PvE Guide v1.1 (Updated January 2016)

Currently being reviewed and updated after threats and inducements from various sources. So if you want to tell me why my ideas are so terrible please either add to the thread here or PM me, this is your opportunity to shape the future advice for so many hungry eager young player minds...

Eddiemon's Complete PvE Guide v1.1
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Thanks to Nemek for some of the background work and plenty of forum regulars for arguing with me.
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Scaling: The increasing difficulty of your opponents based on personal success and community success. The devs refer to it as 'matching' or 'matchmaking', even in a PvE context.
Rubberbanding: An increase in points multipliers based on how far behind the leader you are.
Tanking: Deliberately losing missions to **** or reverse scaling effects.
Grinding: Completing more missions at lower point values in an effort to amass a higher score.
Node: Any individual stack of missions
Stack: Most nodes have between 2 and 5 mission completions before they go to either 0 or 1 points. This is the mission stack
Refresh: The time between completing a mission and that being mission being added back to the mission stack.
Base points: Every node has a base amount of points its missions are worth. This base value is used to calculate point increases due to rubberbanding and point decreases due to stack size reduction.
Clear: Completing every node in a sub once only.
Final Clear: Completing every mission you can in a sub as often as possible, before the sub ends.
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The points you get for any individual mission are determined by three things - the base points for that node, the amount of missions still in the stack and how far behind the leader you are.
The leader is an ambiguous term, because it depends on the event. For some events, such as TaT, the leader is always the global leader, even in sub events. In other events such as The Simulator, the leader is the global leader for that sub event. Basic information on a particular event can be found in mags1587's excellent PVE Format Guide which is kept updated for more assiduously than this. More specific information on an instance of an event can be found in the Events subforum.
The D3 communications team (and by that I mean David) have been good at letting us know what events are coming in the future. Check out the monthly sneak peeks in the General Discussion forum.

Rule 1: Timing is everything
If you want to succeed in PvE events then you need to get the maximum amount of points possible for your endeavours. At the same time you don't want to put in more effort than is required to win. In particular, this means that for the final clear of any sub-event you want to leave it as late as possible to maximise your rubberband bonus while being able to complete all the missions you need to complete.
You're also going to want to have all your nodes available with a full stack of missions at that time, so you need to stop playing missions at least a refresh duration and about 2 hours before the end of the sub event.
You could follow this behaviour back to the start of the event, but that generally isn't necessary. People rarely grind everything down to zero, and they also are rarely fixated on precision timings for the first few refreshes. So it all comes down to clearing missions in the last 2 hours.
I have assumed it takes you about 2 hours to completely grind down all the nodes in a sub, which is why I have gone with 2 hours from the end as the time. Your mileage may vary on this depending on your roster quality and the number of nodes. If your roster is poor and you can't complete every node 5 times before running out of healthpacks then start your final run later so you get more rubberband points for those nodes that you can complete. Or similarly if you are running maxed 5 starts that melt faces, you can probably start later to roll around in more rubberband points.

Rule 2: Don't Grind
Grinding looks attractive. You are getting more points and you get to pick up all 4 individual rewards. What's not to love? Scaling!
There are two forms of scaling in the game - personal and community.
Community scaling increases the level of opponents based on how many times the node is cleared in the event. This is offset by the amount of time other nodes are cleared and the amount of people who fail to clear the node.
Personal scaling is based on how well you perform. This isn't just based on wins and losses, but also looks at how healthy you are entering each match. So if you are healing in the event or even in battles outside of the event your difficulty will continue to scale up.
Community scaling drops between sub-events and events. Your personal scaling also seems to decay somewhat [anecdotal, not confirmed] between events and possibly between sub-events.
That 500 ISO bonus looks attractive and is worth just 1 more go of the node right? Not when you go to the fourth sub event and can't get any of the bonuses because everything is level 230. Basically if the mission isn't on your path to winning, let it go.

