As you’ve probably noticed we are still not at 30 members. We have been using “open” wars (no assigned BGs) for a few wars with mixed success. Managing two BGs of random people creates a few difficulties:
BG Generals need to rethink the paths for each war because which summoners are available to attack isn’t known until attack almost starts
Summoners get moved to different paths frequently which makes it difficult to become accustomed to a route and the nodes you will see on it (one example, not realizing your path requires a bleed immune champ)
Defensive diversity is difficult to maintain
Defensive placement is complex because the available champs change each war as summoners change in and out. Determining the best boss, the best minibosses etc takes time
The plan for the near future is to continue 2 BG wars but we will try a different approach. We will use our assigned BGs but each BG will get 1 day off each week.
Wednesday Night War search – BG1 and BG2 place but BG3 takes the day off
Friday Night War Search – BG2 and BG3 place but BG1 takes the day off
Sunday Night War Search – BG1 and BG3 place but BG2 takes the day off
If one of the BGs is short because we are under 30 people then one of the officers will fill in the hole. If you are assigned to a BG but unable to participate in your war (example, vacation) please reach out to one of the officers to get coverage.
This will allow us to keep set diversity and regular paths for people but still work only two BGs.
Okay everyone, we have been discussing among the officers how to best take the next step as an alliance. In addition to the solo work you can do (Act 3, 4 and 5 completion, ROL and LOL) there are two main ways for the alliance to grow stronger: Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars. Each has a different kind of reward set for different purposes.
AW rewards 3, 4 and 5 star crystal shards (depending on tier) which allows everyone to open more crystals duping champions or acquiring new champs.
AQ Rewards you with catalysts used for ranking up champions you already have.
As an alliance we have long focused on Alliance Wars for growing our champion base. Most of us have a large set of four star champions at this point we just wish the champs we had were stronger. (That isn’t to say there are not champs we still want, we just are not hurting because we don’t have enough 4 stars).
In focusing on Alliance Wars we have always made sure our top champs were always reserved for Alliance Wars so on war attack days we had to do easier AQ maps. We are going to flip that paradigm. We will still compete in wars, but our top champs should be used in AQ. We will still compete in wars, but we may lose a few more until we get into a tier that suits or champions better. This will also allow us to go back to 3 BG wars once we get back to 30 members.
When Alliance Quest restarts tomorrow we will be running map 4 for the first 4 days. If we do complete 2 BGs on each day, the 4th and 5th days will be very tough as our prestige climbs, but the point rewards will be great leading to more milestone rewards, more glory to spend on t4cc and hopefully more t4cc from those map 4 crystals. We are currently experimenting with the best map for day 5, whether to go to map 3 or drop down to map 2 and try for AQ revives which come in map 2 crystals.
BG1 and BG2 will have assignments in AQ just like in war. If you are not assigned a BG, you may join any group AS LONG AS YOU FIRST VERIFY THAT ALL OF THE ASSIGNEES ARE IN OR THERE IS SPACE LEFT FOR THEM. We need to have those people in the BG to ensure we can take out the mini-bosses and Dormamu at the end. Everyone should join so that you get a share of the rewards. And get as many kills as you can, each point adds up in the end. Here are the BG assignments:
Bg1
Bass
Champ
BackupAgent
Digbob
Kim
Bob
Bg2
Wozab
Harsh
Triliver
Bone
Lelele
Tilt
For Reference, Here are the scores we have put up in the last 2 months. If we do map 4 on each day we should get even higher.
Lots of things have changed in this new season of AQ.
Kang has been replaced by Dormamu as boss
The mini-bosses will change up every week [this week quake was our nemesis]
Map 4 no longer has 9 paths in section 3 so the difficulty is more manageable
They changed the constant re-tiering and reduced the number of brackets to 3
They introduced a new currency called glory which you can use to buy the things you most need. Most notably full t4b and t4cc shards.
Overall these changes will be very good for our alliance. The old system made it incredibly difficult for alliances not in the top to even get t4cc shards
With these changes we are in the middle of the three tiers: advanced. We scored 11M points this week [5-6-17] and ranked around 2200.
