Marvel Puzzle Quest

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by dunkem

These changes kind of suck... Spidey at least some kind of offense now, but there are just way better characters than him still. I rarely have downed allies so that increased damage means nothing. 4* Venom is still not strong enough either.

*sigh* With our lead player gone, may be time to find another alliance. Seems like there are a few members who aren't playing anymore since our leaderboard in the boss events list only about 14 players.

Can we reorganize? I'd much rather play with a group of primarily people "i know" with a few outsiders sprinkled in, then to play with all randoms, but whatever.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Each day I've played this week, the daily ISO bonus was 900-1200. Someone needs to kick the dead weight.

Originally Posted by General Mike

Name names.

Originally Posted by dunkem

These changes kind of suck... Spidey at least some kind of offense now, but there are just way better characters than him still. I rarely have downed allies so that increased damage means nothing. 4* Venom is still not strong enough either.

*sigh* With our lead player gone, may be time to find another alliance. Seems like there are a few members who aren't playing anymore since our leaderboard in the boss events list only about 14 players.

Re: Spidey, I fooled around with him some earlier. I've been trying to think of a scenario that brings the bonus damage into play, but shy of, like, Boss Rush? I'm not sure you can get there.

Maybe if you hamstring yourself by bringing along a 1* and let Thanos kill the 1*, but...I don't know why you'd ever do that.

Some damage is better than none, and I think there are better healers in the 3* tier than Spidey was, so trading the healing for damage isn't awful, but the yellow probably still needs to be reduced in cost.

As for the other stuff up there...

As dunkem pointed out, even in the premiere alliance events, participation capped out at around 14 players. I'm impressed as all hell that we were able to clear round 6, and occasionally 7, with that kind of participation. But we had some new players who weren't able to haul the same weight (through no fault of their own; the crazy jumps in scaling every 8 hours or so has that effect), and that hurts outcomes.

The other half of that, the "dead weight" Toddzilla refers to, is harder to deal with, because here's the thing: commanders can't be kicked from an alliance, and the only way to tell if they're playing or not in the first place is to crosscheck the list of players with "Commander" by their names with who shows up in the ISO list. Some of that dead weight might be folks who are Commanders but haven't played in forever, and there isn't anything you can do about that without getting customer service involved.

Looking at T.R.O.U.T. right now in the alliance search, 7/17 players are Commanders, and of the 10 who aren't, one hasn't played in nearly a year, another in nearly a month, and the other 8 look pretty regular. So if T.R.O.U.T. is getting 9-12 people a day playing, that means probably at least three of the Commanders are dormant.

But it's really hard to tell who. Part of why I designated Ajaxab as a Commander before I left is because he IS active (I'd see him pop up every night from my friends list as playing), and I wanted to make sure there was somebody behind the metaphorical wheel.

Something I'd like to point out about the difference between TROUT and the alliance that recruited me: it isn't all "hardcore" players. In fact, I'd guess there's close to the same number of max progression chasers in both events. The difference is that this alliance doesn't have 1/3 dormancy. The bottom six players for us have a combined 44k points, equivalent to what 1.5 max progression players would have generated. For TROUT, those six players might have been dormant for months.

That's responsible for the difference between top 1001-10k, which is where TROUT generally finishes a PVE, and top 250, which is good for about an extra 100 HP/week from PVE play. Even top 500, which I think a revitalized TROUT is capable of, would return that.

My recommendation: create a new alliance, since clearing out dead weight among the Commanders is not a trivial task. Coordinate in TROUT chat who's active and wants to move over to the new alliance so y'all can stay together as much as possible (since I'm not sure if everybody active in TROUT is still active on FOFC). Minimize the number of Commanders; I know in the past the number had to do in part with the cost to add roster spots, which is no longer a thing. Have one person, or possibly two, who will be active in that role.

Once you've got your core, you can open it up from there. You can either recruit on the forums/Reddit/whatever or open it up to randoms, but make it clear what your expectations are. You don't need all 20 people to be max progression players; if the core is active, even casual play from the 6 spots you currently aren't getting anything from could be huge.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

3* AND 5*! I'll probably chase the 3* because at least that way I can have a version [of Thanos] I have a reasonable shot at covering.

