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

mdreyer93

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Something else slightly different that I've been doing is making a point to shield out in PVP when I hit 1200 even if it's past full season progression. That's also been contributing to my 4* cover growth as well as dropping 50-60 shard slugs on whatever 5* is featured as well. That's usually good for t50 or t100 depending on what's going on.

I'd be interested to know what your typical PvP strategy is to hit 1200. It's something I've struggled with. What slice do you typically play and when do you make your climb? Are you usually using boosted 5s? Do you shield hop? How many wins does it usually take?

With the number of champed 5s you have now I'm sure you usually have at least 1-2 boosted.

ThaRoadWarrior

It’s potentially noteworthy that I’m on day 2052, and there is no way to quickly do that, so any 5*, LT, or CP drops that are from just being a relative long timer on the game are going to factor in to this.

entrailbucket

I've had many, many people tell me that a strategy like this is impossible for them because they're "only" on day 2000 (or thereabouts).

ThaRoadWarrior

mdreyer93 said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Something else slightly different that I've been doing is making a point to shield out in PVP when I hit 1200 even if it's past full season progression. That's also been contributing to my 4* cover growth as well as dropping 50-60 shard slugs on whatever 5* is featured as well. That's usually good for t50 or t100 depending on what's going on.

I'd be interested to know what your typical PvP strategy is to hit 1200. It's something I've struggled with. What slice do you typically play and when do you make your climb? Are you usually using boosted 5s? Do you shield hop? How many wins does it usually take?

With the number of champed 5s you have now I'm sure you usually have at least 1-2 boosted.

Sure. I generally play Slice 1, and I usually climb to the 10cp drop whenever it opens, and then I just let it float there until i'm ready to climb the rest of the way. That's generally around the time I have 10cp laying around so I can pull a classic then. Then I've been pushing to 1200 sometime around the 24hrs left window (but I'm not strict about that) so that I can just use the 300hp shield. I only use hp for that, health to get over the hump if I'm out of spicy tokens, roster slots, and occasionally a daily deal if i'm within a purchase or two of a cover that is meaningful. I try to always have enough HP to roster a new character, but it's not quite so scarce I can't get it back in time if I burn it down on health or whatever. I usually use some combination of boosted characters in pick-2, or if I only have 1 of them I'll try to use a Boosted + a crit producer, either my lvl 370 Chavez or maybe Killmonger these days, it all depends. And yeah, so far i"ve always had at least 1 boosted character, typically 2 or 3, and only a few times all 4. Because all my characters are around 450, I have to use the boosted ones to be able to grind the health pools i'm up against. I think a relatively flat MMR is helpful there, rather than having a lopsided group of a few up at 550 that I would be locked into using always.

dramatist

So I hit 100 cp this morning and pulled 5 more Classics. I ended up getting a champ level for LumberCap and a purple cover for Banner Hulk to make him 2,2,5. 

I also must have gotten 500 5* shards bonus because I got a Colossus champ level and I was no where close. I don’t have time to pause in my pulls to wait to see if I got bonus shards for someone. 

Question for Road Warrior: where are you on the milestone quest to use 5* covers? I hit 259 this morning. 

entrailbucket

dramatist said:

I don’t have time to pause in my pulls to wait to see if I got bonus shards for someone. 

I agree with this!  If I hit 20cp during a PvE grind I'll pause grinding to go open a token.  I frequently mash on the "open classic token" button when I don't even have 20cp, just out of habit.

I'm at 578 on that milestone even though nobody asked and also nobody cares.

ThaRoadWarrior

here are some notable milestone quest progressions:

324474/500000 matches

22250532/25000000 iso leveling characters 

7526/10000 health packs

798/800 team ups

48441/50000 boosts

77/100 shields in pvp

2130/4000 on the 4* cover collection

298/500 5* cover collected 

67/100 2* champions

63/80 3* champions

114/150 4* champions

42/47 5* champions

mdreyer93

Thanks for the info! That seems like a much better strategy than what I've been doing. I only have 11 5* baby champs so I don't always have one boosted but when I do I'll try something similar. I like the idea of breaking it into two climbs and not worrying about shield hopping.

