Superheroes Sequel 101: Issue 1 Battle Strategy

Hey Tappers….Safi asked if he could help out with some Superheroes posts and suggested that maybe he could do a Battle Strategy post.  I thought it was a great idea…so here’s Safi’s take on battle strategy for Issue 1.. Enjoy! 

Hey Battle Strategists!

In a follow-up to “Superheroes Sequel 101: Issue 1 Battles” I’m going to delve into some basic strategy of these battles. In order to understand the strategy, it’s important you know the basics of battles in general. So be sure to read that first post before reading this. I’ll wait until you’re done reading…

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Still waiting

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Done reading that post? Good, now that you the basics of battling, we’re going to cover basic strategy so you know how to win battles (both felon and social battles) and how to maximize knuckles (felon battles only). There will be a few different scenarios I have included to illustrate things as well.

We’ll break down this post into three parts: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advance.

 BEGINNER

First thing, always remember which fighter type has an advantage over another fighter type:

 Brawn has an advantage over Brains

 Brain has an advantage over  Tech

 Tech has an advantage over  Brawn

What this advantage means is that the character will do more damage to the weaker character (2 hearts in 1 shot).  In return the character with the weaker defense will lose 2 hearts with 1 shot.

Secondly, when you’re selecting your team to go into a felon battle or social battle, take a look at the top of the battle box for the Fighter Roster. You’ll fight the characters in the order in which they appear at the top from left to right. As well, the first character you select will be the one that leads the battle for your team.

So in the scenario above, your team will face a Tech fighter Meg Ahertz first, a Brawn fighter Testost-Irene second, and finish with another Brawn fighter Gluteus third. Also, in the scenario above, you’ve chosen a Brain fighter in Dr. Colossus to lead the battle for your team.

As mentioned in that basic post, because you’re facing off against a Tech first, Brawn second, and Brawn third; your ideal team to counter is a Brain first, Tech second, and Tech third. Why?

Your Brain will have an advantage over their Tech. Your Tech will have an advantage over their Brawn. Your Tech will have an advantage over their Brawn.

The order is pretty important and can win you a lot of battles simply by matching up your roster so you always have an advantage over your opponents roster.

Now let’s get into some mathematics. We know that there are 3 options for what fighter type the first opponent can be (either Brawn, Brain, or Tech). Likewise, there are 3 options for what the second opponent can be. And finally, there are also the same 3 options for what the third opponent can be. Taking 3 x 3 x 3, we get 27 different fighter type permutations we might face over the course of the event.

So for those who are really overwhelmed by how to choose team members, below is a table showing all 27 permutations of Fighter Rosters you may encounter, along with the fighter types for the ideal team you should put together to beat them (in a lot of cases).

Again, for beginners, if you follow the table above, without worrying about switching players or healing them, you’ll win a lot of your felon battles and social battles. To get that win percentage even higher or perfect, keep reading.

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INTERMEDIATE

After you’ve seen the fighter types of the opposing roster, another thing to look at is their life line (number of hearts). If you’ve chosen the correct fighter type, even if you have lower life line, you stand a good chance of winning, as you get to attack first and your advantage will do more damage to their character.

This is because it is important to understand the order of who gets to attack when.

• You get to attack first at the start of every battle.
• Once you’ve attacked, if you didn’t kill the opponent’s character, the opponent gets a turn to counter attack you.
• After your opponent counter attacks, it’s again your turn to attack.
• If you kill an opponent’s character on your attack, when the opponent’s new character appears, you again get to attack first.
• If your character gets killed by your opponent on their counter attack turn, your new character gets to attack first.
• If it’s your turn and you use Science Water, you still get to attack.
• If it’s your turn and you switch characters, you forfeit your attack, and its your opponents turn to counter attack.

So in the early stages for beginners with the bare minimum characters, you may face off against an opponent with only one heart. If that is the case, it doesn’t matter which fighter type you choose as any fighter type will kill a one heart character.

So if the opponents roster is made up of a 1 heart Tech, 1 heart Brawn, and 2 heart Brain, the table in the Beginner section above says your roster should be made up of a Brain, then Tech, then Brawn. But knowing what we just covered about order of attacks, you could win this battle with just a 1 heart Brawn leading alone.  This is explained below:

The battle starts with your 1 heart Brawn (note: all your characters should start with at least 2 hearts, but for sake of example I’ll use 1 heart) taking on their 1 heart Tech. You get first move. First move: 1 heart Brawn at a disadvantage would still deal 1 damage to 1 heart Tech. 1 heart tech dies. 1 heart Brawn comes in for opponent. Still your move. Second move: 1 heart Brawn deals 1 damage against 1 heart Brawn. 1 heart Brawn dies. 2 heart Brain comes in for opponent. Still your move. Third move: 1 heart Brawn at an advantage deals 2 damage to 2 heart Brain. 2 heart Brain dies.

