Roster Advice: CMags or Black Panther?

I got some new covers, but I only have roster space for one. They are red/blue Classic 3 star Magneto, blue Black Panther, and green Classic Bullseye. I'm probably not going with Bullseye but figured I'd include it since I have one.

3 star magneto (CMags, usually) is an awesome character. He does incredible damage once you level him up. His red is decent damage (depending on board composition) but it is a great cascade activator. It also is relatively cheap. I use it over LThor's red.

His blue is very high damage. It makes a great finisher, and again, it doesn't break the bank. There are those really rare times where you don't have any red or blue tiles on the board to swap, but I generally never have trouble getting it to fire. I rate it highly on the cost/damage balance sheet.

His yellow isn't really worthwhile, it blocks so little damage that it just becomes bait for moves that steal special tiles or deal damage based on them.

As for Black Panther, he is very strong as well. Good health for tanking. His yellow activates based on your saved team up AP, which I personally usually have plenty of. The strike tiles it lays down are really strong, on the other hand, it does require them to sit on the board for a few turns for max value.

His black is an incredibly strong move with a downside. It hits all enemy characters, which is always worth hanging onto in MPQ. At max level its 3,708 damage to all characters, which is about as good as you will find. Plus, most other characters don't use black AP, so its easy to save. The problem is that it goes give 5 AP in the enemy's strongest color, which shouldn't be overlooked. You will almost certainly give them the AP to fire a special in return. Thus, it works best as a finisher.

His blue is pretty dumb in my opinion, it requires a countdown and even then the tile it creates isn't that strong.

Bullseye is interesting, and I think his black passive has some real potential, but I'm not yet buying. Pass for me.

If I were you, I'd save the CMags. The value of having two colors is really helpful as well, you need 9 covers before a 3 star is useful, so CMags is already that much closer. Plus, the blue cover is Panther's worst power.

Play-around Guide: Daken

Daken is one of the most popular choices for PvP with his latent healing and latent damage boosts. When he was buffed to add the active ability with solid damage output he only got stronger. There is no way to play PvP without frequently encountering him as you climb, and even at the highest ranks. He can be a scary opponent, and at times skipping around a Daken team may be the best choice. When you have to fight him though, how do you approach it?

Daken comes in two flavors, the standard 2 star and the gold 3 star version. The 2 star is a staple of 2 star PvP, with Ares and OBW he clearly occupies the highest tier. The gold 3 star version is also excellent, however at the 3 star level he appears less frequently. This is both due to the fact that 3 star teams have more options for team building, as well as more answers to Daken’s unique abilities.

Dane’s two passives are Pheromone Rage and Healing & Heat. Pheromone Rage creates a red strike tile on any green match. Healing and Heat either restores health or causes damage to Daken. His active is Chemical Reaction, which does damage, destroys attack tiles, and creates a few green tiles.

Pheromone Rage is probably the first one you really need to think about. A lot of passives that create special tiles on matches can be dealt with by denying the opponent those matches. Not here, as your green will create strike tiles as well. In a way, your creating the tiles is slightly worse, as Daken then gets the benefit without you having a chance to remove them. The best way to deal with this move is to just continually remove the red strike tiles. At this highest level, Gold Daken creates two strength 46 tiles, 2 star Daken creates one strength 46 tile. Neither is immediately lethal to similarly leveled character. The danger comes from these tiles stacking up and being paired with special moves. As long as you prioritize red matches, you should be able to keep the board relatively clear. You can also use moves that destroy special tiles, such as Daredevil’s Radar Sense or Squirrel Girl’s Nuts From Above. I find that these moves are very helpful, but only once per match.

Pheromone Rage: The Bane of PvP

The second move to deal with is Healing & Heat. This move causes latent healing each turn based on the number of blue tiles on the board. If there are less than a certain number of blue tiles, Daken takes damage each turn. The difficulty is that at max level, Daken only needs 6 blue tiles to maintain healing. It can be very tough to keep this number down, so you should prepare to get hit with a lot of heals. When I face Daken, I always prioritize first clearing any red strike tiles, and second clearing any blue tiles. A few turns of “Heat” can really slow an enemy Daken down. One thing to be careful of, especially as a climbing 2 star player, is when Healing restores more health per turn than your match damage. In these cases, its best to put another opponent first, save up for a lethal amount of special moves, then switch to focusing Daken and kill him in one shot.

