Polarity's Guide on Going From 1* to 3* (Updated: 1/22/15)

[NorthernPolarity]

@BelligerentGnu

Question: Do OBW or Thor ever appear as three-cover rewards in events?

They do, but they haven’t been recently.

[system]

I think the guide is great and will definitely help a lot of newbies. And I think you’ve inspired me to start a new game on a secondary device.

Kudos

[NorthernPolarity]

@beezer37_84

I think the guide is great and will definitely help a lot of newbies. And I think you’ve inspired me to start a new game on a secondary device.

Kudos

Thanks for the encouragement! Let me know if you have any tips from the new playthrough. I added an outline for the 2->3* transition, and will be working on that next, let me know if you guys have any suggestions! I’m planning on adding descriptions of all 3* characters (probably going to copy some off of mischiefmakers ranking guide) and adding some stuff on their strengths as your first maxed out 3*.

[mischiefmaker]

A few suggestions:

1. Whenever you update the guide, post a reply so that people who want to read the update know that there is one (the unread icon doesn’t activate on an edit, as far as I know).
2. You may want to wait on using anything from the rankings guide, since a lot of that is out of date, and I’m planning on doing another run of rankings real soon, which will come with new writeups.
3. CStorm’s green actually isn’t a strict upgrade on mStorm’s; if anything it’s slightly worse. mStorm breaks more tiles per AP until cStorm gets 20, and mStorm’s cost is cheaper so you can cast sooner and more often.
4. Mawkeye is a bit underrated; I think Avoid is actually his strongest ability because it essentially gives you the ability to tank two additional colors (blue/purple for Thor/Wolverine, red/blue for Daken). That’s quite powerful in terms of extending your play time.
5. When you say to place top 45 for 3 2* covers, I think you mean top 75.

[stowaway]

I’ve been curious to see what you would say about transitioning to 3*. It’s in line with what my experience has been; namely, you’re sort of at the whim of the new. I haven’t seen a Spider-Man cover in weeks. Now, suddenly, I have as many Black Panther covers as Spider-Man.

The exception to this is the Lightning Rounds. We’ll know soon if the rewards for villain rounds will be changed to reflect the hero rounds (tokens instead of specific covers). But you can gain ground pretty quickly in Lightning Rounds. It’s just a matter of getting your toe in the door. During the last villain rounds, I went from zero to seven Doom Covers in under a day. The day 44 supply drop, plus a few lucky Doom pulls from event tokens, led to ranking well in an off-peak Doom round, and suddenly I have my first 3* in the level 70+ range. Not enough to make me want to use him all the time, but enough to make a big difference in events where he’s powered up.

Great job with the guide! I hope every newbie reads it.

[system]

@NorthernPolarity

Stage 2: From Newbie To Mid-Game (1*->2* Transition)

Gameplan: At this stage of the game, your 1* roster should be around level 30-50 and strong enough to complete almost all of the missions in the prologue. At this point, you’re going to want to start figuring out what 2* characters you should focus on. Note that 3 Daken, Wolvie, Thor, and C. Storm are handed out at various points in the prologue, so the easiest way to make the transition is to place top 45 in a PvP event that offers one of these characters as a reward. This would get you 3 covers, and coupled with the prologue covers would give you 6 covers on a 2*. Placing high enough to get heroic level tokens from PvE events should also give you a good chance of getting a lot of covers for a specific character. The most important thing to remember for this phase is that your goal is to level up a couple of key 2* characters ASAP, and the best way to do that is to just go with whatever characters you end up getting a ton of covers for. As long as the characters are mid-high tier, they’re worth leveling so don’t worry if the composition isn’t ideal, as it’s still good enough for you to work with. You should even consider leveling low tier characters if they’re featured in a week-long PvE event, as they’ll definitely help you do well in the event. Ideally, you would want to level your 2* characters just enough such that you can place well in PvP tournaments, so I would recommend leveling a core team of 3 2* characters to max level before moving onto the next stage.

Very comprehensive and nice. Just thought that I’d point out that you mean Top 75 here.

@NorthernPolarity

• Don’t aim for higher than top 45 in PvP tournaments! You might think that trying to go for a single 3* cover is useful (which is probably the highest you can place with a 1* roster), but this is actually a pretty bad idea because that 3* cover is going to be sitting in your roster for an extremely long time as dead weight.

And here, “higher than top 45” implies exclusive of top 45, so someone may read this and think that getting Top 45 is OK (if they somehow skip over the rest of your point and ignore the context). No higher than top 75, I think, would be clearer

Minor nitpicks, but I think it’s important.

