3* transition - the Murphy's law

h4n1s

Trying to transition to 3* is a fun road, but a challenge, given the covers received.

See this example - among the most covered characters (with minimum of 8 covers) I have:

- Psylocke - but 0 cover
- Falcon - but 0 cover
- Hood - but 0 cover
- LThor - but 0 cover
- Punisher - but only 1 cover (the most interesting power!), and he's off the rotation at the moment

I am not trying to set here some conspiracy theory, because it would be full of holes (if devs would like to get HP out of me, I would need to get at least 1 cover of each color). But the end of the transition path seems to be far away given the fact that the most covered 3* are far far away from being at least useful in the battle unless boosted.

Unknown

The simplest explanation is that they are trying to slow down the transition as much as they can. End game offers literally nothing but boredom. By changing the rank rewards of the alliance to the T100 cover and not the T10 anymore, they make sure that they do not provide more than 1 color cover to those transitioning 2* rosters. Adding more characters every 2 weeks or so makes cover rotation tremendously slow, so in order to see covers for the same character be given in PVP it will take a very long time (And we are talking months here). There is no meta game as many seem to think. The transition to 3* IS the meta game. After that you just admire your covers as you don't really have much to compete for rather than your guilt for the huge amount of time spent in this game.

Unknown

PunPun's best power is green. By a mile.

h4n1s

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

PunPun's best power is green. By a mile.

Well, that's questionable, because honestly often that crater destroys existing strike tiles or countdown tiles or attack tiles... I like his red as it is incredibly effective against tanks such as Hulk, Shulk, Dino, but also Lthor etc. Nevertheless, I suppose his optimal build is 3/5/5. I have him 4/4/1 that's tragical build as there are not many characters to pair him up with which would compensate for his current red....

GrumpySmurf1002

Getting the covers is kinda of the easy part. It takes forever, but collect enough tokens and play enough, and you'll get them, sometimes in bunches. For instance, I went from Psylocke being the last character to get 1 cover to being the first to cover max. They came in waves (and are still coming in).

What I've found is the actual hardest part of the transition is learning how to play again. I feel like I used the 2* army so much that I could play all of them on auto-pilot. Now I have a whole new (limited, only made 7-8 viable to start) set of characters to figure out how to use and how to pair them effectively for the way I play and visualize each board.

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Getting the covers is kinda of the easy part. It takes forever, but collect enough tokens and play enough, and you'll get them, sometimes in bunches. For instance, I went from Psylocke being the last character to get 1 cover to being the first to cover max. They came in waves (and are still coming in).

What I've found is the actual hardest part of the transition is learning how to play again. I feel like I used the 2* army so much that I could play all of them on auto-pilot. Now I have a whole new (limited, only made 7-8 viable to start) set of characters to figure out how to use and how to pair them effectively for the way I play and visualize each board.

The best part about this from my experience is: it keeps happening. I figured out how to run Patch and LCap. And then I had to relearn again to figure out Sentry. And again for Hood. And again for... etc.

_RiO_

Okin107 wrote:

The simplest explanation is that they are trying to slow down the transition as much as they can. End game offers literally nothing but boredom. By changing the rank rewards of the alliance to the T100 cover and not the T10 anymore, they make sure that they do not provide more than 1 color cover to those transitioning 2* rosters. Adding more characters every 2 weeks or so makes cover rotation tremendously slow, so in order to see covers for the same character be given in PVP it will take a very long time (And we are talking months here). There is no meta game as many seem to think. The transition to 3* IS the meta game. After that you just admire your covers as you don't really have much to compete for rather than your guilt for the huge amount of time spent in this game.

Two questions: What have you been smoking? And is there some left for the rest of us?

"End game offers literally nothing but boredom"; seriously? And what, pray tell, do you think the agonizingly slow accumulation of spare 3* covers feels like to a transitioning player, hmm? Unless you really screw the pooch, the end-game more or less guarantees you a top 100 PvP placement for any new character that may be released. Thus it ensures you will always have something to continue to build as long as each new season continues to introduce new characters.

