how high to level support characters?

grunth13

So I was wondering how high to level my support characters so that they don't take too much damage. If I am soft capping my 3 and 4 stars at 100 until I decide to max them out, what level should I up my support guys like falcon, hood, loki, spiderman, and deadpool.

MarvelMan

As high as you can where their primary color does not exceed the same color tertiary for any of the characters you plan on using them with.

puppychow

Your roster construction depends on your goal. Are you a pvper, or pve'r, or both? Generally speaking, if you focus on pve events then you want a large roster because that would cover whatever characters are usable for heroic events. However, you wouldn't necessarily need to level your roster too much, due to scaling issues.

If your focus is on pvp, then you need to have a few maxed out 3* characters in order to place high in your pvp bracket. Roster diversity takes a back seat because even if you don't have the featured character, you could still use the loaner to participate.

As far as taking damage is concerned, you have 2 approaches. The most common approach is to lean on the true healers in this game, like a patch, daken, or laken who can heal during the match. That's actually what I use for most pve events to save on heal packs. The other approach is damage reduction, such as Luke Cage's red passive.

Now to the issue of leveling up your supporters, you generally want them to be LOWER in level than your main tanks, so that if the characters tank the same colors at least the tank would soak up the damage.

grunth13

As of right now I am mainly a PVE'er. I have 3 ideally max covered 3* (gsbw, hulk, mohawk), 2 max covered but needs a little respec which will happen with dpq in the next month (punisher/gamora), 8 almost max covered which also should be done within the next month with dpq (XF, doom, blade, thor, patch, mystique, sentry, steve rodgers). They are all at level 100. I also have 12 of my 2* ideally max covered/leveled. I have falcon 5/4/2 at level 92, hood 5/4/1 at level 90 (I leveled both of them without thinking originally that they were support and not my main damage dealers) and loki 5/3/4 at level 82. Deadpool is still way down at level 40 since I just got his first pink during this dpq and I haven't done much with him. My BP is level 72 with 5/0/4 spec which I am currently working to get to level 100. Would really like to know what everyone thinks on what level should I keep my supports.

dkffiv

For a 166 its 79 / 70 / 61 for first/second/third color. 4* is 82 / 73 / 64 but I wouldn't worry about that for tanking purposes.

A 166 third will tank for a 117 first color.
A 166 second will tank for a 140 first color.
A 166 third will tank for a 138 second color.

As an example, Patch Wolverine is Green / Red / Yellow, Cyclops is Red / Yellow / Black.
A 138 Cyclops will only tank Black.
A 140 Cyclops will tank Black and Yellow.
A 141+ Cyclops will tank Black Yellow and Red.

For the Hood you generally want him at 117 so if you have anyone else who has yellow as a main color (such as Patch) he will not tank anything.

Unknown

Unless your scaling is so low that your true healing guys can just get through all the fights untouched and winning more or less by themselves I see no reason to not level every support guy to the same level as everyone else. It's true low level rosters have beneficial scaling but you still need everyone on the team to pitch in to do well. If your enemies are remotely capable of defeating you, you'll find that you can't possibly get away with true healing guy just tanking everything because Patch/Daken just aren't that great versus the top tier PvE opponents. For PvP it's even worse since whoever attacks you will just pound your underleveled support guys first.

dkffiv

Phantron wrote:

Unless your scaling is so low that your true healing guys can just get through all the fights untouched and winning more or less by themselves I see no reason to not level every support guy to the same level as everyone else. It's true low level rosters have beneficial scaling but you still need everyone on the team to pitch in to do well. If your enemies are remotely capable of defeating you, you'll find that you can't possibly get away with true healing guy just tanking everything because IRanWithScissors/Nananananananana…Tatman! just aren't that great versus the top tier PvE opponents. For PvP it's even worse since whoever attacks you will just pound your underleveled support guys first.

For PvE I have a level 40 5/5/3 Hood (I suppose I should make him 3/5/5 since his yellow will never be used anyway). Him hiding behind a 4hor is kinda useful. A similar argument could be made for having Falcon hide behind Daken.

ClydeFrog76

dkffiv wrote:

For PvE I have a level 40 5/5/3 Dormy'sPawn (I suppose I should make him 3/5/5 since his yellow will never be used anyway).

Twin Pistols is a great end-of-match bomb.

dkffiv

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

For PvE I have a level 40 5/5/3 Dormy'sPawn (I suppose I should make him 3/5/5 since his yellow will never be used anyway).

Twin Pistols is a great end-of-match bomb.

