What is the intended way for 2* players to transition?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I’m on day 112. I have no characters above level 94. I have many star.png
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characters, but only one with more than 10 covers. The one exception is The Hood who I have covered perfectly but have left at 94 to not hurt my PvE scaling.

I’ve been waiting to level my star.png
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until I have two characters that can carry me to top 25 consistently in PvP. This requires getting more covers though.

Even before the PvP changes, I was unable to consistently finish in the top 100 with my star.png
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roster. I needed either a fresh bracket, some luck in not getting hit, and usually both. With the PvP changes, it seems nigh impossible for me to place decently in any PvP event. I’m consistently matched against maxed star.png
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that destroy my team. I’m also unable to even earn the 300 point progression reward that has a chance of awarding a cover. In fact, I’m way off the pace to get the Heroic 10-Pack for this season even though I comfortably earned it last season. PvP is unplayable currently with my roster.

Thus, I continue to focus the majority of my effort on performing well in PvE. This is where the vast majority of my covers have come from, mostly from Heroic and Event packs, but they are spread across my entire roster. The release of new characters accentuates this problem because I get Rank covers for new characters, but not enough for them to be useful. The amount of time required to earn these Rank covers feels excessive though. I spend close to an hour to do the nodes each refresh, and then 2-3 hours at the end of each sub grinding the nodes to try to finish top 10. With 8 hour refreshes and 24 hour subs, this is about 5 hours a day playing the game. I can feel myself running out of steam to keep up this pace though.

This leaves Deadpool’s Daily Quest as the only reliable way for me to earn the covers I need at the moment, but that means at least 3 months before I have another fully covered star.png
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.

I realize that this transition is not supposed to be a quick process, but if I’m honest, I’m starting to become frustrated and lose interest in the game. What is the intended way for star.png
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players to transition? Is there something I’m overlooking?

2

Pay money or die trying.

I’d really like to not be sarcasic about this, but you’re essentially doing what you need to be doing already. MPQ is a slow, slow burn, and with the number of 3* characters available, it’ll definitely take some time for enough of the right ones to come your way.

3

Deadpool daily is what the Devs will tell you and that is a lot more than I had when I was in 2* land. The reality is to transition you have to push higher in PVP to score top 100. It will be tinykitty hard, and might be impossible, but PVP can give you a cover every 2.5 days while PVP is 1-4 covers of an existing character every other week.
How to get to top 100 now a days with a 2* roster…???..
The only other way to help is to try and stockpile hp from all modes and buy a couple of covers that will be real difference makes for playing. Patch Loki is a great transition combination, LCage is great to save health packs, IF is a beast, but when his PVP is run it will be a blood bath. Punisher was my transition 3* and he was awsome as 5,5,3 with OBW. He is now 3,5,5 for me as I have bigger black powers.

I have no real answers but I hope you can get some good ideas.

Good luck

4

DDQ and tokens, plus PvE progression awards (and the occasional top 100-150 finish in PvE). I’m in the same boat as you. There’s no easy answer – but PvP is definitely not the answer. Get your 300 point token, but beyond that, anything you get is gravy.

5

I think the mistake most players make at your stage is not leveling characters. Yes leveling them will affect your scaling in PVE. But you’ll also have stronger characters to fight those nodes.

Who do you have that you can take above 94 besides Hood? I’d strongly consider leveling Hood with someone else who can run with him. Either Hood to max, or to the same level as one or two other 3*'s that you can also take past 94. Even if they’re mid-tier, that’ll do wonders to make PVP easier, and as has been noted, there are about 3 times as many covers awarded in PVP as PVE. Plus the tokens, iso, and progression HP.

If players would just max everything they had, they wouldn’t have to worry about trying to manipulate the system and could focus on winning more stuff. You don’t have to beat the best right now. You just have to beat all the other 2-3* transitioners.

6

This pretty much summarizes my own experience. For a good while, I was F2P and it was progressing very slowly. I didn’t have Rags, Spidey, and a fully covered Thor back when they were hard to get before shielding and such. Was getting dropped to Black Panther when he released by those who invested in him to max. It was just a bad time. Eventually I had a decent spread of characters and no covers in the 3* area but some were 9-10/13 covers. Purchased some HP during a sale and propelled a few characters I had to 5 in strong powers that would help me down characters in PvP and help me rise even higher. Haven’t looked back since and haven’t had any real problems with MMR changes since.

