Is the game stuck in **** mode today?

Unknown

The last couple of days have been a bit depressing for me. I worked my butt off during the first few days of the ISO-8 event, and even with my...marginal...roster, managed to score *very* well. I've hit top 5 in subs 4 times, and top 10 once. I was briefly up to first place in my *main* bracket a couple days in. I can usually nail top 50 in a sub...but only when I can get INTO them. The past few days, the hard sub unlocks have been 170-200+ villain sets, and I can't beat them. Early on, I thought I could get a couple of T'Challa covers, but now I may or may not make the top 100, and the 2* Wolvie covers are not inspiring when he's the only 2* character that I have maxed on both covers and levels.

I'm in the 1*->2* transition, mostly handicapped by the fact that my OBW only recently got up to 2/3/0. My best characters are a maxed 5/5/3 2* Wolvie and a 3/4/4 Thor. I can handle minion packs, even at 230, with Thor/1* Storm/1* Widow, but character groups above 150ish are simply impossible because I take too much damage from tile matching, much less gruesome abilities from, say, Ares, Doom, or (holy ****) a 200+ Juggernaut.

My Classic Spidey would like to say hi; he's got 2 very nice purple covers. He thinks that he likes the colors "blue" and "yellow," but he's never seen them before. Daken has been a beast lately, but he's stuck at 5/3, and cries every time I vendor another purple cover.

Yeah, I know, that's what I get for having a noob roster. But I was doing well early on by picking my battles and investing a lot of time, which should count for something. I have zero problem with nodes that I can't beat yet, but it SUCKS when those nodes are locking down entire subs that I've been able to push into a bit earlier in the event (hell, a couple of my top 5s were in hard subs).

Note to devs: please tone down the gatekeeping on the nodes that unlock entire subs, even the hard ones. I don't care if noob rosters can't do a lot *inside* those subs, but it's very frustrating not to even be able to join them.

NorthernPolarity

Vairelome wrote:

The last couple of days have been a bit depressing for me. I worked my butt off during the first few days of the ISO-8 event, and even with my...marginal...roster, managed to score *very* well. I've hit top 5 in subs 4 times, and top 10 once. I was briefly up to first place in my *main* bracket a couple days in. I can usually nail top 50 in a sub...but only when I can get INTO them. The past few days, the hard sub unlocks have been 170-200+ villain sets, and I can't beat them. Early on, I thought I could get a couple of T'Challa covers, but now I may or may not make the top 100, and the 2* Wolvie covers are not inspiring when he's the only 2* character that I have maxed on both covers and levels.

I'm in the 1*->2* transition, mostly handicapped by the fact that my OBW only recently got up to 2/3/0. My best characters are a maxed 5/5/3 2* Wolvie and a 3/4/4 Thor. I can handle minion packs, even at 230, with Thor/1* Storm/1* Widow, but character groups above 150ish are simply impossible because I take too much damage from tile matching, much less gruesome abilities from, say, Ares, Doom, or (holy ****) a 200+ Juggernaut.

My Classic Spidey would like to say hi; he's got 2 very nice purple covers. He thinks that he likes the colors "blue" and "yellow," but he's never seen them before. Daken has been a beast lately, but he's stuck at 5/3, and cries every time I vendor another purple cover.

Yeah, I know, that's what I get for having a noob roster. But I was doing well early on by picking my battles and investing a lot of time, which should count for something. I have zero problem with nodes that I can't beat yet, but it SUCKS when those nodes are locking down entire subs that I've been able to push into a bit earlier in the event (hell, a couple of my top 5s were in hard subs).

Note to devs: please tone down the gatekeeping on the nodes that unlock entire subs, even the hard ones. I don't care if noob rosters can't do a lot *inside* those subs, but it's very frustrating not to even be able to join them.

That sucks: I hope things work out for you so that you get at least 1 T'challa. Even with a noob roster, if you invested that much time into the event (grinding 230 mobs with thor/1*'s), you should be rewarded in some manner for doing so.

Dragon_Nexus

It's been the 5am event starts that have been screwing me.
When I was there at the start of an event, I could gather some nice point totals with relative ease and the enemies would get harder over time. Now I'm going to bed an hour before the new event starts, so when I get going with it tomorrow it'll already be really difficult.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

That sucks: I hope things work out for you so that you get at least 1 T'challa. Even with a noob roster, if you invested that much time into the event (grinding 230 mobs with thor/1*'s), you should be rewarded in some manner for doing so.

