Grand Experiment 2: Treading Water in the SCL 10 Post-Shardpocalypse

KGB - don't forget about bonus shards. Those end up being pretty significant over that many pulls.

For whatever reason the math has just never captured what's actually going on when we do this.

I cannot count the number of times I've had a version of this discussion/argument, and the only answer I ever had was "it works for me in practice, I don't know why." Mostly that ended up with them giving reasons why it worked for me but could never work for anyone else (tenure, competitiveness, spend, etc).

Now it works for roadwarrior too, he doesn't fit the same tenure/competitiveness/spend levels as me, and he potentially got to a better place faster than I did. I always suspected it was the additional 4* this method generated, but like me, he appears to have stopped tracking, so we'll probably never know!

@KGB said:
How much do bonus shards really matter here? I think you get 1% chance of 500 5* shards per pull so 140+ extra pulls is 1.4 extra covers (and roughly 1.4 more 4* covers too). Are you really going to notice 4-5 extra covers per 10000 CP when we are talking about earning thousands of covers a year (across classics, LTs, shards, earned covers from events, vaults etc). They are a rounding error.

Entrailbucket, I'm definitely not saying this doesn't work. In fact I'd say what you and Roadwarrior are doing works very well indeed. Once you can ride the 'latest train' (covering new 5s just from LTs, feeders, shards, boss events etc before they leave latest), then you should definitely switch to using this system (spending CP in classics). The only reason not to do so is if you want to attempt to 550 a meta trio via a special store in which case you need to save massive amounts of CP. But if you want a well rounded roster where all your top characters are close in level so you have a wide variety of teams to use, this is the way to go because even if you only get +3 extra levels a year on your characters it's worth it. The only point I was trying to make is that classics alone doesn't explain his roster improvement, it's simply a product of hard work (a lot of playing and earning rewards/farming etc).

KGB

I think +9 levels on average across all 4* s is pretty significant, given the size of the 4* tier. It doesn't need to explain the entirety of roadwarrior's roster to be a significant factor.

As for shards, I think that's a bit harder to calculate for a couple of reasons (1) because they shards system has changed during the past 3 years, and (2) because classics and LTs offer different rates of bonus shards. Has anyone done the math on bonus covers with the new(ish) pity system?

@entrailbucket said:
Didn't they just make a big change to the bonus rate from Classics? Or was that awhile ago? There was something but I can't remember now.

9 levels across all 4* sounds pretty lame, but you're right -- that's a ton of covers.

And they aren't evenly distributed. So it will be +3-5 for some characters, but +20 for others. And of course the number of 4* s has only gone up over 3 years, so the older 4* s will get more benefit compared to the newer ones. And looking at the batch of 4* s that roadwarrior was able to ascend the list is heavy on (i) old characters (is Shuri the newest?) and (ii) I think a lot of the first group of latest 12s from back in the day when that was a thing. Those characters got a decent level boost relative to their contemporaries and have always been a bit inflated on my own roster.

@Bowgentle said:
Bonus shards matter A LOT.
Whenever I pull a couple of hundred, the faved 4 gets 20+ levels, and the 5 gets 4 to 5.

A lot relative to what? If 200 extra draws nets 20+ 4 star levels and 4-5 5 star levels then using the math above that's +30 4 star covers and +6 5 star covers in a whole year (based on 30K cp in classics vs latest). Compared to 1000+ covers earned per year (from all sources), 35 more is a rounding error.

KGB

You get 20% more pulls using cp for classics. You should get almost 20% more 4* covers and a bit more than 20% extra 5* covers. You also get 20% more shards and 20% more chances at bonus shards. This leads to 20% more rewards. This all seems like a good trade off for a bit of randomness unless you’re specifically trying to grow a particular 5*.

@KGB said:

@Bowgentle said:
Bonus shards matter A LOT.
Whenever I pull a couple of hundred, the faved 4 gets 20+ levels, and the 5 gets 4 to 5.

A lot relative to what? If 200 extra draws nets 20+ 4 star levels and 4-5 5 star levels then using the math above that's +30 4 star covers and +6 5 star covers in a whole year (based on 30K cp in classics vs latest). Compared to 1000+ covers earned per year (from all sources), 35 more is a rounding error.

KGB

I mean sure everything is relative.
Would you rather have no bonus shards?
I don't get that post.

@Bowgentle said:

@KGB said:

@Bowgentle said:
Bonus shards matter A LOT.
Whenever I pull a couple of hundred, the faved 4 gets 20+ levels, and the 5 gets 4 to 5.

A lot relative to what? If 200 extra draws nets 20+ 4 star levels and 4-5 5 star levels then using the math above that's +30 4 star covers and +6 5 star covers in a whole year (based on 30K cp in classics vs latest). Compared to 1000+ covers earned per year (from all sources), 35 more is a rounding error.

KGB

I mean sure everything is relative.
Would you rather have no bonus shards?
I don't get that post.

Someone asked about factoring in bonus heroes when I was doing the back of the envelope math on how many extra covers you'd earn in a year drawing Classics vs Latest. I said the extra bonus heroes changed the math by a minimal amount when considering the difference so I hadn't bothered to do it (420 covers without bonus heroes or 450 with isn't a big difference on over all roster level when you have to distribute those +30 covers across 220+ characters).

Then you wrote about shards mattering a lot and I wrote my reply. Obviously every last cover matters since it improves your roster in some manner. It's just that when considering Classic vs Latest CP pulls it doesn't advance your roster much at all if you get +30 covers a year when you consider that's across 220+ characters (averages less than 1/10 of a cover).

We are just talking about 2 different things.

KGB

I have to admit I spent a few thousand on the Wanda Colossus boosted incarnation of classics.
Still not going all in, but I... Dabble occasionally.