Category: Tips/Tricks

Tips/Tricks

Infinite streaks make the arenas infinitely easier

originalbassman3 Comments

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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 they don’t have any masteries [so they won’t parry for example] so they are easy in basic arena and beatable in t4b.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

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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.

Continue reading “Infinite streaks make the arenas infinitely easier”

Summoner Advancement: Saving next week and long term plans
Tips/Tricks

Summoner Advancement: Saving next week and long term plans

originalbassman1 Comment

(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).

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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.

 

 

Note on Item Usage
Tips/Tricks

Note on Item Usage

originalbassman1 Comment

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:

  1. Enough shards for a PHC
  2. A tier 1 Alpha Catalyst
  3. 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:

  1. Signature stones – You can sit on these and dump all of them in your champs during item use
  2. 2 and 3 star awakening gems
  3. 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.
  4. 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.