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

1…6791112…27

Comments

  • Unknown
    Unknown
    I just had a wild tourney that changed my views a little. Lately, 2* teams have been hitting into a wall at around 700 points. I'm gonna have to change my views on what the goal of the 3* team is.

    Before I had assumed that a 2x85 (or 3x85) team is capable of scoring top 10s consistently. This is still true but it is NOT EASY. At around 700 points, reasonable opponents just seem to vanish and I have to hit above my weight level a little. This is certainly manageable but I need to boost every single battle above 700 points. My transition objectives have changed to the following:

    1) The goal of the 1* -> 2* transition is to be able to easily hit the 700 wall
    2) The goal of the 2* -> 3* transition is to be able to break the 700 wall

    I went with the 60/85/85 strategy for the past 2 weeks and have observed the following: Cap, Punisher and Doom are all helpful at L90. GSBW sucks and it makes no difference to me whether she's L23 or L50 or L90. This should go without saying, but when going for my strategy, only invest in the 3*s that would actually be helpful.

    Anyway, going back to Point #2 above, I believe NP's method of focusing on one 3* is the better way to break the 700 wall. For example, if I rolled out a say a 23/130/85 team with my Cap at 130, I atleast have ONE win condition against the 141 teams. If I went with 90/85/85, I'd have no win conditions. The L90 is nice and all and helps me roll over the opposing 23/85/85 that I'll be facing on the way up to 700, but against 141/141/141 teams, a L90 is still a L90...

    However, there is one thing I'd like to mention, and that is the long climb to 3*. When you hit 2x85, it's a pretty long wait til you get 115 and beyond 3*s. You're going to be accumulating huge reserves of ISO. Remember, Top 10 finishes, while pretty consistent, are nowhere near guaranteed at this point. You'll be stuck at 2* for a while and you'll just be accumulating ISO with no way of bolstering your lineup. I believe at this point you can level any available 3*s to 60 without hindering your progress at all. I really do think that you can "waste" all of that ISO and still be able to soft cap a 3* character as soon as he reaches 100 and beyond.

    I'd like to talk about my climb and how incredibly wasteful I've been. I was stuck at 85+69 (Thor/Daken) forever. I was accumulating ISO. I would just waste ISO whenever I felt like it. I randomly leveled Venom from L1 to L40 for a Lone Star tourney, played him for about 3 matches and found I didn't like him. I'd randomly level C Storm and MNMags for no reason. I'd randomly level Wolvie, eventually maxing him in Heroic Venom (this one was definitely worth it). I brought Ares to 50 for the DA tourney. I later brought him to 77 for no reason. I've been leveling my 3*s to 60. I've been VERY wasteful. But despite being so wasteful, I'm sitting at 35k ISO right now, with my best character at 100/115.

    What I'm trying to say is this; I blew ISO leveling up secondary 2* teams AND taking a bunch of my 3*s to L60. I'm STILL able to jump on one single 3*. The only regretful thing about this is that I'm unable to level up my 2nd 3* as quickly. However, if you were slightly less wasteful, you could do my 90/85/85 strategy and still not be hindered AT ALL. If I had ignored CStorm and MNMags, I'd have enough ISO to soft cap my best character and have PLENTY leftover in case I got more covers.
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Updated with Falcon.
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Added falcon build/edited description.
  • Wil88
    Wil88 Posts: 159 Tile Toppler
    SInce it's been 2 months and no nerf - you thinking about doing an analysis on C. Mags and Spidey just for completeness sake?
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    purinxa wrote:
    1) The goal of the 1* -> 2* transition is to be able to easily hit the 700 wall
    2) The goal of the 2* -> 3* transition is to be able to break the 700 wall

    Question for you: At what point where you able to easily hit 600? I'm sort of still at the beginning of the 1* to 2* transition, and I'm finding that I'm stagnating quite a bit - I feel like I hit a wall every time I get to about 520 in PVP events and just get slammed back down by those in the higher weight class.

    My main guys at this point are MN Thor (stuck at 69) and M.Storm (50)/C.Storm (53); I would love to use Daken but he is stuck at 38 due to the apparent complete absence of black covers.

