How to progress with max 3* roster?

Banacek555

So I have championed all 40 3* characters but

1) even with this can never finish top 10 in PVP or PVE
2) as a result I can't win 4* covers
3) which as a result means I can't compete with Jeanbusters
4) which means I can't finish top 10
5) which means I can't progress
6) which means I can't transition to 4* roster
7) which means I can't finish top 10 in PVP and PVE
8) which means I can't compete
9) which means I can't progress

So how do I start winning 4* covers without paying money?

Quebbster

The 1000 Point reward in PvP is an excellent source of fourstar covers. It should be reachable with a threestar roster with a Little practice - you need to develop a sense of what slice to pick, when to climb and when to shield.

Wolarsen

Woe not! You have indeed a long road ahead, but you are not really THAT bad.

1) Top PvP is quite out of reach, but you could get top 10 PVE as scaling would put you in similar position as 4* and it makes it mostly a matter of dedication.
2) You can reach 1000 in PvP for the 4* cover relatively easy with a couple of shields (225 HP investment)
3) There's 25 CP as progression reward in each PvE event.
4) There's 1 CP in each PvE subnode (2 if you have the required 4*)

All that grants you say 2 covers per week mínimum, and 2-3 more reachable if you put effort/ have luck. Plus a small income from event and taco tokens. Keep the spirits up!!

MaxxPowerz

You don't already have some 4* close to being maxed out?

HaywireII

I'd be curious to hear from other people who are done with the 3* transition and how their 4* transition is coming along. I've got six 3* characters championed now and several more ready, just don't have the ISO to level them.

I'm going to be championing 3*s for months but I'm doing decently at building up my 4*'s while I'm at it. I've got at least one of every 4* character (minus Devil Dino) with five of them at six or seven covers and several more at four or five. I'm picking up around two or three 4* covers every week between PvE command points and championing 3* characters. I also get the occasional 4* character from a heroic token or a vault and hit 1000 in PvP for the first time once last season.

My hope is that by the time I'm done with the 3* transition I'm in position to start winning the 4* DDQ every week and getting 1000 in PvP more reliably.

JackTenrec

I'm in close to the same boat. ~580 days, 68 (?) slots, lots of championed 3* (and almost everyone rostered is maxed, but too ISO-starved to do anything about them yet), no really usable 4* (most at four or fewer covers). I don't have everyone rostered, so I'm also HP-starved and can't really afford shields.

So my F2P approach has been:

DDQ every day. The ISO I get then allows me to:

Champion everything you can afford. 3* champions get you an LT, which is likely a 4* cover. Eventually, after enough covers, the champion rewards also will award a fixed 4* cover. Also CP.

Grind PVE for CP nodes. Usually, the essential node is easier, but it's also possible you'll be locked out. Often the final sub node is terrible and is like pulling teeth -- sometimes I just let those ones go. I only bother with 20 CP LTs. Also, once you've accumulated some champions, T200 placements will help push you towards those champion 4* covers.

Join PVP brackets as late as possible. Since I can't afford to shield hop, I hope I get a weakly populated slice and try to play for placement rather than progression. I've managed T5 finishes in the 600-800 point range.

PVP at least enough to get the 10 token season reward. Usually this will also involve some Simulator, but at least that's extra ISO (which you're going to need).

It's not fast by any means, but I don't feel like my progression is utterly halted.

Nepenthe

OP, I have all my 2*s and 3*s championed, I've only ever hit top 10 pve twice in my life and I've never hit #1 in pvp. But I currently have several 4*s fully covered (and am in the long slow process of getting the iso to level them). It's about progression rewards instead of placement. Here's how:

1. CP from PvE is the easiest. I've hit the top progression reward in nearly every PvE, getting LTs before and 25 CP now. You don't have to place anywhere near the top to get all the progression rewards. Usually 3-4 clears per node will cut it. Grind the 2 nodes that have 1 CP in them too. It adds up, and buy the cheaper 20 CP tokens with it. I like to aim for top 50 in my subs though, because that gets you some HP from each one.

