A few advanced player questions

Unknown

Howdy all!
I've been playing this game since day one, have quite a few max level characters and do ok in all the tournaments, but not where i want to be. I feel I should be much more ahead of the game at this point considering the time I've put in and what not. I can't help but feel like I'm missing something. So I have a few questions I'd like to pose, and if there is a topic on the forum please point me there, or if you would be so kind, lend me a hand
- Is there a max tile damage thread? I love the the max level damage thread, as well as the character ability thread, but I can't seem to find a max tile damage one. If there is, I'd like to know so I can better level up my remaining characters moving forward.
- These ISO tourneys! I grind and grind and grind, and everyday I'm still between 77-103 when I wake up the next morning. How in the heck am I supposed to get ahead. This happens constantly. Should I wait a day or two for easier brackets? I seriously couldn't grind more then I do right now. I've been playing the current one since day one and right now I'm sitting at 3771 red iso and am in 124th!! Ugh!
- Similar question for PVP lightening and special character related tournaments like the current Top Shot one. Once again, I feel like I can never climb up the ladder fast enough. Should I be only targeting 25 or more related opponents, not retaliate? Again, at a loss.
- Lastly I'm looking to put together the best team I can, and once again I feel I;m missing something. Currently I have:
MAX LEVEL: Thor, Iron Man 35, Storm Modern, Black Widow Modern
OTHER: Wolverine lvl 54 4/5/3, Ragnarok lvl 38 2/2, Black Widow Original lvl 37 2/4, Storm Classic lvl 21 2/5/2, Magneto Classic lvl 20 1/1/1, Jugs lvl 17 5/5,
OTHER PART 2: I also have every other cover in the game with the exception of the rare Wolvie. So if I should concentrate on obtaining other covers for them, or leveling one of them in particular please let me know.

Thank you for reading through this, and any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Unknown

HWood wrote:

- These ISO tourneys! I grind and grind and grind, and everyday I'm still between 77-103 when I wake up the next morning. How in the heck am I supposed to get ahead.

You say "wake up the next morning", which implies you are sleeping. There's your problem!

HWood wrote:

Storm Classic lvl 21 2/5/2,

Why's your C.Storm only level 21?

Unknown

HWood wrote:

Is there a max tile damage thread? I love the the max level damage thread, as well as the character ability thread, but I can't seem to find a max tile damage one. If there is, I'd like to know so I can better level up my remaining characters moving forward.

Max stat list has both, skill damage and tile damage, at max level. Compendium has already that information for some characters and I will updated it soon with missing ones.

HWood wrote:

- These ISO tourneys! I grind and grind and grind, and everyday I'm still between 77-103 when I wake up the next morning. How in the heck am I supposed to get ahead. This happens constantly. Should I wait a day or two for easier brackets? I seriously couldn't grind more then I do right now. I've been playing the current one since day one and right now I'm sitting at 3771 red iso and am in 124th!! Ugh!

Waiting could help, but that's not guarantee you get an easier bracket. I only recognize 2 names in my bracket, yet the chase is quite fierce. Are you able to complete all repeatable missions? Do you farm them efficiently?

HWood wrote:

- Similar question for PVP lightening and special character related tournaments like the current Top Shot one. Once again, I feel like I can never climb up the ladder fast enough. Should I be only targeting 25 or more related opponents, not retaliate? Again, at a loss.

For now treat Lightning rounds as iso farm- attack easy opponents, get 100pts and if lucky push for top 250. Maybe you will get some nice covers from standard token, but mainly concentrate on leveling characters.
Yeah, the higher points, the better, because the chance they retaliate is lower. And even if they do, you can attack them again for plenty of points. To climb up fast, you need a fast killing team, which you don't have yet.

HWood wrote:

- Lastly I'm looking to put together the best team I can, and once again I feel I;m missing something. Currently I have:
MAX LEVEL: Thor, Iron Man 35, Storm Modern, Black Widow Modern
OTHER: Wolverine lvl 54 4/5/3, Ragnarok lvl 38 2/2, Black Widow Original lvl 37 2/4, Storm Classic lvl 21 2/5/2, Magneto Classic lvl 20 1/1/1, Jugs lvl 17 5/5,
OTHER PART 2: I also have every other cover in the game with the exception of the rare Wolvie. So if I should concentrate on obtaining other covers for them, or leveling one of them in particular please let me know.

I would suggest: Thor, Storm Modern, Black Widow Modern.
You should concentrate on leveling Storm Classic and eventually switch Modern for her. She won't get you top spot any more, but you can still can decent place with her. And tournaments like Top Shot almost beg use of Storm Classic.

Also no offence, but you are still quite beginner. You only begin to move from 1 star characters to 2 stars. Advanced for me would be someone with couple maxed 2 stars and moving onto 3 stars. And my point is, you still have lot room to grow (and long way to top places )

Unknown

Shikao wrote:

Waiting could help, but that's not guarantee you get an easier bracket. I only recognize 2 names in my bracket, yet the chase is quite fierce. Are you able to complete all repeatable missions? Do you farm them efficiently?

