No Holds Barred PvP event

Unknown

Tosel wrote:

klingsor wrote:

I am pretty frustrated right now. So I held a 20 hour lead, let's say 650ish. Then this dude, Tosl, comes out of nowhere (his roster is **** btw, so why he is in my tournament standings, but his team is so low levelled I can't find it, I don't understand. Can someone explain?) and pushes past me by 50 points. So i break shield, push three patches then shield again. Risky but fine. Well he breaks shield and does the same thing. I breach 800 before wham, 2 attacks and I'm down to 675, again, He apparently gets attacked too, but doesn't reshield. I end up freaking out and switching to Patch, buy ISO and level him 10 levels or so as a last resort, thinking with his fast output I can win faster and put up the shield. Well, for some reason this brings the hordes back, and my Patch ends up working as bait instead of deterrent. Long story short, presumably that dude wins the tournament, and I don't finish my last fight in time (so I guess it doesn't count...) and I end up placing top 5. I spent real cash though, and probably about 1000 HP in shields, most of them at the last 3 hours...I got **** rewards other than the 3 Hood covers, so now I stand with a level 20 Hood for my efforts. I know I am solely to blame for all my bad decisions.

Hi there,

tosl here. Sorry for the loss. I pushed 3 times a bit further with about 16h in between, so i didn't came "out of nowhere". I just didn't shield, because this tournament ended 18 o'clock my time, with me coming home early from work. With that push to 800. I did the same, got smacked down, pulled a boost, because you have been 3 points in front of me. Now the lucky part was, that while i did this one more game, my team won on defense. I did not spend 1k hp, but 500 for three shields and a +3boost.

Could have gone another way easily and i would be pissed.
Just the point with the **** rooster: I played with a 100 Hulk, 75 IM40 and a 77 OBW. I just go for purple in the beginning, then yellow, then rank up 30 green and 30 red and just smack down the last two standing with hulks red. This works just fine.

Best regards

Tosl, I must confess I made my post a little bit inflammatory to draw your attention, since I didn't know if you surveyed the forums. I'm glad you appeared! Even thought your roster is a little weaker than mine, it isn't ****. your hulk is actually a little stronger than mine. I just added a lvl 100 Spiderman and a lvl 89 Patch to the mix (alternating IM40 lvl 90, OBW 85 as needed.) The point is I'm not really butt hurt about losing to you, just losing after what I considered an epic amount of effort. I tried to find you, I cycled maybe 200 times to find you, and had I did I would have attacked you when your shields were down. The problem is even though we were on the same leaderboard, we weren't on the same opponent pool. Obviously it's not based on ratings, since we had the same ratings at this point. I wish you would have stopped deshielding and taken second place, but you are not a quitter, and I can respect that. I wish I would have not deshielded to being with, and some fool would have attached me and given me points on defense. Can you be attached and win other than retaliation hits while shielded?

If someone can explain why Tosl and myself had same rating and on same leaderboard but couldn't find each other I would appreciate it. I'm guessing it's a difference in levels or rating, because I kept on seeing the same people over and over...

Phantron wrote:

Breaking shields when you've above 600 is always risky. There's no predictable way to do it. You can go check the Avenger Elite thread for some guidelines on how to best break shields, but it bascially boils down to that when you shield you should have a team that is hard to attack, because no matter how fast you think you are, there's always someone (usually more than one guy) who sees you the moment you break your shield. You get one chance to switch teams safely (start with defensive team, break shield with high offense team and opponent still sees your defense team until you're done with your match), but that's it, which is why the Avenger Elite tournment was won by someone running a very defensive team (Hulk/IM40/Punisher?). At high rating, the most important part is that you have to slow your opponents down, because there's no way you can outrace 5 guys who see you pop up on their screen for 40 points.

I did read that Avengers Elite post, which is what prompted to me copy his strategy. Deshield, fight once, and shield worked fine except the last 30 minutes of the tourney. It was the only time I lost, but it was when it counted the most. If I am understand Phantron correctly, you finish the match say with IM40, Hulk and Spidey or Patch, whoever is your deterrant, then you switch to your offensive team, fight once then shield? if that happens your offensive team is left up no? So do you have to fight twice? One with offensive team, then again with defensive team to assure that the defensive team is left up? I Tried doing the first strategy, but the problem is I had to break shields more than once, because TOSL would also deshield, gain 18 points on me, and shield. If I had a level 140 Patch maybe that would have been a deterrent, but lvl 89 Patch wasn't...

