Single 5* champ discussion: pros, cons, 5* candidates, horror and success stories.

jtsings · March 2019

Part of what makes this game somewhat unpredictable/difficult is that there are often consequences either good or bad for making decisions in the game. About a year and a half I was considering making C4rol my first solo 4* champion and asked the community for help in seeing if that was a wise decision. Not long after champing her, however, it wasn't too long after I champed my 2nd 4* then 3rd, etc and it ended up being just a short transition period but overall a non-issue (maybe because C4rol really is one of the best, if not the best, 4*s). From what I understand, the 5* game is a whole different animal, namely because it could take a really long time to get a 2nd 5* champ. And even having two 5* champs might not be helpful if they don't work that well together. I've also heard, on the forums, that people have made 5* champs of mid tier or mediocre characters and ended up regretting their decision.

This leads me to think that it's worth a discussion about the topic of single 5* champs. As always feel free to discuss whatever you'd like about this topic: but I think it might be helpful to the community overall (and to me personally) if some of you could address some of these questions in your thoughts/opinions/experiences on this topic. Hopefully this will be helpful information for those who are considering making a single 5* champ transition.

1) Would you recommend just having one 5* champion?
2) What are the pros and cons of having one 5* champion?
3) Which 5* do you think would or do work well (or not work well) as a single 5* champion.
4) I'm quite positive any 5* champ will definitely help with PVE but how does a single 5* champ change your PVP/Simulator experience.
5) What stories do you have (negative or positive) about having a single 5* champ?

Vhailorx · March 2019

Quick thoughts:

(1) the answer is probably dependent on how much you care about pvp., And which 5* you can champ.

(2) pros are that pve will be faster, or you will be able to reliably play a higher cl. Con is that PvP mmr can be quite punishing.

(3) right now kitty is the clear best option. Kitty + grocket is a meta team in PvP and pve. Traditionally, true healers (okoye, DD, ss, oml , and now inguess doom are the best, with Loki and Phoenix sort of working too) are ideal for entry into a new tier, as they mitigate the healthpacks drain of having only 1 character to use every match. Hawkeye is also viable because of coulson. Thanos and strange are very useful for pve, but have serious drawbacks if they are your only 5* option.

(4) the climb up to 800+ in pvp is less fun with 1x 5* mmr. It's basically meta teams all the way from seeds to grilling territory. It's not impossible, but it can be a boring, frustrating slog. The compensation is that once you break mmr, which happens earlier for 5* teams, grilling and shield hopping is easier. So if you want to play that higher end PvP, then the net result is likely to be positive. But if you play to 575 and stop every event, 1x 5* mmr will make the experience less fun.

(Disclaimer: my single 5* days were during the summer of 2017. So that experience may be a bit out of date. I fully covered Hawkeye, thanos, and strange before champing anyone, but had Hawkeye champed alone for a long time while gathering iso. I Hawkeye/coulson as my A team for many months in 2017, basically until my best ever hoard opening experiences got DD and then Gambit champed late that year.)

Dragon_Nexus · March 2019

1) A single 5* champ...probably Okoye. She self heals and she empowers every character she's paired with as you gather TU AP.

Thanos is good for PvE focus because you just need to take out one character and he'll AoE the other two on CL7 and below.

2) Pros are PvE is much, much faster. You'll go against single 5* teams and low-mid level 4*s combos in PvP. It can be trickier to get further because you'll show up as a target.

3) As said above Okoye boosts everyone. Kitty is a great transitioner for her Rocket & Groot pairing.

4) Been a long time since I did it so...I don't remember. Besides the above guy described it better

5) Same as 4. I don't remember >_<. I do remember champing Thanos first so it chewed through my 4*s quickly requiring more health packs. I did Daredevil soon after who can self heal, so that fixed that problem.

General concensus I was seeing for a long time is t save up enough ISO to do at least two 5* at once, preferably three.

Huntah86 · March 2019

I had Thor, Parker, D, SS and GG and put off champing any for a while for fear of how hard it would change things. Decided to just champ Parker since he was great when paired with Vulture and didnt regret it at all. I champed DD next and they made a surprisingly serviceable team. If youre only going to champ one Id probably only consider doimg it with Parker, Kitty or Okoye I think just because you can combine them with plenty of 4* and still have solid teams. As far as PVP is comcerned with a single 5*, I was able to still hit 900 with ease but 1200 was always a struggle.

