Suddenly...weekly boosted 5*s

entrailbucket

Daredevil217 said:

entrailbucket said:

DAZ0273 said:

entrailbucket said:

I guess my point was that a higher tier obsoletes the lower tier, because it's a higher tier.

Not really in MPQ when we are talking single covers. This boost makes true the original premise of 5* - that even one cover is a possible game changer, especially at low level play. This is probably the biggest PvP changer for newer players since before OML got nerfed - grab 5* covers if you can because it may pay off any given week.

This!!!  How does the change the current conventional wisdom for roster building?  What should lower tier players be doing now?

Conventional wisdom was always to roster everyone, as it gives you more access to essential nodes, SHIELD Training, etc. I don’t think this changes anything. I wouldn’t tell someone to now go HAM in an OML store just because he’s going to be boosted a few times a year (or whatever it is).  Put your resources in the best characters because they will help you everyday, not just when boosted.

This change is just a bonus for folks like me who happen to like champing them all, but shouldn’t change conventional wisdom. 

That said, I entirely agree with you that rotating boosts are the only way to truly make characters beyond the top meta relevant. I’ve seen way more Jean/Logan/Surfer/BSSM than I have ever (since I wasn’t a 5* player when they ruled). So if their goal is to diversify the characters people use, it’s clearly working. As we move through the boost timeline to those tier 2/3 characters, I’m sure we’ll see them a TON. I think it’ll be fun, but I expect people to complain… a lot. 

Well, one piece of advice I've seen all over is for new players to never open any legendary tokens or spend any CP until they're ready to champion 3 5*.  Is that still the best strategy?

Going HAM on any store is a bad idea.  Going all in on OML will put you in a far worse place than going all in for Okoye, but you're still going all in.  Wouldn't you want to target a broader set of 5* if the boosts are permanent? 

How could one possibly pull covers for all these guys when they're featured in stores so rarely?

Codex

I wonder if this has made the latest store a little more irrelevant and the the new release store a little more palatable. 

Sekilicious

If the choice is between 5* characters that will be boosted once every ten weeks or so and meta characters that will be useful every week, then you still go for the meta. Getting a champed Strang3 and IM40 will be much more useful than low covered OML the vast majority of the time. Besides, unless you’re spending cash on HP the main reason not to spend LL or CP is you can’t afford the roster spot so you spent 20-25 CP for 1500 iso. It changes once you get a broad roster of 4* champs. 

Maybe there can be an argument that CL tokens are more valuable now. After all. More pulls for 4* is the best strategy for covering 5* with feeders.  But still probably not the best strategy for transitioning from 4* to 5* play. My opinion anyways 

ThaRoadWarrior

entrailbucket said:

Daredevil217 said:

entrailbucket said:

DAZ0273 said:

entrailbucket said:

I guess my point was that a higher tier obsoletes the lower tier, because it's a higher tier.

Not really in MPQ when we are talking single covers. This boost makes true the original premise of 5* - that even one cover is a possible game changer, especially at low level play. This is probably the biggest PvP changer for newer players since before OML got nerfed - grab 5* covers if you can because it may pay off any given week.

This!!!  How does the change the current conventional wisdom for roster building?  What should lower tier players be doing now?

Conventional wisdom was always to roster everyone, as it gives you more access to essential nodes, SHIELD Training, etc. I don’t think this changes anything. I wouldn’t tell someone to now go HAM in an OML store just because he’s going to be boosted a few times a year (or whatever it is).  Put your resources in the best characters because they will help you everyday, not just when boosted.

This change is just a bonus for folks like me who happen to like champing them all, but shouldn’t change conventional wisdom. 

That said, I entirely agree with you that rotating boosts are the only way to truly make characters beyond the top meta relevant. I’ve seen way more Jean/Logan/Surfer/BSSM than I have ever (since I wasn’t a 5* player when they ruled). So if their goal is to diversify the characters people use, it’s clearly working. As we move through the boost timeline to those tier 2/3 characters, I’m sure we’ll see them a TON. I think it’ll be fun, but I expect people to complain… a lot. 

Well, one piece of advice I've seen all over is for new players to never open any legendary tokens or spend any CP until they're ready to champion 3 5*.  Is that still the best strategy?

Going HAM on any store is a bad idea.  Going all in on OML will put you in a far worse place than going all in for Okoye, but you're still going all in.  Wouldn't you want to target a broader set of 5* if the boosts are permanent? 

