Jumping In Again, I'm Lost and Confused

SolarEclipse

Ok so it's been a while since I last played this game (I think last person I saw being released at the time was possibly Moon Knight). So I have a few Champ 3*s and 2*s (I will provide a bulk list at the end of the post to avoid clutter). Currently I also own 4* Blade, Hulkbuster, Ghost Rider, Nova, Sam Wilson Cap, Thor and Venom at 1 covers each, Nick Fury at 3 covers and X-Force Wolverine at 2/4/5 (I think a long time ago he was one of the best 4*s in the game and this was before 5*s were a thing). On top of that I have 5* Cap and Hawkeye (both just dumb luck)  

Bonus Heroes
So I guess first off my question is, how exactly does the Bonus Hero/Gold Heart thing work? From what I understand I get a chance of getting these specific covers whenever I use a Token or something. If so I guess it'd be better to have some questions you can answer in a uniform way.

• What is the best strategy for choosing Bonus Heroes? 
• Should it be 3*s I've Champed? 
• 3*'s I'm looking to complete? 
• 4*s that I own?
• 4*s that are good and should own?
• How many Bonus Heroes should I have?

Strategy
I suppose I've always had this problem with the game. But I don't have any strategy, I just kinda play and hope I get the covers I want. I guess this kinda is a dumb question, but any sort of tips for someone getting back in would help, especially since it's been so long. 

Roster:
3* Champed: Rocket & Groot, Captain America, Spider-Man, Storm, Black Widow, Blade, Iron Man, Psylock, Hulk, Gamora (Deadpool and Daredevil joining them soon.
3* Not at full covers: Punisher, Iron Fist, Captain Marvel, Dr. Doom, Human Torch, Star-Lord, Thor, Black Panther, Wolverin (Patch), Magneto, The Hood, Bullseye, Falcon, Sentry, Daken, Squirrel Girl, Thanos and Scarlet Witch.
2* Champed: Hawkeye, Wolverine, Ares, Thor, Black Widow, Human Torch and Magneto

All help and information is much appreciated!

Astralgazer

Welcome back.

Firstly, any strategy is tightly connected to your playstyle. Are you a casual or competitive player? Do you aim for T10/T25 in PVE? What score do you get in PVP?

I will not give you any advice, just want to show you mine so you can make comparison and adjust if you think you like it. To give you a picture, I'm a competitive player, but not overly. I don't want to loose sleep or work over a match-3 game.

That being said, I aim for Top 50 in PVE and score of 800-900 in PVP. I play PVE for 3* and 4* covers in progression reward, and the CP. PVE placement reward also gives me 3* covers. I play PVP for easy CP (at 575), 3* and 4* in the progression reward, and 3* covers in placement reward.

My main source of HP is from 2* farming. I champion all 2* characters and sell them when they reach max; restarting the championing process. Championing 3* also gives a lot of HP.

My main source of Health Pack is DDQ tokens.

All those events give ISO, and winning also gives XP that goes into Shield Rank which gives more ISO.

In regard to Bonus Hero, this is my strategy:

• For 3*, I put BH status for the character that I want to level up to 183, then to 223. Those are the champion levels that give 4* covers. Look at the champion reward preview for any character, and see if you want that cover given at lv 183. Set BH for that character. Switch to other character when it's done. I've completed raising all my preferred characters to 183, and now in the process to raise everyone to 223.
  
• For 4*, BH status is for whoever I'm trying to complete. I've completed IMHB and Iceman this way. Go for top tier 4* that is not in the pool anymore. See here: http://forums.d3go.com/discussion/56176/a-mostly-accurate-4-ranking-updated-3-25-17#latest for info on how good a 4* character really is.
  
• For 5*, BH is for Thanos. Just because. I have no intention to put any ISO to my 5* anyway.
  

Good luck for your game.

Magic

Welcome back. So couple of tips before you get your feet properly wet:

1. Save CP and LT - don't rush to pull them, take your time and feel the game after long break.
2. 2* farm is a must for farming Hero points, CP and 3* covers. You are deep in 3* land so you won't rely on 2* in PvP or PvE. This is the moment to farm. One way of doing it - I sell the maxed championed 2* (lvl 144) when I have another cover in the queue. I sell and use the roster slot for that one cover. That way I never miss a 2* when it's needed in DDQ or PvE.
3. Use hero points only on the slots - no need to shield in PvP or buying health packs (or even cover packs... maybe the daily deal for 100 here and there). When you have the farm rolling and manage to get top 50 in PvE the hero points flow is steady and allows to roster everybody.
4. That leads us to: roster everybody when you have a cover. They are all being used in PvE and DDQ and there is no reason to miss out on rewards. However you only need one 1* (Juggernaut can solo his DDQ, but also Spider-man and Iron Man so any of the 3 will do fine). 
5. Open tokens when you have enough hero points to roster a new hero (or enough iso to champion somebody if you get 14th cover). This minimizes the wasted covers.
6. Finish the 3* transition (so champion all non-vaulted 3*... probably no need to worry about vaulted ones but keep them) and move on to the 4* land.
7. As a 3* player PvE and DDQ are your bread and butter. PvP till 575 (10 CP) should be doable (especially if you have a championed featured) but won't be piece of cake. Still - that is probably a realistic goal. Don't worry about placement there unless you want to spend real money on shields.
8. You won't have to worry about 5* if you use the advice from point 1. If you don't - roster them as they are rare but don't level. That way they shouldn't affect your scaling in PvE.
9. Bonus hero. I suggest you select the 3* you want to finish and switch to the next one (regardless if that 3* is vaulted or not). When you reach a point where all the 3* you wanted are maxed covered/championed you should apply different strategy. One mentioned by Astralgazer is fine. Or select a top one you want a high as possible (Dr Stange is a good example as each level will give his yellow more oomph and will be more helpful in PvE).

For 4* - i would focus on top tier among the latest 12 - Carol, Medusa, Coulson, Cage, Blade (I think this would be the order i have them in). However if you don't open LT/CP tokens you will not be getting a lot. For 5* - no clue. Maybe target OML. His yellow can still be useful to save some health packs. You don't have to worry about it at all if you abstain from LT
10. Get 3* Thanos and 3* Strange to champion levels as soon as possible. They are instrumental in PvE and Lightning rounds . 
11. Enjoy the game and don't stress out. Set realistic goal and you can achieve them!

spudzo0

Reading through Magic's post, I noticed that 2* farming is quite essential to hp gaining. I'm about 18 3*'s champed and have only 3 2*'s rostered. Should I start rostering more 2* and start farming? Or should I continue to use my spots for missing 4*? And with that note, if I should start farming, do I just use new slots for rostering, or do I clear room by dropping some low tier 4*?

Magic

I would say - hoard the tokens for a while (even heroics) and build the farm to start the process. It will slow down the feel of progression but you will benefit long term from not selling 4* for slots.

SolarEclipse

What does LT mean? I'm sorta wracking my brain with every word in the game and I'm coming up empty. Thanks for the information though!

Also you suggested hoarding tokens, how long should I hoard them until I can use them then?

SolarEclipse

Also, I heard that it's preferable to wait  until the end of a PVE event to enter it to get a better chance of scoring higher. Is that true/recommended?

Quebbster

SolarEclipse said:

What does LT mean? I'm sorta wracking my brain with every word in the game and I'm coming up empty. Thanks for the information though!

Also you suggested hoarding tokens, how long should I hoard them until I can use them then?

LT = Legendary Token. The ones that only give four- and fivestar character covers.

Generally, you should hoard as long as the risk of getting something you cannot use is high. Early in the game when you are limited by roster slots you should hoard until you can afford a new roster slot, then open tokens until you get someone new. Later on you may be limited by the ISO you need to level up, then you hoard until you have enough ISO to level someone and can open tokens until you run out of ISO. In the late stages of the game you can hoard Legendary tokens to maximize your chances of fully covering the Three fivestar characters in Latest Legends.

SolarEclipse said:

Also, I heard that it's preferable to wait  until the end of a PVE event to enter it to get a better chance of scoring higher. Is that true/recommended?

It depends on what you are after. If you happen to get lucky and enter a fresh bracket where there's not much competition you can get good placement and good rewards, but you are missing out on the other rewards you get from the various nodes and progression rewards. Also, there's no guarantee there will be a fresh bracket at the end. If you have the time to play the entire PvE, it's probably better to do so.

Magic

LT is Legendary Token. 

And no - for PvE it is nonsense - not sure who told you that but they are not your friends.

It might be recommended to join later if you are aiming at the placement rewards. However it luck dependent as what you hope to achieve that way is to enter a new bracket. It is possible with out of the game coordination or by pure luck. However the later you join the even the smaller the chance the new bracket will be open and lower the chance that you will reach enough points to get max progression. So if you want to join a PvE event on the last day chances are you will be placed 874 with no chance at good rewards from progression.

The question is what you mean by "scoring higher". If it's placement - this strategy might pay off and it will blow in your face from time to time. If you want to maximize points - it makes no sense. 

