Transition to 4* land

Doragon

I've champed all my 2/3*s. I've also champed C4rol and Chavez, and rostered all the 4*s besides Jubilee (I've also BHed Vulture). For context, I play both PVE and PVP, and go for placement when it makes sense. My teams are either Chavez + 2 5-stars for high match damage critical tiles, or using C4rol/Chavez/Strange for rainbow coverage with burst damage and stun.

• Which 4* characters should I focus on that can synergise well with the characters I have?
• Is it normal to take ridiculously long to get covers at the 4* tier?
• Do they ever change the champion rewards? I'm looking at a level 182 3* R&G and wondering if I should wait for them to change the rewards to a 4* R&G from Drax.

Waddles_Pines

Wasp - creates special tiles, and her blue one turn countdown condition can buff tiles to ridiculous levels with Carol

Mockingbird - with America, you're going after AP for America's crits anyaways. with bobbi you get free casts/AP gain when enemy makes a match 4.  Since America has no fireable powers, you can make the 3rd character in your team be one of those high damage/ high AP cost  ones to maximize the free power casting

Clagger - you need black/yellow for Carol.  Their attack tiles are ripe for buffing.

Rogue - saves you healthpacks and can neuter the other team.

Domino - creates black for Carol, or Vulture (who you wisely have as a priority, Iron Fist also pairs nicely with Vulture...)

Every character (well most, looking at you Talos and Emma) has their strengths.  But, you have to start somewhere... oh, Carol and America don't necessarily run great together (not horrible either, just not fast) unless you have a red outlet for the AP gain from Carol.  


- yes, it takes a long time to cover a 4 unless they're new (new ones are rewarded as placement rewards more often)

- they have changed rewards in the past for 3*, but not in a long time.  I think they changed some because mult 3* fed the same 4. Now that the 3* tier is pretty static, don't expect more changes.

bbigler

If you're having trouble covering 4*s (meaning that it takes a long time) then you probably have to take what you can get instead of targeting certain ones.  But if you're not having trouble covering them, (which is maybe implied by you already champing the 2 best) then here's my suggested pairings not mentioned above:

Ghost + Chavez + [Hood]:  depending on the level of your 5*s, Ghost may have higher match damage, plus she has a good red nuke, which can be recurring and even helped by the Hood.

Carol + Rhulk + Grocket: team to fight high match damage, which takes advantage of Carol's buffing.  Also works with a high level 3*Hulk and/or 3*Daken.  The Hulks on this team could be replaced by XFDP.

Carol + Star Lord + Grocket: good against PVE goons; you already start with beefy strikes, then Carol buffs them even more from Star Lord's CD tiles.

Bishop - is generally awesome in Shield Sim and can stop threats quickly until you can deal with them.

Vulture - is a 1 man band capable of killing an entire team by himself

Medusa - is generally awesome and even works with Carol.

Getting covers in the 4* tier is supposed to take much longer than the 3* tier.  Furthermore, 5* progress is meant to be even slower than 4* progress.  So, set your expectations properly.  If you can champ one 4* per week, then you're doing very well.  I'm guessing the average is about every 10 days or so for 4* players.  And don't hold your breath for 3*Grocket's champ rewards changing.  I would bet money that it won't happen. 

SMZ210

Best 4* characters so far....
1.) Carol (Cpt. Marvel) (w C&D)
2.) America Chavez (w Mockingbird)
3.) Rocket & Groot (w Nico)
4.) Medusa (w Carnage, Nico)
5.) Nico (w Carnage, Medusa)

Doragon

Waddles_Pines said:

Mockingbird - with America, you're going after AP for America's crits anyaways. with bobbi you get free casts/AP gain when enemy makes a match 4.  Since America has no fireable powers, you can make the 3rd character in your team be one of those high damage/ high AP cost ones to maximize the free power casting.

Thanks man, didn't know Mockingbird synergised this well with Chavez, I'll focus on her after I pick up Vulture.

bbigler said:

If you're having trouble covering 4*s (meaning that it takes a long time) then you probably have to take what you can get instead of targeting certain ones.  But if you're not having trouble covering them, (which is maybe implied by you already champing the 2 best) then here's my suggested pairings not mentioned above:

Ghost + Chavez + [Hood]:  depending on the level of your 5*s, Ghost may have higher match damage, plus she has a good red nuke, which can be recurring and even helped by the Hood.

Carol + Rhulk + Grocket: team to fight high match damage, which takes advantage of Carol's buffing.  Also works with a high level 3*Hulk and/or 3*Daken.  The Hulks on this team could be replaced by XFDP.

Carol + Star Lord + Grocket: good against PVE goons; you already start with beefy strikes, then Carol buffs them even more from Star Lord's CD tiles.

Bishop - is generally awesome in Shield Sim and can stop threats quickly until you can deal with them.

Vulture - is a 1 man band capable of killing an entire team by himself

Medusa - is generally awesome and even works with Carol.

