You must upgrade to a 3* team..why?

Unknown

I can't quite get my head around something.

I've levelled my characters really bad. My highest is Wolverine at 72 and I have a ton of covers in the hovering between the 40-55 range. Optimal, thy name is not abuelo. The conventional wisdom is always upgrade from * to ** to *** but as I look at my characters I can't seem to really understand why.

It used to be that when I read 'upgrade to 3*' people were talking about the 3 strongest cards in the game, Magneto, Ragnarok and Spiderman. I get that. I also get that 3* level their base attack damage higher once they hit the upper levels, but the three previously mentioned aside (which obviously has now become 2) I really don't see what advantages they have against Thorverine.

Ablities always feel much more important than match damage and I don't really see any other 3 star characters that can actually come close to the Thorverine combo.

Am I just jumping to conclusions based on my 3* being at a similar level to my 2*?

Unknown

Thorverine is going to be nerfed.

3 stars also have more health and as the game progresses the need to move from a 3 star to a 4 star will appear, as for right now there isn't a huge rush.

Unknown

Right now I have a Spiderman and Punisher with enough covers that they're now "Viable". However, I'm still using a similarly-levelled Original Black Widow and Wolverine, simply because the scaling on higher-star heroes is slower. They don't really surpass until a certain threshold (I'm guessing the 90-95 range), and as such I'm waiting until Punisher's 3 strike tiles will exceed Wolverine's (and by exceed, I mean 10 or so more each, given how Wolverine can generate them more rapidly once he gets some red). It's more of a long-term thing, that keeps getting longer given events like the Rage and Ruin event, where all my ISO is being pumped into Ares instead of Peter Parker.

Spoit

Unfortunately, 10 or so is pretty close to max, since IIRC, at max level it's 89 vs 106 or so

Unknown

Even ignoring the fact that Thorverine will be nerfed, the 3* abilities scale much higher. My grey suit widow does 2100 damage to entire team at Lv 81. At max level that scales to more than 3300 (or is it 3600?) so it's not just match damage that's higher.

My classic Magneto can one shot pretty much any non buffed character.

Unknown

Just as two star characters don't really 'come into their own' until around level 45 or so, three star characters don't really differentiate themselves until levels 80+.

Nemek

I run a fairly high-level three star team most of the time. Any time I see 2* characters, no matter which 2* they are, it's always an easy win. (Obvious exceptions are when they are heavily boosted, ala Ares currently.) Two star characters just don't have enough health to compete - even a maxed Thor only has 300 more health than a maxed GSBW, and she is considered extremely squishy.

Unknown

So, offensively, 3* abilities pack a higher punch once you get those characters higher than the 85 cap 2*s are limited to, and the health pool just grows. Sounds reasonable to me. I'm still working on transitioning to a 3* team. Ares is not helping lol.

Unknown

Yea, that is the unique thing about MPQ to other similar games like this I have played. When you get a 'rarer' card/character it doesn't really become apparent how good they are until you have poured A TON of resources into them.

In other games, you immediately see the positive benefits/power of the rarer characters the minute you put it into play.

I think they tried to address that issue by letting you play with a 'boosted' version of them in various tournaments, but it's been a really poor way of showing off a character.

Unknown

Because so much of the game centers on brackets and MMR where you end up fighting similarly leveled teams, there actually is something to be said for not switching over to or not fully leveling the three-star characters. In my own experience, I tend to place just as well or better in tournaments where I play two 2*'s and a level 50 3* or buffed 2* than when I load up on higher level 3* characters, simply because the competition scales right along with you.

Higher leveled 3*'s are nice for PvE, but using the buffed heroes for PvE tournaments is usually sufficient for all but the toughest of enemies. And even then, with boosts I've been able to beat the Level 240 teams and place well in the standings with the right combo of 2*'s, buffed, and mid level 3*'s.

I hope the impending nerfs don't ruin the very satisfying mid-level experience.

Unknown

With no rag there are no scary teams due to boosts. Hp and low ap moves are the only consideration. One of the reasons the hulk is top 5 for me is that he is quite beefy which means you either A. Have to waste your quick takedown moves on him in one go or B. Dunk him down from the start and use the big moves on the others. Either way it forces a slightly longer game= more damage/time taken. Take out thor/ares and the avg. Hp pool for a 2** is about 3400. That's pretty quick to take down. 5800 is avg for the 3***. 7000-8000 will probably be avg for the 4**** (iw is in the 7000 range and wolvie is in the 9000 range. If you compare his hp with his other versions he is generally a little above avg on hp and so I could see someone like a 4**** iron patriot having 12k hp and a 4**** thor having 13k).

On off. Thor and wolvie were top 5 characters. Thor has insane board control and that will certainly be nerfed either with higher ap cost or lower color generation. Wolvie green will certainly see nerfs and likely rather hard ones too. Obw Is only really a strong off weapon because she took advantage of wolvie's ridiculous green. With that gone she loses a lot of her gusto and sits more as the support character she was meant to be (can still do well with strike tiles though). I fully expect feral claw to be 5-8 ap now and, depending on the ap, have a set # of tiles dropped. Thor I expect to have his red messed with considerably and his yellow possibly changed a tad (personally I think his yellow is fine once you nerf the red's ability to easily churn out yellow).

