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.

Heroism: Phoenix

Dark Phoenix
(artist: John Byrne)

Introduction

Phoenix is available from the store for a bargain 48 CP, and has been since the beginning of the game.  Jean Grey is one of the most popular of the original X-Men, first featured in Uncanny X-Men #1 as Marvel Girl.  Her Phoenix persona didn't appear until Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny, and the Dark Phoenix "saga" is one of the iconic moments in Marvel history, being retold numerous times in the cartoons, as well as in X-Men 3:  Last Stand (for better or for worse).

She's also unique in Marvel Avenger's Alliance:  Her Phoenix 5 costume is the only costume that is unique to the game, having appeared nowhere else in Marvel comics, television, or film.

If you're interested in more about Phoenix, the Dark Phoenix run on the 90s X-Men cartoon is excellent, available on Netflix Instant, and features a ton of Cyclops saying the name Jean.  I suppose you could also watch X-Men 3, if you're into that kind of thing.  It's my wife's favorite of the X-Men films, but I can only speak to my previous memories of the film, as I haven't gotten around to rewatching it in time for the writing of this article.  And those memories tell me you're probably better off watching the cartoon.  Or you know what?  Maybe you should just take my word for it, or perhaps get a Marvel Unlimited subscription to read the comics.

Phoenix

Unique to M:AA, her Phoenix Five costume.
(The Comics featured Namor, who is for
legal reasons not in Avengers Alliance.)

Phoenix as mentioned before is a bargain:  She also has several alternate costumes, White Crown Phoenix and Phoenix 5 Phoenix.  The Phoenix 5 costume is a limited time only costume, having most recently been available during the Phoenix Five sale earlier this month, but it is arguably not as good as her always available White Crown costume.  Between her costumes and base abilities she has access to three classes:  Tactician, Blaster, and Infiltrator.  I personally use Blaster White Crown Phoenix, but you may find you prefer Infiltrator, or possibly even the Phoenix Five Phoenix as a Tactician.  Each has their own distinct advantages.

Her White Crown ability is that Phoenix Five refreshes Death and Rebirth, which allows her Phoenix Force powers to revive the first ally (including herself) that dies with 25% of their max HP.  It also unlocks her Phoenix Fire level 9 ability, a catastrophic attack that hits all enemies, does significant damage, applies soulfire to remove buffs, and removes debuffs from your team.  The ability to 'scroll' with her power as well as keep your team alive makes her one of the premier aggressive support team members in the game, and learning to play around her abilities and kill her before she can Phoenix Fire is a significant part of higher tier PVP.  She's also great in PVE, unlocking a premium mission, and is one of the first heroes I suggest new players to buy if they're looking to get into PVP while still playing PVE.

PVP Strategy:  Using Phoenix

On Attack

Phoenix has several attack abilities, each with their own applications.  Often, players are attracted to her Level 2 ability, Telekinesis, for the 60% chance to stun, and overlook her Psi Blast as being "just damage".  However, Migraine is a very powerful ability reducing the next attack's damage from the afflicted target by 30%, which is great for keeping your team alive through something like Modern Thor's Call Thunder, or other large aoe attacks (including opposing Phoenix Fire).  Additionally, Psi Blast is a psychic attack which makes it act stealthy, allowing you to ignore protect and counterattack abilities such as Rescue's Magnetic Attraction.  This can be used to pick off weakened targets or to attack targets weak to Phoenix.

Always available.
Always good.

Her Mind Link is another ability that recently received a buff making it a Quick Action.  Mind Link adds Focused to your team, but more importantly turns the target party member with Mind Link into a protector.  If you have an Agent with a Sinister Scepter, or a series of counterattack items, or are partnering with Kitty Pryde, you can set up teams that counterattack while being immune to damage.  You can also use this to spread the damage around, making it harder to focus fire individual team members who survive a single round.  This can also be used to help trigger Phoenix Fire.

