10.9 Update Recap - Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*

Introduction

A stinker update was to be expected with the cast of characters in this film, but it was actually managed relatively well. Having all the excessive mid-months leading up to this tie-in update allowed it to be the Anniversary Update while not being the 11.0 update (which would bring higher expectations). The 10 Year Anniversary rewards were also undeniably excellent, which served as a nice distraction, and none of the characters/uniforms really being "must-haves" meant players could spend their 10,000 free Crystals on catching up on past content.

It should be stressed though that this really was a horrible update. Still no changes in ABX/L means most of these characters were dead on arrival PvE-wise, and little effort was put in to even make the Thunderbolts into a viable Otherworld PvP team with synergising supports. Instead most of them are just completely useless unless you like scraping the bottom of your barrel for Alliance Conquest or "Team Battle Arena".

Seemingly knowing this update was lame and bad, Netmarble has been hyping up an upcoming update, assumed to be referring to 11.0, that was a "highly requested theme" from the community last year. All signs point to X-Men '97 (apart from Gambit getting a seasonal just last Winter), which should hopefully spice things up for the first time this calendar year. If this is not the case there will be consequences.

• Characters

  Characters

  Not happy with how any of these uniforms/characters turned out, so we're adding a last line to each with how it could have been done better.

  The New Avengers

  Sentry [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Sentry [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  A solid incremental improvement in PvP, considering the first uniform and Tier-4 was only last Anniversary. Worth getting if you already have Sentry built and are using him in PvP, buffing him enough to be roughly on par with Knull.

  It's probably not intentional, but interesting that all 3 uniforms for Native Tier-3s so far (Sentry, Knull, Sentry) have come around during Anniversary or Black Friday.

  Ideally: This would be a PvE-focused uniform so that the still-very-recent previous uniform is not completely replaced. He is only eligible for 1 ABX and 1 ABL restriction, so he could take 1 Universal Male ABL from Thanos/Loki and they would still have better versatility.

  Taskmaster [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Taskmaster [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  The switch to Female was expected for this uniform, after they didn't retroactively swap the Black Widow movie uniform, however the change to Hero was a nice surprise. This adds some versatility in ABX/L and WBL restrictions, though there are numerous Combat Female Hero supports already, such as She-Hulk, Valkyrie and Sif. The Male uniform is probably still more useful as a support, but the new uniform can still be worth for flexibility, especially if you're T4ing him/her to push WBL+.

  Her support passives didn't improve much from the previous uniform, with a 5% increase in basic damage dealt. The Weapon Master support has been swapped to a Thunderbolts* specific one, which doesn't matter as most of them are useless and it's doubtful anyone new ever gets added to that ability.

  Sadly as a main/DPS character, she is sorely lacking with a criminally low hit count, resulting in an ABX performance worse than Hope Summers. A TP outscoring a T4 absolutely should not happen and it's very lame that support T4s are all so horrid as DPSes.

  Ideally: Simply make her a viable 2nd alternative behind Crescent, no one is buying the Goblin Queen Deluxe for Hope anymore. The emphasis they are putting on chokeholding the meta for this singular Combat Female ABX day is ridiculous, the rewards are not that good.

  West Cheapskate Bay Thunderbolts

  Winter Soldier [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Winter Soldier [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  A clever move to give Bucky a Combat Villain uniform a few months prior for added versatility. This uniform switches him back to Speed Hero, mostly for the benefit of people who already Tier-4ed him with the previous uniform or fans of the character. While not the best in either category, he is not far behind the top PvE characters of each uniform's restrictions.

  This uniform (along with the previous one) has one of the nicer proc-friendly rotations in recent updates, and performs quite well in WBL - which for a Speed Male Human Hero is all you can hope for. With the meta as inundated as it is nowadays, and recent updates leaning hard into bad PvP characters, a viable and proc-friendly PvE character is a nice breath of fresh air.

  Ideally: As the secondary lead character of the film (at least marketing-wise), he should be much better than Miles in WBL given how old that uniform is.