Getting covers in the 4* tier is supposed to take much longer than the 3* tier.  Furthermore, 5* progress is meant to be even slower than 4* progress.  So, set your expectations properly.  If you can champ one 4* per week, then you're doing very well.  I'm guessing the average is about every 10 days or so for 4* players.  And don't hold your breath for 3*Grocket's champ rewards changing.  I would bet money that it won't happen. 

Thanks for the recommendations, I was looking at Ghost as well to synergise with Chavez, but I've been picking up a lot of Rhulk covers these days as well. Okay, so on to my next question. How does one champ one 4* every 10 days? I don't exactly get to pick which 4*s I get. I had to BH C4rol and Chavez for ages and open many Classic Legends tokens before finally getting them champed. It's impossible for me to fight for PVP T5 placement (I'm either T10 or T25), and PVE hasn't had any good 4*s worth fighting for placement in a while.

TPF Alexis

Eventually, you hit a sort of critical mass where you've got a bunch of 4* fully covered, and it's just a matter of getting the ISO to Champ them. At that point, depending on how you play, you're going to be champing one every 7-10 days or so. Looking at your Roster, I figure you're probably still a couple of months away from that, but you will get there if you keep going.

Doragon

TPF Alexis said:

Eventually, you hit a sort of critical mass where you've got a bunch of 4* fully covered, and it's just a matter of getting the ISO to Champ them. At that point, depending on how you play, you're going to be champing one every 7-10 days or so. Looking at your Roster, I figure you're probably still a couple of months away from that, but you will get there if you keep going.

Ah okay yeah that makes more sense where it's an ISO requirement rather than collecting covers. Until I can start consistently getting T5 in PVE, I think I'm about a year away from that.

HoundofShadow

America Chavez's best ability is churning out critical tiles.

Ghost is the best partner for her if you want to speed up matches in PvPs and in matches against tile movers in PvEs. Ghost + America Chavez + ap boost+1 = matches usually end quickly... Until the enemy teams luck into cascades or match-4 or more.

America Chavez + critical tile = higher match damage. So, you could team her up with characters who take advantage of this like Valkyrie to activate her passive ability quicker.

2. C4rol is basically all about her buffs. So, anyone who can spam CD tiles and SAP tiles easily are good partners for her. I find that Wasp is a little slow in the beginning, but C4rol + Wasp is good for 3-4 rounds of wave nodes in PvE.

Tried and tested teams even in 3* lands are C4rol+Loki+Daken. C4rol + Beast could be nice as well since Beast's blue ability cost 6ap. I had a lot of fun with C4rol's green passive too.  

As for champing 4* every 10 days also, it probably depends on how competitive the players are, how much they spent, how competitive their alliances are. Even though 4* progress looks slow, but once the ball starts rolling, you will be dealing with waves of 4* screaming for your attention to champ them.

Currently, I have champed 8 4* and I have been a 100% FTP player for 400+ days. I have about 30 4* that are soon to be champed. Many of them are 1-2 covers away and I expect that my 6.5 million iso-8 will be withered down to fewer than 10,000 iso-8 when things start moving. Saved Cover is a wonderful feature that helps in some way with this wave of 4* hitting  13 covers. I'm actually glad that some of my 12-cover 4* are getting dupe covers instead of covers that upgrade them to 13-cover champion state. 

Doragon

HoundofShadow said:

Currently, I have champed 8 4* and I have been a 100% FTP player for 400+ days. I have about 30 4* that are soon to be champed. Many of them are 1-2 covers away and I expect that my 6.5 million iso-8 will be withered down to fewer than 10,000 iso-8 when things start moving. Saved Cover is a wonderful feature that helps in some way with this wave of 4* hitting  13 covers. I'm actually glad that some of my 12-cover 4* are getting dupe covers instead of covers that upgrade them to 13-cover champion state. 

You must be a very hardcore F2P player with 4-star champs if you have so much ISO-8 after 400+ days.

Okay, I guess my question is this, I'm facing a tough time with Chavez/C4rol/Featured for the PVP events unless I farm the 3-star teams (I'm hitting 900pts and calling it quits). However, I do have Cardusa with 12/13 covers, and I'm wondering if that'll make my PVP climb easier. I've heard that Cardusa is too slow to shield hop with, but is it also too slow a combination to do PVP climbs? Before reaching 4-star territory, I never knew that combinations were more important than single strong characters haha.

HoundofShadow

I won't call myself hardcore but I play competitively: Top 10 in PvE SCL 6/7 and top 50 in PvP SCL 9. 

I can't advise you on Cardusa. But I've played against them in Simulator. I find that just the animation of the attack tiles for both teams will increase your match time considerably. That's probably why they are slow to climb but they are probably healthpack-savers due to Medusa's passive healing/ap gains.

Ultimately, whether to use them or not depends on your playstyle.  I break up my PvP playtime over 2 days and I float between 400-500 points. Timing in PvP is important as well. I find that hitting 900 points 10-16 hours before the PvP ends is easier. There are much fewer retaliations.