On Patrol - A Team-up Guide (last updated 11.29.16)

xellessanova

This is a Team-Up primer as of R113.

The update to SHIELD Rank in R108 included XP for common actions in-game: one of those actions is sending Team-Ups to your alliance. The higher the star level of the character sent, the more XP the sender receives.

Send a TU - 1XP
Send a TU - 2XP
Send a TU - 3XP
Send a TU - 4XP
Send a TU - 5XP

The updates in R106-107 made it so that any Championed character sent as a TU would have 5/5/5 covers so you no longer have to rearrange character covers before sending. (This didn't work the first time through, setting Championed characters at 2/2/2 for one update before it was fixed.)

The Champions mechanic in R91-92 came with a massive nerf of 2* and 3* ability strength unless both Championed and Boosted, while increasing the range of levels that gifted and won Team-Ups can have. What this means is that 4* ability strength far outclasses that of 2*s and 3*s, and Team-Ups of value belong to the following categories: 2-3-4* Accelerators, 4* Team Damage, 4* Single-Target Damage, 1-4* Stuns, 1-4* Board Shake. 5*s have complex, expensive, or double-edged powers that can rarely be gifted or won as TU.

In addition, only new 4* and 5* characters are being released at this point; this guide has been slow to update because of that. On the upside, no one should be providing undercovered characters to you either

Feel free to update the thread with patrol times.

How do Team-Ups work?
Team-Ups are selectable from the Team-Up tab in fight selection mode, and act as one-time use powers in a fight. They charge by matching Team-Up tiles, and have the same cost in TU AP as their color version costs to play. Team-Ups must be from characters that are not on your active team -- and in certain PVE matches (like Gauntlet) must not be from characters on the opposing team.

Any empty slots not filled with Boosts or Team-Ups during fight selection mode will be automatically filled with random Team-Ups from your inventory, so you could use up to 3 Team-Ups per fight.

How do you get Team-Ups?
1. If you defeat a playable character that matches tiles, there is a 15% percent chance that one of their active powers will drop as a Team-Up. This power will have the same number of covers as the character you defeated (so for instance, beating Original Black Widow with 3 Purple covers will drop an 8 TU AP cost Team-Up that steals 3 of each non-Purple AP). The level of the Team-Up power is equal to the average of your 4 highest-level characters or the maximum level for that character's star level, whichever is the lowest.

2. You can request Team-Ups from your alliance if you have fewer than 20 Team-Ups held in your Team-Up inventory. From the Team-Up select screen, there is a Yellow button on the bottom to "Request Team-Ups from your Alliance!" This causes a request button to pop up in Alliance chat at the top of the tab. When you receive 5 Team-Ups the button will go away. These Team-Ups will have covers identical to the character in your alliance mate's Roster that they sent out On Patrol and levels equal to the average of your 4 highest-level characters or the maximum level for the character's star level, whichever is the lowest.

How does the Champion mechanic affect Team-Ups?
Championing raises the maximum level of the character. Championed characters that you fight may drop TU that are higher than the standard max level for that tier. Your Champion levels do not matter.

Example: If you fight a Level 167 Champion Iron Fist, you have a chance of getting a Level 167 IF TU. Your Iron Fist does not have to be Championed. You may get TUs over your top 4 characters' average level via drop here.

If you fight a non-Champion 2*Wolverine and you have a Champion Level 100 2*Wolverine, the TU you get is a Level 94 2*Wolverine TU.

Championing does affect gifted TU from your alliance. If you receive a champed Carnage TU from your alliance and you have a champed Carnage, the level of the TU is the maximum for Carnage that you can support.

You can switch levels on powers for Championed characters at will, so any Championed character sent as a TU will by default have 5 in all covers.

On Defense in PVP, what Team-Ups do people see when fighting me?
It's entirely random.

