Second Series - How Are Support Circuits Treating You?

JHawkInc

So we've just completed our second run of the Support Circuits. For a refresher, each had 16 supports available, the first had Avengers Tower, Chimichanga, Element Guns, The Blackbird, Korg, Lucky, Cull Obsidian, Kimoyo Beads, The Dora Milaje, Quantum Realm, Royal Talon Fighter, Hulkling, Pocket Radio, Yaro Root, The Tinkerer, and Victorious.

This second run had the Quinjet, Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw, Ancestral Plane, Shuri's Lab, Spider-Sense, Wasp Gauntlets, Stepford Cuckoos, Carol's Communicator, Chewie, the Carol Corps, Taskmaster's Sword, Hope Summers, Vanessa Fisk, Victorious, and Atlantis.

Here's my personal progress, I'd like to hear how everyone else is doing. (just for the record, I've always chased supports as much as a mostly-F2P player can, occasionally grabbing HP deals and buying daily deals to grab vault tokens)

For the first set, I managed 80 pulls from the vault. All of the tokens from each Support Circuit, usually one from placement (I found it was pretty relaxed to place high enough in SCL9 for at least one extra token). I managed to grab a Rank 2 Yaro Root from the vault (an improvement over the Rank 1 I already had or a dupe, I forget which), 2 Master tokens, 2 Advanced, 4 Beginner, 8 Red ISO pulls (we'll count that since this event is about advancing our Supports, even if actual Support pulls are way more desirable than the Red ISO itself). I then managed to pull the only 4* Cover and five 3* Covers (better than 2's, even if not Supports themselves, so I took note of them for some reason). My tokens got me Rank 4 Korg and Avengers Tower (fun to run Thor and Iron Man with those and start matches with free yellow AP), and a Rank 3 Blackbird. And I grabbed a Rank 1 Victorious (one of the few supports I didn't have at all).

For this second set, I only did 60 total pulls. I only got 2 Beginner tokens, but again got 2 Advanced, and RNG let me pull all three Master tokens this time around. Got less Red ISO than before and no 4*, but more 3*s than normal. I managed to snag a Rank 1 Carol Corps from the vault, but it was a dupe. The tokens gave me a Rank 4 Stepford Cuckoos, and a Rank 4 Chewie. Part of the reason I had fewer pulls for this set is because I spent HP in the vault that had all of the Captain Marvel supports, because I originally didn't have Chewie or Carol's Communicator. The Nick Fury costume was nice, but I was actually working on clearing out that vault so I could get the Supports, where I managed to get both the Rank 2 Chewie and the Rank 3 Carol Communicator. The Rank 4 Chewie was pulled afterwards, after I had put the effort into grinding out extra HP to pull from Fury's vault.

Ultimately, a quick glance tells me I'm gaining new Supports at roughly similar rates (I still need 12, and half of them are Infinity Stones), and I'm building up Rank 4's at fairly equal rates (I had the Royal Talon Fighter, Element Guns, Hydra Henchmen, and Spider-Sense before, and gained Korg and Avengers Tower during the first set, and the Stepford Cuckoos and Chewie in the second set). And that's with fewer pulls from the Support Circuit Vault the second time around.

I definitely appear to be making more progress with Supports than I was before, which is a good thing. Except, that requires me to pretend Rank 5 Supports don't count. Because I still haven't gotten any of those. I'm not even gaining them fast enough to guess how many months/years it would take to finish them all. (as a side note, half of my Rank 4's are at level 200, I definitely see a point where I have Red ISO to spend and am having trouble actually ranking up my Supports in order to use it) So in that regard, I'm not actually making any progress at all.

The real downside is that I feel like I'm having an "above average" experience with Supports. And Supports don't have a perfect implementation to begin with (too many tied to specific characters, then almost no reason to USE those characters in the vast majority of the game, not to mention being meaningless in half the gamemodes we play). So I feel like if I'm having a "good but not great" experience, and my RNG has been particularly lucky, it means others are getting even less out of the system.

