Unstable ISO-8 - July 18-24

kidicarus

Thugpatrol wrote:

squirrel1120 wrote:

Any tips on the goon only fights? Is it maybe worth it to bring baby-storm along just to keep shaking up the board every 5 red? without a villian making matches, it gets to be quite a drain on health if you aren't getting the colors you need...

My team for goon only fights that I've been using for a very long time is 1* Storm, CMags, and pretty much anyone who does damage. The third is usually a required character, whatever the super boosted character is, or since I maxed him out Black Panther. As soon as you get 5 red and 5 blue the match is pretty much over. CMags can mostly do this by himself, provided you have 5 blue covers for him, but having MStorm around to zap those meddlesome enviro tiles and battery it up with her green just makes it a wash. I like BP for a third because you can actually leverage his yellow strike tiles with MStorm around, and cleaning house with a Rage of the Panther or two is a good time.

I believe that using cmags in this way messes up your karma - ie your scaling. 1* storm is always awesome for board shakeup. Loki is awesome as well for getting rid of hard to reach tiles. Using those two, clear the board using storm's mistress first since loki's illusion doesn't work on environmental tiles and you should be all set. I've been using lazycap as my third since he's required and superboosted anyway and I've not been hit a single time by a goon countdown.

Unknown

kidicarus wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

squirrel1120 wrote:

Any tips on the goon only fights? Is it maybe worth it to bring baby-storm along just to keep shaking up the board every 5 red? without a villian making matches, it gets to be quite a drain on health if you aren't getting the colors you need...

My team for goon only fights that I've been using for a very long time is 1* Storm, CMags, and pretty much anyone who does damage. The third is usually a required character, whatever the super boosted character is, or since I maxed him out Black Panther. As soon as you get 5 red and 5 blue the match is pretty much over. CMags can mostly do this by himself, provided you have 5 blue covers for him, but having MStorm around to zap those meddlesome enviro tiles and battery it up with her green just makes it a wash. I like BP for a third because you can actually leverage his yellow strike tiles with MStorm around, and cleaning house with a Rage of the Panther or two is a good time.

I believe that using cmags in this way messes up your karma - ie your scaling. 1* storm is always awesome for board shakeup. Loki is awesome as well for getting rid of hard to reach tiles. Using those two, clear the board using storm's mistress first since loki's illusion doesn't work on environmental tiles and you should be all set. I've been using lazycap as my third since he's required and superboosted anyway and I've not been hit a single time by a goon countdown.

If you haven't been hit by any, it's not going to be any different than if you were using mags.

Unknown

Red Panda wrote:

Previous PVE grinder here, new to the ways of rubber banding success (which surprisingly worked so well in the Hunt for me)

Is it ideal to grind the valuable nodes a few times before the noon reset? Since it's not like sub with token/hero point rewards... Am I just repeating to get most of the 4 ISO/standard token/boost rewards while still available? Just wondering if I do a pass through at 11:30 since I'll be busy this morning

If your riding the rubber band it only really maters what you do in the last day or so. It not that the rubber band will also reset at the noon reset as it does when there are subs. So do them if you want the rewards else you can let them slide.

Unknown

Well it was a nice bait for the first round with the easy (enough) nodes. Scaling is through the roof, and I have lvl200+ double Thugs everywhere dropping 2k dmg pistols everywhere and every turn. My roster just got murdered in 1 clear of the new nodes.

Unknown

For the very high level nodes, aren't those the one with only 2 characters? There seems to be this assumption that 1 level 300 guy is exactly as tough as 3 level 100 guys built into this game, so anything with only 2 characters is going to have very high levels.

Ducky

The node with 2 Thugs in it is not nice at all. Lots of AP mixed with low cost and low CD timers = lots of health lost.

Unknown

j12601 wrote:

kidicarus wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

squirrel1120 wrote:

Any tips on the goon only fights? Is it maybe worth it to bring baby-storm along just to keep shaking up the board every 5 red? without a villian making matches, it gets to be quite a drain on health if you aren't getting the colors you need...

My team for goon only fights that I've been using for a very long time is 1* Storm, CMags, and pretty much anyone who does damage. The third is usually a required character, whatever the super boosted character is, or since I maxed him out Black Panther. As soon as you get 5 red and 5 blue the match is pretty much over. CMags can mostly do this by himself, provided you have 5 blue covers for him, but having MStorm around to zap those meddlesome enviro tiles and battery it up with her green just makes it a wash. I like BP for a third because you can actually leverage his yellow strike tiles with MStorm around, and cleaning house with a Rage of the Panther or two is a good time.