How can we tell which Team-Up the AI will be using?
The AI can use only ONE Team-Up per fight, which you can preview on the fight setup screen. The strength of the AI Team-Up is always 2 covers -- however, AI Team-Ups are scaled to the average level of the opposing team, so their effect may still end up brutal. AI Team-Ups can come from any playable character of any star tier (so no Gorgon, no Ultron) with the exceptions listed below. Hulk Smash, Sentry Supernova, and Ragnarok Godlike Power have been removed from the AI power tables because the ally-damaging drawback is not much of a drawback for the AI. If you see these powers or any similar powers appear as AI TU from new characters, COMPLAIN.

During a Dark Avengers PVE the AI Team-Ups are pulled from a table of villain-only powers.

In PVE, the Team-Up for the AI cannot be a TU of a character that you have on your active team. If you see that the AI has Red Hulk's Gamma Siphon TU, you can change the AI TU to something else by putting Red Hulk on your team.

There is no such character restriction in PVP and putting the AI's TU character on your team does not change the TU.

What powers can be given out as Team-Ups?
Any Active (non-Passive) power that is not self-damaging or self-stunning, or keyed to character abilities that the Team-Up cannot trigger since they aren't a real character in the fight. Sentry's Sacrifice, Juggernaut's Headbutt, Colossus's Immovable Object, Iron Man 40's Recharge, and Spider-Woman's Seeking Redemption cannot be given out. Gamora's Bad Reputation or Patch's Best There Is cannot be given out because they do not have tiles to match as a Team-Up. Professor Xavier can never be sent out On Patrol as he has no Active powers that do not affect him. Active-Passives, like Doom's Diabolical Plot or Silver Surfer's Perfect Being, count as Passives and cannot be given out.

In addition, powers that are too complex are not available for Team-Ups. Ant-Man cannot be sent because all of his powers are complicated double-drop powers that assume he is a playable character. Powers that change function if a condition is met cannot be given out, such as X-23's Holding Back/Berserker Fury or Iceman's Build/Punch a Snowman; thus Old Man Logan may not be given out as a TU at all. Peggy Carter's Blue has multiple conditional effects (stun up to 2 non-targeted opponents then drop CD tiles equal to number of active teammates that deal damage). Gwenpool's 'Sploits! are not available either.

TU affecting TU AP or tiles are iffy: Classic Cyclops Yellow and Red aren't giftable, although Black Panther and MoStorm Yellow are giftable. 2* Capt. Marvel Yellow was not giftable but this bug was fixed in R92.

What conditions do Team-Ups obey?
Team-Ups act as if they were cast by that character, except that the character is not on the active team. Countdown tiles placed by a TU, such as 4*Deadpool, Kingpin, or Star-Lord, will persist until matched or the end of the CD, since there is no character to down.

Team-Ups that have additional effects that require that character to fulfill a condition, such as Colossus's Red (X damage; plus additional damage if Colossus is in front) or Ares' Red (X damage to opposing team; +Y damage if Ares is hurt) will ignore the secondary effect. Team-Ups that require X amount of colored AP, such as Ares's or Classic Storm's Greens, will not be used if there is 0 AP of that color even if you have enough Team-Up AP to cast the Team-Up.

Team-Ups count as powers, so Passive abilities that trigger on an activated power, such as Kamala's or Professor Xavier's Yellows, will trigger when a Team-Up is used.

If a character is Boosted in PVP or PVE, Team-Ups from that character are also Boosted.

Team-Up instant effects are owned by the character in the middle, so Vision's Heavy Density will add damage to a Team-Up cast if he is in the center position.

What happens when I send out Team-Ups to my alliance?
You can send out up to 5 characters for each Team-Up request and gain XP for each. For each character, your teammate will receive one Team-Up chosen at random from that character's TU-compatible powers (see above). You can have up to 5 characters sent out On Patrol at any given time. Each character has a different length of time that they can be out On Patrol, which just means that they cannot be sent out again until the timer runs out OR until you pay hero points to recall them. These times vary widely as seen below but scale linearly, and the recall prices decrease along with the time spent On Patrol. You can use characters who are On Patrol while they are out On Patrol.

Team-Up On Patrol Times Sorted by Character
These times depend solely on who the character is -- they are not level- or cover-dependent. Patrol times http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14332 thanks to j12601
Colors not available are explained unless they are Passives.

