HP and moving up to a 3* team

Unknown

While I haven't been playing since day 1, I'm not far off, must be about 2 months now. However this is my first time posting here so apologies if this has been covered already.

I've been ranking top 10, if not top 1-5, in almost every event since I started playing (bar lightning rounds obviously) and felt like I could hold my own against almost anyone. In the last week or two though it seems like a lot of players who've been here since the beginning have moved on to another level and there's a lot of scary 3* Raggy teams out there now and I'm having to hit skip more and more often. Feel like I've plateaued and I'm no longer keeping the pace with the big boys. My team is a maxed Thor, lvl 79 model 40 IM (only boosted this high coz of his usefulness in past events) and lvl 76 Grey Widow (yeah, she's squishy but I love her purple ability).

By now I have at least 1 of every cover except for Ragnarok (and Invisible Woman but that's no biggie) and I'm sitting on 2k+ HP. So I guess I have 2 questions. 1.) Where should I be spending my HP? My roster is 26/26 but as I've only 2 characters left to recruit (suppose 3 when Punisher hits), I don't need any more cover space urgently. Should I use the HP on direct power upgrades or are there any cover packs worth investing in, different events sometimes have interesting ones (obviously not the Heroic tokens, or as is more accurate in my experience, Modern Hawkeye tokens)?

2.) Any suggestions for acquiring more 3* covers? I have only the 1 cover for Spidey, Mags & the Hood and that big Ragnarok-shaped hole in my roster makes me sad Obviously the lightning rounds would be good for Raggy but feel like I've missed the boat there already as my team isn't strong enough to rank in a Raggy lightning round (competition is fierce there man). Where have most of the top players gotten their 3*s from, lightning rounds, event rewards or just lucky tokens? My Grey Widow for instance is 2/2/5 and nearly all of those covers came from event rewards, same with Model 40 IM.

Cheers for any advice. Please Santa, all I want for Christmas is some Ragnarok covers!

Unknown

It sounds like your problem is that you have been doing too well consistently, if you continue to place top 10 in most tournaments your rating is going to start putting you up against a lot of scary 3* teams, and you will then find it hard to win the covers you need to progress. Next time the lightning rounds are up I would suggest taking part in as many as possible, get to around 100 points for some ISO and then switch out to your 3 lowest characters for the next match and hit retreat, then yield to the opponent. That weak team will now be your defending team and you will finish very low in the rankings, a few of these and you will find when you next compete in a tournament for real you should be fighting teams more around your teams strength. I'd save your HP for now until you get some more Spiderman, Rag or Punisher tokens.

Unknown

Good shout. As I said, it's only the last week or so I've felt I needed help so have been checking the forum a good bit. Only learned about the rubber banding a few days ago and just learned how to "tank" today. Bring on the next lightning rounds!

Unknown

I kinda wish tanking didn't become such a widespread tactic.

Unknown

Anytime you have competition, there is going to be lots of people 'working the system' to get advantages. It's unavoidable.

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I'm kind of in the same boat as you OP, but I have a Doom that is getting beefy (2b/5blk). This allows me to compete better in Lightning rounds which lets me win Diabolical tokens. So, maybe if you can, focus on one of the 3 star villains (use your HP to buy specific colors to max thier levels) and working on getting him to higher levels.

I would not spend any more on cover slots. You should be at a point where you can start selling off characters like Bagman, Juggs, etc etc.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

I kinda wish tanking didn't become such a widespread tactic.

As per IceIX, it appears to only be widespread on the board, which means <1% of the player base.

But I continue to wonder if it's a larger portion of a particular segment of the player base (namely, the repeat tourney winners). I don't expect IceIX to be able to tell us, simply because the game database and the board database are completely independent and they cannot correlate names between the two in many cases (looking at you ihearthawthats, with your different game name! )

To OP -- I agree with Nick Fury's general assessment. Save your HP for now. I disagree w/ Toxicadm's suggestion to ever sell a character. Just ask how many people here have been bitten by doing that when something like the 1* or DA tournament appeared and they had no characters to use. You're already at the point where you're not scraping up HP to buy a cover slot -- keeping every single character shouldn't be an issue anymore.

Unknown

What exactly are those people missing if they didn't have Dark Avengers? If you don't have a high level Rag, it's very unlikely you're going to get the best prizes.

What was the main prizes of 1* tournament? I forget, but I think it was just Captain America covers.


Also, you're talking about events that happen once every 2 months (or maybe longer). Additional covers on 3* characters are something you will use every day.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

What exactly are those people missing if they didn't have Dark Avengers?

6 Spiderman covers. Or IW (which is wanted by some for the Hunt or just to have).

Toxicadam wrote:

If you don't have a high level Rag, it's very unlikely you're going to get the best prizes.

If you read up the thread you'll see people who placed well without a Rag. Because of how matchmaking works it's quite possible.

Toxicadam wrote:

What was the main prizes of 1* tournament? I forget, but I think it was 4 star Wolverine (zzz) and Captain America covers.

Captain America both times; the first time was the introduction of the character so it was highly prized.

But even if you don't want the top prizes if you don't have the characters then you cannot get any progression rewards, which is pretty much free ISO and HP.

Unknown

You can still be selective in who you choose to sell and not hurt yourself in those minor tournaments. You can sell off Yelena, Bagman, Classic Hawkeye and Juggs (or IM35 or Moonstone) and still be competitive in those tournaments.


