The Gauntlet: Oct. 30 - Nov. 4

Punter1

Summary so far, looks like 3 options for starting probably based on your max char, which is why my single max 3* makes for a higher level band than GrumpySmurf:

Opening GD at 130-131:
CrookedKnight - max lvl 114 and 94s
GrumpySmurf - 2 @ 141, some 134 plus others lower (lucky you!)
BrandonE - max 2*s, no higher 3*s
Mr Stoat - bunch @ 120s

Opening GD at 151-152:
Punter - 1 @ 166, bunch at 128/127

Opening GD at 236:
Phantron - Max Fury & XF - crazy roster...

GrimSkald

Phantron wrote:

GrimSkald wrote:

Well, I must say I'm a bit miffed that I can't get a Blade cover as a progression award (probably,) but in general I don't have any real objection to the reward structure of the Gauntlet. Sure, you end up with a lot less stuff overall, but as people point out, it is a lot less grindy.

Now, if it ran all the time, I'd be annoyed. As it is, it is a nice break. I can definitely use that Captain Marvel cover, hopefully I can get to it.

It's not less stuff overall. There are 3 3*s and that's about the best you can expect in PvE unless you're one of those 2 guys who don't sleep. It's not the 3* you're looking for but another PvE event could've easily offered IM40 for reward too. Only 1% of people can finish top 10 for the 3 3* covers. 15% of the people have Blade from last event, so as long as 1 out of 15 guys with Blade completed all 3 brackets it's still the same overall. It should be quite easy for more than 15% to get the 1st cover in the last bracket if they have favorable scaling.

I disagree. I was factoring in all the Iso and token awards from the subs (of course, not every PVE has subs, but most of them do,) the one progression award and the top level placement award. You're also not getting Iso and HP from your final placement, which is not-inconsiderable.
I honestly got stymied at the last one and didn't make it to the end, I suspect a lot of people will. Couple this with the fact that you don't grind and therefore don't get more awards from the individual nodes and you're definitely coming out the other end of the event with less general awards than you would otherwise.

I mean, sure, you could grind the nodes, but since they're harder, most people probably won't.

What I'm saying is I do think you get overall less rewards from this event, but the trade off is you don't have to compete with anyone but the AI for them and I'm totally fine with that every once in a while.

Unknown

Just finished the last node.

Posting pics of some of the more interesting/difficult nodes.

Now just need to wait until these scale to 395 and come back for some TU.

CrookedKnight

Thor-fest! Cute, devs. Real cute.

simonsez

RefinedBean wrote:

You're getting 3 3* covers and a bunch of tokens for a) no grind and b) no stress.

Since when is trying to beat ridiculously overbuffed formations for 70 ISO considered "no stress"?

GrumpySmurf1002

WorldRunner wrote:

Just finished the last node.
Posting pics of some of the more interesting/difficult nodes.
Now just need to wait until these scale to 395 and come back for some TU.

What did you use to get through these?

CrookedKnight

simonsez wrote:

RefinedBean wrote:

You're getting 3 3* covers and a bunch of tokens for a) no grind and b) no stress.

Since when is trying to beat ridiculously overbuffed formations for 70 ISO considered "no stress"?

Compared to banging your head against ridiculously overbuffed nodes over and over and over every two hours for 20 ISO a pop, it's no stress.

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

WorldRunner wrote:

Just finished the last node.
Posting pics of some of the more interesting/difficult nodes.
Now just need to wait until these scale to 395 and come back for some TU.

What did you use to get through these?

XF/Magneto/Whoever (Thor when I could)
Sentry/Hood/Magneto (Had to double sac WR the last node)

Unfortunately I don't have enough DP points to sperm whale so... That's about all you can do.

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

It's not less stuff overall.

I know what you say is taken as gospel around here, but this simply isn't true. In that last PvP, I didn't lose any sleep, didn't kill myself grinding, and got four 3s, the IW, 50 hp a day from subs, plus a couple hundred HP from the final awards. Here, I'm seeing one less 3, no chance for a 4, and hundreds less in HP.

