Finished prologue except ragnarok. Nothing to do now?

KGB

If your ranked #3 with 235 points then you are probably going to struggle to see opponents you can handle because of your #3 ranking. It's still reasonably early in the event (about half over) so lots of people like myself still haven't entered yet. Just keep checking in over the remaining time and you will eventually fall in the rankings a bit and see easier opponents.

Shield sim is a bit different because it runs for a few weeks so again many players haven't entered yet. 1030 is very good points for your roster. You might be able to get as high as 1300 or hit the wins requirement for the 1300 reward but anything beyond that is going to be hard unless you just go for pure wins based (which you can obviously do).

Magneto/Storm/Thor is much better in PvE than PvP because often you just fight goons who can't damage you other than cd's. Your other teams are a much better choice for PvP. Ares is a good partner for your teams over Wolvie/Thor because he can use all 3 of his colors including healing on his Yellow and his Red is an AoE. Ultimately you'll need to develop another good 3* (Fist or Cage) to pair with Daken/Strange before you are able to advance much further in PvP.

KGB

Tanglefoot

Bedtime. Finished the day on Predator and prey. Rank #2. 440 points. 19 wins.
Must be more than 19 losses
one team alone has beat me 4 times - he has 2 players over rank 300 next to his black panther at rank 170ish.

HoundofShadow

Are you playing SCL 3 and what is your shield ranking now?

I think with the implementation of shards and milestone quests, a new approach is needed for new players.

Instead of hoarding, they should be opening all other tokens (except for CP or LT), provided that their goal is to get the best rewards as fast as possible, which means chasing meta characters.

Reasons are they will be able to cover meta character faster by:

1) gaining shards via opening tokens
2) get 4* shards via training 3* and 4* powers
3) hit shield ranking 40 faster so that their "complete 6 daily quests" will start giving 10 4* shards of their choice every day.

Besides these, unlocking scl 8 (sr 47) allow them to grind for 415 4* shards faster. Even though they might not have enough roster slots to roster all of them immediately, at least they have them ready to be rostered in the future.

What do you do with 4* cover via lucky pull? Roster them and replace them with another 4* cover that is about to expire if you are running out of space.

In the beginning, one might mourn the losses of all these 4* covers, but the faster you speed up and place top 10 or 5 in PvPs/PvEs, those placement rewards earned will be more than enough to cover the "losses".

So, after deep consideration, I would recommend players to put Polaris as the first 4* to focus on if their goal is to get the best rewards, including placement rewards, quickly. R4G can be replaced with other characters in the beginning, like Daken or Wolverine. Polaris is going to improve QoLs both in PvPs and PvEs once you hit 1/5/1 as soon as possible.

Tanglefoot

So, when I started this post about 2 weeks ago, I think my highest level character was like 86 and had no one else even at 70. I could not consistently beat DDQ mission 2. I could not consistently beat Ragnarok to finish prologue. I had maybe 1 lucky win in PvP.

I now have 9 2* champions. I am currently “top 30” in both “Perfect Storm” and “Shield Simulator” PvPs. With 7 minutes left in the Yellowjacket event I was #3 with like 15 wins - then fell fast with a series of attacks - ended up with a message that I had ranked in the top 100, but didn’t see where it actually was. I added a roster spot with earned HP and opened 43 heroic tokens at one time. Kept going since the were mostly existing covers. 

The drop also included 2 covers for 4* Carnage. I only rostered him since I got 2 covers at the same time. Is he worth keeping? It sounds like while he looks wicked from a 2 and 3* POV, he is probably not a standout for a 4*. That currently gives me 2 4* covers (with Elsa bloodstone). I also dropped a 4* Talos in my queue this morning - pretty sure it was an elite cover. Also pretty sure he is a poor 4* so do not expect to roster him unless I miraculously get a roster slot.

also today dropped a legendary cover - NOT opening that yet. When is the right time to open a legendary? I think I have covers I could afford to drop if it is worth rostering - like 2* moonstone, or 3* Thor or Spider-Man or quicksilver or daken or Storm (though I do have 4 covers of Storm)

should I plan on championing ALL the 2* I can, even ones I don’t seem to use like moonstone? I can add the covers and not level them if I need to, but should I be thinking “champion all”?

