Polarity's Guide on Going From 1* to 3* (Updated: 1/22/15)

Trisul

Do the incoming Daken changes bump him up the 2* tier list and bump down 3*? Still seems awkward color-wise to pair him with OBW.

Unknown

I appreciate the guide. I'm just starting to incorporate some more 3* players into my roster and being able to use more then just a few different characters.

over_clocked

Trisul wrote:

Do the incoming Daken changes bump him up the 2* tier list and bump down 3*? Still seems awkward color-wise to pair him with OBW.

He's a great 3rd to the dynamic duo of RGY+oBW, or maybe HT+oBW even (lose on yellow, gain an active black). You will be able to finish someone with blue rather than have an awkward heal that won't stay anyway. He won't cover oBW on purple and blue, but he will on black if put correctly, which is more than RGY guys do. Plus, free strike tiles and Espionage.

NorthernPolarity

locked wrote:

Trisul wrote:

Do the incoming Daken changes bump him up the 2* tier list and bump down 3*? Still seems awkward color-wise to pair him with OBW.

He's a great 3rd to the dynamic duo of RGY+oBW, or maybe HT+oBW even (lose on yellow, gain an active black). You will be able to finish someone with blue rather than have an awkward heal that won't stay anyway. He won't cover oBW on purple and blue, but he will on black if put correctly, which is more than RGY guys do. Plus, free strike tiles and Espionage.

Not covering obw on purple/blue is actually a pretty good thing due to espionage triggers. obw/torch/daken is now the best 2* team offensively despite the lack of yellow just because gaining torch black (which is amazing with strike tiles and doubles up as the espionage color) in place of yellow means you have the same number of active colors, except your black now has amazing synergies with obw/daken. Torch green also works amazingly with dakens strike tiles, and his red is good by itself. Thor/ares is probably better defensively since theyre big and dumb, but eh. Torch/daken/obw just has so many synergies amongst themselves that they must be the best offensive team in 2* land.

over_clocked

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Torch/daken/obw just has so many synergies amongst themselves that they must be the best offensive team in 2* land.

Pretty much agree. Pity that Torch might destroy friendly tiles, but eh. Strike tiles don't come any cheaper than with Daken.

amarrero

With BP's yellow buff, would be still be a good pair with LT? I'm debating whether to pump Iso into Punisher, Patch, Sentry or BP to go with my maxed LT.

NorthernPolarity

amarrero wrote:

With BP's yellow buff, would be still be a good pair with LT? I'm debating whether to pump Iso into Punisher, Patch, Sentry or BP to go with my maxed LT.

I don't think the buffs really change anything: with LT on your team you're always going to be using LT's yellow, so the LT/BP team comp doesn't really change much. Between those 4 I would choose between Sentry and BP. BP gives you access to a powerful black, Sentry is just crazy in general (although he has little synergy with LT as do all 4 of those characters). You might be better off just hoarding iso or using some on buffed heroes for tournaments such as Patch.

Unknown

Sorry if this has been asked before...but I joined here after I had maxed out my 2* and have been topping my 3* as I got them. this seems to have been a bad move, as I now keep getting put into death brackets. I am not sure if this is related to my roster having quite a few partly leveled 3*. Is it? And if so would deleting some of them be a good idea? But it would mean I would lose the covers I already have...help

vudu3

Do not delete your roster. Sounds like you need to fix your MMR. I just sent you a PM.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

i can't wait to hear your thoughts on Deadpool(who i consider a mid tier character but good for shield hops since his red is so OP), captain marvel(a decent character for PVE, especially with her stun) and Fury(i consider him the first true 4* cause the other one's are so....****).

NorthernPolarity

Update! Added Lil Torch, Deadpool, Cap Marvel. Messed with some rankings in light of recent changes, the important stuff is quoted below. Don't think I'm going to add Fury since you're not really transitioning at that point.

Something I need to make more apparent is that the rankings weigh how the characters look in a roster where they're one of the only 3*s on the roster somewhat highly. Punisher is amazing as a transition character since he brings solid abilities in 3 different colors, but is terrible in the grand scheme of things since he's completely unplayable once you get the top tier guys outside of buffed events.

Also need to think of a better way to list out team compositions/synergies. Maybe I should add a section to each character saying who they're good with instead of the team composition section for 3*s, but that seems annoying when adding new characters, since if I say something like "Deadpool is good with Hood" in the Deadpool section, then I'm going to have to add "Hood is good with Deadpool" in the Hood section. A color coded spreadsheet matrix might work, but that doesn't really let me explain why the combinations are good.

Human Torch - Same as his big bro, Lil' Torch is a glass character that dishes out a ton of damage. Despite him being a RG character, he actually fills out a pretty important role in the 2* lineup as your primary red/black user. Since no other 2* character has a good black and Thor/Ares have a poor red, Torch is the perfect compliment to your standard 2* lineup of OBW/Ares+Thor.

