"The Gauntlet" is wonderful

Ryz-aus

Phantron wrote:

There isn't some kind of strategy to beat the 395s. On the highest scaling (270 on roster) you run into 395 by the time you hit Juggernaut/MBW/IM35. Star Spangled Avenger does about 1500 damage per turn factoring in recycle time and it'd take you 20 turns to kill Juggernaut, which is an awful long time. Headbutt will do 9975 damage on this level, more than enough to kill anybody through protect tile in any realistic situation since you should've already taken some damage from match damage immediately and their average tile damage is around 200 (think it's 225/200/175 at that level). Just because you beat them once doesn't mean you figured out something because if you go back again you might find you have The Hood dropped on turn 3 from a cascade or you take an AP consuming move on turn 10 on Captain or whatever.

Maybe I should take up the lotto then, because my "not a strategy" got me through the whole thing with maybe 2 losses overall. Or maybe my overall scaling is much easier, because my x-force is only level 225.

I went back to that node to see what's going on - it's more difficult because you can't use im40, but goes faster because you bring along x-force instead - this is vs. 395s. I did get hit by a cascade, feeding a couple of unstoppable crashes and a headbutt so I took more damage than the first time through. Team up that was used was a 166 call the storm, accessible to everyone.

Unknown

I'm finding it extremely tough, which is probably good, but I do have one gripe.

In the other PvE games, it was possible to get a high score without having the Essential covers. I've just finished Heroes Gauntlet and wouldn't have been able to if I didn't already have Black Panther and Punisher in my roster. That's not fair to people who are starting out. I have no idea whether it's worth me putting time into going after Psylocke because she might be an Essential in the Finale gauntlet.

Or am I missing something? Do the Essential teamups change to match your roster?

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

I know I'm in the minority, but I just don't see what's so great about the event. It seems like you need to boost up and bring team ups to the majority of the battles just to stand a chance. I don't really see the fun in having a downed team more than 50% of the time.

It probably depends on where you're at. I've only used team-ups two or three times (and replaced them with better team-ups), and no boosts, and I've cleared everything but the last one and the last three essentials. This is more "challenging" hard than "have to grind like a madman" hard, which I find a lot more fun. It's also friendly to my schedule; I do a few missions every so often, and don't have to stay up late or anything to get what I want. I've already gotten two 3* covers, might get another, as well as a bunch of tokens, some ISO, and a bit of HP, without having to stay up late or get a single 20 ISO reward. And while the missions are hard, they're static - if I can't beat it, it won't be 50 levels higher the next morning.

I've gotten downed a handful of times, but only on a few missions, and it hasn't been the problem it is in normal PVE, where you might miss a refresh because of it. And I'm liable to finish up this evening, get a bit more ISO, and a sense of pride, and get to bed on time.

I'm up to simulation 22 with Level 170 Hulk, Hawkeye and MN Mags & essential 08 with level 150 Lazy Thor, 1* Black Widow and a Goon Lieutenant.



My top characters are
Maxed Punisher and Black Widow GS
154 Spidey
145 XForce Wolvie
142 Magneto
Various other 3 stars in level 100s

If I bring buffed storm and/or MN Mags they're wiped out after a few turns.

PuceMoose

I'm glad that they're introducing new tournament styles, but I do dearly miss the dialog and story. Deadpool vs. MPQ was a favorite of mine from the (generally) amusing writing, and I wanted to play every node to hear the new dialog, even if I didn't place high enough to win one of the top-tier rewards. I would have had more incentive to work through the challenging nodes if there were some amusing banter to look forward to. Then again, it's the *first* of its kind for MPQ, so as long as this doesn't replace other modes I'm happy to see some new ideas. It's also nice not seeing this: 20 over and over.

over_clocked

DrUnpleasant wrote:

locked wrote:

You got both Hood and Shieldbro and still think Shieldbro takes too long? Not cool, man, not cool. He might take a little longer than Sentry-bombing, but he also plays more strategically and safely.

19 yellow is still a hell of a lot of AP to generate even with Hood stealing what he can. Blue is OK at 12 ap but doesn't absorb much damage if the enemy gets off a power and if unlucky enough to get destroyed it's virtually game over. Even in a best case scerario you're probably looking at getting out with damage you need to heal... so why not just Sentry Bomb?

*EDIT* tried node 40 (lv340 opponents) with Shieldbro and Hood - got completely destroyed before he got close to useful amounts of Yellow / Blue.

