The Hunt: Jan 21 - 26

DrNitroman

dtrpath3 wrote:

One positive thing about the 8 hour refresh is I can try some nodes I wouldn't normally touch with a ten foot pole. When you know you don't have to re tackle nodes for another 3 hours it doesn't matter if you wipe against a hard or deadly node since you'll regen health and health packs in that time. I've beaten a couple of nodes I wouldn't even have tried in other events knowing even if I won my health would be wiped out for the refreshed beatable nodes. Feels kind of nice getting points from a node I should have no chance in he'll of beating.

I Agree. With 3h refresh I sticked with more conservative strategies (fast wins, true healing...) whereas now I'm less afraid to try more 'expensive' tactics.

Like Hulk bombing

Before I didn't dare sending Hulk to the hospital too often. This time I hulk-bombed my way through the entire Florida: lot of slaps, lot of healthpacks, lot of fun!

Cortez

Same thing here. I actually beat that Ares node with stormneto and got absolutley destroyed on the "knock on the door" node with my main team. Thanks to the 8 hour refresh, i can actually split the sub in two halfs, as long as i'm inside my own time limit. If this makes sense.

DrNitroman

Cortez wrote:

Same thing here. I actually beat that Ares node with stormneto and got absolutley destroyed on the "knock on the door" node with my main team. Thanks to the 8 hour refresh, i can actually split the sub in two halfs, as long as i'm inside my own time limit. If this makes sense.

Of course it makes sense! The second time you may have a completely different board by chance... let's say full of and !
Good luck

bender

Vhailorx wrote:

Quick question about a Slice 4 bracket.

Attention: Kiddicarus of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Ronald EM of Neko House; and UGA Bulldog of Quack Fu

All of you are currently in the top 10 of your Slice 4 bracket in the Hunt. All of you already have 5 3* Thor yellow covers. And you all also probably out of contention for a top 2 finish, being at least 9000 points behind 2nd (and two of you already have 5 4* Thor red covers anyway). Consequently, the only value of a top 10 finish to you, as opposed to a top 20 finish, is a about 1000 iso. Do you intend to grind out the event for top 10?

I'm looking for my first 3* Thor yellow cover and would really enjoy not having to grind like mad to hold my top 10 position. So I thought I would ask and see what your intentions are.

I'm in the same slice 4 bracket (leap frogging in and out of top 10) and would very much appreciate the help if you guys could ease up just a little bit. My thanks and good MPQ karma in advance!

squirrel1120

Woke earlier this morning and did a run through Florida. Everything was fresh since I'd have had to get up at 4am to do it, or do a double clear which would push it all the way out to noon. I'm sure I'm giving up a few points by not doing either, but I have to say it was really nice being able to go through them in a pattern instead of trying to retrace the order in which they became playable in the first run. The run took 41 min including the repeatable in the main, and thankfully everything went down the first try.

Ares daken venom was 229, which I didn't think was too bad, but at least partly because patch n mag.stique denied them all but about 10 turns. Lil riskier with patch in there, but when it works it makes it go so much faster. I lucked into evough ap for tbti after the first cascade too which only helped the speed up. Because the green and red strike tiles aren't basic they actually stick around pretty well, only getting eaten up by lines blowing out rows or columns.

ZeroKarma

squirrel1120 wrote:

Woke earlier this morning and did a run through Florida. Everything was fresh since I'd have had to get up at 4am to do it, or do a double clear which would push it all the way out to noon. I'm sure I'm giving up a few points by not doing either..../quote]

What I have been purposely trying to avoid is losing time where the nodes are fully charged. Getting up at 4am is not happening, so I am doing a clear at 4-6 pm and then clear the nodes again at 10 before bed. The last 6 hours or so, I go through the essentials at least every couple of hours, whole board if I can. Rinse and repeat has me 10k clear in first, so small sample size says it works.

