The TL;DR of this post is that new champions’ ascension could be added to the titan pool when the associated champions become the 2nd newest set in the crystal. Below would be the format for the June titan rollover:
- Set 1 (entered December)
- Set 2 (entered March, ascension materials added)
- Set 3 (entered June)
The announcement of new champions’ ascension being gated behind a valiant crystal paywall until 2027 has not been received well across the community, including from some who intend to potentially purchase the valiant crystals anyways. This is a potential solution for how the ascension materials can be added with a delayed window to still reward valiant crystal purchases, while also not alienating the people who choose not to spend on the featured valiants.
This is something that could be added alongside the June titan rollover, and therefore give plenty of time to implement this change. As stated above, the idea is that new champions who are ascendable are added to the titan initially simply as their base champion, without a cluster drop. When the following batch of champions is added, only then will their ascension materials be included alongside pulling that original set.
For example, in June ascension materials would be added for Pavitr, Strange, JJJ, M’Baku, Blue Marvel, and perhaps also Lizard. Pixie and Madelyn will join the titan alongside 4 others, but none of them will receive cluster drops in the titan until September.
I understand that there may be a plan currently to attach ascension materials for 2026 champions alongside various 2027 content rewards, but I am strongly suggesting that the ascension materials be provided sooner for these champions. Characters like M’Baku may not be necessarily received as popular as Okoye was at launch, but the Might mechanic could potentially put him in the same tier. Gatekeeping the materials for these champions for up to a year or further is only going to give players who don’t spend on featured valiants less of a reason to invest in them, at least until their ascension materials arrive.
There is another problem that has been circulating, which is the hoarding pattern of titan crystal shards. I know I have over 300k titan shards and multiple nexuses waiting for the rollover, as I stopped opening titans after the last rollover date. Most end game accounts are probably doing the same thing, and it definitely has depreciated the value of titan shards. I know that for the most part the reward value of them have decreased drastically in most end game players’ minds.
Adding cluster drops in this way to the titan would mean that there are essentially 12 new champion rewards per titan rollover instead of 6. In turn, more titans would be opened and less shards would be hoarded, especially if players are trying to pull the cluster drops multiple times. More importantly, the titan itself would be far more valuable. And if players were to choose hoarding until their desired champion was both available in the titan and had cluster drops alongside them, then they are choosing to miss out on using them for an entire 3 month cycle. That is to say, hoarding shards further would be a choice that can be made, but also a detriment at the same time.
The period between new champion additions and their titan debut is currently about 1-3 months. With this idea, the period between their additions and their ascension materials debuting would be about 4-6 months. Seeing as ascension is a more valuable resource than pulling a new champion, I think waiting that additional 1-3 month time period is more than fair. Additionally, it would give that window for spenders to value buying featured valiants for ascension materials. This is true because the 1-3 month wait period currently still incentivized many spenders to buy featured valiants, so giving a larger window would only convince them more to do so.
Based on the wording used in today’s stream, there may not be any plans currently on how the ascension materials for these champions will be added later. I may be wrong in saying that, but even so waiting until 2027 to add these materials is not going to sit well with the player base and may potentially result in less use out of these new champions until next year.
Ultimately waiting 1 year for ascension materials on new champs is a poor way to implement this. There may be multiple better solutions than the one I’ve stated above, but I think that this makes a lot of sense for both player satisfaction and reward distribution. Kabam said a lot of good things on their livestream today, so I don’t want to ignore that, but this one thing has definitely not been received well so far and should be changed in some way.
@Kabam (Osaurus) Rex
