Here’s your Marvel Contest of Champions news brief for Monday, September 2, 2019.
Schedule Notes: Round 2 of the Captain Marvel Movie and MODOK arenas begins at 1pm EST. 100% champion availability until AW attack resumes later this afternoon.
Katy Candy examines the comic book origins of Claire Voyant, who joins the Contest this Thursday.
Overall, I’m very happy with the top of my roster, which can handle pretty much anything the Uncollected EQ throws at it. Blade, Mephisto and Stark Spider-man are all Sig 200, Corvus Glaive is Sig 131 and headed all the way up.
9 6* champions
My 6* roster falls in the “needs improvement” category. Gladiator Hulk is fun to play and gets some situational work when Blade is otherwise occupied. Morningstar is mostly a Mephisto backpack when I run him as my main war attacker or for dungeons. Guillotine is a character I’ve always enjoyed because of the long reach of her sword and the bleeds, so she gets on the quest team when AW and AQ are both active. The others just see time in arena.
6 Max 5* champions
I’m very happy with my 6 maxed out 5* champs, no rank-up regrets here. All were taken to 5/65 with regular resources except for Hyperion, who got the cosmic rank-up gem I pulled from Variant 2. Blade, Sparky and Mephisto are my Map 6 attack team at the moment, while Sentinel and Corvus lead my AW attack, and Hyperion is on AW defense. I’ve got a great balance of damage, immunity and utility up top.
I have 11 4/55 5* on the roster. Ghost-Rider will be my next 5/65 champion, after that Quake will go up unless I dupe a higher prestige science champion. If I pull a mutant gem from Variant 3, Iceman is going up, if I pull a skill gem Killmonger is going up.
I have a Tier 2 Alpha set to expire in two weeks, so I’ll be “forced” to rank up another 5*, likely Symbiote Supreme (unduped). Of the champions I currently have, Nick Fury, Psylocke, Medusa, and Darkhawk are also likely to go to 4/55 as resources allow.
Top 5 Most Wanted (5* or 6*) The Champion – For Mephisto synergy in Act 6 Void – To do Void stuff Sunspot – Looks super fun, love New Mutants in the comics, prestige Heimdall – Cheat death synergy Venom The Duck – Fun as hell to play
I currently have mutant and tech 5* awakening gems, so I’m planning on buying the Sigil and going for the next featured crystal which will have Warlock, Mysterio and Sunspot in it.
Story Quest Progress
My main goal each month is to 100% the heroic, master and uncollected levels of the Event Quest. After that, I pick away at the permanent content, but I’m not in a rush. Currently, I’m working toward 100% of Variant 3, which I hope to have completed within the next month. After that, I’ll have to decide whether to continue working through Act 6.1 or finally finishing Variant 1. Until Act 6.4 drops and completion rewards for the entirety of Act 6 are available, I’m not very motivated to look at Act 6.2 while there is other unfinished content.
Here’s your Marvel Contest of Champions news brief for Sunday, September 1, 2019.
Schedule Notes: UMCOC Podcast, Live On Discord, 8pm EST. Tier 4 Basic arena begins at 6pm EST. 100% Roster Availability on Sunday, September 1 following the conclusion of AQ at 3pm EST, until war attack resumes on Monday, September 2 in the afternoon.
Seatin tests out his 5/65 Warlock with a speedrun through Realm of Legends.
The mutant hunting robot Sentinel is one of the most versatile utility champions in the game. In addition to being the MVP of Variant 3 Polar Opposites, Sentinel is very useful in Variant 1 and 2, as both an Alliance War attacker and defender, in Alliance Quest (particularly Map 7) and for general questing. While likely not anyone’s choice for their first 5/65 champion, Sentinel is an excellent champ to rank up after your main damage dealers are in place, and is an fantastic 6* pull.
Key Information: Sentinel is a single-fight ramp up champion. Sentinel’s ramp-up mechanic is called an Analysis Charge (max 100). These are gained by getting the opponent to repeat an action, and the most effective way to get to 100 Analysis Charges is to repeatedly bait the opponent’s SP1 with an awakened Sentinel. Sentinel becomes much more effective at 100 charges and that is where the big damage comes into play. Analysis Charges reset to 0 for the start of every fight in a quest.
