Experiment 3: New Release 4* to Ascended 5* timeline

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Comments

  • WhiteBomber
    WhiteBomber Posts: 751 Critical Contributor

    @dianetics said:

    If you can ascend him just do it. There are very few 4s that require ascension and he is 1 of them.

    Counter point: 99.9% of 4 stars require ascension (if you want them to be more than useless). Agreed that Shaw does become significantly more valuable amongst the upper tiers though.

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,692 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2024

    @dianetics said:

    Well, there are very few 4s that fill a valuable role that isn't already filled by some 5.
    There are really only a handful of extremely useful 4s showing up. Deathlok, Polaris, Juggs, and we can add Shaw to that list.

    Obviously all the 4s need ascension to be useful on developed rosters, but not all of those characters are actually useful.

    On a week to week basis I'm mostly using boosted ascended 4 stars and 1 stars. They're usually much better than my natural 550's or boosted 5 stars. This week is the first time in ages that I'm using boosted 5 stars (BRB and Hex23) but BRB is boosted to 672 and Hex to 612 and they have great synergy together.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards

    You guys aren’t running boosted ascended Ant-Man with boosted Wa5p this week to call all the swarms?

  • WhiteBomber
    WhiteBomber Posts: 751 Critical Contributor

    Oddly enough! I took on one of the boosted 5* Wasps just a few minutes ago, it went like this:

    ME: Champ boosted Hex23, champ boosted BRB, 4* Electro
    VS
    THEM: Champ boosted BRB, champ boosted 5* Wasp, 4* Electro

    1. Focus BRB first (naturally)
    2. Inconsequentially kill their Electro because 4*
    3. Wasp... keeps locking tiles, healing and hitting my entire team so they can't hide behind Hex23
    4. Take way more damage than I anticipated, so use my mandatory stun team-up
    5. She still has enough health to survive all those turns and I don't want to waste more time healing my Hex, so end the fight missing more than half health

    Needless to say, she did better than every other team that wasn't boosted BRB, HEX

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    I 550d Wasp before her buff (just so I could say I did) but I haven't actually used her this week -- the x-23/2* Nightcrawler team is such a bulldozer that I didn't do my usual experimenting.

  • Tiger_Wong
    Tiger_Wong Posts: 1,098 Chairperson of the Boards

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    You guys aren’t running boosted ascended Ant-Man with boosted Wa5p this week to call all the swarms?

    I would if Deathlock was the feature pvp. As is, they’re still too slow.

    Back on topic, I got Shaw to 370. Now all I need is 800 shards, and I’m ascending. Woot!

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    @dianetics @WhiteBomber @BriMan2222 you guys are all right, even though you're saying different, seemingly contradictory things.

    Ascension (and the weekly boost, which is absolutely still critical) gives us two paths. You can either use really strong unboosted characters in every event, or use boosted characters during their week. Either way is "optimal" -- I no longer see any advantage to one route over the other.

  • Pantera236
    Pantera236 Posts: 604 Critical Contributor

    @entrailbucket said:
    @dianetics @WhiteBomber @BriMan2222 you guys are all right, even though you're saying different, seemingly contradictory things.

    Ascension (and the weekly boost, which is absolutely still critical) gives us two paths. You can either use really strong unboosted characters in every event, or use boosted characters during their week. Either way is "optimal" -- I no longer see any advantage to one route over the other.

    I mostly agree with, just maybe add: if you have the meta champed, or better yet at 550, when they are boosted that's always gonna be the best case. A 672 BRB absolutely laughs at a 550 or whatever 450 is boosted to. Where as for instance 5* Kingpin while not necessarily good unboosted he doesn't NEED to be 672 to be good because most don't have him at 550.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2024

    @Pantera236 said:

    I mostly agree with, just maybe add: if you have the meta champed, or better yet at 550, when they are boosted that's always gonna be the best case. A 672 BRB absolutely laughs at a 550 or whatever 450 is boosted to. Where as for instance 5* Kingpin while not necessarily good unboosted he doesn't NEED to be 672 to be good because most don't have him at 550.

    Good point. When m'Thor or Shang-Chi or Omega Red or Chasm or...(Polaris? Juggernaut? Dunno, there are definitely more) are boosted, you're using those guys or you lose.

    On the Kingpin point, I will say...I actually do have him at 550 (dunno if I'm the only one!) and during his week he's really crazy. He definitely doesn't need to be that high level, but if he is it's a massive benefit.

    If you look at the "top" rosters in the game, they pretty much all look the same. They all have the same characters maxed out, and they all have the same characters at low level. If you were to look for a competitive advantage to exploit there, adding one "other" high level guy will give you a big advantage during his week, especially if it's a lesser-known character.