  Nova (Richard Rider)

  Nova (Richard Rider)

  Phyla-Vell

  Phyla-Vell

  Nice to see two supports be bumped up to TP for WBL eligibility, however a bummer that these two still have not gotten any uniforms. Transcended characters are generally worse to play due to the long 6th skill cooldown, so even if they do get uniforms in the future it's a bit harder to be excited for them.

  As for whether this random Transcend has any correlation with an upcoming uniform, check the below Buggle!

  The Plight of the Transcended Shitter

  Thunderbolts*******************************

  Yelena Belova [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Yelena Belova [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Kind of like Daredevil's uniform last update, feeling extremely dated in terms of rotation and animation. In practice she is an invisibility-based PvP character, but as has been said many times in these recaps, Native Tier-1s are just not cutting it in high-level PvP and I can't even remember the last time a Speed type was properly PvP meta.

  Made worse by the fact that Black Widow also received a PvP-oriented uniform a couple months back that is simply better. And this update came with a Tier-4 Selector that Black Widow was in. Excellent work promoting the film.

  Ideally: She is the main character of a very well-received movie and deserves to be a very powerful PvE character, only slightly worse than Luna in Alliance Battle modes. Spider-Gwen's uniform is almost 2 years old and is still the best substitute for Luna that matches all her ABX/L restrictions. This is unacceptable and Yelena being paywall would still earn them a decent revenue if she were almost meta.

  Red Guardian [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Red Guardian [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Another phoned-in uniform, though it's hard to blame the designers on this one as they must be absolutely sick of making shield based skills at this point. He is another disposable Combat Male Hero Human for WBL and a solid step below Venom.

  Ideally: He performs much better in WBL, only being slightly worse than Venom, while being perfectly proc-friendly. This means you can decide between Red Guardian's easy playability or Venom's DPS potential as candidates for pushing higher stages.

  Ghost [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Ghost [Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts*]

  Not even going to write anything about its current state.

  Ideally: Knowing that she has the coolest powerset in the film other than Sentry, take her straight to Tier-4. Give her a strong leadership skill for All Allies, have a damage support for Machine types, and keep the debuff immunity for Thunderbolts. Make her a niche PvP character with a "Perfect Invisibility" buff that acts as a non-ignoreable i-frame. They could then reuse this for Invisible Woman's uniform in a few months.

  U.S. Agent

  U.S. Agent

  Everything about this is horrible - the animations are like a Cap uni from 5 years ago, his damage is just pathetic, even his portrait looks like he needs t. Him being paywall, having no useful support, and being weaker DPS-wise than the past few free characters is a joke.

  As a pittance they've given him a PvP-oriented leadership skill for the Thunderbolts. But leaderships don't even work in Otherworld so it's Conquest or "Team Battle Arena" only. Or simply don't do anything with him and you will miss out on absolutely nothing.

  Ideally: At least give him a unique support passive. For example, something that increases basic damage dealt by 40% for each Command character that is in the team, similar to how Drax's leadership works. This allows you to create some nice thematic WBL teams (as most Cap-adjacent characters have Command) while not wasting slots on non-supports.

• "Team Battle Arena"

  "Team Battle Arena"

  More autoplay PvP slop, this time you have to watch a minimum of 30 battles at once with no user inputs. They keep pushing PvP modes as I assume it is making them the most money.

  If anyone at Netmarble is reading this I would urge you to consider that perhaps it is making the most money because you refuse to improve on PvE modes or add any new meaningful PvE content. You have refused to even try a cooperative PvE Alliance based gamemode, the ABL restrictions were cooked from the start and you have not changed them in 3 years, you have added 0 new PvE CTPs, you refuse to add a PvE gamemode that does not revolve around a boss DPS check, and the majority of PvE-oriented characters are really bad for no reason instead of making them viable alternatives to the current meta.

  No one that can be considered a real human is playing this game for the munted PvP. Stop this nonsense and put some effort into modes and characters that people will actually enjoy playing. DO IT NOW!!!!