I’ve been Playing Marvel heroes now for about a week. I have been thoroughly enjoining my premium character; the Hulk. I figured it would be neat to go through the characters as I played them and talked a little bit about them as I went. Blarghe has humoured me a couple of times and tried to play the game and has been just been hating it; He choose Hawkeye as his starting character. I wondered why my expereince with the game has been so positive and his hasn’t been so much, so I fired up hawkeye to see what the difference was.

So lets talk about Hawkeye, as far as starting effectiveness goes he is probably one of the worst. Yes, you heard me right… You start out with only your auto attack and his kick ability which is effectively a useless pile of junk. As you level and have more abilities available to you though he can turn into an extremely effective dps character(With proper use of his mechanics, that is). having said that …..

1. he seems weak. Very weak in fact. I cannot tell if that is just the changes in the most recent patch or if hes……well just weak. His primary attack vs. his secondary is a bit strange. He seems very dependent on his primary as his secondary is situational. Granted i only made it to 10 or 11 so far so it seems a little off. I did get the double arrow attack and that seemed to help my primary attack a lot. It could very well be that he just starts off rather slow.
2. I really, REALLY like passive ability options on characters. Hawkeye seems to have enough.
I feel that +crit is a potentially dangerous thing to give any character but since hawkeye is rather a single target DPS, it suits him well. If there is any other character i’ve played that needs it as well it’s DD.
3. His look and voice acting are superb. Costume options look good. He’s a really solid character short of his damage output.
4. Would like to see some +speed options with him if he doesn’t already have them.

A fellow named Ballercaust from the Marvel heroes forum wrote this out for anyone interested Hawkeye as a guide
In my experience your end game strategy for groups of mobs ends up being drop tear gas arrow, drop shrieking arrow inside the tear gas arrow, and shoot explosive arrow into the tear gas. For elite mobs substitute the use of explosive arrow for taser arrow and triple arrow. With the new addition of his ultimate ability, which could easily be one of the highest damage abilities (given only a single target exists to be targeted by the arrows).

• Quick Arrow: This is essentially your bread and butter ability until level 10. It’s your main source of damage, and your only ability that doesn’t cost you any spirit(excluding upgraded versions).

• Precise Aim: This one is pretty self explanatory, it’s crit for a power point what more could you want?

• Piercing Arrowheads: Gives your arrows a chance to pierce through a target upon impact allowing it to hit an additional target behind it. (Works on all single target arrows, including taser arrow, I have yet to test if it can pierce again after piercing and so on).

• Twin Arrow: This is your first upgrade to your auto-attack ability, this effectively doubles the damage you do while auto attacking. The arrows will both hit the target almost at all times, unless the target is at max range then one of the two may miss.

• Vibranium Arrowheads: Defense penetration, what’s not to love about that. The less damage the target mitigates the more damage you do.

• Masterful Archery: This is power is very closely tied in with Piercing Arrowheads. It gives you a chance (Piercing Arrowhead activation chance x 2) to inflict extra direct damage to your target and cause them to bleed for 3 seconds.

• Triple Arrow: This is your ultimate auto attack ability, it does effectively triple the damage of quick arrow. Each of the three arrows seems to have its own independent crit chance, Piercing Arrowheads, and Masterful Archery activation chance. Making this a highly effective damage source.

• Pinning Arrow: This ability does damage and pins a target to a wall effectively stunning it. I’m very skeptical about the usefulness of this ability. It is very specific ability and you have 2 much better means of controlling enemies that don’t require a wall behind them(Taser Arrow and Freezing Arrow).

• Wave of Arrows: Frontal cone aoe arrow shot. This ability could use a lot of work. Currently it does extremely mediocre aoe damage, and really isn’t worth putting the points in as far as I’m concerned.

• Forceful Kick: Does damage and knocks the target back. This is one of rare cases where an ability that you are forced to always have 1 point in becomes extremely annoying. This ability has no use outside of the first 10 levels. If your letting something get close enough to you that you have to kick it away you’re doing something wrong.

• Getaway Roll: Allows you to roll a short distance, if you roll through an enemy it is stunned briefly. This is your first mobility and avoidance ability. It allows you to maintain a comfortable gap between you and enemies, while also being quite useful as a travel ability. Pretty much a “1 point wonder”.

• Elusive Arrow: Shoots an arrow at an enemy while leaping backwards slowing them. This could have some usefulness in solo play but in general I would take a pass on it.

• Combat Training: Gives you dodge chance. This seems like a useful ability at a glance, but when playing a ranged dps character your main goal is to not let an enemy get the chance to hit you. This makes this a less than ideal use of your points. If you find yourself getting hit by enemies frequently you might want to consider putting points in this until you can get your positioning down.

• Ronin Lunge: Short range dash that does damage when passing through an enemy and knocks them down. This is basically the better version of Combat Roll. With that in mind it also falls into the “1 point wonder” category.

• Ronin Assault: Melee ability that stuns the enemy. This is a complete novelty ability, returning to the fact that an enemy shouldn’t be close enough for you to use a melee attack.

• Taser Arrow: Does damage and knocks down effected targets (Chains to a second target). This is your basic crowd control and spirit dump ability. It also does a rather decent amount of damage.

• Freeze Arrow: Freezes and damages the first target it hits. This is your secondary crowd control ability. It is decent when starting out, but falls off in effectiveness later due to it only stunning one target (unless piercing arrowheads activates).

• Adamantium Arrow: Charges an arrow that deals increasing damage and penetrates defenses for each second channeled, travels in a straight line damaging all targets hit. This is one of Hawkeye’s more interesting abilities; it requires him to be standing in place for 2 seconds to charge it fully which goes against the majority of how you want to be playing him. Very good on bosses provided you don’t have to dodge any ground effects or high damage ranged attacks.

• Explosive Arrow: Explodes on contact with an enemy dealing damage to all enemies in an area. This is your aoe bread and butter, it is the first ability you get that lets you do damage to a large number of targets in an area. It fills this role extremely well doing very good damage.

• Tear Gas Arrow: Make a gas cloud that persists for 5 seconds and deals damage to targets inside(seems to also leave a dot on them). This is where you become an aoe wrecking machine. This abilities damage is amazing and the aoe radius is reasonably big.

• Nullifier Arrow: Clears the ground around the impact point of negative enemy ground effects. This is an extremely unique ability, and will probably be extremely useful in endgame content. That being said this is also a “1 point wonder”.

• Shrieking Arrow: Arrow that taunts targets around it’s point of impact and then explodes. This is extremely effective when used in combination with Tear Gas Arrow. It also can provide you with another means of escaping from enemies closing in on you. It also does pretty good damage on it’s own with the explosion. At the moment I am considering this another “1 point wonder” ability.

TL;DR Hawkeye has a crappy early game, but gets exponentially stronger late game.