Preparing for 5* transition, but may soft-cap first

froggerjohn

I have a pretty good base of 13-cover 5*s that includes:
Okoye, Kitty, BRB, PX, Iceman, and Yelena
iHulk is 13-capable, at 4/5/3 with 3 saved.
I should be able to finish Apoc before he leaves as well, currently 2/3/5 +545 shards.
Carnage is finishable, at 3/4/5.

A few key 5s are hopelessly under-covered, and I'll likely never get them.
2/1/0 Thor
2/2/1 Thanos
2/0/0 Hawkeye
2/2/1 DD

4*s are in the 300-310 range.
1.5mil iso, 16K HP, 800 CP, and 6 LTs (after recent hoard bust)

When I get to 2mil iso or so, I figure it's time to make a move. But I'm thinking of soft-capping somewhere first, for two reasons:
- might be an easier PvP MMR
- might have more variety of play with 5*s complementing, instead of just replacing 4s

Questions:
1. Is it worth converting 3 saved iHulk to finish him at 5/5/3?
2. Is there a high-speed PvE team here? iHulk/Okoye?
3. I have 40 champable 4*s, that just need iso. None are meta, but many have 20+ or even 30+ saved covers. Any reason to further delay the transition to champ some of them?

Advice also welcome on soft-capping, if it's a reasonable idea, who should go first, and how high to level them. 
(I figure I can bump slowly, and see what happens to MMR).

BlackBoltRocks

Delighted to see your progress frogger.

To answer your questions:

1. Is it worth converting 3 saved iHulk to finish him at 5/5/3? If you're willing to play CL10 whenever iHulk is essential (that should be one or two more times), you might not need to convert. Still, if you're unable to get that 13th cover organically, go ahead and convert the saved covers. You're only missing out on 1 LT and 25CP, which isn't gamebreaking. I've converted several of my 5*, such as Carol and Kingpin.

2. Is there a high-speed PvE team here? iHulk/Okoye? Kitty/R4G/Juggs will see you through all easy nodes. For harder nodes, iHulk/Okoye is a beast. Kitty/BRB is a deadly combo (especially with Bishop or R4G), while Prof and Yelena are good support characters

3. I have 40 champable 4*s, that just need iso. None are meta, but many have 20+ or even 30+ saved covers. Any reason to further delay the transition to champ some of them? If they aren't meta, there's no reason to prioritise them. The only reason to champ them is the champ rewards, and you'll eventually get the iso you need to champ them. No rush

Advice also welcome on soft-capping, if it's a reasonable idea, who should go first, and how high to level them. 
(I figure I can bump slowly, and see what happens to MMR). If you want to softcap (and your relative lack of iso is one good reason to), bring them up to lv360. That won't affect your MMR. And yes, it will allow your 4* to remain relevant. Once you have enough iso, I'd recommend prioritising the following 5* for champing: Okoye, Kitty, Bill, Hulk, especially for PvP. Right behind them would be Prof, Apocalypse, Carnage, Iceman.

TPF Alexis

Also for high speed PvE, try out Okoye/2099/whoever. I use Thor in the third slot, but Carnage or Professor X should also work well. I don't really have a good handle yet on anyone newer than iHulk, so I can't say if they'd fit in there well or not.

froggerjohn

Thank you for the responses.

SCL10 is actually pretty intriguing. Hellcat's Welcome to SHIELD is some of the most fun I've had in the game to date, but that's without all the repetition, so being locked into a whole PvE event is a bit scary. It does feel like I could get the shards though, even if I couldn't make very many clears of the 5e and challenge nodes. It probably depends upon the event, and the boost list. I'll keep an eye open for the opportunity, but I think iHulk only has one more event before leaving latest.

I rarely see Kitty-based teams in the top spots in PvE. It's all Thor/Okoye, or 5Thanos. My own experiences with her are decent, but her extra tile animations really slow things down on the bleeding edge.

I bumped Okoye to 340, and if that looks good, I'll push to 360. And just try out a few combos and see what happens. I think iHulk/Okoye may be the answer I've been wanting for ages to essential nodes with active tile-movers.

froggerjohn

Raised Okoye to 350, and tried some iHulk/Okoye on my final clears of The Hunt in SCL8.
It's a bit dependent on both TU and green tiles, but when it all worked, it was terrific.

