Avoiding 5 Stars

Gmax101

I may well be in a minority but I am actively avoiding 5 Stars. I had a 6 cover Phoenix but it was doing crazy things to my scaling, sold her and things are now almost actual fun

Since then I have enjoyed opening Legendary Tokens (I need so many 4 Star covers that there is minimal risk to it being useless) but I am currently lamenting the fact that I have now pulled 3 5 Stars (different characters) that I have sold on...

While I would love a token that did random 4 Star with no 5 Star in it... I guess this is something that no sensible person would ever buy given the level that 5 star characters swing the game.

Having set myself goals that I think make things interesting for me, ie, get all my 3 stars championed while occasionally levelling up a 4 star to roughly 120-130 so it is useful when boosted... assuming it has a reasonable number of covers. The 5 stars are too much of a risk to the current equilibrium.

I have enjoyed PVE, old and new, though would prefer decent rewards/better progression options, and occasionally dabble in mid-range PVP but cant be bothered with shielding etc. So this seems to be a decision that keeps me engaged by the game...

However, I does occur to me that this is a very odd scenario for D3 to have created, where either you have been favoured by RNGesus and received bountiful 5 stars or actually not having the most powerful characters in the game is the most enjoyable...

metallion

My 4* pull streaks from LTs mean that all these LTs are essentially 4* tokens for me. Not that I'm complaining though, given how much I need 4* covers, but it must be nice to be able to draw 5* covers once in a while...

Vomit Fountain

I'm pretty much doing the same thing myself. I only had one Silver Surfer blue so it was skewing difficulty and not really of much use. I'd rather use my Iso to level my languishing 3*s!

Berserk_Al

I remember pulling a Silver Surfer back when I was mostly around lv94. After a couple of weeeks, I had to sell it, because all enemies were overleveled.
Now I have five or so 3star champions as my strongest characters, right below 170. Early this month, I pulled another Silver Surfer. I rostered it right before joining the Prodigal Sun event.
While I mostly didn't use it (only once, while other character recovered health), it's level didn't give me huge enemies this time, while still being the highest-leveled character of my roster.
If the way the enemy levels are calculated in Prodigal Sun becomes the norm, I will keep it for good this time, along any new 5star I pull in the future.

rastafari7

As long as you don't level those 5* the scaling is not that bad.
But I am also one of those players who do not roster them.

Gmax101

metallion wrote:

My 4* pull streaks from LTs mean that all these LTs are essentially 4* tokens for me. Not that I'm complaining though, given how much I need 4* covers, but it must be nice to be able to draw 5* covers once in a while...

I was much the same but in the last week I have had 3 out of 4 pulls... prior to that something like 20-30 without seeing one.... which I was happy with.

and it is very much a #FirstWorldProblem

Malcrof

If you have a single 4* @ lvl 255 , or any boosted/essential champ 3* , scaling doesn't change at all with an unleveled 5*. Just don't level them. Now if you are in the 3* transition, with no max 3*s for pve or pvp that could ever be boosted to 250+, it would hurt quite a bit.

TxMoose

to me LTs should not be opened by anyone with less than about 6-8 champed 3*s, preferably more like 10-12 champs. at that point you're likely to have multiple boosted 3s each week and can handle a 255 on the roster. The scaling adjustments that have been tested might change that, but until you have many champed 3*s, your 4*s aren't getting any more useful going from 2 covers to 5. the LTs will still be there when you're ready for them and by then you'll have 4*s that are within range of usefulness. only exception is ddq days where a couple of covers can mean the difference between another LT or not. to me that's not worth borking your scaling by pulling LTs and risking a 5* that you might feel compelled to sell.

Natsufan01

I would say if you have a team of champed 3* that work well together you should keep 5s, just don't level them. My first 5* was SS shortly after being released, and at the time I had 4 or 5 3s at max level. I didn't actively notice an increase until I also got OML, and then I saw the enemies jumped around 30 levels or so, and PVP started showing more maxed 4*. It certainly made things harder, but skipping would still find teams I could beat in PVP and PVE wasn't much worse being 30 levels higher, just a bit more health to work through, but damage received is pretty similar.

End game right now is 5*. You're crippling your end game by selling, but not as much as quitting if the game is no longer enjoyable.

Vhailorx

This is likely to be affected by whatever new pve system is finally implemented after all the recent tests. scaling is going to change, and will account for both covers and levels, so a single cover 5* will be less crippling on weaker rosters.

(Still have a hard to believing that no one at deimurge recognized this potential problem during 5* development. Less hard to believe that it has taken 6 months to get a fix)

HaywireII

I'll pipe in as a newer player (Day 157) who went through this. I had just championed five or six of my 2* characters when they introduced the classic legendary token. Before they actually released the token they had been talking about a less expensive token that had less chance to give people a 5* character. Even though they didn't follow through on that I decided to spend my 40 cp when they introduced the classic token.

