I started playing this last week and I absolutely love it. I was lucky enough to get a Wolverine X-Force card and have been plodding along levelling up this and that. It is starting to feel like there is little point in anything other than Health in the game though. Here is my very scientific not at all anecdotal observations:
Obviously you live longer.
Due to the AIs frankly ludicrous ability to luck into the most insane combination, you will often be outnumbered in terms of AP and have to soak up enemy powers. A lot of enemy powers can actually one shot lower HP characters!
-The longer you are alive, the more AP you yourself will earn meaning that the more expensive powers (Cap’s yellow, IM40s Red) are actually within your reach.
Other players will attack you less so you’ll retain more points and get better rewards
I’m fighting at the 28-34 range so maybe it is more of a product of my position and I have no doubt that a lot of you are reading that and thinking ‘this guy has no idea what he is talking about’, but I’m starting to come to this way of thinking.
Health is important but it depends on what your strategy is.
To quickly climb the ranks or farm ISO, speed is more important. Speed refers to teams that do a lot of damage with a little amount of AP because AP takes time to generate. In this case, health is hardly a factor.
For some PvE missions, control might be most important. Sure, you can use people with massive health pools to make sure you don’t die but you’d still take the damage from the occasional countdown tile. Having stuns and board clear/manipulation can be very useful to go through the mission without taking damage. This goes out the window, of course, if your damage can kill the enemy before any countdowns have a chance of triggering.
Health is good for a strong defense. Defense in this game is primarily deterring other people from attacking you. Having a big health pool may make people skip you just because it would take a long time to beat you when they can easily beat someone else in half the time for the same amount of points.
Btw, “HP” is usually reserved for Hero Points in this game.
He has most damaging red in the game IIRC, even without cascades. Unless you count the cumulative damage from Hawkeye’s AOE red, or an unrealistic scenario like 20 red tiles on board for Moonstone.
Per AP, probably. Which doesn’t matter as much when the AI is running him, since it will only use a power once per round.
To the OP – stop with 4* Wolverine now. All of the 4*'s are pitiful and actually do less damage than 3*'s on non-favored colors. Even on favored colors they only do 3 points more damage – with an additional 80 levels required. Comparatively each other step up (1*->2*->3*) does 10-15 more damage on favored and at least 2 or 3 on unfavored colors. On top of that all of the 4* powers are hideously weak even compared to 2* or even some 1* powers.
2* Wolverine, on the other hand, is a very good cover. And while he doesn’t have as much initial health as Thor, he makes up for it with regen – he’s more susceptible to being one-shotted is all (which is the best way to kill him if you’re playing against).
That’s just false. His damage per ap is high (and frighteningly so when paired with Wolverine) but the ai will only use it once per turn and per use it’s pretty crappy.
As opposed to Widow’s green which would never get used at all?
Even with boosted IM40, I think I only got hit by Unibeam once or twice, and that’s 13 AP. Him and Thor is the only competition in red space in the current meta. It’s common to get hit by a Mjolnir, but 2 Thunderclaps > 1 Mjolnir.
And if Rags’ red is not good, why do people use him? For his green?
His red is amazing for the green generation but it’s a low damage ability. Some people on here seem to think that Ragnarok in a vacuum is the god of all 3 star heroes. He’s a green battery, he needs someone else to shine.
Combine him with even modern storm, and that obscene amount of green translates into not worrying about fueling every other power. Not to mention cascades. I’m convinced he’d still be one of the better characters even if the red did no damage at all