3* Roster Advice and MMR Question

Doragon

Hey guys, I've restarted for two months and I'm currently in 3* land with 40% champed (167-180), 40% usable (120-142), and 20% unusable at 40.
I've got two questions I need help with:

1. Roster: I will be able to scrounge up 90 LL Tokens by the first week of Feb-2019, which is when I hear Kitty Pryde is going to go out of the LL Tokens rotation. I'm considering making the jump for 4* Grocket + Kitty before she rotates out because it seems like after Doom rotates in, LL Tokens will be pretty worthless for a while. Here are the issues - I won't get her fully covered, and I'll probably also need to dump half the 4* covers I get. Is it still worth it to increase my roster strength? Or should I wait until there's another meta-defining 5* before attempting the pull? 
2. MMR: Despite being deep in 3* land with no usable 4*s, I'm currently facing teams with 1-2 champed 4*s with the Essential 3* Hero. I'm still able to defeat them, but that'll require a round of health packs to recover from. That's pretty much why I'm tempted to make the jump, because if my MMR is somehow this **** already, I might as well just power up my roster with Gritty and face 3 champed 4*s with Kitty5 + Grocket4 + Daken3. I'm currently unable to break 1,000 points in PVP events (SCL7 T25). What were your experiences when you started to pull LL tokens in 3* land? Or is this scenario actually a pretty decent one?

Thanks in advance for all the help you can give me.

AardvarkPepper

AFAIK if you keep all your characters at level 70 then you see a significant change in MMR. And supposedly if you have one or perhaps more 5*s your MMR supposedly doesn't jump (so your level 255 doesn't make you face level 270ish 4*s that end up boosted)

But otherwise, once you start hitting higher points, you're going to get tougher matchups.

To answer the question - if you're not going to hoard up to get three 13-cover 5*s, then IMO you might as well go with 5* Kitty Pryde.  She's pretty nasty.

jtsings

   First off it might be helpful to know what shape your Grocket is in before answering this question.  What level and how many yellow covers you have for them.  If you have anything less that 5 yellow covers for them, my answer would be no.  It's too easy to lose strike tiles and if Kitty doesn't have 4 out she really loses her most effective power.

   If you do have a 5 yellow cover Grocket my advice would be you better treat it as a really big gamble and resolve yourself to understanding you're giving up a lot for a very low chance of getting an effective Kitty and live with the consequences that RNG may be unkind to you.  It's your call on whether the risk is worth it.  To me, personally, I'd rather build up my 4* roster because champing 2*s,3*s and 4*s give you other resources that help you further progress in the game.  Even a 1 or 2 yellow covered Kitty, to me, wouldn't be worth giving up all those possible resources/rewards.

   MMR is weird but the one thing I can tell you for sure the only way you'll meet someone at your level consistently is if you've got 2 level 550 5*s.  My highest 4* or 5* is at 296 and the higher I go in PVP I frequently get beat down by a max leveled required character and two 5* champs.  So I have lots of max champed 3*s and my highest level 4* can boost to just above 400 and the big flaw in "MMR" gives a 5* champ team my low 400's team as an "equivalent" match.  My guess would be that even with a pretty decently covered Kitty, once you reach 800+ you'll still get beat down by far superior teams, because that's how things go in PVP.

Waddles_Pines

MMR opens up at different point totals based on your roster strength.  Essentially up to a certain point total you will face people of similar MMR.  Once you reach the tipping point, then you're seen by everyone.  

Champing Kitty to run with an unchamped Grocket, and baby champed 3* in PVP might help you get to the tipping point faster, but once you reach it you'd probably be a punching bag to people who 2x champed 5*, plus the fully max champed 3*.  

The general consensus is if you're in 3* land, don't open LL.  The game really is designed for you to go up tier by tier.  I'm fully entrenched into 4* land and I hardly ever get to 1k.  I get beatdown by 5* before I get there.  You getting T25 and under 1k is really good.  