Even though I was solidly in 2* land I opened the tokens because in events where I had the essential 4* character I was sometimes able to hit top 50 so I was getting two or three 3* covers each event. In events where I didn't have the essential 4* I was typically getting one or two 3* cover rewards. Luck being what it was I spent my 40 cp and pulled one 4* cover and one green Phoenix cover. Well...there goes the neighborhood so I opened my 2 legendary tokens I had banked as well and got another 4* cover and a black Silver Surfer cover.

So I let those covers sit in my queue as long as possible and rostered them on the last day. And my scaling shot through the roof. It was horrible and hard in PvE and in PvP I couldn't get any winnable matches outside of the seed teams. I had plenty of matches where I only won because Phoenix died and came back and nuked everyone. But even though it was really hard I was somehow still making it to the 25 CP reward. So I kept playing and kept opening all of my tokens and working to place as high as I could. And I pulled a black Old Man Logan cover about a week later.

Long story short the game was a lot harder but by the time my 2* champions hit 144 (not a super long time when you're playing the lightning rounds) it had gone from brutal to just hard. And now that I have nine 3* champions having those 5* characters on my roster is a non issue.

I'm glad I opened all of those legendary tokens because I have every 4* character now and I'm covered for every essential for every event and have even won my first DDQ. I'm also glad I didn't sell the covers because they just aren't showing up lately. They are just way too rare and too important in the endgame to sell them off to make the game easier in the short term. I read horror stories about people going 0 for 70 or more on 5* pulls. I myself haven't seen a single 5* in at least a month and I'm pulling in at least 60 CP a week (sometimes a bit more with alliance purchases) and spending it as I get it.

Hopefully when they finalize the new PvE it will fix this problem and people won't go through what I went through. I do want to caution people before they sell off a 5* though; I would have really regretted it if I had done it.

Edith09

I was thinking about avoiding 5* too. I got SS few months back when my 3* were around 120 and I kept it. Yes game became harder but I was able to manage. Now I have 3 x undercovered 5* and my 3* are around level 140 and I'm still able to play and get top 50 in PVE most of the time. So my advice would be to keep 5*.

hopper1979

I think this all depends on how you have slotted your roster and how many characters you have. So let me give you some background, I am at 92 slots, I have all the 3's and 2's championed but 2, I have every 4-star covered to a certain degree but none maxed. I also have all the 5 stars except GG and they have 1-3 covers each. I have no iso invested in any of my 5-stars. With this roster I rarely, if ever see 5-stars with multiple covers until I hit 700+ in pvp. I occasionally even see some 2-star teems, in the current pve events I have been getting levels between 65-185 depending on the number of replays. I have not seen any of the nightmare situations people describe with crazy matchups or scaling. I am actually thinking about a calculation or some sort of data crunch that may help us find some correlation with the 5-star issue and see how many, what level etc cause this scale issue. So when that post comes up some day soon please respond, the more data the better.

revskip

TxMoose wrote:

to me LTs should not be opened by anyone with less than about 6-8 champed 3*s, preferably more like 10-12 champs. at that point you're likely to have multiple boosted 3s each week and can handle a 255 on the roster. The scaling adjustments that have been tested might change that, but until you have many champed 3*s, your 4*s aren't getting any more useful going from 2 covers to 5. the LTs will still be there when you're ready for them and by then you'll have 4*s that are within range of usefulness. only exception is ddq days where a couple of covers can mean the difference between another LT or not. to me that's not worth borking your scaling by pulling LTs and risking a 5* that you might feel compelled to sell.

That's pretty much the tack I've been taking with my roster. I have just saved all the LTs and CP I have earned over the past couple of months and am finally getting close to when I can start really making a dent in the 3* characters. Won't pull any of the LTs until I hit a spot where I actually have a roster that would be heavily benefited by them, I have 18 of the 30 4*s rostered but none of them with more than 3 covers other than Howard the Duck who I was very lucky to get 5 covers for the past couple of weeks. I also champed nearly all the 2*s while collecting 3* covers and it helped a lot since I have enough characters to hit PVE hard and still do a little bit of PVP (even though I rarely get past the 650 token).

I've been just stockpiling everything for the last month or so while waiting for my first fully covered 3*s to pull a champ cover. My first will happen next Tuesday (Patch). Right now I have ~ 370K ISO, 130 standard tokens, 24 heroic tokens, 3 LTs, 549 CP and 30 taco tokens (18/12). It sucks being static for so long but it has keep PVE fairly easy for me and when I do make the 3* jump next week I'll be able to take three (maybe four if I pull decent on the heroic tokens) 3*s to champ.

