It was tough, but I made it (road to top 25)

h4n1s

OK - let me start with the fact that this is not my first top 25 placement ever, yet it is my first top 25 since seasons were introduced (yep I am pretty long in MPQ) and it feels different than before. I am not a grinder. I have not developed strong roster. My strongest are Xforce (2/2/5 - lvl 209), Hood (5/5/3 - lvl 166), Hulk (5/3/5 - lvl 153), Punisher (5/5/1) and then few 3* missing more than 4 covers to be fully covered and/or more than 4 covers to be ideal build. Having that said, I don't consider myself being fully transitioned yet, I am missing those speed-killers in my roster to be adequately built.

Yet I decided to focus on the latest Mystique PvP, because I really REALLY wished to get my CMags better then current 3/3/2 build.

My alliance since the 'free slots for all' is no longer top100 alliance, so I couldn't count with it's extra cover. I needed to finish in top 25 to get 2 covers. My time schedule did not allow me to grind my butt of multiple hours in a row, so I needed to figure out some strategy.

I started with the last time slice (end 10am my time, monday). Without shielding, while playing 30 minutes here and there I reached 500 points rather easily (if I net it, it was around 2 hours of play) - I was attacked just once, it was a defensive win.That score put me in top 100, somewhere around 60ish spot. 24 hours before the event end I climbed to 580 pts, again no retals, pretty easy. 16 hours before the end I started to think - "I won't have much time in the morning to grind, so I rather climb as much up as possible, shield for 24 hours and when I wake up, I'll just get +20-30 pts to secure the spot if needed".

My roster - both offensive and defensive - since 580 pts was Xforce (2/2/5 - lvl 209) + Hood (5/5/3 - lvl 166) + Mystique (1/1/0 - lvl 60 boosted, I know...). Already at 580 pts I started to see 166/270 wall, I thought it will improve if I tank a bit in sim, but it did not make any significant difference. So after like 15 skips I found opponent worth 25 points having 166Lcap and 203XForce (4/2/5 build) with 110Mystique. Piece of a cake a thought to myself and indeed I won. 2 healthpacks later, I had few similar fights and won 'em again. At 670 pts I started to see only 270 walls, so I was like - lets use some of those boosts, grind 50-60 pts and then shield... yeah... I've beaten the first team which bumped me over 700pts milestone, queried and beaten next team worth 35 pts. I said to myself, yep - 735 pts will be enough. It would BUT during the last fight, I lost 40 pts, as I got 3 defensive losses.. So down at 695 pts, I panicked and quickly raised a 24 hrs shield. Before it went up I lost one more fight worth -15 pts, so I got down to 680. I went to sleep.

I woke up at 6:45 AM in the morning to check whether I got some defensive wins or not and how do I currently rank. To my surprise I got attacked 8 times, no defensive win, yet due to shield no points lost. I checked my rank and I was on 24th spot. That's ugly. 3 hours to go, and I am just one rank away from losing the second cover. So I took the leap of faith, queried a guy worth 25 points, beaten him and immediately shielded at 705 pts. That ranked me 19th with 3 hours to go.

At work, 10:20, I found time to check how it ended up. Screen flashed to show me I was attacked 8 times, no points loss. At the end of the tourney I finished 21st and gained my 2 covers. In top 10 all ranked above 950 pts. Top 5 above 1100, top 1 ~1400 pts.

TL;DR - Bottom line - PvP top 25 placement is cheaper than buying extra mags cover for 1250 HP, that's for sure. But it is also extremely difficult and I have to say even quite nerve-wrecking to achieve over 700 pts and top 25 because without solid roster, you're an easy retal target, without solid roster it is extremely difficult to acquire solid roster. It doesn't matter how much time you invest in PvP - as long as you reach over 600, the game becomes different - TOTALLY DIFFERENT. And that's IMHO broken. I hope the new MMR will change this.

Xenoberyll

sorry to say, but i really think you'd have it easier not playing that x-force until you got at least 4 in green/black.

h4n1s

Xenoberyll wrote:

sorry to say, but i really think you'd have it easier not playing that x-force until you got at least 4 in green/black.

There's no one in my roster who would be more effective than him even with such **** build.. lets face the fact that Hulk is very slow, Punisher in 5/5/1 build is slow as well (the red is really **** unless fully covered) and other 3* I have face the same build trouble. Using 2* like Thor and Ares, even in optimal builds, are very vulnerable to defensive losses even before reaching 600 mark; they are not that scary for transitioners as 209lvl xforce is and are even more vulnerable to retals in over 600 game...

