Ultron 2 Progression - Some Math

anamosity

I'm glad a read this when I did we were coasting at 18 members, a couple of which are more relaxed, since we got all the rewards last round. I guess it was naive to think it would be the same difficulty to get 3-4* covers.

simonsez

udonomefoo wrote:

I don't think it's fair to reject the concept

Let me clarify. I'm not rejecting the concept. I'm rejecting the notion that some people have that making PvE non-competitive would make it any less grindy and time-consuming. Anyone who manages to clear everything in Ultron 2 will have spent at least as much time, if not more, than they would have doing a top 5 finish in a normal PvE

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Let me clarify. I'm not rejecting the concept. I'm rejecting the notion that some people have that making PvE non-competitive would make it any less grindy and time-consuming. Anyone who manages to clear everything in Ultron 2 will have spent at least as much time, if not more, than they would have doing a top 5 finish in a normal PvE

Disagree -- you get a full clear every 8 hours, plus a full clear whenever you roll over to the next ultron. That is WAY better than grinding nodes to dust.

windfallstar

simonsez wrote:

udonomefoo wrote:

I don't think it's fair to reject the concept

Let me clarify. I'm not rejecting the concept. I'm rejecting the notion that some people have that making PvE non-competitive would make it any less grindy and time-consuming. Anyone who manages to clear everything in Ultron 2 will have spent at least as much time, if not more, than they would have doing a top 5 finish in a normal PvE

Except these battles are significantly easier, and there are guaranteed covers at the end. Also there's no grinding nodes to 0 like there is at end of each sub. There is no way that this event requires more, or even as much, effort as other PVEs.

shriekingwillow

Rather than base the round 7 & 8 projections on percentages, if we look at the increases for rounds 4,5, & 6 of:

Round 4 increase: 500,000
Round 5 increase: 1,000,000
Round 6 increase: 1,500,000

it's possible that the round 7 and 8 increases will be 2 million and 2.5 million, meaning total health for those rounds would be 6.5 and 8.5 million.

Call me an optimist (realist?) but I don't think the increases for the first few rounds where the points are so small relatively, should be factored into projections for the last 2 rounds. Time will tell I suppose.

orionpeace

Has any Alliance unlocked Ultron7 yet?

Malcrof

shriekingwillow wrote:

Rather than base the round 7 & 8 projections on percentages, if we look at the increases for rounds 4,5, & 6 of:

Round 4 increase: 500,000
Round 5 increase: 1,000,000
Round 6 increase: 1,500,000

it's possible that the round 7 and 8 increases will be 2 million and 2.5 million, meaning total health for those rounds would be 6.5 and 8.5 million.

Call me an optimist (realist?) but I don't think the increases for the first few rounds where the points are so small relatively, should be factored into projections for the last 2 rounds. Time will tell I suppose.

I think this is to fix the issue with many alliances completing round 8 without everyone getting progression.. bad news for small alliances who didn't finish round 6 the first time around though.

LXSandman

simonsez wrote:

Anyone who manages to clear everything in Ultron 2 will have spent at least as much time, if not more, than they would have doing a top 5 finish in a normal PvE

I don't think this is true.

EotS is running right now. It's a 7 day PVE that will reward the IMHB. To get top 5 in that event you will need to finish every node and hit the proper refreshes almost exactly throughout the entire event. On top of that you will need to grind down the nodes at the end of each sub. This to me seems like WAY more work then Ultron, unless you are including the effort of everyone in your alliance.

Obviously to get the 3 rewards in Ultron you require your entire Alliance to work hard... which might not be possible... but lets say they do. That means that you need to hit the Ultron nodes (6 Ultrons +5 Nodes) once every 8 hours. But the difference is that because they are set refresh times you can hit one early and one late and still get a near perfect score while still sleeping! On top of that there is no grinding the nodes to 0... which really is the most time consuming part.

All in All... I say Ultron is easier... if you have an alliance.

LXSandman

DrStrange-616

windfallstar wrote:

fmftint wrote:

the problem with this format is, no mater how dedicated YOU are, you might not achieve all rewards, you are dependent not only on your ability but the ability of everyone you are playing with to unlock everything

To be fair, lots of people have been asking for a cooperative event. If anything, this was a good chance for alliances to overhaul membership.

It is or would be if we could see the bottom half of the scores to determine who isn't pulling their weight.

GrumpySmurf1002

Updated the OP with mags1587's info. (Thank you mags1587)

Shifts the timeline a little (round 7 can be done in 3 refreshes), but not enough to make an impact.

simonsez

windfallstar wrote:

Except these battles are significantly easier

I keep forgetting that my scaling is giving me a far different experience than most people...

Scoregasms

I just wish they informed us of the Health per round increases (given all the other shenanigans...), not sure if a lot of alliances got caught off guard, but we sure did trying to get everyone the best chance for top progression and intentionally taking it a little slower this time around which could now potentially screw us from opening the final Round 8 Prime Node.

I firmly believe if we knew about the health increase, we all would've been better off in preparation, as it stands, it's gonna go down to the wire for us (we're using 5.5, 7, 9 Million respectively for the last 3 rounds of health for our estimating purposes). Anything less will be great, anything more and it just becomes a numbers game and we're not on the right side of that equation.

I'm in the camp that this is definitely less grindy than a regular PVE (coming from someone who goes for top 2 placement and comparing level of effort), instead of relying on yourself to get those covers though, you need to rely on others and YMMV depending on your alliance. Given a good group of folks, it becomes a much more pleasant experience, it's a bit grindy up front in this format, but a lot more stable down the stretch.

GrumpySmurf1002

simonsez wrote:

windfallstar wrote:

Except these battles are significantly easier

I keep forgetting that my scaling is giving me a far different experience than most people...

Doing the math quickly, but one can get the final progression with as little as 16 full clears. (it's probably less with partials, just ballparking it right now). Basically 100 clears, 16 of which is Ultron himself who is pretty easy for most elite character combos (which anyone completing the event likely has).

A 48 hours sub (not even the whole event) with 8 nodes ground down to 1 is 96. And it's not like regular PvE scaling is much better, if at all. Sentries are annoying, but not moreso than level 350+ Juggs/Ares

The effort required here is definitely less, it's just dependent on 19 people you associate yourself with to be equally committed.

simonsez

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Doing the math quickly, but one can get the final progression with as little as 16 full clears. (it's probably less with partials, just ballparking it right now). Basically 100 clears

The only thing I'd quibble with is that in these survival nodes, you're facing anywhere from 6 to 10 opponents, not just 3, so it's really the equivalent of around 250 clears. And none are trivial (at my scaling). In a standard PvE, at least 1/3 of the nodes are low level opponents you can just throw Daken at and be done in less than a minute, so they shoudn't even factor in. So instead of 100 vs. 96, a more accurate comparison would be more like 250 vs. 64.

TxMoose

simonsez wrote:

windfallstar wrote:

Except these battles are significantly easier

I keep forgetting that my scaling is giving me a far different experience than most people...

I'm with simon here. vast majority of the battles I win - I've only lost 2 (both today) since early in the first event (when I didn't understand which sentries were important). but I basically only have 2 characters above 104 - 166thor and 140loki. good characters and loki black is very useful here but with nobody else above 104 and literally all other essential characters at level 40-60 (other than 94obw - have no problem with her nodes), I have literally no support from anyone else, so thor takes most of the damage and loki takes a lot too, requiring health packs for both after nearly every battle. I know this is because of the way my roster is set up right now, but for me the puzzle part is managing health packs good enough to make full clears every 8hrs. i have thrown in daredevil for loki from time to time when opposition levels are lower (he's at 102), but loki's ap generation is soooo useful here.

wymtime

Scoregasms wrote:

I just wish they informed us of the Health per round increases (given all the other shenanigans...), not sure if a lot of alliances got caught off guard, but we sure did trying to get everyone the best chance for top progression and intentionally taking it a little slower this time around which could now potentially screw us from opening the final Round 8 Prime Node.

I firmly believe if we knew about the health increase, we all would've been better off in preparation, as it stands, it's gonna go down to the wire for us (we're using 5.5, 7, 9 Million respectively for the last 3 rounds of health for our estimating purposes). Anything less will be great, anything more and it just becomes a numbers game and we're not on the right side of that equation.

I'm in the camp that this is definitely less grindy than a regular PVE (coming from someone who goes for top 2 placement and comparing level of effort), instead of relying on yourself to get those covers though, you need to rely on others and YMMV depending on your alliance. Given a good group of folks, it becomes a much more pleasant experience, it's a bit grindy up front in this format, but a lot more stable down the stretch.

