5* Groot.

Not going to lie, pulling a champ like Groot from a 5* crystal that you've spent weeks saving up for is quite disappointing. Only my 4th 5* in my 8 months of playing and really am not seeing the "future of the game" with these champs. They take so long to earn, but don't seem to have any use when I can can get more useful 4* champs (despite lower PI).

I know this is just a rant thread and don't expect anything in the game to change. That being said, any way to salvage a pull like this (synergies, usefulness in specific quests, war defense nodes, etc), or is this just one more champ to sit on the shelf while I earn more shards for the next?

Comments

Tmasters1984

I don't use any of my 5*s except for Arena.

I have 7.

Vinitlalka1988

My First 5 star pull was Magik & i opened my 9th some time back for Daredevil Netfilx....Still waiting to dupe Magik..Imagine the pain..Just imagine it...

CammonRo

They should take Groot, Luke Cage and Spider-Gwen out of the 15K crystal completely.

Dexman1349

Next 5* champ? Hulkbuster. Seriously.

How the hell are we supposed to get excited for 5* champs when the same bad ones keep dropping?

Kabam wants 5* champs to be the future of the game? Well, if the 5* champs are $hit, then I guess they expect the future of the game to be $hit too.

Only silver lining is that it's another champ I don't need T1A to rank up...

Alpha07

I got a 5* bad luck streak some time ago. It feels really bad when it happens but you'll eventually get lucky. RNG maybe is not with you right now.

Iron Man.
Gambit
Groot.
I got these three in 5* Crystals between August and September. i know how it feels man.

Dexman1349

In the year I've been playing, I have accumulated seven 5* champs. A couple are serviceable, but I almost never use them

Blue Cyclops - sometimes used in AW defense for diversity.
Storm - She's on my "c" team but even then don't use her much
Drax - Arena fodder
Iron Fist - Arena fodder
Venompool - Arena
Groot - Not even worth the ISO to rank him

And now Hulkbuster.

I know I can do worse, but I also know I can do better. One more downside of having so many different champs in the game.

I said it in the very first post and I'll say it again, how are we supposed to be excited for 5* champs when the cold-hard reality is that the ones we're given don't progress the game at all. How is my roster supposed to get better with the above listed champs? The result is that we're grinding for weeks to unlock something that literally does nothing.

Talk about knocking the wind out of my sails. Again. Maybe it is time to move on.

winterthur

I just pulled She-Hulk.

Only good coming out is I did not use Valor to get that 250 shards.

I think the problem is the 5 T1A needed to rank the 5*. I suppose at least 20 champs will stay unranked.

DrZola

Venom, Groot, IM, Groot.

Back to 10K again last night and sitting on them until December. Stuck at 16 5*'s for a while because, quite frankly, what I keep pulling are dupes of the likes of Red Mags and Groot and IM...all the while staring at a loser's gallery of 5* Colossus, Ronan, Juggs, IF and their sorry compadres sitting alongside some decent yet unduped champs like SL, YJ and Hulk.

I have to admit I caught myself thinking about holiday offers and the potential to nab more T2a. Then I realized those offers are largely pointless without solid R4 options. The 5* predicament for longtime players who have yet to hit the pseudo-RNG lottery even once is that you finally don't care about Valor, Loyalty, Glory or any other in game currency, for that matter.

That predicament can, however, be just as liberating as it is depressing. If you've played a phone game since early 2015, you realize you are well-settled in the long run and bristle at the suggestion you need to keep looking ahead to...better days? So you just stop worrying about it altogether, which is advice I would give to anyone and everyone.

In the meantime, fellow in my (semi-retirement) ally has pulled 5* Stark, GwenPool, Mordo, Ghost Rider and Blade in the past week and a half--partly from featureds but also from GMC and Jarnbjorn. Amid the steady stream of drivel champs from featureds 5*/featured GMCs, it just serves to reinforce that crystal drops haven't gotten any less cruel over 3 years.

Ultimately, it would be nice if Kabam called a spade a spade and reduced the cat/gold/ISO rankup costs for the likes of crummy champs like KK, Groot, Cage, Red Mags, etc. That would be a standup thing to do, but I'm not holding my breath for that one. Diversity clearly showed the game team is more interested in cheap tricks than fixing broken champs.

Dr. Zola

Vision_41

Groot isn't too bad though. His Regeneration is pretty good.

Mhykke

Vision_41 wrote: »

Groot isn't too bad though. His Regeneration is pretty good.

Groot is one of the worst champs in game.

GoArmyGoNoles

Y'all have no room to complain, I was lucky enough to pull Magneto as my first 5* and I've been waiting literally MONTHS to dupe him, and 10 crystals later, I've pulled nothing but this garbage. smh.

Dexman1349

I have a theory...

