What's a viable 3 star team?

[homeinvasion]

So I am playing PVE and get my max 166 Patch/ Daken/ BP on full health 3 times completely destroyed by 4 star Thor at only 115. Sentry is about to get nerfed, two weeks after maxing him out, I have max cover Nick Fury, Xforce, Devil Dino and Insignificant Woman. But I don’t really want to transition to 4 star land yet. I have so many 3 stars I haven’t even played apart from featured PVP.

I have max cover 3 star;

















All at level 100. so about 6 million iso away from leveling them all up, so really want to hang around 3 star land for a while. to get some play out of all these characters I have. I found 2 star games much more enjoyable and don’t really want to progress to a meta where there is one strategy.

See MPQ is in this weird transition phase. Sentry nerfed, Xforce and Fury hanging around and a ridiculously broken Thour (four + Thor) on the horizon. D3 say regularly, “we are trying to broaden rosters”, “we are trying to avoid power creep”, but they are utterly failing in both. There is not enough 4 star characters to make the meta interesting or to have options of play. Lets be honest once Thour comes out what team is playable except X-force/ Thour/ ? Is this the game D3 wants? One max power team that crushes everyone else and is going to be the only team that you see on offense and defense. The only slight variations will be who the third roster slot is. It will be the best strategy for sustained early grind with deadpool, and best late game shield hop with Nick Fury. Is shield hop even a thing now that Sentry is gone? Additionally for some reason 4 star covers are easier to pull than 3 star covers, you are releasing new 3 star characters every other week, but 3 star land is now completely irreverent.

My point in all this is there is all this excellent content sitting in 3 star land that is completely irrelevant. The closest thing I can match it to is when the Burning Crusade came out in World of Warcraft. Blizzard had years of excellent content made irrelevant by a tiny handful of new instances where the gear far out shined the dozens of excellent raids and instances. Which burned many players from WOW, including me, because all that hard work getting those rewards was now irrelevant. Also because the list of options of what to do went from dozens… to one. WOW has survived, you could say it went from strength to strength, but Blizzard still talks of the heyday when they had 14 Million subs. WOW survived because they looked at their mistake and made it a strength by constantly releasing newer higher level end game content. D3 is not doing that they are still releasing new 3 star content, and I have to say the last 2; Blade and Mistique are good, well balanced characters that could have found a slot in a 3 star team, but all these three star characters have no space in a 3 slot team when you have 2 of the slots perma filled with X-force and Thour. Maybe D3 should embrace the power creep and only start releasing 4 star characters, then NEVER make a 5 star. At least they would be building to a broad sustainable meta.

From an economic point of view 4 star characters are a terribad decision. 4 star covers are easier to get, you only need to spend iso on 3 characters, then you are done, forever. Once you actually have those three X 4 star covers any other cover as a reward is irrelevant cause you may collect them but you will surely never play them, apart from the occasional featured event. Honestly Iso is so hard to come by it is a rare thing to level up a character only for featured events. 20 iso rewards don’t go very far. People will start to realize that buying tokens, or iso etc for 3 star characters that WILL NEVER SEE PLAY, is a massive diminishing return on investment.

I don’t have an answer to any of this, I am just posing the question to see what suggestions peeps have. My only suggestions are:

1. Stop making 1/2/3 star characters and broaden your 4 star meta or
2. Make 4 stars much harder to get and bracket 3 star characters, so that the progression becomes longer. But this option has kinda flown the coop because everyone has their 4 star rosters already.

So my question is, now the meta is moving to 4 star land, (moving? moved?) what is a viable 3 star team?

[dr_tinykittylove]

Try different teams. The all-thor node is lower level than gauntlet. You have all that usable roster.

For ap-denial, try Hood, get Recon tus from your alliance.

Don’t like Hood? Use stunners like LCap and Marvel, especially if she just got enough ap for a skill, then thor or rags will waste it for her.

All three are beefy, so don’t use aoe, look for characters who can do fast, hard single target damage. Focus on killing Thor4 first.

There’s no one-size-fits-all team.

[system]

Out of those, the first one I see is LCap Hood. It is a slow, but painful team.

LThor + Anyone could also work. LCap perhaps to make up for his weak Red and also provide a great active blue.

