When you defend against an Attack you have to Exhaust your Hero, does this mean they are basically useless during your turn? Are they allowed to at least flip and Recover?

You only ready at the end of the Player Phase. So yes you will be exhausted if you defend.

There are other ways to ready such as ( Desperate Defense , Indomitable , etc.)

Mathematically it is similar in equivalence to recovering and thwarting (recovering because you net less damage, thwarting because staying in hero mode prevents the villain from scheming).

No you are not useless at all. It sounds like you are exhausting every time you do any sort of attack or thwart. When you are exhausted, the only things you cannot do are actions that would exhaust you. So you cannot do a basic attack, thwart, defence, recover, or use any abilities that require you to exhaust while exhausted. You can still do any action or play any card that does not specificslly require to exhaust, which is everything else aside from the 4 things I listed. You can flip forms, play cards (including attack, thwart, and defence events), trigger actions on cards etc.

21 hours ago, Jonathan4290 said:

No you are not useless at all. It sounds like you are exhausting every time you do any sort of attack or thwart. When you are exhausted, the only things you cannot do are actions that would exhaust you. So you cannot do a basic attack, thwart, defence, recover, or use any abilities that require you to exhaust while exhausted. You can still do any action or play any card that does not specificslly require to exhaust, which is everything else aside from the 4 things I listed. You can flip forms, play cards (including attack, thwart, and defense events), trigger actions on cards etc.

Turn 1 Player 2 kill Rhino (with direct damage), flip Phase II Rhino (attach Breakin' & Takin')

Rhino turn: Attacks for 5 (3 native + 2 point boost), decide to defend.

P1: E1 - Ivory Horn (Rhino: +1 ATK), P2 : E1 - Stampede (4 points and Stunned)

P1: E2 - Bomb Scare, P2: E2 - Assault (Take 4 more to the chin)

(Slightly useless during next Hero Phase) You can flip to Alter-Ego, but you can not heal and the cards you drew are for doing damage or nothing useful at this point and you are sitting at 4 Hit Points.

2 hours ago, Tappiocca said:

Turn 1 Player 2 kill Rhino (with direct damage), flip Phase II Rhino (attach Breakin' & Takin')

Rhino turn: Attacks for 5 (3 native + 2 point boost), decide to defend.

P1: E1 - Ivory Horn (Rhino: +1 ATK), P2 : E1 - Stampede (4 points and Stunned)

P1: E2 - Bomb Scare, P2: E2 - Assault (Take 4 more to the chin)

(Slightly useless during next Hero Phase) You can flip to Alter-Ego, but you can not heal and the cards you drew are for doing damage or nothing useful at this point and you are sitting at 4 Hit Points.

learn the power of allies my friend...not sure what aspect you are playing but Leadership has great chump blocker(s) like Stinger, Ant Man...Protection has Clea...and so forth.

In fact, watch the most recent Team Covenant. They had a good chance to win their heroic against Kang had he kept Mockingbird down to absorb all the damage. For those who have not played Hawkeye, especially if he can get down 2 expert Marksmen, a beat cop or three...and Mockingbird he is an impenetrable wall. He shoots arrows for free, absorbs all the damage with Mockingbird, plays her back down to thwart or hit a minion as needed, rinse, repeat...they went a different direction and lost to damage. He deliberated about it, made a decision I personally thought was sub-optimal in that case...and against someone like Rhino who can gain overkill and I have seen attack for double digits with overkill...have a plan such as Mockingbird, Shield Block for Captain America, tough tokens, Backflip for Spiderman just off top of my head

On 12/1/2020 at 8:25 PM, Tappiocca said:

Rhino turn: Attacks for 5 (3 native + 2 point boost), decide to defend.

Are you remembering that you need to make the choice to defend before revealing the villain's boost card?

There are some good protection cards that work well with defending, allowing you to stand up again and even deal damage back to the attacking bad guy.

As mentioned above, make use of your allies too. When an ally has only one hit point left I always throw them under the bus to soak up the next villain attack.