Marvel Strike Force Raid Guide 616: Do You Even Raid?

Marvel Strike Force Raid Guide

Have you ever stopped and examined the meaning of the word “raid”? It’s typically used in modern settings in a comical way, like, raiding the fridge. In games, we need a party to raid the fridge, and we’ll get awesome grub!

Marvel Strike Force takes on an almost similar play style to that of conventional turn-based RPGs. The character with the fastest speed stat, whether it’s your own character or the opponent team’s character, will fill up his speed bar first and takes a turn.

In the game’s Raid mode, whatever HP and energy conditions you end the battle with will carry over into the next battle, thus requiring a different strategy for playing. You definitely shouldn’t go all-out to win a battle, unless necessary!

Characteristics of the Raid Mode

This game mode is similarly found in other games, whereby your list of characters are pitted against multiple battles. For those who aren’t familiar, or want to know the differences between Marvel Strike Force’s Raid Mode and other games’ raid modes, check out the notes below:

• All your characters can be deployed into battle
  
  If there is a reason to recruit as many characters as possible, it’s so that you have more options available should any of them fall. Some of the higher raid levels, like Ultimus 6 (u6), Ultimus 7 (u7), Alpha 4, Beta 4, Gamma 4, etc., tend to have restrictions. For example, Gamma 3 battles may required you to use either Spider-Verse or Guardian characters only. You can mix characters from both Spider-Verse and Guardian into the team, particularly if one set of characters have too low power or were wiped out from the previous battle.

• Status conditions in the last battle carry over into the next
  
  After your last battle ends, whatever HP you have and whatever energy each individual character accumulated will be brought into the next battle. This applies to the number of Charges too, for characters such as Black Panther, Thor and Juggernaut. Buffs and debuffs, and summoned Minions will not carry over. The same goes to the enemies you encounter in battle.

• Characters can be healed and revived, but at a cost
  
  Health Kits, the green test tube currency you get from Daily rewards and Challenges, can be used to restore a character’s HP to full, or bring a dead character back to full health, allowing you to reuse it in the next battle. 20 Health Kits are needed to fully heal a character from 1 HP. 50 are needed if the character is dead. It sounds cheap, but it’s difficult to accumulate these many Health Kits, especially when you can only hold a maximum of 250.

• Upon choosing a route and entering the battle, you cannot change your path
  
  Raid Mode was designed for alliances and its multiple members to participate and contribute to its completion. That’s why you can choose one of several routes at the beginning, and pick different branches along the way. However, once you enter a battle on a route, you cannot change to another route. This means that the routes must be taken by someone else, thus requiring you to fight with companions. If there is a reason for two or more members to take the same route, it would be because those battles are too difficult to defeat by yourself. Note, though, that this means there will be fewer members available to take the other routes, resulting in a smaller percentage completion of this raid.

• Completing a battle adds to the completion percentage
  
  Every Raid the alliance initiates will have three different groups for you to join. Each battle you complete adds a percentage to your group. Then, the completion percentage of all three groups are averaged out to give the final percentage. That is what the game will use to decide what rewards you’ll get at the end of the Raid. And that is why it is so important every member should participate in it.

• The total damage you deal in all your battles decide your ranking
  
  Within your alliance, you’ll get a ranking as well, and it’ll decide what exact rewards you’ll receive. That’s where your in-game mail will state your rank. It’s not your rank based on the group you joined, even though that’s what the game will display. It’s your total damage output tallied against your entire alliance, so you definitely want to dish out as much damage as possible.

• A higher Raid level yields more rewards, even at a lower percentage completion
  
  Consider the rewards you can get from Ultimus 6 (u6) and Ultimus 7 (u7): In U6, having a completion of 100% (tier 3) will net you at least 1,568 Raid Credits, 96 blue ability materials and 90 purple ability materials. However, in U7, having a completion of only 30% (tier 1) can yield 1,805 Raid Credits, 2 orange ability materials and 120 purple ability materials, which is much more desirable than completing U6 at 100%. It would be more efficient for everyone to put their efforts into reaching 30% in U7 which you give you better rewards, as compared to overclocking yourself to reach 100% completion for less. Besides, the chances to reach 100% is almost impossible without a fully-dedicated team effectively communicating with everyone and deploying high power characters. This means you’ll more than likely receive rewards from the 60% completion instead, which yields much, much less.

General Tips for Raiding

• Train up as many characters and form as many teams as possible.
  
  It contributes to your total combat power, which tends to be what alliance recruiters look out for, but is also useful for Alliance Wars. As stated earlier, if a character falls in battle, and you don’t want, or can’t, revive it, you’ll want to replace it with another team that has the synergy you desire. That’s why having one team will become a liability, especially when you are unfortunate to lose character(s).

