Roster level question

Glockoma

Most of the time when new players come around, we advise them to level appropriately for incoming 5* additions to their roster in order to mitigate the mmr walls that are inevitably encountered.

I’ve often wondered if it would be a much better experience to have soft-capped my personal 5* roster scaled back to the good ole days in line (or slightly above) with my 4* max champs.

Excluding the current revive meta, would you enjoy having theoretically expanding your character tiers out like this? Thoughts? Cheers

Timemachinego

I basically did that, softcapping 5s at 360 until I started aiming for competitive PVE play. PVP was a lot smoother even disregarding the immortal teams.

That said, I think there's a really good argument for going single-champ 5* with a solid character (like Apoc, SC, Okoye) that can pull most of the weight and help you break into higher ranks in PVE since that's where the best rewards are. I can often now t20 in prejoins and I've snagged more than a few 5s in early flips... doing that well also lets me break into my alliance family's t10 teams and pick up some LLs which then strengthen my roster and it all kind of snowballs.

Now, if I could go back to entirely sleepwalking through PVP while still doing well in PVE, I'd obviously like that (I don't particularly enjoy PVP but rewards are rewards and my alliance has minimums). I've been bumping more and more of my unleveled 5s up to my 360 cap so I can try them out during boost weeks, long term goal being to make the jump to full champed 5* mmr with a reasonably wide set of characters available for boost weeks and specific answers to specific problems (hulkchasm, mostly)

skittledaddy

Most already know this about me, but there is nothing theoretical about it... This is exactly what I still do to this day.
My top six 4s are between levels 362 and 368. I have 69 fully-covered 5s, all are soft-capped at level 360 (except GThor and IHulk, who are intentionally under-leveled for Okoye tanking).
I am still marching towards my personal end-goal to fully-cover EVERY 5* without champing any. Only 11 more to go, with the finish-line in sight.
I know that most people hate on us soft-cappers (a few are abusively vocal about it, too), but I enjoy it. It's the sweet spot for my playstyle and my limited availability, and that's all that matters to me.

Borstock

I soft-capped for a while because the 4* tier was more diverse and more fun overall for a long time. Once the 5* tier filled out a little more, I made the jump.

BriMan2222

@Borstock said:
I soft-capped for a while because the 4* tier was more diverse and more fun overall for a long time. Once the 5* tier filled out a little more, I made the jump.

Same. I didn't want to be stuck using the same 2 characters all day everyday. So, I soft capped my 5's until I had a diverse group of 5 stars that I could champ all at once.

Daredevil217

@Borstock said:
I soft-capped for a while because the 4* tier was more diverse and more fun overall for a long time. Once the 5* tier filled out a little more, I made the jump.

Same here and I have zero regrets. I think what it is for me, back then I liked having the options available to me and the diversity. I feared my hard-earned 4* would just become reward factories. However, once the 5* tier started bloating, it felt like there were TOO many characters and I like not having to think about most of them and only viewing them as reward factories (I’ve become the thing I feared most lol). The 5* tier has more than enough diversity in it now, so I don’t feel like I lack for variety at all, especially since I “champ em all”. God boosts have only made the tier more fun and diverse. That is the one thing that the 4* meta had over 5* and now fives get their boosts to shake things up as well. Right now, the meta sort of sucks when two unboosted characters are more of a deterrent than characters 100+ levels higher. But my hope is that once the devs deal with that one way or another, we go back to weekly boosted being the meta each week.

Soft-capping was fun and I did it for literally years, but there is something fun about taking the training wheels off and unlocking a character’s full power.

entrailbucket

I think the fears that cause people to softcap are overblown and have always been overblown. Some players seem to have really crazy ideas about what'll happen to them if they accidentally put an extra level on a guy.

That said, I'm not as bothered about softcappers anymore, because they've fixed the incentives to do it. Softcapping used to be optimal, in that it was way harder to win stuff if you actually leveled up your guys. Now it's clearly suboptimal -- it's clearly harder to progress in the game with low-leveled characters, so if you choose to keep playing in the minor leagues you can't compete for major league rewards.