Thank you; it would be nice, but it's not going to happen. 1 day from the end of the event, and I'm at about 88-90 in my main leaderboard. Today, for example, I'm going to hit top 50 in the easy sub, and could not enter the hard sub. I'd love to jump the 15 or so places I need in the last set of subs, but I think it's unrealistic.

To be honest, it's not like the event has been useless. I now have a maxed cover Cap (who doesn't), and I'm only 1 blue cover from a 5/5/3 Classic Storm, thanks to pulling several sub tokens. (By the way, a few mins ago, I pulled a blue IW cover from a daily drop heroic token--my first. I know she's 4*, but...my feelings were mixed, since she's joining a single red cover of X-Force Wolvie in the "not really useful" section of my roster.)

My chances are maybe a bit better in the Psylocke PvP. With a fair bit of effort and some luck, I can sometimes hit top-45, and in the Psylocke event, I've actually found that 2* Wolvie and Daken work well, so long as you have a black cover for Psylocke (mine is 1/0/1). Use Daken to generate strike tiles, and buffed Psylocke for at least 1 attack tile, and you get a fair bit of bonus damage.

Edit: Well, good news and bad news. Top 50 in easy sub got me the last blue cover for cStorm, so she's now 5/5/3, 67/85. On the other hand, the final hard sub is locked by a group of Moonstone/Hood/Ares at 173. Hood feeding Ares = very very dead, very very fast. I'll probably try for another top 50 in the easy sub for the token, but otherwise, finishing 100+ is worth exactly 300 ISO more than finishing 250+ (50 base award differential, 250 Wolvie cover vendor price).

Unknown

Vairelome wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

That sucks: I hope things work out for you so that you get at least 1 T'challa. Even with a noob roster, if you invested that much time into the event (grinding 230 mobs with thor/1*'s), you should be rewarded in some manner for doing so.

Thank you; it would be nice, but it's not going to happen. 1 day from the end of the event, and I'm at about 88-90 in my main leaderboard. Today, for example, I'm going to hit top 50 in the easy sub, and could not enter the hard sub. I'd love to jump the 15 or so places I need in the last set of subs, but I think it's unrealistic.

To be honest, it's not like the event has been useless. I now have a maxed cover Cap (who doesn't), and I'm only 1 blue cover from a 5/5/3 Classic Storm, thanks to pulling several sub tokens. (By the way, a few mins ago, I pulled a blue IW cover from a daily drop heroic token--my first. I know she's 4*, but...my feelings were mixed, since she's joining a single red cover of X-Force Wolvie in the "not really useful" section of my roster.)

My chances are maybe a bit better in the Psylocke PvP. With a fair bit of effort and some luck, I can sometimes hit top-45, and in the Psylocke event, I've actually found that 2* Wolvie and Daken work well, so long as you have a black cover for Psylocke (mine is 1/0/1). Use Daken to generate strike tiles, and buffed Psylocke for at least 1 attack tile, and you get a fair bit of bonus damage.

Edit: Well, good news and bad news. Top 50 in easy sub got me the last blue cover for cStorm, so she's now 5/5/3, 67/85. On the other hand, the final hard sub is locked by a group of Moonstone/Hood/Ares at 173. Hood feeding Ares = very very dead, very very fast. I'll probably try for another top 50 in the easy sub for the token, but otherwise, finishing 100+ is worth exactly 300 ISO more than finishing 250+ (50 base award differential, 250 Wolvie cover vendor price).

That is a tough group of baddies to bust through but dont give up! You are so close! and your new C Storm cover is like a sign telling you that you can do it! She is buffed and that extra hp is all she needs to survive a Sunder or two while retaliating with her yellow passive. Boost like crazy and don't give the other team many turns to match - try stacking the new +20% all colors damage 5 times. And if you have any of the leftover retired boosts like +3 AP to All Colors or the +20% Damage vs. Dark Avenger Boosts? If you did +3 AP to all colors and +3 Blue/Purple AP, you would only need two blue matches to use Storms Blue Ability and give you a strong lead. . Boosts are expensive but if you have some prologue nodes that you can farm then it won't be so bad....

I am cheering for you! Good luck!!

kensterr

Yeah, Hood missions for me requires AP boosts. I'm thinking of spending on boosts just so I can get the 8K ISO-8 progression reward and maintain in Top 10 for the Black Panther covers. Other than that it's freaking hard for my roster to compete.

