*** Wolverine (Patch) ***

Mawtful

I only just acquired my first CMags Red cover, so for this intent, he was out of my game.
I've used Spidey at great lengths in PvE, but I've even stopped using him for that in recent weeks/months. Mine is fully covered, but only L75. For the most part I'd rather run oBW, since I think AP steal > Defense tiles.

I run Patch in a 3/5/5 build. He was my first 3* to 141.
I have only just recently made Panther my second 141, and I now have a number of other 3*'s over L100, including Hulk, Punisher and Rogers.

I feel as though I'm right at the 3* tier threshold - I have enough now that I should expect to encounter whole teams of 3* characters, although I think I should expect to start losing more than I win again as I've gone from big fish in a small pond to being the small fish in a bigger pond once more. I rely a lot more on Patch's red than his green currently, and that's becoming more of a liability as there's a much greater chance that he won't be covering tiles (eg. in Army of One, he would cover Yellow only). Although Patch Rage + Panther Rage is a thing of beauty even with Berserker Rage at rank 3.

It's still a little dependent on the rest of your team lineup, but I think:
If Patch is covering Red/Green then 5/3/5. This seems counter intuitive, but I think that you want the regen from Yellow if Patch is covering more colours.
If you're running another Red/Green spender then 5/5/3. Patch will actually be protected, requiring less regen. With this build, if you KO Patch first, the other character is building and spending red/green, if the other character is targeted, Patch will pick up covering Red/Green, making TBTI an end game threat.

Spoit

You don't want patch to be protected though. Both because of TBTI, as well as eating match damage and regening it instantly

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

But if you don't use him a lot in PvE, 5/5/3 is by far the best. You simply can't reliably tank with Patch in the current PvP structure (featured hero almost always has at least 4 colors of your team is at all decent level) to make good use of his regen.

Why is 5/5/3 supposedly by far the best in PVP? Even if you think his regen is worthless in PVP (which I HIGHLY disagree with), I literally NEVER use his red. When paired with CMags, even if I don't have rage strike tiles, I'd rather spam red for cascades or a more favorable board position than waste it on TBTI

Unknown

entropic01 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

But if you don't use him a lot in PvE, 5/5/3 is by far the best. You simply can't reliably tank with Patch in the current PvP structure (featured hero almost always has at least 4 colors of your team is at all decent level) to make good use of his regen.

Why is 5/5/3 supposedly by far the best in PVP? Even if you think his regen is worthless in PVP (which I HIGHLY disagree with), I literally NEVER use his red. When paired with CMags, even if I don't have rage strike tiles, I'd rather spam red for cascades or a more favorable board position than waste it on TBTI

TBTI is marginal in PvP but regen is useless in PvP. It doesn't matter on defense (nobody is going to attack Patch first no matter what level of regen he has) at all. It matters very little on offense due to the structure of PvP events. Assuming your featured character is always at least higher than level 141 after boost (so around level 100 base), that character will always have blue, purple, black over Patch. Patch's colors are green > red > yellow, so if the featured character has a yellow, he'd always take yellow over Patch (because even if yellow is his weakest color he is higher level than Patch). Likewise if the featured character has a red that is at least his second strongest color, he'd take red over Patch as well. I checked my roster and the only 3*s with a red as the weakest color are The Punisher and Daredevil. Of course if the featured character is maxed (level 212) he might even take a color where he's weaker than Patch normally just due to that extra 71 levels.

Only GSBW and OBW will not take any additional colors from Patch due to being boosted (their strongest colors are exactly the opposite). Any character with a yellow will have 4 colors over Patch. Any character with a red that isn't The Punisher or Daredevil will take 4 colors over Patch. They can take even more if they're higher level. Now, I know plenty of time your featured character is low level, but having a low level featured character makes your team more vulnerable too. Certainly I can't imagine why if you had a level 141 featured character you'd purposely not use him just to help out Patch. Sure, regen is great while you're still transitioning because Patch can easily be your highest character and your featured character might be a loaned character who might be tanking no colors at all. But at some point you're going to move out of the phase where Patch is the sole high level character on your team, and regen is just not very useful if he's tanking 2 or even 1 color. Of course TBTI sucks too when you only have 2 colors, but at least it might be useful on defense because other characters are likely to die before Patch.

