Pow Pow Alliance PvP tips
Hello, I'm ZombieDan from The POW POW Alliance. I recently tried an experiment with the PvP events and learned quite a few things about PvP, so I thought it would help out if I shared what I'd learned with the alliance. Obviously these are things that I learned, so if you have any clarifications, other opinions, or better advice, please feel free to comment and tell me where I'm going wrong.
The Experiment. (What I was trying to do)
The PvP progression rewards used to have a much higher point bracket. The top reward, a 4 star cover, was at a points value that my mind simply did not register as it seemed impossible to achieve. However, a little while ago the progression rewards for PvP were restructured, and the top reward is now given out at 1000 points. I had found getting 500 points to be relatively easy, and if I was pushing for a top 25 rank then 700-800 wasn't that much of a stretch. So when I saw a red Thor cover up for grabs at 1000 points I decided to go for it. My first attempt failed. I got 980 points, and then ran out of healthpacks and shields. I lost around 300 points in an hour and finished the event with 660. But I knew where I'd gone wrong. A few weeks ago the Women of Marvel PvP event had a yellow Thor as top progression reward, and this time I was prepared. I finished with 1108 points and in 2nd place. The ranking was an afterthought, I really only did it for the Thor cover. How I did it is pretty simple, so I'll leave that for last, as it's obvious stuff. But I learned a few other things that I think would be useful to share with the alliance.
Your Bracket (It doesn't mean what you think it means)
When you start a PvP event you're placed in a bracket of 500 other players. Now some people have complained that their bracket seems really hard, or the people in their bracket have much better rosters than them, etc. Well your PvP bracket is decided by your MMR. (Mulitplayer... something... ranking. I forget) This is a hidden number that shows MPQ how good you are at PvP. Now I don't know how MMR works, but I'm sure there are some great guides here on the forums if you're interested. They may even involve maths. And graphs. Have fun. What it means to me can be boiled down to two things.
1)Your win/loss ratio
2) How well you did in previous events.
What this means is if you finish a few events in the top ten, then you'll find that a top ten finish starts to get more difficult with each new event. This is because the 500 people in your bracket also probably finished in the top ten of their bracket. So now you are playing against people who score roughly the same kind of points you do each event. Actually, that's a little misleading. I should say you are competing against people who score roughly the same kind of points as you. Once I hit the top 5 of my event I took note of the names of the four players above me. I never fought them. My nodes had players who had more points than some of the people above me. So therefore I was actually fighting against people from outside my bracket. Your bracket is only important for ranking. The opponents you face are much more dependent on your current points total, than on your actual skill level as dictated by the hidden MMR. So lets look at those opponents...
Your opponents (they are evil and they suck)
0 points: You should face 3-6 Not-Real people at the start of the event. These guys are obviously not real, they tend to be worth 20-25 points and have ridiculously low level one star teams. I like too_many_pants. He's pretty awesome. Once you clear them off the nodes they will be replaced with real players. But don't leap straight into those high scoring fights. Finish off the placeholders, it's cheap and easy points.
0-500 points: This is primarily made up of maxxed out 2 star teams, with occassional high level 3 stars. The Guest Star will probably be lvl60. These teams can be easily stomped by a reasonable 2 star lvl94 team.
500-700 points: Here's where you start seeing more maxxed out 3 stars, and quite a few low level 4 stars. The Guest Star will be reasonably boosted. You will need a tough 3 star lvl166 team to get past this.
700-850 points: You'll see a lot of 4 stars here, and the guest star will probably be high level or maxxed. While a lvl166 team could make it out here, going further will be a struggle.
850-1000 points: Where the wild things are. It's dangerous to go alone. And so on. Maxxed out 4 stars. You'll need a killer team to get here. So lets look at that next.
On the Offensive (face punching for dummies)
I'm not going to recommend particular characters, or say that this character is better than that character for PvP. There's a really good character ranking post on the forums that does that soooooo much better than I could. So go read that. It's really useful. What I will say is that if you want a high score using the method I used, you need speed. A fast team is everything. Once you're past 800 you should really be hitting a power after two or three matches, and you should have downed someone shortly after that. You can't spend long in games. While you are in a game your team will be showing up on people's nodes. That's not good, because every team can be beaten. While some teams are tougher than others, you can take down teams much higher than yours with the right combination of boosts and powers. I've taken out boosted 270 4star Thor/Xforce teams with a level 200 team. It's definitely doable, because the AI is not super intelligent. You need to attack fast and get out. Timing and speed are key to high point runs. Unless you have a maxxed out 4 star team. In which case I hate you.