I'm thinking that it might actually be preferable to do the cover conversion for my last green iHulk cover, because I'll want Okoye to tank over him anyway. So I don't really want more levels on him.

jtsings

froggerjohn said:

Questions:
1. Is it worth converting 3 saved iHulk to finish him at 5/5/3?
2. Is there a high-speed PvE team here? iHulk/Okoye?
3. I have 40 champable 4*s, that just need iso. None are meta, but many have 20+ or even 30+ saved covers. Any reason to further delay the transition to champ some of them?

1.  I would advise turning in the covers because like you said at higher levels he'll tank every color except red and black, if you keep him just below Okoye and, as you know, you want her to tank as much as possible.  I can see him working really well in PVE with him being under leveled with 5 green and him only tanking green.

2.  iHulk and Okoye might be a new speed team (I only have 2 green covers on him) so I'm not sure. Kitty and Grocket are going to be behind Thor and Okoye just because sometimes you can be left with a bad cascade that wipes out your strikes and you're left with a very long match that's going to slow down your clear times.  The better question to ask is how important is PVP to you.  Okoye is fabulous offensively but is going to be difficult in keeping a high float point in PVP.  However, I personally skip all Champed Okoye iHulk teams because it's too easy for the AI to get out of control lucking into tons of team up tiles and the match is done before it even begins.  So honestly Okoye and and under leveled iHulk may be a good balance because they can potentially be fast on PVE and PVP and you'll have lots of autoskips from people, I would imagine in PVP.   The highest floating point team I've found is with two 5* champs is Kitty and BRB, both champed, but they are not always a fast team, unfortunately.  Also keep in mind that if you chose to champ just one you'll see lots of Gritty in PVP.  When my Okoye was my only 5* champ once I got high enough that's the only pairing I saw.  Single champed Kitty's, I would imagine, have the highest float point of any other single 5* champion.

3.  The champ rewards are worth it to champ them all.  I have all 4* champed but Spider-Ham & Hellcat and it really speeds your HP, ISO, CP and LT acquisition when you know every 4* is going to advance your progress.  

froggerjohn

Thanks jtsings.

1. I did the cover conversion, so now have a 5/5/3.

2. Hulk/Okoye are the answer to a wish I've had for a long time, which is a way to get through the Essentials quickly. (Especially essentials with tile-movers). But they are proving to be well beyond that, giving me faster times almost across the board. I think Juggs is still faster in SCL7 for goon-only nodes, but I'm still figuring that out.

Hulkoye was a clear win in the Sentry-heavy last sub of IP, where I no longer have to worry about Fighters Swarming and wiping out strike tiles. That's going to be true in many other scenarios as well. Rider Awakens coming up in HoD is a great example where Juggs/Gritty is usually fast, but if you lose a bunch of strikes (or worse, have them stolen), it can go poorly. So I've been running that wave with America/Karnak, which is safe and reasonably fast, but Hulkoye will be much batter.

In PvP, the MMR definitely changed for me, and I'm now seeing champed Gritty and some other teams I hadn't encountered before.(I have 360 Okoye, 340 Kitty, and 320 iHulk). But I'm finding plenty of teams I can handle, and I think overall it will be an improvement. I'm still below the BRBitty wall. AmeriKarnak was fine for climbing, but easy prey on defense, so I had no options to try and push for 1K progression. That's probably within reach now.

3. No argument there. It was more a matter of _when_ to champ them, versus whether to spend that iso to level more 5*s and/or start champing them. Cleary a champed Okoye will be even better for my PvE, but I suspect I'll be straddling the line for a bit longer while I figure out life in this new territory.

froggerjohn

A bit of closure on this topic for those that might be considering soft-capping, and how it compares to the first-champed experience.

I ran the soft cap for awhile, and it might have been the best PvP experience to date. 900 was really easy, much faster, and I went to 1K maybe 50% of the time, or more.

PvE also got a notable boost as mentioned before, especially on the essentials.

I didn't however get the expected 4-5 hybrid play, due to iHulk/Okoye just being too dominant.
So once I got to about 1.5m iso (enough for two champs, in case I didn't like the results from just one), I champed Okoye.

The results were terrific in PvE, further speeding up my clear times.
PvP however took a big hit, and it's now very difficult to get much past 700. 
I run into a wall of mostly Gritty/BRBitty, and I can't really beat either of those teams.
Between the other Bishop or Worthy/HE teams, it's just a hard stop for me now, so I turned in my first <10K season in a long time. At least for the moment, I've decided to just shield-out at 725 for the next season as well.

It's mostly still a win, even though I'm giving up some PvP rewards, because I'm spending drastically less time to get to that 725 level, so the ROI is considerably better in spite of the lower scores.