• Plan for replacement characters for your teams
  
  There can be many situations where you have a perfectly good team synergy going, but there will likely be one weak spot which gets exploited. It seems that the enemy A.I. sometimes focuses attacks on the lowest HP character, resulting in the team being short of one member. But to replace the entire team feels quite a waste, especially when the other four members are perfectly healthy and even has energy for Ultimate attacks ready. This is when you should have contingency plans to replace your fallen character with the next best character. Well, considering that some teams’ fifth member is a Legendary character, many people are likely to have incomplete teams. This is when you would want to plan for a fifth temporary character. Along the way, plan for a sixth as well!

• Consider training up teams designed for raiding
  
  You would want to consider sustainability in multiple battles, in particular, healing. While in other game modes, such as arena, healing may not be a fundamental requirement, Raid Mode will make champions out of healers! Sure, you can win a battle with an all-brawlers team, but if you lose one character, your team synergy will very likely get affected, or if you enter the next battle with low HP, you can expect swift defeat. For team suggestions, read on below!

• Try to divide your teams into waves
  
  In the starting battles, the enemies are expectedly weaker, with maybe one or two surprises. Consider deploying weaker teams to handle them, so that even if you failed to Stun or Blind the army of Winter Soldiers, thus losing two or even three characters, you’ll still have a backup team ready. Sure, you can say, “I’ll just jump in with my best team that can wipe the floor with them.” If you’re that confident of your team, then you can consider the opposite tactic. Deploy your strongest team first, so that the early battles will be a breeze. Then, when you reach the mid or end battles, you can slowly replace your top team with the next teams.

• Always check who are your enemies
  
  If you are up against an army of Support types, aided by plenty of Protectors, don’t you dare underestimate them! Scientist Supreme will be protected by Defense Up through Vision’s Passive skill, and if you focus your attacks on her first, Night Nurse, S.H.I.E.L.D. Medic and Hand Sorcerer will focus their heals on her. And when you successfully defeat her, Doctor Strange or the S.H.I.E.L.D. Medic will revive her, and your nightmare starts all over again. By the way, did we point out that the Mercenary Riot Guard is there to attract all your attacks? The healers will be there to heal him too! In such battles, you’d want to consider the X-Men team that can draw away your team’s debuffs, and stun every enemy in one attack.

• Communicate with your alliance members
  
  If you don’t have the best characters to use, such as Bio, then let your alliance know to give you the route that allows Tech characters. Or if there’s a branch, and you’re not sure which to take, ask your leader or captains for an opinion.

• Stay on the path you’ve chosen
  
  As explained earlier, once you’ve chosen a route, you can’t change it, thus leaving other battles uncompleted. Don’t ever jump into someone’s route and leave yours untouched. If you really need to join someone’s route, ask the person or your leader for permission first, and ensure that there’s someone else who can cover the battles you’ll be missing. There is nothing worst than switching routes haphazardly, leaving potholes all over the map and bringing down the alliance’s overall completion percentage.

Battle Tips for Raiding

• Conserve energy
  
  Just because you have enough energy for your Ultimate skill doesn’t mean you must use it. For example, if there is only one enemy left, and it’s a Protector that cannot deal heavy damage to your team, save your Ultimate skill and rely on basic attacks instead. Most Ultimate skills take time to accumulate energy, and if it can take out the last standing enemy in one hit, you’ll need to survive another five or so turns before you can use it again. So, if you save your Ultimate skill this battle, it’ll be ready and waiting in the next, to be used on a Mordo or Mantis or any character you deem the most dangerous.

• Heal as much as possible
  
  This is conflicting with the above tip, because it would suggest to use your healing skills whenever they become available. Please note, this is not to say you should indiscriminately heal, even when your members are at 90%. It suggests to avoid waiting until your character’s HP is at 50% or lower before you heal, because, as stated much earlier, surprises can happen. So, be a little more daring, heal to keep HPs high, but don’t over-heal to ensure you still have some available when you need it.

• If the last battle ended with critically-weak or easy enemies, it’s an opportunity to heal or gain energy
  
  If, for example, your last battle ended because the Protector had too high defense stats and time ran out, there’s no need to rush in again with the same team. Consider switching out to your second team and use only basic attacks in order to accumulate energy for them. Or bring in a team that has critically-injured characters to give them chances to heal. Starting a fresh battle with injured characters has a severely high chance of getting them killed.

• Know when to quit
  
  If three or even four of your characters are wiped out in an AOE attack, don’t try to force a win with the remaining character. Quit the battle! You’ll still have that one character alive to mix into another team to help you move along your Raid path. If you see your entire team under heavy debuffs, and you know the enemy will be launching powerful skills soon, there’s no point to pray for their survival just to conserve your 10 Raid energy. Live to fight another day! In fact, if you see the enemy team executing all their best buffs and summoning all their Minions, ending the battle now means they will be energy-less, buff-less and Minion-less when you re-enter! It may be an expensive decision to make, but if it helps you clear that battle, it could be well worth the saved characters. Pride won’t win any battle!