Ideal Build: 5/5/3 - While theres more of a debate in 3* land, Lil Torch's build is a no brainer. Torch's black/red are the best abilities of those colors in 2* land, and you can easily find a guy with a decent green in Thor/Ares/Wolvie. This might change once 2* Daken gets his 3rd cover for the specific team comp of Daken/OBW/Torch (in which case 5/3/5 is better), but I would say that 5/5/3 is always going to be the most flexible build for Lil Torch just because of how black is non-existent.

A. Wolvie – One of the main damage dealers at the 2* level. Green's strike tiles give you consistent damage throughout the entire match, and red is one of the most cost-effective damage spells out there. Yellow helps him tank a little if needed. Given that you probably have Thor or Ares on your team, wolvie is mostly there for his red and his green providing strike tiles for OBW to double dip with. He's a fine character to level up if he's the only character that you're getting colors for, but he'll become obsolete as you get the higher tier 2* characters.

Ideal Build: 5/5/3. Yellow is situational, and red/green covers give the abilities more damage, which is exactly what you want.

Torch + OBW + [Thor or Ares] - The new cookie cutter 2* build that has active abilities in the entire color rainbow. Torch adds a strong red/black DPS ability to the team, Thor/Ares provide the yellow/green, and OBW provides the AP stealing / sort of heals. While you lose the strike tile synergy with Wolvie, this gives you access to black as a color that actually does things, while keeping a strong, faster red. Thor tanks both red/green for Torch (if you place him in the primary position) which is nice, so he gets a slight nod above Ares who only tanks green.

Black Panther - A very tanky support character with an amazing aoe ability. His black costs 12AP for 3.2k damage to all enemy characters at max level, and does very efficient damage. Yellow has been buffed to basically become Punisher's judgement color shifted in yellow as a baseline, and supercharged judgement if you can collect 12 TU AP, and as promised, he is now promoted to high tier due to having one devestating ability in RotP, and one very good ability in battleplan.

Ideal Build: 5/3/5 The chances of the blue countdown tile surviving to put out more than 3 countdown tiles seems pretty unlikely, and the boost in yellow's damage is pretty significant, especially now that it's buffed. Black's a given.

Deadpool - A specialist character that is used mainly for his devestating red in high level play. Black is super situational because on defense the enemy team can just choose to ignore you, and on offense you need to put him in front just before the enemy uses an ability in order to pass the damage threshold, which means that you're going to be taking a bunch of damage anyways. While purple looks good as one of the only active purple skills in 3* land, it costing 14AP means that it's going to be hard to get off reliably. That being said, 14AP for 4k team damage still generally ends the game pretty quickly. so its still probably fine to go for. He's ranked lower than a lot of the characters on this list because he's just so damn awkward as a transition character: red is clearly still very strong, but purple is completely out of place in a transition roster. Just the fact that you need purple for whales means that Deadpool plays horribly with OBW, which is the best support for a fledgling 2->3* character and is probably going to be on every other transition team. The whole purpose of her being on a team is for recon, so either you're running OBW and not running Deadpool for purple, or you're not running OBW so you can use Deadpool's purple. Oh, and 14AP is pretty hard to get to without some help in generating AP from another character, which is typically OBWs job.

Build: 5/5/3. Black is just too situational on both offense and defense to be considered.

Captain Marvel - The second tankiest of all tanks. Captain Marvel is even Hulkier than She-Hulk, and can basically be thought of as a Hulk / Psylocke hybrid. Her yellow passive makes it so that people don't really want to attack her on defense, and shes still for the most part useless on offense (although her Psylocke genes makes her abilities able to actually cast her abilities on offense). Her abilities just don't really do enough damage to carry a transition team. She can get a good amount of damage in if she absorbs a bunch of attacks like the Hulk, but then shes taking damage and not being really sustainable. Same weaknesses as the Hulk puts her at around the same level, but she's probably slightly better just because you can actually use both of her abilities on offense.

Best Build: 3/5/5. 5 Yellow is important since it allows her to absorb 3 extra black AP. Between red and black, black is clearly her best ability, and so its probably worth maxing it out to get that 2 turn stun on people. 4/4/5 is probably fine as well if you want the extra damage in red, but losing out on the utility of the stun is probably not worth it.

Lil' Torch -> Placed in high tier by virtue of having the only useable black in 2* land, and a good red to compliment Thor/Ares.
Wolvie -> Demoted to mid tier since Torch is a better guy to go with on offense in 2* land nowadays.
BP -> Moved to high tier due to buffs in yellow.
Punisher -> Demoted to mid tier. Still a really strong transition character since he can carry a 2* team with his abilities, but his becoming completely obsoleted in high tier PvP play pushes him out of top tier.
Hood -> Demoted below Punisher/Torch, since having guys with a ton of active abilities to carry a transition team with dps is more important.
Deadpool -> Placed below Cap and above Psylocke because whales is super awkward with OBW around, and red is strong but only having 2 abilities hurts when you're the only 3* on the team and need to carry.
Cap Marvel - Placed slightly above Hulk since they're similar and share the same weaknesses as a transition character.