Daken’s active move does moderate base damage, plus bonus damage based on the strike tiles on the board. It destroys these tiles, and also converts 2 blue tiles to green tiles. This is good, because it reduces the number of blue tiles on the board, but also bad, because it makes it very easy for Daken to replace any consumed strike tiles with immediate cascades. The other difficulty with this move is that it only requires 5 blue AP, and if there are a few strike tiles on the board, can hit very hard.

Daken’s biggest weakness is actually to stun. If you need to get rid of some green tiles, a stunned Daken will not fire Pheromone Rage. Additionally, you won’t see Healing and Heat function on a turn that Daken is stunned. Even occasional stuns can be essential to manage the green tiles.

Daken is generally high on my kill list. Pheromone Rage is never immediately lethal, but over time, it adds up. However, as mentioned earlier, if his healing is equal (or even nearly equal) to your match damage, put him in back until you have enough specials charged to one shot him. Blue denial is a possibility, but it ultimately will depend on the board. It is satisfy to watch him die from a Healing and Heat turn, but as long as you are denying blue AP to fire Chemical Reaction, you probably won’t be getting the total blue tiles below 6 often. 

Reader Question: What do you think of the weekly boosted characters?

Just wondering what your thoughts were on the rotating boosted characters within the game?

I generally like this feature. The game was getting rotten and stale with the same 2 or 3 teams appearing over and over in PvP. At the 2 star level it was rare to fight a battle that didn’t include Ares, OBW, or Daken, or you fought the Stormneto team. The 2 star level was a little more varied, as the number of characters in the game has always been growing and there used to be a lot more 3 star cover scarcity, but even then it got stale quickly.

The weekly boosted characters have added a lot of variability to this but giving players a chance to use a character that isn’t strictly as powerful.

I’m also a fan of the fact that it makes a lot of different characters viable in PvP. It’s great that you can see a powered up 2 star competing with a team of 3 stars. It creates a lot of unique match up and team possibilities not otherwise possible. For example, this week I’ve been experimenting with GSBW as an activator for 2 star Hawkeye.

It also helps make less covered characters viable. A 3 star with 9 covers is solid, but you probably don’t want to bring it into a 166 team fight. When you add the boost, however, you can now add that under covered hero to your roster.

And possibly best of all, I’m sure the dev team loves that this gives players a chance to try a new character and possibly drop some money on the game. I’m onboard here.

Got a question? Submit one in the comments or by email and maybe I’ll answer it here!

New 4 Legendary Character: Carnage

Carnage.. the newest 4 star character to be added to MPQ. As usual, I have no idea who this guy is from the comics or lore, but whatever. The cover art is pretty cool, as is the character model.

Carnage definitely goes for the wild, out of control play style. I don’t know if this is lore appropriate, but so far I think he is pretty awesome. Let’s look at his powers first.

In Game Cover Art

Red: Symbiote Scythes - Carnage’s red power deals damage to the target, then deals additional damage to your own team, as well as across the enemy team. At max power, it deals 4903 damage to the target, plus 1808 to all others, for 7 AP. That is some serious damage for not too much AP. A solid value in my view, although this isn’t really F2P efficient.

 Black: Alien Instincts - The black power is a passive. As an aside, why is it that new legendary characters are either countdown tiles or passives? Even worse, this one fires off of other powers, which continues the trend of Prof X and Kamala. Either way, this one sets 4 attack tiles, 2 friendly and 2 for the enemy. The friendly ones are strength 137, the enemy are strength 90 (at max level). This one is more of a non-starter for me, unless you have a lot of powers firing frequently, I don’t see it having a huge effect. Also, in the 4 star arena, the damage values aren’t that high. I would like to see Carnage paired with Falcon though, his yellow boosting your attack tiles with his blue keeping the enemy ones in check is an interesting idea.

