Is every PvP battle supposed to be an uphill climb?

elusive

Let me start by noting that I've had a solid 3 star team for as long as I can remember, with no well-covered (or even leveled) 4 stars. Ever since they changed matchmaking, I'm always pitted against teams that are at my level or above, e.g. fully leveled and often championed 3 star teams with the occasional 4 or even 5 star sprinkled in. While this seems mostly fair, almost every battle drags on for 5-10 minutes and usually ends with my team being beat up enough to where I need to heal them up if I want to keep playing another round (this is assuming I actually win every time), and when this is happening at the very beginning of my climb, I feel as if I'm never going to get far and lose any motivation to keep going. When I browse these forums, though, I see people say that it's actually better this way and that they can climb up the ranks and get 800+ points in less than an hour. I feel that I'm lucky if I can get 500 in that time without burning through all of my health kits and boosts. I'm not even going to touch the subject of shields and losing points.

What am I doing wrong here? I assume at least part of the problem is that I don't have a fully covered Iron Fist or Luke Cage, i.e. the characters I see most often when trying to play. They certainly seem to be the most annoying 3 stars, at least. I feel like I'm never going to get anything good outside of PvE ever again.

We_are_Venom

Use the provided character as a meat shield. Color coordinate to ensure they are out front most of the match. Avoid the other teams provided character as they are undercovered and not a huge threat. I can go from 0-650 with minimal health pack use just off this alone.

wirius

In PvP, if you have a good roster, its easy to score high. 3*'s don't cut it anymore. If you don't have a top tier or buffed 4*, you're going to have a hard time. The people at the top understand this, and really don't want those under them getting 4*'s. Its PvE until you get some covered 4*'s for you now, sorry.

Dragon_Nexus

wirius wrote:

In PvP, if you have a good roster, its easy to score high. 3*'s don't cut it anymore.

Which is nonsense.
Not saying you're wrong, I'm saying the situation is completely in D3's hands. They nerfed the entire 3* roster making them utterly useless in PvP. I'm still building up a 4* roster and if I don't happen to have one of this week's 4*s buffed to a reasonable level, then I might as well forget going for 1000. Hell, some rounds I've had a hard time hitting 800.

Linkster79

elusive wrote:

What am I doing wrong here? I assume at least part of the problem is that I don't have a fully covered Iron Fist or Luke Cage, i.e. the characters I see most often when trying to play. They certainly seem to be the most annoying 3 stars, at least. I feel like I'm never going to get anything good outside of PvE ever again.

If possible use 3* Daken and Patch, both are true healers and can save some early health pack usage. Sadly unless you have a 4* team or use Line to coordinate with others you will struggle to get high score in versus events.

halirin

Are you using the boosted 3*s? Most weeks using at least one, and paying attention to synergies should make 3* teams pretty viable for getting to 800-1000 without shielding (that does involve a steady climb from ~500). But that's for someone with all the 3*s covered, and about half championed. If your roster doesn't have that kind of 3* breadth, then yah, I would expect matches to be a struggle on the weeks where the boosts don't line up right for you. I don't think the game distinguishes between "good" 3*s and "bad" ones for matchmaking purposes.

Good luck!

Turbosmooth

For the first ~13 months, I grinded PvE for prizes. PvP seemed to be an impossible mode to me. I couldn't reach 800 and was slaughtered. I thought I was a PvE player for life. When my roster improved, I finally could reach 1000 with 3 hops. And when I joined a truce, I could finally hit 1300 with 3 hops. Now I do 1300 with 1 hop. I try to stay T25, so sometimes I have to climb to 1500.

These days I focus on PvP and skip as much PvE as I can for time. I'm on day 556; it takes a long time to build a good PvP roster.

At the 3* level, Luke Cage and Iron Fist is one of the best teams so I hope you get your covers. Patch and Daken was also great for saving health packs.

Pants1000

Using healers helps a lot with health pack usage. This week KK/Thor worked pretty well, if you have them championed. KK isn't a true healer, but since Thor feeds himself and Psylocke has cheap abilities, you'll out heal the damage from most matches.