Teams for Raiding

With so many different characters and team synergies, how do you decide which to bring in? Simply taking your highest-powered team might only give you victory over a few battles, because, unless your characters are way over-powered, they’ll eventually be whittled down to zero HP. And if your characters are so powerful that they won’t require any healing until the final boss, then it’s likely the Raid difficulty is too low for you. Of course, do ensure that your alliance members can cope with the difficulty. Anyone with an Ultron recruited will surely find Ultimus 5 exceptionally easy.

Raid Teams

There are some teams designed specially for raiding, as can be seen in some skill descriptions. An example is Killmonger’s Passive skill:

In RAIDS, +20% chance to Counterattack. In RAIDS, gain +20% chance to Counterattack for each WAKANDAN ally.

These teams have skills or play styles that are either activated only in Raid battles, or are optimized for the situations you encounter.

As stated earlier, Killmonger gains chances to counterattack enemies, which can be very efficient in dishing out damage. When you are typically outnumbered, you’ll get fewer turns in to attack, so Killmonger’s passive skill is valuable in trying to weaken enemies before your actual turns come around.

Who you’ll also love is Shuri for her ability to heal the most injured ally at her every turn. This may not seem like much, but if you’re having a Stunned or Slowed enemy, this gives Shuri extra turns, thereby providing extra healing without using up any valuable energy. Her Raid skill allows her to apply Deflect on Wakandan allies that drop below 50% HP, which gives her the added time to heal them, or her allies borrowed time to withstand killing blows.

What some of us love the most might actually be Black Panther. He doesn’t have any Raid-only skill, but for every one kill he gets, his speed bar will fill up as much as 100%. In Raid battles, you’ll encounter overwhelming numbers in form of normal enemies and summoned enemies. Kill off one, and you’ll quickly get another turn in. Kill off multiple targets with his Charged Ultimate skill, and you’ll get multiple turns in. This makes Black Panther the only one who gets turns for a while, which easily ends up letting him ace the battle!

The newest addition to the game, Spider-Man (Symbiote) has Raid-specific effects that finally make the four Spider characters long-lasting in Raid!

Whenever a debuff is applied, his team gets to heal a small amount that adds up considering how many debuffs the team, as a whole, can apply. Plus, Symbiote characters get Drain effect.

This team heals as they attack, allowing them the much-needed healing each of them need. Spider-Man, Spider-Man (Miles), Spider-Man (Symbiote) and Carnage are all Brawlers, while Venom is a Controller, of which none originally have team-healing nor taunting. They can be powerful, yes, helping you to take down boss battles. But expect heavy losses of maybe four out of the five members if you have nothing to restore lost HP, and then, this team will be out of the count.

This is why the inclusion of Spider-Man (Symbiote) and his Passive skill is of utmost importance to the Spider team. Better read up on obtaining and utilizing Spider-Man (Symbiote) in our character guide so that you know how to best use him!

Other than their potentially endless healing, this team distributes debuffs like a widespread pandemic of coronaviruses, leaving enemies weakened and vulnerable. If you slow them too, Carnage’s speed bar fills will leave your enemies watching haplessly as you pummel them with more and more debuffs! Of course, do be aware that all five of them are still fragile and can easily be disposed with one powerful burst attack, even from a Mercenary Sniper’s special skill. Save Miles Morales’ and Symbiote’s Special skills that prolongs targets’ debuffs, because with one successful use, your team’s HP can easily be brought back into the green!

This is an early group designed for Raid, with skills made in consideration of the Raid mode. For one, Drax becomes utmost important because of his ability to Taunt at the start of battle. If you use any other Protector, you’ll always need to store up the energy to do a taunt, and even then, at the start of battle, your Protector will likely be one of the last to have his turn. Drax will give you that free taunt, without fail, at every battle, plus, give him enough energy to taunt even more in the middle of battle!

Mantis is the next character to love in this team, because her role is designed as the healer, to heal the team, to heal the most-injured ally, and to heal herself even if she’s without any energy. Always keep Mantis alive, as she will be valuable even when not in a Guardians team!

Now, with as many as six members belonging to the Guardians, which five should you include in the team? Consider the following if you have Star-Lord unlocked:
Groot, Rocket Raccoon, Star-Lord, Mantis, Gamora
We understand that Drax is not inside, despite our commendations to him earlier. This is because with Star-Lord and his ability to generate energy at a high rate, especially when you place Rocket Raccoon and Mantis adjacent to him, you will have higher rates of executing Rocket’s and Mantis’ skills.

Rocket’s Ultimate skill will dish out the crazy-heavy damage you need to all enemies, plus his Special skill will apply Taunt on Groot, allowing them to take the place of the pseudo-tank of the team. Groot is pretty hardly, and if you get out his Defense Up and Deathproof buffs, he’ll be even more reliable in protecting the team. Has Groot ended his turn and worn off his taunt buff? Don’t worry, Star-Lord should be pumping Rocket with enough energy to execute another Special skill! (Please, keep your thoughts PG!) Mantis will also be executing more team heals and Regeneration buffs such that your members will be healing ever so often. If Groot is having trouble with critically low HP, Mantis’ Ultimate skill will sort out that difference!

