Avengers Academy - Shadowcat & Phoenix

Avengers Academy features a PVP team that is easy to acquire and works at lower level brackets.  It'll have a budget, low level focus for the items, and won't use items that are no longer in the rotation at the time of printing.

Shadowcat Kitty Pryde (Infiltrator):
ISO-8:  Steady
The Shadowcat alternate costume is unfortunately critical to this build working, you really need the benefits of starting phased and Strike from the Shadows to make this work.  With the Mind Link from Phoenix up, Kitty will protect and counter nearly every attack thrown at her.

First round, you can Call Lockheed, hopefully on a tactician to get Combat Reflexes for more counterattacks.  Call Lockheed doesn't break phased, so you'll have another turn to dish out some painful counterattacks before you break phased with Sneak Attack, which hits exceptionally hard.  Use Shadow Kick if you have Already Phased, and use Phased Attack to set back up once the debuff falls off.

Phoenix (Blaster):
ISO-8:  Mercurial and Chaotic (see Agent note) or Violent (after 125)
Use Mind Link on Kitty to set her up to protect/counter attacks, and then start focus firing someone with your mind-bullets!  One thing to be aware of is if it looks like someone is going to drop soon, you likely want to make sure you have enough stamina on phoenix to use her Phoenix Fire, so that might mean preemptively recharging.

Phoenix has Psychic Energy attacks, very good for focus firing past protects or onto other phased targets like Agents using Sinister Sceptre, or opposing Kitty Pryde.  Additionally she has a Stun which can be helpful for protecting Kitty once she's had to break Phased.

Infiltrator or Bruiser Agent
ISO-8:  Mercurial and Chaotic (see Agent note)
Key items:
Sudden Support
Goblin Glider (or Custom version)

One thing about this team is that ISOing your team is very particular:  You must make sure that Kitty has the highest max HP between the Agent, Phoenix and Kitty for the AI to properly Mind Link onto Kitty like you want during the setup of the team.  Since the AI always mind links the character with the most HP remaining, that will often be Kitty since she starts the fight phased (barring psychic shenanigans).

Otherwise, this Agent is set up to have one bit stealthy hit on a key opponent.  With three stealthy characters you can often remove a troublesome Agent or Rescue before she gets a chance to remove your Mind Link or Strike from the Shadows, which lets you have free reign to run over them in a flurry of counterattacks.

Summary

Total CP Cost:  65 for Ktty, plus up to 80 for White Crown Phoenix, putting this team around 145CP for the better setup.  You could spend slightly more and get Infiltrator Phoenix, but I currently prefer the Blaster variety.  If you see a ton of Rescue, it might be worth the extra CP though.

This team is fairly buff reliant:  If the opposing team strips your buffs before you get a chance to really act, it can be devastating.  Still, it has a lot of play and is quite the fun team to use.  Phased is very powerful, and if you can take advantage of it you can use it to survive teams that are set up to one shot you fairly easily.

Heroism: Captain America

Introduction

He also has been known to suffer from the
serious condition known as "Liefieldism".

Captain America is one of the most iconic superheroes around, dating all the way back to the 1940s.  Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, his origin in World War II has remained relatively unchanged throughout the years as Steve Rogers, scrawny boy with heart who undergoes a fantastic transformation because of a Super Soldier Serum that grants him the near supernatural ability to not look like a complete doofus with wings on his head like little elf ears, and silly boots.

His intentionally patriotic themes make him fairly polarizing:  Many people misunderstand the character as a jingoist symbol of American superiority, but that fails to address his modern incarnation as more of a fish out of water idealist with a strong individualism streak that often puts him at odds with the government he appears to be a literal representation of.

If you're looking for some good Captain America reading, I heartily recommend both Marvel 1602 (no seriously he's in it), as well as the Death of Captain America if you want something new.  Although it does feature his "Death", it also is a great look at how the character is portrayed and impacts the universe around him.  I'd also suggest his 1970s run which features a very interesting political climate (Watergate, and the Vietnam War both put significant strains on the character).

In Marvel Avenger's Alliance he's largely based on the Marvel cinematic universe take on Captain America, which is basically fairly close to his main comic book incarnation, although he doesn't appear as at-odds with his government as Steve often is.  Carrying his trademark shield, he's an excellent character for protecting your team, and in his World War II costume is one of the stronger Bruisers or Tacticians around.

He's also a valuable buy:  He unlocks a premium mission in Season 1, Chapter 11, and is the team up in Season 1, Chapter 12, Mission 2 which is still the best (or one of the best, pending season 2 analysis) place to farm CP once you're in your mid 100s.  He's also an excellent protector, although it's strongly advised to pick up his WW2 costume (in Bruiser or Tactician flavor depending on if you expect more blasters or scrappers).  I'd suggest Bruiser just because it's vastly better for 1-12-2.

