Am I missing something you know and I don't?

Zirtak

What I tend to do is wait till the last 24 hours, play up to 700 and shield up for the rest of the day. Costs 150HP or 250HP (depending on the cost of shields, I believe they are cheaper now in the DD Tourney) and gets you a certain top 10 finish, or a top 5 finish. I like the 5am finishes better (I'm in Europe), because at the time I am playing, most US players are asleep. Not a lot of retaliations.

My MMR raises pretty quickly during the run to 700 though. I start out against teams a bit weaker than or as though as mine. Once I reach 300-400, I have to skip through a lot of 141s to find a team that I can beat without spending too much time on board control. Still, it´s easy enough to get to 700.

BUT THEN, upon reaching those 700 points, I get gang ****, as if a big red X was painted on my backside. Not shielding up right after reaching the 700+ mark would mean an instant drop of 100+ points, all done by losses of 30+ each.

So before 700: walk in the park. After 700: horrible slaughter.

Unknown

For regular tournaments, I think you and I are in the same boat: good team of high level 3* characters, very high MMR, we get almost entirely similar teams for matchups. This pool of players can all beat each other, so there's really no defense or having a team good enough to be skipped. I don't care if you have 3 141's, if you're worth 25+ points I'll attack. I hit you, you hit me back. We get up around, say 600, and there's no matchups worth more than about 15 points, which are a net loss.

I'm guessing you have no trouble getting, say top 45. However, to get in the top few spots, it's just a matter of winning the bracket lottery. I've had decent luck joining, say 36-12 hrs before the end but it's a total **** shoot.

I've seen you hovering around the top of the elite tournament, which I think might be what you're talking about. My guess is those players staying at the very top are using boosts to complete their matches as quickly as possible, getting only 1 or a couple matches and then reshielding. They probably also skip a ton while shielded to setup good matchups. I couldn't really say, though. Haven't made the plunge myself.

I want to join an elite tournament, but I find it completely crazy that I have to spend a ton of HP on shields for the privilege of NOT PLAYING to have any chance to compete. And then if I can stay near the top at the end, ultimately, whether I get 3rd or 10th or 50th is more or less down to random chance of who gets put in everyone's queue the most in the last hour. Just too expensive and randomly decided IMO. (Also a bit busy this weekend).

Unknown

John Courage wrote:

I want to join an elite tournament, but I find it completely crazy that I have to spend a ton of HP on shields for the privilege of NOT PLAYING to have any chance to compete. And then if I can stay near the top at the end, ultimately, whether I get 3rd or 10th or 50th is more or less down to random chance of who gets put in everyone's queue the most in the last hour. Just too expensive and randomly decided IMO. (Also a bit busy this weekend).

I don't spectate it particularly avidly, but it's less random than regular tournaments where a lot of people try to play unshielded. All anyone at the top wants to or really can do is turtle and poke their way up, for obvious reasons, and the stakes are high enough if you think you have a shot at the very top to warrant the expense.

I do agree that keying success more generally to paying Demiurge for the privilege of getting off their servers is either utter genius or pretty odd, depending whether you view it from their perspective or ours. I don't have an obviously better idea, though. It's a Bejeweled competition. The actual competing necessarily takes place almost entirely outside the game itself.

Unknown

I find that joining the tournament right away (when seed teams are up) is pretty much a guaranteed way to get a tough bracket. You're likely to get the guys who have nearly completed rosters that are just doing iso 8 farming on seed teams, while they're not necessarily hyper competitive, a guy with a loaded roster is still a difficult opponent in your bracket even if he's not trying super hard.

But after about 2 hours after tournament started, I've seen no reliable way to predict how competitive a bracket would be. You might want to avoid joining a bracket near 3am if you don't plan to be playing at 3am though, because that way it rules out someone in your bracket playing a lot during that time and have an insurmountable lead, so always join a bracket in the morning if you don't plan on playing late because by the time you join, you'd not be in the same bracket of someone who just hit 800+ for playing continously at 3am.

I haven't tried joining extremely late (less than 12 hours), but from what I can tell the problem there is that since you've no idea what kind of score your bracket will settle at, you either have to stay exposed or just hope your shield is enough. That is, in an established bracket, by the time you hit the 8 hour mark you can see that 550 will probably get top 15 and 650 will probably get top 5, and there's no reason to believe top 15 suddenly is going to get bump to 700 on average, so if you're shielded at 600 it's probably pretty safe for a top 15 finish. In a late bracket you might be looking at 350/450 for those threshold and you know it is quite possible that gets bumped up by 100, but it's also possible it does not, so you pretty much just have to guess how your bracket will end up.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

That is, in an established bracket, by the time you hit the 8 hour mark you can see that 550 will probably get top 15 and 650 will probably get top 5, and there's no reason to believe top 15 suddenly is going to get bump to 700 on average, so if you're shielded at 600 it's probably pretty safe for a top 15 finish. In a late bracket you might be looking at 350/450 for those threshold and you know it is quite possible that gets bumped up by 100, but it's also possible it does not, so you pretty much just have to guess how your bracket will end up.

I'm hoping that's the case I might get my first top five!

I got a bonus - a retaliation while I was shielded lost, so I got an additional 10 points bump. I fought 12-13 wins before throwing my shield up, so I'm hoping I might get another sneaky defence bump or two!

Twysta

Actually since I think they've bumped up the safety value where you lose less points, peoples point totals are a touch higher than previous tournaments.
I'd say add 100 to Phantron's estimates and you might be in business.

Zirtak

I joined rather early, first hours or so. My bracket is easy as ****. Number 2 guy has shielded at 713 points with a roster of a 61 Cap, 61 OBW and some maxed one star tiny kitties. Number 1 guy has shielded at 717 and he has a 79 OBW, a 90 Patchy and a 60 Spidey. Highest character after those three is lvl 30. Yep, **** you, MRR. We are in a system where you can take first place with a team of the cutest tiny kitties around.

I join early all the time by the way, and don´t find myself in too many tough brackets at all.

Twysta

Great! So it's just me who's consistently in a bracket of people who do better than average?

Zirtak

And to make my point even clearer: top 1 spot in my bracket has now been taken at 766 points with a team of 70 Thor and probably a 48 OBW, 53 C Storm or a 50 IM35. And of course a lvl 15 DD, which is granted by the game. The other characters in this guy's roster are not better than his lvl 40 Modern BW).

They must all have incredible MMR.