The Hunt: March 10 - 16

Unknown

In 9th place with just over 100k, 2.5 hours left, 18k lead on #11. I think I can stop now. 5th is out of reach, and I don't think it's mathematically possible to lose top ten status at this point. I'll keep an eye on it - there are still a fair amount of points on the table if I need them - but I can't imagine that I'll need them.

over_clocked

Phantron wrote:

Phumade wrote:

Yeah the Hardcore came out for this PVE. I literally have not had more than 4 straight hours of sleep. I've been catnapping the last 4 days. I really wonder what max level points are for the entire pve. I'm sure that there are some couples that are swapping shifts on the same account to stay close to the theoretical maximum. I know, I left some points on the table.

On the one hand, 8 hr refreshes and count down timers make a huge difference in helping plan out a strategy for the game that works with the real world. On the other hand, 3hr refreshes and no visible timers made it possible for people to really breakout of the pack. Now it feels like everyone plays to the optimum schedule and its just desire, endurance and discipline that separates the tiers.

I think my bracket will finish with around 140,000K. Going into the the T-8 hours, we are averaging around 132 to 133K.

Endurance is going to be eliminated as a factor after the next round of character fixes come in as it'd no longer be possible to grind everything down to 1 on most events without using AP+3 all boosts or health packs, and at that point it becomes a question of whether it's worth spending that much HP in the first place (30 HP per fight X number of fights can add up to a huge expense in a hurry) when you can just save the HP to upgrade the cover later.

Not sure if I agree on rainbow boosts, they do not guarantee a win (sad but true), especially not in the aftermath of infinite combos getting nerfed. Completely agree on endurance.
This is what I have had to score before the final 8 hours thanks to my competition having the same exact 'advantage' that I do, namely 4or. (Don't think Mystique and MMN account for much there, judging by the clearing speed.)



XF/4or and either of Loki, MMN, GSBW, Iron Fist allow anyone to clear ALL normal, hard and deadly nodes in any given sub in The Hunt 5-6 times in a row, using a replenishing healthpack on 4or or GSBW here and there sparingly, with very slight ISO boosting and maximum speed. Heck, I was able to clear 3 subs (grinding down one to 10 pointers at that), all on 5 standard healthpacks, and even still had some healthpacks left after that to do PvP. And anyone can do that, if they got the characters! There's not much skill or strategy required, sadly. 4or is that good at trivializing PvE.
So I'm looking forward to character changes and hoping they could improve non-Heroic PvE with unlimited character rosters to become less of a grind.

I'm not complaining, it's been sorta fun, since I can enjoy (un)healthy competition as much as anyone and this marks my 4th new 4* event in a row with a top 1 rank (no life, nothing to see here, move along, please remember what I just said).
Shout out to Spider man 75 of The X-Men II for making me grind better points for my alliance and not giving up despite my lead since the very 1st sub. Hope to not see you again, though, lol. I always pick slice 4 for PvE but after the daylight saving adjustment slice 2 suited me better (1 AM/PM compared to 10 AM/PM).
Time for victory lap and a good rest after that.

(Please someone explain to me why the Hunt has to have repeating overlapping subs, this is madness, lol. We dubbed the event the Hurt in our chats for this.

There's also a variant name rated R.)

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

at that point it becomes a question of whether it's worth spending that much HP in the first place (30 HP per fight X number of fights can add up to a huge expense in a hurry)

8 hr refreshes working as intended. Now I'm just wondering if everyone who was in favor of the change didn't believe that it was going to make PvE more P2W, or if they're totally fine with it.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Phantron wrote:

at that point it becomes a question of whether it's worth spending that much HP in the first place (30 HP per fight X number of fights can add up to a huge expense in a hurry)

8 hr refreshes working as intended. Now I'm just wondering if everyone who was in favor of the change didn't believe that it was going to make PvE more P2W, or if they're totally fine with it.

I'll finish top ten in about an hour and I haven't spent a single HP on the thing.

Unknown

Well, slice 1 is over and I'm a shade disappointed - but not angry, because I did the best I could. Life got in the way and I missed the end of one of the subs a few days ago, and that, I believe, was why I came in a very solid....11th place. 710 points or so difference between me and 10. Here's my group:

1 - 145,009 points - Cloudo (Alliance: Moondragon)
2 - 134,628 points - TwoCoo1 (Alliance: GenerationNext)
3 - 134,093 points - Arn Anderson (Alliance: The Sanctuary)
4 - 132,514 points - orbitalint (Alliance: Motley Crue)
5 - 131,901 points - Seikami (Alliance: 5DeadlyCurses)
6 - 130,160 points - Dr. Ebola (Alliance: SteamSlackers)
7 - 124,232 points - SuperRed (Alliance: Phoenixx)
8 - 111,973 points - pabasa (Alliance: Deepspace3)
9 - 111,893 points - JsonC (Alliance: Hybrid Rainbow)
10 - 104,869 points - grizzle82 (Alliance: Kick Azz Leaf)
11 - 104,159 points - my sorry ****.