Also while looking through the thread for Toddzilla's username I came across this and had to laugh because RNGesus + my singular 5* bonus hero = "I have a 4/2/5 5* Thanos now." Which is about 6 more covers than I ever thought would happen.

[dunkem]

For almost all PVE's I pretty much rank up to about 20 each time and around 50 if i screw it up .. like these two day rounds that i'm conditioned to jet through in the last two hours the usual one day rounds. Sometimes I forget about the last two hours and end up short with just an hour to clear.

In the boss rounds, I think we had a good top five or so that cleared a good chunk another 6 or so who tried, but didn't have the roster strength to hit the higher levels, and about another 3 or so who just tagged along for the ride for free covers.

Yeah, the name of the game is consistency... if all twenty or at least 18 played consistently even if they didn't have top 100 finishes, we'd have better alliance finishes.

At this point, I'm kind of just taking it as if alliance rewards are just some bonus... the true pain will happen in boss rounds when individual placement means nothing and alliance progression is everything...

If another alliance isn't created with our group, I may just join a public alliance. Either that or I may just play a whole lot less. I spend a good 3 to 4 hours a day on this game... which isn't real healthy. If I put in that kind of time, I figure some alliance would want the contribution.

One thing I read about the commander thing is that you can somehow submit a request to demote the commanders. After that, you can boot them. It still doesn't matter though since we can't even fill the rest of the alliance.

Ah well, I'll just ride it for now. I still wish they'd turn PVE into a quality challenge vs. a quantity one. Guess they don't like it when they make it too hard since people can't get full clears... my stance is... you aren't supposed to clear it all easily... it's supposed to be difficult enough that only good players get the full clears and are rightfully rewarded. You'd also remove this whole clear before and at the end of event nonsense... and you could play throughout the day trying to beat a difficult node ala the gauntlet.

I have a love/hate thing with these goon events too... while they're easier to clear, they're boring as hell and I end up using the same roster of characters to speed clear em. IF it were more gauntlet-ish again, much more challenging and you have to change up your lineup to beat them efficiently.

Ah well, maybe this whole alliance things will make me decide if I want to use those 3 hour of my life in other ways.. (like my 6000 Steam games I've hoarded...)

... oh.. and about that TROUT chat, I notice that there's a lot of missing messages on my android smartphone, but I see them all when I use my tablet... that chat is pretty wonky...

[Ajaxab]

I'd be up for starting a new alliance if there was interest. I don't play a ton, but I'll generally put in 30 minutes every day doing the BE challenge and the odd event here or there. I think my game has been about longevity more than about long sessions and then burnout as I've been slowly chipping away since the game came out. I figure if someone else who puts more time into the game wanted to be a commander, that would be fine by me.

[Swaggs]

I'm in with whatever you guys want to do. I still play every day - always get the BE. I prefer PVE and try to clear most storylines (I don't typically clear them 4x unless there's a really good reward). I'm level 80 and have all the 2/3 and all 4s except Sandman. I feel like we have a solid foundation. It would almost be nice if we could merge with another alliance.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by dunkem

I spend a good 3 to 4 hours a day on this game... which isn't real healthy. If I put in that kind of time, I figure some alliance would want the contribution.

Yes, that is true. You wouldn't have any trouble latching on with a PVE-focused alliance as a top 20 player.

The good news is that once the SCL-based scaling becomes permanent, that 3 hour daily investment could end up looking more like a 90 minute daily investment. That was my experience in the two tests so far, as someone who generally does enough clears for top 50 to top 100, depending on my work schedule.

When playing at SCL7 under SCL-based scaling, it was taking me literally half the time to do my clears. So that was glorious. And I'm anxiously awaiting that becoming a regular thing.

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

I'm in with whatever you guys want to do. I still play every day - always get the BE. I prefer PVE and try to clear most storylines (I don't typically clear them 4x unless there's a really good reward). I'm level 80 and have all the 2/3 and all 4s except Sandman. I feel like we have a solid foundation. It would almost be nice if we could merge with another alliance.

