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

ThaRoadWarrior

Decided to blast through 11 pulls in that Magneto/Kitty/FA Cap store and got a saved cover for Kitty for my trouble. I’m 10 shards away from a direct cover, and Frost is at level 332 (with 371 shards). Once I get this shard cover I decided I’m going to just walk my direct cover around finishing up characters that are within 1-3 covers of complete for awhile, so I’ll probably finish Cable, then maybe Hela, OML, and Lumbercap in that order. Because Frost will spit that next Kitty cover out at 350, I’ll just leave my 4* there till she does.

ThaRoadWarrior

Ok, got that direct cover for Kitty from shards, so now I need to figure out my sharding strategy. I don't really "need" any specific un-champed character to fill a roster hole I don't think, so this is more just about stacking up a volume of finished 5*s.

Initially I was thinking I'd finish up Cable this way, since he is 400 shards shy of done, but my 4* Cyclops is 10 covers away from finishing him, and I'll get at least 3 more of those out of 3* Cyclops as I continue to chase Frosts for another 17 covers. So I think for now I'm going to chase Hela, who is 5/2/4 with 420 shards, and my Magik is only 7 covers away from spitting out a full cover. I'll leave it on her for 80 shards, then move on so I can finish her up with Magiks. I'll figure out who's next after that. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Just champed Old Man Daken - he is now 451 with 290 shards, putting him at 452 after the Lizard release event; looks like it took me 12 days to get that kind of iso since champing Killmonger. I see that this next PVP event will feature 4* Cyclops; depending on how I finish the Angel one (0-2 covers from placement when I shield out at 1200?) that could significantly shorten my run towards a finished Cable. 3* Cyclops has 2 more covers in him before he flips, and *4 is at 311 right now, so if I were able to pull down 4-5 more that would be an awesome time saver.

ThaRoadWarrior

Lol...so I blew most of 1,000 hp on health packs to save out at 1200 pts in the Angel pvp, and that turned out to be only good for 55th place, or 200 shards for Cyclops. Oh well, better than none I guess.

ThaRoadWarrior

I completely burned out in that pvp, just got 1x cover worth of shards out of it and didn't even hit 900. Oh well lol; looks like I'll just leave my 3* on Cyclops for a bit longer and finish him like I did Fi5k.

ThaRoadWarrior

Assuming no bonus shards, I'll need 25 pulls to get a cover for Hela. Currently sitting on 15 between CP and LTs. Unless Next 5* has a really stellar release store, or something awesome shows up in the holiday Fan Favorites, I'll try and  keep saving up until Heimdall leaves before pulling anything.

I'd been using the 2099/Okoye/50Thor team to grind PVP, and it was feeling pretty fast, but I've been seeing people saying swapping 2099 out for Polaris was way more consistent and faster. So far, it feels squishier and not quite as fast to me, perhaps because I play with animations on? But i'll give it a few events and see. I don't really care about competitive speed, just quality of life speed.

ThaRoadWarrior

Y'all. these Milestone rewards.

I Got my Frost up to 343, so 7 more of those and I'll be done with Kitty.

I got my Hela up to 494 shards on the cover i was after, so 7 more Magiks and she'll be done.

I got 2x covers for Yelena, who is now champable

I took my Gladiathor from 5/0/2 to 5/5/2 with 100 shards

So I"ve left my 5* target on Thor to finish him off. After that I'll probably go after one of the others with 10 covers, like Lumbercap, OML, Thano5, or Loki. Maybe Havok, i'm not that stoked about him but he doesn't have a feeder so I may just have to park it on him for now to get him done. Once I get out of that block, I'm back to the ones that need 4 or more covers, and also are decreasingly useful. I'd maybe target Bolt or Gambit there.

ThaRoadWarrior

Mag5 hit latest today; I burned my ~22 LTs until I got one, ended up with a champ level for Heimdall and a Red for my Ghostpool along the way, as well as about 180 shards for Gladiathor (hit a 50 shard bonus). Thor is only 220 shards away from being done. My Frost is now at 344. Really feeling like progress is getting made finally.

ThaRoadWarrior

I was up to 700cp, and tired of waiting on that last 100 or so shards for Thor, so I just kind of....pulled all of it. I had a pretty hot run, though 4x of those draws were yellow Heimdalls. But I pulled enough 5* covers to clear 2x more milestone quests, which put me way over what i needed for Thor, then I used the second slug of shards to finish my 12th cover on Lumbercap for a 4/4/4 build. I moved my 5* fav back to Hela for the last 4 shards I need to get her to 5/3/4 for now. But I champed Thor and got a great start on Magneto with a couple Ghost Riders as well.