I believe that using cmags in this way messes up your karma - ie your scaling. 1* storm is always awesome for board shakeup. Loki is awesome as well for getting rid of hard to reach tiles. Using those two, clear the board using storm's mistress first since loki's illusion doesn't work on environmental tiles and you should be all set. I've been using lazycap as my third since he's required and superboosted anyway and I've not been hit a single time by a goon countdown.

If you haven't been hit by any, it's not going to be any different than if you were using mags.

I don't think the situation is quite that simple.

Nowadays, I don't believe the game particularly cares who you play with anymore, post true healing changes.

However, I do believe that the game still does check for semi-exploitive tactics. If a player is winning against an enemy roster of 40,000 health in only 4 total turns, the game is probably going to call foul and throw the player in the "penalty box" by generating obscene scaling. Reduce the net damage to a more mortal level of damage per turn, the game will not likely care if CMags is being used.

Unknown

I'm still using the assumption that the main factors for scaling are how much damage you take and how many nodes you complete. Just winning constantly seems to make your scaling go up more than even killing off your whole roster makes it go down. Makes me think scaling these days, at least what I've been seeing, is mostly community scaling. I used to use CMags for just about every battle when I was just a youngin' (I was fortunate enough to get him rolling as my first decent 3*), but lately I've been staying away from him for the most part anyway. I have a deep roster and I've been enjoying messing around with some oddball combos, because why not. But if you're having trouble with a node CMags is a nice "in case of emergency, break glass" option to have.

For this event I've been screwing around with Team Hulk: Hulk, She-Hulk, and Loki. Basically just rock the board as much as possible with SH's red (wish I had the fifth cover, oh well) and Hulk's green. Use Loki's purple if a countdown gets stuck someplace. Try to get enough for SH's blue before too many countdown tiles get going, use it as a panic button if things get out of hand. Yellow is a dud color, as is black for the most part, though you can use it to flip the enemy strike from SH's blue if you're really desperate. So far, pretty interactive and fun. Go Team Hulk (and Loki)!

FierceKiwi

Thugpatrol wrote:

I'm still using the assumption that the main factors for scaling are how much damage you take and how many nodes you complete. Just winning constantly seems to make your scaling go up more than even killing off your whole roster makes it go down. Makes me think scaling these days, at least what I've been seeing, is mostly community scaling. I used to use CMags for just about every battle when I was just a youngin' (I was fortunate enough to get him rolling as my first decent 3*), but lately I've been staying away from him for the most part anyway. I have a deep roster and I've been enjoying messing around with some oddball combos, because why not. But if you're having trouble with a node CMags is a nice "in case of emergency, break glass" option to have.

For this event I've been screwing around with Team Hulk: Hulk, She-Hulk, and Loki. Basically just rock the board as much as possible with SH's red (wish I had the fifth cover, oh well) and Hulk's green. Use Loki's purple if a countdown gets stuck someplace. Try to get enough for SH's blue before too many countdown tiles get going, use it as a panic button if things get out of hand. Yellow is a dud color, as is black for the most part, though you can use it to flip the enemy strike from SH's blue if you're really desperate. So far, pretty interactive and fun. Go Team Hulk (and Loki)!

Yeah there doesn't seem to be much personal scaling at all I've been grinding the last 4-5 PVEs pretty hard and abusing Mags but my levels are always roughly in line with what other people post.

Unknown

hhmm, i know it states new nodes will appear every day. But any idea when is the timing when they do so ? 24hrs after the events start ? I was asleep last night and when i woke up, the nodes changed already (with the rb effect i guess as i am seeing nodes as high scoring as 1k points)/

HairyDave

It's definitely community scaling.

Regardless of whether or not I bust out Mags, nodes are going crazy high.

Unknown

HairyDave wrote:

It's definitely community scaling.
Regardless of whether or not I bust out Mags, nodes are going crazy high.

Must be the large number of goon fights. It's much more likely to come out of them without much damage, and very possible to come out of them with none. With so many people taking so little damage the game is like, "Tinykitty this ****! Too easy! Make it harder!"

hamsingame

Anyone else feel like they're still in balance of power, but this time only the enemy team has been scaled to 270? :{

HairyDave

Thugpatrol wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

It's definitely community scaling.
Regardless of whether or not I bust out Mags, nodes are going crazy high.

Must be the large number of goon fights. It's much more likely to come out of them without much damage, and very possible to come out of them with none. With so many people taking so little damage the game is like, "Tinykitty this tinykitty! Too easy! Make it harder!"