I agree better disclosure would be easy. Many people were talking about going to a smaller alliance in order for everyone to get the progression rewards. They could have easily added we are going to increase Ultrons health to allow more players to reach the 1 million progression. My alliance is in round 6 with 19 people and it should be fairly easy to score a million points for me personally. I was hoping that we could kill Ultron by Friday so we could focus on the new season and PVE, but this might not be possible. Now that I think about it, D3 might prefer stronger alliances to be playing Ultron to get Hulkbuster while more 2* heavy alliances go after PVE. This way 2* alliances can grind PVE down to win Hulkbuster while 3-4* alliances still have to grind Ultron.

I actually like rounds 6,7,8 of Ultron compared to PVE and the gauntlet. Rounds 1-5 felt like a grind because we flew through them so fast. 6,7,8 Ultron takes a lot more hits to beat and since you don't have to do clears all at once it makes it much more flexible compared to PVE.

GrumpySmurf1002

simonsez wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Doing the math quickly, but one can get the final progression with as little as 16 full clears. (it's probably less with partials, just ballparking it right now). Basically 100 clears

The only thing I'd quibble with is that in these survival nodes, you're facing anywhere from 6 to 10 opponents, not just 3, so it's really the equivalent of around 250 clears. And none are trivial (at my scaling). In a standard PvE, at least 1/3 of the nodes are low level opponents you can just throw Daken at and be done in less than a minute, so they shoudn't even factor in. So instead of 100 vs. 96, a more accurate comparison would be more like 250 vs. 64.

Alright, but as I said, that's just one 48 hour sub. And a 24 hour sub is still 72 clears (which I'll discount down to 48). And that's an 8 node example. Obviously there are those with 10-12-14 nodes to clear. And EotS has waves also, which factors in. But I'll grant you the difference isn't as stark as the quick example I gave.

From my perspective (with a bit easier scaling than you), I haven't had a node yet in AvU which is 'unbeatable.' I've only really wiped to totally believable Core Meltdown cascades. Compare that to PvE, where there are nodes where even if I could beat it, the reliability of me doing so is such a low percentage that it may as well be unbeatable.

There's also the factor of 'optimal play' in the two scenarios. Regular PvE is inflexible for optimal scoring, but this just requires you hit it sometime between the essential refreshes. That's definitely less taxing over a 4.5 day event as well.

Overall, this is just a much more pleasant experience to me. I would play this every 4.5 days for the rest of MPQs life, whereas I'm not sure I'll ever play competitive PvE again.

Scoregasms

simonsez wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Doing the math quickly, but one can get the final progression with as little as 16 full clears. (it's probably less with partials, just ballparking it right now). Basically 100 clears

The only thing I'd quibble with is that in these survival nodes, you're facing anywhere from 6 to 10 opponents, not just 3, so it's really the equivalent of around 250 clears. And none are trivial (at my scaling). In a standard PvE, at least 1/3 of the nodes are low level opponents you can just throw Daken at and be done in less than a minute, so they shoudn't even factor in. So instead of 100 vs. 96, a more accurate comparison would be more like 250 vs. 64.

I dunno, with only 2 waves, I usually have enough AP to completely nuke down the 2nd wave for these, so once you get past the first wave, it's over pretty quickly (unless the board is completely awful). Even when they get those mega cascades, they have no active powers so it doesn't really matter much, so I'm not fearing some insta death ability, lol.

Have you found out from anyone you know that sold off their 270's to see if their scaling has indeed gone down? Not saying that's a good option, but worth confirming if it helps at all. My highest characters are 192 and I've found this event to be enjoyable for the most part.

mohio

I'm definitely in the "like this better" camp, but starting to get pretty upset with d3 about not communicating the changes to the second run. My alliance optimized for the first run and finished in 2.5 days so we decided to split up the heavy grinders in this second run and now it looks like neither group will finish. I'm not sure we'd have done it differently if we'd known but we absolutely should have known. Sadly it's on par with well everything they've ever done in the past with shoddy communication but that doesn't make it any less wrong.

Unknown

Not 24 hours ago we were wishing Ultron had more health. Now he has more health and you want to complain about it?

Does this mean that those edge cases that barely cleared round 8, or didn't make it through round 8 last Run will miss a cover? Probably. But we are talking about a 4* release which has a PvE for the exact same 4* running right beside it (never been done before, 4* cover awarded for 2 events, let alone back to back) . There are Hulkbusters to go around for those that work for them.

I'm glad Grumpy did some math on this and made everyone aware of the situation. Now that we are it's time to unleash the hounds, and get those point seekers some more action. If you have players in your camp who held at a million so others could also get a million last Run, you are probably totally fine for this run, just tell them to get to 1.5 Mil or 2 Mil. Release the big guns.