Gauntlet 3.0: The Good, the Bad, the Loki

areacode212

I generally enjoy the Gauntlet, but the personal scaling is the worst thing about it. I had finished what I thought was my final Gauntlet node, only to not get the green Loki cover because I had accidentally skipped Essential 15 (Gamora/Loki/She-Hulk). Not a problem, I thought--I went back and tried it, but it was so tinykitty hard by that point (level 224 or so), that I wasted a ton of heal packs & boosts, and ended up Whalesing it. So it all worked out in the end, but the scaling appeared to make a node much, much harder than it should have been.

Pwuz_

areacode212 wrote:

I generally enjoy the Gauntlet, but the personal scaling is the worst thing about it. I had finished what I thought was my final Gauntlet node, only to not get the green Loki cover because I had accidentally skipped Essential 15 (Gamora/Loki/She-Hulk). Not a problem, I thought--I went back and tried it, but it was so tinykitty hard by that point (level 224 or so), that I wasted a ton of heal packs & boosts, and ended up Whalesing it. So it all worked out in the end, but the scaling appeared to make a node much, much harder than it should have been.

Honestly that's the way to make the Gauntlet more manageable. Avoid the Essential nodes till you finish the normal ones. Then take the 2nd set 1st, followed by the 1st set. This keeps your scaling down for the normal nodes, and the Essential nodes (while forcing a character on you) tend to be lower than the final nodes of the same chapter.

Having a Balanced roster is advantageous as well. The more characters you have built to the same max level, the better you'll do. This event PUNISHES anyone who has 1-5 characters significantly higher than the rest of their team. You've sometimes got to get creative with your teams when you're facing your own best characters. Look for weaknesses that can be exploited (like bringing countdown tiles against Loki & Daredevil) or other counters to effectively neutralize (or minimize) you're opponents team.

Unlike PvP, don't be afraid to bring out a team with only 3-4 active powers, especially if they have some good synergy (M.Mags/C.Storm/M.Hawk, IM40/Cap A, DareD/Patch).

GothicKratos

I had a lot of fun. I've enjoyed The Gauntlet in each of it's iterations.

Actually managed to get almost all the way through it this time, as well. The only Essential Character I had was Captain Marvel (and if what I read in this thread is correct, I had Mystique too, but didn't beat that Colossus/Devil Dino/Loki node to unlock the last branch of Essentials) and I still managed to nab all but a few of the prizes. I missed three in the first sub (and none of them were worth anything anyways), I think three in the second too (the She-Hulk being something I actually wanted), and like four in the last one (but it was just the Loki and some HP/ISO - and while I would have liked a Loki, it's okay). Like I mentioned, I made it to that Colossus/Devil Dinosaur/Loki node and just couldn't get passed it in the few tries I had time for, but that was the third to last node, so I'm pretty content with that.

That being said, I see a lot of people complaining that it was too hard, or harder than previous iterations, but that's not the case for me at all. Personally, I breezed through the majority of nodes with Wolverine/Daken/(x), and anything I couldn't beat with that was Magneto/Hawkeye/Storm. I got stuck on maybe four nodes? The Sentry one in the second sub, the 4* Thor one in the third sub, the Devil Dino/Colossus one in the third sub, and I know there's another, but it eludes my memory atm. I did burn through a fair bit of Boosts and Team-Ups, but I'm sure I'll build them back up to 20+ soon enough.

I'm not sure what to say about there being personal/local scaling. On one hand, it is a PvE, so that's par the course, but on the other hand, why is there extra scaling when you're not competition -- you don't need to level any playing fields. I suspect it's just a bit of artificial difficult and/or a failsafe in case the event doesn't quite scale good enough for you.

My only suggestion would be to add more cover rewards. Break down Progression Rewards more, add them into the prize pool for nodes, reward us for completely each sub-event, add more nodes in each event so there's more Progression Rewards, and/or add more sub-events (and scale the difficulty spike across them all more evenly).

In my opinion, each sub should garner about 4 covers, each to a different character. The first sub should give away 2*, the second sub should give away 2* & 3*, and the last sub should give away 3*s.

Some things could use some retooling, though - for example, if the first sub-event gave away 2* Miss Marvel (or even 2* Torch) it would have felt a lot more rewarding/worthwhile to work for, rather than a Moonstone cover. A lot of people complained about the She-Hulk cover, so maybe a Blade or a Groot cover, since those are newer/in demand/well-received, instead. I like that Loki was the last reward for the last sub, but really, I feel like there should be a kicker somewhere, if you completed all the nodes (including Essentials) you got an extra prize, like perhaps a Black and Purple cover, so you would have one of each color. Let's be honest here, one cover is nothing - furthermore, one cover in each color is nothing - except now people can use Hero Points to max him out (if they want to).

I also feel like there should be more Tokens floated around the event -- ideally an Event Token or Heroic Token should have a chance to be attainable in every third node and every other node in Essential Nodes. That's what, like, 4 Event/Heroic Tokens for normal nodes and another 3 for the Essential Nodes? The Gauntlet could turn into the hero transitioners need lol.

Anyways, I think that's all I have.

Unknown

The difficulty is probably slightly higher overall because there's a clear theme to showcase Loki's new ability which utterly owns players at higher levels. On a per node basis I don't recall anything super cheap but anything with Loki in it is exceptionally difficult even with normal characters. They did a very good job with the goon + villian combo nodes in that you no longer have any hard hitting moves that's accelerated by goons. I'd say the Loki nodes are just bad luck because had they decided to showcase Daredevil's new powers instead, people would be saying how this is one of the easiest Gauntlet to date instead.

Leugenesmiff

I love the Gauntlet format. It's so much more fun than regular PVE. The only one I've had an issue with was the gauntlet before last. I didn't like that one of the required characters had only just been released. As a semi retired player I'd prefer it if the required characters have had at least two, or even better three, chances of being obtained prior to the gauntlet.

Unknown

I liked that Gauntlet after all. It was challenging, but not too challenging. I pretty much mags/stormed it + boosts the entire way through and finished fairly easily with a 2* roster, 125 lvl char being my highest.

Nice to grind on my own time, and complete all rewards. Rewards were weak as usual, but that's MPQ apparently.