That's probably got a lot to do with it but I don't think I made it of any of the Thug shooting galleries unscathed. They do a surprising amount of damage if you can't get to the CD tile(s).

Unknown

HairyDave wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

Must be the large number of goon fights. It's much more likely to come out of them without much damage, and very possible to come out of them with none. With so many people taking so little damage the game is like, "Tinykitty this tinykitty! Too easy! Make it harder!"

That's probably got a lot to do with it but I don't think I made it of any of the Thug shooting galleries unscathed. They do a surprising amount of damage if you can't get to the CD tile(s).

I like to bring in The Hulk for Maggia Thugs. Go ahead. Shoot The Hulk. See what happens.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

Must be the large number of goon fights. It's much more likely to come out of them without much damage, and very possible to come out of them with none. With so many people taking so little damage the game is like, "Tinykitty this tinykitty! Too easy! Make it harder!"

That's probably got a lot to do with it but I don't think I made it of any of the Thug shooting galleries unscathed. They do a surprising amount of damage if you can't get to the CD tile(s).

I like to bring in The Hulk for Maggia Thugs. Go ahead. Shoot The Hulk. See what happens.

I'll go one better.... I think what everyone is experiencing is what I believe to be Demiurge's "solution" to players using Daken/Patch to out-regen incoming damage.

At some point in the leveling scheme, goons are being granted free reign to drop unlimited CD tiles as soon as they generate enough AP to cast a new tile (with the villain restriction of only being able to cast a power once a turn). This is insane with goons that have very low CD tile costs. For example, on the Essentials node with two Thugs, each thug generates 2 Yellow AP. Pistol only costs 4 AP to cast a new tile, which means that a new CD tile can be cast onto the board every, single, turn.

What makes this even worse, is that this potentially means that the roles of goons and villains are reversed. Goons don't need to feed the villains. Villains can move the board and match tiles so that goons can generate new tiles even faster.

I just finished one board (Crossing Borders) where a single lowly Soldier had FOUR Assault Rifle tiles on the board simultaneously because Venom was picking up Green for him.

So, the solution to Patch/Daken appears to be "throw so much CD tile damage on the board simultaneously that it is impossible to out-regen that kind of incoming damage".

5 days left in this event? Yeah... this is going to be "fun". Would you look at that? Iso-8 Horders has scaled up to 208 just now....

NorthernPolarity

If rubberbanding is like what it was last time they did this event, its pretty much a waste to play anytime before the last 2-3 days of the tournament. Joining a bracket before then just puts you in a bracket of grinders and forces you to play more and scale more when you could just be doing minimal work for your covers.

kidicarus

Lyrian wrote:

j12601 wrote:

If you haven't been hit by any, it's not going to be any different than if you were using mags.

I don't think the situation is quite that simple.

Nowadays, I don't believe the game particularly cares who you play with anymore, post true healing changes.

However, I do believe that the game still does check for semi-exploitive tactics. If a player is winning against an enemy roster of 40,000 health in only 4 total turns, the game is probably going to call foul and throw the player in the "penalty box" by generating obscene scaling. Reduce the net damage to a more mortal level of damage per turn, the game will not likely care if CMags is being used.

That's exactly my reasoning - it's not so much the damage taken but also the number of turns taken by the AI (this would also account for perma stun from spidey). Using lazycap as a damage dealer, I'm happy to let countdowns run down which hopefully effects my overall performance at the meta level.

HairyDave

NorthernPolarity wrote:

If rubberbanding is like what it was last time they did this event, its pretty much a waste to play anytime before the last 2-3 days of the tournament. Joining a bracket before then just puts you in a bracket of grinders and forces you to play more and scale more when you could just be doing minimal work for your covers.

And that's exactly what I would have done but I want to have a decent shot of picking up the Steve covers from the progression rewards so I jumped in earlier than I might have normally.

My ISO-8 Hoarders is ONLY up to 195 now...

Unknown

Keep in mind goon only missions always had extremely high base level to make up for the fact that these guys can't move the board at all. Sure you can argue rapid machine gunning Pistols more than makes up for the ability to move the board but D3 clearly doesn't agree there.

I got about 50% of the point of the overall bracket leader by doing every mission once so it's the standard 'weak rubberband' that's been in effect for almost all recent events. If this is like the last time it was ran I should've gotten at least 80% of the overall leader. Depending on how the overall leader finishes you might have to do more than once per day for the progression prizes.