This is about where I am at, except I'm only at level 60. Have all 2*s and 3*s, with only a few 3*s left to champion, and I have 37 of the 4*s. I basically just play PVE, and I usually get close to max progression, but I never feel like I really do great placement wise.

Either way, would love to see some kind of reorganization.

[AnalBumCover]

I'm cool with creating a new alliance. Seeing a more active group will be a refreshing change. I'm GizmoDogg on MPQ, btw.

[Umbrella]

I'm a somewhat casual player, but I at least try and do the DDQ every day. I'm currently trying to level up my 4* roster, and my 3*'s are all championed. So I'll just go with the flow on this one.

[SackAttack]

dunkem's got first dibs since I've already contacted him about it, but since it's the holiday weekend, I don't know how quickly he'll respond to me, and we need to get this vacancy filled before the boss event on Thursday, I just want to toss out there that the T250 alliance that recruited me just had someone move to a T100 alliance, so there's an open spot.

What we need is someone who plays to max progression/is invested in alliance events, with the upcoming alliance event later this week. There's the possibility of a permanent spot if whoever fills it is interested, but if your long-term interest is "go back to TROUT or whatever replaces TROUT," that's cool, too.

Mostly we just need to make sure we have a full deck for the event. I'm told past boss events, they've generally cleared round 7, and the last time around they cleared round 8, to set an idea of reward possibilities.

[dunkem]

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in another alliance. Sorry, I don't check in here more than once a day. I'll check more often for updates on that other alliance though.

Interesting... T250 to T100... Sounds like a tiered alliance of some sort. Sounds like some promotion/relegation thing in Football manager.

Regarding the SCL thing. I'm playing at SCL 8 and top 30. You're saying that at SCL 7 you're cutting your time investment from 3 hours to 1.5? Wow... I may need to consider a drop that level then.... Then again, to be honest, I didn't really see a huge difference in difficulty for myself. Maybe because it was during a relatively goon heavy event. Usually, the challenges come when there's that dirty cheating bastard Juggernaut who haphazardly headbutts you with no consequences in future clears.

Also regarding the SCL's, I'm wondering if the scaling will matter if the SCL thing becomes permanent. I'm holding off levelling up my 5* just because I don't want an unnecessary scaling hit. 4* I just level to max, but 5*, the benefits aren't quite enough to counter the increase in scale might be presented with. 5 covers for Black Bolt that I could get up to 330, but not worth the overall scale hit I think.

[General Mike]

god if everybody else is bailing, I'm gonna bail before the event too, and maybe we can get things sorted out after its over

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by dunkem

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in another alliance. Sorry, I don't check in here more than once a day. I'll check more often for updates on that other alliance though.

Interesting... T250 to T100... Sounds like a tiered alliance of some sort. Sounds like some promotion/relegation thing in Football manager.

Not quite, although those exist! What happened here is that the guy in question had previously been a temp in that top 100 alliance, and when the original occupant returned, found a home in this alliance. Someone left the top 100 alliance, and this fella got offered that spot back on a permanent basis.

But there do exist tiered alliances, yes. The higher end ones have much more stringent requirements (such as a minimum of 1200 points per PVP event, say), and the lower tier ones act as a sort of "minor league," either for players to prove out and earn promotions when spots open up in the more competitive members of the alliance family, or to get a call-up when someone needs a break or will otherwise be unavailable. That's not what's going on with LoE, but it is a thing that exists elsewhere in the game, yes.

Regarding the SCL thing. I'm playing at SCL 8 and top 30. You're saying that at SCL 7 you're cutting your time investment from 3 hours to 1.5?

Little more context: With roster-based scaling, which is in place for Enemy of the State, time to clear is the same whether you play at SCL1 or SCL8. So up to this point, I've played SCL8 when I don't care about placement, and SCL7 when I'm chasing a new character release.

They've run a couple of tests in the last month or so for SCL-based difficulty, rather than roster-based. During those tests, the high-end scaling for SCL8 is set in a range that caps out at level 400. The high-end scaling for SCL7 has been set in a range that caps out at level 220'ish.

