Experiment 3: New Release 4* to Ascended 5* timeline

St_Bernadus

Are you planning to Ascend ASAP or are you targeting a particular level of dupe?

ThaRoadWarrior

i'm not super sure, I may just ascend right away and move on to clearing out other duplicates. Even with the sad way they are handling retros I don't think it's worth clogging up my roster with dupes on the off change somebody is going to get a change in feeders someday maybe.

dianetics

@St_Bernadus said:
Are you planning to Ascend ASAP or are you targeting a particular level of dupe?

No reason not to ascend Shaw. I have yet to have a loss against any SheThor team when Shaw was up to bat. He pairs with everyone, and match down characters 50 levels above him.

He makes it easy to fight any team she is on as long as you can counter the other.

If you can ascend him just do it. There are very few 4s that require ascension and he is 1 of them.

entrailbucket

My Shaw is lvl354, but I've continued my usual strategy of bonusing Coulson + any natural 4* who's not yet ascended. Right now that's Shaw and Doom -- Doom is currently lvl307.

Coulson is lvl530, btw, and has reached the point where he's doing completely insane damage on his passive, even unboosted.

StillMonsoon3

Week 4 is complete. Shaw sits at 313 with 220 shards, so a gain of 12 levels. Hoping to have him max leveled in 8 weeks.

WhiteBomber

@dianetics said:

@St_Bernadus said:
Are you planning to Ascend ASAP or are you targeting a particular level of dupe?

If you can ascend him just do it. There are very few 4s that require ascension and he is 1 of them.

Counter point: 99.9% of 4 stars require ascension (if you want them to be more than useless). Agreed that Shaw does become significantly more valuable amongst the upper tiers though.

dianetics

@WhiteBomber said:
Counter point: 99.9% of 4 stars require ascension (if you want them to be more than useless). Agreed that Shaw does become significantly more valuable amongst the upper tiers though.

Well, there are very few 4s that fill a valuable role that isn't already filled by some 5.
There are really only a handful of extremely useful 4s showing up. Deathlok, Polaris, Juggs, and we can add Shaw to that list.

Obviously all the 4s need ascension to be useful on developed rosters, but not all of those characters are actually useful.

BriMan2222

@dianetics said:

@WhiteBomber said:
Counter point: 99.9% of 4 stars require ascension (if you want them to be more than useless). Agreed that Shaw does become significantly more valuable amongst the upper tiers though.

Well, there are very few 4s that fill a valuable role that isn't already filled by some 5.
There are really only a handful of extremely useful 4s showing up. Deathlok, Polaris, Juggs, and we can add Shaw to that list.

Obviously all the 4s need ascension to be useful on developed rosters, but not all of those characters are actually useful.

On a week to week basis I'm mostly using boosted ascended 4 stars and 1 stars. They're usually much better than my natural 550's or boosted 5 stars. This week is the first time in ages that I'm using boosted 5 stars (BRB and Hex23) but BRB is boosted to 672 and Hex to 612 and they have great synergy together.

ThaRoadWarrior

You guys aren’t running boosted ascended Ant-Man with boosted Wa5p this week to call all the swarms?

WhiteBomber

Oddly enough! I took on one of the boosted 5* Wasps just a few minutes ago, it went like this:

ME: Champ boosted Hex23, champ boosted BRB, 4* Electro
VS
THEM: Champ boosted BRB, champ boosted 5* Wasp, 4* Electro

1. Focus BRB first (naturally)
2. Inconsequentially kill their Electro because 4*
3. Wasp... keeps locking tiles, healing and hitting my entire team so they can't hide behind Hex23
4. Take way more damage than I anticipated, so use my mandatory stun team-up
5. She still has enough health to survive all those turns and I don't want to waste more time healing my Hex, so end the fight missing more than half health

Needless to say, she did better than every other team that wasn't boosted BRB, HEX

entrailbucket

I 550d Wasp before her buff (just so I could say I did) but I haven't actually used her this week -- the x-23/2* Nightcrawler team is such a bulldozer that I didn't do my usual experimenting.

Tiger_Wong

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
You guys aren’t running boosted ascended Ant-Man with boosted Wa5p this week to call all the swarms?