2. 1000 points in PvP is totally attainable with a 3* roster. I've been getting that for months, well before I had all my 3*s maxed out. (Basically since they added in the 1300 reward level I've found it easier to hit the 1000 as more people were pushing for higher scores.) Learn good combos with whichever heroes are boosted that week, and stop being afraid of jeanbuster. Use stuns, AP stealing, fast damage combos, whatever you need to use to keep them from getting big powers off. It's manageable.

3. When you play PvP decide up front if you care about progression rewards or placement. I recommend progression, and for that START EARLY! A lot of people like starting PvP late for a good placement, but if you join your slice ASAP when it opens you can get in one with people who are going for really high scores, and that means higher value targets for you, AND it means when you get up to 800-900 you're not the juiciest target around. Sometimes I've gotten in a slice where all the top 10 people were over 2000 points with 12 hours left to go, and so I was able to hit 1000 without even using shields once! Typically I need to use one 3 or 8 hour shield to hit 1000, but I only use a second shield after that if I want to preserve a decent placement too - if all you care about is the 4* at 1000 you don't even need that.

4. Epic DDQ - As you get some 4*s, focus on leveling the ones that you have enough covers to beat their DDQ when it comes up. Some are MUCH easier than others. IW or PX can win with few covers due to invisibility. Iceman can win with some blue if you chain-stun long enough, etc. Epic DDQ is hard at the start of your transition, but it really snowballs as a source of LTs when you start getting some 4*s up to 150-ish.

Hope that helps!

wirius

Another addition to what others have said:

Keep getting 3* covers to get those 4* covers. Yes its INCREDIBLY long, but I think intended by the devs.

mpqr7

You'll never get top 10 in pvp or pve. I think once I got 2nd place, but it's extremely rare. I generally get top 50 in pvp and within top 200 in pve. Which is fine.

Once you've championed enough characters, you'll win enough HP to start shielding regularly in pvp. Generally you can hit 1000 points with just two shield hops (225 HP). First, you rush to 800. Then you do a hop to 950. Then a final leap to 1000+. It's stressful, but totally doable, especially if you join a group where people are shield-checking each other. People will wait for you to shield instead of attacking you immediately.

Eventually you'll get enough covers on two good 4*s, and that will make things much easier. It takes time, but you'll get there eventually.

CT1888

If you are looking to shield hop to 1000, be prepared to accept that over placement, and don't shield to protect your score, this allows you to chase it early if the chance arises without worrying or spending too much.
Chasing 1000 points? Only scary 4* combos to hit? Don't be afraid of using Deadpool points on Whales to get in and out quickly (it can be a risky strategy though because you paint a big target on your back after a win) - Scarlet Witch and boosts makes this pretty quick.
Learn how to beat 4* teams. Hunt them out in Simulator and develop strategies there.
Try Crash of Titans with your underdeveloped 4*s; I've won several on this round of fights with characters with low covers and low levels ( 4 or 5 covers in a 94 Thing, Starlord at 100 with 5 covers iirc). It can be doable.

Like many, I've been regularly hitting 1000 for several seasons now with 3* teams. It's been a long time, but finally I've broken through into my first 270. There was luck along the way with tokens, but there was a lot of chasing specific covers at 1000 points. Early doors it was off putting the seeming enormity of the task getting the covers, but it passed, and 1000 point was at the core of that alongside champion tokens.

mpqr7

That's true. Some of the crashes can be easy if you have enough of the right covers.

Prof X is easy with Invisibility, blue helps too.

Iceman is easy if your blue is high enough. You just keep stunning the enemy forever. Never punch, just keep stunning, at least until the very end.

Arimis_Thorn

If you have 40 championed 3* then that means you have 40 LT's to open. Plus hitting max progression in every PVE should be easy given that your scaling won't be out of whack. Plus hitting 1K in PVP should be entirely doable with a 3* roster.

You're going to be fine.

Calnexin

HaywireII wrote:

I'd be curious to hear from other people who are done with the 3* transition and how their 4* transition is coming along.

