The 1000 Point Challenge

Seasick Pirate

Okay, so this isn't really a competitive challenge, but more of an on-going community goal. I'm trying to bring together, not divide.

What I propose is, for anyone willing, hit 1000 points in a PvP without using any 4* characters (no matter what their level), and share your experience here. I'm not imposing any other restrictions. Use all the boosts and shields as you want. You're free to score anything beyond with your full roster.
This shouldn't be limited to those with 4* covers. Anyone struggling to earn 1000 points should also participate.

This experiment won't be confined to a single event. Try it in one or multiple events - whichever suits you. But please share your progress during or after so we can all compare notes. Let us know any helpful details like your time slice, when you joined, your teams, etc.

[My original, long-winded reasoning below:]

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the 4* transition. Many players are struggling with their progress while others are not. What both ends of the spectrum agree on is hitting 1000 points in PvP is the fastest way to gain 4* covers. How to get the 1000 points is where folks can't agree.

A common response I see is to use your already leveled 4* characters to earn more 4* covers. If only it were that simple. Not everyone has useable 4* characters - that's why earning them is so important for those without (you need a snowball before rolling it down the hill). Some 3* players don't believe 1000 points is even obtainable for them at this point.

I'm not proposing this to see if it can be done - I personally know it can be. I also know it can be extremely difficult. What I want to accomplish here is for those who struggle to score well (myself included) to see how we can improve. This can become a good reference or resource for anyone breaking into the 4* transition.

I don't know what the results will be. If we find not too many participants make it to 1000 points, we can bring this to the attention of Demiurge and ask if it's "working as intended." From there, we'll know what the 4* transition is supposed to look like.
If most people have no problem achieving this, then we'll know hitting 1000 points is probably more dependent on a players skill more so than their roster.

morph3us

I think this is a great idea!

The tl;dr version:

The Challenge
Reach 1000 points in any PvP event of your choice.

The Rules (we think of them more as "guidelines", really, argh)

Use only

or less characters in your climb to 1000.
If you need to post more points for your alliance, feel free to switch to your characters once you clear 1000 points (if you have them).
Use shields and boosts as you please.
Out of game communication is fine.

Why?
It seems that the "easiest" way to get 4* covers is via reaching the 1000 point target. A question that gets asked a lot is whether it's even possible with a 3* team in the current meta. I've done it, and so has Seasick, but it's not easy. We thought it would be useful to get feedback from anyone climbing to 1000 points with an exclusively 3* team, to establish how feasible it really is.

What do we want to know?

Time slice When you joined Your team composition throughout your climb Points at which you shielded Number of matches per hop HP spent Did you actually reach 1000 points?

turul

It is obviusly possible if you can win at least one fight per shield hop quickly enough.

lukewin

I will share a past experience. I almost made it to 900, but was going for 1k. I think it was where Gamora was 900 and Xforce was 1k. The sole reason I went for it. It requires outside communication for coordinated hopping, so you can line up targets, that won't retal or hit you while you're climbing.

I used 3 3hrs and 3 8 hrs. Lthor and Hulk were my hopping team both probably in 130s, but 4/4/5 Thor and 5/4/4 Hulk, not optimal, but what I got to work with. I had one bad hop where I lost 100 pts. Got attacked once during each match, and out of frustration, stayed to fight another match, where I got hit for maybe 2 or 3 more. If I had been content with shielding, for no net gain that hop, I probably would've hit 1k. Lesson learned, don't fight that 3rd match, esp with a weaker team/easier target for everyone else.

Then I settled for trying to get the Gamora at 900. Breaking at the end, the match wasn't worth the pts it was when I queued it, and so I missed the cover by 6 pts. 894 was my highest score in PVP to date. Insult to injury, fell out of Top 10, got leapfrogged, by someone who jumped to 901. 3 red/yellow boosts, 3 green/black the whole time hopping.

morph3us

turul wrote:

It is obviusly possible if you can win at least one fight per shield hop quickly enough.

