Whats it like to play at higher tiers?

Hayek

I have a 420 OML and 8 or so championed 4*s. Since their buff, I have had at least one boosted+championed 4* every week. 5*s are so OP that I can typically just join 2h before an event ends and get to 1300 points without shielding or getting hit. I fight normally to about 700, then look for 3 queues of 70+ points. Then I wait 15-20 minutes to give them a chance to shield. Then i climb to 1300 by hitting each node and immediately replacing it with a 70+ queue so that that person will have time to shield (however long it takes me to clear the next two nodes). Since I'm not coordinating in any line chats, I'm sure I've "sniped" people, but I do what I can to avoid it.

I only really play at the highest tier because I have been extremely lucky in the sense that even though I'm still below average for 5* pulls, I have pulled more OMLs than all other 5*s combined.

babinro

http://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/babinro/
Surfer 5/3/5 (450), Phoenix 3/5/5 (450), and OML 4/5/2 (420) make up the most important part of my roster. I'm firmly established in the 5* metagame.

What's it like?

PvP:
Easy but boring. Matchmaking is an ongoing nightmare for anyone involved in truces as you'll match the same 6 or so people immediately after seed teams until around the 1300 point mark. Due to truces I would find myself in 'skip prison' being unable to hit anyone until someone shields. This happened so often that I finally gave up on my normal PvP shard and just decided to play another one where truce members don't play.

This decision to play pvp 'solo' has made the mode a whole lot more tolerable but it's still not actually fun. OML/Phoenix, OML/Surfer, OML/xDP, OML/Rulk. That's pvp in a nutshell and it's been that way for several seasons now. I've played the same exact match hundreds of times over and it's dull. PvP was my favorite mode of play by far up until 5*'s were introduced. Eventually 5* tier will diversify but it's an extremely slow process by design.

In terms of performance I'll often take about 5 hits climbing from 0-1000 depending on how early I choose to climb. I'll take another 2-4 hits getting to 1300 from there. Once I break 1300 the climb often becomes much easier and I just go until I run out of high point targets often shielding around 1700-2000 points depending on how active the shard is for the event. I only shield once per event because I'm not actually a competitive pvp player. If I choose to do the whole shield hop thing I'd be able to finish events closer to 2500-3000+

PvE:
Amazing. Reduced level scaling on non-goons combined with a gradually improving roster through championing and 5* progression has made PvE genuinely fun. There's a sense of genuine progression with time and the match variety amazing compared to anything I'll see in pvp. Even heroics are great despite being massive health pack sinks because it forces me to use non-5* teams. I know that clearing a sub 7 times to get the rewards is supposed to feel like a grind but I still enjoy the process. I just do clears at my leisure over the course of the day without caring about optimum times.

In terms of performance I settle for top 20 to top 50 finishes depending on how early I finish my sub clears and how close they were to being optimal. I'm not actually concerned with placement or rank so much anymore even for new character releases.

DDQ:
Decent. I love that D3 mixed things up here but it can still feels like a 20 minute chore that I need to complete daily because of the rewards. I'll admit that it's nice to mess about with 2* and 3* teams for kicks though.

Shield Sim:
Boring. Similar problems to PvP but with more in terms of players I can hit. I'd actually consider Sim worse because it boils down to Surfer/OML/Phoenix or OML/Rulk/Phoneix and that's pretty much it. Actual diversity feels even worse and the enemies you face means that you can't exactly mix up your team either.

Lightning Rounds:
Super competitive and kind of fun because of it. LR's are interesting because I genuinely struggle just to finish in the top 100 these days. Before I got into the 5* meta I could easily finish top 25 consistently. Now my MMR and those of other similar players means that there is a LOT of hits in LR. It's serious business if I want to even try to compete which is fun because of the 90 minute nature of the event. It's odd that having a great roster directly hurts your performance in a mode but I'm okay with that. LR's are all about ISO and killing see teams only gets easier with 5*'s so as far as I'm concerned it's a win regardless of whether I finish top 50 or my usual top 250+

Unknown

rkd80 wrote:

...just do us a favor and give it a few minutes before you hit That way we shield and you get your points and everyone wins.

I've often wondered about this very thing... Exactly how long is a good amount of time to wait?? I'm still pretty new to being able to hit 1000 in PVP (an impossible feat without the help of CC teams, so a big thank you to all those who bake).

I don't have any maxed 4*'s, so the 1k threshold in PVP is still quite a challenge for a 4* transistioner like myself. I don't have line, and because the ranking board doesn't scroll, I'm very limited in my ability to see who is shielded...

When I'm shielded around 900, I'll stay that way until I find 2 CC teams to take me to 1k. I always give at least 7-8 minutes before I unshield and attack one of them. I figure that's a decent grace period (?). I'll win one match, and instantly shield again. Wait 30-60 minutes and attack the 2nd one. At my level, any unshielded exposure over 800 is asking for pain; like 4-5 attacks minutes after my shield goes up, pain.

