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

Mechahamster

Trisul wrote:

Mechahamster wrote:

Thanks for the answer.

My concern isn't so much with wasting the ISO, but more the effect adding those levels has on the scaling of the enemies.

If you really want to excel in PvE and have absolutely no interest in PvP, stick to a low cap across your roster. Maybe even as low as 40 or 50 to keep 1*s viable.

If you want to dabble in PvP but keep scaling low, 94 is a solid cap for your 3*s. Your 1*s are mostly useless at this point, but this rewards a deep 2* roster, and will especially shine in heroics.

Personally, I capped at 114 (accidentally leveled that high before I figured out scaling), and I slightly regret it since it relatively depowers the 2*s I have. This is less of an issue now that my 3* roster is more fleshed out.

(Fine print: there are some minimum level for enemies in PvE. Goons can be very low, but 3*s can't be lower than level 40 even if the node is supposed to be trivial, which might be more difficult than usual if you cap at 40 or 50.)

This is a wonderful post and exactly what I was looking for. I already had Spidey at 100 and will keep him there while I continue grinding out more 3* covers until I can level two or three solid 166s.

NorthernPolarity

Mechahamster wrote:

Trisul wrote:

Mechahamster wrote:

Thanks for the answer.

My concern isn't so much with wasting the ISO, but more the effect adding those levels has on the scaling of the enemies.

If you really want to excel in PvE and have absolutely no interest in PvP, stick to a low cap across your roster. Maybe even as low as 40 or 50 to keep 1*s viable.

If you want to dabble in PvP but keep scaling low, 94 is a solid cap for your 3*s. Your 1*s are mostly useless at this point, but this rewards a deep 2* roster, and will especially shine in heroics.

Personally, I capped at 114 (accidentally leveled that high before I figured out scaling), and I slightly regret it since it relatively depowers the 2*s I have. This is less of an issue now that my 3* roster is more fleshed out.

(Fine print: there are some minimum level for enemies in PvE. Goons can be very low, but 3*s can't be lower than level 40 even if the node is supposed to be trivial, which might be more difficult than usual if you cap at 40 or 50.)

This is a wonderful post and exactly what I was looking for. I already had Spidey at 100 and will keep him there while I continue grinding out more 3* covers until I can level two or three solid 166s.

Did you see noticeable impact on your PvE scaling by having your Spidey that high? I've been hearing reports of this happening, and I think I might need to change the guide to warn people against maxing out a character if this is the case.

morph3us

erlloyd wrote:

Thanks so much for this post!

After returning, I'm stuck in the 300-400 points range for PvP events, and I vary wildly in placement for the PvE events. I've got what I think might be a solid start to a roster, but I'm not sure which direction to go. Looking at my covers below, where do people think I should be investing my time and effort? What covers should I be going for if they come up in events? Is there any way for me to break out of ** rewards land with what I have right now? Thanks!

Usable Covers right now

Lvl 100 GSBW 5/3/5 (Only *** I could max-level, but I don't want to mess up PvE and not sure I can field a good team with her...)
Lvl 94 OBW 3/5/5
Lvl 94 Daken** 4/4/5
Lvl 94 Thor** 3/5/5
Lvl 94 Wolvie** 5/5/3
Lvl 94 Hood 2/5/1 (Can level to 104)
Lvl 92 Spiderman*** 1/5/3 (Can level to 117)
Lvl 74 Nick Fury 1/1/1
Lvl 70 Ares 4/2/5
Lvl 55 Rocket & Groot 1/3/1

Can level up some if useful

Lvl 55 Iron Man*** 3/5/4 (I way over-covered yellow, so I feel stuck with him - anything I can do there?)
Lvl 45 cStorm 5/5/3
Lvl 40 gamora 4/2/0
Lvl 40 hulk 4/0/1
Lvl 40 beast 3/2/0
Lvl 26 Cap** 3/5/5
Lvl 15 Captain Marvel** 5/4/4
Lvl 15 mnMags 3/5/5
Lvl 15 Torch** 5/3/3

