How to finish my 2/6/10 Carol

froggerjohn

https://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/froggerjohn/revisions/126

All 4*s rostered, 6 champed, 2 champable, and a few others close.

I had my 4BH on Carol up to 1/5/5, but then moved on to others for awhile.
When the black cover came up on HfH awhile back, I bought it, and put the 4BH back on her.

Now at 2/6/10, (including 3 greens in one day) I'm getting frustrated at the semi-waste of bonus heroes.
It's great that saved covers aren't lost now, but I'm essentially using BH for champ covers, which isn't a great use of that, when there's many other important 4s I want to finish.

3/4/1 Valkyrie
4/1/1 RBG
2/2/3 Rogue
3/3/5 Nico
2/3/3 MEHulk

Wondering if I should stay the course with 4BH on Carol until that last cover, or move on and finish her another way.
(If I don't pull a lucky cover, I could use the saved covers, or hoard to 120CP).

Part of the issue, is that while I have no doubt that she's great, I also don't know when/how I'd use her right now. I may not have the key partners that would vault her to usefulness over America.

Quebbster

C4rol is good on her own, with the right partners she moves to spectacular. You don't need to worry about her usefulness. I Think you should stay the course, you only need one successful pull and all the saved ones will pay off then.

jtsings

   This might not be the quickest way, but you could roster a dupe of 3* Captain Marvel and champ her and add covers to get her to level 183 and get the black cover as a champ reward.  Since you should get 3* bonus heroes more often, it may be easier to do it that way, rather than keep her as your bonus 4* hero.  Or do both, she really is one of, if not the, best 4*s and well worth the extra levels; even if you get a few more saved covers for her.  IMO her support ability is one of the best in the game and her super nuke is just as good.  Actually since C4rol generates AP through her passive, she actually works quite well with America.

HoundofShadow

I think they might be running a couple of C4rol PvPs and PvEs in Jan or March. If you have the patience to wait until then.. 

If C4rol can help you to step up your gameplay, why not? If not, just focus on other characters. You have champed a number of top 4* characters, so I think you can do fine without C4rol. Again, you are 1 cover away from champing her. 

If I were you, I would continue to BH her.

froggerjohn

I think that makes sense to keep her BH, and just be patient. Thanks guys. Worst case, it just delays some of those other 4*s.

Also wondering whether this overlaps with another question I posted about the Family Legends store. In addition to some 5*s I don't have, there's 5x odds on some of the best 4*s I still need, including Carol (and RBG and Rogue).

With that in mind, I made a speculative pull there, and of course, pulled another Carol green. Maybe it makes sense to keep pulling those? (Have about 60 CP right now, plus whatever I can earn for the next 9 days).

Rod5

Hmmm, there are a lot of decent/useful 4s in that selection, I’d be tempted in your position.

froggerjohn

I did end up pulling Family Legends for the last week. Got two Rogue, which was really helpful to 3/3/3 now, and some other great 4s like Peggy to 5/2/4 and Wasp to 5/1/3. Also pulled a 5* BB which I didn't have at all, so I think this turned out to be the right decision.

Mixed in was more Carol covers, now 2/7/12, and Venom to 9/0/1. So the bad luck there continues for the moment. Probably only 1 or maybe 2 pulls left before that store is gone. Fingers crossed.

If I don't finish her here, the next hope is when Loki leaves Latest, I'll be pulling LTs to get the new 5, so maybe it will happen there.

helix72

Just make 3* Captain Marvel your 3* bonus hero and be patient.

froggerjohn

Already past the black cover in champ rewards.
Short of starting a dup and getting 27 covers for it, it's not an option.

helix72

It doesn't take as long as you might think, and you're in luck that it is the first champ reward you need. I recently had to get 40+ covers for my 3* Blade to get 4* Blade fully covered. I don't recall exactly how long it took but it got done in a reasonable time frame. And think of it like a savings account--keep dumping the covers in until you have 27, then champ her and collect all the rewards at once. It will also give you the time to save up the ISO you'll need to re-champ her (assuming you don't want to sell your other one until she's maxed).

If she's your 4* BH, you only have a 1 in 3 chance of getting a cover you can use, and in my experience it's better to have a bunch of characters leveled a little than a few characters leveled a lot. It keeps the matchmaking more reasonable (it's based on the levels of your highest leveled characters, so you might want to stop putting ISO into your 5*s) which helps with progress, and the game is less boring--you get to use more characters more often. I would make that 4* BH someone less covered that would be useful (your 4/1/1 Grocket seems a good candidate). One additional level for Carol is going to matter a lot less than one additional cover for Grocket.

froggerjohn

Despite any appearances I may have given to the contrary, it's not even the overall time that's a factor, as much as the 'efficiency'.

It feels wasteful of resources to create a new 3* Carol just to get that last cover. (1000 HP, a bunch of iso, 20+ 3BHs). That's especially true if I end up pulling the black cover anyway by some other means before completing that other path. Back when it was first proposed, I did consider it for a bit. But since it's inefficient at best, and very frustrating at worst (if the cover shows up anyway), it didn't seem like the right fit for me.

