Good PvP defense characters?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Do you ever avoid certain characters in PvP? If so, which characters and why do you avoid them?

Which characters do you feel are good as defense in PvP?

Personally, I tend to avoid Devil Dino and Thora/Thorina/Thoress/4-Thor (seriously, does that character have a real “confirmed” name?), mostly because they have a sh*tload of hit points, but also because 4-Thor so easily kills off your entire team, by paralyzing one character for a long time, and right after that kills off another character with Smite.

When on defense, I like to have characters with high health and I prefer to have abilities for all colors. Most of those abilities need to have a high damage output and also not overlap each other, meaning if I have X-force on defense, I prefer the other characters to not have green or black abilities, since the computer tends to always use the wrong abilities and also at the wrong time. Trusting the computer with good timing and smart planning is not what you want to do. Even though I like to use Doom on offense, he sucks on defense because he never uses any of his abilities at the right time. Using such arguments, I disqualify lots of characters as proper defense characters.

Here’s a list of the characters I myself can and will use when on defense:

X-force: Extremely damaging, even after his upcoming nerf. Two good abilities, and a third that after the update can wreck a lot of havoc. However, he does lack high health, so that’s a minus.
Nick Fury: Boosted health after the update, a big plus. Three very damaging abilities, one (blue) is completely devastating.
Daken: Strike tiles and self-healing will compensate a lot for his lower health, and his cheap ability is ever so annoying and easy to overlook. He’s just a pain to deal with.
Luke Cage: Ever-present protect tile keeps your team alive longer, super powerful yellow ability, but his black ability will probably never be used at the right time nor at the right enemies. Still, he’s a keeper (but not combined with X-force).
Magneto: Two extremely damaging abilities and decently priced abilities makes him a threat the enemies have to keep an eye on.
Sentry: High health and very destructive abilities makes him quite annoying.
Punisher: Despite his lower health, his three abilities are all downright dangerous and annoying, he messes everything up real good.
3-Thor: High health and destructive abilities makes him a keeper for me.
Hood: Despite being super squishy, he’s so annoying constantly stealing mana and you just know you have to make him your first kill while you also realize you have bigger threats that also needs to be dealt with.
Blade: General annoyance, a high kill priority.
She-Hulk: This is AFTER the upcoming update, since her cheap green will mess a lot with your mana base, her red has a decent price and damages the whole team, she has high health and her blue will mess around with any special tiles you might have.
Groot: High health, regeneration and powerful strike tiles means it can take quite some time to kill him.
Loki: Once again, general annoyance that will steal all your mana unless you deal with him quickly.

That’s my defense candidates so far (there are more, but at current levels I can’t use them effectively so I don’t list them). Returning to the argument about color overlapping and representing all available colors, I think I’ll try out a team with Hood, She-Hulk and Blade sometime soon.

2

I avoid going against the Hulk in PVP. Unless you have a reliable stun effect, fighting him involves triggering Anger multiple times, with resulting cascades and Thunderous Claps. My own Hulk does not have enough black covers to Hulk Bomb effectively yet, so I don’t let him defend my team very often but I think twice before entering a match with an even mediocre-level Hulk.

3

D: I always thought he was fun to fight. Though by fun I mean to hit him with Surgical Strike then use up that green to beat him down to death on a single turn.

4

I as well have always enjoyed hitting a hulk, unless it’s near end of an event and I’m hopping. There’s a few stradegies for taking down a hulk in 1 turn, but with all the nerfs as of late, it’s getting a little harder. Typically a stun before high damage skill is the best bet. I do skip hulks often though, not out of fear, just out of habbit. But if you have a hulk paired with a weak combo, easy pickins.

I typically will avoid most 270s obviously. For 3* I don’t like fighting Thor, or Cage. Patch is usually fine since he’s low on health, and after the changes will have the constitution of bulleye on a bad day apparently.

5

the current pvp hulk is not so bad since you have Lthor’s hammers. use other characters to gather ap on and unleash them on hulk in one go. obviously you don’t always have that option though and I usually skip unless his black is low covered.

6

Don’t forget that Patch’s health is effectively higher than what it is. You’re talking about 435 HP a turn which protects against match damage and then some. True healing as well.

7

Even post nerf, I’ve heard that Sentry is quite good on defense because he can go full out with his team damaging abilities without the concern for health in the next match.

I’m in the later stages of the 2->3* transition, so I tend to avoid all 270’s and a large number of 166’s (I have about a half dozen 3*'s fully covered but not fully leveled yet). Given that Patch is one of my staples, I tend to avoid Hulk teams unless he’s under leveled (and likely doesn’t have 5 Anger).

8

I still think he got the shaft with the changes. Yeah, it’s great he heals himself, but he has so few Hps it doesn’t take much AP to drop him. I’m never afraid of a patch. save up enough AP for 2 skills, hit him with both and he’s done.

9

Problem was that any character sitting at 6800, and there are tons, were downed in 2 hits. Depending on your roster, you could even down even higher HP characters in 2 hits. >.> Female Thor was hitting over 9000 damage before her nerf if I remember correctly with just Blue into Red.

10

yeah, I feel you. but (to argue for the sake of it) that took a lot of AP. It doesnt’t take much AP for 6,800 worth of damage in this game. I just feel in contrast, yes, patch heals so it’s not going to be fair to give him 10K HP, and wolvie / patch is a beserker, not a tank, but at the same time he’s now one of the easist charecters to “1 hit” in the game and that just doesn’t jive bub.

11

When fighting Patch, I generally save up 13 AP and then let Luke Cage punch Patch into orbit.

Comics-wise, this game does nothing right, Cage should never be able to do just that, while Hulk sure would (but game-wise, he can’t).

I do avoid Hulk when I’m looking for quick fights but he’s never a real threat. A strong Hulk can take common blows and then be killed with 1-2 powers. A weaker Hulk means I’ll have to kill off other characters first, to gain AP to kill Hulk with.

12

Depends on your choice of offense too. From a Hulkbomber point of view, avoid at all costs are Hulk, C.Marvel and Hood. Professor X can also be a big trap. On one of my horror hopping episodes, a 270 Xavier downed my full health Hulk by mid of turn2. A series of infinity cascades and bobbing heads later, my Hulk is dead, and had to hit retreat even before the AI finished with his turn.

For this Thor PVP, I’m pairing him with Magneto and Hood, this allows me to take on other Hood teams too. I’m thinking after D-day tomorrow, the new annoyance queens will be Kamala and Invisible Woman. Imagine an invisible Hood surrounded by protect tiles?

13

There is not a single character that I will avoid if the price is right. Now, I may skip some characters (L166 Hood, Loki come to mind) if there are pickings out there, but even prenerf I would go after a L270 4hor/ XForce if I could get 45+ points out of it. This game is so skewed towards offense that trying to set up a defensive roster is pointless. That may change with the incoming health buffs, but for now defensive wins are based much more on luck than who you field.

14

Defensively I’m always trying to be as rainbow as possible, with as many heavy hits and health points as possible. Generally speaking it’s impossible to deny every color, so if you can leave the AI options, you have at least some chance. Patch is a good high-risk character because with a lucky cascade he can turn the game into a shootout, which is never what the offense wants.

Of course, in current world offense is too quick for anything to really matter. You’re always hoping just to get lucky. Hope someone takes a shot with too little health, gets eaten by bad boards, or something else (power failure?)