PVP Strategy:  Using Captain America

On Attack

Captain America is great for protecting your squishy
damage dealers like Iron Patriot.  MURRICA!

Cap is an aggressive protector:  He triggers tons of counterattacks, so you want to have him set up to maximize your utility from that with some attack ISO to make sure he hits hard.  He's vulnerable to being debuff stripped however, so beware.  He also provides an excellent buff to the party just for being around, but his protect sequence often leads to his main impact being in the first round or two of a fight.

His attack sequence is tragically a little boring:  Leading Strike, then just use whatever you feel is right for the situation, and refresh Shield Guard once his alternate costume's buff wears off.  This is one of Captain America's main weaknesses as far as a character you're interested in using:  He's a bit of a one-note character.  The note is a good one, sure, but it's still fairly mundane.  This might be because he hasn't had much of an update since they first implemented him, and many of them aren't as complex as the currently available heroes.

He's still a very powerful protector however:  His ability to protect from AOE attacks right at the start of the fight takes away several one hit KO strategies by himself, and he can ruin teams that rely heavily on that.

On Defense

Cap's AI is pretty good!  He will always recharge Shield Guard if it goes down, and like many straightforward heroes he doesn't need much to be good in the hands of the computer.  Correctly ISOing him and providing him with a good backup team is very important, though, as he often goes down fairly quickly to dedicated fire.

PVP Strategy: Facing Captain America

As mentioned earlier, his protect is a buff and can be removed, which renders his utility fairly low if you have a way to give him Cornered, Soulfire him, or Scroll it away.  If not, you're in for a bit of a slog.  Bleeds are also particularly good here, as he makes many attacks if you proc them, which can result in him bleeding out if you really have no way to deal with the protect.

Additionally, his damage is fairly low so against low damage pairings you can often take the time to defensively set up, and wait for his protect to fall off naturally.

Featured Team: Emma Frost & Psylocke

Phoenix Five Emma Frost (Tactician):
ISO-8:  4 Spry, 4 Steady
Emma is a very technical hero:  You will often want to Unlock Potential to either purge debuffs or increase Psylocke's power, since she is your primary bread and butter offense on this team, then follow up by applying Psychic Tap to any characters without Mental Resiliance.

This can take some knowledge of what the characters are capable of:  Heroes with full action defensive moves are not ideal targets, but heroes like Wolverine or Iron Patriot that are assured to attack if possible are great targets for Psychic Tap.  If you are facing a very defensive hero, War Diamond to stun them and hold them out of the action, or use Mental Trauma to apply an AOE Migraine to the opposing team to reduce their damage and keep yourself alive.

Typically, you will want to Unlock Potential whenever possible, unless Emma acts first on your team, to maximize the stamina gain and keep your offensive power up.  Emma is very reliant on the AI to do her damage, and as a result is not the greatest defensive team hero, although her abilities are all very potent.

Modern Psylocke (Infiltrator):
ISO-8:  8 Steady
Your setup for Psylocke is Mental Coordination first turn, then follow up with a Kinetic Shield on either the Agent or Emma if you still have the Psionic Shadow buff, and then follow up with Telekinetic Katana, or Psychic Knives if you need to break through a target that is protecting, or you already had Weak Mind on someone due to Coordinated Attack.

The real benefit to Psylocke here is that the Weak Mind caused by her Telekinetic Katana causes Mental Anguish to do 75% of a character's base health, so you will often want to put Weak Mind on characters you targeted with Emma, or set up to psychic tap if Emma follows Psylocke in the turn order.

Bruiser Agent
ISO-8:  8 Steady
Hoarfrost Mace
Sinister Sceptre
Scroll of Angolob
Shepherd's Staff

What you typically want to do with this build is use Staff at the earliest opportunity, use Angolob to strip buffs, then protect for two astral projection turns by using Sinister Sceptre.  That should give sufficient time for your team to get set up, and the extra healing from the Staff will help make up for the fact that your team has no regeneration of any kind.

Budget Setup:
Custom Posessed Pistol / Custom Goblin Glider
Sudden Support
Power of Four
Damage Amplifier

This Agent wants to kill people, plain and simple.  Attack, and hit extra hard, with your quick action supporting items to allow you to make huge hits, and will proc additional coordinated attacks.  Use Power of Four when you have near full Stamina thanks to Emma so that you can use four Pistol shots to take down a pesky target before you burn out in a blaze of glory.

Summary

Strengths

This team is very good at taking out teams that vastly outclass you in armory and stats, since it is based on Mental Anguish which scales with opponent HP. Additionally, it has a strong "get lucky" factor when you consider both Emma's chance to take very little damage, and coordinated attack proccing multiple times to randomly explode key targets.  That makes for a very efficient team that can roll the dice and win unwinnable fights.