[system]

LThor/Cmags is excellent, as is LThor/LCap. Deadpool plays nice with a lot of people on account of having a strong purple active. Hood is a top tier support character but not amazing until you have 5 blue covers. Ragnarok, Doom, Storm, Loki, Shulk, Falcon, Daredevil, IM40, and Spidey can all be safely ignored for the moment; they’re “I have way more ISO than I know what to do with” characters. Psylocke, Torch, and Punisher are all of questionable value in transition compared to, say, C.Mags or Thor. If you’ve got max covers, focus on LThor. He really is that good.

[homeinvasion]

@Budget Player Cadet

LThor/Cmags is excellent, as is LThor/LCap. Deadpool plays nice with a lot of people on account of having a strong purple active. Hood is a top tier support character but not amazing until you have 5 blue covers. Ragnarok, Doom, Storm, Loki, Shulk, Falcon, Daredevil, IM40, and Spidey can all be safely ignored for the moment; they’re “I have way more ISO than I know what to do with” characters. Psylocke, Torch, and Punisher are all of questionable value in transition compared to, say, C.Mags or Thor. If you’ve got max covers, focus on LThor. He really is that good.

I think most peeps missed my point, I have nearly every 3 & 4 star character at max cover and level 100. What’s a viable team when the 4 star teams start appearing at 300 points? Without using 4 stars?

[GrumpySmurf1002]

I’m using XForce (173) LCap and OBW for that node. Full color coverage. My Thors are lvl 128, which makes OBW still in the ballpark of strong enough.
Patch-Panther-OBW is another alternative with full rainbow. Strike tiles + Espionage should do the trick.

If you’re talking PvP (based on the 300 pt comment), Patch-Daken-Falcon should be able to clear out the 4* rosters, but overall, yes a full developed 4* lineup will be a wall much like 166 3* characters are for a 2* player. Well, except that Sentry can cut through them like butter still.

[dr_tinykittylove]

@homeinvasion

@Budget Player Cadet

LThor/Cmags is excellent, as is LThor/LCap. Deadpool plays nice with a lot of people on account of having a strong purple active. Hood is a top tier support character but not amazing until you have 5 blue covers. Ragnarok, Doom, Storm, Loki, Shulk, Falcon, Daredevil, IM40, and Spidey can all be safely ignored for the moment; they’re “I have way more ISO than I know what to do with” characters. Psylocke, Torch, and Punisher are all of questionable value in transition compared to, say, C.Mags or Thor. If you’ve got max covers, focus on LThor. He really is that good.

I think most peeps missed my point, I have nearly every 3 & 4 star character at max cover and level 100. What’s a viable team when the 4 star teams start appearing at 300 points? Without using 4 stars?

Our point is that 4s are great, but not really all that unstoppable as you seem to think. Level a few more of the top tier 3 and try out different combinations to fit. Taking down maxed fury/xforce isn’t all that scary if you have the right team for it. It can be risky, but even sentry-bombs can fail sometimes.

[homeinvasion]

Exclude Sentry, he is nerfed in 2 weeks and unplayable. It’s nearly impossible to get one green match when shield hopping let alone what 87 green matches? What 3 star characters would you use to fight a team of 270 X-force, Thor, Nick Fury. You don’t. They are way outclassed over anything in 3 star world. But 4 stars are still bracketed with 3 stars. So my question remains, what’s a viable 3 star team.

[Spoit]

Fury is really slow, and only his
is super special awesome.
is reasonably good, but LT’s is an order of magnitude better, and even BP’s BP or a sentry sacrifice probably is more of a threat. And his purple is good mostly because it’s an active
, the countdown almost never resolves, and under 4k for 12 AP really isn’t THAT much to write home about if it were anything other than purple

[dr_tinykittylove]

@Spoit

Fury is really slow, and only his
is super special awesome.
is reasonably good, but LT’s is an order of magnitude better, and even BP’s BP or a sentry sacrifice probably is more of a threat. And his purple is good mostly because it’s an active
, the countdown almost never resolves, and under 4k for 12 AP really isn’t THAT much to write home about if it were anything other than purple

Exactly. If I have fight an xf, fury is the guy I like to see with him most. Half the time the ai goes for fury’s colours, which makes both fury and xf slower to collect enough to fire and gives you time to prepare your own offense. If they collect yellow, that’s even better - great chance that the ai will waste it on recovery for an uninjured xf.

