The most fun I’ve had with Marvel Strike Force has been raiding with a competent Alliance. Pretty much every other aspect of the game is something you play solo, but raids can require a bit of coordination with your Alliance to pull off well. This week, we’ll be talking about raids in MSF and the sorts of characters you’ll want to field for your raid team.
First things first, you’ll need to join an Alliance. You can do this in-game by clicking the Alliance button and browsing around or you can go to the MSF Discord or MSF subreddit to find an Alliance that meets your needs. If you’re planning on being active, you’ll want an Alliance that runs raids daily, coordinates over Discord, and has a majority of members hitting the 600 Raid ticket contribution each day. Before you apply to an Alliance, you can look them up in-game and actually check to see if members are pulling their weight before you bother to join up.
Why do you even want to raid in MSF? Well, raiding is where a lot of your progression will come from in the game. The level 40 raids, for example, will provide you with tons of T1, T2, and T3 ability materials which are necessary to upgrade your characters’ skills. Playing solo and without an Alliance, you’ll quickly hit a wall once your abilities start requiring T2 materials, and you’ll find upgrades nigh impossible once they require T3 materials, unless you raid. Raids are also a great way to get character shards for some of the more powerful characters, such as Thor. You can also use raid currency to acquire rare pieces of gear, which you’ll need at higher gear tiers. This is where I’ve been putting my raid currency to work. Thor is pretty OK, but he’s a huge grind to unlock and I’d rather trick out my existing characters, but it’s up to you.
OK. So you now know why you should raid and you’ve joined a (hopefully) competent Alliance. How do you actually do it? Well, raids teams are first come, first serve, so I would hope your Alliance sets a designated time for the raid to start and puts up enough raids (or higher level raids) to accommodate its roster. The lower level raids only allow for 8 players total, while higher level raids will require multiple strike teams totaling 24 players.
Once you’ve joined a raid team, you’ll want to coordinate with your Alliance to pick a path. Without coordination, it’s not too hard to complete 60% of a raid and earn a good chunk of the possible rewards, but if you want to complete the whole thing and get all the loot, everyone’s going to need to know where they’re going ahead of time to make sure you complete every node on the board. Here’s an example of a raid path we put together in our Alliance (you can look up raid maps on MSF.GG):
One thing I really appreciate about raids in Marvel Strike Force compared to say, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, is that the raids feel fully cooperative. There’s a difference in the rewards you get for the completion level of the raid, but there’s also better rewards for those who place higher on the leaderboards by contributing the most damage. Unlike some other games, the spread of rewards between those who place at the top and those who place lower is much tighter. It feels more like a bonus than anything else. This results in less drama over node competition, making the experience more collaborative, as it should be, than competitive.
So, what kind of team should you put together for raids? Well, unlike something like Arena or Blitz, raids are more of a marathon than a sprint. Your health and ability energy are persistent from fight to fight, so you’ll want to think a bit differently about your composition. Personally, I tend to focus on AOE-heavy teams great for clearing out waves of trash and I stick ‘em with Night Nurse for sustain. Healers aren’t really necessary outside of the campaign missions, but they also shine in raids. The only way to heal your characters in raids is using a special currency (or Power Cores) or having another character heal them in battle. I prefer keeping my dudes healed up in battle instead of depending on said currency. Farm Night Nurse; she’s a healer without equal in Marvel Strike Force. Thank me later.
My current team consists of Yondu, Quake, Night Nurse, Gamora and Rocket Raccoon. Yondu, Quake, and Rocket all have exceptionally powerful AOEs. Gamora is great for tearing apart single targets and also really great for cleaning up whatever the AOEs leave behind due to her multiple reset mechanics. Wolverine, if you’ve unlocked him, is also a great choice for raids due to his self-healing and potential to revive himself.
Got your own raid tips or team compositions to share? Post ‘em in the comments below!