Each Analysis Charge reduces Sentinel’s power cost to throw a special attack, meaning it becomes easier to spam specials, and increases attack rating.
At 100 charges, Sentinel gets several major bonuses. SP1 and SP2 debuffs will trigger through an opponent’s block (for the SP2 incinerate this is huge), Sentinel becomes unstoppable for .8 seconds when charging a heavy attack, and Sentinel’s debuffs last 100% longer. This last bit is where the big damage from the SP2 incinerates comes into play.
Sentinel Stats at 5/65Sentinel % Rates at 5/65
Sentinel Signature Ability
Signature Ability: Sentinel’s signature ability is nice to have, but is not required to effectively play the champ in general questing, as it simply reduces your analysis ramp-up time. For high-level timed gameplay, such as Alliance War and Map 7, you’ll want Sentinel awakened to reduce the risk of a time-out. After awakening the champ, additional signature levels do not provide much of a benefit.
Team Building/Key Synergies: One of the major advantages of Sentinel is that it is not a synergy dependent champ, so it is easy to fit Sentinel on the either a 3 or 5 champion team without wasting any roster spots on “backpacks.” Sentinel’s unique synergies are all defensive in nature and therefore don’t come into play when using Sentinel as an attacker. Sentinel makes a great add-on to many popular Trinities for general questing.
Mastery Setup: Sentinel doesn’t need a specific mastery setup to thrive. Because Sentinel is both bleed and poison immune, at first glance it is a suicide friendly champion. However, a lot of Sentinel’s utility comes from spamming specials, so you’re going to take a lot of recoil damage in the fights where Sentinel really shines. Therefore it is advisable to run Sentinel without suicides active.
Alliance War Defense: Sentinel is an above average, but not a top tier defender. Sentinel can pick up a kill when the attacker forgets that the SP2 can inflict incinerate debuffs through block at 100 Analysis Charges, or through timeout. Recommended placements are nodes with high health pools, breakthrough, and armor up.
Special Attacks: Sentinel’s SP1 is largely a utility attack as it inflicts heal block and then armor break, and should be used in fights where those mechanics are required to be effective, such as a constant regeneration node or against a character like Emma Frost, Killmonger, or Mysterio that you want to keep armor break up on. The heal block lasts for 6 seconds, but that doubles to 12 seconds when at 100 Analysis Charges. Because of the reduced power cost at 100 Analysis Charges, you can reliably keep the opponent permanently heal blocked if necessary.
The SP2 is Sentinel’s single greatest source of damage and is the main special you will reply on in most circumstances. With the ability to stack up to 5 incinerate debuffs (each lasting 100% longer with 100 Analysis Charges), Sentinel’s SP2 ends a lot of fights.
Stacking Incinerates via Sentinel’s SP2
The SP3 is not generally used because of the effectiveness of the SP2, but it is useful in rare cases, mainly extremely long fights, because Sentinel can heal by throwing multiple special 3 attacks.
Pros: A double immune (bleed and poison) champion.
Extremely effective against mutant champions.
Most effective in longer, untimed fights.
Useful in many different game areas (AW/AQ/Questing).
Doesn’t require being awakened or synergies to be effective.
Cons: Ramp-up takes time, especially unawakened, so fights are not short.
Not a big hitter.
Regen mechanic is extremely difficult to trigger in most fights, so you’ll likely need to rely on health potions if you are taking damage.
XL champion that some may find slow/awkward to play.
Defenders with the ability shrug debuffs, or who are incinerate/debuff immune significantly hamper Sentinel’s ability to do damage.
No power control mechanic.
Analysis Charges ramp up at 50% normal rate versus Cosmic champions.
Not immune to own debuffs for Clapback node.
No built in true-strike to counter auto-block and evade.
Pro Tips: Bait opponent’s SP1 to build up Analysis Charges while building up to Sentinel’s SP2.
Sentinel can gain Analysis Charges by throwing consecutive attacks into the opponent’s block.
Sentinel is immune to the Delirium node in Map 7.
