i may not be your best source here, my play style is probably not considered optimal and i don’t spend $ on covers and i’m in a crappy alliance with friends. but i think i was sitting on maxed 94s more or less when DDQ started (which was…maybe feb or march?), and very slowly collecting those 3 covers. i manage to play DDQ most days, might have missed 10 or so, and now have 23 3s level-capped at 114. BUT i’m kind of a hoarder, never met a cover i didn’t want on my roster, and like to keep my guys evenly leveled. that, mixed with my general impatience with long PVE events, inconsistent PVP results, (and let’s be honest, a tendency to forget when i should stop doing life things to play) keeps me moving pretty slow. i’m sure in retrospect i would have expected to have a stable of maxed 3s by now but i guess i’m just taking the scenic route and enjoying the sites. although with the PVP scoring changes, i’m consistently getting the 2 progression event tokens and right on the cusp of breaking the 800 wall so that will just be an additional source of 3* covers and hopefully move things along a little faster. and get me putting enough points on the board to finally start pulling those season 10 packs!
a lot of people will tell you to just focus on maybe 3-6 characters and get them fully covered up to 166. and that’s probably the best advice if you’re committed to working your schedule around PVP and bringing home that bacon, but if you do much PVE just remember it could make your scaling crazy wonky if you ever use your 166s in those events. but just focus on hoarding as much ISO as possible (DDQ and LRs!), getting as many event tokens as you can, and if you want to focus on a select few then perhaps start stockpiling your tacos and only cash them in on weeks your key characters are in the pool.
as far as hours a day…i won’t even venture a guess as to what the crazies are doing. especially with 10 health packs. how deep your roster is along with how fast you actually play the game is a big factor…but if your focus is PVP only, it’s not that bad - i doubt you could spend more than a few hours on a single event at this point, maybe 8-10 hours a week for PVP? but if you’re doing it all, you’re looking at adding in DDQ time, the LRs you can play, and time it takes to do a couple of clears a day in PVE. if you’re feeling greedy. but man that is a ton of time. all depends on what you’re looking for i suppose.
I’m pretty much the same. I have 5 covers in the queue and I’m not sure if it bugs me more to spend real $$ or lose covers. Keeping bullseye till the last minute for PvE then swapping for one.
This is really great advice and is exactly what I did, I am still in hardware mode but with this method and staying persistent along with being in a good alliance you will get where you want to be. I would say seek out a good top 100 alliance though as you will get more rewards faster. I have only been playing since January of this year and you can see my progress from the roster link in my signature…happy hunting!
Actually got up to about 600 in the Magnetic Mayhem. No one on hitting me to lower the score. Don’t know if its a glitch or everyone is finishing other events. Got some good rewards.
I actually have a near exclusively 2* roster. I have a couple 3’s at 94 but i only use them when buffed for PVE or when they are the feature character for a pvp. So far my experiences have been that you can definitely get at least 600 points with a 2* roster in any pvp. Even though the general advice for a long time and even now maybe was that you shouldnt level too many 2s and waste ISO, I think that has changed. Now all 2’s will eventually be essential for PVE AND the weekly rotation of buffed characters for PVP includes 2 2*'s every week.
Basically, you should rely on the buffed 2’s. The last couple weeks have been especially nice. Having one or even two heroes at lvl 150 should scare away a decent amount of attacks up until the 500-600 point mark. For example, this last week was OBW and Cap America buffed. Cap isn’t very good at pvp but OBW is amazing. I just used OBW and Astonishing Wolverine and made it all the way to 799 points while only getting attacked 3 times. The week before that Ares was buffed and I used Ares OBW. Not many people are going to want to attack into a lvl 150 Ares.
