Cover Lottery or level my Ares?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Hello,

I just got my current lineup to soft cap and I’m not sure what I should do next. Should I spend my ISO’s on playing the cover lottery or should I level my Ares?

Here’s my roster:

Main lineup:

-Black Widow (Original) 3/5/5 Lv. 85/85: She’s fully leveled.

-Thor (Marvel Now) 5/3/3 Lv. 69/69: he’s caped until I get more yellow covers. I’m building him for 5/5/3.

-Wolverine (Astonishing) 4/4/1 Lv. 54/54: he’s also caped until I get more yellow covers. I’m building him for 5/5/3.

In my roster:

-Ares (Dark Avengers) 3/2/5 Lv. 37/61: Currently I’m thinking of eventually teaming him with my Original Black Widow and Bullseye. I want to build him for 3/5/5

-Ragnarok (Dark Avenger’s Thor) 1/2 Lv. 28/28: Level capped for Lightning Rounds.

-Captain America (Modern) 1/2/3 Lv. 28/30: I plan to get him to 5/4/4 or 4/5/4 and use him on the events he’s buffed for.

-Loki (Dark Reign) 0/2 Lv. 25/25: Level capped for Lightning Rounds.

-The Hulk (Indestructible) 2/0/0 Lv. 25/25: Level capped until more covers. Not overly fond of him but he’s a nice tank.

-The Punisher (Dark Reign) 2/1/0 Lv. 18/28: I lucked out and pulled 3 of him out of The Hunt boosters during The Hunt event. I’m going to level him during events he’s buffed for.

-Spider-Man (Classic) 1/2/1 Lv. 15/28: Waiting until I have more covers and to see how the nerf bat will hurt him. Currently thinking of a 4/5/4 build, possibly 5/5/3. Planning on running him With Wolverine (any) and Venom.

-Iron Man (Model 40) 0/1/2 Lv. 15/28: Waiting until I have more covers.

-Black Widow (Grey Suit) 1/0/0 Lv. 15/15: I’m not a fan of her. I plan to sell her if/when I get something better.

-Doctor Doom (Classic) 1/0 Lv. 15/15: Random 3* I got from a pack.

-Bullseye (Dark Avengers Hawkeye) 0/5 Lv. 6/37: Will probably run him with Original Black Widow post Thor and Wolverine nerf. Need his Purple cover before He’s really viable.

-Moonstone (Dark Avengers Ms. Marvel) 2/2/3 Lv, 6/37: I don’t like her and will probably sell her if/when I get something better. I’m honnestly just keeing her in case of another No Mans Land event.

-Daken (Dark Avengers Wolverine) 3/1 Lv. 6/22: Might run him with Wolverine when I collect all his covers just to be dirty.

-Storm (Classic) 1/1/0 Lv. 6/8: Very poorly timed re-build of her. I sold her a day before the Divine Champions event started. I had her at Lv 61 with 5/3/5. Wasn’t good but would have been nice to have her buffed for the tournament.

-Venom (Dark Avengers Spider-Man) 5/5 Lv. 1/40: He’s the only 1* I’m considering keeping. I’m going to run him with Classic Spider-Man. The only reason being that he can om-nom-nom someone for 12 blue and 12 black AP when combined with a maxed-out blue Spiderman.

That was a lot more typing that I expected. There’s my roster; a lot of random stuff, I know. I have the strangest luck (And the worst timing). What’s the better long, medium, and short term way to go with my ISO’s? Level Ares and/or some of my current assortment of 2* and 3* characters?

Thanks for reading,

2

In your situation, I’d probably level Ares, since there aren’t any other characters you have with enough covers to replace any of your current main team. Ares will help you reach higher ranks in this and the follow-up Divine tourney this week, which if you get lucky on a bracket might get you some additional Punisher covers. I never recommend the cover lottery myself, although I know others on this forum who have gotten very lucky with it.

3

I don’t have any advice for you other than “not the 500 ISO cover lottery”.
When it comes to Thor, I ended up going 544 because i sold three green covers while waiting for that fifth yellow. Pulled another green and said “screw yellow”. In the end I realized that I rarely have 11 yellow AP, but not 12.

4

As someone who spent over 10-15k ISO on that silly 500 ISO token in my early days hunting for nothing specific, but anything decent, my advice is to never, ever do that. It might be my bad luck with these standard tokens, but they are not worth it. Even if their cost was 300-400, I still would not recommend them. Go with the leveling, even if it is Bag-Man we’re talking about (he can’t stay like this forever, someday they will fix him).

5

Its looking like Hulk/Frank (Punisher) will be a good way to go but youre level capped on both. Bank the Iso-8 until you get the covers you want, or the uncertainty of the buff/nerf cycle evens out and its clear what your goal will be.

For Ares, what is your reasoning behind the 3/5/5 build? Are you thinking you’ll be pairing him with either Wolv or Hulk therefore you will use green for them?