So I figured this was a good place to ask, for the last thing I want to do is snipe someone who's CC crumbs give me the ability to hit the elusive 1k.

morph3us

7-8 minutes should be fine. If you want to be generous, give them 10 minutes. The bakers have to be quick about shielding up after serving up a cupcake, or they'll get hammered.

tanis3303

7-8 minutes??? If you're out that long after your CC team has won a match, you just lost several hundred points. The way it works (usually) is you have 3 Qs. You attack the first one with your A Team so thats what people see while you're baking. Then you attack the 2nd team with your cake team. For me its lvl 15 Bagman, Loaner featured character and lvl 50 1* Storm (i bring a strong team up to make this work) Once that match is over, you take on team 3 with your A Team again, and you do it is fast as humanly possible while your allies Q your cake team. Depending on your A team, this should only take ~2 minutes, tops. 1 minute or less is preferred. 7-8 minutes is incredibly generous. I'd say 5 minutes would be more than enough wait time, or you could just Q the cake team, go do another fight vs a regular 4* team and when you finish that one, go ahead and eat your dessert, they really should be shielded by then.

PeterGibbons316

tanis3303 wrote:

7-8 minutes??? If you're out that long after your CC team has won a match, you just lost several hundred points. The way it works (usually) is you have 3 Qs. You attack the first one with your A Team so thats what people see while you're baking. Then you attack the 2nd team with your cake team. For me its lvl 15 Bagman, Loaner featured character and lvl 50 1* Storm (i bring a strong team up to make this work) Once that match is over, you take on team 3 with your A Team again, and you do it is fast as humanly possible while your allies Q your cake team. Depending on your A team, this should only take ~2 minutes, tops. 1 minute or less is preferred. 7-8 minutes is incredibly generous. I'd say 5 minutes would be more than enough wait time, or you could just Q the cake team, go do another fight vs a regular 4* team and when you finish that one, go ahead and eat your dessert, they really should be shielded by then.

Agree. I think 7-8 minutes is a good rule of thumb for total hop time - usually a match with A-team, bake, A-team again takes less than 7-8 minutes. 7-8 minutes post-bake is an eternity.

rkd80

to Moose, I shall echo what Aes has said - what you are describing happens. It even happens in the LINE chat rooms themselves, if the queue is old enough there is a good chance that you hop at the same time as the person you have Queued.

Sniping is different, that is deliberately and purposely cycling through at critical times to pick up Qs and hit targets. You are doing something materially different. I imagine if you were to hop in a truce chat you may reduce those instances, but my experience suggests that once you get on Line chat - MPQ turns into an even bigger time suck than before.

Like I said, I am amazed/astonished that you were able to pull this off without it. You obviously have great intuition, bravo!

MarvelMan

tanis3303 wrote:

you could just Q the cake team, go do another fight vs a regular 4* team and when you finish that one, go ahead and eat your dessert, they really should be shielded by then.

Just to put it out there....this is what I tend to do. It has resulted in me "sniping" a CC on one (maybe 2?) occasions so try to be generous in case the baker had a rough time for some reason. =(

madok

I'm in the same boat as Moose on all this. I was lucky enough to have the spare cash to cover out Jeanbuster before they took away HP cover purchases. Once you play in a slice long enough you tend to pick up on the people in that slice and when they tend to bake. I've never used LINE but I can always hit the 1K and even 1.3K when I want thanks to those wonderful baked goods.

Since I know how the process works, I always try to give the bakers time to shield up because I tend to run my shields at different intervals. I'm not the most efficient with shield spending but I grind top 50s in every PVE sub so I have a little extra HP to play with.

zeeke

babinro wrote:

http://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/babinro/
Surfer 5/3/5 (450), Phoenix 3/5/5 (450), and OML 4/5/2 (420) make up the most important part of my roster. I'm firmly established in the 5* metagame.

What's it like?

PvP:
Easy but boring. Matchmaking is an ongoing nightmare for anyone involved in truces as you'll match the same 6 or so people immediately after seed teams until around the 1300 point mark. Due to truces I would find myself in 'skip prison' being unable to hit anyone until someone shields. This happened so often that I finally gave up on my normal PvP shard and just decided to play another one where truce members don't play.
<snip>

Everything Babs is saying and I only have an 11 cover level 420 OML. I've actually stopped pre-joining events and to a 1-2 hour rush at the end instead. This means I can hit 1300 and shield out for 75 HP and be net positive.

What I really killing the fun is the power level of 5s. Even with championing we earn 4* covers at a far too low rate to make a difference, and once you have a leveled 5, you HAVE to play that character. I start seeing 5 star teams right after seeds, thankfully most are sub 400 but still.

Something has to change though in end game play. The sense of progression is nowhere to be seen when you have to spend 3-4 weeks to level a 4 to 270. And to be honest, once I get enough covers for that second 5 Im not sure I can do the grind anymore. At least not in PVP.

mpqr7

That's the biggest problem. Lack of an endgame. Everyone wants those hot 5*s, but then once you get them, it becomes extremely boring to keep using them and waste the rest of your roster.

Even for users who don't have 5*s, all you mostly use in PVP are your two strongest characters. I guess with boosts that changes every week, although it seems most people just settle on jeanbuster and use that forever, even if they have other more powerful characters.