In the current meta the buffed characters are king and are really the deciding factor on "do I fight this guy or not?" Part of that is due to the parity of everyone having to use them on their team so its a direct comparison of strength and part of that is because with boosts their hp gets irritating to take down compared to others. Again more hp means slower match which means bigger chance of a bad cascade hurting you.

Unknown

Osaic wrote:

I hope the impending nerfs don't ruin the very satisfying mid-level experience.

Seconded. Don't get me wrong, Thorverine is straight broken and is the main reason there's no pressing need yet to ditch 2*s once you want to start winning your tournament bracket. It's mostly **Sniktbub who warps the game, since adding 500-1000 damage to everything in every match that goes remotely your way (356 on turn 1, if you want) is completely out of scale with what anyone else can do. Abuse it while it lasts.

But I do like the fact the game isn't heavily stratified, and from recent developer comments about making 4*s special they might be trying to move more in that direction. I have a Hulk and Punisher by now that are within a few lucky pulls or good event placements and tens of thousands of ISO of passable, and Spider-Man and ***Widow not far behind, but there's no way I would've acquired those without abusing strike tiles to spike down anything faster than even most 3*s, including 15k HP buffed Hulks.

If the whole game goes the way of LRs, which are great ISO fountains but fairly useless otherwise to 2* players, the only new blood to stick around will be people willing to treat the 3* transition as an outright pay-wall. If comments from people who dropped $100 to get Rag-Man are any indication, it isn't a cheap one.

Unknown

Osaic wrote:

I hope the impending nerfs don't ruin the very satisfying mid-level experience.

I hadn't thought about it, but that's a really valid concern, in my opinion. On the one hand, three-star characters don't have the godlike advantage they did before the Ragnarok changes. On the other, breaking from two-star into three was the single most difficult thing in the game in my opinion. Ultimately, the thing that will make it ok is OBW. I doubt Wolverine's strike tile damage will be decreased. I see them raising the cost of his green. But I think OBW/Wolverine will still be a very strong combo.

Unknown

While it's almost certain Thor and Wolverine will be nerfed, that doesn't mean 2 star characters are useless. I can certainly see bring in a two star specialist to deal with the more interesting high tier characters. For example, if you have a level 240 Invisible Woman on the other team, you probably want someone who can deal with special tiles (Captain America, Moonstone, whatever), because otherwise that blue protect tile she puts down is going to completely take your team out of the game.

Unknown

It's not just the level but also the available covers that make a hero "usable". I mean, you can level up a certain 3* hero pretty high, let's take a spiderman but say you have no blues or 1 blue cover you just have a higher level dead weight So it's more of a combination of covers and levels rather than just one of the two. This may be a fairly obvious statement, but I thought I would mention it anyway since I've levelled up my Invisible Woman some for the 240 battles that require her. Unfortunately, without any blue covers I feel she's just a meat shield with slightly higher tile damage.

Spoit

Roya PQ wrote:

It's not just the level but also the available covers that make a hero "usable". I mean, you can level up a certain 3* hero pretty high, let's take a spiderman but say you have no blues or 1 blue cover you just have a higher level dead weight So it's more of a combination of covers and levels rather than just one of the two. This may be a fairly obvious statement, but I thought I would mention it anyway since I've levelled up my Invisible Woman some for the 240 battles that require her. Unfortunately, without any blue covers I feel she's just a meat shield with slightly higher tile damage.

Not even really that much higher. IIRC, 4*s only get like 5 extra tile damage for the extra hundred levels

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Roya PQ wrote:

It's not just the level but also the available covers that make a hero "usable". I mean, you can level up a certain 3* hero pretty high, let's take a spiderman but say you have no blues or 1 blue cover you just have a higher level dead weight So it's more of a combination of covers and levels rather than just one of the two. This may be a fairly obvious statement, but I thought I would mention it anyway since I've levelled up my Invisible Woman some for the 240 battles that require her. Unfortunately, without any blue covers I feel she's just a meat shield with slightly higher tile damage.

Not even really that much higher. IIRC, 4*s only get like 5 extra tile damage for the extra hundred levels

Agreed, but in this case she's boosted so a bit more than normal still

Unknown

Remember, as the lr get less competitive the easier it is for new players to place. A 2** only team even after nerfs should still be able to win diabolicals..still place tier 4 or better in a weekly tournement. They should still be able to move into the 3*** territory with time. Also, boosts are the great equilizer. Since you make 70/140 per a match you are averaging around 105 ISO per a win. For a simple + all +color +color you are talking about spending 400 ISO every 3 matches. That means you lose about -85 ISO every 3 matches. If you just do the +all+color you are actually +5 iso per match. So once you have your max 2** team buffs can keep you competetive.

Certainly I think that stratification is being looked for though. That said, 4**** and newer 4**** need to be good for that to happen. If done right, 4**** should be a beast...but they would do well to not make him Too Good as ppl have been getting himfor quite sone time and there would be decent covered ones in the wild a bit quick ....which might be good for getting some of the whales to spend but not good overall since the new whales need to get him first before they can do so. So....expect a wolverine pack whenever they balance the 2 wolvies. I expect a guaramted 3*** with a chance at 4 **** 5 pack to go alongside a tournement and the balancing. Well, if they play it right at least.