Phoenix Fire is the big whammy:  A huge, hard hitting AOE that strips debuffs from your team, buffs from the opposing team by applying the Soulfire DOT, is catastrophic and cannot be protected or countered, and rarely misses (it can still be negated by special attacks).  This is what turns Phoenix from a good character to a great one:  She can take you from a losing position and catapult you ahead quickly. With White Crown Phoenix this refreshes Death and Rebirth allowing your team to remain alive even longer, possibly long enough to fire off a second Phoenix Fire if the opposing team lives that long

On Defense

Phoenix's AI prefers to Mind Link onto the character with the most remaining health:  It's for that reason that if you are running a Phoenix team that features Kitty or an Astral agent, you should consider only ISO-equipping that character with HP, to increase the chance that Phoenix will properly give the protect to the character you want soaking up hits.  Her AI is pretty darn decent, it will use Phoenix Fire whenever possible, and now that Mind Link is a quick action it doesn't always waste turns spamming useless buffs.

PVP Strategy: Facing Phoenix

It's something like this...
except with arguably better animation.

Fighting Phoenix is an important skill that will test you, particularly as you try to push into the later leagues (Vibranium and Adamantium).  The most important trick is to prevent Phoenix Fire from being used.  The best ways to do this are with specific crowd control abilities, and properly timing your focus fire so that you can trigger Death and Rebirth and then kill Phoenix before she has a chance to act again.  This means knowing the exact damage ranges of your abilities, being a bit lucky not to unintentionally kill characters with big crits, or spamming stuns on Phoenix after you trigger Death to hopefully keep her stunned for the round when she would fire off Phoenix Fire, allowing you to kill her.  Enough DOTs on her can also prevent her turn from happening, assuming that she's not partnered with a character or agent that can remove those DOTs.

She's very hard to kill with Psychic attacks, so keep that in mind if your plan is to attack her that way.  The most dangerous Phoenix teams feature protectors, making it very hard to target her on the critical turns.  Try to have an AOE ability or two you can use to hit her if she has a protector up, or have Stealthy attacks (or Psychic Energy from your own Phoenix, perhaps) to hit her when she's "down".

Phoenix is a top tier defensive hero, so expect to see her often, and learn to play around her.  Hopefully, you'll start seeing some success once you develop that important skill.

Oprah League Rewards! PVP Season 9 recap.

Look under your PVP Tab... YOU ALL GET ANGEL!

There was no Featured Team on Monday due to the end of PVP.  I was going to post this the same day, but the events of the day were very chaotic and I felt I wanted some time to reason out a response.

So this PVP Season went out with a huge surprise, pleasant to most and unpleasant to the top roughly 1% of the players:  Nearly everyone received the Adamantium League bonus!

For me, this isn't a big deal:  I was once again Adamantium on my accounts, and seeing a bunch of my friends who were on the bubble get rewarded at my season end party event was a blast.  The backlash is very vocal against this, but I think we need to take a moment to look at how Playdom could have potentially addressed this, and then look at how they did.

1. Playdom could have rolled things back and recalculated rewards.
2. Playdom could have issued additional rewards to players in their respective leagues to make their accomplishment "worth something".
3. Playdom admits they screwed up, but does not change the rewards.

The first option is what many people were fearing.  I just got this cool reward, will the company then take it away from me?  Thankfully, Playdom seems to have some grasp of how large a PR nightmare that would be.  The Adamantium league posters are out in force telling them that their current solution was terrible, but they're not even 1% of the overall user-base.  Imagine how loud the other 99% would be.

The second option is the one I'd like to hope they considered before deciding to go with option 3.  I spent significant time and effort getting Adamantium, and as a result I think it would have been nice to receive something for that effort other than a number in my tournament history.  That said, this option would require them to spend some significant time to come up with a reward that was fair and wouldn't just leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth.  Most likely, that reward would have come in the form of CP or Shield Points or something else that's just a minor benefit, and not anything as major as the free hero.  That said, Adamantium was one of the only ways to guarantee that free hero, since some players did not receive the free Oprah Angel.