Yeah, we're not asking if it's possible. What we're trying to do is build a thread where people with 3* teams who are trying to reach 1k can go to reference for advice in getting there.

h4n1s

morph3us wrote:

What do we want to know?

Time slice When you joined Your team composition throughout your climb Points at which you shielded Number of matches per hop HP spent Did you actually reach 1000 points?

What I would like to add is How much time (net minutes of play) you spent on this?

Unknown

It can be done next time that hulk is the feat character pair him with patch and grocket and bomb for quick hops focus on blue and green tiles only you can do two hops per shield hop. I tried it in sims and it can take anyone pretty quick and grocket healing ability helps you save on health packs.

windfallstar

I did this recently, it wasn't too difficult, but very stressful since pretty much all my battles starting from the 700ish range were against xforce and 4*thor.

Time slice: Slice 5
When you joined: about halfway through the event.
Your team composition throughout your climb: Climb with Patch + Daken + Featured until 600-700. Hops with Hood + Thor + Featured after that.
Points at which you shielded: Shielded at approx 800, 900, and 1000.
Number of matches per hop 3-5, I would really prefer to stay within 2-3 matches, but such is life.
HP spent: 375. I used 8 hour, 3 hour, then an 8 hour until the end of the event. The last 8 hour was necessary to protect score and placement for the event. In the future, if I don't need the placement covers, I might just go unshielded after hitting 1k.
Did you actually reach 1000 points? Yes

This process did cost a good chunk of HP which I'm very hesitant to spend due to roster slot costs. Also for the hops I went all out with boosts and high level team ups. It takes far too long to kill 4Thor otherwise. I probably won't attempt to go for 1k too regularly since it does take a while to stockpile all boosts.

Kolence

Teno1 wrote:

It can be done next time that hulk is the feat character pair him with patch and grocket and bomb for quick hops focus on blue and green tiles only you can do two hops per shield hop. I tried it in sims and it can take anyone pretty quick and grocket healing ability helps you save on health packs.

I prefer Capt. Marvel as the third wheel when Hulk is the featured character. That way you can quickly stun the opposing Hulk before dropping the bomb and avoid the Russian roulette of whose Hulk will get sufficiently angry first. Because a minor cascade for you that doesn't KO the enemy Hulk is just bad.

Besides, when hopping for 1k, health packs are no longer a problem (unless really bad things happen). For 2-3 fights per hop and 2 hops in 8 hours, there's enough time to start each hop with full 5 health packs.

Unknown

Kolence wrote:

Teno1 wrote:

It can be done next time that hulk is the feat character pair him with patch and grocket and bomb for quick hops focus on blue and green tiles only you can do two hops per shield hop. I tried it in sims and it can take anyone pretty quick and grocket healing ability helps you save on health packs.

I prefer Capt. Marvel as the third wheel when Hulk is the featured character. That way you can quickly stun the opposing Hulk before dropping the bomb and avoid the Russian roulette of whose Hulk will get sufficiently angry first. Because a minor cascade for you that doesn't KO the enemy Hulk is just bad.

Besides, when hopping for 1k, health packs are no longer a problem (unless really bad things happen). For 2-3 fights per hop and 2 hops in 8 hours, there's enough time to start each hop with full 5 health packs.

You are right other hulks will be buff guess that's not a good strategy after all

Lightning_Man

I just did this with the Iron Fist challenge, so let me see if I can remember all the details…