Still confused by the PvP matchmaking. I rarely even see an opponent with levels lower than mine. I will log on, see I lost like 5 battles, and go look at their rosters. My dr strange is now 167, and I have 6 heroes between 100 and 111. But all 5 of the guys who beat me will have like a level 190 storm, and 2 other characters at level 270 or above. Why is someone with a level 320 Chavez and a 270 Deadpool even able to attack me - is it ALL just ranking?
in the Storm PvP yesterday I was at like #12, then was beat by 1 opponent with extra characters both ranked above 300. I fell to 38th with 1 loss. Then I beat a player with ranks like 179/190/202 with my ranks 97/151/167 and jumped from #38 to 36. How can I get beat by a player nearly 2x my levels and fall so far, but beat a player who clearly outranks me but only gain 2 spots? I think PvP is a world of mystery.

and, are there lots of characters or powers who can “interrupt” your turn, or get 2 turns in a row? I am constantly surprised when the game seems to skip my turn - this is not just a time or two, but constantly - like the computer moves a gem makes a single 3 gem match and no cascade, then shoots a power, which should not be possible, since the gem move should be the end of their turn - isn’t it always “shoot powers before moving gems” - it seems to be for me) then My dr. Strange hits with his passive yellow, then the computer moves another gem for another match - wait a minute, that was MY turn to move! I probably saw this over a dozen times finishing the Infinite Pursuit event this morning, against ultron looking robots...

thanks again or the help - your advice has really helped me understand the game better.

DAZ0273

The 2* tier should be your foundation moving forward - you should try and roster and farm (champ, max out rewards, sell, re-roster) as many 2* as you can, this will be your building block to advancing. Talos is terrible. Carnage on his own might actually hurt your game depending on what covers - giving your opponents attack tiles at your level may not be wise.

MMR is not a fixed number. It is a range of values that can stretch based upon not only your roster strength but also when you play and how many points you have. At certain points players "break" MMR and can see more opponents than normal so that might explain your issues.

KGB

That's quite a post. With no paragraph breaks it reads like a giant run on sentence

You've come a long way in 2 weeks with your roster. You at the most fun time of MPQ where you make very meaningful progress in a short period of time.

Here's some answers to your questions or what I read as questions.

1) You should only have opened all 43 heroic tokens if you had spots to roster all the characters. You violated this by getting covers for too many characters. Having to sell covers is not a positive thing even if they are bad characters like Talos. Only open tokens when you have enough hero points for a roster slot. Then you open tokens till you run out of tokens to open OR you get a new hero to roster.

2) Carnage - Keep him because he's one of the better 4* characters (Top 20) because he works very well with other meta characters like Medusa and Polaris.

3) Talos - Drop him, he's garbage.

4) Legendary Tokens - Do not open them. The right time to open Legendary tokens is AFTER you have rostered all the 2 AND 3 star characters and you are starting on the 4* characters. Some would argue you should wait even longer until you are getting close to 5* characters but that's too long in my opinion. For now, just keep hoarding them and don't open any.

5) Do not drop any 2*. You need to roster and champ them all for the rewards (Moonstone awards 3* Hulk covers/shards). Also you need them for PvE as she will be the required 2* character. You should also not drop any 3* either as your goal now is to endlessly increase your roster size.

6) PvP Matchmaking - No one knows exactly how it works other than the Devs. It's based on a secret sauce called MMR. MMR takes into account the average level of your top 3 (some claim 5) characters AND your current score AND your current ranking in the event. Players have guessed/inferred that 5* characters (those 255 5* characters) DO NOT count in your average level IF they remain at level 255 but there is no official confirmation of that.

When you are skipping and looking for teams in PvP the game attempts to match you up against similar opponents. Sometimes there are none (early in events if not enough have joined, players are shielded etc) so you get teams with higher level characters than yours. This is normal and everyone sees this. The higher your point total, the higher above your own team the enemy team will be. So when you have few points the teams will be close to yours and as you increase your point total they will get harder and harder until you can't beat any team you see. This is normal. It's also why I said you can retreat several times in a row immediately after starting battle in order to lose points deliberately in order to find easier opponents.