The third option is honestly the easiest for the company in many respects.  No more hours of developer time have to be spent implementing fixes or trying to do rollbacks, they just continue working on their already-delayed Season 2 content and fix it for next season.  This option also leaves people with a bunch of free stuff, but that seems to be fine for most their users.  The biggest concern is that for the users who were the heaviest spenders on the game, this solution also feels like the worst one.  How they choose to address that (if they do) will be interesting to see.

This also almost feels like an apology for all the players who got their teams ruined by the plethora of bugs introduced with a week left to go in pvp.  Sorry, everyone who used all my budget team recommendations:  They extra screwed over all the best budget characters (except Phoenix, see the recap!).  Hopefully these bugs are addressed before next season.

But enough of the drama!  You've got some sweet new heroes, look forward to my Angel review next week (I haven't had the time to play with him enough this week), the upcoming feature on Shepherd's Staff (if you got that), and a return to the regular content schedule.

Season 9 Recap

My defense team (lvl 100+):  Iron Patriot // White Crown Phoenix

My offense team (lvl 100+):  Iron Patriot // Modern Thor

My defense team (lvl 50 and under):  White Crown Phoenix // Psylocke

My offense team (lvl 50 and under):  Phoenix Five Emma Frost // Psylocke

Overall, my team selection stayed fairly constant once the nerfs to Rescue came in:  I was using Juggernaut // Phoenix Five Cyclops before that, since the combination can pressure the old Rescue teams fairly consistantly.

I noticed a sharp drop-off of Tacticians being used on defense teams near the end of the season at level 100+:  Instead, there were numerous infiltrator teams featuring Phoenix, Nightcrawler, and the like designed to punish those players.  This gave room for me to run Blaster teams fairly liberally, and I had reasonable success with that approach on offense.  With many more players having access to 8 slot blaster coats than before, I imagine we might see a brief uptick of blasters.

I managed to get lucky enough to get my Staff quests done without spending into the ol' gold stash, but I imagine many were not as lucky.  The item seems very reasonable, particularly if you do not possess scrolls, since the healing is good and one way to beat scroll teams is to take enough turns once they blow their scrolls, and win that way.  All in all though, I felt the quest was slightly too discouraging.  I wish that it was less random number generator specific.  Getting ten pvp spin items was very frustrating, even if it did happen for me.

How did your PVP season go?  Were there things you wanted me to cover that I didn't talk about here?  Drop me a line at tactwidow@gmail.com or reply in the comments below and I will try to address your questions!

Tools of the Trade #2: Quantum Jumper & Power of Four

Tools of the Trade is released every Friday, and features in depth discussion of equipment for your agent.  It features two items:  One that may or may not always be available, usually a limited edition, special operation, pvp or other premium item, and then one item that is either always farmable, or researchable.

Premium Item - Quantum Jumper

How to obtain it:  Store (36 gold)

Effect:  Each other member of your team gains an additional turn and applies Exhaustion after that turn.  2 turn cooldown, STARTS ON COOLDOWN.

Quantum Jumper used to be a huge favorite back when it was immediately usable.  Now that it's not quite as good, I know that some people have benched it in favor of other items, but it still has one of the best effects possible, so it's worth bringing to people's attention.  Unlike the newest shiniest Shepherd's Staff, the Quantum Jumper gives you the turns _right now_, which can be very important when fighting heroes like Rescue or Phoenix, where allowing the opposing team a chance to respond is deadly.  However, I honestly can't suggest springing the gold on this item these days, because there are two similar items, one of which, Magnetic Field Generator, is our everyday item today.

If you are using the item, you'll probably want to pair it with hard hitting or buff-focused heroes that can keep you around long enough to use it.  Wonder Man springs to mind as a hero that can really take advantage of extra turns, allowing him to build huge Finest Hour! hits and piles of buffs on himself.

Everyday Item - Magnetic Field Generator (and Custom Magnetic Field Generator)

How to obtain it:  Drops from Magneto, the epic boss in 4-4.  (Requires Storm as a deploy to unlock the fight).

Effects:  Grants a shield to your team, and if the shield is broken (not expired or removed by effects) it grants an additional turn to that team member and applies Exhaustion..

