Coming back after some time away...

LaserPepper

Like a lot of people here, I'm returning to play after a big lag. And I've read up on the current strategies, so while I'm slightly more casual than SERIOUS as a player, I do want to know how I can use my current roster to best effect and kinda get back on track. I think my problem is I lose interest because it eventually *feels* like a grind, but I suspect if I'm a little more strategic and implement some better roster habits, it won't feel quite the same.

Here's my current roster. I know it's a bit of a mess! But a few tips about what I should drop/what I should focus on wouldn't come amiss. Like I said, I've read a bunch of the threads and guides here, and I think I understand most of it from the POV of "starting out," but what do you recommend I do with the lot I've got?

Thanks a bunch!

Persephone

First thing I would do is finish champing 2* and start farming them. 

Second, I would finish rostering all the 3* and champ them.  This part may take a while.  If you play PVE SCL 6, you’ll get two covers for the 3* essential which will help.    

This is controversial, but I spent CP to build my 3* as fast as possible to get them to champ state quickly.  I’d focused on whoever was essential in PVE at the moment and poured ISO into them.  Others on the forum may not agree with this.  But, I’ve found it to be a good investment.    

If you’re not wanting to spend CP on building 3*, then hoard them.

I would actual ignore the 4* you have; meaning, don’t go after their covers.  Or, if you’re in dire state for roster slots because of lacking HP and you have 3* covers dying on the vine, then sell them to roster the 3*.   Don’t worry about losing the 4*.  They’ll come back to you (despite what it may sound like on the forum).   

Once you have all the 3*, start rostering the 4* (I’m still in this stage myself). 

If by chance you get LT tokens but not ready to roster 4*, then hoard them.  Only open them when you’re ready for 4* and have the HP to roster. 

Once you are ready for 4*, spend CP on Classics and not Latest.  It not only costs less CP but will help build roster, particularly the older 4*.  

I hope this was helpful. 

LaserPepper

It is thanks.

At the risk of sounding stupid, I do this by hoarding tokens. Other than standard, are there any I should spend? I think it's just that I understand the *concept* of champing 2*s but the guides aren't super specific about how to do that.

abominatrix

I think @Persephone has some good advice, but a couple of comments:
a. You'll be using 2* characters to win matches for awhile. Don't farm characters you need; for example. if you are still using Storm/Mags/Hawkeye or Thor to win matches, then keep them at 144 until you use 3* champs almost exclusively. 
b. I disagree with using CP to build 3*, but to each his own. A reasonable compromise would be to only do this to finish top-tier toons like IM40 and Strange.
c. Do not open tokens if you can't use the results. For example, if you can't roster a new character, don't pull the token. You can decide to open things like standards and elites anyway and if you have to sell a character, oh well. At your stage of the game, tipping the developers 20 bucks for HP is pretty common (and it's free to play, so a small purchase keeps the lights on), and use HP only for slots.
d. You can't go too far wrong rostering and building all of the 2* (with the possible exception of bagman, even though I have a max-champed one so I'm not one to talk). Having them rostered means you'll always have the 2* essential, you'll have the required 2* for the burrito, etc. And, while you may never use Moonstone unless you have to, she gives Hulk covers, HP and CP as champ rewards, which are valuable.
e. Otherwise, your roster seems perfectly fine for where you are in the game. I might have held off putting ISO into 3* and 4* characters which aren't yet really useful, but it's not a huge amount. The one exception might be Daredevil; at 3/3/4 he's probably as useful in matches as your champed 2*
f. I probably wouldn't drop any character on your roster. If you had to (say you pull a Strange or IM40 before you can buy a slot), drop Gambit; he's not great.
g. Play in the highest PVE SCL you can get at least close to complete progression. My guess is that's 5 or 6 with your roster, but I'm not sure; others who weren't already SCL 8 or 9 when SCLs were rolled out might be able to give reasonable advice. However, in PVP the goal is getting the best progression rewards you can. Since enemy scaling is based on SCL rather than roster now, don't worry about leveling characters in an unbalanced fashion assuming you don't worry about PVP too much for now.

That's a start. There are lots of folks on the forums who give very good advice; don't hesitate to ask for it. 

Good luck and have fun!

Dormammu

LaserPepper said:

... I'm slightly more casual than SERIOUS as a player...

