So I whaled the Latest Legendaries, now what?

kingpaul69 · December 2016

Hi Guys,

Long story short, I did what many of us are coming to realise is the only viable way to get a 5 star character to 13 covers and that is save up an ungodly amount of CP and tokens and hit the Latest Legends Tokens all at once.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=55098&start=40#p616370

Which worked out amazingly well and with a little help from Customer Service I now have the following:-

Black Bolt 5/5/3 (2 spare covers)
Black Widow 5/5/3 (0 spare covers)
Doctor Strange 5/5/3 (3 spare covers)

Current aim is to champ Black Bolt and Strange before the tokens expire and once I've repaid my 2 star loan champ Widow. Then keep saving until Thanos is about to move to Classic Token Hell™ While hoarding I'll keep champing 4 stars hopefully I'll get all the even slightly good ones done by the time this happens and have a nice stash of ISO waiting to champ Thanos and pals, who by the current rate of power creep will be even more amazing that the 5 stars that proceeded them.

My dilemma is that while hoarding I've been able to champ a few more 4 stars (14 now most of the good ones and most of the rest are fully covered) and I'm really starting to enjoy using them. I still get the odd occasion where I have no boosted 4 stars but usually I have at least 1 sometimes 2 which has made a big difference to my PVP and PVE experience. PVE is a breeze now and the last Galactus event was a piece of cake (though I think it was for most people).

I was loving PVP before the cupcake nerf as I'd recently joined a great alliance (xmen) and was experiencing the delights of cooperative PVP, I was able to climb quickly but importantly I was able to bake myself and give back to everyone else. Anyway we know how that turned out.

I'm starting to make traction again in PVP as my 4 star roster grows however my MMR isn't quite high enough to be able to catch many of the 5 star bakers out there, no matter what my points are I just can't see them and I certainly can't bake against the ones I can queue, It's touch and go sometimes that I can beat them at all, you know how it goes a bad board or a quick cascade for the AI and you're dead.

I've heard a lot of horror stories about the 5 star game (crazy crazy scaling in PVE, matched with much higher 5 stars rosters than your own in PVP, stuck with the same 2-3 characters all the time, facing the same half dozen opponents again and again) and I'm wondering what is the smart play right now?

I've seen absolutely solid 4 star rosters out there with many fully covered 5 stars that are all sat doing nothing at 255 and I've seen guys with 1 champed 5 star and frankly a much worse roster than mine.

Obviously it would be great not to lose any 5 star token considering the effort it took to get them, however I'm worried what it will do to my game experience. Last night I completed 2 full clears of PVE in half and hour using boosted iceman to destroy everything and to be honest I think my MMR has gone up slightly and I am starting to see more of the 5 star bakers since I added my spare 200 4 stars tokens to my roster.

I know a lot more people are in the 5 star transition now so maybe the variety of opponents issue has now gone, however the scaling and matching issues are still there.

I'd really like to here from people of their current experiences in 5 star land especially if you have just made the step up yourself.

Should I stop whining and get on with it (3 top 5 stars should be good yes?) or take the hit and loose the tokens and play the long game and keep making slow and steady progress.

Also is there any synergy between these characters (other than Black Bolt goes well with everybody

)? I have hardly played with them at all.

Thanks

Gametag: pk69
Alliance: xmenfive

JamieMadrox · December 2016

All 3 of those characters are solid. For PVP I'd run

and

.

is OK for PVP, but shines in PVE.

is also great for PVE especially against goon nodes.

Congrats. You can now save all of your

and

for a few months to do it all over again.

fmftint · December 2016

What are your iso reserves at? You'll need 1.14m iso to champ BB and Strange in the next 14 days to avoid wasting those extra covers

mpqr7 · December 2016

Even if you can't champion them in time to save the extra covers, it's not that big of a deal. A lv 450 five star is almost the same as a lv 452 five star. With so many high-level 5*s, you should be able to get plenty of LTs and CP soon enough, so you'll make up for any 5* covers you miss this time around.

I say just go for it. I'm only in 420 oml / 405 ph land, but I see plenty of rosters in pvp with two champed 5*s, so they seem to be doing fine. PVE is tough, but you'll pull through. Hopefully at some point, they release higher SCLs for PVE, and then the tough scaling will at least give better prizes.

adamdivine · December 2016

Do not champ those 5's unless that is all you want to play with. I believe the current consensus is to raise them to 360 without completely altering your MMR. There are plenty of people in X that should be able to give you first hand experience. Over 360 (or somewhere around there) you will be unable to play the way you are currently playing. You will become food for all of the 5* rosters that can suddenly q you in pvp, and your scaling will go through the roof on pve which will essentially prevent you from using all of your recently champed 4's. If you are content playing with only those 3 toons for everything (which some people are OK with), then champ away!

kingpaul69 · December 2016

Currently on 720k ISO so 427,192 more needed to champ both,

CS have just switched the colours of by Dr Stange Blue over to yellow which gives me a respec option and inadvertently a new 14 day cycle to save up the rest of the ISO for Strange. (8.5 days left for Bolt).