ThaRoadWarrior

I’ve never used shields to hop, or coordinated in pvp. As a 4* player I had a very refined sense of my float points, and was only concerned with hitting 900 when I could. I used to be able to float between 650 and 700 in those days, but after champing my first 5* I was lucky to float at 375. Now I can usually float around 550, which makes climbing the rest of the way more doable. As with PVE, any placement rewards are purely a side effect of me hitting full progression. I play simulator across the season in drips and drabs, I usually try to float around 1300 for awhile there, then about 3/4 the way through I push to 2k and walk away from it. I have a junior/casual alliance for the most part, so alliance rewards are incidental at best.

dramatist

I’m curious how long I’ll still be able to use cp on Classics going forward. I’m holding 45 Latests now to pull whenever Shang-Chi enters Latests. My Electro has 7 covers and 1000+ shards so I really only need 4 more covers to finish. My Odin has only four covers. 

I’ve enjoyed pulling Classics for a couple of months and I’ve been able to finish and champ Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, Peter Parker Spider Man and Yellow Jacket while on this journey. 

Captain_Trips88

My PVP strategy is the same as yours RoadWarrior but I've started to join PVP with 4-5 hours remaining in the slice providing I have enough time to sit down and grind through a climb. I can normally reach the 900 mark if not all the way and end up with much better placement rewards these days. It is also meaning that the climb up is showing a few more varied teams to fight,  I don't really understand the mechanics of PvP enough to know why the teams are all over the place. I do play in slice 3 as that finishes 10/11pm UK time so that might be a factor

Those extra shards for placement rewards certainly start to add up. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Shang-Chi landed in Latest, so I pulled one last classic (mockingbird, LT champ level) so I could track the date that Ronan dropped into Classic on my spreadsheet, and then started pulling the 22 LTs I had saved up. Between that and earned rewards, I ended up pulling 30 Latests, and had a pretty strong haul for my trouble (7 out of 30 5*). Along the way I got the last shards I needed for Kingpin, so Daredevil is champed (had an LT saved on him), and I moved my 4* over to Drax who is 14 covers away from completing 5* Lord (who also has a banked LT saved). I only need 40 more Goblin shards to get him to 4/4/4, and as previously mentioned I'm just going to leave him there and finish him from the iso-spend milestone quest which I'm confident will happen faster than grinding out 10 more Sandmans. I need to burn through 2.7 million, so champing a few more 4 and 5* characters will get it there naturally. I'll put my 5* on Banner Hulk who is my next closest 5* after Star Lord at 4/3/4, but my TA Hulk is only at 327 so it'll probably take quite awhile. 

Current Latest crop:
Electro: 3/2/3
Odin: 3/2/1
Shang-Chi: 0/2/0

Ronan dropped out at 450 with 350 shards.

And for clarity, I'll be committed to Latest until Electro is completed.

mdreyer93

Well, I was able to hit 1200 in PvP for the first time following your guidance Road Warrior, so thanks! It may have been a bit of a fluke since it was the Chavez PvP and I had Knull champed, but we'll see how it goes in the next few.  The 18 additional CP really are nice!

Back on topic to this thread - I failed to fully cover Ronan before he dropped out. He dropped out at 5/2/0 with 1305 shards. He's the first latest since Heimdal that I've failed to cover before dropping out while following this thread's original strategy. I went on a camping vacation where I didn't play for 10+ days so I'll chalk it up to that. On the plus side, Electro is already at 5/2/3 with 740 shards.

dramatist

I had 46 Latests this morning and drew. I got three 5* covers and no Shang Chi. After applying the covers I had enough Latests and cp for 10 more tries. One Electro (5,4,1 1015 shards) and that’s it. 

