The effects of vaulting & Bonus Heroes – how did your roster fare?

DAZ0273

As most of you will know, before there was such a thing as Gambit, the forum spent much of its time debating the Dev’s 2017 experiment with the vaulting of some 3 & all but the latest twelve 4 star characters. The Devs having at least the foresight to see that this might spark some pitchforks sought to introduce the concept of Bonus Heroes as a way of off-setting the potential tidal wave of hate heading their way. With dilution of characters being an issue that isn’t going away soon, we can’t rule out future revisiting of plans like this or similar.

So, the question is, how did that end up working out for you? Below is what happened to my roster:

Position Pre-vaulting

I was firmly a 3 star player with multiple champions but with a lot of 4* well covered and a smattering of 5* looking to push forward the 3 to 4 transition.

4* Tier

Pre Vaulting Champions: 1 – X-force Wolverine

Characters with highest levels/covers non-champed were X-23, Red Hulk, Cyclops, Hulkbuster Iron Man, Ice-Man, Nick Fury.

Characters Champed during vaulting: 3 – Wasp, Luke Cage and X-23.

Unlike quite a few other players, I had terrible luck with draws and was unable to champ any of the “hot” 4* released in this period (or slightly before) namely C4rol, Medusa, Grocket & Vulture.

Wasp was when I champed her considered “trash tier” but fortunately she got a great rebalance and is now solid.

As the Devs advised – you could still get the old characters via bonus heroes but this was a busted flush for me yielding duplicate X-23, HBIM and Red Hulk covers that had to be sold. Switching to the newer heroes only really produced some joy for C4rol who I nearly champed before she left the “12”. I had very bad luck with Medusa purple duplicates.

Post vaulting:

Champions: 9 – Cloak & Dagger, Agent Coulson, Captain Marvel, Iron Fist, Cyclops, Iceman, Hulkbuster Iron Man, Mordo, Moon Knight.

Vaulting allowed me to cover from scratch and champ 2 characters in Wasp and Luke Cage and obviously concentrated covers for others from the “12” but since un-vaulting I have champed a further 9, tellingly 4 of them older characters who had stalled to complete halt. In terms of progress, it seems vaulting was bad for me at this tier. The other effect, coincidence or not (I suspect not) was that vaulting managed to define the 4* meta with strong releases during this period – C4rol/Medusa/Grocket/Gamora and to less extent Vulture were/are everywhere even now.

3* Tier

 Pre Vaulting Champions: All 3* were champed apart from Dr. Strange and Thanos (both rostered) and Spider-man/Beast/Falcon/Daken/Sentry/Ragnarok/Doc Ock (no covers rostered).

Unlike the 4* level bonus heroes, 3* bonus heroes were incredible! Of the above, only Strange, Thanos, Spidey and Falcon remained un-vaulted. Additionally, only Daken and Ragnarok had 2* feeders. Yet by the time vaulting was ended I had managed to champ every single one of them and Starlord and Hawkguy.

Conclusion: At least in my experience, vaulting and bonus heroes worked backwards. It completely failed to accelerate my 4* Champions but enabled me to finish the 3* tier using bonus heroes only! If there was ever to be another visit to this, it is clear that the BH part needs to be looked at as potential supplement to fighting dilution.

TL/DR – What effect did Vaulting have on your roster?

Dogface

Vaulting provided me with a bunch of then latest 4*, allowing me to level and sometimes champ them fast. But that goes for everyone, so a lot of people have the same 4* champed.
However, i'm glad they got rid of vaulting. I have a lot of other 4* that would have gone to waste due to vaulting. I pick dilution over vaulting any time.

Alfje17

Vaulting definitely helped me to champion 4*, I went from 0 to 38 in less than a year. Invisible Woman and C4rol were my first and it snowballed from there. 

All 3* were champed, before and after vaulting, but BH helped to get the 4* covers or LT I needed.

And I should thank RNGesus for having to sell less than 10 4* covers ever.

