Is this what they call "MMR Hell"?

kensterr

Opponents around my level range have dropped to below 20 points for me, while those higher or harder are around 25... that's why I'm unsure if I should use boosts or not.

over_clocked

Boosts in PvP, expensive! Unless you have 30 of every boost dropped, better just find a more suitable match. ISO lost from skipping is much less than ISO lost from using boosts in vain.
I do sometimes pick battles and retaliations that are too hard, but I'm just curious and irrationally stubborn.

Polares

locked wrote:

Boosts in PvP, expensive! Unless you have 30 of every boost dropped, better just find a more suitable match. ISO lost from skipping is much less than ISO lost from using boosts in vain.
I do sometimes pick battles and retaliations that are too hard, but I'm just curious and irrationally stubborn.

As a general rule I would say, If it is the first or second day skip never use boosts, you will find a better match. But if you are in the last 10 hours your possibilitties of finding better matchs go down a lot, so maybe then you could think of using boosts, but only in the last matches before you shield. You have to make this boosts count so just use them before you shield, don't let other users attack you and loose your points and boosts for nothing.

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

Polares wrote:

With the system we have now, I don't play as much as I would want. I play until I get to 600 or 700 depending on the rewards (I don't care for thr 4*, they are not good enough, at least for now) and then I shield and I stop playing. I don't see any incentive to keep playing. To get to 700+ points you have to play A LOT and be very lucky with retaliations, so it is not worth the effort.

Just out of curiousity do you use boosts or do people in the top 30 usually use boosts? I'm contemplating on this cos I really want the IM covers.

I always forget about boosts I have stocked. I'd say save them for PvE fights and just try to move up in PvP without them.

Eddiemon

kensterr wrote:

Opponents around my level range have dropped to below 20 points for me, while those higher or harder are around 25... that's why I'm unsure if I should use boosts or not.

Boosts are a last hurdle or a last minute solution. If you need 25 more points before you hit the point you want to shield then sure. Or if you want need that last kill before the event expires, or a couple of quick kills between shields then sure. If you're looking at spending up on boosts to keep progressing then you should tank and tank hard. Because not only are you burning ISO here, but you are also upping your MMR so that next time you will be facing those who are hard to kill even with boosts.

kensterr

Yup, I'm thinking more about getting some quick points before reshielding or that last minute push up the ranks in case i dropped due to a competitive last day

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

Just out of curiousity do you use boosts or do people in the top 30 usually use boosts? I'm contemplating on this cos I really want the IM covers.

Currently at 904 in the BP PvP and I think I used +3/+3 blue/purple 3 times to retal against people which would be a nightmare if they got a 3-4 cascade and I wasn't able to steal those AP with OBW. In general though I don't think you get all that much from using boosts. The best thing you can do to gain points is to win fights as quickly as possible (which boosts don't help all that much with unless you're using a +3 to all and to 2 key colours which costs HP) and to have a decent roster for your MMR (so you are at least awkward to retal against). In my experience, if you want to place really high you either need to get high early and use shields or take your chances in the massive rush in the last hour or so.

If I was taking place in the end of event rush I might throw out a few boosts to win high point fights that would be risky but, often anyone with enough points to be worth boosting to hit will be shielded, so unless you have saved up retals vs ppl with a lot of points I don't see it coming up much.

EDIT: the only reason I boosted to retal those ppl was because I get a bit vindictive about being hit... not because it was a good idea

Unknown

I'll occasionally use a boost I have a lot of to give me a slight edge in a game against a tougher opponent or during a particularly important time, but I don't use them for routine fights. I'll also sometimes use them at the end, when I'm about to shield, to speed up the matches. But I doubt I boost in more than 5-10% of PVP matches, if that; I try to hoard boosts for PVE.

Unknown

Impulse wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

Pretty sure retreating to tank PvP was removed from the game

The team you retreat with is no longer the one you defend with, but retreating counts as a loss and slightly lowers your MMR. Repeatedly retreating will do the trick eventually.

Yep. If you retreat a bunch of guys to death at the end of every play session (or every other play session), you'll always see 1* teams and never get retaliated or even hit in the first place (only 1* teams will see you). One tourney (I think it was Daredevil) I got up to 900 points by smashing in 1* teams and left unshielded for 8 hours and still finished in first without losing a single point. (I left 85 Wolvie, 85 oBW, and 77 Ares up).

