4* transition help

Mercalla

So I have had this plan in my mind for transitioning to 4* land, which is REALLy close for me, but I have to rethink an aspect of it after reading some posts. For scaling purposes, if I champed 2+ 4*'s, will the game trigger additional difficulty in my MMR because of that (despite there being boosted 3's higher than the 4's)? I have always thought that the game looks at the top 3 to 5 characters and blends their levels to an average, and that drove your scaling difficulty. If there is an additional ramp up of difficulty though for just having champed 4's, I'm thinking I should hoard big time before I champ a 2nd 4*, and try to get 4+ champs at the same time.

Thoughts?

smkspy

Your nodes will go up 20-60 levels in difficulty with plus 2 champed 4s. You can horde, but when I transitioned, I didn't find the jump all that drastic from what my scaling had previously been with rostered 5s and 3s champed.

Here's the thing though, it really does depend on which 4s you champ. At less than 5 champed, you need the best otherwise you'll have some middling 4s that are no better than your 3s but are affecting your scaling. 5 of the best, you'll have a useable arsenal even when not boosted.

Dormammu

You'll see spikes in both MMR as well as PVE scaling, but it's wholly manageable if you have most of the 3-stars champed because you'll have the buffed 3-star characters to help you.

It'll be worse if and when your champed 4-stars are buffed for those events. This is why transitioning, to any tier, can have its difficulties. As smkspy mentions above, who among the 4-stars you champ can also make this transition easier/harder.

Mercalla

Thank you both for confirming my worries on scaling. Sucks, but now I can adjust my plans to fit. Was originally going to hoard till I had 300k+ iso and 240 CP, then open LT's until I get 13 covers on a 4*, or until I got a 6th cover color on a character with 11 already which is what the 240 CP would be for. Champing whoever Lady Luck decides I should and not worrying about how good they are. Once I dipped below 300k iso, drop to 240cp, or run out of LT's, hoard/repeat the process. Now, I'm thinking I should hoard much MUCH longer, maybe until 1.5mill iso, and enough tokens/CP to pull 40+ times from the legendaries without dipping below 120 CP (just in case a top tier cover might get wasted). I'm really close with AntMan, 12 covers with the 13th coming from a 3* champ reward soon. After that, got a bunch of 10's from mid-low tiers - spider gwen, fisk, carnage. I wouldn't want to champ a couple of those with no heavy hitters coming for awhile.

Dormammu

You can always soft-cap your 4-stars until you have more at 13 covers, hoarding any surplus iso in the meantime. You run the risk of wasted covers, but don't let that stress you too much. A wasted cover for a character that isn't going to help you or a character you don't like isn't a wasted cover.

smkspy

Yeah, my philosophy for wasted covers is that it's better to waste a 6th power or champ level cover than waste a potential roster cover. 6th power covers are inevitable and, while a wasted champ cover sucks, pulling a useable cover for a rostered 4 outweighs having to sell a champ level.

I think far too much stock is put into champ reward levels when you're at the stage of trying to build your 4 roster. When developing your 4s, it's (to me) seeing the forest but not the individual trees.

And I wouldn't worry too much about mmr either. If you have rostered 5s, you'll likely being seeing the exact same opponents in pvp and the increase in pve is small beans really. Even when boosted, they don't affect your pve scaling. I was facing 290 opponents in my hardest node pre champed 4s and now they're 320. And while you'll rely on you 4s more, that's only natural when you have better characters to use. My core team is still im40, 3strange/oml, with the addition of random 4.

My suggestion would be to use your cp to build your 4s. Pull until you can't roster a new character. You might finish off some of 10 covered 4s and even pull some wasted champ levels, but gaining those covers for iceman, peggy etc will prove much more useful than any spider gwen or Fisk champ level. And unless it's one of those top 4s, I think buying a cover is a waste too. You'll get to them to 13 without having to waste 5 classic pulls.

Tatercat

Another thing to keep in mind in transition to the 4*’s, there’s kinda of what I felt like was the “3.5*” level, where your 4* are only as good as the 3* that was fueling their ap. I had well covered 4*’s, even champs, but they wouldn’t have been effective without some kind of ap battery like IM40 or Scarlet Witch. Your Spider Gwen might not be that impressive on her own, but with IM40 fueling her red for just 6 yellow AP, you’ll slinging Cherry Bombs to hopefully one-shot some PVE enemies. Either IM40 or S Witch can fuel Ant-Man as well (IM40 for the blue or S Witch for the purple) so you can do the same with his grow punches.

Part of the 4* transition is re-evaulating your 3* roster not for damage, but how much AP they can give you to speed up 4* powers. In addition to IM40 or S Witch, 3* Hulk is great for green, Iron Fist for black, even Cap Marvel 3* is a good source of red and black if you can get her to tank. Any AP generation gives you an extra edge against that increased scaling.

Also Kingpin isn’t top tier but I’d put him above mid-low tier. He was in my first 5 champed 4*’s. That black works wonders when you have someone like S Witch around to constantly exploit her countdown tile (10K when a champ is boost for just 6 ap), as well as using her purple to deny AP and fuel your yellow.