DAZ0273

Alfje17 said:

Vaulting definitely helped me to champion 4*, I went from 0 to 38 in less than a year. Invisible Woman and C4rol were my first and it snowballed from there. 

All 3* were champed, before and after vaulting, but BH helped to get the 4* covers or LT I needed.

And I should thank RNGesus for having to sell less than 10 4* covers ever.

Wow, that is impressive!

How do you find your progress now? Bizarrely, I find I get more older characters regardless of whether I hit Latest or Classics since vaulting ended.

optimus2861

Honestly if not for vaulting I probably would never have broken through into 4* champ territory. IIRC I was getting close on several characters, but of course the ever-growing size of the 4* pool meant those final covers were maddeningly elusive. During the 12-only era, I went from 0 to champ on several of the featured, including Marvel and Medusa and Blade (barely, just before he rotated out) and a couple others I'm forgetting.

Once you get that toehold in 4* territory, especially with some top-tier characters, it gets a lot easier to advance. PVP isn't quite so maddening an experience any longer, even if like me it's still just 575 and out for the most part (I still will not bother chasing 900 as I do not support the shielding/scheduling mechanic it effectively requires). You also get to curb-stomp some PVE nodes for ISO, tokens, CP, etc.

That said I've no desire to ever go to 5* land. Sometimes I groan when I pull one, though I did like getting the third colour for Hawkeye recently. Even at 1/1/3, teamed with Coulson & Carol, he's a menace and that team is hell of a lot of fun to play.

Crnch73

Vaulting versus non vaulting didn’t change much for me. All it did was change who got champed, not how many really. Granted I champed more because my roster was more “focused” due to vaulting, but my older ones suffered. Rather than build my roster (albeit slowly) uniformly, it went heavy towards the newest 12. I just didn’t like being told who I was going to build next. Getting 13 covers of the newest 4* before a single cover for hulk buster or rhulk was frustrating. 

The real travesty for me has been bonus heroes. I began tracking my token pulls before vaulting and BH became a thing, then I created a second data set for “after implementation” where I also tracked bonus heroes. My odds of pulling a specific tier from a specific token stayed almost on par with their published odds. My bonus hero odds are terrible. I have gotten 8 bonus 4s in total, and one bonus 5 in total since inception. I am sitting at under 2% for 5s and under % for 4s. Bonus 3s come in spurts which are nice but not super important for me

long story short... vaulting was frustrating but didn’t alter much. I champed 28 4s without vaulting, 12 with. Bonus heroes are a sham, for me at least, and I feel robbed. Granted it’s a free mechanism, but compared to some other people I feel unfairly punished somehow. 

broll

4*s

I believe I had 5 - 10 champed when vaulting came out.
Today I have 49 champed.  

But to be fair when vaulting came out I had the majority of vintage 4* at 9-10 covers, I imagine it would be a very different story if I had to get all 13 covers for all the vintage.

granne

I had no 4* champs when vaulting began, but I managed to champ Peggy before she left the pool, so some time in the first 5 weeks. I champed every 4* released after her before they left tokens until vaulting ended. I also managed to champ Red Hulk and Nova with the help of bonus heroes.

I used 3* bonus heroes to get me the last couple of 4*s I didn't have (Elektra and Quake). As of right now, I have 42 4* champs, with Elektra about to join them in a couple of days, and Quake at 12 covers. Kraven is my only 4* with fewer than 8 covers and the Iso crunch is real.

Vaulting did wonders for my roster.

DAZ0273

Would anybody be in favour of a period of vaulting again? If so, what would you do differently? Possibly rotate characters in and out?

Kishida

Before vaulting was implemented I had all but two 3* characters champed & eleven 4* characters with 10+ covers. I champed my first 4* the first week of March 2017.

Today, I have 51 champed 4*s with three others max-covered waiting for iso. Seven highest champs are between lv312-319, three others over lv300. With the exception of 4* Cage, I haven't wasted more than a handful of covers until recently, when raising iso for champing my 5*s took precedence over saving Winter Soldier/Thing/Elektra/Ant-Man/Professor X covers.