Absolutely. I'll farm the easy repeatable mission for 30 iso to avoid hurting my team to maximize the grind. I don't bother farming the tougher 60 iso repeatables since I'll be able to farm them much less then the easier ones. So I would think that is being efficient.

Shikao wrote:

I would suggest: Thor, Storm Modern, Black Widow Modern.
You should concentrate on leveling Storm Classic and eventually switch Modern for her. She won't get you top spot any more, but you can still can decent place with her. And tournaments like Top Shot almost beg use of Storm Classic.

Also no offence, but you are still quite beginner. You only begin to move from 1 star characters to 2 stars. Advanced for me would be someone with couple maxed 2 stars and moving onto 3 stars. And my point is, you still have lot room to grow (and long way to top places )

No offense taken, however,I sincerely don't understand what I've done wrong then? I assure you I've played this game literally everyday since release, and for quite a bit each day. I don't know if I've leveled the wrong characters, focused on the wrong things, or am just not maximizing iso awards. I would wager to guess one of my problems is that I do not have any facebook friends except one sharing the rewards. I bet a lot of advanced players have specific profiles just for this. Lastly, the only reason storm classic is so low is because I can't get her covers to save my life

Unknown

HWood wrote:

Absolutely. I'll farm the easy repeatable mission for 30 iso to avoid hurting my team to maximize the grind. I don't bother farming the tougher 60 iso repeatables since I'll be able to farm them much less then the easier ones. So I would think that is being efficient.

Not doing the harder ones will make you fall in rankings, though I understand why you don't do them. As for the easier ones, do you do them once and wait or multiple times and then wait? (the latter being better method)

HWood wrote:

No offense taken, however,I sincerely don't understand what I've done wrong then? I assure you I've played this game literally everyday since release, and for quite a bit each day. I don't know if I've leveled the wrong characters, focused on the wrong things, or am just not maximizing iso awards. I would wager to guess one of my problems is that I do not have any facebook friends except one sharing the rewards. I bet a lot of advanced players have specific profiles just for this. Lastly, the only reason storm classic is so low is because I can't get her covers to save my life

Sincerely I don't know. You levelled good characters - IM35, Storm and Black Widow make very good one star team. You 'upgraded' IM35 to Thor. Maybe it's lack of covers for Storm Classic. Also, what's your definition of 'quite a bit each day'? Because you seem to be bit low on iso. Did you blow it on standard packs?
As for Facebook, it was really great source of iso till about 2 weeks ago. Currently it is ok when something is happening in the game (Unstable, Lightning rounds), but it's quite dry otherwise.

Unknown

I don't think Shikao meant you (the player) is a beginner, but rather your team is still 'young' because of the lack of three stars.

For instance my highest character is a 90 something 5/5/3 Spidey. Because of him alone I rarely need health packs (58 saved up right now) and more importantly if I want to can grind longer than most others.

Like most are suggesting I started by leveling my Thor and cStorm because they were available to me. That allowed me a way to build until I got lucky with some pulls of spidey and rags.

Unknown

HWood wrote:

Howdy all!
I've been playing this game since day one, have quite a few max level characters and do ok in all the tournaments, but not where i want to be. I feel I should be much more ahead of the game at this point considering the time I've put in and what not. I can't help but feel like I'm missing something.

I'd say the biggest problem you seem to be having is a fundamental understanding of what is required to get ahead in the game.

To me, you should be reading a lot of the threads on this forum, and the character forum, to learn what works and what does not. You need to understand which characters are must haves and which ones work well in different scenarios. I actually think it's pretty lazy to expect people to do all this hard work for you.

For someone playing from day one, I'm surprised at how little character development you have in your pack.

Other than that, good luck!

Unknown

Don't start an event as soon as it comes out. That's when all the tryhards start playing. If its a 5 day pvp event, you can give it 2 days before you even start if you want. If it's like this pve iso collecting ****, give it a day.

Unknown

Shikao is correct, as in, you upgraded the 'right' characters.

A good one-star team most, if not everyone, starts with is Iron Man 35, Storm Modern, Black Widow Modern. However, considering you've started from Day 1, your progress is quite slow. You should have at least upgraded to a two-star team and be moving on to your three-star team.

Iron Man 35 can be swapped out for Thor (which you already have), or Wolverine. Storm Classic is a natural upgrade from Storm Modern. For now, you should focus on maxing out your Storm Classic as the third character is usually a variable (in tournaments). It's not much use in the early two-star team building stage to be levelling three characters equally. Most of the time, you can't use your third.

Team synergy is important. Some things you should focus on is look at the 'popular' teams in tournaments. Some teams go for the 'annoyance' factor (Daken, Wolverine), some go for speed kills (Storm Classic, Thor, bait). These teams work well together, and some are easier to build than others. Right now, most of the players are transitioning from two-star to three-star teams, so it's normal for your team to be suffering.

