Finished prologue except ragnarok. Nothing to do now?

Tanglefoot

DAZ. There must be a logic somewhere, but I don’t get it. In the current Spider’s Ilk PvP event, I had a total of 4 wins and like 20 losses. Sitting at rank 88 with 132 points. My last 15+ matches were all losses. I had not started a battle in the better part of a day since none of the shown enemies were anywhere close to my level - all multiple 200+ heroes. Pretty sure I have ZERO a chance against a player with 270 lvl Medusa and 200+ Polaris... yet that is pretty much all I can see. Then, suddenly, I get beat 2 consecutive times by a player with all 3 characters over lvl 300, he is ranked top 10 in the event, with over 500 points. How could I possibly have been visible to him, how could I possibly be visible to him twice, how could he possibly get any points from me, and how can I possibly lose 30+ points to him in each battle? There is no world in which that makes any sense at all.

DAZ0273

In PvP you can theoretically get matched up against any other player in your time slice. Not knowing what your roster looks like, it is difficult to try and work out what is going on with your MMR. Remember theories on MMR are just that, the Devs have never told us how it actually works and we believe they tweak it on a regular basis.

If you suffered 15 defeats then your points tally must have been higher at some point? Possibly players had queued you at that point and hit you later.

When consecutive hits start to come in, this is normally a sign that you have broken MMR and are visible on more players radars. It is also normally a sign to shield as your float point has been passed and you have a bullseye on your chest unless you have strong defensive team. Once you have been beaten down to a certain point you will find the attacks stop and your MMR is protecting you again.

The nature (and seeming unfairness) of how points are lost and gained in PvP is probably the biggest reason it is not popular with younger rosters. It is also why we have the Wins Based alternative that players can try and grind out.

helix72

Tanglefoot said:

Finished #11 in the “Most Wanted” event. Was #4 with less than 2 minutes left. How do I lose 58 points to an enemy with ALL 3 heroes over level 300. The event page showed that if I beat him I would have gotten 42 points. How is that even possible????

I'm not entirely clear from your post exactly what you're saying happened, but let me take a stab:

1) You were in 4th place with 2 minutes left
2) You were not shielded, you were actively still hitting other targets
3) When the event finished, your rank was 11th

So two things can happen:

1) You can lose points. If you're hitting someone else, you're not shielded, which means you could simultaneously be getting hit by others.
2) Others can gain more points than you. The most I've gotten from hitting a target is just over 70 points, and if I'm close to a cutoff (t10, t25, etc) I will keep one of those targets saved and break at the end just before the event ends to see if I can push over the threshold. The risk, of course, is that someone else has ME q'd and hits me during that time.

One last bit. Don't trust the main screen, it sometimes lags. Be sure to click on your rank to see the list as that will ping the server and show where you really stand. Same with the points you get for hitting others: what is displayed is not necessarily what you will get.

HoundofShadow

Do this for the next PvP and we could answer you.

Note down:
1) which ending time slice and scl you chose
2) how many hours are left when you first entered the PvP. You can look at the top right hand corner.
3) Note down your position and points when you decide to stop playing. Take note of the number of hours left.
4) Note down your position and points when you decide to start playing. This will be the part where you will see hit notifications or your losses. Take note of the number of hours left.
5) Repeat step 3 and step 4 until the PvP ends or until you decide to put a shield that protects you from point loss until PvP ends.

Optional:
You mention level 300 plus characters hitting you. Tell us who and what the top 5 characters you have in that PvP. Please include boosted characters. 

Once you do this, it will be easier for everyone to help you.

Tanglefoot

Really frustrated by the puzzle challenge event. Too many of the levels are impossible. How do you gather and keep 25 red gems with a level 66 3/0/1 Hawkeye? Or how do you gather 18 green from an enemy team which can completely deplete your green with 1 attack when there is no chance of killing 3 enemies with 30,000 health when my characters have 7000 health. I guess the puzzle quests are only made for players with high level heroes...

KGB

Actually you never kill any of the enemy heroes in Puzzle Challenge. I think I once accidentally killed one. The goal isn't to kill them.

Your roster just isn't developed enough to beat most of the nodes since you are still a 2* player transitioning into 3* land. Once you are fully in 3* land you should be able to beat most (maybe all) nodes.