So what do you think? How has your experience been? Do Support Circuits fix the availability problems we had before, or not? What could be changed or improved upon? Thoughts on Supports going forward? (I could ramble about this for a bit longer, but as is already evident, I ramble a bit anyway, so I'll save something for another post or thread so I don't bore people to death with too many walls of text)

MrBowers

From the first run I got a 2* tinkerer and the second run I got a 3* stepford cuckoos which was the apart from that everything else I’ve got so far hasn’t been worth mentioning. This is all from tokens awarded I didn’t buy any extra

ZootSax

There's only been two weeks of the Support Circuit where I really felt like I did above average with my token draws, with most of weeks played have resulted in 4/5 of my pulls (I haven't done the daily deals; only used tokens I won in the event) being 2* characters or regular Iso-8.  That being said, since the event started I've made significant progress by acquiring eight new supports, bringing my total to 36/50 (with six of the remaining ones being the Infinity Stone, which I don't play anywhere near competitively enough to consider being plausible for me to acquire).  All of the new supports have been Ranks 1 or 2, although I did get a Rank 4 Ancestral Plane to replace the Rank 1 version I previously had.  Considering how casual I play (to the 8CP in SCL7 for normal PVE and either full progression or all three bosses in SCL5 Support Circuit, depending on how much time I have that week), the lack of higher-rank supports isn't as troubling to me.  Without playing much PVP and not usually getting full progression in PVE means that I usually lack the Red Iso-8 to level my supports too much anyway, so I'm shooting for a broad range of Lv100 supports until I get a surplus or run out of supports I'm interested in at lower levels.  


Not surprisingly, the largest driver for my progress on getting new supports has been the cycle of vaulting for supports being available in tokens rather than anything inherent to the Support Circuit event itself.  Vaulting of 4* characters turned me from a 3* player to a 4* player, so it's hardly surprising that I've seen similar results for collecting supports.


All in all, I'm satisfied with the event.  I understand the complaint from people who feel they would need Rank 5 supports to stay competitive at high levels and that those are less available now, however I'm not in that situation myself.  I would also prefer if they put the Support Circuit event during 48 hour PVE subs to reduce the daily playtime to reach progression, but again this affects me less than people who actually do play to progression more regularly (any many high-end players seem to hate 48 hours subs on top of that).

Twomp_thaDJ

Honestly I’ve just come to the conclusion “ it is what it is “ we can no longer say there isn’t a way to get support.. even if it’s still a very minuscule chance of getting them it has moved the needle positively. They gave us a vault that “ helps gain supports “ even if the vault is too big it’s more than what we had previously. They gave us an event (1 day grind fest) with the chance of being t3 out of 1000 just to get an actual token * but t50 does get u some chances at the vault, see previous statement * Again.. this is what we have to work with. It’s no where close to making supports a real part of the game for the bigger part of the community but it’s bettet than it was 3 months ago.. just my $0.02

user311

I had 50 pulls and I got something like 3 unique supports, 2 2 stars and 1 1 star.  I also got 2 3 stars but they were duplicates and wasted. 

I don't like supports in the current design that they can't be ranked up.

Jormagund

Only pulling the twenty tokens I get from progression/placement.  But lucked out this time with my only support related pull being a master token.   RNG was my friend and I got a five star support... the one I would have chosen, Wasp Gauntlets.

Only levelled it from my previous rank 2, level 100, to level 150 but it is now equipped to 3 star strange (I'm in that tier of play) giving him 331 match damage per blue dial and healing him for nearly 1400 when enemies fire powers.  Makes a huge difference to PVE already and I'm looking forward to a goon heavy PVE so I can really test it out.

I've tried SCL8 PVE before when the boost list has been favourable but I think the support makes enough of a difference that I could play it regardless.

That and the free Wong means I'm quite happy with my recent supports progression.

Kishida

Great for the 10cp progression, pretty much a failure for actually getting high-level supports to players. Bought daily deals the first go-round, spent nothing on the second vault: negligible difference in results. Managed a couple 3* supports from each series, but I can't really consider this anything approaching a success.