I'm right around there. I've championed 31 3*. My best 4* right now is lv 168, and I'm working on them gradually as they come up in DDQ or events where I could use a little more oomph to beat nodes.

I'm so early into it that I don't have any real viable heroes to use in PvP. I'm not even close to max covering any of the top-tier 4* characters, and using the ones I've got will be hard to win with, and easy to pick off if I do win. 4*s are currently much weaker than my 3*s, so I will continue to rely on them.

The Juggernaut heroic gives me a little hope. Despite being min-level, my 8-cover Starlord has actually been useful. TA Hulk not so much. I see a lot of potential power, but I'm still focused on getting Legendary/CP rewards to beef up my roster - as such, pumping Iso into any 4* with enough covers to potentially win the DDQ is my new focus.

Pants1000

I'm in a similar situation, but I like PVE better, so I rarely get the 1000 points in PVP. I rarely get top 10 in anything either.

My biggest sources for 4 star covers are:
PVE CP progression reward
DDQ (I can win half of them now)

I'm getting close to getting some from championed 3 stars, and occasionally get them from daily rewards, event/heroic tokens, and top 100 in new character PVE's.

It's slow going, but I'm definitely progressing on 4 stars, with a rare 5 star too.

TxMoose

OP - you're in a long stretch that will feel like you're not making any progress at all. I remember that stretch. as your 4* characters go from 2-4 covers and then 4-6 covers it takes a while and you feel like nothing is happening. because a 6-cover character is no more useful than a 2-cover character. but I just kept trudging along and before I new it, half my 4s had 8-10 covers. then, in the span of a few weeks, all of the sudden I had several viable 4s. then once I got hb and jean running, the remainder of covering my 4s was relatively fast because I went from hitting 1K most of the time to hitting 1300 most of the time. now I literally only play the game for iso and OML yellow. during this stretch, don't get lulled into getting lax with iso - I let myself overuse boosts and stuff and really regret it now. keep chasing it so when the covers do come for you, you'll be ready to take advantage of them.

your primary source of 4* covers should be pve progression cp and 1K in pvp. if 1K in pvp is too expensive (in hp) to hit consistently for you, just target top tier characters and colors that fill out your guys. if you can hit (or get close to) the 10K season progression, I recommend trying to find a t100 pvp alliance. the 100th place alliance averaged ~10K for the season - once I did that (move up to a t100 alliance), covers/hp/iso went way up. and with championing, a t100 alliance will really help with progressing your champs.

you don't need to finish t10 in either pvp or pve. I only have a few of each and those came well after I mostly completed my 4* covers and happened more by accident than anything else.

PlasticCar

Nepenthe wrote:

OP, I have all my 2*s and 3*s championed, I've only ever hit top 10 pve twice in my life and I've never hit #1 in pvp. But I currently have several 4*s fully covered (and am in the long slow process of getting the iso to level them). It's about progression rewards instead of placement. Here's how:

1. CP from PvE is the easiest. I've hit the top progression reward in nearly every PvE, getting LTs before and 25 CP now. You don't have to place anywhere near the top to get all the progression rewards. Usually 3-4 clears per node will cut it. Grind the 2 nodes that have 1 CP in them too. It adds up, and buy the cheaper 20 CP tokens with it. I like to aim for top 50 in my subs though, because that gets you some HP from each one.

2. 1000 points in PvP is totally attainable with a 3* roster. I've been getting that for months, well before I had all my 3*s maxed out. (Basically since they added in the 1300 reward level I've found it easier to hit the 1000 as more people were pushing for higher scores.) Learn good combos with whichever heroes are boosted that week, and stop being afraid of jeanbuster. Use stuns, AP stealing, fast damage combos, whatever you need to use to keep them from getting big powers off. It's manageable.

