Roster advice for a formerly mismanaged roster

ssbledsoe

I started playing back a few years ago.  I got bored with the game after about 6 months (likely because I egregiously mismanaged my roster).  I recently got back into the game, found this forum, and realize the absurd mismanagement of my roster. 

Since figuring out what I was doing wrong (not farming 2*, jumping to 4 & 5*'s too quickly, wasting 3* covers for undercovered 4*s), I've made some changes to my roster configuration, but I want to figure out what else I can do to dig out of the MMR hole I've dug.

Here is my current roster: https://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/ssbledsoe/

I am Shield Rank 65; I have ~175000 ISO, 100 HP, and 29 CP.  I have pretty much at least 1 cover of every 3* I don't have recruited on my vine, but many are nearing time to sell.

I guess my question is this:
What are my next moves?

Do I just sell the 3*'s on the vine as they get to a few hours within expiration and save the ones I can as I get the HP for the required roster slots?

Is there anything else I can do to get me out of the MMR hole?  I have two 4* champs (Deadpool - 275 & Wolverine - 270) and IMHB at 12 covers, but it's going to take awhile for them to get anywhere near overtaking my 5*s I leveled too soon.

All help is much appreciated!

Rod5

Yeah, I see this so much...levelling 5s is a terrible idea till they get a lot of covers and you have enough 4s to make them invisible till you’re ready to champ.

The good news is this - if you can push on it hopefully won’t take too long before you can sort out your MMR. Your gateway is story mode...play DDQ and PvE events as hard as you can, 3* covers will accrue quickly and if you pull what you get you should be able to start covering 4s more quickly.

spatenfloot

Finish champing the 2 stars, sell everything you can't roster, and just keep playing to earn hp and tokens.

TPF Alexis

Story Mode should really be your focus at this point in your roster development anyhow.

What are your options for play like, time-wise? Is there are a slice where you have the time available to play even vaguely optimally (4 clears when each sub opens, then three more shortly before it flips to the next)? If so, my experience has been that in SCL7, that will pretty reliably get you T50, which is 100 HP per day. Combined with overall Event placement and Progression, that works out to something like three Roster Slots every two weeks, which ended up getting me out of my roster crunch eventually.

Dormammu

Your situation isn't that bad, you're just going to take some unconventional steps.

1. To counter what your leveled 5-stars are doing to your MMR you'll need a decent number of champed 4-stars. Your teen Jean and Hulkbuster are close and they're both good - good enough to set as your 4-star bonus heroes to try and finish them up. You have a Vulture with 5 in black and even if he's not champed he's going to make a great AP battery for you. Your next best covered 4-stars are Kingpin and Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler is okay, Kingpin is rubbish. After that you've got Red Hulk and MEHulk both of which would help you. Once you have a few more champed 4-stars PvP will be a crapshoot for you depending on which 4-stars are boosted for that event. If you have boosted 4-stars the 575 point progression prize should be attainable. If you don't have any boosted 4-stars, it'll be more difficult. The current 4-star meta is Medusa, Gamora, and Rocket & Groot. The sooner you have them champed, the easier your life will be. All this being said, the SHIELD Sim will be a nightmare for a little while because of them.

2. While doing this, focus on your 3-stars as well. Get as many rostered and champed as you can. This is a long-term goal, but the more you have the better off you'll be. Boosted 3-stars are a great boon to a 4-star player. Lean on your IM40 as an AP battery. Put him with your Magneto/DocStrange and Patch and you've got a great PvE team. Dr. Strange is the priority here. Use the ISO you have banked to champ him RIGHT NOW.

3. As others have wisely stated above, make PvE story mode the focus of your time. You should be able to handle SCL 7 and that's where you want to play because it offers two 3-star covers, one 4-star cover, and a nice chunk of CP as progression prizes. 5 clears of every node will get you max progression in an event. DDQ is also mandatory - finish 100% of it every day.

4. I don't usually advise this, but if you're going to use CP to pull tokens I'd pull from the Classics vault - this will help you get some of the older 4-star covers you need to catch up. IMPORTANT: if you don't have the HP to roster new characters, do not use any CP or LTs to pull covers you're just going to have to sell. Hoard them until you have open slots. This may mean you hoard for a while as you finish rostering the 3-star tier.