And yes, you might insist that I'm a 1%'er whose PvE experience is atypical, but if you think more than 1% of players are going to bother to plow through those formations that worldrunner posted, I seriously doubt it. And either way, those who do, will be seriously undercompensated for it relative to other PvPs

simonsez

CrookedKnight wrote:

Compared to banging your head against ridiculously overbuffed nodes over and over and over every two hours for 20 ISO a pop, it's no stress.

Don't try to play PvE that way. Skip the stupid nodes, and just grind the ones you can beat. If you think beating random goons 3 times is way more stressful than trying to beat lv395 Thor, Rags, Thorina, you're not being rational.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

RefinedBean wrote:

You're getting 3 3* covers and a bunch of tokens for a) no grind and b) no stress.

Since when is trying to beat ridiculously overbuffed formations for 70 ISO considered "no stress"?

When I don't have to compete with 499 other people and wake up every 2.5 hours to try and get a placement worth two tinykitties?

When I can lucky-cascade my way to advancing to the next node, which actually feels great instead of just "Whew, okay, 400 more points, time to do it again for 350?"

Seriously, are you people TINYKITTYING me with this tinykitty? I'll take progressively tougher nodes that offer a challenge and that I don't have to repeat if I don't want to and getting 3 3* covers over any of the other PVE events any tinykitty day. I have a tinykitty life outside of the game and it's nice, now and tinykitty then, to be able to participate in an event that allows that to happen while still keeping me engaged in the tinykitty game.

Tinykitty me.

Unknown

GrimSkald wrote:

Phantron wrote:

GrimSkald wrote:

Well, I must say I'm a bit miffed that I can't get a Blade cover as a progression award (probably,) but in general I don't have any real objection to the reward structure of the Gauntlet. Sure, you end up with a lot less stuff overall, but as people point out, it is a lot less grindy.

Now, if it ran all the time, I'd be annoyed. As it is, it is a nice break. I can definitely use that Captain Marvel cover, hopefully I can get to it.

It's not less stuff overall. There are 3 3*s and that's about the best you can expect in PvE unless you're one of those 2 guys who don't sleep. It's not the 3* you're looking for but another PvE event could've easily offered IM40 for reward too. Only 1% of people can finish top 10 for the 3 3* covers. 15% of the people have Blade from last event, so as long as 1 out of 15 guys with Blade completed all 3 brackets it's still the same overall. It should be quite easy for more than 15% to get the 1st cover in the last bracket if they have favorable scaling.

I disagree. I was factoring in all the Iso and token awards from the subs (of course, not every PVE has subs, but most of them do,) the one progression award and the top level placement award. You're also not getting Iso and HP from your final placement, which is not-inconsiderable.
I honestly got stymied at the last one and didn't make it to the end, I suspect a lot of people will. Couple this with the fact that you don't grind and therefore don't get more awards from the individual nodes and you're definitely coming out the other end of the event with less general awards than you would otherwise.

I mean, sure, you could grind the nodes, but since they're harder, most people probably won't.

What I'm saying is I do think you get overall less rewards from this event, but the trade off is you don't have to compete with anyone but the AI for them and I'm totally fine with that every once in a while.

I assume Gauntlet reward is modeled like an event without subs (say, Heroic Jugg) and not every PvE event is equal in terms of reward. The 100 HP you get for progression matches the 100 HP you're expected to get in final placement. I don't know about the iso but it doesn't seem like a huge difference at a rough glance. Remember that if you need to run boosts to beat the nodes you likely come out behind in iso 8 anyway so just because you can grind the nodes more in normal PvE doesn't mean you'll have more iso8 at the end. It's obviously a lot less compared to events with lucrative subs but there was never any consistency even amongst those. Iso 8 Brotherhod subs are way more lucrative than anything else, for example. In The Hunt the sub was only 500 iso/50 HP for top, and most likely the average guy is looking 500/25 if even that (think that was top 50). I think they can give another 50 HP progression somewhere and maybe switch up some of the reward structure for the harder nodes to something like (200/250/500/token) instead of (200/500/token/crit boosts) but that's a minor compliant.

