Thoughts on what I should do now.

jtsings

aa25

I wouldn't worry about much at your stage. As long as, you DO NOT roster a 5*. (Save all the cp and legendary tokens until your roster is ready for 'the punishment of having a low-level 5*'.)

I would recommend bringing up the 3* to lv120 while waiting for the covers. As for champing them, I would recommend you checking ranking threads and prioritizing the top tier first. Save bottom tier for later. (I wouldn't champ Squirrel Girl first, although I don't think she is as bad as what most people brand her, personal opinion though.)

Once you have like 5-6  from the top tier champed, then you can start champing the rests as covers come in.

Once you have a solid 3* roster, (may be 12+ champed). You can consider open legendary tokens to start working on moving up to 4* land. Once you get to this point, your roster should be able to handle the punishment I mentioned earlier.

Spend every single hp you earn on roster slots for now. I still believe that having all characters (vaulted and non-vaulted) is the best way to go, but my thoughts on this could be wrong due to vaulting thingy.

talleman

Im no pro but i recommend you to level Thanos and Dr Strange asap as they will make your PVE a lot easier. Dr stranges (passive) yellow will deal damage every time the enemy uses a power and the blue will stun them + damage. Thanos (passive) black will do heavy damage to the enemy team as fast as you down one of them. His green also deals damage to the whole enemy team. If you want to you can also use IM40 in this team as his yellow will get you the AP.

Calnexin

I wouldn't hold off on champing 3*.  The boost to a high-champ 2* will put it on par with a champ 3*, so that will determine your PvE scaling anyway.  I would, however, recommend that you start with the more powerful ones.  In no particular order, IM40, Thanos, Strange, Panther, and Iron Fist are what I'd consider top-tier.  Get two or three of those champed first and then it doesn't really matter what order you go in.  I just did it as the covers became available.

Unfortunately, this will make you visible to stronger rosters in PvP.  There's nothing you can do about that in the long run anyway, though.  You can't stay in the shallow end forever.  "Softcapping" was a great strategy but I think the benefits from champ rewards are too great to leave your characters at 120 (or whatever arbitrary point was considered optimal back then).  If you can do that without losing covers it's a sound strategy for the time being but probably not enough difference in difficulty to give up champ levels.

jtsings

heybub

I would wait to champion the best 3* (look for thread as to who these are, as they may have changed since I transitioned), and not worry who is needed in the coming up events.  Personally, I use Dr. Strange a lot on PVE, and think he is one of the best.  I typically use Blade (great for PVE and in conjunction with Dr. S, and maybe throw in a falcon) , Iron Fist ( in conjunction with Panther or Cage), Panther, Luke Cage, CMags, Switch, Cyclops, and Patch (with Loki), and Thor.  I should note that I am a 4* transitioner (for like the last year and a half) and play primarily PVE on highest security clearance and rank in the top 300 or so (usually give up after the 4* reward or so). 

jtsings

I'm actually very torn now.  Despite the fact that I said I would wait, I do have my 13th cover for Thanos, who from what I heard is the cream of the crop, according to many posts in the forums.  I do have 1 cover that is going to expire in 5 days, what kind of awards can I expect for duplicate covers for 3*s, pretty much the same as 2*s?

spatenfloot

Same type of rewards but better

jtsings

spatenfloot said:

Same type of rewards but better

Ok, Thank you.

heybub

jtsings said:

I'm actually very torn now.  Despite the fact that I said I would wait, I do have my 13th cover for Thanos, who from what I heard is the cream of the crop, according to many posts in the forums.  I do have 1 cover that is going to expire in 5 days, what kind of awards can I expect for duplicate covers for 3*s, pretty much the same as 2*s?

I don't know how good 3* Thanos is, I just never rostered him, since I have so many 3*s.  I use 5* Thanos all the time, even though I only have 3 covers.  His black and green are awesome against wave nodes on PVE, and he's a ton of fun to play.  3* is probably similar, and maxed covered, would probably kick my 5*'s butt.  I get 3* Thanos all the time these days, so another is bound to come your way, if you do decide to wait.

I just think it's best to have 3-4 top tier to champ, otherwise the scaling is going to hit you.

MarkersMake

You have no chance at a significant score in PVP until you hit 4* land (575 is a good stretch goal for you right now, and you might be able to hit 4k as a season goal, IIRC), and d3 are currently changing PVE so that it won't scale with your roster. 

So champ everyone you can, when you can! No point wasting covers anymore.  If ISO is scarce, prioritize the better ones first, obviously. (if you want to wait until the new SCL system is fully implemented, that's ok too) 

Also, if you have multiple well or max champed 2*s (close to 140), then scaling won't change much for you with a couple of 166 3*s. And if they are good ones (Thanos, strange, im40) , it will still be a net positive for you in terms of clearing times and PvP performance. 

