Thoughts from day 763

King_Koopa54326

Over two years of mpq under my belt has left me with a lot to consider.
Today, I'm 100% convinced that The Thing is  garbage all on his own. Barely beat the torch. 
Secondly, with a full roster of champed 3 stars, a handful of champed 4 stars, and some mid 300 5 stars, I've spent a lot of time during the past two years swapping tiles.  With vip since its been offered, a chunk of change too.  I really love this game. 

However, at this moment, i have seven 4 star tokens sitting and I've had to sell a bunch more that ran out because of ranks like 5-1-1. Awesome. Can we consider colorless covers or paying ig currency to swap covers? I'm sure I'm not the only person who's run into this. 

DarthDeVo

King_Koopa54326 said:

Over two years of mpq under my belt has left me with a lot to consider.
Today, I'm 100% convinced that The Thing is  garbage all on his own. Barely beat the torch.

Seconded. Mine happens to be 3/4/1, so the one power I have the most covers in was totally useless for this fight. It was basically a fight between one character with three offensive powers against another with only two. Not to mention Johnny needs 23 AP to fire all three of his powers and Thing needs 22 to fire two. I managed to win, but just barely and with a lot of boosts. 

Thing needs to be changed so that if he's alone, he'll still place at least one Protect. I know the power is designed around Thing's selfless nature, with him jumping in front to take the hit someone else would have. But he needs to stand on his own as well. 

In fact, I think any power that's solely determined by the number of teammates you have needs to be modified so that it's still useful in some manner if you're alone. That's one of the things I most enjoyed about Wasp's buff to her yellow.

Before, you had to count on teammates placing Strike or Protect tiles. On her own, her yellow was useless. But now, with it placing a Strike and Protect tile if there aren't any, she can stand on her own. 

JackTenrec

Unfortunately, The Thing sucks quite a bit even when paired up with teammates, since his ability to protect depends on a) intercepting an attack from another character, so ideally he shouldn't tank too many colors, b) requires him to have more health than the other characters, so he usually receives one attack and then his passive does nothing until your other characters have been sufficiently damaged, and c) his protects are good, but (confirmation bias probably in effect) I'll be tinykittied if they don't usually get matched away within a few turns.

DarthDeVo

Oh, you'll get no argument from me that he's not that good, and you've done a good job explaining why. All of it was really magnified by the Crash though.

The only good thing about this Crash was that two of the three colors were shared, so going for red and green for myself denied Johnny at the same time. 

King_Koopa54326

DarthDeVo said:

King_Koopa54326 said:

Over two years of mpq under my belt has left me with a lot to consider.
Today, I'm 100% convinced that The Thing is  garbage all on his own. Barely beat the torch.

Seconded. Mine happens to be 3/4/1, so the one power I have the most covers in was totally useless for this fight. It was basically a fight between one character with three offensive powers against another with only two. Not to mention Johnny needs 23 AP to fire all three of his powers and Thing needs 22 to fire two. I managed to win, but just barely and with a lot of boosts. 

Thing needs to be changed so that if he's alone, he'll still place at least one Protect. I know the power is designed around Thing's selfless nature, with him jumping in front to take the hit someone else would have. But he needs to stand on his own as well. 

In fact, I think any power that's solely determined by the number of teammates you have needs to be modified so that it's still useful in some manner if you're alone. That's one of the things I most enjoyed about Wasp's buff to her yellow.

Before, you had to count on teammates placing Strike or Protect tiles. On her own, her yellow was useless. But now, with it placing a Strike and Protect tile if there aren't any, she can stand on her own. 

Agreed.  

King_Koopa54326

JackTenrec said:j

Unfortunately, The Thing sucks quite a bit even when paired up with teammates, since his ability to protect depends on a) intercepting an attack from another character, so ideally he shouldn't tank too many colors, b) requires him to have more health than the other characters, so he usually receives one attack and then his passive does nothing until your other characters have been sufficiently damaged, and c) his protects are good, but (confirmation bias probably in effect) I'll be tinykittied if they don't usually get matched away within a few turns.

There's too many factors that can't be met consistently for him to be awesome.

King_Koopa54326

DarthDeVo said:

Oh, you'll get no argument from me that he's not that good, and you've done a good job explaining why. All of it was really magnified by the Crash though.

The only good thing about this Crash was that two of the three colors were shared, so going for red and green for myself denied Johnny at the same time. 

It was easier a few days ago when it was prof x vs elec. Staying hidden and praying for a match5 when there weren't any shadows. Seriously took20 minutes

Borstock

DarthDeVo said:

...two of the three colors were shared, so going for red and green for myself denied Johnny at the same time. 

Had no problems with Johnny for that very reason.

bbigler

My 0/3/5 Level 150 Thing was very lucky to win his crash (he was 1 turn away from dying).  Nevertheless, he's useless now - I don't want to take a big hit in order to get some strong protect tiles!  I'd rather avoid the damage from that big hit instead. 

When Thing first came on scene, I saw people pairing him with XFDP, which was annoying because if you tried to hit anyone hard, one or both of them would respond.  But, that problem was solved by wearing down Thing with match damage below XFDP hit points, then hitting XFDP with a big nuke, then you go back to Thing to take him down. 