Green: Carnage Rules - Carnage’s green power destroys random tiles and does additional damage for any special tiles destroyed. At max level, it destroys 16 and causes 651 damage per special tile. At first, I was incredibly underwhelmed, as we have seen how Doc Oct remains useless even with this power re-worked. However, this one seems to deal damage based on either a friendly or enemy special destroyed. Paired with his black, there is potential here. His green power is also exciting because it answers a real problem in team building. Moves that shake the board are great, but you can’t pair them with characters that build the board with special tiles. Hulk and Daken seem like a great pair, but in practice they just don’t work together. Carnage has the potential to work with characters that set special tiles.

I’m actually pretty excited about the direction of Carnage. A wild and crazy character sounds fun, it looks like he will be one that results in either unexpected loses or HUGE wins. I think he might capture some of the fun that is 2 star Hawkeye. So many players seem to love his speed shot with its huge damage potential on a lucky cascade, and I think Carnage could fill a similar role.

On the other hand, legendary characters are expensive and dear. Only the most dedicated (or rich…) players have a fully covered 4 star roster. For everyone else, its scraping and scrimping and praying for covers, and it makes a fun, but unproductive, character less appealing. If I’m a low budget player, I’m not spending my hard earned ISO and HP on a character that I won’t use in a key fight. 

Deadpool Daily Quest Teams: My Personal Group

I consistently see forum questions asking for information on teams to complete the final DDQ node. This is an ongoing series where I examine different teams or strategies.

For my first installment, I am going to share the team I have been using to clear the DDQ events with minimal effort. This team has so far basically trivialized the events, as much as they can be. You still need to pay attention to countdown tiles and your AP reserves, but this team never seems to lose.

Character 1: Level 94 OBW, covered at 3/5/5. OBW is going to be the backbone of pretty much any team you see here, so this should come at no surprise. I am confident you can easily clear this node without her, but in order to consistently get first run clears, she is going to be a necessary edition. The 3/5/5 cover pattern is the generally accepted ideal. I initially had reservations about the 3 purple, which lowers the AP stolen per move. However, it is true that you are able to fire it much more frequently with 3 covers, and I have come around. Blue remains the most over powered move in MPQ, and that is no different here. Stall on the countdown tiles plus a team heal can't be beat. The heal is especially key in these mutli-round events. Her black is a nice damage boost, and at level 94 with 5 covers it actually helps work down the goons.

Anti-Gravity Device - The most OP move in existence

Character 2: Level 166 LThor, covered at 3/5/5. LThor is one of the best 3 stars, with a lot of versatility. He has the HP to tank, great damage output, plus tile generation. Mine is fully leveled to 166, which really helps reduce the time to kill, however you do not need him at max. You can easily replace with 2 star Thor as well, although I think you will want him at 94. I like 3/5/5 personally, although some argue for 4/4/5. I'm willing to let the red slide a bit because I want his yellow power generating as many green tiles as possible. I frequently find that I can fire Call the Storm twice, fire his yellow once, and then gain enough AP to immediately fire Call the Storm again.

Character 3: Level 131 X-Force, covered at 2/3/1. X-Force is obviously a strong character and generally useful. Mine isn't even close to fully covered, but I still include him here for a few reasons. First, his black power is great against goons. Goons tend to place countdown tiles in their strongest color, and Surgical Strike wipes them off the board. It is an excellent backup to OBW when you are low on blue AP. His yellow is also useful as a board shaker plus strong healing, although in this context you will want yellow AP to Thor. His green is a decent board clear, but I'd never waste the AP that should be going to Call the Storm.

The strategy:
The strategy is pretty straightforward. Round 1, against the goons, you want to build AP. I try to prioritize blue, since I want to get out of Round 1 with as much health as possible. Ideally you take no damage. Every turn make sure that no countdowns are about to fire, and just make matches. The only AP you should spend are blue to stall countdowns, and if you are facing Maggia goons, you can use OBW's purple to steal some blue in a jam. If a move is about to fire, carefully consider the value of wasting another special vs. the damage. If you are going to get hit by one shuriken tile, you should just take the damage. If 2 Tommy Guns are about to fire, use X-Force's black to knock them out.

