SCL10

Sekilicious

fractalvisions said:

I don't know if it's just because I only have Shang partially covered, but I don't find him to be all that quick with Chavez and Valkyrie. At least for the CN (I was being lazy and sticking to Polaris+Gritty for the others), I find him better paired with Cyclops and Karnak. No need to keep checking who the bounty is on and their yellow, green and blue powers all help in keeping the matches rolling in. Cyclops' green has the added benefit of a stun and covering up Daken's strike tiles. 

Still couldn't get the final clear on the first day though.

Yeah, Valkyrie is best for the tough nodes when you need to fight bad boards. If I have a red match turn 1 I can often Winfinite on Turn 2, unless there is no purple or red anywhere.  I had Valkyrie but I have used him with Chavez and Karnak as well. I found Karnak (I run both him and SC 3/5/5 in these cases) in these instances to be the fail safe. I can often win before he puts out his critical tiles. But Shang is not fast if you winfinite, because he requires an analysis of the board and determining how to best keep the combo train going.

Yepyep

fractalvisions said:

I don't know if it's just because I only have Shang partially covered, but I don't find him to be all that quick with Chavez and Valkyrie. At least for the CN (I was being lazy and sticking to Polaris+Gritty for the others), I find him better paired with Cyclops and Karnak. No need to keep checking who the bounty is on and their yellow, green and blue powers all help in keeping the matches rolling in. Cyclops' green has the added benefit of a stun and covering up Daken's strike tiles. 

Still couldn't get the final clear on the first day though.

Good thoughts. To be clear -- from my perspective Shang-Chi is anything but "fast." His time-to-kill scales pretty linearly on my mind-graph time-wise based on opponent health. That is: the harder the longer. (The dream of most men, really...)

Sekilicious

Ugh. I miss boosted Shang-Chi already 

Yepyep

Sekilicious said:

Ugh. I miss boosted Shang-Chi already 

Yes, it’s especially punishing with a small stable of 5s (or 4s or 3s…). That feeling is what triggered my analytical brain to reach the same conclusion I did with 3s and 4s: the WHOLE point of this enterprise, this game as a business, is roster slots. That’s how the devs make their money: champ everything and run farms everywhere possible. It all boils down to hp. 

As an aside, they once ran a roster slot discount sale, maybe in 2018? IIRC it was 600 hp per slot if you were below the cutoff (300 slots? I think.). I still wonder why they did it. I bought 30 then. Shoulda bought 300…

Sekilicious

So I champed Kitty today, it was Honor Among Theives again so I figured there would be a bit of symmetry. Plus with Mindless Ones all over the place I figured my strategy of Valkyrie with SC would be hard countered. It cut my time by 15 minutes using Kitty, Polaris, and Grocket in Pick-3. I didn’t try her against Carbage in the Challenge Node.  Boosted Shang-Chi is still faster. 

Day 2 with the Mindless Ones was much slower but at least I got full clears. 

In PvP my MMR is pretty much the same with two 5* champs over 1. Lots of people I skip into have multiple champs, a few have 1 or 2, and some have none. It really is hit or miss. The main difference I found is that the 4* Polaris meta no longer exists for me, which is fine cause that would not be fair. 

Punisher5784

@Sekilicious said:
So I champed Kitty today, it was Honor Among Theives again so I figured there would be a bit of symmetry. Plus with Mindless Ones all over the place I figured my strategy of Valkyrie with SC would be hard countered. It cut my time by 15 minutes using Kitty, Polaris, and Grocket in Pick-3. I didn’t try her against Carbage in the Challenge Node.  Boosted Shang-Chi is still faster. 
Day 2 with the Mindless Ones was much slower but at least I got full clears. In PvP my MMR is pretty much the same with two 5* champs over 1. Lots of people I skip into have multiple champs, a few have 1 or 2, and some have none. It really is hit or miss. The main difference I found is that the 4* Polaris meta no longer exists for me, which is fine cause that would not be fair. 

Hi @Sekilicious
Thanks for making this post and keeping a journal! I know it's been a year since you posted here but I found it very helpful and encouraging!

I have played on-and-off since 3* Sentry's release but I just returned from a 2yr retirement. I dipped my toes in SCL10 and my old Kitty + Rocket team was getting their butt kicked. I was trying to find some good posts on what to do and saw yours. I Faved BRB and Polaris. Got them covered and put the Carol's Communicator Support on BRB so he's constantly healed matching special tiles. Now, I am kicking butt back, with 1* Juggs TUs!

Thank you again. Much appreciated

Sekilicious

I'm glad this helped someone. I find Kitty and Grocket do great against non-tile movers, though Kitty needs to be at 5/5/3 since it takes a bit to get going and she will need to get rid of countdown tiles. If your Kitty and BRB are champed, tile movers are a breeze if you use Polaris as a third. Target blue to stun with Polaris to get the strikes out quickly, and the enemy team will do virtually no damage to you.

Good luck with SCL 10.

fractalvisions

I'm sure it must help if Kitty is at 5/5/3, but she doesn't need to be. I think my Kitty was 2/1/2 when I first started in SCL10 and even now is 5/3/3. The boosts to the strike tiles are whats important to get those goons down before their countdown tiles go off. It certainly helps that I have Carol's Communicator (for the healing and possibility of initial defence tiles) on Kitty, Taskmaster's Sword (for the extra damage) on Polaris and Sanctum Sanctorum (for the possibility of initial yellow AP) on Grocket. This is still my standard team for the pick 3 non-trivial nodes, even the tile movers.

Sekilicious

Yeah if that works in your experience then I misspoke. I find thugs with their 3-turn 15k+ yellow pretty nerve wracking so prefer the 1 turn counter.