Milk Jugz

My Thing took Johnny down first attempt, 3/5/5 level 150- straight up, no boosts. It has a lot to do with the board you get and how well you can deny ap. Johnny was able to fire green and red once in the match, but i hit red about 4 times and green once to end it. It still depends on the luck of the board- one good cascade for Johnny and I would have been toast.

byc

My Thing is championed.  Got it without problems.

He's fine as a character, but in games like these, fine is not good enough.  Only top tier characters or great combos will be used.

He can use a minor buff, but tons of other characters should be buffed before him.

DarthDeVo

Yeah, I wouldn't consider him high up on the list as needing to be fixed immediately. Really, as I mentioned earlier, the most important thing is his yellow could stand to be tweaked so it isn't necessarily teammate dependent.

Certainly boosted if there are more teammates, but not useless if alone. Look to Nova's yellow for inspiration. It still does damage if he's by himself, but if he still has teammates, he gets strikes too.

Jaedenkaal

bbigler said:

My 0/3/5 Level 150 Thing was very lucky to win his crash (he was 1 turn away from dying).  Nevertheless, he's useless now - I don't want to take a big hit in order to get some strong protect tiles!

Lots of 4*'s aren't very useful at 0/3/5, and Thing is hardly the only 4* to 'lose' one or more of his powers effectively in his Crash matchup. Some crashes are just easier than others. 

carrion_pigeons

Thing/XPool is a legitimate defensive team in PvP, assuming your MMR isn't too far out there, supposedly.  Haven't really heard of other uses for him.

Milk Jugz

carrion pigeons said:

Thing/XPool is a legitimate defensive team in PvP, assuming your MMR isn't too far out there, supposedly.  Haven't really heard of other uses for him.

Is there really such a thing as a legitimate defensive team in pvp? I've seen this combo and torn it apart like almost any other thing I've seen. The only thing I won't attack in pvp are teams that are ridiculously better than mine level wise- the characters there really just determine what strategy I use to beat them. 

Azoth658

Milk Jugz said:

carrion pigeons said:

Thing/XPool is a legitimate defensive team in PvP, assuming your MMR isn't too far out there, supposedly.  Haven't really heard of other uses for him.

Is there really such a thing as a legitimate defensive team in pvp? I've seen this combo and torn it apart like almost any other thing I've seen. The only thing I won't attack in pvp are teams that are ridiculously better than mine level wise- the characters there really just determine what strategy I use to beat them. 

There are teams that act as scarecrows because of how long it takes to beat them. Almost all teams are beatable and one of my favourite new things that I have multiple 4* champs now is facing opponents I previously would have ignored.

I mean I'll be avoiding carnage medusa and Peggy nodes like the plague after that carnage rework version 2. I've played it with my under leveled Medusa and carnage and it would take a long time to beat with animations, team healing and ap boost every turn for the enemy. So I definitely think there are legitimate defensive teams in PvP. Especially if the Peggy has yellow pumped to 5. You've then got to have 15 blue ap from your own Peggy to stun the two main threats all the while taking that passive damage from their attack tiles.

Quebbster

Thing could conceivably be good with Wasp since he puts out defense tiles without using yellow AP, which is a rarity. Jump in front, make protect tiles, have Wasp flip them to strike tiles, have Thing jump in front again next time. It's still an unreliable combo though.

Borstock

Quebbster said:

Thing could conceivably be good with Wasp since he puts out defense tiles without using yellow AP, which is a rarity. Jump in front, make protect tiles, have Wasp flip them to strike tiles, have Thing jump in front again next time. It's still an unreliable combo though.

Except Wasp's flip uses the yellow tiles. This means that there will either be fewer yellow tiles on the board on which Thing can drop a shield OR she'll be matching away those shields en route to flipping them.

Quebbster

Borstock said:

Quebbster said:

Thing could conceivably be good with Wasp since he puts out defense tiles without using yellow AP, which is a rarity. Jump in front, make protect tiles, have Wasp flip them to strike tiles, have Thing jump in front again next time. It's still an unreliable combo though.

Except Wasp's flip uses the yellow tiles. This means that there will either be fewer yellow tiles on the board on which Thing can drop a shield OR she'll be matching away those shields en route to flipping them.

True. There's Always Gwenpool...

Rodolfo78

Seems this has turned into a Thing discussion thread.

For what it's worth, I've found Thing yellow to have great standalone utility against tile-matching bosses. In later rounds, you can arrange it so the very first enemy match procs the shields, which then make the absurd match damage very reasonable. I remember beating the Civil War guys this way with a roster that had no business doing so.

Jaedenkaal

Borstock said:

Quebbster said:

Thing could conceivably be good with Wasp since he puts out defense tiles without using yellow AP, which is a rarity. Jump in front, make protect tiles, have Wasp flip them to strike tiles, have Thing jump in front again next time. It's still an unreliable combo though.

Except Wasp's flip uses the yellow tiles. This means that there will either be fewer yellow tiles on the board on which Thing can drop a shield OR she'll be matching away those shields en route to flipping them.

Well you only need 5 Yellow AP, so it's not that brutal. I think that's still better return than trying to combo her with 4* Sam Wilson. And if they're similar level then she'll tank Yellow for him which makes it more likely that he'll take the hit for her.