The Hunt; Properly playing 8 Hour refreshes.

Arondite

I put myself in the top 10 in my bracket, wiping every node in (what I assume was) record time. I'm currently waiting for the nodes to come off cooldown.

I am now sitting just outside of the top 10 and have been watching those around me. Counting points pretty carefully, I've determined most of the top 10 in my bracket has grinded some of their nodes to 0. Is this wise?

I was under the impression the best way to play would be to hit every once at EXACTLY 8 hours to maximize point efficiency, then as the sub comes to a close grind the remaining nodes to 0 when they would no longer have time to refresh, maximizing rubber banding as the event goes out.

Am I mistaken? Are they playing "better" than I am, or are they ruining their shot at the event? Does it somehow balance out?

NorthernPolarity

Playing 8 hour refreshes is the exact same concept/strategy as playing 3 hour refreshes. They are ruining their shot at the event, and are probably a filthy, non-forum viewing casual .

Arondite

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Playing 8 hour refreshes is the exact same concept/strategy as playing 3 hour refreshes. They are ruining their shot at the event, and are probably a filthy, non-forum viewing casual .

So do I have the right strategy? Pop them once every 8 hours at exactly 8 hours, then grind them to 0 at the last minute starting with the most valuable node?

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Playing 8 hour refreshes is the exact same concept/strategy as playing 3 hour refreshes. They are ruining their shot at the event, and are probably a filthy, non-forum viewing casual .

So do I have the right strategy? Pop them once every 8 hours at exactly 8 hours, then grind them to 0 at the last minute starting with the most valuable node?

Yep. That's the most points you can make. However, since some florida nodes are actually kinda hairy, and have multiple ares/venom combos which will wreck your S**t if they get a cascade, you should consider starting the final grind with a substantial amount of time on the clock.

Unknown

Assuming scaling is anything that remotely resembles normal you're not going to be able to do 6 stacks in even 8 hours and if you could do that you never needed any strategy to win virtually any PvE event.

You might as well try to start as early as possible on the last 8 hours because until you get to about the 4th stack or so, the winner is almost strictly whoever cleared more total base points even with rubberbanding and points replenishing assuming everyone started out virtually tied, because both factors are too small relative to the amount of points even a 4th stack (half of base points) is worth. You should never let extra health packs stay idle because that's going to be your limiting factor. Now if you're going to use them for something else (like PvP) then sure you can wait longer but that should be because you don't have the health packs to continue clearing in the last 8 hours. Prior to the last 8 hours just do your clear roughly every 8 hour and you should start in a 'virtually tied' position for the final stretch, assuming you're able to clear everything, which is not as easy as it sounds.

ZeroKarma

Phantron wrote:

Assuming scaling is anything that remotely resembles normal you're not going to be able to do 6 stacks in even 8 hours and if you could do that you never needed any strategy to win virtually any PvE event.

You might as well try to start as early as possible on the last 8 hours because until you get to about the 4th stack or so, the winner is almost strictly whoever cleared more total base points even with rubberbanding and points replenishing assuming everyone started out virtually tied, because both factors are too small relative to the amount of points even a 4th stack (half of base points) is worth. You should never let extra health packs stay idle because that's going to be your limiting factor. Now if you're going to use them for something else (like PvP) then sure you can wait longer but that should be because you don't have the health packs to continue clearing in the last 8 hours. Prior to the last 8 hours just do your clear roughly every 8 hour and you should start in a 'virtually tied' position for the final stretch, assuming you're able to clear everything, which is not as easy as it sounds.

This. Given the scaling of the nodes, they aren't impossible, but they leave you hurting when you try to clear everything in one run. Especially tough with two subs at the same point!

My plan this time around is to hit the sub every couple of hours when we hit the last 8 hours. I don't know that this is really optimal, but the 2 hour breathers let me heal up and let the health packs regenerate. We will see how it works.

Any grinding before the last 8 hours is wasted unless you don't have the time available. But given the 8 hour refreshes..time should not be a problem.