Time slice: Slice 5
When you joined: With a day and a half left (joined Saturday morning, ended 1am Monday)
Your team composition throughout your climb: Climb with Patch + Dr Doom + Featured until 700. Hops with Hulk-166 + Patch-165 + Featured after that. Faced the wall of 270 Thor and X-Force around 500. Kept passing on them to find teams I could beat until about 700.
Points at which you shielded: Shielded at approx 700.
Number of matches per hop: Made some mistakes by trying for 3 matches each hop, which easily made me lose points early on in the process. I could win two matches in about 4 mins for 50 pts. Then re-shield before I would lose about 150 pts from retaliations and snipes. That became the process for the rest of the event.
HP spent: About 1700 HP. I messed up early with not knowing how to properly bomb and hop, so I could have done this in less…maybe like 1200 HP. I used 1 24 hour shield, 3 8 hour shields, and 3 3 hour shields. Also was using the +3 every color boost, so about 400 went to that.
Did you actually reach 1000 points? Yes. Came in #12 overall.
Time this took away from my life: On average, 10 mins every hour. Since I was constantly checking for high point teams that were unshielded, I was never far away from the game. I spent a good 4 to 5 hours doing the entire event, even though actual play time was probably only about 2 hours. I did leave some time for sleeping.

Very stressful but it worked! I won't do this all the time - only for covers I really want.

westnyy2

Current PVP featuring Luke Cage

Time slice: Slice 1
When you joined: 24 hours before the event ended
Your team composition throughout your climb: Laken, Cage, Iron Fist. From start to finish
Points at which you shielded: 1012
Number of matches per hop: 1 consecutive run
HP spent: 300 on a 24 hr shield. I used boosts that I had earned from the sim pvp
Did you actually reach 1000 points? Yes

GTannen73

I did this in the Women of Marvel inter-season event. My post is here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=24973

I doubt I'll go for 1000 in Sticks and Stones, because I'm not sufficiently interested in an Elektra cover to shell out a significant amount of HP for it. However, if things come together and I'm close enough, I might give it a try. Most likely, I'll just try for 900 to cover max Luke Cage.

EDIT: I'm running (166, 5/5/3) (163, 4/5/4) in Sticks and Stones. I'm having a lot of success with this team, even against X-Force/4Thor.

DaveR4470

I actually think the interesting thing isn't whether you can reach 1000 with just a 3* team. It's how many different combinations of 3* teams are capable of reaching 1000.

If you give me maxed Patch and LDaken, I'm pretty sure I could get to 1000 at least, say, 33% of the time. Probably 50%. Good % chance, I'd guess, with maxed Patch and Hood, too.

But what about someone who only has, say, Falcon and Dr Doom? I'd say that would be more of a challenge to get to 1000 (largely because they step on each other in purple, and you're forced into choosing between using it for offense and defense), but not impossible. What about Colossus and SG? Etc.

If there are a lot of different 3* combos that can reach 1000, then I think you can argue that the 1000 progression award is a good method of distributing 4* covers. If it's only really obtainable if you're running some combo of Patch/LDaken/Hood (hypothetically - not saying this is the case), then that's really the "you need Thorverine to be competitive in PvP" issue all over again. It's a viable option, but only if you meet certain narrow requirements.

Looking forward to see what people come up with here!

Seasick Pirate

DaveR4470 wrote:

But what about someone who only has, say, Falcon and Dr Doom?

I get what you're saying, but if someone only has maxed Falcon and Doom from 3* land, I would suggest they focus on building their 3* guys before going after 4*s. Just as you wouldn't expect someone with OBW and Bullseye to reasonably compete for 3*s.

This challenge is geared more toward those who have established 3* rosters and needing 4* covers to progress in the game.

I don't think anyone would say any 3* team can get you 1000 points. But another interesting challenge would be to see how far one can get in an event only using unconventional teams like Falcon and Doom. Maybe for another day.

Unknown

Great idea!

Don't forget to be skipping matches throughout your downtime (when you are shielded up). It's not uncommon to score a 40 pt match from the leaders if you catch them in your queue unshielded. This makes a HUGE difference in hitting 1k, especially if you absolutely need the 1k cover and are doing one match per hop.

Salgy

did this in both "fist bump" & "sticks and stones"... the following is from sticks & stones, since the details are fresher in my mind, team comps & final score are about the same though...

