Figured it out. It was my ios, not my PQ.

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/8...ins-live-12-22

New feeder updates

I am looking at quite a few retro rewards. Eleven 5* feeder updates. Eight of the 4*s getting update are ones I have maxed with a second one in the works.
I should be getting this.
4*/5* - 4* level (/4* level #2) - 5* covers getting
Drax/Ronan - 370/280 - 7
Elsa/Shuma - 350 - 5
Gamora/Gamora - 370/325 - 9
MEHulk/Bruce - 370/291 - 7
Iron Fist/Shang Chi - 370/285 - 7
Polaris/Havok - 370/297 - 7
Rhino/Wheel - 303 - 2
Sam/Heimdall - 370/282 - 7
Scorpion/Electro - 338 - 3
Quill/Quill - 370/287 - 7
Th4nos/Thano5 - 370/283 - 7

68 5* covers.
Not unhappy.

New shard drips on the 22nd: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/8...ins-live-12-22

I think this means my Shang Chi gets 4 levels.

It's great that you guys who have played the game so long are just racking up the retro rewards. Even though I am not in the same place I am below by 1 million ISO buffer for max champing a number of duplicate 3*s to boost those 4 rewards along.

I hope that every year or 2 the company will do something like this to progress the game along but also add those perks to the people who have been playing a while.

Rewards for the outage are coming in. Dozens of tokens. A week (21) of taco tokens. About 120000 iso and a bunch of red iso.

No shards or covers yet.

Edit: not sure how I thumbs downed the post, but that was not intentional. I'm quite pleased this stuff is coming I.

You left out the best part: They're coming in one at a time.

(Not one ISO at a time, but close. )

-J

Yep. It's annoying but if that's the biggest complaint as a mountain of stuff lands in my account, I'm not going to be sending that complaint anywhere.

35 LTs hit my inbox. 250 Shulk shards, about 8 covers worth of Shards/Covers of ME Hulk. More tokens than I can keep track of.

And since none of this has Namora in it.... I don't think it's done yet.

Not only are you bankrolling through everything, the last shardsmas is upon us tomorrow.

So I got my shardsplosion and was thinking about the 1000 wildcard shards I have waiting to be claimed in my milestones.
I'd been sitting on these in case of an "emergency" where an LL cracking doesn't go my way.
(Like, I'm trying to complete the oldest one in there but the newer ones get completed first.)

My current 5* fav is Shang Chi, and I've been debating just giving him two more levels.

I decided to track how much he improves with every level to be able to guesstimate what kind of benefits that would make to my PVE game.
Also, I wound up with so many new pulls that I splurged on some more classics and got SC up one more level beyond the gifts.
Here is what I found, for those who are curious.

START - Level 520, Build 3/5/5

Level.........:...520/...521/...522/...523/...524/...525/...526/...527/...528
Health........:107857/108691/109532/110380/111234/112094/112961/113835/114716
Vital Balance.:..5677/..5720/..5764/..5810/..5854/..5900/..5946/..5991/..6037
River of Blows:...920/...927/...934/...941/...949/...956/...963/...970/...977
Yellow........:...215/...217/...219/...220/...222/...224/...225/...227/...229
Red...........:..1701/..1714/..1728/..1741/..1755/..1768/..1782/..1796/..1809
Blue..........:..1323/..1334/..1344/..1354/..1365/..1375/..1386/..1397/..1408
Purple........:..1512/..1524/..1536/..1548/..1560/..1572/..1584/..1596/..1609
Green.........:...199/...200/...202/...203/...205/...207/...208/...210/...211
Black.........:...182/...184/...185/...187/...188/...189/...191/...192/...194
Crit..........:...4.5/...4.5/...4.5/...4.5/...4.5/...4.5/...4.5/...4.5/...4.5
TU............:...841/...848/...854/...861/...868/...874/...881/...888/...895


I'm just eyeballing things here, it looks like the increases for each stat are as follows.
(I'm being generous with rounding things up.)

Health........: +.77%
Vital Balance.: +45
River of Blows: +7
Yellow........: +2
Red...........: +14
Blue..........: +11
Purple........: +12
Green.........: +2
Black.........: +2
Crit..........: +0
TU............: +7

(Note: I find it interesting that the health (seemingly) increases by a percentage while everything else seems to be a flat increase.)