There are some people who would swap out Gamora with Star-Lord, because his Ultimate skill does rather heavy damage, added on with as many as two Assist attacks. However, we recommend keeping Gamora. Her Special skill can chain up to multiple targets, which is effective against Minions and low HP targets, plus, she gets another turn immediately if she gets at least one kill! the same goes to her Ultimate skill, which can really, seriously, do a huge ton of damage. It’s boosted with Offense Up every time, anyway! Should you feel the absolute need for a tank in your team, then you can follow and replace Gamora with Star-Lord to ensure the team continues having a secondary offense.

Sustainable Teams

Despite having only three known teams designed specifically for Raid Mode, it doesn’t mean none of the other teams are unsuitable! If you think you have enough teams to swap out with for every single battle, you can do that too! But we prefer to employ the more efficient method and select teams that can sustain themselves over multiple battles. These are some teams we recommend:

Luke Cage is one of the two characters you’ll recruit upon starting a brand new account, but he’s definitely far from being the most noob. If anything, his synergy with the Defenders team will keep them well-protected. Just taunting once will allow his team to heal up while being protected, and Luke himself gets multiple Regenerations to help him recover from two turns of brutal assaults.

The one character that you should try to keep alive, however, is Iron Fist. Ever noticed that his Passive skill heals the team at the start of battle, and questioned the reason for having this? Whenever you start a battle, you would start with full HP, so healing at this point is, well, pointless, no? In Raids, you carry over your HP, even if it’s just 1 HP, so having Iron Fist heal you is ever important and crucial to your survival in subsequent Raid battles! And when Iron Fist takes his turn, he has a good chance to heal the entire team again. Desperate for more healing? Use his Special skill! Need energy to heal again? Use Jessica Jones’ Special skill for a chance to bless Iron Fist with more energy! Healing can be abound with this team!

Remember how Killmonger is heavy on attacks and counterattacks? The Punisher is an alternate version of him, who can counterattack whenever an enemy targets Daredevil. Just like Killmonger, this frequent counterattack from the Punisher will be valuable in injuring enemies as much as possible, and leaving them in danger of the other members’ attacks. (Hey, Luke Cage punches pretty hard too!) The Punisher may not receive the Regeneration buff from Luke Cage’s Special skill, and heals much lesser from Iron Fist’s Special skill, but as a glass cannon, I think the odds suit him well!

Some may say that A.I.M. is in no way a Raid team, because nothing about them says “Raid”. If anything, we would say the opposite because of Scientist Supreme’s three-energy healing skill that not only heals the entire team, but debuffs the entire enemy team at the same time. Combo her with the Symbiote-trait characters, and she becomes their pillar of support! Other characters require more energy, like Mantis and Night Nurse, who need four energy for a team-wide healing. Also, if A.I.M. Security is there, accompanied by Scientist Supreme, they’ll keep the team debuff-free, so, no worries about being inflicted with Heal Block or Blind. If anything, you’ll probably want to receive these debuffs just in time for Scientist Supreme to flip them!

Scientist Supreme is pretty much the entire A.I.M. team, because without her healing and her chances to revive, the other members are basically one-hit wonders. They may be powerful enough to clear a boss battle, but very likely with heavy losses. Can any other character replace Scientist Supreme? Maybe not… Can any other character replace a random A.I.M. character? Sure!

If you ever lose Scientist Supreme, that shall be the A.I.M. team’s last battle (unless you revive her with a Health Kit).

S.H.I.E.L.D.

Another main-character-supported-by-minions team, Nick Fury is basically the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. team, who provides the healing and the team-wide buff, keeping everyone on his team alive.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Medic will provide the additional healing when Nick Fury is out of energy, but her chance to revive will give the S.H.I.E.L.D. team a chance to remain together and get boosted and buffed up by Nick Fury, all over again!

If you lose Nick Fury, pray hard S.H.I.E.L.D. Medic will revive him, but otherwise, the S.H.I.E.L.D. team will also be engaging in their last battle.

Kree

This team is almost like the A.I.M. and S.H.I.E.L.D. teams, except that it has two non-Minion characters, Ronan the Minn-Erva.

Strictly speaking, though, Minn-Erva is probably the one that sustains the team and keeps them going. She applies Regeneration with every basic attack, thereby holding up the team until she gains enough energy to execute her Ultimate skill to heal the entire team. It bypasses Heal Block, applies Regeneration, and adds Deflect to Kree allies, so it’s quite worth the seven energy. Also, she revives manually, without relying on chances like Scientist Supreme.

Minn-Erva’s Passive skill is also one to look out for. On ally death, which I would want to highlight that it applies to summoned allies too, her speed bar fills up, giving her the rush you need to start healing or reviving the team. So, go ahead and summon as many times as you want with Ronan! Plus, whenever an enemy dies, summoned or not, Minn-Erve heals the most injured ally, which is what would provide of utmost value in multiple battles against several enemies. Wait for Ronan to wipe out several enemies at once with his Ultimate skill, and Minn-Erva could probably heal the entire team back to full!

