When is it worth leveling a mediocre 3*?

Vhailorx

I have a particular roster problem of my own that prompts this question (the RNG has seen fit to give me 10 gamora covers for some reason, instead of any of the 15 or so good 3*s for whom I have 4-8 covers!), but think that my personal problem illustrates a generic question.

A character like gamora is clearly second class. If I had a maxed roster, she would see little if any action outside of essentials. She does, however, have some uses as a B-team captain in that she is fairly tanky and benefits from tanking as many colors as possible.

Is it worth putting a little iso in in such a character, maybe 40-50k (up to somewhere around level 100)? They can help save healthpacks by cleaning up the lower pve nodes, and would actually be more than a handicap in essential nodes and lightning rounds.

Obviously, if you only have one 3* with 10 covers, its worth leveling that character up to at least parity with maxed 2*s, and perhaps beyond.

And obviously if you have 5+ of the very best 3* (e.g., lazy thor, lazy daken, BP, cMags, Patch, lazy cap, blade, deadpool) all maxed already, then wasting iso on a mediocre 3* is silly (you need to save iso for the 4* iso black hole).

But where is the cutoff? Is it wasteful as soon as you have three good 3*s cover maxed? Less than three? More? Just wanted to see what the community thinks.

Unknown

If you don't have a personal obsession with the character, the only time where it's worthwhile to level up a medicore 3* is when that character is featured and you got something you want to win pretty badly in the event. It's not so much as a level 249 Gamora in PvP or level 256 Gamora in PvE is going to make you unstoppable but rather every bit counts if you know it's going to be a close call.

If you need a team to mop up weak nodes, all you need is Daken or Patch plus whoever.

Vhailorx

Well, I don't think it's ever worth leveling a mediocre character up to 166. Iso is just to precious in the end game. but leveling someone to say 104 or 114 can make a huge different when they are boosted, and also makes them viable vs. 2* opponents. That only costs about 50k iso.

As for your point about patch and daken to mop up lower level nodes, that's true. But sometimes patch and daken get killed too, and they are always good A-Team members. So having a deeper bench to play with is occasionally useful. I grant that its a very limited use scenario, but that's why any iso investment should be similarly limited.

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Well, I don't think it's ever worth leveling a mediocre character up to 166. Iso is just to precious in the end game. but leveling someone to say 104 or 114 can make a huge different when they are boosted, and also makes them viable vs. 2* opponents. That only costs about 50k iso.

As for your point about patch and daken to mop up lower level nodes, that's true. But sometimes patch and daken get killed too, and they are always good A-Team members. So having a deeper bench to play with is occasionally useful. I grant that its a very limited use scenario, but that's why any iso investment should be similarly limited.

I get my heroes up to about level 110 if they're halfway playable to avoid putting green as my strongest match in PvP but that's likely a first-world problem. Daken or Patch isn't going to lose to something below level 100 unless you got horrible luck or it's a level 100 Jugg + 2 Snipers. In the former you can't predict that and on the latter you should be aware there's no way that team fights like a typical level 100 team and bring your best guys.

A deep bench is useful if you're doing a lot of PvE because the PvE structure tends to suck up all your available health packs if you want to be competitive, though since X Force can true heal and Captain America is the king of PvE while not being very good at PvP this usually means you've at most one more slot available for PvP (featured + X Force + ???) and one for PvE (X Force + Captain America + ???). The problem here is that Captain America is so superior in PvE it's hard to see him being benched unless the node is pretty trivial, and if the node is trivial you probably want to just run all true heal/double regen guys, something like Patch/X Force + Daken + Blade/Deadpool/Hulk, or optionally put in Falcon for the obvious pairing with Daken. While you can mess around who is the third guy with say Daken + Falcon + ??? it usually doesn't even matter who that third person is.

Unknown

never imo

I made that mistake with Capt Marvel and have literally never used her once (not even when she is featured). Granted I don't have her Yellow which is her strength, and I have LCAP for strong attack red...but now that I need to iso max out Patch, LCap, Loki, Blade, I wish I would have just saved the ISO.

IMO, don't do it.

Unknown

Admittedly, I'm pretty much the opposite of a powergamer, but the main reason to level the less powerful 3*s is that a lot of them are a lot of fun to play.

morph3us

Vhailorx wrote:

I have a particular roster problem of my own that prompts this question (the RNG has seen fit to give me 10 gamora covers for some reason, instead of any of the 15 or so good 3*s for whom I have 4-8 covers!), but think that my personal problem illustrates a generic question.

A character like gamora is clearly second class. If I had a maxed roster, she would see little if any action outside of essentials. She does, however, have some uses as a B-team captain in that she is fairly tanky and benefits from tanking as many colors as possible.