Magnetic Field Generator is one of the first truly good defensive items you're likely to encounter in Avengers Alliance, assuming you're not springing for gold items.  Shields are powerful proactive defensive measures, and extra turns are some of the best possible things you can gain in this game.  This item provides the both.  It is a full, non-quick action to apply, keep that in mind, and you'll find this item to be not so great against agents with a Scroll, or Rescue, but often this item if correctly used and at a timely moment, will win you fights by itself.  A really solid pickup.

The only difference between the regular and Custom generator is that the Custom no longer has the Tech type.  This is barely relevant, there's a couple of things that prevent Technology effects, but realistically this item will be the same no matter which version you have.

It's also worth noting that 4-4 is one of the most efficient ways to farm Command Points, so in your quest for this item you might just get some CP along the way!

Avenger's Academy: Nightcrawler & 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.

Swashbuckler Nightcrawler (Infiltrator):
ISO-8:  Steady
Shadow Dance >> Triple Threat, with his Night Kick if you absolutely need to stun someone critical (like Modern Thor), and Ambush to trigger bleeds once they're stacked on a target.  Repeat as needed.

White Crown Phoenix (Blaster or Infiltrator are both fine):
ISO-8:  Steady
Phoenix is fairly straightforward.  Mind Link Nightcrawler if he has (or will easily get) combat advantage, otherwise whoever has the most HP is a good choice.  I often only attack with Mind Blast, since it allows you to avoid protects and cannot be countered.  Telekinesis is good if you absolutely need to stun someone.

Once Death and Rebirth triggers, use Phoenix Fire ASAP and watch the opposing team burn!  If you have White Crown Phoenix, this will give you another Death and Rebirth which is pretty nice.

Bruiser Agent
ISO-8:  Steady
Key items:
Curative Reach
Brutal Claw

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 with Nightcrawler's alt costume allows you to bring a lot of pain really quickly.

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.

Other items are of your preference:  I am fond of things that provide shields to help keep Phoenix and Nightcrawler alive longer.  Magnetic Field Generator is a particularly good one, from the epic boss in mission 4.4.

Summary

Total CP Cost:  160 if you buy both alt costumes with their cheapest choices, 96 without costumes.

This team is slightly more expensive than the last one I featured, but it has one advantage:  The costumes aren't 100% required to run this team.  They are certainly a huge improvement, but the base characters aren't useless, unlike some costumes which really make or break the characters.

This is a very defensive team, that wants to play the long game.  Use this team if you see a lot  teams with a Tactician running around, because it can quickly mop the floor with them thanks to Nightcrawler.  If you are seeing heavy (2-3) tactician teams, you may want to run the Infiltrator Phoenix instead.

DISCLAIMER:  At the time of writing, Swashbuckler Nightcrawler is bugged, and his Ambush is not proccing Hemorrhage.  I still believe he's fine to use, but be warned.

Heroism: Red Hulk

Introduction

Red Hulk was the Adamantium reward for Season 8, and more importantly, is being released for general sale on the 11th of July.  You might be wondering "Why is the Hulk Red?" and more importantly "What can he do for me?"

Red Hulk

Red Hulk is the now-Hulked out alter-ego of General "Thunderbolt" Ross, best known for telling his daughter Betty to "keep out of it, this is man talk" in the classic Hulk cartoon, and sending insane amounts of the army's resources to capture a green dude with anger management issues.  Now, after experimenting with Gamma radiation because why the hell not, he is a Red Hulk.

Red Hulk looks like he's been out in the sun too long.

He should cost 135cp when released (like all the other pvp heroes) when released, which puts him on the expensive side of the generally available heroes.  Should you buy him?  Well, he fills the same role as Captain America basically:  A tactician protector with reasonable aggressive power.  Unlike Captain America, he's not required to unlock any missions, but it is very likely in the future that he will be needed in a Special Operation mission as a deploy.  This means that buying him is a fairly reasonable proposition down the line, to try and save some gold and gain access to the loot from that epic boss.

