A Slacker's Guide to PvP

Unknown

We all know the deal. You want to do well in PvP tournaments, but you don't want to grind all day, you don't want to spend a lot of money, and you definitely don't want to do worse than people who grind all day or spend a lot of money. What's a slacker to do?

Slack smarter.

1. Always fight UP.

So you may hear people talking about "defense". I will tell you this right now: There is no such thing as defense. If someone with a remotely reasonable team wants to beat you, they can. They get three tries, and damage sticks per try. They get to use boosts (and you should) which the defender can't use. They get the first move, they get to choose their targets manually, and the AI is simply not as good at making moves as a human can be.

The only real defense is getting someone to look at your team when it comes up as an option to fight, and convincing them to say "meh" and press "Skip".

The first step is to only fight teams that have way more points than you do. First of all, you'll get more points per win, which means you'll rise higher with fewer fights; a slacker goal if ever there was one! Second, when you show up for retaliation, they'll look at how many points they'll get to beat you, and realize that it's not worth it. And if they DO retaliate, so much the better! You've proven that you can beat that team, and you'll get more points back than you lost. And lastly, the fewer fights you're in, the fewer people that can later retaliate against you. A surefire recipe for getting stomped at the end of tournaments is trying to grind out an extra 50 points by stringing together 15-20 point wins. Those people will be retaliating back for more points than you earned, and with two minutes left, you'll get a message saying you just lost 150 points, and you'll cry bitter slacker tears. Also, all that frantic grinding sounds like a lot of effort. No thank you.

2. New event, shmew event.

"OMG, there's a new event that just opened five seconds ago! Let's jump in and start earning some points!" said no slacker, ever.

Good heavens. You know who starts playing events right away? People who just can't wait to start earning rewards. People who, if they are in your bracket, will probably kick your butt. A new event opened up? Do the slacker thing. Take a nap. Heck, skip a day. This increases the likelihood that your bracket will contain more newbies and slackers - your preferred opponents! I did a late start on the Juggernaut tournament, and ended up winning my bracket with a score that was about 300 points shy of where folks like TheLadder ended up, and with a team that only a slacker could love. If I had joined a bracket with the sort of people who start playing ten seconds after the event started, I probably wouldn't have made top 50.

3. Eat all the low-hanging fruit.

The biggest factor in getting people to look at your team and say "meh" is building a team that looks like it will be frustrating/time consuming to fight. One of your top priorities should be getting all the HP, covers and tokens you can from the PvE missions, and building up a couple of tough 2* characters. Thor, Daken, Wolverine, and Cap all have easily acquired covers, and if one or two of those guys is near-maxed or maxed, I'm more likely to just press "skip" and look for easier targets. This means you should really focus on a two-character combo that works well for you, and work on those. Often, tournaments will add a mandatory third, so you can slack off on leveling a third character. I actually don't recommend C. Storm, because she's a really easy character to beat - low HP, her passive is trivially avoided, and no cheap high-damage skills. I love fighting teams with L85 C. Storms and underleveled pals, and all good slackers should.

Some extra miscellaneous tips in no particular order:
- If you're going to un-slack for anything, try to get 3* Spidey. His healing ability can drastically cut down on downtime for you.
- If I see a team of Wolverine, Daken and Bullseye, I am definitely skipping that team. It might not actually be that good, but there is no way I'm sitting through triggering those passives a million times.
- Never spend ISO for covers. You will get a bunch of cover tokens over time, and you will never have enough ISO.
- When the Lightning Rounds are going on, even if you don't want to compete, jump in for a couple rounds to get the easy prizes. Those can add up to a lot of ISO with minimum effort.

There you have it. More snooze, less lose.

- Tesla

mytisbrewin

Tesla wrote:

- If you're going to un-slack for anything, try to get 3* Spidey. His healing ability can drastically cut down on downtime for you.

Good stuff. The only thing I disagree with is the above, as a slacker the last thing you want to do is cut down on downtime.

Unknown

It doesn't matter if you start playing the tournament at the 5 second mark or the 2 day mark. The bracket that you are put I'm is determined by the outcome of the previous tournament.

Unknown

Badman82 wrote:

It doesn't matter if you start playing the tournament at the 5 second mark or the 2 day mark. The bracket that you are put I'm is determined by the outcome of the previous tournament.

which explains why some bracketed have about 200-220 in it, some minor amount of ppl put in just in case they were afkers or something.

Unknown

Badman82 wrote:

It doesn't matter if you start playing the tournament at the 5 second mark or the 2 day mark. The bracket that you are put I'm is determined by the outcome of the previous tournament.

No, it doesn't. Brackets are filled on a first come, first serve basis.

Do not confuse the bracket you're in with the matchmaking "group" you're in -- the former determines who you're competing against for ranking rewards and is limited to the number of players in each bracket (varies by tournament). The latter determines who you will be fighting against, and is across all players regardless of bracket.

Dninot

I would add....

Don't grind PvE. Target the missions with rewards you need, and don't replay anything else. Boost rewards can be bought with Iso, and you can get Iso much faster playing PvP. Get your covers and get out.

