4* championing

johnmcclane

Hello folks,
I've got a stabbing doubt:
My roster is composed by some low-covered 5*, championed 3* and almost all 4*, with 1-13 covers but soft-capped to around 150-ish level (the ones who can).
Then, while i had two other covers (yellow covers, already at 5) waiting to be sold, my Cyclops got its 13 cover.
Should I champion him?
I'm quite worried of ultra-scaling when he will be boosted, I guess he'll be around l370 while other characters will be 100 levels below him.

What should I do?

Magic

So you have 5* not leveled at 255 already. Cyclops at 270 would not make much of a difference. He is clearly top 10 in the 4* realm so you won't go wrong with him. He will make a bit of a difference when he is boosted in PvE - in that case the scaling will go higher up (but he is so good when boosted that he can handle it - just give him good running mates who fuel his skills).

Since you have 2 covers you can champion him and get the LT out of it. So the time is fine to do it. But the game will most likely change for you. What would be good is to champion couple of the max coverd 4* along with him (again - while being ready to see higher level enemies in PvE).

Overall softcapping your 4* at 150 is not the best strategy if you try to play all modes in the game - they are pretty useless compared to championed 3*. If you don't play any PvP and Lighting rounds I guess that is fine (not sure how the 5* are affecting it for you).

Overall when you decide to champion 1 4* you should be prepared to do it with multiple ones. Targeting the top toons is key - Rhulk, Peggy, Ice, Jean, Hulkbuster, Cyclops, Star-lord (if you do a lot of PvE), Thoress, Punisher Max, Quake - they are some great 4* that can get you far in PvE and PvP (especially when they are boosted).

Tl;dr - Cyclops is great, never great idea to have only one 4* championed (pair him with somebody - Ice, Jean, Rhulk for colors or SL for acceleration in PvE); when he is championed and boosted the scaling will be way higher in PvE (but should be manageble as he is so good).

johnmcclane

Magic wrote:

So you have 5* not leveled at 255 already. Cyclops at 270 would not make much of a difference. He is clearly top 10 in the 4* realm so you won't go wrong with him. He will make a bit of a difference when he is boosted in PvE - in that case the scaling will go higher up (but he is so good when boosted that he can handle it - just give him good running mates who fuel his skills).

Since you have 2 covers you can champion him and get the LT out of it. So the time is fine to do it. But the game will most likely change for you. What would be good is to champion couple of the max coverd 4* along with him (again - while being ready to see higher level enemies in PvE).

Overall softcapping your 4* at 150 is not the best strategy if you try to play all modes in the game - they are pretty useless compared to championed 3*. If you don't play any PvP and Lighting rounds I guess that is fine (not sure how the 5* are affecting it for you).

Overall when you decide to champion 1 4* you should be prepared to do it with multiple ones. Targeting the top toons is key - Rhulk, Peggy, Ice, Jean, Hulkbuster, Cyclops, Star-lord (if you do a lot of PvE), Thoress, Punisher Max, Quake - they are some great 4* that can get you far in PvE and PvP (especially when they are boosted).

Tl;dr - Cyclops is great, never great idea to have only one 4* championed (pair him with somebody - Ice, Jean, Rhulk for colors or SL for acceleration in PvE); when he is championed and boosted the scaling will be way higher in PvE.

Thanks for the info!
I go for points to be clear:
1) yes, I got a bunch of l255 5*, with 4 covers max
2) my fear is indeed the scaling when it's boosted
3) I've got no other 4* ready to be championed
4) I play only PvE (PVP in the last minutes, just to get the Elite tokens)
5) that's would be my strategy, as I did when I went from 2 to 3 stars: waiting for having a high-valuable core of 3* ready to be championed and champion them together. I would do it for 4* too, but the 2 covers are tempting (and the possibility to re-shape its covers to 5/3/5, while now he's 3/5/5).

Currently I'm leaning towards waiting for other 4* (the closest: Antman at 5/5/1, X23 at 3/2/4, FalCap at 3/2/5, Rhulk at 4/5/3, Wolvie at 3/4/5. Oh, well, there is also IW at 3/4/5..)

Magic

Educated guess is you have a fair stash of CP. If so - you might splash 120 on the missing Rhulk cover and champion him with Cyclops. That way you have great rainbow team (and you can still benefit from boosted Rhulk this week - he make it a breeze to get 900 points in PvP when boosted - one-two hours of play over the course of event and if you don't care for placement you can do it early on). That way you can benefit from the covers for Cyclops. You would have to of the top10 4* championed and you would officially move to 4* transition.

The bad about it? Rhulk is boosted this week so he will not be boosted for a while. He will count as 270 in the scaling for you so not a big change. But his benefits when not boosted are not that great. Not sure when Cyclops will be boosted.

As for the scaling fears. The opponents will be much higher when Cyclops or Rhulk is boosted (I assume you do both or none). But both can handle them with ease. Example from current deadpool PvE: level 277 (boosted to 377) Rhulk does 15500 damage with 18 green AP in the bank. Fairly easy to get there when you pair him with Switch. Most nodes you have to use it once. On some (the most difficult ones) you might need to fire the 9 AP version (almost 6k) before to soften them. With a lucky board you can finish a fight in a minute or so, after 6-7 turns (so switch can fire her power once-twice). Long story short - I can do full clear of this PvE (4 times each node) without a health pack or maybe one or two if I am not lucky with the boards.

Similarly for Cyclops. His Red (when you have 10 TU) kicks for something over 20k damage as far as I remember. His blue does a lot of damage as well and fuels Red. His yellow is cheap and fuels red. If you pair him with IM40 or Star-Lord (wonder how many covers in Yellow you have, regardless of level) - he can do his damage quickly.

The strongest opponents have around 20k hit points. As you see - both can do it quickly and effectively. So for me the scaling is fine in you average PvE (and I have 11 championed 4* so I go rarely in a week without one).

It's not that great in Guantlet but I've finished the last one without ever using the whales. And Boss fights usually require a good combo to win anyway.

johnmcclane

Ok then, thank you very much!
I don't have the CPs at the moment (when I see 20 I can't stop myself from getting the Legendary), but I'll wait for Rhulk+possibly a third one to champion them together

Magic

One thing you could do is getting Rhulk to 250 along with championing Cyclops. That would work pretty much the same but the fact you only have 3 in purple would make it slower. Might not be worth it.

In the end it's two levels of a champion and 1 LT you would trade for 2k ISO.

I would advise against opening of LT and using CP when you don't have operational 4*. Sure - you might pull the covers to make them operational and some 5* covers for future but you will also have situations like the one with cyclops when you might need to sell the covers. For the moment consider playing to 900 points in PvP to get the covers you need (no necessarily all PvP events - just the ones that have the desired cover as award).