In the example above, you just won without a single hit against you. Those who stopped reading at the Beginner part would have won too. But they would have been dealt at least 1 heart damage.

Let’s illustrate the importance of order in a scenario:

In this scenario, we’re taking on a 2 heart Brawn, 3 heart Brawn, and a 2 heart Tech. This is a beginner account and only has access to the four characters re-introduced for all new players who were not part of Superheroes 1.

If you look at the Beginner table, the ideal team to defeat a Brawn/Brawn/Tech roster is a team made up of Tech/Tech/Brain. All new players only have one Tech character, so we’ve gone Tech/Brain and left the third spot empty. [Note I left the third spot empty because I was sure I can win with just the two; but if you’re not sure, just put any character in the third spot to possibly help increase your chances of winning]

My Clownface will lead things off and has Tech advantage over Brawn. He’ll deal 2 damage, killing our opponents 2 heart Brain.

Because we killed our opponent’s character, it will remain our turn to attack when their second character comes.

We again have Tech advantage over Brawn, and inflict 2 damage to their 3 heart Brawn.

Their 3 heart Brawn will counter attack with 1 damage, as Brawn is at a disadvantage to our Tech.

Our Clownface then delivers another 2 damage attack, which is enough to kill their 3 heart Brawn.

With their 3 heart Brawn killed, their last 2 heart Tech comes in. Since we just killed their character, it will again be our turn.

Here we are at the critical junction and have two options: we can attack with Clownface or we can switch to Fallout Boy.

Given that we only have 4 characters and I’ll be back in an hour for my next attack, we’re going to switch to Fallout Boy. This gives us the advantage of Brain over Tech, but it sacrifices our turn. Their 2 heart Tech counter attacks and deals one damage.

Now Fallout Boy can use the Brain over Tech advantage and deal the 2 damage fatal blow.

In this scenario, both characters only lost one health and will heal in one hour. However, if we wouldn’t be online in an hour, attacking rather than switching might have been a better option at the critical junction.

If we had attacked instead of switched at the critical junction (pictured above again), a Tech versus Tech neutral matchup would only deal 1 damage, and Clownface would have been killed on the counter attack. That would bring in Fallout Boy who would deal the winning blow for our team.

In this outcome, Clownface would need 2 hours to recover his 2 hearts, but Fallout Boy would be in full health along with the two characters we didn’t use.

While most regularly active players can wait for the healing time to elapse, there are alternatives to waiting. Here is a list of all the ways you can heal your characters:

• One heart will heal for every hour elapsed between battles.
• A Band Aid will heal one heart, and can only be used between battles.
• A Science Water will heal two hearts, and can only be used during battles.
• Best time to upgrade your character using gems is between battles, as the upgrade will automatically heal your character and give them their extra heart (so you essentially heal without consuming Science Water or Band Aids and can use the character again).

In the previous illustrated scenario, we were taking on weak opponents with a weak team. This gave us the option to both attack or switch at the critical junction. However, sometimes we have to face strong opponents with a weak team; where switching will actually hinder your chances of winning.

Knowing that you will get attacked if you switch characters, it can be a strategic advantage to leave a weaker player with just one heart remaining in to absorb the hit and die rather than switching them out for another player and having them lose a heart right away.

Let’s go through a scenario together to illustrate this.

Our opponent’s team includes a 4 heart Brawn, a 4 heart Brain, and a 4 heart Tech. Our team as you can see only has 2 heart characters. But we know that given the right advantage, our players can do double damage. As the table in the Beginner section shows, best counter to a Brawn/Brain/Tech roster is Tech/Brawn/Brain.

So that’s what we do, we have our 2 heart Tech (Fruit-Bat-Man), 2 heart Brawn (Radioactive Man), and 2 heart Brain (Fallout Boy). We know the Tech has advantage over Brawn and will immediately do 2 damage and only take 1 in return on the counter attack.

So now on our subsequent attack, Fruit-Bat-Man again deals 2 damage and kills their 4 heart Tech guy.

Having killed their 4 heart Tech guy, we now face their 4 heart Brain guy. But it’s still our turn. If we were to switch right now, we would sacrifice our attacking turn and be at a significant disadvantage fighting a 4 heart Brain with just a 1 heart Brawn, as Radioactive Man would immediately lose one health on the counter attack. So we’ll strategically keep Fruit-Bat-Man in and attack. The counter attack will kill Fruit-Bat-Man.

