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

Sekilicious

Yeah, the main reason to favourite five stars, other than milestones and opening hoards, is so when you get bonus shards they aren’t wasted on awful characters. I would probably pick between Okoye, Apocalypse, and Shang-Chi in this particular case. Thankfully I probably a decade away from anything of the sort.

entrailbucket

If they keep fixing those "awful" characters, a lot of people who ignored them will have trouble during their boosted weeks.

Bowgentle

Nah 460 is enough for those.
Champ em all but pick good ones to get slightly higher after that.

ThaRoadWarrior

@Bowgentle said:

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
I've chosen to walk my 5* shard around to whichever 5* is within 100 shards of a level until "next out" is somebody I don't have. I didn't want to just park them on a "meta" character so that i'd have just one much higher leveled than the others character. that feels like it would feel like the single 5* champ MMR days, and I'd have to use that one character always, so I've been looking for more even leveling.

I mean, you need 166 pulls for one measly cover.
I don't think you need to worry of that one character racing ahead.

i'm not worried about anyone racing anywhere, but it's exactly because of the glacial pace of 5* growth and how hard it is to pivot if you put yourself in a bind that I didn't want to park it on one forever.

Bowgentle

@ThaRoadWarrior said:

@Bowgentle said:

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
I've chosen to walk my 5* shard around to whichever 5* is within 100 shards of a level until "next out" is somebody I don't have. I didn't want to just park them on a "meta" character so that i'd have just one much higher leveled than the others character. that feels like it would feel like the single 5* champ MMR days, and I'd have to use that one character always, so I've been looking for more even leveling.

I mean, you need 166 pulls for one measly cover.
I don't think you need to worry of that one character racing ahead.

i'm not worried about anyone racing anywhere, but it's exactly because of the glacial pace of 5* growth and how hard it is to pivot if you put yourself in a bind that I didn't want to park it on one forever.

Yeah I'm still catching up from my three year break, and I only pull every 3 months (with the exception of Jane Chasm who were too good to ignore), so different situation.

entrailbucket

Given the current environment and the direction they seem to be going, if I was a new player and you gave me 100 5* covers of my choice, I'd take 10 covers each of 10 "good-when-boosted" guys vs 100 covers of one "good-all-the-time" guy.

Two years ago, that choice would be extraordinarily stupid, but now I think there's a 50/50 chance that it's optimal, and that chance keeps tilting toward the "more characters" side.

Bowgentle

Was that choice ever stupid, though?
We always advised to build broad, not tall, so you are nerf-proof.
So there aren't any nerfs anymore but who knows when an old char you neglected becomes relevant again.

Remember, bucket, not everyone is you, with the choice of 10 550s vs 50 510s.
I've always told "normal" people to get a staple of good 450s instead of going all in on the current hotness.

For non-hoarders "all in" means getting a char to 480, maybe, not 550.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
Was that choice ever stupid, though?
We always advised to build broad, not tall, so you are nerf-proof.
So there aren't any nerfs anymore but who knows when an old char you neglected becomes relevant again.

Remember, bucket, not everyone is you, with the choice of 10 550s vs 50 510s.
I've always told "normal" people to get a staple of good 450s instead of going all in on the current hotness.

For non-hoarders "all in" means getting a char to 480, maybe, not 550.

...we are all very, very lucky that everyone isn't me!

I dunno. I don't really engage with the players who make up the MPQ hivemind anymore, so I'm not sure what they do. I always told people to build broad, not tall, too, and then they'd throw Wasp at me as an example and go all-in for Okoye.

If you look at the top rosters you see a LOT of 550/550/550/450/450/450/etc etc. If I was in a position to make that decision, I'd much, much prefer to have 480/480/480/480/480 etc, and I think that's actually the more optimal choice today.

Vhailorx

@rainkingucd said:
With Riri and Hit-Monkey in, I finally hit the milestone. All 5* are now champed. I have rostered all the 1* too. The only "unfinished" is my 12 cover Abomination.

Which leaves me with the question: Who do I target now for shards? My targets have always been to feed a specific 5* that I was chasing, but now?

3* - it's Hit-Monkey/Arcade to get them max champed

4* - maybe Polaris / Juggs to get them maxed out too? Or maybe just generally looking to raise the levels of some of my lagging 4* (I'll be the only person targeting Talos with 4* shards)

5* - no idea! I guess Wong, but that's next season. Maybe whoever has the most shards to see if i can start flipping levels? Or one of the metas?

I would chase levels for the offensive meta characters. The difference between a level 455 SC (or okoye) and a level 530+ one is very big in terms of quality of life. Not as sure about the defensive side since res character quirks can change the math (e.g., a lower level ihulk can sometimes be useful).

