To hoard or not to hoard?

Warbringa

Ok, so just by how my hoard draws have been, I am missing the boat on Kitty.  I do want to cover GED though, not because I think he is great (he seems mid-tier) but because I just want to cover that particular character.  My question is if there is a difference in odds of collecting a particular 5* by waiting to draw a hoard all at once or simply pulling tokens as soon as they enter LL tokens? I ask because my initial thought is to wait until Cable & KP leave tokens as I don't really want covers for either.  

Is it a better strategy to pull tokens throughout a characters full time in LL tokens as opposed to waiting for a large hoard if your goal is to cover one character in particular?  My concern is that in my past experience, opening hoards can be really boom or bust if covering one particular 5* is your goal.  This assumes that you don't have the 350+ pulls needed to cover all 3 5* etc.  

Edited:  Since my original post seemed to dwell too far into the mechanics of how pulls work, I have modified my question to a more general one (but still basically the same).  I only looking for the forumites best guesses and personal experiences on this question. 

Quebbster

I don't know if we are allowed to discuss this here. That said, as I understand it that is not how it works.

St_Bernadus

Going by my recent pulls, I get none of the above.

bbigler

To answer the OP, your odds do not change whether you pull continuously or in 1 session.  If you don't care about Cable and Kingpin, then wait until they leave so you don't waste 5* pulls on them.  If you're not likely to pull between 300 and 400 LL in the next 18 weeks, then don't expect to finish GEDoom.  Any other token pulling strategies referred to above should not be discussed on this forum. 

EDIT: after seeing the OP EDIT, I'll add this: if you pull continuously until GEDoom leaves, then he will have the best odds of getting fully covered, but...................mathematically, it doesn't matter if you hoard until his last day in Latest and then open everything or just open continuously until his last day.  You have a 5% chance of getting GED in a single pull whether you do it now or later.  If you continuously open, then the odds are that you'll get the fewest covers for Cable, followed by Kingpin, and the most for GEDoom.  But those are just the odds, not rules or reality. 

For example, I hoarded 200 pulls until Cable entered the Pool and planned to continuously open afterwards until he left the pool.  The odds of fully covering Cable were the greatest, followed by Kitty, with Loki having the smallest odds.  Reality was that Loki got fully covered first, followed by Cable and Kitty still isn't done.  This was a total of 368 pulls, and Loki got fully covered after 264. The point is this: it's random, you can't predict it..........but you could bet on the odds, just like gambling.  I had good odds of completing Kitty, but it still didn't happen.  Since you don't have a large hoard to overcome possible bad luck, you're only hope of completing GEDoom is with good luck.

Theghouse

Statistically speaking, there is no difference in the odds for pulling a bunch of tokens at one time versus pulling a bunch of tokens over the course of any given period.  Once GED enters Latest LTs, every single time you open an LT your odds of getting a GED cover is 1/3 of 15%, which is 5%.  It does not matter how many LTs you pulled before, how long he has been in the Latest LT, or what characters are in there with him.  If you pulled an infinite number of tokens, you could expect 1 out of every 20 to be GED.  When you pull less tokens, you are likely to get a more varied result.

The reason why hoarding is effective, and therefore popular, is two fold.  First, it allows you to calculate your expected odds based on how many pulls you have.  There are other threads out there that have the expected pull odds which much greater degrees of calculation than what I posted above.  If your goal is to pull, say 200 LTs, with the goal of getting 13 GED covers, if you pull as you go you may wind up earning less LTs than that before he rotates out and not give yourself enough pulls.  If you wait until you know you have your target number of pulls then your odds are better to hit your target covers.  If you don't reach your target by the time he's set to rotate out, then you can make an informed decision based on how many pulls you do have, and decide to either take a chance on it or give up and go after other characters in the future with more pulls at your disposal.

The second is exactly for reasons you already mentioned, if you don't want either of the 5* with GED at a particular time, you can simply wait until they rotate out.

MaxPowers

Personally I just pull as I go. I usually end up covering the character by the end of its run (i find that covering new 4* characters through tokens is more daunting of a task).

I am tempted to hoard if not for the fact that cocering a 5* character sooner means being able to take advantage of their season long (?) boost.

justsing

If you’re going to be pulling the same amount of tokens in the end, then there’s not much of a difference* between pulling as you go and pulling a hoard. A large hoard (350+ pulls) will help cushion against the uncertainty that comes with RNG, but a smaller hoard won’t.

