Break the hoard or not ?

hothie

justsing said:

hothie said:

justsing said:

hothie said:

Okay. I can see that. The larger sample size you have the closer you get to actually meeting the 1:7 odds. Although I suppose that works both ways, too. I could go a freakish 6 for 18 and quit, knowing that the last 2 are extremely likely to be 4*s. Also, 100 pulls means saving up 2500 CP. So I would in effect be saving for the 2022 AS, then, right? I don't think  that's necessarily the best strategy for me at the moment for where I am in the game. I'll keep that in mind, though. Thanks.

Yeah, the different thing about this store and also the Fan Favorites store during Anniversary is that meta 4*s have boosted odds. So for any 4* rosters who don't have Polaris, Medusa, R4G, Juggernaut, America, and Karnak champed, it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend some CP here. But if you already have most of those champed and don't have a ton of CP, it'd likely still be better to keep hoarding until Anniversary. 

As for CP earn rate, if you're playing SCL7+ PVE to full progression and SCL7+ PVP to 13 wins or 500 pts, you'll earn about 72 CP a week. When we get to Anniversary in 3 months, you'll have at least 864 more CP in your hoard, which isn't too shabby, and that's not even accounting for the CP you get from other venues like champ rewards. 

Thank you for that. I have every 3* champed, so I'm not doing too badly in the champ rewards dept. Unfortunately my alliance isn't all that great for giving out CP. I usually end up giving more than I receive. And with the Spider Silk event, I just started doing SCL9, and holy cow the rewards are much better! (Tangent) Where I struggled in SCL8 are the higher levels of the 5* node. I knew I didn't have the 5* for this event, so I figured Why not? I may try and stay with SCL9 in PvE, even if I have the 5*, because the rewards are so much better overall, and for the rest of the storyline, I'm doing pretty well, which makes me think I can handle it.

But, your math makes me think I might be able to make the 1000 CP threshold when the AS comes about, so that gives me some hope. I know it's only 40 pulls, but if I can stay to the 1:7, that's still 5 5* covers, and a bunch of good 4*s, so that will be nice.

If you have them, champed Polaris + R4G + Juggs/Medusa will get you through most of SCL9 PVE. Some of the 5e nodes can be rough, but I was able to get through most of them with Polaris + Medusa using +2 all AP boosts and +2 blue AP boosts to stun the enemy ASAP. If you don't mind the extra time (and sometimes health pack usage) in SCL9, I'd say it's worth it for the bump in resources.

I run Polaris Juggs almost exclusively. R4G only has 5 covers, but they're 5 yellow, so they become my 3rd for the bulk of the story line. Medusa is 4/1/3, but I haven't played a lot with her yet. Getting there, though. Yeah, it helped that I have Monica champed for this arc, as she is the 4*. I'll stick with SCL9 until I get beat up too much, which will let me know that I can't handle it anymore. SCL8 5* nodes were brutal at the higher levels, so I expect SCL9 to be worse. Makes me a better player, though, right?

fractalvisions

hothie said:

But why is it "better"? To me, mathematically, it's the same. The 5* odds are the same across all of the stores. The number of CP will be the same. I see it like this:

 Realistically, I hope to get to 500 CP for the AS store. Assuming 25 CP per pull, that's 20 pulls, right? Along the way, I'm earning the CP. So, if I spend 100 at a time in 5 different stores, I still get the same 20 pulls, with the exact same odds of pulling a 5*. The only difference I see is that 20 pulls in the AS should get me more covers of a particular 5*, which I get in 5* land is the focus. But i'm not there yet, nor will I be for quite a while, I think. And even if we go with 1:7 odds, 20 pulls is still an expected value of ~3 5* covers. That's likely to be 1-2 in 2 separate 5* characters, which if I had spent it along the way, is about what I would get anyway.

Yes, the difference is that you're aiming to get multiple covers of the same character. At your stage a single cover 5* is already useful just from the increased match damage, but personally I got annoyed by having a lot of single covered 5* as I always felt like I was missing out by not having some of their powers. Of course it depends on the cover. A yellow Kitty cover is a lot more useful than a red Kitty cover, for example. So I prefer to try and get at least one cover of each colour to make them feel more useful. 