  • Tiger_Wong
    Tiger_Wong Posts: 1,098 Chairperson of the Boards

    And just LIKE THAT I got my 800 shards today. Shoot-outs to the Bonus Shard RNG. You da real mvp. 😢❤️

    Time to have some fun. I think I’ll switch my fave target to Gorr. I’ve always though highly of his moveset.

    So I started at about April 8th (I think that was when Shaw released) and it took me about…… what? A month and a half/2 months to ascend? That doesn’t sound bad to me.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards

    Is Gorr doing anything Magik isn’t? I don’t run him much

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,692 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2024

    I don't remember why exactly, but one of my alliance mates who ascended gorr warned the rest of us not to because he's one whose abilities gets worse after ascension

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    Is Gorr doing anything Magik isn’t? I don’t run him much

    He does the same thing but a bit better, if you're stapling him to a power booster. His repeaters are 1-turn vs 2 for her, and he starts with 3 of them vs 2.

    I'm not sure if he still is, but Gorr + power booster used to be one of the faster PvE teams.

  • Tiger_Wong
    Tiger_Wong Posts: 1,098 Chairperson of the Boards

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    Is Gorr doing anything Magik isn’t? I don’t run him much

    I like Gorr over Magik because

    1) awesome vs the brb/polaris duo to start off a match. And vs carnage or with carnage
    2) his repeaters is 1 turn. It just doesn’t do a lot of damage
    3) has a sneaky damage mitigation power depending on how many repeaters are on the board.
    4) his black nuke is also sneaky good and downs opponents at 25% health.

    I run Gorr with Okoye all the time but once I ascend him, he’ll probably out-match damage Okoye. So I’ll be looking elsewhere for boosting his damage. Unless the ascension boost is beefy.

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,692 Chairperson of the Boards

    @BriMan2222 said:
    I don't remember why exactly, but one of my alliance mates who ascended gorr warned the rest of us not to because he's one whose abilities gets worse after ascension

    Okay, so it's not that his powers get worse, he just gets worse with okoye, but that's who everyone uses him with for pve.

    It's fine until he clears enemy tiles then his match damage jumps up and he tanks almost everything

    So if you don't care about pairing him with okoye to speed clear pve then it's fine.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2024

    I just went through and read his powers, those do seem pretty good if you're up against a polaris team.

    golden oldie is now fully covered, so I'm back to favoriting whatever 5* has the most shards until Jubilee hits Latest. Shaw is 309. 3* Scarlet Witch dupe is 241, getting close to ascension. It certainly seems like taking shaw from fresh-roster to 5* will be much faster than taking a 3* character to 5* for whatever that's worth.

    Useless roster trivia: America Chavez is my 15th highest level character at 471(tied with 5 others, but sorted above alphabetically i guess), and my next closest ascended character is at 461 (frost). Loads of natural born 5s in between.

    I've been cutting back on how much I care about completing progression; i probably haven't hit full progression on the last 3 or 4 PVE events and I'm barely in PVP. Just kind of burned out on it a little bit.

  • rainkingucd
    rainkingucd Posts: 1,532 Chairperson of the Boards

    @BriMan2222 said:

    Okay, so it's not that his powers get worse, he just gets worse with okoye, but that's who everyone uses him with for pve.

    It's fine until he clears enemy tiles then his match damage jumps up and he tanks almost everything

    So if you don't care about pairing him with okoye to speed clear pve then it's fine.

    His yellow also gets worse (like 4* Ghost Rider)

    • 4* - each minion reduces damage by 10% (max 50%)
    • 5* - each minion reduces damage by 6% (max 30%)
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards

    That seems significantly worse

  • rainkingucd
    rainkingucd Posts: 1,532 Chairperson of the Boards

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:

    Shaw is 309. 3* Scarlet Witch dupe is 241, getting close to ascension. It certainly seems like taking shaw from fresh-roster to 5* will be much faster than taking a 3* character to 5* for whatever that's worth.

    I think you're right there. In your Grand Experiment 2 thread, I decided that with Goose's release I was going to get her ascended to 5*, and she's been my favourite 3* target ever since. That started in November. I max-max ascended her, and she is currently at 329. A full 7 months to get ~325 3* covers, with my estimates being ~1 year to ascend her to 5* if I ascend her with a 271 dupe.

    In contrast, my Shaw is at 345 after an end of March release date. 2 months to get to 88 4* covers, so maybe another 2 months or so to get him ascended at my rate.

    not sure if @dianetics or @Tiger_Wong focused on any 3* to compare to their Shaw ascensions, but in my data it seems 3->5 ascension is 3x as long as 4->5 ascension

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,566 Chairperson of the Boards

    It’s so interesting how that has changed. Definitely used to be that a specific 3* cover was the easiest thing you could chase in this game in the bonus hero days.

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