Ascended Winners and Losers

entrailbucket

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:
Someone was asking about Doop somewhere...hoo boy.

I'm running him all passive, with Chavez/Colossus/PX, and he's just a straight-up better Colossus. With AC's extra match damage boost adding on, plus PX's extra damage reduction, he's a completely unstoppable tank.

Have you tried Ascended Doop/5ProfX/Ascended Rogue. I guessing that would work well. I'm almost done with Ascending Coulson, then I'm planning on Doop next, but I need 40 covers.

I haven't, but that sounds like a pretty good idea!

captainheath

@entrailbucket said:

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:
Someone was asking about Doop somewhere...hoo boy.

I'm running him all passive, with Chavez/Colossus/PX, and he's just a straight-up better Colossus. With AC's extra match damage boost adding on, plus PX's extra damage reduction, he's a completely unstoppable tank.

Have you tried Ascended Doop/5ProfX/Ascended Rogue. I guessing that would work well. I'm almost done with Ascending Coulson, then I'm planning on Doop next, but I need 40 covers.

I haven't, but that sounds like a pretty good idea!

I'm thinking there is a team where Doop denies AP with his passives and increases power cost for enemies. If it stacks with Prof X's increasing power costs and Rogue continually tanks and denies even more AP, that would be a great sim team.

entrailbucket

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:
Someone was asking about Doop somewhere...hoo boy.

I'm running him all passive, with Chavez/Colossus/PX, and he's just a straight-up better Colossus. With AC's extra match damage boost adding on, plus PX's extra damage reduction, he's a completely unstoppable tank.

Have you tried Ascended Doop/5ProfX/Ascended Rogue. I guessing that would work well. I'm almost done with Ascending Coulson, then I'm planning on Doop next, but I need 40 covers.

I haven't, but that sounds like a pretty good idea!

I'm thinking there is a team where Doop denies AP with his passives and increases power cost for enemies. If it stacks with Prof X's increasing power costs and Rogue continually tanks and denies even more AP, that would be a great sim team.

Oh, hmm. I guess you could spec him that way. I think that might actually be TOO much defense, though!

I liked using him with AC's passive and Colossus passive stacking for match damage, with PX and Colossus passive stacking on defense. He took almost no damage.

Glockoma

@entrailbucket said:

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:
Someone was asking about Doop somewhere...hoo boy.

I'm running him all passive, with Chavez/Colossus/PX, and he's just a straight-up better Colossus. With AC's extra match damage boost adding on, plus PX's extra damage reduction, he's a completely unstoppable tank.

Have you tried Ascended Doop/5ProfX/Ascended Rogue. I guessing that would work well. I'm almost done with Ascending Coulson, then I'm planning on Doop next, but I need 40 covers.

I haven't, but that sounds like a pretty good idea!

I'm thinking there is a team where Doop denies AP with his passives and increases power cost for enemies. If it stacks with Prof X's increasing power costs and Rogue continually tanks and denies even more AP, that would be a great sim team.

Oh, hmm. I guess you could spec him that way. I think that might actually be TOO much defense, though!

I liked using him with AC's passive and Colossus passive stacking for match damage, with PX and Colossus passive stacking on defense. He took almost no damage.

Yeah, Doop was my sleeper pick given his dynamic setup and pairings with other characters. A great character for those looking to ascend first.

WhiteBomber

Anyone who lived through the 3* years should know the pain that is "The Hood", I wanted Doop to be one of my first ascensions, but I find myself prioritizing offense. However, I do also find myself with a little ascenders remorse having chose Karnak as my first, and I almost never use him... On the obvious Deathlocke now.

entrailbucket

@WhiteBomber said:
Anyone who lived through the 3* years should know the pain that is "The Hood", I wanted Doop to be one of my first ascensions, but I find myself prioritizing offense. However, I do also find myself with a little ascenders remorse having chose Karnak as my first, and I almost never use him... On the obvious Deathlocke now.

Right there with you! I was playing in the early days, and Hood still haunts my nightmares from the time.

I've got some bad news though. In 2024, the Hood passive is terrible. It was crazy strong back then because we had to cast expensive stuff to win fights. Now we've got 5* match damage, tons of mass AP generation, passive damage, and cheap heavy hitters.

AP steal/drain can still be useful (see Chasm) but it needs to be part of a package of other defensive or annoying stuff.

ThaRoadWarrior

After I finish Domino I’m considering parking my fav on Shaw, I think he is pretty obviously going to be a dominant 5 and I’m curious how long it’ll take to go from freshly rostered to max champ these days.

WhiteBomber

@entrailbucket said:

@WhiteBomber said:
Anyone who lived through the 3* years should know the pain that is "The Hood", I wanted Doop to be one of my first ascensions, but I find myself prioritizing offense. However, I do also find myself with a little ascenders remorse having chose Karnak as my first, and I almost never use him... On the obvious Deathlocke now.

Right there with you! I was playing in the early days, and Hood still haunts my nightmares from the time.

