Which 4* to chase?

krakenoon

Apologies for the long post.

So I started my 4* transition during shardpocalypse and it has been a slog. Plenty of shards have been made available, but I find it difficult to really focus anyone outside of new releases (even fed characters). I have also been expanding my 5* roster as I go in the foolish idea that I can gain ground there.

As of now my main teams consist of Grockernaut & Carbusa with both Juggs & Medusa ready to champ (holding off due to fears of PvP matching making win based progression even harder). My Grocket is at 2/5/2 and the plan was to get him champable as well but I’ve been lead to believe that there may be better choices to focus on first.

 I do have a champed Worthy and M4rvel will be champable once her feeder gets about 19 more covers. Karnak is champable as well and I have a level 233 MODOK at 5/5/1. Also in the mix are a 1/5/3 Profe$$or and a 3/3/2 BRB.

My main contenders outside of those already listed are Vulture @ 4/3/1, Peggy @ 2/4/2, DP @ 2/4/2, W4sp @ 3/1/1, and 4merica @ 1/4/3. I also have some characters like Black Cat @1/4/4 & 2099 @ 3/4/2 but I’m not sure I can really leverage them ATM. SuperSkrull & Maria will probably be champable before long but again, not sure about leveraging them. Other stand out characters are probably too under covered to focus on now, like Sabertooth 1/3/2, G4mora 2/1/1, V4lkyrie 0/2/4, Rogue 4/0/0, Bishop 3/0/1, Coulson 1/2/2, RHulk 2/0/2 and a number of others (Bl4de, C&D, Icem4n, etc.) with even fewer covers. There are other randos like N*, Nova and Fury in the area of 7-10 covers, not sure on them (I want to like N*, but his only real use is AP denial for me.

Worthy is probably my only real stand out stunner, and most of my play style revolves around match damage with Grockernaut or AP dominance/heals/steals/attack tiles with Carbusa. I would like to get to a point where I can go points based in PvP to get more progression rewards (75 wins in 2.5 days is asking a lot IMO), but I generally settle for the HP reward @ 25 wins and see no path between here and there any time soon.

While I plan to do a (hopefully) mini-hoard bust to roster the current LL, I am hoarding my heroic tokens for when Hellcat enters and would like to start pulling some Classics right before Onslaught drops in. I think I should be able to champ Hellcat without shardgetting her, which is my primary concern (obviously I missed out on getting most new 4*s champed before Karnak). After that, I should have a better idea on who to focus on in 4* land as the classics pull will really help that part of my roster.

I guess what I am looking for is advice on which 4s to chase, in what order and how to best leverage them to get to a point where I can be competitive in PvP. I softcap pretty severely right now (not champing anyone else & leaving most at levels below 100) but would like to softcap with champs, keeping my 5*s in line with my highest level 4*s and throwing a little iso around for characters that struggle in essential nodes.

Any feedback is appreciated.

P.S. I don’t think I’ve touched my Charlie’s Angels team since I started using my current mains, should I start adding non blue covers and levels to my 4Prof or is there a good reason to keep that team as is?

helix72

There are several 4*s that would be useful. Some depend on who the boosted 3rd partner is. But here are the 4* duo teams I relied on the most (in no particular order) in pick 2 PvP:

Teams
Grocket & Juggernaut
Carnage & Medusa
Grocket & Gamora
Grocket & Valkyrie
Cloak & Dagger & Vulture
Cloak & Dagger & Captain Marvel
Cloak & Dagger & Sabretooth
America Chavez & 3* The Hood
America Chavez & Karnak
Bishop & Karnak
Nightcrawler & 3* Scarlett Witch

4* Partners who reliably help generate AP (aka the batteries):
Valkyrie (whatever your strongest color is which can be manipulated through the use of supports)
Captain Marvel (also whatever your strongest color is)
Cloak & Dagger (black). Domino also but she adds black after you make a match so if the enemy team is chasing it too it can backfire.
Medusa when paired with or against a special tile maker
Bishop (blue)
but don't sleep on some 3*s that can feed a boosted 4* with success
3* Iron Man
3* The Hood
3* Scarlet Witch

It's late and I'm dozing off so I probably missed a bunch. But this gives you some ideas.

krakenoon

Lol. I typed all of that and forgot to ask who would be best to get champed first and foremost as I have a hoard bust incoming. I appreciate the input. It was a bit late for me when I posted.

 I guess what i was asking is who to shardget since I have 5 yellow on Grocket. I’m kind of os leaning towards America, but I don’t see myself using her that much outside of duoing with Karnak. Feels like I need a better stunner that doesn’t cost heavy health pack usage, but my G4mora is so lowly covered it will probably take a while.

Jacklag

I don't think there is anything better than Grockernaut for PvE at that stage. Sometimes (mindless ones) you may need to bring Dr. Strange, but that's a rarity. In the rare ocasions when Juggernaut is less effective (when a required 5* outmaches Juggernaut), that's exactly when Karnak The Shatterer and America Chavez excel. Unfortunately neither one of those has a feeder, unlike Juggernaut (by Magneto) and GRocket (by lower level Grocket)

krakenoon

I’m thinking I’ll prioritize America first, then see about Valkyrie/Vulture. C&D seem important, but they will probably take a while. Sabertooth is pretty much only used (by me anyway) for Special K and G4mora is on my radar as a better stunner than Worhty.

 I’m probably only getting one more (shard) cover on Grocket just to level them enough to pad hit points, since with the 5 yellow already on him a lot of PvE is trivialized.

Thanks again for the input & still listening for any other.

mpiter

Once you have R&G, Jug, and Gamora championed, you will almost never use other 4* characters in PVE, even when there are boosted.  Everything else is too slow in comparison to the killer trio.  In PVE level 8, the trio can finish almost all 3 low non-essentials nodes in one turn, and most 3 high non-essential nodes in not more than 4 turns.  No other 4* teams can compete with this speed.

You will also need Medusa against Carnage.  AC is also useful for the 4*-to-5* transition and against waves. For example, AC + Hood + Strange3/Karnak can be better than Grokernaut + Gamora for long fights such as waves of tile movers.

Captain Marvel, Peggy, Vulture, Iceman, Ricky, C&D, Karnak are killing machines way too slow to set up to compete with Grokernaut + Gamora.

Depending on which 5* you improve first, some other 4* may be important.  For example, if you have a good Hawkeye5, you will need Coulson and Worship.

But unfortunately, the 4* realm is so unbalanced that one needs half a dozen of characters, the 90+ other ones are just trash.

DAZ0273

In most cases when running Juggs + R4G + Other GotG you will not even really need the ability to stun enemies below SCL10 as they will be dead quickly, so if you are struggling with champing Gamora any of the other Guardians will do the job and Juggs will tend to tank over them in most cases.

I run Gritty for the Essentials and Juggs + R4G + GotG for the other nodes and they are very fast.

mpiter

You are right, in most fights below SCL10 any GotG can be used instead of Gamora4 because the fights will not last 5 turns.  I however rank her higher than the other GotG because her blue and her purple set at 5 can partly compensate the loss of the R&G attack symbols.  Sometimes more than half of them can be cleared in a couple of turns.  Then her stun and her purple become very important.  Even if that situation is not frequent, I highly advise to max her as soon as possible with R&G, Jug, Medusa, and AC because the rest of the 4* tier is mainly composed of trash with less use than her.