PvE Guide v1.1 (Updated January 2016)

Unknown

I read through the whole guide and I'm still confused about the procedure I need to go through, assuming I'm aiming for top 5/10 ranking. I don't have much healing in my roster. What I do now is to clear all missions, unlock all nodes, then clear the highest-rewarding nodes as long as I have health packs. Apparently this is inefficient...even though I'm at #1 now, 4 hours before the end of the Prodigal Sun: China event.

Do I clear each mission once at the start, or halfway through the duration of the event?
How long is the refresh time approximately? 12 hours?
Do I clear all missions 2 hours before the end of the event, then stop playing? What if my ranking is too low?

Sorry, I'm really confused.

Unknown

Leugenesmiff wrote:

There's one thing I'm not clear on and I hope someone can help me out. Let's say the refresh is 12 hours. Does that mean the entire sub event starts refreshing all the nodes 12 hours after you began that sub event or is it per node played. For example, if I play one node at say 12o'clock am, stop playing, and play another node at 3 o'clock am, does that second node begin refreshing at 12pm or at 3pm? If there's 5 battles per node until the points are emptied and I played both nodes five times taking ten minutes per battle, then will both nodes be full at 12:50pm or just the first with the second node full at 3:50 pm?

Thanks, and thanks for the guide.

I'll second this question. Also, how do you know what the refresh time for a particular raid is?

Simple as I am, what would rally be handy for me is a refresh chart, ie:

Optimal Maximum Points:
Raid Start time: 0
First Play: +2 hours
First Refresh: +12 hours(?)
Second Play: +14 hours


or something similar.

Thank you so much for the help.

Eddiemon

You find out the refresh time for an event by reading the thread in the events forum for that event. As a general guide, 26 hours or less would be 8 hours, anything more than that is 12 hours. But that's only a generalisation from experience, not a rule from anywhere. The more active players generally monitor this stuff in those event threads and will post stuff as they work it out. If it is a rerun of an event that information also generally comes up in the thread. If it isn't there, ask for it.

Eddiemon

"&#91 wrote: »

MagiNioN"]I read through the whole guide and I'm still confused about the procedure I need to go through, assuming I'm aiming for top 5/10 ranking. I don't have much healing in my roster. What I do now is to clear all missions, unlock all nodes, then clear the highest-rewarding nodes as long as I have health packs. Apparently this is inefficient...even though I'm at #1 now, 4 hours before the end of the Prodigal Sun: China event.

Do I clear each mission once at the start, or halfway through the duration of the event?
How long is the refresh time approximately? 12 hours?
Do I clear all missions 2 hours before the end of the event, then stop playing? What if my ranking is too low?

Sorry, I'm really confused.

The '2 hours' is the start of your last clear, not the end of it. This assumes that you will take 2 hours to clear it. But if it only takes you 90 minutes then start 90 minutes before the end. Or whatever. But there should be as close to 0 time as possible between you finishing your last 'clear' and the end of the event.

Unlocking everything at the start can be good because you have the weakest community scaling. Then you can target the most valuable missions through the event. You don't need to clear every event, just enough so no paths are unlocked.

After that it depends on your personal scaling and the length of the event. In a ten day event your personal scaling is going to rise a lot, so you are balancing value per mission cleared against the difficulty increases you are facing. And I don't have a formula for that, and even if I did, it would change per event and every time they tweak their formulae ie often.

Eddiemon

nigelregals wrote:

So for the newest event I noticed if I play 1 node down all the way all other nodes go down in value and are worth less points. Is this a change?

This is called rubberbanding. See rule 3.

for me the best method is to find the highest paying node an grind it down and keep checking other nodes and find highest again and repeat.

My first refresh one node was worth 650 points but this morning the highest node is worth 210 pts. So if I play as much as I can I won't be able to get enough points to first. Maybe it's longer than 12 hours for full refresh?

Rubberbanding is determined by how how high your score is compared to the global leader. So if you are high in the tables your point score per mission will be low. Then again there isn't a rule against refreshes being longer than 12 hours. The event threads often contain not only the refresh times but also the base scores for missions. If you leave the cheapest mission untouched, you can work out your rubberbanding by dividing that mission's value by its base value. You can then multiply the high scoring missions base values by that number and compare it to the value being offered to see if they have refreshed fully.

Unknown

Problem on this particular event (prodigal sun) is these sub brackets with damage meter and what looks like capped node pts mean you HAVE to grind at the moment. Any suggestions for this change Eddie? Your guide is excellent but last two events devs have really thrown spanner in the works. I'm hoping they open up final sub as they did in last event so those pts can be rubber-banded back.

Eddiemon

Leugenesmiff wrote:

There's one thing I'm not clear on and I hope someone can help me out. Let's say the refresh is 12 hours. Does that mean the entire sub event starts refreshing all the nodes 12 hours after you began that sub event or is it per node played. For example, if I play one node at say 12o'clock am, stop playing, and play another node at 3 o'clock am, does that second node begin refreshing at 12pm or at 3pm? If there's 5 battles per node until the points are emptied and I played both nodes five times taking ten minutes per battle, then will both nodes be full at 12:50pm or just the first with the second node full at 3:50 pm?