Unknown

Nailed a top 5 finish. I stayed strong most of the tournament, only falling down a couple times.

The leader in my bracket, Sockid, finished up in first with some near-1000 points - when I last checked I was third with 637, 2nd place had 648.
Everyone else in my bracket is tier-2 upper/mid level heroes, Sockid's all high-level tier 3's. Must've been doing some serious tanking to get down here, noticed he was leading some of the LR's too with ridiculous scores. That rascal!

Unknown

starsrift wrote:

Nailed a top 5 finish. I stayed strong most of the tournament, only falling down a couple times.

The leader in my bracket, Sockid, finished up in first with some near-1000 points - when I last checked I was third with 637, 2nd place had 648.
Everyone else in my bracket is tier-2 upper/mid level heroes, Sockid's all high-level tier 3's. Must've been doing some serious tanking to get down here, noticed he was leading some of the LR's too with ridiculous scores. That rascal!

You're bracketed with people who started around the same time as you, not with people in your MMR range.

over_clocked

a bit hurtful, finishing only top 45 after staying top 10 and even top 1-2 during all of the tournament. I wish people stopped pushing so hard in the last minutes, this isn't LR ffs, want a quick grab? Go to LR.

Unknown

Shielding would have guaranteed a cover or two. You chose to take a gamble and it didnt pay off.

Unknown

klingsor wrote:

If someone can explain why Tosl and myself had same rating and on same leaderboard but couldn't find each other I would appreciate it.

Your matchmaking is independent from your bracket. It happens once in a while, that you actually compete against someone directly (had this once or twice i believe). But most of the time you are not competing directly.

And i looked for your team also

Unknown

locked wrote:

a bit hurtful, finishing only top 45 after staying top 10 and even top 1-2 during all of the tournament. I wish people stopped pushing so hard in the last minutes, this isn't LR ffs, want a quick grab? Go to LR.
[img][/img]

Why should they change their strat if it's working? And why are you reluctant to change your strat if it's not working?

Unknown

Well to my surprise this tourney didn't went as south as I predicted. I sawed between 300-500 points the first days. Sometimes retaliated, sometimes didn't. Never shielded until the last day when I spent 3hrs shield at 480 points with 12hrs to go (probably pointless). Second shield (8hrs) I spent at 550 points just 7,5hrs before tourney ended. Then 20mins to the end I grinded three 30pt matches with my Punisher/Patch/C.Storm team and burnt my 5 health packs doing that. With just one attack towards me in between I ended up 2nd place with 603 points and just 1min on the counter. Would've been even sweeter victory if I hadn't noticed that #1 had 617 points... grrrrr. So close.

Oh well, I got those Hood covers. Although I'm very surprised that I didn't get flooded with attacks at the very end. Seemed to be the fate of so many. I got lucky, I guess.

PS. I also got extremely lucky (as did someone else in this thread) and drew 3* cover (Hulk black) from a standard token at the lightning match right after No Holds Barred.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

locked wrote:

a bit hurtful, finishing only top 45 after staying top 10 and even top 1-2 during all of the tournament. I wish people stopped pushing so hard in the last minutes, this isn't LR ffs, want a quick grab? Go to LR.
[img][/img]

Why should they change their strat if it's working? And why are you reluctant to change your strat if it's not working?

The cheapest way to play is to try and grab a high spot at the start or middle of the tournament and shield it out. The most viable strategy is to play only at then end of tournaments, say the final 3-4 hours and shield hop to make big point advances.

over_clocked

Fangel wrote:

Shielding would have guaranteed a cover or two. You chose to take a gamble and it didnt pay off.

Are you talking to me? I did shield, twice, but due to not being an experienced money waster my shields turned out to be completely useless. I don't mind working hard to get higher; I very much object to NOT PLAYING due to extensive shielding (forget the money, I could throw some but, thank pasta, I can't due to being purchase-banned). That's not my way and it's not fun, period.
What was it like before shields? Does anyone even remember? I say, screw the shields. They do naught for players who don't have thousands at their disposal (like me; never sailed coattails of c. Storm, Loki, Rags and GSBW, Thorverine, max blue Spidey, etc.) I'm content with getting what I can at my speed anyway; it's not like you get enough iso to level all the covers.

over_clocked

ihearthawthats wrote:

Why should they change their strat if it's working? And why are you reluctant to change your strat if it's not working?

