How necessary is a healer?

TheHueyFreeman

I had been using thorvelrine/OBW for awhile now and loved it. Then I leveled punisher enough to replace Thor and am thinking about what my long term 3*** team will look like. Spidey is the only healer other than Patch but the nerf hammer is coming so I am skeptical.

Do any of you have primary teams that don't include OBW or Spidey? How's that working for you?

Unknown

I have rarely used a healer on my main team - I do occasionally on PVE, especially when one is buffed - and it's very doable, but be prepared to spend a lot of time healing in the prologue and/or burning health packs. One advantage is that it tends to get you a lot of defensive wins and a lot of skips, in all likelihood - you might be 3-on-2 for many matches, both allowing you to minimize damage per person and giving you a fairly large advantage on both offense and defense. When it's 2+ scrub tournaments, your advantage might be even bigger - I've been seeing OBW + Storm + Fat Thor teams a lot, and either one of my main attackers might have more hitpoints than the entire opposing team.

Short answer - you can do it, I prefer it, but it's a bit different. It's liable to slow you down, but you might find you prefer it - I do.

Unknown

My pvp team is 3/5/5 Patch, and 5/4/4 Hulk (might switch to 5/3/5). Hulk is there just as a deterrent, patch tanks basically everything and regens all the damage so I don't need to run a healer. If i see a big enemy ability in coming, i'll match black and hulk will tank it with anger. Hulk i don't bother healing, if he gets downed, i just health pack. 3rd character is whomever, doesn't really matter. Usually Doom/C.Mag/OBW or featured character.

I'll match damage until the weakest character is dead, usually by that time I have enough to use Best There is, downing a second character, and then i finish off whomever is left with matches or 1-3 uses of Patches green ability.

If Patch is damaged at the end of a battle, I just go to the prologue and do a mission to heal him back up.

I attack OBW first, I prioritize purple, then green, then blue. I use Patche's green to kill, but only if I have good odds of matching purple after.
If against Spidey, I prioritize Blue, then green, then yellow if there is a web tile, then red.

If against OBW & Spidey, I kill OBW first.

note: PVP advice only, this is not a super fast way to do battles, as you're generally storing AP until you can 1 shot the whole team. However I take very little damage and can play marathon sessions.

Arogntbastrd

Having a healer as your regular team helps a lot if you can consistently end the match with a victory heal. No fuss with prologue healing means more time to win another match. Getting hit while you're healing sucks.

If you don't want to use a healer them having 2* mags with 5 purple or im40 helps get you 2 heals per prologue instead of one, which also helps.

Unknown

You can get more than 2 heals per prologue if you choose carefully. A very good mission is the one that lets you fight yelena and venom at relatively high levels: They have a bunch of hp, actually hit for less than goons, unless venom hits a devour, and since you don't have to worry very much about attack tiles, you can just concentrate on your major colors. With OBW and MN Mags, getting pretty much anyone to full health is not out of the question.

Arogntbastrd

hibikir wrote:

You can get more than 2 heals per prologue if you choose carefully. A very good mission is the one that lets you fight yelena and venom at relatively high levels: They have a bunch of hp, actually hit for less than goons, unless venom hits a devour, and since you don't have to worry very much about attack tiles, you can just concentrate on your major colors. With OBW and MN Mags, getting pretty much anyone to full health is not out of the question.

I've been looking for a new heal stage. I'll give that one a try, thanks

poomermon

I was really addicted to healers but I have learned to play without them. Healers are nice as 3rd character but we are usually forced to take a mandatory hero on our team who is usually pretty much useless if it is a new character addition (like Psylocke, Black Panther or *** Thor). That leaves you with just 2-man team and OBW or spider-man are not ideal for a second character imo. OBW is just too squishy and even with healing if you take too much damage you either have to take a health pack or heal at prologue missions. At least personally I'm not comfortable taking half health OBW to a fight whereas 4000 hp cmags or punisher is still ok. Spider-man is a safe choice but ah so slow with no offensive punch at all. Not ideal if you want to finish matches quickly like in lightning rounds.

So instead I like to use 2 offensive characters (Punisher and cMags for me) and just endure the damage I take. The can finish matches super quickly and either char is a much bigger defensive threat than the healers. If I can I play until my health packs run out and take a break and wait until they recharge. Or heal in the prologue if I have to keep playing but I generally find that tactic super boring.

Unknown

hibikir wrote:

You can get more than 2 heals per prologue if you choose carefully. A very good mission is the one that lets you fight yelena and venom at relatively high levels: They have a bunch of hp, actually hit for less than goons, unless venom hits a devour, and since you don't have to worry very much about attack tiles, you can just concentrate on your major colors. With OBW and MN Mags, getting pretty much anyone to full health is not out of the question.

Very nice tip, had levelled up beyond my previous prologue healing mission and this one works a treat.

Unknown

There is a penalty to your MMR (Match Making Rank) when you heal using healers and not health packs. So if you constantly use a healer and keep winning and exit battles full health, it will raise the level of your opponents in PVE and PVP.

There is less of a healer penalty in PVP as opposed to PVE and you have two separate MMR's for them which apply to all modes under that gategory.

Unknown

hibikir wrote:

You can get more than 2 heals per prologue if you choose carefully. A very good mission is the one that lets you fight yelena and venom at relatively high levels: They have a bunch of hp, actually hit for less than goons, unless venom hits a devour, and since you don't have to worry very much about attack tiles, you can just concentrate on your major colors. With OBW and MN Mags, getting pretty much anyone to full health is not out of the question.

The last Rag fight's pretty good, too. He's alone, so he's easy to stunlock and he won't be matching your web tiles. Plus he's got enough hp that he won't prematurely die to match damage.

Unknown

to heal the characters I use Dark Avengenger Personal Security (down right) using OBW, MN Mags and the one to heal. kill first the commander and then you can manage to destroy the asassin's green tile and then recover.

Unknown

I use the last venom fight, works great

Katai

Depends on your team, I would say. I don't think they are 100% necessary, but they are definitely very useful. If you can fit one on your team in a logical manner, they're great. Patch Wolverine with Original Black Widow, for instance, is a great damage-dealing combo, as well as good for AP stealing. The heal is just icing (though the heal is mostly to heal OBW, since Patch heals himself well enough).

I would go with a good combo over forcing a healing on your team, though. If OBW or Spider-man is taking up a slot that could go to someone who works with your other characters better, I would forego the healer.