I was also late to the Sentry train, never found Patch, Daken (regret taking to 166), or 3* Thor (most recent 166) to be that good during my play, had no covered Mags before he was changed, and I prayed to the Almighty Hood before he became the bees knees.

7

A 166 isn’t going to carry you to a top 25 unless it’s someone absolutely in the top tier (likely only Iron Fist now, since The Hood/Loki is no good without someone else despite also being top tier). But you won’t be sniffing top 25 without a 166. RNG/reward trends will naturally point you toward a particular character and if that character is at least playable, at some point you need consider saving up HP to max that character out because having a 166 at least puts top 25 in the realm of possibility. For example Kamala Khan would be a fairly obvious choice to max out given recent trends (awarded 3 times as reward, multiple times as progression prizes and season prize), and while people probably won’t be scared of your 166 Kamala, at least with a 166 Kamala you could attack some of those ‘wall of 166s’ and know that you’re not an automatic win on retaliation against all but the strongest 3*/4s, whereas when you’re running your 2 team you are indeed an automatic win for your opponent on the retaliation if you attack any of those same ‘wall of 166s’. I see that people always say ‘how can I possibly attack this guy who is stronger than me?’ But the person with the higher rating needs more than the fact that his team is stronger to retaliate because he stands to lose more points if you retaliate against his retaliation, and it’s important to get your team out of the ‘automatic win on retaliation for your opponent’ range for there to be any hope of keeping some of your points. Remember that when you attack someone your opponent is working from inaccurate data. That is, suppose you have 400 points and you attack someone worth 30 points, and then you later picked up 200 points in a climb. While you might think this means your opponent should see a retaliation of ~30 as well since you’re now at 600, but his retaliation will use your initial 400 points for display purposes and you’d likely appear as a 20 point retaliation, and at that point even a modest strength in roster could discourage the opponent because retaliation against 20 is not a good deal (even though it could really be 30), but your opponent doesn’t know that you’re worth more than that.

8

I’m pretty much in an identical boat as the OP. I only have a maxed 2* Thor, Wolverine and Daken. I couldn’t make a 3* over level 100 if I wanted to.

In every PvP this season I haven’t been able to score more than 100-200 points. After the seed teams, there are nothing but 166+ teams and even endless maxed 4* Xforce and Lady Thors. Every win hard earned gains that I made were quickly negated by several loses by maxed teams.

Last season I was scoring 300-400ish every PvP even and scored my first 10 pack. Even though I only got 1 3* from it, I was proud to hit that milestone. When they announce an increase of odds to the 10 pack, I was even more excited for this season to start.

With the new matchmaking, that announcement seems backhanded because there is little to no chance that I’ll hit that reward level this season.

I’m a sad depressed panda that seems like I’ll be doing only DDQs for any enjoyment / gratification from MPQ for the foreseeable future.

9

I have to admit I was one of them. Kept my roster at 94 for a few seasons and I was going nowhere in PVP (couldn’t get above 300). Last season I finally bit the bullet and got several of them to 120. This got me my first 10 pack ever. It was then much easier to achieve 500-600 and make top 100 in a few events. I was looking forward to doing the same this season only to find out, I’m back where I started with the new changes. Again struggling to hit 400 and that second 10 pack is looking like a distant dream again.

As for PVE, yes the nodes are slightly more difficult, but nothing your 94 teams couldn’t handle before anyway. It’s the grinding at the end of the subs, and scaling that made them impossible to beat. Which was the case with the old roster anyway. So leveling my roster has really only affected the starting levels.

10

Tbh 100 days is not that much, I think I needed like 180 to get first full covered 3*, on day 300 I’m throwing away most old gold covers. Just continue doing PvEs and hope we get break from new characters. Grind hard when needed 3* appears for 5 covers (3 placement + 1 alliance + 1 next pve) and don’t overshoot on new char releases to prevent burnout. PvP is constantly shifting so can’t really help with that, before it was worth waiting till last hour and race up and you’d get into t100 easily as 2* if bracket wasn’t full. But even without ranking in PvP you get triple amount of 3* from DDQ that 2*->3* could achieve before.