Some numbers to illustrate since I happen to have a max level Doom (level 173) queued up. His 3 strong colors are 81/72/63. A level 141 character has 67/60/52 for their 3 colors.

Note that the first two values are higher than the highest stat of the level 141. This means the only way a character that shares any color with Patch that won't take a color from him is if green is weakest color. The only 3* that satisfy this is HT and Thor, though those characters can go to level 212. I got a level 200 Psylocke in my Simulator Basic and her weakest strong color is 73, so a level 212 will definitely take any conflicting colors from Patch. Yes none of that matters if your featured character is low, but that's not a desireable outcome in the first place.

over_clocked

Phantron wrote:

I don't get why people want regen for PvP. Patch isn't going to take enough damage on PvP before your other 2 guys need health packs, and he usually only tanks 2 color in a PvP event if your featured character is high enough because that guy will take whatever colors he shares with Patch + all of Patch's weak colors, and only OBW/GSBW shares no colors with Patch in tile strength.

Doom and Yelena also have blue/black/purple tile strengths. I imagine that strike tiles + attack tiles = tons, tons of excruciating pain.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

entropic01 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

But if you don't use him a lot in PvE, 5/5/3 is by far the best. You simply can't reliably tank with Patch in the current PvP structure (featured hero almost always has at least 4 colors of your team is at all decent level) to make good use of his regen.

Why is 5/5/3 supposedly by far the best in PVP? Even if you think his regen is worthless in PVP (which I HIGHLY disagree with), I literally NEVER use his red. When paired with CMags, even if I don't have rage strike tiles, I'd rather spam red for cascades or a more favorable board position than waste it on TBTI

TBTI is marginal in PvP but regen is useless in PvP. It doesn't matter on defense (nobody is going to attack Patch first no matter what level of regen he has) at all. It matters very little on offense due to the structure of PvP events. Assuming your featured character is always at least higher than level 141 after boost (so around level 100 base), that character will always have blue, purple, black over Patch. Patch's colors are green > red > yellow, so if the featured character has a yellow, he'd always take yellow over Patch (because even if yellow is his weakest color he is higher level than Patch). Likewise if the featured character has a red that is at least his second strongest color, he'd take red over Patch as well. I checked my roster and the only 3*s with a red as the weakest color are The Punisher and Daredevil. Of course if the featured character is maxed (level 212) he might even take a color where he's weaker than Patch normally just due to that extra 71 levels.

Only GSBW and OBW will not take any additional colors from Patch due to being boosted (their strongest colors are exactly the opposite). Any character with a yellow will have 4 colors over Patch. Any character with a red that isn't The Punisher or Daredevil will take 4 colors over Patch. They can take even more if they're higher level. Now, I know plenty of time your featured character is low level, but having a low level featured character makes your team more vulnerable too. Certainly I can't imagine why if you had a level 141 featured character you'd purposely not use him just to help out Patch. Sure, regen is great while you're still transitioning because Patch can easily be your highest character and your featured character might be a loaned character who might be tanking no colors at all. But at some point you're going to move out of the phase where Patch is the sole high level character on your team, and regen is just not very useful if he's tanking 2 or even 1 color. Of course TBTI sucks too when you only have 2 colors, but at least it might be useful on defense because other characters are likely to die before Patch.

Some numbers to illustrate since I happen to have a max level Doom (level 173) queued up. His 3 strong colors are 81/72/63. A level 141 character has 67/60/52 for their 3 colors.

Note that the first two values are higher than the highest stat of the level 141. This means the only way a character that shares any color with Patch that won't take a color from him is if green is weakest color. The only 3* that satisfy this is HT and Thor, though those characters can go to level 212. I got a level 200 Psylocke in my Simulator Basic and her weakest strong color is 73, so a level 212 will definitely take any conflicting colors from Patch. Yes none of that matters if your featured character is low, but that's not a desireable outcome in the first place.