SaltyK

same as always, clear for cp and move on, there are better things to do. difference between top 20 and top 200 rewards is too marginal to put in the extra effort.

jredd

pros: interesting variety of enemies. extra resources.

cons: too much grinding on top of an already grind heavy schedule. doesn't do enough to actually ensure getting/improving supports. 

suggestions: reduce the amount of clears (to 3) or increase the duration of the event (6 days). get rid of all the filler in the vault (2*, iso, etc). eliminate placement.

HoundofShadow

I opened 49 vault tokens this round and I think I was pretty lucky. I didn't open as many previously.

I have gotten:

4 Advanced Tokens, 3 Beginner Tokens and 1 Chewie Support.

Most of them are dupes, which is normal because I have already gotten majority of the non-limited Supports. 

I would love to see some Ascension system to increase the Rank of Supports for players who have rostered majority of the Supports. It could be something similar to the conversion system used in Saved Covers.

Polares

I still don't have even one, at 4 or 5 stars. Supports are a pain, they are still super difficult to get.

bluewolf

I don't quite know my exact pull results, but I did pretty well.  I have pulled, I think, 5 Master tokens from the two vaults and various Advanced and Beginners, and a few of the direct Supports.

I am up to 36 out of the (now) 44.  Two of the most recent group, Vanessa Fisk and Carol Communicator, I didn't pull yet.  In the first group I missed Pocket Radio, The Dora Milaje, and Yaro Root.  Leaving Sp//Dr, Mirror Image, and maybe Kra-Van in the next group (starting next week) to try to get.  Some of the ones I don't have, have little interest to me anyway.

So far I have 6 Rank 4's - Lucky, Quantum Realm, Royal Talon Fighter, Avengers Tower, Quinjet, Ancestral Plane - and one Rank 5, The Blackbird.

Since the devs seem to be treating Supports at the 6* tier and it seems obvious players who want to somehow get Rank 5s have a looooong road ahead of them, I feel like I'm doing pretty well as someone who hasn't spent any major resources (although I did some 10 packs here and there).

GrimSkald

Since they closed the vault I'm not sure how much I pulled, I'm afraid.  It was roughly as much as my first time around, so probably around 50.  I tracked my pulls, but just in raw numbers not when I made them.

I seemed to do worse for support tokens second time around - first time I drew an advanced and probably 3-4 beginner.  Second time I drew 4-5 beginner tokens, that's it.  I have had three Master token pulls, total, since they implemented supports, I believe all three were daily awards, maybe two out of three.  I don't have any rank 5 supports.

I did draw a lot of rank 1 supports that I didn't have, so it did increase the breadth of my supports.  I didn't draw any rank 3s this time around.

All in all, I'd say that higher level supports are much rarer than their utility would indicate.  They're super rare, and they don't affect the game that much.  The danger here is that supports will increasingly be irrelevant and a source of frustration to newer players.

To sum up, while Support Circuit has increased access to lower level supports, they have actually decreased access to rank 5 supports in the process, and I think that's a very bad thing.

Vhailorx

My experience was much closer to what I suspect is "good for a veteran" this time around (as opposed to last time when I had stupidly good fortune and got my first 2x 5* supports).

I got 30ish pulls from the vault and ended up getting 3x advanced tokens, 1x master token, plus a bunch of chaff. 

I have not yet opened the support tokens.

crackninja

Finally got a support token from the vault...it was a master support token...which ended up being a duplicate 3* support.
I can see that these will slowly fill in my missing low level supports, so i guess that's something.

spidyjedi84

Pulled just shy of 50. I got a few dupes this time around, but also nabbed Vanessa Fisk 1 star, Vintage Shield 2-star, Carol Communicator 3-star, Stepford Cuckoos 1-star. I'm down to just 10 I still need to roster, outside of the unobtainable Infinity Stones. I have 4 I am just 17 levels away from 100 on. My goal is to level them as I get RISO equally, so it's not as much of a hurdle to level supports who obrain more abilities/ levels in the future.

mega ghost

I played a couple of nodes on the debut event, but found the timing too restrictive and the extra grind not worth it. I haven't participated in these or pulled from their vaults since.

Borstock

I got a 3* Tower. That's the most valuable support I've gotten since support circuits started.