Rule 3: Manage your rubberbanding bonuses
Rubberbanding is based on your current point value compared to the current points leader as explained earlier. For any event there is a value 'X' which determines the rubberbanding bonuses. X seems to change between events, but it's not necessary to know the number, just know how to use it.
When you are within X points of the leader your rubberbanding bonus is 0, i.e. you only get the base points for the mission. When you are outside 10 times X points from the leader your rubberbanding bonus is 9 times the base points, giving you 10 times the base points for every mission completed.
In between those two points the rubberbanding multiplier drops linearly. So if you were 2 times X points away from the leader your points per mission would be doubled, 3 times X back would be tripled and so on.
When you are in the 10x bonus, or in no bonus, the order you undertake missions does not affect your point return. While in the middle where your multiplier is declining though it is important that you attempt the highest base value missions first. This gives you the best ratio of bonous points earned to base points used.
As a corollary it is generally good to do low value missions in the 10x bonus phase when you think you are close to that 10 times X value. This means that once the bonus does start to drop you can move on to your highest value missions without wasting too much of the multiplier available.
The rubberbanding effect appears to have been reduced. I don't know if anyone has studied it since Nemek left, but it doesn't seem to blow out to 10x anymore. Any input on this would be greatly appreciated

Rule 4: Manage your stack's refilling
Apart from rubberbanding, the other bonus affecting your points is the number of missions in the stack at the node. For most events this will be 5, but for some events it has been 2. There is nothing stopping them from making it 3 or 7 tomorrow, so you need to be adaptable.
If all the missions are in the stack, you get 100% of the base points times the rubberbanding bonus. For every mission missing from the stack you lose a percentage of the points equal to the percentage of stack used up. In math terms you get (current stack)/(maximum stack) of the available missions points with base and rubberbanding factored in.
In a 5 stack then the first mission is worth 100%, the second 80% and so on down. Each node regenerates one mission every refresh time from when you first took the stack down from full. Normally this means you want to hit a node once to take one mission off the stack, then wait for the refresh time before hitting the node again so that you are getting the missions at 100% point value. This is the best way to play if you can.
If you have a life and time constrains you from playing every refresh (generally 8 hours, I believe they have standardised on this but there is nor rule guaranteeing it), then you may need to sometimes miss a refresh. In these situations plan ahead and where you see you won't be able to play when a refresh is up you may be better served hitting each node twice and getting 80% of the points for the second clear rather than missing out entirely. Given that most subs are 8 hours long, you don't have a great window for a 12 hour gap in playing unless you manage your first clear right when the sub opens.


Rule 5: Rotate through all nodes starting with the biggest
The old rule used to have players grinding through individual stacks because of the way nodes used to refresh. Now that they only refresh one mission every refresh period regardless of how many missions you have taken off the stack, that method is actually counterproductive.

Now you want to hit your most valuable node first and work your way through the nodes in descending order of value. This is because you want to apply your highest rubberbanding bonus to your highest base value. If this is a regular clear then you want to hit each node only once in that order. If this is your final clear then you may want to repeat higher value nodes before starting on lower value nodes, as the larger rubberband multiplier is better applied to higher base values.

We've done the math on this, and if you fully exhaust the rubberbanding bonus then it doesn't matter much which order you do the nodes in, you get almost the same amount of points, varied only by the value of the very last mission you beat. But if you don't manage to exhaust the bonus then you can get a larger chunk of it by prioritising your mission choices

Rule 6: Don't rely on boosts
Boosts should be what it says on the tin. A boost. When you rely on them for sustained performance they ruin your game experience. If you need a boost to beat that opponent that one time for the special bonus mission, or to get past a progression mission, then that is a good use of a boost.
If you look at the information presented above on how scaling works, regular boosts will mean that you come out of missions better than you should. Which means that your personal scaling will increase to allow for the boost, and your opponents will scale as if you had a higher baseline ability than you do. You end up as hard up as you were before you started abusing boosts, but you are also flushing ISO down the drain.
Had you instead spent that ISO on leveling your characters you should always be slightly ahead of the games baseline expectations of you, or at worst level.