Every PVP I join with about 2-3 hours left on the pvp. Sometimes you will get lucky and hit a fresh bracket, most of the time you won’t. However, joining late will still make it so you have lots of players to attack for good point values while most people will be too high to care about attacking you. I usually grind up to about 450-500 points and take a short break for my heroes to heal and regen a health pack or two. Then I make the push has high as I can without getting to the point that I start getting attacked which seems to be around the 700-750 point mark. Then you should buy a 3H shield. If you make it all the way to 725, you should get the last HP reward and in most cases make top 100 which will still put you gaining HP even after buying the shield. If you’re close to 800 and feeling lucky, you can try for a last minute attack to get that coveted 3* cover reward.
I do this every pvp and always get 600+ points and more often than not make top 100. I’ve even made it to 800 for the extra 3* cover a couple of times. Hope some of this helps you push a little higher in PVP. I honestly believe if you have enough of your 2* roster maxed you can definitely get to at least 650 for that second PVP Token! GL!
TLDR; Max your 2*'s when they are buffed for the week. Rely on buffed 2*'s for pvp. Join the PVP late. Shielding is NECESSARY!
To be honest I’ve never used a shield. Now that the roster is filling out and I’m less “hoard mentality” about hp, I probably should try that. Does shield make you untouchable during that time period? What shield tips does the group have?
You can’t lose points while shielded. As I understand it, other players won’t even be able to see you to select you as an opponent. Anyone who already had you queued up or had a retaliation against you can still hit you, but you won’t lose points even if they win.
At your level it’s questionable to whether it’s worth it to be spending hp on shields. I’d only do it in two cases:
You’re really close to 800 and want the progression but keep getting hit. Put up a 3 hour shield, wait until it’s about to expire then try to hit a couple quick matches to jump over the line.
You’re in top 100 and want to see if you can hold position through the end. You’re a pretty easy target at this point so you want to avoid the feeding frenzy in the last couple hours of the event. If your event ends at midnight you could start your final push at 8, play until at least 9 and then throw up a 3 hour shield. Just know that a lot of people are going to pass you by even without you losing points. Don’t expect to shield up at #80 and still be top 100 3 hours later.
Of course, neither of those will apply if you’re using the strategy of jumping in near the end of the event to see if you can get a lucky new bracket.
I am also using level 94 characters only, (mainly **, and with some *** having 6 or 7 covers but purposely not to level above 94).
my strategy:
Deadpool Daily Quest is the first priority, it gives you the best possible reward with small time/effort.
play PVE if you have time(I means at least 3 or even 4 hours per day), aim for top 10 if you have all required characters, aim for top 50 if you only have 2.
play PVP and aim for progression rewards. play early to get to 200/300 or so, then wait until only 8 or 10 hours before it ended. by that time the guys still not playing like crazy, but the rubberband effect still helps you to get to high point. I can consistently reach 575, sometimes even reach 800 if I have the featured and boosted characters in good shape (I means having enough covers to make them useful)
no tokens ever expire that I know of. once open, covers do. that’s why newer players should never open any tokens whatsoever unless you have hp to roster whatever you get. then open tokens until your open spot is filled, then stop again.
Well, I was stockpiling DDQ tokens and then the shift. Blargh! I was waiting for cyclops/hood/thor upcoming! Well, I feel like covers have been dropping better, and that getting better at PVP is all about getting those characters levelled. Here’s what I’ve been doing:
1)The DDQ is still nice for having a dedicated cover you can get with minimal effort
2) Hitting versus PvP events hard when they first drop and pushing to 400 to get the hp reward. Then sitting back and having 10 heals ready for the last hour of play. Then go all out. Got in mid 30s ranking for patch versus.
Trying to time these to they don’t end at a time when I can’t cram. The Gamora Vs ends at 3am for me—going to see if that makes a difference in the amount of people playing. I’m assuming the majority of players are in the US, but we’ll see.
3)PvE got me a Thing cover, but it was a LOT more time investment and I could see the same last minute “cramming” for points as with PvP. Unfortunately I was at work and I slowly watched my ranking drop.
Kind of avoiding Lightning rounds if there’s something else going on, I’m not sure they drop more than iso and some crappy covers. I don’t recall getting anything better than a 2* from a lightning round.