Tricky situation. Both of your viable 3*s (GSBW and Hood) are good, but are probably not of sufficient calibre to build teams around at your stage. GSBW is still very useful, and you have her specced right with Sniper Rifle and Deceptive Tactics. I'd only level her insofar as her match damage in green/red is low enough so that 2* Thor and Ares are still tanking green and red for her. Your Hood is very usable, since you mostly want him for his blue anyway, but again, you want to keep his match damage below 2* Thor/Ares/2* Daken, so he's not tanking. Obviously Hood is a long term prospect for later on. (As a side note, GSBW was my first fully covered 3*, and I used her with a 9 cover 3* Thor and 8 cover Colossus to help my transition, so she can be viable, if she has the right partners).

None of your other three stars are ready to level yet. I wouldn't level Spiderman any further than this, his usefulness to you is pretty limited. If you're willing to invest in your 2* roster more, I think you could probably develop a bit more roster depth, which would help you get up to around 500 points in PvP (ie, up to the "wall"). I'd think about fully covering Ares, then pairing him with OBW, and see how you go, since they're a strong duo in featured PvP events. I'm not sure if you'd want to cover and level the cStorm/mnMags/mHawkeye combo - even though this would give you the 2* equivalent of Sentry bombing, they're so weak on defense, that their only real use is in shield hopping and for difficult PvE nodes. I'd see how you go with Ares/OBW for the moment, and save your ISO. Try climbing with 2* Wolvie/2* Daken, then switch to Ares/OBW at the end. You could slide GSBW and Hood in there on occasion, but at their current levels, they're so squishy, they're soft targets for transitioners to hit.

Definitely stick with NP's advice, don't level your 3*s until you have 9 or 10 covers in them. They tend to be more of a hindrance than an asset if they're undercovered.

yogi_

Trisul wrote:

Mechahamster wrote:

Thanks for the answer.

My concern isn't so much with wasting the ISO, but more the effect adding those levels has on the scaling of the enemies.

If you really want to excel in PvE and have absolutely no interest in PvP, stick to a low cap across your roster. Maybe even as low as 40 or 50 to keep 1*s viable.

If you want to dabble in PvP but keep scaling low, 94 is a solid cap for your 3*s. Your 1*s are mostly useless at this point, but this rewards a deep 2* roster, and will especially shine in heroics.

Personally, I capped at 114 (accidentally leveled that high before I figured out scaling), and I slightly regret it since it relatively depowers the 2*s I have. This is less of an issue now that my 3* roster is more fleshed out.

(Fine print: there are some minimum level for enemies in PvE. Goons can be very low, but 3*s can't be lower than level 40 even if the node is supposed to be trivial, which might be more difficult than usual if you cap at 40 or 50.)

Trisul, based on your 94 character cap statement there, can you go higher levels at all before you start triggering things higher up or once you reach 95, it's all over? Should you stick at 94 (or less) until you have a decently developed 3* roster that you can bring up all at the same time in line with NP's suggestions?

Unknown

morph3us wrote:

Tricky situation. Both of your viable 3*s (GSBW and Hood) are good, but are probably not of sufficient calibre to build teams around at your stage. GSBW is still very useful, and you have her specced right with Sniper Rifle and Deceptive Tactics. I'd only level her insofar as her match damage in green/red is low enough so that 2* Thor and Ares are still tanking green and red for her. Your Hood is very usable, since you mostly want him for his blue anyway, but again, you want to keep his match damage below 2* Thor/Ares/2* Daken, so he's not tanking. Obviously Hood is a long term prospect for later on. (As a side note, GSBW was my first fully covered 3*, and I used her with a 9 cover 3* Thor and 8 cover Colossus to help my transition, so she can be viable, if she has the right partners).

None of your other three stars are ready to level yet. I wouldn't level Spiderman any further than this, his usefulness to you is pretty limited. If you're willing to invest in your 2* roster more, I think you could probably develop a bit more roster depth, which would help you get up to around 500 points in PvP (ie, up to the "wall"). I'd think about fully covering Ares, then pairing him with OBW, and see how you go, since they're a strong duo in featured PvP events. I'm not sure if you'd want to cover and level the cStorm/mnMags/mHawkeye combo - even though this would give you the 2* equivalent of Sentry bombing, they're so weak on defense, that their only real use is in shield hopping and for difficult PvE nodes. I'd see how you go with Ares/OBW for the moment, and save your ISO. Try climbing with 2* Wolvie/2* Daken, then switch to Ares/OBW at the end. You could slide GSBW and Hood in there on occasion, but at their current levels, they're so squishy, they're soft targets for transitioners to hit.

