Trouble with essentials and DPD

grunth13

When I had everyone soft capped at level 120, PVE essentials were just plain easy. Unless there was a crazy cascade, I was never losing that match...heck, I wasn't even losing a character. I have since upped most 3* to 135-140, with some to 150-152. The last 2-3 PVE I have noticed that it is harder. Not sure if its because of the characters I was using, but seriously...I am losing a toon or maybe even a match every 2-3 clears. As for DPD, I was using 120 blade, steve rodgers (ideally cover maxed), and level 94 hood (5/5/1) and it was a cake walk. I upped them to 140 blade/steve rodgers (still cover maxed) and 120 hood (5/5/2) and even more a cake walk. Since I have upped the other characters to 150-152, my level 140 blade/steve rodgers (still cover maxed) and level 120 hood (cover maxed) have had some trouble. Not horrible, but it seems every 4-5 days I will have to retreat because one character will be downed. After healing and trying again, it goes easily, but I am having to use health packs. I don't understand why my level 120's never had any trouble, but my level 140's are having a harder time. The ai's level didn't go up since their levels are static. Just wondering if anyone else has noticed this?

Malcrof

DDQ does not scale.. the enemies will always be the same levels, regardless of your roster. As for the Story Events.. i would not use the current Heroic as a template for anything.. this one is .. well.. harder than most..

Lemminkäinen

DDQ is probably harder for you because your higher-level characters kill the goon waves too fast so you don't get enough AP for the character nodes. Doom bot waves are especially bad since the bots have so little health.

You could try switching to a team that does less damage as silly as it sounds.

puppychow

The thing w/ pve events is that scaling is based on your character level FACTORING IN ALL BOOSTS. It may be that certain characters in your roster got boosted dramatically, and that's causing your scaling to increase significantly. Generally speaking increasing roster from 120 to 140 shouldn't significantly increase the difficulty level of your nodes too much.

Also, I hope you're not using Venom heroic as a baseline for any comparison, because the limited roster available is a factor into the difficulty of heroic events in general.

Punisher5784

Lemminkäinen wrote:

DDQ is probably harder for you because your higher-level characters kill the goon waves too fast so you don't get enough AP for the character nodes. Doom bot waves are especially bad since the bots have so little health.

You could try switching to a team that does less damage as silly as it sounds.

I've been using KK, Spiderman and Psylocke to avoid destroying the Goons too fast in DDQ. By the time I get to the forth wave, I have enough Green for KK to bash them to death plus with Pyslocke and Spidey's cheap abilities, I'm healing every turn. This team also works well against the Ninja ones.

grunth13

The essential nodes in of themselves haven't scaled much...maybe a few levels, but it seems my characters are losing more often then they ever did before. As for the DPD, I know that the levels are static...I said the same thing in my original post. I don't think the match damage has increase by much with my added 20 levels (every 2 levels adds 1 match damage to any certain color) so I don't think its that either. I have hood and blade mainly to gain ap quickly so that things can get going faster. I prioritize black so that Hood can steal red, blue, pink and then blade black can also start stealing ap once its out on the board. When I start losing characters, its not on wave 2, 3 or 4, its on wave 1. I will get to wave 2 with blade or hood with a couple of hundred hp left because they have been hit with so many ai powers. Its just weird.

JVReal

My DDQ Big Enchilada team is R&G (center), SW (left), IF (right).

match damage and build up enough purple for SW to have her move ready. End wave 1 with IF Green, when wave 2 shows up, I use SW Purple to stun someone, and beat on the rest. Usually have had R&G strike tiles out, so with his strike tiles on Blue, and IF strike tiles on Red, and his attack tile, wave 2 goes by quick. Wave 3, focus on purple AP gain, and usually don't have time to end wave 3 with a special, as a small cascade of 3 matches can end the turn just after it starts. Stun random person in wave 4, the rest drop like flies.

Ninja's are the only reason I take damage in Big Enchilada usually.

For me "Third Time's the Charm" has had a few challenging fights lately where I was uncomfortably low in health by the end... but I always use OBW, Thor, Hawkeye.

grunth13

Ok, I feel this conversation has gone off topic, and probably its because I wasn't clear. I am not looking for advice as to who to use for the DPD. I am wondering if you have a regular team that you use for the last node of DPD, have you noticed lately it is harder than say 1-2 months ago. That was the simple reason for the original post.

