Character Re-balance Announced: Your top 3 for the 3-stars?

STOPTHIS wrote:

I went with Spidey, Punisher, and Captain Marvel. Though I was tempted to with Psylocke and Colossus. But Punisher is so damn weak he buff across the board and Carol's red is useless. It needs to get rid of any special tile. And Spidey. Man, poor Spidey. He needs either a complete rework or to be made more like 1* Spidey.

I'd also like to see some tweaking to Doc Ock too. His blue really should cost less.

Carol's red is excellent if you're going into a fight knowing you have to deal with protect tiles. At 5 she takes out all of them. Against 2* Bullseye, 3* Magneto and Falcon, and several 4*s, it's a lifesaver. The damage is trivial but relatively cheap.

Punisher was on my initial list (Psylocke and Sentry being my top two - O opted for Hulk instead). He feels like he's really supposed to get going combining strike and attack tiles, but I've never had the molotov do much and the strikes tend to get blown away when he uses his green again.

Thoughts on Spidey:

I think the massive, massive problem with Spidey (and Venom, for that matter) right now is the whole web tile system. Tieing power strength to web tile presence just doesn't work. Either the web tiles need to be a passive every-turn addition (like Dr. Doom), or they need to SERIOUSLY upgrade the powers that use them, because they're so difficult to generate. If EACH web tile generates an additional 1000 points of healing (instead of requiring 3 for the bonus), Spidey's heal becomes a lot more valuable (and almost competitive with KK). Ditto for his stun -- each web tile should increase the stun duration by one turn, with a cap at 6 (which I think is the current maximum in-game stun, from Gorgon). And both his yellow and purple should generate web tiles like his blue does.

Would that Spidey be a little overpowered? Probably. But better than the current one.

I hope the community read the devs thread on the re-balance. They are going to nerf certain characters as well, probably those at the top end of each tier like iceman, iron fist, and who knows maybe OML etc. It was a key part of their communication that I believe many players are over looking and then will be upset when it happens. Their goal is to try and make it so that you don't have nearly as dominate characters in each tier so it makes sense that you need to strengthen the really bad ones and reduce the strength of the best ones to achieve this goal. Just a heads up since most people think they are only going to strengthen weak characters.....their communication also basically says nerfs are coming as well.

I voted for Spider Man, Sentry and Ragnarok.

Spider-Man lacks any offense and quite frankly Falcon is the same color set but with better abilities for the same role as a support character. At least Falcon's tile improvement ability is pretty good and can add offense if he is boosting offensive tiles. A simple fix would be to just clone the 1* spider man into the 3* character.

Sentry is just bad. He needs a complete re-work. His damage team abilities are useless for players but annoying enough when you face him since the AI doesn't really need to worry about team damage (same issue for Carnage imo).

Ragnarok really just needs his green fixed. I think his blue and red are ok and have good synergy. If his blue was true healing that may also make him a lot better. His green is just awful though as so many other 3* have much better green abilities for much lower AP.

Most of the other characters on the poll have one power that really needs addressed to some degree with some minor tweaking but are still useful in some way. For example, I think Punisher has a decent red and green power but his black really needs to do more damage and produce stronger tiles. Hulk's passive and green power is good but his red needs to be a lower in AP and do more damage for example closer to IMHB in idea (not in damage since he is a 4*). Beast's yellow healing should be true healing since he is a medic but his blue and green are already pretty good etc.

One character that could use a little help as well is Doc Ock. His passive and blue board shuffle are ok but his green power is too weak and doesn't fit in with his tile destruction/manipulation angle. Perhaps an ability that stuns a random character for 1 turn for each enemy tile on the board (up to 8 of course lol) for 12 green or alternatively 6 green plus the number enemy tiles on the board (max 14 green?). This would make him a true counter against tile producers.

