Need quick help for my *** team

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Tips and Guides
1

Hey guys,

After looking into this for a while, I´ve yet to figure out my team composition, so I thought I´d ask for some help…

Since I don´t play that much, I don´t have a fully developed roster, relying instead on my A Team, and skipping out those tournaments where they can´t play (such as every tourney right now, lol).

What I have

I´m rocking:

130 GSW - 5/3/5
129 Spidey 3/5/4 (would put another in purple, when i get it)
85 Regular Thor 5/4/4

It´s a pretty decent team, and gets the job done. I mainly go for purple to generate green for the sniper rifle, use spidey as control and healing when needed and use thor for… errr.. Herein lies my question..

What should my third char be? Thor is getting more and more useless. I don´t use his green (saving them for GSW), I almost don´t use his yellow (saving them for spidey, or when i really need to generate some green), and his red hits for like 1000 something, which makes no difference for me.

What I want: (but if you have a better idea, let me know)

  • a bruiser that can hit hard for not too much AP (for when sniper rifle is not enough)
  • someone that uses black, since it´s the only color i´m not using.

I´ve never messed with strike tiles, hit tiles, etc. It could be fun, but sniper rifle kinda wipes the board.

My first idea was hulk (mine suck: 5/1/1 at level 65), but I´ve noticed that his black (which i wanted for green generation) only procs if he gets hit for 5% of his HP. If I level him up, thus increasing his HP, he should proc less and less, right?

So, which way do you guys think I should go.

Thanks a lot

TL;DR: Looking for a 3rd char that complements GSW/Spidey.

2

Black Panther. Look at your requirements, look at black panther. Literally a match made in heaven! Hulk’s pretty bad on offense since his abilities besides anger suck (and you can’t reliably trigger anger without taking a lot of damage). Black Panther, on the other hand…

3

Hulk is still a decent choice, imo. You might not trigger his anger much to generate green, but he’ll be useful to absorb damage and take the brunt of any attacks should the opposing team collect enough AP.

IM40 with his yellow at 4 is a good match for GSBW and Spidey, too. At 4 yellow, he’ll generate green and purple AP for GSBW to use and blue AP for Spidey to use. It’s a nice team because no matter what colors the board have, you’ll have a fairly quick path to sniper rifle. Plus, IM40’s red is useful to finish off enemies that sniper rifle leaves standing.

Edit: Sorry, just saw your requirement of someone who uses black. In that case, BP is definitely the way to go.

4

Thanks for the reply. I haven´t kept up that much with the new chars, tbh. I took a look at T´challa, and couldn´t really understand why he´d be such a great fit.

A yellow that generates strike tiles - That´s cool, but GSW could do some damage to those
a blue that generates protect tiles - that´s cool, even though spidey generates those too, and needs the blue ap
an active black that hits (how hard does it hit?), but feed the enemy AP.

I´m not saying he is not a good char, but is there something i´m not seeing? Like I said, i´ve been away from the forums, i´ve been reading for the past hour trying to catch up on the current meta and chars.

Thanks a lot.

5

I would suggest Psylocke because you could use some attack/strike tiles on your team (couldn’t we all!), and she would provide you with Red (much better than GSBW’s) and cheap Black (6AP). Unfortunately, she’s not a tank and you could use a tank. BP does seem like the obvious choice here, as Polarity suggests, though you might find his blue and yellow wasted with Spider-Man around. Panther’s yellow does give you strike tile capability though, and he has tankability. Plus, his black gives you another big attack bomb alongside Widow’s green (Panther’s black does 3162 to all enemies at max level).

6

Thanks for the answer…

Here´s what I´m thinking:

  • i really like the hulk, it´s be nice to have a tank, since spidey and gsw are kinda glassy. I assume that, when properly leveled, he´s gonna hit harder than those two, thus staying in front of them (tanking and increasing the chances of anger activating). It just seems that, with 8k+ hp, that´s not gonna happen that much. Am I wrong in thinking that?

  • I like the idea of IM40 to feed GSW (mostly because my IM is 3/2/5 already). That´s something to be considered.

  • Not using black is not a deal breaker, I just thought It´d be nice to not waste a color. To me, the most important is optimizing getting greens (amd maybe purple), since gsw does such a great job of killing whole teams.

Thanks a lot. Gotta love the community here.