On the 3* front, bonus heroes helped me get seven champs to lv266. I sold maxed Gambit at the increased price last season which I couldn't have accomplished without BH. Still need to champ Angel, Gambit and a handful of dupes.

Vaulting was pretty good to me. I do think that the brief window when it was in effect played a not insignificant role in warping the meta to the overfamiliar Medusa/Gamora/Baby Groot team that still haunts 4* players. I wonder if they had left vaulting in place if that situation would be better or worse now.

CT1888

Vaulting worked a treat for me - I was in the luck position of having most of the key older 4*s champed, but getting the new characters up and running was a slow process, so I felt I was missing out on the new shiney meta. When I did get someone champed, they'd sit around the 270 mark for a while unused, vs my 290+ characters. Vaulting mixed it up, so suddenly the newer characters, Blade, Carol, Medusa etc were up there level wise, so I had a much broader group at the top.
The other thing about the processes was that it kick started my 5* transition - the reduced 3* pool pushed a lot of characters into the sweet champ reward range, the focus on the twelve characters got me more consistent LTs from champ rewards and BH allowed me to target charades reaching a multiple of 10 to get more LTs.

If they were to offer a toggle switch to chose between latest 12 only, or as is currently,  I'd probably go with the latest 12 only option.

Kishida

Vaulting had some great unforeseeable benefits only apparent in retrospect. The biggest one was the addition of champ rewards giving up 5* covers. If you're packing levels on to mediocre characters, 5* covers really helps to take away the sting.

Also, when players are getting tons of covers for less-than-stellar characters, the devs seemed much more likely to implement rebalances. Riri & Mordo both went from bottom of the barrel to much improved, and I don't know if we would've seen such a swift response if players weren't getting so many of their covers. The players have made mention of the mediocrity of MEHulk, Nightcrawler & Kraven to little response.

Finally, vaulting was fantastic for iso management and hoarding. I feel like this, as much as anything, was what helped kill it.

ThaRoadWarrior

I came back to the game mid-vaulting I think, and I was primarily getting 4* covers from 3* champion rewards. I sat on a 1 cover Kingpin for ages, never getting a 4* bonus hero. Either Medusa or Mordo was my first 4* champion, and I've managed to get everyone to champion that has been released since then either just before, or just after the moved out of latest. At that time, I think my highest covered 4*s were Nick fury and Sider-Woman, at about 7 covers total each, and for some reason I only ever got the same color on both of them (nick fury I seem to only ever land blue and Sider-Woman i only ever get purple) so I was never able to meaningfully make progress on them. Now that vaulting is gone, I'm up to 9 4* champions with every 4* on roster at at least 1 cover, and that sad 1-cover kingpin has grown to (2/3/5) since his rework. I definitely prefer the current system to vaulting, but I still feel like it is a challenge to target those vintage 4*s just to have characters I like at playable levels.

ZeiramMR

I was in pretty good shape for 4* transition when vaulting happened. I think I only had four of the Legacy 4*s which weren't championed (mostly due to lopsided coverage). During the vault period, I made good progress on the Latest as you might expect, but added a level or two to the others weekly to slowly build them up. A few times ISO was tight so I would hold onto Legendary/CP until I wouldn't risk wasting covers.

The vaulting period did get me to a state of having fewer 4*s pre-champion. But the biggest thing for me is that it helped stripe my 3*s so they wouldn't all approach max champ level at the same time, and thus have a lot of simultaneous dupes to try to roster and build.

smkspy

Vaulting was amazing and BH actually worked to build up lower 4s. I just made sure to de-BH any 4 that hit a 5 power. Plus the explosion of resources from vaulted 3s was quite a boon. The real effects of vaulting just took a bit of time to become noticeable.

Unvaulting worked for me too as I finished off all my vaulted characters left and it gave me the room to champ them taking the focus off of always having to champ the latest.

FWIW, I had about 12 champed fours pre-vaulting, today I have all but the latest 4 champed.

Alfje17

DAZ0273 said:

Alfje17 said:

Vaulting definitely helped me to champion 4*, I went from 0 to 38 in less than a year. Invisible Woman and C4rol were my first and it snowballed from there. 