DaveR4470 wrote:

The problem I have with Carol is not that her skillset is poor, it's that she doesn't play very well with other 3* tile control specialists. I'd like to consistently use Carol/Lazy Cap/miscellanous green/yellow damage person (e.g. Squirrel Girl) against strike/protect spamming nodes, but that gives you a poor choice between Carol's red (to remove a lot of protect with a little damage) vs Cap's red

I find her yellow to be really good as a feeder for red and black. I use her red very limited but her real use is to soak damage and feed red and black sort of like Hulk. If you are using her for her red then yeah she is not good but I think her black and yellow are pretty good. I consider her better in the AP feeder roll vs. tile control. Plus shouldn't her yellow really help feed Cap's red if that is what you are looking for since his red is much better damage and has the potential to return most of its AP? Beside the best tile control strategy is to simply steal them. Characters like Loki, Moonstone, Ant-Man, She-Hulk are best for tile control and I would say Doc Ock, 3* Falcon, and Bullseye are better than Cap or Marvel as tile control candidates. Cap is only really good for tile control if paired with IM40 for the abundant AP in which case yes you can start throwing a ridiculous number of shields out at that point. Pair her with Cap and IM40 and you should be having a red shield party.

There are few broad categories of characters/powers in 3* land that could use a little help:

The 'Balanced' character the meta left behind. (Punisher, Psylocke)
I considered punisher and psylocke to be very well balanced characters when they were released. The both have cheap powers that don't do over-sized damage. But the meta evolved and power-creep is real. These guys were solid (not great) when they launched, but they have not aged well.

Failed to Launch (Colossus, Quicksilver)
Never really got off the ground or gained acceptance. They started out in the bottom half of the meta, but never fell low enough to ever garner enough attention for a proper 2nd look. Quicksilver landed here because of his pre-launch tweaks.

The Over-Nerfed (Rags, Sentry, Spider-Man)
All former top tier characters laid low by nerf. Let's give these guys some improvement to restore some former glory. One is a marvel flagship character after all.

The Little Tanks That Couldn't (Captain Marvel, Hulk, Gamora, Vision, Bullseye)
These characters all have one or more powers that depend heavily on their ability to get out front and do some damage. This requirement shortens their usable life as players transition beyond the 3* tier. Colossus yellow, and Deadpool black give those characters the ability to continue to tank long after their match damage has been far exceeded by our growing 4s. Let's figure out a way to give these tanks some renewed life for the players that are somewhere in the transition phase to 4* land (or maybe even allow them to be viable for a 4* player if they catch the weekly buff).

I voted Spidey, Psylocke, Punisher.

Spidey: needs an offensive ability akin to his 1* counterpart's or . Although I do like that 6-yellow hypothetical above.

Psylocke & Punisher: Just need to deal more damage. Even when boosted they just can't get the job done (Pun's red is worth using though). Psylocke's blue needs a rework too. A quick lazy revamp makes it behave like Blade's black, stealing X AP every turn it's on the board.

I only voted for Spidey, because he's my last remaining 3* to champion.

Doctorpus (Carol and Beast should not be on the list IMO)

DTStump wrote:

I picked Punisher, Psylocke and Sentry because they have useless powers. Psylocke has maybe the worst power in the tier and one of the worst in the game (blue), Punisher green is also mostly useless and Sentry... can Sentry get at least one ability with no self-damage?

Punisher's green is easily his best power and is simply underpowered due to power creep since his release.

Voted Squirrel Girl (hear me out), Psylocke, and Gamora (again...hear me out).

I think Spidey is actually very good as a support character with anyone who generates/uses pink, which in the 3* tier means Iron Fist, Switch, KK, and GSBW...all of whom are very good 3* characters, thus making all of them last much longer.

Squirrel Girl's green is an absolute beast if you can get it off but its simply too expensive to be useful at 13 green. Make it 10 and watch her soar. Her pink is great against Carnage, Blade, Daken, and a few others. If you simply make her yellow not lose a turn and remove the bonus for a high health opponent, I think she would be extemely useful.

Psylocke for many reasons mentioned.

Gamora is interesting because of her quick red ability but it should be a little stronger. Her Black should have a set number of attack tiles rather than based on how many tiles she has on the board. She is a hybrid attack/support character who wont typically beast a ton of tiles so her Black isnt as good as it should be. Her green could use a damage buff.

I know Im in the minority, but I love squirrel girl....would love to see her buffed to make her a little faster.