Extrapolating things, my prediction for level 530 would be:

Health........:116489
Vital Balance.:..6127
River of Blows:...994
Yellow........:...233
Red...........:..1837
Blue..........:..1430
Purple........:..1633
Green.........:...215
Black.........:...198
Crit..........:...4.5
TU............:...909


So what have I learned? Not much, I think.
The main area where my game would be improved, I guess, is with the River of Blows and match damage, particularly red and purple.
I'm not sure that the improvements in those stats are going to make any sort of noticeable impact on my speed.
I might actually be better off throwing those to 5X to boost his extra damage on a Match-4.

I knew I had a accumulated triplicate 3*s when shardsmas was occurring. I sold my dupe max champs and went from just below 1 million ISO to just below 4 million ISO.

So with some friendly encouragement, I made the leap to 5* Land -- champed Shang-Chi, Beta Ray Bill, Mighty Thor and Kamala Khan. (Kitty Pryde is also ready, but didn't seem urgent.)

It's clear I'm going to have to re-learn PVP strategy, so I'd be grateful for any advice y'all could give!

-J

Depends on the PVP, for me.

When placement is important to me (i.e., I want top 50 or better) - I like playing with my Shang-Chi/Onslaught pair, so I do that to climb up. I don't jump into the game until there is a day or less left. That way I can climb and shield. I'll get to 700-800 in my first climb, and then shield. For my second climb (and this may be rough for you as they're not on your champed list) I use Chasm/iHulk if not for the whole climb, definitely the tail end of it. I want those two as my defense team, as a lot of folks skip 'em. Once I've got as high as I can (new nodes are getting to be 15 and under) it's time to shield for the rest of the event.

When placement is not important to me (most of the time), I play for 50 wins. I'll start as early as I can, play whoever seems fun. Never shield. I will skip the Chasm/iHulk teams regularly (not afraid of them, it just can take a while to get thru). Typically, I'll get to a point where ALL the teams coming to me are Chasm teams at which point I'll play something else. Let myself get hit a bunch of times, and then I can come back later to and most of those retaliation nodes will be non-Chasm teams. I celebrate giving my points to the world and then go get another 15-20 wins, cause all I want here is whatever progression rewards there are.

Holiday Quests are back!!!!!! I really really hope this is a sign of more quests. I've always felt they should have season quests, monthly quests, etc.

I hope you notice a difference when playing.

Yes!!! A million times this.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but making Shang-Chi work has been coming down to dumb luck -- I can't seem to reliably build up Combo Points, and when Deadly Hands is ready there doesn't seem a good place to activate it. (And yes, I did have Quantum Realm on him.) I may just be using him with the wrong allies, though.

That's okay, though, because in PvE champed Thor is helping me melt faces. For most SCL10 nodes I'm still running her with Grocket and Polaris. I gave Thor the 4* Carol Communicator; with Polaris and Rocket feeding her, she's rarely at risk, and all the strike tiles make things go that much quicker.

When that isn't enough, I swap Rocket for Kamala Khan. It's slower to ramp up, but once it's going KK's Embiggen Blast does wonders for damage output both passive and active. So far I've been able to reliably max out Challenge Nodes with the ladies. I've still got BRB ready if things get even tougher.

While I was able to max out progression in SCL before, I often couldn't take on harder nodes (like, the second 5* or Challenge) and that was hell on my placement. With KK and Thor I've been able to max out every node. This has been allowing me to score better placement... I mean, Top 200 is "better" than I was doing.

The other thing I'm eager to test: If I'm able to keep up this performance on every other node, will I be able to hit max progression in SCL10 even if I don't have the required 5*? I think so?

And then there's PvP...

I had the 280s MMR pretty well figured out, and a variety of characters I could use. But the 450s MMR is a whole 'nother story. I've got fewer tools and as mentioned, I'm struggling with synergies. Right now I've been sticking with Thor and Polaris and a lot of refreshing. Lots and lots of refreshing. I was able to get 25 wins with the Hawkguy PvP, but 50 was out of the question.

If I can keep up with getting 25 wins per PvP event, then I think I'm slightly ahead on the deal thanks to better PvE performance.

I have a new question but I think I'll do a new post for that.

-J