Stranger Sights SCL 8 - 4* transition, how did I fare?

peterdark

I am on my way to completing Stranger Sites at SCL 8, I have been getting t50 on scl7 for the past couple of months so thought I'd give it a go as I have the 5* req char. 

My roster is basically in a transition state from 3* - 4*, all 3 * champed. I have about 6 x 4* that could be champed but have left them sitting at around 220 - 230 (my highest 3* is at around 230) and another 4 very useable ones at around the same level. I have all 4* but the duck, taskmaster and spiderham rostered. Technically I could be fully in 4* land but I'm holding back until I have a bigger useable roster.

Why did I try this? Well I've got to the stage where I'm not as desperate for the HP as before, i.e. there's nobody sitting on the vine that I need a roster spot for. So technically I could go an event without ranking for the hp. I've used all my CP but have 28 LT sitting there. I have rostered the latest 3 rostered, but not really useable. At this moment I don't think there's any point for me to open any more. 

So how am I doing in Stranger Sights? Surprisingly well actually. I did not clear very quickly but tried to clear during the day then the rest before the window closed. It was very slow clearing the required nodes, I used chavez, 3* strange and the required char. First couple of clears on the 5* node was straight forward. The rest I had to use boosts after a couple of wipes. I managed to get t50 on the first day and t10 on the second. Looks like i might hit t50 for the last one too which is a big surprise for me.

I half expected to be outside t100 but maybe I got lucky? Or maybe everyone who should be doing scl 8 is stuck in scl 7? I will try hearts of darkness at scl8 to see if it was by luck that I got such a good ranking and will report back on that. 

It was a lot more fun and enjoyable doing this level, rather than trying to speed through everything. It's kind of put life back into the game. Even if I don't rank in future ones I may just go for this lvl if I have the required 5*. The only issue being I have no time to hit pvp progression. 

jtsings

  First of all congrats on quite an accomplishment!  I wouldn't have thought about even trying SCL 8 when I was at your stage in the game; so props to you for giving it a go!

   However, I really don't want to dissuade you from trying this again but let me try to give you a few reasons why you were able to do what you did in Strange Sights this time around and hopefully this will give you a little more realistic view of what may happen in upcoming PVEs.

   a)  the reason you were able to finish top 10 and top 50 is because each section of Strange Sights is put into 3 sections.  So this means you are not competing against 1000 people but however many people are in your choice of 3 sections.  It could be that you happened to choose a section that only 100 people were in or in a section where most of the people in that section were just trying to do what you are doing but not as successful.  What would be more of an indication of how you did in the event would be your final placement.  If you finished in the top 100 then you would most likely place within the top 100 every day on a regular PVE.

  b)Dr. Strange 3* boosted is a beast!  He's not as effective with tile movers but on events like Strange Sights, where 80% of the opponents fire powers passively, he really shines.  My guess would be that he was the workhorse that significantly helped you get through the event.  Though America Chavez is also extremely useful against non tile movers as well.


   Again I don't want to take away from your accomplishment and honestly it would be interesting to know how you would fare on another SCL 8 event but I would give a word of warning about Heart of Darkness:  The first few days are not too bad, however the last day has what I consider to be to two toughest PVE nodes of all time.  The 5e node is known as the Royal Family Black Bolt 5*, Medusa and Lockjaw.  This is especially difficult because Medusa's constant damage to you doesn't end till she's downed.  If Black Bolt (passively) creates a charged tile in your strongest color your going to take damage every turn if you're not able to match the charged tile.  And if Medusa's countdown tile gets matched and you or the AI matches any attack tiles she creates Lockjaw is going to give you even more damage.  It is a very creative team by the game team but at SCL 8 you may not be able to even pass through it once.    I usually intentionally drop to SCL 7 on this event just because of that node even though I have a champed Okoye; however I'm going to give it a go this time around.  The second really difficult node is the Rider Awakens wave node.  I had difficulty beating this node with my 4* roster in SCL 7 so I would think that you might have a bit of an issue with this with just a 3* roster.  (your 3* boost list is Deadpool 3*, Gamora 3*, Loki, Daken and Black Widow 3*).  If you do happen to try SCL 8 I would really love to hear what team you put together to beat this node.  The 4e and 2e node are quite troublesome as well, if I recall correctly.

  I hope whatever you decide to do that you have fun trying out new combinations to solve the puzzle that Marvel Puzzle quest can be!

P.S. my apologies if you already knew all of this information, since I know you are on the forums quite often but I just wanted to refresh your memory at least.  So if you knew all of this beforehand then I fully support you taking on the challenge.  Truth be told many other people skip the Royal Family and the Rider Awakens node completely, so you might not even need to complete those nodes to score well in the event.  Either way good luck!

DAZ0273

The new boost list kicks in today and as it features 4* Cap Marvel boosted I would give quite a bit of thought into doing whatever you can to boost her up and/or if you can champ her to unleash on Hearts of Darkness. If you have Quake she can help against Kishu or Nightcrawler will teleport out of the way. The rest of the 4 boost list is much of a muchness unless you have them champed.

You don't need to finish the 5E 4 clears or whatever - a couple of clears per day will help as it is very tough but The Rider Awakens is a bit of a different story - it is worth lots of points which you will need if you can't do those 5E clears but is LOTS of waves and is very challenging if you are chasing full progression or placement. I have a very deep 4* roster and it can still cause me problems on a bad boost week.

Jormagund

My roster is at a very similar stage of development, although I only have one four star champable.  I can't play at optimal times so don't normally get a t50 even in SCL 7 and usually play up to 8 if there are lots of goons for Strange to play with, Strange Sights, Honour Among Thieves, Meet R&G spring to mind.  Alternatively if the boost list is good I might try on other events.