over_clocked

Imo Hood's a good transition character (if you have 4-5 blue) since he plays so well with the 2* Thor/Ares/Torch/Wolvie and oBW. Hood/cStorm/MMN tear PvE nodes apart as well. I had blue Hood covers earlier than Patch or cMagneto even and he helped me transition just fine at that time without maxed yellow. Of course, the current meta is heavily relying on big DPS atm, but all that DPS must come from either free strike tiles (Daken (and optionally Falcon)) or AP. There are also no superb counters to Hood except other 3* characters (Mags, Psylocke, Daken, Hood), so a 2* player with a leveled Hood has a pretty big advantage I'd say.

squirrel1120

eris-wtga wrote:

Sorry if this has been asked before...but I joined here after I had maxed out my 2* and have been topping my 3* as I got them. this seems to have been a bad move, as I now keep getting put into death brackets. I am not sure if this is related to my roster having quite a few partly leveled 3*. Is it? And if so would deleting some of them be a good idea? But it would mean I would lose the covers I already have...help

None of my 3* characters are leveled higher than my 2*'s are right now, and I've been shunted into all the death-brackets everyone has been seeing since the start of season 4 as well. Definitely don't delete your characters. The system is just made harder once you reach certain points in the career. If I pull 3 covers from each pve in a week, and 3 single covers from the pvp events (because top 25 has become an impossible pipe dream within the context of a death bracket scenario) in the same week, its still going to take a long time to hit even a single viable 3*, so I feel for anyone in the same place in their transitioning.

Unknown

squirrel1120 wrote:

None of my 3* characters are leveled higher than my 2*'s are right now, and I've been shunted into all the death-brackets everyone has been seeing since the start of season 4 as well. Definitely don't delete your characters. The system is just made harder once you reach certain points in the career. If I pull 3 covers from each pve in a week, and 3 single covers from the pvp events (because top 25 has become an impossible pipe dream within the context of a death bracket scenario) in the same week, its still going to take a long time to hit even a single viable 3*, so I feel for anyone in the same place in their transitioning.

Well tanking is helping.I can now get top100 fairly easily (but that could be a cover thing, but I will take what I can get lol) with no shielding..that's going to help

Unknown

Very helpful guide. Thank you.

Grabrube

This guide helped me a lot making my rooster decisions. Thanks

Unknown

I'm currently in the process of maxing some 2*'s as I'm sitting on a pile of ISO. However I was wondering if there was any advantage to keeping my team levels low, mainly from a pvp point of view.

I'm currently finding that i can get to 500ish points in a pvp before hitting maxed 2* teams which has so far been good enough to net me a few covers. If I was to suddenly be running with my own maxed 2* team would the outcome be that i'd be seeing maxed 2* teams earlier, thus making things a little bit slower?

HairyDave

Mr Stoat wrote:

I'm currently in the process of maxing some 2*'s as I'm sitting on a pile of ISO. However I was wondering if there was any advantage to keeping my team levels low, mainly from a pvp point of view.

I'm currently finding that i can get to 500ish points in a pvp before hitting maxed 2* teams which has so far been good enough to net me a few covers. If I was to suddenly be running with my own maxed 2* team would the outcome be that i'd be seeing maxed 2* teams earlier, thus making things a little bit slower?

Your level has no direct effect on matchmaking. What tends to happen is as your team level rises (as an average), you win more often, and this higher win/loss ratio drives up your MMR.

PVE might be a different story - I've seen a few rosters purposefully unlevelled doing very well in previous events (annoyingly well in fact).

Unknown

HairyDave wrote:

Mr Stoat wrote:

I'm currently in the process of maxing some 2*'s as I'm sitting on a pile of ISO. However I was wondering if there was any advantage to keeping my team levels low, mainly from a pvp point of view.

I'm currently finding that i can get to 500ish points in a pvp before hitting maxed 2* teams which has so far been good enough to net me a few covers. If I was to suddenly be running with my own maxed 2* team would the outcome be that i'd be seeing maxed 2* teams earlier, thus making things a little bit slower?

Your level has no direct effect on matchmaking. What tends to happen is as your team level rises (as an average), you win more often, and this higher win/loss ratio drives up your MMR.

PVE might be a different story - I've seen a few rosters purposefully unlevelled doing very well in previous events (annoyingly well in fact).

Yeah when I started pve did seem straight forward for the most part as the boosted characters really overpowered the low level nodes plus rubberbanding kept me with the leaders. Now that I've been playing a while the scaling really can get on top of you after a few clears of a refresh. (I'm looking at you juggy+2x snipers!)

I guess the devs may want it to feel pretty easy for newcomers in pve so that the player feels like they are making progress and end up horribly addicted to the game!

Unknown

Great review! One thing you forgot is that if you have Magento Classic's blue power, he is incredibly useful aganist hammer agents who produce countdown tiles.