5. If HP income for slots is a problem, start farming your 2-stars. Farm them all. Roster them, champ them, max-champ them, sell them, and start a new one. The initial ISO investment is costly but after that you basically recycle the ISO back needed to champ the new one. Doing this will earn you the HP you need to expand your roster slots. Chase after Standard, Elite, and Heroic tokens - they'll feed your 2-star farm and help you cover your 3-stars as well.

Good luck and have fun!

DAZ0273

Boosted 3* characters will help your MMR woes for PvP on an event by event basis, so definitely chase them.

Also looking at your roster it seems pretty clear that you missed the period where a lot of 4* were vaulted. There were a number of strong 4* released in this period with increased odds to obtain and that has defined the current 4* meta. As pretty much all of those are in classics now it will be tough to catch up but it isn't impossible - I took Moon Knight from a 0/2/0 build for example to champed thanks to bonus heroes so don't despair.

Otherwise you don't seem to be doing too badly - those 4 Jubilee covers indicate that you seem able to compete and win prizes and/or are in a good alliance.

NeonBlue

DAZ0273 said:

Boosted 3* characters will help your MMR woes for PvP on an event by event basis, so definitely chase them.

My alliance and I have been discussing this, since the exact science behind MMR is unclear. I'm in the camp that believes boosted char levels are not factored into MMR, because if it were, it would not only defeat the purpose of boosts providing a competitive edge (because you are forced to fight stronger opponents, effectively turning boosts into a detriment), but also would undermine the game's general philosophy of rewarding roster diversity (because if boosted chars did factor, having all chars of a tier champed would guarantee that your MMR would go up a tier).

However, it wouldn't be the first time that in-game mechanics didn't reflect development philosophy. But I don't have solid evidence one way or the other and would really like to know. 

DAZ0273

NeonBlue said:

DAZ0273 said:

Boosted 3* characters will help your MMR woes for PvP on an event by event basis, so definitely chase them.

My alliance and I have been discussing this, since the exact science behind MMR is unclear. I'm in the camp that believes boosted char levels are not factored into MMR, because if it were, it would not only defeat the purpose of boosts providing a competitive edge (because you are forced to fight stronger opponents, effectively turning boosts into a detriment), but also would undermine the game's general philosophy of rewarding roster diversity (because if boosted chars did factor, having all chars of a tier champed would guarantee that your MMR would go up a tier).

However, it wouldn't be the first time that in-game mechanics didn't reflect development philosophy. But I don't have solid evidence one way or the other and would really like to know. 

Well if boosted characters don't affect MMR then it is much more of a mystery than I thought! I can certainly understand your reasoning/logic but it doesn't seem to match my in game experience. I'm happy to be wrong though.

NeonBlue

DAZ0273 said:

NeonBlue said:

DAZ0273 said:

Boosted 3* characters will help your MMR woes for PvP on an event by event basis, so definitely chase them.

My alliance and I have been discussing this, since the exact science behind MMR is unclear. I'm in the camp that believes boosted char levels are not factored into MMR, because if it were, it would not only defeat the purpose of boosts providing a competitive edge (because you are forced to fight stronger opponents, effectively turning boosts into a detriment), but also would undermine the game's general philosophy of rewarding roster diversity (because if boosted chars did factor, having all chars of a tier champed would guarantee that your MMR would go up a tier).

However, it wouldn't be the first time that in-game mechanics didn't reflect development philosophy. But I don't have solid evidence one way or the other and would really like to know. 

Well if boosted characters don't affect MMR then it is much more of a mystery than I thought! I can certainly understand your reasoning/logic but it doesn't seem to match my in game experience. I'm happy to be wrong though.

I was thinking of a potential field experiment, but I can only conduct it after I finished champing all of my 3* but before champing a 4*. Ideally, a person in this situation would always have the five or so boosted characters all of the time (the control group). The experimental group would be persons with at least 5 champed 3* but with none of the boosted characters. They would both enter the event and track the levels of the opponents they're pitted against at certain point intervals (let's say, every 100 points). 