Counters

Ironically, other Psylocke teams are very difficult for this team to beat, and Rescue teams can be a nightmare for Emma due to Rescue purging Mental Anguish.  Also, if you're facing this team, don't forget that refreshing removes Mental Anguish which can take a lot of the edge off this team's ability to damage you.

Rating

Offense:  A+

Defense:  C

Avengers Academy: Black Widow and Hawkeye

Avengers Academy features a PVP team that is easy to acquire and works at lower level brackets.  It'll have a budget, low level focus for the items, and won't use items that are no longer in the rotation at the time of printing.

Grey Suit Black Widow (Tactician):
ISO-8:  Steady
Widowmaker into Flying Kick to remove buffs and put out huge burst damage.  Widow's Bite if you fear lethal retribution from high damage targets.

Heroic Age Hawkeye (Tactician):
ISO-8:  Steady
Heroic Age Hawkeye is the master of multiple focus fire attacks:  Pinpoint Target then follow up with whatever attack is appropriate.  With Trick Arrow for stuns and your primary arrow for a variety of effects you can burn down single targets pretty quickly, particularly when hitting a Widowmaker target.

Scrapper Agent
ISO-8:  Chaotic
Key items:
Sudden Support
High Damage Item (Golden Screaming Eagle)

You want to lead with Sudden Support into a high damage item, to explode the Widowmaker target.  This team, and your agent, really needs to burst down one to two members before the second round is done, or you're probably not going to get there, since both Hawkeye and Black Widow are fairly squishy.

Suggested items:  Bolt Action 4-Bore, and if you are lucky enough to have them, the various damage amplifier items like Arc Reactor Charge are very strong choices.

Summary

Total CP Cost:  72 cp, making this one of the cheapest fully costumed pvp teams you can obtain.

This team wants to focus fire.  Your matches will be fast, furious, and over in a few rounds one way or another.  It's a bit soft to teams with protects since it can be hard to hit the targets you want to hit, but it is a reasonable choice and with a bit of luck with Hawkeye you can have a lot of success, particularly at low levels.

Heroism: Wolverine

Introduction

A mild improvement on the original,
Brown and Tan offers extra turns
when struck while protecting.  Sometimes.
Mostly when the AI uses him.
Yours will never proc.

Wolverine is one of Marvel's most popular properties, appearing in X-Men titles for years, the Avengers, X-Force, basically anything with an X in it, and I'm sure there's someone trying to figure out if he's a good fit for the Fantastic Four right now.  In Avenger's Alliance he's probably one of the first characters you checked the CP cost on, admit it.  And it probably gave you a shock to see the number 90 right up there.  Is he worth it?

The answer is "well yeah, now that they've buffed him".  If you're on the iOS, you're probably not that impressed, but the rest of us see him frequently and bemoan his ability to outheal us, and put out considerable damage.  He snikts bubs with the best of them.  The weapon Kuzuri is also named after him (being Wolverine in japanese).  You'll hear that a lot if you go see The Wolverine, which is in theaters at the time of this writing.

Wolverine

Wolverine is one of the better buys in the game at the 90CP mark:  He tears apart PVE with his self-healing, practical immunity to bleeds, and his ability to pump out large amounts of damage with his Berserker Rage.  Additionally, unlike many characters who are not PVP viable without their costumes, Wolverine is still surprisingly good, which makes him a good buy if you're early on.  Plus, he unlocks a Premium Mission!  It's almost like they want you to buy this guy.

And according to Season 2's previews, he's needed for one of the new mission types (in a solo fight against Sabertooth).  The 90 CP you spend on Wolverine is worth it, bub.

He gains a lot of synergy with other characters that exploit bleeds:  Nightcrawler (Pirate costume) and X-23 are both great choices.  Not surprisingly, since they are in the comics associated with Logan... or outright clones of the guy.

PVP Strategy:  Using Wolverine

On Attack

Shouldn't be standing.
Instead, Berserker Rage for the win.

He's the best at what he does, and what he does is ruin Infiltrators hard.  Once you get a target bleeding, proceed to Berserker Rage them into the ground.  Pesky protectors ruining your day?  Savage Rend them and get them to cut that out.  Can't do that?  Try his stealthy attack that also stuns!  He does it all... if what you want is attack.

Wolverine's biggest flaw is his lack of versatility.  He can't do much other than throw down bleeds, damage, and the occasional stun.  He doesn't provide buffs to the team, and not many other team members will really help him be much more than what he is:  A very powerful part of your team.

On the flip side, he's based on bleeds and can randomly just survive things that should kill you, letting you win fights you just don't really "deserve" to win, particularly against opponents who massively out-stat you.  For that reason, I use him a lot when I first start out.