All 3* were champed, before and after vaulting, but BH helped to get the 4* covers or LT I needed.

And I should thank RNGesus for having to sell less than 10 4* covers ever.

Wow, that is impressive!

How do you find your progress now? Bizarrely, I find I get more older characters regardless of whether I hit Latest or Classics since vaulting ended.

Progress has slowed a lot now, also because the change in XP: used to gain a level every 5 days, now it's about 12. Instead of having enough ISO to champ a 4* each week, I'm now struggling to get enough.

On the other hand PvP became possible with 4* champs, I didn't soft-cap my 5* when I first got them so PvP was just impossible for a long time.

mohio

Haven't seen anyone mention something similar to my situation yet so i'll give my perspective. 

Disclaimer - I don't keep track of my roster now or ever like some others, so my details will be somewhat vague and educated guesses as to what things were like before and after. 

Background - I've been playing since about 4 months after the game began...so a long time. I wasn't always at the forefront of the meta, but was usually just a step behind after the initial catching up period. Prior to vaulting I had all the 3* champed and all of the "older" 4* that were even situationally good champed. I was lagging behind on the newer 4* since even though some were considered very good, I just couldn't be bothered to spend herculean efforts to get them covered quickly since dilution was so bad that they would always lag behind my highest leveled 4s. On top of that, I had a champed Phoenix and 435 OML (5/4/3 I think was the build), that allowed me to compete enough in PvP and PvE that I was content with, so I was hoarding LTs and CP. My highest leveled 4s were in the 310-320 range, they were Teen Jean, Thora, HB, Nick Fury in roughly that order. Most of the others that were considered good I had champed in the 290-300 range.

Vaulting Duration - As a lot of you will remember, I was a big proponent of vaulting, not only for myself but for everyone. It played out pretty much exactly how I thought it would, both good and bad, so overall no complaints from me. So, as expected, my vaulted 4s completely stagnated, gaining maybe 1 or 2 covers here and there as their turn through rewards rotation came around. The vaulted characters however shot up like bamboo. It was tough at first since I had maybe just 2 or 3 of the "latest" 4s champed, but once I got to I think 7 or 8 I decided it was time to open up the hoard and reap my rewards. It wasn't enormous like some people's, but I had around 2700 cp and 90 LTs. I actually opened classics at first since I wanted to finish off my OML (which I did after just a handful of pulls) and my SS, which also had 12 covers at the time. Despite pulling OML and SS fairly early, I kept pulling classics cause I was hooked on bonus heroes and wanted as many as I could get. I ended up pulling way more than my fair share of Coulson, so he ended up in the 320s naturally without being a bonus hero. I had Carol as my bonus hero and got her up to 350 as she was exiting the latest pool and I decided not to keep her as bonus anymore. 

Vaulting End - Fast forward to the end of vaulting - Most of the latest 12 that had been in there the longest I got up to around 310 to match my highest pre-vaulted 4s. C&D got up a bit higher by chance, and Medusa as well. Blade, Wasp, Spider Woman, Gwenpool, Riri all basically ended up in the 300-310 range. 

Up to Now - While I think I still prefer the way things were with vaulting, I do like the current setup as well. I've went back and champed a few more of the older characters as covers came in for them, and some of the ones I had stagnating around 275 or 285 have gotten a few more covers and either got me the bonus LTs at the 10s, or are going to soon.

Tl;dr - Vaulting was good to me and with that + bonus heroes I've gotten Carol up to 350+, Coulson to 330+, and a handful of others around 320. Being a 5* player, however, I still would prefer vaulting since those characters at 330+ are more valuable to me than tacking on a few extra levels to my older characters that stagnated at lower levels.

Daredevil217

I absolutely hated vaulting and was probably its biggest critic.  I hated the idea of 80% of the 4* tier locked away.  Just a dumb idea when you are trying to get new players into the game and when having every character is so key to success in MPQ.