RWTDBurn

I'm a bit surprised to see that you've played this long and yet you don't have a deeper 3* roster. Did you take a break from the game or do you just play at a very casual rate like play just a few times a week? As your roster sits currently, you're in a difficult spot, that's for sure. PvP does favor the players that have the more powerful characters, but personally I think that's how it should be. That 600 point range you spoke of changes as your roster gets stronger. As you get better developed 3*s, that point moves to 700 - 800. As you get a 4* or two well covered and leveled, that point goes up a bit higher. Eventually we all get to that point where people are hitting us often and we risk losing far more than we gain when we break shields to attack. During the PvP with Sentry, I dropped shields at 979 to make my final hop to 1000+ (team was 270 X-force, 240 Goddess, and Sentry boosted to 249) and in the time my 1 battle took to complete, I got hit 5 times and lost 128 points. I tried to fight my way back but kept getting hit along the way until finally I shielded at just below 900. We all face that wall. We all face that tension (though that's what makes it rewarding to me). You're roster, point leader scores, and timing of your hops determine what score that wall will be and hop difficult (read: tense) it will be to score past it.

h4n1s wrote:

without solid roster it is extremely difficult to acquire solid roster.

While I agree it can be a challenge, the amount you play and the strength of your alliance is what defines how much of a challenge it will be. A transitional player really needs an alliance that reaches top 100 on a regular basis and also needs to take advantage of PvE to earn those extra covers. If you are scoring 600 every PvP, there should be some fringe top 100 alliances that could use you. Getting a cover every PvP event really helps a transitional player build their roster. I know my roster wouldn't be anywhere near what it is now without a solid alliance to help me build my roster. If you are really attached to your alliance and don't want to move on to a stronger one, then you need to spend some time on the PvE events. Between the tokens, ISO, HP, and cover rewards you can help build your roster for PvP there. Granted that level 209 X-force may be seriously screwing up your scaling for PvE, I'd be curious to see what that's like for you. If PvE is usually too difficult for you to finish top 150 because of scaling being high from your X-force, then THAT would be the part of the game that may be broken.

Edit: I just remembered, we also have the daily Deadpool challange starting shortly as well. That sounds like a great way to fill in your 3* roster. If that does in fact give out more 3*s then D3 has found away to address your roster issues. Hopefully we will all find out soon!

h4n1s

RWTDBurn wrote:

I'm a bit surprised to see that you've played this long and yet you don't have a deeper 3* roster. Did you take a break from the game or do you just play at a very casual rate like play just a few times a week? As your roster sits currently, you're in a difficult spot, that's for sure. PvP does favor the players that have the more powerful characters, but personally I think that's how it should be. That 600 point range you spoke of changes as your roster gets stronger. As you get better developed 3*s, that point moves to 700 - 800. As you get a 4* or two well covered and leveled, that point goes up a bit higher. Eventually we all get to that point where people are hitting us often and we risk losing far more than we gain when we break shields to attack. During the PvP with Sentry, I dropped shields at 979 to make my final hop to 1000+ (team was 270 X-force, 240 Goddess, and Sentry boosted to 249) and in the time my 1 battle took to complete, I got hit 5 times and lost 128 points. I tried to fight my way back but kept getting hit along the way until finally I shielded at just below 900. We all face that wall. We all face that tension (though that's what makes it rewarding to me). You're roster, point leader scores, and timing of your hops determine what score that wall will be and hop difficult (read: tense) it will be to score past it.

h4n1s wrote:

without solid roster it is extremely difficult to acquire solid roster.

While I agree it can be a challenge, the amount you play and the strength of your alliance is what defines how much of a challenge it will be. A transitional player really needs an alliance that reaches top 100 on a regular basis and also needs to take advantage of PvE to earn those extra covers. If you are scoring 600 every PvP, there should be some fringe top 100 alliances that could use you. Getting a cover every PvP event really helps a transitional player build their roster. I know my roster wouldn't be anywhere near what it is now without a solid alliance to help me build my roster. If you are really attached to your alliance and don't want to move on to a stronger one, then you need to spend some time on the PvE events. Between the tokens, ISO, HP, and cover rewards you can help build your roster for PvP there. Granted that level 209 X-force may be seriously screwing up your scaling for PvE, I'd be curious to see what that's like for you. If PvE is usually too difficult for you to finish top 150 because of scaling being high from your X-force, then THAT would be the part of the game that may be broken.

Edit: I just remembered, we also have the daily Deadpool challange starting shortly as well. That sounds like a great way to fill in your 3* roster. If that does in fact give out more 3*s then D3 has found away to address your roster issues. Hopefully we will all find out soon!

As per my roster, I played nearly every day, but for about first 3-4 months rather casually. I wasn't member of the forums at that time so I made a LOT of rookie mistakes, that kind of delayed my progress. I though have a solid amount of various 3 star covers, but I lack those critical (as example BP black, LThor yellow...).
I was a member of top 100 alliance for nearly 2 full seasons and that helped me a lot to obtain certain amount of 3* covers, I admit. And I scored 600 every PvP, but I got enough because it heavily impacted my personal life, now I play rather casually and push hard only for covers I'd like to have, such as CMags. One way or another, my roster even though is not great is not bad either and the message I tried to convey in my post was, that it feels kind of broken, that after reaching certain amount of points the game flips dramatically instead of gradually increasing competition. Furthermore it's extremely dependent on your roster, because the weaker your 'defensive team' is, the bigger 'HIT ME' sign you bear and it's not rare that within 5 minutes you get 70 points shorter, while in those 5 minutes you can gain only 50 points tops (of course unless you have XForce, 4thor combo, which reduce the time by 2-3 minutes...).