I've got some bad news though. In 2024, the Hood passive is terrible. It was crazy strong back then because we had to cast expensive stuff to win fights. Now we've got 5* match damage, tons of mass AP generation, passive damage, and cheap heavy hitters.

AP steal/drain can still be useful (see Chasm) but it needs to be part of a package of other defensive or annoying stuff.

Oh, you know I was planning on running him WITH Chasm on a purely annoying defensive team. I don't care if it takes me 20 mins to win that fight, I will leave that Doopsm team for someone else to deal with.

rainkingucd

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
After I finish Domino I’m considering parking my fav on Shaw, I think he is pretty obviously going to be a dominant 5 and I’m curious how long it’ll take to go from freshly rostered to max champ these days.

I just got Moondragon to 360 and finished Phyla-Vell. I've got no interest in favouriting Oscorp Spidey even for the Golden Oldie covers.

So I switched then to Shaw for the same reasons (and because I saw him in X-Men 97)

Mr_F

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
After I finish Domino I’m considering parking my fav on Shaw, I think he is pretty obviously going to be a dominant 5 and I’m curious how long it’ll take to go from freshly rostered to max champ these days.

I'm in process of ascending Wasp and Ant-Man. Max-Max I want. It took me about 2 months to get Wasp from 320 to 370 and now 277 and Ant-Man from 344 to 280. Total of... 119 covers. Depends on luck and pulls and such.

ThaRoadWarrior

I have both of those ascended, I feel like the new swarm mechanics they added are just kind of in the way, but that is largely due to me having such a longer history of using them the old way I guess I don't really have a good sense of what to do with them now. I'm not max-maxing any of my 4s though, i just do champ+1 and ascend.

Mr_F

Color overlapping in all three of them. Part of the problem. But it's Wasp. You know me. Even my 5 yo niece niece knows which Marvel character put on the BD's laurel*.

Anyway, I got 119 covers in 2 months. That's what ya want (101+13) to know. Aproximation, sure, but still better than nothing.

*a common kids present for adults in Poland. TLDR: A kids drawing/piece of art on paper with wishes written on it. Google "laurka". I got few and sometimes cardboard made Wasp and Ant-Man.

ThaRoadWarrior

yeah for sure; I haven't been tracking exactly my progress on sharding of 4* dupes, i've been marching down mostly completed ones just to free up the slots since ascension went live, but I'm now so iso limited that they are stacking up saved covers and 5* characters are sitting unchamped with as many as 19 covers in the bank. So I want to catch back up on that a bit, and I figure focusing fire on a long-haul 4* might be interesting for science as well as a means to that end. I'll probably start a new experiment thread for it.

entrailbucket

M'baku is completely insane (he's boosted this week).

That will be all.

WhiteBomber

You know who's not insane? 4* Mbaku.

entrailbucket

@WhiteBomber said:
You know who's not insane? 4* Mbaku.

It's crazy that ascension flips all these guys on their heads. M'baku is a 4* with a decent match damage boost who really needs to tank to be useful, but never will if you use him with 5*.

But at 5* he's Better Colossus, basically guaranteed to tank his colors, with match and power damage resistance plus massive healing.

It's like he was designed to be an awesome 5*, then downgraded somewhere along the line.

WhiteBomber

Sounds like 98% of the 4* tier
"this could be a cool character... if the 4* stats weren't so far off from the 5* stats that they are useless".

A few more years though and I will have that Mbaku that isn't useless *rubs hands together

entrailbucket

@entrailbucket said:

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:

@captainheath said:

@entrailbucket said:
Someone was asking about Doop somewhere...hoo boy.

I'm running him all passive, with Chavez/Colossus/PX, and he's just a straight-up better Colossus. With AC's extra match damage boost adding on, plus PX's extra damage reduction, he's a completely unstoppable tank.

Have you tried Ascended Doop/5ProfX/Ascended Rogue. I guessing that would work well. I'm almost done with Ascending Coulson, then I'm planning on Doop next, but I need 40 covers.

I haven't, but that sounds like a pretty good idea!

I'm thinking there is a team where Doop denies AP with his passives and increases power cost for enemies. If it stacks with Prof X's increasing power costs and Rogue continually tanks and denies even more AP, that would be a great sim team.

Oh, hmm. I guess you could spec him that way. I think that might actually be TOO much defense, though!

I liked using him with AC's passive and Colossus passive stacking for match damage, with PX and Colossus passive stacking on defense. He took almost no damage.

I'm dumb. The Doop passive I was talking about is 4* Juggernaut, not Colossus.

They're close, sorta! Right???

Domitronas

Ascended Ikaris kinda slaps not going to lie

sambrookjm

I just pulled 50 LL tokens, which was enough shards to get my dupe Polaris up to 370. So now she's my second ascended 4-star, after Cyclops. This now means I'll need to find a new 4-star team for the DDQ, but I think I can manage.

Up next for favoriting? These are the characters I've got dupes at LVL 300+ for
America Chavez - 318
Captain Marvel - 329
Gamora - 305
Rocket & Groot - 303
X-Force Wolverine - 319
X23 - 302

Or should I just ride the Polaris train all the way to 550?