MarvelMan wrote: Couple things to add to the points: 1) Open your bracket (BUT DO NOT PLAY) as soon as possible after the event goes live. You will see the seed teams, and they will still be there (3-10 of them) once you actually join the bracket. They can get you 50-100 easy points with minimal damage and in the 2* range....efficiancy is KEY. 3) Only shield after you have played with your A team. Once you break the shield, opponents will be seeing your defense team until you win/lose a match so the stronger that is the better. While unlikely, it might save you a loss...and again, efficiency is KEY. 7) You lose health when retreating, it can even down a char, so make sure you are recognizing situations where you should retreat early. With the shortened health regen only needing a char to heal, ie not downed, is a significant difference. (did they tweak the down times as well?)
mohio wrote: I haven't been in 2* land for quite some time so I'm not sure if 1hour is a reasonable amount of time to be able to play with just the 5 health packs with the new change. So with that disclaimer out of the way I think the 2 best strategies for 2* teams who want high placement will be: 1) enter with 45 min-1hr to go and grind like hell to the end. I recently did this and got 11th (10th was literally one point higher) with like 565 points. I think a 2* team would have a reasonable shot at top 25 this way although it will hurt their season score and alliance contribution since they can clearly put up more points than that. 2) enter with ~a day left (as bonfire noted, picking start times can be HUGE so find a good time ) and initially get up to ~500. This should be doable in one play session, but if not, get as high as you can. Then in the final 3-8 hours depending on how much you're comfortable with shielding you can start your final climb hopefully from around 300 points or more. By the time you start running out of health packs you might be around 750 or so, which is when you get hit with the full zombie horde anyway so you probably want to shield.
bonfire01 wrote: If you have a decent size 2* roster you can get some benefit out of those other characters but WHATEVER YOU DO do NOT use your best team first. Using your best team (Ares/Thor + OBW or Ares+ Thor generally), blowing all your health packs to go as long as you can THEN using your weak teams means your final defensive team is terrible and you get ripped apart. Make sure your very last win is with your best team and the safest way to do that is to be playing with them, with 5 health packs available (in case of nightmare cascades and needing to retry) after using all your garbage.
SnowcaTT wrote: bonfire01 wrote: If you have a decent size 2* roster you can get some benefit out of those other characters but WHATEVER YOU DO do NOT use your best team first. Using your best team (Ares/Thor + OBW or Ares+ Thor generally), blowing all your health packs to go as long as you can THEN using your weak teams means your final defensive team is terrible and you get ripped apart. Make sure your very last win is with your best team and the safest way to do that is to be playing with them, with 5 health packs available (in case of nightmare cascades and needing to retry) after using all your garbage. So I need a bunch of healthpacks available at all times, gotcha. I'll go CMags-Storm, then Daken-Wolvy, then Thor-Moonstone, then Ares-OBW as my last of four matchups I might be able to win with. Of course, they'll get beaten up each matchup, and then I'll have to wait several hours to play again. --This is all very good advice, and well written. But I don't think the 2* roster has any chance to compete without paying for healthpacks. They'll simply have to play more matchups than is currently possible with their rosters.
mohio wrote: I think people claiming they'll only be able to play 20 minutes or so are exaggerating some, but I don't know for sure.
MikeHock wrote: Here's my hint. Put the game down. Enjoy life. Don't perpetuate D3's greedy garbage
NorthernPolarity wrote: These are good hints but i think the title is a little misleading since these are all completely applicable before true healing as well. Character composition wise, i dont think too much had changed from the current meta of ares/thor/obw. Any team featuring daken feels miserable since he cant tank any colors in a standard rainbow 85 team (obw/ares), and in a 2 person team + loaner, (say thor+daken), he doesnt tank anything except black/purple, which you dont want to match anyways. Obw is still probably the way to go due to how absurd recon is.
NorthernPolarity wrote: These are good hints but i think the title is a little misleading since these are all completely applicable before true healing as well.
bonfire01 wrote: -Moonstone + Bullseye: Moonstone's red is decent and her purple isn't terrible in PvP because it acts as a nuke or you can match away Ares' Sunder CD timer. Bullseye wants to be with a purple user to get value out of the tiles you're matching for his purple and his black is fractionally better than Moonstone's in most circumstances (though both are pretty bad). You lack green and yellow outlets but beggars can't be choosers -Daken + Hawkeye: OK, getting wins isn't massively easy BUT if you can do it this team lasts pretty well without health packs. Hawkeye avoids onto Daken who has true healing. He can also nip into the prologue if badly beaten at the end of a match and get better there. You only have 2 actives on red and blue but Both do good damage if the CD tiles live and explosive arrow synergises well enough with pheremone rage. It's possible to win vs OBW + Ares/Thor but only if the board is pleasant and you can outplay the AI (second one easier than the first) -A.Wolvie + Hawkeye: Similar to Daken + Hawkeye except you get a green power to make your strikes, you have an alternative red for pretty solid single target damage and you can only get back to half health when battered which is not really enough to start a fight but does leave a shorter regen timer (along with double heal speed).
vudu3 wrote: I'm sure these teams work to some extent but I would still recommend avoiding pumping ISO into Moonstone, Bullseye and mHawkeye. It might extend your playtime somewhere now but it's going to make the transition to a 3* roster take even longer. It takes 70K ISO to fully level a 2* character and I think that ISO would be better if put towards budding 3* characters. A level 85 Punisher is better than a level 85 Moonstone.