Thick As Thieves: Nov 19th - Nov 25th

mags1587

Phantron wrote:

Seems like we won't have any repeat on sub at this rate. I'm guessing the next sub is going to be 48H and we get 24H to wrap up the main bracket, and depending on whether they're repeatable or not it's either going to be a victory lap or a bloodbath in the last 24 hours.

I'm actually guessing 60 hours for the last sub and the main nodes won't be repeatable. Because 24 hours with non-repeatable main nodes seems a bit too long. And if they are repeatable and have rubberbanding like the last time they were repeatable (enough to make the sub-events irrelevant) well, then as you say, it'll be a bloodbath.

Vankysher

Anderson Bio-Technic V already scaled at 116/117/117 and killed my teams.
Ares & Empiricist at ~7200 hp ea coupled with Bullseye's annoying protect tiles made this a battle of attrition.
AWolv got one shot by the Empiricist Merciless Crush as I couldn't get rid of the countdown tile.
OBW was one shot by Ares sunder.
Thor managed to take out Bullseye & the Empiricist due to the fortunate build up of AP OBW AR'd before she died.
In the end Ares Sundered him twice and down he went.
Maybe I should run my 0/4/2 LCap instead of AWolv just to get rid of those protect tiles?

Unknown

My memory might be hazy, but I remember only getting 12 hours in the main node last time.

GrumpySmurf1002

Phaserhawk wrote:

So after I play the main which establishes my bracket, then play the first sub. Does it matter when I join the second sub? In theory wouldn't I be rubberbanded to my own main bracket? Or does it matter when I join the new sub?

Someone with more insight/experience can correct me, but my experience says:

It probably will matter for top 2.
It might matter for top 10/20 - depends on how tough/competitive your main bracket is, and when you joined.
It won't matter otherwise.

Unknown

Assuming the event is the following

156-120 Sub 1
120-72 Sub 2
72-24 Sub 3
24-0 Main Nodes (Repeatable)

If that is the case, each subevent will rubberband off the subevent global leader, but the main nodes will rubberband off the main event global leader. This was an old format for this event that was scrubbed due to ridiculous placement drop in the last 2 hours. Basically, set your alarms, if you aren't playing the last hour (and preferably the clear before that) you could easily drop from 1st to no Rocket/Groot covers.

If that is the format, it **** sucks and was something D3 was, in theory, listening to us and moving away from.

Vankysher

papa07 wrote:

Assuming the event is the following

156-120 Sub 1
120-72 Sub 2
72-24 Sub 3
24-0 Main Nodes (Repeatable)

If that is the case, each subevent will rubberband off the subevent global leader, but the main nodes will rubberband off the main event global leader. This was an old format for this event that was scrubbed due to ridiculous placement drop in the last 2 hours. Basically, set your alarms, if you aren't playing the last hour (and preferably the clear before that) you could easily drop from 1st to no Rocket/Groot covers.

If that is the format, it tinykitty sucks and was something D3 was, in theory, listening to us and moving away from.

Oh dear.
I'll probably give up then if that's the case.

wymtime

papa07 wrote:

Assuming the event is the following

156-120 Sub 1
120-72 Sub 2
72-24 Sub 3
24-0 Main Nodes (Repeatable)

If that is the case, each subevent will rubberband off the subevent global leader, but the main nodes will rubberband off the main event global leader. This was an old format for this event that was scrubbed due to ridiculous placement drop in the last 2 hours. Basically, set your alarms, if you aren't playing the last hour (and preferably the clear before that) you could easily drop from 1st to no Rocket/Groot covers.

If that is the format, it tinykitty sucks and was something D3 was, in theory, listening to us and moving away from.

I thougt they adjusted this the last time they ran this event and the main sub had no rubberbanding? There was 1 PVE event like that where after the subs as long as you played your placement stayed the same. Was that a different event?

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

I thougt they adjusted this the last time they ran this event and the main sub had no rubberbanding? There was 1 PVE event like that where after the subs as long as you played your placement stayed the same. Was that a different event?