Definitely stick with NP's advice, don't level your 3*s until you have 9 or 10 covers in them. They tend to be more of a hindrance than an asset if they're undercovered.

Thanks for the advice! I'll focus on getting my ** Ares up to 94 and see how that helps in PvP. Would Hulk be any help in transitioning with GSBW, if I can get him to a level where he's tanking green and I get a few more 'Anger' covers?

morph3us

erlloyd wrote:

Thanks for the advice! I'll focus on getting my ** Ares up to 94 and see how that helps in PvP. Would Hulk be any help in transitioning with GSBW, if I can get him to a level where he's tanking green and I get a few more 'Anger' covers?

It probably would. The main issue that I can see with this is that you can't really rely on Sniper Rifle going off all the time as your finisher. 19AP is a lot. The reason why 3* Thor/GSBW worked for me is that I had two green feeders (Thunder Strike and Deceptive Tactics), feeding into CTS at 14AP. I might occasionally get Sniper Rifle off as an optional extra, but it wasn't all the time. With the Hulk/GSBW combo, you do have the advantage of a fairly meaty tank to cover for GSBW's low HP, and Thunderous Clap, at 10AP is certainly usable, as your main green ability. You'd need 5 covers in Hulk green and black for that to work well, I'd think. It'd certainly be a reasonable team to try and tackle the 166 wall with, once you had them levelled, although they'd eat health packs.

Trisul

yogi_ wrote:

Trisul, based on your 94 character cap statement there, can you go higher levels at all before you start triggering things higher up or once you reach 95, it's all over? Should you stick at 94 (or less) until you have a decently developed 3* roster that you can bring up all at the same time in line with NP's suggestions?

I'm basing these observations on purely anecdotal evidence, and I don't think it's a hard cap by any means. I think papa07 was the first person I read that suggested that your highest level character affects the base starting levels of all your PvE nodes. If he and I are correct in these assumptions, then 95 vs 94 hardly matters, but large outliers (like a single 270 4* in a roster of otherwise 166s) could make a fairly noticeably bump in starting levels. I believe Phantron did some basic analysis on this on one of the gauntlet event threads.

Mechahamster

In the Simulator, I haven't seen any node that seemed of excessive difficulty in the normal one, and nodes that quickly ramped up to 'not worth it' in the hard one. The Essentials stayed around level 70-75 in normal, and 100-115 in hard. Someone with a full 2 star roster and no 3* beyond level 94 can tell me if that's higher than they have.

I'll keep an eye out during the Hulk event.

NorthernPolarity

Updated the guide with Cage: our first high tier guy in a while now!
Blade is higher up on the rankings, as he is good.

Unknown

really loving luke cage's animation, cute, fast and simple

loroku

As always: spectacular guide. Brilliant. Thanks so much for keeping it updated.

Quick note: you still have language in Patch's description talking about Spiderman being good / stunning the enemy team, and his "upcoming" nerf. Just fyi. (Yes, this guide is that old! You should have done a revision date thing. )

Couple of suggestions: now that Cap. Marvel has a good black, I think it's worth talking about 5/3/5 for 2* Human Torch. His black is good but his green is REALLY good, AND it doesn't deplete your entire team's resources to use it. The only downside to the green is that it can get matched away easier, but if you're smart about when you place it it's almost certain to do more damage than the black, since those get matched away even faster. (And it's cheap to deploy if it does.) Anyway, something to consider.

