Dark Avengers: Heroic - Sept. 25 - Oct 1

scottee

orionpeace wrote:

scottee wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Since this event has HT it'll definitely be in favor of established roster, but it just feels really dumb to have Psylocke and HT die over and over and know that there's literally no one you can put in to tank their colors.

My clears so far have been done with no health packs. HT and Psy of course, and OBW to steal & heal. Just took a couple matches to remember how awesome OBW was.

There is no way I could that without using health packs.

What level is your node "General Mayhem"?

Mine is up from 127 to 167.

Trip report:

Just finished a full clear. Bleh, had to use one health pack this time.

General Mayhem 182
Three Amigos 158

Using max Psy, max OBW, underleveled 76 3* HT (unbuffed). No boosts, no TU's.

Cleared 3 essentials, no problem. Cleared 2 hammer nodes and the left easy nodes, no problem. Saved General Mayhem and Three Amigos for last. Ares node has been pretty easy before, but this time there was no purple, so had a harder time denying green. He got off 2 minimal Onslaughts, which still hurt, and had Psy low. So I had to use one healthpack on Psy. Three Amigos, target Jugg first and deny red, then Daken, then Venom last. No headbutts, 1 chemical reaction, no devours.

Unknown

Very lucky for you, then.

My trips on three amigos tend to go like this:

-- Deny Red to Juggs.
-- Juggs will grab Green, or Daken will grab Blue.

Then, either one of the two will happen:

-- Juggs will cast Unstoppable Crash to feed Daken Blue, who will immediately cast Chemical Reaction for 2000+ damage on top of UC.
-- Daken will cast CR (whether or not there are strike tiles on the board) to generate free green matches for Juggs, who will then cast UC on the same turn.

The two of them will just keep chaining off each other (add in free headbutts for more fun), almost into perpetuality.

Once they start up, you might as well retreat out of the node.

scottee

Lyrian wrote:

Very lucky for you, then.

There's more to this game than just luck. Once you have this mentality, the less "unlucky" this game starts to look.

dkffiv

scottee wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Very lucky for you, then.

There's more to this game than just luck. Once you have this mentality, the less "unlucky" this game starts to look.

At these levels its 90% luck. My Three Amigos is up to 170 and I've basically been scaled out of it. I think I've wiped on it every rotation, second attempt would result in an easy board that'd end with minimal damage taken.

Three Amigos is basically everything wrong with PvE scaling. Jugg getting off a red is around 4k damage which one shots squishy 2*'s and takes all of the available 3*s and Thor to 50%. Jugg getting off Crash is a crapshoot as to what colors he's going to cascade into, not to mention its virtually undeniable due to you matching green gives Daken tons of very potent strike tiles. Daken getting 5 blue gives him a 2-4k nuke, Venom getting 7 pink usually results in them getting enough AP to cast one of the other abilities.

You need to deny 6 red, 6 green, 7 pink, 12 black, 5 blue, and probably a nasty TU. Their characters are at 7k (with healing) / 10k / 14k. Psylockes red and black only hit for around 2k each. That's a lot of health to eat through while denying them any ability casts.

This event is also highlighting how vastly broken LThor is. Compared to Psylocke he's got twice the life and any ability going off virtually downs the target you're hitting. Lucky cascade and you can win the match on your first ability.

I said it on the previous heroic thread and I hope the devs eventually listen. There should be no personal scaling, just global scaling based on your current point total. 1*'s should be their level x4 (lvl160 or 200), 2*'s should be level x2 (lvl134 or 188), 3*'s should be level x1.333 (lvl186 or 221), featured 3* is level x1.5 (lvl 210 or 249). Level 90 1*'s are completely useless against 170's and Hawkeye is mostly impotent. Only reason OBW is around is for AP denial but if she gets hit once she's down. I'm scaling to the point where a Rampage just about does her in.

scottee

dkffiv wrote:

scottee wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Very lucky for you, then.

There's more to this game than just luck. Once you have this mentality, the less "unlucky" this game starts to look.

At these levels its 90% luck.

I disagree on this number.

