How do you deal with the 4* lack of healing?

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Unknown
Unknown
edited October 2015 in Roster and Level Help
So as a free 3* player I rely very heavily on my 3 big healers (Grocket, Patch, and LDaken) to get me through most everything. I use them all the time in PvE, and for my PvP climbing (until I reach the danger zone and need to have better defenses up). I can put them in front of the better offense characters, and sweep along without having to rely on my precious health packs, for which I'm not going to be spending HP to restore. (Yes, there's Taco Tokens, but I'm trying to keep those for the real prizes.)

But as I'm (slowly) climbing into the 4*'s I'm getting very nervous about the fact that there don't seem to be any great tanking healers in the bunch. At least no passive ones. And it's going to be hard to get XPool and XForce to use their expensive healing powers to restore back to max the way I can with the 3* guys. Then there's Reed who relies on "lucky" elimination of my own special tiles? Thing seems like a good tank, but doesn't heal so even that's only useful for so long.

I realize that there probably aren't many F2P 4* gurus yet, but any thoughts about playstyle? I'm not planning on underleveling my 4* characters for scaling, but is it worth doing it so they can hide behind the true healers? I know that offense trumps defense in the "big leagues", but even a fast offense team is eventually going to get worn down to the point of healthpacking right? Then what does the free player do?

Comments

  • 20three
    20three Posts: 371
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    ...what?

    4 star is healing is not something there needs to be more of...
  • Der_Lex
    Der_Lex Posts: 1,035 Chairperson of the Boards
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    F2p player here. I currently have 5 4* at L250 (xforce, Hulkbuster, Prof X, Kingpin and Jean) and 2 at 200 (Ant-Man and Thor), so I think I can probably weigh in on this.

    I tend to hit any seed teams with loaner + 3*s, and then switch them out for my main team, which is usually Jeanbuster unless one if the others is boosted that week. I use those to get to 650-800 (playing against 50 point+ teams to play as few matches as possible) or so before taking a break to regenerate health packs. Then I usually float unshielded until I can start my climb to 1100+ until my first shield, and then I use 2-3 hops to get to 1300.

    The only time I ever run into health pack trouble is if there's a character release pve running, and then I usually use taco's to get more (I personally feel that's the best use for them). But during the initial climb you can usually find enough teams in the 3* range that can be beaten without losing too much health, and later you tend to play in short 2 match bursts anyway, so then it isn't an issue either.

    Long story short, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    Thanks for the response. So I guess the answer comes down to having to change my playstyle to stronger teams in shorter busts. I guess I kind of knew that already, but change is hard. icon_e_smile.gif
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I guess this doesn't really apply to transitioning into the 4* tier but, you get a lot more mileage out of a 4* during climbing than you would out of a 3*. Back when I was playing in the 3* tier, there were not too many characters that I'd want to take into a fight while wounded. The true healers weren't too much of a problem, even after the rest got the health buff, but if Hood, Loki, or even Iron Fist has taken 4k damage, my choices are to spend a health pack, sub them out, or wait for them to recover. The tanks like Hulk, Thor, or Panther can still probably be hit for 4k in one match and still take on a second match without healing. In the 4* tier, the tanks can lose 4k and still have more health than 3* Hulk at 100%, and even a wounded XFW will still have slightly more health than full health Patch.

    I couldn't give you specifics, but if I had to guess, I'd say that the extra health pool starts to kick in at around level 160 - that's about the stage that the ISO cost per level starts to make significant increases.
  • TxMoose
    TxMoose Posts: 4,319 Chairperson of the Boards
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    a few weeks into having a usable hb (running fistbuster most of the time), the vast majority of the time I only need 1 health pack for hb each match (every once in a while fist will need one and every once in a while a cascade happens and I won't need any). that will change next week with fist boosted (fist will tank black too then), but 10 health packs can get me 8-10 matches usually and I'm not usually running that many at one time anyway.

    edit: the challenge is when you are being optimal in pve. I rarely pull hb out for pve though, but pve usually leaves fist damaged and some health packs used.

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