For now, I recommend maxing your Storm Classic. Read more posts on the forum, as Ladder have pointed out. Take note of what teams other players are mostly using. Good luck!

Unknown

1-stars are a dead end as far as I'm concerned. The only 1-star I maxed was Juggs, only because I like the character. If you have all day to grind for ISO, then sure. Otherwise, focus on 2-stars and above.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

1-stars are a dead end as far as I'm concerned. The only 1-star I maxed was Juggs, only because I like the character. If you have all day to grind for ISO, then sure. Otherwise, focus on 2-stars and above.

Yes I heartily agree. The only good 1 star was juggernaut, and I say "was" because he had the juggernaut event where he was 1 shotting everything with headbutt but that was like a month ago when very few people had high level 2 or 3 stars.

Any new players reading this - do NOT waste time and ISO upgrading 1 stars. Just use them to the point you get daken/wolverine/storm/thor which are all given out by the campaign, and ditch the 1 stars. I sold all mine about 2 weeks into playing the game.

Other than Thor, Wolverine, Storm, and to a lesser extent Daken, you should save your ISO for later, unless you want a few side projects like Widow or Magneto or whatever.

You still want to be selective at the 2* stage because there are a lot of them and many are outclassed by 3 stars. For example, people here seem to love black widow, but she's really just a **** spiderman. Wolverine is one of the better 2*s but I'd take Ragnorok over him any day of the week. So just pick basically at most 5 2* heroes you're going to really focus on, and save the rest of the ISO for when you transition to 3*s. This is a long transition because unless you pay it's probably a month of playing events regularly, but it requires a LOT of ISO to get those 3* to where they're better than the 2* anyway so you will need to save the ISO.

Unknown

The biggest piece of advice I can give is to never, under any circumstances, fight an opponent for less than 20 points. There may come a point where you reach the very top of all brackets and there are no longer any opponents giving that amount, but that will only apply to the highest 0.1% of players, and it sounds like you are not there yet. If you fight for less than 20 points you will be spending time and hero health to lose points, as the opponent will see you as a tasty target that will give more points than they lost so they will retaliate and you will come out lower than you were before. Even doing this, know that being retaliated against for hundreds of points lost is normal after a push, and for this reason play for the progression rewards during the tournament, but do not play until the last 90 minutes before the tournament ends to get the placement rewards.

As for heroes, my first priority in your situation would be to max out Classic Storm. an 85 C. Storm and 85 Thor is a common combination for a reason, they work exceptionally well together regardless of who the third teammate is, and sometimes even work better with a standard third teammate that needs no health packs to keep up and helps trigger Storm's yellow passive. This will allow you to win many tournaments without having the boosted hero available, something that you should look to do as soon as possible.

After that, I would focus only on three star heroes for long term investment, as others have suggested. Ragnarok is a popular choice as he is boosted in every lightning round tournament so far, so he can be used very often. He is also very threatening to other players, so you should see fewer retaliations with a high level Ragnarok as other players either A) consider him to be better than the other 3 stars and so avoid fighting you or can reliably defeat AI opponents before their higher cost AP abilities charge, but do not want to take the incidental damage of letting a few low AP Red or Green abilities from Ragnarok go off even if they still win in the end. Consider also three star Iron Man, who seems to be boosted in tournaments more often than most and is a popular reward in tournaments so getting covers for him may be easier as well.

Whether intended or not, the current design of the game has you spending about a third of your time skipping opponents and two thirds of your time fighting opponents in order to make progress. Buying coins is also never worth it, as the only three items worth spending coins on are cover space, that you should still have plenty of at this point, 3 star guaranteed covers or upgrading 3 star covers, and you do not want to spend $11.00 to $14.00 in real money per cover to upgrade your 3 stars. Pick better fights, spend ISO on C. Storm and Rags, and you should do just fine.

Unknown

Thank you all for your advice and feedback, it is very much appreciated. I'm just trying to gauge the whats and what nots as I felt I had recently plateaued. I apologize if this thread annoyed anyone, but again, it is frustrating when you feel you play a lot and aren't where you want to be. I will take all of your advice to heart, and maybe some newer players can be helped by this thread in the future. Thanks again!

uuddlrlr

This isn't advanced advice, but...
having facebook friends still means free Iso, so make a MPQ-only for that.

KillStormFirst

Stop spending your iso on boosts (unless you you know if means certain victory) and don't risk buying standard covers unless you are bored and have tons of iso to spare, same with the coin. Your 1* characters will get you nowhere fast if you want to fully progress. Focus on quality 2* characters and up. Forget Classic Storm or any Hawkeye or Black Widow. You need a stunner, a bruiser, and a generator for either AP or healing. Don't rely too much on a team where everyone uses the same AP colors. There's no "trick" to getting iso that doesn't require time,saving it up, and selling same character covers 1 by 1 without combining them together. Take advantage of the prologue and heroic mission multi-rewards and COMPLETE THE MISSIONS THE FIRST TIME!