Developing a Deep Roster

Unknown

One big advantage to having a deep, evenly developed roster is that you do not scale yourself out of PvE. Since starting point enemy levels are based on your highest level character, having 1 or 2 outliers can lead to a very frustrating experience on half the game.

NorthernPolarity

papa07 wrote:

One big advantage to having a deep, evenly developed roster is that you do not scale yourself out of PvE. Since starting point enemy levels are based on your highest level character, having 1 or 2 outliers can lead to a very frustrating experience on half the game.

The downside to this being that this requires you to not level anymore to 166, which is going to severely hinder your PvP scores. Given that you get ~3x the amount of covers in PvP than you do in PvE, I'd consider the PvP drawback significantly more important than the benefits you get in PvE. Granted, some people just don't care for PvP (I'm looking at you ballingsbee or however you spell your name) and solely play this game for PvE, but it's obviously not recommended if your goal is to build a competitive roster. This might be a mistake though since it seems like those people are having a lot more fun than we are.

FaerieMyst

It does help me play a better game because it gives me more sustained play. I don't play a lesser game. I am consistently a top 5 finisher in PVP. When it interests me, I finish high in PVE. I don't think it is the only way to do well but for my style of play, I consider it an advantage. I once said that I would play against the Holy Trinity if it was worth enough points. It's my downfall. I'm a very aggressive player. That means that sometimes I wipe out my team. By having a deep roster to play with, I only have to heal the featured character.

There are some characters I don't like to play with but there isn't any character I can't make part of a winning combination. That doesn't mean playing two characters to compensate for one.

If you need Daken, Sentry, and Hood in some combination every time to win, go for it. So not my thing.

And yes, it is play. It is never a waste of time regardless of my win/loss ratio. It's okay if you don't get it.

Unknown

Having a deep roster does nothing for PvP because the moment your team doesn't have The Hood or Sentry/X Force on it you're going to get lit up unless you use shields, and if you use shields you might as well stick with one of those two proven PvP deterrents (or both). It's irrelevent whether you can beat Sentry/Daken/The Hood with She-Hulk+Daredevil+whoever, because your team will just get beaten by everyone else. It doesn't even matter if you can somehow win very fast although it's hard to see this happening because you'd still lose even faster. Having a deep roster is only meaningful in PvP if you don't care about your rating, and even then it's probably better to climb using one of the tried and true until you hit whatever mark you want, and at that point you could start playing for fun though if your goal is to lose all your PvP rating just not shielding will do the trick even when you're using a tried and true power team.

loroku

One disadvantage of having a deep roster is that it is very expensive to buy roster slots when you're first starting out.

Like most of this game, you sort of need to have more in order to get more. Once you can compete in PvE, you can get more HP. Once you have more HP you can get more roster slots. But you can't compete in anything until you get some decent covers. Sort of a chicken-and-egg that I'm guessing mostly gets solved with time or money infusion.

wymtime

Here is the thing. A balanced roster is the right way to play and the way D3 wants us to play. D3 wants to see Psylock, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel leveled up and played. It means they have developed good characters that the community wants to play. The reality is it takes a long time to level each character and it is smarter to level the right people in order to place in PVP.

xample: After I got Pun, IM40, GSBW as a solid starting transition I focused on Patch and Cmags. They became my go to team until I could get Sentry leveled up. Once I got Sentry he became my defense and I am focused on LDaken and Hood. I even invested HP in buying Blue Hood covers becuase it let me win more. I now have 13 max covered 3* but I only have 4 maxed leveld 3*.

To bring all the 3* up equally would have made it even harder to win the covers I want. I am being more and more selective on who I level becuase if they will only be worth 1-2 battles it does not feel worth the ISO to me.

ballingbees

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This might be a mistake though since it seems like those people are having a lot more fun than we are.

Having fun playing the game. Isn't that what got everyone into this game. But the deeper you get into the game, the definition of fun may not stay the same as when first started out. For some it is collecting the full character list. For some it is winning every competition out there. For some it is breaking the high score, even if it means playing Sentry for the 325th time this week. For some it is messing up Sentry's hair with Bagman or Daredevil. There's no mistake in any way one chooses to develop his/her team or how to play, as long as you can still derive the fun you seek.
There might be a mistake though if you stop having fun playing the game.