Thanks, and thanks for the guide.

That should be covered by rule 5.

Rule 5 explains that each node refreshes individually. If all nodes refreshed at the same time then rule 5 would be a pointless rule.

Unknown

For the first time ever, the more you play, the more points you gather.

You can keep on playing, the number of points decreases very slowly, and goes up again pretty soon after.

Do you have some explanation for this Eddiemon ?

It was hard to play in the beginning.

Was applying "old" PvE rules in the first sub. Ended lower than Top 50. Next subs opened. I played much more and am now Top 1-2 in main. I can play every second hour or so.

Scaling is pretty hard, but my characters can still cope.

Arogntbastrd

Agreed, seems like tried and trusty "when you play is more important than how much" is out the window for this pve. Maybe worth mentioning if the trend continues.

I just hope the scaling reset for next pve

Edit: feels like simulator is back to standard Rubberbanding

Unknown

I'm a little confused on how to best approach PvE.

Rule 2 states don't grind. However, Rule 5 suggests to complete all nodes on a stack before moving to the next node.

So with these to rules, are we just to pick the X nodes that provide the highest reward, deplete all their stacks, rinse and repeat every 12 hours - while leaving some mission nodes completely untouched?

Initially, I was so focused on Rule 5 that I depleted every node of every mission in a PvE sub-event. Now I'm worried that my future sub-events will be impossible to beat due to Rule 2.

So what is the common practiced approach for PvE?

Arogntbastrd

Dumbed down. I'd say make sure to do one clear so you have access to all nodes. Then do the nodes based on highest point value available. The order you do the nodes is generally irrelevant if you do them all but I suggest this way bc it maximes pts per node and if scaling goes up, you don't want a fat point node that you cant do anymore bc you were grinding some 100 pt node

Generally, "essential" nodes will have the highest points and point:difficulty ratio so those are what you're going to want to focus on first

Unknown

a silly question, but... what the heck is PvE??? (PvP is player vs player, I suppose?)

Edit: Player versus Event?!

Eddiemon

HIM175 wrote:

a silly question, but... what the heck is PvE??? (PvP is player vs player, I suppose?)

Edit: Player versus Event?!

Player vs Environment.

It got picked up from places like World of Warcraft

Eddiemon

Frobones wrote:

I'm a little confused on how to best approach PvE.

Rule 2 states don't grind. However, Rule 5 suggests to complete all nodes on a stack before moving to the next node.

So with these to rules, are we just to pick the X nodes that provide the highest reward, deplete all their stacks, rinse and repeat every 12 hours - while leaving some mission nodes completely untouched?

Initially, I was so focused on Rule 5 that I depleted every node of every mission in a PvE sub-event. Now I'm worried that my future sub-events will be impossible to beat due to Rule 2.

So what is the common practiced approach for PvE?

As in Rule 2, don't grind everything down to 1 point recklessly. Pick your targets.

Rule 5 isn't intended to say 'always beat a stack down to 1 point' but rather 'whatever number of attempts you are going to have at any stack, do them all in succession and then ignore it until the next refresh'. Don't bounce between stacks and return to ones previously attempted.

Unknown

Rule 2: Don't Grind

This is what drives me crazy about this game. Playing and winng actually hurts your outcome. In PVP, you use shields, which is practically the same as paying money, to not play the game, in order to win. Sometimes it makes me want to not play at all anymore.

Eddiemon

rooter wrote:

Rule 2: Don't Grind

This is what drives me crazy about this game. Playing and winng actually hurts your outcome. In PVP, you use shields, which is practically the same as paying money, to not play the game, in order to win. Sometimes it makes me want to not play at all anymore.

From D3's perspective, the players who have the most time to play are generally the players who are least able to spend money on the game. So making it all about grinding is a net loss strategy for them. If a player with a job and disposable income cannot compete with the unemployed and students, then they will stop paying and those other 2 groups don't generally have the disposable income to fund the game. Then everybody loses.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

HIM175 wrote:

a silly question, but... what the heck is PvE??? (PvP is player vs player, I suppose?)
Edit: Player versus Event?!

Player vs Environment.
It got picked up from places like World of Warcraft

Ah, thank you. Still don`t understand exactly what it is, but maybe friend google will help ^^

mohio

The idea stems from early online games introducing player vs. player combat/competition. So, they had to come up with something to describe the old school "single player" aspect of these games, so they called it "player vs. environment". It's a little off to use the terms in this game since on one hand everything is "player vs. environment" since there is no direct player vs. player play, you're always playing the AI, and on the other hand, everything is a competition against all the other players fighting for position in your bracket. Despite that the terms have stuck, so everything that shows up in the "Story" tab (where the enemies are predetermined), is deemed PvE, and everything in the "Versus" tab (where the enemies are the teams of actual players) is deemed PvP.

Puertorico

They should just be the same amount of point for everyone at all times

Jimmy Whisper

My question(s) is: Why is it that the leader of most event brackets I'm in has sub lvl 85 characters and several level 6 2* with maxed covers? What's the advantage with this kinda roster?