Talk:The Punisher (Dark Reign)/@comment-67.61.203.104-20140702104050

Oh goodie, another split opinion for me to address!

Alright, Marvel lovers. Today we're gonna look at the 5/3/5 build. It does appear that some of the players do prefer a 3/5/5 Build, but we have two major factors in the choice of this build: Color variety and AP cost. With several recent releases, the 3-star tier is now loaded with red-green combinations.

The full list is Wolverine Patch, Thor Modern, GS Widow, Storm Mohawk, Ragnarok, Sentry, Hulk, She Hulk, and Human Torch.

On the other hand, 3-star characters with an ACTIVE black power are Black Panther, The Hood, Human Torch, Psylocke, Storm Mohawk, Doctor Doom, and Loki. And two of those aren't able to reach level 141.

Black is scarce color, let alone one that has few ill consequences. But let's tackle his strengths in order of importance.

The first of Punisher's strengths is medium-low AP costs across his three colors. While each taking a basic 3 matches to pop first, the leftover makes repeated uses easier each time, not counting any excess from match 4's or AP generating board destruction.

First move to look at is Retribution. It has very weak damage for a move of its kind, but its additional effect is what makes it valuable to Punisher at any level. For completely downing an opponent based on the percentage of their HP, even the mighty level 141 Hulk could be taken down at 3914 HP and below for just 8 Red AP. Teams of high health characters could have their threat drastically reduced as Punisher picks them off one by one with this technique. The base damage is meant as saver for either characters with much lower HP, or to be consumed for excess uses, like using Retribution twice in a row, once to reduce HP to a downable level, and the second to actually down the opponent. However, given the wide variety of Red abilities on most characters, Retribution could serve as a followup to one of those techniques as well, be sure to weigh the cost and benefit of each superpower before deciding.

Next is Molotov Cocktail. With it's 7 Black cost, it's hard not keep fire spreading across the board and full team damage cooking. While countdown powers are difficult to manage, the attack tile generation should be seen as a grand benefit in conjunction with the strike tiles generated by Judgement. Both the full team damage and the damage of the attack tiles are increased by Strike tiles, which makes the consistent barrage all the more painful. But the key difference here over trying to load the board with strkes is consistency. Generating extra damage every other turn at no extra cost is much more powerful than it first sounds with that reduced cooldown. It becomes difficult for the opponent to keep the board clear of potentially multiple countdowns generating multiple attack tiles that need to be cleared to stop. And even if a countdown were to fall, only 7 more black AP would be needed to refresh it, along with another wave of full team damage. In that way, Molotov Cocktail becomes a perfect balance to Retribution. Spammable versus situational, team wiping versus tank-killing, and all the while being difficult to fully rid the effects of.

Last on the trio is Judgement. It loses some impact being a board-shattering move that has no base damage. It's theoretical maximum for 3 Level 141 characters would be ~600 damage for 9 tiles, reduced if one is unfortunate enough to be an environment tile. The extra strike tile with 15 extra damage for each becomes really unnecessary for being the main focus of the move. A single one cleared undermines the benefit of the two covers used on it and they become difficult to stack without inadvertently clearing them with the board shattering effect of Judgement itself when used twice. As mentioned before, Judgement works best in tandem with Molotov Cocktail, specifically BEFORE, to increase the full team damage. As it's description states, it creates the opening for serious damage, but is less effective as the main tactic. The idea is to whittle the opponent's HP to the proper percentage to Retribution instead of blasting them down to 0.

Punisher is a very balanced offense character, but being one of the game's humans, he is a low-HP character himself. That's the other benefit to the low cost AP abilities, in that he won't need to be forced into harm's way too often to get his abilites active. He really seems to pair well with any complementary colored characters given how independent Retribution is and how Judgement and Molotov paiir with each other. There's no specific characters I could recommend with abilites to enhance Punisher's.