Dark Avengers: Heroic - Sept. 25 - Oct 1

Unknown

Bracket update!

Now my bracket is at 991 players. So soon there will be a fresh bracket! Ill tell when

Unknown

Miaomew wrote:

Bracket update!

Now my bracket is at 991 players. So soon there will be a fresh bracket! Ill tell when

Now it is full! If you are still waiting to join, now is a good time!

_RiO_

Phew. Was a mad rush of point grinding, but finally crawled the 120k finish line at 1:30 AM.
Hopefully I'll also be bagging atleast one Ock for future essentials.

Man, was I ever pissed at the rubberband in this one again...

Unknown

hex706f726368 wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

I don't think I ever want to grind a PVE this hard again, but at least it seems to pay off.

Ditto. Terrible event. And I'm in 2nd with more than a 10k lead over 3rd.

ahahas I keep chasing but closing the gap seems like a perpetual grind with no reset time at all!! Good job though! (:

yogi_

This thing is basically grind hard and from near the beginning and you'll do well, otherwise be content with a 3* cover, maybe. If you don't keep up the points, even end grinding is only going to make a modest difference - it might get you a tier up, but it's not going to get you much more. Ironically, this change theoretically does somewhat answer earlier concerns about catching up massively at the end.

I miss old PvE compared to this suffering. The amount of effort to get a single cover for Beast, Colossus and Doc Ock (compared to the old days) is unpleasant. Perhaps there is a middle ground somewhere.

Either way, the intention is clear to try and slow down the release of 3* covers, particularly early on.

Anywho... for those struggling with the "Call Me, Rags", the advice earlier, was good. M.Storm, O.BW and Speed Shot (I mean, the guy who has the Speed Shot ability, though I think he has a red too).

Play cautiously, deny red and green, collect blue and carefully timed use of powers should get you a win. You won't have much health left, but you'll win. Probably.

Unknown

yogi_ wrote:

Anywho... for those struggling with the "Call Me, Rags", the advice earlier, was good. M.Storm, O.BW and Speed Shot (I mean, the guy who has the Speed Shot ability, though I think he has a red too).

Play cautiously, deny red and green, collect blue and carefully timed use of powers should get you a win. You won't have much health left, but you'll win. Probably.

Deny green against 2 feeders? Lol.

And Those three are at pretty low health, especially Storm. I'd say the best chance there is to use storm to feed some of those level 200+ X-Force TUs many of us have filling up our inventories

Vankysher

kalirion wrote:

yogi_ wrote:

Anywho... for those struggling with the "Call Me, Rags", the advice earlier, was good. M.Storm, O.BW and Speed Shot (I mean, the guy who has the Speed Shot ability, though I think he has a red too).

Play cautiously, deny red and green, collect blue and carefully timed use of powers should get you a win. You won't have much health left, but you'll win. Probably.

Deny green against 2 feeders? Lol.

And Those three are at pretty low health, especially Storm. I'd say the best chance there is to use storm to feed some of those level 200+ X-Force TUs many of us have filling up our inventories

I think I just barely scraped by with and down and OBW as the last woman standing.

Vankysher

I'm most likely playing very inefficiently as I have 2 health packs left and all my nodes on refresh.
"Call Him Ragnarok" has already scaled to deadly for me and I barely cleared that one.
Grinding the few normal/hard nodes I have open since I cannot do essentials to place in the 201-300 range makes it seem I am doing something wrong compared to everyone here.

SunCrusher

I take part of my last post back; hard work paid off (didn't think it would as I had a lot of difficulty with the last few hours of the last sub and managed to end the last sub at 100k points) and I actually hit the FPR cover with points and time to spare and hovering at 50th ish place which is fine by me.

... I really hope we don't have another Heroic soon. Even with subs, this was LONG.

Vankysher wrote:

I'm most likely playing very inefficiently as I have 2 health packs left and all my nodes on refresh.
"Call Him Ragnarok" has already scaled to deadly for me and I barely cleared that one.
Grinding the few normal/hard nodes I have open since I cannot do essentials to place in the 201-300 range makes it seem I am doing something wrong compared to everyone here.

@Vankysher, if you can't do Essentials and if you're having trouble on the non-Essential nodes, then, speaking from personal experience as someone who's done PLENTY of Heroics without the Essential characters, you're going to have some difficulty clearing nodes and earning the needed/competitively numbered points to 'place well' and your placement in ranking and points and experience pretty much is like what mine was before this particular event.

The reason for this is just like you mentioned: The Harder non-Essential nodes have scaled out of your reach and if you can't clear those on future refreshes, that's typically 1000+ points you miss out on per refresh (even more if you're the sort to drill it down) and it kind of adds up.

There's also bracketing to keep in mind; if you're bracketed with people who can grind an insane number of points and you can't clear all the non-Essential nodes, you WILL fall behind as the other people continue to clear the nodes. The reverse is also true and this is why some people try and join the events at potentially 'better' times... with mixed results.

To share an experience regarding bracketing, I got stuck in what was basically a 'death' bracket in one of the more recent Heroics. Despite missing an Essential character until the very last day within the last day, I ended up going a LOT of points over the Final Progression Reward and at the end of the event (yeah, I totally did crazy-grinding that time) and I STILL only placed top 200-300. THAT was how 'crazy' my bracket was. Thing is, on the forums, people were reporting having reached JUST barely the FPR and having won top 10 for their brackets. Talk about feeling that my bracketing was unfair!

