Spending in the ISO Debt

Carnifex
Carnifex Posts: 121 Tile Toppler
in MPQ General Discussion

Hi all.

So, like the many of us, I am stuck in the middle of the great ISO recession depression. I am at the stage now where I don't know where the best place to spend my ISO first is, and was wondering what my fellow swipers views are on this topic.

My current debt of characters waiting on ISO is:
4 5s - Hit Monkey + 3 latest
39 4s - All other 4s champed, all remaining are at 10+ saved covers
3 3*s - all dupes

I don't play competively, so is it best to spend from the top down, or go from the bottom up to increase resource gain by a trickle? What do you guys do in this situation? Thanks :)

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Comments

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    Feeder 4s first, then 5s.
    Then the rest of the 4s.
    3s whenever.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    I spread it out. With the massive iso income I got from Guardians quest I used it to champ 5* Star-Lord & Kingpin, Coleen Wing and 3* Jeff and High Evolutionary whilst churning my farms.

    I prioritise 5* unless the 4* has a feeder that is badly needed. As this latest event shows, you never know when having a champed 5* might be useful so I wanted to get Star-Lord champed. I am likewise eyeing up Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse which is why I chose to champ Kingpin in the hope he gets the boost treatment later this year.

    With the 3's, I want to get the new guys all champed ASAP so I will probably spend there before champing 4's which I already have far too many of with really not much use for most of them apart from being reward farms and times like the Guardians challenge. It is sometimes useful to have fully covered 3's + 1 cover not already champed for an instant LT if I need one trying to cover a Latest 3 character.

    But I am terrible at this game, lol!

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    The cold hard truth is, it doesn't really matter.
    That deficit will take a long time to erase, no matter what you do.
    So, pick someone randomly if you can't decide.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    There is also the issue of the out of sync cost of champing 4*. The Devs have promised they are looking at the game economy but I don't know if that means more iso or less costs and obviously we have no timeframe.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    Yeah. I mean my Kingpin choice is just a wild swing I hope will pay off at some point and is only based upon his association with the Miles Spider-Man film rather than anything else. I might have spent the 100,000's of thousand iso and he will be completely excluded. Still at least he will get a boost week here and there I guess.

    I am also eyeing up Abigail Brand who is at 4/4/4 for Secret Invasion but probably we will not get an event based off that.

    And of course if we do get Cosmo next then that is top priority for champing because, hello, space dog.

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    5* Kingpin was only recently reworked? I don't think he's up for another balance pass already.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    No I don't expect him to be re-balanced but I do hope we get another event based shenanigan type thing for the Spidey film and hope he will be boosted or a part of it.

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    I highly doubt Magik will make anyone's PVE easier. She's a big load of nothing on the 5* node.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    If you want easier PvE then make sure you grab Kang before he is gone for the hard/challenge nodes, not sure any of the next three are particularly earth shattering. High Evolution looks like he has potential but seems hard work to get the best out of and confused the hell outta me. Magik was ground pounded to nothing before she could even summon a demon and Jeff is adorable but also just a fish.

  • stef_focus
    stef_focus Posts: 117 Tile Toppler

    When I was in the desert, I spend on 4* first. My first priorities were 4* that were either top tier, or had interesting abilities that made playing easier. My second priorities were specific feeders.

    The 3* duplicates were left without ISO until they could be champed and have a decent amount of levels, so I would sell the max champed version and use the ISO to champ the duplicate.

    I played a bit more competitively, so I only started adding ISO to 5* once I had enough that I could still do a decent PVP, but ymmv.

    4* I found interesting:
    Polaris (top 4* because part of many combo's)
    Rocket & Groot (strike tiles)
    Valkyrie (AP generation)
    Captain Marvel (AP generation + damage)
    Jean Grey (special tile removal + stun on match 5)
    Juggernaut (for the easy nodes)
    America Chavez (critical tiles)
    Medusa (healing + AP generation)
    Riri Williams (damage + airborne)
    Karnak (critical tiles)
    The Hulk - Main Event (board shake)
    Nightcrawler (inifityBamf)
    Quake (team damage prevention)
    Cloak & Dagger (attack tiles + tile generation + healing)
    Iceman (stuns + tile generation)
    Legion (all colors + 6 abilities)

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,653 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Bowgentle said:
    I highly doubt Magik will make anyone's PVE easier. She's a big load of nothing on the 5* node.

    I have her paired with Wong right now and some yellow supports including kamartaj. And they are melting most nodes. Her reds repeaters do some work when they get good damage increases.

    Kang drops out next and he is another that can see good use.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    4* I would prioritise is Deathlok (insane battery) but I am guessing OP already has the latest good 4* champed.

  • Timemachinego
    Timemachinego Posts: 507 Critical Contributor
    edited May 2023

    This is the plan I'd suggest players follow nowadays, I threw in some specific thinking towards your situation where appropriate.

    For credentials... I've just entered my 3rd anniversary daily rewards phase, have everything champed through 5* metas and I am currently working on champing those that are useful when a week hits that I don't have anyone boosted to run for PVP while maintaining my overall plan. I do and have played fairly competitively during this growth so the plan below is tailored to that approach.

    I mostly spend bottom up, as that increases the flow of rewards most quickly, but I have some caveats:

    2s I spend on immediately to keep them cycling.

    New 3s are immediate also, then start spending towards a team that can help your play out. I honestly don't know who is considered useful at 3* anymore, I mostly leaned on Dr. Strange, Iron Fist and Luke Cage during that phase. Champ em all. Dupes only get spent on once at 64? covers so they'll spit out that extra LL.