For reliability purposes, this experiment would ideally be repeated with different number of boosted characters in the experimental group (ie. multiple events/situations in which the persons with the less developed roster could be compared against the control).

If both players ended up fighting similarly leveled opponents, boosted chars wouldn't matter. If there was a statistically significant discrepancy, then boosted chars would.

Bowgentle

DAZ0273 said:

NeonBlue said:

DAZ0273 said:

Boosted 3* characters will help your MMR woes for PvP on an event by event basis, so definitely chase them.

My alliance and I have been discussing this, since the exact science behind MMR is unclear. I'm in the camp that believes boosted char levels are not factored into MMR, because if it were, it would not only defeat the purpose of boosts providing a competitive edge (because you are forced to fight stronger opponents, effectively turning boosts into a detriment), but also would undermine the game's general philosophy of rewarding roster diversity (because if boosted chars did factor, having all chars of a tier champed would guarantee that your MMR would go up a tier).

However, it wouldn't be the first time that in-game mechanics didn't reflect development philosophy. But I don't have solid evidence one way or the other and would really like to know. 

Well if boosted characters don't affect MMR then it is much more of a mystery than I thought! I can certainly understand your reasoning/logic but it doesn't seem to match my in game experience. I'm happy to be wrong though.

Boosted characters do count.
Running boosted 370 4s gives you 5* MMR.

DAZ0273

That sounds tricky to pull off as meeting the exact conditions for boosted/non boosted will be hard to control but it would be an interesting experiment. We know MMR isn't a fixed value but a range and that range is also affected by other factors which are part of the secret formula that the dev's cooked up. From my personal point of view - I am in 4* land with all 3* champed and 20 4* champed, I have found that score is definitely one of those extra factors and I also believe that if the AI is struggling to match you with available targets it has a built in "capacity" to widen it's search - so you sort of start in the middle as much as you can but can stretch either way, that tends to lean towards harder fights the better you do as more players of equal or higher strength fill out your range. In any given event I can typically see the following:

Mixed boosted 4* & 3* teams
Mixed low cover 5* + boosted 4*/3*
Mixed 5*/4*/Boosted 3*/ Boosted 2*

It isn't uncommon for me to see the last 2 types early in an event. Midway to late in an event I will nearly always see first type. Based upon experience, the upper most level of MMR I encounter are low 400 level characters in matches on offence. On defence the exceptions to this that I recall was one champed Gambit team during the win based PvP series which had clearly broken free from MMR and hit me and in Lightning Rounds which clearly operate to truncated rules from normal PvP.

Otherwise - apologies if this has derailed this thread, I guess the mystery that is MMR is hard to pass over though!

Dormammu

Boosted characters are factored into MMR. Any player transitioning from one tier to the next experiences this. It was obvious before SHIELD clearance levels, when PvE scaling was affected by MMR.

NeonBlue

Dormammu said:

Boosted characters are factored into MMR. Any player transitioning from one tier to the next experiences this. It was obvious before SHIELD clearance levels, when PvE scaling was affected by MMR.

If this is the case, isn't it better to have fewer champed characters? It seems odd that the devs implement a system where, for instance a player with a non-boosted but potentially much stronger 4* team is matched against a 3* team that is potentially mediocre or worse (because you have no control over who is boosted). In this case, boosting characters seems like a punishment for the player who invests in a diverse roster (as the devs have stated in the past they want to reward those who do) and plays into it thinking it would give them an advantage.

If this is the reality, going into 4* land, I'll collect all but only champ and use the good ones. Again this seems to directly counter their stated goals.

Rod5

Unboosted 4s are stronger than 3s boosted to the same level, most of them are at least.

Dormammu

NeonBlue said:

If this is the case, isn't it better to have fewer champed characters?

Quite the opposite. The more you have, the greater your flexibility becomes.

Say a player champs their first two 4-stars. They are now going to start seeing more 4-star opponents, including teams with boosted characters. MMR can't only match that player against other players with two champed 4-stars, it's not that exact and there isn't enough roster diversity out there. Also, event points are a big factor. MMR has a minimum amount of points it will offer you in nodes that opponents are worth. The more points you accrue, the harder opponents will be. If that player's two 4-stars aren't on the boosted list, the ceiling will be much lower.