That being said, the 8hr refresh really isn't letting me rest THAT much more than before. The Hunt is probably the wrong PvE to get a real feel for things, with the concurrent subs shifted by 12 hours. But you do need to make sure you have free time scheduled at the end of the event to grind or you're going to miss out.

orbitalint

bender wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

I'm looking for my first 3* Thor yellow cover and would really enjoy not having to grind like mad to hold my top 10 position. So I thought I would ask and see what your intentions are.

I'm in the same slice 4 bracket (leap frogging in and out of top 10) and would very much appreciate the help if you guys could ease up just a little bit. My thanks and good MPQ karma in advance!

So I'm in their position in slice one. No need for the Thor cover. In my situation, I got a super fresh bracket (15th entry) and am trying to stay top ten in every sub for the HP and placement is an afterthought. I'm a mostly f2p player (about $50 in over a year of play) and these subs are the best way to build up the stock. It is hard to help it given that situation. Heck I've only been doing essentials and a goon node or two in these subs to keep top ten in a sub. I can't speak for them but I'd hope that is their situation too.

Unknown

gobstopper wrote:

dtrpath3 wrote:

As someone who is on day 66 of mpq I dont know "how things used to be." However it seems to me that the developers are trying to keep a natural progression to the game. I beat the game levels, got a couple 2* characters and decided to see what the events were about. If I couldn't compete at that level I wouldn't have continued playing. Probably the same for all of us at some point (think way back). Scaling is necessary to keep new players engaged. How fair it is is another matter dependent on the developers. My top ten always has stronger rosters than me at this point but I've never felt I can't compete against them if I put in the effort and I normally place high enough to get a couple featured covers (currently in 3rd thank you very much. I've never played pvp but I always assumed it's what higher level players graduated to when they began to max out their rosters. Some day hopefully I'll have a strong enough roster to be complaining about those weak transition players beating me in events due to scaling but I'll also try to remember how I got my roster in the first place. Aside: 2* level 72 Thor is my strongest character at this point.

When I started playing, the first PvE I experienced was Unstable ISO. I could only do a couple of nodes, but it didn't bother me. I just started, why should I be able to do the entire thing? The more difficult nodes gave me a concrete target to strive for. Maybe if you have zero interest in Marvel you'd drop the game. But it's not unreasonable to be locked out of certain content when you are just a beginner.

In fact, I think the devs dug themselves a deep hole when they introduced scaling. Because there is so little actual new content in this game, by opening up every story node to every player, they were left with only two options to prevent the game from getting stale fast: 1) Consistently produce new story content / game modes, or 2) Slow down roster transition as much as possible. They went with 2), probably because covers and roster slots make up the bulk of their revenue and take less effort to develop than real content.

This is a great post.

Unknown

bender wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Quick question about a Slice 4 bracket.

Attention: Kiddicarus of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Ronald EM of Neko House; and UGA Bulldog of Quack Fu

All of you are currently in the top 10 of your Slice 4 bracket in the Hunt. All of you already have 5 3* Thor yellow covers. And you all also probably out of contention for a top 2 finish, being at least 9000 points behind 2nd (and two of you already have 5 4* Thor red covers anyway). Consequently, the only value of a top 10 finish to you, as opposed to a top 20 finish, is a about 1000 iso. Do you intend to grind out the event for top 10?

I'm looking for my first 3* Thor yellow cover and would really enjoy not having to grind like mad to hold my top 10 position. So I thought I would ask and see what your intentions are.

I'm in the same slice 4 bracket (leap frogging in and out of top 10) and would very much appreciate the help if you guys could ease up just a little bit. My thanks and good MPQ karma in advance!

I couldn't play nearly for a whole day, so I´m out of top 2 and no reason to keep grinding, I´ll just play to collect the 500 iso nodes and get my gold token from subs, that´s a yellow thor I have no use for someone else. Good luck.

Unknown

Aaaaaand I'm scaled out of Bullseye II & III in the Savage Lands. They're both deadly and I'm not willing to throw whales at it to win. Looks like I'll be sticking to the Essentials and the two goon nodes until the end.