7

Wow. Didn´t know that about BP´s black. That sounds like it could be useful. And, as you said, I kinda need a tank if I´m going to play with the big boys (not that i get hit a lot with spidey around, but sometimes those blues just don´t come along). Some strike tiles could sure be useful. Makes it slow to hit 160hp per match until i can get sniper rifle to activate.

I took a look at psylocke. Loved her blue, and even her black. Will look into her, see how well she scales up. It takes me a looong time to get covers, though. So there´s that (same problem with BP)

Thanks a lot.

8

So BP looks unassuming at first, but try playing against a maxed out one. Imagine getting your team hit by a sniper rifle, and thats what BP’s black does in 4 black matches. As a result, you learn to dread every black match that the enemy team makes since if they get 4, it’s over. His yellow/blue aren’t the greatest: with spidey and GSBW, youd only use the yellow situationally if you didn’t need spidey heal, but his black and HP alone makes him a very powerful character, especially on defense. Again, 4 black matches for a sniper rifle is pretty damn good. Hulk might be better if you need to absorb a lot of ability hits, but black panther is just so much scarier on defense than the Hulk is. You can play around anger, but you can’t play around a crazy black cascade into rage of the panther. He also has 7.4k hp when maxed out, so he’s a good tank for your dudes as well.

9

I have been reading the whole board, but focused on the BP thread (and the chars ranking too), and I think I´m convinced. However, my BP is 1/0/0. Oh well, gives me something to focus on, I guess.

I wish I had time to play more LRs, because no way i´m getting the covers i need just on random packs.

Thanks a lot, man.

10

That´s the problem with information, lol. Was reading more, and saw some posts saying he became underpowered after the nerf, his reliance on enviro tiles, etc…

He still seems like a good fit, especially for his black aoe. I´m just dreading how hard he´s going to be to level.

Any other suggestions, guys? Thx

11

I very strongly disagree with those recommending Black Panther:

(1) People use him for his black, but you’ve already got GSBW to do that thing.
(2) With GSBW, you need to have a third character that hits hard on green tiles. Your whole strategy is based around green, but neither Spidey nor GSBW does any match damage on green.
(3) You already have better uses for your blue and yellow.
(4) Having all six colors represented is unnecessary. Leaving black tiles on the board is fine unless you’re facing Doom, Black Panther, or one of those lvl 230 Venoms. And all of those guys need 12 black, which gives you some room for error.

Hulk is a perfect fit for your setup. GSBW is taking care of your offense. You just need someone to tank red and green and be scary on defense.

My second choice for your team, although he’s not the strongest character overall, would be Ragnarok. He just fits extremely well: tons of health, tanks red and green, and his red power would make your team hit a lot harder and faster.

Punisher would also be decent. I actually like him much more overall than Hulk or Ragnarok, but he doesn’t fit your team as well.

All this is assuming you don’t have the covers for LazyThor. If you do, then he’s without a doubt your ideal third character.

12

As a counter point to this argument,

  1. Why not both? It’s a back up color: if you can’t match green or purple, then you match black, giving you 3 devestating colors as opposed to two. Not every board is going to have enough green/purple tiles to support GSBW, but the more the better.
  2. I don’t see why this is a necessity. GSBW’s green costs 19 green AP, and each match 3 green results in 150 damage, which means that you’re missing out on 900 damage which honestly isn’t that significant.
  3. Blue yes. Yellow is arguable, as you don’t need to heal after every match and BP’s yellow can randomly give you the offensive boost you need.
  4. Without black, OP’s team would only really have three colors represented: blue, green and purple. Red and yellow are arguably represented, but GSBW’s red sucks in PvP and heal is more situational (especially since you don’t want to heal after PvE missions nowadays to prevent scaling. Black would bump the useful colors up to four.

Hulk point - BP can tank green too! In the event of match damage tie, winner goes to whatever character is at the center, so just place BP in the center. If you look at the match damage values for spidey. gsbw, bp. BP and GSBW are tied in green at 141, and spidey beats BP by one point, so the solution is to just max out BP and not level spidey past the point where his green surpasses BP. Put BP in the center and he’ll tank green for days. Tanking red is nice but ultimately unnecessary since you’re not going to be actively matching red tiles when green/blue/purple/black are so much better for you.

Rags - fair. He’s a pretty crappy overall investment though, and clearly not as versatile as a character like hulk or bp.

Lazythor - LazyThor is extremely strong by himself, but I don’t like how he essentially delegates GSBW to purple duty. I don’t think he fits as well as BP simply because black is a more desirable “power” color with GSBW/Spidey than green/yellow are.