Almost got you, grizzle. Almost.

Edit: Probably also worth noting that 12th place was Krumc of the Hail.Hydra alliance with an even and solid 90,000 points. So I was very safely 11th, but...oh well. I have 1 Professor cover, and that's all I need for the next PvE I guess.

Unknown

Slice 1 of the event just finished. Total number of players 188. The grinding? Oh, the grinding was intense. I hope they restructure this event. No fun at all. It's good that I joined yesterday while the previous sub was open and managed to take some points there. I finished 10th (34322) which is perfectly fine considering I played for less than a day.

Unknown

My slice 1 bracket (the one that was open for most of the event):

1. lukewin 126,410
2. Waynerz666 122,236
3. LokiAoA 121,658
4. TDog37 121,517
5. pmg888 118,634
6. Stynknugget 114,386
7. Bar 5003 107,198
8. HeroComplex00 103,075
9.xforest 102,299
10. Ben Grimm 100,891

Happy with my two covers; won't be getting an alliance reward but I'll live.

jojeda654

Narkon wrote:

Slice 1 of the event just finished. Total number of players 188. The grinding? Oh, the grinding was intense. I hope they restructure this event. No fun at all. It's good that I joined yesterday while the previous sub was open and managed to take some points there. I finished 10th (34322) which is perfectly fine considering I played for less than a day.

Lucky! I joined right as the last sub started, so everyone was already at 20K. Decided it wasn't worth the effort to stay 8 spots away from the Daredevil cover, so I didn't do any refreshes optimally. Ended 70-ish. Oh well, easy HP.

JamieMadrox

Phantron wrote:

With 24 hours left in my bracket, the good news is that I'm 27K ahead of #6. The bad news is that I'm 1K behind #1 who has been pretty much hitting everything perfectly so I got no chance of catching up. I guess it'll be a pretty easy final sub since I can't move up and I sure don't see how I can drop a rank. I'll still be trying to hex the #1 and hope he gets abducted by alien though.

I know a few people in this situation. Don't forget about the repeatable 200 point node in the main. Glad I'm not in this situation.

Unknown

jojeda654 wrote:

Narkon wrote:

Slice 1 of the event just finished. Total number of players 188. The grinding? Oh, the grinding was intense. I hope they restructure this event. No fun at all. It's good that I joined yesterday while the previous sub was open and managed to take some points there. I finished 10th (34322) which is perfectly fine considering I played for less than a day.

Lucky! I joined right as the last sub started, so everyone was already at 20K. Decided it wasn't worth the effort to stay 8 spots away from the Daredevil cover, so I didn't do any refreshes optimally. Ended 70-ish. Oh well, easy HP.

Yeah, really lucky. The plan was to join in the last 2-3 hours and hope for the best, but I checked the forums yesterday and I saw than a new bracket had opened a few minutes ago. I jumped right in and the previous sub had 1 hour until the end. I grinded (is this the right word for past tense of grind?) like crazy and this saved me today.

The bad news is that now I am the owner of another 4* who will never be leveled high enough because I can't compete for #1 in pvp. I had to open a new slot (600HP) despite my original plan to delete MNM (lv19 so no big deal), because I didn't like the 44 as roster size. I have all the MPQ craziness to deal with, I have my OCD issues as well.

simonsez

Ben Grimm wrote:

I'll finish top ten in about an hour and I haven't spent a single HP on the thing.

Which means you're missing out on two of the covers you could've gotten. In other words, yeah, you didn't P, but you didn't W either.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

I'll finish top ten in about an hour and I haven't spent a single HP on the thing.

Which means you're missing out on two of the covers you could've gotten. In other words, yeah, you didn't P, but you didn't W either.

That was more a timing thing than an HP thing. I've got over 20k HP saved up and I'll use it when I have to, but the first half of this thing took place during the workweek and that severely limits my time on it.

orbitalint

dearbluey wrote:

Well, slice 1 is over and I'm a shade disappointed - but not angry, because I did the best I could. Life got in the way and I missed the end of one of the subs a few days ago, and that, I believe, was why I came in a very solid....11th place. 710 points or so difference between me and 10. Here's my group:

Almost got you, grizzle. Almost.

Edit: Probably also worth noting that 12th place was Krumc of the Hail.Hydra alliance with an even and solid 90,000 points. So I was very safely 11th, but...oh well. I have 1 Professor cover, and that's all I need for the next PvE I guess.