Unknown

Fievel wrote:

Aaaaaand I'm scaled out of Bullseye II & III in the Savage Lands. They're both deadly and I'm not willing to throw whales at it to win. Looks like I'll be sticking to the Essentials and the two goon nodes until the end.

mnmags mystique hood

Unknown

I think they had scaling to address the story concerns because a lot of people must also play this game for the story. I remember in the first The Hulk a lot of people were asking what happens when you beat the final 230 Juggernaut + Ragnarok (pre nerf) because it was just really hard to beat that node no matter who you have unless you're willing to burn a lot of health packs since there are multiple ways to lose that fight by turn 3. Of course I don't know why they use the 'hard' setting (anything with a 500 iso reward) for story nodes. Either all the story nodes should be on the 'easy' setting or they can put a normal/hard bracket with the same story sort of like Simulator Basic, or do something like first pass from any node has no scaling.

Vhailorx

orbitalint wrote:

bender wrote:

So I'm in their position in slice one. No need for the Thor cover. In my situation, I got a super fresh bracket (15th entry) and am trying to stay top ten in every sub for the HP and placement is an afterthought. I'm a mostly f2p player (about $50 in over a year of play) and these subs are the best way to build up the stock. It is hard to help it given that situation. Heck I've only been doing essentials and a goon node or two in these subs to keep top ten in a sub. I can't speak for them but I'd hope that is their situation too.

Well the obvious solution to me seems to be that you could tank the last sub (or the final nodes after the last sub where applicable. Even if your definition of "tank" means dropping down to top 50 in the last sub, that would likely open up a top 10 main finishing slot for someone else. And it would cost you the grand total of 25 HP. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I agree that it would be silly to ask vets not to play pve events when they don't need the cover rewards. But there is a pretty big gap between playing casually to get iso/hp rewards, and grinding out every last sub to get the best possible placement.

Vhailorx

Ronald EM wrote:

bender wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Quick question about a Slice 4 bracket.

Attention: Kiddicarus of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Ronald EM of Neko House; and UGA Bulldog of Quack Fu

All of you are currently in the top 10 of your Slice 4 bracket in the Hunt. All of you already have 5 3* Thor yellow covers. And you all also probably out of contention for a top 2 finish, being at least 9000 points behind 2nd (and two of you already have 5 4* Thor red covers anyway). Consequently, the only value of a top 10 finish to you, as opposed to a top 20 finish, is a about 1000 iso. Do you intend to grind out the event for top 10?

I'm looking for my first 3* Thor yellow cover and would really enjoy not having to grind like mad to hold my top 10 position. So I thought I would ask and see what your intentions are.

I'm in the same slice 4 bracket (leap frogging in and out of top 10) and would very much appreciate the help if you guys could ease up just a little bit. My thanks and good MPQ karma in advance!

I couldn't play nearly for a whole day, so I´m out of top 2 and no reason to keep grinding, I´ll just play to collect the 500 iso nodes and get my gold token from subs, that´s a yellow thor I have no use for someone else. Good luck.

Thanks Ronald!

squirrel1120

ark123 wrote:

mnmags mystique hood

I have not tried this as my hood has 3 blue. Does it speed up the start decently? Bc that's the biggest danger for the comp... trying to get the initial p/b ap to get rolling and hoping rng doest ever let ya run out.

With mag.stique I've really liked putting several with them as the third wheel:

Patch
BP
cage (even unbuffed, but especially when he was)
Punisher
psylocke
cap marvel

Basically I've tried almost everyone that puts out decent strike tiles with ap on any color except blue/purple or almost anyone with a decent black that doesn't need turns to pass the be useful. Squirrel girl has been in the way more often than not, but I have to admit her yellow and greens came in handy a few times when the engine ran out of steam.

Anyone else have any favorite dance partners for the duo? I'm considering giving blade a try once I finally get a couple of his green covers soon.

orbitalint

Vhailorx wrote:

Well the obvious solution to me seems to be that you could tank the last sub (or the final nodes after the last sub where applicable. Even if your definition of "tank" means dropping down to top 50 in the last sub, that would likely open up a top 10 main finishing slot for someone else. And it would cost you the grand total of 25 HP. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I agree that it would be silly to ask vets not to play pve events when they don't need the cover rewards. But there is a pretty big gap between playing casually to get iso/hp rewards, and grinding out every last sub to get the best possible placement.