Getting further into the 3* transition is like getting into shape. I spent a lot of time (and yeah, some money) for the MPQ-equivalent of a diet fad. Sure, there are quick boosts, but it’s about adherence. I looked at the 166 wall and wanted a quick fix. I don’t want to admit to how many cover packs I bought, but I bought my fair share before I realized getting a team of 166 characters is like building muscle. There are a million ways to get there, but there’s one key thing among all of them: patience. I haven’t bought a cover pack (or even a cover, for that matter) for quite some time now, and it’s the patience that’s paid off. It was said earlier that getting the tokens at 300 points in PvP is a good first step out of the transition, and I agree. Start small, work up. Nobody deadlifts 500 pounds their first time to the gym–the same philosophy holds true here. There are a lot of P2W players, but there are a lot more tenacious and long-term players that have succeeded with persistence. I started playing right before the anniversary event and the 166 wall inspired me to spend money and use the HP unwisely. I stayed away from PvP for a while because the rewards for my poorly-spent money didn’t seem to yield results. I was on a 500 calorie per day diet and of course I gave up on it. It’s unsustainable. Have fun with the game, do what you can, and be patient. You’ll have better results.
A question on retaliation in PvP. If I attack someone, is that the team they see when they fight back, or is it the last team I use? Let’s say I keep fighting and use a tougher team after they decide to retaliate…which one do they fight?
Also, let’s say 2 teams fight me and win on a certain node. Does only the latest winner show up?
Just trying to figure out the best way to manage losses
For retaliations, the team you beat them with is the one they get to retaliate against. Everyone else will see the last team you used. There can be multiple retals on each node that you see. If you really get beat down you will sometimes have to skip through a lot of them (or fight them).
Ok I’ve managed to get human torch to 5/3/2. (10/13). Having only one 3* developed is it worth it to raise the level or wait until I have 2 solid 3*? I have 227K ISO saved up.
Also how will using this scale in PvE? If you use them once is the whole stage scaled or just that node?
depends on where he was and is. if he isn’t at 94 yet, at a minimum get him there so he can play with your **s. if you want you should be able to take him to 102 or 104 without really messing scaling up (I took my group to 104 in the early part of my transition). personally I wouldn’t take him any farther than that and I might hold off on that until you have some other characters ready to join him. not sure if you’re ready to go higher as having one guy way above the others at your level can be tough to overcome.
You’ve been given a lot of good advice so far, so I hope this is neither redundant, obvious, nor unhelpful. When I started to aggressively push my 3*s forward (and despite the fact I have a cadre of 166s I still feel like I’m transitioning as there are character decks that just aren’t ‘there’ yet) I really focused on having my color balances. Keeping an eye less towards ‘favorite characters’ and more toward overall functionality, and a solid blend of offense/defense/support/economy. The first 166 team I assembled was Patch/Magneto/Loki (and always in that order). Patch tanked all three colors and team-ups, Mags has the strongest (I want to say only) blue nuke at his rank, and Loki covers punishment. It’s fairly terrible in PVP defense as Loki is always first to get dropped, but it gave me the ability to grind nodes much faster with less health pack consumption because of Patch’s aggressive regen at 5 covers.
So without knowing who you have covered, the next thing I would strongly recommend is selecting three characters that give you a flexible framework (and you have, and like using) and round robin them. When you’re done, you’ll have a solid team that you can then hang other team members off of. So if you start with a fan favorite, say: Lazy Thor (
), Black Panther (
) and Iron Fist (
) you have a flexible attack platform that strikes on five colors (
), provides defense on blue from BP, and a persistent offense from Iron Fist. Then next you might go with Doom, or Mystique for blue/active black coverage, or slot Rocket & Groot in for Black Panther, or Wanda for IF… and so on.
If you get the three characters you find strong balance with that meet your gameplay style, and level them as a squad, you’ll find success sooner rather than later. I absolutely agree that you should have a strong foundation, but I found that having that first fully functional squad at 166 helped tremendously.