When it comes to longevity in the game, there are 2 reasons you stay. You either really like the game (which does wane over time) or you're lucky with your pulls. If you're on the fence on the "like the game" side and you pull good champs, you stay. Otherwise you end up quitting.

This is why we only see long-time players with good champs. They wouldn't have stayed if they were pulling ****.

It's a game of attrition. A select few have good pulls and stay, but Kabam pushes the bad champs to manage numbers. Too many players overwhelm their servers. This is what they mean when they have champs for "balance", they aren't trying to balance the in-game play, they are trying to balance how many servers they need to keep online (and ultimately balance their checkbook).

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SgtAnime1

Hey man, I got a Luke Cage out of a Stark Spidey Crystal.

DNA3000

Dexman1349 wrote: »

I have a theory...

When it comes to longevity in the game, there are 2 reasons you stay. You either really like the game (which does wane over time) or you're lucky with your pulls. If you're on the fence on the "like the game" side and you pull good champs, you stay. Otherwise you end up quitting.

This is why we only see long-time players with good champs. They wouldn't have stayed if they were pulling ****.

It's a game of attrition. A select few have good pulls and stay, but Kabam pushes the bad champs to manage numbers. Too many players overwhelm their servers. This is what they mean when they have champs for "balance", they aren't trying to balance the in-game play, they are trying to balance how many servers they need to keep online (and ultimately balance their checkbook).

We don't really need to theorize, because there's actual schools that teach game development and actual conferences with tracks like "Monetization and Player Retention" where industry people actually talk directly about how they do this. None of this is a secret.

Your theory assumes everyone thinks like you all of the time, but you need to consider that the entire world is full of easy to think of examples of the billions of people who do not match your theory. Consider Las Vegas. Do you believe the only people who go to Las Vegas to gamble are the lucky 1% that win? If that's the case, how do the casinos make money to stay in business? Or do you think that all of them are physically addicted to slot machines?

The fact is, some percentage of people get addicted to games of chance. Some people are just really lucky. But the vast majority of people are perfectly willing to play a game of chance with the hope of winning, even if they are not one of the lucky few that beat the odds. The free to play game industry is just the latest industry to figure that out.

No game developer sets out to make a bad champ. They always aim to make them useful and powerful in some way. But they don't always succeed. The game will tolerate a wide range of performance that is acceptable, so when they miss on the downside they may still miss by a small enough margin that the champ stays in the game at that performance level. This is because by definition it is impossible for everything to be above average, and players judge based on the average, not based on an absolute scale. Groot is not a bad champion in absolute terms. He is only bad compared to the alternatives. And it wasn't very long ago that he was considered one of the best defenders around. That changed not because Groot changed, but because players learned how to defeat him. Against newer players that haven't had an entire season of AQ to practice against him, he's still pretty lethal.

We demand everything be above average, when that is impossible. The devs try to aim everything to be above average, but they know they will often not succeed. The two combine to create the spread of champions we have.

No F2P game tries to winnow down their players deliberately. The free part aims to gather as many players as possible and grab their attention. Everything else about the in-game economics is designed to attempt to convert them into paying customers, by tempting them with offers that appeal to them. That's why the offers are spread out all over the place in terms of value and price, and why so many seem to not make sense. Many times, they don't make sense because they are targeted at someone who doesn't think like you, and it makes sense to them. F2P game operators keep statistics on every single offer they make, and they know if an offer is effective or not, and how to tune their offers to try to maximize the number of players who take advantage of them overall.

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DNA3000

_ASDF_ wrote: »

GoArmyGoNoles wrote: »

Y'all have no room to complain, I was lucky enough to pull Magneto as my first 5* and I've been waiting literally MONTHS to dupe him, and 10 crystals later, I've pulled nothing but this garbage. smh.

Yeah. Rough run bud. Omg Only Blade, dorm, Gwenpool, mordo, rogue and Magik. How do you quest with that kinda line up?

I assumed that was sarcastic, but now I'm not so sure. I'm trying to picture someone duping their Blade and going Anonymous2k on their phone because they were hoping for a Magneto. Its like MCOC has servers in the Bizarro universe.

Dexman1349

Had to google it, but that Anon2k video for Iceman was awesome. Only because it's so relatable...

Mightylibra

My first 5 5* are Ronan, Groot, Antman, Cap A ( from 15k crystals) and SIM.

The 6th one is slightly better: Blue Cyclops, then I duped Sim with the 7th. Then, I bought UC by loyalty. Up until the 8th, I got some luck, pulling Ultron.

However, none of them are at rank 3. And I’ve decided that I would open only featured crystals. If I get featured champs, great. If not, it’s just another lame 5*.

No need to complain, it’s just a game at the end of the day.