I might be able to champ a 4 star now out of Hulk(7 covers), PunMax(5 covers), Bucky(8 covers) and Moon Knight(3 covers) in between and save their covers I gained from the hoard. Not sure which one, thought Hulk might go well Bolt....

Think I'm going to go for it, I think it was touch and go before my covers where switched as to whether I could make it as I wasn't sure if they'd come back with a new 14 day timer or not.

Thanks Guys.

Gametag: pk69
Alliance: xmenfive

Bowgentle · December 2016

What's the point of saving up to fully cover 5s if you don't plan to champ them?

Champ all 3, take the scaling hit, enjoy an easy ride to 1200 and never look back.

Strange and Bolt can handle anything PVE can throw at you, although things will be rough without a useable true healing 5.

johnnyzero · December 2016

Hi KP,

I did the (almost) the exact same thing as you. I hoarded enough CP to go on a latest legend token binge once Strange got added. My I ended up a few extra covers on my widow and BB, but overall, very similar experience. Those are my only 3 cover-maxed 5 stars, so we're in the same boat there. I also had the same concerns as you before champing them.

Ultimately, I champed them all. For the exact reason you outlined above. I felt like PVP was leaving me behind. I was never after placement, but I liked hitting 1200 every event to help my alliance. Even with 2x champed boosted 4s and a max featured character, it was taking quite a few hops to get to 1200. I had 29 champed 4s, but I still made an easy target. I also like the co-op nature of PVP, and I felt like a mooch not being able to grill with the rest of my friends in the battlechats.

What you've heard about being stuck using the same 2-3 characters all the time is unfortunately pretty accurate. This past pvp, I used my boosted Hulkbuster (level 305 unboosted) a little bit, but overall I'm mostly using BB and Widow. They really make a great team, so it's not a big worry, but it can get stale.

Part of the problem is the 5* MMR. Once you've got a couple champed, you're only going against other folks who have champed 5*s. Expect to hit the same people every event. Even if you want to use your boosted 4s, you're stuck in that 5* MMR, so it's a lot harder to climb with them.

The scaling concerns in PVE are real, but manageable. Expect your final node each sub to be approx. level 450 once it's maxed out. On the plus side,... Widow, Bolt, and Strange make for an EXCELLENT pve team. A damaging ability on all colors, acceleration, big nukes, stuns, ways to deal with countdowns and special tiles....this team does it all! Unfortunately, when the scaling gets that high,...they are going to be your only option when playing for speed. Sometimes if I want to play casual I'll give my boosted 4*s a shot at the hard nodes (69,000 life on Moonstone,...damn girl, you got thicc!) but if you're going for placement, your big 3 are going to be your only option. They are a GREAT option, but keep it in mind.

* a bit of perspective on PVE. I play competitively, and I think the scaling is appropriate. Boosted 4s face lower scaled enemies, but 5*s do such crazy match damage, in my mind, it's pretty even. Not everyone agrees, but they might be using 3 different 5 stars.

I won't tell you what to do because everyone is after a different experience when it comes to this game. Like everything, there are pluses and minuses to leveling them all the way up. I did it and I don't regret it, but can see the merits of when folks say that leveling them up to say, 375, would allow you to use more of your roster on a more frequent basis.

Best of luck in whatever you choose!

kingpaul69 · December 2016

Hi Adam,

That's what I was afraid of, my champed 4 stars are up in the 380's now when boosted so I thought about soft capping the 5 stars around 360-380 if I didn't champ them.

Is it really that bad? I'm not really sure I'd enjoy playing with the same 2-3 characters exclusively, I mean really exclusively. Though to be fair that's what I ended up doing whenever I went up a star level until more characters came online.

The only thing with the 5 stars is that they would take a lot longer to come along. And to be honest moving up into 4 stars didn't really stop me using a few complimentary 3 stars i.e. IM40/Switch/IronFirst etc. To be honest outside of being the required character I don't use any 3 stars unless its for a specific case e.g. Winfinite or the ones I've just said. I tend to only use 4 stars when boosted but that rotates around. PVP is all about hoping quickly and re-shielding and PVE is blasting through the clears as quickly as possible. If the 5 stars would help me do that then I say bring it on, however if the MMR and Scaling are so bad that it will be worse, then it's not really worth it.

I had hoped that the problems people had raised in the past stemmed from the fact that there where so few people at that level of the game and now that more people had joined their ranks then things would have calmed down somewhat.

Up till now I've not really bothered about top 10 placing in either PVP or PVE, it seems like too much work, but anything that would allow me to pick up all the progression rewards and a decent placement finish and require less time doing it would be very welcome.

Surely with PVP I get stomped on now as soon as I put by head above 800 anyway, I can be seen by anyone as far as I can tell and can't retaliate half the time unless I just wanted to donate them more points. At least the only people with better teams would be the guys with better champed 5 stars and there is less of those guys around and my float level should be a lot higher. So the lack of variety might be worth the gains and could probably get away with less shields.