Rule 7: Powered up characters are awesome
No seriously. The first thing you need to understand is that 1* characters scale better than 2*s who scale better than 3*s and so on. A 3 star at 120 is about on par with a 2* at level 85. Their edge is that they can go to level 141. Even better, a 2* with only 2 abilities is designed to scale even better because their maximum level is lower again that a tricolour 2*.
So if you have a level 85 2* with a 30 level bonus it is more powerful than any 3* can achieve. Even better if it is a 40 or 100 level bonus.
Championing makes this even more true at the lower levels, though championed 3*s may be able to hold their own against boosted 2*s at the top end. We won't know until at least patch 94 which fixes boosted character performance

Rule 8: Higher level characters are bad
The matching algorithms in this game, for both PvE and PvP select your opponents based, purportedly on your 3 highest leveled characters for a given event. Now while I talked earlier about personal and community scaling earlier, there is also a scaling effect applied to the nodes based on your roster. We don't have access to the algorithm, so whether it sets a base level that is then multiplied by the community and personal scaling factors, or is also a multiplier in itself we aren't sure.

But we are sure that the more you level your characters the harder the nodes get. And this is significant in two ways - not only are your fights longer, requiring more health packs and resources and more time commitment on your part, but you also need to start your final clears earlier to get all the nodes. That is why you will often see players with only 2 star characters in the top 10 of events.

There are two character 'soft caps' that people aim for, Level 94 and level 120. Level 94 because your 3*s won't outlevel your 2*s and affect your scaling, and level 120 because most characters will have come close to their peak performance while still keeping opponent levels down.

In response to this the devs have changed the character ability scaling algorithms so that they reach peak performance at a higher level are less powerful in the middle levels to make 94 and 120 less attractive for 3*s. Unfortunately they screwed the pooch and we await patch 94 to see how this actually all plays out

Additionally they are in the process of deploying a new matching algorithm for PvE and PvP which is intended to make staying underlevelled a less beneficial if not completely pointless exercise. Once we've seen it in action analysis will be provided

Rule 9: Have the essential characters
Yes it's a mean rule that may be out of your control, but it's the sad truth that finishing at a high level without the essentials makes it very difficult to win or even achieve the top progression reward. Lacking one essential you can still make top progression by being diligent (unless they screw up their points prediction for the event, which happens.)

The one thing that many players do that helps here is hold onto cover rewards until the timer forces them to sell. This gives you 14 days where you can sub in a character you didn't have in your roster if you require them. For an early game player this can mean holding onto those 3 star covers you can't afford a roster slot for, and for more advanced players it can mean having the ability to sub in any 2 star character that you sold off.

Rule 9: Play for your objective
PvE has progression and placement rewards. There are optimal strategies to reach each target.

If you want the top progression rewards, or anything along the way, start early. The sooner you start, the sooner you start earning points. This is the hardest way to end up top anything though, as you have grouped yourself with similar minded people who are trying to amass as many points as possible, and maybe a few people who just needed some extra ISO or CP.

If you want the top placement rewards, starting around halfway through an event, close to the end of a sub is best. You will find yourself competing with people like yourself who are trying to snipe the rewards, but mostly you will be dealing with people who entered just to collect a few bonuses. There is a gamble as you could be the 1000th entry in a sub and everyone is ahead of you, or you could be the first entry and have a bonus. You are starting at the end of a sub so that you can get all the points for a final clear and have that edge over anyone who joins in 2 hours time.

And if you like to try your luck, joining in the last 30 minutes is a pure gamble. You could end up in a bracket with only 50 other people or you could end up replacing someone who got sandboxed form an early bracket and end up 100,000 points behind everyone. But if you don't have the time it's worth a gamble.




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Contributions
Some alternate explanations that seemed to help, or just people who added direction

mohio wrote:

As for nodes vs. stacks, nodes are just the term used for each "dot" on a map. Stacks is just a helpful term to visualize what is happening to the point values. Every time you beat a node the base point value decreases by 20% of the maximum, so previous users visualized that as 5 stacks, and beating a node removed a stack from it. Next time you're in the game, note what the point value is at full value, and then after you beat it. It should be 80% (although it could be slightly off due to rubberbanding changing the values, but the base value will have gone to 80%).

Nemek as mentioned for rubberbanding calculations.
Mohio for the alternate explanation of nodes and stacks.
Aleth for the question on essentials.
Malcrof for the bullying.