In contrast, a transitioning player misses out on many of the offered 3* covers in PvP due to being knocked out of the top 100. A recent change has pulled 'the 166 wall' (and likely the associated full visibility to MMR) down to the 500-600 points range. A lot of transitioners are left stuck at the 166 wall that way, within the critical 500-600 point range where even the slightest amount of losses will lower their standing to below top 100 placement. And ofcourse, if left unshielded in that points range they are going to be utterly destroyed by veterans performing their climbs and seeing them as easy pickings without having to waste healthpacks early in the climb. Basically, you must be able to recoup lost points in the last few hours or have deep enough HP pockets to shield for longer time (and possibly both). And you also have to have the luck of scores not undergoing a dramatic last moment shift due to late climbs, putting you behind everyone that could play up to and including the last minute. Due to the low 166 wall and full MMR exposure, you cannot build up much of a 'points buffer' anymore to reduce the risk of dropping out of the top 100 this way.

PvE is often cited as the go-to place for transitioners, but wrongly so: For some screwball reason the fact that you have one or two grossly undercomplete 3*s qualifies you to be placed into the same PvE slaughterhouse category where full on 3* veterans enjoy lvl 200+ enemies. Transitioners are quickly scaled out of effective competition for placement rewards. And if the event requires a high point total for the final 3* progression reward, they can write that off as a loss as well. (I like to entertain the thought that Demiurge got wise to this problem and it is the reason we now have some PvE events with lowered 20,000 final progression scores.) The escape hatch is, ofcourse, the essential nodes. The ones that require you to have earned previous 3*s. More of a chicken & egg problem than an actual solution.


Basically, transitioners are the most unfairly screwed over players in the game that have just enough vested interest to keep hanging on to that golden carrot of finishing the transition and establishing a decent enough 3* foothold to seriously start building up a roster and enjoying all the characters. (Until they arrive in full on 166 Sentry-bomb territory, atleast.)

Spoit

And apparently making it so that the 1100 cover is the same as the top 100 AND alliance one wasn't a mistake. Now you can't buy the top 5 cover even if you wanted to spend on it unless you win it

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

And apparently making it so that the 1100 cover is the same as the top 100 AND alliance one wasn't a mistake. Now you can't buy the top 5 cover even if you wanted to spend on it unless you win it

imho making the top alliance cover the same as the top 100 cover was a stupid mistake by the devs. Top 5 cover = Alliance cover allowed more people to get a third color that they had no chance of otherwise. The 1100 from the next pvp would then make sense as the top 100 cover if it wasn't also the alliance cover. All of this wasn't such a big deal when there were only a handful of 3* so you'd eventually get all the colors rotated through. Now there are like 30+ 3* so you'd have to wait months for a rotation

GrumpySmurf1002

_RiO_ wrote:

PvE is often cited as the go-to place for transitioners, but wrongly so: For some screwball reason the fact that you have one or two grossly undercomplete 3*s qualifies you to be placed into the same PvE murder-brackets where full on 3* veterans enjoy lvl 200+ enemies. Transitioners are thus quickly scaled out of effective competition for placement rewards. And if the event requires a high point total for the final 3* progression reward, they can write that off as a loss as well. (I like to entertain the thought that Demiurge got wise to this problem and it is the reason we now have some PvE events with lowered 20,000 final progression scores.) The escape hatch is, ofcourse, the essential nodes. The ones that require you to have earned previous 3*s. More of a chicken & egg problem than an actual solution.

What bracket you're in has nothing to do with your scaling in PvE. PvE is cited as the go-to because:

a) The progression rewards are attainable and often award 3* covers (in addition to multiple 2* for those building a stronger 2* roster)
b) Effort generally trumps roster strength overall. You can look at any PvE bracket and there will be multiple 'transition' rosters in the top 10, except for maybe the ones that start immediately as the event did, because those are generally the insane grinders in the top alliances.

