OP,
Let me add to the chorus advising you not to spend iso on tokens. You will need the iso for 3s later on, and the token drop rates are so low that you will never actually build any 3s using that strategy.
As a general transition strategy I would advise:
(1) Level the following 2s (ideally in this order): OBW, Ares, Daken, Thor, Storm, MNMags. Those are the essential 2s that will retain value for you well into 3* land. Additional 2s that can be useful include mHawkeye, 2 Wolvie, Torch, and maybe Ms. Marvel.
(2) Other than those 2s, don’t spend iso on anything. Horde it, you will want several hundred thousand iso saved when you start getting 3s to level. So that means ignore other 2s and ignore stop leveling your 1s. In fact, once your 2s reach the 70s, drop all 1s except Juggs.
(3) try to avoid selling any 3s The transition phase takes forever and generally gives you a random sampling of 3s. It can be very hard to build up and well-covered characters without maintaining a large (and sadly useless) bench of 1-5 covered 3s. This sucks. It’s the biggest money sink in the game. If you can (and want to) spend some money on the game, this is the place to do it. Buy some HP and sink it all into roster slots to hold useless 3s. If you stick with the game long enough to reach 3* land, you will be glad you did so.
(4) focus on PVE. It is especially valuable to figure out how to get multiple cover rewards from PVE. getting some 3* covers isn’t hard, but getting 13 covers for one character is the trick. So almost anything that lets you get multiple covers from the same character is worth the effort.
(5) when I was in 2* land, Ares/obw could sometimes score 550-600 with some shielding. I don’t know if that is still the case, but in general high end pvp is for 3* players. Don’t worry too much about scoring well. get 400 to bank your hp, and don’t bother shielding unless the top 100 cover is essential for you (ie an important cover for a good 3* for whom you already have several covers). Also learn which pvp slice works best for you (if you want placement, than slices 1-3 are probably the way to go, even if the end times are slightly less convenient).
As for nimvin’s Thor/Ares debate: Ares is better. that’s not to say that Thor is bad, and in certain situations he is preferrable, but overall ares is better. He is just as good on offense and has more defensive value. He has awesome, and very fast, one target damage. And with the proper 4/4/5 build his yellow countdown will resolve most of the time (especially if you clear obvious yellow matches first), and it’s quite efficient when that happens. Even better, use ares with obw and you can give him temp health to absorb the yellow self-damage!