DrZola

I’m more than a little shocked at the number of people who describe Groot as a force to be reckoned with in old AW. The only time I recall him being a defensive obstacle was when he was first added as a mini on Map 3 (long ago) and players hadn’t discovered Magik and Voodoo as antidotes. The point is: he’s never been especially good for anything. I am perfectly comfortable putting it out there that I consider Groot a bad champion in absolute terms.

But...I realize I’m not the only one playing this game. I’m sure there are tons of players out there who enjoy plodding, weak-hitting, clunky champs who fuel Mystic Dispersion and have brief and limited upsides. Vive la difference!

Dr. Zola

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

I’m more than a little shocked at the number of people who describe Groot as a force to be reckoned with in old AW. The only time I recall him being a defensive obstacle was when he was first added as a mini on Map 3 (long ago) and players hadn’t discovered Magik and Voodoo as antidotes. The point is: he’s never been especially good for anything. I am perfectly comfortable putting it out there that I consider Groot a bad champion in absolute terms.

But...I realize I’m not the only one playing this game. I’m sure there are tons of players out there who enjoy plodding, weak-hitting, clunky champs who fuel Mystic Dispersion and have brief and limited upsides. Vive la difference!

Dr. Zola

Back then people had to be told to try Magik because no one used Magik in AQ because common knowledge was that Magik was a weak attacker. Times change. Also, Voodoo was introduced about six months after the start of season three, so he wasn't available initially as a Groot counter.

Groot's biggest problem in AW was mystic dispersion, but it took some time for mystic dispersion to catch on and in the meanwhile someone who invested in a 4/55 Groot could get a lot of kills on lower tier alliances. If I had him, I would have put him maybe on node 52 (the top left miniboss) or maybe node 43 (power gain + nullify immunity). I think outside of tier 1 and 2, he would have been nasty under pre-12.0 healing rules.

DrZola

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

I’m more than a little shocked at the number of people who describe Groot as a force to be reckoned with in old AW. The only time I recall him being a defensive obstacle was when he was first added as a mini on Map 3 (long ago) and players hadn’t discovered Magik and Voodoo as antidotes. The point is: he’s never been especially good for anything. I am perfectly comfortable putting it out there that I consider Groot a bad champion in absolute terms.

But...I realize I’m not the only one playing this game. I’m sure there are tons of players out there who enjoy plodding, weak-hitting, clunky champs who fuel Mystic Dispersion and have brief and limited upsides. Vive la difference!

Dr. Zola

Back then people had to be told to try Magik because no one used Magik in AQ because common knowledge was that Magik was a weak attacker. Times change. Also, Voodoo was introduced about six months after the start of season three, so he wasn't available initially as a Groot counter.

Groot's biggest problem in AW was mystic dispersion, but it took some time for mystic dispersion to catch on and in the meanwhile someone who invested in a 4/55 Groot could get a lot of kills on lower tier alliances. If I had him, I would have put him maybe on node 52 (the top left miniboss) or maybe node 43 (power gain + nullify immunity). I think outside of tier 1 and 2, he would have been nasty under pre-12.0 healing rules.

That may be the issue--I don't recall seeing a lot of Groot in AW T1-4 on anything but the occasional Power Start 2 node.

And I have nothing but sheer pity for anyone who took a 5* Groot to 4/55. Poor, poor soul...

Dr. Zola

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

I’m more than a little shocked at the number of people who describe Groot as a force to be reckoned with in old AW. The only time I recall him being a defensive obstacle was when he was first added as a mini on Map 3 (long ago) and players hadn’t discovered Magik and Voodoo as antidotes. The point is: he’s never been especially good for anything. I am perfectly comfortable putting it out there that I consider Groot a bad champion in absolute terms.

But...I realize I’m not the only one playing this game. I’m sure there are tons of players out there who enjoy plodding, weak-hitting, clunky champs who fuel Mystic Dispersion and have brief and limited upsides. Vive la difference!

Dr. Zola

Back then people had to be told to try Magik because no one used Magik in AQ because common knowledge was that Magik was a weak attacker. Times change. Also, Voodoo was introduced about six months after the start of season three, so he wasn't available initially as a Groot counter.

Groot's biggest problem in AW was mystic dispersion, but it took some time for mystic dispersion to catch on and in the meanwhile someone who invested in a 4/55 Groot could get a lot of kills on lower tier alliances. If I had him, I would have put him maybe on node 52 (the top left miniboss) or maybe node 43 (power gain + nullify immunity). I think outside of tier 1 and 2, he would have been nasty under pre-12.0 healing rules.

That may be the issue--I don't recall seeing a lot of Groot in AW T1-4 on anything but the occasional Power Start 2 node.

And I have nothing but sheer pity for anyone who took a 5* Groot to 4/55. Poor, poor soul...

Dr. Zola

Well, anyone that took him up to rank 4 way back then had their chance to rank him down in 12.0 so the long term cost was nill. Anyone who decided to keep him up there is probably wearing an I am Groot T-shirt right now.

