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

ThaRoadWarrior

I can't recall tbh. I used to do 4x clears at open, then just some time later the next day I'd do 2x clears for full node rewards and some general attempt at points, though I never would do that final 7th clear for no rewards that everyone seems to do. At some point I figured I could just do 4x clears and not do the final 2 and safely hit progressin, so I was doing that.The 4x clears total in SCL10 is so much more livable, and I just try to do those all at once now.

ThaRoadWarrior

Got a black for Electro, so worst case is she will drop out only needing half a cover worth of shards.

Sekilicious

That is pretty sweet. I’m glad splitting between LL and CL seems to work as a strategy once all 4*s are champed. I wonder where your roster has to be in order for pulling straight CL works to keep the latest covered. Maybe all classics have to be 500+ or something ridiculous.

ThaRoadWarrior

I don’t think so, probably just champed at all since 5* champ levels just repeat all the way to 550 between LT, 5,000 iso, 25cp, 250hp. I think it’s likely more important how many 4s you have over 340.

Sekilicious

Yeah that makes sense. Maybe all or most 5* champed and over half 4* over 340.

ThaRoadWarrior

Quick update: I looked again and the hp and iso rewards do scale up pretty significantly across the life of a champion 5*, but the LT and CP remain the same as does the pattern of when you get them. 

At 472, the iso jumps to 8,000

At 502 the hp jumps to 500

At 512 the iso jumps to 10,000

At 526 the hp jumps to 1,000

At 542 the hp jumps to 2500

At 544 the iso is 15,000

At 548 the iso is 20,000

at 550 the hp is 5,000

entrailbucket

Sekilicious said:

That is pretty sweet. I’m glad splitting between LL and CL seems to work as a strategy once all 4*s are champed. I wonder where your roster has to be in order for pulling straight CL works to keep the latest covered. Maybe all classics have to be 500+ or something ridiculous.

I only have 21 5* at 500+, so you don't need them all!

Jokes aside, I really do think it's about the 4*.  Pulling classics grows your 4* at a significantly faster rate across the board, and those guys just kick out a TON of rewards collectively.

I think that's why I can get away with the all-classics strategy and roadwarrior has to switch back and forth, although he seems to be getting closer.

ThaRoadWarrior

The game is definitely built for people to roster everyone and then use the lower tiers as the resource engine to feed the upper tiers - the trick is just to know at what point you can meaningfully expect it to be "firing on all cylinders" as it were. I would say that I was able to "stay current" once I had 75% or more of my 4*s champed, and I think as Entrailbucket says now that my 4*s are generally growing at a fairly rapid pace it's becoming more and more likely that I'll have the resources to stay current eventually without switching focus. There's also quite a lot of new variables in the mix now that shards are fully implemented and the quest system is in place. That half-cover for someone every PVE along with whatever incidental (or meaningful if you're trying hard to place) shards you get from placement add up really fast too from both modes of play. So it isn't *just* my roster that's making it possible I would say.

entrailbucket

Are you tracking 4* levels?  Anecdotally I know that classics are responsible for my (objectively stupid) 4* roster, but I wonder if it's quantifiable somehow.  Are you hitting 370s yet?

ThaRoadWarrior

no, i'm not tracking 4* levels exactly, but i track every character and color I earn, so I could probably reverse engineer it from the tracker sheet and maybe the last time I updated my gamependium if that site is still around. 

I have one 370 currently, and I have a couple more above 350 with rogue and maybe frost up over 360. Mostly those are characters I had to grind up to chase a particular 5* character, so there will be more of them on the way as I go after these characters where I need all 6 champ reward drops to finish them. I'll have a look at my roster later and see if I can figure out how many are within each band of levels to get an idea.

ThaRoadWarrior

I hit the "spend 25 million iso leveling characters" milestone and finished up Goblin (5/4/4) this morning (next milestone is 50 million for a blue profe$$or x), though now I need to come up with another 70k iso to finish champing him. Shouldn't take long while double-iso is still running.