6

My reasoning is that I really like the idea of the two turn countdown for Sunder even if the ideal might be 4/5/4. I’m going to be running him with Bullseye and Original Black Widow so he will be using his green for onslaught. I could do 4/4/5 but I like the idea of Rampage hitting it’s big damage on below 40% health. I do not want to rebuild him from scratch, unless they run The Hunt again. Then I would probably consider it.

7

The ideal for Ares is 4/4/5. Rampage at 5 is 30%, not 40%.

8

checks Wiki So it is, must have been thinking of Punisher’s red at 5 being 40%. Now I feel dumb for throwing away that extra green cover I got. Oh well. It is what it is. Thanks for correcting me.

9

The extra 5% is not as big of a deal as you might think. It sounds great, but generally chars arent that low, while you would get the extra damage from a lvl 4 green you see all the time. 4/4/5 is considered his best build:
4 vs 5 green: giving up the extra green isnt a big deal, I would rather have the extra red
4 vs 5 red: meh, its an extra 5% to get the double damage, I would rather have the extra green
5 yellow: yeah, not much here. Definitely want 5.

10

You will get plenty of Standard Token while playing. buying them is totally not worth it.

11

Aye white tokens flow quickly and abundently you’ll be regularly selling those rewards immediately very shortly

12

People very slightly underestimate the benefit of being able to Onslaught at 5AP, because it rounds down the transferred green, so you could use it for poke damage while giving the opponent only 2. I often end up stacking an overkill amount by the time I’m ready to use it as a finisher, so that wouldn’t be totally awful, but mostly it’s only really going to benefit the dumb AI, especially unbuffed, and who honestly cares much about what the team’s going to do while being trounced on defense? 4/4/5 is almost always best unless you never use Sunder or something, which is a bit of a let-down after Punisher and Hulk came out with less of an immediately obvious “right” build.

Regarding cover lotteries, I did the daily 100HP heroic for a little while because it’s pretty good value, and got some ok pulls out of it, not that I actually use Marvel Now! Magneto, or anything, but I’d never recommend gambling like that to anyone, especially now you need (a lot of) HP for shielding. And always sit on ISO if you’re not sure what to do with it and won’t immediately use whatever you’re thinking about spending it on. The answer will roll along soon enough.

Keep **Wolverine and Thor dupes if you have a spare slot or are good at remembering to sell before expiry, though. No one knows whether they’ll still be any good after they’re fixed, but if they are you never know what’ll happen to preferred build.

13

Go with Ares, he’s worth it. And 4/4/5 works as build.

For more covers (and Iso) enter lightning rounds and play to 50 points for a token and some Iso (or to 100 points for some more Iso). That’s usually just two matches, three max (or 4 to 5 if you aim for 100 points).

14

Thanks to the Steam Sale I was able to get a metric-bum-ton of HP And ISO. Instead of starting a brand new thread, I’ll just update this one. High point of the changes: I managed to get my Ares to 84 and Punisher to 41. Here is a complete list of what has changed:

-Thor (Marvel Now) 5/3/4 Lv. 74/77: Pulled a green cover out of my Divine Champions token and decided to use it. Sank the ISO’s I got from Lightning Rounds into him to help me in the PVP event. Hoping for another Yellow cover. I could train it for HP but I want to wait and see what his re-balancing is going to do.

-Wolverine (Astonishing) 4/5/1 Lv. 54/62: I’m waiting for the adjustments before spending any ISO’s on him. Unless he becomes trash I would still like to consider him for Spider-Man/Venom team.

-The Punisher (Dark Reign) 3/1/0 Lvl 41/41: (Somehow) Managed to place top 45 in the first round of the Divine Champions tournament; I think I ended up 38-40 range thanks to a shield in the last three hours. Pumped him full of ISO’s to hit his level cap. I’m still leaning towards 5/3/5 build.

-Ares (Dark Avengers) 4/4/5 Lv. 84/85: Sank 1500 HP to grab the missing covers and dumped the remainder of my ISO from steam purchase into him. I’m planning him as a possible replacement to Thor since the nerf will potentially make him unviable; we’ll see in a couple of weeks.

-Black Widow (Grey Suit) 1/1/0 Lv. 15/18: I’m liking her a bit more after reading up on feeding her green from Hulk’s Anger ability. What I didn’t like about her was the high cost of her green ability. She may end up in my 3*'s team if I can keep pulling her from random packs.

-Bullseye (Dark Avengers Hawkeye) 1/5 Lv. 6/38: Finally managed to pull his good ability from a daily deal Heroic Pack. People keep saying that he’s bad. I can’t see why. Combo him with Black Widow (any) and you get free Protect Tiles that are hard to get rid of (until bullseye dies). It’s one of those abilities that can really lock your opponent down if you combine it with a way to steal enemy AP (such as 1* or 2* Black Widow).

-Venom (Dark Avengers Spider-Man) 0/1 Lv. 1/1: Decided to rebuild him for 4/5. An extra five levels won’t really be that usefull when running with two 3* or a 3* and 2* team. Venom is really only planed to om-nom-nom high Hit Point characters because I think it’s funny.

