Chaos League alliance chat

Unknown

I have managed to keep my PVE scaling very low from event to event doing exactly what you outlined above. I tend to pair weak guys who cover other colors with one buffed character. I cycle through my roster, typically letting the weaker guys die after about 2 nodes. The trick is to build up AP for the buffed character and unload on the enemies at a point when your weaker chracters have been beat up pretty good. I also never grind for 1st in subs or overall. I always grind just enough to get some HP, ISO and the overall covers. That usually equates to a top 50 per sub and top 20 overall. My starting nodes tend to stick around 30-40 and never exceed 100-120. I know some people want more HP And ISO so i can understand grinding harder, I just like to keep the PVE easy.

Unknown

...and it goes without saying i owe a huge debt of gratitude to Lyrian and Mischief. My strategy hinges on those things i've learned from them.

farlus

I usually don't grind either, and I had a general idea about node stacks and refreshes in previous events but never really tried to time it. I'm not much of a grinder, I'm just seeing steady increases since I'm actively trying for the Daken progression award.

The tip to use lesser teams on easier nodes is a good one, and one I plan to use from here on out to see if I can keep the scaling from getting out of control.

mischiefmaker

Just overhauled the alliance strategy doc - updated several sections and added a new one.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ljA ... 6IzdmWRp4/

If you joined the alliance after season 1, you'll need to send me your email address so that I can add you to the doc.

Unknown

Great update again. Keep it up mischiefmaker!!!

mischiefmaker

As promised, I'm going to try and do a quick summary of what's new in the PvE event, relative to what's in the strategy doc.

- First sub is 26 hours long. Each time you play a node, the base value goes down 20%. Every 5 minutes, the base value goes up .66%.
- Therefore, optimal strategy is to play every mission once every 2 hours and 24 minutes.
- Playing optimally for 6 days straight will probably cause you to lose your job/girlfriend/mind. Therefore, what I would recommend is to play all the nodes once as soon as you start. Each refresh, play the high value nodes as many times as you expect to be away from the game (so, if you will play in 2.5 hours, play them once; if you're going to bed for 8 hours, play them three times), or until you get into the tier of rewards that you want, whatever happens first. All other advice from the doc still applies.

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

Playing optimally for 6 days straight will probably cause you to lose your job/girlfriend/mind.

+1

mischiefmaker

Additional strategy note: the nodes in the main are rubberbanded off the global main leader, while the nodes in the sub are rubberbanded off the global sub leader. Therefore, optimal strategy for the end of the event, assuming your priority is to finish highly in the main:

- Don't play the last sub very much, so that the rubberbanding factor is as high as possible going into the end of the event.
- When you make your final push, play all the main mission nodes first, to get maximum rubberbanding points. You have a decision to make here about whether you want to play the hood nodes, which will be worth a lot but will be quite hard and may take a long time. I will probably do the essentials and the non-hood nodes 3x each, then if I'm in the top 40, do the hood nodes once each; otherwise do them more.
- Once you're done with main mission nodes, do the sub event nodes. Don't do these before you finish the main mission!

delita007

I'm an idiot when it comes to high level strategy. Is rubberbanding what makes the nodes worth like 2000 instead of 600? How does it work?

mischiefmaker

Yes, that's the general idea. For each event, there's a rubberbanding number. Let's say it's 1000. For each multiple of that number that you're below the global leader (the person who has the highest score in the game), you get a 1x multiplier to your base values (the value that a node is worth at the very beginning of the event, or if you're within 1000 points of the leader), maximum of 10x. The rubberbanding number is different for every event, but you don't really need to know exactly what it is.

So, for example, let's say the global leader is at 88000 points, the rubberband factor is 1000, and you're at 80000 points. Since you're 8000 points behind the leader, you get an 8x multiplier to your base values. As you win fights, you'll be getting closer to the leader, so your rubberband factor will go down.

There's some additional strategy here based on the math which suggests that you should always do the highest value nodes first to maximize points based on rubber banding, but it's not much of an optimization, so if you have reason to do lower value nodes first (e.g., maybe you have a harder node that's worth decent points, you might want to do that first to see if you wipe, and to get the points from it before it scales out of reach).

