Prodigal Sun: Dec. 15 - Dec. 22

gambl0r312

Ben Grimm wrote:

I managed to be the 998th person in my bracket last night, which was annoying, but not actually a problem for an event this long.

I don't know if I have the stomach for a week of this. I guess I can take comfort in the fact that the last three days are a weekend plus a day I'm taking off, and the slightly longer refresh time is slightly better. I'd still like four hours though.

Seeing levels close to 200 already (my highest leveled characters are at 160). On the plus side, though they're not the quickest combo, Doc Ock/Falcon/Daken are annihilating the goon nodes. It's nice to have 2500 of attack tile damage every turn. The trouble is clears are taking so long I don't really have time to do enough. The first sub barely matters, though, so as long as I'm semi-competitive for the first few subs, I should do fine surging at the end.

If you have him decently covered, Blade makes a great substitute for Doc Ock. It's nice to have MOAR free strikes when I use Blade + L. Daken + Falcon, plus the two Attack tile option is still there on Blade's Purple, configured so that L.Daken tanks. If 6 strikes are out when I drop Blade's Purple, EACH Attack tile is set to 1011 dmg, so that's 3k dmg a turn easily, not even counting cascades...

Makes chewing through those LvL 181+ Dons and Muscles much faster, plus Blade's Black skill is cheaper and faster to toss out than my X-Force's Surgical...

loroku

ZootSax wrote:

is there any conceivable chance a 1->2 transition guy without Loki could possibly be in the running for the new 4-star this event?

...and playing Ares, Daken & Moonstone has been much more fun than I expected.

By contrast, there is a chance that a 1->2* transition player could be in the running for a top 50 placement. The trick is: your levels are so low that your nodes are going to be significantly less difficult than others', which gives you a better chance to clear the more difficult nodes more often. If Ares / Daken are some of your top characters right now, then yes, there is a chance you'll do very well. My advice would be to resist pumping ISO into anyone during the event, and try to do as many full clears as you can.

I actually think getting a Loki cover from progression is something that's possible by at least the halfway point in this event. I'm on track to be over 1/5th of the way there about 24 hours in, and I'm not going too hard. I'm pretty sure this will end up being one of those "everyone gets the progression and then just mindlessly grinds for placement" events, which suck, but they still suck less than the ones where it's too hard to get the final placement award. All that to say: keep at it and there's a good chance you will pick up Loki most of the way through and that will be enough to vault you up to the top ranks, especially with your other low-level team getting you decent clears.

ALL THAT SAID: it's actually a pretty terrible idea to pick up a 4* character in the 1->2* transition. You'll probably never get another cover for her within the next 6-9 months - easily - so she'll just take up roster space that you could have used for something that would actually help you. But hey, then again, maybe not.

orbitalint

So, I'm in slice 1 and the 2nd sub just started. Is scaling all messed up for everyone? My entire level is sub level 40's...I'm not upset about the levels, more the grind if this is how it is for everyone...

Unknown

gambl0r312 wrote:

If you have him decently covered, Blade makes a great substitute for Doc Ock. It's nice to have MOAR free strikes when I use Blade + L. Daken + Falcon, plus the two Attack tile option is still there on Blade's Purple, configured so that L.Daken tanks. If 6 strikes are out when I drop Blade's Purple, EACH Attack tile is set to 1011 dmg, so that's 3k dmg a turn easily, not even counting cascades...

Makes chewing through those LvL 181+ Dons and Muscles much faster, plus Blade's Black skill is cheaper and faster to toss out than my X-Force's Surgical...

My Blade is something like 4/3/4, and I'm in the process of taking him up to 140 - I'll have to try dropping him in and see how he works.

Unknown

As im clearing the nodes for sub 1 it just hit me: D3 should have a rental system for characters. For example, I currently don't have Loki but would actually pay 2$ to have one temporarily for this event. It's a way for D3 to make an income and for players to try to grind out for new characters... I'm 26th now but I know for a fact that unless I get my hands on Loki ASAP I have no chance for Top50

What do you guys think of this really small fee rental system?

loroku

ark123 wrote:

Event Format:
Length of Sub-Events: 36 hours

-This is the first event with time sharding. Remember to account for the 36 hours when you pick - you don't want to have some nodes end at a easy-to-get-to 6PM and the others at 6AM.

This is also wrong: the first sub node is only 24 hours. I haven't heard from anyone in the first time slot if the next one is as well, but it seems likely. Not sure if this was done to fix the 6PM/6AM problem you described above or what.

Edit: Sorry! This information is wrong - I completely forgot when I actually started the event.