Here's my current roster. I know it's a bit of a mess! But a few tips about what I should drop/what I should focus on wouldn't come amiss. Like I said, I've read a bunch of the threads and guides here, and I think I understand most of it from the POV of "starting out," but what do you recommend I do with the lot I've got?

You've received a lot of good advice in this thread already, but a lot of that is long-term serious player stuff. I'm guessing you want some more immediate advice.

Most of your roster is unusable. That's not an insult, you're just at the beginning stages of building a roster. You're going to need to champ some more 2-stars to give you some flexibility while you build up your 3-stars. Try to chase some Ares and Original Black Widow covers - they can really help you. Daken and Cap Marvel, too. In the meantime just keep leaning on the 2-stars you do have champed.

Try to get at least one cover of each 3-star on roster, make that your immediate goal. So all HP earned should go to roster slots to accomplish this. Once you have at least 1 cover for all the threes there will always be another 3-star cover available for you in DDQ (Deadpool's Daily Quest). DDQ, as well as any (non-legendary) tokens you earn, will be your path to getting the 3-stars all fully covered. Hoard your Legendary Tokens and CP. You can use CP to buy the 12-13th covers of 3-stars you want to finish up and get champed, but don't go looking to buy 4-stars and 5-stars from the Latest or Classic Legend vaults if you don't have the roster slots to keep them.

Once you start getting some 3-stars champed, then you can start worrying about farming 2-stars, elevating your PvE SCL for better rewards, worrying about how in the heck you're going to roster all those 4-stars, and all the long-term advice you're receiving.

Here are some 3-stars you want to prioritize over others if roster slots are tight:
Captain America, Cyclops, Doc Strange, Iron Fist, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Kamala Khan, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, Thanos, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Deadpool, Thor

Persephone

I have one comment about chasing (or prioritizing) certain characters...
I have tried that repeatedly.  Realistically, it doesn't happen the way you want to very often.  RNG is going to be RNG,  You simply have to use what RNG gives you. This was a huge reason why I spent CP into building my 3* fast as possible.  It was exhausting trying to chase/prioritize characters.  By spending the CP was how I prioritized my characters and got them to champed status.  
This has been my experience.  I've only been playing two months shy of two years.  Others are going to have a completely different experience.  

Regrading 2* Bagman.  I don't have him at all.  I never did.  Then again, I don't play PVP so I don't need him.  And, that is why I totally forgot he existed.  

If you want to focus strictly on 2*, play PVE SCL 3 or 4. That may be comfortably challenging or too easy.  Only one way to find out.  

iron-n-wine

Using Bonus Heroes to prioritise one 3* at a time helps a lot too

ThaRoadWarrior

In my experience, nothing is more attainable on purpose in this game than a specific 3* cover via bonus heroing. I once went from not having 3* Gamora on roster to champion in about 2-3 weeks (though I had a solid roster aside from that and wasn't fighting hard for everything I was doing). If you have all 2*s on roster, spend time in PVP. Don't sweat progression or placement as much as winning LOTS of winnable fights. You'll get loads of covers from there over time along with 70-140 iso drops. And now with the wins-based option, you'll (eventually) start pulling down some progress rewards as well as you do it. An easy place to score standard tokens is from clearing seed teams in lightning rounds. you just need 50 event points (2 seed matches generally) to get a standard token, so keep your eye on them and try to jump in when they start and then bounce out once you get your token.

Once you get to the point where you can play SCL 7/8 in pvp and you're pulling down a lot of CP, 4* bonuses are pretty reasonable too. You can expect to see maybe 1 or 2 5* bonus heroes per year if you're not playing hardcore, so assume if you're not planning to hoard until latest or a special store that you probably aren't going to be a 5* player. That's not to say you can't get at least 1 cover for every 5* out of classics so you can eventually play their essential nodes in story, just that it is highly unlikely you'll be able to champ them that way.

Persephone

@TheRoadWarrior, you've had better luck with Bonus Heroes than i ever did.  I still do heart the ones I need cover for, though.  