For perspective, my roster-based scaling tends to land in the 330s on the hardest nodes once I've cleared them 4x. So, yes, with SCL-based scaling, cutting those ~110 levels off my scaling results in much faster clears.

That's not a permanent thing yet! But it's probably coming on some level; they wouldn't spend time on those tests only to scrap it entirely. For the moment, I'm playing at SCL8 because scaling is the same either way, so I might as well maximize my progression rewards. Once the switch gets permanently flipped and scaling is based on SCL instead of roster construction, I will be dropping down to SCL7 with a quickness. The modest increase in rewards at SCL8 is not worth giving up an extra 60+ minutes a night, which is how much time I saved on my clears during both of those tests.

Wow... I may need to consider a drop that level then.... Then again, to be honest, I didn't really see a huge difference in difficulty for myself. Maybe because it was during a relatively goon heavy event. Usually, the challenges come when there's that dirty cheating bastard Juggernaut who haphazardly headbutts you with no consequences in future clears.

That difference was present only during those tests! For Enemy of the State, you'll face the same strength Adamantium Slash from Wolverine whether you play at 1 or 8. If this were Meet Rocket & Groot, you'd take the same Headbutt from Juggernaut regardless. If, on the other hand, SCL-based scaling were in play? Juggernaut's max scaling in a hard node at SCL7 would be 150 or so levels lower than at SCL8. Trust me, not trivial.

Also regarding the SCL's, I'm wondering if the scaling will matter if the SCL thing becomes permanent. I'm holding off levelling up my 5* just because I don't want an unnecessary scaling hit. 4* I just level to max, but 5*, the benefits aren't quite enough to counter the increase in scale might be presented with. 5 covers for Black Bolt that I could get up to 330, but not worth the overall scale hit I think.

Hold off on leveling your 5s IMO. I have a 12-cover 5* Thanos I haven't touched with ISO yet. Until they confirm SCL scaling in PVE, leveling him would negatively impact my experience. What I'll have to decide if and when they switch on SCL scaling is how much I care about my PVP experience (which could also be negatively impacted by leveling my 5's).

I'm predominantly a PVE player so that's the majority of my concern regarding if and when to level 5's. But the matchmaking on the PVP side might be worth considering, also.

[Toddzilla]

Just tell me where to go and I'll be there with my occasional $20 drop for a cover I'm chasing

[dunkem]

I think they may need to make the progression rewards more significant between SCL's so people don't beat up on the easy guys. Like you just summed up, people may want to get better placement for some new covers, but if the progression reward was significantly larger for SCL8 vs. SCL7, it'd be a give and take.. better placement covers vs. losing out on CP's. Right now, the difference is marginal, so I think they need to change the rewards to keep more people in the suitable SCL's. We'll see what pans out I guess.

Yeah, I'm holding off on my 5*'s until I get them really covered up and where they'll give me a significant enough punch to deal with the scaling.

I must say that it does annoy me that they remove characters from legendary packs though. It's nearly impossible to cover up on some characters not in packs like Iceman. They need to put older 4* covers in the classic and keep the newer ones in latest like the 5*.

I managed to champion my Wasp 4* just when she left the packs. Kicks ass with somebody like Falcon mass converting protects to strikes. Fun to play with, but not quite as fast as a Dr. Strange lineup.

Wish they'd let us use covers in excess of the 5th one on other colors too.. Wasted a good two Spider Womans because I already had 5 each in Black and Purple.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by dunkem

I think they may need to make the progression rewards more significant between SCL's so people don't beat up on the easy guys. Like you just summed up, people may want to get better placement for some new covers, but if the progression reward was significantly larger for SCL8 vs. SCL7, it'd be a give and take.. better placement covers vs. losing out on CP's. Right now, the difference is marginal, so I think they need to change the rewards to keep more people in the suitable SCL's. We'll see what pans out I guess.

Well, I mean, you DO lose out on CP if you go for placement in 7 over progression in 8, unless you're a top 10 player in the lower SCL.