Punisher5784

@Timemachinego said:
I basically did that, softcapping 5s at 360 until I started aiming for competitive PVE play. PVP was a lot smoother even disregarding the immortal teams.

@skittledaddy said:
Most already know this about me, but there is nothing theoretical about it... This is exactly what I still do to this day.
My top six 4s are between levels 362 and 368. I have 69 fully-covered 5s, all are soft-capped at level 360 (except GThor and IHulk, who are intentionally under-leveled for Okoye tanking).

May I ask why you both chose the 360s?

I've been raising my 5*s to 350 because a few players said that was the highest you can go. I have not seen others suggested higher until now

skittledaddy

Back when I played PvP in a coordination room, levelling to 360 was required in order for me to consistently queue grill teams. Anything lower wouldn't always do it. I did that even when it meant they were higher than my highest 4s.
My top 4s have now passed my 5s again, and it's gotten slightly easier to climb.
Tbh, I've never seen counsel to stop at 350. It might work, but I've just never seen it. I do know others who stop at 330, but they don't play in BC rooms.

fractalvisions

When I finally learnt about MMR, my highest character was already at lvl 330. I decided it would be good to, at least temporarily, limit my 5s to 330 whilst I built them up. Soon after I hit the ISO drought anyway and decided to focus my ISO on champing 4s (and occasionally levelling another 5 up to 330). I do keep asking myself the question of when I should switch to champing 5s, but I greatly appreciate the diversity of my options in 4* land and I do fear that the game just won't be as much fun if I feel forced to use just the meta characters in order to be able to win anything. Another great thing about my current level is that there does seem to be a reasonable amount of diversity in opponents and I fear that diversity would also be lacking in 5* land.

@entrailbucket said:
I think the fears that cause people to softcap are overblown and have always been overblown. Some players seem to have really crazy ideas about what'll happen to them if they accidentally put an extra level on a guy.

I suspect the fears you are alluding to are different to those being expressed in this thread. Certainly, I have seen players being hesitant to move to 5* land for fear of not being able to compete despite having some of the best characters. I'd agree that that is overblown, assuming that the player is happy restricting themselves to only using their very best characters. Would you not agree though that the fears are not overblown for those of us who are afraid the game will be a lot less fun if we restrict ourselves to only using our very best characters? Given all the 'nerf Chasm' threads, I also presume that there's nothing overblown about my fear of a lack of diversity in 5* land.

That said, I'm not as bothered about softcappers anymore, because they've fixed the incentives to do it. Softcapping used to be optimal, in that it was way harder to win stuff if you actually leveled up your guys. Now it's clearly suboptimal -- it's clearly harder to progress in the game with low-leveled characters, so if you choose to keep playing in the minor leagues you can't compete for major league rewards.

I presume this is only relevant to those who care about playing optimally. I'm very sceptical that champing 5s would lead to any increase in my rewards. I presume that would only happen if I started caring about placement.

entrailbucket

Can you get to 1200 in PvP? Again, the reason some of us hate softcappers is that before static-scaled PvE, softcappers dominated placement in PvE. Enemies scaled to your roster, so they had a massive advantage over all of us, and it was almost impossible to win a PvE if you actually leveled up your guys.

This talk of diversity is interesting though...when I see softcap rosters in PvP (and I do see them occasionally, and I go out of my way to hit them excessively when I do), I generally see them running the strongest characters in the game, just at lower levels. I do not see them running interesting or "diverse" teams. It's generally Polaris BRB or Shang-Chi Valkyrie or something similar. Lately, I see some of them running underleveled Chasm/Hulk. Those players don't seem to be too worried about only using the very best characters.

entrailbucket

It's like a 20-year-old professional choosing to play in the 12-year-old baseball league. The game is much easier and you get to feel really strong and push the little guys around, but it's a bit sad. At least now they can't win the world championship, though.

The devs are (or at least, were) very concerned about the impact these folks have on legitimate low-level players, though, and have made lots of changes to encourage them to play in the big leagues.

KGB

Softcapping (which I also do) hasn't been beneficial in PvP since the advent of 5* boosts.