    I feel like the only thing I can do is to try to place well in PVE events, but due to that my roster has been getting bloated with 3*s that I only have 1 cover for. Did you ever hit a wall like this?
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Wil88 wrote:
    SInce it's been 2 months and no nerf - you thinking about doing an analysis on C. Mags and Spidey just for completeness sake?

    I second the motion! icon_e_smile.gif
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    ****, I seem to have exceeded the character limit of a single post. Mods, is there any way for me to add another post immediately following the original post, or do I have to create a new topic to have the guide in contiguous posts?
  • vudu3
    vudu3 Posts: 940 Critical Contributor
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    ****, I seem to have exceeded the character limit of a single post. Mods, is there any way for me to add another post immediately following the original post, or do I have to create a new topic to have the guide in contiguous posts?
    I would imagine they could change the time stamp on this post to place it immediately after your original post.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    octopoid wrote:
    purinxa wrote:
    1) The goal of the 1* -> 2* transition is to be able to easily hit the 700 wall
    2) The goal of the 2* -> 3* transition is to be able to break the 700 wall

    Question for you: At what point where you able to easily hit 600? I'm sort of still at the beginning of the 1* to 2* transition, and I'm finding that I'm stagnating quite a bit - I feel like I hit a wall every time I get to about 520 in PVP events and just get slammed back down by those in the higher weight class.

    My main guys at this point are MN Thor (stuck at 69) and M.Storm (50)/C.Storm (53); I would love to use Daken but he is stuck at 38 due to the apparent complete absence of black covers.

    I feel like the only thing I can do is to try to place well in PVE events, but due to that my roster has been getting bloated with 3*s that I only have 1 cover for. Did you ever hit a wall like this?

    Very hard to say. When I was making the 1* -> 2* transition, Top 75 gave 3 x 2* covers as rewards so my experience will vary greatly from yours. I never really aimed for any point total, just Top 75. I do believe I was below 500 consistently. And yeah, I did feel like a hit a wall every time I got someone capped. My Thor was stuck at 45/45 forever. Then again at I believe 61/61.

    Being stuck is very frustrating, though there are two MN Thor covers up for grabs in SHIELD training and one in Army of One. I think at this point you just hope for Heroic/Event tokens to give you random 2*s as a partner for Thor.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    purinxa wrote:
    octopoid wrote:
    purinxa wrote:
    1) The goal of the 1* -> 2* transition is to be able to easily hit the 700 wall
    2) The goal of the 2* -> 3* transition is to be able to break the 700 wall

    Question for you: At what point where you able to easily hit 600? I'm sort of still at the beginning of the 1* to 2* transition, and I'm finding that I'm stagnating quite a bit - I feel like I hit a wall every time I get to about 520 in PVP events and just get slammed back down by those in the higher weight class.

    My main guys at this point are MN Thor (stuck at 69) and M.Storm (50)/C.Storm (53); I would love to use Daken but he is stuck at 38 due to the apparent complete absence of black covers.

    I feel like the only thing I can do is to try to place well in PVE events, but due to that my roster has been getting bloated with 3*s that I only have 1 cover for. Did you ever hit a wall like this?

    Very hard to say. When I was making the 1* -> 2* transition, Top 75 gave 3 x 2* covers as rewards so my experience will vary greatly from yours. I never really aimed for any point total, just Top 75. I do believe I was below 500 consistently. And yeah, I did feel like a hit a wall every time I got someone capped. My Thor was stuck at 45/45 forever. Then again at I believe 61/61.

    Being stuck is very frustrating, though there are two MN Thor covers up for grabs in SHIELD training and one in Army of One. I think at this point you just hope for Heroic/Event tokens to give you random 2*s as a partner for Thor.

    Yeah I feel like I missed the boat on being able to amass 2*s on the roster- it is so hard to land them now, which is part of why I'm stuck. Also, I am stuck specifically because after I land this green MN Thor from army of one, he will be at 5/2/5- so I will only specifically need yellows to get him where I want him. The scarcity of covers just compounds this issue.

    And god forbid you have a life event and can't play, haha.

    I feel like I need two 85's to scratch 600 at this point; every time I get to 550 or so I just end up getting thrashed back down to 400. I don't know, I just feel frustrated because I've made essentially no progress over the past week and half.