36 Hours (300 hero points to recall)
(0.1111 XP / hour)
Nick Fury
Thing (Ben Grimm)
Thor (Goddess)
Kingpin
Hulkbuster IM (no self-damage)
Jean Grey
Amadeus Cho / Hulk
Howard the Duck (no targeting Howard)
Nova
Quake
Peggy Carter Captain (no double drop too complicated)
Kate Bishop (no self-damage)

28 Hours (0.1785 XP / hour)

Silver Surfer (no Passive)
Phoenix
Black Suit Spider-Man
Green Goblin
Iron Man XLVI
Steve Rogers (1st Avenger)
Bruce Banner / Hulk
Black Bolt
5tephen 5trange, I presume

24 Hours (225 hero points to recall)
(0.1667 XP / hour)
Star-Lord
Wolverine (X-Force) ( self-heal)
Deadpool (X-Force)
Sam Wilson (Captain America)
Mr. Fantastic
Iceman (no double drop)
Red Hulk
X-23
Ghost Rider
Miles Morales
Venom (Eddie Brock)
Spider-Gwen
Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes)
Drax the Destroyer
War Machine (James Rhodes)
Moon Knight
Gwenpool (:purpleflag: too complicated)
Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) (:blackflag: self-targets)
Luke C4ge (Power Man)
Wasp

(0.125 XP / hour)
Black Panther
Deadpool
Human Torch (Classic)
Kamala Khan
Magneto (Classic)
Punisher
Quicksilver
Scarlet Witch
Sentry (no self-damage)
Squirrel Girl
Storm (Mohawk)
Thor (Modern)
Vision ( Attack Protocol: Solar Beam only, affect Vision)

16 Hours (175 hero points to recall)
(0.1875 XP / hour)
Black Widow (Grey Suit)
Captain Marvel
Colossus (no self-target)
Cyclops
Daken (Classic)
Doctor Doom
Doctor Octopus
Falcon
Gamora (no keyed to match tiles)
Hood
Hulk
Iron Man (Model 40) (no self-stun)
Loki
Luke Cage
Psylocke
Ragnarok
Rocket & Groot
She-Hulk
Wolverine (Patch) (no keyed to match tiles)
Doctor Strang3

12 Hours (125 hero points to recall)
(0.3333 XP / hour)
Carnage
Elektra (no self-targeting)
Invisible Woman (no too complicated)
Cyclops ( too meta)
Bl4de

(0.1667 XP / hour)
Black Widow (Original)
Human Torch (Johnny Storm)
Storm (Classic)
Thor (Marvel NOW!)

8 Hours
(0.375 XP / hour)
Beast
Blade
Bullseye
Captain America (Steve Rogers)
Daredevil
Iron Fist
Mystique
Spider-Man (Classic)
(0.125 XP / hour)
Ares (no self-damage)
Bullseye
Daken
Hawkeye (Modern)
Magneto (Marvel NOW!)
Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men)
Ms. Marvel

6 Hours
(0.1667 XP / hour)
Black Widow (Modern)
Storm (Modern)
Spider-Man (Original)

4 Hours
(0.5 XP per hour)
Captain America (Modern)
Moonstone
Spider-Man (Bag-Man)
(0.25 XP per hour)
Hawkeye (Classic)
Iron Man (Model 35)
Juggernaut (no self-damage)
Venom

2 Hours (50 hero points to recall, 0.5 XP per hour)

Yelena Belova

N/A (cannot be sent, period)

Professor Xavier (no actives that aren't self-targeting)
Ant-Man (2 double-drop powers + 1 passive)
Old Man Logan (all double powers not sendable)
Punisher MAX (1 double-drop, 1 stuns allies, 1 passive)

Data Pending
Devil Dinosaur

Venom (Agent Venom)

---

Advanced Team-Up Guide

What are the best characters to send and powers to receive as Team-Ups?
As of R72, where you can now fight with characters that you've lent out, it becomes less critical to have spare characters built with only one color and reserved for Team-Up purposes -- as you can send your best characters AND use them.

At best, Team-Ups extend the number of power combos you can use -- for instance, bringing Moonstone's Photon Blast without having to bring Moonstone and match Red, particularly with 3*Cyclops to feed Yellow into Red and/or 2*Magneto to add Red to the board.