The reason some REALLY strong teams beat yours is something players call 'breaking MMR'. At certain point totals (known only to the devs), you become visible to VASTLY stronger teams than your own. This value fluctuates based on how early in the event it is AND how many players have signed up AND the point totals of the top teams. Here's an example from my own play. In the current PvP I signed up last night and played until I hit 575 points. My average roster level is 320. By the time I hit 575 points, I was only seeing teams that were all level 400+ and I was ranked 5th. This morning I woke up to see that I was hit several times overnight losing about 150 points. Some of those hits came from teams that had L450-500 characters. That's because last night 575 points broke MMR for me and made me visible to those teams. Today I played several more matches and went up to 700 points before seeing the L400+ teams. That's because more players are in the event and the point totals are higher (700 points isn't even close to T5 now). I also won't be hit by L450-500 teams because I didn't break the new MMR value. Later tonight and tomorrow the MMR value will go even higher and I will be able to return and reach 900 points before I see only L400+ teams but once I cross 850 points I will break MMR and the L500 teams will be able to hit me so I have to quickly win 2-3 battles to go from 820->900 before they knock me down (or I raise a shield). I hope this helps with something that's not easily explained and not well understood by anyone other the devs.

7) Ranking rising/falling - Take a look at the scores, not your ranking. The reason you fell so far was because there is a lot of players bunched up together in the points so losing a few points makes you fall far down. You only rose a small amount because again there may be a large gap between player rankings so 1 battle may not pass many people. Also be aware that you were probably beaten more than 1 time. Each red node represents 1 loss and if a single player hits you more than 1 time you'll only see his red node 1 time so you may not be aware he hit you multiple times.

KGB

Tanglefoot

Thanks for the fast responses.

 Will have to play with the PvP. I tried the “lose a couple matches” on the Yellowjacket event and it seemed to work, along with the strategy to simply roster teammates with high health. The enemy wasted time attacking my support team members while I was hitting his Yellowjacket and mining gems to crush him - it worked like 90% of the time even against players substantially higher than me.

KGB - Erk, yes that was awful - didn’t realize it while editing on my iPad. went back and added some paras.

On the SHIELD Simulator I am still hanging around 1000-1100 points, even though I am up to 56 wins. It feels like that is about my points max since I am attacked often enough to keep me down, but can still squeeze in a couple/few wins per day. Right now - it seems to be 7-10 losses and 2-3 wins per day on offense and usually 1 or 2 wins on defense. Yes, it is frustrating to see the same player with level 320 characters hit me like 4 consecutive times while i am offline - have fallen back to level 37 with another loss so my exact ranking is... fluid...

Timemachinego

I think you're well covered on all your other questions, but nobody answered to what you were seeing in regards to "skipping turns" so I'll take a crack at it!

Some of the Ultron minions (sentry fighters) start the turn by destroying a random half-column if their team has less than 5 attack,defense or strike tiles. Then they'll fire powers if available and finally if there's a tile mover on their turn they'll make their move and that ends the turn. I was pretty confused by it early on as well, but that tile destruction is what is making you think they skipped you.

There's a few other hedge cases that play out like this that you'll eventually run into someday, 4* Rocket & Groot have a countdown tile that provides them with an extra "free" automatic turn to start the round. 5* Carnage also gets this passively.There's also several characters that start the turn with some sort of passive tile color swap or destruction and this can cause cascades similar to what you saw with the Ultron bots.

Tanglefoot

Timemachingo - that could be it for the battles today - the “skipping” was def against ultron bots. I will try to catch that first “clear” next time.

my only remaining issue with the battles is how the sheer randomness of the gem drops can affect your game. I hate going an entire match and never getting a single match in any of my characters’ colors, even when I have 4 or 5 colors covered - at the end of the game, showing 30 black and 24 purple, but 0 green, red, blue, and yellow. Or going the entire game only getting 3 matches while the enemy gets multiple cascades from off the screen every turn.

that, and the fact that I never know whether to call it “purple” or “pink”

DAZ0273

Tanglefoot said:

Thanks for the fast responses.

 Will have to play with the PvP. I tried the “lose a couple matches” on the Yellowjacket event and it seemed to work, along with the strategy to simply roster teammates with high health. The enemy wasted time attacking my support team members while I was hitting his Yellowjacket and mining gems to crush him - it worked like 90% of the time even against players substantially higher than me.

