*** Wolverine (Patch) ***

over_clocked

The transition build is 3 green. You simply lack good AoEs outside of cStorm and reliably cheap skills to deal with 5 green, while oBW can double dip on 3 strike tiles and benefit from removing purple tiles. Besides, if Patch is your highest leveled 3*, it's not hard for him to tank his colours and sometimes even purple over 2*s which makes BTI all the more viable.
5 yellow is also absolutely necessary if Patch is your core pusher.

I have long transitioned and have thought of making Patch something other than 3/5/5 seeing as how 5/3/5 tends to be more destructive and dangerous on defense (more dangerous to himself, too), but I'm kinda partial to the IM 40 with one yellow cover combo and to not having to wait with Berserker. Besides, if I produced 6 tiles of my own, I would simply lack the space to put them down sometimes!





If you have long moved to 3*s chances are you use Patch to climb in PvP or for PvE. Patch build is a matter of preference, then; 5 green for comboing with cheap attacks like Psylocke's or with stunners; 5 red for people that can feed red and don't like the kamikaze style. You can go full damage suicide build a la Phantron, too, and unwimp out from 5 yellow since your Patch is not needed often anyway. Anything works

Unknown

I don't see why you'd have 5 in his green and think his regen even matters. It easily overpowers his own regen and if you can't make a strong cascade or AP moves when a level 5 Berserker Rage hits the board then it's going to be over for you no matter what your regen is. If you have only 3 in green then Battleplan is better, though if you're in a transition mode where Patch is your only high level character then 3/5/5 may work, though any build works well when Patch is your only high level character because both TBTI/healing factor requires him to have ownership over a significant number of tiles which is only possible if he's the sole high level character.

TBTI needs to be able at least kill a max level 166 character from 100% to 0% to be worth using. At red 5 it does 253 damage per tile, so against someone with 10K HP (Thor, Sentry, Hulk) you need to own roughly 40 tiles, which is 62.5% of the board and is more than 4 colors. So as soon as you can no longer own more than 4 colors then TBTI is not doing enough damage to justify investing in it so of course that leaves you with only 5/3/5. Prior to that the regen doesn't matter compared to the ability to kill anybody in one move, and it's especially true against the yellow powerhouses that can generally kill Patch easily through his regen so you better be able to kill them with one TBTI, until you cannot due to roster issues. This is the same thing about people claim using Sentry is a liability despite him being pretty much the strongest PvP character in the game. The very slightly decrease in survivality doesn't matter compare to the power TBTI level 5 brings, until TBTI level 5 no longer kills anyone because of tile ownership issue, and at that point you got no choice because you can't de-level your characters.

Sandmaker

Phantron wrote:

I don't see why you'd have 5 in his green and think his regen even matters. It easily overpowers his own regen

Because his green isn't something you fire off the moment you get 9 green ap. If the board isn't right, or if the opponents have too much health left, sometimes you just have to hold onto the green and use him to soak match damage and eat opposing abilities.

And not every ability in the game does 6k+ damage, in fact most don't. Most of the time the abilities you let slip through are in the 2-3k range. Having yellow at 5 guarantees that you have a net positive healing, which means you can continuously eat these abilities without much consequences. The amount of health packs that it saves over multiple matches is tremendous.

Personally I don't see why you'd even bother using Patch at all if not for his true healing. The ability (along with Daken's heal) currently define the longevity game. They let you to play almost indefinitely, while using as little health packs as possible. Having yellow at 3 detracts from that.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I don't see why you'd have 5 in his green and think his regen even matters. It easily overpowers his own regen

Because his green isn't something you fire off the moment you get 9 green ap. If the board isn't right, or if the opponents have too much health left, sometimes you just have to hold onto the green and use him to soak match damage and eat opposing abilities.

And not every ability in the game does 6k+ damage, in fact most don't. Most of the time the abilities you let slip through are in the 2-3k range. Having yellow at 5 guarantees that you have a net positive healing, which means you can continuously eat these abilities without much consequences. The amount of health packs that it saves over multiple matches is tremendous.

Personally I don't see why you'd even bother using Patch at all if not for his true healing. The ability (along with Daken's heal) currently define the longevity game. They let you to play almost indefinitely, while using as little health packs as possible. Having yellow at 3 detracts from that.