My single exception is that when the last goon is under 1,300 health, I use Thor's red to wipe them. The reason is that this allows me first turn at the next round.

Strategy? Just fire Call the Storm until everyone is dead

Round 2, against the three mid-level characters, is time to dump my AP. I always fire Call the Storm first, making sure to switch the lead character in between for maximum damage. I then cycle through Thor's red, then Thor's yellow, and then I evaluate. Usually I have green AP for Call the Storm again, so that is a nice bonus, but if not fire X-Force's black. This is almost always enough to clear, if it isn't, check the enemy AP. If they have enough to fire any of their specials (check the living enemy heroes to verify), use OBW's purple until they can't. You can easily survive a round or two of matches, but they will try to fire their specials, and these can really mess you up moving forward.

I'd try to avoid firing OBW's blue if possible. You want it for the next round of goons.

Round 3, as long as you made it out of round 2 without taking a lot of damage, is similar to round 1. Its perfectly acceptable to have spent all your AP. Again, start saving up AP and blocking countdown timers. The round 3 goons are a little stronger, so be careful letting them fire their moves. The fact that they are stronger is really helpful though, as you can save up even more AP during the round. Again, the countdown blocking pattern goes OBW's blue, then if possible OBW purple to steal blue AP, then X-Force black, and as a last resort, any other power to stop an imminent attack.

One thing to consider this round is the Maggie Thug. They generate blue AP, which you can steal, so leaving them around is helpful. Also, one of their moves is threaten, which creates a strike tile. In some instances, you can let this fire without ruining your run. It only does immediate damage if it creates a cascade, so if you are in trouble, check the Threaten tile. If nothing falling above it will make a cascade, let it go off and save the blue AP. However, be mindful of this new tile, as it will make a lot of other attacks lethal.

Again, try to finish off this round with a Thor red to maintain your first turn status in Round 4.

Round 4 is both the scariest and the easiest round. By now you should have nearly max AP in most categories, except for blue. First things first, use two Call the Storms. This should basically kill at least one enemy, and leave the other two very low. Don't forget to change order between the first and second shot. You can then cycle your other powers until all are dead. If you don't have the legs to finish them in one round, make sure to steal down their AP with OBW.

One thing to watch out for on this round is Deadpool. Life of the Party blocks high damage from other characters, so you may need to kill him first. Call the Storm usually is fine (since it hits all) but any other moves he will step in front, take the damage, and immediately heal.

This round just go for broke, losing your guys is fine as long as you win in the end. Feel free to use OBW's blue to heal as needed, and enjoy your 3 star cover and 1,000 ISO.

How did this team work for you? Got a better team? Post it in the comments and I will try it out and do a follow up post.

Analysis of Moonstone's Recent Black Buff - Is She Now a Keeper?

Moonstone is my favorite character, and when I heard she was being buffed, I was really excited. However, I still admit that she still isn't a high tier character.

 Her black is cheaper, which is the most important improvement. The previous black move was one of my favorites, because it was so unique and produced so many interesting and fun results. The fact that it was also a single target stun was the icing on the cake. It just cost way too much. If they reduced the cost some, I think you are on the right track. Instead, we get another "answer to enemy special tiles" move. These used to be rare (basically Captain America's overwrite, then we added Loki and Daredevil) but now it seems like every new character can either destroy or steal enemy special tiles. I guess added Moonstone to this list gives another option, but I don't think its that special anymore. As for the black power firing itself, its better, for sure, but I personally prefer moves that destroy enemy special tiles and cause damage based on that over moves that steal the tiles. I do think the cost is a little more in line with expectations though.

 Moonstone's red remains much like her old black: A potentially awesome move ruined by its cost. Her red has the potential to be a beastly nuke, it can OHKO pretty much anyone if the board is set up. The problem is that it has a fairly high cost to charge, and then further requires even more red tiles to sit on the board for damage. This makes it one of the slowest moves in the game. You could possibly charge with the new silver magneto purple, I guess...

