Should I be rostering 1 stars?

dxanders

So with the upcoming champ 2.0 system about to go live, I wanted to get some thoughts from vets on what the best strategy is going to be. I have farms going for 3 and 2 star characters and 80-ish 4 stars. In the latter category, I have the meta pretty widely covered but am trying to fill out the roster so I have essentials and can do a mass pull of LTs without having to dump a bunch of 4 covers.

Do y'all think it's going to be worth it to start making spots for 1 stars so I can get champ rewards there, or is that best left until 4 stat rostering is complete?

Bowgentle

Vets will tell you to farm everything.
You probably want advice from people who have any idea what play is like at your level - sadly, we don't.

dianetics

Short answer no.
If you don't have a complete roster you will put a lot of pressure on your roster slot progression.
Nobody even knows how the lower levels will actually perform when they jump up. It seems unlikely any 1* will be meta. Even the best 1's wont see massive changes in how they work.
Just remember powers don't translate across tiers. Arcade and Dr Strange are great 3's but not good 5s.

If you don't have the room to mess around, then just wait for others to do it first.

Zalasta

I've started rostering all 1 stars, whereas previously I only kept Juggernaut.

The reason being that by ascending my 1-stars to 2-stars, I start getting 2-star champion rewards for each 1-star cover, instead of just 100 ISO for selling covers I didn't want or need.

YMMV

dxanders

@dianetics said:
Short answer no.
If you don't have a complete roster you will put a lot of pressure on your roster slot progression.
Nobody even knows how the lower levels will actually perform when they jump up. It seems unlikely any 1* will be meta. Even the best 1's wont see massive changes in how they work.
Just remember powers don't translate across tiers. Arcade and Dr Strange are great 3's but not good 5s.

If you don't have the room to mess around, then just wait for others to do it first.

To be clear, I'm in no rush to start ascending 1 star characters - and if so - only for the farming rewards.

More generally, thanks for the advice everyone.

dxanders

@Zalasta said:
I've started rostering all 1 stars, whereas previously I only kept Juggernaut.

The reason being that by ascending my 1-stars to 2-stars, I start getting 2-star champion rewards for each 1-star cover, instead of just 100 ISO for selling covers I didn't want or need.

YMMV

I guess the big question here (and one we likely won't know until the update is in the wild) is whether or not splicing two 1 stars to get 2 star champion rewards will be worth the alternative.

ThaRoadWarrior

The alternative being to just sell them for 100 iso each, i'm guessing it is "worth" it. Because I was in a position to do so, I went ahead and rostered all the 1s back when they casually mentioned maybe one day they'd add 1* champ levels, prior to that i'd only kept around juggernaut. But I tend to agree that farming low tier characters fuels roster growth at the upper tiers, so you should do that. Now whether you still need to have all the 4s before you start chasing 5s I guess I wouldn't necessarily weigh in on that at this stage in the game. But the game rains down 1s and 2s on you at all levels of play, so being able to turn them into rewards seems prudent at all levels of play to me.

dxanders

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
The alternative being to just sell them for 100 iso each, i'm guessing it is "worth" it. Because I was in a position to do so, I went ahead and rostered all the 1s back when they casually mentioned maybe one day they'd add 1* champ levels, prior to that i'd only kept around juggernaut. But I tend to agree that farming low tier characters fuels roster growth at the upper tiers, so you should do that. Now whether you still need to have all the 4s before you start chasing 5s I guess I wouldn't necessarily weigh in on that at this stage in the game. But the game rains down 1s and 2s on you at all levels of play, so being able to turn them into rewards seems prudent at all levels of play to me.

I'm really at the point where I'm wondering "is it worth it to pull ~300 LTs even if I'm going to have to sell a few dozen covers for 4s I never use?" and my impatient brain is telling me yes.

ThaRoadWarrior

I guess what is the goal there?

meadowsweet

@dxanders it depends what you're trying to do.

If you want to have a bunch of Level 550 characters, then 2★ and 1★ characters will probably get you there first, just by virtue of how common their tokens / covers are (and how few characters they're divided amongst.)

Or you can focus on trying to roster all of the 4★ tier so that you can open tokens and not worry about getting a new character and having them die on the vine. But you're still 60+ roster slots away from having all 143 (and counting) 4★ characters?

Or you could prioritize just the best / most meta / over-powered characters (Polaris, Okoye, Shang-Chi, Thor, etc.) if you're having more fun playing with them or think they'll be more successful.

Again, you could theoretically get the 1★ Iron Man, 1★ Spider-Man, and 1★ Storm to Level 550 relatively quickly. That may help a lot in PVE, but it might also mean that in PVP you're getting matched up against 5★ Level 550 Chasm teams, not 1★ Level 550 teams...

entrailbucket

If you're asking "is it optimal," someone can do that math.

If you're asking "will it make the game more enjoyable for me", you are the only one who can answer that.

Bad

I think the wise move is to not open any token until knowing better what will happen, or until having more 1* characters released.
Then yes, ascending them to 2* or 3* will give you certainly better rewards than selling 1* covers.

bbigler

Having restarted my roster twice, here’s my advice:
Because you are on the verge of busting your hoard and champing 5-stars, building out your 4-stars is less important than building up your lower tier farms. Why? Because those lower tier farms are far more productive and champing non-meta 4-stars doesn’t help you much. You’ll get more rewards from 1,2 & 3 star farms than those 4-star PVE nodes you’re missing.