True healing doesn't matter if you can't win the game, which you won't be doing very much with Patch without using your green unless fighting against teams significantly weaker than you, but if you're fighting against guys significantly weaker than you, you can usually just roll over them with any typical strong team. Yes his green isn't something to use immediately but waiting for too long and you'll still lose. At the level of Patch and Daken you're not talking about 2-3K. The weakest credible attack from someone on the same tier would be a Fireball, which they can survive but at that point all it'd take is another small attack to finish them off. Seriously, are these discussions always about how to fight stuff 100 levels lower than you in PvP or PvE? Because whenever you need to use Patch in PvE it's usually against guys who are 100 levels higher than him as opposed to the other way around unless Patch is major boosted, but even then in heroic events the guys you face have powers that can easily defeat his regen. Likewise in PvP the lowest standard a Patch/Daken calibur character should be facing is HT, who can definitely punch through his regen in almost any two moves. Inferno can usually punch through his regen by itself if you can't get rid of it quickly, and we're talking about some relatively weak opponents at the top tier. Thunder Strike will almost certainly kill Patch/Daken. Rage of the Panther can't quite kill him but the rest of your team would be screwed and Battleplan does enough damage to punch through regen. Sentry will maul either of them (or anyone else) with a WR combo. X Force is nearly guaranteed to kill your whole team with Surgical Strike because green is Patch's strongest color. Do people expect to have their max regen Patch fighting Psylocke? Sure you can easily shrug off someone of that calibur's attacks but Psylocke is not remotely top tier in PvP. And if your strategy is just to find 2* players to feast on, you don't need Patch to do that.

Sandmaker

Phantron wrote:

Seriously, are these discussions always about how to fight stuff 100 levels lower than you in PvP or PvE?

No, these discussions are about what people actually see in game, what they expect to face, and what they realistically use Patch for. Now that magneto's nerfed nobody goes around shield hopping with patch hoping his BR gets him through the fight against a 270 x-force, or 166 sentry/hood.

Here is what people use Patch for:
In pvp, patch is used to get you through the first 30 fights in pvp, where you face all sorts of teams, the large majority of which are not maxed out Sentry/X-force. At a very generous 1000 total damage per fight, your team is still eating 30k damage. That is 3 health packs at the very least. Patch lets you get through that damage with zero to one. 5 yellow lets you do this reliably, 3 does not.

In pve, 5 yellow lets you deal with the ridiculous match damage you get from higher level opponents. You run him to clear through the entire easy sub, and half of the hard sub, so that you have the health-packs to push through the hardest nodes.

There's no point talking about what he can/can't do against top tier opponents, because without magneto his green/red is not top tier. You use him for his regen, or you don't use him at all.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Seriously, are these discussions always about how to fight stuff 100 levels lower than you in PvP or PvE?

No, these discussions are about what people actually see in game, what they expect to face, and what they realistically use Patch for. Now that magneto's nerfed nobody goes around shield hopping with patch hoping his BR gets him through the fight against a 270 x-force, or 166 sentry/hood.

Here is what people use Patch for:
In pvp, patch is used to get you through the first 30 fights in pvp, where you face all sorts of teams, the large majority of which are not maxed out Sentry/X-force. At a very generous 1000 total damage per fight, your team is still eating 30k damage. That is 3 health packs at the very least. Patch lets you get through that damage with zero to one. 5 yellow lets you do this reliably, 3 does not.

In pve, 5 yellow lets you deal with the ridiculous match damage you get from higher level opponents. You run him to clear through the entire easy sub, and half of the hard sub, so that you have the health-packs to push through the hardest nodes.

There's no point talking about what he can/can't do against top tier opponents, because without magneto his green/red is not top tier. You use him for his regen, or you don't use him at all.

Okay, so basically you've done a great job at tanking your MMR to incredible lows and you think that fighting cupcakes is supposed to be the norm in PvP, which is probably why there are these 'walls of 166s' thread often made by guys who have at least 2 level 166s because it'd never occur to them that you should be also fighting other 166s. In PvP you'd have to be fighting 2*s for that model to make sense and if you're fighting 2* teams you don't need a strategy for longevity. At the 3* level, assuming the rest of the team is identical and the only difference is Patch versus whoever they got, you have the following matchups:

Versus Sentry - Loses fairly badly because Sentry is the strongest PvP character.
Versus X Force - Loses badly because of Surgical Strike.
Versus The Hood - Terrible mismatch in the enemy's favor since he turns Berserker Rage into a 4 match move in almost every circumstance and you're not outlasting The Hood when your fastest move is a 4 match move.
Versus Thor - Thor is generally superior to Patch.
Versus Black Panther - Black Panther probably has an edge, and his none blue moves are beyond what regeneration can handle.
Versus Nick Fury - All his moves can punch through regen just fine, even though they take a long time to use.