KGB

Tanglefoot

Yes that is exactly where I am. Now have 13 2* heroes championed, and crawling through the low 100s. I have three 3*s championed - dr. Strange, iron fist, and Rocket&Groot- but those are my only 3 heroes above level 155 (all 167-172). should R3G be 5/3/5? So far I have been disappointed, but perhaps I am not using him right? My favorite character is still Dr. Strange, so when he is on the board I am not using ANYONE else’s blue - 3 turn stun and 5400 damage ftw.

I am dropping 3* covers like crazy from events, elite, daily rewards, and standards even. But most of them fall in what appears to be generally accepted as the worst 12-15 3*s, so not better than what I already have. Pretty sure covers like Sentry, Colossus, Elektra, and Squirrel Girl are low value for me unless I get to the point I have roster slots just sitting around.

dropped a 4*Captain America and a 4*Spider Woman from event vaults before the vaults expired. Looks like I seem to be earning enough hero points I can add a new roster slot about every 5-7 days. I have enough shards for 2 covers of 4* Polaris, but I don’t think it makes sense to rush her and take up a roster slot I can use on a worthwhile 3*.

sitting in 17 heroic tokens, 5 mighty and 3 legendaries. Expect I will be sitting on those for quite a while.

KGB

I run R3G at 5/5/3. The blue count down seems to get matched too often and takes a long time to get the AP for. Plus you are always bringing Strange so you are using his Blue over theirs.

R3G's best use is as a tank since he true heals. His green does OK damage and some board shake but it's his ability to eat a nuke and then heal (with board shake) that is the reason you put him on your team.

That said, since you also have Fist champed, in pick-2 PvP you'll want to use Strange/Fist and only use R3G when one of the others is dead or near dead.

Otherwise you are progressing nicely by getting enough HP to roster another character every other week. As your noticing, it's starting to rain covers (2 & 3*) faster than you can roster them. While it's annoying to sell some it also tells you that you are getting plenty to cover them once you do roster them.

Sentry/Colossus/Elektra/Squirrel Girl are indeed bottom of the barrel in 3* land. No rush to roster them. Also no reason to convert Polaris shards into covers until you have way more than 2 covers worth. You'll be wanting at least 8+ to make it worthwhile (unless you draw a Polaris from a Heroic token in which case your rostering her).

KGB

Tanglefoot

Finished 857 out of 1000 in the puzzle quest. Too high for my characters. 

Finished 9 overall in my slot for the Lost in Time event. Ended up collecting 3 covers for Ares, and like 7 for Moonstone, plus others.

Tanglefoot

Don’t understand the fire and eyes event. Why does my cyclops always have the stupid useless yellow power and my enemy cyclops always has the black dark Phoenix power that kills my teammates and drops half my cyclops’ health in 1 attack? Is there a trick to getting the black power? I thought it said when my teammates are gone it becomes black, but the enemy cyclops still uses black while they have 2 teammates, so that’s not it... what am I missing?

KGB

If the enemy cyclops teammates are all stunned/airborne then that counts as him being 'alone' and lets him change into Black.

I don't remember if he transforms back once they are unstunned/land (I think he doesn't).

KGB

Tanglefoot

Struggling with matchmaking on the Cage Match Vs. I STARTED the event being teamed against players who played Cage and 2 level 300+ heroes. I now have a total of 6 heroes over lvl 150, with my highest, 3* Dr, Strange, at 173. I then proceeded to lose 9 straight matches before I got a single match that was competitive. Luckily I started with 0 points, and losing 9 cost me no points. Got me to 12 points after beating Cage, and a Dr. Strange and Cyclops, both over level 200. Not sure how that was only a 12 point win, since it was my first. 

Then lost another 6 before winning 3 in a row. Total of 4 wins. I have now been attacked and lost probably 15 matches, and started and retreated from another 10 - for ABOUT another 25 straight losses. How am I STILL getting matched against teams with Cage, a level 230 Beta Ray Bill and a level 267 Polaris? Most players near me on the ranking list has a dramatically worse roster than me - many of the top 10 have a weaker roster than me. I am at like 4wins and 40+ losses, and can’t buy a win...

is there some magic to forcing a more favorable match-up other than continuing to throw matches? At my current rate, I am losing 70-80 points from losses to gain 40ish back with a win, and a single win just seems to get me even harder opponents. Should I just chalk this event up to **** luck and forget about it rather than trying to lose until I get matches which are even slightly competitive? Dropping points here also hurts my Mind Season ranking, right? Am I better off with 117 points and 4 wins than 88 points and 7 wins?