How could one possibly pull covers for all these guys when they're featured in stores so rarely?

My advice was always not to spend into a store you couldn’t afford to roster a character from should you land somebody you don’t have yet, and to not spend iso into any high tier characters until you’re ready to transition. But as far as I’m concerned you want them on roster for node access. My strategy was to roster every 4 and 5 spending into classic, and then work backwards to start farming 2s and 3s after that, that way i could spend as I go into legendary stores without having to throw away covers (pre-saving). Here in the shard era, I’m very curious if the strategy ought not to be to spend into classics for longer 

DAZ0273

I think shards changed the "never open stuff" strategy because you can target the 4's you want and not care about rostering the 4's you don't want if you lack roster space. Unlike Bonus Heroes, every pull you make in a relevant store advances you to your goal. The new strategy I see repeated is basically get Polaris champed as quickly as possible and R4G to 0/5/0 and that is it priority wise for the 4* tier. You might then think about some of the other useful ones but it is secondary.

The 5* game has developed a lot since I made the 3/4 transition - the 5E especially added a new found relevance to having 5* rostered. There doesn't seem to be an enormous amount of wider roster building going on at the 4* level being pushed as an optimal path.

I guess shards were the answer to dilution in terms of being able to get an exact Classic character but they also seem to have put paid to the need of rostering everybody. If 5's are going to be boosted they will be valuable at 1 cover for PvP and PvE because a boosted 355 5* is probably going to be OK in the 5E which is worth more points than the 4E and so you could if you were pursuing such a strategy chase as many 5's as you can and still be able to get progression.

ThaRoadWarrior

I still believe a wide roster of 4* champs is important/required to progress though. You really need the champ reward engine firing on all cylinders to be able to sustain your roster. To me it's the difference between "shortest path to a champed 5*" vs "shortest path to actually being a 5* player." But as with anything, your mileage and goals will surely vary.

DAZ0273

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I still believe a wide roster of 4* champs is important/required to progress though. You really need the champ reward engine firing on all cylinders to be able to sustain your roster. To me it's the difference between "shortest path to a champed 5*" vs "shortest path to actually being a 5* player." But as with anything, your mileage and goals will surely vary.

As a guy with 100 champed 4* (might be more), it looks like I agree.

entrailbucket

Sekilicious said:

If the choice is between 5* characters that will be boosted once every ten weeks or so and meta characters that will be useful every week, then you still go for the meta. Getting a champed Strang3 and IM40 will be much more useful than low covered OML the vast majority of the time. Besides, unless you’re spending cash on HP the main reason not to spend LL or CP is you can’t afford the roster spot so you spent 20-25 CP for 1500 iso. It changes once you get a broad roster of 4* champs. 

Maybe there can be an argument that CL tokens are more valuable now. After all. More pulls for 4* is the best strategy for covering 5* with feeders.  But still probably not the best strategy for transitioning from 4* to 5* play. My opinion anyways 

Right, I think there's no question that you still want to target the characters who are always usable, whether boosted or unboosted.  That's Okoye, Hulk, Apocalypse, Beta Ray Bill, etc.

*But what do you do after that?*  The community's assumption for years has been to just save up and wait for a good new guy, since new characters are always better than old characters due to power creep.  I think that's not necessarily the case now.

5* boosts change the character tiers from "usable all the time" and "usable never/maybe if you're just screwing around" to "usable all the time" and "usable only when they're boosted."

Compare OML to Cyclops.  Both are basically unusable in normal play, but both are definitely playable when they're boosted.  Obviously Cyclops is significantly better than OML when both aren't boosted, but I'm not sure that matters anymore since you'd never play either unboosted.

Sekilicious

Yeah I agree that is the question. Personally, I always considered ‘gotta champ them all’ used by many on this forum to be a good strategy. Now that strategy appears to be at least equivalent to the ‘save 1800 pulls and wait for the new Okoye store’ that some were advising before. I assume hoarding and pulling for meta is still more efficient for accounts with limited financial resources to put into their gaming hobbies. 

Punter1

Next PVP Here to Chew Bubblegum preview is up - 5* boost list is from Week 2 as expected on the release list from earlier in the thread.  

Now to go and remember what any of these 4 characters do!!