I must say that it does annoy me that they remove characters from legendary packs though. It's nearly impossible to cover up on some characters not in packs like Iceman. They need to put older 4* covers in the classic and keep the newer ones in latest like the 5*.

I'm not sure they really know how they want to handle it. They've rejected several suggestions - and that one is the most common - and settled on the Heroes for Hire store...whose usefulness they promptly obliterated by tying it to the Crash instead of the Burrito. Same character cycle, it just takes five times longer to go from one character to the next, now. Meanwhile, the only other ways to get the vintage 4* are bonus heroes (1 in 20 chance to pull one, no guarantee it'll be usable) or the Vintage Heroic (only available one week a month, and you're still more likely to pull a 2* than anything else).

It's a head-scratcher.

I managed to champion my Wasp 4* just when she left the packs. Kicks ass with somebody like Falcon mass converting protects to strikes. Fun to play with, but not quite as fast as a Dr. Strange lineup.

Wish they'd let us use covers in excess of the 5th one on other colors too.. Wasted a good two Spider Womans because I already had 5 each in Black and Purple.

I missed out on championing my Peggy before she left because RNG gave me nothing but reds for her final 5 or so pulls, but I eventually got the blue I needed from bonus heroes; I've been able to champion the last 5 4* to leave tokens, and I have everybody championed through the end of September, so it should be a while (if ever, under the current system) before I ever have to play "beat the clock" again.

Colorless covers would be nice. I've kind of gotten to the point where I don't stress about unusable covers much anymore because focusing the token pool on the 12 most recent releases means that I'm going to end up covering everybody sooner or later anyway. Those extra covers might be the difference between them being level 277 or 279 for me when they leave tokens. That's not nothing, but it doesn't prevent me doing what I need to to get characters covered and championed, either.

It was insanely aggravating when everybody was in the pool still and I pulled nothing but purple from my Professor X pulls, though.

[SackAttack]

Pay attention to the Sinister Six's power descriptions in the boss event. They're subtly different in some cases (drastically so in others) and if you don't keep an eye on how they work, you may struggle with some of the bosses.

[Critch]

Takes somebody that can destroy tiles for Doctor Octopus. What a pain in the ass that was til I actually read the descriptions.

[General Mike]

Doc Ock is as tough as it gets. Ended up going with 3* versions of Iron Man, Hawkeye and Hulk, and generally had success.

[Critch]

I've been using 3* Black Widow as both her red and green can take out the reactor, and the purple can help line up a 4 to take it out too.

T.R.O.U.T. is a bit lonely for this Boss event though, just me and Katon so far.

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by Critch

I've been using 3* Black Widow as both her red and green can take out the reactor, and the purple can help line up a 4 to take it out too.

T.R.O.U.T. is a bit lonely for this Boss event though, just me and Katon so far.

Sad. I know I bailed for a random alliance with full participation.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Critch

Takes somebody that can destroy tiles for Doctor Octopus. What a pain in the ass that was til I actually read the descriptions.

All you NEED is to match-4 or -5 the reactor. The tentacles are for if you can't do that.

[General Mike]

Hate Carnage

[SackAttack]

He's annoying. The only real way I've found to deal with him is to run a winfinite team that keeps him from getting to make a move at all.

I suppose 3* Cage might be able to help with the black denial so he doesn't get the bonus matches, but...I'd rather he just not move at all. Thanks, 3* Widow!

[SirFozzie]

3* Witch helps as well

[SackAttack]

I don't think he can be stunned.

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

I don't think he can be stunned.

I think the only one who can be stunned is Doc Ock when you blow up his reactor.

[General Mike]

Hit the 700K mark. My best showing ever in one of these boss events.

[SackAttack]

I was surprised at how achievable max progression has been this time. Last time around I got there on the third day, and that was playing optimally. I got there inside of 24 hours this time.

[General Mike]

Yeah, just got max progression. Temporary alliance has a good chance of getting the full set of alliance rewards too.

Seems like the point scale of the boss battles was higher then in previous events too though, so that probably helped.

