PVE: How do you maximize the total amount of points possible

Gagutz

Trying my best to get into the top 10 reward bracket for PVE...

I do face level 240+ enemies... have a deep roster to take hits...

However...

Wondering what works for you guys...

Is there a system/method/strategy to get the most amount of points possible in the event?

Thank you and a great weekend to all!

simonsez

Very simple. Clear each node as soon as it hits "full", and then grind everything down to 1 as close to the end of the sub as you can.

Gagutz

How much time left do you turn it up to full grind mode??

Bowgentle

Gagutz wrote:

How much time left do you turn it up to full grind mode??

However long it takes you to do that. At least two hours, usually.

wymtime

Gagutz wrote:

How much time left do you turn it up to full grind mode??

The last 1-2 hours depending on how many nodes there are and how fast you can clear them.

simonsez

Gagutz wrote:

How much time left do you turn it up to full grind mode??

Depends on your speed relative to the event, and your scaling. When you do your first clear, you'll know how long it take you to do 1... multiply that by 5 or 6.

Unknown

It is also going to taken into play what you want to get out of the event. If you are looking for 1st place, you may need to do optimal clears at the start of each sub, then every 8 hours, then a 2-3 hour grind. If you're going for top 10, maybe a little less than that. Top 50? Usually just the clears. Top 150? One or two clears per sub will often get that.

I took 1st in my EotS bracket for the extra Hulkbuster. I cleared at sub open, then every 8 hours (or as close to it as real life would allow) and was often grinding intermittently during the last three hours. I didn't have to grind everything to 1 because the guy in 2nd wasn't grinding everything to 1. I'd hit each node maybe 3 times and was pulling ahead each sub. I did however take top 2 for every sub.

Get into a bracket with some of the real crazies and they are actually grinding things to 1. Every sub.

Another thing to think about - if you are using the forum threads that track when a new bracket opens... so are a lot of other forumites. I was the 1st person into my bracket yesterday for Thick As Thieves, and watched it fill to 90 in not much time, the bulk of those names were somewhat familiar.

dkffiv

j12601 wrote:

It is also going to taken into play what you want to get out of the event. If you are looking for 1st place, you may need to do optimal clears at the start of each sub, then every 8 hours, then a 2-3 hour grind. If you're going for top 10, maybe a little less than that. Top 50? Usually just the clears. Top 150? One or two clears per sub will often get that.

I took 1st in my EotS bracket for the extra Hulkbuster. I cleared at sub open, then every 8 hours (or as close to it as real life would allow) and was often grinding intermittently during the last three hours. I didn't have to grind everything to 1 because the guy in 2nd wasn't grinding everything to 1. I'd hit each node maybe 3 times and was pulling ahead each sub. I did however take top 2 for every sub.

Get into a bracket with some of the real crazies and they are actually grinding things to 1. Every sub.

Another thing to think about - if you are using the forum threads that track when a new bracket opens... so are a lot of other forumites. I was the 1st person into my bracket yesterday for Thick As Thieves, and watched it fill to 90 in not much time, the bulk of those names were somewhat familiar.

Had to optimally grind everything to 1 in EotS, top 5 in my bracket was

257481
257166
245661
235002
233108

0.122% difference in scores.

Phumade

dkffiv wrote:

j12601 wrote:

It is also going to taken into play what you want to get out of the event. If you are looking for 1st place, you may need to do optimal clears at the start of each sub, then every 8 hours, then a 2-3 hour grind. If you're going for top 10, maybe a little less than that. Top 50? Usually just the clears. Top 150? One or two clears per sub will often get that.

I took 1st in my EotS bracket for the extra Hulkbuster. I cleared at sub open, then every 8 hours (or as close to it as real life would allow) and was often grinding intermittently during the last three hours. I didn't have to grind everything to 1 because the guy in 2nd wasn't grinding everything to 1. I'd hit each node maybe 3 times and was pulling ahead each sub. I did however take top 2 for every sub.

Get into a bracket with some of the real crazies and they are actually grinding things to 1. Every sub.

Another thing to think about - if you are using the forum threads that track when a new bracket opens... so are a lot of other forumites. I was the 1st person into my bracket yesterday for Thick As Thieves, and watched it fill to 90 in not much time, the bulk of those names were somewhat familiar.