I don't think PVP has gotten harder because of the 3* nerf, it's that more and more people have 4's and 5's, and more 4's are buffed.

wymtime

For this week it will be a lot tougher. The top tier 4* are not buffed so you will have 4* players seeing more buffed 3* and all the buffed 3* players alread beat each other up. It is also a new cover PVE with double ISO so people are playing around PVE instead of PVP.
I use a championed Rhulk to get over 1600 points my MPQ high. I was able to use my first shield over 1100 points because when you run a maxed buffed 4* a smaller population will hit you. This PVP I used my first shield at 950 because I kept getting hit under 1000 points. My highest leveled buffed 4* is antman and buffed hie is only 271, so he is not nearly as scary as a 350+ Rhulk.

Pylgrim

You need a good climbing team. This is made up of the featured character (whom you hopefully have maxed and championed so they'll be close to level 300) and either two highly synergistic characters or two other good characters that are also powered up. Iron Fist is the best 3* not only because he literally triples up your normal damage per turn but because his purple is one of the best batteries in the game. Black is one of the best colours in MPQ so any decently levelled character with a good black skill assisted by Iron Fist tears the opponent up and the quicker you finish a fight the less damage you take. So yeah not having IF is a big hit, but it's all not lost. Look for other synergistic combinations with characters that are objectively strong like Kamala, Cyclops or Thor... hopefully you do have some? If you are fielding a team of Psylocke, She-Hulk and Spider-Man, I may have bad news for you.

PuceMoose

Pylgrim wrote:

If you are fielding a team of Psylocke, She-Hulk and Spider-Man, I may have bad news for you.

That team actually sounds kind of fun - next season I might try it in the Sim and see how high I can climb!

ZootSax

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

wirius wrote:

In PvP, if you have a good roster, its easy to score high. 3*'s don't cut it anymore.

Which is nonsense.
Not saying you're wrong, I'm saying the situation is completely in D3's hands. They nerfed the entire 3* roster making them utterly useless in PvP. I'm still building up a 4* roster and if I don't happen to have one of this week's 4*s buffed to a reasonable level, then I might as well forget going for 1000. Hell, some rounds I've had a hard time hitting 800.

Serious question: right now I'm leveling my covered 3*'s to 166, but none are above my champed 2*'s at the moment. Am I better off soft-capping my 3*'s at 144 or trying to champ them for the champ rewards? I'm stuck in PVP limbo for the time being, but I'm not sure if basically invalidating all my 2*'s and kind-of-covered 4*'s (i have a 13 cover Dino, 8 cover fury & cap falcon and no one else above 4-5) will hurt my chances in PVE enough that I get fewer 3* awards and, thus, fewer champ levels. It seems like a vicious cycle for those of us who frankly aren't Top 200 players all the time...

Pylgrim

ZootSax wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

wirius wrote:

In PvP, if you have a good roster, its easy to score high. 3*'s don't cut it anymore.

Which is nonsense.
Not saying you're wrong, I'm saying the situation is completely in D3's hands. They nerfed the entire 3* roster making them utterly useless in PvP. I'm still building up a 4* roster and if I don't happen to have one of this week's 4*s buffed to a reasonable level, then I might as well forget going for 1000. Hell, some rounds I've had a hard time hitting 800.

Serious question: right now I'm leveling my covered 3*'s to 166, but none are above my champed 2*'s at the moment. Am I better off soft-capping my 3*'s at 144 or trying to champ them for the champ rewards? I'm stuck in PVP limbo for the time being, but I'm not sure if basically invalidating all my 2*'s and kind-of-covered 4*'s (i have a 13 cover Dino, 8 cover fury & cap falcon and no one else above 4-5) will hurt my chances in PVE enough that I get fewer 3* awards and, thus, fewer champ levels. It seems like a vicious cycle for those of us who frankly aren't Top 200 players all the time...

I don't see the point though. If you keep your 3*s at 144, your championed 2*s will be better when boosted (with a few exceptions), so that's what you'll use in events. So what's the point of having 3*s? 4*s? You'll never use them, you'll keep using the same characters you've been using so far for however long you'll keep playing before you die of tedium.

Also, I HAVE to wonder how in the world do you have 13 Dinos if your other 4*s are so uncovered!

ZootSax

Pylgrim wrote:

Also, I HAVE to wonder how in the world do you have 13 Dinos if your other 4*s are so uncovered!