11

Really, tbh I was way worse than you when I was at day 112, and in fact even for a completely F2P player I think my transition was really slow, but I’m still here icon_e_biggrin.gif
Really, being at your stage isn’t really shabby at the moment to me.

Disclaimer: I know my forum join date makes me look like a noob but I’ve been playing since the beginning, on day 533 now.

For me, I was completely F2P playing way too casually, I spent most of my early days up to season 5 or 6 pushing PVE instead. Subs give cover packs, do well enough for those and that’s about 4-6 packs in a week maybe more, and maybe even earn the main reward . Meanwhile I was doing only enough in PVP to earn the 10 pack. It was only after the anniversary that I was able to compete decently in PVP, managing to push up to top 100 for the first times with shields on (thanks in part to hood and my 11 cover XF, R.I.P). At this point my roster wasn’t good enough for PVE, I don’t remember earning anything from PVE rewards from then up till Squirrel, which was when I felt my roster was developed enough to fight on 2 fronts. You don’t need maxed level guys to do that, in fact right now I only have 3 guys maxed leveled (Patch, Hood and DP), and of my 8 maxed covered guys only Blade is more than Lvl140. I was running DP (maxed covered on his last DPD day), 2* Daken and Patch (maxed leveled in March) for 2 months on every PVE until my 3hor and Blade were good enough to replace Daken

Bottom line for me, have faith, and never look down on the cover packs, even the standard ones. I’ve lost track of how many 3s and 4s I got from them, but I do know I’ve gotten 8 XF and NF covers solely from packs, so for now, focus on PVE, try to maybe hit the 300 point progression in PVPs, and pray every time you open one. Try the switch to PVP when you have confidence in your top 2 to 4 characters to get covers more quickly, and you can easily develop the roster further to be able to compete on both fronts. Don’t try to rush the process, it will just come eventually, though whether you have the patience is another matter. If not, there’s always the option to buy

And yes, do not be afraid to level. If you’re afraid of scaling, maybe try a soft cap. An unmaxed 3* beyond level 100 is better than a maxed 2*. Yes you get slightly tougher matches but you get the increased firepower and health to deal with it.

Hope you get some ideas from what I did last time, though the game has changed a lot since then.

12

I’m at 230 days and I paid to never throw away a 3* cover while keeping all my 2* and my favorite 1* trio. My max 3* guy is at 11, then I have a bunch of 8-7, and I kept everything that was thrown at me.

13

I did pay. And I haven’t lost a 3* cover because of it.

But it doesn’t matter. MMR changes have left me facing a sea of 166 teams at 200 when I used to hit 500… I’m sorry, but this game isn’t getting any more of my money.

14

Thanks immensely for all your comments. I’ve read through all of them and their many good points.

I’m seriously considering leveling some of my star.png
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beyond 94 when the Iso-8 Leveling Costs Update comes with R75. One factor I didn’t mention in my initial post is that I haven’t had the Iso-8 to level more than one star.png
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, so hopefully the update will help with this.

Though this may help me to be more successful in PvP, I’m still nervous about how severely this will affect my initial PvE scaling, as that’s based only on the 3 highest leveled characters on a roster. If I level The Hood to 166 and Thor to 127, will that cause the initial levels to be 37% higher? (166+127+94 vs. 94+94+94) Perhaps I will softcap instead at 114, as I have 5 star.png
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that I can raise to this level, depending on Iso-8 costs of course.

I’m also considering saving Hero Points to cap out a high priority character. I’ve not spent them on anything except roster slots so far, but I still need at least 10 more slots in order to have space for every star.png
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character. I consider this important for the Covers, Iso-8, and Hero Points that I can earn from Deadpool’s Daily Quest. These roster slots will cost 6250 Hero Points, so I could get 5 covers for the same cost.

For those that are curious or want to give recommendations, my current stable of star.png
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characters is hidden below.

