Awesome update! I've been playing a lot, too (only game I could play while on vacation for the past week and a half), and I finally got Cass, so Steph and Cass are now battle buddies (there was a Batman Day sale of character shards using gold gems, so I also got Damian and Tim, which is fun, though I have to admit they aren't as fun as Steph and Cass). And also Helena. I wish I could get a healer who was as good as them - Wonder Woman isn't bad, but she only removes negatives, she doesn't actually heal. Maybe I should try to upgrade Star Sapphire - Zatanna is fun, but she's too squishy at the higher levels.
Huh - I never got the sideways kick for Steph's third power.
The tips I've learned, at least using Steph as my "leader" in every possible combat - upgrade her to the max, with gear, power upgrades, and levels - and always use the shield power as often as you can.
If you hold your finger on a character while in combat, you can see what buffs and debuffs are on them, and for how many turns - but I haven't quite figured out where the details of the buffs and debuffs are.
The blue line above the health is shields - they are SUPER useful. They function as extra health that can be replenished without a healer.
The purple area on a health meter is called "overheal" - it's basically an ability that some characters have to give even more extra health to a character who is already as max health.
I finally got Steph's upgraded costume, but it took a ton of "grinding" - I purchased her 8000 gold gem pack, which got me up to 5 stars, and then I did all of the Character Event missions I could win (not a whole lot, because after about 6 to 10 missions, the villains get too hard unless you're already legendary on all available characters, and I am super not). But every day, I would replay (using the lightning autoplay options) every mission with shards of Steph (which eats up your energy for normal and heroic campaign missions, sadly, but if you want to level Steph up, is essential, as she doesn't currently have any Heroic missions to farm in the campaign yet). (Farming, by the way, is where you just play the same level over and over to get shards of a character to level them up). Now I have Steph at one purple star (which is the 6th star available - and when you get to 10 stars, or 5 purple stars, you apparently get to level her up three more times through something called "Rebirth", but that's a long way off for me
). I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get the second purple star by the end of this month, though, which will be fun!