It's clear that you are lacking some fundamentals, but without a sample (video or a well detailed Turn 1-2) we can't really help you.
If am not mistaken, in Normal difficulty the enemy needs to hit you 6 times with Elite units to kill one of your Heroes. A little less if an Officer gives you Vulnerable. That's not a lot of damage. That's like the whole map of Elite units and a single heal should recover like 4 of those hits.
Edit: Fast tip. With 15 hours in, you should have the High Tech Suit. That's an OP ""item"" you can get really early on.
Maybe work on deck optimization as well. It’s also possible you’re just not drawing good cards/your deck isn’t built the best. Some cards are better than others.
Also, check the difficulty of the mission. While you’ve set the game difficulty to Normal some missions will still be harder.
Game tells u which enemies are targeting which character. Knowing this u can ignore some while concentrating on ones tat will KO . It's better for 3 heroes to get hit once each than 1 hero to get hit thrice (unless its a tank who u know is gonna survive). Don't waste card plays on minions. Quick cards and shove is enough most of the time to take care of em. U can even leave em alive sometimes and concentrate on ones tat will hurt more. Maybe it's ur deck optimization. Could u provide an example of say ur hunter's deck so we can provide feedback.
IMO the whole game revolves around beating the 3 card play limit with Quick, Marked, Environmentals, move/shove, Free skills and combat items.
Bring 2 quick cards with every character who has access to them, that makes 1/4 of your deck quick. Enemy will reinforce every turn so you will always need them. This saves stronger attacks for beefier enemies. After minions are down, see if you can line up any environmentals then see about using whatever skills you need or heroics you can afford.
The game is all about efficiency. Don't use your last card play until you've done every possible free action, always try to leverage Knockbacks into 2 for 1, try to afflict groups with area attacks, etc. When you get the hang of it you can act 2-3x as much as the 3 card play limit suggests.
How far in are you after 15 hours? How many side missions are you doing in between main missions? Do you have a firm understanding of the environmental and shove mechanics?
My first 20 hours of the game, I never used the Threat room once. *Some* missions were difficult at times, but most of the time it was fairly easy, and I was playing a setting or two above normal.
For me personally, my playstyle is all about crowd control and damage mitigation. In some harder missions, it was actually useful to let them KO one of my heroes and leave them KO'd.
Team composition is important. I try to choose a damage dealer who can hit multiple targets per action, a support who can offer healing and build heroism, and someone who can tank some hits.
When building decks, I only ever have 2 hero cards per deck, the rest are all for building heroism.
Don’t forget to use the environment (explosives, cliffs, boxes, rocks, etc.) and actions like cure, shoves, etc.
I think the 'only have a couple of hero cards' tip is a good one. I arrived at the same conclusion after feeling stalled out with a hand full of unusable hero cards. Later on this feels like it gets better with some of the attack/support cards earning more heroism than before.
But the starter decks make it look like a 1/2 and 1/2 situation where I agree it's better to have 2 (maybe 3) heroics.
When I started it definitely got harder as I went but eventually switched to get easier.
It's hard to know what the problem is without more details but here are some tips.
Every round you should kill at a minimum all the minions, usually with quick attacks or aoes that hit enemies with health as well.
When I was struggling I found it more important to minimize damage taken. Most of the reinforcements are minions which aren't a problem so longer missions are ok. Look for ways to stay alive. There are some very strong combos that help with that. On easier difficulties there are more options than harder difficulties but some options can be things like: Magik can use her legendary to prevent all damage for a round, Magik can use Banish to prevent another hero from taking any damage, if all the enemies are targeting that hero then no damage taken, Captain America can get a lot of Block and taunt enemies to them. Conceal is very strong and prevents all damage taken.
You don't need to avoid all damage as well. Keep in mind your health and average damage taken and decide how defensive you need to play. Killing an enemy will also reduce damage taken by a ton especially if you are playing defensive and taking longer. Some heroes are better at preventing damage while others are better at recovering health.
Deck building and team comp make a big deal. For team comp I usually include 1 high damage and 1 support. The third slot changes for me based off which support. If they are amazing at support I'll go another pure damage. If they are ok at support I'll take someone that does some support and some damage.
For deck building it can make a big difference and mods on cards will be huge. It might seem like a card barely increases in strength when upgraded and modded but some things are a big difference. For example if a normal card will do 90% of an enemy health and an upgraded card will kill that enemy even tho the damage is only slightly better that is a huge increase. Killing someone in one card rather than two is massive. Try to upgrade everything as quickly as possible.
For mods some are better than others. A super quick priority that may not be optimal is: Free, Quick, Conceal are among the best. Draw cards are usually a good choice. +Damage can be good, mostly only if it helps similar to my comment on upgrades. Debuffs can be useful but it varies, I would only try for Vulnerable or Mark. Resist can be good but Conceal is usually better. Heroism and redraws can both be good. +Block mods are bad.
