Can someone explain the PvP timeslot strategy?

TheHueyFreeman

There are 5 timeslots for PvP and it seems apparent that the strategies and timings have changed for how to approach PvP. I've noticed that signing up early brings me into a death bracket and I've also noticed that it gets very competitive in bracket 4 for me.

Anyone have observations or thoughts going into the new PvP timing meta?

Unknown

I just choose the time that works the best for me. I can't worry about what other people are doing.

If I ever see a progression reward I really want, I guess I would go for the traditional evening time slot ending, as that seems to be the popular one. Popularity counts for finding viable targets.

Unknown

Endtime 4 is the death bracket. Join it to get a better score but less likely for better rank. Better score does help the alliance and your overall season score.

Unknown

Generally speaking closer to 1 means easier covers lower scores, closer to 5 means higher scores, harder to place. Specifically, all the X-men tribes and high end alliances all join a single slice so they can fight each other and get high scores. This time it's bracket 4.

NorthernPolarity

Sharding Strategy in a Nutshell:

There are currently two types of brackets:
1. The bracket where all the X-Men go to. These brackets featured absurdly high scorers because X-Men are pushing (1.5k+), and drive the points to, making it easy to get high point totals, but hard to place.
2. The other brackets. Since there's no X-Men to get points off of, the scores here are very low by comparison (1k), but there are also less veterans / high scoring players here.

Therefore, your strategy is:
1. Find out what bracket the X-Men are in (through an alliance member?)
2. Ask yourself, "do I care about placement awards or progression / season awards?" If you care about placement, join a non X-Men shard because you aren't placing highly when the top 10 is all 1.5k+ and the shards are full of crazy X-Men. If you care about progression / season awards, then enjoy the inflated point totals that the X-Men give you.

hurcules

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Sharding Strategy in a Nutshell:

There are currently two types of brackets:
1. The bracket where all the X-Men go to. These brackets featured absurdly high scorers because X-Men are pushing (1.5k+), and drive the points to, making it easy to get high point totals, but hard to place.
2. The other brackets. Since there's no X-Men to get points off of, the scores here are very low by comparison (1k), but there are also less veterans / high scoring players here.

Therefore, your strategy is:
1. Find out what bracket the X-Men are in (through an alliance member?)
2. Ask yourself, "do I care about placement awards or progression / season awards?" If you care about placement, join a non X-Men shard because you aren't placing highly when the top 10 is all 1.5k+ and the shards are full of crazy X-Men. If you care about progression / season awards, then enjoy the inflated point totals that the X-Men give you.

Of course, this is further complicated by "sharding", i.e. parallel unfilled brackets within each time shards. The ones I end up in tend to fill up really slowly and have quite a few vets.

OnesOwnGrief

Top alliances are spread all over, not just congregating to just one specific time slot. My opinion is to just find a time slot in YOU can compete at without having to kill yourself over sleep. Personally, I only really join PvPs around 8-9 hours out, climb to 600-700, sit there and make a climb to 1100. Easy top 10 placements and occasional top 5 with very minimal effort/resources.

Wonko33

If you are a transitioning 2* player or mid level 3*, season is meaningless (except for 10pack which you will get either way), go for easy low scoring brackets where you will finish top 25.

you will earn 1-2 more covers per pvp than just finishing top 100 with a high score, I'm lucky enough that my alliance still gets top 100 in pvp and has a shot at top 100 in season but scoring high and passing on many 3* covers to get a chance at getting a 10-pack in individual season score that might give you some 3*s or a 4* in alliance that will just sit useless in your roster with 1-3 covers for 6-8 months just slows down your progression.

Dayv

I expect the time slice strategy to evolve over time as player behavior changes, possibly even into an oscillating pattern where one ending time is the best for a while and then it switches to another as players start figuring out which ones to avoid or prefer.

GothicKratos

I still haven't figured out why X-Men and Co. don't just say what slice they're going into. They want to the big dogs int heir brackets to feed off of, and it lets everyone else stay away. It's a win/win.

Ryz-aus

For events that end in the night in the US, both end times four and five have been high scoring - I think five has been higher than four, but it's hard to tell unless we can get more people reporting their top ten ranges after the event. It seems like a whole lot of people have bought into "slice four is the death bracket time" based on the first couple of events, but the times I've been in slice five since the sentry nerf I've had my bracket leaders over 1600. The first three are lower - I still don't have a good handle on how hard 1100 or 1300 progression rewards are for those, or if it depends on the day or rewards too much to be consistent.

For the mid-week event, I would guess four is high but I wouldn't expect the distribution to be the same as the other two events. I am in slice three this week - 1100 is very reachable, and some will get to 1300, but this might be higher due to competition for blade covers.

OnesOwnGrief

GothicKratos wrote:

I still haven't figured out why X-Men and Co. don't just say what slice they're going into. They want to the big dogs int heir brackets to feed off of, and it lets everyone else stay away. It's a win/win.

They join all over but the best way to get that information would be probably be to ask them on line.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

I still haven't figured out why X-Men and Co. don't just say what slice they're going into. They want to the big dogs int heir brackets to feed off of, and it lets everyone else stay away. It's a win/win.

They join all over but the best way to get that information would be probably be to ask them on line.

Yep. They don't just stick to one slice as people seem to believe.

simonsez

Based on this thread, I avoided the XMen shard in Psy, and ended up in the hardest bracket I've ever ended up in (1k for top 25). So I don't think there's really as much science to this as we'd hope.