Excuse me? You don't need to collect yellow, trying to protect yourself against lvl 300+ abilities passively is a silly idea. Offense is your defense, target red and black! Blue is an afterthought and should be used to stun the selected opponents when they are ready to use an ability. Yellow, if you do get it passively via Hood or thanks to rare matches, should be used by Hood to charge more red/blue/black for Intimidation. Cap's yellow sucks, same as every other overpriced pure protection ability.
My main players (XF/cMags), I needed for PvP, so I just cleared a couple of lvl 300+ nodes with Shieldbro and Hood. When you target red as is right and proper, and fling 5-7 shields, it's a wrap-up.

over_clocked

Proof that LC/Hood can take on teams ten times their size below (picture-heavy).
Preface:
level 395 Juggernaut - 31920 health; 9975/4988 Headbutt.
level 395 IM 35 - 19950 health; 6983 Repulsor Blast; 2394 Armored Assault.
level 395 mBW - 13965 health.
Match damage for all 3: 225/200/175. Full rainbow match damage.

I literally only took HT to dump green in a way that doesn't disrupt the board and isn't OP like Punisher/Sentry/LT/X-Force. He also incidentally tanked red for LC and black for my damaged Hood, but HT as a tank is not very viable, of course. I did not use HT red/black at all.
Took the readily available Polarity Shift TUp instead of some more OP stuff, figured I would need blue for stuns but my focus would have been on red as is proper.



Of course the starting board had few scattered reds but plenty of yellow/blue, so I had to take what I could, and when Juggs acquired 6 red, I had nothing but Twin Pistols and a single 2-turn Peacemaker to save my day:





I figured that I would need more blues for Peacemaker, and going after scarce red at this stage was too risky. Red I siphoned off them anyway when the board started to have more reds, still scattered, but now my Hood could benefit from that, and they could not.



Despite Juggs making me nervous with Crash (Crash is very dangerous to special tiles like Cap's, and is also able of charging all sorts of AP), and later mBW acquiring enough purple for Recon, I managed to stunlock all three the best I could, only letting IM 35 get off Armored Assault twice which would kill HT normally but failed to do so thanks to Peacemaker's protect tiles. You will notice there are no enemy protect tiles by the end, either, and IM 35 used his ability twice. After Juggs was downed, stunlocking 2 opponents was a piece of cake:





So while the game did not begin the way I would like, it went absolutely normally for LC/Hood games and LC proved himself a strategist, as usual. HT's green dump helped a lot but I could also take 2* Thor or something to dump green in a non-OP way. Not a single enemy ability was used besides 2x Armored Assault.

Unknown

Ryz-aus wrote:

Phantron wrote:

There isn't some kind of strategy to beat the 395s. On the highest scaling (270 on roster) you run into 395 by the time you hit Juggernaut/MBW/IM35. Star Spangled Avenger does about 1500 damage per turn factoring in recycle time and it'd take you 20 turns to kill Juggernaut, which is an awful long time. Headbutt will do 9975 damage on this level, more than enough to kill anybody through protect tile in any realistic situation since you should've already taken some damage from match damage immediately and their average tile damage is around 200 (think it's 225/200/175 at that level). Just because you beat them once doesn't mean you figured out something because if you go back again you might find you have The Hood dropped on turn 3 from a cascade or you take an AP consuming move on turn 10 on Captain or whatever.

Maybe I should take up the lotto then, because my "not a strategy" got me through the whole thing with maybe 2 losses overall. Or maybe my overall scaling is much easier, because my x-force is only level 225.

I went back to that node to see what's going on - it's more difficult because you can't use im40, but goes faster because you bring along x-force instead - this is vs. 395s. I did get hit by a cascade, feeding a couple of unstoppable crashes and a headbutt so I took more damage than the first time through. Team up that was used was a 166 call the storm, accessible to everyone.

Spare me the fancy strategy talk. I beat that node while barely getting touched but I'm not going to pretend that has anything to do with my strategy as opposed to being thankful for a good board. I can't believe you used the plural for Unstoppable Crash which implies at least 2 but didn't think you were exceptionally lucky on a move that's been wiping people out at much lower level since Heroic Events existed. An Unstoppable Crash will average about 5000 damage on a modest outcome (2K average damage, 300-600 per chain, 2000 damage if the result gives at least a match 4) before even counting any additional moves that are enabled by the Unstoppable Crash. It would not surprise me at all if everyone at full health dies one turn after a level 395 Unstoppable Crash is used and you're saying as if no special luck is required?

atomzed

locked wrote:

DrUnpleasant wrote:

locked wrote:

You got both Hood and Shieldbro and still think Shieldbro takes too long? Not cool, man, not cool. He might take a little longer than Sentry-bombing, but he also plays more strategically and safely.