This is why 3-star players complain about hitting that ceiling in PvP and they start seeing 4-star teams. It's because they've gotten enough points in that event where there are no more 3-star teams that are worth MMR assigning. The same thing happens to me as a 4-star player - once I hit 600-700 points in an event I start seeing 5-star teams.

But the more 4-stars I champ, the more apt I am to have a strong team of boosted characters that can climb higher. I have almost 40 champed 4-stars and there are still events where none of them are boosted and I struggle to get to 575.

ssbledsoe

Rod5 said:

Yeah, I see this so much...levelling 5s is a terrible idea till they get a lot of covers and you have enough 4s to make them invisible till you’re ready to champ.

The good news is this - if you can push on it hopefully won’t take too long before you can sort out your MMR. Your gateway is story mode...play DDQ and PvE events as hard as you can, 3* covers will accrue quickly and if you pull what you get you should be able to start covering 4s more quickly.

I definitely spend a lot of time in story mode.  I've competed at SCL7 & 8 and typically wrangle Top 100.  My biggest issue is my time it takes to clear the nodes and missing 5* essentials keep me from really climbing the leaderboards.  If I'm missing an essential character, I generally take a leisurely stroll through the PvE and get as many points as I can.  While I'm not receiving top placement (practically impossible without all essential covers), I typically get the Top 100 and full progression awards.  It just sucks that I crippled myself from a PvP standpoint.  Appreciate the advice.

spatenfloot said:

Finish champing the 2 stars, sell everything you can't roster, and just keep playing to earn hp and tokens.

At one point I had all of the 2 stars champed.  My mistake/mismanagement started here where I wanted to get more competitive and decided to sell them to roster 3 stars and up that would help me in the essential nodes for PvE.  I feel like I should have my 2 star farm completely operational in the next few weeks.  I have all them all rostered (minus bagman) and just have to wait for covers to champ. 

TPF Alexis said:

Story Mode should really be your focus at this point in your roster development anyhow.

What are your options for play like, time-wise? Is there are a slice where you have the time available to play even vaguely optimally (4 clears when each sub opens, then three more shortly before it flips to the next)? If so, my experience has been that in SCL7, that will pretty reliably get you T50, which is 100 HP per day. Combined with overall Event placement and Progression, that works out to something like three Roster Slots every two weeks, which ended up getting me out of my roster crunch eventually.

The alliance I'm in is a PvE alliance, so I definitely focus here.  My biggest issue with story mode is that I'm usually missing 1 of the essential node covers.  I've had subs where I'm missing essentials, grinded as hard as I could and still barely kept Top 100 because I was missing essential covers.  Like the current 5* req is Jessica Jones.  There's simply no way I can even think about a top placement with the 5* essential node having the most points.  Thanks for commenting and glad to hear I'm more or less on the correct track.

Dormammu said:

Your situation isn't that bad, you're just going to take some unconventional steps.

1. To counter what your leveled 5-stars are doing to your MMR you'll need a decent number of champed 4-stars. Your teen Jean and Hulkbuster are close and they're both good - good enough to set as your 4-star bonus heroes to try and finish them up. You have a Vulture with 5 in black and even if he's not champed he's going to make a great AP battery for you. Your next best covered 4-stars are Kingpin and Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler is okay, Kingpin is rubbish. After that you've got Red Hulk and MEHulk both of which would help you. Once you have a few more champed 4-stars PvP will be a crapshoot for you depending on which 4-stars are boosted for that event. If you have boosted 4-stars the 575 point progression prize should be attainable. If you don't have any boosted 4-stars, it'll be more difficult. The current 4-star meta is Medusa, Gamora, and Rocket & Groot. The sooner you have them champed, the easier your life will be. All this being said, the SHIELD Sim will be a nightmare for a little while because of them.