3. When you play PvP decide up front if you care about progression rewards or placement. I recommend progression, and for that START EARLY! A lot of people like starting PvP late for a good placement, but if you join your slice ASAP when it opens you can get in one with people who are going for really high scores, and that means higher value targets for you, AND it means when you get up to 800-900 you're not the juiciest target around. Sometimes I've gotten in a slice where all the top 10 people were over 2000 points with 12 hours left to go, and so I was able to hit 1000 without even using shields once! Typically I need to use one 3 or 8 hour shield to hit 1000, but I only use a second shield after that if I want to preserve a decent placement too - if all you care about is the 4* at 1000 you don't even need that.

4. Epic DDQ - As you get some 4*s, focus on leveling the ones that you have enough covers to beat their DDQ when it comes up. Some are MUCH easier than others. IW or PX can win with few covers due to invisibility. Iceman can win with some blue if you chain-stun long enough, etc. Epic DDQ is hard at the start of your transition, but it really snowballs as a source of LTs when you start getting some 4*s up to 150-ish.

Hope that helps!

I can definitely say it helped me (even if I'm not the OP).
Your advice is very useful to me, because it fits my way of playing and my temperament.
Thanks!

Lee T

HaywireII wrote:

I'd be curious to hear from other people who are done with the 3* transition and how their 4* transition is coming along

I'm closing the OP's situation. I'm not interested in PVP enough to try the 1000 and I won't spend more time in PVE. I should have all 3* championned within a few month, I will probably have to seriously consider playing something else at that time unless there's some big changes in 4* accessibility.

Pylgrim

The transition to 4* tier is definitely and unjustifiably broken and instead of having been solved, it has been made worse in the last few months. That said, it's not impossible to inch forward and there's good advice on the thread already.

The biggest source and greatest leap forward in the transition for a 3* player like you is the 40 Legendary Tokens that you got from championing. If you are anything like me, over half of them were worthless Invisible Women, Chulk and the such, but that still should have left you a sizeable number of decent to good 4*s half-covered. Establish a goal now to focus your efforts in getting the covers for the good 4*s you have with the most covers and the best 4*s (JG, HB, IM, Rulk) regardless of how many covers of them you have. You have limited resources, time and energy so it's important to use it all where it will provide the best results.

1k progression in PVP is the main source. If it is difficult for you, don't waste your efforts and HP in trying to get, say, a Star-Lord. But if a cover you really need is up there, spend as much as necessary of your resources and time to get it. Jump in a PVP bracket early (preferably with over a day to go) so you'll have time to pay at your pace, recover health and packs, and use retaliations advantageously. Once you go over 600 points play until you get 800 or so, then shield and hop from there. It used to be that a 3* transitioner could shield-hop once and unaided from 800-ish to 1k, but latest changes have made their battles take much longer (and be more difficult) while climbing 4* players can snack on them in matters of seconds. Joining a Line truce or battlechat room is the best way to diminish the amount of people who would hit on you, while allowing you to get reliable targets that give high points (and if you're lucky, cupcakes.) I'll be the first to admit that is a bit of a hassle and an additional time and energy commitment to the already demanding MPQ, which is why I advice to only do it for covers you really want/need.

The second source is PVE. You can only be top 10 if you manage to play close to perfect (i.e. start at the very beginning of each sub, replay each node as close as possibly (and as quickly as possibly) to every 8 hours and grind the nodes to as low as humanly possible in the last 2 hours or so of a sub. This, I realise, is not possible to everybody, even with the different time slices. The ones that straddles your sleep time coincide with your job or family time, etc. It's not for everybody, sadly (and even if it were, only the top 10 of them out of 1000 would get the rewards anyway). If you fall in that big group, PVE is still a venue for 4*s via the progression 25CP and the reward vault.

• Getting the CP progression reward is for everybody and can be done at your own pace as long as you play enough. A good rule of thumb is to play full point nodes at least thrice per 24h sub, but since latest subs give much more points than the earlier ones, you can slack quite a bit at the beginning. Find your own rhythm. Use the 25 CP to buy classic legendary tokens (never "latest"). Again, if you're anything like me, you'll get an unholy number of Invisible Women, but from time to time, you'll get something good.
• PVE vaults are only 80 items big and have three 4* covers and one LT so every draw is a 1/20 chance of opening something good. IF the three 4*s are covers you need (or at least two of them are covers that you really, really need), is not a bad idea to try your luck buying covers. The single-draw daily deal is only 100 hp, so, coupled with the tokens you earn from playing the event, you can get around 10 draws total from the vault in the default 4-day event, which gives you a theoretical 50% chance of opening one of the big rewards.