It sucks that something like that can happen, but it can happen.

That said, in my opinion, you're not necessarily doing anything 'wrong' and for me, I see it as a part of the experience... as disappointing as it may be at times.

You're missing an Essential character whose nodes would otherwise help fill in those gaps. Without the Essential character, you NEED to be able to drill down the other available nodes (even if it's only once) on refreshes to gain the points and if you can't, you will have a harder time playing 'catch the leader'. If your leaders in your bracket happens to love doing crazy insane grinding, then you will suffer even more for it.

Unknown

Still hate that final node, but Looks like top 10 is safe. I need to blow off some PvEs to reduce my scaling. I blame the Gauntlet and all these grinding new character PvEs for the fun scaling. Facing 200+ enemies is usually not that bad, but with the reduced roster of 3 maxed 2*s, 2 Maxed 1*s a 150 Psylocke and moderately leveled HT and low level IM 40, it was tough.

In the end I ended up clearing it using AP boosts so I could Recharge and Katana first turn, to bum rush Rags as quick as possible. The other two are not that big a deal, as long as you don't let Rags get one of those crazy cascades going.

Unknown

Looks like I"m going to finish around #120 or so and that wasn't as bad as I feared despite missing virtually every event ending this time. Still, this seems to be one of the worst event I can think of in memory, probably because the rubberband is so weak so you end up having to play a ton, and that would've been somewhat okay if your team was capable of winning fights, except they're not. Yes scaling usually evens things out but I feel even at the relatively low levels of this event, every fight in this heroic is much harder than other events just because your team is so weak, even against lower level enemies.

SunCrusher

Brought in Psylocke, Thor, and OBW (full Espionage and tanking Purples)...

And I just had a hugely lucky streak where I got a series of 3-4 Criticals within the second match, plenty of Purples, and a Pyro who hogged the Green AP from Ragnarok. Downed Ragnarok's health down to around 60% by matches alone owing to the Criticals (didn't bring MHawkeye since he was too squishy - dangit!) and then Recon-ed AP and then collected a few extra colors for Thor and LET FLY and baby, did Ragnarok FALL leaving the two goons to suffer from Thor's Green ability.

Took down the Pyro and then took down the Soldier and took minimal damage.

After 3 very unhappy deaths (tried multiple teams) and one 'escaped by the skin of my teeth' (using the same team), this was completely and absolutely unexpected.

Unknown

Anyone have eyes on alliance 100 rank? UnitedAlliance is also looking for a merc to get us there.

SunCrusher

Phantron wrote:

Looks like I"m going to finish around #120 or so and that wasn't as bad as I feared despite missing virtually every event ending this time. Still, this seems to be one of the worst event I can think of in memory, probably because the rubberband is so weak so you end up having to play a ton, and that would've been somewhat okay if your team was capable of winning fights, except they're not. Yes scaling usually evens things out but I feel even at the relatively low levels of this event, every fight in this heroic is much harder than other events just because your team is so weak, even against lower level enemies.

A not-so-great board and a mis-matched decision can cost you a whole node - even on the easier levels. I embarrassingly got downed on some of the goons-only nodes and easier goons+1 character nodes because of making the wrong decision (I should have let fly with the ability but instead I wanted to see if I could get in another match) ended up cascading a **** ton of other CD tiles down and... well. Once they start, they keep going in some cases and in some cases, they also keep feeding AP WHILE firing. Dead is dead is dead.

This Heroic was NOT terribly 'easy' (save for the Trivial that went beyond Trivial) at all and even on the goons-only nodes and with a fully built OBW to help with Blue and Purple.

Unknown

Kind of almost prefer this method just because it is fairer. Think I could have not played the last 6h and still remained in top 10?

There are people who are going to grind with or without rubberbanding and should be rewarded accordingly. The three different difficulties for each node was nice too although the hardest ones could be kept just a wee bit lower especially with feeders.

Hope D3P finally keeps it consistent with maybe just very very minor tweaks of this format for PVE.

CrookedKnight

On the one hand, good Lord was that a grind.

On the other hand, to quote Fawful, I have Fury! That makes up for a lot of tedium.

Trisul

Really strange that the last 12h had main rubberbanding. That made the outcome of my later bracket much more unstable near the finish. Had I not missed one of my refreshes, I probably could have stolen top 5 even though I played a lousy second sub and was outside top 10 for most of third sub. That said, top 10 was the goal and I'm happy to squeak in.

HairyDave

I was looking forward to having a nice relaxing morning only to find that the rubberband was so strong I was in danger of missing out on Otto completely

I finished 128th but at various points in the last five or six hours I've been 200th, 170th, 100th and 160th. I do feel kind of sorry for the people I selfishly blitzed past in the last twenty minutes.

But only a little

Unknown

Started every sub with 7-8 hours to go and got first and second, 18th overall.

Starting early is for chumps

Pwuz_

Despite pulling out #5, #2, & #1 in the subs, I was barely able to hold on to a top 10 position for the main. This was the 1st time in I can't remember how long that I did this well in PvE though, especially a Heroic.

I really hope next time D3 picks the buffed characters, they try to let us have a full rainbow. I'm not even sure that if I had any featured characters I could have built a full rainbow team.

It really is frustrating to see a board load full of a color you have absolutely no use for.