At worst, Team-Ups do nothing - either they're too expensive to use, or they have no effect or even end the turn. Good luck using Hood's Yellow without Hood to steal AP.

Certain TUs are stronger than they are on the playable character because they count allies or cast from TU AP (Luke Cage and Black Panther Yellow) while others are weaker because they are tuned for specific synergies (Mystique Black, which needs Mystique Purple; Storm Yellow, which has minor board shake and a net loss of TU AP; Ares Green, which drains both TU and Green).

Your alliance's rosters and responsiveness affects the Team-Ups you can get. You should immediately delete Team-Ups that you don't use, Team-Ups that you will never use (I'm looking at you, seed team 1*Storm), and fill your stash with Team-Ups that you will use and use often. TU are free and can help you punch way above your weight class, more than boosts ever will. Keep MBW Blue in your pocket against Carnage, Iceman, 4DP or OML and some of the hardest PVP matches become much easier.

Most Reliable Characters for Sending Team-Ups
High reliability (only good actives and no bad actives)
Quick Return (low patrol time means they can come back quickly -- especially with XP for sending now)
Strong effect for their AP cost


1. Modern Black Widow - - A+ worth keeping her as 0/5 for TU purposes only
2. Juggernaut - - B+ super cheap board shake


1. Original Black Widow - A+ for PVP/PVE, A+ for PVE - best cheap AP steal
2. Classic Storm - A+ stun with team damage, B+ board shake with AP collection (especially if you do not have a Green user)


1. Deadpool - A+ when you absolutely need to deal <270,000 damage, B takes a good chunk out o

Cymmina

A couple things missing here:

• Does the level of the hero matter? Is a level 40 GSBW as good as one that is level 166, assuming they have the same number of covers?
• Does the number of covers matter? Is a 0/0/1 GSBW as good as one that is 0/0/5?

xellessanova

Cymmina wrote:

A couple things missing here:

• Does the level of the hero matter? Is a level 40 GSBW as good as one that is level 166, assuming they have the same number of covers?
• Does the number of covers matter? Is a 0/0/1 GSBW as good as one that is 0/0/5?

Thanks, good questions.

Hero Levels Example
Say I have a 5 / 3 / 5 GSBW at level 40.

I send her out to my alliance-mate whose highest-level heros are all level 94. He receives one of the three possible Team-Ups: Sniper Rifle 5; Pistol 3; or Deceptive Tactics 5; the Team-Up level he gets is scaled to 94.

Tomorrow I send the same GSBW out to another alliance-mate with 270 X-Force, 222 Nick Fury, 166 Blade and 166 Captain America as her highest-level heroes. (270+222+166+166 = 824 / 4 = 206 average, but GSBW is a 3* so the highest possible level for this Team-Up is 166. The second alliance-mate receives one of the three possible Team-Ups: Sniper Rifle 5; Pistol 3; or Deceptive Tactics 5 -- scaled to level 166.

Since the level of the Team-Up is tied to the average level of the receiver's 4 highest-level heroes, the level of the sent character doesn't matter.

Cover numbers matter a lot, since some powers increase significantly from cover 1 to cover 5: sending a 0/0/1 GSBW won't be nearly as effective as sending a 0/0/5 GSBW. Some powers don't scale with level - for GSBW Deceptive Tactics the Team-Up level doesn't matter, but the cover number definitely does -- contrast with Sniper Rifle, where the Team-Up level and cover number both matter.

You can see the character, power color, power name, and character level of the Team-Up on the front the individual Team-Up in the Fight selection screen. It is significantly harder to tell what number of covers are tied to that Team-Up -- you need to click on the (i) link to get more info on the Team-Up. This will give you the power information on what the Team-Up does and how much AP it costs, but it will not tell you how many covers are linked to the Team-Up. So for instance, it will tell you how many AP a power costs, and what number of targets it affects, and how much damage it does.