The third source is the SHIELD simulator 2k reward. Play throughout the month, don't leave it for the last couple of days. There's not much else to say about it.

The fourth source is Crash of Titans in DDQ. You either can do it with the character as you have it, or cannot, but you'll be surprised by how low you can sometimes go and still make it, don't give up after a couple of times, unless it's clear that is entirely useless to try.

Last, but not least, if you have a really good 4* with only 1 or 2 covers to finish, and you know that it will not come back again as PVP 1k reward for a while, it may be a good idea to save up the CP to buy them outright. It may be tempting to cash out 6 tokens instead, but if it's a really good character, it will actually help you getting more covers more easily and reliably in the long run.

OneLastGambit

Ok here's my tips. Finishing t10 in pve is not as hard as it seems.

First download line, get invited to the pve chat room and wait until your chosen slice flips at least twice then join. Play optimally and you will finish t10. You prob won't make progression but you will place.

I know this works because I do it

ClydeFrog76

I'm stuck in 4* transition hell, too, with around 20 championed 3*s. I don't have the time to invest to grind PVE for the 25CP progression, nor shield hop for the 1K covers in PVP. My best 4*s are Bag Lady max covered and Fury 4/4/3. And I just don't really see the point in leveling either.

They need to introduce a proper 4* path with 4* rewards. The meta long ago changed...LONG ago...and yet they still treat 4* covers like shiny baubles. It's tedious. I don't have fun anymore because I feel like I'm not really playing for anything. I just log in to collect my daily and play TBE if it's a cover of someone I've championed already. That's it.

It's such a shame because I love the game, currently at day 770 (would be higher but I took a break of a couple of months just before the first anniversary.) I wish I could progress a bit...just a little bit...without having to commit so much.

Pylgrim

OneLastGambit wrote:

Ok here's my tips. Finishing t10 in pve is not as hard as it seems.

First download line, get invited to the pve chat room and wait until your chosen slice flips at least twice then join. Play optimally and you will finish t10. You prob won't make progression but you will place.

I know this works because I do it

This works but I feel is fairly luck-dependant. Will you be around precisely when the slice flip? Will you be able to play optimally within the time left, taking in account that the refresh timing will be different from a starting sub? Will you be placed in a bracket with lots (and by lots I mean, more than 9) really hardcore grinders with fast rosters? In my experience, the most hardcore grinders are precisely the ones that wait for slices to flip, while, when you join early (as in, even before the event start) you'll have better chances of being placed along people going only for the progression or non-hardcore grinders. You'll end playing quite a bit more in the long run, but top 10 won't be so cutthroat, I think.

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

I'm stuck in 4* transition hell, too, with around 20 championed 3*s. I don't have the time to invest to grind PVE for the 25CP progression, nor shield hop for the 1K covers in PVP. My best 4*s are Bag Lady max covered and Fury 4/4/3. And I just don't really see the point in leveling either.

They need to introduce a proper 4* path with 4* rewards. The meta long ago changed...LONG ago...and yet they still treat 4* covers like shiny baubles. It's tedious. I don't have fun anymore because I feel like I'm not really playing for anything. I just log in to collect my daily and play TBE if it's a cover of someone I've championed already. That's it.

It's such a shame because I love the game, currently at day 770 (would be higher but I took a break of a couple of months just before the first anniversary.) I wish I could progress a bit...just a little bit...without having to commit so much.

Unfortunately, time is the other currency to progress in the game and I don't see how that could possibly change. I wholeheartedly agree that the rewards are lacking when contrasted to the time investment, but to expect the needed time investment to go down is unrealistic, I'm afraid Note that this is not a trait of MPQ only, as most MMO games work like that as well.