Versus Human Torch - Perhaps a small edge to Patch here but you can only hold the green for so long before any of his bombs can take someone out.
Versus Magneto - Hard to compare because Magneto lacks offense to beat Patch but his combo ability is still superb.
Versus Captain America - Edge to Patch because Captain America is not very good at PvP.
Versus Punisher - Small edge to Patch but Molotov bypasses any plan for sustained playing.
Versus Daken - Matchup is unclear.
Versus Deadpool - Strongly in favor of Patch because regen is very powerful against his red.

You have an edge versus the rest of the 3*s that aren't viable in PvP but that's also why they're not viable in PvP and not seen very often. Out of the 12 characters I see on a somewhat regular basis you're disadvantaged against 6 of them and have an edge against 2 (Captain AMerica, Deadpool). If you fight characters who are weaker than that, most of the characters that are even or better in a matchup against Patch are also perfectly fine against those guys.

For PvE you don't use Patch on easy bracket because you can't use Berserker Rage against level 30 guys unless it's going to kill them outright but in that case any similar 3 match green move would do the trick. Daken is way better for fighting trivial enemies. For hard bracket anything that can do enough damage for regen to matter can one shot you with their moves too, and unless you're gutsy enough to use Berserker Rage the moment it's ready you're just prolonging your death because 6800 HP is nowhere near enough to survive any decent move used by a level 200+ opponent, not to mention using an imbalanced team is a recipe for disaster against level 200+ opposition so you might not even be able to get the correct guy to take the hits.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

People wimp out way too much with Patch for yellow. Patch is hard enough to kill as is with 3 in yellow for all normal gameplay purposes. You want 5 in yellow because at some point when your roster becomes more developed it is increasingly impossible for Patch for own enough colors for TBTI to be useful unless he's major boosted/featured, so you might as well cut your losses early. But if Patch is major boosted a level 256 red 5 TBTI can often take out a level 395 enemy, who is going to otherwise laugh at your regen. It's just such scenarios don't happen very often and you can't build a character around the expectation that he's always going to be major boosted/featured. This also applies to PvP as his regen is more than enough for anything except fighting guys that can instantly kill you (Sentry, X Force) and in that case his regen also doesn't matter, but for the same reason as your roster gets stronger you'll find it increasingly difficult for Patch to own 3 or more colors and when you can no longer own 3 or more colors your TBTI can't kill someone at 100% health reliably and at that point you might as well go with regen instead.

The reason people like Patch with 5 yellow isn't because they're worried about him dying in a fight.

Its because they want to play with him and completely ignore health packs.

With 3 yellow, he actually ends matches with damage on him. With 5 yellow, unless something went wrong, he's leaving every fight with 6800 health or close to it.

The less often you need to use health packs in this game, the better. More damage is nice, but health packs are a limiting reagent in this game. Damage isn't.

Leugenesmiff

I think I'm going to stick with 4/4/5. 4 enemy strike tiles usually aren't a problem to clear enough of them if I use BR early before I can kill everyone and a fourth for me keeps my strikes potent if they clear one of mine. I like being able to use BR early if it presents itself as a good move and having to worry about 6 enemy strikes is a pain. The reduction to his red doesn't bother me that much since I've either got a better red or by the time I get 14 red AP it does enough damage.
Thanks for the tips. Going to go sell yet another green Patch cover.

Unknown

Lets not pretend that it's too hard to lose if you spit out 4 tiles for the opponent too early.

Leugenesmiff

ark123 wrote:

Lets not pretend that it's too hard to lose if you spit out 4 tiles for the opponent too early.

Maybe I'm tired and my mind's not working up to snuff, but does anyone else find this quite difficult to understand? I think it's because he started with a negative. I don't think I haven't worked it out yet though, and you just need to be aware of how many free purple tiles there are and their placement. That should help you with the losing quickly.

