Thick as Thieves

Unknown

Its 70mil not 700 I believe

Unknown

If people have 1000 points on average, there's only 30K or so people playing in this event. Even double that and you still get only 60K, which is considerably less than The Hulk. That said, the difficulty curve of this encounter is rather devastating. The underyling idea isn't bad, but it definitely could've been implemented better.

Unknown

I THINK my stacks have reset but can't remember when 8 hours ago was exactly. Oh well, gonna grind them out now.

Mawtful

Double checked and it's 70M.

I also tried suiciding in Anderson V (with the "guest" Patch). I somehow managed L, W, L, L, W from 5 attempts. Interestingly, noticed no level drops after the losses, but did notice level drops after the wins. Perhaps it's something to do with winning with some KO'd party members. That's pushed me back up to #40 in my sub, so I might see if I can pick off one or two other missions now - I've actually managed to get the Maggia in Anderson 1 mission below level 100.

Unknown

Ok off to her with a 250+ lead in both brackets. Kids should wake me up just in time for the brackets to reset

Nemek

Phantron wrote:

If people have 1000 points on average, there's only 30K or so people playing in this event. Even double that and you still get only 60K, which is considerably less than The Hulk. That said, the difficulty curve of this encounter is rather devastating. The underyling idea isn't bad, but it definitely could've been implemented better.

1000 is wayyyy too high of an average. The forumites really only comprise the more hardcore. Wasn't Hulk only 65K, anyway?

Unknown

Hey Phantron,I want to be the first to say THANKS for posting the tip about retreating to lower the stupid scaling difficulty level. I think many would have kept that little tidbit to themselves, competition and all. You sir are a gentleman and a scholar.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

Phantron wrote:

If people have 1000 points on average, there's only 30K or so people playing in this event. Even double that and you still get only 60K, which is considerably less than The Hulk. That said, the difficulty curve of this encounter is rather devastating. The underyling idea isn't bad, but it definitely could've been implemented better.

1000 is wayyyy too high of an average. The forumites really only comprise the more hardcore. Wasn't Hulk only 65K, anyway?

Both Hulks were around 50k almost instantly and crept up over their duration to over 60, as far as I remember. But yeah, people who placed first in their brackets had a little over, or even under, 1000 points. Rubber bands or not, that's no average. You should be able to guess the current average if you assume roughly 60k players again, but it'd only be a guess. Also sounds like a good few are getting locked out by the level escalation, though I imagine it might be fewer than you'd think from this place. How many people do we really think are grinding them down repeatedly?

Phantron wrote:

Patch is only powerful because his strike tiles are incorrectly credited to you instead of the other side. If they're shared 50/50 like they're supposed to, you'd probably die in 3 turns after you used Berserker Rage if the other side isn't dead by then. I don't see him being exceptionally more powerful than Wolverine 2* if not for the bug. In fact, if his strike tiles are correctly counting against you, I'd definitely use Wolverine 2* instead if there's a choice.

The difficulty of these missions does keep the guy ahead in check and makes it somewhat possible a casual player might compete.

Even discounting the bug, pre-nerf ** reaches the same general silly damage area, but takes longer to escalate. In the event, I find Patch is better if you want to win fast and sloppily, but for 230 missions (ie all of them, soon enough) Astonishing works out safer. You can only chunk through 10k HP Ares and chums so fast, even at 2000 per turn.

Unbugged, Patch is very niche or useless. Haven't decided which, but leaning to the former. He needs Loki, long match-trading sessions for AP hoarding, or stun-lock once you pop Berserker Rage. Selective tile overwriters also potentially work, but only C.Mags strikes me as really workable there, and he's in line for the bat. Who knows, maybe this is finally Captain America's time to shine? Or Moonstone, of course. Want to knock out those 5 strike tiles? No problem! That'll be 40 purple. Hope you weren't planning an Aggressive Recon this week.

It's why I think the bug looks so darned shady, however genuine it might be. Not much of a tinfoil hat sort, but really: So, that new hero you don't have at more than 2/2/2 unless you bought covers? Yeah, we accidentally doubled his offense and removed his drawback while he's the only substantially buffed unit in a new event. Just a bug, though, don't go spending money getting him skilled and leveled, or anything.

Unknown

Veracity wrote:

Unbugged, Patch is very niche or useless. Haven't decided which, but leaning to the former. He needs Loki, long match-trading sessions for AP hoarding, or stun-lock once you pop Berserker Rage. Selective tile overwriters also potentially work, but only C.Mags strikes me as really workable there, and he's in line for the bat. Who knows, maybe this is finally Captain America's time to shine? Or Moonstone, of course. Want to knock out those 5 strike tiles? No problem! That'll be 40 purple. Hope you weren't planning an Aggressive Recon

IW would be perfect with Patch to nullify enemy strike tiles with bubbles after popping Berzerker Rage. I'm investing in Patch for the post Spidey era when stuns/heals will not be a given. A lot harder to one-shot his larger health pool than 2* and as tweaks to the other damage dealers go through, survivability alone will grow in importance as health packs once more become a factor.