Last time was as follows

156-130 Sub 1
130-104 Sub 2
104-78 Sub 3
78-52 Sub 1
52-26 Sub 2
26-0 Sub 3
~35-0 Main Nodes (One time only - no rubberbanding)

So they fixed it, but decided to **** it up again.

mouser

My theory is they're tweaking sub end times to now all end at the same time of day. In preparation for PVE time sharding.

TheHueyFreeman

So are the nodes repeatable in this sub?

Unknown

TheHueyFreeman wrote:

So are the nodes repeatable in this sub?

Most (or all) nodes are always repeatable in the every subevent.

The question that determines how messed up this event will be is whether the main event nodes will be repeatable

Vankysher

Vankysher wrote:

Anderson Bio-Technic V already scaled at 116/117/117 and killed my teams.
Ares & Empiricist at ~7200 hp ea coupled with Bullseye's annoying protect tiles made this a battle of attrition.
AWolv got one shot by the Empiricist Merciless Crush as I couldn't get rid of the countdown tile.
OBW was one shot by Ares sunder.
Thor managed to take out Bullseye & the Empiricist due to the fortunate build up of AP OBW AR'd before she died.
In the end Ares Sundered him twice and down he went.
Maybe I should run my 0/4/2 LCap instead of AWolv just to get rid of those protect tiles?

That didn't work either.
LCap/Thor/OBW wiped even quicker.
Ares just cannot be stopped.

DrStrange-616

I haven't been playing that long, but are these nodes escalating in difficulty really quickly? I will probably be down to 3 or 4 by the end time nears.

Unknown

Just because nodes are in the main bracket doesn't mean they have to rubberband off the main bracket. Last time we simply had unrepeatable nodes in main that are always worth a constant amount of point, so it was just a victory lap becasue everyone got exactly the same number of points for finishing the same number of missions (unless you somehow weren't able to beat all the missions) and that was a pretty relaxing pace. Of course, there are also the bloodbath version of those nodes too. In fact every version besides the last iteration of TaT was a bloodbath when the main nodes opened up because they're both repeatable and rubberband. Note that you can also have nodes that are repeatable that do not rubberband. I think Heroic DA had nodes like that. It'd still be a pretty nasty bloodbath if the nodes are worth high base points even without rubberbanding.

The time you join a sub after you're already in a main bracket has no bearing on your main bracket score, though all things being equal the later you start playing the less total points you're likely to have because starting later almost always implies slightly less total time played. Of course if you have no intention to play much then you shouldn't be joining early as all that does is put you in a tougher sub bracket. Now if you're heavily contesting a certain spot in the main bracket you might have no choice, because due to the weak rubberband if you say hit a cycle immediately for 2K and then can't play for another 15 hours, that'll still likely translate to about 1K more points overall compared to just starting 15 hours later, and if your main bracket position is in doubt then you still got to take the extra 1K. Of course you'd have almost no shot of placing well in the sub with such a large gap in playing time for starting so early, but if the main bracket matters you got to take a chance.

Unknown

DrStrange-616 wrote:

I haven't been playing that long, but are these nodes escalating in difficulty really quickly? I will probably be down to 3 or 4 by the end time nears.

Captain America is probably the best guy for enemy in this set of missions. They tend to have one guy with very low HP (Bullseye/Yelena), one goon, and someone who is otherwise very tough. This means you can focus on the guy with low HP, stun the hard guy with Peacemaker, and now you get 3 turns to every 1 turn they get as long as you manage to pick up 2 blue AP every 3 turns and that should be enough to win the fight easily.

DrStrange-616

Phantron wrote:

DrStrange-616 wrote:

I haven't been playing that long, but are these nodes escalating in difficulty really quickly? I will probably be down to 3 or 4 by the end time nears.

Captain America is probably the best guy for enemy in this set of missions. They tend to have one guy with very low HP (Bullseye/Yelena), one goon, and someone who is otherwise very tough. This means you can focus on the guy with low HP, stun the hard guy with Peacemaker, and now you get 3 turns to every 1 turn they get as long as you manage to pick up 2 blue AP every 3 turns and that should be enough to win the fight easily.

That makes sense. Now only if I had a maxed (or even close to it) Cap!

eta: I'm pretty much leaning on Falcon, OBW, and AWolvie. Used CMags/Storm to stun biggy on last sub. Might have to try that here as well. But at the rate the enemies are leveling, I'll be SOL before too many passes.

