I have set only Rhulk to my only 4* BH. I have decided that he is the best 4* for both offense and defense, and I’d like to push him up to lv 320 or higher (I currently have him at lv 295).
However I’m not seeing him grow quickly. Despite opening up around 2 to 3 LTs per day, as well as numerous event tokens, heroics and standards etc, I’m just not seeing him grow at more than maybe 2 covers per month, if even.
What other options are there to grow him (or any other of your favorite non-latest 4*s?) Every options seems very slow, including:
Grow a 3* that gives Rhulk as champion rewards
Cycle through PVE and PVP to get him from progression rewards (possible) or placement rewards (impossible for me, since I’m not a top 10 or better player)
Spend lots of HP to try to win him from a vault (expensive and not guaranteed)
Spend 3600 HP to buy one cover of his (too expensive)
Again, I’m using Rhulk as my example, but this could apply to any non-latest 4*. I’d love to favorite a few 4*s, but since Rhulk alone is growing so slowly, if I favorited more than one, they would each grow even more slowly.
So, if you will get approx. 4% 4* bonus heros from LT.
You want 25 levels, That’s 625 pulls or 250 days. Another 8 months or so and you’ll be golden. They’ll probably be 1 or 2 in progress along the way so lets go with 220 days or 7 months to mid-champ 1 of 40 4stars.
Maybe Bonus Heros isn’t an adequate solution for vaulting.
To answer your original question, I see no other way to expedite this process besides lucky vaults, vintage tokens, buying packs for either, or the occasional (over-priced) hero for hire.
Placement awards are a joke and the devs are aware.
Progression in PVE and in the season PVP sim are doable for many people in the 4* transition. But that is it as far as earning an older 4*.
Heroes for hire store is a viable means - I bought one this way despite the obscene expense. I realize I am not helping by doing this but I am tired of deleting covers I can’t use because I cant get that last cover in the one color I can use. When the star lord comes around again I will probably buy his last one. I have all the characters rostered (save 4* R&G) and am getting more HP than I am spending. But I only see it as a means to buy that last cover only. Just to get you safely past that 5/5/2 trap.
I have an alternative suggestion: change your expectations and don’t try to champ an older 4* that high. I’ve accepted that the new vaulting system practically prevents you from max champing any 4*, so the only real way to grow in power is to develop 5*s. That’s my plan.
If I keep playing, this is how I see my roster 1 year from now:
3s - Most Max Champed at 266
4s - Most between 280 and 300
5*s - 7 Champs around 452
The numbers really suggest that the only effective way to use BH is to focus on one character at a time, but even with that, I can barely imagine getting my partially-covered characters to 13 covers, let alone getting them to 320.
I am actually mostly focusing (hoping?) on increasing my 5s. I have completely lucked into lv 451 Phx and Cap, with a lv 435 OML at 5/2/5. So I’ve set my 5 BH to Phx and Cap, since I know those will be viable champion levels and won’t go to waste. Eventually I’ll add 5* BH for my other 5*s that don’t have any covers at 5 levels yet (such as BSS, GG, Thanos etc).
And I’m generally getting each new 4* up to around lv 280+. But I’m a bit sad to see all of my older 4s (even any one set as a BH) stagnate at the same champion level for months or years at this point, barely going up at all, unless they happen to be a PVE progession reward or champion reward for a 3.
I like vaulting for the most part, but I miss having the ability to grow any of the older 4s. And the vintage tokens are not the solution. They are too expensive and too rarely given to make a difference.. they pretty much only just give me 2 covers (like most non-standard tokens).
You ought to be earning more than 2 covers/month. So even you are grossly understating the number of BH you have gotten, or you are just at the very bottom end of the RNG curve.
If you set your 3* BH as a feeder (especially one that is not vaulted, and has a 2* feeder) it should help at least a little.
With that many LTs I have to assume you are earning heroics and other tokens at a pretty good clip as well - this should be generating more 4* BH too.
And lastly if you have all 12 newest 4s champed every 10 LTs gets you a bonus, not to mention CP rewards.
So you should be getting more than 2/month, but I (and it would seem the devs as well) agree that the rate is still too low. It’s still faster than the older system (if you’ve only gotten 4 since BH started, you would be at 1 under the previous system) but it does’t allow for players to make meaningful targeted progression.
What’s lost in all this is how fast would you have gotten those Red Hulk covers under the old system? The new one might take you a year or so, but with the old system it still would have been at least 6-8 months for you to earn 30 Red Hulk covers.
The new system is a little more than twice as fast for ONE character, slightly faster for the second, but by the time you get a second character to 320 under the old system you would gotten those same 25 covers applied to virtually ALL of your older 4s. This is the tradeoff for getting all the new 4s leveled up and generating champ levels much sooner.