HoundofShadow · March 2019

This is a perfect thread for me because I was thinking of champing my 1st 5* once I get those 3 magical covers. Currently, I have champed 8 four-star characters and most of them are my favourite 4-stars, so I don't mind my MMR jumping up in PvP. I hope this thread stays alive by then because I would love to share my experience since the current meta (Gritty/Thorkoye) is different from the Gambit-a 1 year ago.

Daredevil217 · March 2019

I never played single champ MMR at any tier. I tend to wait until I get a handful before transitioning.

I think most would say Kitty or Okoye. My pick would be Okoye of the two. Both Kitty and Okoye can get you super fast clears in PVE with the right chararacters, though neither will get you into that Thanos tier.

Kitty beats Okoye in PVP defense. Way more people skip Kitty than Okoye, especially people in single champ 5 MMR, I’d imagine. They aren’t as likely to have the tools to deal, seeing as how that team goes toe to toe with dual champ 5s.

Okoye gets a leg up in versatility. Where Kitty is handcuffed to a racooon and tree, Okoye pairs with way more characters. So if you tend to get bored running the same team, I’d go Okoye. Okoye also has a slight leg up in sustainability since she has true heal (though it is not as great when not paired with Thor).

I personally think Daredevil is a great select as well. His true heal is more reliable than Okoye, and he pairs great with any 4* stunners. I’m the kind of person who likes playing this game, probably an unhealthy amount (Doom might work here too. I’d have to see how much his heal actually triggers in action). And I’m also a person who doesn’t like to spend. So a character that allows me to grind incessantly is a good pick.

Really it comes down to what you value.

TPF Alexis · March 2019

With Kitty as my sole 5* champ, I've been grooving on it pretty well. When just blasting through PvE with Grockitty gets boring, I can still go take a little vacation in SCL7 for some more variety. And actually, it's usually only really the 5* Essential that I really need Kitty for, but it can take forever to chew through some of those health pools in SCL9 with just 4*.

I've been finding MMR usually OK as a 575 and out PvP player. There are a lot of Grockitty and Thorkoye teams out there, but I still see plenty of teams with another 5* champ in them (most commonly OML, Black Bolt, or Thanos, but I've seen pretty much all of them at least a couple of times), quite a few with two 5* at 350-400 and occasionally even a couple with just high level 4*.

That said, Kitty is probably a near-ideal 5* transition character. I was pretty hesitant to champ her, because I've heard a number of stories of unpleasant transitions. I have no intention of champing my other two fully covered 5* (Cable and Widow) yet, and would not have champed either of them as my first, even if they'd been covered before Kitty.

Vhailorx · March 2019

Three additional thoughts of note:

(1) at least as much as their power strength (and arguably more so), 5* match damage is a revolutionary experience. 5* health and power strength is actually lower (on a 1:1 basis) than 4*s. They can just achieve much higher levels, so their relative weakness is only apparent in events like balance of power. 5* match damage, however, is about 2x higher than a 4*s on the same 1:1 basis. And that advantage is going up as 5* match damage has consistently gone up for the past 3 years. Marvel's match damage is so high that her second color (green) will tank for Thor's strongest color (and Thor was himself a big leap forward in match damage). This significantly higher relative match damage changes a lot of things about the game. Playing a slow, AP denial strategy hurts a lot more in 5* land, and good true healers become all the more valuable. But you can also carve through enemies quickly too.

(2) TPF Alexis' report on PvP mmr is encouraging. There should be a lot more 5* players now than in 2017 when i made the transition. So mmr might not be quite as punishing as it used to be for 1x 5* rosters. On the other hand, kitty is an unusually good 5* for the transition role because her best partner is a 4*, and that team also happens to be among the best teams in the game (Hawkeye/coulson is the only real comp, but with all the animations they produce, they have always been too slow (in terms of actual time spent per match) to dominate the meta, even if they have among the fastest match times on average when counted by turn). So I would like to see more current mmr Data before declaring the pvp waters "safe" for 1x 5* rosters.