It might also be helpful if you listed all your 3*s right now, so we have a better idea of how far away you are from making these characters viable. I’d obviously say to go with lazythor if you had 2/2/2 covers in him and 1/1/1 covers in BP or something.

13

Sure, but with green matches + GSBW purple + either Hulk black or Ragnarok red, you’re always going to get the green you need. Collecting black instead just seems like a waste of time to me in all but the rarest cases

The difference b/t Hulk and Black Panther is 57 per green AP = 1083 damage for 19 green AP. But this ignores the fact that probably more than half of that is going to be critical matches due to GSBW’s purple. So as a conservative estimate, I’d say 2000 extra damage purely on green match damage. That’s huge.

Agreed. Sometimes BP’s yellow will be useful. But overall, it’s a pretty weak ability and I’d almost always spend those AP on Spidey if I have them.

But remember that the characters I suggested add red as a useful color. Black Panther adds black. And under both, you have green, purple, and blue as awesome colors and yellow as a useful color. Either way, you’re looking for purple or blue first.

What do you mean about the healing and the PvE scaling? All I remember reading is that IceIX said that the system can tell if your characters suddenly gained a bunch of hp too quickly, but he was specifically referring to going into the prologue and healing up. Do the PvE events scale more quickly the less damage you take during the matches? Can you point me to a post, b/c I’m interested to know more about this!

I don’t think Black Panther is a terrible choice here, I just don’t see any synergy. If you’re using GSBW, you’re selling out for her offensive nuke. Black Panther does nothing to aid in that goal.

14

Aren’t the crit tiles formed after the match-5s hit? I don’t think that a match 5 does critical damage (unless im horribly mistaken), but rather matching the crit tile afterwards, in which case that tile probably isn’t matching other green tiles unless you’re really good at this game.

I don’t remember specifically which post he said it, but he mentioned that the game uses the difference in hp from when you start a fight to when you end it as an indication of how hard the fight was for you, and uses that to adjust your PvE MMR. You’re going to have to do some digging through his comments to find it though. You can see by reading the random PvE Venom and Unstable-ISO threads that a lot of people have stopped using Spidey to heal because they’re afraid of increasing their MMR.

Rags, yes. Hulk, no. Smash by itself does pretty poor damage, and theres no way you would want to use it because it drains 10 green AP from your pool when you do.

Black Panther doesn’t have as much synergy as Hulk/Rags, but I think the sheer power of his black makes him a superior pick up over Rags/Hulk. Rags admittedly would probably a really good third when coupled with GSBW/Spidey, but given his limited use in any other team, doesn’t seem like a worthwhile character to invest in. Hulk seems like he’s almost, but not quite there. Like I said earlier, you aren’t ever going to be using his red when it drains sniper rifle AP, so his only use is as a 9k punching bag that triggers anger and green match damage. While this is okay, I think that having another power move in BP’s black is worth more than this, especially since that means that you’re going to be taking considerable hits on hulk before he does anything worthwhile.

LazyThor is probably a good amount better than BP now that I think about it just because he also gives a usable red, but that just feels distasteful since the focus of the team now shifts to LT. Alas, thats probably just how the world works due to how good the character is.

15

Yeah never mind, you’re right about this.

16

NorthernPolarity, you make good points. BP is probably better here than I’m giving him credit for. He and Hulk actually would fill a similar role, which is (1) have a lot of hit points, (2) be scary on defense, and (3) be a backup plan to GSBW. For BP, the backup plan is going black instead. For Hulk, it’s getting hit by someone’s power to generate a bunch of green. I’d still go with Hulk over BP, but either seems viable.

LazyThor I agree is the clear top choice, but I assumed the original poster didn’t have enough of his covers or he’d be already using him instead of 2*Thor.

The more I think about it, the more I like Ragnarok for this team. But is it worth investing in a character that is pretty mediocre outside of lightning rounds and a few niche cases like this one. If I were using Spidey and GSBW with my own roster, Ragnarok would be my third … but he’s already max level from when his red was a very ridiculous 2AP. I still think he’s worth considering for the original poster if he has good covers on him. Level 115 is a lot less ISO than level 141. The problem with that setup, though, is that not many people will skip GSBW/Spidey/Rags. They might skip if they see a high level Hulk or Black Panther instead. Personally, every time I see GSBW as a part of a team, I say to myself “easy points” because I can safely ignore 1/3 of the team until approximately forever. For that reason, I don’t use her.