Speaking of Cap. Marvel, she seems like a solid mid-tier character, and her yellow is surprisingly good. I didn't think getting a bunch of teamups would be useful - and in and of itself, it's not particularly - but the cascades it causes have been impressive! Humans don't tend to go for team-up tiles so there are always a bunch, and the cascades are a good board shake-up that also clears out a lot of the junk you didn't want. I wouldn't be surprised if 3/5/5 turned out to be her strongest build, or at least 4/5/4. (Her yellow is secretly good with Stormneto, since his pink really wants a nice, open board so you can chain those blues together. She also gives them rainbow coverage.) Red is actually not really that strong unless you're specifically going up against Cage, Falcon, Black Panther, or maybe Cap (or maybe Loki if you have a strike-tile generator), as the damage is still really low even maxed (although it is pretty cheap). Anyway, it might be worth putting a section in for her, even without recommendations, just so people know you didn't make a mistake.

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Did you see noticeable impact on your PvE scaling by having your Spidey that high? I've been hearing reports of this happening, and I think I might need to change the guide to warn people against maxing out a character if this is the case.

According to pretty much everyone on this forum, PvE scaling depends on your highest character level, making the "max two 3* characters quick" the potentially least helpful advice in this great guide. I can definitely say - since I tend to move my characters up in bunches, 10-15 levels at a time - that there is some truth to this. However, it doesn't seem to happen live - in other words, you don't just level up a guy and suddenly nodes are harder. So it's really hard to measure. Also my own experience might be coincidence. And it might be dependent on average level of top X characters or something equally as unknown, which would also match my personal data. But I'm pretty sure I noticed when I got my first level 70 4* (and my other characters were level 55) that things got harder, so "highest level character" is still my theory as well.

NorthernPolarity

loroku wrote:

As always: spectacular guide. Brilliant. Thanks so much for keeping it updated.

Quick note: you still have language in Patch's description talking about Spiderman being good / stunning the enemy team, and his "upcoming" nerf. Just fyi. (Yes, this guide is that old! You should have done a revision date thing. )

Couple of suggestions: now that Cap. Marvel has a good black, I think it's worth talking about 5/3/5 for 2* Human Torch. His black is good but his green is REALLY good, AND it doesn't deplete your entire team's resources to use it. The only downside to the green is that it can get matched away easier, but if you're smart about when you place it it's almost certain to do more damage than the black, since those get matched away even faster. (And it's cheap to deploy if it does.) Anyway, something to consider.

Speaking of Cap. Marvel, she seems like a solid mid-tier character, and her yellow is surprisingly good. I didn't think getting a bunch of teamups would be useful - and in and of itself, it's not particularly - but the cascades it causes have been impressive! Humans don't tend to go for team-up tiles so there are always a bunch, and the cascades are a good board shake-up that also clears out a lot of the junk you didn't want. I wouldn't be surprised if 3/5/5 turned out to be her strongest build, or at least 4/5/4. (Her yellow is secretly good with Stormneto, since his pink really wants a nice, open board so you can chain those blues together. She also gives them rainbow coverage.) Red is actually not really that strong unless you're specifically going up against Cage, Falcon, Black Panther, or maybe Cap (or maybe Loki if you have a strike-tile generator), as the damage is still really low even maxed (although it is pretty cheap). Anyway, it might be worth putting a section in for her, even without recommendations, just so people know you didn't make a mistake.

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Did you see noticeable impact on your PvE scaling by having your Spidey that high? I've been hearing reports of this happening, and I think I might need to change the guide to warn people against maxing out a character if this is the case.

According to pretty much everyone on this forum, PvE scaling depends on your highest character level, making the "max two 3* characters quick" the potentially least helpful advice in this great guide. I can definitely say - since I tend to move my characters up in bunches, 10-15 levels at a time - that there is some truth to this. However, it doesn't seem to happen live - in other words, you don't just level up a guy and suddenly nodes are harder. So it's really hard to measure. Also my own experience might be coincidence. And it might be dependent on average level of top X characters or something equally as unknown, which would also match my personal data. But I'm pretty sure I noticed when I got my first level 70 4* (and my other characters were level 55) that things got harder, so "highest level character" is still my theory as well.

