some questions for the community

Unknown

I would like to ask a few questions and get everybody's thoughts. I've got a 40 man roster. I have many 2* covers maxed out. I have many 3* rotting on my roster. The best 3* I have is cap Steve Rodgers at level 89. I also have 4* nick fury and x-force wolvie at 94 which I use often.

Question 1. When I play pvp I can't really get past 500. I get to this point and have no more life's left and all my level 94s r dead. I always finish with a rating around 130 and up. Just can't get those 3* covers.

2nd. What's up with the crazy ai cascades? Anybody else have issues with this. Just kills me.

3rd. The last two 10 pack heroic I got had nothing but 2* covers. Very stressful to see that after all the time that's put in. Like to hear what others have pulled from 10 packs.

4th. When I break shields I lose points faster than I can play matches. I play fast but not overly fast. Is this normal.

Maybe I'm just at a spot in the game that slows down and I have to break through it. Any thoughts will be appreciated.

Thanks everyone.

Lystrata

1. This is a problem for lots of players when starting... and even well into the 2* - 3* transition. One day, you'll break 600. But yeah... this is 'working as intended'.

2. Heh, yeah. Many threads are dedicated to the AI 'cheats' and cascades. You'll get cascades as well... it's just more annoying when the AI gets 'em.

3. My last 10 pack only had 2*s, while someone in my alliance got 6 3*s. It's just the luck of the draw / numbers. You won't always get 2*s, so hang in there.

4. Yeah, it's normal. Unless you have whoever the 'fast team' is at a given point (used to be Sentry/Hood), you'll get hit faster than you can make points. I'd suggest working your way up to your highest possible score and then shielding until the end. Until your roster is able to 'speed kill', it's just not work breaking shields. (I once lost 118 points in the last ten minutes doing that... lesson learnt!)

All I can say is this game is a marathon. You won't 'race' through it... and it is really, really frustrating at times. If PvP is difficult though, PvE should be a little better for you - it tends to favour beginners more than vets.

Also, just my personal opinion, but don't put iso into 4*s unless they're well-covered. You'd be better off building up a solid and varied 3* roster first.

Unknown

Thanks for the info Lystrata. It was very helpful. I really like this game so I'm in it for the long haul.

Unknown

Yeah unfortunately you won't "scare off" people until you get at least one 166, and you won't know true "peace" until you get a scarecrow - someone like a 166 Hulk, a 200+ 4* (any except elektra and IW).

You can take advantage of that to some extent running OBW and Ares - this duo can take any 2* team down pretty reliably, and quite a few 3* teams with a lucky cascade

wymtime

#1 and #4 it is tough for 2* to get past this point. if your wall is 500 points you should climb to 499 but not over 500 and line up 3 quality opponents you can beat. My guess is once you get above 500 you get 166's. If you stay below that mark you should still see teams you can beat. Once you beat those 3 nodes hopefully you will have over 550 points and place your 3hr shield. You then need to line up 2-3 matches you think you can win quickly and score the remaining 40-50 points you need to get to 600 points. With 5-7 min left in the PVP that is when you attack with AP boosts to try and get to 600 points. If you are unshielded for more time than that you will be lined up a squished by others doing the same thing. Start out at 5 min and then see if you can go to 6 and then 7.

#2 this is MPQ life. Sometimes the cascades come to you, sometimes it goes to the AI.

#3 Just remember there is a reason everyone on the forum says never buy tokens. the 10 packs will average out to 2 3-4* per 10 pack so not great odds.

Lastly to help transition you really need to grind PVE. This is where a 2* team has an even playing field. If you are able to do well there you can earn some good 3* covers to help transition.

Good Luck

Nonce Equitaur 2

jaydee4854 wrote:

2nd. What's up with the crazy ai cascades? Anybody else have issues with this. Just kills me.

That's why Loki is now one of my favorite characters. In the Simulator, I'm avoiding the nodes where I can't use him. I love it when AI ridiculous cascades trigger 8 or 9 Mischiefs in a game. The more egregious the cascades are, the faster I win.

Had a match go weird yesterday when Level 280 Gorgon managed to kill my 4-Thor and stun my badly injured X-Force for 2 turns, and it was just my badly injured Loki left against a 10000+ health Gorgon. No or to use if I did come out of stun, but Gorgon had plenty of . I had 17 so I cast Trickery to collect the colors I needed while denying for Gorgon. Managed to set up some Mischief (the AI always goes for a 4-match), collected 9 before X-Force woke up, and then ended the match. He's terrible on his own, much like Falcon or Spiderman, but he's got two very spammy powers now, can alter the board better than anyone, and actively punishes AI cascades.