You know what? I am a fan of both Puzzle Quest and Marvel. But not a fan of turtling. Guess why I'm not pro extensive shielding. I like playing, dammit. I wish the system were a bit more fair to players like me.
No we can't afford several day long shields; and even if we could, we WANT TO PLAY and be rewarded proportionately.
It would have been extremely easy for me to keep place 2, had I not wasted 100 HP for a useless 3 hours shield a day before; lesson learned and I don't think I will pay for another shield anytime soon, since my roster is full yet again.
But I don't see how other people can have fun with oh such a clever shielding strategy, when this is a match 3 game and not a timing contest.

Unknown

locked wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Why should they change their strat if it's working? And why are you reluctant to change your strat if it's not working?

You know what? I am a fan of both Puzzle Quest and Marvel. But not a fan of turtling. Guess why I'm not pro extensive shielding. I like playing, dammit. I wish the system were a bit more fair to players like me.
No we can't afford several day long shields; and even if we could, we WANT TO PLAY and be rewarded proportionately.
It would have been extremely easy for me to keep place 2, had I not wasted 100 HP for a useless 3 hours shield a day before; lesson learned and I don't think I will pay for another shield anytime soon, since my roster is full yet again.
But I don't see how other people can have fun with oh such a clever shielding strategy, when this is a match 3 game and not a timing contest.

Step 0: have disposable 100 HP
Step 1: play during late night, when there's less competition
Step 2: get to 100-150-200 points.
Step 3: wait till last 4-3 hours.
Step 4: push for desired placement - I'd guess top 45 or top 15
Step 5: shield with cheapest shield (3 hours one)
Step 6: DO NOT BREAK SHIELD
Step 7:...
Step 8: get 100 HP back as reward +50 HP as progression, get 1-2-3 3* covers
PROFIT! And you don't need to pay anything at all! You even spend less time and nerves!

mags1587

I finished #11 in this tournament easily using no shields at all. I didn't start playing until last night and I think that got me into a less competitive bracket. There was competition for the top five, no doubt, but it tapered off pretty quickly after that. Last night I got up to 500 with almost no one attacking me, woke up this morning with about 300 points, played a few matches to keep in the 6-15 range, and just waited.

Unknown

klingsor wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Breaking shields when you've above 600 is always risky. There's no predictable way to do it. You can go check the Avenger Elite thread for some guidelines on how to best break shields, but it bascially boils down to that when you shield you should have a team that is hard to attack, because no matter how fast you think you are, there's always someone (usually more than one guy) who sees you the moment you break your shield. You get one chance to switch teams safely (start with defensive team, break shield with high offense team and opponent still sees your defense team until you're done with your match), but that's it, which is why the Avenger Elite tournment was won by someone running a very defensive team (Hulk/IM40/Punisher?). At high rating, the most important part is that you have to slow your opponents down, because there's no way you can outrace 5 guys who see you pop up on their screen for 40 points.

I did read that Avengers Elite post, which is what prompted to me copy his strategy. Deshield, fight once, and shield worked fine except the last 30 minutes of the tourney. It was the only time I lost, but it was when it counted the most. If I am understand Phantron correctly, you finish the match say with IM40, Hulk and Spidey or Patch, whoever is your deterrant, then you switch to your offensive team, fight once then shield? if that happens your offensive team is left up no? So do you have to fight twice? One with offensive team, then again with defensive team to assure that the defensive team is left up? I Tried doing the first strategy, but the problem is I had to break shields more than once, because TOSL would also deshield, gain 18 points on me, and shield. If I had a level 140 Patch maybe that would have been a deterrent, but lvl 89 Patch wasn't...

A couple of points to be made here, as I don't want what I said in the Avengers Elite thread and my AE tourney run-down thread to lead people astray. You don't need to burn HP on shields all the way through the tourney like many of us did for Avenger Elite, where we were earning way more HP than we were spending. I doubt anyone of us that placed highly in that tourney would be so cavalier about dropping multiple shields in another tourney like this one.