And, I dropped a 4* Ghost from an Elite crate I think. I don’t see any rankings for A 4* Ghost, but looking at her, the fact she requires you to fire a 10gem purple THEN a 10 gem red to have any apparent value suggests to me she has limited use.

And I also dropped a 4* Iceman. Rostered him.

Now at 48 roster slots. And up to 12 mighty tokens and 6 legendaries. So tempted to open, but, yes, holding them.

Sithforever

4* Iceman is pretty good and good job on holding on the Latest legend tokens. Playing Cage could drop you in the Season so watch where you are at for sure. That being said maybe try to get higher up as all tokens are nice to get from rewards. 

DAZ0273

I don't think it is entirely clear what is happening as the information HoundofShadow suggested be provided has not been such as time slices, start and end times. However here are a few more theories on PvP:

1.) There is a conflicting theory upon what MMR bases it's matchmaking in terms of character levels - base or boosted. I am in the base level camp - the reason for this is that I believe the boosts are not taken into account in the algorithm - it makes far more sense that MMR is decided at the base rate rather than the weekly changing boosted one. However what this does mean is that if you have a limited size roster, you are going to suffer when others have boosted characters that you do not. The enemy may have a base level Scarlet Witch that is say 170 which matches up with your highest level characters but if she is boosted in the event then she gets 100+ levels on her but retains her base level MMR. This explains how you can get matched against boosted characters.

2.) You say you encountered a lvl 230 Beta Ray Bill but I suspect this was a typo as 5* start at lvl 255. Another theory is that single cover 5* are not counted in MMR so long as they have not been leveled (it is possible to level a single cover 5* to level 270 immediately) you might therefore find yourself matched against 1 cover 5* players using this as a "meat shield" and for match damage.

3.) The 267 Polaris is a bit of an outlier but possibly this player had broken MMR and so was able to see your team?

4.) I refer back to helix72's post above - when you play can determine a LOT. In PvP, there are generally a lot of late climbers and if you are out late in the event unshielded when most other players are shielded, you are much more likely to appear on climbing players radars as a target because the number of targets has shrunk thanks to those behind shields. Likewise - if you climb early in an event and go past your float point, you will see the hits coming in fast and furious by those starting later - this is normally a cue to shield but obviously a starting player such as yourself will not have excess HP.

5.) Is there a way to manipulate MMR? Yes, however it requires that you leave your strongest characters in the box until later on. The way Defensive MMR works is that the strongest team last used by you is what is left out on defence. Whilst we don't know what our Defensive team is, we can try and manipulate it as follows: Start the event so that you get "seed" teams - these should be beatable with the loaner and champed 1* or low 2*. Beat all the seed teams, once you start to get "real" teams - wait. You should be a juicy target that will draw in some hits from lower tier players. You can then beat these retaliations with slowly increasing strength teams hopefully for good points until you finally reach the point where you need your top level guys. This strategy works much better if you have a bigger roster that you can cycle through and obviously you need to put out teams that can win but are not so strong that you are a deterrent on Defence.

6.) The unhappy truth - PvP is BRUTAL to players such as yourself. Until you build a wider set of 3* characters to help with chances of being boosted every event, you are going to continue to struggle in PvP. 4* PvP (which does not happen all that often) tends to be particularly rough for young rosters.

Anyway, there are many many players who can correct any of the above or expand upon it and a lot of this is all just guesswork but hopefully it helps you a little bit.

Tanglefoot

Thanks guys.

I think I have to accept that while they are likely part of the math, my actual player level, and at least the boosted level of my team appear to have a relatively small affect on my matches. I don’t know the math, but to the devs, “hero level” appears to be a very small part of it.

I suspect a significant amount of the attacks I receive are from players who happen to be high level who I splatted on to try to hurt my matchmaking formula. If I am seeing ONLY heroes in the 300s, i look for the highest reward level - 50+, 60+ once in a while, and go get myself swatted, retreating after a turn, taking a loss, maybe losing a character, and losing 3-8 points. If I do this 6 or 7 times I can usually see at last competitive teams appear on my MM again. I lose 35-45 points if I am lucky.

then, win my 2 or 3 matches, gaining 60-140 points, until the MM is out of control, then lose 6 or 7 again. Inevitably, some/many/most of those 6 or 7 splats retaliate. Repeating this 6 or 7 splattt and 3 wins probably has me a record of like 15 wins and 70+ losses, but it does have me those 15 wins and 383 points, ranking me #21 on my Cage Match, and #34 in the current Mind Season. 3 steps forward, 2 steps back...

Tanglefoot

Also dropped the 4* Scorpion in the Mind Season at 75 wins, but have not found a ranking or readable review on him. Given my limited roster space, is he worth keeping?

At 1 cover he is not impressive, but he looks like he could be productive at like 5/3/5, but I am a LONG way from boosting him with more covers...

KGB

Scorpion is a decent 4*. Not meta though so not worth rostering over 3* that you still don't have.

KGB

DAZ0273

Yeah - see those heroes probably aren't really in the 300 levels, they are probably just boosted for that week. With the possible exception of a select bunch of meta characters, nearly everybody is going to lean on the boosted list as much as they can. This continues right through the 4* tier and only really ends once you get decent 5*/champed 5* which make mostly everybody else irrelevant. Until then though - the boost list is king.

We used to have regular updates about which characters were boosted on a weekly basis but, well, there was also a time when everybody wanted an OML yellow cover.

Retaliations - see if you can beat a team once then you can beat a team twice but what sounds like it is happening to me is that the team you beat first time around is not the one your opponent hits you back with. Otherwise you could just trade hits all event. Rather than just make judgements on the team offered up - check the players roster before you commit. They could be hiding some nasty surprises...

Now whilst it is probably true that you can be selectively choosy about who you pursue and champ in the massively overpopulated 4* tier, the truth is that building out your 3* is going to be key if you want to play PvP. You'll need a core group of them so that you have a chance of at least having somebody boosted every week.

Stick with it. At this stage, your major focus will be Story mode and Deadpool Daily Quests but if you build a few decent 3's to back up your A team, you will find Versus mode opens up more. The good news is that your MMR should stabilise the more characters you can get champed. Believe me, there are a *lot* of MPQ players out there who overlevelled characters, especially their 5's and were left with months worth of broken MMR which would only be fixable by selling characters. Your progression is steady - don't get too disheartened by PvP - Nobody tells you how to play it and the game gives not one iota of information on what is going on.

Tanglefoot

DAZ thanks for the post.

I think I really have to get over the fact that hero level and player level are not critical parts of matchmaking. It seems to me like they SHOULD be, but they are just not.

Despite all that, I have managed to fare okay in the PvP events. I finish the vast majority of them in the top 25, and have been top 10 in a couple. I finished higher than I thought I would in the last Infinity Stone season, and am currently hanging around #40 in the current MindStone season, though it does take a lot of work to get there given that I have to lose so many matches to find competitive opponents. 

for the most part, I feel ok tackling PvP enemies who are 30-40 levels above me (so 200-210, compared to my 129-173 teams) a few more, depending on what heroes they are. But there are exceptions - the first time my entire team got wiped out by a sub 200 Polaris I figured that out right quick.

my PvP go to teams are either
3* dr, strange lvl 173 5/3/5
3* IM40 lvl 168 5/3/5
2* Original Black widow lvl 129 3/5/5 < her ability to steal good AP often makes the difference to fire a second red strike from IM, or a second, or even third blue stun from Dr.S. If I can get in 3 turn stuns on 2 enemy heroes it’s all over but the crying’

or 
3* dr, strange lvl 173 5/3/5
3* Luke Cage lvl 166 5/3/5
3* IronFist lvl 167 3/5/5
They are better at absorbing strike tile damage, and they hit hard for the big boys.

darkman84

Hi, someone probably already mentioned that, but I notice you mentioned "a record of 15 wins", so I'm not sure. If you prejoin a PVP and/or start it right at the event start hour, you will very likely encounter 8-10 dummy opponents with very low levels. Those are easy wins, which can help you get higher in progression rewards.

At your level I was mostly focused on reaching at least 25-28 wins, as 25 was HP reward, and 28 some 3 cover. I mostly played right at the beginning, and hour or so before the end to secure some better placement. I got used to encounter opponents with higher levels, it's mostly a constant thing in PVP, only thing which will make PVP somewhat easier for you is, like guys before me mentioned - more developed roster.

Btw. I think that your results in PVP are good, if you're able to hit T25/T10 each time. I understand you'd like to get higher, but it just needs time. Like most stuff in this game. So just be patient and good luck!