Unknown

Also if you get unlucky during the last few hours and can't complete a sweep or two, having been exactly on time for those 8h clears will mean exactly ziltch. You can get a handful of points over people who were late or early, but a full sweep will give them like ten times that difference.

Arondite

ark123 wrote:

Also if you get unlucky during the last few hours and can't complete a sweep or two, having been exactly on time for those 8h clears will mean exactly ziltch. You can get a handful of points over people who were late or early, but a full sweep will give them like ten times that difference.

The way I timed it, I'll have 7 Hours and 56 Minutes to do my "grind to 0" sweeps on Alaska. Hopefully, that should work

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Also if you get unlucky during the last few hours and can't complete a sweep or two, having been exactly on time for those 8h clears will mean exactly ziltch. You can get a handful of points over people who were late or early, but a full sweep will give them like ten times that difference.

The way I timed it, I'll have 7 Hours and 56 Minutes to do my "grind to 0" sweeps on Alaska. Hopefully, that should work

Alaska sure, Florida, who the F knows

Arondite

ark123 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Also if you get unlucky during the last few hours and can't complete a sweep or two, having been exactly on time for those 8h clears will mean exactly ziltch. You can get a handful of points over people who were late or early, but a full sweep will give them like ten times that difference.

The way I timed it, I'll have 7 Hours and 56 Minutes to do my "grind to 0" sweeps on Alaska. Hopefully, that should work

Alaska sure, Florida, who the F knows

There's a lot of nodes on Florida, yeah, but some of them are so low value I won't be replaying them to 0 unless I'm within striking range from someone above me. I'm talkin in the low 100 value.

That, and half of them closed after I cleared them the first time.

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Also if you get unlucky during the last few hours and can't complete a sweep or two, having been exactly on time for those 8h clears will mean exactly ziltch. You can get a handful of points over people who were late or early, but a full sweep will give them like ten times that difference.

The way I timed it, I'll have 7 Hours and 56 Minutes to do my "grind to 0" sweeps on Alaska. Hopefully, that should work

Alaska sure, Florida, who the F knows

There's a lot of nodes on Florida, yeah, but some of them are so low value I won't be replaying them to 0 unless I'm within striking range from someone above me. I'm talkin in the low 100 value.

That, and half of them closed after I cleared them the first time.

Of the repeatable nodes, if you have the time and can grind all of the easy ones to zero that often means skipping a clear on one of the fiendishly hard nodes. And sometimes can take less time to clear an easy one 5x compared to the hard one once.

Unknown

I don't know if its been long enough to tell, but say you have 3 hours on a refresh before bed. Is it better to miss out on the 5 hours of Fully refreshed time while you are sleeping and get full refresh points in the morning, or play the nodes that will refresh before you wake up? Also, what would be the amount of time for refresh that would be smart to play before sleeping if it doesn't fall perfectly to when you wakeup? I've been playing right before bed as long as refresh time is less than half the time I'll be sleeping.

Carnage_78

Deadpool-69 wrote:

Is it better to miss out on the 5 hours of Fully refreshed time while you are sleeping and get full refresh points in the morning, or play the nodes that will refresh before you wake up?

I did not do the mathematics on it...but I've been trying to not let my counters reach full if I could not be there at the right time. I'd rather get the points I can as close as possible to the full refresh & keep the counter accumulating points while I am busy elsewhere rather than hit a full points refresh hours after it got full...I have a feeling that in the end you get more points that way...

It served me well during this event...for example, I missed a number of optimal refreshes during the last Florida sub but hit the nodes early if I could not be available just in time for the full refresh & then grinded at the end of the sub for a Top 10 finish for that sub...my bracket is not very intense for sure but still I think I would have missed the Top 10 if I had waited.

Just my personal impression though...

bdksni1

My opinion is that 8hr timers rock. I've had pretty much the same results as in previous events - +118000 pts, top 10 overall and a couple top 2 subs- with MUCH less effort and actually some fun doing it. The strategy was to play all nodes every 6-8 hours until the end of the sub. Then from the 8hour mark -when the sub is about to end- clear as many nodes as you can down to 100pts or less, starting from the biggest rewards (essentials,deadly,hard).