List copied here:

1) OML, PhX, SS, BSSM

2) GG, IM, CW Cap, Banner

3) BB, BW, Strange, Thanos

4) BP, HE, SL, Doc Oc

5) PPSM, DD, Gambit, Thor

6) AA, GR, JJ, Beardcap

7) Okoye, Wasp, Loki, Kitty

8) Cable, KP, GED, CM

9) Hela, Rescue, Storm, IceMan

10) PX, Carbage, BRB, Sinister

11) Havok, iHulk, Yelena, Apoc

12) Onslaught, KM, OMD, Heimdall

13) DP, Magneto, Adam, YJ

14) Cyclops, Colossus, Wanda, Knull

Captain_Trips88

Goblin was my first champed 5* and my first pick for years. will be good to dust him off again 

Punter1

Captain_Trips88 said:

Goblin was my first champed 5* and my first pick for years. will be good to dust him off again 

I champed all 4 later so have rarely used them.  Just the couple of times they would have been featured.  Shows why this boost is long overdue and exciting to "discover" characters I've had rostered for years!  

Any synergy on these 4?  I think GG is probably the best, then which of the others to bring along?

Kolence

Cap will have great synergy with boosted Valkyrie. Not sure if that'll be good enough for pvp.

I'm just sad my Banner is still a few covers short of being champed for his boost week... (mostly kidding)

Kwahder

Goblin auto fortifies countdown or repeater tiles at the beginning of his turn; all the other characters have these, but I reckon Iron Man’s drones will be the biggest pain to deal with.

entrailbucket

Ok, so I guess we're keeping this, and it's going in release order.

Goblin black is one of the bigger numbers in the game, so I bet he'll be used a lot.  His purple is slow and there's not really a reason to cast it on anything besides red, but it's ok.  Yellow is just the passive.

Iron Man red is a big number but it cares a lot about who his teammates are.  If there's no team Iron Man it's bad.  His blue will be pretty cool with crazy match damage.  His yellow is bad.

Cap actually has already been adjusted once and he's not as bad as he was.  His yellow does a bunch of stuff and red and blue both do decent damage.  His AP costs aren't insane.  He's just kind of average.  Unlike Iron Man he doesn't really care who's on his team.

Banner isn't as bad as you think he is but he's also not very good.  If he transforms it's annoying to kill him multiple times but he doesn't make you pay for it like Hulk does.  His attack tile power is better than it seems (in that it's not absolute trash).

sambrookjm

entrailbucket said:

Banner isn't as bad as you think he is.

No. He's worse.

entrailbucket

sambrookjm said:

entrailbucket said:

Banner isn't as bad as you think he is.

No. He's worse.

He's not good, but I never understood why he became a meme.  Wasp is definitely worse and there are probably other contenders.

The reason he's mildly annoying to fight is how the transformation works: every time Hulk shows up he gets his full HP pool (I think it's like 60-70% of what Banner has).  When you kill Hulk, Banner goes back to whatever HP he had before he transformed.  So you can get stuck in this endless annoying loop fighting him where he keeps transforming.

We had a guy who had all the 5* at stupid high levels, he'd put out a 500something Banner as an easy team to hop off of quickly, and you'd inevitably wind up in a stupid endless cycle where he'd never die.

It probably doesn't matter now because we have a team who does 100,000 completely free passive aoe every turn, but it was annoying then because we were fighting him with much weaker characters.

DAZ0273

This is gonna be a painful week. However it seems this is here to stay so some strategic iso investment might be worth investigating. Not this week though - Banner is the only one I even have covers in all colours for but I don't think he is doing anything at 355 against minimum champed 5* MMR. I guess he might have a shot at beating a seed team. Maybe.

gmp72

A simple change like gaining AP for the auto Banner-Hulk moves would make a world of a difference.
5* Carnage already has this mechanic.

Srheer0

BlackBoltRocks said:

Agreed on the annoyance of Banner. I don't understand why people rate him so low. I'm not looking forward to facing boosted Goblin and Banner in pick-2 PvP: get 6 Green AP, Banner places his Countdown, and Goblin fortifies it, almost guaranteeing he'll transform into Hulkform. This means you'll probably have to rely on Kitty's Purple or Colossus' Blue to remove the Countdown. Then you have a dilemma: target Goblin first, and Hulk will be making free matches in the background, and if you do down Hulk, Banner pops up relatively unscathed. Target Hulkform first, and Goblin will likely get enough Black AP to use his boosted Goblin Glider.

On the flipside, I'm looking to try that out myself.

Or rely on stunning Banner / Goblin so they can't do any shenanigans.