Defensive plays (mind games, it's all mind games)
Defense is a bit weird. Yes I know that there are some characters that are great at defense. The AI uses them well, they slow people down, they can even beat teams. But it's a bit pointless. The only time you'll need a defensive team is if you are trying to climb the rankings without a shield. If you are using shield your defense team will never fight anyone. When you use a shield you do not show up on other players nodes. No one can choose to fight you. The only people who can attack you are retaliations from people that you attacked and beat. And they will fight the team that you kicked their **** with. And even if they beat your team, you're shielded, so no worries. The only time you can get attacked is while you're fighting other people. So the best defense is a fast team that can end fights quickly and score points before getting back under a shield. Uhm... well... there is a mind games aspect to it too. I must admit I am more inclinded to skip a team if it has two or more high health characters. This is because I need to finish the fight fast, and high health means longer games. Longer games means I take more damage, use healthpacks, and could get attacked. So no, I'll skip that. I actually like seeing XForce on enemy teams, because I know that with boosts I can probably kill him before he does anything nasty. 4 star Thor though.... yeah I tend to skip her. So my only advice as far as defense goes is if you are not shielding end your play session with a team that you would skip if you saw it. If you don't want to fight that team, then probably other people won't either.
How I did it (the bit you probably skipped to)
My team was XForce/3Thor/Hood up until about 750 points. Then XForce/Fury/Devil Dino from 750 to the end. Devil dino is my highest levl at 210. Xforce and Fury are at 200. Thor is 166, and Hood is at 132. So you don't need max levels to hit high scores, but I would say XForce is rated the best character in the game for a reason. He's scary fast.
I bought a Logan's Loonies Hero Point pack for shields, healthpacks and boosts.
I used all three shields multiple times.
I avoided boosts up until about 700 points. When I started to see teams higher than mine then I'd use boosts. Rainbow and Green/Black if I was using Xforce/Thor/Hood, and Rainbow, Green/black, Blue/Purple towards the end.
I started early, pretty much as the event opened. I used my A team from the word go. Mostly because they weren't taking much damage, and I didn't want people retaliating. I only fought opponents with 20 or more points on offer. Yes, there were a few times I stomped an 18 point team, but only because I knew I could finish the fight fast with little damage to myself. (Magsn/Storm teams are basically free points for Xforce) I continued playing until about 500 points and then popped an 8 hour shield.
About 10 minutes before the shield expired I started to set up my nodes. This is really important. While you're shielded your points are safe, so you can spend time skipping through opponents until you find ones that give good points for fights you're sure you can win. Set up all three nodes with cherry picked opponents, then break your shield and destroy them fast. I played up to 700 points and popped a 3 hour shield. Waitied while retaliations bounced off, reset my nodes with high point opponents. When sheild expired I pushed to 800 points and popped the 24 hour shield.
Yes... I know it costs 300HP. But buying a 4 star cover costs 2500HP. And I really wanted that cover. Then I took a nice long break, safe in the knowledge that retaliations wouldn't cost me any points. I actually gained about 30 points while I was shielded, which was useful. I broke the shield early, because the eight hour shield had refreshed and pushed up to 950 points. I didn't want to press my luck so I was moving very fast by this stage. All three team up slots were boosts, and I was skipping through the rewards as fast as I could. I did not skip any opponents at this point, I just picked the highest points fight I thought I could win. I only played 4 games before I popped the 8 hour shield again.
I set up my nodes again and waited for the retaliations to come in. By this stage I was in the top 10. When shield expired I played three games, got my points, got the cover and popped the 24 hour shield again. I chose the 24 because I think there was 6 hours left to the event, and the 3 hour wouldn't cover me. Either way I'd got what I wanted. I had a yellow Thor cover and I was in the top 5.
Out of curiosity i checked my position about 30 minutes before the event ended. I'd dropped to 6th. Not from lost points, but due to other people scoring more points. As the gap between myself and 1st place was less than 100 points I decided to break shield, and hammered another three nodes before popping the 3 hour shield. I finished with 1108 points in 2nd place. Only 10 points behind 1st. But literally 30 seconds after I shielded I got hit by three attacks that would have cost me around 60 points, so I think I made the right choice to stop.
Final tallies
Shields = 1100HP
Healthpacks = probably another 1000HP. Was not really keeping track.
Boosts = 500-700HP on Rainbows, and probably around 1600iso on colours.
So that's what I did and how I did it. Hope it's useful. If you have better suggestions please add them below, feedback is always useful. Thanks for reading, sorry it's so long.
