Venom Heroic - Aug 29 - Sep 1

dkffiv

Leugenesmiff wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

Barely maintained first place with a tremendous amount of effort, f this style PvE. In the last 2 PvEs I was able to play lightly the last few days due to the cushion I had built up.

61521 with Soundwave at 61056 in second.

Man, I wish I'd have been in this bracket. I'd have been 1st instead of 16th.

I built up enough of a lead that I just ignored the right half of the map the final push. Think I ended up with 1-2 clears on everything, 5x clear on the first 5 and 2-3 clear on the essentials.

Unknown

Flat-out ridiculousness. Was as high as 28th, and as low as 510th. I'll take a 97th place in my bracket with 57,466, and the alliance at 41st. (1,109,712)

IReallyHatePVP

This was an important event for two reasons:

1) My previous POLL just got its first result-on Sept. 1!

2) Two very important lessons were learned:
a. Top PVP progression rewards are now unbeliveably achievable.
b. Due to lesson a, and due to the all importance of global rubberbanding, no-one should be playing untill the last 15 to 20 percent of any given PvE. This lesson is magnified in this instance of a total lack of sub-events.

Also, must instruct my sis/alliance mate to bulid a level 5 Yelena, because i found a solution to any node with an out of control Tattken/DaKitten & Bullseye: Payback Mission TU plus five(5) Critical Tile boosts equals one (or TWO!) dead opponents.

rbdragon

I know no one really wants to hear another person complain about rubberbanding - it's been done to death, but as I've never hated this game more than I do right now, I just had to say something...

First off, why is rubberbanding a thing anyway? It's like telling the slower runners at a track event that due to the fact that they can't keep up, you can have a head start. I know it's a little backwards, but you know what I mean.

Why would any game reward those players who's method of play is to NOT play the game for most of an event? That just completely defies logic...

Why would they make a 3 1/2 day event with only 13 nodes that you repeat endlessly for almost no reward....oh wait, you're not supposed to play the first 3 days, I forgot for a second...nevermind...

The last PvE sucked because it was 9+ days and it was a total grindfest - but it was FAIR. It rewarded players who...PLAYED!

I'm not angry because of where I placed based on the reward - I ended up 38th...definitely respectable. What I am angry about is the fact that I was near the top after each refresh I did throughout the entire event, and due to a slow laggy phone, I probably left some points on the board at the end. But I still played for the last 2 hours and was still only able to climb back up to 38th.

I had the top progression reward before day 2 was over. Each node was worth 20 ISO after the first 36 hours. It began to feel so pointless that I caught myself playing less and less as it went, going from 1st to 4th to 9th to 14th by the last time I did a full refresh....what was my motivation? Beast? Sure - a new character is very cool, but I'm (fairly) sure the Doom PvP will give Beast covers as well before his PvP, so there's opportunity to get them again.

TL;DR version - enough with the stupidity that is rubberbanding and let players who play have the advantage over those who don't.

Unknown

Well, I ended up #11 and my points were tied with guy at rank 10. Now that sucks.

HairyDave

And while we're having a moan, get rid of the damn 2.5 hour refresh cycle! It was a tinykitty terrible idea when it was implemented and it hasn't gotten any better. At least when everything was on a 12 hour cycle you could go and do other things like work, sleep, have a life...

Unknown

rbdragon wrote:

TL;DR version - enough with the stupidity that is rubberbanding and let players who play have the advantage over those who don't.

The earlier heroic events are poorly designed and reflects the lack of experience D3 had when they made this. It's not clear to me why they think everyone should have the opportunity to see how horrible the earlier PvE events are, but that's what it is. Events like Iso8 Brotherhood are more modern and reflect the lessons they incorporated from the earlier mistakes.

But even on a poorly designed event like this, manuevering for position still matters. I made some criticla mistake and went into the final 2 hours with only 2 health packs, and was only able to beat the right side nodes (highest point that aren't essential) twice in the last 2 hours (as in I beat only 2 nodes total, not every node twice!), but thanks to my superior positioning (aka grinding) I was able to still come in at #2. If rubberbanding makes playing irrelevent, that would not have been possible because I had a really bad final cycle and initially I wasn't even sure that was enough for top 10, but it turned out grinding at the right time still matters, even on an event as badly designed as this.

Unknown

I will sum up my PvE :

Cleared each node every 2.5 hours except when I was sleeping. I wanted to know if it would make a significant difference in the end.

Was placed in the Top 20 most of the event.

2 hours before the end, I was even 1st. Grinded crazily in the last 40 minutes (3K points).

Ended being Top 15 missing 190 points out of 60 000 to be Top 10.

Better : an alliance mate made a test. He joined in the last hours of the event.

1st in this bracket had 35000 points and only played a few hours (and got all progression rewards).

NEVER AGAIN....

Unknown

So TL;DR: If there are subs, join at least half way through the time. If there are no subs, join with 2 hours left on the clock. Got it.

Unknown

Someone in our alliance tried joining the last hour but there was already guys with 50K point in that bracket, so there's definitely a risk too.

NorthernPolarity

arktos1971 wrote:

I will sum up my PvE :

Cleared each node every 2.5 hours except when I was sleeping. I wanted to know if it would make a significant difference in the end.

Was placed in the Top 20 most of the event.

2 hours before the end, I was even 1st. Grinded crazily in the last 40 minutes (3K points).

Ended being Top 15 missing 190 points out of 60 000 to be Top 10.

Better : an alliance mate made a test. He joined in the last hours of the event.

