Marvel Heroes Captain America Guide

Marvel Heroes Captain America Guide by Coolica

This guide is aimed to give a clear view of what skills are useful to maximize DPS in Captain America’s arsenal as of patch 1.2. **Please note that everything in this guide is subject to personal preference, so it is ultimately up to the player to decide what skills he wants to use! **

The Build

Mandatory Skills

• Opening Strike: Still your bread and butter for single target DPS.
• Leaping Strike: This is your heavy hitter as well as your primary AoE for dealing with large crowds. Also does double damage against the main target when you spend 2 shield points.
• Quick Block: This is what allows you to take hits and survive End-Game. Not quite as good as before, but playing carefully and making use of it’s block ability still makes you survive quite well.
• Athletic Leap: Put 1 point here so you can travel faster everywhere, and allows leaping over pesky obstacles.
• Shield Toss: You are forced to have 1 point here by the game.
• Combat Veteran: You are forced to have 1 point here by the game.

Optional Skills:

• Defensive Prowess: I highly recommend putting at least 1 point in this skill. It increases your survivability greatly by deflecting projectiles. At rank 1, it gives a significant 30% chance to deflect projectiles.
• Combat Veteran: Currently it’s not very good due to the amount of defense per point, as well as the diminishing returns on defense. With Quick Block you won’t be needing the extra defense from this skill.
• Shield Expertise: This one is strictly personal preference; I used to not be a huge fan of this skill, but recently I’ve come to like it a lot. It gives a little extra CC for 2 shield points.
• Warrior’s Heart: Again, with the removal of skill synergies in patch 1.2, I don’t particularly like this skill anymore. However 1 point is recommended if you decide to use Shield Strike.
• Heroic Charge: With the defense change and the Quick Block change, I really like this skill. When coupled with the use of Quick Block, you basically reach pre 1.2 damage mitigation.

Captain America’s AoE Problem

As you all know, Captain America suffers one big problem: He has a lot of trouble handling multiple enemies. While most people assume that Leaping Strike is the automatic answer to solve this, the problem is that it requires 2 shield points to actually do AoE damage. With the removal of skill synergies, this opens up a lot of options.

• Shield Strike: A decent option for AoE. Does moderate damage and has moderate shield point regeneration, slows enemies, and doesn’t cost any spirit. Overall a balanced skill.
• Shield Bounce: Overall I chose to max this skill for my final build. The damage is great now, and it makes Captain America more versatile by having a ranged attack. I also find it superior to Shield Toss because it is a more guaranteed hit against mobs that are spread out. The best part is that you can still be attacking with your basic powers and Leaping Strike while this is flying around. The downside is that you can’t use Quick Block/Shield Bash/Vibranium Bash while your shield is gone, so make sure you know when to toss it. Currently (from my testing) it doesn’t scale with any +damage modifiers (including Aggressive Shout.)
• Shield Bash: This is another skill I have decided to max for my final build. After tinkering around with other short-range AoE options, I found this skill to be the best as it does good damage, and it builds shield points VERY quickly.
• Vibranium Bash: Does more damage than Shield Bash, but eats up your shield points in one go, and doesn’t regenerate them either unless you are lucky and have points in Shield Bash.
• Shield Swipe: I have experimented using this skill, but it’s not the best option for AoE. With Captain America’s survivability and mobility, you don’t need a knockback skill at all, and one that costs shield points to boot. However it’s got good AoE range.

So with all that laid out, which one is the best to use? After some testing here is a more in-depth analysis, here is some summarized info to help you decide.

• Shield Bash has the highest +damage per skill point, and it’s base damage is comparable to Shield Strike. It also has the highest shield point gain per hit (going over 100%, although it does not do anything.)
• Vibranium Bash has the highest base damage and the second highest +damage per skill point. However it does not build up shield points and in fact, eats up shield points.
• Shield Strike has moderate + damage per skill point, but much lower than both Shield/Vibranium Bash. It’s shield point generation is also quite low, it’s AoE radius is a tiny bit smaller, and it’s also 0.1% slower in attack speed. However it’s biggest advantage is that it’s free. It has the potential to replace Opening Strike, but you are basically sacrificing damage for AoE, so your DPS against single-targets will go down.
• When the skills are maxed at 20, Vibranium Bash has about +685 damage over Shield Bash. However it should be noted that as you approach higher skill levels past 20, the gap gets smaller. At level 25, the difference is only +540 damage, and at level 30, the difference is +396 damage.
• Shield Bounce is great for ranged AoE and can take out trash from afar. The problem is that it does not generate any shield points and does not benefit from +damage sources. However it’s great for supplementary AoE damage.
• Shield Swipe is garbage :(.So with all that said, my personal opinion on the subject is that the best option is to go with both Shield Bounce and Shield Bash. Shield Bash generates a lot of shield points, and does good damage, and that’s all you really need in an AoE situation; build up shield points quickly with Shield Bash, and finish off with Leaping Strike. Toss your shield when you feel like it. It’s also a good spirit dump that can be spammed easily with low spirit cost.

Auras

There are basically 2 main auras to choose from:

• Encouraging Shout: I definitely like this one a lot as it speeds up movement and attack speed. However its main flaw is that it does not speed up your Leaping Strike skill.
• Aggressive shout: I also like this one, and with the last patch, it’s damage got buffed. Definitely makes you pack a stronger punch. Leaping Strike scales very well with this skill; unfortunately Shield Bounce does not get affected at all.I’ve debated which one is better to use, and all I have to say is that it’s down to personal preference. I chose Encouraging Shout because the damage calculation is still a bit strange, and you never know how exactly much damage you are getting from +damage sources due to hidden coefficients. It’s also hard to resist the movement speed bonus.

Other auras have their uses, but until the devs rework them they aren’t as useful as these 2.

If you are going for Encouraging Shout, I don’t suggest leveling it past 5 or 10, as the diminishing returns per point starts to get really heavy.

Gear

As for gear, I don’t really have much to comment on except for a few key points. Just note that all of these are my personal opinions on what stats and gear work with what build. It’s definitely open-ended and can be changed to fit your own personal setup.

Offensively, the best source of damage are actually critical hits.

Defensively, dodge is still a good choice for mitigating damage completely, and I do recommend getting some dodge once you have sufficient defense for your level (should be mitigating about 50% without Quick Block active.)

On-hit procs are quite good as well due to Captain America’s naturally speedy attacks.

Cosmic Items

Cosmic items are actually very good for Captain America; almost all of the effects are useful to him, and they give him that very much needed dps boost.

Additionally, I’ve noticed that cosmic powers proc off Captain America’s Shield Throw/Bounce. For example, if you have “Starfall”, when your shield hits an enemy it will proc the effect on the enemy!

Artifacts

Artifacts are great for Captain America, and it’s totally personal preference (much like most of this guide.) Artifacts give that much needed tiny defense or offensive boost, or can jut improve the quality of life when playing Captain America.

Ending Notes

I hope this guide has been helpful and don’t heistate to post questions or comments about it below. See you Cap players in-game :).