Where to spend iso: Save a 4*, champ multiple 14 cover 3*s, or re-champ the 2* farm?

ThaRoadWarrior

Here is my situation:

I currently have 232,681 iso, 765 hp, 8LTs, and 9cp. I'm totally F2P, Shield Rank 93, day 785. I primarily play PVE to progression in SCL7 or 8, and occasionally shoot for t50 placement to get the HP for roster slots. I play PVP to 575, though increasingly as I a accrue 4* champs I've been able to hit 900 without shielding by playing at off hours - I don't pay any attention at all to placement in PVP, but playing the way I do tends to leave me around t100. I'm commander in a casual public alliance, so we don't get loads of resources from each other.

I have every 5* with some covers (no champs), save Green Goblin who is on the vine waiting on HP, and JJ, who I missed in the Alias store.

I have every 4* on roster, 15 of them champion, many at 12 covers. I have a lvl 131 Chavez (3/2/5), one on the vine, a lvl 131 MEHulk (3/3/5), one on the vine, and a lvl 172 Flaptain (5/3/1), one on the vine.

I have every 3* on roster save Colossus, all but 23 at champion. I have a lvl 40 Dar3Devil, lvl 76 D3adpool, and lvl 40 Sh3-Hulk at 13 covers with one each on the vine. Blad3 and B3ast are at 13, no vine covers.

I have a functional 2* farm, still working on my 4/18/2 Bagman but everybody else has been turning over nicely for some time. I have a lvl 15 Thor ready to re-champ with 3 on the vine. Wolverine, Moonstone, and Ares are all a few covers from champion, still at lvl 15, with many covers on the vine as well.

I keep a lvl 30 max-cover 1* Sp1der-Man for DDQ.

My tentative plan has been to save up enough iso to try and save Chavez - expires in 7 days, or Hulk - expires in 9 days. Flaptain expires in 4 days, and I don't like my chances of getting 4 covers on him with the token "hoard" i've saved up so I'll probably just sell that cover off. I've been saving LTs as I get them waiting for JJ, who is now in tokens. Chavez would be my first choice - and is my 4* bonus hero, but obviously RNG gets the final say there. I also have loads of characters at 10-12 covers with some levels on them that might turn out to be options (lvl 209 Hulkbuster, lvl 209 Sandman, etc) as well. 

The amount of iso I need to go from 131 to 255 on a single 4* is as close to the same amount it would take to champ 3 3*s as makes no difference, so if i swing for that fence and miss, I figure I can champ my 3s 1 at a time for easy LTs. I don't really think it makes sense to throw iso at Thor at the moment, it's easy enough to come up with that kind of iso through a little targeted play in a day or two.  I guess as I write down this plan, I still feel like saving iso until Chavez is about to expire and pulling my LTs is the move, but I'm curious what y'all would do: try and save either of those 4* covers or just take the low-hanging LTs offered by the 3*s?

Dormammu

Your 2-stars are the least of your concern, those covers are easily replaceable. Your MEH and Flaptain wouldn't be my priority of the covers you have on the vine as neither of them are very good, though Hulk is the better of the two. Chavez, as you've already recognized, is the one worth saving there but I doubt you'll be able to cover her with only 9 LTs and no CP to work with.

You're in that spot where you have two bottlenecks - ISO and a load of 4-stars who don't have 13 covers, but enough covers where dupes are a problem and you're starting to see waste. We've all been there. You're going to lose some 4-star covers in this transition and you can't fret about it. Save the ones you can and let the ones you can't go.

If I were you I'd work on finishing up the 3-star tier and getting them all champed. Let your 4-stars do some organic growth and get more fully covered in the meantime. You'll feel really good once the 3-star tier is done - major progress.

Also, let your hoard grow. The more LTs and CPs you can save up, the better. Get yourself a bank of 200-300 CPs, This will make you more flexible when a top tier 4-star is sitting at 11 or 12 covers and you really want to get them champed or save a couple covers on the vine. You have the option of dipping into your LT hoard or simply buying a cover with CP.

ThaRoadWarrior

Thanks for the advice. I burned about 250 cp in the Alias store targeting a jessica jones, and wasn't able to land one, so now i'm back down to not much in the CP department. Since then, i've been burning CP in classics as I get it, which is what i generally did before i hit this iso crunch while saving up LTs. Doing so has allowed me to have at least 2 covers on every 4*, with most being in the 6-9 cover range. 