Being similar to Captain America isn't really a strike against using Red Hulk:  If you need a protector character, he's one of the stronger ones, due to his protect granting him Energy Steal which steals health and stamina when attacked, and granting him Heat, a buff that stacks and as it stacks grants both Burning and Phosphoric to his attacks, as well as building into a critical mass Nova attack.

Because he can create Burning, he's a fine pairing with Human Torch or Mark 42 Iron Man, but also with other durable team members to keep him alive, such as Doctor Strange, Emma Frost, Rescue, Invisible Woman (Future Foundation) or Omega Sentinel.  He can also be used reasonably well to protect glass cannons like Quicksilver, although his protect being buff based makes him particularly susceptible to debuff removal.

PVP Strategy:  Using Red Hulk

On Attack

Little Known Fact:  Red Hulk often
has a stat bar for a face.

You generally want to lead with Gamma Bomb unless their team has a clear way to remove debuffs that hasn't been used yet (Omega Sentinel's Nanoheal Array, an agent with a Scroll, etc).  If they can remove debuffs, consider leading with Searing Smash to build up Heat, or just start using Bulwark immediately if their team has heavy hitters or you need the protect.

Bulwark is your core skill:  You will want to use it when you can to soak up attacks, acting as a constant drain on the HP and Stamina of the opposing team, and building up Heat.  Once you have 30% heat, Bunker Buster hits particularly hard, and if you can build to 70% you can unleash on your enemies and do significant damage.

In order to make sure Red Hulk can get to that point, you will want to either heal and shield him with your team, allowing him to protect and build to the point where you can win the fight.  Try and avoid Meltdown, as although it deals massive damage it stuns Red Hulk and hits your own team.  Phoenix is a fine partner if you actually want to trigger Meltdowns, since she can help a teammate survive then use Phoenix Fire to follow up after your Meltdown and polish off their team.

On Defense

Red Hulk's AI is reasonable, but not spectacular.  He often tries to build into Meltdown, and almost always leads with Gamma Bomb.  I don't tend to use him on my defense teams personally, because he's a micromanagement hero, and those tend to perform badly on defense compared to more straightforward characters that the AI understands.

PVP Strategy: Facing Red Hulk

You can approach beating Red Hulk by removing his Heat buffs and keeping his Bulwark down, either with Cornered status, Soulfire and Scroll attacks, or stealthy attacks to avoid his protection.  He doesn't present much of an offense without Heat, and if you can avoid giving that to him you will do well.

Ask Tact Widow - 7/9/2012

Dear Black Widow,

Me and my friends are often paired against each other in PVP, and because I've spent a ton of my money on this game I often beat them.  I'd like to give them a chance to win once in a while, what can I do?

Sincerely,
Wallet Warrior

Dear Wallet Warrior,

There comes a time when winning isn't everything.  I suggest replacing your armory with Mystical Munitions. Those 64 gold items aren't what makes a winner, what makes a winner is spirit!  If you really like the look of all those Sorcerous Scepters you just bought, perhaps my buddy Luke Cage will help your friends have a fighting chance.  Luke's feeling awfully lonely on the flight deck these days, and could use the company of his best friend Iron Fist on your defense team.

Dear Black Widow,

I've just started this game, and my friends keep telling me not to spend my gold.  I really, really want to recruit Spider Woman, she's been my favorite character ever since she was really the Skrull Queen in Secret Invasion.  Why won't my friends let me do this, and what should I spend that gold on?

Confused,
Spider-Woman's Only Fan

She's sad because she's terrible in
Avenger's Alliance.

Dear Spider-Woman's Only Fan,
Please, please don't buy Spider Woman.  She's only good for flying airplanes.  That said, you really should spend your early gold on armory tabs:  You will be able to fill them with all those random mystical munitions and things in order to have a fighting chance against your friend, who sent in that earlier letter.  Plus I'm pretty sure he'll be fielding Luke Cage soon, that should help!

Regards,
Black Widow (the only real Spider Woman)

Have questions?  Email tactwidow@gmail.com, or leave a question in the comments.