KGB - Erk, yes that was awful - didn’t realize it while editing on my iPad. went back and added some paras.

On the SHIELD Simulator I am still hanging around 1000-1100 points, even though I am up to 56 wins. It feels like that is about my points max since I am attacked often enough to keep me down, but can still squeeze in a couple/few wins per day. Right now - it seems to be 7-10 losses and 2-3 wins per day on offense and usually 1 or 2 wins on defense. Yes, it is frustrating to see the same player with level 320 characters hit me like 4 consecutive times while i am offline - have fallen back to level 37 with another loss so my exact ranking is... fluid...

The more you play PvP, the more you will be able to work out what your rosters "float point" is. This can change from event to event but is normally quite steady and what this means is the amount of points you can safely climb to without becoming visible on stronger rosters radars and then getting repeatedly attacked. If you are playing points based PvP then the minute a flurry of attacks starts hitting usually means you have gone past your float point and you either have the choice of trying to fight and hope you gain more points than you lose or you have to shield to save your points tally and wait until it is safe to put your head up again. SHIELD SIM is normally a toss up as to how you play it - you can either try and charge at the beginning and get as far as you can and then just walk away and watch your points take a battering. Or you can play steadily for wins over the Season and hopefully get what you want. Or you can wait to later to start playing where a lot of players are worth high points. Reaching 2000 points is hard work even for bigger rosters, so don't stress too much but if you stick at it and build your roster you will get there eventually. 

PvP is the most difficult thing in this for new rosters - the game does not explain that having a single character levelled highly above the rest of your roster can be bad, it doesn't tell you that getting hit multiple times is a sign that you have somehow mysteriously become visible to a whole new bunch of players not bothering you before and it definitely does not tell you that certain points expectations are simply out of your reach because getting there might be 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

A quick aside: A good way to measure roster progress is actually DDQ. Getting to a point where you can comfortably beat Behemoth Burrito each day for the 3* cover is a sign of very nice progress. Everything else takes some time but I will trot out the old saying: "MPQ is a marathon, not a Sprint". That said, there is no reason the forum can't help you pick up the pace in the early part of the race.

Tanglefoot

I am definitely bouncing off that “visibility” a lot. As you say - attacks seem to come in flurries. I only really get frustrated with it when the same player with level 320 characters beats me like 4 times in a row. Most of the time I get A battle, but there have been times when it was not 1, but like 8 or 9 in an hour and 20+ in a day.

I have been able to mostly stay at around rank 30 in the PvPs. Much higher than that and attackers are conjured like magic. 67 wins in SHIELD simulator in the last 2.5 weeks...

I expect behemoth burrito is going to be an exercise in frustration - I have been going as far as I can daily, but I have never rostered any character BB has ever required so I have been unable to even try. Most Days, DDQ is simply the first 3 missions. 

Same problem with the basilica event, I have rostered none of the required characters so can really only get in like 2 battles a day or so. Well, 1 today, since you really can’t count me pitching a single level 110-154 2* character against the level 251 5* green goblin

Tanglefoot

Just had a match when the enemy got extra turns. 

The enemy team ONLY had a 2* Daken left. He attacked with a blue swipe. 

My Dr. Strange hit him with a yellow passive. 

He made a single 3blue match.  

Then he attacked with a blue swipe. 

My dr. Strange hit him with a yellow passive. 

He made a single 3yellow match and it became my turn.

so, he moved 3 match 3s with no cascades between my turns - I don’t get it. Was the game counting my drstrange powers firing as MY turn? I know daken converts blue to green on attack, but he made no green matches.

Tanglefoot

I  watched matches very carefully this weekend. The game DEFINITELY sometimes treats dr. Strange’s passive hit as my complete turn, and immediately gives the enemy team a new turn.
the example above was basically:
I use powers.
I move a gem match.
                                          Enemy fires power attack
my dr. Strange fires yellow.
                                          Enemy moves a gem match
                                          Enemy fires a power
my dr. Strange fires yellow
                                          Enemy moves a gem match
I fire a team power I move a gem match.
definitely skipped my turn. I saw this many times this weekend. Sometimes it’s ok, since it the attack is weak my passive dr.strange can heal a weak attack AND hit the enemy hard, but a couple times the matches, cascades, and extra turn was enough to kill my dr. Strange.