That's only matters if you have mountains of ISO to toss onto marginal characters though. if you have a boosted character that's actually good (like this recent punisher one), then you can have them do the heavy lifting, otherwise, the required one is largely irrelevant.

btw, cmags is blue/red/yellow, the exact same secondary and tertiary colors, so as long as he's on the right, you only lose out on blue, plus whatever colors the required one takes

Unknown

I did some calculation and if you have a level 100 character base, who is boosted to level 150, here's the boosted character relative to the number of color Patch tanks (ignoring whoever your 3rd person might be):

Patch - Up to all 6
GSBW, OBW, Doom, Loki - 3 colors
Everyone else - At most 2

Regen is well worth it if Patch is tanking at least 3 colors, but there are only 5 characters in the game (and one of them is Patch) that can be boosted for this to happen if your featured character is at least level 100. It's not hard to come up with a team that lets Patch tank 3 colors without boosts, but the vast majority of PvP events involve boosting. Yes it doesn't matter if your boosted character is low too, but having a high level boosted character should be a bonus, not a negative, so it's something you ought to strive for in the long run.

That said of course Patch goes well in events that features characters that you're likely to never level up, like Loki.

Unknown

The question skews the results too much. I suspect spidey should still be the best active stunner in the game if he were to get nerfed. There are no useable stunning characters after him, which effectively is saying "no stunning." Ignoring mags is a little more fair as the ap cost is the only issue there and would almost certainly change from being a great move to go with Giles to becoming an awful one.

Regardless, it really does depend on the team. So assuming a player has neither mags or spidey, has no plans to ever have them, how should they build? Well, if you tun patch, his green is a must. No green= no point to him. Red there are other characters that can use it possibly more effectively, especially if your team isn't being purposefully **** for patches to own colors. I would say, generally 4/4/5 or 5/3/5 would be the best builds. 3 in green and you might want to start considering just using punisher imo. The yellow isn't that different on def, as most fight him ASSUMING he is going to heal every turn, but on off it really does save you the cost of health packs.

@4/4/5 its less damage for green with a little more on red. Bigger issue, imo, is the difference in enemy purple tiles dropped. 6 vs 4 is pretty big. If you run spidey/bullseye on your team, feel free to just run 5/3/5. Why? Because you will usually have 3-5 uncovered purple anyway, but you might cut off one or two from the 5 skill on that situation. On the opposite side you have the idea that 4 tiles are much more easily removed than 6. A match 4 or a desert is likely to remove 1-2 easily. A character with a tile remover might take away one or two as well. No mags/spidey and you are talking about 2-4 tiles removed in a turn. That could possibly totally remove those purple @4 green. Almost no chance with 5.

So like I said...it really depends on the team. And I like that. I like how mags has 3 builds. I like how punisher has 2 main builds. I like how, even though I said its mostly 2 builds, that there are more worthwhile with patches as atguements for 5/5/3 and x/x/4 do exist and are worth running. Know what I don't like? Thor having 1 main build and maybe a slight change only if you kinda want go be "different"... Or cap who is only logical as a 3/5/5....or falcon or bp where the build is 5/who cares/who cares. Wish more character were like punisher and patch and magneto. more builds = more diversity = more fun.

Unknown

entropic01 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

But if you don't use him a lot in PvE, 5/5/3 is by far the best. You simply can't reliably tank with Patch in the current PvP structure (featured hero almost always has at least 4 colors of your team is at all decent level) to make good use of his regen.

Why is 5/5/3 supposedly by far the best in PVP? Even if you think his regen is worthless in PVP (which I HIGHLY disagree with), I literally NEVER use his red. When paired with CMags, even if I don't have rage strike tiles, I'd rather spam red for cascades or a more favorable board position than waste it on TBTI

I feel the same as you.