It's primary use is for players who want to remain in 4* land for the diversity (ie who wants to face the Immortal Bros in PvP over and over) AND for players who want to have multiple 5* champs (say 6+) when they make the jump to 5* land.

KGB

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:
This talk of diversity is interesting though...when I see softcap rosters in PvP (and I do see them occasionally, and I go out of my way to hit them excessively when I do), I generally see them running the strongest characters in the game, just at lower levels. I do not see them running interesting or "diverse" teams. It's generally Polaris BRB or Shang-Chi Valkyrie or something similar. Lately, I see some of them running underleveled Chasm/Hulk. Those players don't seem to be too worried about only using the very best characters.

This is so true! In the thread I wrote chronicling my leap into the 5* tier, I speak to just that. I was clinging to this idea of “diversity” and wanting to hold on to these 4* characters, but all my teams were really relying on 5* (Thor, Okoye, Kitty, BRB, DD, and Thanos). Once I realized that I was like, “might as well level them!”

Vhailorx

Lots of good debate to be had on this topic. The problem is that it's not easy to get experience doing both things. So it's sort for like an argument over "what fruit tastes like" between one group of people who have eaten oranges and a second group of people who have eaten apples. But no one has eaten both. It's hard to find a common frame of reference.

And even those few people who have tried both strategies can't go back and forth. You can only go from having softcapped in the past to being at champ levels now.

Personally, I care more about pve, so the decision to champ my 5*s was pretty easy when CLs were introduced and scaling was decoupled from roster strength. Softcapping is a perfectly viable strategy though, especially if you care about pvp.

entrailbucket

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
This talk of diversity is interesting though...when I see softcap rosters in PvP (and I do see them occasionally, and I go out of my way to hit them excessively when I do), I generally see them running the strongest characters in the game, just at lower levels. I do not see them running interesting or "diverse" teams. It's generally Polaris BRB or Shang-Chi Valkyrie or something similar. Lately, I see some of them running underleveled Chasm/Hulk. Those players don't seem to be too worried about only using the very best characters.

This is so true! In the thread I wrote chronicling my leap into the 5* tier, I speak to just that. I was clinging to this idea of “diversity” and wanting to hold on to these 4* characters, but all my teams were really relying on 5* (Thor, Okoye, Kitty, BRB, DD, and Thanos). Once I realized that I was like, “might as well level them!”

Like, if they were actually using most of the 4* characters -- if these guys were running Talos and Invisible Woman, and didn't want to lose the ability to do that, then that's one thing. But when you're just facerolling noobs with Polaris or Shang-Chi the whole time, that's not "diversity." You may as well just use Chasm/Hulk for every match. Why preserve the ability to use bad/fun characters when you have no intention of actually using the bad/fun characters?

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
This talk of diversity is interesting though...when I see softcap rosters in PvP (and I do see them occasionally, and I go out of my way to hit them excessively when I do), I generally see them running the strongest characters in the game, just at lower levels. I do not see them running interesting or "diverse" teams. It's generally Polaris BRB or Shang-Chi Valkyrie or something similar. Lately, I see some of them running underleveled Chasm/Hulk. Those players don't seem to be too worried about only using the very best characters.

This is so true! In the thread I wrote chronicling my leap into the 5* tier, I speak to just that. I was clinging to this idea of “diversity” and wanting to hold on to these 4* characters, but all my teams were really relying on 5* (Thor, Okoye, Kitty, BRB, DD, and Thanos). Once I realized that I was like, “might as well level them!”

Like, if they were actually using most of the 4* characters -- if these guys were running Talos and Invisible Woman, and didn't want to lose the ability to do that, then that's one thing. But when you're just facerolling noobs with Polaris or Shang-Chi the whole time, that's not "diversity." You may as well just use Chasm/Hulk for every match. Why preserve the ability to use bad/fun characters when you have no intention of actually using the bad/fun characters?

By the time you see softcapped rosters they have broken MMR. The only way they can get anywhere near that is by using the best meta teams that you mentioned (BRB/Polaris, Grocket/Polaris, Shang/Valk etc).