Tanglefoot

Hit 75 wins on shield PvP and dropped a 4* Red Guardian. I can’t seem to find any reviews of him - is he any good or at my point in the game is he a waste of a roster spot? 

I don’t plan on claiming him yet, but the milestone quest 1,000,000 Iso8 also has a 4*Kingpin waiting for me. Reviews of him look like he is decent overall, but will not rock 4* world. But, it also appears I can leave him hanging for as long as I want before I claim- kind of like a backup roster spot...

KGB

Red Guardian > Kingpin.

I would not claim Kingpin for a very long time.

Red Guardian is also a luxury at this point in time since you would only have 1 cover for him. You are better off rostering a 3* character who you will get way more covers for and be able to champ.

KGB

P.S. Did your Alliance finish round 7 to get you 3 more Elsa covers?

HoundofShadow

Could you take a video of the bug next time? Is it possible that they made a match-5; thus giving them the extra turn? 

darkman84

I don't use Strange very much lately, but I'm pretty sure his passive (or anyone elses passive) doesn't use up your turn. It just depends on who you are fighting against. There are a lot of characters, or goons which have various passives which may look like an aditional move, but actually is within one enemy turn.

Next time you notice such a strange behavior check all the enemy powers (especially passive ones) - I'm pretty sure there will be an explanation within those.

Of course there is always a possibility of a bug, but if it was as serious as you decribed, it would probably be already reported to the support.

As 4* Red Guardian, he will be essential 4* at least a couple of times in the next few weeks, so if you have a spare slot you can recruit him to have a chance on scoring more points for the PVE event. But other than that he won't be very useful at your current stage of the game. I'd focus on 2* and 3* for now. Just set one of the meta 4* as a favourite, and patiently keep collecting shards for one at a time. This way you won't have to throw away any covers, other than 1*.

Tanglefoot

KGB said:

Red Guardian > Kingpin.

I would not claim Kingpin for a very long time.

Red Guardian is also a luxury at this point in time since you would only have 1 cover for him. You are better off rostering a 3* character who you will get way more covers for and be able to champ.

KGB

P.S. Did your Alliance finish round 7 to get you 3 more Elsa covers?

My alliance finished basilica at around rank 3000. I think I got like 500 iso8, and exactly nothing else - I want to say that makes a 1 cover Elsa a waste of roster space, but since she can hit and stun invisible and airborne enemies, I suspect she will eventually be of value - but that is a way in my future. Personally I was able to complete maybe 5 battles in the entire event since I have exactly 0 of the essential characters they used, and there is no way I can even think about beating any character ranked 250+ in a 1 on 1 match. Even the 3 on 1 boss battle against the lava and snow creatures I only won with my best characters if I was lucky on the gem drops. I probably would have been better off skipping it completely, but realistically spent maybe 12 minutes on it. I guess an event like that built for higher level players is a good excuse to take a couple days off from the game.

MoosePrime

HoundofShadow said:

Could you take a video of the bug next time? Is it possible that they made a match-5; thus giving them the extra turn? 

I wondered about this, too.  But the enemy team doesn't fire powers after a match-5.

@Tanglefoot, Daken's blue changes some tiles from blue to green, could this be causing the appearance of a second turn?

Tanglefoot

MoosePrime said:

HoundofShadow said:

Could you take a video of the bug next time? Is it possible that they made a match-5; thus giving them the extra turn? 

I wondered about this, too.  But the enemy team doesn't fire powers after a match-5.

@Tanglefoot, Daken's blue changes some tiles from blue to green, could this be causing the appearance of a second turn?

MoosePrime 
I thought about that so had been watching carefully. I regularly saw the animation of a moving tile which initiated a match, not just the appearance of a green into a match.

and I first watched for bigger matches and cascades - i feel certain that I have seen it when the enemy did ALL “match 3s” - nothing bigger and no cascades.

I am guessing what someone else said is true - if this was really happening the way it appears to me, I expect it would have been reported - pretty sure I am not that special that it would only be happening to me - but I can’t figure out what is really happening here. Not sure how often people are currently using Dr. Strange in like 75% of their battles these days, so how often someone might even have a chance to notice it.