[homeinvasion]

@dr tinykittylove

@Spoit

Fury is really slow, and only his
is super special awesome.
is reasonably good, but LT’s is an order of magnitude better, and even BP’s BP or a sentry sacrifice probably is more of a threat. And his purple is good mostly because it’s an active
, the countdown almost never resolves, and under 4k for 12 AP really isn’t THAT much to write home about if it were anything other than purple

Exactly. If I have fight an xf, fury is the guy I like to see with him most. Half the time the ai goes for fury’s colours, which makes both fury and xf slower to collect enough to fire and gives you time to prepare your own offense. If they collect yellow, that’s even better - great chance that the ai will waste it on recovery for an uninjured xf.

so far we have 2 characters, Black panther and Lthor, that is apparently going to get through 37,000+ hit points. Ok, that’s over 3 rage of the panther or call the storms. who’s the other character? lets not forget Xforce/ fury/ Thour are rainbow and are basically one shotting these guys while building your 36 black/ 42 green. My question stands, what is a viable 3 star team?

[system]

My question is why don’t you want to use x-force?
A lot of people want a max cover x-force more than any other character in the game, and since you’re fortunate to have one, why not use him?

[homeinvasion]

@flnn1

My question is why don’t you want to use x-force?
A lot of people want a max cover x-force more than any other character in the game, and since you’re fortunate to have one, why not use him?

Excellent question, finally someone that gets it and asks something intelligent. I don’t want to use Xforce, or any 4 star because:

1. I have so many unused 3 star that I worked so hard to get, I don’t want to rush off to 4 star and never play characters that I won so many events to get my hands on. many of these characters I had to come top 5 in like 4 events, now I never even get to use them cause the devs dropped a completely broken 4 star on the table with another one on the way?
2. Everyone else, I mean EVERYONE else uses Xforce, I hate this one strategy tiny kitty. When you get to the high brackets the only question is what are the two characters accompanying Xforce, not what is the team.
3. If I level a character past 166 my PVE scaling goes through the roof. I believe that a broad good 3 star roster will mean I am able to compete far better in PVE, ergo all those shiny new covers. Seriously all those peeps that rushed their Xforce, guess why you don’t have 6 Mystique covers like me? Cause your scaling is off the charts. Grats you win PVP, I’m all over you in PVE.
4. I find Xforce boring. any game with a one strategy win is not worth playing.
5. 4 Star has only one team option… YAWN. With Sentry gone, peeps are going to start getting screen burn from Xforce. There’s no puzzle in that.

[dr_tinykittylove]

@homeinvasion

@flnn1

My question is why don’t you want to use x-force?
A lot of people want a max cover x-force more than any other character in the game, and since you’re fortunate to have one, why not use him?

Excellent question, finally someone that gets it and asks something intelligent. I don’t want to use Xforce, or any 4 star because:

1. I have so many unused 3 star that I worked so hard to get, I don’t want to rush off to 4 star and never play characters that I won so many events to get my hands on. many of these characters I had to come top 5 in like 4 events, now I never even get to use them cause the devs dropped a completely broken 4 star on the table with another one on the way?
2. Everyone else, I mean EVERYONE else uses Xforce, I hate this one strategy tiny kitty. When you get to the high brackets the only question is what are the two characters accompanying Xforce, not what is the team.
3. If I level a character past 166 my PVE scaling goes through the roof. I believe that a broad good 3 star roster will mean I am able to compete far better in PVE, ergo all those shiny new covers. Seriously all those peeps that rushed their Xforce, guess why you don’t have 6 Mystique covers like me? Cause your scaling is off the charts. Grats you win PVP, I’m all over you in PVE.
4. I find Xforce boring. any game with a one strategy win is not worth playing.
5. 4 Star has only one team option… YAWN. With Sentry gone, peeps are going to start getting screen burn from Xforce. There’s no puzzle in that.

Please, please, please level your unused 3s and try again. People get past nodes with xf and fury in pve all the time, and without using any 4 since it’s pve and mirror matches are not allowed. Why have all these covered 3* if you don’t use them?

[homeinvasion]

@dr tinykittylove

@homeinvasion

@flnn1

My question is why don’t you want to use x-force?
A lot of people want a max cover x-force more than any other character in the game, and since you’re fortunate to have one, why not use him?