Also - for max progression points in PvE (provided you have all the essential characters) it is enough to do 4 clears of each node. If you miss an essential you need to do some nodes 6 times. If you miss 2 essentials - you might need to greencheck all the others (and the essentials are in the progression rewards). 

SolarEclipse

Thanks for all the answers so far guys, it's helping me a lot. So in terms of hoarding tokens, does that go for everything? Like the DDQ and even the PVP tokens as well? 

Magic

Depends on your HP levels and where you are with the 2* farm. It' better to open the tokens when you have hero points to roster somebody new that might fall out of them. However hoarding all tokens makes farming 2* almost impossible so when you have the spare HP there is no reason to hoard standard/elite/heroic tokens. In you situation hoarding is for Legendary tokens and Command points i guess.

Milk Jugz

spudzo0 said:

Reading through Magic's post, I noticed that 2* farming is quite essential to hp gaining. I'm about 18 3*'s champed and have only 3 2*'s rostered. Should I start rostering more 2* and start farming? Or should I continue to use my spots for missing 4*? And with that note, if I should start farming, do I just use new slots for rostering, or do I clear room by dropping some low tier 4*?

You should put together the HP and roster all the 2* and farm them, the 3* they feed will get a huge boost. Plus each time you cycle them from 94-144 is worth 5 CP and 250 HP. I personally have my 3 2* for DDQ rostered twice, the 3 to actually use at 144 and a copy of each that move on the conveyor belt. Once your farm is running you'll find it to be quite self-sufficient. There is approx. a 5000 iso loss to recycle the character, you get 65k iso for selling and it costs about 75k to champ them from 15. The iso champ rewards is 17.5k, selling 50 2* covers would earn you 12.5k iso. So all in all the CP, HP, and 3 3* covers are worth the 5k hit in iso

spudzo0

Good to know. Just started the process. Got 50 tokens stored and it's killing me lol. Any advice on getting hp faster? Right now I'm mostly just pve but do you think there's merit to pvp for hp gain?

Milk Jugz

Its OK, if you make 575 for the cp there is 50 HP along the way, there is another 50 HP at 725. With 3 pvps a week that's another 300, so definitely has merit. Problem with getting to 725 though is without boosted champ 4s you might have trouble. But any addition HP in is welcome, so go for 575 and hit 725 when you can

Magic

The main source of HP is the farm. Also getting top 50 in the PvE (in some slices it only requires the max progression) gets you 50 a day. If you add the PvE and PvP progression, some levels for championed 3* and the intercepts the HP flow is good.

spudzo0

Which pve slice is the easiest to rank top 50 in? 

Magic

Depends on your roster. It usually is in the clearance level just below you max - i play in slice 3 or 5 (depends if the event is a weekend one or mid week) in clearance 7. And in most cases I have stress free journey to top 50. This requires 4 clears of each node and sometimes greenchecking the easy nodes (but I usually only green-check the ones with goons).

Quebbster

spudzo0 said:

Which pve slice is the easiest to rank top 50 in? 

I suggest starting with the one with the most grind-friendly slice for you. That way you can play more if you need to. If that doesn't work out you can try Another time slice and see if it works better.

Milk Jugz

sh81 said:

Milk Jugz said:

I personally have my 3 2* for DDQ rostered twice, the 3 to actually use at 144 and a copy of each that move on the conveyor belt.

Why!?  Pretty much any combo in 2* land is passable on DDQ.  Ares is a beast, Thor is effective, Bullseye surprisingly fun I find.

Id have those 3 roster slots for 3 and 4* not duplicate 2s!


Ive found it is interesting when my go to covers arent available (Magneto, Storm, Hawkeye, brilliant combo) because I end up using characters I just wouldnt bother otherwise, in random combinations that often end up quite fun.

It helps keep the monotony of it all at bay.  Give it a go!

I agree, but I like the speed of Ares, Storm, Mag. Two aoes can add blue to charge one of them. Keeps my strategy the same and is really really fast!!

TPF Alexis

spudzo0 said:

Good to know. Just started the process. Got 50 tokens stored and it's killing me lol. Any advice on getting hp faster? Right now I'm mostly just pve but do you think there's merit to pvp for hp gain?

Going to 400 is very worthwhile, even if your roster isn't up to hitting 575 or 650. Don't bother shielding, just pick a time during the last day or so of the event that doesn't conflict with your PvE slice, climb until people start really hitting you or it's getting hard to find good targets, and then just take what you got from Progression, pay no heed to any of the notifications about people attacking you, and let your Placement fall where it will.