Hopefully I’ll get Shang Chi soon, and I’ll be pulling no Classics for awhile. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Didn’t realize it was a short PVP season here this near anniversary. Picked up a couple Odin’s and an Electro.

Electro: 3/2/4 with 40 sharss
Odin: 3/4/1 with 260 shards
Shang-Chi: 0/3/0 with 400 shards

got that Goblin cover for a 4/4/4 and moved my direct shard over to my 4/3/4 Banner Hulk. Drax is at 309, 11 more to finish Star Lord up.

ThaRoadWarrior

I've been making as many moves as I can towards pulling down LTs and CP trying to get those last two covers I need for Electro before she drops out of latest. My current latest crop is now:

Electro: 7/2/4 with 40 shards (of course the two covers I got most recently were both saved greens...)
Odin: 3/5/2 with 260 shards. I leveled Odin to 390 to see how fun he is to play, and so far I think he is a promising Heimdall buddy. I liked running him in the Anniversary season with Heimdall/Shuri
Shang-Chi: 1/3/1 with 200 shards. I'm really hype to finish him, I really enjoy this play style.

Ultron: 0/0/0, 400 shards. still "NEW" so not chasable yet.

Favorites:
Banner: 4/4/4 with 102 shards. I'm currently debating moving on from him and moving my 4* to TA Hulk after Drax is done force feeding Star Lord. I only need 12 more hulks to complete him
Drax: Level 313 with 235 shards, 7 more to complete 5* Lord

I'm currently at 24,254,985 iso out of 25,000,000 to get the final Goblin I need to complete him as well. I have 462,152 iso banked up, so a few hundred more and Goblin will be good to go.

Sekilicious

When did you start pulling from LL exclusively in the beginning. Or did you always until recently.

ThaRoadWarrior

That thread sadly is long gone, but I committed to it in December 2018 when Kingpin was released; I was pretty hype for Spider-Verse and I liked his art, and I didn't have a good sense yet for what a "good" 5* character's moveset looked like coming out of 4* play like I did. The first time it "worked" was with God Emperor Doom, then I missed one or two, and was able to get the Profe$$or X/Iceman/5torm trio champed. X was in there a long time, way longer than normal, and is still my highest leveled character at 468. I wasn't stopping to wait until the older characters moved to classic, I used to just keep pulling all the time which wasn't very optimal for staying current at that time. I missed a couple after that here and there, but made them up with bonus heroes or shards eventually since nobody dropped out with less than 10 covers.

I want to say I had 65-70% of the 4*s fully covered and waiting on iso when I did it, and my first champ was actually Ghost Rider even through all that, with a lucky final pull from a special legendary store just before I got Doom finished. I was also chasing Jessica Jones via bonus heroes at the time, that took most of a year grinding direct bonus heroes and Chavez champ levels, and by the time I was done we were basically at shards. Also shortly after that we got all those Quest rewards, so I was able to finish a bunch of key 5*s all at once that really helped my play.

ThaRoadWarrior

I also created a google doc back then to track my legendary pulls, one tab for latest, one for classic, that way I could see at a glance about when I was "due" to hit a 5* as well as tracking my pull rate generally. I find it was helpful psychologically when looking at long dry streaks to know around when I was "owed" a 5* give or take. I'm definitely aware there is no streak breaker system, but having been doing this for 3 years I can tell you that most long dry spells have been broken by an eventual quick-succession grouping of 5* pulls, so it does balance out over time. When you are splitting your pulls between Latest and Classic, a dry spell in both simulatneously can feel interminably long, like imagine you're 0 for 12 in Latest, and 0 for 12 in classic; that can "feel" like you are 0 for 24 overall which shouldn't be the case becuase each store has its own pull odds.

Sekilicious

I can’t remember, was SCL8 the highest Level back then or was 9 around. I remember being terrified of SCL7 when that thread came out.