Had to optimally grind everything to 1 in EotS, top 5 in my bracket was

257481
257166
245661
235002
233108

0.122% difference in scores.

I'm so glad I m not in your bracket! You are a true pve machine! 300 pt lead?, event is already over! They just forgot to tell the rest of the bracket!

Unknown

You should never leave points idle for more than an hour. If a node is going to be idle for more than an hour you should do it twice even if it's only for say 1 hour and 30 minutes of idle time. This is assuming you don't have problem beating the node of course.

Quantity is almost always more important than quality, and it'd be obvious if you're up against someone where quantity alone is not enough, like the example dkffiv posted.

mouser

Insomnia, pure and simple.

dider152

When my sub starts I do 2 runs of each node. This gives me almost 15 hours where I can sleep and do other stuff (it starts at 1am, which sucks). When there is one hour left before it is fully recharged, I do a full clear again, then leave it for until there are four hours left in the current sub, and start my grind. Some may say it's too early, but I feel that it helps me out if I have instances where I need to recharge healthpacks. I usually get top 10, but if the sub is 48 hours (this one is only 24) I can get top 5, or even top 2.

Moon Roach

Here are some musings about the theory of optimisation that I don't mind sharing.

Empirical evidence shows that when you clear, the points for that node drop by 1/6th of the full node's value, down to a minimum of 1. The node becomes full 8 hours after a first win, the time to fill increasing by 8 hours for every subsequent clear.

Purely in the interests of science, I just cleared three times "Heavily Guarded", which when full is worth 200 points (the Initial Value, which I'll call IV from now on). For subsequent clears I got 168 and 135, and now it's worth 102, and will be full in just under 24 hours. So, there's some rounding going on, and the non-zero time between clears has an effect.

Here are a couple of strategies at opposite ends of the "full clear" spectrum:

(A) At the beginning of the event clear the node 6 times to leave it with 1 point, and it will take 2 days to refill. But you'll get 3.5 times the IV of the node (6/6 + 5/6 + 4/6 + 3/6 + 2/6 + 1/6 = ? Bueller? Bueller?) For a 24 hour sub, by an hour to go it will have refilled to 23/48 of the IV. Clearing down to 1 point again will take 3 clears and will yield an additional 15/16 of the IV (23/48 + 15/48 + 7/48). With that strategy, for a total of 9 clears you'll net just under 4.5 times the IV.

(B) Clear once at the beginning, again at each refresh, then grind down to 1 with an hour or so to go. For a total of 9 clears this time you'll get 306/48 or 6.375 times the IV (48/48 + 48/48 + 48/48 + 47/48 + 39/48 + 31/48 + 23/48 + 15/48 + 7/48).

(There's also (C), clear as many times as will leave you a full node or nearly so when you can next play, but I'm trying to keep the models simple, so all I'll say is that it will get you a result in-between (A) and (B).)

This takes no account of rubber-banding. For someone trying to do (B), he'll drop places during the 8-hour refresh period, but the IV should go up as the leaders are doing multiple clears and possibly intending something like (A). At the end of the sub he should be overtaking as he still has points to grind when poor (A) is wondering what's happening.

It takes no account of time needed to clear a node, nor the numbers of nodes.

It takes no account of scaling. If there's a node you can't clear even once, that's points dropped.

It takes no account of the range of node points available in each sub.

I think that ideally you should be clearing nodes in descending order of available points, to maximise any available rubber-banding (though I might be wrong on that). But I often do it in ascending order of difficulty, just because I want to maximise the number of nodes that I can clear, which in my case isn't always too many.

Unknown

For ordering strategy, if you're in a competition tight enough that you know it's going to come down to a few guys racing for a certain spot, let us define a node's value as (node's base points * node's difficulty [easier the node, the more it's worth on this value]). That is, a node worth a ton of points that is also impossible might not be worth very much (because you can't beat it) compared to a node worth normal points that is trivial. Although you can't compute this value exactly, it should be fairly easy to see which nodes are the least amount of points for the highest amount of risk. When trying to shake/mislead other players, always start with the node with the least reward (lowest point/highest risk) first and work your way down. This usually means you should start with the hardest non essential node (decent points, incredible risk). An opponent watching your score cannot see what you're clearing and will likely mistaken you for clearing an easier node, and if you can trick him into clearing his easy nodes first then you've a huge advantage in crunch time. Of course, a caveat of this is that you got to be able to beat the nodes in the first place. You should only do this if you've a lot of time left or you're absolutely certain of your ability.

