So I’m seeing the pattern that the required 4 star is based on their release date… Since IW was today (9/25/15), what are the upcoming ones? I’d like to minimally level them based on upcoming needs. Thanks.
(If this was posted somewhere already, my search skills suck.)
Hulkbuster is next.
there seems to be no rhyme nor reason for their order!
Ouh, weird. I was thinking since the first 3 were early releases that it was going in some kinds of release order. Hmm.. Any clue what comes after HB?
just a shot in the dark guess here, but I could see the current order being generally the total number of covers in the game from most to least, giving the player base the best chance at getting there with the generally most covered characters first and pushing out the lesser covered characters until later. xforce is by far the most covered 4* and IW was with him as original 4s in the game and fury came 3rd. hulkbuster is the current 4 everyone whales to use with fist to play at a high level for no a ton of $$ spent, so I could see hb actually being 4th most covered in the game. many came out of the first ultron event with several covers from tokens, the ultron event, and then the EotS pve that followed too.
if that theory holds up, my guess is that 4thor might be next - pure speculation, but it seems like they’re trying to let us use the best covered ones first. my 4thor will struggle but I’m looking forward to antman and starlord.
I like this theory. Be fun to guess which are most covered after this, my guesses:
4thor
Elektra
Prof X
Ant-Man
Star-Lord
Jean Grey
Kingpin
Thing
X-Force Deadpool
Carnage
Sam Wilson Cap America
Mr. Fantastic
Devil Dinosaur (?)
I would love to see a Devil Dino node but that would cause all of the people that haven’t been playing for at least a year to grab their pitchforks since they never had a shot at the covers.
[notes location of my pitchfork] 
pretty sure they’ve said dino will never be required or essential. it would be fun if they did introduce him into the mainstream part of the game. I’m still a couple of months away from mine (but maybe only a couple of weeks unless they go a different route this year).
If it is in order of covers owned (or some similar metric), I think the next one could be GT or Carnage. Carnage is a recent release, but the rerun of his release PvE means more people might have him covered.
Agree with the speculation that it’s in order of most covered 4s. That way, Demi give us time to try and cover some of the newer characters in time for their 4DDQ node, and stave off some of the complaints that no one has the required character in a usable state.
If it was the case that it’s down to how likely someone is to have full covers, why was IW third? She was one of the two starting 4*s with Nick Fury being the third.
I’d wager more players have Fury leveled…
Also I’m willing to bet there have been a lot of people who’d rather have 1000 ISO than roster IW.
Well if it is Hulkbuster next that reinforces my belief that the pulls are not random because I’ve pulled 2 this week! I like the game seems to encourage me to progress like that sometimes. Hopefully 1/3/2 will be enough for me to have a chance this time
The 2nd position in the active vault appears to be reserved for the character that is going to be required in this 5-day run.
I also noticed, today, that the 2nd position in the inactive vault just updated. It no longer holds Invisible Woman (the required from the last rotation) it now contains X-Force Deadpool.
This doesn’t give us any long term predictive ability, but my money is on x-pool being next.
So I see ‘Thing’ in there as the third spot (XDP as 2nd and he is next). So I am assuming Thing is next?
if I understand right, the third spot is random.
You understand right. I have Mr Fantastic there.
Ah, my bad. I guess I just had something weird last week. I had HB in the second slot and XDP in the third slot.
And, that is the correct order so I figured it would translate. Bleh 
Thanks for the info.
XF Deadpool, according to the October thread…