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

ThaRoadWarrior

I was chasing that last Carbage cover all weekend, didn't land it but I got 2x BRB and 1 black for Sinister. I also finished a shard cover on Gladiathor, so he's 3/0/2 now. Valkyrie is at 295, about to spit out a 4th green for him so he'll actually start gaining an extra AP and becoming a bit more useful. I think i'll move my 5* Shard Target over to Carbage to wrap him up before moving on to Hawkeye. I'll just leave my 4* on Valkyrie until she hits that next Thor cover at 320. I was walking my 3* cover around chasing characters close to max-champ, so the Spid3r-Man growth strategy suffered some. It's back on him now though, he is at 174 now, with 254/300 shards. 

Current Latest Crop:

fresh out: Carbage (4/3/5) 190/500 shards

BRB: champed, lvl 454 (125/500) shards
Sinister: 2/1/3 (300/500) shards
Havok: 0/0/0 (365/500) shards

ThaRoadWarrior

Now that Carbage is out, and BRB is starting to stack champ levels, It's time to sit tight I guess until he drops out. I'm pretty hype for Immortal Hulk. I did land another black for Sinister earlier, he's 3/1/3 now. 

I wonder if Carbage will get a feeder anytime soon? I'm working on that last cover i need via shards while Valkyrie grows in the background for the last 2 greens i need on Thor.

ThaRoadWarrior

I picked up that Bucky/Cap 4k hp deal - it was enough to flip my 3 Cap and re-roster him, and it was enough to get shards off Bucky to take Lumbercap to 3/4/4. Current stash is 89cp + 2x LT for Immortal Hulk. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I was cycling through stores to burn a Mighty Token yesterday, accidentally burned an LT. Got a purple Sinister for my trouble - 3/2/3 now.

This double-iso can stay as long as it likes, i just champed Northstar, Talos is the last covered 4* I have at 209, so there's a possibility I can do him also. After that it'll mostly be starting from scratch on iso for Th4nos, MODOK, and the other 7. I can't decide if it's best to continue bumping them to 209 as an interim stopping point, or if I should just leave them at 70 or wherever until I can champ them in 1 go. If I can get to the top of Simulator, I'll have a champable Karnak, who is good enough I might use him on purpose.

I have Carbage leveled to 403; he's reasonably survivable, I'm going to get back on champing 4*s to stay ahead of the new release pace if I can, at least until I get him champable via shards. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Doing pretty well at not spending on purpose, though I have accidentally spent two LTs scrolling to Mighty Tokens so far. Second time was a red Riri, so not as cool as that Purple Sinister. But i'll be at ~200 cp and 5 LTs after i finish up Honor among Thieves progression

ThaRoadWarrior

313cp and 11LTs so far. It’ll be nice to pull for Havok and Hulk before too long.

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm tempted to pull for a Havok so i can do the 5e node in Simulator PVE, but I'm also within 100 shards of a cover anyway; i kind of want to see how hard it is to just get one through progression, and whether or not it can be done on sub 1, or if it won't get here till sub 2 since i need the second shard drop to do it.

ThaRoadWarrior

i kind of panicked on Sub 1 of that simulator run - i could only do 2x clears on the challenging node with Sinister. I ended up pulling about 30 Latests trying for Havok, and didn't get him. I got a BRB champ level and 2x Sinisters, who is now 3/3/4 with ~450 shards. I ended up getting a havok from shards at the beginning of Sub 2, and I was able to get full progression anyway, so I felt a bit dumb.  I also got an organic Valkyrie pull, so she is at 297. 

But i'm back to saving up, I have 3 LTs and ~137 cp. Once Hulk drops into Latest, I'm going to pull till I get Sinister finished via organic pulls and I have a Hulk on roster before I use that shard cover for Sinister, just in case I end up with a bum distribution. Had the challlenging node on day 1 not been so wild, I could almost surely have gotten up progression far enough to finish my Havok cover before it closed. If Hulk works out like that, I'll have to check and see if it can be done there.

ThaRoadWarrior

I champed MODOK this morning with 6 saved; not counting Ham (or super skrull who isn't yet available) i'm down to just 6 more unchamped 4*s. They're all covered except 2099 (needs a cover) and Maria Hill who is 2/2/2.

I'm back up to 6 LTs and 200cp for hulk.

 

ThaRoadWarrior

I was able to t100 the super skrull release PVE by just green-checking the nodes, so I have a decent jumpstart on him. It makes a huge difference when you have a champed featured 5* to get through those clears for sure.

I've been seeing some immortal hulk's in PVP, and so far he is about as rough as I expected he'd be, even mostly covered. Completely different from the 1/1/1 loaner.

I'm about 2/3 of the iso from champing another 4*, I'll probably do Karnak. Th4nos and To4ch are covered, after that everyone will still need some covers.

ThaRoadWarrior

Valkyrie was only 100 shards from lvl 300, which would put my Thor at 4/0/2 and increase the tile break from 3 to 4. That doesn't seem like it would be much, but it actually changes everything. I went ahead and burned 10x LTs to get him up a cover, and I went from being unable to find a team to 4x clear the surfer node and having to use WCap/Coulson/Hawkeye to (eventually) clear the challenge node, to just burning through both like they were nothing. Totally worth it, only got 1x champ level for BRB in the process. I'm back up to 3LTs and 437 cp.