Excellent question, finally someone that gets it and asks something intelligent. I don’t want to use Xforce, or any 4 star because:

1. I have so many unused 3 star that I worked so hard to get, I don’t want to rush off to 4 star and never play characters that I won so many events to get my hands on. many of these characters I had to come top 5 in like 4 events, now I never even get to use them cause the devs dropped a completely broken 4 star on the table with another one on the way?
2. Everyone else, I mean EVERYONE else uses Xforce, I hate this one strategy tiny kitty. When you get to the high brackets the only question is what are the two characters accompanying Xforce, not what is the team.
3. If I level a character past 166 my PVE scaling goes through the roof. I believe that a broad good 3 star roster will mean I am able to compete far better in PVE, ergo all those shiny new covers. Seriously all those peeps that rushed their Xforce, guess why you don’t have 6 Mystique covers like me? Cause your scaling is off the charts. Grats you win PVP, I’m all over you in PVE.
4. I find Xforce boring. any game with a one strategy win is not worth playing.
5. 4 Star has only one team option… YAWN. With Sentry gone, peeps are going to start getting screen burn from Xforce. There’s no puzzle in that.

Please, please, please level your unused 3s and try again. People get past nodes with xf and fury in pve all the time, and without using any 4 since it’s pve and mirror matches are not allowed. Why have all these covered 3* if you don’t use them?

thats my point I need 6 million iso to level them, or what $4,000 i WANT to play my 3 stars, with this broad diverse range of options not this tinykitty 1 option 4 star team. I go to 4 star land, I have no reason to keep playing, my end game is maxed I have 1 option for a team what a bore. Im staying in 3 star land.

[system]

Patch Hulk?

[system]

@homeinvasion

@dr tinykittylove

@homeinvasion

@flnn1

My question is why don’t you want to use x-force?
A lot of people want a max cover x-force more than any other character in the game, and since you’re fortunate to have one, why not use him?

Excellent question, finally someone that gets it and asks something intelligent. I don’t want to use Xforce, or any 4 star because:

1. I have so many unused 3 star that I worked so hard to get, I don’t want to rush off to 4 star and never play characters that I won so many events to get my hands on. many of these characters I had to come top 5 in like 4 events, now I never even get to use them cause the devs dropped a completely broken 4 star on the table with another one on the way?
2. Everyone else, I mean EVERYONE else uses Xforce, I hate this one strategy tiny kitty. When you get to the high brackets the only question is what are the two characters accompanying Xforce, not what is the team.
3. If I level a character past 166 my PVE scaling goes through the roof. I believe that a broad good 3 star roster will mean I am able to compete far better in PVE, ergo all those shiny new covers. Seriously all those peeps that rushed their Xforce, guess why you don’t have 6 Mystique covers like me? Cause your scaling is off the charts. Grats you win PVP, I’m all over you in PVE.
4. I find Xforce boring. any game with a one strategy win is not worth playing.
5. 4 Star has only one team option… YAWN. With Sentry gone, peeps are going to start getting screen burn from Xforce. There’s no puzzle in that.

Please, please, please level your unused 3s and try again. People get past nodes with xf and fury in pve all the time, and without using any 4 since it’s pve and mirror matches are not allowed. Why have all these covered 3* if you don’t use them?

thats my point I need 6 million iso to level them, or what $4,000 i WANT to play my 3 stars, with this broad diverse range of options not this tinykitty 1 option 4 star team. I go to 4 star land, I have no reason to keep playing, my end game is maxed I have 1 option for a team what a bore. Im staying in 3 star land.

Once Thorina is out, that may be more true, but for now, you have plenty of options to go with Xforce.

Aside from Fury, XForce goes pretty well with CMags, Hood (Less so post nerf) , DP, and LCap. He plays well with anyone really, but those are just the better ones. Anyone with a good solid active purple, blue and/or red goes well with him.

[homeinvasion]

@Chaotic Ryu

Once Thorina is out, that may be more true, but for now, you have plenty of options to go with Xforce.

Aside from Fury, XForce goes pretty well with CMags, Hood (Less so post nerf) , DP, and LCap. He plays well with anyone really, but those are just the better ones. Anyone with a good solid active purple, blue and/or red goes well with him.

and when Thour comes out is there a 3 star option any more, or did I just waste all my money and time on a game with a one win strat? No -one can tell me a viable team versus Xforce/ Thour/ Fury cause there isn’t one. but 3 & 4 star teams are grouped together. Yea D3 great way to live up to your word " expand rosters"!!! “avoid power creep”!!! Xforce is so broken that in nefarious foes with level 300 teams of Sentry Hood Daken there were still Xforce teams floating around. Thour is going to blow Xforce away in terms of power creep. How do I fit Beast into a team any more? These guys are shooting in the dark they have no idea what they are doing.

[dr_tinykittylove]

Subject: What’s a viable 3 star team?

