PvE Guide v1.1 (Updated January 2016)

Unknown

Simple question...


Is there differents brackets in the PvE ? For the main and for the sub event ?
And if i want a maximum points, is it better to enter the PvE quicky or to wait a while ? (if i can play quite each 2 1/2).

Thank you

Unknown

Darek wrote:

Simple question...


Is there differents brackets in the PvE ? For the main and for the sub event ?
And if i want a maximum points, is it better to enter the PvE quicky or to wait a while ? (if i can play quite each 2 1/2).

Thank you

Sub events and the main event do have different brackets. If you want maximum points, you should start early but maximum points doesn't really get you anything. You can start 8 hours before an event ends and the rubberbanding will usually be enough to get you all the progression prizes with grinding essential nodes 10-12 times in that time period. Starting later also gets you away from the heavy grinders so you'll probably place higher in your bracket.

Unknown

Thanks for the info everyone, although it was very confusing at first.

I will switch to not grinding so hard and see if this helps me place higher with less work.

Unknown

This is so counterintuitive. Can you give rough estimate how late can you join to 7 days PvE to get all rewards and place in top150? I know about placing it's really depends on getting into fresh bracket.

Unknown

And about subbed PvE i can't understand. If rubberbanding is from global sub leader, you get zero points if you miss it completely. So you maybe can get high total place in your bracket, but how can you get all rewards?

orbitalint

Events with subs can make all the difference or no difference in making progressions and/or placement - depends on the structure. If it is sub events only and a non-repeatable main, you won't make all progressions if you join late because it is only one sub of point totals and there is no RB to the main. However, if there are any repeatable main nodes at the end of the event, theoretically, it can or will rubber band off the global main leader and you have a good shot at all the rewards. In that scenario, you could make the progressions if you started playing a day or so ahead of time. Depending on if you get a fresh bracket, you could likely get top 10 too.

We're not really sure about this latest Thick as Thieves (11/21/14) event because they play with these settings all the time. Repeatable mains drive us grinder folk crazy because it makes playing for any of the previous 6 days meaningless. I think they've been playing with the rubberbanding multiplier and repeatable mains though hopefully as a way to respect this time investment over 7 days. They've definitely toned down the multiplier in the last few months so that playing consistently definitely has an advantage for overall placement even with a repeatable main. To my knowledge, you can't power your way into the top 10 anymore if you join early but don't play until the last day.

Unknown

I think people are looking for a magic bullet that makes winning PVE easier. I also think the devs are looking for it, too, only they want to get rid of it.

To that end, I don't think it exists, anymore. Sure, there's an effort underway to track when a fresh node is starting, but in my opinion, it's less important than consistency.

My best advice for winning top honours in a PVE is this: Play every node when its countdown is finished. Then play it again when the new countdown ends. Then either grind it to a seven hour countdown and go to sleep, or set your alarm from 2 hours and 40 minutes from now so you can play the full points again.

This last method is disruptive to your sleep patterns, and could possibly lead to your wife deleting the app from your smartphone. But more importantly, it's exhausting, and generally requires you to pause your life every three hours, even when people are watching, and you end up looking like some kind of app addict.

There's no such thing as app addiction, but games like this mimic compulsive behaviours quite accurately.

That's it really: don't be the one who blinks first. Most of the players who leapt on board at the start will fall to the wayside or forget to play on time. Others will split their focus, and use a few heals on PVP instead. If you're really diligent, and eat lots of curry, you'll be woken in the middle of the night and have to spend a lot of time on the toilet. You can then use that time to make another run.

That's why it's called, "having the runs."

Unknown

I have a question for all of you guys, so hopefully someone can answer it.
The commander in my alliance said that I should level my covers until I reach level 131, since the increase in level it will be at 132. It's that true or not?
At what cover level does the difficulty increase in events? My max. cover is 117, so wanted to know if I should level up more covers at that level, I will get an increase in difficulty or not?

HariSeldon

I agree strongly with Vertigozooropa's comment from a game play perspective. That said, it should be noted that the DSM-V has identified internet gaming addiction specifically as a highly recommended area for further research and documentation, after preliminary analysis over the last 7 years suggested a strong argument for classification as a disorder.

I'm not sure if external links are frowned upon, but anyone interested in more information on that can certainly find it by searching with your favorite search engine for "DSM gaming addiction". Now, if I can just manage to eliminate sleep all together, I can finally finish up my XForce... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

PeterGibbons316

I'm pretty new to this game and don't yet understand all of the mechanics, so forgive me if I am asking stupid questions.......

When you talk about a stack - is that just the number of rewards available for a node? So in this Welcome to Earth sub-event the second mission Sight Seeing has 4 rewards. If I get all 4 rewards will I no longer be able to attempt it again? What happens if I try again, but don't get one of the remaining rewards, do I still need to wait for the cool-down to try again for full points?

alaeth

Any advice for those of us without the "required" toon for progression in PvE? I missed out on Groot and I'm not sure the same grind node mechanics apply.

In the "Welcome to Earth" I barely managed to finish the main line... both if the Hood/goon nodes were damn close (barely survived). Now that the rubberbanding is starting, I doubt I can hit them at all - even with boosts.

PeterGibbons316

I don't have Falcon, so I basically skipped the last PvE event once I realized that I wasn't going to get anything worth my while. Focused on PvP.

Ebolamonkey84

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

I'm pretty new to this game and don't yet understand all of the mechanics, so forgive me if I am asking stupid questions.......

When you talk about a stack - is that just the number of rewards available for a node? So in this Welcome to Earth sub-event the second mission Sight Seeing has 4 rewards. If I get all 4 rewards will I no longer be able to attempt it again? What happens if I try again, but don't get one of the remaining rewards, do I still need to wait for the cool-down to try again for full points?

