If someone new is going to be widely used, they'll have to push someone old out!

I actually replaced mThor by Agatha in SC team. The match damage gets insane so quickly

Match damage can ramp up quickly. Plus her blue can add more red for Shang to keep making matches boosting his MD and using red more often to trigger cascades or make some purple matches to KO someone with Shangs purple.

KGB

@bluewolf said:
I haven’t tried her with anyone who’s not boosted but it seems like her match dmg boost happens between the match and the dmg applied, so she’s not making them tank necessarily.

Agreed? If so, it’s kind of a bummer because I was hoping she’d sort of be a cheat code for getting all these people who work best when tanking, to do so.

Correct. If you click on a tile you'll see the base damage never changes (and thus who tanks that color). It's only at the time the damage is applied that the bonus happens because you can watch the match 3 damage steadily increase.

I suspect a big part of the reason for this is because if the damage on the tile itself increased then other powers that destroy tiles and do tile damage would skyrocket too which would likely way over power her.

KGB

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@bluewolf said:
I haven’t tried her with anyone who’s not boosted but it seems like her match dmg boost happens between the match and the dmg applied, so she’s not making them tank necessarily.

Agreed? If so, it’s kind of a bummer because I was hoping she’d sort of be a cheat code for getting all these people who work best when tanking, to do so.

Correct. If you click on a tile you'll see the base damage never changes (and thus who tanks that color). It's only at the time the damage is applied that the bonus happens because you can watch the match 3 damage steadily increase.

I suspect a big part of the reason for this is because if the damage on the tile itself increased then other powers that destroy tiles and do tile damage would skyrocket too which would likely way over power her.

KGB

I think they're just not consistent with how they handle match damage increases and tanking. Sometimes it increases tile strengths on the board and sometimes it doesn't.

Domitronas

I think this can all be fixed with something that starts with "new" and end with "gine"

WhiteBomber

@Domitronas said:
I think this can all be fixed with something that starts with "new" and end with "gine"

New asparagine? I fail to see how an amino acid is going to solve that one, but maybe...

bluewolf

No, new margarine.

The old stuff is getting moldy.

Painmonger

@Domitronas said:
I think this can all be fixed with something that starts with "new" and end with "gine"

Newfoundland Aubergine? Are we getting a new tile color?

JediJones77

The Heroic, Elite and Mighty tokens on the Recruit tab all still say "Featuring Agatha Harkness (Governess)" on them. Normally this tagline should've disappeared Thursday morning. It only lasts for two weeks for each new 3-star character. But for some reason, it's still there. Clicking into the pool still shows the increased odds tag on Agatha.

So, did something change? Are the increased odds now going to last for longer than two weeks in these tokens? Is this just a mistake, and they should've been taken away by now? Or, the worst case scenario, is this merely a visual bug, and the increased odds are not actually happening right now?

GrimSkald

@JediJones77 said:
The Heroic, Elite and Mighty tokens on the Recruit tab all still say "Featuring Agatha Harkness (Governess)" on them. Normally this tagline should've disappeared Thursday morning. It only lasts for two weeks for each new 3-star character. But for some reason, it's still there. Clicking into the pool still shows the increased odds tag on Agatha.

So, did something change? Are the increased odds now going to last for longer than two weeks in these tokens? Is this just a mistake, and they should've been taken away by now? Or, the worst case scenario, is this merely a visual bug, and the increased odds are not actually happening right now?

I've been pulling all weekend and I think that the odds are still increased. This is unscientific, but I definitely seem to be pulling more Agatha than the normal odds would have.

JediJones77

If the new norm is to keep the bonus pulls for the new 3-star running continuously, then that's probably a good thing. It'll make it easier to build up that character. Although, it will slow down pulling of older characters.

bluewolf

@JediJones77 said:
If the new norm is to keep the bonus pulls for the new 3-star running continuously, then that's probably a good thing. It'll make it easier to build up that character. Although, it will slow down pulling of older characters.

While this is true....dilution is getting quite bad, and as far as older characters go, your best bet is to utilize favoriting them vs hoping that you hit that 1/71 pulls you need.

I assume this continued weighting is intentional.....I mean mistakes have happened before, but the length of time on this is kind of making me think its intended.

GrimSkald

@bluewolf said:

@JediJones77 said:
If the new norm is to keep the bonus pulls for the new 3-star running continuously, then that's probably a good thing. It'll make it easier to build up that character. Although, it will slow down pulling of older characters.

While this is true....dilution is getting quite bad, and as far as older characters go, your best bet is to utilize favoriting them vs hoping that you hit that 1/71 pulls you need.

I assume this continued weighting is intentional.....I mean mistakes have happened before, but the length of time on this is kind of making me think its intended.

It will change over to the new one a week from Thursday, unless they decide to do only a 5★ instead of a 5/3★ release. But they haven't done that for a long time, and it's pretty clear that was an outlier.

bluewolf

@GrimSkald said:

@bluewolf said:

@JediJones77 said:
If the new norm is to keep the bonus pulls for the new 3-star running continuously, then that's probably a good thing. It'll make it easier to build up that character. Although, it will slow down pulling of older characters.

While this is true....dilution is getting quite bad, and as far as older characters go, your best bet is to utilize favoriting them vs hoping that you hit that 1/71 pulls you need.

I assume this continued weighting is intentional.....I mean mistakes have happened before, but the length of time on this is kind of making me think its intended.

It will change over to the new one a week from Thursday, unless they decide to do only a 5★ instead of a 5/3★ release. But they haven't done that for a long time, and it's pretty clear that was an outlier.

The What's New MPQ thread shows that the next release is, indeed, a 3/5, as every one has been since......well, basically September 2022 when Emma was released, although they didn't pair 3/5s every time until Kang in Feb 2023 firmly established the practice.

Wolvie171

I'm guessing the increased odds for 3* Agatha did not end because the next release was a 2* (for Headpool) instead of the usual 4*. If that's the case, chuck this as a one-off as things should return to normal next season.

bluewolf

@Wolvie171 said:
I'm guessing the increased odds for 3* Agatha did not end because the next release was a 2* (for Headpool) instead of the usual 4*. If that's the case, chuck this as a one-off as things should return to normal next season.

Possibly?

I can see how they might decide to give us a hand on new 3s, to help with dilution, by making them more likely for 4 weeks.

entrailbucket

They probably just forgot to turn off the increased odds.