[Toddzilla]

I love Black Bolt and his board-clearing holler.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by General Mike

Yeah, just got max progression. Temporary alliance has a good chance of getting the full set of alliance rewards too.

Seems like the point scale of the boss battles was higher then in previous events too though, so that probably helped.

Well, that, and there were twice as many boss battles available per 8 hours as previous events. It doesn't seem like they tweaked the point totals for personal or alliance progression rewards to compensate for that (thank heavens).

[ntndeacon]

So I was playing today and checked the available heroes to verify vulture was there and blade was gone. Imagine my surprise when I realized that we can get ALL of the 4* 's again. You are three times as likely to get newer folks. At least in the heroic area. But I wanted to share the good news!

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by ntndeacon

So I was playing today and checked the available heroes to verify vulture was there and blade was gone. Imagine my surprise when I realized that we can get ALL of the 4* 's again. You are three times as likely to get newer folks. At least in the heroic area. But I wanted to share the good news!

Same is true of the 3*, but they don't get bonus pull rates.

All 3* are back in Elite, Heroic, and event tokens.

All 4* are back in Elite, Heroic, event, and Legendary tokens, with the 12 most recent 4* releases at any given time getting 3x pull rates. The net effect is that the Token12 have an aggregate pull rate roughly equal to the field.

So in a Legendary Token, you have a 42.5% chance to pull a cover from the Token12, a 42.5% chance to pull a token from the field, and a 15% chance to pull a 5* cover.

I've set my bonus heroes to be members of the Token12 I've either not championed or not yet finished covering; now that I can get the oldies through regular pulls again, I don't see a reason to 'waste' a bonus pull on one of them.

[SackAttack]

Oh, interesting. The 4* bonus pull rate applies to the Hooked on a Feeling blind token, but not to the Simulator blind token; wonder if that's because of the Mockingbird release.

EDIT: display bug. They've fixed it. The 4* bonus pull rate applies to all blind tokens.

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by ntndeacon

So I was playing today and checked the available heroes to verify vulture was there and blade was gone. Imagine my surprise when I realized that we can get ALL of the 4* 's again. You are three times as likely to get newer folks. At least in the heroic area. But I wanted to share the good news!

Thank god. Was kinda getting frustrated with the game and my hoard of hero points just sitting there. Now at least I can maybe fill out this roster of mine.

[General Mike]

Got my first 4* Champion! Baron Mordo!

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by General Mike

Got my first 4* Champion! Baron Mordo!

Grats! I'd been running him 5/5/3 and somebody suggested last night I try him at 3/5/5.

Mordo @ 3/5/5 against board movers, especially when boosted, is a revelation.

[General Mike]

I finally feel I'm in a good spot with PVP. I actually have teams I can run out there and win some of the battles that pop up for me and get some progression out of this. I guess getting a few of my 4*s up to champion helped.

[SackAttack]

Yeah, getting your first 4* champions opens up your ability to hit higher targets. I can pretty consistently hit 650/725 if I want to these days (30 champions). 900 is still one of those "I could but ugh" targets. Just waiting for win-based PVP to be a permanent thing.

[SackAttack]

So from my last 10 or 11 Legendary tokens of various flavors, I've had 9 5* covers drop.

Here's the net result:

Spidey, Ock, and Thanos all got their 13th covers on the same day (today).

[Toddzilla]

I've championed 4* Wolverine and 4* Dino but haven't been able to move them up from there. how much ISO does it cost to champion a 5* at level 255?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

I've championed 4* Wolverine and 4* Dino but haven't been able to move them up from there. how much ISO does it cost to champion a 5* at level 255?

Maxing out a level 255 5* costs 553,929 ISO.

I don't know what the 5* champion fee is, but I know it's like 12,500 for 4*, so I'd guess it's probably 15-20k for a 5*.

So call it 575k as a ballpark guess?

[Schmidty]

I apologize. I haven’t played the game in.....no idea. Right now, if you aren’t my kid or wife, you get zero of my time.

[General Mike]

I still hate Simulator. Just trying to do enough to get that Carnage token, as he's one of the 2 4*s I don't have.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by General Mike

I still hate Simulator. Just trying to do enough to get that Carnage token, as he's one of the 2 4*s I don't have.