(3) Hound, if you only have 8x 4*s champed, then I don't think you are ready for the 5* transition. Unboosted 4*s cannot really play with 5*s. They are dead from match damage alone after 5-10 turns if they tank their colors (see (1) above). If you don't have a deep 5* bench, then you really want to have a deep enough 4* bench that you will frequently have some boosted 4* champs to work with.

Alfje17 · March 2019

I've waited to champ my first 5* for about a year until I could champ 3 at once. Now that I've champed Thanos, Logan and Tony, PVE has gotten a bit faster, but PvP is a disaster as I'm only paired up with people who have 3 (good) 5* champs. I used to get the 4*, now I don't even get to the Heroic 10 pack in a season.

So if you don't care about PvP, champ away. If you do, wait until you get a few good 5* to champ at once.

If you mainly play PVE, then it's a no-brainer: doing a few thousand in match damage is insane and will speed you along.

SymmeTrey · March 2019

1) Would you recommend just having one 5* champion?
Yes, if you can have a good one. I actually found this to be the easiest MMR I had experienced in forever when I champed Okoye... single 5* MMR actually ends up including a ton of teams where someone overleveled a poorly covered 5* or champed a poor 5*. However, this MMR is only easy if you champ a "very good" to "great" 5*.

2) What are the pros and cons of having one 5* champion?
Easier MMR for PVP if you have a good character champed. You can even start to catch grills and high point values in higher levels of PVP. The only negative in PVP is that you won't see many true 4* MMR opponents any more if you care about that, but, I was tired of the 4* tier so I was glad to move on to a fresh batch of opponents. There is no negative in PVE other than possibly becoming addicted to using your 5*.

3) Which 5* do you think would or do work well (or not work well) as a single 5* champion.
Okoye is excellent as she can boost any characters powers to 5* levels, giving you a fair amount of variety and still having a 5* champ. Kitty would also be an excellent single 5* champ as she pairs with a 4* already and Gritty can do what you need to do with no help from other 5*'s. Thor would be less good as managing his health will be difficult if he is your only 5*. Jessica Jones or Black Bolt might be okay, but, would less strong choices than Okoye or Kitty. Outside this group, it's hard to recommend another 5* as a single champ. One caution about Kitty... if we get a 5* who weakens/destroys SAP tiles (a better Kraven-type character for example), she could be quickly handicapped.

4) I'm quite positive any 5* champ will definitely help with PVE but how does a single 5* champ change your PVP/Simulator experience.
I think I answered above.

5) What stories do you have (negative or positive) about having a single 5* champ?
No interesting stories besides what has been touched on above.

Straycat · March 2019

I think single 5* champ is a pretty good time. I had Daredevil as my solo champ, and I loved it. It can bring out new relevance in old characters, even 3* characters can be useful since the 5* will always tank. I often used Hawkguy with Daredevil since his first arrow is a decent cheap stun and he generates purple ap.
PVP was the most diverse, I don't think I've faced a civil war Cap ever since. A friendly board can really make a match, if there's a match 5 available on the first move you can end up taking out an enemy.

bbigler · March 2019

3.5 weeks ago I champed Kitty as my sole 5* champ and it has been great. No regrets. I do understand that she's top tier meta of course, but here's my experience: PVE clears are faster but my ranking is about the same, being t10/t20. I think everyone has come to realize how good Gritty-Thanos is so I've lost some advantage there. In PVP, the difficulty to climb was about the same. I mostly queue 4* boosted teams and some single 5* champ teams. Attacks are few until I get past 1100 points. Shield Simulator was much easier though.

But there are other ways to make your MPQ life better besides top tier 5*s. I moved from PVP slice 2 or 4 to slice 1 and that made getting to 1200 so much easier. I can now do it without shielding! Once I pass 1200 using Gritty, I start shield hopping for placement rewards. In PVE, you can watch the bracket flips when joining to get better ranking there (or you could just not care about ranking and enjoy the faster clears).