Also, in PVP, SCL only matters for rewards.  You still get hit by the same people.  It's not a measure of difficulty (just in case you thought it was).  PVE on the other hand SCL is difficulty level (and better prizes).

Additionally, if you're talking about character PVP (vs SHIELD Sim), you only get to chose 2 characters plus essential, so your 3*Daken team only works when it's his event.  The main problem with running a Champed Kitty is that her level would be such an anomaly to your current character levels.  She'd be 450+, Grocket at 140ish, and whatever 3* boosted (~260).  Your team would be a big target since you'd basically be playing 1 on 3 vs stronger rosters.  Also, you'd kinda be stuck using Kitty on every team, and she only excels with certain teammates.  

bbigler

I was in your same position 5 months ago when Okoye was the hottest thing.  First, I want to say that you're doing very well!  After 11 weeks from my restart, I had 20 x 3* Champs and 70 LL pulls, which is about where you are.  It sounds like you're struggling for roster slots, like I did.  4* covers are precious and you don't want to waste them.  So, if you pull now and don't buy HP to roster everyone, many will be wasted.  Kitty should be in Latest through the end of this upcoming season.  I would expect her to leave either on 2/18 or 2/25.  So, that gives you 1 or 2 more weeks than you're expecting.  With 105 pulls, the odds say that you should get 5 Kitty covers and about 4 x 4* BH.  I've looked at your gamependium roster (assuming it's up to date) and you don't have Grocket or Blade or Carnage or Clagger rostered, and Medusa has 1 cover.  Theoretically, you could get a 2/2/1 Kitty and a 2/2/1 Grocket, but that still isn't good enough to fight with.  So Gritty isn't an option for you right now.  You could BH Carnage instead; all you need is 1 black cover, and then pair him with Kitty.  At low levels, it's not a killer team, but it could work.  There is, of course, inherent risk with that plan as luck may not go your way.  Kitty is the key though.  If you get 1 or 2 yellow Kitty covers, then you could pair her with 3*Daken / 3*Blade / 3*Fist, which you do have fully covered.  But to make Kitty effective, you would need to level her up as much as possible. 

To answer your question about opening your hoard or not......I did not when I was in your position.  I knew Okoye was great, but I would rather have 3 fully covered 5* in the future, than a half-covered great one now.  I waited until I had 200 pulls and a top tier 5* was in Latest.  That was at week 23.  I would have liked to hoard longer, but my 4* progression was stalled and I knew Kitty was awesome.  Waiting was definitely the best decision, plus I wanted to finish champing the 3* tier before building the 4* tier.   If I were you, I would stay the course champing 3*s, rostering 4*s and hoarding LL pulls.  I understand well that this period in the 3* tier feels slow and difficult, but your hard work will pay off in the future.  Soon enough we'll get another 5* that's worth breaking a hoard for. 

To answer your other question about MMR, you need to understand that MMR takes into account the boost list for the week.  So, your boosted champed 3*s are near the same level as non-boosted 4* champs.  That's why you see them regularly in PVP.  Opening a hoard isn't going to change that either.  What will change your MMR is getting some 5*s and leveling them up to 350 or champing some 4*s and then they get boosted for the week.  That's when you'll face boosted 4* champ teams instead.  For now, bring your best 3* teams to the table and take down those 4* champs.  I liked IM40 and Strange.  My backup team was Cage and Fist. 

Waddles_Pines

I really need to learn how to read one day   I thought you were trying to champ out Kitty.  Anywho, at this point your biggest issue will be HP for roster slots.  That's one of the reasons not to open LT/spend CP until you're ready.  By the time you're ready to be a full on 4* player or 5*, chances are there'll be another 5* that'll be worth chasing.

If you want the Kitty-lite experience, bonus hero Nico.  Once Kitty leaves latest legends, it'll be easier to get bonus Nico's over Kitty...

Doragon

AardvarkPepper said:

To answer the question - if you're not going to hoard up to get three 13-cover 5*s, then IMO you might as well go with 5* Kitty Pryde.  She's pretty nasty.

