*** The Punisher (Dark Reign) ***

Unknown

Celerity wrote:

To reiterate: 5 in black is not for the extra attack damage, it's so you can guarantee your strike damage twice per turn and not worry about nursing your attack tiles.

That's just it though: it's still not guaranteed. The attack tile will always be unreliable, which is what finally, after weeks of consideration, was the fact that convinced me to respec from 5/5/3 to 3/5/5.

For a long time, I was convinced that 5/5/3 was the way to go, as I found the strike+attack tile combo to be Frank's greatest source of dps. And sure, that it still is, but in pvp I found myself very rarely getting that big dot damage rolling. It was never reliable. That being said, reducing the timer by one turn greatly increases the odds that you will always have one attack tile up, which is all you need. But you'll still be getting disappointing countdown placements and tinykitty cascades that will ruin your day.

At 3 red, I also didn't find Retribution worth using as a general nuke at all, and the 30% threshold doesn't mean much against most characters. Although the raw damage boost from 3 to 5 isn't that big, it is a big increase relatively and makes Retribution much less lackluster compared to other red skills out there. The way I saw it was that he moved from two useful skills to three. The convenience of 5 red against high-health targets adds a lot of value, too.

So, Ruval, I'd say it boils down to whether you want to reduce (but not eliminate) the uncertainty of the Molotov tile, or beef up Retribution to be used as a nuke with the added benefit of being able to cruise through high-health targets. Both 5/5/3 and 3/5/5 are good, and I think people often prefer the latter simply because Molotov tiles can always disappoint, whereas Retribution is always reliable.

Unknown

Sorry for taking a few days to get back to this.

My high-ish level characters will be (once Frank is levelled, I did pull the money trigger on this. May regret it, we'll see. Wife is on board, so that's okay).

Punisher
95 Hood, 5/5/1
85 OBW
85 Astonishing Wolvie
85 Ares, who is mostly taking Wolvie's spot to level Frank now.
85 C Storm, my wife love her some Wind Storm.
Misc other non-leveled guys - basically every other 3* (Save LazyThor) with 1-5 covers each and 2* with maxxed (or near it) covers

Of that, I'd likely be running OBW/Hood/Punisher when I can, so he'd be the main damage guy. I think OBW/Ares/Punisher would work as well. Often you are forced for the third char, so it'd be Frank/OBW I think. I have started experimenting with a 'no healing' team and subbing OBW in to heal in prologue, but I'm not convinced yet.

I think it may come down to how much other use I have to red. OBW/Hood/Frank - only Frank uses red, so having his be good would be nice. Ares does have a red, but it's a bit of a different usage.

It really seems to come down to:
- 5/5/3 - Black is more consistent, but not guaranteed. Still, this is the more consistent damage approach. Red isn't quite a waste of time, but you will very rarely use it for the instant kill, but you can get 1200ish (>) damage from it as a mini-nuke.
- 3/5/5 - Less consistent in the 'average' fight, but shines when there are 1-2 very high health opponents. The red is also generally better, doing 1500ish. If you use red twice/fight, that's 600 more damage to offset the extra damage black will do.

I'm still not sure. I have some time to think it over.

Can I confirm something - I see people above talking about strike/attack tile combos. Do the strike tiles are damage to the attack tiles? Are the strike tiles added to each attack (this seems crazy good with M storm) or once to the whole attack? I think it's just once, which is why people above are noting it's important to have at least one attack tile down - then your strike tiles can affect your match and your attack. And OBW's espionage as well, maybe.

Unknown

I think You just answered Your own question, in a way at least. Build 553 is good when You're still in the ** position or when slowly transitioning into ***. But once You're in ***, 355 shines.
You can achieve bigger damage in black by using green first. No point in leveling it further than 3.

As for Retaliation - once You're in the *** zone, You will love it and use it very often. And will save Your **** plenty of times.

Unknown

I'm 355 user. Since his first appearance, there were disputes about best build. At first, 553 were considered better - after all, "where and when you will be against fat opponents?". Mostly in PvE, of course. And PvE is much rarer than PvE (at least was). This changed with next Thor-centered tourney. 10k fat pre-nerf Thor with his nukes was devastating, and that's where 5 red shined - being very cheap (all of Punisher's abilities are in "cheap" range), sometimes difference between shooting it at 4k or 3k was difference between life and death. Oh, and it's animation addictive as hell - it's possibily one of most popular animation in game.
As for 5 black - if it's long, slow fight, I usually throw 3-4-5 Molotovs during match.Sometimes it becomes even tiresome - almost each turn some cCD ends and puts attack tile. Even with 3 in black. Even with using green. Initial AoE of black is much better part (just don't use it on cStorm).
Just my 2 cents.

unimatrix

I use 355 build. That 5 at Green comes with additional strike tile. Which is pretty useful. Combine that with espionage from your obw, those strike tiles are an additional turn of damage by itself.