Yeah I noticed the Patch thing last night as well: It's embarrassing to look at in hindsight haha, since I was a pretty big Punisher fanboy back when the Pun vs Patch debate was still going on. I'm going to need to update the guide soon with changes to all three of these things as you said. The maxing out 2 guys strategy was ideal back in the day, but PvE scaling has ruined this as well.

yogi_

loroku wrote:

Couple of suggestions: now that Cap. Marvel has a good black, I think it's worth talking about 5/3/5 for 2* Human Torch. His black is good but his green is REALLY good, AND it doesn't deplete your entire team's resources to use it. The only downside to the green is that it can get matched away easier, but if you're smart about when you place it it's almost certain to do more damage than the black, since those get matched away even faster. (And it's cheap to deploy if it does.) Anyway, something to consider.

Speaking of Cap. Marvel, she seems like a solid mid-tier character, and her yellow is surprisingly good. I didn't think getting a bunch of teamups would be useful - and in and of itself, it's not particularly - but the cascades it causes have been impressive! Humans don't tend to go for team-up tiles so there are always a bunch, and the cascades are a good board shake-up that also clears out a lot of the junk you didn't want. I wouldn't be surprised if 3/5/5 turned out to be her strongest build, or at least 4/5/4. (Her yellow is secretly good with Stormneto, since his pink really wants a nice, open board so you can chain those blues together. She also gives them rainbow coverage.) Red is actually not really that strong unless you're specifically going up against Cage, Falcon, Black Panther, or maybe Cap (or maybe Loki if you have a strike-tile generator), as the damage is still really low even maxed (although it is pretty cheap). Anyway, it might be worth putting a section in for her, even without recommendations, just so people know you didn't make a mistake.

I can't comment too much about 2* HT. I still find the black good but could see how more green could work (it has a lot more competition though). I tend to find you want to match green more - Wolv / Thor etc, so it depletes quickly. Often the black sticks around a little longer. Could you do 5/4/4?

I have been playing with a max Cap. Marvel (3/5/5) a bit now and as much as I generally dislike the execution of TU's in the game and powers that use them, 5 yellow is good and fairly consistent with its' effect as well.

Red sort of has its uses at times, though, not much - sometimes you just want a hit of red for less AP. I actually had a 4th red for her for a number of days but decided to not use it. Having said that, there are times when getting rid of a 3rd protect tile may be of use and one more or less TU tile on the board might or might not be of more use, so, I could be convinced to at least try 4/5/4 but the list of above characters being all the next rank up, makes me pause. 3/5/5 - more consistent? 4/5/4 - more well rounded and can dabble in a higher rank but eh....? Bullseye will one day get a third power...

By the way, some wannabe imitator tried to make a guide like this one. What a jerk.

***
Follow up - how strange... just got two Green HT, so can try this out depending on what people think...

Unknown

yogi_ wrote:

Follow up - how strange... just got two Green HT, so can try this out depending on what people think...

My 2* HT right now is at 5/4/4. I feel like its the best of both worlds. The only downside with the green is I usually have HT paired with MNThor and I'd rather be calling off a Call the Storm then a Flame Jet. But i'll be honest it has saved my rear end a couple of times. Lemme know what you think of the 5/3/5 build. Wouldn't mind trying that out!

loroku

yogi_ wrote:

I can't comment too much about 2* HT. I still find the black good but could see how more green could work (it has a lot more competition though). I tend to find you want to match green more - Wolv / Thor etc, so it depletes quickly. Often the black sticks around a little longer. Could you do 5/4/4?

I've been playing with 5 green for a long while and I find it's pretty awesome. Black just isn't ever worth it, especially since if you ARE in the 3* transition, you almost certainly have a better black power (especially these days). But I still don't tend to use his black even if he's the only one covering it, just because of the 30% drain to now-useful colors - not to mention it always seems like there's a million team-up tiles in the way or I need to match in the middle of the screen anyway. The trick is: instead of thinking of his green as competition for other powers, just look at it as another good option. I probably wouldn't use his green over Ares, but I would over Thor or even Wolvie because it's just that much faster or better - but on the other hand, if I suddenly had the green and needed their powers for a specific target, that's still an option. I mean: if you have 14 green and manage to keep his tile up for 3 turns, that's 1197 + 1064 + 931 = 3192 damage for effectively 8 green. That's Thor-green level damage for a lower cost and one that continues until it gets matched away. Anyway, it's just stronger than it's given credit for, I think. (And I've been really enjoying him with Luke Cage, since they're both boosted in the Hulk event.)