19 yellow is still a hell of a lot of AP to generate even with Hood stealing what he can. Blue is OK at 12 ap but doesn't absorb much damage if the enemy gets off a power and if unlucky enough to get destroyed it's virtually game over. Even in a best case scerario you're probably looking at getting out with damage you need to heal... so why not just Sentry Bomb?

*EDIT* tried node 40 (lv340 opponents) with Shieldbro and Hood - got completely destroyed before he got close to useful amounts of Yellow / Blue.

Excuse me? You don't need to collect yellow, trying to protect yourself against lvl 300+ abilities passively is a silly idea. Offense is your defense, target red and black! Blue is an afterthought and should be used to stun the selected opponents when they are ready to use an ability. Yellow, if you do get it passively via Hood or thanks to rare matches, should be used by Hood to charge more red/blue/black for Intimidation. Cap's yellow sucks, same as every other overpriced pure protection ability.
My main players (XF/cMags), I needed for PvP, so I just cleared a couple of lvl 300+ nodes with Shieldbro and Hood. When you target red as is right and proper, and fling 5-7 shields, it's a wrap-up.

^What she says.

My go-to team in the gauntlet is lvl 210 xforce, 166 shieldbro, and 128 hood. All are appropriate covered.

Priority is always green and black. Xforce is the main damage dealer. But shieldbro and hood are the ones that get the job done. As the enemies level are so high, the games inevitably drag on longer than usual. Hood shines because he steal so many AP. Then shieldbro comes in because he has use for red and blue, which can clear CD tiles.

Don't underestimate blue. The stun can delay a potential COTS and Rage of panther. And that 2 turns can allow hood to steal those ap away, averting team dmg!

Shieldbro and hood are really kings of pve among my roster.

Unknown

My two cents. I have completed all of the nodes except for the last one. I lost quite a few times, it definitely wasn't easy. I didn't use any boosts, but did use all of my high power TUs I earned on the way. Here are some pics of the last node and my roster so people can compare scaling and difficulty. I understand the match damage problem that Phantron speaks of, but I cant speak to it since I do not have any heroes over 166. I just want to say I thought the event was manageable and fun for someone in my situation.

EDIT - Beat the last node with 1.5 hours left in the event (if you don't count the one day extension they added). Used LCap, PunPun, and Hood. I hope they do another one soon.

Oldboy

The Gauntlet is wonderful because it's made me realise i can beat some of the 3* players in pvp. Now i'm bloodthirsty And yes i retaliated against some who were above me and used me to climb and i gained more points when i won than i lost from them attacking me.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

And while the missions are hard, they're static - if I can't beat it, it won't be 50 levels higher the next morning.

Dunno about you but my nodes have jumped 20 levels in a day without me doing anything (cept the occasional wiping of my team on a node without winning).

Unknown

futongus wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

And while the missions are hard, they're static - if I can't beat it, it won't be 50 levels higher the next morning.

Dunno about you but my nodes have jumped 20 levels in a day without me doing anything (cept the occasional wiping of my team on a node without winning).

From what I can tell the nodes go up as a function of your accumulated score. They don't go up spontaneously on their own even though it sure feels like it. It usually doesn't matter because there's only one path in this event, though in theory this means you should leave the essentials for the end since they're lower level in general and presumably slightly easier, though in my case since everything is 395 at the end I'd be better off doing the essentials first while they're around 310 since the end nodes are going to be 395 no matter what, whereas if I did all the non essentials first then the essentials would be 395 by the time I come back to them too.

Polares

Phantron wrote:

There isn't some kind of strategy to beat the 395s. On the highest scaling (270 on roster) you run into 395 by the time you hit Juggernaut/MBW/IM35. Star Spangled Avenger does about 1500 damage per turn factoring in recycle time and it'd take you 20 turns to kill Juggernaut, which is an awful long time. Headbutt will do 9975 damage on this level, more than enough to kill anybody through protect tile in any realistic situation since you should've already taken some damage from match damage immediately and their average tile damage is around 200 (think it's 225/200/175 at that level). Just because you beat them once doesn't mean you figured out something because if you go back again you might find you have The Hood dropped on turn 3 from a cascade or you take an AP consuming move on turn 10 on Captain or whatever.