PvE is a slower path, but it's a more guaranteed path for a 2* roster. It's not even really arguable, IMO.

_RiO_

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

What bracket you're in has nothing to do with your scaling in PvE.

You're right, ofcourse. I updated my post to use a more neutral term instead of mis-using the 'bracket' term.

As for the other parts of your post; half-truths. Final progression rewards are most definitely not always attainable. Look no further than this current episode of the Hunt; good luck getting the 70,000 Miss Marvel on this episode of the Hunt if you don't already own a Miss Marvel to play the easier essential nodes. (The ones that conveniently also hand out atleast double the maxmimum amount of points of any other node and on which the 70,000 limit seems to be based...)

From what I usually see in my brackets, most players in the top 10 are established 3* veterans; that can throw their weight around and/or are just extremely hardcore grinders or paying whales, or are beginning players; that are less affected by scaling and/or are riding on the wave of their massively boosted essential.

Unknown

h4n1s wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

PunPun's best power is green. By a mile.

Well, that's questionable, because honestly often that crater destroys existing strike tiles or countdown tiles or attack tiles... I like his red as it is incredibly effective against tanks such as Hulk, Shulk, Dino, but also Lthor etc. Nevertheless, I suppose his optimal build is 3/5/5. I have him 4/4/1 that's tragical build as there are not many characters to pair him up with which would compensate for his current red....

Hmm I Never get the opportunity to use his red as there are many other better reds I normally use (patch, Lcap etc...). I would also use Lthors red before pun. His green black powers are much more useful to me than red which really only serve a niche purpose. Once I get those tanks around the health I can finish then off with a punisher red I can invariably kill them with some other power. Your build is fine you'll find the red to be redundant before long.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

Final progression rewards are most definitely not always attainable. Look no further than this current episode of the Hunt; good luck getting the 70,000 Miss Marvel on this episode of the Hunt if you don't already own a Miss Marvel to play the easier essential nodes. (The ones that conveniently also hand out atleast double the maxmimum amount of points of any other node and on which the 70,000 limit seems to be based...)

Gotta agree with Rio here. I reached the Ms. Marvel 70k prog award today and there is no way I could have done it without already having one cover of Ms. Marvel from the previous event. And even then it took a lot of grinding. Though I have a decent roster and am in modest 3* territory now, I haven't always been able to reach the max progression awards. Having said that, PVE is a decent part of the path to transitioning players. On an unrelated topic, if PVE ultimately is more friendly to lower level rosters at the expense of matured rosters, I guess I can live with that -- PVP gives the advantage to the vets and has gotten a bit easier for me over time.

over_clocked

The Hunt is very tough but the current iteration saw most top players hit way higher than the top progression before the 4th sub finished even (out of 6). I think many had hit 100-110k, and later subs often see general increase in point values meaning it should be tough but doable to score 70k without a single MiniMarv cover.

Tharos

And after you have one cover of each color, the same Murphy's law will tell you to buy the final covers:

I had a LazyThor at 3/2/5 for ages. Overall, I won maybe 7 or 8 green power for him. I ended spending HP for the 3 last yellow covers (definitly worth it).

On the same line, my Hulk is 5/4/2 since maybe 6 months. I got maybe 10 green covers for him, but never a black cover since 6 months!

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

Okin107 wrote:

The simplest explanation is that they are trying to slow down the transition as much as they can. End game offers literally nothing but boredom. By changing the rank rewards of the alliance to the T100 cover and not the T10 anymore, they make sure that they do not provide more than 1 color cover to those transitioning 2* rosters. Adding more characters every 2 weeks or so makes cover rotation tremendously slow, so in order to see covers for the same character be given in PVP it will take a very long time (And we are talking months here). There is no meta game as many seem to think. The transition to 3* IS the meta game. After that you just admire your covers as you don't really have much to compete for rather than your guilt for the huge amount of time spent in this game.

What have you been smoking? And is there some left for the rest of us?

