Welcome to Marvel’s Midnight Suns best Wolverine guide. In this guide you will find the best cards of the Wolverine, the best decks and how to play. If you want to be a Wolverine in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, our guide is waiting for you.
Many of the effects in Midnight Suns calculate damage as a percentage of a hero’s Offence stat, commonly 50% or 100%. As a shorthand, I will write this as [X%]. Note that all modifiers to this stat apply, such as from Strengthened or mission cards.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns Best Wolverine Builds & Cards
My analysis of each character follows. I have applied the following template to each:
Name: The character’s name. If you needed me to explain this to you, you may be beyond help as far as the guide goes.
TL;DR: A simple summary of the hero’s effectiveness. For those of you who don’t want to read my endless text, and yet are still willing to take my word as gold for some reason.
Passive: The hero’s passive effect. Note that I’ll only be including the max friendship effect, as I have been reliably informed that friendship is magic.
Combo: The character’s effect when they lead a combo.
Cards: The character’s cards listed in order Attacks-Skills-Heroics, then in alphabetical order. Note that every character bar Hunter has ten cards total – four common cards available from the start, three rares, two epics, and one legendary unlockable through their challenge once they hit max friendship. I will only be running analysis of the upgraded version of each card, because really, who cares what the un-upgraded version does? Note that I have described the card in each entry – this isn’t because I assume people can’t read cards, but rather because damage is usually based on a hero’s Offence stat, so their actual damage isn’t necessarily obvious from a screenshot.
Recommended Builds: The set of cards I recommend you run as standard in a character’s deck. If you really want to be sweaty about it you can tailor each character’s deck for each mission – drafting in Stun effects for missions you need to bypass Protect and so on – but realistically this is far from necessary. Most characters have clear winners and losers as far as cards go, and the game really isn’t hard enough to need this amount of min/maxing. That said, if it makes you feel good, go for it.
Where appropriate I’ve provided multiple sets of options for heroes (because I’m nice like that), but this isn’t possible for every hero, either because they’re very one-dimensional in what they do or just because a lot of their cards are kinda bad. For heroes with only one build listed, their alternate build should be considered to be the ‘Hardcore’ build. This entails opening the deck-builder, closing your eyes, and clicking cards at random while screaming at the top of your lungs.
Wolverine Guide
Well, you see, Wolverine’s abilities make perfect sense in context. He’s a mutant, so he has crazy fast healing. Because he can heal so quickly, they were able to graft adamantium onto his skeleton, making him super durable. And he has an enhanced sense of smell because *indistinct mumbling punctuated by vague hand gestures*. See? Perfect sense.
TL;DR – As far as tanks go, Wolverine is the best – lots of multi-target Taunt abilities, some beefy self-healing, and his own innate Revive. Unfortunately, since tanks suck, that isn’t very far.
Passive – Whenever you Redraw a Wolverine card, he regains [100%] health. Since you’ll probably find yourself throwing his cards away a lot, this is actually pretty good.
Combo – Restores health to both participants. Not terrible as far as free bonuses go, I suppose, but as always something offensive would probably be better.
Wolverine Cards
Deals [33%] damage with Chain 3 and Taunt. If all attacks hit the same target, applies a stack of Weak.
This card sucks, even by the standards of Wolverine. [33%] damage per chain hit may as well not exist – it can clean up minions and that’s about it. It applies Taunt, sure, but you can probably hit more targets with Stink of Fear. In fact, the only reason I can see for using this is if you accidentally Taunt far too many enemies and have no cards to kill anything, so you panic-Weaken something and hope for the best. Freaking Blade has a better Chain attack than this, and it’s not even good enough for him to use.
Deals [75%] damage with Chain 2. If both attacks hit the same target, Wolverine gains a stack of Strengthened.
A little better. Hitting for a total of [150%] makes this approach the heady heights of mediocre. Gaining Strengthened is nice, but much as with Webslinger, it’d be a lot better on someone who can deal noticeable damage. You might still want to keep this around for prepping Midnight Special, but otherwise, give it a miss. Side note – given you need to play this to gain Strengthened to deal any real damage, its name is ironically misplaced; and in fact, a man of Wolverine’s build probably doesn’t ‘pounce’ much either. I suspect whoever named this card thought they were making cards for an actual wolverine.
Note: Because it’s based on Offence, the Strengthened from this card actually boosts the healing gained from his Passive.
Deals [50%] damage, knocks back, and applies a stack of Vulnerable.
Apparently Wolverine has a very different idea of ‘power’ than the rest of the team, because this does laughable damage. It applies a stack of Vulnerable, but that 50% damage boost probably still doesn’t add up to the same damage as you’d get from playing a better card instead. Avoid.
Deals [100%] damage with Taunt and Quick.
Surprisingly Wolverine has one of the harder-hitting Quick attacks – but due to a lack of knockback, that extra damage will almost never be relevant. Not much else to say about this – it’s Quick, so bring it.
Draw three Wolverine cards. Wolverine cards gain Lifesteal for the rest of the turn.
Another mirror of a Spiderman card – drawing three cards would be great, if only they weren’t Wolverine’s. You’ll mostly want to play this to draw Midnight Special with, because the Lifesteal is more or less irrelevant – Wolverine doesn’t deal enough damage to care about Lifesteal, and if he wants healing he has the far superior Rapid Healing available.
Restores 75% of Wolverine’s max health and Cures him. Can be played even if Wolverine can’t act.