[spoiler]```

1 Beast
2 Black Panther
3 Black Widow 7 3/3/1
4 Blade 2 0/1/1
5 Captain America 2 1/1/0
6 Captain Marvel 2 1/0/1
7 Colossus
8 Cyclops 7 3/2/2
9 Daken 5 2/2/1
10 Daredevil
11 Deadpool 4 2/2/0
12 Doctor Doom 8 2/4/2
13 Doctor Octopus
14 Falcon 4 1/2/1
15 Gamora 4 1/3/0
16 The Hood 13 5/5/3
17 The Hulk 2 1/1/0
18 Human Torch 9 3/3/3
19 Iron Fist 6 3/0/3
20 Iron Man 2 0/1/1
21 Kamala Khan 3 1/1/1
22 Loki 1 0/0/1
23 Luke Cage 9 4/3/2
24 Magneto 6 4/2/0
25 Mystique 2 0/2/0
26 Psylocke
27 The Punisher 9 2/3/4
28 Quicksilver 2 0/1/1
29 Ragnarok 4 1/2/1
30 Rocket & Groot 8 1/3/4
31 Sentry 2 1/1/0
32 She-Hulk
33 Spider-Man
34 Squirrel Girl
35 Storm 7 3/2/2
36 Thor 10 4/4/2
37 Wolverine 3 1/2/0

15

That is not coming Friday, that is clearly stated coming in R75

16

Oops! Thanks for pointing that out! That means I’ll have to wait longer, but I’ll probably still wait. Iso-8 is a fairly precious commodity for me at the moment, and perhaps I’ll get another cover or two to help direct my leveling.

17

The problem with your roster is that your best character is The Hood, who is great, except there’s going to be a significant nerf in the form of everyone else getting way more HP this Friday, and it’s very hard to predict how things will shake out. Further, The Hood can’t do anything on his own, so you still need someone else. If there was no impending change on Friday I’d just take Thor to 4/5/4 with 3750 HP and run Thor/The Hood/featured, but I really have no idea how things will shake up after Friday. It seems like you can’t go wrong with Thor/The Hood but stranger things have happened. Note that The Hood will climb very poorly after this patch because all fights will be much longer which makes health pack usage prohibitive since it takes very little damage on The Hood before he starts the next fight in one-shot territory. Unless you’re sitting on more than 300K iso (so you can level 2 guys to 166 and still have plenty to spare) I’d first observe what happens after Friday and see make note of what kind of team you tend to see. If you’ve The Hood at a playable level you can experiment with him with your Thor after Friday and see if the kind of attrition is something you can tolerate or not.

18

I think its best to hold out on levelling any of the 3* meekersX. I have a feeling the meta of the 3* will change with the HP changes as well. For example, the likes of LStorm and LHuman Torch will be better with the HP change while the likes of Hood and Loki will become even more squishy.
The iso change will not be coming this Friday, heck its not even going to be in the next patch R74. Its not recommended to level your 3* unless you’ve got them pretty well covered. PVE is still your best bet at covers especially with that new MMR for PVP. At least we know the bad scaling in PVE is unchanged.

19

If you were to spend HP on the roster you have my recommendation would be Luke cage red, and LThor yellow. Luke cage at 5 red means you take 1 point match damage. He would be a very useful 3* to transition with. Lthor yellow is one of the best yellow in the game and will feed green. LCage will also let you climb with Ares as your big nuke in green.

Everything else you need more covers before spending Hp on characters.

20

Figured I’d give a short update. Thanks again for the comments.

It seems the consensus is that I should wait to level any star.png
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for now. I agree having The Hood as my only 166 would be awkward since he can’t carry by himself. And the HP changes are certain to change which characters are best.

With significant babysitting, I managed to barely get top 100 in Hostile Takeover to get a 5th redflag.png
cover for Thor. I should be able to get a 5th yellowflag.png
cover on the 22nd to take him to 12 covers. I’m sitting on 301.6k Iso-8 at the moment, but I’ll wait for the Iso-8 Leveling Costs Update to use it. I’ll figure out who I should level then.

For now I’ll continue to plug away. icon_e_smile.gif