@homeinvasion

@dr tinykittylove

@homeinvasion

@flnn1

My question is why don’t you want to use x-force?
A lot of people want a max cover x-force more than any other character in the game, and since you’re fortunate to have one, why not use him?

Excellent question, finally someone that gets it and asks something intelligent. I don’t want to use Xforce, or any 4 star because:

1. I have so many unused 3 star that I worked so hard to get, I don’t want to rush off to 4 star and never play characters that I won so many events to get my hands on. many of these characters I had to come top 5 in like 4 events, now I never even get to use them cause the devs dropped a completely broken 4 star on the table with another one on the way?
2. Everyone else, I mean EVERYONE else uses Xforce, I hate this one strategy tiny kitty. When you get to the high brackets the only question is what are the two characters accompanying Xforce, not what is the team.
3. If I level a character past 166 my PVE scaling goes through the roof. I believe that a broad good 3 star roster will mean I am able to compete far better in PVE, ergo all those shiny new covers. Seriously all those peeps that rushed their Xforce, guess why you don’t have 6 Mystique covers like me? Cause your scaling is off the charts. Grats you win PVP, I’m all over you in PVE.
4. I find Xforce boring. any game with a one strategy win is not worth playing.
5. 4 Star has only one team option… YAWN. With Sentry gone, peeps are going to start getting screen burn from Xforce. There’s no puzzle in that.

Please, please, please level your unused 3s and try again. People get past nodes with xf and fury in pve all the time, and without using any 4 since it’s pve and mirror matches are not allowed. Why have all these covered 3* if you don’t use them?

thats my point I need 6 million iso to level them, or what $4,000 i WANT to play my 3 stars, with this broad diverse range of options not this tinykitty 1 option 4 star team. I go to 4 star land, I have no reason to keep playing, my end game is maxed I have 1 option for a team what a bore. Im staying in 3 star land.

Let’s try again. So you know where I’m coming from, I have no maxed characters by choice due to the same iso issue. I have my favourites all set at 141. My sentry is 95 and never used. I rarely boost.

Here, you play a lot of pve, right? Do you play lightning rounds too? Between these two, you probably get a lot of iso every week. Don’t spread it around the whole roster.

Like some of the other commenters said, pick one or two of the top guys - lthor, lcap. Focus on maxing them. As you expand your available top characters, you’ll be able to field more effective teams against various combinations.

Outside of pvp where he is a target, Hood can be used immediately even at low levels because his ap steal is independent of level.

This increased selection lets you play longer and take on more opponents, get more iso, and level up more of the strong characters. The game really rewards deep rosters if you’re not thinking about top tier pvp which is currently sentry-dominated.

In the recent Gauntlet one of the last nodes was T4or/Fury/XF - exactly the team you were worried about. Here you need stuns and ap steal and strong, focused single damage. Either obw or Hood will work. I used obw at the time, but it’s also great if you can get recon tus from your alliance.

See what colours are on the board. Don’t fire any skills immediately - focus on xf or nick as they have weaker health, then when they have enough ap for a skill, kill or stun or steal.

You said it would take forever to get enough ap to kill them all by aoe, but you’re not taking into account regular match damage and the other skills. Bp’s battleplan and daken’s strikes/chem reaction will take out a good chunk of that health, Thor’s yellow hits fairly hard and produces green to power call the storm fast, and if you target that 4k damage on an already injured nick/xf they’re going to die fast. Try it out.

4*s are fun and powerful, but they’re really not leagues better than 3’s because of the scaling. I take them on regularly in pvp with my cheap low-levels. Plus if pve scaling is what bothers you, level them to 3 levels (166) and they will work nearly as well. For them, covers are more important than levels.

Don’t level Beast. He’s currently one of the weakest 3*s around…

[system]

I have all my current 4* characters at 13 covers, with XF at 270 and Fury at 250. And a whole bunch of other 3* at 166.

Despite this I still use my 3*'s all the time in PVE. Especially if the enemy team has a version of Wolverine and I can’t use XF (which is quite a frequent occurrence). But even if I could bring XF along, I’ll instead use Falcon, Daken, Punisher. Or maybe Hood, lazyCap, IM40. Why? Because 3*'s will still always fun for me, even though I have the option of nuking everyone with XF and Fury.

To address the original post, there are no 3* teams that imo would (easily) beat a 4*. My assumption is Demiurge has meant 4*'s to be end-game content, which means you and everyone else would want to use them in all scenarios because they’re simply that powerful, especially in PVP. This is the direction the meta is headed.