One-attack-and-done shielding in a regular bracketed tourney like this one is really only for the final stretch (last 3-5 hours or so). The key to pulling this off is having a good cushion going into the last 2 critical benchmarks (~8 hours and ~3 hours), when many people begin shielding heavily. If you don't, the field will make up the gap, because they're getting more points per unshield than you will, since you can't stay unshielded for long periods (especially if you're in first). Think of it like PvE strategy where the person who has the lead going into the last 2 sub-events has the best chance to win at the end.

So, at those 8 hour and 3 hours markers, there will always be people scrambling to get a high score and shield the rest of the tourney out (3hr mark moreso than 8hr mark). As such, if I'm going for first I avoid unshielding at those times. If I'm trying to have a good shot at taking first in a non-bracketed tourney I want to make sure I have a good 50-100 pt. lead going into the last 9 hours of the event. So my shielding and attack strategy often look like this for regular tourneys when I really want to win 1st place:

12 hours to finish through 8 3/4 hours to finish: secure a sizable lead, then throw up a 3 hour shield.

8 3/4 hours through 5 3/4 hours to finish: Stay shielded, lots of people will be looking to move up and then throw up an 8 hr. shield, so this is a dangerous time to be active. Look for high point value targets, and queue them up in your 3 nodes, but don't attack.

5 3/4 hours to finish: The people who shielded at 8 hours aren't a threat any more, but the rest of the field will still be creeping on you. Depending on the size of your lead, and the speed/strength of your team, you can unshield and take out 1-2 opponents (3 if your team is a beast and you REALLY need the points) and then reshield.

5 1/2 hours through 2 1/2 hours to finish: Stay shielded, there will be another flurry of activity around the 3 hours left mark, as many players will look to push and throw up a final 3 hour shield (that's what I do when I'm only gunning for Top 15 or Top 5). Continue to queue up high point value matches.

2 1/2 hours to finish: Evaluate your current lead. If 2nd-5th is breathing down your neck, you may have to poke your head out for 1-2 more matches then throw down a final shield to ride out the rest of the event. If I've done the right work leading into the last 9 hours, I can often ride that final shield out through the end of the event. People often won't break shields in the 2nd-5th spots if you have a 50-100 point lead, because it would cost them too much in shields or expose them to too many attacks.

If someone is pushing hard down the stretch, and shows that they're willing to burn a lot of one-and-done shields to start closing the gap safely, then I have to decide if I want to risk opening up (and spending more than the 300HP I usually budget for shields for a run at 1st place) to stay ahead. In the last 2 1/2 hours, if I have to open up and attack, it is for one match only, and I will save my good boosts to ensure that I end those matches as quickly as possible.

I also make sure that no matter how many matches I play while unshielded, that I win my last match with my defensive team. To be honest, I usually play all my unshielded matches down the stretch with my defensive team these days. This means that if someone is queing me up and attacking while I'm unshielded, it will take them more time to beat my team, and increase the chances that I get some bonus points from a successful defense. When people are pushing, they don't always heal up before every match, making a defensive win (and the points that go with it) more and more likely.

This is my strategy, and it has worked out nicely for me, in that I usually spend around 300 HP in shields to land 1 4* and 3 3* covers. Given that I earn back 150 from prog rewards and placement, it's a steal. If you don't have the HP to spend, go for a tourney or two unshielded and sacrifice optimal placement to save up and have the HP on hand when you really want to go for it because there's a cover you really want.

It's not foolproof, and it takes a strong roster and a semi-reasonable MMR to pull off. And I have ended up 2nd due to a late push or a lucky quick win someone got on me while I was unshielded a decent portion of the time as well, but it's the strategy that has provided the best overall results for me since the changes went in for shielding and matchmaking. In your situation, it sounds like you didn't have a large enough lead before shielding down the stretch, which is why you had to unshield during the last 30 minutes. I avoid unshielding in the last hour unless I know for certain I'm about to get passed, and if I am, all I can do is match like the wind and hope the RNG gods are on my side.

Unknown

From my general experience if you're shielded 1 tier above you'll almost always get the tier below. E.g. shielded at #1, you'll always get top 5, and so on. There are obviously exceptions and this also assumes your bracket has some time to settle (don't win your first game to 1st and shield, that won't work), and obviously if you're shielded at the very low end of your bracket (e.g. #5) it is possible to fall out of top 15.