DyingLegend

Do you use 1 stars in balance of power?

If you answered no, then don't worry about rostering them. They aren't useful now and they won't be useful later.

helix72

Let's say for a moment that you have 70 covers for 1* Juggernaut. Assuming I've understood ascension correctly, here are two options:

Option 1: Sell each cover
Cost to you: nothing
Rewards: 70 x 100 ISO = 7,000 ISO

Option 2:
-fully cover (10 covers each) two versions of 1* Juggernaut
-then bind them to ascend to a level 94 2* version of 1* Juggernaut
-then apply the remaining 50 covers to bring your new Juggy to level 144
-then sell your new Juggy (you likely wouldn't sell him but I include this so it's apples to apples with Option 1)

Cost to you: 37,440 ISO (the cost to level up your two 1* Juggernauts to level 40)
Rewards:
Iso-8: 16750 from champ rewards + 65000 for the sale = 81,750
Hero Points: 190 from champ rewards + 125 for the sale = 315
Command Points: 5 from champ rewards
Heroic Token: 6 from champ rewards
Elite Token: 2 from champ rewards
Mighty Token: 2 from champ rewards
Plus you get some XP which goes towards your SHIELD Rank which generates more ISO

Now, you may point out that in Option 2 I did not consider the HP you need to spend for 2 roster slots. And while this is true, you can't re-sell the roster slot but you can re-use it. So just keep that in mind.

To me, reading the above, the answer is pretty obvious which one I would do.

meadowsweet

@DyingLegend said:
Do you use 1 stars in balance of power?

If you answered no, then don't worry about rostering them. They aren't useful now and they won't be useful later.

Well, they might not be useful in PVP, but I could see a team of three 1★ characters at Level 550 being potentially more useful in PVE than a team of three 4★ characters at level 270 (which sounds like where their roster is now.)

Captain_Trips88

Isn’t ascending 1* a no brainer because you can get champ rewards for all those extra covers that currently just get sold? The only real question seems to be how high do you ascend them and I feel that is also a question revolving around the rewards rather than actually playability. Let’s face it, using an ascended 1* might be good for new players, it’s pretty irrelevant for the level the majority of the forum are at. To be honest, with how easy it is to get higher covers I’m not even sure how relevant ascending the lower levels is going to be in terms of actual match usage.

Adric1123

@helix72 said:
Let's say for a moment that you have 70 covers for 1* Juggernaut. Assuming I've understood ascension correctly, here are two options:

Option 1: Sell each cover
Cost to you: nothing
Rewards: 70 x 100 ISO = 7,000 ISO

Option 2:
-fully cover (10 covers each) two versions of 1* Juggernaut
-then bind them to ascend to a level 94 2* version of 1* Juggernaut
-then apply the remaining 50 covers to bring your new Juggy to level 144
-then sell your new Juggy (you likely wouldn't sell him but I include this so it's apples to apples with Option 1)

Cost to you: 37,440 ISO (the cost to level up your two 1* Juggernauts to level 40)
Rewards:
Iso-8: 16750 from champ rewards + 65000 for the sale = 81,750
Hero Points: 190 from champ rewards + 125 for the sale = 315
Command Points: 5 from champ rewards
Heroic Token: 6 from champ rewards
Elite Token: 2 from champ rewards
Mighty Token: 2 from champ rewards
Plus you get some XP which goes towards your SHIELD Rank which generates more ISO

Now, you may point out that in Option 2 I did not consider the HP you need to spend for 2 roster slots. And while this is true, you can't re-sell the roster slot but you can re-use it. So just keep that in mind.

To me, reading the above, the answer is pretty obvious which one I would do.

This is going to be the real impact of ascension. Maxing out a 1* as a level 550 5* is a fool's errand. Adding the 1s to your 2/3 farm is a goldmine.

Also, on roster slots, you won't need 2 for each 1*. You'll just need 1 for each plus a shared 1 to cycle the duplicates through, so 9 total.

I assume those are the generic 2* rewards. I don't suppose you could share the generic rewards at higher tiers?

DJ47057

As we expect the next 1* ascensions coming "SOON" I decide to only roster those 3 1* you'll able to ascend these days

Phumade

@Captain_Trips88 said:
Isn’t ascending 1* a no brainer because you can get champ rewards for all those extra covers that currently just get sold? The only real question seems to be how high do you ascend them and I feel that is also a question revolving around the rewards rather than actually playability. Let’s face it, using an ascended 1* might be good for new players, it’s pretty irrelevant for the level the majority of the forum are at. To be honest, with how easy it is to get higher covers I’m not even sure how relevant ascending the lower levels is going to be in terms of actual match usage.

2 issues in your question.

Economically, you will never stop ascending 1*. It will always be better to farm 1* covers vs selling for 100 iso. True day 1, true day 3500.

Gameplay, 1* will lose alot of value around 270. The 4* tier has the widest powerset. In play terms, the big toolbox is alot more fun and easier/obvious to play.

You will of course keep growing your 1*, since there's no better options. But you won't use them once you have 4/5 powersets available.

helix72

@Adric1123 if you go to Ice's very first post at the top of page 1 in the Ascension announcement thread, at the very bottom of that post is a link to an excel file with all the champ rewards. I am assuming that the ascended characters will follow the champ reward patterns under the "no feeders" column.