2. While doing this, focus on your 3-stars as well. Get as many rostered and champed as you can. This is a long-term goal, but the more you have the better off you'll be. Boosted 3-stars are a great boon to a 4-star player. Lean on your IM40 as an AP battery. Put him with your Magneto/DocStrange and Patch and you've got a great PvE team. Dr. Strange is the priority here. Use the ISO you have banked to champ him RIGHT NOW.

3. As others have wisely stated above, make PvE story mode the focus of your time. You should be able to handle SCL 7 and that's where you want to play because it offers two 3-star covers, one 4-star cover, and a nice chunk of CP as progression prizes. 5 clears of every node will get you max progression in an event. DDQ is also mandatory - finish 100% of it every day.

4. I don't usually advise this, but if you're going to use CP to pull tokens I'd pull from the Classics vault - this will help you get some of the older 4-star covers you need to catch up. IMPORTANT: if you don't have the HP to roster new characters, do not use any CP or LTs to pull covers you're just going to have to sell. Hoard them until you have open slots. This may mean you hoard for a while as you finish rostering the 3-star tier.

5. If HP income for slots is a problem, start farming your 2-stars. Farm them all. Roster them, champ them, max-champ them, sell them, and start a new one. The initial ISO investment is costly but after that you basically recycle the ISO back needed to champ the new one. Doing this will earn you the HP you need to expand your roster slots. Chase after Standard, Elite, and Heroic tokens - they'll feed your 2-star farm and help you cover your 3-stars as well.

Good luck and have fun!

Thank you for the extensive analysis!
1. I actually had Vulture as my bonus hero.  I really like using him as he has destroyed me in a few PvP nodes.  i typically pair him with my undercovered 5* Thor.  I get Vulture airborne and then get AOE damage with Thor's Green.  Then I toss in either of my champ 4*'s for their true heal ability (DP or XFW), but ultimately it's a slow grind and eats health packs against tougher nodes/PvP battles.  
2. I have Strange champed, I just don't have that many covers.  I plan on hitting the Strange Days PvP hard enough to hope for a cover or 2 out of progression and placement.
3. I've outlined my PvE focus above.  With DDQ, I play essentially everything I can.  I run into a lack of covers here too.  The node that requires a 2, 3, & 4 star cover usually trips me up.  However, I do play everything I have a cover for.
4. Thanks for this especially.  I obviously had not been hoarding, but this helps confirm my plan for those resources and how to use them.
5. I have started farming 2 stars.  I had previously done this on a limited basis, but not to the extent that I really should have been doing.  When I started up again, I ended up with A LOT of 2 star covers quickly and didn't know what to do with them.  Ultimately, I chose 2 to champ and sell after looking at the investment and what you get out of it.  It took me about a month or so to go from 5 or 6 covers to a max champ 2 star.  However, I sold them off and replaced them with undercovered 4 stars that aren't really helping me at the moment (hence the thread and my acknowledged mismanagement).

Thanks to everyone for the welcome and noted advice.  I'll try and update as things go along.

NeonBlue

Dormammu said:

NeonBlue said:

If this is the case, isn't it better to have fewer champed characters?

Quite the opposite. The more you have, the greater your flexibility becomes.

Say a player champs their first two 4-stars. They are now going to start seeing more 4-star opponents, including teams with boosted characters. MMR can't only match that player against other players with two champed 4-stars, it's not that exact and there isn't enough roster diversity out there. Also, event points are a big factor. MMR has a minimum amount of points it will offer you in nodes that opponents are worth. The more points you accrue, the harder opponents will be. If that player's two 4-stars aren't on the boosted list, the ceiling will be much lower.

This is why 3-star players complain about hitting that ceiling in PvP and they start seeing 4-star teams. It's because they've gotten enough points in that event where there are no more 3-star teams that are worth MMR assigning. The same thing happens to me as a 4-star player - once I hit 600-700 points in an event I start seeing 5-star teams.

But the more 4-stars I champ, the more apt I am to have a strong team of boosted characters that can climb higher. I have almost 40 champed 4-stars and there are still events where none of them are boosted and I struggle to get to 575.

I understand that flexibility is important. I also understand that MMR depends on your points/rank in any particular event. 