ThaRoadWarrior

Miles Morales finally came up in my shard store. I needed 40 shards to put him at the correct number that this iteration of Spid3r-Man would take him to 300 instead of 299, so I picked up 2 slugs of shards. Still having fun with Thor-Koye, but man this team is whack on defense. Makes wins-based pretty painless for sure though - for some reason I'm seeing mostly other thorkoye teams which are very beatable.

ThaRoadWarrior

Karnak is champed now; not counting Sider-Ham, but counting Super Skrull I have 6 un-champed 4*s left:

2099: 5/5/2 (1 saved)
Wolfsbane: 5/3/2 (2 saved)
Torch: 4/4/5 (2 saved)
Thanos: 5/4/4 (1 saved)
Maria Hill: 2/2/3
Super Skrull: 3/2/2

and

Spider-Ham: 2/3/4 (forever)

Currently have 5 LTs and 539 cp, waiting on Hulk to show up. They nearly got me with this OML/Archangel/5torm store, my OML is 4/1/4 and archangel is 2/2/2, but neither is going to be as good as pulling for hulk/havok/sinister i don't believe.

ThaRoadWarrior

BRB is out, iHulk is in. I had ~ 40 pulls in latest and wasn't able to find one, but i did get 2x for Sinister and 3x for Havok. That many pulls was enough to finish the 13th cover I needed for Carbage, so he is now champed. I got some shards for a Profe$$or X champ level, an organic Miles pull that put him at 299, so Fi5k is pretty near-term as well. I also got a few Kate Bishops (294) and a Valkyrie (302), and my Frost is now 299.

Current crop of Latest:
Sinister: 4/3/5 (640|500 shards)
Havok: 2/1/1 (165|500 shards)
iHulk: 0/0/0 (365|500 shards)

I'm still going to let Valkyrie get me that 5th green on Thor, I think that's as built as I need him for awhile. After that I'll move to Kate Bishop.

I'm going to move my 5* FH over to Hawkeye. at 2/5/3 i get a lot of use out of him, but maxing out that purple will really make him reliable for challenge nodes. I'll probably do the same thing I did for Thor here, and get 1x cover out of him directly and then finish up with Kate Bishop.

3* remains on Spid3r-Man until i get that last Miles (well, i flipped a bunch of 3*s over the weekend and champed To4rch, so for the moment it's replacing those). After that, I'll push it to Ragnarok to help with Valkyrie, then I'll probably go all in on the Hawkeye tree.

After Hawkeye, I probably need to go to work on Kitty Pryde. She's at 3/2/0, and I think worth champing, so I'll probably just park it on her for the foreseeable, and move over to Frost as well.

ThaRoadWarrior

I got the 22 cp out of this story that was ending, and pulled a black iHulk cover, so I'll probably start sitting tight until Sinister leaves.

ThaRoadWarrior

Closing in on the iso to champ Sinister - i'm just under 400k with a max-champ Strang3 I could unload once I come up with the other 75k or so. Coming out of last PVP season, I have a 4/4/4 Maria HIll now as well. 

I've been using Carbage/Profe$$or X/Okoye in PVE for Strange Sights - that team works very reliably to get those cascade blasts going, and has Aoe on 2 colors (with the Royal Talon Fighter random AOE occasionally). I'm starting to see iHulks pop up in Simulator - he is going to be a defensive nightmare for a little bit while I figure out my options for shutting him down.

ThaRoadWarrior

Flipped a pair of 3*s to champ Sinister. I tried him with Doom in the 4* widow pvp, and he took a lot of damage but did most of the heavy damage. He is kind of interesting mechanically I still feel, but he may not be a Pick-2 superstar 

ThaRoadWarrior

I tried pairing Iceman with Sinister for the dual damage reduction. I guess it worked okay, but Iceman just hemorrhaged all the blue that Sinister would otherwise be using to make his big hitter traps, so I don't think it's the ideal pick-2 for him. The experiment continues to find out if he can be a big wheel or just a third wheel...

ThaRoadWarrior

Guys, I fell off the wagon. I was getting destroyed with my single black cover Hulk, and tried pulling for a green. I got a red, and 3 red Havoks (5/1/1), and 2x for Sinister, but no green. Sigh; saving up between characters is soooooo boring.

ThaRoadWarrior

Oh it wasn't the yelena store, i threw it into Latest, where it belongs. It wasn't ALL wasted, it was mostly useful covers for the two newer 5s, but i do now have a 452 Sinister.

I was trying to get a green for my iHulk so I could have more luck in DP vs MPQ, which is kind of dumb in the end, but it felt like a good idea at the time I suppose. 

I've been trying to weigh the pros and cons of chasing 5*s with my 4* favorite, or if I need to try and (for instance) max-champ my Bishop so that I can be part of the problem with BRBishop in pvp, or max-champ my 4ocket remedially. Both characters seem to be part of the Play-Up essentials, but since i have a barely-champed bishop and a <310 rocket, I'm pretty much not really able to run them myself.