Current Favorites:
Hela: 5/2/4 with 496 shards
Frost: lvl 346with 165 shards
Cyclops: 204 with 141 shards

Current Latest Crop:
Heimdall: champed, 456
Ghostpool: 2/2/4 with 501 shards
Magneto: 2/2/1

Current interesting 5*s:
Yelena - waiting on iso to champ
Kitty: 5/5/2 with 102 shards, 4x more Frost covers to finished
Hela: 5/2/4 with 496 shards and Magik 6 covers from finishing her
Lumbercap: 4/4/4 - 15 more Buckies to finish
Cable: 3/4/5 with 100 shards - i saw you can essentially buy your way to a cable cover with Iso-8 by grinding the use boosts quest, so I'll probably do that later. otherwise 7x more Cyclopses to finish
Thano5: 5/3/3 with 4 shards and G4mora at 316 (out of sync by 100 shards somehow, i guess featured reward shards at some point)
Gambit: 3/4/3 with Rogue at 316
OML: 4/2/4 with 440 shards and XFW at 306

ThaRoadWarrior

I decided to work on OML (4/3/4 now with 164 shards), I guess I always thought Kitty was intended to be a soft buff for him, since he makes strikes left and right, but when you have 4ocket I guess it was kind of not meant to be for that pairing. I don't think I ever saw it one time. 2 more Frosts and Kitty is done

ThaRoadWarrior

I champed Ham today with 1x saved, so now I have all the champable Limited characters champed. I don't keep 1* yelena on roster, but i throw away what feels like at least 1 a day.

I'm not sure where it would come from unless I move my 3* to Cag3 for 3x more levels, but I only need 710 more HP to get that Frost bundle. Maybe something will give out a Winter token and I'll hit one of those 1k hp rewards...

ThaRoadWarrior

I don't have any right now, that's where Cag3 would come in being 263. It's whatever, it would just be saving me like a week or so of grinding on Emma Frost covers anyway. I'll do it if I stumble into the hp, but i'm probably not going to make any moves to get it.

ThaRoadWarrior

Well, looks like Kitty is in placement rewards for Strange Sights, so the following event (assuming it isn't an alliance event) means that she'll be complete from shards anyway. So I've moved my 3* and 4* over to Colossus and Magik to finish Hela's final cover up - I just need 6x more Magik covers to do it. Colossus has a secondary giveout of XFW who is currently at 306, and once Magik is done I'll move my 4* over there with my 3* headed I guess to Patch.

I'm currently at 6516/10,000 Boosts to finish up Cable.

ThaRoadWarrior

Managed to get to 10,000 boosts to finish Cable, and I got those last 2x Frost covers out of her PVP. Since I’d been leveling Kitty as I got covers, it was only about 70k to champ her so that’s done.

I also champed Yelena, and I’m at 250 shards to finish OML. 4x more Magiks and Hela is done. Even though Lumbercap is sitting at triple 4s, I think I’ll set my 5* on Havok and move my 3/4* chain over to G4mora to work on Thano5 after this group. He is 5/3/3 and Gamora is at 317. He is a bit out of sync on shards because of a PVE feature, so we will see how that ends up working out with shard targets.

ThaRoadWarrior

I’ve also been pulling latest, and Deadpool is 3/4/5 with Magneto at 3/3/3. Heimdall is at lvl 456, should be dropping out for Adam Warlock soon.

ThaRoadWarrior

Pulled a Sandman cover that finished up a Goblin cover, and that put me at the 40 5* cover Milestone quest. So OML is fully covered now too. Moved my 5* over to Thano5, still working on Magik at the 4* tier.

ThaRoadWarrior

I just checked, I had it incorrect. It’s actually 23, but yeah it’s been pretty awesome for me chasing shards and landing the Milestone Quest rewards. I have Cable and OML waiting on iso, and Magik is 2 covers away from finishing Hela. I’ll do a big year end post when I am at a keyboard soon.

ThaRoadWarrior

Alright, so here is the year in review wrap up for the Treading Water thread:

I started the thread in Feb 2020 (actual date doesn't seem to be exposed on the forum) and at that time I had 
8 champions (Profe$$or X, Okoye, GE Doom, Ghost Rider, Rescue, Jessica Jones, Iceman, 5torm).  I had 11 4*s remaining to be champed. 