We also reached the first 8 milestones.
In the end we received at least 8 map-3 crystals and 4 map-4 crystals. Plus 13k t4b shards and 1080 glory. This was a pretty good haul. Eventually we will be able to clear 2 BGs regularly in map 3 and map 4 and the rewards will get better.
Personally I spent 1050 glory on 2 glory crystals and got 7200 t4 tech shards.
Some people in the alliance have a dedicated AQ team that does not conflict with their AW team but not everyone does. So completing map 4 on days where we are at war is difficult [I did screw up once and accidentally started it on war day. We were able to clear 1 BG by putting all our strongest on 1 group]. We will start with doing map 4 twice a week on non war days so either 34343 or 43433 depending on whether aq day 1 is a war day or not.
BG1 and BG2 should mirror the alliance war assignments so we can make sure we have enough strong people in each group to clear the bosses. Everyone should join a group and help get points because 1) you get a share of the reward and 2) every point helps toward our final ranking.
As I just updated in the alliance rules we need to start requiring donations to keep running map 4. Our weekly requirement will be 40,000 gold and 2,000 loyalty. You can make this easy by just donating whatever prize you get when we complete each map.
For reference below are some duel targets you can use to practice for the boss and mini bosses we will face now.
This is a summary page to try and pull together important information for new members.
The first key item is that you must join our Line groups. If you haven’t already, download the Line app [android, iPhone] and create an account. Preferably set your display name the same as your in-game ID. Search for OriginalBassMan and add as a friend. I can then get you invites to the key chat rooms:
Spider Pigs General chat – Announcements, game help and discussion, and just being friendly
An individual chat for your assigned BattleGroup – this is very active during aq and AW as we talk about paths, who needs help, notice of when nodes are cleared etc.
Announcements – this is not for general discussion. This is for officers to make announcements of interest to the alliance. Reminders about events, BG assignment changes etc.
[Optional] training group – this is a room where our more seasoned fighters share knowledge with those needing to grow their fighting technique.
Here is how we work Attack phase in Alliance Wars [this post will be rewritten once we understand the new aw nodes, paths and strategy]
For wars and aq everyone is assigned a BattleGroup. There is a blog page where we keep these assignments captured… Your bg will have an assigned general to coordinate paths and strategy. You will have a dedicated chat room for your BG that will be used for both AW and AQ.
Here is a map that shows all of the node paths. We will refer to these path numbers going forward. Note that there are two maps. a 6 path map and an 8 path map. Depending on our war tier (and to accommodate when people are away from the game for things like vacation) we sometimes alternate between these two maps. Make sure you know which map your BG general is using to make assignments.
AW 8 path map
AW 6 path map
For each Battle group the GB general will assign every member of the battle group a role prior to the start of the attack phase. Please make sure you check your assignment before joining the offense.
6 (or 8 depending on the map) people will be assigned a specific line to clear (remember to wait for link to be taken down before attacking!)
4 (or 2 depending on the map) people will be assigned to sit at the beginning and wait until we see how the other paths are doing. You are the Cavalry; someone will need backup to finish their path.
Once you know your path, study the nodes. You can look at the nodes on your path to see what buffs you will face. For example, on path 3 you will face a bleed node that will drain all of your health in 60 seconds unless you bring a bleed-immune champ with you.
If you are in the cavalry check back (on Line) often to see if you are needed to help clear a path or if you are free to go for exploration. In many wars exploration percentage and defensive diversity are what make the difference. Priority one is making sure we can get to the boss and take it down but priority 2 is getting all the possible exploration. Pay close attention to the paths on the maps and follow them so that the cavalry can clear all the missing exploration if possible.
Hey all, lots of things have gone on over the last week that I wanted to touch on the highs and the lows and what we’ve learned. Rather lengthy details in here about some AQ and AW thoughts. Apologies but I started to get tired and I’m not going back to proofread tonight.
1. Alliance Wars
We lost 3 in a row. I understand that can be frustrating but there a few things to consider before we get too upset and start making drastic plans.