Unknown

New sub I'm back in 1st. See if I can hold it. Patch is THAT overpowering in bugged form. I beat the Maggie with free patch + lowest characters.
Save my patch + best 2 for the DA. It's critical to get 1 green patch strike ASAP. Currently for me it's 135x6 after I use my green. I've also learn to spread out my play and not buy health packs. I also use OBW to heal up any low health character I need in easier prolong quest. I.E. venom lol 18 n 22.

Unknown

How to get more points when every mission is only 1 point each??

Unknown

Darktears wrote:

How to get more points when every mission is only 1 point each??

Wait 8 hours.

Unknown

walkyourpath wrote:

Veracity wrote:

Unbugged, Patch is very niche or useless. Haven't decided which, but leaning to the former. He needs Loki, long match-trading sessions for AP hoarding, or stun-lock once you pop Berserker Rage. Selective tile overwriters also potentially work, but only C.Mags strikes me as really workable there, and he's in line for the bat. Who knows, maybe this is finally Captain America's time to shine? Or Moonstone, of course. Want to knock out those 5 strike tiles? No problem! That'll be 40 purple. Hope you weren't planning an Aggressive Recon

IW would be perfect with Patch to nullify enemy strike tiles with bubbles after popping Berzerker Rage. I'm investing in Patch for the post Spidey era when stuns/heals will not be a given. A lot harder to one-shot his larger health pool than 2* and as tweaks to the other damage dealers go through, survivability alone will grow in importance as health packs once more become a factor.

Basically I am waiting on seeing how 4**** xforce turns out before putting more than trivial (to lvl 30 or so) ISO into patches. He should be better than patches if they buff him correctly. Just for his red and yellow+hp pool he is worth having on a team (patches). If xforce has anything even comparable with his hulk lvl hp pool he will be pretty scary with the upcoming nerfs to characters like spidey mags and tholverine. Which is why I think its good xforce doesn't have an auto heal like the others. 9k+ hp and a 400-500+ hp/turn heal would be pretty intense without magneto level damage or a whole lot of saved up ap. At least if its a non-passive yellow it requires him to burn ap to heal up.

Unknown

soenottelling wrote:

walkyourpath wrote:

Veracity wrote:

Unbugged, Patch is very niche or useless. Haven't decided which, but leaning to the former. He needs Loki, long match-trading sessions for AP hoarding, or stun-lock once you pop Berserker Rage. Selective tile overwriters also potentially work, but only C.Mags strikes me as really workable there, and he's in line for the bat. Who knows, maybe this is finally Captain America's time to shine? Or Moonstone, of course. Want to knock out those 5 strike tiles? No problem! That'll be 40 purple. Hope you weren't planning an Aggressive Recon

IW would be perfect with Patch to nullify enemy strike tiles with bubbles after popping Berzerker Rage. I'm investing in Patch for the post Spidey era when stuns/heals will not be a given. A lot harder to one-shot his larger health pool than 2* and as tweaks to the other damage dealers go through, survivability alone will grow in importance as health packs once more become a factor.

Basically I am waiting on seeing how 4**** xforce turns out before putting more than trivial (to lvl 30 or so) ISO into patches. He should be better than patches if they buff him correctly. Just for his red and yellow+hp pool he is worth having on a team (patches). If xforce has anything even comparable with his hulk lvl hp pool he will be pretty scary with the upcoming nerfs to characters like spidey mags and tholverine. Which is why I think its good xforce doesn't have an auto heal like the others. 9k+ hp and a 400-500+ hp/turn heal would be pretty intense without magneto level damage or a whole lot of saved up ap. At least if its a non-passive yellow it requires him to burn ap to heal up.

I won't have enough covers or ISO (right now at 3/3/2, lvl 45) to make him viable for a long while, so Patch will be a farming tool until then. I have 10 covers and 120 levels of ISO invested in IW so far, so I'm pretty well committed to maxing her as my first 4*.

I'd like to see them implement a healing tile similar to a strike tile for 4* Wolvie, that heals a set amount each turn. It could be low cost (6-8 HP), and that way it begins providing benefits right away without being OP like a passive since it would require multiple casts to be really amazing and would be vulnerable to matches.

Unknown

For gods' sake, Anderson III, refresh so I can go to sleep! >.<

Unknown

walkyourpath wrote:

IW would be perfect with Patch to nullify enemy strike tiles with bubbles after popping Berzerker Rage. I'm investing in Patch for the post Spidey era when stuns/heals will not be a given. A lot harder to one-shot his larger health pool than 2* and as tweaks to the other damage dealers go through, survivability alone will grow in importance as health packs once more become a factor.