MojoWild

grunth13 wrote:

Ok, I feel this conversation has gone off topic, and probably its because I wasn't clear. I am not looking for advice as to who to use for the DPD. I am wondering if you have a regular team that you use for the last node of DPD, have you noticed lately it is harder than say 1-2 months ago. That was the simple reason for the original post.

I haven't noticed any change. I use a regular maxed 3* team, if by last node you mean the big enchilada.

Lee T

I go through the enchilada with 3* Storm, 3* Steve Rogers, and 2* OBW. I upped my 3 stars significantly those last few weks and I have see not much change. I'd say it's easier.

Unknown

The difficulty varies. Today's was super simple (didn't it start with robots?). While some of the days with the ninjas or mob guys with 4k+ health can be a real pain.

Buret0

Change your team for sure. There are a ton of posts on how to beat BE. At 2-3 * I suggest 2storm instead of cap because of the AoE stun. Hood is fine. 2Mag is how I rounded out my team... purple makes blue, red does excellent damage and is a big AP boost. Between Storm green, Hood's passive, and Mags' red, you will have a ton of AP to use on the active character fights. You should be able to down the second and forth round without taking any damage.

DFiPL

grunth13 wrote:

When I had everyone soft capped at level 120, PVE essentials were just plain easy. Unless there was a crazy cascade, I was never losing that match...heck, I wasn't even losing a character. I have since upped most 3* to 135-140, with some to 150-152. The last 2-3 PVE I have noticed that it is harder. Not sure if its because of the characters I was using, but seriously...I am losing a toon or maybe even a match every 2-3 clears. As for DPD, I was using 120 blade, steve rodgers (ideally cover maxed), and level 94 hood (5/5/1) and it was a cake walk. I upped them to 140 blade/steve rodgers (still cover maxed) and 120 hood (5/5/2) and even more a cake walk. Since I have upped the other characters to 150-152, my level 140 blade/steve rodgers (still cover maxed) and level 120 hood (cover maxed) have had some trouble. Not horrible, but it seems every 4-5 days I will have to retreat because one character will be downed. After healing and trying again, it goes easily, but I am having to use health packs. I don't understand why my level 120's never had any trouble, but my level 140's are having a harder time. The ai's level didn't go up since their levels are static. Just wondering if anyone else has noticed this?

I think someone else had the right of it - the stronger your characters, the more they go through the goons, which means they don't have AP built up for the boss waves.

Right now I'm running Magneto (2), Storm (2) and Cyclops, with Cyclops in the center. He's gained several levels in the last week or so as he's trained from 90'ish to 114, but having blue, green and purple carried by a couple of 2* helps me get the AP I need without finishing off goon waves before I'm ready.

Turbosmooth

My classic DPD Wave 4 team is Cyclops, Mystique, and Modern Magneto. Cast Mag's purple with a match-5 blue. Instantly gain blue and collect red. Cast Mystique's blue. Gather purple and black. Start the loop again. Cast Cyclops yellow when necessary. Use Cyclops for all damage output. Mystique can use her black for the last guy if Cyclops is stunned and will do enough damage to finish.

Unknown

My team is all 2*--OBW, Thor, and BE. And I could plug in virtually any character into that last spot. OBW keeps the countdowns high and steals AP. Thor does the damage. BE occasionally produces a critical tile.
The team works consistently and doesn't do too much match damage (which keeps my AP levels high enough to just nuke waves 2 and 4).

MojoWild

OJSP wrote:

grunth13 wrote:

Ok, I feel this conversation has gone off topic, and probably its because I wasn't clear. I am not looking for advice as to who to use for the DPD. I am wondering if you have a regular team that you use for the last node of DPD, have you noticed lately it is harder than say 1-2 months ago. That was the simple reason for the original post.

I don't really have a regular team, so far, I've used at least 5 teams.. recently I started using a different team and couldn't really appreciate any change in difficulty compared with the other teams i used.

I could think of a couple of reasons why you would think this way..