"End game offers literally nothing but boredom"; seriously? And what, pray tell, do you think the agonizingly slow accumulation of spare 3* covers feels like to a transitioning player, hmm? Unless you really screw the pooch, the end-game more or less guarantees you a top 100 PvP placement for any new character that may be released. Thus it ensures you will always have something to continue to build as long as each new season continues to introduce new characters.

First, I want to say that being a 2* roster you can compete for T100. 550-600 points with a shield have an 90% chance of you being in the T100 of a bracket. I know it because it is what I have been doing the past 3 months.

About "the end-game more or less guarantees you a top 100 PvP placement for any new character that may be released". This is exactly what I mean when I say that end game is boring and offers nothing. While in transition phase you are overwhelmed with HP expenses, in the end game you just don't have anything to compete for except for those new characters. And let's be honest here, the latest 3* additions where nothing to be excited about once you got your hands on them.

The only real new character that has value is Thoress, but we will not see her around for a very long time. Blade is the current reward on PVE. Is there anything going to change because he is being released? Absolutely not. Did we get some new story or mode to introduce him? Absolutely not. Should I be excited about him? Absolutely not. He will be out of reach for months. Of course, he should be out of reach because he is new, but with his introduction the rest of 3* characters become less reachable as well. I have better chances of pulling number 3 out of 10 max than pulling number 3 out of 11 max.

At this pace, even the solution they have provided for rotating chars out of tokens will not work. There will be a time where they will need to take out 15+ characters in order for the tokens rates to not be changed. And the very fact that they make characters unavailable for 1 month at least, proves that they are trying to slow you down. How the heck am I supposed to get more level up my 5 covers Punisher?

I keep adding new chars to my roster with 1-3 covers and then I have to wait large amounts of time until I get some progress on them. While I am waiting, more and more of those chars keep coming making it so hard to manage roster space and covers coming in. If you where at the end game before all this madness, lucky you. If you happen to be in the transition while this is happening, bring some Vaseline.

SnowcaTT

The transition time is getting way to long. The drop rate in heroics needs to increase at the same rate the 3* population is increasing. It is getting impossible to get any characters "usable" (covered), instead you have a huge roster of undercovered, underleveled 3*'s that can't compete with the 166's.

As others have pointed out, many of the new ones aren't great. So now you have to wade through more garbage at slow rates to get to the good ones. My 3* Wolverine and Daken (pretty much essential to compete it sounds like, that's probably a balance issue) are nearly the least covered on my roster, right up there with the newest characters. Sounds like you have to "pay to win" if you can't get the necessary covers quickly enough.

The biggest detriment to the transition has been, by far in my opinion, the change in PVP rewards. I very rarely could get T25 a couple seasons ago, now my MMR (who knows, with how much info we have on MMR) won't let me touch T25 in last couple seasons - so it's T100 and that's it. The reward structure now gives the same covers for alliance and personal rewards, and this is TERRIBLE for progression.

My five black storm, five black hood, five blue falcon, and five blue Magneto really appreciate that change. Every single one of those characters I had five covers of the color they were giving, and could have used two of either of the other covers - that is, they are marginally usable at best. All those 3*'s sit and have to wait for another rotation (who knows how long, as they sometimes skip and keep adding more characters) before they improve.

Previously at least one color would have a chance to improve, allowing a bit more movement into the 3* range. By giving the same color cover for both rewards, the transition time really increased.

GMadMan040

Every once in awhile it's fun to revive an old, dead horse for a few laughs. And as a reminder of how the circumstances may feel different, but the song always remains the same.

Unknown

GMadMan040 wrote:

Every once in awhile it's fun to revive an old, dead horse for a few laughs. And as a reminder of how the circumstances may feel different, but the song always remains the same.

Holy stale tacos , bat man

CT1888

Heartburn

wow i didn't realize it was that old until the end. in my mind i was thinking but DDQ helps now what about that? but seeing the same complaints from a year ago makes me think someone doesn't like to listen to feedback.