Why are AI dropped TUs so underpowered?

Phumade

Putting aside the issue of having to endlessly prune dark avenger tus.  I really think its a boring decision choice to have the AI drop 1/1/1 TUs?  I don't see any sort of fun game mechanic involved when I have to manually prune Tus.  At the min,  all TUs should drop at 5 cover power.  Make the challenge about players mixing and matching TUs to team comp.  Move away from tedium of forcing players to read every TU to determine power.

Its makes sense to still get **** Dark avenger TUs.  It doesn't make sense for the AI to keep dropping underpowered **** Dark avenger Tus

Ducky

I think the amount of covers that the AI TU has corresponds to the type of node you get it from. Weaker TUs from trivial nodes, stronger from the harder ones.

I usually just scrap them all, tbh, as they cap at the regular level cap and not the champ cap. The only exceptions are Yelena's Black power and Bullseye's green. I like me some crit tiles, hehe.

orbitalint

They've tweaked this over time but from what I remember, it depends on the number of covers of the character you faced and got for the team up.

Ducky is mostly right that the easy nodes give you worst team ups. It is mainly because those easy nodes don't have many covers on powers at the low scaling levels you play them at. They only reach five covers after a certain number of levels. I don't miss the old days but this would be the one benefit of all covers being at five after a certain scaling level in pve (yeah, they used to do that...Ugh)

killercool

From memory people were farming over scaled team ups from 1 and 2 star AI opponents to nuke hard nodes.  D3 realized that while it was fun to hit players with over scaled Juggernauts, they didn't like players using scaled up versions of 1 and 2 start characters TU to cruise past hard nodes.  I think they capped the TU level to the max legal level the character could be - so if you fight a level 280 Ares you end up getting a level 144 TU, because that is the highest a player can legally level him.
  

Bowgentle

killercool said:

From memory people were farming over scaled team ups from 1 and 2 star AI opponents to nuke hard nodes.  D3 realized that while it was fun to hit players with over scaled Juggernauts, they didn't like players using scaled up versions of 1 and 2 start characters TU to cruise past hard nodes.  I think they capped the TU level to the max legal level the character could be - so if you fight a level 280 Ares you end up getting a level 144 TU, because that is the highest a player can legally level him.
  

I wish they would apply that logic to enemy levels in PVE, too.

Phumade

killercool said:

From memory people were farming over scaled team ups from 1 and 2 star AI opponents to nuke hard nodes.  D3 realized that while it was fun to hit players with over scaled Juggernauts, they didn't like players using scaled up versions of 1 and 2 start characters TU to cruise past hard nodes.  I think they capped the TU level to the max legal level the character could be - so if you fight a level 280 Ares you end up getting a level 144 TU, because that is the highest a player can legally level him.
  

Sigh.... Ask and answered.  I guess I will go back to pruning my Dark Avenger TU tree.

kyo28

There are much better venues also to get good TU's rather than get them from the AI. Join a decent alliance and ask memebers for TU's. That way you get better TU's to the point that you'll need to delete the **** AI ones to makes space for your allaince TU's. That's basically what I do.

Megdar

Ok, the problem is higher then that, I don't care about dropped TUs, yes when you start the game, but as soon as you join an alliance, you should have an option to turn it off. Hell, I will just go make a suggestion. This would be a HUUUUUGGGGGEEEEEEEEEE quality of life improvement, seriously, let us turn off TUs drop... I just always delete them.

revskip

Megdar said:

Ok, the problem is higher then that, I don't care about dropped TUs, yes when you start the game, but as soon as you join an alliance, you should have an option to turn it off. tinykitty, I will just go make a suggestion. This would be a HUUUUUGGGGGEEEEEEEEEE quality of life improvement, seriously, let us turn off TUs drop... I just always delete them.

That would be cool  Especially if I could just turn them off for PVE.  I actually like getting them in PVP since they are based off the actual levels of my opponents so if I go hunting for a tougher boosted team I end up with some really good TUs.  

Akari

killercool said:

From memory people were farming over scaled team ups from 1 and 2 star AI opponents to nuke hard nodes.  D3 realized that while it was fun to hit players with over scaled Juggernauts, they didn't like players using scaled up versions of 1 and 2 start characters TU to cruise past hard nodes.  I think they capped the TU level to the max legal level the character could be - so if you fight a level 280 Ares you end up getting a level 144 TU, because that is the highest a player can legally level him.
  