My current roster (for the immediate future):

-Original Black Widow Lv 85 3/5/5

-Ares Lv 84 4/4/5

-Thor Lv 74 5/3/4

What I’m thinking: What I’m thinking of doing post is replacing Thor with Ares as a permanent addition to my main roster and dumping Wolverine completely. Alternatively I could dump Wolverine for Ares as (currently) Thor’s red and yellow abilities are still more or less better than Ares’s. If I do end up dumping Thor and Wolverine I would need a third hero to fill my roster. The only real “viable” candidate I can see is Punisher. That covers me for all colours on either a first or second damage rating with one exception: Ares hits Yellow on as his third rating. Thor could be a solution to this. It also give me abilities that cover all AP colours with no overlap. The downside is that getting the Punisher covers I need could be difficult.

My questions: Is Punisher a viable addition to Ares and Original Black Widow? At what level should I transition him instead of Thor? Should I avoid the rush and sideline Thor right away and replace him with Punisher? Or is there anyone in my roster I should level instead?

I’m currently sitting on 9.8k HP but would like to hang on to them for now unless I can get a quick turn around from upgrading abilities of current heroes instead of playing cover lottery. I tend to get ISO’s rather quickly during Lightning Rounds.

15

My roster (for the immediate future) is almost identical.

-Original Black Widow Lv 81 3/5/5
-Ares Lv 84 4/4/5
-Wolverine at 76 5/3/4

Wolverine is replacing your Thor since mine is at 4/5/1, waiting the changes to see if it worth using him or moving to another. I fear that after the changes will will be in the same spot with OBW and Ares searching for the third member. My Punisher 3/3/1 so if I could find some red covers I was thinking that he would be a nice addition to the team since I would have a 5 color coverage. OBW for blue/purple, Ares for green/yellow, Punisher for green/red (they would share the green, with Ares having priority). Hopefully Ares will drop the opponent’s health low enough with green and yellow to have the Punisher deliver the finishing blow with his red and have OBW assist/steal and heal.

16

I think you meant to say “Punisher for Black/Red or Black/Green/Red”. Punisher uses black, green, and red. He damages them in that order. Molotov Cocktails might not be the best ability in the game but it’s pretty cheap, the attack tiles it spawns isn’t tied to any particular colour, and with 5 ranks spawns a new one every two turns. I like to call it “The gift that keeps on giving.” While the idividual attack tiles aren’t going to be hitting very hard, you get two countdown tiles on the board and you can quickly flood it with attack tiles. A little times a lot is a lot. I think people underestimate it… or I’m overestimating it. Either way I’m maxing it out because I don’t like Judgement at all. The damage on it isn’t very high and the strike tiles are vulnerable to repeated use.

My team would have Ares to use green and yellow, Black Widow uses blue and purple, and Punisher uses red and black. For tile matches: Ares would hit green, red, and yellow tiles; Black Widow would hit blue and purple; and Punisher would hit black. Once Punisher gets above level 121 Punisher would hit red. Once above 99, he would take over hitting green for matches. Of course, by that time chances are that I should have already replaced Ares and/or Black Widow.

17

Who would you be replacing Ares with? I’m working towards Punisher, OBW and trying to figure out a decent tank for the third slot once Thor goes away. Hulk has color overlap with punisher so not really a good choice, Wolv has no decent synergy with Frank either. IM40?

18

That’s the million-dollar, long term plan, question.

By the time I’m going to replace Black Widow or Ares it’s probably going to be whoever I can level past 90 at the time and worry about building a proper 3’s team after that. My initial Thought is replace Black Widow with Spider-Man, since I like to run with a White Mage. Ares possibly gets replaced for Patch Wolverine since they use and hit the same colours. Punisher sticks around unless I can find someone who uses black and purple and isn’t Loki. I like how random his purple is but his black is too situational for a standard lineup. He’d be a sub-in versus Patch Wolverine, Classic Magneto, or Doctor Doom.

Right now I’m more interested in the near future. I need to build a 2* team to start competing for 3* covers. Cover lottery is bad at building a 3* team, though I’ve had pretty good luck so far. Unfortunately, none of the ones I have are currently close to being helpful to me right now. The only exception to this is Punisher who is one or two covers away from closing on Thor’s level.

19

Yeah Spideys the obvious choice now to replace OBW but a nerf coming down the pike for him and BWs extra strike tile damage on blue and purple matches may keep her on the team when punisher replaces wolverine. I dunno about patch yet, mines 2/2/2 and still sitting at level 15 untested. I imagine Patch and Frank working about as well together as Frank and Wolv now which is not at all well. CMag makes the most sense as a third I guess, but mine is nowhere near ready with 0/1/2 build and that team is all squish no beef.

20

Also I hate Ares, and don’t plan to use him…can’t stand that all his abilities have terrible drawbacks. Maybe Hulk isn’t as bad as I thought since even though his colors overlap with Frank, his Anger would feed Frank all the green he needs for strike tile generation. I dunno, we need a good 3* tank in this game. Make Luke Cage or the Thing, make em big and make em good!