As far as my roster, I was right in that 4* transition.  I had a smattering of 4* champs, but had gotten to a point where most of my non-champed characters were in that 8-13 cover range and I could champ them as the covers came.  Dilution allowed the covers to roll in evenly and I was champing them as they came.  I loved it.

Once vaulting came, all that progress stopped.  However, I did make progress on my latest 12 but very quickly had to stop pulling because I did not have the iso to champ all these new characters coming at such a fast rate.  So where most players rosters exploded and hoards were cracked, I was doing the opposite, and STILL tossing 4* covers like hotcakes.

I hit a point where I could hit 900 PVP and T5 or T10 PVE consistently.  What that means is I was getting 1 cover per PVP and anywhere from 3-5 in PVE every event.  So without even opening tokens, I was getting covers faster than I could champ them.  And with most of my characters hovering around max-covers anyway, I was at no shortage of characters needing to be champed.  Vaulting or no vaulting, it didn't matter, because I was earning covers so fast, and doing it at a rate my iso couldn't keep up with.

Through all this unintentional hoarding, I was able to amass a hoard of LT and CP.  I eventually cracked it and was able to max-cover both Daredevil (my favorite hero ever) and Gambit (the best character in the game).  Both sit at 255 but I got them.

I honestly think this new setup is perfect with the 50/50 Classic/Latest split.  For new players and vets alike.  New players can max-cover newer characters and be somewhat competitive, but still have an avenue to older characters as well for things like Crash, Burrito, and Essentials where you don't need a champ to compete, but having at least some covers will open up doors for you.

Currently I have 51 champed 4s.  Only Chavez and Kraven are unchamped from latest (and Chavez is level 209).  I've again began hoarding because I'm still tossing 4* covers I'm earning like hotcakes and have about half of my 3* all approaching that level where dupes need to be champed and I just can't keep up with both.  So I'm not opening any tokens except standards and am just focusing on rechamping the 3* tier.  I may divert from this if say I top 10 a PVE that rewards a 4* character I have 13 covers for. But for the most part, the focus is on 3s and rebuilding the 2farm I demolished chasing Gambit and DD.  I currently have 5936 CP, 12 LT, 61 Heroics, and 121 Elites.  One of my taco vaults is over 300 pulls as well.  And I have a smattering of tokens from different events (sometimes I open those, sometimes I don't). 

Dogface

The biggest problem i had with vaulting was the fact it made the older 4* completely useless in my case (undercovered, with no future). The 4*s i had acquired through luck, patience and lots of PVE suddenly didn't matter anymore. I kinda felt betrayed, even though it did wonders for the latest 4* at that moment.
And the solution would have been so simple: a latest vault (25cp), a classic vault (20cp) and an 'other' vault (20cp or even 15 maybe) with all remaining 4*.

Spudgutter

Vaulting worked as intended, and that's a good thing. It helped new players, because it focused on the newer, better characters, while also cutting away some of the waste.  Mathematically, if you pulled 50 tokens before vaulting, you had a chance to get 1 of every character. With vaulting, you were getting 3 or 4 medusa, blade, peggy or carol covers.  That is a solid base to start your mpq journey. 

I'm not saying it was perfect, far from it.  The idea of several tokens was the immediate suggestion from a lot of people, myself included.  My best guess is that taking away a layer of rng is against some motto they have, so i doubt we will ever see that.

And it also helped veterans, because it allowed us to cover the newer characters at a pace we had never seen before.  When they first shifted to the 4* game, when it was apparent that a new character was coming out every 2 weeks, it just lowered your odds of pulling them, and increasing the time it took to fully cover (and once it was rolled out, champ them).  I was in the same place several have already mentioned, where i had a lot of them champed, so i was able to finish the latest 12 that much quicker, while using BH and placement/progression rewards to finish up the old ones.

Phumade

DAZ0273 said:

How do you find your progress now? Bizarrely, I find I get more older characters regardless of whether I hit Latest or Classics since vaulting ended.

lol so technically its the same 4* in latest and classics.  The only difference in 4s between the packs is that latest cost 25cp and classics cost 20