Also, I would advise against 5/4/4. The damage boost / max damage increase is so much for green, and the difference between 3 and 4 black so little by comparison, I'd say stick with either 5/3/5 or 5/5/3.

Thanks for more feedback on Cap. Marvel. Her red really is just underwhelming. Even 3 protect tiles vs. 2 isn't that huge, typically, unless you're up against Falcon - very few others can consistently keep more than 2 on the board. I think a higher cascade potential might outweigh the 1 extra protect tile, making 3/5/5 better than 4/5/4. But you're right about Bullseye potentially not sucking one day... (Hopefully not, though - you fight him so much in the Prologue that would destroy new players.)

loroku

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Yeah I noticed the Patch thing last night as well: It's embarrassing to look at in hindsight haha, since I was a pretty big Punisher fanboy back when the Pun vs Patch debate was still going on. I'm going to need to update the guide soon with changes to all three of these things as you said.

Also, Hulk's description mentions perma-stun Spidey, just FYI.

Trisul

loroku wrote:

I've been playing with 5 green for a long while and I find it's pretty awesome. Black just isn't ever worth it, especially since if you ARE in the 3* transition, you almost certainly have a better black power (especially these days). But I still don't tend to use his black even if he's the only one covering it, just because of the 30% drain to now-useful colors - not to mention it always seems like there's a million team-up tiles in the way or I need to match in the middle of the screen anyway. The trick is: instead of thinking of his green as competition for other powers, just look at it as another good option. I probably wouldn't use his green over Ares, but I would over Thor or even Wolvie because it's just that much faster or better - but on the other hand, if I suddenly had the green and needed their powers for a specific target, that's still an option. I mean: if you have 14 green and manage to keep his tile up for 3 turns, that's 1197 + 1064 + 931 = 3192 damage for effectively 8 green. That's Thor-green level damage for a lower cost and one that continues until it gets matched away. Anyway, it's just stronger than it's given credit for, I think. (And I've been really enjoying him with Luke Cage, since they're both boosted in the Hulk event.)

I think you're spot on here, loroku. His black is just so rarely used. Especially since there are top-tier black abilities among 3* (also, Ms. Marvel has a good one), and it's actually nice to have a choice between a high-cost, hard-hitting green ability and a low-cost dot ability that you can use based on the amount of green you can take from the board.

Quebbster

I use Inferno a lot, but then I mostly run Torch with Captain Marvel and Daken, which means I don't need to worry about the AP drain and I have plenty of strike tiles boosting the damage. Also, my Torch happens to be 5/5/3 as that is how the covers fell, but I wouldn't mind making him at least 5/4/4 instead.

Trisul

Quebbster wrote:

I use Inferno a lot, but then I mostly run Torch with Captain Marvel and Daken, which means I don't need to worry about the AP drain and I have plenty of strike tiles boosting the damage. Also, my Torch happens to be 5/5/3 as that is how the covers fell, but I wouldn't mind making him at least 5/4/4 instead.

Wouldn't you just use Captain Marvel's black? It seems much better than Torch's. Also, Torch is your only green outlet in that team.

evanbernstein

NorthernPolarity wrote:

The maxing out 2 guys strategy was ideal back in the day, but PvE scaling has ruined this as well.

Yeah, based on this piece of advice in the guide I upped Captain America 3* to 114 and then 127 as soon as I got the covers to do so. My only other 3* is a 102 Falcon. PVE got a *lot* harder when I upped Captain, which sucks.

If you can quickly update your post to include that PVE scaling that would be great so others don't fall into the same trap.

Glad to know that the consensus seems to be highest character level so I'll work on moving other characters up to 127 and no higher until I have enough of them to risk PVE getting even worse.

Granted, that will be a *long* time from now given that I can't compete in PVP too well and PVE just got harder. Oh well, MPQ does hate the 2* > 3* transitioner right now.

Thanks for the guide, it is great!