Similarly, from a 4/1/1 start, switching the BH to RBG is more likely than not to wind up in a similar scenario before they're finished as well. I'm still prepared to do that because it's such an important character, but if I do it now and end up without being able to finish either one of them, that's another bad outcome. Whereas if I wait until after Carol, I've at least made some progress. Either way, I figure I'll end up moving on to someone else as soon as RBG is 5/*/*, unless it's reasonably 'close' (like getting a number of those other covers before reaching the 5th blue).

As for the 5* iso, my 3 best 4s are 279-275, so I capped the 5*s at 275, which seems like that shouldn't have any negative effects on matchmaking. Is that not a correct assessment?

froggerjohn

Pulled LTs to get Kingpin, and got my Carol black in the process.     She's now my highest level 4*, at 279 along with Ghost.

Also got Peggy to 5/3/4, Dazzler champable, W4sp to 5/2/3, Jean Grey to 3/4/5, and progress for a number of other 4*s.

https://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/froggerjohn/revisions/131

helix72

Nicely done! Congrats, it’s always a great feeling when you get that one cover you are hoping for. Who’s next on your wish list?

froggerjohn

Top of the wish list is RBG, but at 4/1/1, it will take some good luck to finish him. I'm considering starting here anyway, just in case, because it would make the biggest difference in my roster. Just move on when I pull the next blue, and hopefully make a bit of progress before that happens.

I've really enjoyed playing W4sp, and at 5/2/3, will also take some luck, but I'd love to have another blue in particular. Vision is my 3BH, and I have 20 levels to go, if I don't get one in the meantime. She seems like an interesting partner for America. Not the AP steal potential of Hood, but brings a lot more to the table in other areas. (Used to run Wasp/Falcon/Switch in 3* days).

3/3/3 Rogue is one of my better BH prospects, as one of the only balanced characters on my want list.

3/5/1 Valkyrie would be great to have, but with no feeder, much harder to finish. I'll almost certainly wait on this one until I have a couple of additional covers by other means.

jtsings

   Definitely not the fastest team in the world, with a little set up required, but Wasp and C4rol go great together.  Get enough AP to trigger Wasps passive That Buzzing Sound (for you now it's 7), then fire Wasps' Tactical Intuition (yellow at a ridiculously low 5 AP) and if you luck out on the protect and strike tile positions, Carol will strengthen both every turn.  Throw in someone like Bl3de or D3ken and you've got the potential to get some pretty insane damage off of strike tiles.

froggerjohn

I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, and something similar happens to everyone if they play long enough, but it's comical that after so many months of trying to get that last black Carol cover, they're now overflowing once she was champed.

- One from a classic pull
- One from the Galactus progression
- One from the Galactus vault
- One more from PvE progression tomorrow or so

That said, she's 284 going on 285 (I hope they make her a feeder for 5Carol), and I got to have some fun with her in the off-season PvPs. As per the suggestion here, I ran her with W4sp, despite not being fully covered at 5/2/3, and decided on Medusa for the third. (I wanted to avoid taking anyone that would use the blue AP).

Against hard teams, I'd include AP boosts +1 blue, +2 yellow, +2 black.

Definitely a fun team to play with a lot of options, and the boosted Carol made really high-level specials by the time the match was over. 

Depending on the board and the opponents, I kind of liked matching the yellow first so I could drop a strike+protect on the second turn. Then if there were blue matches, I could get the Buzzing working right away. In a lot of matches, that was enough to reduce damage to nothing, as long as I could take out the primary threats before they got their nukes off.

Granted, I also made plenty of mistakes due to unfamiliarity, like forgetting to check the dominant color, matching black, and getting shredded by the enemy Carol (while powering up her black). Then accidentally cascading into black on the very next turn, leaving two of my characters on life support. And yet, still managed to pull out a win in that match.

All-in-all, very happy to finally have her usable.

DAZ0273

Wait until the next 3* Hulk PvP and you'll REALLY get to have fun with C4rol! 😀

froggerjohn

I played Carol/Hulk3/Daken in both the Daken PvP and Simulator.

It's only usable against RBG teams or Medusa/Carnage, where they generate enough damage to trigger Hulk Anger every turn, but there's plenty of those teams, and it's a path to a very quick win. (Takes around a minute when things go well). Just try to make every match in green or red, so Hulk tanks the damage.

Granted, it's also a path to a health pack after every fight, but you can spread out the matches over a long period of time, and I used that to get my 75 simulator wins with not much time investment.

Avoid teams with a high-level Kitty, or Hulk will go down too quickly. Some of the funnest experiences though are big cascades by the AI, where you have to watch Hulk's health drop like a rock (generating tons of Anger), and hope he survives. If he does, it's an instant win when the Anger resolves. so the margin between perfection and epic failure can be slim.

When something does go wrong, you can just retreat, so either way, each fight takes very little time.