Unknown

Man, the simulator was great timing for me.

Just prior to it, I decided to level Ares up from 20 to 85. He was 75-80 as the tournament started and quickly hit 85. Buffed Ares was key for me doing well in the Simulator. With all the iso flowing in the simulator, I was able to finish off Ares and get Punisher to 89 or so.

With both the Hood's event and the simulator ending, I got over 20k iso in the last 24 hours. Good chance that'll get dumped into Punisher.

That said, Punisher was high enough level for me to start using, even suboptimally. The experience was enough to make me think 3/5/5 is the way to go. The setup needed for the attack + strike tiles seems a bit too tricky - it doesn't really feel like a 'game changer'. Just a small, but nice, boost to consistent damage.

3/5/5 and the red will save your **** one day and you'll love it. Plus, the red does a bit more damage as well -only a few hundred, but enough to reduce the 'advantage' the black has.

darkmagearcanis

Finally!!!! My Punisher is at level 141. My first 141. Although my build was 4/4/5. Works pretty well for me.

mouser

Appreciate any recommendations on pairings. Been mostly using Punisher and OBW together with either Patch or the mandatory 3rd character. I've recently gotten to the point where I have viable cover counts on many other 3* options and trying to prioritize who to focus leveling on. Have:

3/5/5 *** The Punisher 131/141
3/5/5 *** Wolverine 114/141
5/4/4 *** Iron Man 40 100/141
5/4/2 *** Psylocke 100/115
3/5/3 *** Thor 100/115
5/3/4 *** The Hulk 95/128
5/4/x *** Doctor Doom 92/102
5/2/5 *** Magneto 83/128
5/5/3 *** The Hood 75/141
3/3/3 *** Spider-Man 61/89
5/5/x *** Loki 53/102
4/3/2 *** Black Panther 53/89
2/3/2 *** Black Widow 51/64
5/1/x *** Ragnarok 33/66
3/3/5 *** Daredevil 32/115
1/1/1 *** Captain America 20

My experience pairing other characters with Punisher:
Patch - Okay. Not the greatest synergy but their abilities have enough variation that it doesn't feel that bad using them together. Have kept Patch at a high enough level behind Punisher that he still owns the green and red tiles so can tank and nuke red.
Psylocke - Was nice during the event when she was buffed, but doesn't feel as great now. Perhaps more covers and levels would make me feel different.
Hulk - Just recently got some critical covers that make him viable. Wouldn't mind using him on defense, but doesn't seem ideal on offense.
IM40 - Meh. Can usually get the green tiles by matching and/or stealing. IM40 doesn't seem to add that much.
Hood - Recently got the 5th Blue cover. Have used him a little bit with Punisher and liking it so far.
CMags - Seems like tons of potential, but worried that only having 2 Red right now affects the strike tile triggering.
Thor - Didn't really like the synergy at all. Both competing heavily for green, and I find myself neglecting yellow when playing them together.
Everyone else: no idea.

I do have enough excess HP that I am okay with buying a cover or two if I thought it was worthwhile.

NorthernPolarity

mouser wrote:

Appreciate any recommendations on pairings. Been mostly using Punisher and OBW together with either Patch or the mandatory 3rd character. I've recently gotten to the point where I have viable cover counts on many other 3* options and trying to prioritize who to focus leveling on. Have:

3/5/5 *** The Punisher 131/141
3/5/5 *** Wolverine 114/141
5/4/4 *** Iron Man 40 100/141
5/4/2 *** Psylocke 100/115
3/5/3 *** Thor 100/115
5/3/4 *** The Hulk 95/128
5/4/x *** Doctor Doom 92/102
5/2/5 *** Magneto 83/128
5/5/3 *** The Hood 75/141
3/3/3 *** Spider-Man 61/89
5/5/x *** Loki 53/102
4/3/2 *** Black Panther 53/89
2/3/2 *** Black Widow 51/64
5/1/x *** Ragnarok 33/66
3/3/5 *** Daredevil 32/115
1/1/1 *** Captain America 20