My concern is that boosted characters can contribute to an artificial spike in difficulty. For instance, lets say you (player 1) have only one very good 4* team that you use to PvP with. If none of them are boosted for this event, your MMR will remain on par with your team and you may not hit the 5* teams until much later. You lose flexibility, but your MMR is kept lower, so the opponents you fight will be weaker, and thus it would be easier to climb.

Let's say another person has the same team,  but they have a few more Champed 4* as well, some strong, some not so much. Let's say two of those extras are boosted for the event. Now player 2 is either (a) forced to use the boosted characters, despite maybe they aren't as good, or have less synergy, or (b) Use the same team as Player 1, but now they have to fight 5* teams much sooner, because the boosts inflated their MMR for the event.

I guess my point is that if boosted characters factor into MMR, you are essentially trading flexibility for harder opponents. Unless those extra characters make up for this increased challenge, you are making it harder on yourself by having more champs. 

Dormammu

I understand what you're getting at, NeonBlue, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter if you have any characters on the boosted list or not, you're going to be facing boosted characters (once you get enough points) regardless. Anyone who has spent time in PvP sees it - MMR is a tinykitty to transitional rosters. MMR may be kind for the first couple hundred points in the event, but after that your past the casuals and facing the boosted characters. You become visible to those players as well and they'll chew you up. If you have boosted characters yourself, you can keep up deeper into the progression rewards.

ssbledsoe

Update:

I have also champed all but 4 of the 2* covers.  All are at 13 covers with some on the vine.  I’m hopeful I won’t waste any covers waiting on ISO to champ my 3* first.  I have 2 Bagman covers on the vine.  I assume I’ll just sell them.  Anyone have any thoughts or reasons why I should keep/worry about Bagman???

I’m in an ISO sink at the moment and need close to 500,000 ISO to champ my 3* & 2* I have at 13+ covers.  Right now I’m saving ISO to champ Thanos.  I have him at 13 covers w/ 3 on the vine.  I also have Mystique at 13 covers w/ 2 on the vine.  Based on their current levels (Thanos lvl 102 - 110,000+ ISO; Mystique lvl 114 - 108,000+), I should have no problem champing them in the next few days.

In 4* land, I will likely have to sell a Yondu cover.  I got a sixth yellow not long after I posted the first time here.  I think from PvE progression, but honestly can’t remember...  This will work out to be the only wasted 4* since I started this journey.  I’ve also generated enough CP to get IMHB AND Nightcrawler to 13 covers.  I’ve set my bonus hero to Teen Jean.  

I havent gotten any Latest Tokens since I posted this, so pulls haven’t been a problem, but as mentioned above, I’ve successfully hoarded my CP and pan to hoard LT’s as long as I’m in 4* land (which I realize will be a LONG time).

My user experience has obviously changed quite a bit.  I play PvE pretty hard (that’s my alliances focus).  I was able to get my 4* Simulator progression (Valkyrie Red cover), but it was a total bear.  I’ve successfully gotten the last 2 Sim progression 4* covers, so that’s good.  However, each individual PvP event has been much more of a challenge.  My goal has been to get to 575 for the 10 CP.  I’ve gotten there on an inconsistent basis.  My best event got me up to a little over 725 points.  There’s just no way I’m getting the 3* or 4* progression covers, which stinks but is what it is.

I’m up to SHIELD Rank 69 and should hit 70 in the next few days (the ISO will be much needed).

Anyhow, that’s my update.  I’m hoping I can keep this thread updated as a bit of hope for those that are in the position I was.  There is hope, but it requires patience and effort.

TPF Alexis

There is no need to bother with Bag-Man. I didn't roster him until I was well into 4* land, and even then, it was basically just because I'm a completionist.

The 3* ISO drought doesn't last too long. It's definitely a struggle for a while, but they champ fast enough, and the tier is limited enough that you get past it.

Quebbster

Yeah, Bag-man is basically a Trophy character. Since he is Limited he will never be required in PvE. The big reason to champ him is that his level 144 champion reward is a Legendary token, but collecting 63 covers for him takes forever. Ignore him until you are at a Point where you feel you can afford a roster spot for him.