If you really don't care about having single cover 5*, then some might argue that you'd be better pulling from classics since those are only 20CP. But then, of course, you're greatly reducing your chance of getting the meta characters.

Phumade

hothie said:

 And I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just trying to fully understand the hoarding mindset and see if it is the right call for me at this moment. It may be later, for sure, but I'm not convinced yet it's the right call for now. I'm just trying to analyze the "what ifs" of the different thought processes. 
.

The is the main things to keep in mind.

the mega hoards > 7000cp are purposeful strategies to get to 550 for specific chars.   One thing to keep in mind is that there is special case 5* cover swaps for these Uber whales.  I’ll let them goto into details later how ll 550 swaps work.  In addition,  these players generally has an establish 5* playstyle and position in their br.  So they are already well established players who understand the limits of what their roster is.  They are usually well known grinders who are looking to out the cherry on top of the mpq sundae


hoards around 3k 4K are just trying to make sure they can CHAMP in one pull session.  Don’t forget this nugget was established early in5* history.  So it was extremely important to get to450. And not risk allowing a ll to slip to classics.

so your right to say pulls are the same whether it’s now or in 3 weeks.  But the timing and clustering of when you harvest the 5* matters a lot in terms of first, champing and 2nd growing the 5*to a viable level.

if your confident on you cp acquire rates,  you can certainly open ll as you and still end up at the same place as a”mini hoarder”

but the super hoarders are trying first to get a current set to 550 and use the balance to fix other holes in the 5* roster

HoundofShadow

You can only swap covers if and only if you have all 3 5* in Latest Legends at 550. Then, you can swap the "excess" cover for any 5* of your choice.

If you get all 3 5* in any special cp store to 550, you won't be able to swap even if you have excess covers. In that case, those players will simply roster a dupe of that 5*. It will take about 1.5 years or less for top rosters to 550 characters. You need about 60,000 cp or 2400 LTs equivalent to do that.

It will take me about 2 years and 2 months to do that. 2 years + of not opening tokens is pretty miserable. 

If you can acquire 4 LTs per day on average, you can pull as you go and you don't need to hoard. If you play SCL 10, you might need fewer than that because you get about 2.5 to 3 covers from SCL 10. 

fractalvisions

Phumade said:

hothie said:

 And I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just trying to fully understand the hoarding mindset and see if it is the right call for me at this moment. It may be later, for sure, but I'm not convinced yet it's the right call for now. I'm just trying to analyze the "what ifs" of the different thought processes. 
.

The is the main things to keep in mind.

the mega hoards > 7000cp are purposeful strategies to get to 550 for specific chars.   One thing to keep in mind is that there is special case 5* cover swaps for these Uber whales.  I’ll let them goto into details later how ll 550 swaps work.  In addition,  these players generally has an establish 5* playstyle and position in their br.  So they are already well established players who understand the limits of what their roster is.  They are usually well known grinders who are looking to out the cherry on top of the mpq sundae


hoards around 3k 4K are just trying to make sure they can CHAMP in one pull session.  Don’t forget this nugget was established early in5* history.  So it was extremely important to get to450. And not risk allowing a ll to slip to classics.

so your right to say pulls are the same whether it’s now or in 3 weeks.  But the timing and clustering of when you harvest the 5* matters a lot in terms of first, champing and 2nd growing the 5*to a viable level.

if your confident on you cp acquire rates,  you can certainly open ll as you and still end up at the same place as a”mini hoarder”

but the super hoarders are trying first to get a current set to 550 and use the balance to fix other holes in the 5* roster

You're maths seems a little off. To get a 5* from 0 covers to max champ just from a special store will take approximately 113*3*7*25 = 59325CP. To champ will take approximately 13*3*7*25 = 6825CP. (This is obviously all assume a nice even distribution of covers). 

Also note that hothie is talking about the fan favourites stores, so LL are not going to help with that.

Sekilicious

When should one start hoarding? Is there a generally accepted timeframe?