    4s are where it gets tricky. Find yourself some meta teams and go after those first. Then prioritize those that feed, then move to 5* meta choices but possibly only soft-capping them somewhere convenient (360 is a widely accepted stop point and allows them to play like champed 5s during boost weeks but we do have pvp MMR changes coming so who knows). Whether you soft cap or not, for 5s I suggest only putting ISO into them in a big lump to start for MMR reasons.

    I personally moved from soft-capped metas to a single champ 5* while continuing to work on my 4s and then saved up for a long time, moving fully to 5* with 10 or so of the top picks. The advantages of soft-capping have probably mostly dried up actual game-play wise but there's still pretty healthy debate on the subject. As a growth strategy I think it makes good sense as getting your 4s spitting out rewards is CRUCIAL to your roster growth.

    I don't think there's a huge rush to champ any more 5s once you've gotten through most of the meta. Cases vary but my next priority for 5s would be those that are good when boosted.

    *In your case, I'd champ Hit Monkey and Kang just to have choices for combating immortal teams in PVP. Magik and Jeff can get left on the back-burner for as long as you please, neither are particularly useful imo.

    After 5s go back to 4s and ideally you'll get them all champed (following my previous ahem "wider bottom" up strategy, I champed literally every 4 there was before moving onto putting more than "soft cap" ISO into 5s, but I wouldn't suggest that now). Even the ones that don't feed now could in the future and give you LLs at every 10 covers. Getting your 4s larger means better rewards when you draw for 5s and will become your biggest consistent point of champion income (unless you go hard on classics, I suppose).

    I hope that wasn't needlessly complicated and meandering.

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,653 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Timemachinego said:
    After 5s go back to 4s and ideally you'll get them all champed (following my previous ahem "wider bottom" up strategy, I champed literally every 4 there was before moving onto putting more than "soft cap" ISO into 5s). Even the ones that don't feed now could in the future and give you LLs at every 10 covers. Getting your 4s larger means better rewards when you draw for 5s and will become your biggest consistent point of champion income (unless you go hard on classics, I suppose).

    Completely agree with this . I’ll just say though if a 4* isn’t feeding anybody there is no specific reason to champ them strait away.
    I let Mariah Hill sit unchamped for more than 2 years and I only champed her after I had 23 covers. So I took her directly too 280. I did this with several 4s.

    I was more concerned with the 5* milestone rewards for the first 20 champs then champing the other 4s.

    I would say it obviously depends on the roster. But the 1-20 champ rewards for 5s are very compelling

  • Scofie
    Scofie GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,394 Chairperson of the Boards

    When I was Iso-starved, I'd softcap my 3*s at 120, because just before that is the point where the Iso cost per level jumps massively (but I like round numbers).This was before saved covers and so I held enough Iso back to champ a character before the vine took them away.

    If it were now, I'd probably sink it into the 4s first to get regular champ rewards, but only when you have 5 or so saved covers. I only suffered a little from an Iso drought. At one point, I was 5 million or so down, but the odd 15 levels here or there on most non-covered 5 didn't make any difference to my play style.

    HP was my main limiter because I played mostly F2P for the first 7 years, so Iso wasn't needed when you have to sell 3* covers because you haven't got the slots to roster them. It all built fairly organically in that way.

  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,744 Chairperson of the Boards

    I understand why they don't let us give other users ISO, but it is sad seeing posts like this when you're just sitting on 42 million ISO. I even have a milestone to spend some that I can't do anything with. Would be nice if I could send some in an effort to meet the milestone, at least.

  • Zarqa
    Zarqa Posts: 349 Mover and Shaker

    I am in a similar situation as yours. This is my recent strategy:

    • Champ my 3 currently fully covered 5s first. Reason: I’m a completionist
    • Then keep champing each latest 5 (I am on the LL train). Reason; I just enjoy playing with new 5s while they’re essential and boosted more than the enjoyment I get from having more 4s champed.
    • Then champ the latest 3. Just to have them champed
    • With any remaining iso I plan to champ the rest of my 4s. Priority is a feeder with 10 extra covers, to get a 5 that I am missing and then any 4s with the most saved covers.
    • I champ any 3 dupes only once I have 34 saved covers, which costs only about 10k iso (when you sell the dupe) and gets it straight to level 200.

    I believe that I can champ one 5, one 3, and two 4 stars each season, so I’ll have all the latest 5s and 3s champed and will slowly (slowly!) work towards champing all remaining 4s. I have no strategy about completing any classic 5s at the moment

    Not saying this is necessarily the most optimal strat. But it works for me.

  • gamecat235
    gamecat235 Posts: 117 Tile Toppler

    @DAZ0273 said:

    And of course if we do get Cosmo next then that is top priority for champing because, hello, space dog.

    I read this in singsong to the tune of Hallo Spaceboy. But also, yeah. I’ve already started saving enough ISO to champ him.

    Re: thread, my approach is probably not one to emulate. I have every 4* champed. 21 5*’s champed, and 14 others at 13 covers. I’m “on the LL train” and it’s working great so far.

    I also have started holding out on champing my farm until they reach max covers (50 covers for 2*, 100 covers for 3’s) except for new 3’s. This way the net gain at the time of cashing them is actually a gain. I also slowly level them up so the impact is spread out, so I add a level for every saved cover.

    Just some random opinions that might, or might not, be useful. Day 2090 if it’s useful.

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