ThaRoadWarrior

Now that I can hit 900 in pvp and it's possible to place in the 3* reward zone, i find myself opening way less standard tokens than i once was and so getting way less 3* bhs than before. If you get a 3* out of a standard, you're getting a 3* bonus hero every time, so opening those in bulk is the move. I started tracking my legendary (latest tokens and cp in classic) pulls on 6/26/2018 just because i felt like I was in a 5* dry spell and was curious. Since then, I've pulled 48 classics with 4 bonus 4*s (6 were 5*s) and 43 LTs in latest with 3 bonus 3*s (6 5*s here as well), no 5* bonus heroes in either spot. I managed to get Wiccan to 13 covers over that span of time across the various PVP store tokens and some lucky heroic 4* bonuses which I haven't been tracking. I just keep a google spreadsheet where I record it as i pull them, it isn't too time intensive since it's like 1-2 every couple days depending. Also it lets me know around when I should be expecting to see a 5* cover when I start to feel like "it's been awhile..."

LaserPepper

This is great, guys. Thanks!  I'm going to have to read through it a few more times to really sort it out--it all makes sense in concept, but like, the idea of how you actually chase covers still baffles me a little. Everyone says "champ all your 2*s!" but I have always been a little unclear on the best way to do this. So this is great advice, and I'll be returning often to look over it.

ThaRoadWarrior

The only way to champ 2s reliably is to grind pvp for covers as after-match rewards - don't wait for them as progression. There are less of them than other tiers, so you'll just get them over time. So chasing 2* covers really just means chasing any and all 2* covers, and you'll eventually just have a critical mass of them. 
Before cover saves went live, I'd usually go into Simulator pvp and just grind winnable fights hoping for those last 3-4 covers for whichever 2* I had up near 144 to flip them for iso to come as a randomized match reward. For whatever reason, the game always seems to give them to me in batches of 3-4 characters. It seemed like I was always turning over farmed 2*s in batches of 4, sometimes where a character that was 10-12 covers back would catch up and then 4 would hit 144 altogether. Probably cognitive bias, but still seems like a thing.

But you can use Bonus Heroing to get 3*s, and the way you do it is by chasing tokens - get ALL the tokens you can get, and open them. Understand that Heroics and Event tokens can give you potentially unwanted 4*s, so open those at your own risk, but I always just open everything as I get it. you'll lose some covers until you won't (having everyone on roster), so if you can live with that, go ham on it.

LaserPepper

Awesome. Thank you. It seems to me like no matter what SCL I choose in PVP everyone's way outta my league, but I guess there's where spending ISO to skip comes in.

ThaRoadWarrior

SCL only affects what progression rewards you get and against whom you're trying to place, not who you actually fight against from match to match. that is determined by your roster strength. So if you don't care about placement, just progression, you should pick the highest PVP scl you qualify for. PVE on the other hand affects rewards AND how strong enemies are. I said in a different thread that overloading the concept of SCL is a horrible user experience, but there you have it.

Waddles_Pines

To add onto @ThaRoadWarrior, re: lightning rounds.
If you enter at the beginning of the round, you'll usually get a whole bunch of seeds.  Besides the standard tokens, sometimes you'll get 2* cover as your reward.  If you play a few rounds, you should walk away with a few 2*, so that'll help you with your "how do I champ all my 2*" quandary... Also, remember, lightning rounds are all about iso, tokens, and 2* covers.  Don't worry about placement at all.  Also, I've noticed a weird quirk in RNG, every few weeks in lightning rounds, I'll clear seeds and get like 3-7 of the same 2* cover in a row.  Haven't figured out the pattern, but YMMV, you hit them enough, you'll have your 2* covered in no time.

Also, since you mentioned that in pvp that you're normally out of your league, don't use shields.  Just use all your HP for roster slots at this point.  By extension, if you're not chasing placement in PVP, you can also join when it first opens and you'll also get a whole bunch of seeds.   

ThaRoadWarrior

I've heard tell of people joining PVP events with minutes to spare to snipe placement rewards, but I guess I've never managed to time that right - the few times I've tried it with like an hour or two to go (enough time to get at least the CP if not 900), I've seen the same mega-scores at the top.

Waddles_Pines

Also, if you're not already in a decent alliance, either try joining one, or make your own and recruit ppl who are at the same level as you are/or better...

Dormammu

LaserPepper said:

t--it all makes sense in concept, but like, the idea of how you actually chase covers still baffles me a little.

Chasing covers:
Play DDQ as deep as you can for daily tokens (Standard, Elite, & Taco tokens)

Play PvE for tokens (Standard, Elite, Heroic, & Event tokens). These come as node victory rewards, progression rewards, and placement rewards. There is also 2-star covers available here as progression and placement prizes.