Carmel1

Groot is only one example to all the other **** champs out there...
I have 29 5* champs, only few are dupe and none of them is a good champs
i'm waiting with t2a sitting in my inventory with no good option.
today i pulled my first dupe after very long time (since they started with the monthly addition) and it was Old Man Logan. YUCK!!
i tried few times to go for feature in hoping for better chance to pull someone good twice and increase the chance for dupe... but i haven't pulled feature even once...
i agree with the OP, it is so disappointing to collect these shards and in the end you fall on worthless champs that kabam will never admit he's useless.

let see them making a poll who is the worst 2 champs in each category.

DNA3000

Carmel1 wrote: »

Groot is only one example to all the other **** champs out there...
I have 29 5* champs, only few are dupe and none of them is a good champs
i'm waiting with t2a sitting in my inventory with no good option.
today i pulled my first dupe after very long time (since they started with the monthly addition) and it was Old Man Logan. YUCK!!
i tried few times to go for feature in hoping for better chance to pull someone good twice and increase the chance for dupe... but i haven't pulled feature even once...
i agree with the OP, it is so disappointing to collect these shards and in the end you fall on worthless champs that kabam will never admit he's useless.

let see them making a poll who is the worst 2 champs in each category.

I find it difficult to believe you have 29 5* champions and none are good. Maybe none are one of the three or four you think are top tier, but its hard to find thirty definitively bad 5* champions. Even if you consider which champions are not good attackers, eliminating all of the good defenders, it still looks difficult to pull nothing but champions considered not good attackers. I suspect you think that none are good because you don't consider champions like Storm, Captain Marvel, Yellowjacket or Hawkeye good champs. Champs that are not top tier, but certainly good pulls from 5* crystals.

Carmel1

DNA3000 wrote: »

Carmel1 wrote: »

Groot is only one example to all the other **** champs out there...
I have 29 5* champs, only few are dupe and none of them is a good champs
i'm waiting with t2a sitting in my inventory with no good option.
today i pulled my first dupe after very long time (since they started with the monthly addition) and it was Old Man Logan. YUCK!!
i tried few times to go for feature in hoping for better chance to pull someone good twice and increase the chance for dupe... but i haven't pulled feature even once...
i agree with the OP, it is so disappointing to collect these shards and in the end you fall on worthless champs that kabam will never admit he's useless.

let see them making a poll who is the worst 2 champs in each category.

I find it difficult to believe you have 29 5* champions and none are good. Maybe none are one of the three or four you think are top tier, but its hard to find thirty definitively bad 5* champions. Even if you consider which champions are not good attackers, eliminating all of the good defenders, it still looks difficult to pull nothing but champions considered not good attackers. I suspect you think that none are good because you don't consider champions like Storm, Captain Marvel, Yellowjacket or Hawkeye good champs. Champs that are not top tier, but certainly good pulls from 5* crystals.

You almost right.
I have some “okey” champ but not a R4 worthy.
I have few champs with the potential to be good but they need to be dupe (like SL). Can’t get awakening stone for these champs.
I have few that doesn’t need to be dupe to be good but prestige wise I can’t get stuck with another undupe R4.
I have many champs like HB, IP, gambit, colossus, MK and few more that doesn’t even worth remembering.

Speeds80

Well one ray of hope is the new unique synergies seem to be the way kabam are buffing champs, for example the hela synergy just made Loki useful, and mephisto buffs dr strange and Mordo (I think it is from memory) maybe they will drop a synergy that makes groot useful, there are several gotg movies in the pipeline so maybe a while but it's worth hoping for

Dexman1349

3 guesses who my first 5* dupe was...

11th 5* crystal since starting the game. Merry Xmas. 😒

ESF

Truthfully, I would rather be able to sell 5-stars like Groot and She-Hulk for shards rather than having them just sit on my roster and never be used -- there are 120-plus characters in the game, and I totally realize and understand that not every single one can be great.

There are plenty of great characters, as well. I never begrudge anyone their good fortune in what they pull.

But there are so many characters....the bottom line is that it's difficult to find usage patterns that would ever see me rank up Groot before I would even pretend to use him, or She-Hulk. I have a Hulkbuster, and a Colossus, and an Ant-Man.

It's a double-edged sword -- not only are some characters not that great, but the price to rank them all up is the same whether it's Archangel or Groot, so why in the world would anyone do that?

If Kabam wants us to use all of the characters, embrace the diversity of the roster...I just can't justify using thise kinds of resources on wesker characters that I can't use in the endgame content.

I don't know what the answer is...maybe there is no answer. I just know that there's no way, with the cost of ranking up characters, that there's no way Groot is going to R2 for me.

I never speak for anyone else. But with my roster and what i am trying to accomplish in the game, there's no way I could pretend to justify diverting a single resource to a weaker character