A 5/65 Sentinel can solo the Omega Red mini bosses in Map 7 on all days. You need to get 100 Analysis Charges as quickly as possible by baiting Omega Red’s SP1. I find it useful to break off Sentinel’s combo at 4 hits early in the fight, until you’re at 100 Analysis Charges. This tends to help line-up the power bars better early in the fight. Once you get to 100 Analysis Charges, you’ll likely have the ability to throw a SP1 at the end of every combo as needed. Rely on Sentinel’s SP1 to heal block until you get to the point where a single SP2 is going to end the fight.
In fights where you need to keep the hit count down (fights with increased power gain, for example), rely on the shock damage from the heavy attack.
Excellent versus mutants, but watch out for Magneto as Sentinel is a metal champion.
Sentinel is an absolute beast in Variant 3 and can easily handle all the bosses. Use the heavy attack to apply shock to the final Kang boss to keep him from regenerating.
A 5/65 Sentinel can solo a 5/65 or Rank 2 6* Domino boss in alliance war. You’ll need to boost, and Sentinel may not be the best option, but it can be done.
You’ve only got a few days left to complete the X-Machina event quest before it is replaced by Amazing Fantasy on September 4. Version 24.2 will be available for download early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, and at the latest by Wednesday morning. When you download 24.2, a number of bug fixes from the Change Log will go live, including the update to She-Hulk’s ability to chain into a heavy attack. So if you plan on using She-Hulk for the 6.2.6 Champion boss, get all those fights done before downloading the update.
Claire Voyant will be the first of the two new champions joining the Contest in September and is the featured champ for this coming Thursday’s arenas.
Full Roster Availability (No AW/AQ): 100% Roster Availability on Sunday, September 1 following the conclusion of AQ at 3pm EST, until war attack resumes on Monday, September 2 in the afternoon. There will be a second window starting on Tuesday, September 3 following the conclusion of war attack, until AQ resumes on Wednesday, September 4 at 3pm EST.
Sunday, September 1:UMCOC Podcast, Live On Discord, 8pm EST. Tier 4 Basic arena begins at 6pm EST.
Monday, September 2: Round 2 of the Captain Marvel Movie and MODOK arenas begins at 1pm EST.
Tuesday, September 3: Dungeons end.
Wednesday, September 4: Sinister Labs close. The new event quest, Amazing Fantasy, as well as the first two chapters of the Time After Time side-quest open at 1pm EST. AQ begins at 3pm EST. Week 6 of the Summoner Showdown featuring OldManCanned, mvinceable and mutamatt, with guest host Dorky Dave at 4pm EST.
Thursday, September 5: 4* Hela arena and Claire Voyant featured arenas begin at 1pm EST.
Saturday, September 7: Alpha arena begins at 6pm EST.
Here’s your Marvel Contest of Champions news brief for Friday, August 30, 2019.
Schedule Notes: The Beta Test for the Old Man Logan and Colossus champion reworks ends today.
The Community has been heard! Kabam has officially announced Rank Down ticket compensation for the She-Hulk heavy chain change, although exact details of how this will work and timing are still to be announced.
Here’s your Marvel Contest of Champions news brief for Thursday, August 29, 2019.
Schedule Notes: 4* Basic Captain Marvel Movie and MODOK arenas start at 1pm EST. Alpha arena begins at 6pm.
Congrats to PandamanPete, whose stellar use of Human Torch to defeat Deadpool in Week 5 of the Summoner Showdown won him a spot at New York Comic Con.
The She-Hulk Nerf continued to be the hot topic of discussion around the community. Dorky Dave hosted a round-table livestream featuring Kam and Troy, while Seatin also shared his thoughts on the issue and RichTheMann addressed the subject in MCOC News.
Here’s your Marvel Contest of Champions news brief for Wednesday, August 28, 2019.
Schedule Notes: AW Season 11 rewards dropped this morning. Week 5 of the Summoner Showdown featuring PandamanPete, DragonFei, and Royal.Marshall, with guest host Arbitrarium at 4pm EST.
Yesterday was filled with major announcements from Kabam, and not all were positively received by the community.
