I’m back! ….. for the 5th time

bbigler

Hello everyone, it’s been 2.5 yrs since I stopped playing and posting; I see that some of you are still here! @HoundofShadow @BlackBoltRocksLike before, I got a new phone, started downloading apps and thought I would check out MPQ again. My prior account is gone because I deleted my Facebook account, so I’ve been playing from scratch again (which is actually fun).  I see that my 2019 guide to progressing is still up. 

I mostly wanted to say hello, but I do have a few questions for you guys.  First, I’ll introduce myself to people that don’t know me.  I’ve played MPQ from the very beginning in 2013, but because of the time commitment, I quit, but then later come back, get burned out again and quit again. It’s a vicious cycle. My first account from 2013 to 2017 got up to 17 champed 4*s with a hoard of 183 pulls. My 2nd account from 2018 - 2019 got up to 22 champed 4*s with a Champed 5* Kitty. 

So, I’m starting over again, but that’s ok because progression has never been faster (which I’m sure is by design). Progression was extremely slow in the beginning, but it’s gotten faster and faster each year. I’ve been playing for 9 days from scratch and already have 5 champed 2*s (I did buy the starter packs).  I’m currently outpacing my progression speed last time. 

The new GUI is nice, I love shards and quests are extra gravy. The 4*tier is bloated beyond belief now and the 5* tier is enormous too. Support rewards are still stingy. I wonder what their 5 year plan is. Now, some questions for you guys: 

1. What are the top five 4*s?
2. What are the top five 5*s?
3. Has the total player count increased or decreased?
4. Can I join someone’s good alliance? (Please send private message) 

ThaRoadWarrior

You can join my whack alliance if you want lol. 

Polaris is easily the best 4*, colossus/Wanda is the current 5* duo you’ll see most. However 5* boosting is now a thing in both modes, so the “champ em all” crowd have been enjoying getting to use some moldy oldies with a 100 level boost.

fastest PVE clear team I hear is Adam Warlock/Okoye/Immortal Hulk, but I don’t care for Warlock and use Ghostpool instead if the boosted 5s are not great.

bbigler

Hey @ThaRoadWarrior  I see that you’re still here too.  I’ve been seeing Polaris in pvp and she does look good. 

fiirst

tbh, i believe u are able to retrieve your account by contacting cs.

in my opinion,


t5 4* 
-polaris
-rocket groot
-america chavez
-juggernaut
-karnak??

t5 5*
-apocalypse
-okoye
-colossus
-scarlet witch
-beta / kitty??

Waddles_Pines

Since you're starting from scratch:
4* Polaris, Blob, and either Grocket, Carol, or Drax is killer...

Besides that:
4*: Polaris, Juggs, Karnak, Mantis (to counter Polaris), Carol

5*: Apoc, Kitty, Colossus, Shang Chi, Brb, and not top 5, but Ronan packs a punch against non Kitty teams.

Dunno about lower scl, but pve scl 10 seems to have more players.

skittledaddy

Welcome Home (again) @bbigler !!
I always enjoyed your posts and analysis.
What is your new goal this time?

HoundofShadow

Welcome back!

In 2020, Apocalypse and Immortal Hulk were the meta released. The meta in 2020 until early 2021 was Okoye and iHulk. Players were eating passive AoE almost every turn, boosted by Okoye's passive that added power to allies' powers.

In 2021, Wanda was released as a counter and effectively killed iHulkoye. Now, we have been in the defensive meta of Wanda/Colossus for the past 6 months and the latest 5* release, Gamora, is a counter to this defensive meta. However, weekly boosted 5* shifted the gameplay in pvps a lot. 

The top 5 5* are Wanda, Colossus, Apocalypse, Beta Ray Bill and Kitty. Shang-Chi can also be considered top (offensively) but he's a glass cannon on defense. You can go winfinite mode with Shang Chi and 2* Magneto and 3* Mystique. In PvEs, Shang-Chi makes Challange node feels like 4* essential node. So, that's how powerful he is offensively. He's also been lauded as the character who brings the "Puzzle" back into MPQ.