1. They have recently changed some of the line ups.
2. Perhaps you've been using the same team for too long, so any small observable deviation from your normal play, becomes more noticeable.
3. Hood is very board dependent.. It's possible that he's just not been draining enough AP
4. Blade is also very board dependent. Not to mention his might only drain the one colour that the heroes/villains don't use.
5. Apart from Steve, no one else could deal with the countdown tiles. If the board is lacking or .. it's difficult to control the tiles.. not to mention ninjas make more tiles than he could handle alone.
6. To get Steve's to work, collecting means Blade's is less likely to trigger

So, if you're saying it seems you need to retreat every 4-5 days.. i'd say it's because the boards have been unfavourable to start with. Perhaps changing your team to a line up that doesn't rely too much on the board might be an option..

Since I can't send OJSP a direct message, I'll reply to the comment on the uptick here. You commented: "of course he meant the big enchilada.. crash of the titans didn't even exist 1-2 months ago... "
I wasn't referring to Crash of the Titans. Some people do the essential and big e first and then the other three. Myself, I do the 2nd, the essential, the big E, the first and then the third.

Lemminkäinen

grunth13 wrote:

I don't think the match damage has increase by much with my added 20 levels (every 2 levels adds 1 match damage to any certain color) so I don't think its that either. I have hood and blade mainly to gain ap quickly so that things can get going faster. I prioritize black so that Hood can steal red, blue, pink and then blade black can also start stealing ap once its out on the board. When I start losing characters, its not on wave 2, 3 or 4, its on wave 1. I will get to wave 2 with blade or hood with a couple of hundred hp left because they have been hit with so many ai powers. Its just weird.

Blade makes Strike Tiles whose strength goes up when you level him. Going from 120 to 140 I'd guess the tile strength went from 40 to 50 or something like that (and he likely puts down two tiles). That adds up quickly when taking into account the increase in match damage as well. This is especially pronounced with doom bots and ninjas who have low health totals to begin with. Also, LCap's Red kills goons faster now when you use it to pop countdown nodes.

Unknown

I have noticed the Ai making smarter moves more often lately. They still make stupid moves but on the whole they have gotten much smarter in the moves they choose than in the past. That might account for the OP's recent troubles. Ai cascades are up for me since they seem to be able to plan their moves to get cascades. Generally small cascades so the frequency of insane, game ending cascades remains about the same.

Lemminkäinen

Cayasha wrote:

I have noticed the Ai making smarter moves more often lately. They still make stupid moves but on the whole they have gotten much smarter in the moves they choose than in the past. That might account for the OP's recent troubles. Ai cascades are up for me since they seem to be able to plan their moves to get cascades. Generally small cascades so the frequency of insane, game ending cascades remains about the same.

The AI doesn't take the five-match but rather always the four-match unless a four-match is impossible. I'm pretty sure it doesn't do some super clever cascade optimization.

grunth13

Lemminkäinen wrote:

Cayasha wrote:

I have noticed the Ai making smarter moves more often lately. They still make stupid moves but on the whole they have gotten much smarter in the moves they choose than in the past. That might account for the OP's recent troubles. Ai cascades are up for me since they seem to be able to plan their moves to get cascades. Generally small cascades so the frequency of insane, game ending cascades remains about the same.

The AI doesn't take the five-match but rather always the four-match unless a four-match is impossible. I'm pretty sure it doesn't do some super clever cascade optimization.

They don't do a match five unless its a straight line. I have noticed that its probably 50% if the AI has a choice between match 5 vs match 4 to take either. What I have noticed is them taking colors that are not useful for them to mini cascade into colors that are useful for them. Before, I used to notice the AI taking random matches leaving a double match 3 for myself...I don't see that as often as before. Skynet is in its infantile form.

Eddiemon

grunth13 wrote:

Ok, I feel this conversation has gone off topic, and probably its because I wasn't clear. I am not looking for advice as to who to use for the DPD. I am wondering if you have a regular team that you use for the last node of DPD, have you noticed lately it is harder than say 1-2 months ago. That was the simple reason for the original post.

My regular teams used to be Falcon/Punisher/Spiderman. Now I use Falcon/Punisher/Prof X.

Spiderman's protect tiles and Punisher's strike and attack tiles buffed by Falcon's yellow mean that by wave 4 the enemy just dies through match/attack tile damage. Spideys purple means annoying hand abilities aren't effective and redwing helps with the countdown tiles.

And no I haven't noticed a difficulty increase. Though the selection of goons and mobs will tend to vary the challenge level without having to change the game internals. My teams generally win with no discernible health loss unless the board is green starved.