[NorthernPolarity]

@noknuckles

@NorthernPolarity

Stage 2: From Newbie To Mid-Game (1*->2* Transition)

Gameplan: At this stage of the game, your 1* roster should be around level 30-50 and strong enough to complete almost all of the missions in the prologue. At this point, you’re going to want to start figuring out what 2* characters you should focus on. Note that 3 Daken, Wolvie, Thor, and C. Storm are handed out at various points in the prologue, so the easiest way to make the transition is to place top 45 in a PvP event that offers one of these characters as a reward. This would get you 3 covers, and coupled with the prologue covers would give you 6 covers on a 2*. Placing high enough to get heroic level tokens from PvE events should also give you a good chance of getting a lot of covers for a specific character. The most important thing to remember for this phase is that your goal is to level up a couple of key 2* characters ASAP, and the best way to do that is to just go with whatever characters you end up getting a ton of covers for. As long as the characters are mid-high tier, they’re worth leveling so don’t worry if the composition isn’t ideal, as it’s still good enough for you to work with. You should even consider leveling low tier characters if they’re featured in a week-long PvE event, as they’ll definitely help you do well in the event. Ideally, you would want to level your 2* characters just enough such that you can place well in PvP tournaments, so I would recommend leveling a core team of 3 2* characters to max level before moving onto the next stage.

Very comprehensive and nice. Just thought that I’d point out that you mean Top 75 here.

@NorthernPolarity

• Don’t aim for higher than top 45 in PvP tournaments! You might think that trying to go for a single 3* cover is useful (which is probably the highest you can place with a 1* roster), but this is actually a pretty bad idea because that 3* cover is going to be sitting in your roster for an extremely long time as dead weight.

And here, “higher than top 45” implies exclusive of top 45, so someone may read this and think that getting Top 45 is OK (if they somehow skip over the rest of your point and ignore the context). No higher than top 75, I think, would be clearer

Minor nitpicks, but I think it’s important.

Fixed.

@mischiefmaker

A few suggestions:

1. Whenever you update the guide, post a reply so that people who want to read the update know that there is one (the unread icon doesn’t activate on an edit, as far as I know).
2. You may want to wait on using anything from the rankings guide, since a lot of that is out of date, and I’m planning on doing another run of rankings real soon, which will come with new writeups.
3. CStorm’s green actually isn’t a strict upgrade on mStorm’s; if anything it’s slightly worse. mStorm breaks more tiles per AP until cStorm gets 20, and mStorm’s cost is cheaper so you can cast sooner and more often.
4. Mawkeye is a bit underrated; I think Avoid is actually his strongest ability because it essentially gives you the ability to tank two additional colors (blue/purple for Thor/Wolverine, red/blue for Daken). That’s quite powerful in terms of extending your play time.
5. When you say to place top 45 for 3 2* covers, I think you mean top 75.

1: Will do.
2: I think I’m going to start working on my evaluations here then, and copy paste stuff in once its updated.
3/4/5: fixed.

[system]

As a new player this has been a really valuable guide for me to follow, being somewhat forced into a 2* line up by token pulls the detail laid out here has given me great insight into the strengths (or weaknesses) associated to my roster. Thanks for taking the time to pull it together. Looking forward to the 3* evaluations!

[NorthernPolarity]

@Hei Zhen Zhu

As a new player this has been a really valuable guide for me to follow, being somewhat forced into a 2* line up by token pulls the detail laid out here has given me great insight into the strengths (or weaknesses) associated to my roster. Thanks for taking the time to pull it together. Looking forward to the 3* evaluations!

Thanks! I added evaluations for most of the 3* characters, will complete the section when I have time later on.

[system]

One thing to keep in mind for placement in pvp events is upcoming pve events. Like 1 psylocke was amazing going into brotherhood because she was insanely buffed and had numerous missions that required her. It would have been a huge mistake not to go for her and it would have cost me a mountain of tokens and iso in missed and failed missions.

[kensterr]

Juggernaut is underrated - if you want to be lazy and just get around 100 points in a PVP tourney as fast as possible for the 3 rewards then Juggs is your go-to guy. His Headbutt is a no brainer against level 50 mStorm or even a low level OBW. You can easily heal him in Venom Prologue missions if you have OBW blue.

[mischiefmaker]

Loki - Level 5 purple generates around 4 matches on average
I’ve been wondering about this and meaning to test it. Do you have data on this, or is it a gut feel kind of thing? Would love to see the data if you have it!