    Edit: oh yeah, and getting bag man from the event tokens is just a complete slap in the face.
  • HailMary
    HailMary Posts: 2,179
    octopoid wrote:
    Yeah I feel like I missed the boat on being able to amass 2*s on the roster- it is so hard to land them now, which is part of why I'm stuck. Also, I am stuck specifically because after I land this green MN Thor from army of one, he will be at 5/2/5- so I will only specifically need yellows to get him where I want him. The scarcity of covers just compounds this issue.

    And god forbid you have a life event and can't play, haha.

    I feel like I need two 85's to scratch 600 at this point; every time I get to 550 or so I just end up getting thrashed back down to 400. I don't know, I just feel frustrated because I've made essentially no progress over the past week and half.

    Edit: oh yeah, and getting bag man from the event tokens is just a complete slap in the face.
    The revised 2* cover scarcity is bad, I agree. General points aside, though, I had exactly your Thor (5/2/5) through my entire 2*-3* transition. I was fielding a 2*-only team before the PVE that introduced BP, and I got a 3/3/3 LThor before I got my third 2* Thor yellow. Of course, after my LThor renders my little Thor obsolete, what happens? Two more yellows in quick succession. Also, my OBW was stuck at 1/2/1 until the beginning of the Hulk PVE that introduced LThor.

    tl;dr - you can solidly complete your 2*-3* transition using a gimpy 5/2/5 Thor and no OBW. (Edit: paired a decent 2* partner like AWolv, Daken, or CStorm)
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Thanks to IceIX and the mods for helping me out, updated the guide with Spidey and C. Mags by popular demand.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Thanks to IceIX and the mods for helping me out, updated the guide with Spidey and C. Mags by popular demand.
    Just about the CMag Patch combo, people should know that magnetic projectile will not destroy special tile when there are basic tiles on board. So it is not likely to destroy your strike tiles unless it create a match with your strike tiles.
  • over_clocked
    over_clocked Posts: 3,961
    Wanted to note - I migrated from 4-4-5 cMags to 5-4-4 to 5-5-3 atm. I still have a purple in cache, but I will likely stay 5-5-3 even though I don't have a leveled Patch. The Punisher combo works well enough in regular PvP for me. And what's more important, 5-5-3 Magneto seemingly lets me survive longer in ridiculously scaled PvE environments, where 5 purple wouldn't even take off one enemy's half hitpoints. I still use purple especially if there are strike tiles out, but I find 5-5-3 to be more versatile and the sheer spammability helps. I don't think I'll get my scaling to lower much so I need this power to basically survive some matches (lvl 358 Hulk, Daken and cStorm, for instance) for now if I don't want to use Spidey instead. Sure they are both considered a no-go for PvE, but Spidey is obviously slower.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Thanks to IceIX and the mods for helping me out, updated the guide with Spidey and C. Mags by popular demand.

    Thanks NP and kudos to you.
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Due to boredom, I've decided to write a detailed guide on all of the different stages of this game and how to go from a newbie roster to a 3* roster while explaining the theory that goes behind the advice.

    You should get bored more often. icon_e_biggrin.gif
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Updated Falcon section to account for change in yellow. Added a tier list for character combos with Falcon since Falcon's whole point is to be comboing with someone else. Let me know what you guys think of the tier list and if there are any changes you would make to it.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Ironically, since the purple makes a ton of little defense tiles, it has anti-synergy with his yellow since you don't want to be buffing weak tiles.

    In Falcon's section, i think this line is outdated now that it will be adding +dmg instead of +% damage
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    SirKopath wrote:
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Ironically, since the purple makes a ton of little defense tiles, it has anti-synergy with his yellow since you don't want to be buffing weak tiles.

    In Falcon's section, i think this line is outdated now that it will be adding +dmg instead of +% damage

    Whoops, updated. Thanks for the catch!
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Updated Falcon's section yet again after playing with him in the top gun tournament: 5/5/3 is the new recommended build.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Hey Polarity -

    one small thing I thought you might want to mention is the fact that PvE events almost exclusively buff *heroes* over villains. Given the way 1 and 2 star heroes scale past 85, I've actually found it well worthwhile to max out 1 and 2 star heroes to take advantage of these buffs. For example, cHawkeye and MCap actually seem pretty strong to me in this current oscorp event.

Categories