X-men Simulator, why is the difficult so high?

dramatist

I had a very easy time with the Rogue/Gambit waves using boosted Iron Fist and Vulture. Get Vulture in the air and have Fist punch everyone to death. 

talleman

I like the challenge but without Newly champed R&G and boosted Gamora i would have alot harder time with the simulator. It feels like many struggels with this event because i made top 50 without full clear but maybe its because the rewards is not as desired as usually or that my bracket is not as populated.

SkadenFrudee

I have Gamora champed, Grocket is in the 150s. I did six clears of sub 1, 4 clears of sub 2, and I skipped the third sub completely (life got in the way).

 Results: 81st place, SCL7 slice 1. I have a feeling many people found this particular event difficult, based on how little I played versus how well I placed. 

n25philly

TPF Alexis said:

The problem I've been having is with node 6 in Sub 3. Not that it's too hard, but just that every turn has so much time taken up with animations, between Gambit's two actives, Reluctant Hero, and Psychic Convergence, plus the occasional forehead o' doom. Those clears took forever, it felt like.

I'm on that one now, and it's making one to punch things.  Every turn is taking forever between the ai making 300 matches every turn and all the animations.  Seriously, whoever put this even together clearly hates fun.

Astralgazer

With the new scaling scheme, if anyone complaints they are finding things too difficult then it's their own fault. They eat more than they could chew. If you want to have an easy time, take the highest SCL that your roster can take on, then move down a level. My roster can take on SCL 8 any day, even SCL 9 if I feel like getting punished for every wrong move, but for daily play I now pick SCL 7. I can do the final clears in about half an hour, which is very helpful because I usually do this on my way home from work.

Borstock

Astralgazer said:

With the new scaling scheme, if anyone complaints they are finding things too difficult then it's their own fault. They eat more than they could chew. If you want to have an easy time, take the highest SCL that your roster can take on, then move down a level. My roster can take on SCL 8 any day, even SCL 9 if I feel like getting punished for every wrong move, but for daily play I now pick SCL 7. I can do the final clears in about half an hour, which is very helpful because I usually do this on my way home from work.

Ah, but many will say you're taking advantage of weaker players when you do that. I don't say that, but you've undoubtedly ticked off a few peeps. 

Astralgazer

Borstock said:

Ah, but many will say you're taking advantage of weaker players when you do that. I don't say that, but you've undoubtedly ticked off a few peeps. 

What advantage? Robbing them of their rightful placement at T10? The highest I got for placement reward in SCL7 is T20, usually only T50.

When I say I play easy, I really take it easy.

Pants1000

The only nodes I found harder than usual were the Gambit/Rogue nodes.  They're especially tough because they're a great counter to Grocket/Gamora, the best boosted pair.  Gambit can quickly remove Grocket's attack tiles, and Rogue tanks to make it difficult to take out Gambit before he gets going.

Actually the last PX/OML/Gambit node destroyed me once too.  The AI got lucky with some match-5 cascades, and did 50k damage by turn 2.

Gambit is just tough when paired with the right teammates.

n25philly

Astralgazer said:

With the new scaling scheme, if anyone complaints they are finding things too difficult then it's their own fault. They eat more than they could chew. If you want to have an easy time, take the highest SCL that your roster can take on, then move down a level. My roster can take on SCL 8 any day, even SCL 9 if I feel like getting punished for every wrong move, but for daily play I now pick SCL 7. I can do the final clears in about half an hour, which is very helpful because I usually do this on my way home from work.

I dropped down two levels and found it like 50x harder than any event I've played since the change.  If that isn't worth complaining I don't know what is.  When on the first clear Rouge's power siphon downs anyone on my team in one shot it's not fun.  What am I supposed to play on rank 1?

SirLanik

Coulson + Hawkeye 3* cleaned up every thing easily, and I'd usually add in a Red/Green user for good measure, like Human Torch 3* or Carnage.
Had no trouble any nodes.

Pessi

Its all about strategy I guess. I must admit I didn't find this one hard at all. I loved the Xmen flavour, and it meant the teams weren't so radically different as we've seen in previous simulators. Gambit and Rogue on the same team was tough, and made taking gambit out first more challenging.

I dropped to 7 this event (I normally would for weekend events to make the clears quicker). I used RG/Gamora/Medussa for practically everything. Used zero health packs, non optimal clears, easily got top 50.

broll

Borstock said:

Astralgazer said:

With the new scaling scheme, if anyone complaints they are finding things too difficult then it's their own fault. They eat more than they could chew. If you want to have an easy time, take the highest SCL that your roster can take on, then move down a level. My roster can take on SCL 8 any day, even SCL 9 if I feel like getting punished for every wrong move, but for daily play I now pick SCL 7. I can do the final clears in about half an hour, which is very helpful because I usually do this on my way home from work.

Ah, but many will say you're taking advantage of weaker players when you do that. I don't say that, but you've undoubtedly ticked off a few peeps. 

