Grand Experiment 2: Treading Water in the SCL 10 Post-Shardpocalypse

ThaRoadWarrior

@Sekilicious
I took another pass at that previous post, it wasn't quite as clear to me as I would have liked upon a re-read.

Sekilicious

Oh yeah that makes more sense. I was able to guess at some of the additional explanation, or at least I like to tell myself I was. I liked to follow the previous version of this thread when you champed Ghost Rider while Gritty was taking hold of the meta so it is good to see you still around plugging away. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Ugh...champ level for Yellowjacket today instead of that Warlock I need lol. Come on, game, I don't ask for much...

ThaRoadWarrior

Sigh...and ANOTHER champ level for Yellowjacket this morning. At least those shards put Havok over for a 12th cover, his build is now 5/3/4. Once I finish this last cover, I'll do a quick pit stop on Gambit to get him re-aligned with Rogue's champ level drops, he is just down 30 shards, and unless I get lucky I suppose I'll move over to the last half-cover I look to be needing on Warlock.

ThaRoadWarrior

Got ‘em! After getting a Yellowjacket shard cover and another Yellowjacket organic pull this morning, I finally got a 13th for Warlock. He'll be dropping out of Latest at 4/5/4 with 305 shards. I was scrounging for CP and  LTs anywhere I could find them.

Current Latest crop:
Adam Warlock: 4/5/4, 305 shards (waiting on iso)
Yellowjacket: lvl 455 with 40 shards
Sighclops: 1/1/2 with 390 shards

NEW: Colossus: 0/0/1 with 400 shards

Since Magneto was at 457, that was 7 covers that could have gone to Sighclops, I'm now a bit concerned about him eventually dropping out undercovered like his brother Havok, but that's going to be a hustle for a future day. I'm going to sit tight pulling latest until Yellowjacket drops out. Hopefully next 5* is cool.

Current Favorites:
Havok: 5/3/4 with 30 shards
Rogue: lvl 336 with 92 shards
Gambit: lvl 258 with 3 shards 

5* Gambit is 3/4/4 with 70 shards

ThaRoadWarrior

Adam warlock is now champed, I’ve been sitting tight on pulling until Yellowjacket falls out minus the 4x pulls I accidentally did when Colossus hit latest (got a green Sighclops and a 456th level for Yellowjacket out of that error). Warlock definitely isn’t an autopilot character the way Hulk can be - I’ll have to spend a little time figuring out how to play him.

im pretty hype for 5Witch shaking things up. She seems like a Kitty-tier character to me.

Rogue is up to 338, it’ll be a race whether I get 460 Havok shards faster than bringing her up to 350 as to which 5* gets champed next.

ThaRoadWarrior

So Yellowjacket dropped out today, and was replaced by 5witch. He ended up rolling out of Latest at 457.

So I pulled 60 Latest pulls hoping to get Sighclops, and ended up with:

Sighclops: 1/2/4 (990 shards)
Colossus: 2/0/2 (200 shards)
5Witch: 2/3/3 (380 shards)

I had a 1 in 10 pull ratio for this block, mostly 5Witch. I was going in with a 1/0/1 5Witch since I landed 2 in her cp store back when that was open.

My Havok is up to 300 shards on his final cover, and Rogue is up to lvl 345 to finish Gambit.

ThaRoadWarrior

RNG is funny; it's shaping up that I'll have a champed 5Witch before Sighclops or Colossus.

I got another green for 5witch and a pair of blues for Colossus

ThaRoadWarrior

The newly expanded shard rewards got me the last Rogue I needed to finish up Gambit. Just waiting on iso to champ him since I just champed Dark Beast. I had a 5* cover's worth of shard rewards from milestones as well, so I applied it to Bolt for a 4/5/1 build (115 shards) and moved my 4* over to Medusa, who is currently at level 326. Havok is still my 5* BH, and he is at 380 shards.

ThaRoadWarrior

Broke a pretty long dry spell, but it was a blue for 5Witch making her 2/4/4. Havok is 11 pulls away from finished, I’m guessing my favorite will move over to his brother here before too long. 4x organic pulls feels optimistic in the next 2-3 weeks.

ThaRoadWarrior

Havok is now also fully covered, waiting on iso with Gambit. Looks like it took 83 days, just shy of 3 months to grind 3x covers for an unfed 5*. I had an opportunity to get a slug of 20x shards out of the store at least once but passed on it, and I also wasn't pulling for several stretches while waiting for characters to rotate out of Latest, so don't assume I was pulling hard for that span of time chasing it. But steady progress on favorites is one of the side effects of pulling as you go, whether or not that is worth it to you is up to you and your roster plans.

Since neither Gambit nor Havok had a champ level in queue, I opted to champ Rambeau instead with the ISO i had. In the meantime, I've moved my 5* Shard over to Bolt, since I'd rather wait until all organic pull possibilities are exhausted on Sighclops before putting it on him.

HoundofShadow

So, it took you 83 days to get 1500 shards for unfed 5*? Did you get any bonus 5* shards?