We can now bring in our 2 heart Brawn who has advantage over their 4 heart Brain (who already lost a heart to Fruit-Bat-Man).

We know Brawn has advantage over Brain, so Radioactive Man deals 2 damage and takes 1 in the counter attack. On the subsequent attack, Radioactive Man kills their 4 heart Brain.

Again, having killed their 4 heart Brain guy, we now face their 4 heart Tech gal. But it’s still our turn. If we were to switch right now, we would sacrifice our attacking turn and be at a significant disadvantage fighting a 4 heart Tech with just a 1 heart Brain, as Fallout Boy would immediately lose a heart on the counter attack. So we’ll strategically keep Radioactive Man in and attack. The counter attack will kill Radioactive Man.

With Radioactive Man dead, Fallout Boy comes in and has Brain’s advantage over their Tech gal. His attack deals 2 damage and he takes one hit in the counter attack.

With one heart left each, Fallout Boy launches the final attack. With 4 hours until the next set of Fighter Rosters is ready, we have ample time for healing. Fruit-Bat-Man and Radioactive will require 2 hours for healing while Fallout Boy will require just 1 hour. If I still have felon battles waiting to be fought, I can come back in two hours and use these three characters again without spending a Donut, Band Aid or Science Water.

When it comes to upgrading characters, various strategies will work. You need to use the gems (which you get from winning battles) to upgrade characters.

The best strategy in my opinion for upgrading is to pick one Brawn, one Brain, and one Tech, and level them each up to level 3, then level 4, and finally level 5. The reason for this is explained in the Advance section.

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Using the Beginner and Intermediate strategies together, you should be undefeated in felon and social battles. However, are you more interested in wins or in event currency? Continue reading Advance strategy to maximize your event currency. You’ll also want to refrain from upgrading all your characters to help with the Advance strategy.

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ADVANCED

For those who either have characters from last year or have purchased Premium characters this year, there is a way to maximize event currency at the price of your win-loss record.

This is just based on the flaw in the payout system of battling Felons in your town.

–          If you win, you get 350 knuckles.

–          If you lose, you get 55 knuckles, along with another opportunity to attack and get the 350 knuckles.

Therefore, to really progress in the prize track, it is best to lose as many times as you can. This will give you 55 knuckles each time you lose. And then eventually complete the battle and get another 350 knuckles.

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Personal analogy:

In my case, I have one Brawn, one Brain, and one Tech character at 5 hearts each. All my other characters I have kept at 2 hearts each. As a result of my three 5 heart characters, my felon battles are always against rosters made of three 5 heart characters.

But rather than win these battles right away on my first attempt (which I could easily do using the Beginner and Intermediate strategies above); I lose as many times as I can, which happens to be 12 losses per battle, before winning the battle on my 13^thattempt. The bonus remains the same when I take out 15 hearts in 1 attempt versus the sum of bonuses over 13 attempts.

Those who are undefeated, if you win the three felon battles earning 350 knuckles, you’re getting 1,050 knuckles for those three battles. Using this method of losing 12 times at 55 knuckles and winning 350 knuckles on the 13^th attempt, over the same three felon battles I’m earning 3,030 knuckles (288% of the original 1,050).

Now depending on how many characters you have, and what fighter types you need in order to lose your battle, you may not be able to do a full 13 attempts in the same 4 hours. But still, this method will get you much further ahead in the prize track.

I was initially 32-0 combined in felon and social battles, before I picked up on this method yesterday. Under 72 hours into the event, I could be 51-0 with under 25,000 knuckles. But instead I’m 51-44 with over 27,000 knuckles (thanks to an extra 2,420 knuckles from 44 loses in felon battle over the past 24 hours).

My losses are really starting to pick up as I now have the method down. I anticipate I should hopefully be able to incur 80 losses a day with the current character set I have (I don’t have all the premium characters or any of the premium items).

Unlocking all the prizes in this act is practically inevitable. So 80 losses a day comes out to nearly an extra bonut every other day compared to those who win every battle.

Again, this only works in Felon Battles, not in Social Battles. While you can still do this with all your characters upgraded to 5 hearts, it’s a lot easier to lose if you have 2 or 3 heart characters.

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CONCLUSION

And that my friends…I hope…completes the explanation on Superheroes 2 Battle Strategy! (I should have warned you it was long…)

With this much information, it’s a lot to take in in one sitting. I recommend re-reading this post a couple times to get the most out of it.

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What are your thoughts on the battle strategies?  How’s your record so far?  Were you quick to figure it out, or still working through it?  Which, if any, of the aforementioned strategies were helpful or will you use?  Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!