This guide is written to enumerate the various aspects of raids that I think about generally. The idea is to lay out concepts that can be applied to any raid as well as provide some of my personal opinions on characters, teams, and nodes. The focus of this guide will be on the Ultimus VII raid as that is the raid that my alliance currently runs. I hope to make this a living document that I update as I learn more, gain feedback, and the game evolves. Note, that this guide assumes that you have basic knowledge of Marvel Strike Force and its battle system.
In general, characters that are used for raids should be nearly maxed out. What I mean specifically is:
Level 75 or your current level cap.
Gear Tier 14. Not all raids levels require this, but at this point in time, Ultimus VII difficulty 3+ nearly require it.
7 Yellow Stars. If you can farm your main raid characters, it should be a focus to max out their stars.
5+ Red Stars. With the new red star promotion token currency changes, it's much, much, more feasible to purchase red star upgrades for your characters. I personally recommend buying up to five red stars for your main team depending on the difficulty of raiding you're at. If you're not quite at the top, four or less red stars may be perfectly fine.
Key T4 ability upgrades. Not all abilities are worth buying for raiding, but for many of the essential characters, many of the upgrades are worth their weight not only in raids, but all games modes.
The above might sound VERY expensive, and while it is, I feel like these kinds of investments pay themselves back several times over. Investing in high quality versatile characters helps you in multiple game modes, and since raids are run every day, you're increasing your ability to perform those raids at a high level, helping your alliance hit higher reward tiers and improving consistency.
Energy - Raid energy is gained at a rate of one every 14.5 minutes. That means getting ten energy for an attack takes 2 hours and 25 minutes. Assuming you start with a full fifty energy and you do no cap, you get nine raid attacks per day sustainably. You can make ten attacks and start at 49/50 so that is sustainable every other day. Unless your team cannot make progress at all, try to maximize your hits per day to get the most progress as possible. Even if you cannot make progress, there is still incentive to make up to nine hits per day since raid attacks will contribute to the World Warrior alliance milestone. For budding alliances, this is a great resource for points.
You can purchase more Raid Energy either with Raid Energy packs (usually received through paid offers or from Customer Support for glitched raid hits). If you do no have Raid Energy packs, you can purchase ten raid energy for fifty cores. It is generally not worth paying this amount unless you are attempting to hit a milestone.
Raid Heals - Below is a chart that shows how many Raid Heals you can use per day and end up at 500/500 after the Medical Supply Challenge runs and through Character Blitz Milestone rewards. Healing a character starts at 20 and revives start at 50. After your first two heals or revives per character, the price will increase. I believe this cost is reset at midnight local time.
Since Raid Heals are a renewable resource, use this to your advantage to make the most of your attacks by topping off characters before tackling difficult nodes. Revives are tricky because while their health is restored to full, their cooldowns are set to whatever they were when the character died. If it's in the middle of a node, it will be hard to remember where they are at which might throw off your next raid attack. If possible, it's better to choose to top off a character than to revive them for this reason. This might not always be an option, but a common character this will affect is Ultron. It's cheaper and more efficient to top off his health instead of having to revive him afterward.
Also note that depending on how poorly a node goes, it may be cheaper overall to just hard reset the node and try again. Hard resetting (close the app via your device manager) consumes the energy used for the node, but otherwise it is as if you did not make the attack. Your health and cooldowns are exactly as they were.
Medical Supply Challenge + Blitz Milestones
Tier Heals/day
4 26
5 32
6 39
7 45
8 51
9 64
10+ 71
Below is a chart that shows the cost of resources per use in a 24-hour period. Raid Energy refreshes will use Raid Energy Refills if you have them and Healing and/or reviving a character will consume Raid Heals. If you lack the required currency, the cost will be consumed in cores if possible. If you don't have enough cores, then you won't be able to take that action at all. You cannot mix and match between resources and cores.
+----+--------+-------+---------+
| # | Energy | Heals | Revives |
+----+--------+-------+---------+
| 1 | 50 | 20 | 50 |
| 2 | 50 | 20 | 50 |
| 3 | 100 | 30 | 60 |
| 4 | 100 | 40 | 75 |
| 5 | 100 | 50 | 75 |
| 6 | 100 | 50 | 100 |
| 7 | 200 | 60 | 100 |
| 8 | 200 | 60 | 200 |
| 9 | 200 | 75 | 300 |
| 10 | 300 | 75 | 400 |
| 11 | 300 | 100 | 500 |
| 12 | 300 | 125 | |
| 13 | 400 | 150 | |
| 14 | 400 | 200 | |
| 15 | 400 | 250 | |
| 16 | 500 | 300 | |
| 17 | | 350 | |
| 18 | | 400 | |
| 19 | | 450 | |
| 20 | | 500 | |
+----+--------+-------+---------+
There are two goals that I try to reach at the end of each raid node:
Key cooldowns are restored
Health is as near topped off as possible
Of the two goals, the former is much, much, much, much more important. At a high level, you can use Raid Heals or even Power Cores to restore health and revive your characters in a raid. You CANNOT do anything about cooldowns easily. Therefore it is paramount that you do what you can to get your cooldowns restored for the next node for a consistent raiding experience.
In this section are just a couple of things I think about at a high level when playing through a node. This is by no means comprehensive, but there are a LOT of things to consider at every point in a raid. This is why creating deterministic outcomes simplifies the decision making process.
What your team does
Do I have the cooldowns I need?
