Life with 2 non-meta 5* champs

ThaRoadWarrior

I recently champed GE Doom, my second 5* after Ghost Rider: Robby Reyes. Since both are various flavors of mid-tier, I wasn't really sure how that was going to play out. I figured it was worth chronicling the experience for people interested. I champed GRRR at the end of January, and chronicled that life fairly thoroughly here:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/76726/the-grand-experiment-can-you-transition-to-5-s-pulling-as-you-go-as-a-progession-only-f2p-player/p1

Synopsis of single 5* champ life: It's not easy mode, but you can get through it. As a 4* Player, I could manage my float points to get to 900 every pvp without shields. I could typically float at 650. Once I'd champed GRRR, my float point was around 300. It became a big deal to hit 900 again without shields. As soon as I hit 700pts, I exclusively get fed to Gritty teams, and high leveled ones at that. 460 kittys with 360 bishops and rockets routinely show up against my 452 Ghost rider, and I have 1 4* at 322 with the rest below 300. Many events I ended up grinding 40 wins trying to get to 800, some I just gave up after the 10cp. There was one simulator season I forgot to climb regularly, and couldn't get to 2,000 for Ronin when i realized it.

Some of that is from it being Ghost Rider, some I suspect is just how it is. Ghost Rider has 3 attack powers and a stun, so he is far from the worst 5*, but he isn't fast by design, so he is similarly not overly close to being the best. he uses popular colors, so he isn't mega easy to find good partners for because other characters want what he wants. His match damage was relatively high, so anybody that can fuel his powers or create crits was desirable. Even with him as a champion, there were still 5* nodes I struggled to win using him in PVE SCL9, so he wasn't necessarily easy-mode there. In fact, because he didn't really have a heal, I often just used Okoye (6/4/1 lvl 405) + Medusa or Chavez to climb in PVP and in PVE, then I'd switch to him to finish up if I needed the good match damage. He wasn't especially susceptible to the Kitty meta because he doesn't create or lean on the kinds of tiles she deals with (except the chain whip CD, you basically had to kill her before you used it, or match it yourself right after firing). You can take Thorkoye teams on offense with him if you save Thor for last. He doesn't benefit from Okoye as well as some other characters do because Chain Whip's CD gets nibbled by Kitty immediately, and his Black is just pricy enough that you're better off with anyone else doing cheaper or free damage. Hell Ride would slay if it took advantage of Wakanda Forever. Even though it's doing 300% match damage per tile nibbled, the devs consider it one of those tile destruction powers that shouldn't benefit from it. To me it seems different, but what do I know?

I'd been spending my LTs and CP into latest as i got it when Kingpin launched just to see if it was possible to stay current that way. I got Cable to 10, Kingpin (who left early) to 11, and then Doom to 13. Danver5 is leaving early too, so I've decided to cut my losses at 6/1/3 and wait it out until Hela is about to go. Anyway, I champed Doom last week. 

Doom is just better than GRRR, but he works well with him also. They both nuke on black, so that's a bummer, but GRRR's big damage move is actually Hell Ride. Doom can shuffle the board to keep that fresh, and his black is both cheaper and better than GR's. Also he has 2 kinds of heal to go with it, along with AP steal. I like running them with a 405 JJ in between, or Chavez, since Doom helps keep your AP bank in the right shape for her. 

Interestingly - my PVP experience actually gotten better. Before, i was seeing WAY too many single 5* teams that featured Kitty. Now that the game wants to give me dual-5* teams, I'm actually seeing way less of those, and many more interesting combos. I still prefer to pair Doom with Chavez, Valkyrie, Domino, or one of the other play-up 4*s than GRRR on offense, but I was getting quite a few Defense Wins with Ghost Rider/Doom/Wiccan in the Something Wiccan pvp. I'll be interested to see how it plays out from here. 

I'm chasing Jessica Jones for a 3rd 5*. I have her at 4/3/4 currently, and both she and Chavez (currently 322) are set to my bonus hero. After that, I'll probably switch to Okoye (6/4/1)/Shuri (288), though I'm seriously considering going for 3cap->Bucky (284)->Lumbercap (2/4/4) so that I can use my Suicide Doom + Lumbercap duo to eat these Grocket teams more comfortably.

Glockoma

Pretty sweet write-up. TLDR, but I did catch what you are after in terms of your next 5*. All of those routes are solid to round out your team composition, even Lumbercap route. GED opened up pvp a good bit with his structure and I personally have gone well over 900 pts in pvp on GED/Cap alone. 

I now run Okoye and Doom and they can both nuke and heal/steal. Never had much of the meta, but I have always been able to do okay.

ThaRoadWarrior

I have been considering sinking the 400k iso into Lumbercap now to get him to 405, see if he is functional as he is. I still have 4*s i want to champ though, so that's something of a backburner project. He has a great build for feeding him to completion (2/4/4), but not a great build for using him offensively - basically the opposite of Okoye who had a terrible feeder build but was very useful leveled up.

ThaRoadWarrior

Featured Character PVP has been better for me, as I mentioned, but Simulator is still rough for me to break through the Kitty Wall at 1700. I basically have to look for teams that don't have Bishop on them if I want to reliably win. That team really is easier to handle with 4*s on offense than it is with 5*s in the mix, unless you get really lucky up front against Bishop.

DyingLegend

My first 5 star I had maxed for a while was Hawkeye. It wasn't too painful, but at the time the meta wasnt as defined as it is now. After Hawkeye I was able to complete Okoye before she was pulled and then Jessica Jones a few months later with a few lucky pulls. 

I wish I played harder for Thor and Daredevil when they were in the latest. My roster wasn't strong enough back then to compete let alone hit 900 as consistently as I do now. Lately my 5 star pulls haven't been great and 5 star bonus hero pulls is non existent. Its at the point where I think that feature is broken and not working. But that's a complaint for another thread