First, we are trying to learn how to best organize ourselves which will allow us to beat stronger opponents once we figure it out. We had some planning and communication struggles on the assignments but I really think this will up our game once we get it right. We are learning better the capabilities of each of our fighters and this is allowing us to refine our assignments. We are also taking a lot of guidance from some of our members that have a stronger account in a more powerful alliance; we can learn from what they know and apply it.
AW Tier Rewards
Second, we are in a really awkward spot power-wise. If you don’t know how war rewards work I will give you a little detail. There are a total of 20 different war tiers. As you win and lose wars your “war rating” goes up or down. Your total war rating when you start a war search determines your rewards tier. The rewards tier also determines the map strength and the relative strength of your opponent. We seem to toggle between tier 7 and tier 8. At tier 7 the class of your opponents are hidden and some of the nodes boosts are more powerful so the fights here are harder three different ways: 1) Harder opponent, 2) hidden class and 3) stronger boosts.
We tend to do really good when at tier 8 and get promoted to tier 7. Once in tier 7 we win occasionally but struggle. So we are a strong tier 8 alliance but weak at tier 7. The last 3 consecutive losses were at tier 7 and now we are at tier 8. Eventually if we keep working on getting stronger and organizing better the tier 7 wars will become more manageable.
2. Item use
Item use started today so burn through anything that doesn’t impact Summoner Advancement today, but starting tomorrow drop all your signature stones, awakening gems etc. Lets hit those milestones!
3. Alliance Quest
This is another interesting one that I need to study. The tiering here is different than AW but we used to toggle between the bottom 2 (Training and Normal). More on that below.
AQ Tiers
Your rank up/down depends on how many points you score in the event. The score is defined by multiple factors:
What is your alliance “Prestige” on day 1. This is why top tier alliances worry a lot about prestige (What is prestige)
The map you complete. Each fight earns points, the points get multiplied by the map difficulty.
The number of BGs that you can run increases the number of fights and the total points.
For AQ, we get three kinds of rewards:
crystals for completing maps (which can contain nice rewards, ask Tilt he gets tons of T4cc though I’ve never sniffed one from a map crystal). The harder the map, the better the potential rewards are for the completion crystal. Everyone in the alliance that participates in that map gets a reward crystal as long as at least 1 BG gets 100%.
Milestone rewards as you earn points. Milestone values and the rewards are different depending on your AQ tier.
Rank rewards based on total score compared to other alliances in your AQ tier
If you recall I said we used to toggle between normal and training every other event. The tiering is such that unless you are stuck in training you always either move up or down; you do not spend more than one week in a tier. If you score enough points you get promoted up, if not you get demoted down. We would score enough one week to get a promotion to normal, then score enough for rank rewards but not enough to move up Peak so we would get demoted again to training. Over the last few weeks Kabam made maps 4 and 5 free to run. So everyone’s scores were inflated more than normal so we got stuck in training. Last week’s run was the first one where all maps had their normal cost and we again got promoted out of training and into normal.
There are wonderful people out there that collect data from fellow players and put together charts (like Arena cutoffs I’m sure you’ve seen). They also track Alliance Quest Results. If you look through it, the data for the last few weeks (in normal and training) is much higher because of the free maps. (if you look at the data, there is also a spike back in december when they made maps free for 2 weeks). If the older data trends return, we would need to hit 13M to 18M on our week in Normal to get a promotion up. Based on my tracking we have been hitting 8-9M.
We have been doing map 3 on non-war days and map 2 on war-days… We typically clear 2 BGs on the first 2-3 days and only 1 BG the last 2 days. If we want to move up in the tiers we need more consistency across the week. But we may need to try and tackle the stronger maps. Either squeeze in a map 4/5 once or twice a week (which requires donations and a lot of coordination as we saw today) or at least hit map 3 all days and actually clear it. Step 1 though, is to get more consistency in clearing the maps and not fizzling out in the last day or two.
4. Duels
Overall we did pretty good, only a few people did not duel, and we will keep pushing on them. We hit all but the last milestone.