Version 24.2 goes live on September 4 to coincide with the new Event Quest. The most controversial item on the change log is the removal of She-Hulk’s ability to combo into a heavy attack. While it was never explicitly stated She-Hulk has the ability to combo into a heavy, this was never viewed as a bug either, and certainly reduces a key part of She-Hulk’s value, particularly in the 6.2.6 Champion fight.
Per a forum post update from Kabam Miike, no champion is intended to have the ability to chain into a heavy attack, other than those where it is specifically stated in the champion description, such as Wasp. There are some champions (such as Old Man Logan) that are able to chain into a heavy as She-Hulk could. We have to assume this will be corrected at some point going forward, so it is not advisable to rank up a champion based on the ability to chain into a heavy.
More concerning than this specific Nerf, however, is the precedent it sets. Now anytime the community finds a use for a champion that is not explicitly stated in the ability description, there will be worries that it may be deemed a bug down the road and corrected.
In other news, Kabam released the format and rewards for September’s side-quest “Time After Time.” There will be 5 chapters, each with 5 quests. There will be 4 difficulty levels available for each chapter. Each quest has one specific champion gate, but all the champions needed to get through a gate are currently in the basic pool and there will be additional opportunities to acquire the needed champs over the course of the month.
Wrapping up the official announcements for the day, M.O.D.O.K will be the featured arena champ for this Thursday, August 28 and Monday, September 2.
Episode #90 of the UMCOC podcast is now available. Deacon, RoastedBagel and JJW recount their adventures in NYC for the Summoner Showdown, and are joined by special guest Arbi.
From time to time, special 24-hour “cache” offers that can be purchased for units (as opposed to real-world currency) will appear in the game store. These deals allow free-to-play arena grinders a chance to get items they normally wouldn’t have access to, or to get them much quicker than normal. Some deals are amazing, others are just ok, and many won’t represent good value for your hard earned units.
But how are you supposed to know if an offer is any good? It’s easy to get excited when you see 5* signature stones, Tier 5 catalyst shards, and 6* shards in an offer, but that doesn’t mean the offer represents a good value for your units. To answer that question, you need to have a set value for each of the items in the deal so you can judge the value of the offer. If you set these values before the offer hits the store, you’re in a much better position to make a level-headed decision.
PLEASE NOTE – These are my personal thoughts on the valuations of these items, based on my roster, experience, level of patience for grinding, and in-game goals. You may have a completely different value for certain items. Furthermore, these values assume you already have the units on hand and are not buying units to get the deal.
So now that we’ve got our values assigned, let’s look at an actual in-game deal from 8/19/19 as an example.
As you can see, this was a two-part offer, and you needed to buy the first one to unlock the second. Purchasing both offers would give you 20,250 T5b shards (along with the T2a, gold and boosts), and you need 45,000 to make a full catalyst. It takes 2 T5b to take a 5* champion to rank 5, and 3 T5b to take a 6* to rank 2. So this isn’t an account-changing deal (it’s a little more than 2 months of Uncollected T5b rewards), and if you had to buy the units outright it would cost you $150 USD.
But let’s assume you’ve got the 4,500 units already, and you’re wondering if this is the time to cash them in. Here’s what the value chart says for the first part of the offer.
Analysis of the Tier 5 Basic Catalyst Cache
Looking at the first offer, I’m valuing all the items in the offer at 835 units. That’s what I would consider a fair deal. But the offer costs 1,500 units, so it doesn’t represent a good value to me. Now let’s look at the second part of the deal. There is the possibility that the second deal could be so overwhelmingly good that it makes up for the lack of value in the first, and I’ll want to buy both.
Analysis of the Advanced Tier 5 Basic Catalyst Cache
Unfortunately, the second offer represents worse value than the first, and it wouldn’t even be worth buying if it was the price of the first offer.
A final word of advice on offers. You’re going to see a lot of them in the game, so you’re going to have to pick your spots. Every once in a while a great one comes along, so it helps to have units on hand. On the flip-side, it isn’t worth getting stressed out by the bad ones. Just run the numbers, and if it’s not for you, move on. There will always be another down the line…
Frontline: MCOC 