One of the best defensive tank cards around, it’s almost a full heal and cure, and works even through Dazed and Stun. Unfortunately it doesn’t provide any utility, and since it’s healing rather than Block it’s prone to overheal, but it’s still going to be the highest numbers you’re going to get for a tank’s self-defence button.
Taunts all enemies in an AoE, applies a stack of Weak, then gives Wolverine a stack of Counter.
This is the Taunt option you’ll want to use (if you’re playing at a high difficulty, anyway). You can manipulate the area to draw the attention of the enemies you want so as to avoid getting Wolverine killed, and also gain a stack of Counter to get a little bit of chip damage in while he’s soaking. It even applies Weak to give him an outside shot of surviving the enemy’s turn. Alternatively, use it to pull every enemy on the map and rely on Rapid Regeneration to bring you back. This card wins the award for ‘derpiest animation in game’.
Deals [50%] damage with Chain 4. If any target dies, gain a stack of Counter.
This is effectively the same thing as Stink of Fear, but you pay four Heroism (two plus the two you’d have gotten from Stink of Fear) to add a little bit of damage in. That is not a worthwhile trade. In fact, just as with Chain Swipes, Blade has a better version of this card (though that one he at least plays. Occasionally.). Don’t use this unless you’re playing on a low enough difficulty that you can get away with running an actual tank.
Consumes all Heroism, then attacks that many times. The first hit deals [50%] damage, and each subsequent hit deals [25%] more than the last. It then gives a point of Heroism for each kill and Exhausts.
Alone among Wolverine’s cards sits this gem, a genuinely good card. Its random targeting is not ideal, and while it won’t actively overkill (i.e. it won’t swipe an enemy that’s already dead to a previous swipe), it will throw a swing that gets an enemy to low health and then hit it again for massive overkill. Nonetheless, it’s capable of some quite impressive numbers that can start to rival Crack The Sky in its power – though unlike other similar Heroism dumps, you really don’t want to play this until you hit ten Heroism because of its scaling damage. As an aside, I’m quite confused as to how this is ‘special’ – it’s just doing what Wolverine spends all his time doing, but doing it a bit more.
For anyone interested, here’s a table showing the overall damage with each level of Heroism; as you can see, it equals Crack The Sky in average damage per hit at nine Heroism and surpasses it at ten, although in real terms it’s likely to have more overkill.
Deals [100%] damage, with another [150%] damage if the target has Block.
Pretty much terrible. [250%] damage is starting to approach decent numbers for a single point of Heroism, but you’re only going to see it hit that hard when it’s hitting a target with Block – which almost certainly means ‘when it’s not going to kill its target’. There are too many enemy targets and too few card plays per turn to want to bring along a card that has no utility and is almost never going to kill anything.
Revives Wolverine with 50% of his max health. Free.
A special case – this is added to your hand the first time Wolverine goes down in a mission. It even shows up if you’re playing at a difficulty with no Revives, and on lower difficulties it doesn’t count towards your maximum Revives per mission. The fact that Wolverine has this card is what makes him the best tank in the game (since otherwise you’d want someone with Block rather than healing). Note that even though this card is innate, Wolverine will still count as going down and so still hurt your performance rating at the end of the mission, if that matters to you.
Best Wolverine Builds
At higher difficulties, Wolverine can only really be built for damage control, much like Blade or Captain America – he can’t tank that level of incoming damage effectively enough, and he doesn’t deal enough damage or bring enough utility to do anything else. I have, however, included a full tank build anyway – just be warned that it only functions when the difficulty is low enough for him to soak hits without folding like a cheap suit.
Recommended Teammates: Wolverine works best paired with someone who can hit hard, since he’s here to soak and not kill. Of all the damage dealers in the game, Ghost Rider is the one who can least afford to take a stray hit – even a light slap reduces his damage output – so he’s probably the one I’d recommend. Alternatively, Scarlet Witch’s Chaos Field can help ensure Wolverine survives for a turn and then heal him up afterwards.
Wolverine Generalist Build
There’s a lot of leeway available in this build – the only really necessary cards are Quick Swipe, Midnight Special, and Berserk to draw them. I run two copies of Lethal Pounce specifically to give him Strengthened for Midnight Special. I then take a copy of Stink of Fear because I consider that if I can’t kill everything on the map, it’s his damn fault and he can suffer the consequences. Finally, I then added a copy of Rapid Healing so that if he survives, he can heal himself as a reward. Good boy, Logan.
Card mod-wise, pretty standard stuff here. Heroism, card draw, Quick and Free. Unusually for a single-target ability, Lethal Pounce sees some benefit from applying Marked – because most of the time you play it because Midnight Special is getting played next, and that stands a strong chance of getting the kill.
Wolverine Full Tank Build
For a full tank build, you want to drop your Lethal Pounces – Wolverine isn’t here to deal damage, although you still run Midnight Special as the only really strong card he has. Two copies of Stink of Fear provide the necessary overlap to make it very likely he can Taunt most enemies every turn, with a single copy of Chain Swipes to mop up any stragglers. The main flexibility here is in Berserk – chances are, with the redundancy in the build, you’ll have the tools to Taunt key targets, so the card draw may be unnecessary. If you drop Berserk, replace it with another copy of Rapid Healing so he can keep tanking up every turn. Once again, though, don’t try to do this on max difficulty – nobody can tank that many hits there.
For card mods, this build wants to pick up Block wherever it can – either when played or on Redraw – because he’s still going to be taking a kicking and Block gives him the best chance of surviving the turn. Alternatively, finding Marked on Stink of Fear allows Wolverine to do his best Scarlet Witch cosplay… and that mental image certainly gave me the stink of fear, I’ll tell you.