I agree with you. It is just luck.

I keep saying scaling of 1* and 2* is broken

I haven't noticed at full how broken it is until I started rising the level of XForce, but it is not fair to have at level 270 a 4* with 82 tile damage, a 3* with 120, a 2* with 150+ and a 1* with 170+. Juggs when buffed is nuts. I can cope with thier scaled powers negating their colors, using Hood, etc. (Juggs is maybe the worse of them all because his powers are very cheap and it is very easy for him to get to 6 red or green but the rest is easier). But I cant deny them match damage (yes I can use Spidey but it is not ideal and even him can negate all the damage until too late). Devs have to lower tile damage of these characters when buffed, this is a must for future Gauntlet events.

You can't plan any strategy when you have to use The Hood (and maybe Spidey) no matter what ( it is not planning when you always have to use one character, anybody could use pre-nerf spidey to beat these nodes, but that was not strategy ). You can't plan anything when 1 cascade can kill one or two players.


PS: I want to say, so it is clear, that I LOVE this mode, and I hope we can play a lot of Gauntlets in the future. I just think scaling needs to be a little better, the event maybe needs to be a little longer ( 5-7 days ) with 15-25% more nodes and I think we miss a 4* as a reward. But this type of event is what I ve been asking for a long time, and I am happy that we got it

over_clocked

While I fully agree that beating lvl 395 opponents requires at least some luck, they require less luck to beat than a regular level 166 Sentry/Hood/Daken combo provided you go unboosted. Or boosted through your nose, too, anyway, - Sentry with Hood/Daken's support is that OP.

Meanwhile, another favourite PvE team of mine, which rolls in fat loads of AP once it picks up (no boosts were used):

Polares

locked wrote:

...

But you see, you have to use The Hood no matter what. In all the 250+ nodes you need to use The Hood so they cannt trigger any power. If you woudlnt use the Hood in this fight Mags and Storm woudnt stand a chance.

Try this same fight without The Hood and boosts.

CrookedKnight

I don't even have Hood's blue and I beat 250+ nodes.

over_clocked

Polares wrote:

locked wrote:

...

But you see, you have to use The Hood no matter what. In all the 250+ nodes you need to use The Hood so they cannt trigger any power. If you woudlnt use the Hood in this fight Mags and Storm woudnt stand a chance.

Try this same fight without The Hood and boosts.

I did say I went unboosted. And no, I also wiped with the same comp so it's not fool-proof. I would love to use oBW but buffed cStorm/MMN take blue/purple from her, and oBW and Hood are the only good AP thieves we have. If there would be more, I could maybe think of more comps

Polares

CrookedKnight wrote:

I don't even have Hood's blue and I beat 250+ nodes.

Well you can use LDaken and Sentry, of course, as is the typical OP combination. But can you elaborate a little bit more? What team did you use? What was your max level enemies?

locked wrote:

Polares wrote:

locked wrote:

...

But you see, you have to use The Hood no matter what. In all the 250+ nodes you need to use The Hood so they cannt trigger any power. If you woudlnt use the Hood in this fight Mags and Storm woudnt stand a chance.

Try this same fight without The Hood and boosts.

I did say I went unboosted. And no, I also wiped with the same comp so it's not fool-proof. I would love to use oBW but buffed cStorm/MMN take blue/purple from her, and oBW and Hood are the only good AP thieves we have. If there would be more, I could maybe think of more comps

Yes, I didn't mean that you used them, it was more like or you use The Hood or you need to boost. In this case, you used The Hood. OBW I think is worse than the hood because she needs to match purple and most of the time be in front (if you don't use another powerful purple user).

Unknown

I barely used the Hood and never boosted. I did Sentrybomb a lot, admittedly.

DecoyDuck

Also pleasant to see a lot more community sharing. As someone mentioned earlier... this is a more pure version of PVE, and tacitly, Community Versus Event. People are just more willing to share tactics and strategy when it's not a competition with each other (though I recognize people do share tactics for "competitive" PVEs still, there seems to be much more going on here) - the format and the degree of difficulty seems to bring out to the community.