Marauders

Right now, there are only four members belonging to the Marauders, so you can swap around any other character to fill in the fifth slot. However, we strongly recommend Magneto, due to his synergy with Mystique.

If Magneto is an ally, Mystique can copy as many as three buffs from the enemy, then, when either Magneto or Mister Sinister takes his turn, Mystique’s buffs will gain one extra turn.

Whenever Stryfe uses his basic attack, he’ll transfer his target’s buffs to Mister Sinister.

At this point, the environment should be optimized for Mister Sinister. Have him use his Special skill to transfer all of Mystique’s buffs to himself, and then, he will spread Mystique’s and Stryfe’s buffs to every Mutant and cloned ally in the team! Marauder’s version of Nick Fury, anyone? At the same time, they’ll get healed. Just what the doctor ordered!

Don’t worry that you may not be able to get sufficient energy to heal often. At the start of battle, Mister Sinister’s Passive skill can grant him as many as three energy, helping him to accumulate the energy required faster. And after buffing the entire team, you shouldn’t need to worry (too) much about trying to survive enough turns to execute another bout of healing.

This team could very well be the current meta, in part due to how you couldn’t farm three of the five characters as of 4th March 2020. Come 5th March, only two of the five characters stay unfarmable, as Heimdall’s shards are added to the Arena Store. Yippee.

No, really, this team could well be the meta, and it’s heavily due to the reworks in Thor’s and Loki’s skills to provide optimal synergy with Hela, Heimdall and Sif. While our Gamepleton Tier List 616 gave Heimdall and Sif only two stars, they still play rather crucial roles.

Right at the start, Loki’s high speed stat allows him to apply debuff on the most dangerous target you have, or the most annoying tanker, like Drax, so that you can try to take out one character before the rest of the enemy team catches up. Sif is also fast, so having her taunt early in the battle can provide the cover Loki and Hela need. Then again, with Loki’s Passive skill, they’ll have their second level of protection from enemy damage – Stealth.

If the Undead Asgardian dies, his Passive skill will provide healing to the most injured ally. This is the second level of protection that tries to heal them as much as possible.

Plus, whenever their turn comes around, each individual Asgardian heals a certain amount. This is the third level of protection that makes it all the more important to ensure no one on the team is inflicted with Heal Block, else, it’ll be tricky to survive.

If that happens, prioritize Heimdall’s Special skill that has a high chance of removing Heal Block from Asgardians. Heimdall himself will have to miss out on one turn of self-healing, but at least the rest of his team can still avoid his misfortune.

If you’ve just used Heimdall’s Special skill and you really need that healing, don’t panic yet! Remember in our Battle Tips of Raiding, we suggested to conserve energy? This is where Loki’s Ultimate skill, which becomes full by his second turn, can hide everyone in Stealth and shift enemy attention to his disposable clones. One extra turn to help your characters wear off the debuff and try to heal.

All these healing make the Asgardians all the more hardy in a Raid dungeon, even though none of them are actual healers. Hela doesn’t count, even though her Ultimate skill applies one turn of Regeneration, and she can always summon a Minion to sacrifice and heal one injured ally. She’s starting to sound more and more like a healer, but, trust us, she’s not.

When it comes to damage output, you can typically rely on Thor’s Passive skill to discharge a massive AOE attack with every five hits on his mates, but not on himself. That’s why Sif should taunt often so that she can take the blows and give Thor more Charges. Let Hela’s Undead Minion suicide whenever possible to also give Thor another Charge, and heal an ally at the same time.

If you’re still pondering on whether Asgardians is the way to go in Raids, no need to hesitate further!

Characters of Note

While the above focused on teams are useful for Raiding, there are some characters that can provide the efficient assistance you need to sustain alternate teams. As mentioned in the General Tips for Raiding, plan for a fifth and even a sixth replacement character so that you can go further along the Raid paths. These would be our suggestions:

While she may already be part of the Guardians team designed for Raiding, placing her in most teams will already see to keeping the team alive because her healing effects are not restricted to Guardian characters. Should your Guardian team ever fall, do your best to keep at least Mantis alive!

Yes, we don’t have much to say for Mantis, because her healing skills say it all for themselves!

Her skills are heavily geared toward A.I.M. characters, but she is still quite the inclusive character, albeit in ways you may not fully appreciate at the beginning. Of her turn, not of using her. Her Ultimate skill will heal, but also apply debuffs if her team members are non-A.I.M. It’s alright, because when she uses her Special skill, all their debuffs will be flipped into buffs, and make her team even stronger than they were one turn ago! It’s an alternative to Nick Fury team-wide buff, and if you’re lucky, the Protectors will get Defense Up and the Brawlers and Blasters will get Offense Up and Speed Up. Meanwhile, your enemies are left waddling in debuffs as they face your healed and, later, buffed team.

The best part: Her Ultimate and Special skills both require only three energy each, so your healing and buffing will pretty much take place regularly, keeping your entire team alive and kicking for one-third of the time!