Unknown

DrStrange-616 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

DrStrange-616 wrote:

I haven't been playing that long, but are these nodes escalating in difficulty really quickly? I will probably be down to 3 or 4 by the end time nears.

Captain America is probably the best guy for enemy in this set of missions. They tend to have one guy with very low HP (Bullseye/Yelena), one goon, and someone who is otherwise very tough. This means you can focus on the guy with low HP, stun the hard guy with Peacemaker, and now you get 3 turns to every 1 turn they get as long as you manage to pick up 2 blue AP every 3 turns and that should be enough to win the fight easily.

That makes sense. Now only if I had a maxed (or even close to it) Cap!

eta: I'm pretty much leaning on Falcon, OBW, and AWolvie. Used CMags/Storm to stun biggy on last sub. Might have to try that here as well. But at the rate the enemies are leveling, I'll be SOL before too many passes.

Technically you only need Captain America for Peacemaker, though if you have lazy Captain he can also pitch in on the damage department with Star Spangled Avenger to knock out the first guy. The goon + 2 guy combination would be awfully hard to beat without stuns because Ares + green feed is just not something you can fight for a prolonged period of time. Also note that since Merciless Crush is higher cost AP than Onslaught, this means if you stun Ares when they're above 5 green AP there's a very good chance the goon ends up collecting enough AP and use Merciless Crush instead, which is certainly far more preferable than eating 2 Onslaughts.

Vankysher

Phantron wrote:

DrStrange-616 wrote:

I haven't been playing that long, but are these nodes escalating in difficulty really quickly? I will probably be down to 3 or 4 by the end time nears.

Captain America is probably the best guy for enemy in this set of missions. They tend to have one guy with very low HP (Bullseye/Yelena), one goon, and someone who is otherwise very tough. This means you can focus on the guy with low HP, stun the hard guy with Peacemaker, and now you get 3 turns to every 1 turn they get as long as you manage to pick up 2 blue AP every 3 turns and that should be enough to win the fight easily.

I think I got scaled out right off the bat as I either barely kill 1 and wipe or I don't kill any and wipe.
I cannot collect enough AP to get LCap going without boosting and even then all of them don't have enough hp to last in a long battle.
Skipping out on the very last node is hurting me in this sub as I keep dropping in placement.
Even more so I have not beaten this node even once.

GrimSkald

Vankysher wrote:

I think I got scaled out right off the bat as I either barely kill 1 and wipe or I don't kill any and wipe.
I cannot collect enough AP to get LCap going without boosting and even then all of them don't have enough hp to last in a long battle.
Skipping out on the very last node is hurting me in this sub as I keep dropping in placement.
Even more so I have not beaten this node even once.

You need someone capable of a really fast take-down for that node. That's about the whole of it. LCap's too slow at the 3* level - he's great when you can get some momentum going but he needs time and this node does not give you time. The fact that the mutant feeds both Magneto and IM35 sucks rocks, they're going to shut you down.

I managed to muscle through it once with X-Force, Falcon, and Psylocke. I haven't touched it since - I'm holding 17 in the sub and 15 overall and that's plenty for me. If I did it again I'd probably take a faster team - maybe Daken and Hood for Falcon and Psylocke.

TazFTW

Vankysher wrote:

Anderson Bio-Technic V already scaled at 116/117/117 and killed my teams.
Ares & Empiricist at ~7200 hp ea coupled with Bullseye's annoying protect tiles made this a battle of attrition.
AWolv got one shot by the Empiricist Merciless Crush as I couldn't get rid of the countdown tile.
OBW was one shot by Ares sunder.
Thor managed to take out Bullseye & the Empiricist due to the fortunate build up of AP OBW AR'd before she died.
In the end Ares Sundered him twice and down he went.
Maybe I should run my 0/4/2 LCap instead of AWolv just to get rid of those protect tiles?

I've been using Hulk, LThor, and Punisher for V. Target Bullseye and focus on green. If Bullseye is able to get some of his protect tiles out then I use Clap for board shake, if not then I use Judgement. Hulk tanks green so he'll most likely be in front for whatever Ares does which would feed more green. Call the Storm when you have enough green.