I’ve seen some discussion in the line group and on in-game chat about struggling in the arenas. I am far from the arena expert grinder but I have done it enough to know some tricks to make it work. Generally I only hardcore grind at the tier 4 basic [t4b] arena but I have occasionally gone for milestones in the 4 star basic when I have time.
The rules are different in t4b and 4-star basic arenas. Through trial/error, research on reddit and discussions with others [like soccerbob] I have compiled different formulas that work in each that I will share below. But before that there are a few suggestions common to all arenas.
General Suggestions
Try to bring 3 different classes to each fight. This helps you maximize class advantage and minimize the risk of getting stuck with multiple disadvantage fights in the same round. Sometimes the game will give you 3 of the same class and if you brought 3 tech champs and the game brings 3 cosmic you have a much harder road.
Unless you are specifically sandbagging try to keep your 3 champs with a similar PI. Sandbagging is when you bring 2 champs with a high PI and 1 with a low PI. In certain situations this is useful because the game generally tries to stay with a similar PI to yours. And if it brings 3 equal champs your 2 strong champs have a better chance of winning; but you are conceding defeat on the weak champ. This can work against you if you accidentally bring 1 real strong champ and 2 weaker ones. You may be fighting an uphill battle with BOTH your weaker champs.
Watch out for the game sandbagging you. When you are first offered a matchup check to see if the one visible champ is roughly 1/3rd of the total PI. If so the game is most likely offering you a match with 3 equal champs. If the one visible champ is closer to half the total PI the game is sandbagging you and is going to have two really hard fights and one super weak champ. This most often happens to me in t4b but I’ve seen it in basic.
The Easy, medium and hard descriptions under each matchup. For the longest time I thought this was somehow describing the champs I would face, but I was wrong. What this is actually describing is the Artificial Intelligence (AI) the computer will use when fighting you. On easy and medium the AI is more likely to wait before firing a special 3 (sp3) at you. When on hard the AI fires sp3 as soon as it has 3 full bars. The hard AI is definitely tougher.
Thanos/Kang teams. At certain streak points you can trigger special opponents with the right team on your side. The Thanos/Kang teams are maxed out champs [max for that arena so max 5 stars in t4b and max 4 stars in basic]. So their PI is pretty high, BUT theydon’t have any masteries [so they won’t parry for example] so they are easy in basic arena and beatable in t4b.
Don’t be afraid to spend a few units. This is especially true in t4b where getting into the infinite streak area is more complicated… I hate starting over and spending a few units to keep it going is worth my sanity.
General pattern. In all the arenas the fights start off easy, then progressively get harder, then when you get far enough they get easier again. When they get easy again is what is known as infinite streak, once here they stay easy-to-medium forever [as long as you obey the infinite streak minimums]. As they start to get harder, if you don’t follow the rules they get impossible with what is known as “death squads” and you have to start over.
Example Death squad from t4b arena (good luck winning this one)
4-Star Basic Arena
This arena allows you to use your 3 and 4 star champs.
For matches 1-9 I just use all my maxed 3 stars
you can use anything without triggering a death squad however matches 8 and 9 are particularly hard if you use your 4 stars… So I use maxed 3 stars for at least 8 and 9.
If you don’t have enough maxed 3 stars use your weak champs up until you get to the 3X multiplier so you maximize the value of your max 3s
Matches 10-12 you have two options depending on your roster strength:
Option A – if you have at least nine 4 star 4/40 champs run matches 10-12 with these. If you only have 3 of them use them in match 12.
Option B – If you don’t have enough 4/40 four stars you need to sandbag a little here. Use two 3-star 4/40 and one 3-star 1/1. These fights will be hard but passable.
Matches 13-15 you get to fight Kang/Thanos
Use three 4-stars at 3/30 and you will trigger Kang/Thanos. Again, these fights look tough because of high PI (they are maxed characters) but without masteries the fights are not actually that hard.
Matches 16-21 you are almost to infinite
As long as you use teams of at least 4-star 3/30 and up these fights will be easy. I have heard reports of people successfully mixing in 3-star champs here, but I do not risk it.
