ISIS DANGER ZONE!

Unknown

Lol, I just bit on hulk. I'm realizing, that on defense with Patch, he is really dangerous. Once Patch throws out strike tiles for the other team, Hulk will have his black trigger, and if there is any cascade, even once, you win. Well, back to grinding now than lol.

Unknown

A lot ot read through, apparently d3publisher got filtered to my junk mail. Lol, so i didn't see this thread.

In regards to casualness - I agree that we should try and post, if not here at least in in game chat, what we should focus if we can. I know that I for one am probably a lower contributor (I put only around 400-500 points per mini pvp event), but sometimes that's due to focusing on the wrong thing or wanting to contribute to other things. So yeah, if we can get a specific focus to know what we want to push with the limited time we have, and guarantee a top 100 in the event we're focusing, great! I think someone posting in the in-game with a formatted look to draw attention, so we can scroll to see what we're pushing, that would make it easy.

IE:
V1rusHunter: <~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~>
V1rusHunter: <~^~> Alliance, please focus on X event! <~^~>
V1rusHunter: <~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~><~^~>

In regards to other things - Man, i need a better team. or a beefier team ;(. I'm running Modern Thor with OBW in pvp to conserve healing packs since OBW just heals me like a fiend and steals off what i need for Thor to crunch, but I still feel a bit week in comparison to other teams. I also have a MN mags and CStorm built up, but honestly, I wish I could get some more 3 star covers! A few more black panther covers would be great, or hulk (I only have 1 from the pve event).

Sigh.

Anyways, how're all of you?

Unknown

nice one! you found us

First regarding Patch+Hulk. I have them both maxed (Hulk 5-3-5) and using them is so-so. Your Patch Red is much weaker... And i dont have the feeling they are blocking efficiently... becauuse i get hit A LOT. Now i use Patch+Panther.. i have the feeling its faster while playing. They still are no good blockers...

I know what we will not be focusing on--> new PvE. Nontheless I will try to get last progression, because its storm.
I dont know if we wanna pass on Hood... The two good Colors are rewerds in singleplayer so anyone wanting them could get the covers for themselves. Lets see what our leader says!

Unknown

I agree with the hood covers. Blue and Yellow are really all you need. Black is just so you can max him out to 141.

As for the Patch Hulk combo, a big reason is because I use CMags with Patch. I use his blue/red/purple over everything. use the green from Patch, and Black and Yellow are dead unfortunately. I just feel Patch/cMags is the best offensive combo, and Patch/Hulk are great for defense. I did see I am not being attacked as much anymore. I was using Panther in there as well to add a strong black attack ability, a yellow ability (It's not great but it is better than no yellow ability) and decent health. I think, as of now, I made the right decision.

wade66

I was thinking of experimenting with an idea and wanted to get your guys opinion.

After seeing so many complaints about people leveling a character over 100 and getting slammed by a barrage of maxxed 3* teams, I was wondering if I kept my 3*s at 80, what would happen. I don't mean permanently, just until I have enough to max a full team myself.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, I think having viable featured characters for the pvp events that the game doesn't read as being in the next tier/level bracket when giving me opponents would help me place higher, and get the multi cover rewards more often. It seemed to work in the BP tournament where I stopped leveling him at 85, and faced nothing but loaner/obw/thor teams.

I was just wondering how leveling 1 or 2 characters over 100 affected you guys the first time you did it, and whethef the difficulty to place decently increased significantly to see whether how my plan may work.

V1rusHunter

I have definitely seen 141s as I crossed the threshold. I would try to hold off until the person is featured and when you want to gain a different cover. It's one reason why I won't yet level CMags even though he has a soft cap of 128; that and I lack ISO (again) and he's going to get nerfed.
That bein said, if you are finding yourself bored using the same characters over and over again, just level one character.

V1rusHunter

I know people are awaiting for how we'll structure ourselves. Please be patient. Been trying to refine it. Problem I realized this morning is that we don't know what the events are for the week. We mostly know only the next PvP only when we are well into the current PvP. I should be posting something this weekend (or even today).

That being said, given that we don't have enough for top 100 in season 2, we don't need to push in the Lazy Thor event.

Unknown

Wade, I would say the same thing as Virus, I would hold out until you can max some out all together. When I made the push, there weren't nearly as many teams with maxed characters. I started playing from close to day 1, and have been very active since then. So I don't exactly know what that transition was like, but I have read a lot about it in the forums.

Unknown

i agree i wish miself back to having no maxed 3* chars.