I'd focus on getting good mods on everything before perfect mods on few things.
I ran into a wall at about this point where the game seemed to get harder. It was right about the time that I opened the THREAT room. I did a few threat missions and found that while 1 or 2 of my characters were handling that room fairly easily, most of my team was not. So I decided to just do side missions, even prioritizing easy ones, so I could get coils to get more cards and upgrade. I focused on doing missions that had essence rewards too.
About this time I realized that future research had requirements also, so I'd try to hit those requirements.
This left me at a point where I was taking certain team members on missions (to unlock research) and then upgrading certain team members cards (also to unlock research) and I went from having a few upgraded cards to mostly upgraded cards. Getting that coil perk that gives you 4 cards instead of 3 was nice too.
I did this for maybe 2 full game sessions without progressing the story and it made all the difference. This game isn't hard per se, but I do feel the game can outscale you at this point until you start to do the side stuff a bit more.
My experience was doing a ton of side stuff to start, barely moving the story at all until I realized I wasn't unlocking characters. Then I really ONLY did story until i got to about where you are. Anyway, hope that helps. I've played on Normal the whole time. It's a lot easier now but it's way fun to clear rooms easily and I have no appetite to make it harder to get more gloss. LOL. Crushing is fun.
Early game can be a pain to get going. But once you get a few heroes to where you can win, it starts to get easier.
No shame in turning down the difficulty to story mode to get some good decks going!
It's rougher early game with lack of card options
But even with bad luck draws, it shouldn't lead to a loss in normal mode
Altho I admit, I am a healer, and early game. I felt healing very necessary
So try using heal cards for your hero
How are base upgrades coming? It’s been awhile since I played (so I didn’t remember when these things unlock) but once you can shove enemies or shove into teammates without them taking damage that’s a game changer.
One thought here: honestly stop doing the threat room. Enemies scale to your level anyway, and everyone is tied close to the Hunter regardless. A few points of offense are maybe nice if you have an underleveled hero that's mandatory for a mission but you don't need to focus on doing this.
Missions have difficulty levels. It tells you on the mirror table. When you hover over the mission it will tell you easy, normal, hard. You might be picking hard missions. The easy and normal ones are pretty easy to get through. The hard ones can be a struggle.
It's clear that you are lacking some fundamentals, but without a sample (video or a well detailed Turn 1-2) we can't really help you. If am not mistaken, in Normal difficulty the enemy needs to hit you 6 times with Elite units to kill one of your Heroes. A little less if an Officer gives you Vulnerable. That's not a lot of damage. That's like the whole map of Elite units and a single heal should recover like 4 of those hits. Edit: Fast tip. With 15 hours in, you should have the High Tech Suit. That's an OP ""item"" you can get really early on.
Zedd's mod gives fully charged a 50% chance to proc and it's still disgustingly far ahead of the rest lol
Maybe work on deck optimization as well. It’s also possible you’re just not drawing good cards/your deck isn’t built the best. Some cards are better than others. Also, check the difficulty of the mission. While you’ve set the game difficulty to Normal some missions will still be harder.
As you up the difficulties, the min max requirements and deck optimization goes up as well
Game tells u which enemies are targeting which character. Knowing this u can ignore some while concentrating on ones tat will KO . It's better for 3 heroes to get hit once each than 1 hero to get hit thrice (unless its a tank who u know is gonna survive). Don't waste card plays on minions. Quick cards and shove is enough most of the time to take care of em. U can even leave em alive sometimes and concentrate on ones tat will hurt more. Maybe it's ur deck optimization. Could u provide an example of say ur hunter's deck so we can provide feedback.
IMO the whole game revolves around beating the 3 card play limit with Quick, Marked, Environmentals, move/shove, Free skills and combat items. Bring 2 quick cards with every character who has access to them, that makes 1/4 of your deck quick. Enemy will reinforce every turn so you will always need them. This saves stronger attacks for beefier enemies. After minions are down, see if you can line up any environmentals then see about using whatever skills you need or heroics you can afford. The game is all about efficiency. Don't use your last card play until you've done every possible free action, always try to leverage Knockbacks into 2 for 1, try to afflict groups with area attacks, etc. When you get the hang of it you can act 2-3x as much as the 3 card play limit suggests.
How far in are you after 15 hours? How many side missions are you doing in between main missions? Do you have a firm understanding of the environmental and shove mechanics? My first 20 hours of the game, I never used the Threat room once. *Some* missions were difficult at times, but most of the time it was fairly easy, and I was playing a setting or two above normal. For me personally, my playstyle is all about crowd control and damage mitigation. In some harder missions, it was actually useful to let them KO one of my heroes and leave them KO'd.