Priming my team to be PVE-centric was borne out of necessity rather than preference. Because being HP starved and forced to sell 3* cards hurt. And as a new and ftp and non-top-alliance player, PVE is the most assured HP source for me. Maybe I could have better used the effort to score more 3* cards in PVP. But equally satisfying was the day I drew 50HP from daily rewards in the nick of time to save my one Loki cover from expiring.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

papa07 wrote:

One big advantage to having a deep, evenly developed roster is that you do not scale yourself out of PvE. Since starting point enemy levels are based on your highest level character, having 1 or 2 outliers can lead to a very frustrating experience on half the game.

The downside to this being that this requires you to not level anymore to 166, which is going to severely hinder your PvP scores. Given that you get ~3x the amount of covers in PvP than you do in PvE, I'd consider the PvP drawback significantly more important than the benefits you get in PvE. Granted, some people just don't care for PvP (I'm looking at you ballingsbee or however you spell your name) and solely play this game for PvE, but it's obviously not recommended if your goal is to build a competitive roster. This might be a mistake though since it seems like those people are having a lot more fun than we are.

As F2P, top 5 in PvP is going to be difficult most of the time anyway. I get 2 covers from every PvP and frequently get a 3rd. While in PvE, I get 2 covers and occasionally a 3rd. The big advantage is the amount of ISO and HP that come from PvE. Since I need 1,006,700 ISO currently to cap all my 3 stars, I need ISO much more than I need covers, as I earn plenty of those.

FaerieMyst

She-Hulk+Daredevil+whoever

Egads. You couldn't come up with something more plausible then that?

Unknown

ballingbees wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This might be a mistake though since it seems like those people are having a lot more fun than we are.

Having fun playing the game. Isn't that what got everyone into this game. But the deeper you get into the game, the definition of fun may not stay the same as when first started out. For some it is collecting the full character list. For some it is winning every competition out there. For some it is breaking the high score, even if it means playing Sentry for the 325th time this week. For some it is messing up Sentry's hair with Bagman or Daredevil. There's no mistake in any way one chooses to develop his/her team or how to play, as long as you can still derive the fun you seek.
There might be a mistake though if you stop having fun playing the game.

Priming my team to be PVE-centric was borne out of necessity rather than preference. Because being HP starved and forced to sell 3* cards hurt. And as a new and ftp and non-top-alliance player, PVE is the most assured HP source for me. Maybe I could have better used the effort to score more 3* cards in PVP. But equally satisfying was the day I drew 50HP from daily rewards in the nick of time to save my one Loki cover from expiring.

Having fun doesn't mean purposely doing worse than you could have. Back when scaling was based on damage it was actually quite fun to see who you can put together to still win games while keep scaling low. Now that no such thing exists putting together a weak team has a high probability of wasting your time. Doing poorly also doesn't make stuff any more interesting. I got around #120 on the last heroic DA because that was an event I had no interest in doing, but if I ran my weaker characters instead I'd have just done even worse and wasted even more time on something I wanted to play as little as possible. The game doesn't allow you to take back the fact that you've a level 166 HT, for example, so I can't just run my 2* team that'd be pretty fun but would have no chance fighting stuff tuned against a level 166.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

ballingbees wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This might be a mistake though since it seems like those people are having a lot more fun than we are.

Having fun playing the game. Isn't that what got everyone into this game. But the deeper you get into the game, the definition of fun may not stay the same as when first started out. For some it is collecting the full character list. For some it is winning every competition out there. For some it is breaking the high score, even if it means playing Sentry for the 325th time this week. For some it is messing up Sentry's hair with Bagman or Daredevil. There's no mistake in any way one chooses to develop his/her team or how to play, as long as you can still derive the fun you seek.
There might be a mistake though if you stop having fun playing the game.

Priming my team to be PVE-centric was borne out of necessity rather than preference. Because being HP starved and forced to sell 3* cards hurt. And as a new and ftp and non-top-alliance player, PVE is the most assured HP source for me. Maybe I could have better used the effort to score more 3* cards in PVP. But equally satisfying was the day I drew 50HP from daily rewards in the nick of time to save my one Loki cover from expiring.