(*There might be a slight difference depending on when you pull. Our pulls are a predetermined random sequence, but I’d imagine that sequence is updated each time the store updates. So pulling now might result in different pulls than waiting until after Kitty leaves to pull.)

The statistics of pulling 5*s show that you’re better off pulling / hoarding for the purpose of covering all three Latest 5*s instead of just one. See Hadronic’s plots: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/73395/new-system-means-new-plots/p1 To cover one 5* (without swaps), you need 307 +/- 95 pulls on average. To cover all three, you need 390 +/- 89 pulls.

Personally, I pull as I go until I finish the Latest 5* who’s about to leave and then hoard until they leave. This method works well for me, but I think it requires that you earn 2+ Latest pulls per day on average. 

bbigler

justsing said:

(*There might be a slight difference depending on when you pull. Our pulls are a predetermined random sequence, but I’d imagine that sequence is updated each time the store updates. So pulling now might result in different pulls than waiting until after Kitty leaves to pull.)

Yes, the order of when you get a 5* cover is predetermined, but that order does not change when a new 5* enters the pool. Don't ask me how I know. For example, if your predetermined order is that you get 3 x 5* covers in the next 30 pulls, waiting any amount of time will not change that. So, you simply have to plow through until you hit your next 5* cover. Understanding that helps me because if my LT or 25 CP doesn't get me a 5* cover, it at least gets me closer to the next one. 

Vins2

All this behind the scenes, hush hush stuff is what seems most interesting.  Is my pull order for 5s predetermined whether it's in the latest or classic store? Is this discussed openly on the discord?

HoundofShadow

It is pre-determined now but it wasn't in the past. Because in the past, there were players who switched devices(I think) to manipulate what they pull to their favours.

bbigler

Vins2 said:

All this behind the scenes, hush hush stuff is what seems most interesting.  Is my pull order for 5s predetermined whether it's in the latest or classic store? Is this discussed openly on the discord?

Manipulating pulls is not endorsed, encouraged or even open for discussion here. I imagine Discord is the same. It's not intended game-play because it exploits the functionality of the app. In fact, even mentioning it makes some players want to figure it out, so let's follow rule #1, which is "we don't talk about Fight Club." I don't want to sound rude or authoritarian, but I respect the rules of the forum and the wishes of Demiurge. They don't want their game to be played that way. I believe this is their attitude on the matter. 

Nevertheless, I'll answer your question: Latest and Classics have different orders. 

bluewolf

Manipulating Legendary pulls is not actually possible.  All stores have a predetermined draw order that is generated for each player, which operate independently from each other.  Pulling 5 Classics and 3 Latests or whatever won't change your next result from those stores.  What does change a little, of course, is when a character enters the store, your next result could possibly be that character now.  Same as when one leaves, if your next pull was going to be a character that switched to Classic, you can't pull that person.

(Once, years ago, people had a method to re-roll draws until getting what they wanted.  That is no longer possible.)

As people have said repeatedly, pull if the people you want are in the store; if you don't want the people in Latest, wait for them to leave.  It won't change your odds.

Also, to be clear, a new character boost is 28 days or 4 weeks from the time the character enters the game.  So if you managed to fully cover the next 5 from their release store, you could use a boosted version for about 4 weeks in PVP and PVE.

I have pretty much finished every 5 (some end up with 12 covers) by pulling as I go, since....Spidey.  (That was with swaps, back then.)  So that method works as long as you can brute-force your pulls past RNG roadblocks (0/22 at the moment).

Kevmcg

Hoarding gives the added flexibility of unloading on a better character or holding back for weaker 5*. If you pull as you go, you are fully at the mercy of rng on how they are covered. If you save a hoard you will not end up the exact same even with prescribed pulls, you can influence your outcome, by keeping lesser 5* at 450-455 while beefing better ones to 470+.  The trade-off is not getting the 4* draws, bonus heroes, and associated rewards until a much later time (18 weeks later /  4.5 seasons is what I tend to do).

You also have to have the willpower to only stare at 100+ LTs and 5,000+ CP that slowly grow everyday.

zippee

I never hoard it just doesn't seem that fun imo.

LavaManLee

I do a mix.  Hoard my CP but spend my LTs.  Gives me a bit of both so I feel like I'm progressing but not spending everything until I like all three.  For example, I will be hoarding CP for a LONG time because Cable/Kingpin/Doom is of zero interest to me.  But I feel like opening an LT is fine and can help my overall play.  Especially if a BH is pulled.  Which is, like, almost never.  :-)

DjinnBabba

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