The second anniversary was very random for me. Going into that week I had one purple Dino from a token in the first anniversary and got the three covers for the daily resupply on days 365-367. In the second anniversary, I pulled at least 11 Dinos from tokens/PVP season 10-pack (I know I sold at least two extra purples--I can't remember if I sold any surplus greens) to end up with a 5/3/5 Dino. Exactly zero of the covers came from either alliance or personal placement awards--it was 100% tokens & daily resupply. At the time, my next best 4* was only a 1/1/1. Kind of strange, but then again, so is Devil Dinosaur. ...and RNG, for that matter. I have zero 5*'s pulled, to date, so I guess RNG giveth and RNG taketh away, or something.

I figured that champing my 3*'s was probably the best course of action, but now that 166's won't really guarantee a much better shot at the 1000 4* cover in PVP like they used to, I wasn't sure if the optimal strategy to transition from 3*'s to 4*'s had changed again.

GrumpySmurf1002

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Which is nonsense.
Not saying you're wrong, I'm saying the situation is completely in D3's hands. They nerfed the entire 3* roster making them utterly useless in PvP. I'm still building up a 4* roster and if I don't happen to have one of this week's 4*s buffed to a reasonable level, then I might as well forget going for 1000. Hell, some rounds I've had a hard time hitting 800.

They're definitely getting less frequent, but I still see 3* teams worth a bunch of points after 1000. They're hitting the cupcake trains early and often to get there.

One guy in my alliance was averaging around 1600 with Fist-Cage before he finally finished his IMHB and Jean.

Pylgrim

ZootSax wrote:

I figured that champing my 3*'s was probably the best course of action, but now that 166's won't really guarantee a much better shot at the 1000 4* cover in PVP like they used to, I wasn't sure if the optimal strategy to transition from 3*'s to 4*'s had changed again.

Maxed 3*s may not guarantee reaching 1k these days, but at least you get a good shoot at it (depending on which characters you have). A roster capped at 144 will be laughed off the playfield by the 600 point mark.

amusingfoo1

wirius wrote:

In PvP, if you have a good roster, its easy to score high. 3*'s don't cut it anymore. If you don't have a top tier or buffed 4*, you're going to have a hard time.

This, sadly, is largely true. In fact, it gets worse. Without cupcakes, you'll hit a point where maxed 4*s don't even cut it (though at least that point is over 1300).

wirius wrote:

The people at the top understand this, and really don't want those under them getting 4*'s.

This, however, is largely not true. It is kind-of true of a couple of alliances at the top (though it would probably be more accurate to say that those alliances just don't pay any attention to those below), but most of them (yes, even at the top-10 level) try to help out those with less-developed rosters.

Partyof5

I have the same problem as the OP. I have a few champed 3*, but none over lvl 168. I can get to 500 before I need to regenerate health packs. I can get close to 800, without shielding, but then I get beat back to the 300s unless I shield for the remainder of the event. PvP has seemed more difficult for me lately. Without any stats, my gut feeling is that there are just more people with better (i.e. 4*) rosters than me in PvP than 6 months ago. I do get tired of seeing the same teams over and over in PvP.

Being in 3* land means my HP are still scarce and needed for roster spots, so I've stopped using them in PvP. My season goals lately have been to get to 4000 and the 10-packs.

elusive

I appreciate all of the replies, guys, and now I want to complain about the fact that I'm evidently getting hit by people with championed 4 stars. What the heck is with that? I literally never see anyone with a 2 star team in my PvP, so why do these people get to stomp me into the ground for easy points? I thought the devs said they got rid of this.

OneLastGambit

Start late.

Wait till 6hours remain before entering event. All those maxed 4s will have already done their climbing and you'll not be on their radar at all.

Climb to 650 and then wait until a hour is left and climb again.

You should be able to hit 800 or so pretty easily with few hits and the extra bonus is you'll only spend 75hp on one shield

Malcrof

i see 3* teams hitting 2k+ every event, normally with very little trouble. It isn't always about your team.. a lot of it is which slice you choose, if you are in an alliance that co-ordinates, if you have taken the time to learn your slice, who is in it, who and which alliances score high etc.. this way, when you hop, even if not on Line or whatnot, you can always make sure to get the highest points available to you, knowing who will be worth more when you hop from when you Q them etc.. It takes time to learn, make sure to check leaderboards, both in your bracket and alliances, so you can learn the players.

If you shield @ 650.. and can't find targets, try again in 20 minutes, different people will be out, and you can easily find high point targets in your MMR range. Slow and steady gets it done.