If you have two Sniper Rifle Level 166 Team-Ups, you can deduce from the linked info that one is a Sniper Rifle 5 Team-Up because it costs 19 AP and shoots the entire team, while the other is a Sniper Rifle 4 Team-Up because it costs 18 AP and deals damage to one target. Unfortunately, they will look the same in the Team-Up selection screen.

udonomefoo

I totally forgot about the scale up/down for alliance mates. Thanks for the clear explanation.

HariSeldon

Thanks for a great post! One thought on the Steve Rogers Yellow - I find it to be quite useful in goon fights where they are generating yellow countdown tiles. Because it give 3 yellows to place, I can often knock out a CD (and sometimes more than one), manage to get a match5, and shake up the board a bit in the process. It's not the TU I'd want for more 3-on-3 hero fights, but in those high level good situations, I still find it handy to deploy. Thanks again!

TxMoose

xellessanova wrote:

How do you get Team-Ups?
1. If you defeat a playable character that matches tiles, there is a small percentage chance that one of their active powers will drop as a Team-Up. This power will have the same number of covers as the character you defeated (so for instance, beating Original Black Widow with 3 Purple covers will drop an 8 TU AP cost Team-Up that steals 3 of each non-Purple AP). The level of the Team-Up power is equal to the average of your 4 highest-level characters or the maximum level for that character's star level, whichever is the lowest.

so...I beat a level 160 axwolvie (feed by goons) and he drops a 94 adamantium slash? how cheesy. I swear I just did that earlier in EotS.

xellessanova

HariSeldon wrote:

Thanks for a great post! One thought on the Steve Rogers Yellow - I find it to be quite useful in goon fights where they are generating yellow countdown tiles. Because it give 3 yellows to place, I can often knock out a CD (and sometimes more than one), manage to get a match5, and shake up the board a bit in the process. It's not the TU I'd want for more 3-on-3 hero fights, but in those high level good situations, I still find it handy to deploy. Thanks again!

Thanks!

19 AP for Cap's Sentinel of Libery is a ton - like you said, useful in PVE, particularly in Survival waves where you can build up quite a bit of TU AP. For PVP (and I admit I play more PVP) it's much less useful than either his Red or Blue.

YMMV - generally, Team-Ups don't suffer as much from slight overcosting as picking up the TU AP is secondary.

Colossus's Fastball Special is slightly overpriced at 13 Black - it's only valuable if you can get a substantial discount by flinging another team member who only has expensive powers, which restricts teammate selection even further, and it's quite possible that the teammate you wanted to toss has already gotten themselves knocked out before you can get 13 Black. And why bother with Fastball Special when you can just collect 14 Green for Call the Storm or 11 Black for Surgical Strike? But used as a TU power? Fantastic. You don't have to take Colossus and you don't have to build the rest of your team to have only expensive powers.

TxMoose wrote:

xellessanova wrote:

How do you get Team-Ups?
so...I beat a level 160 axwolvie (feed by goons) and he drops a 94 adamantium slash? how cheesy. I swear I just did that earlier in EotS.

Yes. Prior to R73 if you beat that same Wolverine in PVE you would have gotten a level 160 Wolverine Team-Up for Red 5 (because PVE opponents scaled over their max levels are usually 5/5/5).

After R73 (to make it simpler?) the levels on PVE drop TUs were capped, while the alliance TUs were scaled up so their character levels don't matter any more. I can't confirm whether stored TUs existing in inventory were scaled down or up respectively after R73, but I think they were.

During the initial TU rollout I collected around 4 Level 300+ Hulk Smash TUs. Good times. But I also collected a bajillion Level 1 Storm TU from Lightning Round seed teams -- like it or not at least it's consistent now.

slaxer723

xellessanova wrote:

After R73 (to make it simpler?) the levels on PVE drop TUs were capped, while the alliance TUs were scaled up so their character levels don't matter any more. I can't confirm whether stored TUs existing in inventory were scaled down or up respectively after R73, but I think they were.

They weren't. I still have a level 393 smash and 275 thunder strike

xellessanova

Updated guide for R75 - Sentry's Supernova seems to be back in rotation as an AI Team-Up, even though Sentry and Juggernaut powers were removed for AI use as of August 2014. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature.