Do I have to play more aggressively or defensively?
Do I need to speed things up or slow things down?
What RNG elements are changing my outcomes?
Did I get a crit?
Did the chains go where I need to?
Did my debuffs land?
What can I do to ignore threats?
Do I need a different set of kits?
Do I need to play more aggressively?
Do I need to play more cautiously?
What the enemy team does
Who did the enemy target?
What debuffs landed
Is my team in critical condition?
Can I survive until I get X cooldown back?
What is killing me?
Is it a damage dealer?
Is it a controller enabling the team?
Is it a support saving my target?
Can I kill or disable these sources?
If an enemy gets to go, will that character kill me or the team?
If yes - Can I kill that enemy before he goes?
If yes - Kill that enemy
If no (to either) - Figure out how to mitigate that attack and focus the next highest priority target
If an enemy gets to go, will that character make it harder for me to kill them?
If yes - Kill or control that enemy
If no - Ignore them
Those are the two major points that I think about when going through the micro of each of my turns. When boiling down the enemies to those two questions, I find that there are many enemies that I can ignore for long periods of time, especially if they have already used their key attack. If the enemy has offense down, and enemy's target has defense up, even major attacks are much more manageable in that state. If the team makes it through the major attacks, that enemy is now on the back burner until they pose a threat again.
It's also important to watch the turn meter of all your opponents. If there is point where multiple enemies have their turns coming up and none of your team members will interrupt them in a meaningful way, try and prepare for the onslaught with damage mitigation or more focused attacks. Some examples would be applying buffs, applying debuffs, healing, or outright killing a key damage dealer.
If there are threats that can end your run immediately, they require your full attention. One such threat is Punisher - especially if there are villains on your team. This high damage output with piercing on his ult usually does an obscene amount of damage that is hard to recover from. Disabling his ability to use it (ability block, blind, stun) will buy you time, but if you can safely kill him before he moves, that is the best outcome.
Another important aspect for sustainable raiding is understanding when waves drop. For simpler nodes, this won't matter as much, but when you are running up against the five minute timer and need to maximize all your attacks, it's good to know when the waves come in. This will only come with experience on the specific nodes that you are doing regularly.
If you need more time before a wave drops to recover a key cooldown, either:
Spread your attacks out more between different targets. This is good when there is not a large threat on the board
Use less powerful attacks leading up to the drop. This will require some testing from yourself, and is usually only effective at the beginning of a node or a wave since it's hard to keep track of random damage that splashes onto enemies
An important note with the wave management is that while you want to space out your attacks such that you have key cooldowns ready at the start of the next wave, you also want to be cognizant of the buffs and debuffs that are active. If you spend too much time spreading out your attacks, status effects may have expired leading to a very deadly situation with the existing wave without debuffs/your team without buffs and a new wave that is raw. This turning point can blow you up in an instant so we should do our best to avoid it.
When getting down to the nuances of each wave of a node, upcoming drops can influence your priority targeting immensely. For example, on the node "Fury's Brotherhood of Mercenaries", there is a Sabretooth in the first wave. After the first kill, the second wave drops and it is important to kill Sabretooth first because there is a Magneto in the second wave. By killing Sabretooth, Magneto will spawn with 150 less turn meter making it easier to deal with him and Juggernaut.
When reaching new difficulties of raids, it might not be possible to complete raid nodes in a single attack. At least with your main raiding team intact. There are two strategies to employ that can help you out.
Time Out - If your main raid team can sustain through the node well, but simply cannot deal enough damage to make it all the way through, consider intentionally timing out (you can quit from the pause menu) at a controlled point during the node to effectively allow a continuation at the cost of ten additional raid energy.
Sacrifice Team - If all you need is to burn some opening enemy attacks or to kill a key target, you can send in a sac team. What kind of sac team you use depends on what you need. If all you need is to absorb the attacks, you have a lot of freedom to pick and choose characters that are strong enough to just capture the attacks and then quit the node. If you also need some damage done, there are several options ranging from front loaded ultimates charged to unload as much damage as possible to charged Storm and/or Cyclops strategies. Personally I don't have a lot of experience with either so I will defer to others here.
Regardless of which multi-hit method you choose, it is important to take note of what the enemy field looks like. What characters are present, their health, and most importantly, where their ability cooldowns are at. It's possible that when setting up the node, you set yourself up in an impossible situation that you cannot get out of. If using a Time Out strategy, also ensure that the key cooldowns that you need are ready for the second attack.
A related note: If you quit via the pause menu, it's the same as timing out. The raid progress will be saved, energy consumed, and your team (health and cooldowns) will be exactly as they are when the node is quit. If you close the Marvel Strike Force app (force quit), your raid energy will be consumed, but everything else will be as if you didn't make the attack. Force quitting is useful if something terrible happens on a node the normally goes well.
Hard Reset - This is less of a multi hit, but just another strategy when things just go south. Sometimes RNG just gets the best of us and we start losing our raid team one by one. I feel that the best play is to just hard reset the game. Doing so preserves your team (as if you didn't hit the node) and only consumes ten raid energy. The alternative is that you have to spend up to 250 Raid Heals to revive your team, and on top of that, your cooldowns might be in strange spots, which puts you in a hard place for the next node.
Sadly, Skrilla has since retired from Marvel Strike Force, but before he did, he created some great, short videos about specific raiding topics. If you want more of a visual instruction, check them out: