Meet Rocket & Groot - April 14 - April 19

over_clocked

It has already been pointed out. Mathematically, only top 5% got Kingpin as personal rewards in each 1000 man bracket. Quicksilver cover was awarded to everyone in top 15%. That's 3 times as many. So you didn't have to have Kingpin to get Quicksilver.
I recommend to everyone that hasn't done so yet to read Polarity's transition guide and pay attention to top tier transition characters. New 4*s and gimmicky 3* characters like Quicksilver are not transition material, obviously. If it's not obvious... Just ask others what they think of new releases. It was pretty evident that Cyclops, Iron Fist and Luke Cage would turn out to be powerhouses on all types of rosters, for example.
You shouldn't go out of your way to collect several covers for every new character. There's always a chance that a new release is tied into an event with good covers like Patch, lazy Thor, Black Panther, etc., but to target all new characters hard when you are still a transitioner seems a waste of effort to me. Get one cover for new 3*s, if you insist, that's perfectly enough to keep getting every new cover, and then not really necessary.

Unknown

A bunch of vets don't need Mystique and are burned out on grinding, so this may be a lot easier for people who need Mystique than they may think. I want the Quicksilver cover, but I'm not going to put in any real effort after I get it.

Unknown

I was clearing out all the subs I could 2-3 times per day. Tried to wait for max points on each node, but didn't always have the patience to wait 8 hours. After joining and clearing out the first time, I was around 300th and could never get any higher than that really, hanging in the 280-300 range no matter what I did. I guess if putting in 2-4 hours per day in this game isn't considered decent effort, then I should probably just give up...but it's just so damn addicting.

over_clocked

clagsmd wrote:

I was clearing out all the subs I could 2-3 times per day. Tried to wait for max points on each node, but didn't always have the patience to wait 8 hours. After joining and clearing out the first time, I was around 300th and could never get any higher than that really, hanging in the 280-300 range no matter what I did. I guess if putting in 2-4 hours per day in this game isn't considered decent effort, then I should probably just give up...but it's just so damn addicting.

Did you clear several times when a sub was about to end? Every sub?

Unknown

clagsmd wrote:

I was clearing out all the subs I could 2-3 times per day. Tried to wait for max points on each node, but didn't always have the patience to wait 8 hours. After joining and clearing out the first time, I was around 300th and could never get any higher than that really, hanging in the 280-300 range no matter what I did. I guess if putting in 2-4 hours per day in this game isn't considered decent effort, then I should probably just give up...but it's just so damn addicting.

Sounds like you weren't able to clear the hard bracket reliably, because even though there are more than the usual nodes off limits due to lack of Kingpin, only 5% of the players can have that so everyone else is subject to the same restrictions. If you're a transition player, you're far less impacted by the 'no Wolverine' nodes in Thunderbolt Mountains and most of those nodes are worth a lot of points. Yes those nodes are quite hard to beat, which is why they're worth so much points and you shouldn't expect to close the gap by not beating the nodes worth the most points.

stowaway

Moon Roach wrote:

Hood fed 4 yellow per turn by 2 goons, Twin Pistols by move 5. Lovely.

You're lucky to make it to move five, when he's also swapping his own yellow and stealing yours!

jackstar0

clagsmd wrote:

I just love how they keep releasing a brand new character, then making him the required for the next PvE. Is this the 3rd week in row they've done this? Only the super hardcore players who had Kingpin could get Quicksilver, and now are the only ones who can rank well in this event. Really frustrating as 2-3* transition player. There's no point in playing, since I can't score the 3* cover and don't need any more 2* covers. At least the progression reward is attainable.

Just saying, I could not manage a KP, but I did get top 50 for two QS covers.

I don't think of myself as a crazy player either, as I grind sub-optimal (letting hours sometimes slip while sleeping and such), where I know others are steadfast in their dedication.

I certainly didn't want 3 new characters in a row, but missing Fisk didn't ruin things for me either.

Virus_Type_V

no Hero Points as Progression Rewards..??

Unknown

Virus Type V wrote:

no Hero Points as Progression Rewards..??

Quicksilver took them already

besides since they're gonna release 5 age of ultron characters u will need to buy HP all part of D3's plan

clagsmd wrote:

I just love how they keep releasing a brand new character, then making him the required for the next PvE. Is this the 3rd week in row they've done this? Only the super hardcore players who had Kingpin could get Quicksilver, and now are the only ones who can rank well in this event. Really frustrating as 2-3* transition player. There's no point in playing, since I can't score the 3* cover and don't need any more 2* covers. At least the progression reward is attainable.