Unknown

Well just a heads up, I may have overdosed on Patch yesterday, and I've got a busy weekend to boot, so despite wanting those Hood covers there's a good chance I won't get to play much this weekend at all. But it sounds like we might be taking things easy anyway.

V1rusHunter

Appreciate the notification, Cyrus. Yeah. We don't push as an alliance. Need to break.

Unknown

nice slow day on MPQ Just played casually a little bit of pvE and got into top50. I need to farm some Iso to lvl my lazy thor now
Feels awesome that we made it to green Lazy Thor yesterday. V1rus you are awesome. thank you.

and everyone else is very awesome too Look at our scores ppl! I can`t remember our alliance scoring that high EVER. That was great.

V1rusHunter

As we take the time to rest after collectively winning LazyThor cover(s), I want to share my vision of how we will play. I know this is going to be very long, but hopefully insightful and will prompt you to provide feedback. I'll rewrite these thoughts better once there is more feedback to incorporate.

Challenges
First, for those of us who have been here from the start (thank you!) and those who have just joined (welcome!), here's a small recap of our challenges.
1. There are always 2-3 events with alliance rewards, and we all have limited patience and time. We shouldn't have to grind.
2. Each player's roster is different. Some are weaker, some stronger. So the ability to play efficiently is diverse and the desire to win a cover is different.
3. Several people really contribute; a few don't. Some of this might be a result of time commitments, vacation, or different time zone. But when we fall short of an alliance reward and it's obvious that some non-contributors could have gotten us there, it frustrates everyone.
4. D3 has created a vicious cycle by requiring us to play PvE for a new character and then making that character required for the Essential Nodes in the next PvE. Additionally, they have been known to quickly release the new character as a PvP reward soon after the original PvE.
5. We also don't know what events D3 has planned for us. We only have a 3-3.5 days view into the upcoming events, and even then we don't know what the rewards will be.


Proposal - http://bit.ly/MPQ-ISIS-vote
While there won't be a golden solution, if we can keep this game fun and win alliance rewards, we should be mostly satisfied and only have most of our frustration toward D3 instead of each other. So here's the proposal:
1. To address issue #1, we no longer play PvE. If you want the new cover, such as Lazy Storm, you play for yourself. If we are on the cusp of a top 100 and several people haven't played, we may ask people to play, but can't require them.
2. We always play the PvPs when the rewards are Invisible Woman, X-Force Wolverine, Fury, Spiderman, whoever was most newly released in the last season (in this case, Lazy Storm), and those that were released in the current season. We do not play for the Season alliance reward.
3. Until we can see how this works and refine this further, at the beginning of a Season we define the other set of characters that we play for. Please take a look and vote at this link - http://bit.ly/MPQ-ISIS-vote. Right now, I have defined this at choosing 4 characters, one for each week of the 25-day Season.
4. To address #2, we will subjectively gauge any new candidate's roster, but require that they are beyond purely a full 2* team. They should probably have at least 2 3* - 80+ level covers. Additionally, they should have a good number of slots so that they are not spending all HP on slots, but also on shielding. For those interested in vetting the candidate for alliance fit, please let me know and I'll keep you in mind.
5. To address #3, we will require any new candidates to be located in the Americas. For the the player's health, we do not want them waking up at 5am just to help us place in the alliance rank.
6. To increase communication, we will require all players to subscribe to the "ISIS Alliance chat" topic. This is so we can communicate more effectively of what's working/not working with this proposal, and we will post questionnaire links to gather each member's preferences.
7. We post either in in-game chat or forums that we are on vacation. If you do not do this, you risk being removed from the alliance to make room for a temporary or substitute member that will get us to the reward if we are pushing.
8. To address #4, we simply just have to move beyond the fear of missing out (FOMO). We all have outside lives, and in the end, we need to make sure we don't regret how much time we put in this game. We will get those characters via PvP at some point. Remember that very recently, 2* were made as rewards from PvP matches. We don't want to regret how much we struggled to obtain 3* if and when D3 starts offering them similarly.
9. There's nothing we can do regarding #5. My one concern is whether we will have stretches in which we are playing 3, 4, or 5 PvPs in a row. Perhaps, we will have 0 PvPs for the week or even 2 weeks. It will be hard to tell. This may require more subjectivity and comparing our team's wanted covers to the active rewards. We can certainly discuss more about how we want to deal with this.