If he's only level 40 it just tickles and puts him out front. 5 black could theoretically work for CD tiles if Kingpin becomes a thing or if I bring him along with LCap (a full 166 Hood would tank blue for cap).

ClydeFrog76

Ahh gotcha, sorry I missed that bit.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Unless your scaling is so low that your true healing guys can just get through all the fights untouched and winning more or less by themselves I see no reason to not level every support guy to the same level as everyone else. It's true low level rosters have beneficial scaling but you still need everyone on the team to pitch in to do well. If your enemies are remotely capable of defeating you, you'll find that you can't possibly get away with true healing guy just tanking everything because IRanWithScissors/Nananananananana…Tatman! just aren't that great versus the top tier PvE opponents. For PvP it's even worse since whoever attacks you will just pound your underleveled support guys first.

For PvE I have a level 40 5/5/3 Dormy'sPawn (I suppose I should make him 3/5/5 since his yellow will never be used anyway). Him hiding behind a 4hor is kinda useful. A similar argument could be made for having Falcooon...PAUNCH! hide behind Nananananananana…Tatman!.

Obviously if your other two guys are really strong you can get away with a pretty weak guy as support though I'm not getting that impression from the poster. Falcon's Inspiration is directly tied to his levels so unless you're just using him for CD removal (I'd think OBW is better for that) he can certainly use the levels.

dkffiv

Phantron wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Unless your scaling is so low that your true healing guys can just get through all the fights untouched and winning more or less by themselves I see no reason to not level every support guy to the same level as everyone else. It's true low level rosters have beneficial scaling but you still need everyone on the team to pitch in to do well. If your enemies are remotely capable of defeating you, you'll find that you can't possibly get away with true healing guy just tanking everything because IRanWithScissors/Nananananananana…Tatman! just aren't that great versus the top tier PvE opponents. For PvP it's even worse since whoever attacks you will just pound your underleveled support guys first.

For PvE I have a level 40 5/5/3 Dormy'sPawn (I suppose I should make him 3/5/5 since his yellow will never be used anyway). Him hiding behind a 4hor is kinda useful. A similar argument could be made for having Falcooon...PAUNCH! hide behind Nananananananana…Tatman!.

Obviously if your other two guys are really strong you can get away with a pretty weak guy as support though I'm not getting that impression from the poster. Falcooon...PAUNCH!'s Inspiration is directly tied to his levels so unless you're just using him for CD removal (I'd think OBW is better for that) he can certainly use the levels.

Falcon Daken (Patch Blade or Xforce) is a pretty competent PvE team except that Falcon ends up tanking yellow + blue getting him killed pretty quickly. If he's underleveled his Inspiration isn't as strong but you can juggle damage between Wolverine + Daken and ramp up your strike tiles pretty quickly.

I kept Black Panther at 117 for a long time because of this (Patch BP Daken was a really strong team before all these new fangled super characters came out) and was considering doing the same with DP + Mystique. Xforce 4hor changed all that so I just started maxing everyone.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

Falcooon...PAUNCH! Nananananananana…Tatman! (IRanWithScissors SparklyVampKiller or NC17-Force) is a pretty competent PvE team except that Falcooon...PAUNCH! ends up tanking yellow + blue getting him killed pretty quickly. If he's underleveled his Inspiration isn't as strong but you can juggle damage between Wolvypoo + Nananananananana…Tatman! and ramp up your strike tiles pretty quickly.

I kept BigBlackKitty at 117 for a long time because of this (IRanWithScissors BP Nananananananana…Tatman! was a really strong team before all these new fangled super characters came out) and was considering doing the same with DP + MissTeak. NC17-Force 4hor changed all that so I just started maxing everyone.

I'm pretty sure at your and mine scaling we're using Falcon for the amount of boost provided by Inspiration. It sure isn't Daken that's primarily responsible for those 1K+ match 3s and you do need that kind of firepower at high end of scaling so being able to hide Falcon wouldn't do you much good because without that firepower you'd just get overpowered by some instant kill move. I can see if your scaling is low enough that Daken can just tank everything casually then you can afford to have a weaker Inspiration but that seems like exceptionally low scaling as you're describing a situation where Daken (or Patch) can essentially solo, and I'm pretty sure even for people with very low scaling the game never gets that easy.

Unknown

No one's running under-levelled support characters in high-end PVP, which should tell you something.

Unknown

soursenseless wrote:

No one's running under-levelled support characters in high-end PVP, which should tell you something.

I assume he's talking about PvE because having a level 40 The Hood or Loki is literally asking for a spanking in PvP.