Oh, right, her chance to revive a fallen ally applies to non-A.I.M. allies too!

Lauded as the best healer in the one, you would see how she can easily heal up your team with every of her turn. Even if she’s not using her skills, her basic attacks apply Regenerate to the right ally so that everyone gets evenly healed up. Someone got taken out due to an unexpected burst attack? Revive! At a 100% rate!

You don’t need a Kree team for Minn-Erva to work, because her base design already works effectively in providing healing to the most injured allies and to the entire team, without worries about Heal Blocks!

Plus, you wouldn’t need to worry about Minn-Erva herself. With so many enemies to kill off, Minn-Erva will be healing herself enough to stay strong and kicking! Just… don’t have your team members die off so quickly or at the end of the battle. Energy is still a precious commodity in Raids.

This Protector is unique in his Passive skill’s application of taunt every time Drax spawns. At the start of battle, he’ll have taunt to prevent enemy Blasters from killing off your fragile characters with powerful attacks.

If he gets revived in the middle of battle, he’ll taunt again! For free! Well, it’ll be a bit more dangerous for Drax, because his HP would be dangerously low upon revival, but that’s the risk you could take to have this auto-taunting tank!

He won’t have too much synergy with any other character, though, not even with his own Guardians team. Sure, he’ll gain one count of Deflect from Mantis, which really won’t last long enough to be worthwhile, but otherwise, you can treat Drax as a standalone character to draw attacks, while you concentrate on attacking with your other four characters.

This guy is lovely if he is on your team, and pure annoyance when he is on the enemy team. And we all know why!

In fact, Groot can be quite the multi-role character: he can taunt with the help of Rocket Racoon, thereby taking some damage with his sturdy HP and Defense stats. He can also clear debuffs and heal (albeit, a little bit) so there’s some emergency healing to rely upon. Plus, his damage is in the mid range, not shabby as compared to most other Support types, but comparable to most Brawlers. His turns don’t come around often, which greatly affects his dps value, that’s why you might not want to use him on the offense team.

Last of all, if Groot ever falls in battle, he leaves behind a neat present of buffs to everyone. Even to himself! Because he has a chance to revive by himself (Raid enemy Groots weirdly have much higher chances, sometimes reviving five times) and enjoys his own buffs too.

Use Groot as a member of the Wakandan team, and you’ll activate their Passive skills that react to receiving Defense Up buffs! A suitable stand-in until you get Shuri!

The Raids

There are a number of different raids that go on in the game, each with different rewards for you to earn. There are even some limited-time raids that featured specific characters, such as Thanos, released during the time of the Avengers: Endgame movie, and Venom, released during his own movie too.

Every raid has six different difficulty levels, labeled “I” up till “IV”. Ultimus raids has difficulty levels going up to VII, whereby number VII was recently released a few months ago to give even greater challenges to the most hardcore of alliances.

This Marvel Strike Force Raid Guide will focus on those that are still running at the time of this article in 2020, namely:

Ultimus Raid

The rewards you would target to get are typically blue and purple ability materials. They give quite a fair sum if you reach the higher percentage marks, on higher difficulties. As stated above in Characteristics of the Raid Mode, rewards earned on higher difficulties yield more rewards, even if the completion percentage is lower. So, go ahead and push yourself and your team to fight harder!

As there are no restrictions to what characters you can use, go ahead and prepare your favorite teams! Asgardians, Guardians of the Galaxy, Wakandans, it’s up to you!

Of course, you should still consider avoiding teams that rely heavily on debuffs in case you’re up against Deadpools and Psylockes. When you think you’re clear of a retaliatory anti-debuffer, another Deadpool or Psylocke or Scientist Supreme will suddenly appear and do away with all your hard work!

Also consider keeping aside teams with un-buffers, such as Venom and Yondu, so that they can clear taunts from Draxes. Such Draxes tend to be accompanied by either another Drax, other Protectors, revivers or even a Star-Lord to give him more energy to taunt again repeatedly.

This raid map is harder than the others, but it’s less restrictive and lets you go all-out! Check out the suggested teams above to see what could work well!

S.T.R.I.K.E. Raid: Alpha

The rewards you would aim to get are the Strike Alpha Raid Orb fragments (that’s quite a mouthful) that give character shards of the following:

A.I.M. Infector	A.I.M. Monstrosity	A.I.M. Assaulter
A.I.M. Researcher	A.I.M. Security	Crossbones
Hydra Grenadier	Hydra Trooper	Hydra Sniper
Hydra Scientist	Hydra Armored Guard	Juggernaut
Killmonger	Mystique	Pyro
Sabretooth	Scientist Supreme	Winter Soldier

You’d want to keep an eye out for this raid when it becomes available again, if you’re interested in growing your Hydra team! Shards available include the entire Hydra Minion team – Hydra Grenadier, Hydra Trooper, Hydra Sniper – along with Crossbones and Winter Soldier. This is the complete set of Hydra characters! When Red Skull comes out, expect a mad rush for STRIKE Alpha orbs!