My experience pairing other characters with Punisher:
Patch - Okay. Not the greatest synergy but their abilities have enough variation that it doesn't feel that bad using them together. Have kept Patch at a high enough level behind Punisher that he still owns the green and red tiles so can tank and nuke red.
Psylocke - Was nice during the event when she was buffed, but doesn't feel as great now. Perhaps more covers and levels would make me feel different.
Hulk - Just recently got some critical covers that make him viable. Wouldn't mind using him on defense, but doesn't seem ideal on offense.
IM40 - Meh. Can usually get the green tiles by matching and/or stealing. IM40 doesn't seem to add that much.
Hood - Recently got the 5th Blue cover. Have used him a little bit with Punisher and liking it so far.
CMags - Seems like tons of potential, but worried that only having 2 Red right now affects the strike tile triggering.
Thor - Didn't really like the synergy at all. Both competing heavily for green, and I find myself neglecting yellow when playing them together.
Everyone else: no idea.

I do have enough excess HP that I am okay with buying a cover or two if I thought it was worthwhile.

C. Mags by a landslide: it isn't close at all. The amount of synergies between the two characters are ridiculous. Here are some to start you off:
1. Punisher's Green + C. Mag's blue or red. Punisher makes strike tiles. C. Mags has cheap, spammable abilities. You do the math.
2. C. Mag's blue + Punisher env crits. C. Mags blue generates crit tiles extremely easily, and Punisher has the highest env tile crit generation in the game. His 4x crit multiplier and 4 env match damage gives him 48 env ap off of a match 3 crit, which means that he can almost activate thorned rose in jungle or 2 oasis activations in desert. Now if only you had some ability that allowed you to generate 2 more env AP.... oh wait, C. Mags match 4 blue will let you do that for 1AP. This lets you get absurdly fast wins in either environment. Make a few env crit tiles matches, and generate an absurd amount of all AP which feed back into all of their abilities, or generate an insane amount of green AP which lets you spam judgement and make strike-tile fueled cascades into more judgements that loop and end the game almost instantly.
3. Punisher Green + C. Mags Purple - so you've exhausted all the blue AP on the board due to spamming C. Mag's blue, and don't have enough blue tiles to make translocate do enough damage. Judgement kills off 9 (likely not blue tiles) and gives you 9 fresh tiles to work with, getting more blue tiles on the board.
4. C. Mags Blue + Punisher abilities - You know how you get 6 black AP a lot of the time and only need 1 more AP to use molotov? C. Mag's blue lets you get that extra random AP to use the ability.
5. C. Mags Purple + Punisher red - C. Mags purple will get almost any enemy in the game down to below 40% health. Punisher's red finishes him off.

I guess most of it boils down to C. Mags gives you spammable attacks and AP generation. Punisher gives you strike tiles and cheap attacks as well. Pair the two together, and you get extremely relevant abilities that do insane amounts of damage, control the board, and are just extremely awesome overall in 5 of the 6 colors. You only having 2 red for C. Mags doesn't really matter at all: blue and purple are his main strengths when paired with Punisher anyways. Level him to 141 (128 I guess since the 3rd red doesn't make that much of a difference) and never look back.

For your 3rd, Hood is pretty amazing with the pair as well, since you have relevant abilities in all colors, being able to make use of whatever AP hood steals.

Sandwichboy

Honestly, my go to team now that I've moved almost completely to *** characters is Punisher, C. Mags and Spiderman. Every colour is being actively used, and used well. and good god, even without the massive nuke of Mags' purple, 2 shots of judgement makes magnetic projectile spam REALLY hurt.

Unknown

I originally used the 5/5/3 build thinking it was the best. After acquiring 2 red covers I respecced to 3/5/5 to test it out.

5 in red is by far the best way to go. Although it may not seem like much, the extra dmg and the 10% more on the KO range has saved me soooo many times. There comes a point in this game where all you fight are high levels (either 141s in PvP or 150-230 mobs in PvE). Being able to finish someone off 1 turn early can be the difference between losing or winning.

Phaserhawk

To preface I am a 3/5/5 user but I think either 5/5/3 or 3/5/5 is fine as long as green is maxed you are okay...why?

Well 5/5/3 Punisher is going to do more damage on the front end, he's going to have more attack tiles out and he's going to slowly burn away life points. Now assuming a very beefy 15K hit pointer, the difference in red's would be 1500 pts. The question is, can you do an extra 1500 points damage with a 5/5/3 vs. a 3/5/5? There in lies the question, and if you get used to playing a 5/5/3 Punisher, you might have a different play style than a 3/5/5. For a 5/5/3 black is a very important color to get, you really on those attack tiles, and unless there is a stealth dmg buff, you only get attack tile damage increase at lvl 4 and 5 for black, not the initial AoE damage. Having played against a fair amount of 5/5/3 Punisher's, I can honestly say, that one less tick on the CD timer is many times too much to deal with before an attack tile comes out, but is it 1500 more damage?