For #1, walkyourpath has a pretty good explanation. The key is that the guy holding #1 has a huge advantage assuming your score is actually a decent one. What you do is try to get as high score as possible and then shield and see how others react. If you started out with your defensive team then that also lets you get a last ditch attack relatively safely (your new team isn't seen by anybody until you win, so your opponents will see your defense team while you presumably use a much more potent offense team that might be quite vulnerable to be attacked) as an option. I haven't bothered going for #1 since the covers are the ones I have recently (IW yellow) not to mention I've nowhere the iso 8 needed, but the last time I went for it I basically did the same strategy as walkyourpath did. Shield about 8 hours to go with tournament (was too tired to play more) at around 600, and someone finally passed me up at less than 30 minutes to go and when that happens all you can do is match like crazy and pray for something good to happen. Since I needed the 3* covers I just held on to my #2 instead of breaking shield to fight, but if I didn't need them I'd go for it. There's no way to be certain to be #1, but the more homework you done on building your lead as #1 before your shield, the harder it is for anyone to make that lead up.

This is also why I don't get why people keep on say 'join at the end'. You absolutely need a day or more to steadily build your score so that you can make that crucial stretch where you're far enough ahead to shield. If you're only looking for a top 45 finish, by all means join late. But if you ever contemplated going for #1, you need a lot of time. This is even true even if you're going for top 5. A competitive bracket isn't going to just let you shield at #1 to virtually guaranteed the #5 spot, so you've to hope you can shield at say #3 and hope that lead holds.

Unknown

I messed this one up. Was not paying close enough attention. Thought it ended midnight ESt tonight. Wanted those hood covers and they did not repeat it. Sigh...

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

I shielded at 510 with about 7 hours left. I was in 9th at the time, I'm kind of curious where I will end up. Won't find out until tonight.

Well, I still ended in the top 45 and got the Yellow Hood cover I needed. Good result.

Eddiemon

locked wrote:

.
What was it like before shields? Does anyone even remember? I say, screw the shields. They do naught for players who don't have thousands at their disposal (like me; never sailed coattails of c. Storm, Loki, Rags and GSBW, Thorverine, max blue Spidey, etc.) I'm content with getting what I can at my speed anyway; it's not like you get enough iso to level all the covers.

Everyone waited till the last 2 hours and piled on. The rest of the event was basically meaningless. If you couldn't play in the last 2 hours you were out of luck. It was a terrible system for most people with jobs.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

locked wrote:

.
What was it like before shields? Does anyone even remember? I say, screw the shields. They do naught for players who don't have thousands at their disposal (like me; never sailed coattails of c. Storm, Loki, Rags and GSBW, Thorverine, max blue Spidey, etc.) I'm content with getting what I can at my speed anyway; it's not like you get enough iso to level all the covers.

Everyone waited till the last 2 hours and piled on. The rest of the event was basically meaningless. If you couldn't play in the last 2 hours you were out of luck. It was a terrible system for most people with jobs.

Under the old system, roll a random number between 1 and 200 and that's your final placement. I have went from 1 to 200 in the last 5 minutes of a tournament.

I don't get why people always complain about 'rich'. You get HP for playing the game, and if you don't use them to earn toward covers, what do you use them for? Let's imagine there's this special token you can buy for 100 HP that has the following odds:

90% chance of being a predetermined 3* cover
3% chance of being 2 predetermined 3* covers
7% chance of being 3 predetermined 2* covers

Would you buy this item? I'd take 10 of them assuming the 3* is what I need. That's roughly the payoff for shielding at around 20th place with 3 hours left to go in a PvP tournament. If this deal popped up every one should jump all over it, but you don't do it in a PvP tournament because a shield is P2W?

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

locked wrote:

.
What was it like before shields? Does anyone even remember? I say, screw the shields. They do naught for players who don't have thousands at their disposal (like me; never sailed coattails of c. Storm, Loki, Rags and GSBW, Thorverine, max blue Spidey, etc.) I'm content with getting what I can at my speed anyway; it's not like you get enough iso to level all the covers.

Everyone waited till the last 2 hours and piled on. The rest of the event was basically meaningless. If you couldn't play in the last 2 hours you were out of luck. It was a terrible system for most people with jobs.

yea, I played last night until I went to bed and was #6 with like 400 points. Ended up top 45, but still got at least 1 Hood Cover. Don't know what actual place I ended up, but thought there would be a slight chance I would still end up top 15.