Here is a breakdown of my current 4* roster by 10 level increments from highest to lowest:

370: 1 (chavez, while chasing Jessica Jones pre-shard)
360-369: 3 (frost, rogue, kingpin, all directly chased in the service of 5* champing)
350-359: 2 (medusa, valkyrie chasing 5*s)
340-349: 9 (some of these organically leveled, some from chasing 5s)
330-339: 14 
320-329: 31 
310-319: 22 (Devil Dinosaur and Howard the Duck are in this group)
300-309: 11
290-299: 14 (Taskmaster is in this group)
280-289: 6
270-279: 3 (spider-ham is here)
unchamped: 3 (dupe chavez waiting on a cover, Hydra Stomper 3/5/5 waiting on iso, Blob 3/2/2 just finished all release events and still NEW status)

I'm not sure exactly what conclusions we can or should draw from this, but You can see that 55 of my 4*s are 320 or higher, leaving 68 unique 4*s down in the lower tier rewards - a bit under half of them. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Got a blue for Odin, 3/5/3 with 260 shards. I’ll just need one more for him after this next run of Webbed Wonder.

ThaRoadWarrior

Goblin is champed, got another blue for Odin (3/5/4), so he'll be champable after WW. Looks like I'll have a decent run in Classic waiting for him to drop out. I'm really curious if I'll get that last Electro or not in the next week or so.

ThaRoadWarrior

Odin is champed, not feeling too confident about Electro at this point. I think I’ll just have a few more tries before she drops out. I only need about 140 shards though so it isn’t too bad to catch up on her.

ThaRoadWarrior

Hm, Odin doesn’t reduce Apocalypse’s Shared Strength…that’s useless…

ThaRoadWarrior

Pulled an Electro….but it was another saved Green. So I could do a 3:1 swap and finish her, but it’s probably better to grind the shards and get 3x champ levels. 

HoundofShadow

I'm not sure if that's a bug or it's working as intended. It will only trigger based on original power damage. I'm not sure if strike tiles are part of the his trigger points. However, I remember this being an advantage. But the situation is so niche that I can't remember which situation it was. 

Zalasta

It's probably a good thing that the fan favorites store wasn't more enticing. This thread has me changing my pull methodology.  I pulled for the last set of LL until I had the next out 5* champed, which gave me everyone but the last cover for Shang-Chi.  I'll be able to champ him with shards in his next event.

I used my remaining 2500 CP in classics, and got a bunch of older 5* covers that moved them much closer to champing. I was able to champ Cap-FA shortly afterward with shards (not that I'll use him much). Several others are within a cover to champ. Another bonus that I didn't expect, was that every other 5* cover for your 5* champ is worth an LT or 25 CP, so it's essentially a free pull.  Point being, that this method really seemed to move up my roster.

Next step is to see if I can maintain this pace and have enough LT/CP to pull from the LL when Shang-Chi rotates out, and then have CP left over to pull for more classics. Sitting at 32 LT and 319 CP right now.

entrailbucket

Zalasta said:

It's probably a good thing that the fan favorites store wasn't more enticing. This thread has me changing my pull methodology.  I pulled for the last set of LL until I had the next out 5* champed, which gave me everyone but the last cover for Shang-Chi.  I'll be able to champ him with shards in his next event.

I used my remaining 2500 CP in classics, and got a bunch of older 5* covers that moved them much closer to champing. I was able to champ Cap-FA shortly afterward with shards (not that I'll use him much). Several others are within a cover to champ. Another bonus that I didn't expect, was that every other 5* cover for your 5* champ is worth an LT or 25 CP, so it's essentially a free pull.  Point being, that this method really seemed to move up my roster.

Next step is to see if I can maintain this pace and have enough LT/CP to pull from the LL when Shang-Chi rotates out, and then have CP left over to pull for more classics. Sitting at 32 LT and 319 CP right now.

2500cp into classics?!? Team classics unite!!!

About Cap, and the others who are mediocre but not awful...you'll use them, when they're boosted.  The boosts just completely change the calculus on the mediocre older characters.  It doesn't fix the terrible ones, but there are only a few of those.

Before the boosts, it was insane to spend into classics, and nobody did it (I did it because I'm a contrarian, and I was hoping we'd get boosts someday). 

After the boosts it's actually a viable strategy.  It's not *better* than hoarding/going all in on the meta characters, but it's a viable alternative.

ThaRoadWarrior

Well, Electro ended up dropping out at 5/3/4 with 3 saved green and 365 shards, so I technically got her champable assuming i want to burn the 3:1 conversion, but I'm just going to grind the shards instead. I'll be switching back over to Classic until Odin leaves, we'll see how things go from here when it comes time to get back after Shang-Chi.