Not sure why you're freaking out over bagsilver, he's progression this PVE which no one will care about.

Hell, you can probably snag 1-2 covers of Bagsilver during his PVPs since no one will care

clagsmd wrote:

I was clearing out all the subs I could 2-3 times per day. Tried to wait for max points on each node, but didn't always have the patience to wait 8 hours. After joining and clearing out the first time, I was around 300th and could never get any higher than that really, hanging in the 280-300 range no matter what I did. I guess if putting in 2-4 hours per day in this game isn't considered decent effort, then I should probably just give up...but it's just so damn addicting.

don't stress over PVE, especially intial character PVE - you will get chances to get them again and they will be progression. I am a much more successful PVP player than a PVE player

----

Ok, so first thing Quicksilver does in the PVE loaner node is die. That's always a good sign.

puppychow

Quebbster wrote:

I have to admit this is a good event to let players try out Quicksilver. It's one of the few where the opponents (Mystique and Doom) are very likely to match blue, so you get a good idea about what his power can do.
(Likely not much, but still...)

I managed to grab 1st place in the previous pve event and I have all 3 colors for Quick Silver. He is simply not a good character, unfortunately. I use him when I must (for essentials) but otherwise I can't see myself ever using him in a pvp event.

puppychow

Here's how I reached 145k in the last pve event (and taking first place in my bracket). I actually joined my slice late (as 964th person) and almost an hour after the event started. Basically, you're looking to clear every 8 hours. Then for the grind portion, which is where the separation occurs, you need to look and see how you'll approach the grind. After the last 8 hour refresh, I wait like 2 hours and then do another round. Then start using my lower tier characters (1/2* like juggernaut, daken, astwolf) to grind the trivial/easy nodes. Once that's done I attempt the hard nodes with the most appropriate characters, and I make sure to boost. If I end up having a few characters w/ low health, I heal and repeat. Save the essential nodes for the last hour because they are worth the most points.

The grind takes 1-2 hours of play for one sub. If there's a double set of subs, maybe 3 hours of grinding. So yeah, you're spending a LOT of time on those grinds. The Hell's Kitchen sub is the one that really determined whether you had a realistic chance of taking top 10. How do you kill Torch while he's being fed greens? If your roster cannot deal damage quick enough to knock out the non-goon characters in the nodes, you have no shot at the top of the leaderboard.

So the secret to doing well in these pve events are: a) spending hours to grind prior to expiration, b) having the roster to deal with difficult nodes.

Unknown

puppychow wrote:

Here's how I reached 145k in the last pve event (and taking first place in my bracket). I actually joined my slice late (as 964th person) and almost an hour after the event started. Basically, you're looking to clear every 8 hours. Then for the grind portion, which is where the separation occurs, you need to look and see how you'll approach the grind. After the last 8 hour refresh, I wait like 2 hours and then do another round. Then start using my lower tier characters (1/2* like juggernaut, daken, astwolf) to grind the trivial/easy nodes. Once that's done I attempt the hard nodes with the most appropriate characters, and I make sure to boost. If I end up having a few characters w/ low health, I heal and repeat. Save the essential nodes for the last hour because they are worth the most points.

The grind takes 1-2 hours of play for one sub. If there's a double set of subs, maybe 3 hours of grinding. So yeah, you're spending a LOT of time on those grinds. The Hell's Kitchen sub is the one that really determined whether you had a realistic chance of taking top 10. How do you kill Torch while he's being fed greens? If your roster cannot deal damage quick enough to knock out the non-goon characters in the nodes, you have no shot at the top of the leaderboard.

So the secret to doing well in these pve events are: a) spending hours to grind prior to expiration, b) having the roster to deal with difficult nodes.

Consistency is key in pve

puppychow

While consistency is important in grinding down nodes for point value, I think people underestimate the importance of having a strong roster. By that I don't necessarily mean having a max 4* roster, because I don't have a max 4* myself, but rather a good balance of strong 3* characters plus 2* characters to use and keep the scaling lower.

For Prodigal Sun event, the guy in second place in my bracket was basically a transition player who relied on professor xavier/hawkeye speedshot combo (he's got 2 max hawks), and a bunch of maxed 2* characters. Sure it works great on the normal nodes. But come Hell's Kitchen that smoke and mirror of a roster doesn't work in taking down a buffed Human Torch being fed greens. That player's inability to grind Hell's Kitchen was indeed the difference between first and second place; if he had a better roster we would have switched placements for first-second.