If you already have 20+ slots, that represents about 1300 HP in savings. Possibily even more.

If you read up the thread you'll see people who placed well without a Rag. Because of how matchmaking works it's quite possible.

I'm sure anecdotally there are a smattering of people who got lucky, but the odds are heavily against you in competing for those Spidey covers.

Does that IW cover come with 500 HP? Because if not, that 'prize' is going to set you back a few hundred HP just for the luxury of staring at her beautiful face every day.

Unknown

Zathrus wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

I kinda wish tanking didn't become such a widespread tactic.

As per IceIX, it appears to only be widespread on the board, which means <1% of the player base.

That's where it matters most though. I don't care if the rank 25+ players tank, they'll still prolly be just as beatable. It's the top 25 players fighting for the top 25 prize that is concerning.

That and the late joiner tactic as well. Just in the other thread, Ladder and Polkio don't need to join late really (IMO), but they said they did. They can already muscle people around with their 141 heroes, so now this just overwhelms those with weaker heroes that "needed" to utilize these tactics to even win at all.

All is fair in war, but now we gotta just find something new to exploit. Maybe we'll even keep it under wraps this time.

I think the only reason no one talked about the free healing exploit was because that was blatantly cheating. However, IMO tanking and bracket entry tactics are far more effective, even if they've become accepted as the norm.

Unknown

Start with the the Loki and Doom rounds and see if you can make some headway there. Shoot for Diabolical tokens or better.

Your team is also strong enough to do most if not all of the hunt missions. You should be shooting for top 400 in the hunt events for the heroic tokens. You've got a shot at getting Spidy covers there (and Widow if you need more of those).

Unknown

IceIX already said he doesn't care about tanking and "bracket entry tactics" is completely legit

Unknown

DumDumDugn wrote:

IceIX already said he doesn't care about tanking and "bracket entry tactics" is completely legit

That was my point. They are legit and accepted, while free healing is not. But if you ask me which is worse for the game, it wouldn't be the latter despite being taboo.

I'm not asking anyone to stop (I certainly won't), but ideally a system should be in place that doesn't require such manipulation.

I'm ashamed to admit that I abused the free healing exploit, but it was there and you can kinda tell it really wasn't such a secret. Am I sad that it's gone? No, just the opposite. I'm glad the system is now more fair and less vulnerable to such exploits.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

DumDumDugn wrote:

IceIX already said he doesn't care about tanking and "bracket entry tactics" is completely legit

That was my point. They are legit and accepted, while free healing is not. But if you ask me which is worse for the game, it wouldn't be the latter despite being taboo.

I'm not asking anyone to stop (I certainly won't), but ideally a system should be in place that doesn't require such manipulation.

The tanking needs to go i agree, but what exactly is wrong with "bracket entry tactics"?

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

I'm not asking anyone to stop (I certainly won't), but ideally a system should be in place that doesn't require such manipulation.

Several of us have expressed that we hope it leads to an improved algorithm.

The underlying issue is that the current system overly penalizes you for being good at the start of a tournament. It would be like having season openers for <insert favorite sport> that feature the top 2 teams from the previous season. Not a great analogy, but I think you get what I mean.

Spoit

Zathrus wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

I'm not asking anyone to stop (I certainly won't), but ideally a system should be in place that doesn't require such manipulation.

Several of us have expressed that we hope it leads to an improved algorithm.

The underlying issue is that the current system overly penalizes you for being good at the start of a tournament. It would be like having season openers for <insert favorite sport> that feature the top 2 teams from the previous season. Not a great analogy, but I think you get what I mean.

Yeah, it's entirely possible to score too well 'above your weight class' like the OP, and then have absolutely no chance against the people your matched up against

OnesOwnGrief

I ran mainly a 50ish Daken, 20ish Moonstone, and a low level Bullseye first Dark Avengers tourney and was #1 for a while and yielded to #2. I'm currently #1 again after joining yesterday and spending the last couple of hours shooting from #55 to #1.

In between tournaments I went back to The Hunt to gain some quick ISO and leveled Daken and Moonstone some more. Currently replaced Bullseye with a very low level Rags just because. Considering each bracket is 200, its quite possible to win at these. Doom's tournament though, I'm so screwed with those high level IM40 and Thor teams.

Unknown

Thanks for the feedback folks. Still a little confused on the late entry tactic though. It seems all the top players now are joining tourneys on the last day and getting really easy groups. But if this is the case, surely the last-day brackets are made up of a disproportionate number of high-level players? To use an analogy, kinda like advertising a super-hot ladies night in some club where it sounds like there'll be at least 3 girls to every one guy but then you get there and it's nothing but dudes If all the top players are using the late entry tactic, what stops them all being matched together on the last day?
So there's a Doom event on now, when would be the ideal time to enter, last 24 hours, 12 hours? Even if this is the case, it's so hard not to enter a new event when it starts, enjoy the game too much!

OnesOwnGrief

I'm of the mind that some top players may enter later than usual if they have no interest in the actual rewards. I jump in fairly early to lock in whoever my 200 will be. Currently my leaderboards is pretty low then a huge spike near the top. I can't honestly compete though with all the Thor's and IM40's. I just got my second IM40 just yesterday.