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

#1 and #4 it is tough for 2* to get past this point. if your wall is 500 points you should climb to 499 but not over 500 and line up 3 quality opponents you can beat. My guess is once you get above 500 you get 166's. If you stay below that mark you should still see teams you can beat. Once you beat those 3 nodes hopefully you will have over 550 points and place your 3hr shield. You then need to line up 2-3 matches you think you can win quickly and score the remaining 40-50 points you need to get to 600 points. With 5-7 min left in the PVP that is when you attack with AP boosts to try and get to 600 points. If you are unshielded for more time than that you will be lined up a squished by others doing the same thing. Start out at 5 min and then see if you can go to 6 and then 7.

#2 this is MPQ life. Sometimes the cascades come to you, sometimes it goes to the AI.

#3 Just remember there is a reason everyone on the forum says never buy tokens. the 10 packs will average out to 2 3-4* per 10 pack so not great odds.

Lastly to help transition you really need to grind PVE. This is where a 2* team has an even playing field. If you are able to do well there you can earn some good 3* covers to help transition.

Good Luck

Thats exactly what happens. I hit 500 and out comespecially the 166 levels and even 4* around 200. I'll take that advice and try it. Thanks.

Geauxbotz

We've all been there! Are you in a good alliance? I can't stress how important that is to a transitioning player. And it doesn't have to be top 100. Any extra resources at this stage in the game helps. As far as shields go, I wouldn't hop even once at the scores you are achieving. Maybe shield to end the event and try to maintain your score. But using more than one at the lvl of pts. you are scoring isn't sustainable. Have you tried delaying your start? Figure out how long it takes you to peak and start then. The longer you wait, the less retaliations you deal with and the teams you are fighting should be worth more. Makes the climb quicker and easier. Last piece of advise: This game takes time unless you throw money at it. How you capitalize that time invested determines how quick you progress. Doesn't matter if you start a PVP at the very beginning or with 8 hrs. left. You will end up at around the same final placement. You can spend your HP (earned or bought) on much better things than shields. And like the others have said, PVE is your friend!

ronin_san

My 10 pack draw rates are usually 3/10. I have seen my buddy (who has 9 maxed out 3*) pull 10 straight 2*. It happens. I usually draw about 3 3* covers a week.

Either your pay with time or with money. You don't get everything you want on your timing. I've been waiting on my last 3* Thor cover for at least 2 months. TBH, I need 3 because I only have 2 in his yellow.

I've been waiting on covers for Punisher (currently 5/3/3), Black Panther (currently 3/5/3), She Hulk, Beast, Mystique, Rocket, Daredevil, XFW (currently 2/5/4) and MANY more. This is by design. They want you to feel like you'll never get the covers you want unless you pay $$.

Unknown

PvP placement is as much about metagaming as it is about winning actual matches (unless you're paying to win with hops I guess).

Firstly pick your slice carefully. As a 2* player make it one you can play at the end of so you can do a final climb as late as possible.

Secondly know where you safe unshielded limit is. There should be a score where you will stay fairly level unshielded or lose slowly enough that you can just top up your score occasionally. This is the point to climb to early and NO HIGHER. You will do yourself zero favors climbing past that point, shielding for a while and restarting play because....

Thirdly you need to understand how the node score updates (don't) work. Every roster has a score they will be hit above, even those 2x270 + 249 featured lineups will be hit at enough points (not as many as you would think). So the only safe way to maintain a score is to not appear in people's nodes at that score. While it would seem pretty impossible to do that if you want to climb you are somewhat helped by the laggy and **** node scores in PvP. People only see your true score if they come to you as a fresh node (not in place or queued) when you are at that score.

Upshot of this is if you climb to 550 and sit there for a long time you will be showing as 550 in a ton of people's nodes. On the other hand, if you sit at 400 for a long time then try to time a rapid climb towards the end of PvP (so late enough that you'll get the score you want and just dump a 3hr shield) then when you are at 550 points you will still be showing at 400 points in a lot of people's nodes. This reduces the potential pool of people hitting you to those actively skipping OR having played at least 6 matches since your score climbed (clear a node then the 5 pre-queued nodes. It's been a while since I was a 2* roster but i'm not sure they skip all that much to find "juicy" 500 point targets (could be wrong) and as for those ppl playing 6 matches... well you would hopefully have finished 6 in the same amount of time and that gets you to your target score anyway.