Star-Lord Red and Yellow are back since they are no longer bugged.

Confirmed that existing superscaled TU from pre-R73 PVE remain live in TU inventory, though all post-R73 TU are capped/scaled to your team. The stated reason from the developers was that the super-scaled TU made PVE nodes too easy, adding to community scaling; they thought that having TU autoscale would be a good replacement.

GothicKratos

Very concise and informative write-up. I have no idea how I missed it before, but you have some glue now! :]

TxMoose

xellessanova wrote:

The stated reason from the developers was that the super-scaled TU made PVE nodes too easy, adding to community scaling; they thought that having TU autoscale would be a good replacement.

I don't ever think I'll understand that. if you have to beat high level opponents in pve, you should get the very small benefit of a high level TU drop. I would be totally ok with them not allowing those in pvp (that would be an unfair advantage directly against another player team/points) but in pve it just seems like a slap in the face to scale nodes unreasonably high and then downscale the TU drops. and if it screws with community scaling, then maybe that's a part of the game that needs to not be part of the game (or at least a heck of a lot smaller part of the game). that's great to use one of the broken parts of the game as an excuse to explain another **** part of the game. not that all parts of the game are ****/broken, but these 2 subjects are in the ****/broken group.

Scoregasms

I have tried for the past week to get a KK Green (Embiggened Bash) team up and always end up only getting her Purple (Inhuman Stretchiness) instead, now 6/6 for Purple instead of Green. I have a Green in my inventory, so I know I've gotten it before, but wanted to see if anyone else has gotten one recently (i.e. in the past 7 days) and if this is just my bad luck or if this is a change I'm not aware of?

Malcrof

Scoregasms wrote:

I have tried for the past week to get a KK Green (Embiggened Bash) team up and always end up only getting her Purple (Inhuman Stretchiness) instead, now 6/6 for Purple instead of Green. I have a Green in my inventory, so I know I've gotten it before, but wanted to see if anyone else has gotten one recently (i.e. in the past 7 days) and if this is just my bad luck or if this is a change I'm not aware of?

yes, got one today.. have never received a purple team up from her. Other side of that is, the person sending them only has 3/0/5, so no purple to send.

stowaway

I think Fireball is underrated as a teamup. For eight TU you get 3400 damage, two red AP and minor board shake (including potentially removing enemy special tiles). I don't know if it deserves to be on the "best" list, but I'm always happy to get one. Of course Torch's other two abilities are fairly lousy as teamups.

One option for the worst list is Ares. I get them constantly from players in my alliance with 2* rosters. They know he's a powerful character, so they send him along thinking they're helping. But it's a very rare situation where I would want to drain all my green AP for a 2* ability, albeit a very good one at that level.

d0nk3y

stowaway wrote:

One option for the worst list is Ares. I get them constantly from players in my alliance with 2* rosters. They know he's a powerful character, so they send him along thinking they're helping. But it's a very rare situation where I would want to drain all my green AP for a 2* ability, albeit a very good one at that level.

That TU is literally the last ditch emergency attack - two down from a terrible cascade and the enemy's 1 turn away from finishing you off, so you nuke him and hope for the best. Supernova is kinda the same way.

*edit* Also, why no love for 1* Hawkeye? His TUs are cheap, selectable and can be used to really get you out of a bind. 7 TU AP to wipe out a row or 8 TU AP to turn any basic or Protect tile into a critical tile? Yes please.

TxMoose

d0nk3y wrote:

stowaway wrote:

One option for the worst list is Ares. I get them constantly from players in my alliance with 2* rosters. They know he's a powerful character, so they send him along thinking they're helping. But it's a very rare situation where I would want to drain all my green AP for a 2* ability, albeit a very good one at that level.

That TU is literally the last ditch emergency attack - two down from a terrible cascade and the enemy's 1 turn away from finishing you off, so you nuke him and hope for the best. Supernova is kinda the same way.

*edit* Also, why no love for 1* Hawkeye? His TUs are cheap, selectable and can be used to really get you out of a bind. 7 TU AP to wipe out a row or 8 TU AP to turn any basic or Protect tile into a critical tile? Yes please.