Nemek

I agree with most everything here. The only thing I kind of disagree with is when you say there is no such thing as defense, but then go onto say which characters you'd rather fight against when picking a fight. That's...the defense - anything that prevents people from fighting against you, whether that's taking a long time to kill, or have a higher chance of inflicting damage, that's essentially what defense is when people talk about it.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

I agree with most everything here. The only thing I kind of disagree with is when you say there is no such thing as defense, but then go onto say which characters you'd rather fight against when picking a fight. That's...the defense - anything that prevents people from fighting against you, whether that's taking a long time to kill, or have a higher chance of inflicting damage, that's essentially what defense is when people talk about it.

Or having a 200% boosted level 120 Ironman Mk 40.
That's why I skipped you tonight

Unknown

Zathrus wrote:

Badman82 wrote:

It doesn't matter if you start playing the tournament at the 5 second mark or the 2 day mark. The bracket that you are put I'm is determined by the outcome of the previous tournament.

No, it doesn't. Brackets are filled on a first come, first serve basis.

Do not confuse the bracket you're in with the matchmaking "group" you're in -- the former determines who you're competing against for ranking rewards and is limited to the number of players in each bracket (varies by tournament). The latter determines who you will be fighting against, and is across all players regardless of bracket.

Well thank you for the knowledge . You go ahead and wait to participate. While you do that I will collect ISO, to level up my buffed character, claim progression rewards, to make their abilities stronger and look for you in the tournaments. Hopefully I don't run into you

Nemek

There are pros and cons to starting later in tournaments. Yes, it does look like the brackets fill up in order and easier brackets tend to be towards the end. But, there are certain advantages to starting early, which is gaining ISO. Plus, there really aren't THAT many tournaments going on at a time...so it's certainly less boring to start participating early and getting those progression rewards. For the tip top of players, 95% of your bracket doesn't even matter, anyway.

uuddlrlr

By STARTING a tournament, do you people mean just tapping on it, or doing your first actual fight? I find that if I tap early on the tournament, I get easy default-ish fights, with 1-2 characters; but that might not be worth the easy ISO if I get put into very competitive brackets, which Tesla mentioned.

Also people keep talking about buying boosts rewards with Iso, but I haven't seen that... where is it?

Unknown

Now that you spread this secret you are spoiling the market XD, big fishes may want to wait and start late to eat the small fishes. So an advice is to keep this guide for yourself but it's too late 290+ readers. Muahahahaha

Unknown

Aiolia wrote:

Now that you spread this secret you are spoiling the market XD, big fishes may want to wait and start late to eat the small fishes. So an advice is to keep this guide for yourself but it's too late 290+ readers. Muahahahaha

Ah I see you already use that tactic. That was the reason I found you as one of the top dogs in my bracket luckily I only had to place second for top rewards

Unknown

Mommson wrote:

Aiolia wrote:

Now that you spread this secret you are spoiling the market XD, big fishes may want to wait and start late to eat the small fishes. So an advice is to keep this guide for yourself but it's too late 290+ readers. Muahahahaha

Ah I see you already use that tactic. That was the reason I found you as one of the top dogs in my bracket luckily I only had to place second for top rewards

Me and my gang already know they tactic since unstable iso

Unknown

uuddlrlr wrote:

By STARTING a tournament, do you people mean just tapping on it, or doing your first actual fight? I find that if I tap early on the tournament, I get easy default-ish fights, with 1-2 characters; but that might not be worth the easy ISO if I get put into very competitive brackets, which Tesla mentioned.

Those massively easy fights are "seeder" fights, which IceX mentioned in another thread in another forum. You're only likely to see them very early on.

As for STARTING -- it matters when you actually begin (or, more likely, end) your first fight. I've entered the lobby, checked rewards, checked opponents, and even checked boost levels (select an oppenent to fight and then back out) and it doesn't put you in a bracket. You can even attempt to look at standings -- until you start/end that first battle it won't have any standings to show you because you're not in a bracket.

uuddlrlr wrote:

Also people keep talking about buying boosts rewards with Iso, but I haven't seen that... where is it?

Once you run out of a boost you'll be offered the option to buy more -- as I recall it's 100 ISO for the +AP boosts and 150 ISO for the +% damage boosts, both in 3 packs.

And I wondered the same thing for a long time since I was being really sparing with using my boosts.

Unknown

I'm new to the game. I read a lot about skipping pvp opponents on the forums. How do I go about doing that? I don't see a button.

Unknown

You have to choose a specific opponent you're thinking of challenging, first. Tap one of the icons to pull up that opponent. That will give you a "skip" button at the bottom left.

Unknown

Thank you. I can't believe I never saw that.

g_flores1313

Where are these points I can earn located? Are they the Rating Reward number?

Quebbster

g_flores1313 wrote:

Where are these points I can earn located? Are they the Rating Reward number?

Yup.
Keep in mind that this thread is from 2013, so a lot of information here is no longer accurate.