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
Nah 460 is enough for those.
Champ em all but pick good ones to get slightly higher after that.

I was thinking about this. What's interesting is that I feel exactly the opposite about it.

Here's what I mean: the "meta" characters are good and when they're boosted they get even better. I have Okoye, Chasm, etc, at relatively low levels compared to the rest of my roster, and I can handle their boost weeks just fine. I use them against much higher level versions and it's not an endless party, but I do ok.

But, the "they're fine at 460" attitude is pretty well universal. During, say, Silver Surfer's boost week, most players will get him to 460, so you'll very rarely see a high level one. Players who do have him at a higher level that week have a HUGE advantage. These recently-buffed dudes have insane stats now. My boosted Captain America does 115,000 for 7 red.

I say: zig when the community zags, if you're looking for a competitive advantage.

Bowgentle

I totally get you - my Surfer is only 469 and I wish I had a bigger one.
But how am I going to get him to say 490 NOW without spending an enormous amount of resources that are better spent on getting the next batch of 5s to 460?
For 90% of the playerbase the boat has sailed on getting high level old 5s.

entrailbucket

Why does it have to happen NOW? I slowly, incrementally built everyone up over a super long period of time. That's sorta what Road Warrior is doing too, and it seems to be working out ok for him.

It takes (possibly quite unrealistic levels of) patience -- the first step in getting him to 490 is getting him from 469 to 470. You can't ever get him to 490 if you don't get him to 470 first.

ThaRoadWarrior

Yeah it’s working alright so far, mostly because I truly don’t care who comes out of Classic - I’m not chasing any particular character, just champ levels generally and subsequently shards. Pulling tokens is just the engine that drives the deliberate growth of favorited characters. If you NEED surfer champ levels it’s a real bad deal. But if you just need champ levels for whoever it’s a pretty good deal to get them for 20 instead of 25.

entrailbucket

My goal has always been "get everyone to 550," and the only ways to do that are to spend a billion dollars or to pull classics over an extremely long period of time.

What's interesting is that it's actually sort of getting faster as I max guys out. I bonus all of the 4* that feed 5*, and only the feeders, until the guy they feed hits 550. So I've been able to turn off a bunch of feeders as those guys max out. Hawkeye is going to hit 550 this month, then GG is up next at lvl542, and that should take a month or so.

Normally I bonus the next unchamped 5* leaving latest, but I was able to champ Emma, Riri, and Hit Monkey before they even got into tokens because of feeders. I've been able to use the bonus on guys that were close to max, so it's even faster.

ThaRoadWarrior

Yeah I did really well on Emma and ok on riri and hit monkey for having high leveled 4* feeders at launch. If we are only doing new release 4 feeding a new release 5 I’ll be interested to see how that feels. I feel you on the reward snowball too - it felt that way as I was closing out my unchamped 5s, I imagine it is similar but without the looming iso cliff to fall off.

entrailbucket

I still think there are more feeders on the way, and I bet we'll still see situations like Riri and Emma. But who knows. Either, way these guys are so much more generous that it's all been turbo mode for a few months now.

ThaRoadWarrior

@entrailbucket said:
What's interesting is that it's actually sort of getting faster as I max guys out. I bonus all of the 4* that feed 5*, and only the feeders, until the guy they feed hits 550.

So do you have all the feeder 4*s simultaneously selected, so you get random shards from within that pool every time you draw, or do you select a single one until they are tapped out and move on to the next one?

entrailbucket

Nope, I have all of them selected at once. I turn them off when the guy they feed hits 550.

Remember, my (probably dumb) philosophy is "I want 5* covers and I don't care which ones I get."

Edit: thinking about it, it's probably better to micromanage this, I just can't be bothered to do it. Also I really like the idea of putting my fate in the hands of RNG.

ThaRoadWarrior

yeah i think that's the mindset you MUST have if you want to feel good about pulling classics. Once I got everyone champed, it was a pretty natural transition to thinking about the average shape of the roster in total. I agree that it feels like it would be faster to push them up with focused fire on a single feeder, but doing it the way you are doing it does provide a continued general level raise rather than the one all the way up at a time model.

entrailbucket

And...it's maybe not even that dumb anymore? If they keep up the buffs/reworks, and assuming the weekly boosts stick around, your best bet for competitive play is to run the boosted guys every week, and the bigger they are, the bigger competitive advantage you'll have over the "get them to 460" crowd.

Since we can't predict who's going to be boosted, and we also can't predict which boosted guys will work best with which features (witness: the America Chavez event where Killmonger was boosted, and if you didn't have him, you just lost forever), you can't plan out which guys to target.