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

As promised, I'm going to try and do a quick summary of what's new in the PvE event, relative to what's in the strategy doc.

- First sub is 26 hours long. Each time you play a node, the base value goes down 20%. Every 5 minutes, the base value goes up .66%.
- Therefore, optimal strategy is to play every mission once every 2 hours and 24 minutes.
- Playing optimally for 6 days straight will probably cause you to lose your job/girlfriend/mind. Therefore, what I would recommend is to play all the nodes once as soon as you start. Each refresh, play the high value nodes as many times as you expect to be away from the game (so, if you will play in 2.5 hours, play them once; if you're going to bed for 8 hours, play them three times), or until you get into the tier of rewards that you want, whatever happens first. All other advice from the doc still applies.

For this event, there is an unusual wrinkle in that there is both a local sub rubberband and a global main bracket rubberband operating simultaneously. This is an advantage to be leveraged here, as the local sub rubberband affects the global bracket rubberband, but not the other way around.

And everyone just said.... Wait... What?? English please??

As Mischief pointed out, gaining points in an event reduces the rubberband bonus for clearing pins. Normally, players work against a local sub rubberband (rubberband is based off of the top scorer in the sub) or a global rubberband (based on the total leader of the entire event). Normally, these two never mix. However, in TaT, they do mix, which leads to opportunity.

Clearing a sub pin raises your score towards the global event leader, which effectively lowers your rubberband on the global bracket. However, clearing pins on the main map does NOT reduce the rubberband on the pins in the sub (because the local sub rubberband only cares about the points leader in the sub, and not the total event score). Therefore, as Mischief pointed out, there is a very effective order of operations for the final round of the sub.

Given limited/time and health packs, the most effective order is:

-- Clear all the Essential pins on the main ("Thick as Thieves") map.
-- Clear all of the non-essential pins that you can reasonably clear (because of scaling issues and the match, many non-essential nodes may no longer be playable).
-- Move to and clear the essentials of the local sub( "Scotland Yard"). <-- Preferably wait as long as possible before clearing these pins! You want the rubberband to be as high as possible to maximize points once the rubberband on the TaT map has been depleted.
-- Clear any non-essential pins that are still playable.
-- If time/health packs remain, check the main map again for playable nodes that recovered points.

farlus

Thanks for the strat, Lyrian! I will be all over that this evening.

mischiefmaker

Not much to update on this PvE. Looks like standard 2.5 hour refreshes with significant rubberbanding in the subs. My plan is to join the subs late, play them for an hour, and not worry too much about final placement -- if I get the Storm cover, great, if not, no big deal.

mischiefmaker

Welcome to our four new members: gambl0r312, Bgfy, Himar, and mosby93!

gambl0r312 comes to us from a casual alliance, but you can see from looking at his roster that he's no slouch. With seven maxed 3*s and two more at 141, we're expecting big things! Bgfy, Himar, and mosby93 are all up-and-coming players making the transition from 2* teams to 3* teams. They're also RL friends of some of our existing members -- big thanks to FarLOL and Deimos12 for recruiting these promising new candidates!

As transitioning players, we know they'll have to work a bit harder than established 3* teams to put up big numbers, so we're currently in a trial period with them -- if we do well enough as an alliance to get the rewards we want according to the survey results, and they can pull their weight, we'll keep them permanently; otherwise we'll continue looking for players who are a good fit for our goals. I have confidence they'll do great things!

Of course, adding new members always means saying goodbye to some existing members. As some of you know from chat, Speedy0307 and theHappyDance have decided to stop playing the game. They were two of our first ten members and joined the alliance before we had any expectations or proven results; we're grateful to them for their help in building the alliance and wish them well.

Also moving on, albeit temporarily, are Wicked Witch and ACace, who will be on vacation for Season Three. We hope they have a good trip and we'll be opening up spots for them when they return.

mischiefmaker

Heroic Juggernaut PvE strategy update: not much new here that deviates from the strategy doc. There are a ton of missions and a new character reward, so expect to be grinding this one a lot for top placements. My plan is to grind the high-value regular nodes early and save the essentials for the end of the tournament so that they have lower scaling and I can get through them faster.