That's said, @phantron, patch doesn't have to match every color, or even every other to be useful (with regen). With the games increased propensity for good aoe moves (3 of top 5 have one...the two that don't are mags and patch himself...spidey is an asterisk top 5, or I can just say 3 of the top 6 and give punisher the 6 seed) healing is even more useful than before. Even without aoe moves, purposefully throwing patch in front of a 1-2 k move you know will hit next turn and letting him heal over time is also highly useful. Healing match damage every turn is nice, but the real benefit is being able to tank an ability and come out shiny a few turns later imo...for offense. For def, the anti match damage is more important in a way, but as we both said, the heal isn't that helpful between 3 vs 5 on def. You say because its uses. I say, because ppl ASSUME its @5 regardless with how they go about ko-ing patch. Same result, defensively not a huge advantage between 3/5 ondef. Of course, the machine getting off tbti is not going to happen very often unless a hugely unlucky cascade occurs, there is an ap builder/stealer, or if the match takes too long (usually from poor use of abilities, bad board, or attacking patch with your match damage and then using ap to ko other characters).

Side note: how awful would it be to fight a team where all 3 characters auto healed every turn lol. 3*** dakan, patch....4**** deadpool?

Phaserhawk

Wow, I didn't think this post was gonna get players all flustered The reason I excluded C.Mags and Spidey is the simple fact you can cast Berzerker Rage at lvl 5 with no repurcussions because the other team won't go again. I wanted to see what people would run without that safety net. While I 100% agree with Phantron about healing not being necessary in PvP it does have it's merits. especially with L.Thor, BP, Punisher, Hulk (to some degree) and the AoE they supply it's nice to know that if they Call of the Storm me and Patch is not the target he may heal up by the time the go to focus him down. Same with Punisher, Wolvie heals from Cocktail by the time you come around to deal with him. So in those instances the 5 in yellow are invaluable, and as more and more characters are released that want yellow, Thor, BP, Falcon, Cap, the days of no one going after yellow are gone. I think Patch needs at minimum 4 in yellow. And having played 3/5/5 for so long I can say Patch needs more than 3 in green. As for Red and TBTI well the arguements for and against are actually the same. People say you never cast it, it's too expensive, and Patch doesn't get the tiles to make it worthwhile, which is the exact reason why to run it at 5, because he can then do more damage with less tiles making it semi viable. I do agree the cost is too high for what it does, and if Patch is last man standing whether you do lvl 5 dmg 216 per tile or lvl 3 dmg 98 per tile, you are going one hit them more than likely. Rough numbers lvl 3 red 98 dmg per tile, lvl 4 red 135 per tile, lvl 5 red 216 per tile. That's a 37% jump in dmg from 3 to 4 and a 60% jump from 4 to 5. Lvl 3 green offers 3 strike tiles, lvl 4 4 tiles, lvl 5 6 tiles. At 148 dmg a piece that means a 33% dmg jump from 3 to 4 and a 50% dmg increase from 4 to 5. But that's also the same dmg increase you will be taking on defense, thus the draw back.

The most offensive build is obviously 5/5/3, the most defensive offensive build is 5/3/5
The most deffenseive build is 3/5/5, and the most offensive deffensive build is 4/4/5
The only hybrid worth building IMO is 5/4/4. So we have 5 solid Patch Builds from most offensive to most defensive they are

5/5/3, 5/4/4, 5/3/5, 4/4/5, 3/5/5 You could argue 5/3/5 and 4/4/5 could be flipped due to some mathmatically computation, but I think anything with 5 in green is going to generate more offense all around.

I have found my 3/5/5 severely lacking some of the offesnive firepower I need, I don't use red much and when I do I usually need about 5-6K worth of dmg from it. Assuming I have only 2 colors, not even 5 in red gets me that as you need 23 to 27 tiles to do that kinda of dmg, and that is 3 tile range which Patch has an almost impossible time doing. Until IM40 gets a rework and is a little more cost effective, he's the only pairing with Patch that can max TBTI on a consistant basis without having to wait for others to die. Patch is actually really good against Spiderman as if you can get the red you can time it so the AI stuns the other 2 guys and allows Patch to 1 shot the other team, I use the other teams Spiderman offensively to do this, and leave him last as I one shot Thor and Punisher with 11K dmg

I will as soon as I get a green cover switch my Patch to 4/4/5. I can say this with 100% certaintly. While I was transitioning from 2* to 3* and Patch was my first full color, 3/5/5 was absolutely the best build and still is for people in those transitions. but once you get a fuller lineup and more 141's 3/5/5 is too weak and you will need to upgrade.