If you are playing against goons and haven't considered him I would take in Hawkguy with Strange.  There are usually enough enemy tiles to quickly fill Strange's Blue and his own purple.  They've blitzed everyone this event.

I have got T100 finishes at SCL8 but it's more likely to be in the 100-200 bracket, though this is with sub optimal play and with no 5s rostered yet.  Full clearance should be easy but it usually extends play by about half an hour in my case.

This event was very easy due to Strange being boosted; but overall SCL8 is definitely viable with a good three star roster.

peterdark

Thanks for the heads up on 'The Rider Awakens'. To be honest, in a way i'm dreading it, but another part of me is thinking about forgetting about going for ranking and just have fun. It is very slow going, I wiped a couple of times and had to use a few health packs in Stranger Sights but it was the most fun I had in a long time. Each match (on the essentials) made me feel I could wipe, and the other nodes made me feel I had to worry about matching the right tiles in the right order to save my team from taking a ton of damage. Normally it's just swipe, swipe, swipe and you know you will take all the mobs out in time. 

Hearts of Darkness will be harder and I imagine I will use a lot more health packs but I tend to save them anyway - my SCL7 team usually has at least one true healer to tank to save on them plus I have about 80 of them just sitting there. Like I said earlier, I'm in no rush for the HP anymore, I need roster space for the 5*'s but I don't have enough cp to get many at a time. 

I do have captain marvel sitting at 220, she is fully covered with a couple of saved covers ready to be champed. I guess during the next event I will decide if I should just champ the 4*'s I can for pve or keep them the same level so I can do pvp as well. 

DAZ0273

A boosted CM4 will hit for 20k + damage on her black if that helps

Dogface

And the excellent Energy Manipulation (green) if your strongest colour and the enemies' strongest colour is the same, especially when CM is boosted herself and with other boosts from Gritty or Okoye.

spatenfloot

Unless you play a lot of pvp, there is no reason not to champ your 4s if you have the iso. Having some champed 4 stars will let you do far more than you have so far.

peterdark

spatenfloot said:

Unless you play a lot of pvp, there is no reason not to champ your 4s if you have the iso. Having some champed 4 stars will let you do far more than you have so far.

I only do pvp for the 4* progression rewards. At the moment it's very time consuming, before I would have chavez and a 5 * meat shield and could blitz to 40 in 3 sessions. Now I have to use a fair portion of my roster over the same period but matches are a lot longer.

peterdark

Oh, and just an update, Stranger Sights I got T50 overall. Last day I was ranked between 20-30, overall maybe mid 20's - is there any way of checking your exact ranking?

I could have pushed for higher ranking on the last day but was running out of time and needed to do PVP for the bl4de cover as won't have time later. Plus had the sinister six missions to do and the seed teams for the latest pvp. Some days there's nothing to do, some days there's everything to do.

peterdark

Here's an update (quite long). I managed to rank T50 in the first 2 day sub and the 2nd sub, I think i was well within top 20 to be honest. Quite simple for me as my team for most nodes consisted of Storm, chavez and 3 * strange and most nodes were just goons.

This last sub is a bit more interesting as all the essentials are tile movers. Not been through all the nodes but went to the hardest ones first after doing the pre-requisites.

The Royal Family as what @jtsings mentioned was by far the hardest. This is the 5 star essential and started with Storm, Chavez and 3 * daredevil. First two clears were straightforward. Lockjaw first, keep matching the charged tiles which fed chavez for the crits. Crit with a 5 * boosted = Nice damage. Throw out a stun if I had spare blue, at this point normally just medusa and blackbolt left but at this point chavez/storm combo had already done the damage.

Then 3rd and 4th clears it really steps up, dropped daredevil and popped in 3 * Gamora for her stun. I did think about peggy but I needed to stun both blackbolt and medusa and I probably wouldn't have enough blue until lockjaw was taken out. Had a couple of wipes but they were close. Used 1 all colour ap boost so crits were being created almost straightaway and managed to do both 3rd and 4th. 

The rider awakens was the one I was worried about up to this point. To be fair, after reading what  @DAZ0273 posted I was going to lvl CM and champ her before giving this a go but didn't want to risk PVP progression taking up even more time due to the MMR. So I thought I'd try with a team of chavez, patch and 3* strange first to see how it went. Not sure if I was lucky but used patch to tank (can't remember what support he has on but +dmg on red and green), chavez for the crits and strange for the heals. Patch did get downed on the last wave but that was my own stupidity as I could have stunned and finished them using active powers, but had so much red built up that chavez was hitting like a truck after patch went and she was tanking red. I have a while before the slice finishes so will go back and finish the other nodes.

From these last 2 events I have learnt a lot. If there are any players who have started making the transition to 4 * land, so soft capping but having all 4*'s rostered, starting to feel a bit lost from all the grinding for HP, then I would highly recommend going up to SCL8 if you have the 5 * essential. It's harder, you might not be able to rank each time but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The feeling is similar to beating that node in prologue against Juggs if you can remember that far back. Was difficult but quite satisfying afterwards.

The other main thing I learnt is that I would be lost without chavez and 3 * strange. Strange is a given as his passive rips through goons. Chavez just speeds things up with her crits. Put her with the boosted 5 * and matches deal more damage than powers. Both Gambit and Storm are still sitting at lvl 250 as well. 

 

DAZ0273

Deadpool v MPQ is coming up and that will represent a different challenge for you, lots of tile movers.

shardwick

DAZ0273 said:

Deadpool v MPQ is coming up and that will represent a different challenge for you, lots of tile movers.

Sub 1 sucks but sub 2 is more forgiving.