Marvel Puzzle Quest: Character Rebalances - Batch #2 (Nov 13, 2025)

S0kun
S0kun ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 1,075 Chairperson of the Boards
edited 13 November 2025, 19:30 in MPQ General Discussion

Batch #1 of our rebalances landed last month and we've seen some great and constructive feedback over how they've impacted character usage.

As mentioned previously, we're trying to make some much needed adjustments to MPQs meta without impacting your overall gameplay experience too significantly and it seems as though the first batch has landed as well as we could've hoped for.

To make sure you're fully aware of our future plans without unnecessarily causing a negative impact to your rosters here's a list of our next round of rebalances, along with some info on our upcoming rebalance #3.

Nerf

5 Star: Thor (Mighty Thor)

Unlike with Polaris, Mighty Thor’s kit isn’t what caused her to go off the rails often. It’s more that her abilities were just a touch too chaotic and when the chaos resulted in cascades, they tended to be self propagating. So to bring her back in line, she more needs tome softer touches than full ability reworks.

Red - Feel the Thunder
Minor changes to this ability, reducing the main damage component by 10-15% and very light touches on the cumulative damage component. It didn’t need much, it just wasn’t calculated correctly for how much cascading Jane does in real world matches.

Blue - Doctor Thor
The biggie, we decided not to change overall cascades by adding a cap or anything that would mess with the frequency of newly dropped tiles. Instead we brought down the number of tiles affected by a little so that this ability doesn’t go out of control quite so much. The active had its Charged tiles created reduced by 1, while the passive has had its initial Charged tiles created reduced by 1 AND the number of tiles destroyed per Charged tile match reduced by 1 as well. This brings down the overall chaos that she creates from turn 1 and also reduces the chance of cascades causing massive amounts of damage. In testing, we’ve found that she’s still extremely effective when she has another Charged tile type character supporting, but she’s no longer a one stop shop of Charged tile creation/destruction.

Yellow - Share the Love
This ability vastly underestimated the number of Charged tiles that would exist when it was used on average. Even taking into account Thor’s creation and destruction through her Blue, the number of Charged tiles in existence when this ability was used was higher than expected. With this update, the ability is still powerful, especially when she has help with Charged tile creation, but it’s no longer an ability that is used as soon as you can get the AP every time due to the Charged tiles that inevitably exist on the board

Buffs

5-Stars:
N/A

4-Stars:
Abomination (Emil Blonsky)
The Hydra Stomper (Steve Rogers)
Nebula (Infinity War)
Sam Wilson (Captain America)
SpiderHam (Peter Porker)

3-Stars:
Goose (Flerken Feline)
The Hood (Classic)
Mystique (Raven Darkholme)
Squirrel Girl (Unbeatable)

2-Stars:
Captain Marvel (Ms. Marvel)

1-Star:
Black Widow (Modern)

Upcoming Nerfs & Buffs

Nerfs

We know the changes to Polaris and Mighty Thor are a big adjustment and can have a real impact on the teams and plans you’ve been building toward. Our goal is to handle these kinds of shifts as thoughtfully and transparently as possible so you can plan ahead with confidence. With that in mind, we want to share that the next two characters scheduled for nerfs.

5-Stars:
Shang-Chi (Origin)

4-Stars:
Rocket & Groot (Awesome Mix Volume 2)

Buffs

These characters weren’t quite ready for the Batch 2 buffs, but they’re planned to be included in Batch 3 alongside additional characters from all rarities once that update goes live.

5-Stars:
Wolverine (Samurai Daken)
Spider-Gwen (Gwenom)
Ultron (Age of Ultron)
Yelena Belova (Black Widow)

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Comments

  • sinnerjfl
    sinnerjfl Posts: 1,299 Chairperson of the Boards

    The time that you posted this is... suspicious, lol.

    Nerfing Thor, Shang-Chi and Grocket, hmmmmmmmmmmm. That wont go down well.

  • Batjester
    Batjester Posts: 41 Just Dropped In

    I approve of the upcoming buff to Ultron. Love the character and want to use him more.

    I'm interested to see what kind of buff Goose got.

  • Omegased
    Omegased Posts: 656 Critical Contributor

    Sigh.

    I don't even know what to think any more.

    As much as you claim "transparency is important", why should I bother leveling up ANYONE now?

    Characters that are years old are getting smashed? What's next, 2* storm?