You may end up with more iso 8 in the average PvE event but you also played more. You can instead use that time to play say the SHIELD training which averages out about 100 iso per clear, which is higher than the expected average on most PvE nodes and is almost certain to be easier compared to the nodes that offer 500 iso as a reward. You end up grinding PvE a lot becase you need to ensure your final placement for the cover, but that's time spent in a relatively inefficient way. You do so because you don't have much of a choice, but in the Gauntlet you do. If you want iso 8 just use the time you saved to do something else.

CrookedKnight

I'll take one round against Thor/Thor/Ragnarok (they're very Thorry) over ten rounds of Hitman/Muscle/Thug any day of the week and twice on Sundays. It's the repetition that makes regular PvE such a pain, not the difficulty of any single fight.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

GrimSkald wrote:

Well, I must say I'm a bit miffed that I can't get a Blade cover as a progression award (probably,) but in general I don't have any real objection to the reward structure of the Gauntlet. Sure, you end up with a lot less stuff overall, but as people point out, it is a lot less grindy.

Now, if it ran all the time, I'd be annoyed. As it is, it is a nice break. I can definitely use that Captain Marvel cover, hopefully I can get to it.

It's not less stuff overall. There are 3 3*s and that's about the best you can expect in PvE unless you're one of those 2 guys who don't sleep. It's not the 3* you're looking for but another PvE event could've easily offered IM40 for reward too. Only 1% of people can finish top 10 for the 3 3* covers. 15% of the people have Blade from last event, so as long as 1 out of 15 guys with Blade completed all 3 brackets it's still the same overall. It should be quite easy for more than 15% to get the 1st cover in the last bracket if they have favorable scaling.

It's definitely less stuff, alot less stuff.
With regular PVE event, there's usually a 3* cover as progression reward, if you play all the essentials nodes at a moderate pace that's one more 3* cover as the final reward, and if your alliance is decent you get another 3* cover. Also alot of the PVE events have sub events that give out heroic tokens fairly generously, for a 5-6 day PVE event that's usually enough for 3-4 heroic tokens and maybe another 3-4 heroic tokens from alliance sub event rewards. Than there's also the ISO and HP individual & alliance rewards that's missing int he gauntlet events.

With the Gautlet events, even getting the 1st 3* cover will be fairly challenging since near the end of the "medium" difficulty gauntlet the opponents will most likely be higher lvled than you already

Unknown

Sthor at level 372 (In case anyone is wondering how she scales and her abilities at 5)

Unknown

RefinedBean wrote:

simonsez wrote:

RefinedBean wrote:

You're getting 3 3* covers and a bunch of tokens for a) no grind and b) no stress.

Since when is trying to beat ridiculously overbuffed formations for 70 ISO considered "no stress"?

When I don't have to compete with 499 other people and wake up every 2.5 hours to try and get a placement worth two tinykitties?

When I can lucky-cascade my way to advancing to the next node, which actually feels great instead of just "Whew, okay, 400 more points, time to do it again for 350?"

Seriously, are you people TINYKITTYING me with this tinykitty? I'll take progressively tougher nodes that offer a challenge and that I don't have to repeat if I don't want to and getting 3 3* covers over any of the other PVE events any tinykitty day. I have a tinykitty life outside of the game and it's nice, now and tinykitty then, to be able to participate in an event that allows that to happen while still keeping me engaged in the tinykitty game.

Tinykitty me.

I like to imagine you manually typed all those tinykitties. Makes me smile.

Unknown

I people are still looking to sort out scaling:

Simulation 29 for me is 163s.

If you look at the top 16 characters in my roster including buffs for event they are 196 (Buffed Daken), six 166s, 150, 145 (Buffed Blade), two 134s (Buffed OBW and Ares), 118, 114, 112 and two 111s.

I finished the last one for pride and Team-Ups. I think I will call this one after the final HP reward, as TU drops are less frequent, and I have no need for that final 500 Iso reward.

Unknown

dearbluey wrote:

I like to imagine you manually typed all those tinykitties. Makes me smile.

You know what's stupid? I did.

lukewin

Not sure if been posted already, but you need 3* Captain Marvel for Essentials 10-12. Assuming eventually Daken 3* will be required for some Essentials.

TazFTW

WorldRunner wrote:

Just finished the last node.

Did any of the nodes reward a specific cover (not a token)?