Revised Event: Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Bad

And who do you think is on shard store? The old good logan. I need 160 shards so I will pass on this but if someone wants to adquire, training simulator is running yet and I guess it can be completed with 1 cover.

ThaRoadWarrior

we all have unique offerings in the shard store. for me it's Thano5 right now.

MrJ004

Great update! Keep this format. 

Best time I had playing an event in a very long time. 👍🏼

Bad

ThaRoadWarrior said:

we all have unique offerings in the shard store. for me it's Thano5 right now.

How curious. I didnt know that

Loosie

ThaRoadWarrior said:

we all have unique offerings in the shard store. for me it's Thano5 right now.

Yup, I have Mister Sinister in mine.

bluewolf

Bad said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

we all have unique offerings in the shard store. for me it's Thano5 right now.

How curious. I didnt know that

It's completely random.  You can even get the same offering two (or more) times in a row.

Vhailorx

krakenoon said:

N* also gives a black outlet for Okoye and uses it to send enemies airborne and destroy AP. I think Okoye would be one of the few pairings where he can truly shine even if there might be better 3rds.

*Continuing to beat the dead horse savagely*

Miguel O'Hara exists, so N* even loses by a landslide on the absurdly narrow question of "best yellow/blue/black 4* to pair with okoye."

At first I thought he could win "best yellow/blue/black 4* with pointy ears to pair with okoye." But then I looked at yondu's cover and N* takes another hard 'L.'

Finally I figured it out: Northstar wins at "worst yellow/blue/black 4* in the game to pair with okoye"!  I have never thought about it before now, but 'm pretty damn sure that i would happily take 2099, wasp, or yondu over him in any match against any opponent.

He's just a bad character in mpq. There is no reason ever to use him unless the game literally prevents you from using another character.

ThaRoadWarrior

N* was presented as the "but what about if the required character is terrible" straw man argument, that's why we were all discussing how to deal with it.

froggerjohn

There's an off chance that this new format could actually help avoid new trash 4*s from being released.

If Demi tests the new character in the ST that will accompany the release, and if the results are unreasonably-difficult or impossible to win, it's actually a pretty good indicator that the character is trash and should be retooled.

No idea of course if that's a likely scenario, but it's at least a conceivable one. And wow, wouldn't that be something great.

+1 vote for a wonderful new event that rewarded experimentation and creativity with team selection and usage. Super fun.

FesterTester

I just wanted to give MAJOR THANKS to the folks who suggested using Valkyrie for the 5-star nodes (I believe Jormagund was first (EDIT: actually HoundofShadow), with Vhailorx elaborating on strategy, anyone else too!)

I was ready to give up on them after several attempts with 3*Deadpool, he would jump in front and die before I could ever get enough purple AP.  I only had one of his purple team-ups, so that wouldn't get me through both fights, he had to be present for at least one.

Then I woke up this morning with very little time left, and thought "Why not give my unleveled Valkyrie a shot?"

I won the 5-star nodes using the loaner Hellcat, my level 255 K2/Y2/R1 Wolverine, and my level 70 R2/K5/Y4 Valkyrie.
It took a couple tries, the key was to cover all the yellow tiles with Valkyrie's strikes before firing Hellcat's yellow.  I was able to get the bounty nearly every turn with just match damage, and Thing wouldn't trigger until after all the strikes and Hellcat's repeaters were out (2 of them in the same turn) by which time there was no place for his protect tiles or StarLord's countdown.  Then it was off to the races with the strike tiles quickly reaching ridiculous values.

If anyone reading this hasn't finished the nodes in the little time remaining, and has a Valkyrie with good black and yellow coverage (no red needed, though it helps), TRY IT.

EDIT: Went back and checked and HoundofShadow was indeed first to suggest Valkyrie.  Please accept my apology for the error.
Thanks again to everyone who suggested Valkyrie!

Michael1957

Vhailorx said:

Daredevil217 said:

*snip*

*snip*

I honestly don’t know what Northstar does haha. *snip*

I am pretty sure that Northstar does 2 things:

(1) he has a decent blue that destroys a row and potentially regens some blue/yellow/black ap

(2) he turns yellow and black AP into a literal waste of time as you watch animations/banners than accomplish nothing.