ThaRoadWarrior

I know I got at least one slug of 50 the other day, but nothing like a full cover ever. I started with 273 shards towards a cover though, so it was only ~1300 shards really. I also spent about 500 CP into the classic store at one point, so there was a smallish chunk of higher than normal shards I'd have gotten out of that.

HoundofShadow

3 months for about 2.5 5* covers is still good. That's about 434 pulls, or about 5 LTs equivalent every day. It will also give you about 16 4* covers from shards. If they had feeders, it will cut short your pull for 1 5* cover by about 1 month or so.

After champing all the meta 5* and some of the characters with interesting gameplays, I'm stuck with focusing on the next 5* with at least 10 covers. 

I wonder what your plan would be if you finished all Classics. Focus on Okoye?

ThaRoadWarrior

It’s a good question, even though I have a very long road before I’m there. I don’t like the idea of single 550 MMR, so I think my only two options are either use my direct 5* shard to help cover whoever is dropping out of latest next, or using it one level at a time on every character to try and keep them all relatively the same. I’d probably use my 4* shard to max out that tier, from most useful to most recent I guess.

ThaRoadWarrior

Just went back looking for when I started chasing Rogue, and discovered I’d picked the wrong start date for Havok - it was actually 125 days I spent chasing him. I put it on him on January 12th, and only moved it for about 30 shards to get Gambit back aligned with Rogue’s champ levels. 

And Rogue was favorited for 94 days, which brought her from level 316 up to 351.

HoundofShadow

Thanks for verifying. That actually put this at about 3.5 LTs per day. 

4* shards are difficult to count because they get shards from HTs, PvP tokens and Mighty. 35 levels in 94 days or 2.6 covers per day on average looks impressive to me. You can max champ her in about 10 days, and that could be your second(?) max champed 4*.

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm really not chasing max-champ 4*s for their own sake, i'm only grinding out feeder shards from them, so I'll leave her here unitl it happens on its own. But as for that cover aquisition rate, I was all-in on 3* Gambit who I flipped at least once across that time, and I got 2-3 organic covers out of stores and vaults as well. At the moment, I'm in Every LT For the Cause mode trying to rally on Sighclops, so my 3* is being used to re-champ a recently flipped character, then I'll probably move it over to a couple that are near max champ, but once the deadline is passed, I'll settle in on the full Black Bolt tree of Kamala->Medusa->Bolt and see how long it will take to go up 3x covers.

Medusa: lvl 329
Bolt: 4/5/1 with 127 shards
Kamala: lvl 250

Similarly i'm at 4,114/6,000 health packs on the Milestone quests, so there's a yellow Medusa in there for me at some point. 

At the current moment I have 32 champed 5*s with 2 more waiting on iso (highest level to lowest):

• Profe$$or X
• BRB
• Sinister
• Heimdall
• Iceman
• magneto
• 5torm
• Yellowjacket
• Apocalypse
• Ghost Rider
• Rescue
• Deadpool
• Carbage
• Doom
• Okoye
• Hawkeye
• Jessica Jones
• Killmonger
• Fi5k
• Onslaught
• Old Man Daken
• Cable
• Danver5
• Hela
• Kitty
• iHulk
• Old Man Logan
• Yelena
• Warlock
• Lumbercap
• Thano5
• Thor

Covered:

• Gambit
• Havok

10-12 Covers:

• Daredevil 5/2/3 (15 shards, one saved cover)
• Star-Lord 5/1/4 (485 shards)
• Bolt 4/5/1 (127 shards)
• 5trange 5/2/4 (400 shards)
• Loki 4/4/3 (40 shards)
• 5Witch 2/4/4 (380 shards) - Currently in Latest

6-9 Covers:

• Panther 3/1/4 (440 shards)
• Archangel 2/2/4 (260 shards)
• FA Cap 5/2/1 (100 shards)
• Jean Phoenix 5/2/1 (230 shards)
• Surfer 3/3/3 (100 shards)
• Banner 2/3/3 (150 shards)
• Nata5ha 4/1/1 (280 shards)
• Doc Oc 2/2/2 (455 shards)
• BSSM 4/2/3 (50 shards)
• SMPP 3/2/3 (190 shards)
• Colossus 2/0/4 (475 shards) - currently in Latest
• Sighclops 1/2/4 (1290 shards) - Currently in Latest
• Goblin 3/3/3 (280 shards)
• Iron Man mk XLVI 4/2/2 (475 shards)
• Wa5p 3/3/2 (210 shards)

Unowned

• Knull 0/0/0 (380 shards) - not yet in Latest

ThaRoadWarrior

Operation: Scott Scramble is not going so well; in other news, Colossus is now 3/0/4 with 475 shards and 5Witch is 3/5/4 with 380 shards. I've been walking my 3* favorite around to characters 1 cover away from an LT, so my pull/day rate has been pretty high relative to normal days, but it's been dry or 5Witch for me lol. Assuming one more feature, Sighclops will drop out with 10 covers just like his brother unless that pull streak turns around.

Currently Medusa is level 330, and Bolt is at 4/5/1 with 172 shards. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Well, 5Witch is now 3/5/5, so I get to decide to walk away from Sighclops and Colossus, or risk having a Mega 5Witch going into Knull landing in latest. I’ll probably keep pulling, at least for Colossus.