Since then, Shards were completely rolled out, along with the bonus shard system. We got saved teams, the Quests went live, the Spicy Taco Vault, the change to the number of grind clears to hit progression in SCL10, probably a few other things. I would say that the shard system has definitely been working as designed for me to advance my roster. I ended up with quite a surplus of CP by covering some characters early in their cycle, so more than once I sunk a pretty significant number of pulls into special stores. Since I don't track that, it's going to make it a challenge figuring out my pulls/day this year. But generally speaking, now I'm typically holding off on pulling until whoever I have champed rolls out of Latest. Currently I have 23 champed 5*s with 2 waiting on iso, and all but brand new release 4*s waiting on iso to be champed. I'm on my 3rd champion Bagman after max-champing 2.

As before with bonus heroes, my strategy has generally been to commit to pulling latest and then using my Favorite heroes to chase missed/vintage characters I need. Generally I'll focus-fire on the full reward tree if it's available, but depending on some factors I may choose to separate my 5* target from my 4* target. I think my ISO intake has been pretty significantly increased by just doing 4x clears of every SCL10 node all at once as well, which has made it a lot easier to champ 4*s between 5*s getting coverage too.

At some point after Apocalypse launched and my Thor hit 5 on green (and eventually champed), it became possible for me to hit full progression more consistently in PVP, so I'll do that maybe as often as not now, but it's not a priority if stuff is going on IRL.

So here is the current rundown on my roster:

5* Champs:
Profe$$or X - 463
Mr Sinister - 458
Beta Ray Bill - 457
5torm - 457
Apocalypse - 456
Heimdall - 456 (currently in Latest, about to drop out for Adam Warlock)
Iceman - 456
Ghost Rider - 454
Rescue - 454
Doctor Doom - 452
Jessica Jones - 452
Killmonger - 452
Okoye - 452
Onslaught - 452
Wolverine (daken) - 452
Captain Marvel - 451
Kitty Pryde - 451
The Hulk (immortal) - 451
Carbage (450)
Hawkeye (450)
Kingpin (spider-verse) - 450
Thor (gladiator) - 450
Yelena Belova (back widow) - 450

5* Covered:
Cable
Old Man Logan

5* Remainders:
Lumbercap - 4/4/4
5* Lord - 5/1/4
Thano5 - 5/3/3 (current 5* shard target)
DareDevil - 5/2/2
Black Bolt - 4/3/1
Black Panther - 2/1/3
Doctor 5trange - 5/2/2
Archangel - 2/2/3
FA Cap - 5/1/1
Gambit - 3/4/5
Jean Grey - 4/2/1
Silver Surfer - 2/2/3
The Hulk (bruce banner) - 2/3/2
Black Widow - 4/0/1
Doctor Octopus - 2/1/2
Spider-Man (back in black) - 4/2/1
Spider-Man (peter parker) - 2/1/3
Deadpool - 3/4/5 (currently in latest, next out after Heimdall)
Green Goblin - 2/3/3
Havok - 5/2/3
Hela - 5/3/4 (2x covers for Magik to completion - current 4* target)
Iron Man - 3/2/2
Loki - 4/4/2
Magneto - 3/3/3 (currently in Latest)
Wa5p - 3/2/2

Adam Warlock - 380 shards, still has "new" status for a few more days

4*s:
Chavez is at 368, Frost is at 350 from chasing 5*s. I was able to champ Spider-Ham finally, currently at 275 to complete my set of limited 4* champions. Right now Elsa Bloodstone is champable, Red Gaurdian is champable, and Scorpion is "new" with 3/3/3 coverage, and Throg is currently in his release events, though I have a 0/0/1 on roster from a PVP finish + Welcome to Shield. The only reason I haven't champed them is because I've been working on champing 5s

I don't think there are any truly meta characters left for me to champ, maaaaaaaaaaaaybe Thano5, which is why he is next up on my list. At this point my 5* roster is very serviceable, and I'm just kind of going down the list finishing up characters I missed or that are close. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I got Magik to 299 from direct 4* shards, so I moved it over to G4mora to continue working on Thano5. 3* is still on Colossus, since he'll give me the final Magik I need for Hela in 10 covers.

ThaRoadWarrior

Champed OML, and now I’m running him in Nefarious Foes with Kitty and BRB. Clash of the Worthy is cheap enough that you can kickstart OML’s strike production pretty quickly, and BRB’s starter shields make it so you have a decent chance of surviving long enough to do it.