He is an awesome TU generator , making Okoye even more dangerous. In multiple wave nodes , Okoye/NStar/Torch4 can usually insta kill the 2nd to 4th waves as soon as they appear . I’ve gotten Wildfire into the passive 200-300K damage range 

shardwick

bluewolf said:

Bad said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

we all have unique offerings in the shard store. for me it's Thano5 right now.

How curious. I didnt know that

It's completely random.  You can even get the same offering two (or more) times in a row.

Going through this right now with Storm. Just need 80 shards to get another 5* Hawkeye cover but instead it's pretty much nonstop Storm.

grenadier

Another thank you for the Valkyrie suggestion.  Finally cleared the remaining nodes with her.

You don't even have to wait till all yellows are covered to activate Hellcat's repeater.  It'll keep repeating as you fill in the remaining yellows.  Eventually, even with only a few of them having strike on them, the extra damage compounds as the repeater fires again and again.

Michael1957

shardwick said:

bluewolf said:

Bad said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

we all have unique offerings in the shard store. for me it's Thano5 right now.

How curious. I didnt know that

It's completely random.  You can even get the same offering two (or more) times in a row.

Going through this right now with Storm. Just need 80 shards to get another 5* Hawkeye cover but instead it's pretty much nonstop Storm.

For something “completely random “ it amazingly avoids your favorited cover . For example , in a rotation on average you would get a shard appearance of every character every 22 days . I’ve been 60 shards short of my favorited 5* for 26 days now . I don’t believe in bad luck , MPQ most likely lowers the odds of you drawing shards on anything you have favorited . I’m not wearing a tin foil hat either 

Vhailorx

grenadier said:

Another thank you for the Valkyrie suggestion.  Finally cleared the remaining nodes with her.

You don't even have to wait till all yellows are covered to activate Hellcat's repeater.  It'll keep repeating as you fill in the remaining yellows.  Eventually, even with only a few of them having strike on them, the extra damage compounds as the repeater fires again and again.

Waiting to flood all the yellow tiles is just to block starlord or thing from pricing their passives (both of which only spawn on yellow basic tiles).

Jormagund

FesterTester said:

I just wanted to give MAJOR THANKS to the folks who suggested using Valkyrie for the 5-star nodes (I believe Jormagund was first, with Vhailorx elaborating on strategy, anyone else too!)


Thanks again to everyone who suggested Valkyrie!

I came up with it in a bubble but I'm sure someone (Hound?) had already suggested it in thread by the time I posted.  Not that it was an amazing strategic jump as she's also used in the SCL10 challenge/5E nodes with a similar strategy.

Anyway, glad it worked and hope you presumably went on to get the LL token.

Going back to my long post, I feel the need to reassess a couple of posts:

Jormagund said:

:words:

Rewards.

This is where I'm torn, as mentioned above I wasn't at the stage of regularly completing the old ST.  Can't really remember the other rewards aside from the new 4* and the LL token.  To be honest it's something extra to PVE/PVP and not time gated so I'm happy with a handful of ISO, tokens and CP.  The key difference is not getting a full cover for the new character.

On the one hand I'm not too bothered as the release events and PVE rewards while the character is in latest make covering characters so much easier.  I usually left the release event with 3-4 covers pre shards and if I was lucky had the character at 8-10 covers by the time they dropped out of latest rotation.  Now it is easy to champ them before they disappear into the abyss that is classics.  Looking at the most recent releases here's how the recent characters rate on my roster:

Spider-Man 2099 (pre shards): 10 covers

Wolfsbane (pre shards): 10 covers

M.O.D.O.K. (pre shards): 12 covers

Karolina Dean (shards roll out): 23 covers

Northstar (shards roll out): 15 covers

Karnak (post shards): 30 covers

Maria Hill (post shards): 13 covers

Super-Skrull (post shards): 15 covers

Hellcat (post shards): 6 covers

I did sharget Karnak to champ him as soon as possible but I think only for three covers worth of shards, they've just been generous with opportunities to earn him.