Unknown

Personally I like 3/5/5. Essentially its low risk. If you're looking at using Falcon with his low HP and 3 tile buffing it makes the most sense as it creates 3 tiles.

Spoit

IMO, you either go 3 or 5 for the red depending on if you plan to use it or not. I could see reasons for going to 4 with the green (reduced enemy strike tiles) or yellow (good enough regen), but with the red, the 5 is such a large jump that you either want to be all in, or only use it for emergencies when your other red moves are down (and thus patch is taking the red tiles anyway)

Phaserhawk

From a defensive perspective the AI will never cast TBTI unless it is the only red, the only chance you have otherwise is pairing with Hulk or maybe the AP goves over 13 and the AI uses TBTI over Unibeam if you are with IM40, aside form that it will never be cast. That is where I see merits of 5/3/5, that being said, the AI is terrible with that build as many times they cast Berserker Rage, you survive, because they did it against your full heath Thor and now you have 6 strike tiles I know you can't build teams around defense but doesn't mean you should go so offesive you are a cake walk. That's why lately I almost always run Hood, just for the fact that he is by far the best guy to have on a defensive team because he has such a high rate of steal right on the first turn. I find Patch to be fairly solid when run with him and Captain, you lose out on purple, but you have a nice range of damage and AP steal, as well as offensive and defensive boosts, and if Hood can do enough damage early, you accelerate your cap and patch into late game.

Unknown

If they would give Loki a third ability I would run a 3/5/5 Patch with Loki and lvl 100 Falcon. Patch would have three colours and Falcon would be covered on everything but blue. AI would use Illusions instead of dropping on the protect tiles, TBTI would be only red and trickery the only black. Hopefully Loki's green would cost more than 9 so AI would still use Patch. It would be a little squishy but with illusions you are going to get lucky and get the 14 red pretty easy and will do roughly 5,925 when TBTI gets used. It would be an annoying group to play against.

Unknown

I'm running Patch at 4/5/4 at the moment. Four strike tiles is manageable, I get to use red TBTI at full effect (as long as Patch dominates all his three main colors on board) and he heals always. Occasionally even +300pts if there's enough yellow. I think this build is a viable compromise that is actually quite satisfactory to use and flexible for both PvE and PvP.

Unknown

I don't see a whole lot of discussion around the x/x/4 builds. At 4, healing factor still heals every turn, right? Just slightly less some turns?

I was thinking 5/4/4 would be a more versatile build for when magneto isn't around. Is this viable?

Phaserhawk

thecapnjoe wrote:

I don't see a whole lot of discussion around the x/x/4 builds. At 4, healing factor still heals every turn, right? Just slightly less some turns?

I was thinking 5/4/4 would be a more versatile build for when magneto isn't around. Is this viable?

Well if by slightly less you mean 277 less per turn if not enough yellow or a 75% reduced healing factor or a loss of almost 5% health regen a turn then sure, then slightly less

Phaserhawk

Okay, so the results from the last poll were that if Spiderman and Magneto were not in the game it appears the majority of players would opt for a 3/5/5 build. With that in mind I would pose another question. This is if current lineups as is, but Patch had red, yellow, green values all at tile strength 67, thus guarenting Patch three colors what would the prefered build be?

***
Edited to add final poll results.

Item - Votes - % of Total Votes

5/5/3 - 6 - 16%
5/3/5 - 6 - 16%
3/5/5 - 22 - 59%
4/5/4 - 2 - 5%
4/4/5 - 1 - 3%
Other - 0 - No votes

Unknown

So is 5/4/4 just something that nobody should ever do?

This is the build I was planning, but it's not an option on either poll, and I haven't seen anyone mention it. Am I a fool for thinking green is most important to max but yellow is good enough at 4?

Unknown

To be frank I don't understand the 4/4/5 build, either. If you plan to use his red, 4->5 is such a huge boost that you definitely want it, and if you plan to use another teammate's red, why do you want 4 in Patch's?