We can use 4* boosted characters and other teams before we break the first level of MMR. That's roughly at 500 points for me. At that point I'm simply fed a steady diet of boosted 5* under covered characters (2-10 covers) that are all in the 400-500 range . The match damage from those characters means they can only be beaten by similarly leveled characters (my own boosted 5*) or meta teams. So by the time you see us break the 2nd level of MMR around 800 points you only see the meta teams.

The idea that we are facerolling noobs just isn't true. We never get a look at 3* roster or unchamped 4*s etc.

KGB

entrailbucket

Eh, I often spend a decent percentage of my PvP time grinding 5-point matches (don't ask) -- that's when I see softcappers. I doubt they've broken MMR at that point.

But...hold on. You keep your entire roster underleveled just so that you can occasionally use fully-covered, boosted 4*, from 0 to 500 points?

If you're not facerolling noobs the whole time then the whole thing makes even less sense to me! 0->500 is the easiest part of PvP!

Vhailorx

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
This talk of diversity is interesting though...when I see softcap rosters in PvP (and I do see them occasionally, and I go out of my way to hit them excessively when I do), I generally see them running the strongest characters in the game, just at lower levels. I do not see them running interesting or "diverse" teams. It's generally Polaris BRB or Shang-Chi Valkyrie or something similar. Lately, I see some of them running underleveled Chasm/Hulk. Those players don't seem to be too worried about only using the very best characters.

This is so true! In the thread I wrote chronicling my leap into the 5* tier, I speak to just that. I was clinging to this idea of “diversity” and wanting to hold on to these 4* characters, but all my teams were really relying on 5* (Thor, Okoye, Kitty, BRB, DD, and Thanos). Once I realized that I was like, “might as well level them!”

Like, if they were actually using most of the 4* characters -- if these guys were running Talos and Invisible Woman, and didn't want to lose the ability to do that, then that's one thing. But when you're just facerolling noobs with Polaris or Shang-Chi the whole time, that's not "diversity." You may as well just use Chasm/Hulk for every match. Why preserve the ability to use bad/fun characters when you have no intention of actually using the bad/fun characters?

By the time you see softcapped rosters they have broken MMR. The only way they can get anywhere near that is by using the best meta teams that you mentioned (BRB/Polaris, Grocket/Polaris, Shang/Valk etc).

We can use 4* boosted characters and other teams before we break the first level of MMR. That's roughly at 500 points for me. At that point I'm simply fed a steady diet of boosted 5* under covered characters (2-10 covers) that are all in the 400-500 range . The match damage from those characters means they can only be beaten by similarly leveled characters (my own boosted 5*) or meta teams. So by the time you see us break the 2nd level of MMR around 800 points you only see the meta teams.

The idea that we are facerolling noobs just isn't true. We never get a look at 3* roster or unchamped 4*s etc.

KGB

I can also find teams of under-covered 5* s and off-meta teams below 500 points in pvp, and I have ~lvl 460 MMR. This information makes me question the utility of softcapping for any reason other than team construction (i.e. putting 5s on par with 4s in terms of health and power damage and ensuring that you have your preferred character tanking).

Bowgentle

So softcappers can use the whole roster below 500, after that it's meta teams.
Which is the exact experience you have with dual 5* MMR at level 500+
Remind me again why you softcap 🤣

Punisher5784

I'll say this, my PvP experience today versus pre-retirement 2.5yrs ago is much different.

I used to get by with boosted 4* and land with 700-800pts because no one really had covered 5*s yet. When Kitty was released, I blew my hoard on her. With her covered, I often reached to 1200pts. Then I got Okoye and Half Thor. I finished T1 in a season for the first (and only time ever) and I retired.

Today, everyone has covered 5s and high leveled 4s, so I just play for wins and don't care about the points. I rarely see champed 5s and never see champed 3s. It's truly players like me with softcapped rosters and undercovered 5s. I can easily reach 25 wins and depending on the featured character I'll go for 50. I'll end with 850-925pts, it's good enough for T50-100, T150-200 season. I cannot reach beyond 925pts because I quickly get beat down 150+pts after winning a match. I'm good with that until I get enough Iso to champ all the 5 covered characters I have.