1st in this bracket had 35000 points and only played a few hours (and got all progression rewards).
w
NEVER AGAIN....

Sorry for the loss. With this strategy, you would have been guaranteed first in any event except this one in particular. The problem was that this heroic event was that rubberbanding was a huge factor spread out over 3 days, compared to the 1 day subs that we saw in the previous few events. Since rubberbanding is a big factor, grinding every 2.5 hours is meaningless because any lead you had from doing so at the end of it was gone while you slept those 8 hours and other people caught up. The most important thing for these kind of long events involving rubberbanding is how consistent you can be with the 2.5 hour refreshes on the 12-16 hours leading up to the end of the event, and how well you can grind the last refresh cycle. The total amount of points is also completely arbitrary since the first 56000 points dont even matter due to rubberbanding, so I don't get why you're complaining about the numbers.

Try starting your final refresh 2 hours before the end by grinding all of the easy nodes down to 1 first, and then doing the essentials down to 1 ~1 hour before the end, saving the hard nodes for the very last if you need it: that's been my strategy and it seems to be working. 40 minutes before the end isn't enough nowadays if you want to guarantee top 10, since thats what most people do and they end up underestimating how much time it takes to for clearing.

NorthernPolarity

ark123 wrote:

So TL;DR: If there are subs, join at least half way through the time. If there are no subs, join with 2 hours left on the clock. Got it.

Joining 2 hours left on the clock is really risky since you might get into an old bracket where the leader has a refresh up on you: its much safer to join ~1-2 days before the end of the event so you have time to rubber yourself into the top 10 and outgrind everyone on the last day with your super secret forum tech.

Unknown

Sumilea wrote:

So I went from a low of 998 to finish 2nd going to take another event like this to see if I can climb from lower to higher. On second thoughts maybe not.

I've been meaning to tell you. You should be the pve MVP for everyone alliance and forumite. No one has helped me get better at pve's or provided pve scoring info as much as you.

I said "as much" I do recognize there are still others that make significant contributions as well (or maybe more, this is just my opinion after all).

I appreciate all of your assistance.

Unknown

Stopped play 3 hours before the finish as I had to work and was in the top ten. Came back after the end of the event for a top 200 finish.
Seriously this nonsense needs to be fixed. In future if I see a pve finishing at a time that I can't play on I won't bother playing.
You simply have to be playing right up to the last minute to have a shot at a decent placing.

OnesOwnGrief

This was a PvE I should have waited until the final say to enter. Despite my power outage today, I still managed to get 2 covers. Guess I'll snag the one I missed during PvP Rewards and maybe a progression on next PvE.

Bowgentle

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Try starting your final refresh 2 hours before the end by grinding all of the easy nodes down to 1 first, and then doing the essentials down to 1 ~1 hour before the end, saving the hard nodes for the very last if you need it: that's been my strategy and it seems to be working. 40 minutes before the end isn't enough nowadays if you want to guarantee top 10, since thats what most people do and they end up underestimating how much time it takes to for clearing.

Starting the final refresh 2 hours before the end means 3am/4am for Euros like Arktos. So that strategy only works for you guys in the one true time zone(TM) of Murica.
Those old PVEs before subs are especially bad for us.

Myself, started with about 11 hours to go, did 2 clears before bed and then what I could in the last hour, sacrificing one hour of sleep, as usual.
Finished 44th, and wished there was a meaningful distinction between t50 and t150. T50 should get two covers instead of one.

Unknown

kerravon wrote:

Stopped play 3 hours before the finish as I had to work and was in the top ten. Came back after the end of the event for a top 200 finish.
Seriously this nonsense needs to be fixed. In future if I see a pve finishing at a time that I can't play on I won't bother playing.
You simply have to be playing right up to the last minute to have a shot at a decent placing.

i can share the frustration but don't get too discouraged as this type of 'no sub' PVE events are not too common.

like ISO brotherhood (last PVE event) if you managed to do well in all the subs over the week you can afford to not play at all the last day and still come in top 10 easily.

NorthernPolarity

Bowgentle wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Try starting your final refresh 2 hours before the end by grinding all of the easy nodes down to 1 first, and then doing the essentials down to 1 ~1 hour before the end, saving the hard nodes for the very last if you need it: that's been my strategy and it seems to be working. 40 minutes before the end isn't enough nowadays if you want to guarantee top 10, since thats what most people do and they end up underestimating how much time it takes to for clearing.

Starting the final refresh 2 hours before the end means 3am/4am for Euros like Arktos. So that strategy only works for you guys in the one true time zone(TM) of Murica.
Those old PVEs before subs are especially bad for us.

Myself, started with about 11 hours to go, did 2 clears before bed and then what I could in the last hour, sacrificing one hour of sleep, as usual.
Finished 44th, and wished there was a meaningful distinction between t50 and t150. T50 should get two covers instead of one.

Ah, I was unaware. My apologies and condolences then: being in EU sounds like a nightmare when it comes to playing MPQ. Getting into the top 10 must be impossible without sacrificing all your sleep.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

Someone in our alliance tried joining the last hour but there was already guys with 50K point in that bracket, so there's definitely a risk too.

That could have entirely been RBing rather than sharding, especially if they got a refresh or two in

Unknown

Too bad I had a 7 hour drive up north from SoCal to NorCal for my dad's bday. Managed to end 15th though, grinded the hell out of what I could at the end. That missing 7 hours did me in. Oh well, 2 covers still good. This event sucked though. If I ever see another ISO 20 prize, it will be too soon. lol