Bluey, I saw you pop up in the top ten from time to time. Be glad you got to rest even a little for this event. This event always takes it out of me because it's downright brutal. I grew up on the xmen, so I had to dive in for the week with total disregard for my sleep, lol.

Also, Cloudo is a freaking robot and is either the master of healthpack management or spent some HP. Either way, he earned that win and my respect. I was impressed with his commitment. He has to be close to the global leader, maybe let up a little towards the end.

SnowcaTT

Thanks to you, Ben Grimm (well, and a team-mate that was updating me on slice one so I was watching for a post like yours) I finished 15th. If I had a better roster, it probably could have been T10.

Rather than waste tons of time, and since our alliance isn't pushing for these ridiculous T50's anymore, I just went for a late jump. Went in yesterday morning right as slice one opened, was either 13th or 17th (can't remember now). Whoever went in exactly then had a huge advantage: I grinded second sub for the remaining hour for 12K points, practically an insurmountable lead for anyone who joined an hour in, after that 2nd sub closed.

Ended 15th (of 188), right around where I came in. Ran out of health packs multiple times and never wanted to buy any, also didn't have the roster to finish the hardest two nodes (or really the essentials this time, which I had to boost for and many times wiped me anyway due to crazy scaling). Came very close to hitting top progression in 25 hours. Lots of vets all around me, sharks in the water looking for the easy rewards.

Which is why these shouldn't be competitive, but rather should be progression based. If D3 wants only X% to get the reward, figure out where that laid last time on points and set a specific point value for X% to hit. Could still have vet/rookie brackets, could get rid of rubber-band, probably could get rid of scaling - and prevents us lazy shmoes an easy cover like this.

And now I have to get rid of my worthless bagman for my worthless Charles, horray!

jffdougan

My slice 1 bracket closed, too. I ended in 30th place with about 45767, after taking almost all of yesterday off.

Top 10:
1. Footiefanan (Super_Friends) 97364
2. Loqutiz (Rubar) 73208
3. x6-724 (The Best IV) 70655
4. Casarandres (we B Fighting) 70158
5. Reidolphin (AsgardsArmy) 68213
6. bigchiz2708 (Agents of Fun) 67301
7. TadaaaA (Small Chances) 66721
8. spectruous (mexico 8286) 65927
9. BCDragoon917 (TheAwesomeness) 64833
10. soonerjrj (Sooners) 62163

lukewin

Ben Grimm wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

I'll finish top ten in about an hour and I haven't spent a single HP on the thing.

Which means you're missing out on two of the covers you could've gotten. In other words, yeah, you didn't P, but you didn't W either.

That was more a timing thing than an HP thing. I've got over 20k HP saved up and I'll use it when I have to, but the first half of this thing took place during the workweek and that severely limits my time on it.

Glad he wasn't competing for #1. I would've hated more competition. I finished #1 and the 50 HP from sub top 10 and 100 HP from main top 10 got me to exactly 10k HP. I also didn't spend any HP, but spent tons of ISO on boosts and tons of time in the game. I am now, almost half the man Ben Grimm is. I don't think I'll have the willpower to keep saving anything more than 10k HP, that'll be my baseline.

jackstar0

Woke up way behind top 10 (but by that I mean I'm in 12th, but 9K behind), so that grindfest can thankfully end. Now I can just knock on the easier nodes for the day and should still manage top 50 with no stress. So thanks crazy people who lose sleep to grinding. Monday just got a little easier.

Unknown

My slice ends in just over 3 hours, but luckily I've missed a few clears and managed to grind a bit this morning to boost myself in the 30s. Hopefully, I'll be able to stay in the T50 between meetings this morning. Not horrible placement, but happy my training sessions last week (no playing during the day) meant I didn't fall too far behind. One cover is good enough to start with!

JamieMadrox

12 hours left in my bracket and I only have a 25k lead. I don't know if I can keep my placement...

sc0ville

Phantron wrote:

Phumade wrote:

In a death fight to the finish. I have 1st with 124180, scoville in second has 123613.

It all comes down to savage lands.

If you've a lead of 500 it's already over unless you got abducted by aliens, which is what I'm hoping will happen to puzzlequestm.

I really, really wanted to prove you wrong Phantron, but in the end your words were prescient. I woke up at 5:00am to start my final grind down and already saw that Phumade (Kung Phu Panda) had already started his. I knew I had no chance to catch up, as the aliens failed in their duty to abduct him for the hour or two that I needed. we bounced around for the next 4 hours duking it out valiantly. I did have a pretty impressive lead on him at one point:



but in the end, due to his hard work, I was unable to catch up. We finished up at 149642 and 148361 respectively. About half an hour from the end of the clear it became incredibly obvious that there just weren't enough points left in my nodes to catch up with him. It was an amazing run, and I doff my cap to the Panda, he fought an incredible fight and left me no room to squeeze past him. Well fought.