The Experiment. (What I was trying to do)
The PvP progression rewards used to have a much higher point bracket. The top reward, a 4 star cover, was at a points value that my mind simply did not register as it seemed impossible to achieve. However, a little while ago the progression rewards for PvP were restructured, and the top reward is now given out at 1000 points. I had found getting 500 points to be relatively easy, and if I was pushing for a top 25 rank then 700-800 wasn't that much of a stretch. So when I saw a red Thor cover up for grabs at 1000 points I decided to go for it. My first attempt failed. I got 980 points, and then ran out of healthpacks and shields. I lost around 300 points in an hour and finished the event with 660. But I knew where I'd gone wrong. A few weeks ago the Women of Marvel PvP event had a yellow Thor as top progression reward, and this time I was prepared. I finished with 1108 points and in 2nd place. The ranking was an afterthought, I really only did it for the Thor cover. How I did it is pretty simple, so I'll leave that for last, as it's obvious stuff. But I learned a few other things that I think would be useful to share with the alliance.
Your Bracket (It doesn't mean what you think it means)
When you start a PvP event you're placed in a bracket of 500 other players. Now some people have complained that their bracket seems really hard, or the people in their bracket have much better rosters than them, etc. Well your PvP bracket is decided by your MMR. (Mulitplayer... something... ranking. I forget) This is a hidden number that shows MPQ how good you are at PvP. Now I don't know how MMR works, but I'm sure there are some great guides here on the forums if you're interested. They may even involve maths. And graphs. Have fun. What it means to me can be boiled down to two things.
1)Your win/loss ratio
2) How well you did in previous events.
What this means is if you finish a few events in the top ten, then you'll find that a top ten finish starts to get more difficult with each new event. This is because the 500 people in your bracket also probably finished in the top ten of their bracket. So now you are playing against people who score roughly the same kind of points you do each event. Actually, that's a little misleading. I should say you are competing against people who score roughly the same kind of points as you. Once I hit the top 5 of my event I took note of the names of the four players above me. I never fought them. My nodes had players who had more points than some of the people above me. So therefore I was actually fighting against people from outside my bracket. Your bracket is only important for ranking. The opponents you face are much more dependent on your current points total, than on your actual skill level as dictated by the hidden MMR. So lets look at those opponents...
Your opponents (they are evil and they suck)
0 points: You should face 3-6 Not-Real people at the start of the event. These guys are obviously not real, they tend to be worth 20-25 points and have ridiculously low level one star teams. I like too_many_pants. He's pretty awesome. Once you clear them off the nodes they will be replaced with real players. But don't leap straight into those high scoring fights. Finish off the placeholders, it's cheap and easy points.
0-500 points: This is primarily made up of maxxed out 2 star teams, with occassional high level 3 stars. The Guest Star will probably be lvl60. These teams can be easily stomped by a reasonable 2 star lvl94 team.
500-700 points: Here's where you start seeing more maxxed out 3 stars, and quite a few low level 4 stars. The Guest Star will be reasonably boosted. You will need a tough 3 star lvl166 team to get past this.
700-850 points: You'll see a lot of 4 stars here, and the guest star will probably be high level or maxxed. While a lvl166 team could make it out here, going further will be a struggle.
850-1000 points: Where the wild things are. It's dangerous to go alone. And so on. Maxxed out 4 stars. You'll need a killer team to get here. So lets look at that next.
On the Offensive (face punching for dummies)
I'm not going to recommend particular characters, or say that this character is better than that character for PvP. There's a really good character ranking post on the forums that does that soooooo much better than I could. So go read that. It's really useful. What I will say is that if you want a high score using the method I used, you need speed. A fast team is everything. Once you're past 800 you should really be hitting a power after two or three matches, and you should have downed someone shortly after that. You can't spend long in games. While you are in a game your team will be showing up on people's nodes. That's not good, because every team can be beaten. While some teams are tougher than others, you can take down teams much higher than yours with the right combination of boosts and powers. I've taken out boosted 270 4star Thor/Xforce teams with a level 200 team. It's definitely doable, because the AI is not super intelligent. You need to attack fast and get out. Timing and speed are key to high point runs. Unless you have a maxxed out 4 star team. In which case I hate you.
Defensive plays (mind games, it's all mind games)
Defense is a bit weird. Yes I know that there are some characters that are great at defense. The AI uses them well, they slow people down, they can even beat teams. But it's a bit pointless. The only time you'll need a defensive team is if you are trying to climb the rankings without a shield. If you are using shield your defense team will never fight anyone. When you use a shield you do not show up on other players nodes. No one can choose to fight you. The only people who can attack you are retaliations from people that you attacked and beat. And they will fight the team that you kicked their **** with. And even if they beat your team, you're shielded, so no worries. The only time you can get attacked is while you're fighting other people. So the best defense is a fast team that can end fights quickly and score points before getting back under a shield. Uhm... well... there is a mind games aspect to it too. I must admit I am more inclinded to skip a team if it has two or more high health characters. This is because I need to finish the fight fast, and high health means longer games. Longer games means I take more damage, use healthpacks, and could get attacked. So no, I'll skip that. I actually like seeing XForce on enemy teams, because I know that with boosts I can probably kill him before he does anything nasty. 4 star Thor though.... yeah I tend to skip her. So my only advice as far as defense goes is if you are not shielding end your play session with a team that you would skip if you saw it. If you don't want to fight that team, then probably other people won't either.
