Obviously a question with an MCVE is almost always best. But we get a lot of questions (at least, my review queue is full of questions) that are basically just two or three screens of unreadable garbage with a "why doesn't this work?" Between that, and a prose question that the OP has actually thought through, I'd prefer the prose question. If the prose question's comprehensible as it is, is it worth asking for code?
(Thoughts specifically triggered by this question, which didn't originally include any code, just the prose description. As it happens the added code isn't bad, even if it's not an MCVE, so asking the OP to post code didn't hurt.)
