Very Early-Game Tips

DirigiblePilot · December 2013

Sorry to create another topic, but I haven't seen any help for my specific problem yet.
I just got the game 2 days ago, and I seem to be stuck. The people in S.H.I.E.L.D. training are just a little too hard for me to beat, and the levels in the Prologue are, too. I have completely finished the H.A.M.M.E.R. set of mission (as in, I've gotten every reward) and I have a little over half of the rewards from the Juggernaut missions. I started on the Venom missions, and the first few (where you just fight Venom, with Spidey on your team) were easy, but I seem to have gotten roadblocked on the next few. For example, I can complete the level with two Pyros and a Soldier, but without fail, two of my characters will be downed and IM35 will be at ~200 health by the end of it. What am I doing wrong? Am I supposed to wait several days for resupplies and tournaments that don't put a 3-star limit on you?
Or am I just impatient?
Here's my roster:
2-4-1 IM35 Lv. 18
2-5 Modern Black Widow Lv. 13
2-3-2 Modern Storm Lv. 12
3-3 Classic Hawkeye Lv. 10
1-1-0 Original Black Widow Lv. 8 (Won from a tournament where I got really lucky)
0-1 Daken Lv. 6
1-0 Juggernaut Lv. 1
0-1 Venom Lv. 1

No more roster room, but no covers on deck, either. And 75 HP and 3012 ISO. I save it just in case a character I really want to level comes along. Is this where my problem lies?

Unknown · December 2013

Keep replaying the missions you can to get all of their rewards.

Don't be afraid to use health packs to heal your team after a battle -- they regenerate back up to 5, one every 35 minutes.

Use boosts if you have them on missions that are difficult -- you'll get plenty of boosts over time, and you can buy more for ISO if you need (and not much ISO).

Use your ISO to level up IM35, Modern Storm, and Modern Widow. There's really no point in saving it -- when I was playing through the Prologue it was rare for me to have any spare ISO. Those three are easily the strongest 1*s and, IMO, worthwhile to have maxed level going forward.

Save your HP for cover slots as you're doing now. You may want to not redeem any tokens until you have enough HP for a new slot in case you pull an entirely new cover. Hard to say; the way the tokens and slots interact right now is, IMO, very unfriendly to new players.

Unknown · December 2013

He is right. Mindset should be:
1. Save your HP for slots. Just ignore the golden number. It's not there.
2. Pump ISO into *Storm, *Iron, *Widow. While leveling up always check their damage per colour so you don't end up with Storm tanking.
3. Play PvP using the skip button often.
4. Chill. A quite wise guy once said that this game is a marathon, not a sprint. Enjoy the journey, everything will come to you sooner or later.

DirigiblePilot · December 2013

Thanks for the replies! I just discovered "Who Is This Clown" hiding at the very back of the Juggernaut map, and this mission gives access to both HP and Thor (woot!) so he will be part of my team soon. And I did spend all of my ISO on the three mentioned characters, and saw a noticeable increase in efficiency- especially Storm. Without Iron Man to use reds, she creates awesome cascades with her red and green, and now that black creates 20 3-damage tiles... well, I can certainly see why people say she's good! Things are definitely looking up for me- and in such a short time, too!

Just one more question: when doing PVP, what kinds of characters should I aim to go up against? So far I've been looking for characters like Hawkeye, Yelena, and Storm, i.e. characters with low health. Is this a good approach? Does it really even matter in the end whom I go up against?
And thanks again for the feedback.

Unknown · December 2013

PvP is about personal preference and experience. Try different things. If your team ends up dying, try to understand why and come back when your phone tells you that they healed up. Usually you aim for the highest threat in the enemy team. In the beginning this may be *Storm or *Widow but as I said...experience. Have fun!

Cousin Simpson · December 2013

f3nfire wrote:

He is right. Mindset should be:
4. Chill. A quite wise guy once said that this game is a marathon, not a sprint.

A marathon with a too-tight-for-comfort time limit in place. /shakesfist

DirigiblePilot wrote:

Just one more question: when doing PVP, what kinds of characters should I aim to go up against? So far I've been looking for characters like Hawkeye, Yelena, and Storm, i.e. characters with low health. Is this a good approach? Does it really even matter in the end whom I go up against?
And thanks again for the feedback.

I'm relatively new to the game, too, and while seeing low-health characters is a sight for sore eyes, I'm not afraid to go up against IM or Juggernaut or the Hulk, so long as their character levels don't overwhelm mine by too much. My personal strategy is more concerned with the enemy's AP powers -- I've skipped Wolverine as a rule, for example -- and in fact, I'll take out Storm/BW first when facing them, leaving IM for the last.

Unknown · December 2013

For the order of attack, assuming your team is not so strong that you can simply blow away the other team, here's a rough priority queue:

1. The most damaging character (as a function of level and their AP skills) needs to be killed first.
2. Stun characters, most notably Modern BW, takes precedence over #1 if your team consists of only one strong character plus two tag-alongs.
3. Wolverine and Daken should never be the target of your regular match 3s.

To use a more concrete example, let's say you run into modern BW, Thor, and Wolverine. If your team is dependent on one strong character, you kill BW first (because she can stun your 1 powerhouse character). If not, because Wolverine cannot be targeted by match 3 in any meaningful capacity, you go after Thor first, and switch to Wolverine the moment you have enough AP to kill him (because he can do more damage than Thor).

DirigiblePilot · December 2013

Cool, thanks! Since I'm still in the phase in which IM35, Modern Widow, Modern Storm is the team, I've been taking down characters in ascending order of their health, so that I can (hopefully) stunlock the last character while I take my time whittling down their HP, which is the largest of the three. But I will certainly try out your strategies. The funny thing is, using careful planning and judicious use of the skip button, I can manage to consistently place top 50 or even 25 even if my MMR is high because I did well in the last tournament- with a team that looks something like IM35 Lv. 30, BWM Lv. 22, ModStorm Lv. 19. And maybe I'll be able to do even better with the new strategy!
(My current strategy attempts to minimize damage so I can do many battles in a row- this hinges on the fact that IM35 tanks when I match blues, which is used for the stunlock, so I only have to use 1 health pack after each battle.)
And finally, I've recruited the 2-star Wolverine (from the last Avengers tourney token), have Cap on deck (from this Avengers tourney token) and have no fewer than 4 Classic Storm covers lined up, and hopefully this will be increased to 5 or 6 after the ranking results for this tourney. Can't wait to try her out.

Unknown · December 2013

Well, leaving the strongest guy for stunlock is fine if the opposing team is 1 strong guy + 2 tag alongs. It obviously depends on the exact matchup you're against and what kind of offensive capability your team has. The question you have to ask is that can you take out their most dangerous guy before he can do anything dangerous? If so, then always get him first. If not, you might want to work on his supporting character first and try to weather the counterattack. For example if you can't kill Thor before he does a Thunder Strike, then stunlock is pretty much your only option.

Very Early-Game Tips

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