Ragnarok was of course the classic combination with GSBW before he was so dramatically nerfed.

17

Damn, this post blew up.

I´ll read it carefully, to not miss anything.

NorthernPolarity, you asked me to post my 3*, so you guys can have a better idea…

So here they are. Let me preface it by saying that i don´t play that much, so the progress would be slow.. I´m not, however, opposed to spending some money for covers…

130 spidey 3/5/4
131 gsw 5/3/5

64 hulk 5/1/1
28 ragnarok 2/3
15 BP 1 yellow
28 c.mags 3/0/1
20 punisher 1/1/1
15 3/2/5 im40
15 doom 3/1
15 hood 3/1
15 pyslocke 1/1/1

I got some more 3*, but none relevant. I also got a 1 lazy thor…

From what I ´ve gathered, BP would serve more as a backup plan to hit hard too on black, and hulk would help more with green generation, with anger (how often does it proc, both on pve and pvp?)

Hulk seems like he would more sinergy with the team, but BP would help me hit harder and more often (that, and strike tiles, which always help).

Both would take some time to level up, although hulk is farther along. Rags could be done too, but I´d rather take longer, and go for the optimum route.

I will read both of you guys´s posts, see what I can learn.

thanks a lot for the help, you guys have been great.

18

This really stood out. I think it kinda illustrates the difference between having hulk or BP. Hulk more sinergy, BP more versatility, and a 1-2 punch with GSW.

In my noob opinion, it would come down to how much actual sinergy is there with hulk. If he is not activating anger quite often, he would be way less useful than BP. At max level and black at 5, how often does he give you a bunch of greens?

BP sounds like he could, eventually, even replace GSW (even though, let´s admit it, her purple is just awesome with her green).

And yeah, lazy thor would be awesome, but i got like one cover for him. I´m leaning towards BP, and then I realize i have 6 more covers for hulk, and 50 levels more.

Decisions, decisions…

19

I was thinking about Rags too, but you make a good point. I´ve been staying away from PvP cause I hate shielding the whole time (my schedule is hectic, and i kept missing the end of my shield), and i hate coming back to a game, and having lost 100 points cause people don´t skip me.

A hulk or BP would be way more scary.

20

Since match damage doesn’t trigger anger, Hulk will only trigger anger from ability damage, which means that you need to keep tabs on when the opponents can use abilities and put Hulk out in front when they do. On offense, Hulk amounts to nothing more than a safety net really: you aren’t going to use either of his abilities (green is for gsbw, red can’t be used because it drains green ap), so his sole purpose is to get angry and take hits to make green. The problem with that is that your matches slow down considerably since you have a character that isn’t contributing anything to offense. Having BP on the other hand, would speed up the matches with his rage of the panther, and doesn’t rely on taking hits in order to be effective. Hulk was the second character that I leveled up to 141, and I’m sad to say that I never use him anymore. While he was the best tank at the time, now that BP/LazyThor have been released, he’s become completely obsolete in the metagame.

Some last points to consider:

  1. BP has a lot more kill potential than Hulk on defense. Hulk is definitely more annoying than BP: he has more hit points, you can’t place strike tiles against him, and you essentially need to bank enough AP to one shot him. However, his abilities just aren’t that good/scary so people can just hit him with match damage until they can one shot him. BP, on the other hand, cripples the enemy roster once he hits 12 black, making him infinitely more dangerous.

  2. A lot of tournaments are 2 on 2. For example, the Human Torch tournament that just finished involving a newly released character. Human Torch is too low level to matter since people tend to not drop money on the game, so most of your matches are going to be your 2 most powerful guys vs their 2 most powerful guys since human torch is useless at a low level. In this case, would you rather have GSBW+BP or GSBW+Hulk? When it gets down to a 2 on 2 situation, you want your characters to be as rounded as possible, and so BP is a lot better because he holds well on his own and can end the game quickly.

For me, Hulk’s been benched and will only see use in an elite tournament where you want to slow your opponents down as much as possible. BP on the other hand, is a perfect character on defense due to how his black will randomly just kill the entire enemy team. There are better characters when you care about kill speed of course, but when you’re deathly afraid of retaliations at the 1k point mark, BP is your go to guy since he’ll randomly get you defensive victories. I think that BP is just a far better investment in general, and will fit on a lot more teams than Hulk ever well.