Is it worth putting a little iso in in such a character, maybe 40-50k (up to somewhere around level 100)? They can help save healthpacks by cleaning up the lower pve nodes, and would actually be more than a handicap in essential nodes and lightning rounds.

Obviously, if you only have one 3* with 10 covers, its worth leveling that character up to at least parity with maxed 2*s, and perhaps beyond.

And obviously if you have 5+ of the very best 3* (e.g., lazy thor, lazy daken, BP, cMags, Patch, lazy cap, blade, deadpool) all maxed already, then wasting iso on a mediocre 3* is silly (you need to save iso for the 4* iso black hole).

But where is the cutoff? Is it wasteful as soon as you have three good 3*s cover maxed? Less than three? More? Just wanted to see what the community thinks.

If you have an established 3* roster already, then I see very little value in leveling a mediocre 3*. On the other hand, if you're a transition player (which you're not), then I think you just level whomever will help you in the transition. Early in my transition, my go to team was Colossus, Punisher, and OBW, which was pretty effective for the most part in PvE, albeit horrible in PvP. I stopped leveling both Colossus and Punisher at level 110, and they see very little play, apart from Essentials, as you say, or if there are two subs, I use them in the easy sub to save health packs. I don't regret leveling them, and I still enjoy playing them on occasion.

I don't know that I'd regard Gamora as completely B-grade. Bad Reputation is a good ability, but having said that, if she's not the highest level character in your PvE B team, it's not much good.

Hrm. I guess I'd say that it's wasteful when you have a PvE A team, and viable PvP team maxed, so that'd make it two or three maxed 3*s.

Unknown

i got caught up doing the same thing. Wasted xp on invisible women just because she was a 4*. I started to make the same mistake with Falcon but luckily i stumbled across this forum

Dayv

kevindanielami wrote:

i got caught up doing the same thing. Wasted xp on invisible women just because she was a 4*. I started to make the same mistake with Falcon but luckily i stumbled across this forum

Actually, Falcon can be quite useful, but I wouldn't level him before a couple other 3*, since he's strictly a support character.

Unknown

I think there is a caveat to the plethora of "No"s.

If they bring something unique to the table that can amplify your team effectiveness. For instance, Blade is barely Top Ten if I recall, def not top 5 - but I see him worth it for me to dump ISO into to play with my Daken. Will I use it in hot and heavy PvP? Naw. But while climbing? Maybe. In PvE? SURE! He's fun to play with, without feeling as though I am neutering myself. There are a few characters like this - Falcon for instance falls inline with this - not OP for PvE, though garbage for PvP, he's REAL fun with say LThor/Daken. With Balance of Power and the other 'Star based/neutral' PvP-nodes, its actually worth while to throw ISO at some 2-stars even AFTER the 'transition'.

As for the character the OP mentioned...no I wouldn't dump ISO into her. Just like how I have a max cover IM40 at level 80 and a 12 cover Psylocke at like 78. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't have maxed out Punisher (though I think the game changing over time affected him more than anything), I still haven't capped my Hulk who's sat at 153 for like 6 months now...
- Unreall

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

kevindanielami wrote:

i got caught up doing the same thing. Wasted xp on invisible women just because she was a 4*. I started to make the same mistake with Falcon but luckily i stumbled across this forum

Actually, Falcon can be quite useful, but I wouldn't level him before a couple other 3*, since he's strictly a support character.

Yeah my Falcon is at 130, sentry is at 104 and the next highest are my maxed 2*. My Pve was getting harder and I wan't sure why until a week or two ago. I thought a maxed 3* would've kept me from losing so much in pvp when i wasn't shielding

Unknown

When you leveled all the better 2*, 3* and 4* heroes ?

Unknown

Unreallystic wrote:

Blade is barely Top Ten if I recall, def not top 5 - but I see him worth it for me to dump ISO into to play with my Daken.

The correct answer is "define mediocre". Blade is NOT mediocre, when maxed he's top 5 of all the 3*. (remember, the question was about 3*).
Going back to the OP message, Gamora is definitely mediocre, probably 15-20 or thereabouts. I would never pour ISO into her, instead wait patiently for covers for better heroes.

rixmith

I farm a lot of ISO from Lightning Rounds, so I feel like it is worth putting ISO into characters that are in LR rotation (unless they are really pretty worthless like Doc Ock). So depending on the rest of your roster, you might get a good return on investment into Gamora in Hero LRs (at least while she is in rotation).

And, for me, as long as I don't have any good 4*s to put ISO into, I'm trying to get my B-grade 3*'s up to Level 133. When they are featured heroes in PvP, 133 + 50% = level 200, which seems to be a psychological deterrent to getting attacked versus being level 195. Clearly it won't stop level 270 X-Force and Thor from demolishing you, but I believe it lowers the attacks you get from 10 or 11 covered 3* teams. Or I might just be deluding myself