Well I'm really just trying to explore my options here, it's really frustrating not being able to clinch top positions when everyone has 5* rosters and have 1.2K points in PVP. And yeah, facing Kitty + Daken teams in 3* PVP is what prompted me to ask the question.

jtsings said:

   If you do have a 5 yellow cover Grocket my advice would be you better treat it as a really big gamble and resolve yourself to understanding you're giving up a lot for a very low chance of getting an effective Kitty and live with the consequences that RNG may be unkind to you.  It's your call on whether the risk is worth it. To me, personally, I'd rather build up my 4* roster because champing 2*s,3*s and 4*s give you other resources that help you further progress in the game.  Even a 1 or 2 yellow covered Kitty, to me, wouldn't be worth giving up all those possible resources/rewards.

Honestly, I haven't had a single pull for Grocket4 yet. I was counting on pulling him with BH while busting open the LL Token stash. But yeah, that's a really good point, thanks man.

Waddles_Pines said:

Also, in PVP, SCL only matters for rewards.  You still get hit by the same people.  It's not a measure of difficulty (just in case you thought it was).  PVE on the other hand SCL is difficulty level (and better prizes).

Additionally, if you're talking about character PVP (vs SHIELD Sim), you only get to chose 2 characters plus essential, so your 3*Daken team only works when it's his event.  The main problem with running a Champed Kitty is that her level would be such an anomaly to your current character levels.  She'd be 450+, Grocket at 140ish, and whatever 3* boosted (~260).  Your team would be a big target since you'd basically be playing 1 on 3 vs stronger rosters.  Also, you'd kinda be stuck using Kitty on every team, and she only excels with certain teammates.  

My intention was to not level Kitty at all to put a soft cap on my MMR, but yeah I hadn't considered hitting the same point tier and still being bashed silly by people with a full 4-5* team. And oh I mentioned SCL because I can get T1 SCL6 (which nets me a 4* cover) at 850pts, whereas I can barely get to T25 SCL7 (that's the lowest tier for 3x3* covers) with 850pts. I understand that the MMR still pits me against the same opponents, but my point total requirement is significantly reduced at SCL6, which I compete in when I either don't have HP to roster the 4* or when I need the 3* covers.

Waddles_Pines said:

I really need to learn how to read one day   I thought you were trying to champ out Kitty.  Anywho, at this point your biggest issue will be HP for roster slots.  That's one of the reasons not to open LT/spend CP until you're ready.  By the time you're ready to be a full on 4* player or 5*, chances are there'll be another 5* that'll be worth chasing.

If you want the Kitty-lite experience, bonus hero Nico.  Once Kitty leaves latest legends, it'll be easier to get bonus Nico's over Kitty...

No worries man, and frankly speaking I don't even have Nico yet. My 4* roster is abysmal. I BHed Peggy before I heard that Kitty was leaving the LL tokens, and that's when I considered BHing Grocket instead.

bbigler said:

I was in your same position 5 months ago when Okoye was the hottest thing.  First, I want to say that you're doing very well!  After 11 weeks from my restart, I had 20 x 3* Champs and 70 LL pulls, which is about where you are.  It sounds like you're struggling for roster slots, like I did.  4* covers are precious and you don't want to waste them.  So, if you pull now and don't buy HP to roster everyone, many will be wasted.  Kitty should be in Latest through the end of this upcoming season.  I would expect her to leave either on 2/18 or 2/25.  So, that gives you 1 or 2 more weeks than you're expecting.  With 105 pulls, the odds say that you should get 5 Kitty covers and about 4 x 4* BH.  I've looked at your gamependium roster (assuming it's up to date) and you don't have Grocket or Blade or Carnage or Clagger rostered, and Medusa has 1 cover.  Theoretically, you could get a 2/2/1 Kitty and a 2/2/1 Grocket, but that still isn't good enough to fight with.  So Gritty isn't an option for you right now.  You could BH Carnage instead; all you need is 1 black cover, and then pair him with Kitty.  At low levels, it's not a killer team, but it could work.  There is, of course, inherent risk with that plan as luck may not go your way.  Kitty is the key though.  If you get 1 or 2 yellow Kitty covers, then you could pair her with 3*Daken / 3*Blade / 3*Fist, which you do have fully covered.  But to make Kitty effective, you would need to level her up as much as possible. 