Play PvP for cover prizes and progression reward tokens (Standard, Elite, Heroic, & Event tokens). If MMR is matching you up against unbeatable foes, you need to hit seed teams. 'Seed teams' are available at the very beginning of an event (like, be there the second it starts) and are dummy teams created by the developers for the purpose of getting initial points into a bracket. They consist of the featured/required character loaner and two low-level 1-stars. They are easy to beat.

Add champ levels to champed characters for Heroic tokens.

Join an alliance for more placement reward tokens in all events (PvP, PvE). Even low-placing alliances get things like 2-star covers, Standard, and Elite tokens for participating in an event.

In other words - tokens, tokens, tokens. Everything you do can earn you tokens, so the more events you participate in the more tokens you'll earn. The more tokens you earn, the more covers you'll get.

Rod5

abominatrix said:

I think @Persephone has some good advice, but a couple of comments:
a. You'll be using 2* characters to win matches for awhile. Don't farm characters you need; for example. if you are still using Storm/Mags/Hawkeye or Thor to win matches, then keep them at 144 until you use 3* champs almost exclusively. 
b. I disagree with using CP to build 3*, but to each his own. A reasonable compromise would be to only do this to finish top-tier toons like IM40 and Strange.
c. Do not open tokens if you can't use the results. For example, if you can't roster a new character, don't pull the token. You can decide to open things like standards and elites anyway and if you have to sell a character, oh well. At your stage of the game, tipping the developers 20 bucks for HP is pretty common (and it's free to play, so a small purchase keeps the lights on), and use HP only for slots.
d. You can't go too far wrong rostering and building all of the 2* (with the possible exception of bagman, even though I have a max-champed one so I'm not one to talk). Having them rostered means you'll always have the 2* essential, you'll have the required 2* for the burrito, etc. And, while you may never use Moonstone unless you have to, she gives Hulk covers, HP and CP as champ rewards, which are valuable.
e. Otherwise, your roster seems perfectly fine for where you are in the game. I might have held off putting ISO into 3* and 4* characters which aren't yet really useful, but it's not a huge amount. The one exception might be Daredevil; at 3/3/4 he's probably as useful in matches as your champed 2*
f. I probably wouldn't drop any character on your roster. If you had to (say you pull a Strange or IM40 before you can buy a slot), drop Gambit; he's not great.
g. Play in the highest PVE SCL you can get at least close to complete progression. My guess is that's 5 or 6 with your roster, but I'm not sure; others who weren't already SCL 8 or 9 when SCLs were rolled out might be able to give reasonable advice. However, in PVP the goal is getting the best progression rewards you can. Since enemy scaling is based on SCL rather than roster now, don't worry about leveling characters in an unbalanced fashion assuming you don't worry about PVP too much for now.

That's a start. There are lots of folks on the forums who give very good advice; don't hesitate to ask for it. 

Good luck and have fun!

All of this 100%. Roster as much as you can, but don’t pull what you can’t roster. No to CPs on 3*s, other than maybe to finish 3trange, IM40 or Thano3.

Persephone

Like I said earlier, spending CP on raising 3* is controversial.  I'm going to explain why I did it.  

To play at SCL 7 to get a 4* cover.  From my experience, 4* with only a one or two or three covers is not usable in SCL 7.   I also learned  that 3* must be champed in order to play at SCL 7.  To consistently play SCL 7, I need all the 3* champed because boosted and essential list changes every week.  

This is what worked for me.  It is how I've moved from 3* to 4* transition.  Everyone plays differently.  I've found reading all the advice on the forum, even contradictory ones, helpful. I did the advice by trial and error and found what worked for me.    

LaserPepper

Okay, I've been following the advice here with, I think, great results! Now, I don't play as much as I *could*, I guess, so bear that in mind. But I thought I'd update y'all:

https://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/LaserPepper/

I've stopped leveling up 3*s, pulled a bunch of HP from stockpiled taco tokens, pulled a Dr. Strange and kept him but no other 4*s, and I've managed to champ several other guys since I first posted here. So thanks! It really does make things a little clearer and thus makes me more likely to continue to play when I've something concrete to chase!

(Also thanks for being a friendly and helpful forum, you know the rep a lot of similar sites have...)