S.T.R.I.K.E. Raid: Beta

Wow, it seems like STRIKE Beta has more characters whose shards you can win. The good is that there’s a higher chance of winning shards of the characters that you want, but the bad is that having more varieties of characters reduces each individual character’s drop rate.

A.I.M. Assaulter	Bullseye	Cable
Falcon	Hand Archer	Human Torch
Hydra Grenadier	Hydra Trooper	Hydra Sniper
Killmonger	Korath the Pursuer	Kree Cyborg
Mercenary Soldier	Mercenary Sniper	Punisher
Pyro	Ravager Boomer	Rocket Raccoon
S.H.I.E.L.D. Assault	S.H.I.E.L.D. Trooper	Shocker
Thor	Green Goblin	War Machine
Wasp	Winter Soldier

The Beta version of the STRIKE Raid map has plenty of restrictions in difficulties III and IV, where your beginning battles require either “Mystic or Skill” characters, or “Skill or Tech” characters. Under “Mystic or Skill”, the entire Asgardians team fits in nicely, where Thor, Loki, Hela and Heimdall are Mystic types, and Sif is a skill type. But don’t always rely on your full Asgardians team. Your first boss battle will change up the requirement to “Mystic, Tech, or Sinister 6”, so Sift won’t be allowed and you need to supplement in other characters. The same goes for the “Skill or Tech” route where you would likely rely on a full Power Armor team, but be prepared to switch it out later.

After the first boss battle, the requirements will switch out again and branch off into “Bio or Tech” and reuse “Skill or Tech”. Dependent on your Power Armor team? For the first half of the map, sure! For those going the “Bio or Tech” route, consider either the Spiderverse or A.I.M. team.

Your second boss battle will have the same requirements as the first, so ensure your Power Armor or partial Asgardians teams are ready!

What happens after this will involve more switch outs, involving “Bio or Mutant” and “Bio or Mystic”. Marauders team, anyone? Ensure Mister Sinister is there to provide the healing you need, otherwise, you’ll need to prepare to weather the raid with your X-Men and Brotherhood teams, both of which do not have much in the way of healing.

On the third and final boss battles, we hope your Power Armor/Partial Asgardians team is still alive and fighting, because it’ll use the same requirement again, “Mystic, Tech or Sinister 6”.

Overall, you should prepare the following character types if you intend to take on S.T.R.I.K.E. Raid: Beta III and IV:

Normal battles: Mystic, Skill, Tech, Bio, Mutant

Boss battles: Mystic, Tech or Sinister 6

STRIKE Beta orbs don’t have the full roster of Hydra characters, but they still include a reasonable half of it – Hydra Grenadier, Hydra Trooper, Hydra Sniper and Winter Soldier – all of which are the damage-dealers of the team! The release of Red Skull is truly going to send the community into a surge in raids!

S.T.R.I.K.E. Raid: Gamma

These are the character shards you can get from the Gamma orbs. It’s about the same number as STRIKE Alpha, so the chances of getting any of the individual characters will be higher.

Captain America	Daredevil	Drax
Groot	Human Torch	Jessica Jones
Luke Cage	Mantis	Mister Fantastic
Ms. Marvel	Quake	Spider-Man
The Thing	Spider-Man (Miles Morales)

Similar to STRIKE Raid Beta, difficulties III and IV will employ restrictions on the characters you can deploy into battles.

This raid map is even more restricted than Beta, when you look closer at the restrictions. They require specific teams, like Spiderverse and Guardians, rather than types, like Bio and Cosmic. True, Beta also requires Sinister 6, a specific team, but also permitted Mystic and Tech type characters too, of which you could use the Supernaturals or Asgardians, and the Power Armor or simply Rocket Raccoon, Nebula, etc.

STRIKE Raid Gamma wants you to use Avengers, Guardians, or Spiderverse right at the beginning! Is this actually easier for us? No, because I can’t bring in Yondu despite him being a cosmic character like the Guardians, because he’s a Ravager. Yes, because the teams are already set and synergized, so bringing in a Guardians team means the enemies you’ll face are designed to be defeated by “Avengers or Guardians” or “Avengers or Spiderverse”. If you can’t win that battle, don’t blame it on the enemies having the advantage against your Avengers or Guardians! If the battle isn’t meant to be won with Black Widow or Groot or such, the battle design would have been changed in order to provide a proper challenge to such teams. So this is where you’ll find out whether your specific teams are well-developed and whether you are versed in using them!

How good of a hero/villain are you? Love being patriotic with Captain America? You’ll need to get used to be a baddie with Carnage too!

The two side routes require “Avengers or Spider-Verse” and “Avengers or Guardians”, while the middle route wants to observe your mastery of “Brotherhood or S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “A.I.M. or S.H.I.E.L.D.” Choose carefully based on the teams you have, because the restrictions are rather cruel as you traverse the map.