Long term I have been thinking that finishing out the 3* tier is the move; i figured if I could save Chavez it was worth it for the quality of life improvement she brings, then I'd focus on 3* champing. I like MEHulk a little more than most it seems, but I tend to gravitate to the underdogs and try to find novelty pairings for them. I typically find that popular wisdom holds true though lol.

Blindman13

I will second everything @Dormammu said.
Just wanted to add that in your position, I would stop opening tokens to avoid wasting covers. If you want a JJ cover for when she is the 5*E, then only pull until you get the one you need and stop. 

jtsings

    Speaking as someone from pretty much the same shield rank as you, just reached 95 yesterday, I concur with Dormammu on the championing all the 3*s.  Do I ever use Sentry, Ragnarok, or Psylocke unless they're essentials, no, but so far them combined have given me three 4* covers(Psylocke actually was essential in helping me champ Peggy Carter) over 600 HP and about 20 CP.  For me, psychologically at least, I feel better about being able to use every single 3* cover I get, rather than have to sell a 3* cover because I don't have it champed or wrong color distribution.  In my opinion, if you focus on your 3*s right now you'll get more HP to buy roster slots and more CP to make more classic or legendary pulls to make up, somewhat, for the 4* covers you "waste" by having to sell them.  And I much as I hate the concept of hoarding, I definitely would stop pulling classics or legendaries until I have enough ISO to champ a 4* if I get a 14th cover; which may be my situation in a few months.

ThaRoadWarrior

Blindman13 said:

I will second everything @Dormammu said.
Just wanted to add that in your position, I would stop opening tokens to avoid wasting covers. If you want a JJ cover for when she is the 5*E, then only pull until you get the one you need and stop. 

Yeah, that's basically been the plan generally, though I have been burning CP since the alias vault. Chavez and Hulk came from progression rewards, Flaptain from a daily reward. And now that I got the last "classic" 5* cover i was missing in Green Goblin, I'll be fine organically getting covers from progression or fluke heroic tokens for awhile. 

Dormammu

Even when I hoard I get 4-star covers at inopportune times. It's annoying! 
It'll be a 3-star champ reward or a one-in-a-hundred Heroic Token pull (i can't bring myself to hoard those) or a lucky Taco/Event vault pull (I can't hoard those, either). Even PvP/PvE progression prizes can come at a bad time.

But the more 4-stars I champ, the less often it happens that I get a 14th cover (or a 6th cover) that I can't use within the 13 day expiration. About halfway through the 4-star tier was when my wasted covers really started to drop drastically.

ThaRoadWarrior

I was able to get a Nightcrawler over to champ from 10 covers recently; I had that time 4 on the vine. I ended up losing one of them to expiration, but I was able to get there by pulling cp in classics as I got it. I think Chavez is worth chasing, so I think I’m going to continue going for it, then I’ll switch over to champing 3s for the foreseeable. I’ve been adding those back between character releases, and letting those cover organically while leaving my bonus hero on Strang3 for the increased iso rewards (he is lvl 244, my highest 3*). I’ve really come around on the idea of building a resource engine underneath my higher tier characters.

DAZ0273

Champing all the 3's has massively upped my LT gathering rate. I basically did them staggered with the best group champed first and then the rest a stage behind, so that way as the first group were coming up and through the more profitable levels starting in early 220's, the other group were coming up behind and providing extra resources and my resources are spread out. It also means I can use my bonus hero for any 3* close to a sweet spot such as an LT or 4* cover if useable.

I don't know whether I've passed a threshold either but I was recently able to champ Th4r and R4G saving covers on the vine in a 2 week period and it is looking good to champ Mockingbird too and a bunch of that iso comes from 2 & 3 champ rewards.

ThaRoadWarrior

I was up to 334,521 iso, so I figured what the heck, let's go ahead and open those LTs and see what happens. Luckily all 8 were useful, but unluckily none of them were Chavez or MEHulk. I got many champ levels for Nightcrawler, one for Coulson, an X23 I needed, a Thing I could use, a second color for Gho5t Rider (1/0/1), a Vulture that put him at 279, a usable Kraven. So it worked out okay. But then I figured I'd probably be better off champing my 3s, so I burned the iso on the ones I have with the most vine covers. I champed Deadpool, Blade, and She-Hulk. I still have 45,851 iso to keep the champ-train rolling, and Daredevil and Beast are just waiting on iso for that. I need to add Colossus, but I just have 20 more 3*s to champ