COMPLETED! The race to Max Champ a 3-star: Favorites vs 2-star Feeder?

sambrookjm

Recently, I max champed two 3-stars.  Punisher, who was my last 3-star to reach this lofty goal, and Captain America, who was my first 3-star to get max champed twice.  So I'm going to be running a little experiment for a while:

Is it faster to max champ a 3-star if they're your only favorite at the 3-star tier than it is to champ one with a 2-star feeder?

I've set Punisher as my sole favorite character in the 3-star level, (Does *anyone* else have him as their favorite?) and he'll remain there until the experiment is over.  Has anyone else tried something like this?  If so, how did your characters do?

Anyone want to take some guesses as to who wins the race, and how many covers the second place character will have at the end?

I fully expect Punisher to win the race, since he'll likely get one or two covers a week just through bonuses on Standard tokens, but I never expected to champ Cap twice in the time it took Punisher to get there once.  Likewise, I think Cap will be around level 190 when Punisher gets maxed out.

I'll try to keep this thread updated with the progress every once in a while, in case anyone is interested.  

Jormagund

I'd be amazed if Punisher didn't win.  As you said you can probably expect 2-3  BHs per week from standard through heroic tokens.  Call it three and you'd need 63 covers of a specific two star per week to keep up.

I'm still in three star land and my top three are Strange (229), Ragnorak (227) and IM40 (201).  Although I've had six Ragnorak covers from Ares I've given all three decent spells as BH.  I split my BH between the 3 star I'm chasing, currently IM40 so he catches up, and someone who isn't champed yet.  Even so he's easily outpaced everyone with a feeder but Ragnorak who was already a much higher level.

bluewolf

I will be curious about your results.  Assuming you don't hoard any vault tokens at all, you'll get a pretty large amount of 2's so we shall see - there are a lot of tokens in the game that provide no chance at a bonus hero.  The Support Circuit vault would have helped your 2/3 Caps a lot!  

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I happen to have 3Pun bonused at the moment.  My current strategy is maxing as many 3's as possible to mine the LTs and CPs since Doom is leaving early and I'm waiting for Kingpin to leave.

I know he's not that good, but I'm a completionist, darn it.  I only have about 138 pulls at the moment and one yellow cover.  I expect he won't get finished...

DAZ0273

Based upon my experience of champing the 3* tier after bonus heroes were first introduced my money is on them, I finished off characters from scratch in sometimes just week and would expect that to be a consistent theme. That said, my first max champed 3* was Patch without bonus heroing. Mmm. Cool experiment, definitely interested as to how it goes.

Dormammu

The Bonus Hero will win, hands down. 3-star BH covers come a lot more rapidly than feeder covers off 2-stars.

Daredevil217

Dormammu said:

The Bonus Hero will win, hands down. 3-star BH covers come a lot more rapidly than feeder covers off 2-stars.

Pretty much this, the experiment is not who will win, but by how much. I wonder how many max champ Punishers you could get in the time it would take to finish one fed character (who will never be set as a bonus hero).

Kolence

Yeah, the only question is by how much is BH faster than 2* feeder.

I had lazy Cap as first 3* to 266 and first one re-champed and leading the 2nd wave of 3*s. Some time after that (don't remember Cap's exact level, but I think Kamala was not too far behind) I focused BH on Kamala and Medusa to finish Black Bolt. Got two Kamala's to 266 before 2nd Cap reached it. After that I BH'd Psylocke to this day. Currently, all have a 266 and a dupe - Cap is at 189, Kamala at 191 and Psylocke at 184.

I'm not sure what levels Cap and Kamala were at, when I changed BH. If it can be seen from gamependium roster history, I don't wanna just now. Maybe later...  

P.S.
No hoarding at all, except legendary pulls for a week or a few, waiting for a coverd 5* to leave, when that happens.

ThaRoadWarrior

Just popping in to say Punish3r is my 3*bh until 265 only because I’m trying to get the last blue I need for Punishe4. Currently 232.

sambrookjm

After a week or so, I guess the question should be "Will the 3-star Favorite get champed before the 2-star feeder for the 3-star?"  The 3-star Punisher is sitting at 4/2/4 right now, while 3-star Cap is sitting at 0/1/1.  The 2-star Cap is at a nice even 3/3/3.

No extra tokens have been pulled beyond what's been earned for events and seasons.  Tokens from events have been pulled, but none of the the Deadpool Daily tokens.

sambrookjm

Since 3-star Cap was today's Deadpool Daily cover, here's the latest progress report.

3-star Punisher - Champed at LVL 172, thanks to a 2-for-1 cover boost from a Standard token.  The normal cover was the 3-star Punisher, which led to a bonus Punisher cover.  Sitting nicely at 3/5/5.

3-star Cap - Thanks to the Deadpool Daily today and a recent cover from the 2-star Cap, he's now at 0/1/3.

Since it seems to be a better comparison and a closer race:

2-star Cap - Champed at LVL 106.  Also at 3/5/5.

sambrookjm

Mindlessly clicking through the covers earned at the end of the season, I accidentally bought a Heroic 10-pack.  It contained a normal Punisher cover, to go along with a bonus Punisher cover.  So here's the next update:

Punisher:  LVL 178.  Six covers in the last 10 days.  While this rate won't likely keep up, it's faster than I was anticipating.

3-star Cap:  LVL 78, sitting at 1/2/3 distribution.  One cover from the 2-star feeder, and one from a random token.  He'll get champed by the time my Punisher gets maxed out, but I'm not sure how many champ levels he'll actually get.