Another thing: I recall this having only 3 subs before - I think. Since it's now 7 days long, I wonder if there will be double all the subs?

It would explain why the sub rewards - which have been steadily getting worse and worse - are especially **** this time.

Ebolamonkey84

loroku wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Event Format:
Length of Sub-Events: 36 hours

-This is the first event with time sharding. Remember to account for the 36 hours when you pick - you don't want to have some nodes end at a easy-to-get-to 6PM and the others at 6AM.

This is also wrong: the first sub node is only 24 hours. I haven't heard from anyone in the first time slot if the next one is as well, but it seems likely. Not sure if this was done to fix the 6PM/6AM problem you described above or what.

Another thing: I recall this having only 3 subs before - I think. Since it's now 7 days long and the subs are shorter, I wonder if there will be double all the subs?

It would explain why the sub rewards - which have been steadily getting worse and worse - are especially **** this time.

The first sub is definitely 36 hours. It started at 11 AM CST for me yesterday and ends 11 PM tonight.

orbitalint

loroku wrote:

This is also wrong: the first sub node is only 24 hours. I haven't heard from anyone in the first time slot if the next one is as well, but it seems likely. Not sure if this was done to fix the 6PM/6AM problem you described above or what.

I'm in the 1st slice and the 2nd sub is 36 hours and I joined a 36 hour sub for the first one too. Not sure what other slices were experiencing in terms of time, however, but it was right for me.

loroku

Koko81 wrote:

What do you guys think of this really small fee rental system?

That's the whole point of PvE: to dump all over you if you don't get the required character from the last PvE. It's supposed to be bad for you if you miss out on the last PvE's reward; at least, that's what I am getting from the game design. They punish you so that you will never miss a single event, because missing one makes you fall off the train until they stop releasing new characters (never) or you already have all the required characters (never).

In PvP this would be much worse, as everyone would just rent the most powerful characters and go to town. We'd see 95% of the same teams (in the past it would be Sentry + Hood, now I guess it's Xforce and 4* Thor?) and the entire strategy would be "can you pay $2?"

Unknown

Snipped has been corrected

loroku

I can't reply fast enough but yes, I was wrong, thanks!

Unknown

That's the thing... missing the reward from one event leads to missing rewards from all other events in this PVE format... youre not just punishing the player for missing that one event, but since the new characters are coming out one after the other in PVE, then youre punishing them for a series of events...

and we don't need the "rental" system for PVP... we already get the essential/boosted character

orbitalint

Koko81 wrote:

That's the thing... missing the reward from one event leads to missing rewards from all other events in this PVE format... youre not just punishing the player for missing that one event, but since the new characters are coming out one after the other in PVE, then youre punishing them for a series of events...

I'm definitely not defending the practice but you need to do well in one PVE to have access to the ability to do well in every other event after that. Even without the essential character, that is maybe a middling grind. Heck, jump on in a 3 day event and you are done and have access. I know we all had to do it at some point in this game. It was hard as heck to grab my first Cap token back when rubberbanding would take you from 300th to 10th in one pass but I got him and haven't looked back.

From their business and incentives perspective, there would be no point in collecting characters or expanding rosters or even doing well in any event. That last point, doing well, is why I'm semi-ok with it. Why reward inaction?

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

Koko81 wrote:

That's the thing... missing the reward from one event leads to missing rewards from all other events in this PVE format... youre not just punishing the player for missing that one event, but since the new characters are coming out one after the other in PVE, then youre punishing them for a series of events...

I'm definitely not defending the practice but you need to do well in one PVE to have access to the ability to do well in every other event after that. Even without the essential character, that is maybe a middling grind. Heck, jump on in a 3 day event and you are done and have access. I know we all had to do it at some point in this game. It was hard as heck to grab my first Cap token back when rubberbanding would take you from 300th to 10th in one pass but I got him and haven't looked back.

From their business and incentives perspective, there would be no point in collecting characters or expanding rosters or even doing well in any event. That last point, doing well, is why I'm semi-ok with it. Why reward inaction?

Ahhh I see what you guys mean! Well then back to the grind

Unknown

For the scaling, it's definitely higher per clear probably because there are less clears now (3 hour instead of 2H 24M refresh). All nodes are classified as one of three rough difficulty level: easy, hard, and essential. A node on easy will never exceed around level 40 or so regardless of whatever else that might happen out there. A node that's essential is almost always significantly less than a hard, but there's nothing stopping essentials from going to 395 if the hard node would've been 495 (but capped at 395). From the game's point of view, 395 is still a lot easier than 495!