Also, I think the comparison between Psylocke and Punisher is a bit more nuanced than “all his skills are useful; she only has two good skills”. I’d compare it this way:

• health is equivalent
• Psylocke’s red v. Punisher’s green: slight advantage to Punisher, but it’s pretty close.
• Psylocke’s black v. Punisher’s black: For PvP, advantage Psylocke, and it’s not close. For PvE, still Psylocke, but it’s a bit closer.
• Psylocke’s blue v. Punisher’s red: advantage Punisher, especially in PvE.

So I think on powers they are pretty close, with Punisher a bit better, but Psylocke makes up for that because she pairs better with the other powerhouse 3*s, especially Patch.

Finally, language nerd nitpick: “mediocre” actually means “average”. I think you’re using it to mean “weak”.

[Cousin_Simpson]

Was waiting for the 2* → 3* part to get finished, and it’s nice to see that my suspicion about getting 3* covers is confirmed – gotta get them early! Which is bad for me because my schedule kind of prevents me from getting more than a handful of 3* covers when they’re introduced.

And if you’re takstill ing grammar edits:

@NorthernPolarity

Once you’ve done that, pick another 3* character that compliments your maxed out character well, and focus on getting that characters covers as well.

Bolded part should read “complements.”

[NorthernPolarity]

@mischiefmaker

Loki - Level 5 purple generates around 4 matches on average
I’ve been wondering about this and meaning to test it. Do you have data on this, or is it a gut feel kind of thing? Would love to see the data if you have it!

Also, I think the comparison between Psylocke and Punisher is a bit more nuanced than “all his skills are useful; she only has two good skills”. I’d compare it this way:

• health is equivalent
• Psylocke’s red v. Punisher’s green: slight advantage to Punisher, but it’s pretty close.
• Psylocke’s black v. Punisher’s black: For PvP, advantage Psylocke, and it’s not close. For PvE, still Psylocke, but it’s a bit closer.
• Psylocke’s blue v. Punisher’s red: advantage Punisher, especially in PvE.

So I think on powers they are pretty close, with Punisher a bit better, but Psylocke makes up for that because she pairs better with the other powerhouse 3*s, especially Patch.

Finally, language nerd nitpick: “mediocre” actually means “average”. I think you’re using it to mean “weak”.

@Gotchaye

@jozier

Yeah not putting 5 in your purple in Loki is just…silly. Probabilistically speaking, there’s probably more of a chance of matches being created when he shuffles an entire board than if you shuffled only half of it.

I was curious about this, so I set up a simple simulation where I populate a random board with 7 kinds of tiles (generating new boards until I get one with no matches), then swap some number of the non-environmental tiles, then count the number of tiles that are in matched groups. Averaging over 10,000 trials for each input, I found that for 14, 18, 22, 26, and 32 swaps, you end up with 3.10, 3.48, 3.76, 3.94, and 4.10 tiles in matched groups, respectively and before any cascades. Increasing the number of swaps causes this to eventually asymptote to something just south of 4.4 or so.

Was basing the Loki comment off of the above post, but I misread the data: it should be 1.33 matches. I’ll edit the guide later tonight: a bit busy right now.

[mischiefmaker]

Oh neat! I missed this post earlier. One thing it doesn’t consider though, is that the board may get shuffled into a state where you can make a match-5, which might be fairly common.

[NorthernPolarity]

Added some useful spreadsheets, juggs/hood/doom descriptions. Reworked Psylocke v Punisher comments. Fixed some typos/grammar issues, added a tip for how trying to win the newly released character will help in the next pve event.

[optimiza]

Great guide! I really wish I had known about the “disable tutorial” think in the beginning, since I was PISSED when I was forced to spend 50 HP on Widow when I needed a roster spot!

I also noticed that you didn’t say anything about IM40 - which tier do you put him in?

[NorthernPolarity]

@optimiza

Great guide! I really wish I had known about the “disable tutorial” think in the beginning, since I was PISSED when I was forced to spend 50 HP on Widow when I needed a roster spot!

I also noticed that you didn’t say anything about IM40 - which tier do you put him in?

Whoops, added IM40 to the list.

[system]

First post has been Edited 30 times. Such dedication deserves huge kudos. Your write ups are really interesting - i think everyone could learn something new from your character analysis. Basically the best of every character discussion page summarized and put in one place. You are great NP.

[stowaway]

@pandaberry6

First post has been Edited 30 times. Such dedication deserves huge kudos. Your write ups are really interesting - i think everyone could learn something new from your character analysis. Basically the best of every character discussion page summarized and put in one place. You are great NP.

+1

Until this gets a sticky, I would end with something along the lines of, “If this has been useful to you, please leave a response, to help keep this guide toward the top of the page.”