Matches 22 and up, Congrats you are infinite
At this point you are in infinite streak territory. From here on out use either three max 3-stars, or 4-stars 3/30 and up. Don’t try to sneak in a group of 3-star 3/30 or you will get a death squad. Here I have heard reports of people using two 4-star 3/30 and one 3-star 3/30 but it is not worth the risk to me.
T4B Arena
T4b arena runs every 9 days and it is the most reliable way of getting tier 4 basic catalysts. It costs 10,000 battle chips to enter (so I always make sure I have enough chips on-hand) and you only have two days to get to the last milestone of 1,100,000 points and earn a t4b. You can theoretically earn one with rank rewards, but only if you are willing to grind for 15 million or so points. The number of fights it will take you to complete is primarily dependent on the strength of your roster but also on how many of the matches your can claim all 3 fights. One of the first T4b arenas I finished took me a streak of 62; the last one I finished in only 54 matches.
Milestone for T4b at streak 54
This arena lets you use any of your champs. From 1-star 1/1 to max 5-stars. when doing this arena, be smart with your 5 stars, they give a significant amount more points than your 4 stars do. A 4-star 4/40 with the 3x multiplier gets me 6,500-8,000 points per fight. My two 5-stars get me 17,000-19,000 per fight!
I will go through the match breakdown below, but I will note that I substitute a 5-star 1/25 for a 4-star 3/30 and also substitute a 5-star 2/35 for a 4-star 4/40. 5-stars do have a 6 or 7 hour cooldown period (I can’t remember which and t4b isn’t running right now so I can’t tell) instead of the 2 hour period for 4-stars. Just know that it takes forever so use them as soon as you get to 3x multiplier and re-use them as soon as they are ready to maximize points.
For matches 1-6 use whatever you want
For matches 7 and 8 Medium sandbagging
I use two 4-star 3/30 and a 3-star 1/1 and the fights are medium.
For matches 9 and 10 harder sandbagging
I use two 4-star 3/30 and a 3-star 1/1 and it is hard but passable
Match 11 easy low level fight
I use three low-rank 2-stars and the fight is pretty easy.
Matches 12-15 are your hardest fights [Sandbagging]
I use two max 3-stars and a 2-star. These fights are hard, but if you are careful you can win and keep the streak going. I have found that at fight 15 you can trigger Kang/Thanos with three 4/40 4-stars. But the Kang/Thanos team in t4b is a bit harder than in the basic arena and I have blown my streak against them.
Matches 16-18 You are almost there
Here is where it can take a while depending on your team strength. With these three fights you can get easy matchups by using three 4-star 4/40. Now I have enough 4/40 4-stars to do this but I did not a few months back. When I did not have enough I would fight with what I had and then either wait until they refreshed or used units to refresh them so I could get through these fights. It takes patience and some time, but keeping the streak alive is worth it. The image above of a death squad is from this area where I tried using three 4-star 3/30 and it backfired.
Match 19 and up Congrats you have hit infinite
At this point ONLY use your 4 and 5 stars. And don’t use anything less than a 4-star 3/30. If you follow these rules you should not get a death squad. There are mixed reports on reddit (and mixed reports on my own testing) about using 3-stars. It just isn’t worth blowing the streak and starting over for me so I don’t do it. I cycle through all my 4-stars then wait and do it again.
If you made it this far and are really interested below is an image that shows almost all of the fights from one of my runs. You can see what teams I used where and what the matchups looked like. There are a few missing where I forgot to take a screenshot. And you will also note some fights I lost that were winnable.
(This post is kept for historical purposes. We have been hitting at least 41-70% weekly for the past few months.)
I’ll start this post by admitting that I am a nerd and I spend too much time thinking about stupid things like this game. For the last few months I have been keeping track of our rewards from Summoner Advancement (and Alliance Quests but that will be another post).
I know there was some discussion in the past over whether we got better rewards from opening weekly or saving up and opening them every 2 weeks. Well, I’ve done the math and I believe it is in our best interest to open weekly assuming the following we can generate enough points each week to qualify for ranked rewards: Based on our current bracket we need to score at least 265k points in each event. If we don’t hit at least that minimum score we get NO REWARDS AT ALL for summoner advancement.