How I did it (the bit you probably skipped to)
My team was XForce/3Thor/Hood up until about 750 points. Then XForce/Fury/Devil Dino from 750 to the end. Devil dino is my highest levl at 210. Xforce and Fury are at 200. Thor is 166, and Hood is at 132. So you don't need max levels to hit high scores, but I would say XForce is rated the best character in the game for a reason. He's scary fast.
I bought a Logan's Loonies Hero Point pack for shields, healthpacks and boosts.
I used all three shields multiple times.
I avoided boosts up until about 700 points. When I started to see teams higher than mine then I'd use boosts. Rainbow and Green/Black if I was using Xforce/Thor/Hood, and Rainbow, Green/black, Blue/Purple towards the end.
I started early, pretty much as the event opened. I used my A team from the word go. Mostly because they weren't taking much damage, and I didn't want people retaliating. I only fought opponents with 20 or more points on offer. Yes, there were a few times I stomped an 18 point team, but only because I knew I could finish the fight fast with little damage to myself. (Magsn/Storm teams are basically free points for Xforce) I continued playing until about 500 points and then popped an 8 hour shield.
About 10 minutes before the shield expired I started to set up my nodes. This is really important. While you're shielded your points are safe, so you can spend time skipping through opponents until you find ones that give good points for fights you're sure you can win. Set up all three nodes with cherry picked opponents, then break your shield and destroy them fast. I played up to 700 points and popped a 3 hour shield. Waitied while retaliations bounced off, reset my nodes with high point opponents. When sheild expired I pushed to 800 points and popped the 24 hour shield.
Yes... I know it costs 300HP. But buying a 4 star cover costs 2500HP. And I really wanted that cover. Then I took a nice long break, safe in the knowledge that retaliations wouldn't cost me any points. I actually gained about 30 points while I was shielded, which was useful. I broke the shield early, because the eight hour shield had refreshed and pushed up to 950 points. I didn't want to press my luck so I was moving very fast by this stage. All three team up slots were boosts, and I was skipping through the rewards as fast as I could. I did not skip any opponents at this point, I just picked the highest points fight I thought I could win. I only played 4 games before I popped the 8 hour shield again.
I set up my nodes again and waited for the retaliations to come in. By this stage I was in the top 10. When shield expired I played three games, got my points, got the cover and popped the 24 hour shield again. I chose the 24 because I think there was 6 hours left to the event, and the 3 hour wouldn't cover me. Either way I'd got what I wanted. I had a yellow Thor cover and I was in the top 5.
Out of curiosity i checked my position about 30 minutes before the event ended. I'd dropped to 6th. Not from lost points, but due to other people scoring more points. As the gap between myself and 1st place was less than 100 points I decided to break shield, and hammered another three nodes before popping the 3 hour shield. I finished with 1108 points in 2nd place. Only 10 points behind 1st. But literally 30 seconds after I shielded I got hit by three attacks that would have cost me around 60 points, so I think I made the right choice to stop.
Final tallies
Shields = 1100HP
Healthpacks = probably another 1000HP. Was not really keeping track.
Boosts = 500-700HP on Rainbows, and probably around 1600iso on colours.
So that's what I did and how I did it. Hope it's useful. If you have better suggestions please add them below, feedback is always useful. Thanks for reading, sorry it's so long.
0
Comments
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Hey, it's DAVE2449 - had some problems with the game, wouldn't respond to trying to play an event in pve or pvp. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game, but it doesn't look like it worked; having some problems with the account. If I can't get them resolved, it doesn't look like I'll be back for a while / or even play again... a little frustrated at the moment...0
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Hey, Astro1986 here. Awesome tips zombie. Heading out tomorrow til the 22nd. Limited Internet, should still be able to play a bit but if you think you can find a better player while I'm gone, go for it! Hoping to return to the alliance when I'm back tho so here's my contact!0
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Thanks for the tips ZombieDan!
Posting here so people can PM me if needed.0 -
Here's the link to the thread on PvE scaling that I was talking about:
http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23911&hilit=pve+scaling0 -
Good tips man similar but not exactly how i get pts too.0
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ph0enix taichu, cant pm you yet, i am but a rookie in the forums. 0
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