Unknown

How is that not exploiting the game though? And then turning around and complaining about shields, which is provided from the game company to the convenience of the player...? I'm not understanding this tanking thing at all except to do an end run around the procedures. Which, yay you. But you guys act like it's a feature of the game and it's not, and I'm pretty sure it has just as much an effect on the tourney as shields do. But, maybe I'm misunderstanding...someone break it down for me please.

Unknown

Oh, of course it's exploiting the game. I'm not even going to take some supposed moral high ground about it being necessary or somehow teaching the developers some grand lesson. It is, plain and simple, taking advantage of something that isn't supposed to exist. But it's in game, it's highly advantageous, and it's not my job as a player to decipher what is and isn't part of the programmer's intention. My job as a player is to use all the tools in front of me to compete as well as I can.

I mean, you could make the exact same "exploiting the game" argument about healing runs with oBW or Spidey when he was freely available in Venom proglogue. You could say the same things about Ares' bug where the Sunder countdown remains after he's dead. You could say the same thing about Patch Wolverine back when he got the enemy's strike tiles. You could say the same thing about overpowered characters like old Thorverine or CMags or new Panther's black. Or entering a tournament at the right time. Or only playing at the very end of a tournament. Or any number of things (in game - I am not endorsing out of game cheating) you can do to game the system.

If they don't want it in there, they should change it. Until then, it's not our job to figure out what is or isn't an "exploit." It's our job to use the tools laid out in front of us to get the best possible result. It's their job to figure out what tools to lay in front of us.

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

Oh, of course it's exploiting the game. I'm not even going to take some supposed moral high ground about it being necessary or somehow teaching the developers some grand lesson.

You won me over with this line.

But thinking about it, I think probably maybe somewhat that there aren't as many players tanking in tourneys as there are shields. I doubt there's that many tankers at all really, it sounds like it takes up some time. So with that you're probably not affecting the gameplay of the group as a whole. Which is what I was worried about. On an individual level, you might take a top spot in a tourney but you've put in time and effort to do it using the mechanics provided which is just like everyone else, so...to each their own.

Unknown

As IceIX himself said, if a person is determined enough to tank their MMRs (PvE or PvP), they will be unlikely to ever completely stop them from tanking.

However, what they **can** do, and have already implemented, is render the benefits of tanking increasingly marginal to players.

For PvP:

-- The extension of the tournament scores to require 800 or more to win a bracket requires more consecutive wins in a row, raising MMR.
-- The implementation of the victory bonus pushes players to accept lower point matches, which raises their MMR faster in tourneys.

For PvE:

-- Community scaling factors constantly work against the player attempting to tank by slowly inflating the levels of events of time. Outright of exemplary effort applied to tanking PvE, the best most players can expect is minimal to small gains as they are essentially "swimming against the tide".


I can tell you from personal experience that under the current PvP system, the benefits of tanking are completely exhausted by around 600 points. By 700, any tanking team is at least up to 85s as match opponents. By 750+, that team is going to be lunch for the 100+ teams looking for easy 15 point matches on their way up to 900. After a top 5 finish, my first matches are always 85s or higher, which require at least a full day of tanking to bring back down to manageable levels to start a push in the last 36 hours of a tourney, and the cycle repeats ad infitium.

My personal opinion here towards the PvP reward changes in this regard is that I believe that the devs have sufficient data to suggest that tankers can coast to an easy 15th place for 2 3*** covers. But under the new system, can they coast to a 10th place finish for the same 2** covers, often requiring 700+ points? My magic 8-ball says "Doubtful".

Unknown

That's good information to know, thanks.

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

If they don't want it in there, they should change it. Until then, it's not our job to figure out what is or isn't an "exploit." It's our job to use the tools laid out in front of us to get the best possible result. It's their job to figure out what tools to lay in front of us.

Yeah, though all those things quite kill the game^Wfun.

Before discovered tanking I suffered from insane pairings. With tanking I can play but keep thinking "what is the point". Just to weak to fix spell the answer: there is none.