For what it's worth, when you find yourself in situations like that, all you need to do to get the 4* cover is clear each node twice. The 5* essential node is not required to reach any of the progression targets; the three easy, three hard, 2*, 3*, and 4* essential nodes, cleared twice each over the course of the event, will get you that 4* cover.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

So from my last 10 or 11 Legendary tokens of various flavors, I've had 9 5* covers drop.

Here's the net result:

Spidey, Ock, and Thanos all got their 13th covers on the same day (today).

Just shy of five months later, Spidey and Thanos are champions, and they've been joined by Thor and Daredevil.

Ock is still chilling at 255, and will for the foreseeable future. Gambit hid from my pulls for his final two months in Latest, and wound up at 3/4/5. They've been reworking rewards for some 4* champions to introduce feeders for 5* covers, though, and those feeders have been rewarding covers in order of primacy, so he'll be 4/4/5 one of these days and then I can see about championing him.

The introduction of fixed scaling in Story was the impetus for championing those cats, and it's made a pretty major difference in terms of clear speeds (placement too, but spending 40 minutes instead of an hour and a half on my nightly clears is the bigger deal).

Versus, less so. I can still hit 575 with regularity. the 700-800 range is a less common occurrence for me these days.

But the thing is? Once I championed my second 5*, the change was basically from "Baby Groot + Gamora everywhere" to "Gambit everywhere." Points-based PVP is still a slog, just with different faces.

TL;DR - if you're primarily a Story player and you CAN champion a 5*, particularly if that 5* is Thanos, Thor, Daredevil, or Gambit, do it. If you're a mixed player or primarily Versus...there be dragons lurking. They can be dealt with, but it's a thing to be aware of.

[SackAttack]

So couple pretty major changes if you haven't played in a while and are thinking about dipping your toe back in the water.

PVP is now a hybrid of points-based and wins-based. You earn the progression rewards when you hit a certain wins target OR when you hit a particular points level. Example: it takes 300 points to earn the first event token, ordinarily, but under the wins structure, you can get that in 8 wins. Thus, if you play at the very start of the event and get the ten 'seed' fights, you'll get to that reward level before 300 points, and 300 points becomes just another milestone. Alternatively, if you only take on high-value fights, you might reach 575 points for the 10 CP pretty quickly, at which point the wins table won't matter to you much unless you get smacked down. It's hybrid, so you can reach any reward either way; you just can't double-dip.

The other major change actually has additional changes inbound. In years past, it's been possible to "waste" covers because RNG fucks you. You're sitting on 5/2/5 for a red/yellow/green character and all you can pull is red and green. Few weeks ago, they added the ability to 'save' covers in those situations: characters with 12 or fewer powers, and 5 ranks in a power, can 'save' up to 5 otherwise unusable covers. Characters with 13 covers had to champion, and characters with 4/4/4 builds couldn't save anything, but generally it was a solid quality-of-life improvement. Concomitant, you could trade those 5 banked covers (for 2-4* characters) for a cover you COULD use, or 3 banked covers to do the same for 5* characters.

Coming Monday, they're opening that wide the fuck up. You'll be able to save up to 50 covers for 2* and up to 100 covers for 3-5* characters, and it no longer matters how many covers a character has. I don't THINK you can 'save' a non-rostered character, but otherwise? If you've got a 13-cover character you don't want to champion yet? Save to your hearts' content.

i am so giddy about that you don't even know

[Schmidty]

If I could switch my Steam MPQ account to any of my tablets (amazon, iPad, Samsung tablet), I would. I can't figure it out.

For about two years, I have been intensely playing Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Creature quest and Dungeon Boss. FFBE is my go-to for min-maxing, statistical fun, and lots of completion goodness. You will never achieve completion, but can it's fun. I'm not recruiting, as there are no guilds. Friends are very, very important and, thankfully, friends are easy to add. Would love to see the lovers of math, strategy, and out-of-the-norm thinkers from FOFC take a shot. Great game.