I find that for the Maggia combos you can't get away with Blade/Falcon/Daken very easily once they're in the level 250+ range because the fights last so long that you can't rely on just Redwing to deal with their offensive CDs. I put X Force since he's pretty much good at everything, but if they get even higher I'll probably sub in Captain America instead.

ZootSax

loroku wrote:

ZootSax wrote:

is there any conceivable chance a 1->2 transition guy without Loki could possibly be in the running for the new 4-star this event?

...and playing Ares, Daken & Moonstone has been much more fun than I expected.

By contrast, there is a chance that a 1->2* transition player could be in the running for a top 50 placement. The trick is: your levels are so low that your nodes are going to be significantly less difficult than others', which gives you a better chance to clear the more difficult nodes more often. If Ares / Daken are some of your top characters right now, then yes, there is a chance you'll do very well. My advice would be to resist pumping ISO into anyone during the event, and try to do as many full clears as you can.

I actually think getting a Loki cover from progression is something that's possible by at least the halfway point in this event. I'm on track to be over 1/5th of the way there about 24 hours in, and I'm not going too hard. I'm pretty sure this will end up being one of those "everyone gets the progression and then just mindlessly grinds for placement" events, which suck, but they still suck less than the ones where it's too hard to get the final placement award. All that to say: keep at it and there's a good chance you will pick up Loki most of the way through and that will be enough to vault you up to the top ranks, especially with your other low-level team getting you decent clears.

ALL THAT SAID: it's actually a pretty terrible idea to pick up a 4* character in the 1->2* transition. You'll probably never get another cover for her within the next 6-9 months - easily - so she'll just take up roster space that you could have used for something that would actually help you. But hey, then again, maybe not.

Thanks for the advice. Most of my enemies have ranged from levels 120-185 (my highest character is level 78, un-boosted), so I'm sure my battles are much easier than some. Moonstone stealing a Tommy Gun attack has saved me in a couple of the highest level battles, although as you suggested Ares/Daken are my workhorses. To be honest, I've had such a hard time finishing in the top 400 in previous PVE events, I never even thought about the pros & cons of having a 4-star on my roster--and in all likelihood, I'm sure I'll drop soon enough (and be more than content if I can stay in the top 400), so the problem will likely solve itself . With 12 hours to go in the first sub-event, I was actually 5th and three of the top ten players, including myself, don't have Loki. I missed three or so clears from the optimal 3-hour cycles, so I'm amazed to be where I'm at. Better lucky than good, I guess...

orbitalint

Phan, are you in the second sub yet? Scaling is off in my China sub. The first sub was fine but this 2nd one, the essentials are at level 15 and my hardest node was level 40's. I cap all my characters at 135...

Spoit

loroku wrote:

Koko81 wrote:

What do you guys think of this really small fee rental system?

That's the whole point of PvE: to dump all over you if you don't get the required character from the last PvE. It's supposed to be bad for you if you miss out on the last PvE's reward; at least, that's what I am getting from the game design. They punish you so that you will never miss a single event, because missing one makes you fall off the train until they stop releasing new characters (never) or you already have all the required characters (never).

In PvP this would be much worse, as everyone would just rent the most powerful characters and go to town. We'd see 95% of the same teams (in the past it would be Sentry + Hood, now I guess it's Xforce and 4* Thor?) and the entire strategy would be "can you pay $2?"

You already get a free loaner in pvp?

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

Phan, are you in the second sub yet? Scaling is off in my China sub. The first sub was fine but this 2nd one, the essentials are at level 15 and my hardest node was level 40's. I cap all my characters at 135...

Not yet. My scaling was quite normal (easy nodes 40, essentials mid 100s, hard nodes 200-300). Didn't some people said they also had trivial nodes on the first sub? Looking at the rate the score was climbing in my bracket I can't imagine too many people had that in my time slice, since there were only about 10 guys that were doing the maximum possible pace in the first 3 cycles, and that'd be utterly trivial if scaling is messed up.

Elektra doesn't interest me enough to make the time commitment needed to get top 5 (though I'll still try) and if scaling is still messed up, then that just makes it easier to walk away from this event. I'd like to finish at least top 50 but I can live without it.

Unknown

I'm still working on finishing first sub and WOW scaling is crazy, last run I faced lvl 100ish for hard nodes, now they are lvl 170ish.
As a side note, I'm still 2-3* transition so that is quite hard for me as it's over 50 lvls higher than my highest character.

So crazy low scaling in the beginning, and crazy high at the end??

This says to me scaling is completely broken with the new time shards. Anyone else?