Having fun doesn't mean purposely doing worse than you could have. Back when scaling was based on damage it was actually quite fun to see who you can put together to still win games while keep scaling low. Now that no such thing exists putting together a weak team has a high probability of wasting your time. Doing poorly also doesn't make stuff any more interesting. I got around #120 on the last heroic DA because that was an event I had no interest in doing, but if I ran my weaker characters instead I'd have just done even worse and wasted even more time on something I wanted to play as little as possible. The game doesn't allow you to take back the fact that you've a level 166 HT, for example, so I can't just run my 2* team that'd be pretty fun but would have no chance fighting stuff tuned against a level 166.

Counterpoint: in this heroic event, it was probably optimal to use your boosted 2*s to grind down the "easy" nodes (including the 140 goons). Yes, its slower, but the current format has health packs more as the limiting factor than time, and using the 2*s for the easier nodes can protect your main 3* team from freak cascades/ bad boards on easy nodes.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Counterpoint: in this heroic event, it was probably optimal to use your boosted 2*s to grind down the "easy" nodes (including the 140 goons). Yes, its slower, but the current format has health packs more as the limiting factor than time, and using the 2*s for the easier nodes can protect your main 3* team from freak cascades/ bad boards on easy nodes.

The easy track and the all goon node is something I do at the end and if my 3* is out by then I"ll use the 2*s but otherwise I might as well continue using my best team. Yes it probably doesn't matter who you use on the level 40-50 guys and I don't see my gaming experience would become better for running Thor instead of HT.

The problem is that you can't take back scaling so your 2*s can probably only do the easy nodes + any goon only node. Even the essential nodes which are roughly the medium difficulty would likely be too hard. In Prodigal Sun I have one team for goon only nodes and one team for everything else (and swap out one guy for Dr. Octopus nodes). My goons are level 180-200 or so and that's hard for a 2* to do without Falcon, and the essentials are about level 150 and Punisher is at level 220. That's all well beyond what any 2* or even a weak 3* team can do so why bother when your best team can usually beat it fine? I guess if you're doing both PvP and PvE at the same time it might matter but X Force can do both at the same time quite well due to his true healing, and current PvP event is Captain America that I don't need to use in PvE (he's good, but other guys can cover his role).

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Having fun is not an excuse to waste time unless your definition of having fun is wasting time.

Um... yes it is. Why are you so late? I was having too much fun. Where were you last night? I was having too much fun. Can't make it into work tomorrow, I'll be out having fun.

What's the point of having time if you don't waste at least a portion of it on fun.

Unknown

HawkeyeSucks wrote:

while the overall concept of your post is spot on I just had to comment on this.

FaerieMyst wrote:

6. Know when to sell a character. Unless you are looking for a roster of everyone (which has some appeal), sell characters you don't play with. This may be because you simply don't like the character or because the character has been replaced by someone bigger and better. I sold Ares because I don't like playing him. I sold 2* Thor when I had 3* Thor fully covered - and used the ISO from the sale to level the 3* character.

The correct answer to this is hardly ever.
The only characters you should ever sell are Yelena, Bagman, maybe Bullseye and 1*Hawkeye, and even Hawkeye is worth keeping around to some extent.

You sold your 2* Thor. I'm sorry to hear that, he's now powered up in the current PVE and is a huge asset to the limited roster team by far and large.
Ares is a monster, period. He is way too good for his stars.

Never sell your 2*s

I can think of a few more characters you can safely sell from day 1. They are the list of characters who, even when boosted, are terrible. 2* Cap, until he gets boosted to be closer to 3* Cap but in 2* land (with power difference similar to Thor), and Moonstone, After a certain point you don't need IM35 or Storm (Modern) either. For BoP I prefer Juggs to Venom, but I could see keeping both under the rotating characters to heal philosophy. No other 1* character is worth keeping. Heroics will keep Thor and Wolverine on my roster as well as OBW, Hawkeye, MNM and Storm (My HT is level 15, got him after I was well into 3* land). Ares and Daken are sadly only boosted in Simulators where he is featured, but he's good enough to keep just for that.

At some point you are balancing the usefulness of, say, Hawkeye (Classic) vs 600 . I'll take the HP discount and ditch Hawkeye for the newest 3* thank you.