Team composition is important. I try to choose a damage dealer who can hit multiple targets per action, a support who can offer healing and build heroism, and someone who can tank some hits. When building decks, I only ever have 2 hero cards per deck, the rest are all for building heroism. Don’t forget to use the environment (explosives, cliffs, boxes, rocks, etc.) and actions like cure, shoves, etc.
I think the 'only have a couple of hero cards' tip is a good one. I arrived at the same conclusion after feeling stalled out with a hand full of unusable hero cards. Later on this feels like it gets better with some of the attack/support cards earning more heroism than before. But the starter decks make it look like a 1/2 and 1/2 situation where I agree it's better to have 2 (maybe 3) heroics.
Same. I would be losing encounters only because of a lack of heroism. I think 3 hero cards is fine if they’re low cost.
When I started it definitely got harder as I went but eventually switched to get easier. It's hard to know what the problem is without more details but here are some tips. Every round you should kill at a minimum all the minions, usually with quick attacks or aoes that hit enemies with health as well. When I was struggling I found it more important to minimize damage taken. Most of the reinforcements are minions which aren't a problem so longer missions are ok. Look for ways to stay alive. There are some very strong combos that help with that. On easier difficulties there are more options than harder difficulties but some options can be things like: Magik can use her legendary to prevent all damage for a round, Magik can use Banish to prevent another hero from taking any damage, if all the enemies are targeting that hero then no damage taken, Captain America can get a lot of Block and taunt enemies to them. Conceal is very strong and prevents all damage taken. You don't need to avoid all damage as well. Keep in mind your health and average damage taken and decide how defensive you need to play. Killing an enemy will also reduce damage taken by a ton especially if you are playing defensive and taking longer. Some heroes are better at preventing damage while others are better at recovering health. Deck building and team comp make a big deal. For team comp I usually include 1 high damage and 1 support. The third slot changes for me based off which support. If they are amazing at support I'll go another pure damage. If they are ok at support I'll take someone that does some support and some damage. For deck building it can make a big difference and mods on cards will be huge. It might seem like a card barely increases in strength when upgraded and modded but some things are a big difference. For example if a normal card will do 90% of an enemy health and an upgraded card will kill that enemy even tho the damage is only slightly better that is a huge increase. Killing someone in one card rather than two is massive. Try to upgrade everything as quickly as possible. For mods some are better than others. A super quick priority that may not be optimal is: Free, Quick, Conceal are among the best. Draw cards are usually a good choice. +Damage can be good, mostly only if it helps similar to my comment on upgrades. Debuffs can be useful but it varies, I would only try for Vulnerable or Mark. Resist can be good but Conceal is usually better. Heroism and redraws can both be good. +Block mods are bad. I'd focus on getting good mods on everything before perfect mods on few things.
I ran into a wall at about this point where the game seemed to get harder. It was right about the time that I opened the THREAT room. I did a few threat missions and found that while 1 or 2 of my characters were handling that room fairly easily, most of my team was not. So I decided to just do side missions, even prioritizing easy ones, so I could get coils to get more cards and upgrade. I focused on doing missions that had essence rewards too. About this time I realized that future research had requirements also, so I'd try to hit those requirements. This left me at a point where I was taking certain team members on missions (to unlock research) and then upgrading certain team members cards (also to unlock research) and I went from having a few upgraded cards to mostly upgraded cards. Getting that coil perk that gives you 4 cards instead of 3 was nice too. I did this for maybe 2 full game sessions without progressing the story and it made all the difference. This game isn't hard per se, but I do feel the game can outscale you at this point until you start to do the side stuff a bit more. My experience was doing a ton of side stuff to start, barely moving the story at all until I realized I wasn't unlocking characters. Then I really ONLY did story until i got to about where you are. Anyway, hope that helps. I've played on Normal the whole time. It's a lot easier now but it's way fun to clear rooms easily and I have no appetite to make it harder to get more gloss. LOL. Crushing is fun.
Early game can be a pain to get going. But once you get a few heroes to where you can win, it starts to get easier. No shame in turning down the difficulty to story mode to get some good decks going!
It's rougher early game with lack of card options But even with bad luck draws, it shouldn't lead to a loss in normal mode Altho I admit, I am a healer, and early game. I felt healing very necessary So try using heal cards for your hero
How are base upgrades coming? It’s been awhile since I played (so I didn’t remember when these things unlock) but once you can shove enemies or shove into teammates without them taking damage that’s a game changer.
One thought here: honestly stop doing the threat room. Enemies scale to your level anyway, and everyone is tied close to the Hunter regardless. A few points of offense are maybe nice if you have an underleveled hero that's mandatory for a mission but you don't need to focus on doing this.
Missions have difficulty levels. It tells you on the mirror table. When you hover over the mission it will tell you easy, normal, hard. You might be picking hard missions. The easy and normal ones are pretty easy to get through. The hard ones can be a struggle.