Therefore I'm not struggling to cover new characters so won't really miss 200 shards, however that also makes a case for the prosecution.

I'm in a reasonable but not top alliance and we normally get about top 250 in PVE so I don't get any 4* character tokens there.  Personally I'm usually 100-200 in SCL10 PVP and either top 50 or top 100 in PVE, almost always playing SCL 8 or 9.  I'm not racking up massive amounts of covers but get by quite well from the shards in PVE progression/placement to give incremental covers for new characters.  Competitive players are going to champion new characters very easily and even casual players will pick up covers faster.  So in the in game economy how important are those 200 shards?  The very fact that they're not important makes me question why the devs took them away.  It's come up time and time again on the forums but why do the Devs feel the need to take with the other hand every time they give us something.  Giving out 200 extra 4* shards once a month is hardly going to dent the in game economy and stopping this parsimonious clawback would go a long way towards building goodwill and customer rapport.  I'm sure some people are upset about the change in format and the challenge levels but why shoot yourself in the foot by reducing one of the two most obvious rewards from the event?  Why not generate goodwill/interest by making rewards better, even if only a small increment?

:words:

So overall, I'm mostly positive about the new format of the release event and hope I don't eat these words tomorrow.  A couple of minor frustrations or negative points from my perspective but mainly happy, as a rating I'd say 7/10.

If any of you bothered reading this, thanks for sticking with me, I'm off to bandage up what's left of my fingers.

Like everyone else whose comments I've seen I found the wave node ridiculously easy after the previous two 5E nodes.  I'm again sort of torn on scaling, I'd like it to be more challenging, even without Patsy who's a gift for Wave nodes the fact that you can pick two (Chavez/Karnak, Gritty etc.), means it should be a walk in the park for most 3/4 transitioning or higher rosters.  Maybe this needs to be harder and the preceding 5E nodes easier?

However in terms of rewards this means that as a low four star player I can get half a four star cover and an LL.  On the old ST the LL was behind a paygate or for seriously competitive people who could manage high ranking in PVE and  be part of a strong alliance (or have a huge amount of HP to empty and reset the release vault multiple times).

I can't imagine many players regularly earning the LL in the old ST and nothing I've seen posted has dissuaded me of that.  However now anyone with the essential 5 star has a chance at the LL token.

Therefore in my opinion I'll have to backtrack on my previous statement and say the rewards are actually better for the majority of players in the new introduction event and up my score to 8/10.

(I wasn't expecting to enjoy eating my words!)

shardwick

Michael1957 said:

shardwick said:

bluewolf said:

Bad said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

we all have unique offerings in the shard store. for me it's Thano5 right now.

How curious. I didnt know that

It's completely random.  You can even get the same offering two (or more) times in a row.

Going through this right now with Storm. Just need 80 shards to get another 5* Hawkeye cover but instead it's pretty much nonstop Storm.

For something “completely random “ it amazingly avoids your favorited cover . For example , in a rotation on average you would get a shard appearance of every character every 22 days . I’ve been 60 shards short of my favorited 5* for 26 days now . I don’t believe in bad luck , MPQ most likely lowers the odds of you drawing shards on anything you have favorited . I’m not wearing a tin foil hat either 

When I was chasing Okoye I got quite a few offers so it's definitely possible to see your favorite in shards repeatedly. I just wish that it was more consistent like a 20% chance that they appear each time.

Jexy

That would be great. I need 79 shards to champ Kitty & she hasn't come up in weeks. At least opening my mini hoard got me considerably closer.

ThaRoadWarrior

If you have the HP for it, there are 200 kitty shards sitting in that ladies first vault <edit> never mind, that vault is closed

Dogface

Jexy said:

That would be great. I need 79 shards to champ Kitty & she hasn't come up in weeks. At least opening my mini hoard got me considerably closer.

I bit the bullet and spent HP in the Women of Marvel vault, which had 200 Kitty shards. Sadly I had to buy out most of the vault to finally get those Kitty shards, but it's worth it.