  • turbomoose
    turbomoose Posts: 870 Critical Contributor

    Not really sure why grocket is getting nerfed he only has one power that really makes him useful, I’m guessing a reduced number of strike tiles and turning it into an ap power instead of a passive

  • Grantosium
    Grantosium Posts: 117 Tile Toppler
    edited 13 November 2025, 07:26

    Not really bothered about the nerfs, the buffs would be more interesting. Looking like they're already live though so I can't do an easy before and after screenshot/comparison. That's the most disappointing thing for me. I'll have to look at all of them as if they're brand new characters.

    Edit: ok, had a few minutes trying to look through the buffs. A lot of the characters effected aren't ones I had memorised costs for.

    2 star Captain Marvel's abilities cost the same, I think, but the red has a noticeable damage bump (guessing around 35%), think black damage is up slightly but not a lot (probably more like 10%).

    1 star Widow's blue stuns enemy team for 2 turns now, pretty sure it was 1 before. Cost is 9, which I think is unchanged.

    Think Mystique's AP costs are down. Could be the closest thing to a winner out of this. Her blue changes 9 tiles for 9AP, which sounds like it should be useful to the right combo team, perhaps Nightcrawler and Purple Man? Think the purple stun was 1-2 turns and is now 2-3 at 4-5 covers. Masterstoke now 8AP, think it was 10-12 before.

    Hood's yellow is 13AP and still ends the turn. Not sure what's changed here? Maybe black damage has been buffed?

    Squirrel Girl still seems like a bench warmer.

    Not familiar enough with the 4 star characters to spot the differences. Sam's AP costs might be down and red damage up but that's very much a guess.

  • kuntilanak
    kuntilanak Posts: 268 Mover and Shaker

    Out of batch 1 & 2 list of nerfs, I'd say Polaris and CheapThor need it because their current kits so AI proof that they almost win by their 2nd/3rd turn (Polaris is still on my skip list, though). SC is just a glass Cannon like most of you said, so no need for nerf, but whatever. I personally use him exclusively on most matches, and also gunning for teams using him. 4*RG is a 1-trick pony. Any nerfs on it will most likely 'kill' it... Rip...

    If devs are really nerfing based on use stats, then next on the chopping block might be 4juggy and 5 Sam. They are everywhere now...

    Buff list looks interesting at best, though not exciting enough for vets to have a 2nd glance. Meh... Except a few that's present in PVE nodes.

  • Zarqa
    Zarqa Posts: 579 Critical Contributor

    but it’s no longer an ability that is used as soon as you can get the AP every time

    Such a strange sentence. Aren’t most powers in the game usually used as soon as you can get the AP for them? And that is intended?

  • Read_Only
    Read_Only Posts: 60 Match Maker

    So you've sold me shang for how many years and in how many vaults to now tell me this absolute easy win needs a nerf. The only time I ever lost to him was with a lucky Thor cascade. Even with AP supports he fires it straight away when it's pretty much useless.

    I have zero trust and confidence in this dev team. So many of my alliance feel the same despite how much we enjoy the game. This is only going one way fast. I'm playing less and less and finishing higher and higher in each game type.

  • DeNappa
    DeNappa Posts: 1,434 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Jonny1Punch said:
    We have a game that is ridiculously beyond broken. Currently breaking our devices as well with insanely disruptive crashes & freezing ... and the answer is to roll out a nerf to Grocket & Shang chi? Timing is everything & this is a completely garbage move (not to mention very bad business for player retention which is already circling the drain.)

    I would focus on restoring a playable engine, fixing locked supports, fixing bugs etc. & about 100 other things wrong with MPQ. If you focus on bigger buffs the need for over-nerfing dwindles as the game will balance itself out. Nerfing characters that are not even remotely OP or meta just kills player morale and retention.

    Please do better in the future because none of us are riding high after the incredibly lackluster anniversary season that we just endured.

    I'll echo this please fix the stability of the app it's killing the game. I spent 15 minutes trying to complete the 5required node in pve yesterday but it just. kept. crashing. so I gave up in frustration. I couldnt even get throught the match ONCE.

    I don't mind the 5Thor nerf, I think that was still necessary.

    I do want to echo the opinion stated here a few times already that Shang-Chi does not need a rebalance. Yes he's strong, but you need to play him right and really puts the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, placing his crits or tile destruction strategically, and on defense he's just relying on rng so it's not a problem.

  • Carnifex
    Carnifex Posts: 130 Tile Toppler

    We riot?

  • Chrynos1989
    Chrynos1989 Posts: 592 Critical Contributor

    @Carnifex said:
    We riot?

    I would say yes, but for more reasons than just the „rebalances“

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