 Moonstone's purple, on the other hand, I think is one of the better powers in the game. It is a great counter to hero character's that place countdowns or strong special tiles. You can completely nullify something like a Magneto countdown or Sentry's Sacrifice attack tile with it. I always thought this was cool. When her purple has no targets, it does solid single target damage and has a great potential to set up cascades. This has always been my preferred use, and I still think it fits that role spectacularly. In fact, in my view, unless the special tiles is particularly strong, I don't think Moonstone's purple is an efficient use of AP to remove. A regular Daken tile, for example, doesn't warrant using Gravity Warp. If you have a Falcon boosted Daken tile, that changes things, or if you are going to pull one of Blade's attack tiles into a cascade with others, maybe you can make the argument. This reveals the real power of her new black, it has solid synergy with purple. It can either completely eliminate the special tiles and let her purple function as damage, or it can at least reduce the number of enemy special tiles and make Gravity Warp much more predictable. The counter to Moonstone has always been more than one special tile, her new black really helps here.

 As a cover to keep or toss, her HP isn't great... but she is frequently boosted and her covers are somewhat easy to come by as frequent progression rewards for both PvP and PvE events. If you are a beginning 2 star player, she might be the first character that you can get a full set of covers for. She also is really great against 2 star Daken, the bane of the beginner player. However, you will soon find that there are easily 5 other 2 stars that vastly outrank her, so if you are conscious of your total roster slots, you will probably want to replace her. CStorm, Daken, Ares, OBW, and Thor are all objectively stronger, I'd say Wolvie is a little more well rounded (plus his heal helps budget players).

2 Star Character Guide: Captain America (Modern)

Captain America's Modern cover is a strong 2 star character with beefy health and interesting power mechanics. He is a strong PVP competitor and a powerful PVE choice. His covers don't appear in the story, but are a good PVP award. Yellow - Sentinel of Liberty: Captain America's Yellow power is very expensive, but also incredibly useful. It requires 19 AP to activate at level 5, but it turns 4 tiles into strength 166 protect tiles. With over 650 full points of damage reduction, this can really slow the enemy team. Additionally, it creates yellow protect tiles, so you can use it to set off critical combos, or erase enemy special or countdown tiles. A since each is individually so strong, using two to set off a combo and leaving two behind still provides significant protection. During PVP, there is always the risk that the other team wipes them quickly, and at 19 required AP this one doesn't often come around until later in the match. In the PVE, it is mostly effective for creating critical tiles or eliminating enemy countdowns. Red - Star Spangled Avenger: This move allows Captain America to deal damage and then create a countdown timer which returns all but one of the AP spent. The damage isn't very high, topping out at 627, but the fact that after three turns it returns almost in full means this move can often be chained repeatedly. Additionally, the countdown tile can be created on an enemy special tile (depending on the moves level, at 5 any tile can be targeted) so it can be used offensively. In PVP, this move is effective in conjunction with a stun move, or to destroy enemy special tiles, but getting through three turns without removal can be tough. in PVE, this move is ridiculous, as it often won't be destroyed, and can be used repeatedly. Blue - Peacemaker: Captain America's Blue move is Peacemaker. This move stuns the enemy target only for 2 turns, and then creates a 3 turn countdown, which returns all but 2 of the AP used. Like his red move, the countdown tile can be created over enemy special tiles, an added bonus. In PVE this is a strong move, as it can be used to prevent an eminent enemy attack, and it is easy to get the AP returned. In PVP, this move by far works best after the first two opponents have fallen. The countdown is only one turn longer than the stun, so the enemy can basically be infinitely stunned, unless they remove the timer. This can also be used to destroy any of the story events against a single, overpowered opponent. PVP Summary - A strong but not outstanding choice. Two of his powers are easily countered by PVP opponents, and the third takes a ton of AP to trigger. PVE Summary - An excellent choice, as two moves are essentially free once used for the first time and the third is outstandingly versatile. Team-Up: Weak. Sentinel of Liberty takes a lot of AP to trigger, and Star Spangled Avenger and Peacemaker require multiple uses to be truly effective, which is impossible here. Match-ups: Anyone with complementary colors. Counters: None in particular, Modern Captain America is well rounded.