Good for them?  Choose your own difficulty is great and much needed feature for the game.  If those people feel their losing out on placement they can always drop down also.  It's up to the player to decide where they get the most return on investment for their time is and that's fantastic.  Hopefully the game continues to improve the rewards per level and stretches them out so more people feel it's worthwhile to play at or above their belt because right now it's really, really not.

Nick441234

I must confess, I have dropped to CL7 more recently, even though I can handle CL8. The time saved is considerable. Now, if CL8 offered more tokens and 10-15K ISO more than CL7 does, then I would move back to 8. 

shardwick

n25philly said:

Astralgazer said:

With the new scaling scheme, if anyone complaints they are finding things too difficult then it's their own fault. They eat more than they could chew. If you want to have an easy time, take the highest SCL that your roster can take on, then move down a level. My roster can take on SCL 8 any day, even SCL 9 if I feel like getting punished for every wrong move, but for daily play I now pick SCL 7. I can do the final clears in about half an hour, which is very helpful because I usually do this on my way home from work.

I dropped down two levels and found it like 50x harder than any event I've played since the change.  If that isn't worth complaining I don't know what is.  When on the first clear Rouge's power siphon downs anyone on my team in one shot it's not fun.  What am I supposed to play on rank 1?

Drop down one clearance level each event until you find the one that works best for you. Really no sense in letting a game stress you out so much.

n25philly

shardwick said:

n25philly said:

Astralgazer said:

With the new scaling scheme, if anyone complaints they are finding things too difficult then it's their own fault. They eat more than they could chew. If you want to have an easy time, take the highest SCL that your roster can take on, then move down a level. My roster can take on SCL 8 any day, even SCL 9 if I feel like getting punished for every wrong move, but for daily play I now pick SCL 7. I can do the final clears in about half an hour, which is very helpful because I usually do this on my way home from work.

I dropped down two levels and found it like 50x harder than any event I've played since the change.  If that isn't worth complaining I don't know what is.  When on the first clear Rouge's power siphon downs anyone on my team in one shot it's not fun.  What am I supposed to play on rank 1?

Drop down one clearance level each event until you find the one that works best for you. Really no sense in letting a game stress you out so much.

If I could change in mid-event that would be fine.  My point is if I am used to play at a certain difficulty level with no problems, and I drop down two levels from that and things are way, way tougher, something is wrong.

Richyyy

Simulator's often one of the trickiest PvEs, but from CL8 I didn't think this was significantly harder than previous runs. Outside of Grocket it wasn't the greatest selection of boosted characters this week, which didn't help, but it didn't seem impossible to me. I even found some use for Sandman, which I think is the first time that's happened.

I actually really like Simulator because it's different. So many PvEs are the same thing over and over again, but here you get unusual teams that sometimes present original problems to deal with (like that annoying Gambit/ProfX/OML node, or anything where Rogue had enough health to get in the way). If you don't enjoy working out how to counter things like that, then it seems like we might as well all be playing Candy Crush.

The Viceroy Returns

Pants1000 said:

The only nodes I found harder than usual were the Gambit/Rogue nodes.  They're especially tough because they're a great counter to Grocket/Gamora, the best boosted pair.  Gambit can quickly remove Grocket's attack tiles, and Rogue tanks to make it difficult to take out Gambit before he gets going.

Actually the last PX/OML/Gambit node destroyed me once too.  The AI got lucky with some match-5 cascades, and did 50k damage by turn 2.

Gambit is just tough when paired with the right teammates.

Agreed on this node.
Basically, if you didn't use Gamora's Blue (or another great stunner) to stun Gambit by like turn 3 or 4, you were quickly overrun with gobs of enemy Special Tiles, and taking big damage from Gambit's Red & Purple.
And the deceptive part of this team is if you don't take out Prof X first, but instead target Gambit, all of the Purple gained from Gambit's passive would allow him to turn invisible very easily.

Even in CL8, I almost lost a fight or two at the final scaling, with my OML taking big damage by the time the fight was over (he was even downed once!).

BoyWonder1914

That first day with the Gambit and Rogue nodes definitely got me as well, but once you knew how to attack them, I made easy work of them most of the time. My major shot in the foot was not understanding Rogue's passive well enough. I didn't realize that: 

1. It mitigated POWER damage too, not just matches
2. The 20% reduction stacked for every teammate still alive, so it was actually 60% as long as you were facing a full team

Once I realized that I could drop Gambit first by just focusing on Purple, Blue, & Black matches, he didn't last long against RBG/Gamora match damage. If I could stun Rogue with Gamora in the process? Even better. Event got a lot easier after that. 

shadowyoshi

I agree with the OP that the difficulty was tuned a bit high here. I'm in a casual alliance and most play every event at 7. It was too hard for them as they don't have R&G or Gamora champed (I had no issues using champed Carnage, Mr. F, Captain Marvel)

Remember that 7 is built for 3-4 transitioners. Especially the first day before figuring out how to attack the Gambit / Rogue nodes I can see rosters with no 4* champs and 20-30 3* champs getting roasted easily when that hasn't been the case in any other event.

Jaedenkaal

PVE Simulator has always been hard if you don't have the buffed characters in a good place, and/or if the buffed characters suck. Looking at you, Mystique.