But if we fight a lvl 280 Ares, we get a lvl 94 TU.

SuperRecoome

I wish they'd just scrap the team ups altogether and go back to the environment tiles, those were better

Rick_OShay

kyo28 said:

There are much better venues also to get good TU's rather than get them from the AI. Join a decent alliance and ask memebers for TU's. That way you get better TU's to the point that you'll need to delete the tinykitty AI ones to makes space for your allaince TU's. That's basically what I do.

Exactly this.
Plus, I'll save you from ever getting an AI dropped TU again:
Right when you get down to 19 total team-ups in your bank, that's when you need to request them from your alliance. You'll get 5 from friends. 
Many people are surprised that you can hold 24 of the stated 20 TU's in your bank.

Phumade

@Brigby

Can you ask the developers to reconsider how PVE TUs are dropped.  specifically how TUs are dropped from trivial tier opponents?   It doesn't seem to serve any game play purpose when 90% of players end up deleting 100% of trivial oppponet TU drops.  If high level Tus are the concern, perhaps they can disable TUs drops at the lowest tier

Phumade

Personally I think they should make the lower limit of a TU be based on the powerlevel of what you have rostered and the upper limit be the theoretical max power.

So if you have invested slots for those characters, at the min you should be receiving TUs that are equivalent to what you already have access too.

It makes sense that if you don't own a version of that character, then you would get the **** version of the Tus.

I could see a reasonable game play decision that makes players decide between TUs at are at least equivalent to the chars on his roster.  but not have to worry about TUs that are substantially weaker that "WHAT HE ALREADY OWNS"

But my personal preference would be to disable TU drops in pve.  The only ones that seem useful come out of the hard overscaled nodes, and those few TUs are overrun from 20+ trivial tu drop chances (3 trivial nodes + 1 trivial essential  grinded 7 times =28 tu chances that give TUs that players automatically delete)

MaxxPowerz

I'm comfortable with this - team ups shouldn't be a game changer, but they do offer some tactical advantage. The best team ups usually compliment your team, they not meant to turn the tide of the match based on straight damage.

Jaedenkaal

I can think of cases where you might actually want a Team Up to NOT be 5 covers, as there are a handful of powers that get more expensive at higher cover levels. I don't know off the top of my head how many of them are particularly valued as team ups. Aggressive Recon, maybe.

I'd definitely be ok with never seeing another Lightning Rod team up in my life, never mind a level 40, 2-cover Lightning Rod team up.

Honestly though the whole system probably needs a rework. Lots of the most interesting powers they're making lately can't even be used as team ups. Which makes me pretty sad considering Masterstroke IS available as a team up despite doing essentially nothing when not shape-shifted.

Phumade

Jaedenkaal said:

I can think of cases where you might actually want a Team Up to NOT be 5 covers, as there are a handful of powers that get more expensive at higher cover levels. I don't know off the top of my head how many of them are particularly valued as team ups. Aggressive Recon, maybe.

Fortunately those cases are all pretty rare and incredibly niche.

mpqr7

I almost never use the PVE TUs. With my current roster, when people send me championed 4* TUs, they do a great amount of damage, which is very satisfying.

The main exceptions are similar to Ducky's. I will sometimes take 2* Bullseye TUs from PVE, because his offer board manipulation and critical tile placement. I also generally take Rags Red, because it's cheap, so I'll actually use it. Rags Blue is basically useless, and his green damages my team, but doesn't do much damage to opponents.

Sometimes I get good TUs from PVP battles.

zodiac339

I get mine mostly from PVP.
Side note: where is the cancel option for comments? I wanted to delete the comment I started, but it just clung on as a draft.

The Viceroy Returns

This might just be me, but I'm fine with them under-powered since my scaling makes PVE nodes well into the 350's.  Man do I miss the old 295 PVE Level cap...

Nothing sucks more than to be a turn or two away from finishing them off, and they throw out a Supernova.  
Basically, any high damaging AOE power.  Pretty irritating how often this happens.

Bowgentle

The Viceroy Returns said:

This might just be me, but I'm fine with them under-powered since my scaling makes PVE nodes well into the 350's.  Man do I miss the old 295 PVE Level cap...

Nothing sucks more than to be a turn or two away from finishing them off, and they throw out a Supernova.  
Basically, any high damaging AOE power.  Pretty irritating how often this happens.

It's not about the level they USE Team ups, it's the level they DROP them after you beat the node.