The side route develops into a terrifying way. Your first boss will be a combination of “Avengers, Guardians, or Spider-Verse”, so it’s not such a terrible situation. It’s after the boss that your choices are pretty much tying your hands to your legs. Choose between “Kree or Hand” and “Kree or Ravager”. Hurrah to those who have unlocked Captain Marvel and Minn-Erva, or those who have developed their Kree team beyond what’s needed for the Nick Fury recruitment event. The rest of us will be stuck with Ravagers and Hand, that are reliant on their one or two main characters, and Minions to fill out the rest of the team.

You will get some relief after the second boss battle, as your get to choose between “Brotherhood, Mercenary, or X-Men”. By the way, there’s only one route to take, there are no other choices, so you will definitely need to prepare your Brotherhood, Mercenary and/or X-Men team for this second half of the raid map.

This carries on all the way until after the third boss battle, which tend changes to “Kree, Spider-Verse, or Guardians”, which is also the same as the final boss battle. Admittedly, this will be more difficult as you have to shuffle between these three teams, or risk facing the last boss battle with a weakened or incomplete team.

The middle route develops greater challenges after a few battles, requiring “Defender or Hydra”. Prior to the Hydra rework, few might use Hydra characters, unless they’re very confident with their Winter Soldier, Crossbones, etc. Now that Hydra Minions have been improved, and their leader, Red Skull, will be entering the game soon, we might finally see some new action in STRIKE Raid Gamma! Don’t be fighting with your alliance just to show off your newly-designed Hydra team!

Don’t also be too reliant on it! Further along the middle route, the requirements change again to involve “Defender or Mercenary”, of which the same dilemma occurs over the lack of use of Mercenaries. Thankfully, the boss battles will be better, allowing you to decide between “Defender, Hydra, or Mercenary” teams. After this boss battle, you might find yourself in greater relief…

Welcome more options for the three possible routes to take! You get to choose between “Guardians, Mercenary, or X-Men” and “Defender, S.H.I.E.L.D., or Wakandan”. All of these teams, except Mercenary, are well-synergized, while Guardians and Wakandan teams are designed specifically for Raids. This second half of the route will definitely be tougher, since it’s toward the end of the map, but also easier, because the available teams are designed for this difficulty! Plus, the second-last boss battle will have the same restrictions, so no worries about breaking up your chosen team(s).

Warning: Ensure you still prepare yourself to deploy “Kree, Spider-Verse, or Guardians” team(s), because the final boss battle won’t allow you to use Red Skull or Luke Cage or Deadpool! It seems like going the side routes would be better, so that you only need to prepare a Kree, Spider-Verse or Guardians team, but remember our Raiding Tip about preparing multiple teams – you can lose one or more members at unfortunate circumstances! By the time you reach the final boss, you might have lost three, or four, or all of your Guardians. You won’t be able to rely on Crossbones to blow up enemies! That’s why you should let Crossbones blow up enemies in the early and mid battles, so that you’ll clear the path for a healthy Spider-Verse team to engage in the final battle!

Overall, prepare the following teams, and over-prepare them if you can, seeing how the same teams required for normal battles are also required for boss battles:

Normal battles: Avengers, Guardians, Spider-Verse, Kree, Brotherhood, S.H.I.E.L.D., A.I.M., Defenders, Hydra, Mercenary, X-Men, Wakandan

Side route: Avengers, Guardians, Spider-Verse (Q1) | Kree, Hand, Ravagers (Q2) | Brotherhood, Mercenary, X-Men (Q3) | Kree, Spider-Verse, Guardians (Q4)

Middle route: Brotherhood, S.H.I.E.L.D., A.I.M. (Q1) | Defender, Hydra (Q2) | Mercenary, Guardians, X-Men, Wakandan (Q3) | Kree, Spider-Verse, Guardians (Q4)

Final boss battle: Kree, Spider-Verse, Guardians

Past Raid Events

During the time of the movie releases of Avengers: Infinity War and Venom, the two key characters, Thanos and Venom, both had their own raid maps for people to earn orbs and win their shards. Thanos had a raid map specially for himself, while STRIKE Raid Alpha was originally used to earn Venom’s shards.

Back then, Thanos was considered a rare character, and going up against a team that had him was pretty much a suicide attempt. Thus, the hype for the mad titan and his shards. Even now, you can’t farm for his shards to boost him up to 7-stars, not unless you have deep pockets to open Premium Orbs and such. Pity, though, that the top teams now in all the various game modes no longer include Thanos. We’ve got more info about his skills and stats in our Gamepleton Tier List 616!

Venom is farmable via a campaign battle, and I personally believe he is more valuable now that the Spider-Verse team of Spider-Men and symbiotes is complete, and there is a pretty good synergy among the five of them. Besides, Venom is one of the few characters that can truly give nightmares to characters reliant on Evasions (buffs and innate). More info on Venom, Carnage, and the individual Spider-Verse characters available in our Gamepleton Tier List 616! If there ever is another raid event for Venom, I’d gladly participate in it again with my alliance!