The only tokens I've pulled have been event tokens which mostly have just given me champion levels for my 2*s and covers for my 3*s. Progress has been pretty slow for sure but again I'm pretty sure that delaying helped me in the short term and is gonna be a hoot next Tuesday when I get to open all those standard and heroics.

Crowl

Vhailorx wrote:

(Still have a hard to believing that no one at deimurge recognized this potential problem during 5* development. Less hard to believe that it has taken 6 months to get a fix)

So ridiculous that they couldn't have just done a simple fix that started 5*'s at say 125 and then their first 130 levels were free, it is ludicrous that so many people have had to throw away the best covers in the game for a pittance of iso just to avoid rendering their game unplayable.

simonsez

I used to think people who sold 5*s were idiots, but now that I've caught one of the carrots the devs have been waving in our faces (in the form of a lv435 OML), I totally get it. the game just isn't as much fun any more. It screws up your scaling and MMR to the point where if you don't use him, you're asking for a beating. The game was way more fun before 5*s and mega-boosted 4*s, when you could rotate in any number of 4*s and boosted 3*s, and have success. Now, I have at least 80 characters that are pretty much unusable. Where's the fun in that?

Bowgentle

simonsez wrote:

I used to think people who sold 5*s were idiots, but now that I've caught one of the carrots the devs have been waving in our faces (in the form of a lv435 OML), I totally get it. the game just isn't as much fun any more. It screws up your scaling and MMR to the point where if you don't use him, you're asking for a beating. The game was way more fun before 5*s and mega-boosted 4*s, when you could rotate in any number of 4*s and boosted 3*s, and have success. Now, I have at least 80 characters that are pretty much unusable. Where's the fun in that?

At this point you're supposed to be so addicted that you'll keep playing no matter what.
No need for fun anymore.

Unknown

Reading this thread makes me again contemplate quitting. If a level 435 OML makes the game to where you are forced to use the same 1-3 characters every battle, I concur. What's the fun in that? May as well sell every character who is not a then.

I have a lv 315 SS, 315 OML, & 300 Pho that I'm forced to play in Shield Sim & PVE. I can't even run winfinite anymore because of my scaling. I also have to run my OML every single PVP. It's just not fun when you have 79 characters like me but can really only use like 3 all the time. I know; I know. #1stworldproblems but D3 needs to figure this scaling issue out.

PeterGibbons316

simonsez wrote:

I used to think people who sold 5*s were idiots, but now that I've caught one of the carrots the devs have been waving in our faces (in the form of a lv435 OML), I totally get it. the game just isn't as much fun any more. It screws up your scaling and MMR to the point where if you don't use him, you're asking for a beating. The game was way more fun before 5*s and mega-boosted 4*s, when you could rotate in any number of 4*s and boosted 3*s, and have success. Now, I have at least 80 characters that are pretty much unusable. Where's the fun in that?

Is this for both PvE and PvP?

I have 8/9 covers for OML/Phoenix and have them both at 345 now. I'm really considering keeping them there indefinitely. I have 9 champed 4*s and I love being able to use that diversity in both PvE and climbing in PvP. That's what makes the game fun for me. Having that diverse roster is the payoff of months and months and months of play. I'm not interested in throwing all that away to be forced into using the same 2 characters in every single battle I go in to.

Redrobot30

If you don't have any maxed out 3*s then yeah, you scaling is going to be rough. Save those LTs. Don't open them until you are at a point in the game to actually use them. When I read the OP dropped a 6 cover Phoenix I couldn't believe it. I have had to tell some of my newer alliance mates to hold off on opening LTs as well. Until you have some 3*s maxed at 166 a 5* is not going to do you any favors.

This has been on my mind lately as far as how new players are not really getting any love anymore. The latest currency of CP is meant for those who have been in the game for a while and should at least be at the start of the 3*-4* transition. Letting new players be able to use CP right off the bat is not great at all. Unless you have good self control you want to spend your CP and then you end up having low carded 4*s or in this scenario a 5* who is going to damage your initial progress in the game. None of which are going to really help you in the beginning.

There should be an unlock point or something to prevent newer players from mutilating their rosters with these high level characters, but alas...

It all boils down to making people spend money.

smkspy

Simple solution is to drop 5 star levels to 166 and let their leveling worth little iso to 255. It's crazy that a 4 star starts at level 70 while a 5 star is 255.

Having them start at 166 would at least mean a person with a 140 max roster could handle them until they get some 3 stars championed.

At this point, I have 8 3 stars championed and a single phoenix with 4 covers. I had a 270 ss but finally sold him cause he was just causing havoc on my scaling. I was managing no doubt, but the game wasn't fun.

still, unless I get a phoenix, I sell every 5 star that I draw, which has been

3 oml
2 bspm
1 gg

And I can't not use cp/LT tokens as I have enough 4 stars that could use the covers.