Unknown

On The Hood I just use match boosts and if you're running Psylocke, she goes through his HP pretty fast. It's also more reliable than hoping you'd have any AP to work with against The Hood. Unless you double boost to start with 6, starting with 3 AP is actually just asking for problems on The Hood because a that often just means he starts with more AP. Granted, I have classic Magneto, but there are times you can't even get 5 blues to get your combo going and have to rely on killing him the old fashion way.

I'll also do a Berserker Rage with no guaranteed on being able to deal with the strike tiles just to kill him faster. Against the 230X3s, you really have to think about it in a %. They do roughly double match damage and their special moves are usually instant kill. After Berserker Rage, you usually match them in match damage assuming you have any plan to wipe out some of the purple strike tiles, and their special moves are still instant kill, so you roughly cut their advantage in half. Yes, the total time you'll live is shorter now, but it's not really that much shorter especially when you're against The Hood who will easily collect enough AP to use any of the opposing team's instant kill moves.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

On The Hood I just use match boosts and if you're running Psylocke, she goes through his HP pretty fast. It's also more reliable than hoping you'd have any AP to work with against The Hood. Unless you double boost to start with 6, starting with 3 AP is actually just asking for problems on The Hood because a that often just means he starts with more AP. Granted, I have classic Magneto, but there are times you can't even get 5 blues to get your combo going and have to rely on killing him the old fashion way.

I'll also do a Berserker Rage with no guaranteed on being able to deal with the strike tiles just to kill him faster. Against the 230X3s, you really have to think about it in a %. They do roughly double match damage and their special moves are usually instant kill. After Berserker Rage, you usually match them in match damage assuming you have any plan to wipe out some of the purple strike tiles, and their special moves are still instant kill, so you roughly cut their advantage in half. Yes, the total time you'll live is shorter now, but it's not really that much shorter especially when you're against The Hood who will easily collect enough AP to use any of the opposing team's instant kill moves.

One of my biggest noob mistakes was fighting a group with a high-level Hood a couple of PvE events ago. I carefully prepped with a ton of +AP boosts, starting the match with 6 red and at least 3 all. I saw a board with a ton of environment tiles, thought "Cool!"...and hit Mistress of the Elements. Of course, since the board was now full of colored tiles, and I had 3-6 of *every* color, Dormammu's Aid just wrecked me. I use a different strategy against Hood now (damage boosts instead of AP, like you said).

kensterr

@phantron... Use which psylocke color?

Dragon_Nexus

kensterr wrote:

Yeah, Hood missions for me requires AP boosts. I'm thinking of spending on boosts just so I can get the 8K ISO-8 progression reward and maintain in Top 10 for the Black Panther covers. Other than that it's freaking hard for my roster to compete.

I find using boosts for Hood missions to be a little counter productive. He can end up sapping all the stuff you gained from the boost.

Unknown

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

kensterr wrote:

Yeah, Hood missions for me requires AP boosts. I'm thinking of spending on boosts just so I can get the 8K ISO-8 progression reward and maintain in Top 10 for the Black Panther covers. Other than that it's freaking hard for my roster to compete.

I find using boosts for Hood missions to be a little counter productive. He can end up sapping all the stuff you gained from the boost.

Yeah, if one of those boosts doesn't immediately lead to a stun on Hood there is a big potential for at least a little waste. The longer a match goes the more dangerous Hood's Blue becomes. Even if you just come in with 1 ap of two colors he has the potential to be a couple of moves up on you.

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

@phantron... Use which psylocke color?

When using match boosts you obviously just go by the strength of team. It's just that Psylocke is major boosted so her dominant colors are likely the best strength you have for match 3s, but since her colors covers exactly 1 of each of the 2 color boosts the match boost to use will be dependent on the rest of your team. Since I usually run Magneto + Spiderman blue/purple match damage makes the most sense. You still want to focus on your strongest colors. Match boost is just there to ensure you're still putting decent damage on The Hood if his AP steal is foiling your plans.

If you have say +100% match damage all (should've a lot of those stockpile sitting around), you'll average about 300 damage per round on just match 3s. The Hood has 6000 HP, so he'll go down in 20 turns. Yes, that's a pretty long time, but I've had plenty of games where I have absolutely nothing in the first 20 turns because The Hood is stealing every AP I have. Without the +100% damage, it'd take 20 more turns and you're not going to survive that long since to have nothing going for 20 turns (which is not at all rare) means he's getting a ton of AP and you're not going to sustain that for another 20 turns.