4* Leveling Process Question

MightyBP

OK, so not sure how to ask this, so I'll just spit it out here.

Mostly PVE player, but I do dabble in SHIELD Simulator and the occasional interesting PVP event.

I have championed all the 3* in the game except Strange, and I have my 2*'s on Farm.

I have at least 1 cover of every 5* except Iron Man, and they're all at 255 with 0 ISO put into them.

So now it's probably time to start jumping into the 4* realm. But I'm not sure what the best way is to level them - right now I'm just kind of dumping ISO into whomever is the DDQ this week (so my now has reached a level at which I feel comfortable taking her into DDQ right now, and 5 days ago I maxed out my 2/1/3 . And so on...). Aside from that, I could do any of the following:

1) Level them as a group - I am not sure if this is even a thing because of the 5*'s I have, but scaling would be the main concern here. But basically it's a policy of "Level all the fully covered ones together in a group, then move on to the 12 covered ones, then the 11 covered ones..." and so on until everyone is at their max levels.
2) Pick one fully covered dude and make him the top guy, then go back to the next one - in my case it would probably be or , but I could also start with . Repeat for all of my fully covered characters, and if I run out of those, then pick one of the 12-covered characters on the roster and max them out, etc. All of these guys except are at 168 - DD is 94.
3) Focus on the lower 4* characters, get them all leveled to their max, and work your way up the table until you hit the max cover guys. Makes them more usable when the lower-end is required in PvE, but also slow to get the top of the roster done.
4) Pick a compatible/competitive team and max them first, then slowly work your way around the better characters. I'm thinking my pickup on that would be / / (currently 1/2/5), / (5/2/1) OR / (5/4/3), or / / (4/3/5) but I'd look around at other compatible team-ups before final decision.

I have one pending 4* cover for Cyclops which I'm not applying unless he's champ'd, which may make him the de-facto go guy if I end up going with #2, and I have about 250K ISO right now with an approximate rate of 15K/day.

My roster link below should be current as well if you want to look and make other suggestions

Any advice as to how to proceed?

udonomefoo

#1 & #3 won't do you much good, it just costs too much iso. The flaw in #4 is that you're trying to build a team of 3 characters. In both pvp and the essential nodes of pve you're only working with 2.

4clops is a great 4* to have as your first. His best teammate is IM40 who you already have maxed. As I see it you have 2 options that are worthwhile:

1: Max 4clops asap. (& change him to 5/3/5) You can use him unboosted effectively and when boosted he's just a monster. This is what I did, he was my first and really accelerated my progress. This was when he was new though, and boosted 4*s in pvp didn't even exist yet. These days an unboosted 4 is as scary as a fluffy puppy.

2: Save your iso. Don't spend it on anyone unless you have to add a few levels to beat a ddq matchup. Wait until you have 2-4 good ones max covered and bring them all up at once. If you can get Rhulk covered and max him and cyclops at the same time, that's a really solid team. Especially in cases where you get to pick the 3rd and can bring along im40.

Edit: scaling is an overblown concern. It's really only a problem when you're just working on 2s and pull a 5* or when you max your 5*. In between those extremes it really won't hurt you.

ammenell

max those top level 4*s, everyone else should be high enough to win their 4DDQ.

i have a similar roster with 5 maxed 4*s and 5 5*s with 1-3 covers with 0 iso invested
my scaling situation:
pve is easy, but in pvp i dont care if i dont have at least one boosted 4*.
i champed the best (tier- and coverwise) i had and work my way down. i dont expect to ever use my 5*s.

Tatercat

udonomefoo wrote:

#1 & #3 won't do you much good, it just costs too much iso. The flaw in #4 is that you're trying to build a team of 3 characters. In both pvp and the essential nodes of pve you're only working with 2.

4clops is a great 4* to have as your first. His best teammate is IM40 who you already have maxed.

This. Since you have all the 3*’s champed, build your 4*’s around them. As you get into the 4*’s, you’ll need to re-evaluate your 3*’s not by damage or health, but rather ap generation. As great as 4*’s are, they mostly take more time to get going. That’s why people love 4* Cylcops and Red Hulk – they self accelerate their own powers.

Get them going even faster with your 3* battery characters. Like udonomefoo said, Cyke + IM40 is great. Red Hulk with Scarlet Witch is good too. Those two 3* are the ones you’ll use the most, but Iron fist is great for his black tile generation, fueling your X-force Wolverine, Kingpin or Ghost Rider. Cap Marvel and Hulk are good too, though that’s dependent on them tanking the hits. (As your 4* roster grows in level, that can be harder to do). 3* storm’s green at 5 is great too. Hood and Loki will do good for the transition to 4*’s, but you’ll out grow them and don’t take them into PVP. Make sure you respec all of these characters for their ap generating powers, even at the expense of a damage power. Some changes I would suggest on your roster for these 3*’s, at least when you have to use them with a compatible 4*:

Captain Marvel: 3/5/5 or 5/3/5
Mohawk Storm: 5/5/3
Iron Fist: 3/5/5
Hood: 3/5/5 (but not with 4* Cyclops or any character who benefits from longer countdowns.)
You other 3*’s I mentioned all look good.


I also agree with getting 4*’s in fighting shape for their Crash DDQ days. Typically the range of 150-170 lvl assures a comfortable chance of beating them with a few tries, especially if you have 5 in one color. But its dependent on the character - Mr. Fantastic is one I had to get to 209 to survive his doomed Crash fight. Getting a 4* to 150-170 range is relatively easy though, at least when compared to maxing one. More fights you can win means more 4* covers, and so they’ll grow.