As time starts running out or health packs get low you want to reverse the ordering, that is, clear the nodes that are worth the most points for the least difficulty. This is probably going to be an essential node but it can often be a trivial normal node. Again, remember that a node that is worth a lot of points isn't worth very much if you can't beat it. Of course, this only matters if you're in a very tight competition. If you're fighting for T100 nobody's going to be specifically watching what you're doing, so you probably should always just start the nodes worth the most points for the least difficulty and try to get as much points as you can before you run out of health pack/time.

Moon Roach

In Thick as Thieves, I'm actually doing damn well for once. I'm in the first time slice, we're now in the last sub, and after my first clear last night I was in 1st place. The times work out really well; it starts at 11 pm, so I can do another clear at 7 am (or a little earlier), 3 pm (or a little earlier with a late lunch) then grind from 9 or 10 pm or so. I'm trying (B) in my strategy post.

Now, I'm soon going to do my third clear, I'm trying to wait a little longer as it's only 12:15 here. At the moment I'm in 3rd on 61270, with 2nd on 61401 and 1st on 64045. But, if I look at The Meeting I'm in 24th and falling, on 11646. The guy in 2nd overall is on 20313, the guy in 1st overall is on 15732.

They're grinding the nodes (or at least doing multiple clears) already, decreasing the points available overall. I have every confidence, servers permitting, of a top 2 finish or even, dare I say it, I dare, I dare, a first ever win.

JamieMadrox

The Legend's Guide to Crushing PVE*

1. Open sub (if necessary)
2. Clear sub from lowest point value to highest (or in the order the nodes open)
3. Repeat every 8 hours
4. When there is at least 90 minutes left in the sub (3x a single full clear), start clearing nodes from highest points to lowest**
5. When sub closes, repeat on new sub.

*This is the process I use when I actually try at PVE. I've come 1st every time I've tried it.
**You can start your grind earlier for more points, but you generally won't need them.

Phumade

Moon Roach wrote:

Here are some musings about the theory of optimisation that I don't mind sharing.

Here are a couple of strategies at opposite ends of the "full clear" spectrum:

(A) At the beginning of the event clear the node 6 times to leave it with 1 point, and it will take 2 days to refill. But you'll get 3.5 times the IV of the node (6/6 + 5/6 + 4/6 + 3/6 + 2/6 + 1/6 = ? Bueller? Bueller?) For a 24 hour sub, by an hour to go it will have refilled to 23/48 of the IV. Clearing down to 1 point again will take 3 clears and will yield an additional 15/16 of the IV (23/48 + 15/48 + 7/48). With that strategy, for a total of 9 clears you'll net just under 4.5 times the IV.

(B) Clear once at the beginning, again at each refresh, then grind down to 1 with an hour or so to go. For a total of 9 clears this time you'll get 306/48 or 6.375 times the IV (48/48 + 48/48 + 48/48 + 47/48 + 39/48 + 31/48 + 23/48 + 15/48 + 7/48).

(There's also (C), clear as many times as will leave you a full node or nearly so when you can next play, but I'm trying to keep the models simple, so all I'll say is that it will get you a result in-between (A) and (B).)

This is a fun thread and I like talking math. I sat down to write a math proof for optimal strategy and its pretty close to what you and phantron are implying. However, I would note a few things, in the interest of advancing the discussion.

1. we have to assume that everyone has roughly equivalent rosters and are equally skilled/experienced opponents. I.e. everyone is roughly at the same level of experience and roster.

2. We have to assume that each win is instantaneous. This simplifies the math, but really its to recognize the fact DKffiv can win a match faster than a 1* roster. (The minor differences in DK's bracket is the result of who wins a match faster (faster you win, the more accurate your play schedule becomes) and who is most accurate to finishing a match on schedule.) The basic strategy has been out for several months now and the only real differentiation in PVE results is really about who can a match the fastest and who can stay on schedule the most efficiently.