Polaris is easily the best 4*. The other top (offensive) 4* are Karnak, Captain America Chavez, Juggernaut and the fifth spot can go to other characters as well.

bbigler

skittledaddy said:

Welcome Home (again) @bbigler !!
I always enjoyed your posts and analysis.
What is your new goal this time?

Excellent question! I’ve been thinking about that this morning. What’s the purpose to playing? To have fun right? What’s fun about the game?  Discovering new combos to beat other new combos, I guess. I like covering characters, leveling them up and trying them out ….. but I’ve already experienced every combo in the 2* and 3* tier, so why do it again? Well, it has been a long time. I could contact CS to get my old account back and pick up where I left off …… but do I want to? I was playing Kitty + Grocket + (Medusa) to beat everything fast, which eventually got boring. Variety keeps this game interesting. Medusa + Carnage was fun to play, just slow.  Winfinite teams are fun, I wanted to try Domino. There’s lots of fun 4*s I played, like Powerman + Wasp, 4*Star Lord + 3*Switch. I have a list of character combos to try. 

There are tons of characters I haven’t tried out in the 4* and 5* tier, so maybe I should go back to my old account. But I do enjoy the progression of the game, perhaps more than most. It’s definitely fun to open a hoard. But part of me is saying “you’ve done this all before, don’t waste your time and money”.  It is satisfying to beat my old personal records of progressing fast though. I think everyone agreed that getting 5*champs in less than a year is impressive. I bet I could do it even faster this time - that’s what it looks like now. 

Ultimately, I don’t know exactly what to do. Perhaps I’ll progress through the tiers again, but if it gets boring, then I could restore my old account. I could also quit at any point too, I certainly have a ton of other things to do, but the point of the game is to have some fun in between all the work I do. 

bbigler

HoundofShadow said:

Welcome back!

In 2021, Wanda was released as a counter and effectively killed iHulkoye. Now, we have been in the defensive meta of Wanda/Colossus for the past 6 months and the latest 5* release, Gamora, is a counter to this defensive meta. However, weekly boosted 5* shifted the gameplay in pvps a lot. 

The top 5 5* are Wanda, Colossus, Apocalypse, Beta Ray Bill and Kitty. Shang-Chi can also be considered top (offensively) but he's a glass cannon on defense. You can go winfinite mode with Shang Chi and 2* Magneto and 3* Mystique. In PvEs, Shang-Chi makes Challange node feels like 4* essential node. So, that's how powerful he is offensively. He's also been lauded as the character who brings the "Puzzle" back into MPQ.

Polaris is easily the best 4*. The other top (offensive) 4* are Karnak, Captain America Chavez, Juggernaut and the fifth spot can go to other characters as well.

This all sounds interesting, but a defensive meta must be frustrating to play. I’m glad to hear that Kitty is still top tier because when she was announced, everyone thought she was mid-tier, except me. It’s satisfying to see that I was right, but the power creep in the game is leaving her behind I think. Do we have a 5* that can quickly put out strike tiles? 

HoundofShadow

Kitty is still commonly seen, in shield sim with Polaris and BRB. That's also a defensive team with nice constant passive green and blue ap gain per friendly protect tile matched, thanks to BRB and Polaris.

Knulls put out a strike tile on turn 2 or 3 depending on how you count.

Start of game: nothing happens.
Player's turn 1: Knull places a cd
Player's turn 2: Knull's cd creates a strike tile. 

As for progressing faster,  shards milestones will help you with that. Take a look at this thread if you want to plan in advance. 

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/84122/milestones-taking-notes/p1

DAZ0273

There are some nice counters to the special tile meta now in the 4* tier - most notably Morbius and Mantis.

Histamiel

I am back to the game after a few months break. And I did a fresh start. Progress is a lot quicker now with shards.

Phumade

Welcome back to the game.

definietely send in a support ticket to see if they can recover your account.  Although it would be interesting to see you start from scratch again and document your experience.

bbigler

Phumade said:

Welcome back to the game.

definietely send in a support ticket to see if they can recover your account.  Although it would be interesting to see you start from scratch again and document your experience.