BlackBoltRocks

Sekilicious said:

When should one start hoarding? Is there a generally accepted timeframe?

It's all up to you. The main reason for hoarding is, as you've seen many times, is to amass enough resources to cover three 5* at the same time, so as to counteract RNG as well as matchmaking MMR.

If you wanted to start now, you could do so. Maybe you decide that you want to save your resources for Anniversary, so you begin hoarding. Maybe you have covered Wanda, and you decide to skip over Knull and/or Ronan, so you hoard until both of them are out of Latests. It's all your choice.

Sekilicious

I guess I didn’t phrase my question correctly.  When did you guys start hoarding? I’m interested in personal reasoning, mostly. If anyone is willing to share. 

BlackBoltRocks

Sekilicious said:

I guess I didn’t phrase my question correctly.  When did you guys start hoarding? I’m interested in personal reasoning, mostly. If anyone is willing to share. 

Lol your two questions are totally different. It’s not a matter of phrasing.

HoundofShadow

I hoarded twice: first year of playing the game, followed by last year. I started hoarding again because my cp/LT income aren't enough for me to pull as I go. Back then, I could get them to around 8-10 covers before shards existed and before they left LTs. Once I'm confident of CP/LT income, I'll pull instead of hoard.

hothie

Sekilicious said:

I guess I didn’t phrase my question correctly.  When did you guys start hoarding? I’m interested in personal reasoning, mostly. If anyone is willing to share. 

For me, you'd have to go back all the way to....well, Monday, or so. I see people talk on here about the Anniversary Store, so I wanna see what I can do with that when it comes around. I hope to have a mini-cache (possibly 1000CP) saved up for then. It will be dipping my toe into Hoard Lake to test out the waters for future savings, so to speak.

Sarcasm aside, I'm curious to see what the answers to your question will be as well. 

Phumade

Sekilicious said:

When should one start hoarding? Is there a generally accepted timeframe?

The honest answer is that 220+ SR players roll in resources.  It’s actually a lot of clicks to go through and open up all the stuff.  The vaults are especially tedious, so those tokens always pile up.

So if your a big 500 tier roster,  you already compete at a high tier so you can let the cp just accumulate.  It’s surprisingly easy if you know you can already keep pace.  It’s why wars of attrition are pointless at the high tiers.  Everyone has endless hp, boosts and gold.

justsing

In general, you should mostly be hoarding unless you're in the 3*-4* or 4*-5* transition phase. With dilution, there really isn't much reason to be spending CP in Classics. If you're in the 3-4* transition and need covers for meta 4*s, you should hoard for stores like Fan Favorites during Anniversary where meta 4*s have boosted odds. Once you have meta 4*s champed, you should go back into hoarding mode until you're ready to start the 4*-5* transition. 

Here is how I approached the 4*-5* transition on my alt account (Kitty champed; Colossu5, 5witch, and Knull finished but not champed; BRB almost finished). I pull Latests only when I need a single cover of a new 5* and then continue hoarding LTs. This allows me to play the 5e node in PVE and still save some LTs. I was able to accumulate 200+ LTs in time to pull and finish Colossu5, 5witch, and Knull. For CP, I hoard for special stores with multiple meta 5*s, e.g. Fan Favorites.

On my main account, I've gotten to the point where I can cover Latest 5*s with LTs only, so I save my CP for good special stores. 

entrailbucket

You should hoard if you want to be competitive/win stuff, and you don't want to spend a ton of money to accomplish that.  Hoarding is the way to achieve that goal, if that's your goal.

However, you should make sure that's actually your goal.  You can't beat this game.  It doesn't end, and it doesn't ever get easier.  As your roster gets stronger the game gets harder, and the other players you're competing with get even more competitive.  You have to work harder to keep your place.

A lot of people hoard and optimize because they've heard that's the only way to play.  It's not.  It's the only way to compete.  Before you decide to play that way, make sure that competition is what you want, because once you get on the treadmill there's no getting off. 

Many players end up dissatisfied with the grind and come to resent the game because they thought building a better roster would somehow free them from the grind.  This is just not true -- the more you improve, the more grind there is. 