Sure there's variance. You can't predict what replacement tiles will fall from the ceiling, and you can't predict what the starting board will look like. But you have control over every other aspect. You have control over what 95% of the board will look like after a match 3. You have control over which matches are available to the AI on their turn, and for the unpredictable tiles from above, you can calculate what percent chance they'll give the AI a match you don't want.

Yes there's some luck involved. But you can play taking that into account. Making plays that give you a small edge here and there are what separate players with similar rosters and similar opponents, especially in a PVE where there's no health packs involved.

dkffiv

scottee wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

scottee wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Very lucky for you, then.

There's more to this game than just luck. Once you have this mentality, the less "unlucky" this game starts to look.

At these levels its 90% luck.

I disagree on this number.

Sure there's variance. You can't predict what replacement tiles will fall from the ceiling, and you can't predict what the starting board will look like. But you have control over every other aspect. You have control over what 95% of the board will look like after a match 3. You have control over which matches are available to the AI on their turn, and for the unpredictable tiles from above, you can calculate what percent chance they'll give the AI a match you don't want.

Yes there's some luck involved. But you can play taking that into account. Making plays that give you a small edge here and there are what separate players with similar rosters and similar opponents, especially in a PVE where there's no health packs involved.

In a regular even matchup that's true. When scaling is this hard its not. If the computer gets a cascade you will instantly lose all your heroes due to how hard their abilities hit. When there are 2 red matches on the board and you can't do any matches that will disrupt them both, its luck as to whether or not the computer will go for red.

Specifically for Three Amigos, you can't deny every color. One ability going off virtually downs a character. Due to limited roster, the abilities you are provided are mostly slow and hit relatively softly. I've died with a maxed IM40 without getting a single ability off due to how slow he is and how little damage he can soak.

Trisul

Is the end time of first sub 10am PT Saturday?

Unknown

scottee wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Very lucky for you, then.

There's more to this game than just luck. Once you have this mentality, the less "unlucky" this game starts to look.

Okay, then...

-- Starts up the Coolers Essential node.

Another bad starting board, yay.

-- AI casts Supernova with fed Red from Analyst.

-- Detonated Red tiles generates a moderate cascade, which matches green, which enables Sentry to cast World Rupture on the next turn.

-- Next turn after that (with 1 turn left on WR CD tiles), AI "magically" pulls out a Judgment Team-Up.

-- Everyone dies from being Sentry bombed.

/rolls eyes at the third complete wipe of the evening from the AI pulling out the exact right team-up at the right moment yet again.

/sigh

Sure, I could chalk this up to being on the wrong end of the bell curve. It's completely possible I'm experiencing an outlier bad "luck" night.

Of course, there is more to the game than just luck. Rarely do players complete high-level nodes successfully without some form of a plan of action. That said, many of the recent changes have slowly being rigging the game to thwart even skilled players who are able to mitigate match risk to minimal and manageable levels. Bad "luck" just further complicates the problem.

dkffiv

The additional blue cover for Daken really seems to be aimed at f'ing over PvE rather than benefiting 2* transitioning players. The nodes where goons are feeding characters AP is almost completely luck based. Either they set up a countdown or the AI spams excessively scaled abilities. You can't disable or down a 10k+ character before they can do something.

scottee

Hint: Have you seen the AI try to deny YOU colors? Have you noticed that when you make a match, they often take the same color, even if it's not best for them? You can use this to your advantage.

If there's two red matches on the board, and you can't disrupt both of them, match a different color than red that disrupts one of them. The AI often follows the color you just matched. Then you can deny the remaining red.

Also, keeping the board in a way that there are only a few matches available makes it easier to control what the AI gets. This is more important than actually getting your own colors.

Treat the game less as a battle game and more as a puzzle game and all of the sudden so much opens up.

Unknown

Just because I love being a glutton for punishment, I scrounged up my team one more time and attempted Coolers one more time before calling it a night.

Board was actually favorable for a change. That's a first for the evening.

-- Downed Analyst easily.

-- Focused on Sentry, get him 3/4 of the way downed, denying his colors as well as Jugs.

-- AI pulls out a Mohawk Storm Mistress of Elements Team-Up to start one its turns. Cascade ensues, which **of course** at one point generates a large L-match of pure yellow.