Time slice: Slice 1
When you joined: with just less than 24 hours left
Your team composition throughout your climb: Iron Fist (lvl 140 - 3/5/5) + Daken (lvl 166 - 5/5/3) + Luke Cage (lvl 145 - 5/3/5)
Points at which you shielded: Shielded at approx 800, 975, and 1050*
Number of matches per hop: 6 before putting up my second shield & 2 more before the third*
HP spent: 300 - 3 hour/8 hour/3 hour
Did you actually reach 1000 points?: Yes

notes: fist + cage = awesome & fun to play... between 800 - 975 boosted black/green & blue/pink... from 975 and up added a +3 rainbow into the mix... my second or third match from 800 - 975 i managed to drop a 200ish xhor & 75ish cage with 1 move... it was pretty awesome...

* just in case anyone reading this is in my slice, i ended the pve with just over 1100 total points... i substituted 4hor (lvl 200 5/3/5) for daken (to give me higher health in case the board went south on me) and had an 8 hour shield ready to go...

DaveR4470

Seasick Pirate wrote:

I get what you're saying, but if someone only has maxed Falcon and Doom from 3* land, I would suggest they focus on building their 3* guys before going after 4*s. Just as you wouldn't expect someone with OBW and Bullseye to reasonably compete for 3*s.

This challenge is geared more toward those who have established 3* rosters and needing 4* covers to progress in the game.

I don't think anyone would say any 3* team can get you 1000 points. But another interesting challenge would be to see how far one can get in an event only using unconventional teams like Falcon and Doom. Maybe for another day.

Oh yeah, I realize that. I guess my point was this: given that the devs appear to believe that 1000 point progression awards is (a) the primary and (b) a reasonable way for 3* teams to make the transition to 4*, it would be good to know how accessible that 1000 point progression award actually is. Yes, if you only have Falcon and Doom, you need to work on your 3* roster more. Fo' sho. The issue is if you have, say, 6-8 fully covered 3* chars, but NOT Patch, Daken, or Hood. Is 1000 still a viable target? If not, the primary and reasonable 4* progression is effectively gated not by the quality of your 3* roster, but by whether or not you have specific characters.

Unknown

I think this idea is long overdue and much appreciated. Always found it ironic that to hit 1000 for a 4* cover comfortably you need to ALREADY have at least a 4* char in your roster (XF or Thorina).

My opinion is that the difficulty level varies heavily on who the featured char is. For instance if its cage it will take Forever to finish matches, so your stats might differ. Or if it's Fist it will take a whole lot shorter to finish matches.

I just hope that OP keeps this in mind when compiling data. Once again props to you for doing this, and i will be helping out in the DD pvp with your data collection. Cheers.

morph3us

westnyy2 wrote:

Your team composition throughout your climb: Laken, Cage, Iron Fist. From start to finish
Points at which you shielded: 1012
Number of matches per hop: 1 consecutive run

That's really impressive, to do it in one run. Were your Cage and IF maxed?

jffdougan

I did not hit 1000 points in slice 1 (I just barely missed 575, placing in the 1op 100 (but not top 50) of my bracket in Sticks & Stones.

I joined it early on, climbing in chunks until about 24 hours or so to go. (It helps that I got several Luke Cage pulls out of tokens, so that he's covered at 3/4/1 and level 104 unboosted.) His climbing partners were 2* Daken, at 3/5/5, and Patch at 2/1/4 and level 91. I put up a single 3-hours shield after reaching 450 points or so, at which point in time I was in 78th place. I broke it with about 10 minutes to go, won 2 quick matches to get back into the top 100, and had one more that I couldn't finish in time to cross the 575 mark.

My Daredevil will be covered 2/5/3 after receiving my reward; I may dump some ISO into him and see if I can repeat the process.

If I hadn't pulled 5 sets of 250 HP tacos in the last week, I would definitely not have finished as well because I would not have considered a shield. I know I lost one match while I was shielded.