MightyBP

Thank you all for the comments, it's much appreciated.

Especially appreciative on the 3*/4* transition mode - I had not given that angle too much thought but it makes a lot of sense now thinking about the AP requirements of some of the characters, like Cyke's 10 Red and 10 Team-Up or the 20-something total AP required for Chulk to hit the hardest with his green.

Captain Marvel, I had her teched against Bullseye/Ultron Sentries to bust all the protect tiles at once. She'll probably bounce around from 3/5/5 to 5/3/5 depending on matchups, but switching her to 3/5/5 this morning I definitely see the benefit of having her take hits and provide AP. I also changed Iron Fist to 3/5/5 a while back and forgot to update the GamePendium (and won't until they fix their certificate issues), but the extra damage on the Attack tile was well worth the lost Strike tile on the green.

Going to start with Cyke and see how it goes. Thanks again for the help.

JFisch

A little late to the party, but as a FTP player in no hurry to move on to the 5* tier, here is how I have been handling the 4* characters.

I split the 4* characters into three broad groups:

• Group 1: The best of the best. Folks like Iceman, Rulk, Cyclops, Iron Man, Jean, and Peggy.
• Group 2: Nearly there. Not quite as awesome, but handy. Deadpool, Nova, X-23, Thor, Punisher, Star-Lord, and so forth.
• Group 3: Everyone else.

Group 1 I keep maxed at all times.
Group 2 I raise to DDQ range (approximately 147-172), then level them when I don't have anything more pressing.
Group 3 I raise to DDQ range and leave them alone.

Because I hate throwing covers away, I do eventually go back and level everyone, usually once they hit 13 covers. If you get them up around 200-220 it's fairly straight-forward to come up with the ISO to champ them before 14 days is up. I'm getting to the end of a non-stop champ run I've been navigating since September (IW -> Cho -> GR -> Devil Dino -> Nova -> Miles -> Venom -> Peggy -> Jean -> Deadpool -> Elektra) so I'll be back to raising to DDQ levels again real soon.

Why champion everyone? For starters, I'm in no hurry to pump my 5* characters, so investing in the 4* tier is investing in my highest tier. My goal is to maximize the amount of CP/legendary tokens I earn so I want to be able to win DDQ with everyone and I want to shoot for having 2 boosted champions each week to help me get to 900 consistently in PVP. Plus with 23 4* champions it cuts down on the number of covers I can't use in the token pool.

MightyBP

Thanks for the reply Chronicler. I kind of think the same about the 4* and 5* tier - I'm not in a huge hurry to up my 5*s even though I've been lucky with BSSM and Widow, and for many reasons I'd like to eventually champion all of my 4*s.

Cyke at max has been every bit as expected. I've started on my 4/4/5 Rulk now, 196/270. With any luck I'll be able to get him to at least 250 by the end of the holiday events, then it's just a slag for the last 20 levels. Then it's time to research a bit on others and see who was next.

biryon

How's your scaling now that you've gone ahead with champing?

I'm in the same boat as you were roster-wise, but I just pulled my 14th cover for 4hor, and it'd be a shame to waste it. She's my only fully covered 4* at the moment, so she'd be the only one I can champ, and I'm nervous about bumping a single character messing up scaling. My current max is ~170, with a handful of unleveled single cover 5*.

bigwhoop

biryon wrote:

How's your scaling now that you've gone ahead with champing?

I'm in the same boat as you were roster-wise, but I just pulled my 14th cover for 4hor, and it'd be a shame to waste it. She's my only fully covered 4* at the moment, so she'd be the only one I can champ, and I'm nervous about bumping a single character messing up scaling. My current max is ~170, with a handful of unleveled single cover 5*.

Assuming you don't have any leveled 5*s and most 3* championed, you will not see much bump in scaling at all for maxing a 4*. I remember getting a noticeable bump in scaling after maxing my 3rd 4*, but it is still manageable. 4Thor was my first championed 4* about 8 months ago.

MightyBP

biryon wrote:

How's your scaling now that you've gone ahead with champing?

I'm in the same boat as you were roster-wise, but I just pulled my 14th cover for 4hor, and it'd be a shame to waste it. She's my only fully covered 4* at the moment, so she'd be the only one I can champ, and I'm nervous about bumping a single character messing up scaling. My current max is ~170, with a handful of unleveled single cover 5*.

For me, since I had all but one of the 5* guys @255, I don't think I saw much of a bump when I did Cyclops when he wasn't boosted. And even if it was there when he was, 4Clops boosted is literally unfair to the PvE (23K red damage with 10 TU tiles, 10K without, 6K on Blue).

Now, I just finished Rulk, and I did notice a slight difference on the 4th wave of the required node for Pun (Max) for today's sub, but it was slight, and I think it was more about RNGesus kicking my health packs in the feels.

tl;dr, I suspect that if 4hor is max'd, then you won't notice it much unless she's boosted.

Now when I do one of Kingpin/ProX/Nick Fury, I am curious to see if that affects me more.

smkspy

Once you start champing 4s the scaling bump is hardly noticeable even when boosted. And the boosted 4s make up for it in so many ways.

I've been going with champ them as they come or champ the one with the most covers about to die on the vine (character like mr f need not apply). Currently at 7 champed fours, so definitely at the beginning stages of the 4 transition, but having the right champed 4s dramatically changes the game for you but for the better if you champ the right ones. For instance, I have hulkbuster, iceman, cyclops, and rulk all champed. They just dominate everything now and pvp is something that I can actively pursue.

Nevertheless, I still try to bring up 4s to crash beating levels when appropiate, but the loss of one crash versus having a champed powerhouse 4 is small beans in the long run.