I actually use that ares TU on my goon only team that doesn't have a green user - steve/cyc/mnmags. that seems to work well for that but I agree - any other team I make, green is going to be far more important for an actual ability than a TU. I rarely ever use the TUs I take in with me since I'm focusing on usable ap and unless I 1) get a cascade that nets me some green or 2) i'm matching away green cds on that team, I don't usually have much green to use and many times I never get enough TU ap to use it. hulk has a 50/50 shot at doing the same thing.

Pwuz_

I too use Ares often enough that he certainly isn't the worst TU. Like D0nk3y & TxMoose said, he's useful when your only Green user is downed or if you are building a team without an active Green. Especially since it takes so little TU AP to cast, you are almost always ready to cast it when the conditions are right. Try building a team with Daken, Blade, & C.Mags (or any Red user).

Yeena, IM 35, Bagman, Baglady, Beast, & Falcon all offer worse TU's than Ares.

xellessanova

d0nk3y wrote:

*edit* Also, why no love for 1* Hawkeye? His TUs are cheap, selectable and can be used to really get you out of a bind. 7 TU AP to wipe out a row or 8 TU AP to turn any basic or Protect tile into a critical tile? Yes please.

Classic Hawkeye actually was very usable against Ultron, and taking him as a TU does mitigate his extraordinary squishiness. He does have two good powers that enhance the tactical side of Marvel Puzzle Quest.

But honestly I forgot all about him because only 2 out of 20 players in my alliance have kept him. He's just not a very good character overall -- so he's one of the first characters sold by most people doing the 2* transition, and so by the 3* transition he's almost certainly gone. A lot of people carry a Juggernaut for DDQ or Combined Arms, and MBW's Widow's Sting is so amazingly useful that vets with spare roster slots load multiples of her up to send out.

So good powers, bad character.

stowaway wrote:

One option for the worst list is Ares. I get them constantly from players in my alliance with 2* rosters. They know he's a powerful character, so they send him along thinking they're helping. But it's a very rare situation where I would want to drain all my green AP for a 2* ability, albeit a very good one at that level.

I also have used Ares Green as a Team-Up -- it's really situational but there are a number of good teams that won't use Green. Daken/Blade/CMags, Capt. America/Cyclops/CMags were mentioned, but any team where Blade or Loki is the only Green user on board might find it useful to do something with the stored-up Green. (I personally like having that damage nuke available when I run Daken/Blade/Falcon in PVE.) If you don't have that team, though, it's pretty useless. Unless it's boosted. Ares Green is incredible when boosted and may be better than low-tier or situational Greens.

stowaway

I usually end up burning those Onslaught teamups on Lightning Rounds when any of Loki, Cmags, Hood and Doom are boosted. But that's about half a point shy of just deleting it. For a highly situational 2* green ability, I actually really like Storm's, since it grabs tiles based on the number of green you have without actually using it. Even in the rare cases when I don't bring a green user (like the last node of the most recent Hulk event), there are more potent options available.

xellessanova

Updated for R77 with Vision (24 hrs, should be only Red) and Bullseye (8 hrs, should be only Purple and Green).

Vision's Team-Up should only provide Red, since Yellow and Blue's CD affects only Vision and Vision's matches; it should only be Attack Protocol: Solar Beam (destroy a random 5-tile + and deal X amount of damage to one target). Very very poor, since Solar Beam is the weakest Vision Attack Protocol by design.

Bullseye's Purple is highly situational (I prefer Loki Black or She-Hulk Blue to deal with enemy special tiles) but his Green is a phenomenal board-control/shake/cascade AP generator with a passable amount of damage, excellent at color denial and screwing over opponents who place Trap tiles on particular colors (Daredevil, Doom, Elektra). Pretty good, especially for 8 hours.

I have no idea why Vision is priced at 24 hours and Bullseye at 8; it makes absolutely no sense to me.

Platzy

Revamped Moonstone's Control shift might be worth a mention on the "deal with enemy special tiles" front. It only affects up to three tiles, but costs less than Loki's and can also deal with attack tiles.