Useful team compositions:

Thor/BWGS - yellow and purple make green for Sniper Rifle
IM40/CStorm - IM40 tanks blue; yellow makes blue for Wind Storm and red for Unibeam
IM40/Torch - yellow makes red for Fireball
IM40/mBW - yellow makes blue for stun

I like Hawkeye for concentrating damage on one tank and IM35 for the easier nodes.

Unknown

Extra thoughts on strategy, to expand upon Mischief's thoughts:

-- There is significant rubberbanding in this one. Take advantage of it (see third point below).
-- Virtually everyone will be scaled out of the high point non-essential nodes at some point. Don't rely on them too heavily. Losing 3 health packs to a wipe is much more detrimental than anything else in this event.
-- Don't overlook the easy nodes on the left side of the map! With such low score in a 1 sub event, those 100 and 200 point easy nodes add up very quick! Clearing 200 point nodes easily (if you can it that in this event), over risking a 3 health pack wipe in a 700-800 point node is always preferable. Remember, you can't play if everyone is downed and you are out of health packs!
-- There is a wildcard one-off team-up node that can be dodged for majority of the event - "Guilty By Association". If you have not cleared this node yet, DO NOT DO SO UNTIL THE VERY END OF THE EVENT. Better yet, make this node the very last one you play in the entire event. There is nothing more beneficial to a player's score at the end of the event than a "cannot-lose" team-up node that enjoys full points + event rubberbanding. This is the "ace-in-the-hole" node for this event.

-- Don't discount IM35 at level 90 for those easy nodes. He is halfway respectable at an overbuffed level.
-- MHawkeye's blue and red are quite powerful as well, albeit with the limitation of CD tiles. Remember when using him, to place him directly behind the character you want tanking for him! On the character select screen order of priority from left to right is: 2 --> 1 --> 3. So, for example on the required Essential nodes where IM40 must be in the #1 position, place MHawkeye in the #2 slot to have IM40 tank hits for him.
-- Don't forget MWidow's blue. 5 turns of stun plus 1 to the team can be huge in buying time or locking down Juggs/Ares.

Unknown

Is gambl0r (I might have spelt it wrong) here? Not sure if you are tanking or pushing me up. But I dun intend to play this LR. But thanks anyway!

mischiefmaker

Updated the strategy doc with notes on Dark Avengers. Enjoy!

gambl0r312

mischiefmaker wrote:

Updated the strategy doc with notes on Dark Avengers. Enjoy!

Saw the Update! Thanks again for "strategeries" michiefmaker!

gambl0r312

I put a "thank you to all" in our Alliance chat, but since that has such high turnover, I wanted to say thank you to all in our Alliance here as well.

First I want to thank Lyrian and Mischiefmaker for keeping this Alliance going strong amidst all these changes to the game lately, and thank them for working on keeping us @ 20/20 members, and keeping us going with tips and Stratgeries for events, etc. It can't be easy, but they make it feel easy by shielding us from that recuiting side of our Alliance. (If there are others also working on this, my thanks go to you also!)

Speaking of recuiting, I want to say a big Thank you to all for accepting me into your large ( for me ) Alliance and making me feel welcome. Thank you for taking that chance on me! I hope I can keep on keeping up! The increased rewards from being in this Awesome and active alliance has helped me get my formerly languishing Lazy Daken to true fighting form @ 4/4/4 and I could never get him that good that quickly without this Alliance's help!

Going along with that sentiment, everybody's points help, every little bit helps, so whatever points you can get for us I want to say thank you again! My former Alliance was barely top 1800-2200 as it was just my friends and family, and they are the definition of "playing it casual." Now thanks to this Alliance I am staring at picking up my first Nick Fury at the end of the season! Whether we do or don't, it matters a lot to me to be given that chance!

Thanks for reading, and if I see you in a PvP node, I'll throw you some points for making it to the end of this rambling tirade!