3. Everyone has the same time constraints and the ability to play at any time in the PVE.

With that said, Strategy B is always better than A assuming Points 1/3. Here is why.

Strat A: Clear everything at once

Total points =
Clear1 (6/6 * (Initial value) )
Clear2 (5/6 (IV) + NO RECOVERY POINTS (since your clearing at the start)
Clear3 (4/6 (IV) + NO RECOVERY POINTS (since your clearing at the start)
Clear4 (3/6 (IV) + NO RECOVERY POINTS (since your clearing at the start)
Clear5 (2/6 (IV) + NO RECOVERY POINTS (since your clearing at the start)
Clear6 (1/6 (IV) + NO RECOVERY POINTS (since your clearing at the start)

Or (6/6 + 5/6 + 4/6 + 3/6 +2/6 + 1/6) == 21/6 or 3 3/6 * Initial value of a node.

which assumes that the min a node opens you hammer the node to 1 and you still have 23hr 59m 54 secs to go!

but now the only available points are those that come from regeneration which we can define as a set rate (Alpha)* T (Time left to recover).

so the available recover of points after hitting the node 6 times in the first min is essentially (Alpha *T)

The net point value of scenario A = 3 1/2*IV + Alpha*Time remaining)

Scenario B: Clear 1 then wait until a full points ( 8 hours) then clear again.
Clear 1: (6/6 * (Initial value) ) then wait 8 hrs for the full refresh
Clear 2: (6/6 * (Initial value)
Clear 3: (6/6 * (Initial value)

Then final grind. Note that because we are on 24 subs. Clear 3 is at full value, but Clear 4 has to occur before full value refresh.

Clear 4: (5/6* IV + alpha*T elapsed from clear 3)
Clear 5: (4/6* IV + alpha * Time elapsed from clear 4)
Clear 6: (3/6 * IV + alpha * Time elapsed from clear 5)
Clear 7: (2/6 * IV + alpha * Time elapsed from clear 6)
Clear 8: (1/6 * IV + alpha * Time elapsed from clear 7)

Total Point values =
(6/6 + 6/6 + 6/6+ 5/6 +4/6 +3/6 + 2/6 +1/6) IV + Alpha* time elapsed from Clear 3 to end of sub)
==5 4/6 * Initial value + Alpha* time elapsed from Clear 3 to end of sub)


Right off the bat, Scenario B is better than Scenario A

The inference should be "always let the counter fully refresh before starting your next clear"

so are there edge case scenarios that would suggest a different clearing schedules?

Actually NO!, I won't bother to go through the full math proof to show it because it will tell you some other insights that top tier alliances don't want publicized.

but generally speaking, you've optimized your play to withing 95% of the top value by:

1. Play 1 time at the start of the node.
2. Wait until the node refresh and clear again (Wait 8 hrs)
3. When there isn't enough time for the node to fully refill before end of sub, begin fully grinding the node to 1.

At the DKFFIV level (i.e. the top PVE scorers): those roster can finish a match faster and restart the counter sooner than anyone else, and they worked out the precise schedule to when they need to finish a match to maximize the recovery timers.

There are still lots of opportunity to figure out how to eek out more points but those are within the margin of error of 1st place and 5 place in DKFFIV's bracket. Those points will never be sufficient to overcome a mistake in the first 21 hours of a sub.

I.e.
To even have a chance at beating an elite level pve (DKFFIV level competition and trust me there are tons of the super hard core pve players) you have to follow schedule B and figure out the timing tricks to eek out a few more points.

Remember if you can beat DKFFIV on each node by only 5 points, that will swing a sub 40-50 points. More than enough, to reshake the standings.

Phumade

Last thing.

I wish we had overall individual rankings for PVE and PVP.

DKFFIV is an elite level top tier PVE player. His play style and dedication basically represents the top 1% of the top 10 PVE alliances. (I.e. He's in the top 1% of the top tier pve players) Everything, that I posted needs to be read in the light of high level competition. If you not in a PVE Hell bracket, you can play very mellow and still get a top ten result. But if you want to play with best in the game, invest in a nice alarm clock, and have a smoking hot roster!