So, champing a single top tier 5* is a good idea, but I wouldn't do it with a mid-tier one.

abenness · March 2019

bbigler said:

3.5 weeks ago I champed Kitty as my sole 5* champ and it has been great.

I'm still missing a yellow/purple cover before I can champ my Kitty, but I've levelled her up to 420, and the experience has also been great. I'm facing pretty much the same teams I was previously (loaner + 2 champed/boosted 4*, or almost champed 5*), but it's easier to win with more health and more strike tile boosting.

My experience is different to @bbigler in that I run out of points to earn at about 900, and am getting smacked down hard afterwards (eg down to 504 in Talos PVP slice 4 when I wasn't prepared to shield for 2 whole days).

I'll also report that this level Kitty can manage the 5e nodes in SCL 9 PVE (with some luck required). I tackled the 5e 15 min before the rest of my end-sub grind to give myself more time for it. I was sweating bullets each day, and ran out of health packs a few times, but managed top5 for the Talos release event, my best result yet.

Phumade · March 2019

abenness said:

My experience is different to @bbigler in that I run out of points to earn at about 900, and am getting smacked down hard afterwards (eg down to 504 in Talos PVP slice 4 when I wasn't prepared to shield for 2 whole days).

The reason you get going to 900 in s4 probably relates to when you climb and how you chose to play. As it relates to when you climb and how high you climb. You probably climbed to early in the event and ran out of appropriate value targets. Specifically this happens when there are 3/4 super high scorers/front runners and the rest of the bracket is only 200-400 points. If you wait until the entire top 10 has scored over 1000 points, then you won't run out of targets. The second point is how you climb. You should assume that any person you que can and will retaliate your win within 10m. So you have to pick targets based on Score Asymetry,; size of their roster, Timezone advantage, likely hood of response. Tl/dr. You climbed too early, and your only hitting people who are intentionally staying out trying to make 75 wins etc.. instead of hitting players who can't hit back because of score differences or stuck under shield buy.

edit: It should be noted that even in high scoring shards. waiting until the entire t10 is over 1000 is just shorthand for saying don't play until the last 18hrs.

charmbots · March 2019

Right now the best single 5* you could start with is Kitty paired with R&G, with okoye being a close 2nd. I transitioned to single champed 5* with JJ back in Gambit’s last season on top. I believe it was also the season that started hybrid pvp and JJ made grinding out 75 wins against other single champed 5* teams pretty easy. I really didn’t experience any negatives, the biggest negative to champing 5’s was always pve scaling but that’s been a thing of the past for a while now. PVP shouldn’t be a problem as long as your first is Kitty, Okoye, or JJ. Thor is excellent but he’s better off being your 2nd champed 5*. Single champed 5* mmr for pvp and sim was pretty much all other single champed 5* teams and my pvp scores stopped around 1000 before I started getting hit by dual champed 5* teams. I think I was playing slices 2 and 5 back then also, which are the lower scoring slices I believe. Champing 5’s made the game nothing but faster and more enjoyable for me.

abenness · March 2019

Phumade said:

abenness said:

My experience is different to @bbigler in that I run out of points to earn at about 900, and am getting smacked down hard afterwards (eg down to 504 in Talos PVP slice 4 when I wasn't prepared to shield for 2 whole days).

The reason you get going to 900 in s4 probably relates to when you climb and how you chose to play. As it relates to when you climb and how high you climb. You probably climbed to early in the event and ran out of appropriate value targets. Specifically this happens when there are 3/4 super high scorers/front runners and the rest of the bracket is only 200-400 points. If you wait until the entire top 10 has scored over 1000 points, then you won't run out of targets. The second point is how you climb. You should assume that any person you que can and will retaliate your win within 10m. So you have to pick targets based on Score Asymetry,; size of their roster, Timezone advantage, likely hood of response. Tl/dr. You climbed too early, and your only hitting people who are intentionally staying out trying to make 75 wins etc.. instead of hitting players who can't hit back because of score differences or stuck under shield buy.

edit: It should be noted that even in high scoring shards. waiting until the entire t10 is over 1000 is just shorthand for saying don't play until the last 18hrs.