I would if Deathlock was the feature pvp. As is, they’re still too slow.

Back on topic, I got Shaw to 370. Now all I need is 800 shards, and I’m ascending. Woot!

entrailbucket

@dianetics @WhiteBomber @BriMan2222 you guys are all right, even though you're saying different, seemingly contradictory things.

Ascension (and the weekly boost, which is absolutely still critical) gives us two paths. You can either use really strong unboosted characters in every event, or use boosted characters during their week. Either way is "optimal" -- I no longer see any advantage to one route over the other.

Pantera236

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics @WhiteBomber @BriMan2222 you guys are all right, even though you're saying different, seemingly contradictory things.

Ascension (and the weekly boost, which is absolutely still critical) gives us two paths. You can either use really strong unboosted characters in every event, or use boosted characters during their week. Either way is "optimal" -- I no longer see any advantage to one route over the other.

I mostly agree with, just maybe add: if you have the meta champed, or better yet at 550, when they are boosted that's always gonna be the best case. A 672 BRB absolutely laughs at a 550 or whatever 450 is boosted to. Where as for instance 5* Kingpin while not necessarily good unboosted he doesn't NEED to be 672 to be good because most don't have him at 550.

entrailbucket

@Pantera236 said:

@entrailbucket said:
@dianetics @WhiteBomber @BriMan2222 you guys are all right, even though you're saying different, seemingly contradictory things.

Ascension (and the weekly boost, which is absolutely still critical) gives us two paths. You can either use really strong unboosted characters in every event, or use boosted characters during their week. Either way is "optimal" -- I no longer see any advantage to one route over the other.

I mostly agree with, just maybe add: if you have the meta champed, or better yet at 550, when they are boosted that's always gonna be the best case. A 672 BRB absolutely laughs at a 550 or whatever 450 is boosted to. Where as for instance 5* Kingpin while not necessarily good unboosted he doesn't NEED to be 672 to be good because most don't have him at 550.

Good point. When m'Thor or Shang-Chi or Omega Red or Chasm or...(Polaris? Juggernaut? Dunno, there are definitely more) are boosted, you're using those guys or you lose.

On the Kingpin point, I will say...I actually do have him at 550 (dunno if I'm the only one!) and during his week he's really crazy. He definitely doesn't need to be that high level, but if he is it's a massive benefit.

If you look at the "top" rosters in the game, they pretty much all look the same. They all have the same characters maxed out, and they all have the same characters at low level. If you were to look for a competitive advantage to exploit there, adding one "other" high level guy will give you a big advantage during his week, especially if it's a lesser-known character.

Tiger_Wong

And just LIKE THAT I got my 800 shards today. Shoot-outs to the Bonus Shard RNG. You da real mvp. 😢❤️

Time to have some fun. I think I’ll switch my fave target to Gorr. I’ve always though highly of his moveset.

So I started at about April 8th (I think that was when Shaw released) and it took me about…… what? A month and a half/2 months to ascend? That doesn’t sound bad to me.

ThaRoadWarrior

Is Gorr doing anything Magik isn’t? I don’t run him much

BriMan2222

I don't remember why exactly, but one of my alliance mates who ascended gorr warned the rest of us not to because he's one whose abilities gets worse after ascension

entrailbucket

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
Is Gorr doing anything Magik isn’t? I don’t run him much

He does the same thing but a bit better, if you're stapling him to a power booster. His repeaters are 1-turn vs 2 for her, and he starts with 3 of them vs 2.

I'm not sure if he still is, but Gorr + power booster used to be one of the faster PvE teams.

Tiger_Wong

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
Is Gorr doing anything Magik isn’t? I don’t run him much

I like Gorr over Magik because

1) awesome vs the brb/polaris duo to start off a match. And vs carnage or with carnage
2) his repeaters is 1 turn. It just doesn’t do a lot of damage
3) has a sneaky damage mitigation power depending on how many repeaters are on the board.
4) his black nuke is also sneaky good and downs opponents at 25% health.

I run Gorr with Okoye all the time but once I ascend him, he’ll probably out-match damage Okoye. So I’ll be looking elsewhere for boosting his damage. Unless the ascension boost is beefy.