To answer your question about opening your hoard or not......I did not when I was in your position.  I knew Okoye was great, but I would rather have 3 fully covered 5* in the future, than a half-covered great one now.  I waited until I had 200 pulls and a top tier 5* was in Latest.  That was at week 23.  I would have liked to hoard longer, but my 4* progression was stalled and I knew Kitty was awesome.  Waiting was definitely the best decision, plus I wanted to finish champing the 3* tier before building the 4* tier.   If I were you, I would stay the course champing 3*s, rostering 4*s and hoarding LL pulls.  I understand well that this period in the 3* tier feels slow and difficult, but your hard work will pay off in the future.  Soon enough we'll get another 5* that's worth breaking a hoard for. 

To answer your other question about MMR, you need to understand that MMR takes into account the boost list for the week.  So, your boosted champed 3*s are near the same level as non-boosted 4* champs.  That's why you see them regularly in PVP.  Opening a hoard isn't going to change that either.  What will change your MMR is getting some 5*s and leveling them up to 350 or champing some 4*s and then they get boosted for the week.  That's when you'll face boosted 4* champ teams instead.  For now, bring your best 3* teams to the table and take down those 4* champs.  I liked IM40 and Strange.  My backup team was Cage and Fist. 

Ah good to know that there's someone out there that experienced the same dilemma as I am right now. My Gamependium roster is up-to-date, I just get lazy constantly updating the champ levels for the 3*s so I keep them at 167. Honestly, this helped me a lot, thanks for taking the effort. I was intending to keep Kitty at her initial level to soft-cap my MMR, but I guess waiting a few more months before acquiring a large hoard of LL tokens for the next 5* will be better when I don't need to dump all the excess 4* covers. Plus, this will probably **** my progress from here on out. Fair enough, I'll wait at least until I champ all my 3*s before considering busting open the hoard.

And yeah I love using IM40/Strange on the offense, it's a ridiculously fast combo that can lock down boosted characters, pretty **** on the defense though. For Shield SIM I like IM40/Luke/KK for rainbow coverage. Which given that I'm listing 3*s instead of 4*s I guess confirms the fact that I should be waiting.

TPF Alexis

Yeah, I'd hold off. Another good 5* will come along, and probably with better companions in Latest than Kingpin and Cable. Your roster just isn't ready to absorb all the 4* covers you'd pick up in the process. Rather than timing it based on champing all the 3*, I think a better metric might be how many of the 4* you have rostered, and what your HP income is like, so you can make a more solid estimate of how many 4* covers you might have to waste. The two may well coincide, but I'd look at it from a cover waste angle rather than roster strength.

This is just my gut feeling, combined with how my MMR has changed as I've advanced, but I think the 3* MMR is stuck in kind of a vicious cycle, where relatively few 3* players play much PvP, so the system has trouble finding good matches, and then it tends to "round up", so 3* players get harder matches, which in turn discourages them from playing PvP, completing the cycle.

Also, because the 3* tier isn't as broad, there are more options as a 4* player to try to find a counter for a higher level team, while 3* have to kind of just brute force it as best they can.

DAZ0273

I think you would look back and regret this if you had something like a 50% waste just chasing Kitty.

I can emphasise with the pain of not having the meta - during 2017 when R4G/Gamora/Vulture joined Medusa as the must haves and were in the newest 12 4* with boosted odds during vaulting I had the most terrible luck and failed to obtain any of them with an absolute low of obtaining exactly zero Vulture covers. I didn't actually champ any meta 4* character until they had finished vaulting and they were long gone from the boosted odds. It was pretty painful but in the end you get past it and learn to play around it. Chasing 5* is an even harder endeavour. Doing both - Kitty and R4G is probably gonna be painful.