@Phumade Thanks for these details, makes sense and I will experiment around this. I like going earlier for new characters, and didn't really mind being knocked down. I find top5 placement pretty much out of reach as I'm not prepared to go hardcore shield-hopping, so getting the 1000 point Red iso and finishing top25 is a reasonable goal for me.
Can you clarify what you mean by timezone advantage?
As of last night I now have a champed Kitty, so will see how this changes things. Any tips for the easiest path to 1200 points?

ThaRoadWarrior · March 2019

I've been pretty vocal in most threads it's marginally appropriate to bring up about my experiences with Ghost Rider: Robbie Reyes as my only 5* champ. I would say he is upper middle tier - he hits hard but isn't fast. he's not especially susceptible to the kitty meta (meaning doesn't make a bunch of tiles she can eat), but isn't overly able to counter it either - the best option i have is to bring Main Even Hulk and hope that enough strikes get knocked out or set up to be matched in turn 1 that she can't start buffing. Having a stun, he can deal with Thorkoye to a point as well (they need some level parity, if they are both champs it's not that fun). Since GRRR isn't overly fast he isn't overly helpful in PVE. The match damage is good, but he isn't nearly as fast as my lvl 390 (5/3/1) Okoye matched with my lvl 300 America Chavez and my 293 Medusa for clearing the hard nodes. I do climb PVP with him and Chavez using 3 stacks of +2 ap boosts, but pvp is horrible for me now. As a 4* player, i could hit 900 any event I cared to in slice 1 without shielding, since I was only ever up against boosted 4s, and i had a counter for most teams available. My float point was around 650, so i could push up, wait for health, then go to 900 and be out no problem. Now that I have the one champion, i have no float point at all - i got hit twice in simulator after doing 1 match for 72 points this season. In 3* pvp, since i was in the habit of turning over max champs instead of rostering dupes, I don't have a very robust set of requires anymore. So i get knocked back down to around 300pts if i don't shield. I've only hit 900 twice since i champed GRR, the rest i had to push to 40 wins if i wanted the 4* reward.

I basically ONLY see teams right from the start with a 5* component, most gritty teams or some random assortment of 5s around lvl 420. So I have given up on shield training readiness, and I've gone all-in on America Chavez to grind out a champion Jessica Jones the hard way. Currently she is 4/2/3, i need 60 more chavez covers. I have Okoye set as my 5* bh to hopefully grow in the background, since my Shuri is under 300 covers as well. I started spending exclusively into latest legends (i spend as i go, historically cp went to classics) right when Kingpin became available, trying to see if i could cover new releases as they were released. the jury is still out - i got cable to 10 before he left latest (1/4/5), Kingpin is currently 2/2/3, GE Doom is 2/0/2. I'm not overly hopeful about Kingpin at this point, but I feel good about Doom (I'd prefer him anyway with his true heal).

I join the chorus of those saying "don't do it unless you have a meta 5"

AXP_isme · March 2019

I champed Hawkeye as my only 5* champ. I agree with a lot of what’s been said above. I have another six fully covered 5*s but none are meta-defining so I’m in no rush to push them up (archangel, panther, gambit, GRRR, IM46 and OML).

It made PvE much faster with the increased match damage and the speed with which coul-hawk generates blue and red AP. It’s made PvP a whole lot less fun. Now all I see is gritty as far as the eye can see. I was never that keen on pvp anyway but back when it was 4*s vs 4*s I had a lot of tools in my toolbox. Now i’m severely restricted in terms of choice. I’m lucky that I have carol and coulson as my two highest 4* champs so I can put together a pretty good team of 2 or 3 but, if you like pvp and like variety then champing one 5* seems like a bad decision.

I’m inclined to agree with the views above on single champs. Kitty would be ideal, Okoye would also be good, DD could work, Thor would need quite a lot of health management
but he is strong. Everyone else feels like they’re liabilities (fatpin, banner) or need proper partners (panthos) to get the most out of them.

Edit - I wouldn’t recommend doing what I did unless you have a high level coulson and either aren’t bothered about pvp or are happy spending lots of healthpacks. Even then fighting the same team (gritty) with the same team (coul-hawk) gets old very quickly.

Single 5* champ discussion: pros, cons, 5* candidates, horror and success stories.

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