I’m debating about trying to recover my old account, but in the meantime, I’m comparing my progress between now and last time. Last time it took me 15 days to champ my first 2*, but this time I did it on day 5. Last time I champed my first 3* on day 21 but this time I could do it around day 12. After 10 days of playing, I have 6 x 2*champs and my 3*s are in good shape too: 

Iron Fist 3/5/5 level 127
Luke Cage 3/4/5 level 127
Scarlet Witch 3/3/4 level 127

Dr Strange 4/0/5 level 104
Spiderman 4/3/4 level 104
Kamala Khan 2/3/2 level 70
Thanos 2/2/2 level 56

Now I did buy their starter packs and VIP, which cost me a total of $75, but this is faster than last time spending the same amount. I ranked #1 with 762 points in SCL 4 in the 5*Gamora pvp. 

If you guys want to hear about my progress this time around, I’ll be happy to post it. 

ThaRoadWarrior

How many players like yourself do you imagine are out there? And by "like yourself" I here mean 2-3* players right now? I have no insight into that strata of the player base so I'm curious if you feel like it's a ghost town down there, or if you're seeing higher level rosters slumming it, or what.

Phumade

ThaRoadWarrior said:

How many players like yourself do you imagine are out there? And by "like yourself" I here mean 2-3* players right now? I have no insight into that strata of the player base so I'm curious if you feel like it's a ghost town down there, or if you're seeing higher level rosters slumming it, or what.

It would be very interesting to see what type of rosters you face.  While there a lot of knowledge and exp on the forums, none us have any meaningful recent experience from the prospective of a true 3* player.  

Histamiel

ThaRoadWarrior said:

How many players like yourself do you imagine are out there? And by "like yourself" I here mean 2-3* players right now? I have no insight into that strata of the player base so I'm curious if you feel like it's a ghost town down there, or if you're seeing higher level rosters slumming it, or what.

I will share my experience. I am on day 60. I play mostly PvE and at least 3 PvP games for each event (not a big PvP guy). For PvE, I join S1 at max available SCL and I only fo 4 clears of open nodes suboptimally.
My slice is always full and I mostly place top 400. 
In PvP, If I join early I see seed teams. If not I am matched with mostly teams of 2 stars champs and requeired or teams with high level 3 stars. But some times, i face team with one 270ish level 5 star.
My current rooster consist of:
* : iron man level 50
** : all rostered except Bagman. All are champions
*** : 24 currently rostered and 4 baby champions (Iron Man, Deadpool, Dr. Strange and Scarlet Witch)
**** : Taskmaster, Howard the Duck and Evil Dino got them during anniversary week.
I also have 179 CP and 3 LT.

I haven't spent a dime at the moment.

Srheer0

1. What are the top five 5*s?

In my opinion it's

BetareyBill
Okoye
Apocalypse
Scarlet witch (wandavision)
Colossus




2. What are the top five 4*s?

Polaris
Rocket and Groot (R4g)
Mantis
Morbius
Juggernaut

Things to note: As you saw there are a lot of 4s and 5s now. And D3 are boosting 3-4 5stars each week for both PVP and PVE, so the old ones are more useful now.

Check out the feeder list. They also added a bunch more feeders since you last checked maybe. (R3g now give R4g shards as an example). 

Other 5s like pr5fx, onslaught, C5rnage, Knull and Kitty are also still good, just not seen as often as the ones I listed (in my experience).

bbigler

ThaRoadWarrior said:

How many players like yourself do you imagine are out there? And by "like yourself" I here mean 2-3* players right now? I have no insight into that strata of the player base so I'm curious if you feel like it's a ghost town down there, or if you're seeing higher level rosters slumming it, or what.

There are more low level players than you would think. It’s not a ghost town. Most new players do not hoard, so many have 1 cover 5*s (which are useful) but I’m going for the long term strategy of champing 5*s