Anatomy of a Tourney Run

over_clocked

I find it ridiculous that to place anywhere close to top 10, you *have* to use shields, but oh well. Maybe sometime I... oh I mean, maybe sometime a midlevel player, too, can reach the point where they can throw HP at events, and without Rags' help at that.

Unknown

In regular tournament you have less sharks to start with and even less hunting. And brackets+MMR also plays differently

The new changes with shield hike2, 1 strike, boosts hike it's supposed to be much better than little earlier, but the basics will probably still hold on the top in a few weeks as people adjust to changes. (IMO the running tournaments were pretty much disrupted and caught too many people with pants down -- the army event finished with some extremely low scores...)

But after all the adjustments it will converge back to something similar, just concentrated to the last 8 hours, IMO. Unless further changes make another shake -- after all we'll have spiderman nerf coming soon that shall have a deal of impact.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Given the prizes give out in the Avenger Elite you can think of shields as being 'free', at least to the guys who are trying for first place. I doubt you'll see this kind of behavior duplicated anywhere else. If you were doing that on a regular PvP tournament you'd have spent more in shields than whatever you're trying to win cost to just upgrade straight up unless that was your first cover, and if you've that kind of HP to burn you probably should just buy the special deal packs and save yourself the headache.

At any rate the general strategy outlined is still applicable everywhere else. You won't have those crazy shield off/shield on moments happening all the time but the general concept also still applies.

This. In regular PvP events where I've pushed to take the 4*, I've only spent between 250-500 HP total to take the 1st place down. Get 50 from the early prog reward (100 from the 1000 isn't a realistic expectation any more), 100 for placing, and maybe 75 from selling 3*'s if I don't need them, and I'm looking at anywhere from 25-350 net HP spend to land a 4*, which seems quite reasonable to me.

Nemek

walkyourpath wrote:

pasa_ wrote:

Can we have some timing figures? How many minutes it takes for the mob hits to arrive? What number of hits after reshielding?

I can only guesstimate, but the first day I didn't get attacked too much. The time for retaliation and frequency gradually increased as the tourney got closer to an end. Certainly, most of my unshieldings in the last 8 hours brought at least one attack within 1-5 minutes of me reshielding, again reinforcing my one and done approach to pushes. For the last hour, my shields reflected somewhere between 8-10 attacks in the final stretch, as being in first meant that I was always the highest point value for anyone trying to make a desperate scramble.

I only unshielded once in the final hour, and even that was a scary gambit - a 2-3 minute vulnerable period, with 10 hits in an hour coming in? Spread those out evenly and you're looking at a roughly 1 in 6 chance of a hit landing unshielded. I've rolled enough 1's on a D6 playing tabletop RPGs to know that it's not the kind of risk I want to take when 3 days and 5K is on the line.

Yeah, it changed a bit as the tourney went on. On Day 2, I'd comfortably get in 3 matches before shielding and narrowly missing attacks. At the time, I thought even THAT was overly cautious. Beginning of Day 3 I jumped down to 2 matches per shield. And then in the last two hours, I was down to 1 match between shields. At the end, I'd shield off an attack within a minute or two after finishing the one match. Some of it from other top 20 people, and then some of it with people with absurdly low scores (and then Bugpop was making a huge run, probably used very little HP on shields overall.)

Most of my matches are between 2 and 3 minutes, I'd say.

Unknown

locked wrote:

I find it ridiculous that to place anywhere close to top 10, you *have* to use shields, but oh well. Maybe sometime I... oh I mean, maybe sometime a midlevel player, too, can reach the point where they can throw HP at events, and without Rags' help at that.

Marvelben and several others with midlevel teams landed in the top 10 despite not having maxed 3* rosters like Nemek, Clint, and myself. I certainly never would have entered this one if I didn't have a stockpile saved up from playing frugally in other events for quite a long time (in my case, it took me about 2 1/2 months to grow the HP I dropped in shields). But there were some serious Rocky Balboas in the mix who scrapped their way into a top placement with fewer resources and squishier teams. Was really great to see that.

Unknown

locked wrote:

I find it ridiculous that to place anywhere close to top 10, you *have* to use shields, but oh well.

The devs spoke rarely but that was one of the firm point they disclosed actually. Who remembers the days when we had the pirhanas in the 600-800 range and elevating over that finally peaceful climb was possible? The comments were quite in range, and adjunstments to stop that, and put the risk on the very top. With first surprizes opening those 50 bombs and attack from 0 pts people across the whole field.

And they kept refining the formula -- with the final piece of the key found in removing the shielded people from offers. When I read that statement, it was the evident 'game over'. And reports of the expected manifestation arrived within no time (see the first public enemy #1 thread).

What did surprise me after all that was coming back of the hike on shield price. The original one was that supported the system most perfectly, the elevated really goes the wrong direction. I'm not sure what caused it, blind greed, overlook or deliberate sabotage from someone who would rather see a better arena with less of this ****.

But still the system is primed this way, for those aiming very top leaving not any chance without shields. But if you're okay the 1 *** cover range it may work out. And defense is finally back in business to some level so scary-for-attack teams will have more advantage. Especially after team-stunlock will not be possible anymore.

mischiefmaker

Took me a couple of days to get around to reading the whole thing, but I'm glad I did. Great writeup, thanks for sharing your insights and strategy and congratulations on a well-deserved win!

Unknown

walkyourpath wrote:

Second, I actually gained 10 points on defense in the last hour (about 20-25 in the 5 hours before that) when I made a desperate single match push after real life intruded for the two hours just before and I couldn't do anything but queue up matches occasionally. While I was open, Bugpop, who was playing like a beast down the stretch, lost a round to me while I was vulnerable. I don't know whether my D got a lucky cascade or the board just dried up for him, but that's just the point - a high health team exposes you to more chances that the AI hits a miracle or that you get starved for AP when trying to end matches quickly.

None of this is to say that a defensive team is the best team, or the only option - just saying that for me, it worked out very well at the end and allowed me to execute my plan and get off Zombie Island with a tidy profit. I hope this is helpful to others and sparks some interesting conversation. If not, you're a masichist for reading this far anyway and you deserved what you got.

Thunderous Clap.

Unknown

Great read, thanks for sharing your approach to the elite tourney and congrats on the win.

Seems like too much stress and constant monitoring of the leaderboard without actually playing the game to be worth it for me, so I don't think I'll be trying any elite events.