Unknown

puppychow wrote:

While consistency is important in grinding down nodes for point value, I think people underestimate the importance of having a strong roster. By that I don't necessarily mean having a max 4* roster, because I don't have a max 4* myself, but rather a good balance of strong 3* characters plus 2* characters to use and keep the scaling lower.

For Prodigal Sun event, the guy in second place in my bracket was basically a transition player who relied on professor xavier/hawkeye speedshot combo (he's got 2 max hawks), and a bunch of maxed 2* characters. Sure it works great on the normal nodes. But come Hell's Kitchen that smoke and mirror of a roster doesn't work in taking down a buffed Human Torch being fed greens. That player's inability to grind Hell's Kitchen was indeed the difference between first and second place; if he had a better roster we would have switched placements for first-second.

The problem is that only Prodigal Sun and Simulator Hard consistently scales to a point where 'smoke and mirror' won't work. For most events, smoke and mirror works quite well which makes playing a high end roster pretty frustrating. One easy to see why this must be true is that we all know X Force is overwhelmingly the best character in the game right now (at least until Friday), so if strong/weak roster encounter equal scaling, the strong roster is going to win very easily due to having the strongest character in the game while the weak roster player almost certainly won't have X Force in a usable form. So the fact that weak rosters are even able to compete suggests scaling is generally in their favor enough to almost cancel out the power of the strongest character in the game.

Moon Roach

stowaway wrote:

Moon Roach wrote:

Hood fed 4 yellow per turn by 2 goons, Twin Pistols by move 5. Lovely.

You're lucky to make it to move five, when he's also swapping his own yellow and stealing yours!

After doing a few clears, I don't mind King of New York or A Rocket and a Hard Place too much. It's A Tree Groots in New York that wipes me out, even though it's "Easy". It's hard to prevent the Muscle from spamming Threaten and Tommy Gun when 2 matches of Red gives a Headbutt that takes over half a character's health away. A bad board can ruin your day.

Oh good, I beat it second attempt this evening. 20 ISO. <sigh>

Unknown

puppychow wrote:

While consistency is important in grinding down nodes for point value, I think people underestimate the importance of having a strong roster. By that I don't necessarily mean having a max 4* roster, because I don't have a max 4* myself, but rather a good balance of strong 3* characters plus 2* characters to use and keep the scaling lower.

For Prodigal Sun event, the guy in second place in my bracket was basically a transition player who relied on professor xavier/hawkeye speedshot combo (he's got 2 max hawks), and a bunch of maxed 2* characters. Sure it works great on the normal nodes. But come Hell's Kitchen that smoke and mirror of a roster doesn't work in taking down a buffed Human Torch being fed greens. That player's inability to grind Hell's Kitchen was indeed the difference between first and second place; if he had a better roster we would have switched placements for first-second.

of course

but oftentimes the question is 'how do these people score so high etc etc' and the thing is they're consistent. At least more consistent than the guys and gals under 'em

Unknown

Moon Roach wrote:

After doing a few clears, I don't mind King of New York or A Rocket and a Hard Place too much. It's A Tree Groots in New York that wipes me out, even though it's "Easy". It's hard to prevent the Muscle from spamming Threaten and Tommy Gun when 2 matches of Red gives a Headbutt that takes over half a character's health away. A bad board can ruin your day.

Oh good, I beat it second attempt this evening. 20 ISO. <sigh>

Yeah, that pretty much ended my progression in pve...

Always nice to fail spectularly on an "easy" node on day one... *sigh*

DBC

GrimSkald

Found a good combination for the last two nodes on each line - "A Tree Groots in..." and "King of New York." I use Thor, LDaken, and Loki for vs. Juggs (to turn the strike tiles,) or Blade for vs Hood (to get a bit of extra damage.) Crazy fun, and Thor can take the "Twin Pistols" hit, which is good.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

A bunch of vets don't need Mystique and are burned out on grinding, so this may be a lot easier for people who need Mystique than they may think. I want the Quicksilver cover, but I'm not going to put in any real effort after I get it.

Same. I'm going to try and get as close to 18000 as I can without going over by much, and then not play any further.

TxMoose

Phantron wrote:

Looking at my bracket's numbers, it seems like people indeed followed through on their claim that Quicksilver is useless and participated relatively little during Prodigal Sun, so even without Kingpin it should've been easy to get a cover for him if you put in a decent effort.

I didn't have kp and I came close to getting 2 qs covers. fell just short at 52nd but there several thousand pts between me and 50th so there was no chance at catching them. I always fall behind during the weekends due to life... just how it is.