On Defense

Well, on Defense he can be a house, randomly ruining attack plans and protecting when people don't want him to protect.  Also, his drawback of no versatility leaves very little for the AI to screw up!  A definitely plus for the sniktbub.  Depending on how much Rescue people are running, he can definitely be a solid defense team choice.  See the most recent Avengers Academy for a fairly foolproof low level defense team featuring Wolverine.

PVP Strategy: Facing Wolverine

Wolverine:  Not a fan of musicals.

The trick with Wolverine is many players will pair him with another protect character:  The most important tip I can give you on how to deal with this is that you want to target Wolverine, and kill the other protect first.  Targeting the other protect will proc Wolverine's protect often, and if he's Brown and Tan you run the risk of giving him a lot of extra turns, and that damage piles up fast.

If you're often facing Wolverine, characters who are immune to bleeds (like Colossus, for example) can give him fits, since much of his damage is based on exploiting bleeds.

Also, Bruisers can wreck him fairly quickly, but he has a habit of living through things.  DOTs can help mitigate his Healing Factor, provided they're not poisons or bleeds.

Scheduling Announcement!

Hi everyone!  I know it's been a bit of a hiatus, but between work and other stuff I've not had the time to make as regular updates as I'd like.  So, for the time being, I'll be posting on a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule, with the following:

Heroism on Tuesdays:  This will feature a single hero (this week, we look at Wolverine to coincide with the release of The Wolverine in theaters).
Avengers Academy on Thursdays:  Featuring a budget or always-available team, to help new players get into PVP smoothly.
Featured Team on Saturday:  A no-holds barred PVP team gets a spotlight.

I hope that you'll all continue to check back, and hopefully my schedule will let me return to a more prolific writing schedule!  Season 2 is coming soon, and I'll be sure to have a lot to say when it does.

Avengers Academy: Cyclops & Wolverine

Avengers Academy features a PVP team that is easy to acquire and works at lower level brackets.  It'll have a budget, low level focus for the items, and won't use items that are no longer in the rotation at the time of printing.

Cyclops (Tactician):
ISO-8:  Steady
Use Evasive Maneuvers whenever it's available, then Optic Blast > Exploit Weakness.  Mega Optic blast is nice when you need to do aoe damage to avoid a single target protect, or are desperate and need to get lucky to win a fight.  Cyclops is great for setting up full stacks of bleeds with Wolverine, and generally providing large surges of damage to single targets, allowing you to burn down teams quickly.

Brown and Tan Wolverine (Scrapper or Infiltrator):
ISO-8:  Steady
You don't need Brown and Tan, but it definitely helps.  The extra turns from his protect don't often proc, but they do lead to wins often enough.
If the target is flanked, you can lead with Savage Rend to proc Adamantium Claws, otherwise use Adamantium Claws, then proceed to Berserker Frenzy on bleeding targets to tear them to shreds.  You can use Savage Rend on protectors if you really need to disable their protects, as well, but often times I find I just want to apply bleeds and let them bleed out, assuming they're not immune to bleeds.  Only use Feral Ambush to attack targets through protects, most notably Phoenix.  Wolverine is one of the better heroes for tearing up Phoenix due to his hard hitting DOTs and his stealthy attack and ability to negate protects.

Scrapper or Generalist Agent
ISO-8:  Steady
Key items:
Curative Reach
Brutal Claw

If you are seeing a lot of Bruisers go Generalist (or Blaster, but that's dangerous at low levels with all the Doctor Strange around), otherwise, Scrapper is excellent for beating down infiltrators that can otherwise give Cyclops problems.  I typically try to cover for Cyclops with the Agent, since Wolverine is pretty durable on his own and you can usually burn down a Bruiser before they get too big off your Wolverine.

Brutal Claw is available through the store, as well as mission gear from 3-5 (epic boss) and 4-2.  It applies a bleed and Ravaged, which you will generally want to allow your agent to prepare targets for Wolverine to rip them apart with Berserker Frenzy.

Curative Reach allows you to heal your team, and is available in the mid 20s.  It's a staple almost all the way through the low and mid level pvp scene, allowing you to keep your team alive long enough to set up and do damage.

This team can also benefit from attacks that grant the party stats:  Wolverine is particularly good with Strengthened for example, so if you happen to have something that grants that as a bonus (please don't use Offensive Accelerator, please), then go ahead and use that.  Protect items on your Agent are also excellent for this team.

Summary

Total CP Cost:  160 if you buy Scrapper Brown and Tan, and base Cyclops (since Phoenix Five isn't readily available).  You might want Infiltrator, in which case the cost goes up to 175.

This team is excellent at burning down single targets:  If you face a lot of Phoenix, this team is one way that you can take her down quickly and efficiently.  It also has a pretty good long game, since Wolverine can take on many heroes one on one without significant danger due to his Healing Factor granting a lot of extra HP throughout a fight.