First successful shield hop

GTannen73

I know this is old hat to all you vets, but in the Women of Marvel event, I was progressing well enough to try my hand at shield hopping. I'm mostly F2P (having only spent $20 on roster slots back in the day), so I take HP expenditure seriously. That said, I'd saved up almost 2000 , and since I didn't already have a yellow Lady Thor, I decided to give it a shot.

I managed to hop my way to 961, then threw up one last 3 hour shield while looking for targets to hop to 1000. I debated when to break in order to have the best chance at two quick wins, but while I pondered it, a defensive win came in, then another with a half hour to go, pushing me to 1003.

I was in 10th until I got hopped in the final minutes, so I finished 11th. I don't even care, because Lady Thor. Overall, I spent 525 (before figuring in rewards) and just 10 on skip tax.

Here's the best part: I did it without a usable Lady Thor or X-Force. My team? (127, 5/2/5) (154, 5/3/5) (126, 5/1/5). I occasionally subbed in my max to save health packs. That's normally my PvE team, but with all of them boosted, it worked out surprisingly well.

Sorry if it comes off as bragging. I'm just excited and wanted to share.

Trisul

GTannen73 wrote:

I know this is old hat to all you vets, but in the Women of Marvel event, I was progressing well enough to try my hand at shield hopping. I'm mostly F2P (having only spent $20 on roster slots back in the day), so I take HP expenditure seriously. That said, I'd saved up almost 2000 , and since I didn't already have a yellow Lady Thor, I decided to give it a shot.

I managed to hop my way to 961, then threw up one last 3 hour shield while looking for targets to hop to 1000. I debated when to break in order to have the best chance at two quick wins, but while I pondered it, a defensive win came in, then another with a half hour to go, pushing me to 1003.

I was in 10th until I got hopped in the final minutes, so I finished 11th. I don't even care, because Lady Thor. Overall, I spent 525 (before figuring in rewards) and just 10 on skip tax.

Here's the best part: I did it without a usable Lady Thor or X-Force. My team? (127, 5/2/5) (154, 5/3/5) (126, 5/1/5). I occasionally subbed in my max to save health packs. That's normally my PvE team, but with all of them boosted, it worked out surprisingly well.

Sorry if it comes off as bragging. I'm just excited and wanted to share.

Congrats! This is my first time hitting the 1k progression reward as well.

Doc L

Well done! I say this as someone who has not tried it yet myself. I guess I am worried I will end up outside of my aim, and so, end up wasting HP. Whilst my female characters are a little limited in high levels (Black Widow @ 140 then Invisible Woman @ 126), it encourages me to give it a shot when I have a good required character.

Hendross

I also reached 1k without XF/4hor but it was no small task since 405 4hor takes a while (relatively) to down. On my first attempt, I was at 990, playing my last match and was attacked 3 times. I started again from 950, and made it in 2 hops.

Glad to see other people using the featured ladies.

Unknown

Congrats!

One of us! One of us! One of us!

brisashi

Good for you. I'm far too averse to taking risks to ever really attempt shield hopping.

El Satanno

Congrats, OP, and others here getting that sweet 1k goodness. I only very recently started getting that high myself. Feels good, don't it?

brisashi wrote:

Good for you. I'm far too averse to taking risks to ever really attempt shield hopping.

Dude, just give it a go the next time a cover you really want is sitting at 1k. I was like you until I saw that green X-Force cover. I decided that the 300-500 HP I would burn in shields were a worthwhile gamble if the payoff was the equivalent of 2500 HP. Never you mind that a shielded score of over 1k has very good odds of putting you in top 25, if not top 10. You are going to get back almost as much as you put in for the most part. Try it out!

GTannen73

El Satanno wrote:

Dude, just give it a go the next time a cover you really want is sitting at 1k. I was like you until I saw that green X-Force cover. I decided that the 300-500 HP I would burn in shields were a worthwhile gamble if the payoff was the equivalent of 2500 HP. Never you mind that a shielded score of over 1k has very good odds of putting you in top 25, if not top 10. You are going to get back almost as much as you put in for the most part. Try it out!

This is great advice. I spent 525 in shields, but I got 100 back in progression rewards, 50 for top 25, and 25 in alliance rewards, so I got an extra 4* and two extra 3* (the at 900 and a second for top 25, which I might not have held had I not shielded) for just a net cost of 350 . Absolutely worth it. Even if you don't make it, wait until another desired 4* (or even featured 3* at 900) comes up and try it again. Good luck!

KrazyKeylime

oh man i tried my first shield only to have spent 900hp and only placement rewards to show for it. woke up an hour late for my last hop and hit with -260 points i got most of my points back but i had to buy a pack of health packs... the shame my first and most likely only purchase of them. ended up with 852 final points. i was debating whether or not to fight a 47 point maxed xthor team but i was out of packs and my 180 551 xforce was 1/2 health and out of +3 to all boost.

Polares

Great work! It is really nice when you get to 900 or 1000 points!

I was trying to reach 1000 for my last LadyThor but I couldn't win it in the end, I finished with 987 points even though after the last match It seemed the game awarded me the cover and I had 1005 points (I suppose I win someone for less points that what the initial screen told me, so it initially awarded me the cover but it was not real, and in reality I had less points - they should fix this). But well, at least I won two IF covers

Unknown

My effort was less successful then I would have liked. I'm still pleased though since this was my first time reaching 900 after I came back to the game. After using 2 shields I reached 969 and had queued 2 teams worth 35 points. Sadly, after the first match finished (took 2-3 minutes), I was already hit for 32. The second match went considerably worse after a crazy cascade downed my XF from 5k+ health and lost. When I returned to the node screen I was hit once more and dropped to 943. Finished the event as #27 and away from the red Cage. I didn't care much about 1k progression, but at least I did get the purple IF which was the main goal. He is now at 1/1/3 and marginally useful.

The way I see it, I have 2 options. Either try my luck in the last 1-2 hours of each pvp for a t5-t25 (75-80% of the time) and forget about the 900 progression reward, or join a bracket early and manage to shield hop to 900 (maybe 1000), but forget about t25 since there will always be much better players. If the rate of success (to reach 1000 and get in t25) is 25-30% then perhaps it isn't worth spending the HP for shields and is better to buy covers directly. A little more expensive than the alternative, but much more reasonable gameplay hours and peace of mind.

Lightning_Man

This was my second attempt to get over 1k - and I succeeded for the first time! I hit the wall of 4hor and X-Force around 500 pts, and it was a long slow climb to the top. Still did not use X-Force or Thor to reach it - I was a Hulk bombing in this experiment. Hulk bombing allowed me to win two matches for about 50 pts each shield hop in under 4 mins. Which is good, because after 4 mins, I would routinely lose about 150 pts from retaliations if I wasn't shielded. I was a bit smarter this time around - beating teams quickly, immediately shielding after 2 wins, boosting from the start, waiting for my high point oppponents to re-shield so my retaliation doesn't hurt them - and it worked. I used about 1700 in HP (due to some bad mistakes at the start) but I got a purple Iron Fist cover and a yellow X-Force cover. Those would have cost me 3750 HP (and purple I didn't even own) so this was an investment that was worth winning. It's a good feeling for all the hard work over the weekend.