Spoit

Leugenesmiff wrote:

I think I'm going to stick with 4/4/5. 4 enemy strike tiles usually aren't a problem to clear enough of them if I use BR early before I can kill everyone and a fourth for me keeps my strikes potent if they clear one of mine. I like being able to use BR early if it presents itself as a good move and having to worry about 6 enemy strikes is a pain. The reduction to his red doesn't bother me that much since I've either got a better red or by the time I get 14 red AP it does enough damage.
Thanks for the tips. Going to go sell yet another green Patch cover.

That seems like the worst build possible, since every single one of his skills has a massive boost with it's 5th cover

Unknown

Patch's red tile ability, best there is had been frequently doing no damage for me immediately following laying 6 or more tiles from his green ability. Also does not seem to digger on daken or sentry strike tiles.

Phaserhawk

Spoit wrote:

Leugenesmiff wrote:

I think I'm going to stick with 4/4/5. 4 enemy strike tiles usually aren't a problem to clear enough of them if I use BR early before I can kill everyone and a fourth for me keeps my strikes potent if they clear one of mine. I like being able to use BR early if it presents itself as a good move and having to worry about 6 enemy strikes is a pain. The reduction to his red doesn't bother me that much since I've either got a better red or by the time I get 14 red AP it does enough damage.
Thanks for the tips. Going to go sell yet another green Patch cover.

That seems like the worst build possible, since every single one of his skills has a massive boost with it's 5th cover

No it's not. Red is for the most part non-existant due to high cost, therefore no matter what you have in red doesn't matter, it's how you want to use Green. If you want to be conservative go 3/5/5, if you want to be risky go 5/3/5, if you want a little of both than 4/4/5.

Unknown

Best there is doesn't do damage for every strike tile there is on the board.

It does damage for every tile on the board. If your BTI is doing 0 damage, I'm guessing your patch is lower level than your other team members and he tanks no colors, so there are 0 tiles on the board.

Leugenesmiff

Spoit wrote:

Leugenesmiff wrote:

I think I'm going to stick with 4/4/5. 4 enemy strike tiles usually aren't a problem to clear enough of them if I use BR early before I can kill everyone and a fourth for me keeps my strikes potent if they clear one of mine. I like being able to use BR early if it presents itself as a good move and having to worry about 6 enemy strikes is a pain. The reduction to his red doesn't bother me that much since I've either got a better red or by the time I get 14 red AP it does enough damage.
Thanks for the tips. Going to go sell yet another green Patch cover.

That seems like the worst build possible, since every single one of his skills has a massive boost with it's 5th cover

I don't see 2 strike tiles as a massive jump myself, espescially not a beneficially one for my play style. It can be a big jump in self damage though.
I'd say the worst build possible would be intentionally keeping Patch at 0/1/0, selling off any new covers to keep him that way. If you think about it, that'd be much, much worse.

Dayv

Best There Is is one of the most commonly misunderstood powers in the game. If you check the archives, you'll find many previous threads on it.

cactusrob

I was playing a PvE event earlier and the CPU's Berzerker Rage was glitches and only gave green strike tiles, like when the character was first released.

HairyDave

Having run 5/3/5 for a while before picking up an extra red and repeccing, 5/3/5 was definitely the more fun build, even if it is a little more risky. Four strike tiles just doesn't quite do enough damage when you really need it too - the number of times I've left opponents on less than 200 health is surprising.

Unknown

As a 2* to 3* transitioning player in a top 50 alliance, would you recommend putting iso into patch or funnel it into x-force? I have an 11 cover Ldaken to go withhim.

dkffiv

HairyDave wrote:

Having run 5/3/5 for a while before picking up an extra red and repeccing, 5/3/5 was definitely the more fun build, even if it is a little more risky. Four strike tiles just doesn't quite do enough damage when you really need it too - the number of times I've left opponents on less than 200 health is surprising.

I've lost a few times with a 4/4/5 build when the enemy tiles decided to go to the 4 random corner purples and not the 2x 4 matches lined up perfectly. That gets followed up by a **** cascade the following turn that does 10k+ damage and knocks out 2 chars. 5/3/5 is definitely better on defense but 4/4/5 is much safer for sustained play.