If you want the details I’ll go into the math below, but for now, we will be saving for the next week. The reason to do this is that we are now down 4 of our big players (WFPF, Ema, Backup-Agent and Soccerbob) who contributed a lot of our score. I don’t know what our new average weekly score will be. We might not have enough points under normal circumstances to hit 265k every week. By saving one week, and opening the next, I can divide our score by 2 and see if we will hit the weekly minimum. I will let you all know with another update whether we will be able to hit weekly or need to keep holding every other week until we get more people.
I know some people will open crystals and do some leveling up, but please be reasonable and keep it to a minimum. Especially don’t open up high point items (like 4 and 5 star crystals).
The nerd stuff:
Based on our previous average reward, when opening every 2 weeks we would consistently hit the 6-20% tier and get 450 5-star shards and 425 4-star shards. This is a total of 3,600 5-star and 3,400 4-star shards over a 16 week period.
In a worst case scenario of opening weekly, if we at least hit the 265k minimum we only qualify for the 71-100% tier. Here we get only 200 5-star shards but still get 375 4-star shards. This is a total of 3,200 5-star shards and 6,000 4-star shards. That is enough for a third of a five star and 3 four crystals. This is way more 4 star shards than opening every other week, but slightly less 5 star shards.
In an optimal case of opening weekly I assume we could hit the 41-70% tier. This rewards us with 425 five-star shards and 400 four-star shards. Over the same 16 week period this totals out to 6,800 five star shards and 6,400 four star shards. That is two-thirds of a five star crystal and a little more than 3 four star crystals. This would be our goal.
All… AQ starts in a few hours. We are going to continiue trying to clear two battle groups. I think we have strong enough folks still.
We will keep the same assigned spots from AW. There will be five designated spots in each Battlegroup and they are as follows;
Bg1: Bassman, Champ, Triliver, Wozab, Leros.
Bg2: Tilt, Bone, Harsh, Kim, Lelele.
These ten people have spots reserved for them, if they haven’t joined, make sure there is room before you join.
Everyone remember to,get into a BG with your best available fighters. Every point counts towards getting T4B shards at the end of the event.
See the image of AQ tiers. We used to bounce back and forth between beginner and normal. We would get promoted one week and demoted the next on and on. It still results in solid t4b shards… For the last 2 sessions we have been in the bottom portion of beginner tier and hence did not get promoted. I believe the totals were skewed because map 4 was free and we were gettjng outscored. Our overall point total stayed pretty consistent. So hopefully this week, with things back to normal costs we will again get a promotion to normal tier. This is assuming we continue clearing 2 BGs of map 3 when not in AW and map 2 when in AW.
The last two weeks when item usage has come around we have cleared all milestones. This is awesome because in the end, even without ranked rewards, everyone gets:
Enough shards for a PHC
A tier 1 Alpha Catalyst
250 4-star shards
Something I learned from Soccerbob would help us continue this trend if we all did it.
First, take a look at the links on the main page. One of them is a link to an events calendar I found some time back. (http://34471.mcoc-alliance.com/events-calendar) it shows when each event (item use, duel skirmish, event quest completion, perfect streak etc) is coming up. You can see when the next item use event is and plan accordingly. Once you know when the events are try to save up items for use during this event. Understanding that everyone needs to use potions (revives and health) whenever you need them, some are easy to save. Examples:
Signature stones – You can sit on these and dump all of them in your champs during item use
2 and 3 star awakening gems
40% XP bonus – For some reason, I have these coming out of my ears lately. I just drop a ton of them during item use.
Arena Boosts – Especially with the level up bonus events lately I’ve had tons of these. I can’t really use all the 3-stars since I don’t do that much arena (except for T4b). I kept having the 3 star ones expire. So I started sitting on the crystals until item use starts, open a ton of crystals and roll through arena boosts.
Getting the final milestone takes 75K points. With just 20 active members that is only 3,750 per person. This is easily achievable if we just plan our weeks to use our items during the event. The next item use starts Wednesday April 5th so please try to save items until then.
MCOC SpiderPigs 