Unfortunately for you, some of the better 3*s are now vaulted, so you effectively can't ever get them. 3* Cap you can get (and he's very good, if a bit slow), but 3* Magneto (who is absolutely killer and very fast) is not available to you.  Likewise, Loki's cheap purple board shake can let you punch way above your weight in PVP when he's boosted, but he's vaulted too. 

C'est la vie. 

jtsings

talleman

Another good team combination is 3* Black widow grey suit and 2* hawkeye.

Widows purple turn choosen tiles to green so you can make atleast 2 × 5 green matches that will get green ap for her sniper that does heavy damage to the enemy team + you will activate hawkeyes passive purple that will activate 8 countdown tiles that make about 1000 damage each if champed. Just saying

aa25

You are absolutely right about Thanos. He is indeed a health pack drain. Some workarounds are running him with self-healer like patch or daken, or team health boost like KK or Strange. Or run a 2-man team and designate some 'sheep' to sacrifice to him (this way you need to use health pack on only one member and rotate the other.)

Roland113

I'll be honest, I will often run Thanos with two sheep, often the lower tier characters that don't have any other use in my strategy . . . Psylocke, Squirrel Girl (who would be so much more useful if her yellow didn't end the turn), Daken, Sentry, Rags . . . there are so many sheep that don't really have any other use other than cannon fodder for Thanos.

granne

Thanos is great, but not as a transitional character. Until you have a bunch of 3*s champed, using him will hurt.

I think the horror of scaling is often overestimated in the forums (except for in the 5* tier - that does sound borked). Yes, your opponents will be stronger, but so will your team. The first couple of events will be harder, but then they get easier each week as you champ more people. Not champing your 3*s because of a fear of scaling is like not jumping in the pool because you might get wet. You can't swim without doing it.

Use Bonus Heroes to target some of the top tier, and then dive right in. I'd recommend IM40, Cap, Kamala, Strange and Patch. They're all still in tokens so covers should come quickly. Of those not in tokens, Mags, Daken, Thor, Bullseye and BW all have 2* feeders and are all very, very good.

Calnexin

If your scaling allows Thanos to rapidly make kills himself, there's no reason you can't use sheep.  Any given champ 2* probably has about 3-4 matches worth of play before Thanos downs them.  I use him alongside OML and any of my unleveled 5*, swapping them out as they drop.  It's fun watching him slowly destroy Banner, useless little nerd that he is.

MarkersMake

Yeah, it's probably a good call to wait a bit before champing Thanos - you will get plenty of covers for him down the road anyway. 

Thanos is definitely best used with sacrificial lambs. A 5* with only 1 cover works best, because they are generally useless, other than using their high match damage to kill the lowest HP enemy in 4-5 turns. Although a champed 3* character should be similar to a single cover 5* (in the 10k HP range), a champed 2* character will only have 5-6k HP. Thanos takes about 1k of that away per match, so that's no bueno. 

... But, once SCL scaling is fully live, the penalty for rostering a 5* will be nonexistent, so it's win-win! (as long as you have a bunch of HP for extra roster slots, of course)

jamesh

For story mode, having a broad roster at usable levels is definitely a plus: that way you will usually have a number of boosted characters available that let you punch above your weight.

That said, there are serious benefits to championing the characters: you will be strictly better off by using covers to increase champion levels as opposed to selling them.  You'll get at least as much Iso, while also getting HP, command points, and tokens.  This will in turn make it easier to roster and level up other characters.

It is fairly cheap to level 3* characters up to level 120 (22.9k Iso, vs. 120k to get all the way up to level 166), so it might be worth trying to get a decent number of 3* characters up to that level, and then push individual ones higher as you get the Iso.  And of course, focus on the characters that are in tokens, because they are the ones you'll be getting the most return from in the form of champion rewards.

jtsings

Thank you all for your thoughtful and helpful answers.  I've reread your answers and some from another post about a player asking about champing a 4* character.  I've kind of resolved myself to not champing Thanos quite yet, but I might be more willing to champ him along with Dr. Strange but I'd have to use 20 of my 328 CP's; which would also benefit me because I'd like to take advantage of his full yellow and blue colors, however I don't have any covers to feed to him yet.  Do you all feel like that would be a good spend of 20 CP's?  Partly because I think a champed Dr. Strange, with his most useful powers maximized, will really quicken up my PVE time even if my scaling goes up.

aa25

Very controversial question (about spending 20 cp to buy a 3* cover.)

My two cents: If the character is a game changing character, do it. 3Strange is a game changer for PvE and definitely is one of the top 10 and since he will be the first champed 3*, that also adds a lot of value into that 20 cp investment.

Later on, once you've settled in 3* land, don't buy covers (even for a top tier). It comes faster than you would expect.

Some people don't think spending CP on a 3* is a good investment since you will need a truck load of CP to transition to 4*. However, with the vaulting and Pve rewards changes, CP income may not be as scarce as before.