The number of stacks in a node is unrelated to the number of rewards still available. The number of stacks per node used to vary, but they seemed to have settled on 5, so each stack is 20% of the full points. Each time you clear a node, the points value drops 20% (some variance due to rubberbanding) and 2 hr 24 mins is added to the timer to full points.

You are always guaranteed to get one of the four rewards the first time you beat a node. After that, you either get one of the remaining rewards or a generous 20 ISO. Once you have all 4 rewards, it's 20 ISO all the time, which is why people hate events with no subs. Grinders gonna grind, but we at least like getting rewards for it.

Unknown

I really don't understand how this system works, even after reading this whole thread.

So in the Mystique event currently running, during the first sub event I tried clearing each node only once every 2.25 hours, when the points reset to full. I missed 8 hours and thus ~3 clears, and got set back quite a lot in points. At the end, I finished #11, with #1 being more than 10.000 points ahead. I assumed that was because I missed those 3 clears during the 8 hours afk.

Now with the current sub event that started only 3 hours ago, I immediately cleared all nodes once and noticed that a whole bunch of other people were at the same score as me: 5600 roughly. Makes sense since they were doing the same apparently!

So I left the game and just came back now, 2.25 hours later to do a new clear at full points. My final score is just under 10k now. Yet the #1 on rank is at 16k!? And several others are well above my 10k as well, sitting at 12k, 14k etc. How is this possible? How can someone already have 16k?

If they are clearing all the nodes fully, then how can they only 3 hours later almost have twice as many points as me when I'm "supposedly" doing the most optimal form of clearing? All of their nodes should have only replenished 1 stack, meaning they should be getting only very few points after only 3 hours?

I thought doing the highest stack once every full reset was the best way of doing it, but clearly that is not even remotely the case

Ebolamonkey84

Vamp1819 wrote:

I really don't understand how this system works, even after reading this whole thread.

So in the Mystique event currently running, during the first sub event I tried clearing each node only once every 2.25 hours, when the points reset to full. I missed 8 hours and thus ~3 clears, and got set back quite a lot in points. At the end, I finished #11, with #1 being more than 10.000 points ahead. I assumed that was because I missed those 3 clears during the 8 hours afk.

Now with the current sub event that started only 3 hours ago, I immediately cleared all nodes once and noticed that a whole bunch of other people were at the same score as me: 5600 roughly. Makes sense since they were doing the same apparently!

So I left the game and just came back now, 2.25 hours later to do a new clear at full points. My final score is just under 10k now. Yet the #1 on rank is at 16k!? And several others are well above my 10k as well, sitting at 12k, 14k etc. How is this possible? How can someone already have 16k?

If they are clearing all the nodes fully, then how can they only 3 hours later almost have twice as many points as me when I'm "supposedly" doing the most optimal form of clearing? All of their nodes should have only replenished 1 stack, meaning they should be getting only very few points after only 3 hours?

I thought doing the highest stack once every full reset was the best way of doing it, but clearly that is not even remotely the case

It is possible that the #1 person did one full sweep at the beginning, like you, and then did multiple sweeps after 2 hrs 24 minutes. If you continue to do one sweep every 2 hr 24 minutes you should see that gap start to close. If you know you aren't going to be able to play in 2 hr 24 minutes, you do as many sweeps as possible to minimize the amount of time the nodes are sitting at full points. So if I'm going to sleep for 8 hours, I would do 3 sweeps in theory, since it would take 7 hrs 12 minutes to recharge to full. (In reality, I fall asleep halfway through the second sweep and wake up way behind).

Let's assume one sweep is worth 10,000 points, there is no rubberbanding, and you are so good that it takes no time to finish a sweep. Player 1 plays optimally, player 2 is human and has to sleep at some point.
Time Player 1 Player 2
0:00 10,000 10,000
2:24 20,000 34,000 (did 3 sweeps for 10,000, 8,000, and 6,000)
4:48 30,000 34,000
7:12 40,000 34,000
9:36 50,000 44,000

Unknown

what determines enemy level during PvE?
i have some decent 1 and 2 star characters, a few 3 star characters with a few skills, but none maxed. And now from last event a single four star character with only 1 on the red ability that is level 70.
This 4 star hero is 25 levels higher than my next highest character level. Does this mean the enemy in PvE is also much higher level now?
if so, then i was thinking about just selling this 4 star cover to get rid of it. Or does that not decrease the enemy level ?

lukewin

Feel free to link to my post here, that has when the events have been ran

List of PVEs ran, to get indication of upcoming PVEs

Unknown

Ugh I havery had 3 check internet problems this event. I am now about 12k behind #1 and 10k behind #2. It ducks to have app malfunctions affect scores. I know my Internet was fine because I was browsing reddit and checking back hoping it would fix. Ended up missing like 3 or 4 clears.

Twoslot

Any thoughts to updating the OP of this guide? Has anyone tried rubberbanding recently? Too terrified of not getting my Elektra to try it out.

Also at least for this current event (prodigal son Dec 15) they have changed the nodes to 4 stack 3 hour refreshes. I do (not entirely optimally) one clear every 3 hours and 2 back to back and get 6hr sleep, and I'm currently 7th after one sub. I also did not grind every node down to 1 at the end of the first sub (that crossfire punisher node was a **** with scaling).

Unknown

"So if you were 2 times X points away from the leader your points per mission would be doubled, 3 times X back would be tripled and so on."

I must be missing something then. I am currently 4X behind the current leader. I have 4,100 and leader has 17,000. So according to this guide I should be at 4X the point value. But I'm only at about 15%. A mission that earned me 200 points at the very beginning now earns me 234.

What am I missing?