Make sure you have a personal goal, you know which parts of the game you find fun, and then choose a strategy that supports that goal and will make playing fun for you.  Don't choose a strategy that supports someone else's goal because they told you it's the only way.

justsing

entrailbucket said:

You should hoard if you want to be competitive/win stuff, and you don't want to spend a ton of money to accomplish that.  Hoarding is the way to achieve that goal, if that's your goal.

However, you should make sure that's actually your goal.  You can't beat this game.  It doesn't end, and it doesn't ever get easier.  As your roster gets stronger the game gets harder, and the other players you're competing with get even more competitive.  You have to work harder to keep your place.

A lot of people hoard and optimize because they've heard that's the only way to play.  It's not.  It's the only way to compete.  Before you decide to play that way, make sure that competition is what you want, because once you get on the treadmill there's no getting off. 

Many players end up dissatisfied with the grind and come to resent the game because they thought building a better roster would somehow free them from the grind.  This is just not true -- the more you improve, the more grind there is. 

Make sure you have a personal goal, you know which parts of the game you find fun, and then choose a strategy that supports that goal and will make playing fun for you.  Don't choose a strategy that supports someone else's goal because they told you it's the only way.

It's not just about competing. Hoarding to get more levels for meta 5*s like Okoye, Apoc, BRB, Kitty, etc. will make PVE faster and easier for you, especially if you're already playing SCL10 or wanting to move up there. It doesn't free you from the grind, but it'll reduce the time and frustration. That's a QoL improvement imo even if you're not chasing placement.

But I absolutely agree with entrailbucket's last paragraph RE: making sure you have a personal goal and choosing a strategy to support that. 

entrailbucket

I do agree with you, but the most important thing you said there is "it doesn't free you from the grind."  So many players don't realize that going in, and the expectation that it will creates resentment. 

The devs keep us locked into the game by constantly keeping us chasing -- either chasing the next character, or chasing the guy ahead of us, or outrunning players behind us.  But the chase never ends, and the game doesn't significantly change once you've reached some goal.  The only thing you can ever "win" is a new goal to chase.

If grinding PvE is not fun for you now, it's *never* going to be fun, even with the best roster.  It might get a little easier, but it's not going to go away, and if you want to keep up you'll need to keep doing it, forever. 

If playing PvP is not fun for you, but something you do just to earn rewards so you don't "fall behind" other players, you're never going to enjoy it.  Even with the best roster in the game it'll never be fun.

Sekilicious

Yeah, I have about 40 4* either champed or waiting iso. I know some would hoard now, others would wait, and some would never hoard. I doubt there is a truly optimal path. I am thinking of doing what holthie suggested and hoarding cp for about 50 pulls for the next Kitty store. I also want to roster all the 5* so I’m hesitant to stop with the classic store all together 

Phumade

Sekilicious said:

Yeah, I have about 40 4* either champed or waiting iso. I know some would hoard now, others would wait, and some would never hoard. I doubt there is a truly optimal path. I am thinking of doing what holthie suggested and hoarding cp for about 50 pulls for the next Kitty store. I also want to roster all the 5* so I’m hesitant to stop with the classic store all together 

Very realistic and achievable.  I personally always want to have 3kish available for any important store.  Of course all advice depends on your personal situation, but with every 5* champed, full farms, my focus is on leveling meta chars to ideal levels.

my personal definition of important is 2meta tier chars and  b/c tier char.  The target goal is get meta chars to 500 and then let feeders grow them to 550.

meta for me is apoc, okie, sw , collossus , class.
b class is DD/jj/Thor class
c lass is cable, BB, ha ok class

No class is rescue, wasp, banner.

TLDR
anytime you see 2 meta tier chars easy choice to break the hoard.  Anytime you see 1D class char give a lot of thought towards hoard till next store

hothie

I had 150 CP saved up, but realized that the meta 4*s in the Summertime Store have better odds, too. I missed that before. So I decided to use my CP in the Summertime Store now and start saving up for the AS again afterwards. Write up is in the Summertime thread, but overall I'm really happy with my pulls.