Let's take a less beefy opponent, say you are dealing with fat 8700 hp LazyThor. The diff there is 870 life points. Are you going to get 870 extra damage out of your attack tiles by the time you can use red? If you believe or say yes, then 5/5/3 is great, and the opposite question can be said for 3/5/5 could you get that extra 870 damage faster with a better black skill?

Where I see the big difference is really only when you face big opponents, that's when 3/5/5 is truly the better build, it's the safer build, it's less potential damage then say a 5/5/3 but it's guarenteed damage. I mean if a 5/5/3 gets two blacks off, and has attack tiles on the board, plus green strike tiles, yeah, there is no way a 3/5/5 can come close to that damage. The only issue that I have personally is sometimes the black and green counter each other. If I have enough green to cast after i did black, I run the risk of destroying my black DoT.

In summation 5/5/3 and 3/5/5 are essentially the same it's just how they make the damage difference between the two skills. 5/5/3 wears you down so a lvl 3 red is enough to finish an opponent, and 3/5/5 does less damage with it's black, but it doesn't need to because it can cast red sooner for a finish. It all comes down to play style.

5/5/3---More theoretical dmg, higher risk/reward build
3/5/5---less but guarenteed dmg, safer build

mags1587

I'm a 5/5/3 Punisher user, partly because that's the way the covers fell for me, partly because I think that build suits my play style better.

I do have a question for people with the 3/5/5 build, though. More often than not, when I'm ready to finish off an opponent with Retribution, I double check their HP and find that they have just over 30% left of their health. So I make another match and between my strike and attack tiles, their health is knocked way down, to the point where it's almost overkill to use Retribution. Do you guys find this happening often with a 3/5/5 build?

Unknown

mags1587 wrote:

I'm a 5/5/3 Punisher user, partly because that's the way the covers fell for me, partly because I think that build suits my play style better.

I do have a question for people with the 3/5/5 build, though. More often than not, when I'm ready to finish off an opponent with Retribution, I double check their HP and find that they have just over 30% left of their health. So I make another match and between my strike and attack tiles, their health is knocked way down, to the point where it's almost overkill to use Retribution. Do you guys find this happening often with a 3/5/5 build?

Generally if I have an opponent who is above "instant kill" health but will die just from Retribution's damage + a match, I use retribution and then make the match, and I'm happy to do it

Meto5000

With the upcoming Punisher PVP, when paired with 3* Thor do you guys still think a 3/5/5 or 5/5/3 build is better than a 5/3/5 build? I don't foresee many instances where I'd rather use Punisher's green over waiting for Thor's unless it's to get in that last bit of damage to finish off an opponent.

Phaserhawk

Meto5000 wrote:

With the upcoming Punisher PVP, when paired with 3* Thor do you guys still think a 3/5/5 or 5/5/3 build is better than a 5/3/5 build? I don't foresee many instances where I'd rather use Punisher's green over waiting for Thor's unless it's to get in that last bit of damage to finish off an opponent.

Yes, and if you pair him with thor the AI will still cast Judgement over Call of the Storm anyways so you might as well have the best Judgement you can.

Unknown

So it says The Punisher draws his sidearm and finishes what he started. Damages the target for 564, if they are below 20% of their max health, he downs them. so my question is i know for a fact the enemy is damaged for more then 20% but he only does 900 damage shouldnt he down them? or do i have to be below 20% health? this is confusing me more then is should

Unknown

He downs them if they are below the last 20% of their hit points, not if you do more than 20% of their hit points in damage.

You know that red cross that is their health bar? Basically if 80% of that is empty, then you will kill the hero outright. Otherwise it will only do 564 damage.

FWIW that's why a lot of people like going 5 Red with Punisher, because it ups it to 40% of their health, which is a lot when you are talking about high level heroes and goons.

Unknown

Yeah, when you get to fighting big PVE goons his attack can do the equivalent of 4-5k+ for 8 AP which is amazing.

Unknown

Mizake wrote:

He downs them if they are below the last 20% of their hit points, not if you do more than 20% of their hit points in damage.

You know that red cross that is their health bar? Basically if 80% of that is empty, then you will kill the hero outright. Otherwise it will only do 564 damage.

FWIW that's why a lot of people like going 5 Red with Punisher, because it ups it to 40% of their health, which is a lot when you are talking about high level heroes and goons.

Thanks for the replay makes more sense to me now