Promotion

Promoting or Eliting is one of the four ways to permanently increase a character's Damage and Health, other than leveling up, applying augments, or buying support cards; and it can be found either by clicking on the Character's card itself, or by clicking on the Store and/or the Sell menu.

Promoting characters through the Store.

Following the introduction of Breakthrough in the 2.13 update, promotions can be done up to 10 times (11 cards in total) with characters that are at least level 50, EVII, and have beat the Breakthrough battle (each victory only unlocks one elite tier, so 3 is required to max a card).

The elite rank of a card can be seen as a roman numeral in the top left corner. The Roman number (e.g. "III" in the picture) means it's at the third elite rank; this goes up to X. Fully promoted cards are often referred to as "EX" or "E10", and this applies to other ranks as well. Cards that have never been promoted don't show anything in that corner, but are referred to as "normal" on the card's interface and are sometimes referred to as "E0", or "base".

You can promote a character with an extra copy of the card. This destroys the extra copy and causes it to go up an elite rank, but does not alter the character otherwise, including the level. It does not matter whether you level or promote a character first, they'll still arrive at the same maximum stats as dictated by their base stats.

Characters who are always available at the start of the game, as well as characters unlocked from Challenge Mode or an WBID can be promoted directly on their card interface. Obtaining a character who needs to be unlocked in Challenge Mode or a WBID account from a pack will not unlock them for direct promotions.

Bronze

Rank	Damage	Health
Normal	100%	100%
Elite I	120%	120%
Elite II	140%	140%
Elite III	160%	160%
Elite IV	180%	180%
Elite V	200%	200%
Elite VI	220%	220%
Elite VII	240%	240%
Elite VIII	260%	260%
Elite IX	280%	280%
Elite X	300%	300%

Silver

Rank	Damage	Health
Normal	100%	100%
Elite I	140%	140%
Elite II	180%	180%
Elite III	220%	220%
Elite IV	260%	260%
Elite V	300%	300%
Elite VI	340%	340%
Elite VII	380%	380%
Elite VIII	420%	420%
Elite IX	460%	460%
Elite X	500%	500%

Gold

Rank	Damage	Health
Normal	100%	100%
Elite I	150%	150%
Elite II	200%	200%
Elite III	300%	300%
Elite IV	350%	360%
Elite V	400%	400%
Elite VI	450%	450%
Elite VII	500%	500%
Elite VIII	550%	550%
Elite IX	600%	600%
Elite X	650%	650%

The only discrepancy is Elite IV. Whether this is an error is unknown.

Metal

Despite being a higher tier than gold, metal characters gain less stats from promotions. They also do not have access to Breakthrough, and take more copies to Elite (a small progress bar display this above the promote button on the card). Elite III is required to evolve them, gaining access to Dark Power.

Rank	Copies required	Cumulative	Damage	Health
Normal	1	1	100%	100%
Elite I	1	2	120%	120%
Elite II	2	4	150%	150%
Elite III	3	7	219%	219%
Elite IV	3	10	241%	241%
Elite V	4	14	270%	270%
Elite VI	5	19	308%	308%
Elite VII	6	25	357%	357%

At Elite VII, the multiplier would be slightly lower than Silver's Elite VII multiplier. However, for Metal characters, since higher promotions gain more stats than lower promotions per promotion, it can be extrapolated if EX exists, it would give a multiplier of around 600%.

Strategy

One would be tempted to max-promote every single character to get as high damage and health stats as possible. However, this is an extremely inefficient strategy, as doing so contributes to enemy stat-ramping in Survivor Mode and being sorted with stronger opponents in Online Battle, thus making these gamemodes significantly more difficult. The more efficient way to promote characters is to highly promote characters that are going to do most of the heavy work in dealing damage (the "carries") to the point where the next promotion would cause their health to exceed 90K, low-promote people who will shatter gears with the Claw of Horus (the "supports" or "utilities") to Elite III to IV depending on the character's base stats, and put most characters used to absorb damage (the "tanks") at Elite 0. Generally speaking, a team with balanced promotions is not desirable if efficiency is the goal, though there are exceptions; the Flashpoint team can have each character promoted to Elites IV-V due to each and every one of them contributing to damage dealt via Flashpoint Deathstroke's team assist passive. See these videos for more information.

Trivia

Receiving extra card of a maxed out character.

• Before Injustice 2.0, the maximum promotion a card could receive was 5, or "V".
• Before Update 2.13, the maximum promotion a card could receive was 7 (although this promotion level is still very common currently).
• Prior to update 2.13, hackers in Online Battles can be seen with cards at Elite X and level 99, although their stats are still capped at Elite VII level 50. This should be distinguished between characters who have been elited to EX through Breakthrough, as their stats would still be higher, and not capped at E7.

• If you maxed out an unlocked character before, and you received a copy of that character, the amount of extra cards will be listed in place of the promotion bar. However, if you receive a copy of a character that is maxed out, but not unlocked, the text; "Available in booster packs", or "Available in Multiplayer" would still be there despite having extra copies.