When is the right time to start spending HP on covers?

Cymmina

I'm a free to play player that has felt the push to sink real money into the game more than once to save an expiring cover, but never did. I'm up to 54 character slots and have every single 3* character, 4 2* characters + 1 free slot for the PvE essential, and 9 4* characters. New roster slots are currently 700 HP.

Through a combination of luck (multiple +HP draws from the vaults, including +1000 from the Independence Vault) and good performances in the last few PvEs (multiple top 50 finishes in subs), I have 4700 HP burning a hole in my pocket. I am tempted to purchase a few covers for top tier characters that are undercovered: a purple and green cover for Iron Fist (currently 2/3/3) and possibly a red cover for Captain America (5/1/3). Most of my other cover needs can be filled by DDQ or the next time the character appears in a PvE event.

Should I continue saving? Or is now the right time to start looking at purchasing things other than roster slots? If I buy the 3 covers I'm planning on, I'll have enough HP left for 1 roster slot plus a little extra.

Malcrof

With the rate of new releases, i would go with roster slots honestly. The exception may be if you are 1 cover away from maxing a char and do not want to wait on DDQ type situation.

udonomefoo

I've seen these threads come up a few times and it seems the usual answer is that there are only a few covers really worth buying and they're usually the 5th cover of an ability like hood's blue or cap's red.

Since your red's only at 1 that 2nd cover won't do a whole lot, but if you're not going to use the hp on anything else anyway....why not?

TxMoose

I spent a small chunk on 6 covers to jump start my *** transition and it sped the process up considerably. unless the purchase makes a big difference in your performance I don't think I would go there. for me, my purchase was larger, but went from not finishing t100 in pvp, to finishing t100 in nearly every pvp since. now that I chase 1000 sometimes, I'm generally hp negative in pvp and have played pve completely casually, I'm slowly going through hp. but if you aren't spending on shields I guess you don't need that either. I wouldn't spend it unless it changed what you could go for. if it pushes you over a performance threshold go for it. if not, sit tight until a time it might make more sense. you may get down the road and have most of your ***s covered and wish you had 5k to finish imhb or something, which might make more of a difference then.

Pongie

I built up around the same amount and then decided to spent it all on roster slots... Up to 63 now I believe. basically just expanded my 2* roster so I didn't have to hunt them down via tokens for the pve essentials. I figured I could probably get that back in a month or two anyway.

spectator

I purchased two covers ever, green thor and yellow thor. It brought my thor to 2/5/5, my most well covered top tier three star at the time and made a huge difference to my PVP experience. Top 100 became alot easier, sometimes even top 25. The red cover came soon after (maybe a week). So i would suggest only buying if it will complete the build of top tier three star character.

Oh and dont buy covers for ironfist unless you actually have an outlet for the black such as cyclops, luke cage or black panther

TxMoose

spectator wrote:

I purchased two covers ever, green thor and yellow thor. It brought my thor to 2/5/5, my most well covered top tier three star at the time and made a huge difference to my PVP experience. Top 100 became alot easier, sometimes even top 25. The red cover came soon after (maybe a week). So i would suggest only buying if it will complete the build of top tier three star character.

Oh and dont buy covers for ironfist unless you actually have an outlet for the black such as cyclops, luke cage or black panther

in a pinch mystique could work too but other black users like loki/doom/storm would not work as well due to their abilities working better if cast earlier in the match, not saved up to the end for a nuke to finish something off.

over_clocked

Agree with others, roster slots over covers at this point. Well unless you have someone else close to being finished; Fist and Cap are a bit too far yet.
The only 3* covers I bought were all for top meta players (Cap isn't one), were last covers in their good abilities and brought them to 13/13 or were needed to respec.
They come easily now anyway, I'd really just invest into roster slots and occasional shields.

Vhailorx

Adding to the chorus:

there are VERY few covers that are worth buying outright, especially now that DDQ exists.

A few powers do benefit immensely from getting to the 4th or 5th level (as some examples: Hood blue x5 makes a huge difference by stealing all colors. GSBW green x5 transforms the power into an aoe nuke. OBW black x4 opens up obw's ability to double-dip on strike tiles). But by the time you acquire 3 or 4 covers in that color, you can probably just wait out the ddq to finish the power within 30 days anyway.

There are also relatively few characters that are so useful that they will provide a good return on investment. IMO the top tier of 3*s now is probably Cage, Cylcops, Khan, and Iron Fist (incidentally, all released in 2015 suggesting that power creep is a real problem in 3* land). leveling a few of those characters would be very useful, but it won't turn you into an immediate PVP beast. You will still be getting trounced above 900 by vets and whales that can throw out 290/240/240 or better teams. And it would cost WAY more than 4600HP anyway.

If you are still looking to build a 3* bench, then roster slots are by far the best investment you can make with your HP. It's not sexy, and it will still take time to get covers for those characters, but it's the most efficient way to spend.

Unknown

One should look at his roster before giving tips

I would suggest starting to play pvp to accumulate 4 star covers. if and lcaps will cover themselves in time. At some point d3 might even run an event with if covers as reward, who knows.

1000 points in every pvp should be your goal, which is very doable with your roster, if you level the featured 3 stars you want to use to 127.

Climb to 900 throw up an 8 hour shield, get good queues, break the shield and two fights should get you to 1000.

So to answer the question in the topic: The right time is when you need covers for your 4stars that are hard to come by. Covers for 4 stars are much more significant almost across the board and they are not atainable by waiting on ddq.

PS: Thanks for putting together the gamependium page

Unknown

I'd hold on to the HP for now. There are very few covers worth buying with HP. Even Hood's 5th blue, as good as it is, will come by in DDQ.
I would hold off until you are at a point where you have about 10 or so covers in a 4* character and you need those final covers to level them. The 4 stars are not available in DDQ and are of course much more rare.

I'm sitting on 10k HP and have been tempted to purchase x-force covers on a few occasion, but I only have about 7-8 covers for him so he wouldn't have been good enough had I purchased a cover or two anyway.

Keep the HP for roster slots and shielding to grab those progression rewards. It should take substantially less than 1k of HP to shield hop to a 4* progression reward. Much more efficient use of HP compared to 2.5k to buy a 4* cover. Shielding at 1k+ points also pretty much guarantees good placement... which should net you a couple of 3* as well.