I agree with you in theory but tanking the last sub isn't going to make up the 10k gap between my placement and tenth. Every top ten finish is locking in a certain amount of point lead that simply can't be made up in one sub. One sub of not playing at all isn't going to make up that gap especially with these 8 hour refreshes.

I do one clear and essentials after that. I'm not grinding here anywhere close to optimally. If I can do minimal play and snag top 10 overall, I'm having a hard time seeing how else I'm supposed to play to let someone else in top ten without tanking almost every sub from the start. And that's at least 100 or more HP...

Unknown

squirrel1120 wrote:

ark123 wrote:

mnmags mystique hood

I have not tried this as my hood has 3 blue. Does it speed up the start decently? Bc that's the biggest danger for the comp... trying to get the initial p/b ap to get rolling and hoping rng doest ever let ya run out.

With mag.stique I've really liked putting several with them as the third wheel:

Patch
BP
cage (even unbuffed, but especially when he was)
Punisher
psylocke
cap marvel

Basically I've tried almost everyone that puts out decent strike tiles with ap on any color except blue/purple or almost anyone with a decent black that doesn't need turns to pass the be useful. Squirrel girl has been in the way more often than not, but I have to admit her yellow and greens came in handy a few times when the engine ran out of steam.

Anyone else have any favorite dance partners for the duo? I'm considering giving blade a try once I finally get a couple of his green covers soon.

For the Ares node they don't have Daken so if you have any kind of reliable AP drain you can just grind it out very slowly, as long as your team isn't say OBW + MNMag + Spiderman. As long as one guy can do damage through the Adamantium Bones you'll eventually be able to win with a strong lockdown. The one against the Sniper is considerably trickier since you can't lockdown Deadly Shot forever without someone like Captain America and goons still have elevated match damage. Since goons have elevated damage, Nightstalker will always steal green in that matchup, so one strategy would be to just go for an early Nightstalker and hope you can at least match away the first Deadly Shot, and by the time the second Deadly Shot is about to go off you should have close to 30 green AP and hopefully that's enough to solve whatever problem you have.

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Well the obvious solution to me seems to be that you could tank the last sub (or the final nodes after the last sub where applicable. Even if your definition of "tank" means dropping down to top 50 in the last sub, that would likely open up a top 10 main finishing slot for someone else. And it would cost you the grand total of 25 HP. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I agree that it would be silly to ask vets not to play pve events when they don't need the cover rewards. But there is a pretty big gap between playing casually to get iso/hp rewards, and grinding out every last sub to get the best possible placement.

I agree with you in theory but tanking the last sub isn't going to make up the 10k gap between my placement and tenth. Every top ten finish is locking in a certain amount of point lead that simply can't be made up in one sub. One sub of not playing at all isn't going to make up that gap especially with these 8 hour refreshes.

I do one clear and essentials after that. I'm not grinding here anywhere close to optimally. If I can do minimal play and snag top 10 overall, I'm having a hard time seeing how else I'm supposed to play to let someone else in top ten without tanking almost every sub from the start. And that's at least 100 or more HP...

The subs can give upwards of 20K so why wouldn't one sub of not playing at all be enough? But that's only if that's the only guy between you and top 10, and you still have to do better than anyone else behind you as well.

squirrel1120

Phantron wrote:

stuff

Eh, not having issues getting the node done. I was more interested in how well mag.stique + hood worked for ark, and /or if anyone had any other favorites to pair with them besides what I listed. They could just 2 man any given node most of the time, but any thing that makes them faster or more safe piques my interest

orbitalint

I was exaggerating some, phan, but my point was that being altruistic when I'm doing much less than optimal play doesn't make much sense to me. If i were on the gas pedal, that would be different but anyone with the time could easily overtake me with semi optimal passes in any of these subs. The opportunity has been there to take that spot from me since the start because my behavior hasn't changed all event. It's a pretty low bar given my experience from other events. 4hor introduction anyone?