It's not guaranteed to work as advertised but hope that helps a bit.

Unknown

jaydee4854 wrote:

2nd. What's up with the crazy ai cascades? Anybody else have issues with this. Just kills me.

I'll comment on this one and say that like the first person who commented on your post there really is a thread talking about this. I will add though that while you will get crazy cascades it does seem that the frequency that you get it vs the frequency that the AI gets a crazy cascade is never in your favor. I have noticed that while I do get a nice cascade once in awhile I also am on the receiving end of one multiple times before I see it.

Unknown

In top gun got up to 350 and stopped. Took no point reduction. Last 3 hours of top gun gave it all I had. Got up to 589 and started to take point loss. I then hit the shields for last 2 hrs. Ended up ended up at 61 with a 3* patch green. Thanks for all the advice. It really helped.

Unknown

A common mistake I see people make is confusing the lag between your score is updated versus how far you can reach without shields. Let's say 600 is your stable limit (at this point no one hits you but if you go above they immediately start hitting you), and someone hand you a bunch of free AP+3 all boosts so that you can go forth and conquer. As you're winning the games, you might not be hit for a while but this isn't because people are suddenly avoiding your team. It's because while you're going up, to everyone else you still appear as 600 point since that was your old score to anyone who has you previously queued, and if we're agreed that 600 is your stable state then most people will skip you at 600 even though your real score can be much higher thanks to an infusion of boosts. As soon as people start seeing your score gets updated to 700 or 800 or whatever you managed to get to thanks to these boosts, they'll start hitting you again and not even having an infinite supply of AP+3 all boosts can possibly keep up, so you'll get knocked back down to 600 within about 10 minutes of when your real score is updated. In fact, the correction is likely to bring you quite a bit below 600 because the lag makes your score appear as 700 or 800 even when your score has fallen, so you'll end up doing worse even in this scenario where you're given infinite boosts to climb.

Unknown

jaydee4854 wrote:

In top gun got up to 350 and stopped. Took no point reduction. Last 3 hours of top gun gave it all I had. Got up to 589 and started to take point loss. I then hit the shields for last 2 hrs. Ended up ended up at 61 with a 3* patch green. Thanks for all the advice. It really helped.

Glad it went well. It's a shame (IMO) that knowing how the system works matters more than being able and willing to actually play the match 3 game, but that's where we are....

Unknown

1. When I play pvp I can't really get past 500. I get to this point and have no more life's left and all my level 94s r dead. I always finish with a rating around 130 and up. Just can't get those 3* covers.

Well with just 2* I can get to 600 with careful selection of opponents, obviously I skip 270 x-force teams however #4 gets you unless you shield. The current game mechanics require shields to get above 500 it's as simple as that. Now in some brackets that will get you in the top 100, however in a death bracket like I was in for the patch covers top ten was in 3k points range, so I was well below top 100, I didn't get that needed patch cover, I'm sure that all of the top 10 already had a fully covered patch, so a little frustrated with the reward setup there.

2nd. What's up with the crazy ai cascades? Anybody else have issues with this. Just kills me.

Yeah, not sure it's different than cascades we get or just notice it more since the game doesn't show your AP gain / loss like it does for the AI.

3rd. The last two 10 pack heroic I got had nothing but 2* covers. Very stressful to see that after all the time that's put in. Like to hear what others have pulled from 10 packs.

This is very very frustrating especially when you spend HP on packs. I'm giving up for a while since I'm 43 tokens without a 3 or 4*. The system should count how many 2*s you have pulled and increase the odds of 3* until you get one, so you don't go an insane 43 tokens without one. Odds be damned, if I put HP especially $$ bought HP into tokens, give me a damn gold.

4th. When I break shields I lose points faster than I can play matches. I play fast but not overly fast. Is this normal.

Yeah, this happens to me depending on how busy the bracket is. In the 400 point range I can get in about 3 before getting hit for 50+ on losses, and the last day of PvP is much worse than day 1, if you play and get to 500+ range on day 1 just shield for day 2 maybe popping shield for a few quick matches. I guess though we will see what changes in behavior the shield cool down brings.