How To Use Forum
1. Make a login. It's easier to PM people, and it tracks which topics you've read.
2. Subscribe to ISIS Alliance Chat. Go to this link (http://bit.ly/MPQ-ISIS-Chat ; actually, you're reading it right now), and click Subscribe topic at the bottom left. When there is a new post, you will get an email informing you that there is a new post. If you do not visit the topic when there is subsequent posts, you will not get bombarded with other emails. It's only an email notification on the first unread.
3. Bookmark ISIS Alliance Chat for when you want to initiate conversations. Click Bookmark topic at the bottom left. Then, access your bookmark in the "User Control Panel" -> "Manage bookmarks". When you go to the bookmark, you can tell that there are unread messages because it will be unread. Additionally, once you click on the link, you can jump to that message by clicking "First unread post" on upper right near the page navigation links.

Unknown

great plan. I am a little sad we will not try season 3 But i like the new strong leader of ours.
(Maybe we can discuss season 3 target of minimum 5000 points for each member? thats not high at all and with some of us scoring high we totally could score a Fury. I would like to target 7500 for everyone but thats just wishful thinking on my very crazy competitive part)

I love the replace option for pvp.

I dont agree with categoricly denying europeans the entry to our alliance thogh. Scoring high and shielding for the night is not that hard. if the appcicant can score 900 or above on targeted events.... why not?

And last but not least: Lazy Storm as reward!! WOOoooT! *happydance*

V1rusHunter

Thank you for the feedback, hiddles.

Regarding season minimum, it's going to be hard to require that everyone have a minimum score if we don't know how many events we are collectively focusing on. I don't want us suddenly trying to push for a season award at the very end and call flat, which will likely be 95% of the time. To move from #115 to #110, we would have to have 6,000 points. We would need your estimated 7.5k points per person, which at this point seems rather unlikely especially when we fall into our new mode. I'd like to revisit it if it becomes a problem generally of a fee not contributing to the same extent of others.

As for excluding regions of the world, I suppose I'd be willing to go along with other places if they can place high and shield. Unfortunately, if they are 5+ hours ahead, they definitely need to spend 150hp to shield 8 hours. I can clarify on that aspect when recruiting. And I didn't mean to offend anyone over the pond! That's why I said new recruits above.

Unknown

mkay... we`ll see how the season goes.
nobody is offended i think.
i do think we will have a lot of fun in the weeks to come! thumbs up

Unknown

I AM INCREDIBLY OFFENDED!!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!

Annnnywho, this all sounds really reasonable. I'm sure you are already on it to pick up a new player for Zeppo's departure. You done a great job recruiting recently, so I'm sure you'll grab someone that will be a good contributor.

Unknown

One additional thing, regarding Season 3.

So, we finished at 115 at 153000+, averaging roughly 7650+. 100th place was just over 170000. That's an average of 8500. 65 place was just over 174000. The last group of alliance were all very close to one another, and 101 missed by about 50 points. If we were to get close at the end, we have to put everything into it. Obviously, the alliance that pushed for top 100, all went nuts at the end and were very close to one another. Given that 115-100 was a gap of 17000, and 100-65 was a gap of 4000, it's tough competition at the top.

Basically, let's just remember that if we decide to go for it towards the end of the season, it has to be all or nothing.

Unknown

Yeah, I agree that to try and place top 100 in the season rankings is more competitive than I want to be. That's going in the opposite direction of everything we talked about. If we were going to do that we'd have to have a point minimum on every PVP, and PVE's too probably.

It was my idea to avoid recruiting Europeans, purely because I feel that people who have to deal with awkward event timing are more at risk of burning out, and we don't want to have to be looking for new players all the time the way we have been. We certainly don't want anyone dropping out just before the end of an event. Of course, if they shield early and always place high the way hiddles does, I don't see a problem. Except that, of course, that means they're a more competitive player than many of us want to be. Anyway, I don't think it's a major sticking point. Everything else sounds fantastic. Thanks again, Virus.

Unknown

Hey all, sorry it's taken me this long to weigh in and really post anything. I'm glad to be a part of ISIS and I'm happy you're having me.

Been working on my rosters, frustrated at the lack of ability I have to really move forward, and ya'll seem like a good fit for the casual/but-plays-the-****-out-of-it-sometimes attitude I have.

Everything here looks good to me, makes sense, and I put my answers in in the poll as well. Hopefully I can get my Daken up to 141 soon and really start pushing against other 85s, because in my theory and practice, nobody wants to screw around against Daken. Too dangerous.

Anyway, thanks for having me. And if you'd like, don't worry about typing out the full name, I usually go by Panda, or Bam if you like.

--Bamboomancer