-- Which immediately chains into Sentry casting Sacrifice and then Supernova (in that specific order). Everyone is all-but-downed from full life.

-- Juggs casts Unstoppable Crush and downs one person and downs another with a match-3s. Psylocke lasts 2 more turns before her inevitable defeat because of the unmatchable Sacrifice tile.

Oh, come on! This is outright stupid at this point.

Would you look at that... despite all the deaths, the node levels are all increasing.

Community scaling at its finest. Most of the middle track should be in the 200s by the time I wake up in the morning.

I'm heading to bed before I pop a vein over this.

Oldboy

I gave up on trying to farm Three Amigos after i cleared it the first time. It's a high level rainbow team with high health.

Red/Green - Jugs
Blue - Daken
Purple/Black - Venom

4 out of 5 generate high damage at their levels either directly or indirectly as strike tiles. Purple gives them an extra turn.

With the health packs (and sanity) saved i'd rather go attempt another node or pvp. The only time i might do it is before i go to bed. At least if ny characters get wiped out i have 6 to 8 hours for them and health packs to recover.

dkffiv

Three Amigos is definitely not worth attempting, I don't think General Mayhem is worth it either. Too high a probability that that Ares is going to spam Onslaught, and 2 Onslaughts = 1 health pack.

Unknown

- Can someone please post time remaining from first sub?
- Can someone please confirm that there is/there is no rubberbanding?

Thanks

Unknown

- Can someone please confirm that there is/there is no rubberbanding?

I played yesterday, one full clear, then woke up this morning to find essential nodes went up from 400 to 500 pts approx. I moved from 20th to 60th.

Given it's 200 partecipants per sub, I think the rubberbanding won't be that high.

Unknown

Skill matters way more than people think in terms of winning a difficult match, but for an event like this they do not matter because you got to win so many games that you can't possibly keep up like that. On any of the cheesy nodes (green/red pump of any kind with Sentry/Jugg/Rag) and with this weak roster you're probably looking at losing 4 out of 5 times. Skill might get it down to 3 out of 5 but unless you absolutely have to get Dr. Octopus this isn't enough to matter. With rubberband you'll probably get it back later when you're luckier, and if not you get into one of those 'can't possibly catch up' situations and then you can stop wasting time too. Since you can only lose 2 games before you run out of health packs, variance dominates your score whether you lose 4 out of 5 or somehow managed to get it down to 3 out of 5 losses. You might as well just hope you're lucky until the last day or so and then just start using boosts on everything.

Unknown

rocketh wrote:

- Can someone please confirm that there is/there is no rubberbanding?

I played yesterday, one full clear, then woke up this morning to find essential nodes went up from 400 to 500 pts approx. I moved from 20th to 60th.

Given it's 200 partecipants per sub, I think the rubberbanding won't be that high.

The rubber band is independent on the size of the subs.

dkffiv

I actually ended up with 4 health packs by the end of my rotation so I attempted Three Amigos. Playing perfectly I managed to kill everyone save for Venom and he was down to 2k life. The problem is Psylockes abilities hit for nothing (I managed to get one black off before she was dead, taking roughly 12k damage to my team vs. 4k on Juggernaut), IM40 is useless (got nothing off before he died) and Human Torch is too squishy to do anything. Managed to take Jugg out and deny Venom / Daken but died to match damage due to taking all the green off the board. You take about 1k per turn (x however many lucky cascades they get) and all the characters you are allowed to use have too low life / too low ramp up time to do anything useful. If this was the gauntlet I'd consider boosting just to down it but there's no way in hell I'm boosting 20% into a sub only to see scaling get even more out of control.

Unknown

It looks like there is not much rubberbanding in this one.

The points I can get for each node are the same after 2.5 hours or more.

I woke up this morning after 8 hours sleep, and the points to be grinded were more or less the same as yesterday when I went to sleep.

The Juggs (lvl 183) and Ares (lvl 204) nodes are hell to clear, you need to boost to clear them, or you lose.

This PvE needs a lot of Health Packs, so, same as Colossus (in the end of the event), this PvE is definitely P2W...

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

It looks like there is not much rubberbanding in this one.

The rubber band is nearly exactly the same as it was last time I guess they happy with the current values