2-star Cap: LVL 118.  Progressing somewhat faster than the bonus 3-star hero.  Next 3-star cover Cap from him is in 9 levels, at 127.

ThaRoadWarrior

While we're racing, my own Punish3r has gone from 232 to 253 since you've been doing this.

sambrookjm

And Bonus Punisher just hit LVL 183, which means I get a 4-star Punisher cover.  That puts PunMax at LVL 289, so I'm just a few dozen bonus 3-stars away from adding another LT to the hoard.  It's not six covers in ten days, but five covers in 11 days isn't too shabby at all.

In a nice bit of symmetry, 2-star Cap just hit LVL 127 (strangely enough, from a token from the Team Iron Man Vault.) which gives me another 3-star Cap cover.  He's now at LVL 104, with a cover distribution of 1/3/4.

That makes it nine levels for the two star in the time it took to get five levels for the bonus three star, and two covers for the normal three star.

AXP_isme

sambrookjm said:

In a nice bit of symmetry, 2-star Cap just hit LVL 127 (strangely enough, from a token from the Team Iron Man Vault.)...

I find this really irritating. Is is difficult to curate the content of the vaults? Couldn’t they just tie the vault content to the boost lists in a similar way to how the normal pve vaults are tied to the set of featured characters? It might be a little trickier but it would at least be thematically consistent. That way we wouldn’t end up in a situation where defeating cap gets you a token, the reward from which is cap. It’s just lazy.

”well done avengers, you’ve just defeated Ultron. Here’s you reward: Thanos!”

I just think that a little care wouldn’t go amiss. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I hit my season 10-pack today, got a pair of bonus Punishers out of it. I'm now up to 265, so I've completed 4* Punisher. But since I'm actively chasing the last cover I need for Doom, I'll just leave my BH on him to get the 266th LT I guess. Did I win the race?

ThaRoadWarrior

I got Punish3r to 266 this morning. My prize was a saved blue cover for Fury.

sambrookjm

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I got Punish3r to 266 this morning. My prize was a saved blue cover for Fury.

Congrats on max champing your Punisher, although it would have been nice to get a better reward than a saved blue for Fury.  At least they have saved covers now.  My Fury started out 0/9/0, and eventually got to 2/13/3.  Before saved covers, that was...highly annoying.

Not too many new covers to report this week.  It's been a dry spell for bonus heroes recently, as 3-star Punisher has only gone up one level since my last check-in.  He's now at LVL 184.

3-star Cap - 1/3/5 at LVL 117.  I'll report saved covers as well, since I've got a hunch a lot more blue ones will be coming his way.

2-star Cap - LVL 132, so I'm done getting feeders for 3-star until he's champed again.

sambrookjm

Weekly Progress Report for Punisher vs Cap.

It wasn't a very good week for Punisher, up until Venom Bomb's tokens started rolling in.  One random cover from the vault, and a bonus cover from a standard hero from one of the nodes.  With everything combined, he's now up to LVL 188.

No change at all to 3-star Cap, so he is still sitting at 1/3/5.  No saved covers yet either.

2-star Cap is now sitting at LVL 135, so only three covers for him this week.

sambrookjm

Both 3-star Cap and Punisher have been featured in this round of DDQ, so here's another update on their status.  I"m not pulling anything from the DDQ hoard, as that's what I have been doing (or not doing, I suppose) since the start of the experiment.  The two four stars in the vault are PunMax (for the Crash of the Titans) and Thor.

Punisher has been cruising along and is currently at LVL 194.

3-star Cap, thanks to the DDQ, is now at LVL 140 and sitting at 2/4/5.

2-star Cap has been max champed, and another one is on the farm right now, sitting at 0/0/2.

So in just over two months, I've pulled 11 covers for a non-bonused 3-star, and 41 covers for a bonused 3-star.    Thirteen to get him to LVL 166, and an additional 28 covers for champ levels.  So it's a little under 20 covers a month, or about 3 a week.  At this rate, Punisher might be max-champed around Halloween. Spooky!

sambrookjm

One PvE with Punisher as the featured 3-star makes a huge difference.  He jumped from LVL 194 all the way up to LVL 210, which moves his likely max champ date up from Halloween to somewhere close to Labor Day.

Punisher received:
Three covers for Top 50 in the previous event.
Three covers from progression in the event itself.
One random cover from the vault.  (Note - No extra tokens purchased in the vault to prevent skewing the results - Only tokens I opened were ones that were from the event itself.)

I can only hope that 3-star Cap gets as lucky when it's his turn for a 3-star featured event.  As it is, he's still at 2/4/5 right now.  His next 2-star feeder is also chilling out at 1/1/3.

sambrookjm

Another week has passed, and another large batch of bonus hero covers for Punisher.  He's pushed himself up to level 219 now.  Only four more covers before another 4-star Punisher results.

Cap of the 3-star variety received another yellow cover this week, bringing him to 3/4/5 and LVL 153.  One more non-blue cover, and he'll join his LVL 266 big brother on the roster of 3-star Champs.  His feeder is at 2/5/4 with a saved cover.

Next week will definitely move the 2-star Cap up considerably.  It looks like Spider-Ham will be the featured 4-star in the Deadpool Crash of the Titans.  He's 2/2/3 after his PvP event, so I'll be spending a good chunk of the Taco Tokens to try and get some covers for him.  Neither Cap nor Punisher should be in this vault except for Random tokens, but the plethora of 2-star Cap tokens will probably result in another cover for the 3-star from his feeder.  I've got 372 tokens for this vault, and they've been saved up waiting for a 4-star I don't have champed to show up in the tokens.  Spider Ham qualifies in that list.