If the scaling is so bad in PVE and it's 5 stars only, then that would be a problem, though again I tend to just throw in whatever boosted 4 star I have and run with it to get it over with as soon as possible.

PVP is especially awful at the moment if I don't happen to have a boost that week (it's happened a couple of times recently too) I struggle to get to 900 to be honest and that's with a lot of shields. Champed 5 stars would completely eliminate that problem.

It looks to me if you are PVP focused the Champing is the answer for PVE looks like soft capping is something to consider. Which to be honest sounds a lot like 2015 (pre 5 stars) in my limited experience. My dilemma is that I do both, alliance is PVP focused and PVE is what I do to try and catch up with everyone else (or at least not fall any further behind).

Black Bolt came out 5 months ago and has just dropped into classics, I think 5 months hoarding will put me in good shape to do the same thing again to the Latest Legendary Tokens when Thanos is about to drop out, that would give me 6 champed 5 stars and a lot more scope for team selection. Maybe in that time something will happen with classics to give people a decent chance of getting them.

Just seen the replies from Bowgentle and JohnnyZero while I was taking ages on this. I do feel rubbish for leeching off the bakes or grills of the others and not being able to give back. I think that's this thing I miss from cupcaking - the all in it togetherness, the guys at the top of the tree and the bottom all helping each other.

I think I'm going to do it, what's the worst that can happen, why else did I save up all those tokens and CP!

Thanks Guys.

WelcomeDeath · December 2016

Champ them all, pvp will be easier, and pve will be easy as well. I wouldn't worry about losing champ covers for the 4s right now, just get the 5s up there. Pve scaling will go way up, but bolt and strange are Great 5* for pve. Oh, and forget the rest of your roster for a while, those 4s are going to be good for one thing only: champ levels.

Stax the Foyer · December 2016

If you're going to boost your PvE scaling to crazypants 5* scaling, you couldn't have picked a better duo to have champed than BB and Strange. They're amazing in PvE.

I have a very deep roster, and I still find myself using BB/Strange/Whoever in PvE on nearly any PvE node, because they're both good and fun to use. Much more satisfying than OML, for instance (although he's a solid 3rd character in that group if I want to save on healthpacks).

Champ them and never look back.

GrimSkald · December 2016

I'm more or less tagging to follow - I'm in a fairly similar but not identical situation. I ended up drawing a lot of Black Bolt from the Latest Legendary tokens, so about eight weeks ago I gave up on Classics, waited for the Hulk to move out of the Latest (I was very underwhelmed by him,) and then focused exclusively on Latest with CP. I open fairly slowly - I enjoy opening tokens so I like to stretch it out, but I do open multiple when I'm on a good streak. Anyway, a week before Thanos was to be introduced, I finally cover-maxed Black Bolt. My first fully-covered 5*!

I then stopped pulling (I pulled like a handful of classics, then decided to stick with Latest as my Widow and Strange had 8 and 7 covers, respectively.) I didn't know if CS would swap out for others in the set, or others for the same character, and I'm not ready to Champ BB yet. I had about 40 pulls when Thanos entered the latest, I'm almost through them now and got two more covers for Widow, one for Strange, and three for Thanos. I leveled my Bolt to 375 (same as my soft-capped OML.)

I'm curious to see what happens to your scaling. Also, does anyone know if CS will swap only for the same character, or if they will swap for any cover within the Latest token pool? That may inform how I pull in the future, though at this point I'm on the right track for a maxxed NRBW and Dr. Strange...

Phumade · December 2016

First off Congrats to everyone who had successful 5* token parties. Welcome to the club.

Alot of things will be different for you now in 3 champ land. Everything people says is mostly true. But I would also tell you that your in the sweet spot with respect to game play flexibility.

The big key now is that your in a much smaller player pool that actually plays much more competitively. Gameplay tactics such as when to hop, when to frontrun, when to late climb, learning your nemesis's preferred hop schedule are the main differentiators.

You now have the tools to control how you break the mmr system, so its to your benefit to learn how to use the width and depth of your roster to hide your baby champs from the big whales until your ready to make your 1st sprint to shield.

There are alot of tactics involved because you can learn the habits of the other bakers and snipers and that makes a big difference in how you organize your hops.

Good luck and enjoy your 5*, they give you the flexibility to do alot of different things

and don't forget even 5* players have to climb to 1st shield. Don't take the doubles and triples personally. Learning how to work with the other players in your tier is the main differentiator in how you will enjoy this tier of play. If your a regular in shard i.e. 3x in a row, other players will learn your habits and make decisions from there. Ultimately bakers and snipers are needed to keep the game interesting and challenging. So use your 5* to learn which aspect of the game you enjoy more

Bowgentle · December 2016

GrimSkald wrote:

Also, does anyone know if CS will swap only for the same character, or if they will swap for any cover within the Latest token pool?

Only for the same character, yeah.

So I whaled the Latest Legendaries, now what?

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