She crossed my mind, but I still tend to discount her as too rarely held in a usable state to be all that relevant - dunno if that's accurate. Mine's certainly some 20k HP and hundreds of thousands of ISO from viable, and I don't have blue, at all. If yours is usable, though, it's definitely worth trying, especially now she spawns that protect tile for if one or two enemy strikes do get unlocked. You genuinely could use Bag-Man as a poor man's IW, but I can't see that ever happening partly because the cost would be high, but mostly because he's a joke character no one takes seriously.

Going to throw in with Ghast in the apparently very small devil's advocate chorus and say I like the difficulty of this event, incidentally. I've cleared everything at 200+, requiring boosts only when forced to put in my useless GSBW and struggling a bit with similarly junk Spider-Man, and I haven't even finished leveling my OBW yet. It's not easy, takes a combination of luck and taking time over each move, but I can't say I ever enjoyed all but one or two missions testing no more than clock-watching ability and willingness to get up at 3:30am.

Where Demiurge has faceplanted spectacularly, again, is in communicating nothing at all about the by-now expected rules change. In principle, relatively casual players should be blowing through the missions once and maybe again near the end, placing ok, and probably never even discovering how insane they get for the more competitive types. But massively counter-intuitive stuff like it being ideal to do the story backwards and grinding 500 ISO awards out of easy missions being a fast-track to exclusion for the rest of the week needs to be flagged if you don't want to drive players away for good. Pop-up: Maggia are known to reinforce their facilities in the face of repeated attacks, so choose your battles carefully (enemy levels increase with each mission completed). Done!

To anyone who doesn't have a maxed **Wolverine and is disappointed they can't really compete, I'd just suggest patience. If you don't have probably the single most commonly abused maxed character to participate, of course you're not placing high. Why would you expect to? But Hulk precedent suggests you might be getting a token single Daredevil for doing basically nothing (BUY COVER SLOTS), and in any case the usual pattern for new covers seems to be that the psychotic grindmonkies bust a gut getting them first so they can feel all special, then everyone and his dog gets bombarded with them for weeks.

Unknown

I like the idea of a difficulty increasing with the grind, although the increase appears to be quite steep imho.

But even at the max. level of 230 the enemies are definitely manageable, if you have decently leveled OW, Spider-Man and Wolv/Patch (and I am only a mid-range-player who started with the Steam-version). Boost are pretty much unavoidable (for me at least), but due to the level rewards I still gain more ISO than I am spending on it. It's not the greatest fun I have ever had, but my OCD keeps me grinding those levels every 8 hours anyway. Grind-Monkey ftw!

Only thing really annoying is forumite Psykopathic give me a real run for the money in the main-bracket

Unknown

I went ahead "what the heck" and tried a lvl140 maggia mission, tell you what my team was downed in one shot around turn 6...

This can't be what the designers want the game to be, as it's making me NOT wanting to play, I'm sure they want me to WANT to play and drop bucks rather...

Unknown

You can retreat repeatedly from goon-only missions at no real cost until you're almost dead, particularly when they're lending you a Patch. You know when a Tommy Gun is about to nuke your entire team, so save the healthpacks/cooldown grief and just ditch.

Anti-Gravity Device (OBW's blue) is pretty critical for these missions, since it can delay any number of countdowns indefinitely as long as you keep finding 9 blue. Her level doesn't really matter, but having at least four black covers makes a huge difference to damage output in combination with Patch/**Wolv's strike tiles.

If you don't have her, Bag-Man's purple and yellow can remove and delay countdowns, respectively. Moonstone is also good at removing special tiles, but questionable at best against Maggia because they're spammy and use at least two colors. Spider-Man or any other stunner can delay countdowns by stunning the owner.

Unknown

My main bracket is slacking, or rather hitting the wall of 230s in the face, I am first at 1739 with the second being at 1480... I did almost all missions twice for 3 times, skipping some those for 9 or less points when I already got the iso/token rewards. No retreats to lower levels, as they regain them so fast it feels just a bother.
(I still have no idea why, if this episode is mostly about Maggia, the reward has always the boost against Hammer )
The net iso gain is positive but really low, as you cannot reliably play against the 230 levels without at least the +3 all colors ap boost - or else the risk of being wiped is really high.

Still, whit the target being at 20k points for the last progression reward, my whole efforts might turn useless. Well at least in less than a day I should have Patch at max covers - I would totally love to see GSWidow or Spiderman as rewards for the next sub brackets, since they are sort of featured too.

If anyone is curious, I am running these:
OBW 3/5/5 lvl 40 (in retrospect, I should have built a 5/3/5, but no big deal)
Spiderman 2/5/4 lvl 65
WPatch 3/3/3 lvl 51
+3 ap all +3 blue/purple and something else that I don't have to buy


If WPatch is fixed before the end of the event I will have to rely on Loki, but it will make the grind 50% slower in terms of time expended per battle, so I really really hope not. It might be fun to see Maggia strike tiles of 800+ become protection tiles tho