The Marathon That Was... PvP (8.13.17)

[mjmxiii]

First things first, I gotta say congratz to Kamuz! My longest running trooper and one of the most deserving Eternals ever! I had a blast being in a race with you and Shaolinlondo on a Saturday in the Arena. I knew it was gonna be fun but I can't remember enjoying a loss quite so much. Carlos came into the chase with less than an hour to go and damn this dude is fast! He took third by ten points, basically by less than one win! Not to worry, my CG will be on the podium one day! Kamuz took the lead at 9:30am PST, after after his defense held me in spectacular fashion (more on that in a minute).

I realize now what it takes to go Eternal. It's an urgent rhythm. It's a pattern that you have to nail down and repeat with robot-like precision for hours on end. You have to get into a flow and not see the team in front of you, just know what you need to do to win and do it.. Its impossible to understand the urgency needed to play with until you need to play with that urgency. Today was invaluable. I understand why Gmac, and Jofer before him, are truly beasts now. They can commit the energy needed to win with what may seem like no effort, but it's only because it has become second nature to them.

Speaking of Gmac, I have to give a tip of my hat to him. He showed me nothing but support and encouragement throughout the week. People should take a page from his play-book, this guy is what a real champ should be like.


****My Legacy of the Bugs****

So its one thing to lose to great players, its something you expect, prepare yourself for and can accept. When things began, I found myself doing well with my team, the meta was in my favor and I thought I might try this before they nerfed Talismans and Chars that I invested all that time into upgrading. You would think that the change in meta had an effect on my team synergy, but it would be wrong to do so. I actually found my team (ripe with Energy and Explosives) to be better after the update, easier to win with, oddly enough.

The thing that got worse, was the bugs. Its common knowledge that LotB is ripe with them. Rarely are they in your favor. But never before has that been so vital to have to deal with. In over 1300 bug-infested matches, I must have lost at least two hundred. Of those two hundred, at least half were due to bugs. The most common are the hiccups and game lag that I realized a bit too late, must be caused by poor Wi-Fi communication within the game. It works so much better through my mobile carrier network. I would have never kept up with the podium if not for trying this. The other and most annoying bug is the game hang, where buttons go to die. I lost count at 30... it may have been double, possibly triple this number. I have read that people with iPhones and Apple devices rarely see bugs... well that makes sense if LotB is maintained and more properly tested with similar products. Too bad for us Android users eh...


This happens way too often

So anyway, this morning, when I lost the point lead to Kamuz and spent the rest of the day chasing, I did it with a game hang while playing his team. Now as much as it is true that this loss was gonna happen regardless, it is also true that this hang consistently happened whether on Wi-Fi or mobile network. As a matter of fact, those of you who saw two or more holds against me at a given time, majority was game hang. I would say that on average, 2/3 holds were this bug and your team playing that one go-first-all-perfects-procs-match.


Nomads last ditch effort to freeze out a win

All that said I won over a thousand matches (no numbers posting in my stats window... another bug they "fixed"), which is astonishing in itself and knew that a better, more experienced PvP player would win. Will I try it again? Hell yes! Would I recommend it to anyone? Hell NO! I stumbled onto this game and don't know anyone else personally who plays it. I would mention it if they ask what I'm looking at on my phone but would have to steer them clear of this bug laden mess.


****My Team Needs Work****

Now even though I will say half my losses were due to bugs more than any other factor, the other half was to teams that are so well built and thought out, that there is just no way you're gonna win if they go first and even one minor thing goes right for them.

Nicko, Kamuz, Silentknight, Slauki, to name just a few, have DEF teams that are well built killing machines and really do give them the best opportunity to hold opponents or at least make it tough on people who attack them.

I can only imagine what their offense must be like with the proper, more arena specific talisman builds some of these players have. I just got my first set of Strike Talismans from Big New Waste-of-time and I will try to get the rest of the achievement rewards at some point. I have a long way to go in that respect.

So I'll end by giving props to all the players in the Arena who know what the grind is like and how much fun it can be ripping each others teams to shreds and deal with and overcome the Legacy of the Bugs.

See you all in the arena!


Top 10

1. KAMUZ
2. Shaolinlondo
3. Carlos
4. mjmxiii
5. caliza12
6. gmac
7. Blacksteel
8. donslauki
9. dje
10. Chaosego88

[slauki]

Attacks 242
Defenses 196

Thanks for the great writeup and it's hard not to agree with everything you said. The new update came along with a lot of bugs, but if i should be honest i prefer new content with new bugs instead of old content and old bugs.

Have to say, that i enjoyed watching the race for the eternal and the 10 points diffence to the poster is extremly unlucky, feel sorry for you man. If the bugs are fixed (which they will prolly never be) it would be easier for you. I haven't experienced many buggs in PVP aside prisoner not working as intended (again) and all my losses vs you were "honest losses".
Maybe playing on emulators is more stabile than playing on the phone. But stability should have the highest priority for NF now.

Aside this i think we will see a lot of balancing in the next weeks and months, some of the new talis are at least questionable not talking about some chars which are on every team. Diversity is out of the window again... I would like to point out two sets which seems worthy to discuss:

Explosives:
If you ask me they are messed up. Singlehitter are going to stunn whole teams for two turns and drain health. Many teams rely solely on them and they are pretty successfull. They even stunn the unstunnable harpy and they trigger more often on some toons than on others. I like the idea that defenes win some fights but please in a reasonable way. These little guys are fucked up for me. At least everyone can farm them, so we can see them everywhere soon

Immortality talismans:
We see VHEs with immortality talismans everywhere in the top spots and soon we will see them on wrath too and it won't take long to see theam on 3/4 of the team. Immortality should be a normal buff which should be removable i think. There are not enough chars with permadeath to counter them, i feel. Maybe we will see some permadeath talismans too soon...
One big problem i see is that they will divide the player base again. some simply cannot farm them due to non premuim teams others will go for them even the droprates are horrible.

prolly there are more talis which i didn't figure out yet but that should be enough for now. Curious to see other opinions.

[DaveMurray]

Gratz to Kamuz, it was about time, always up there. Gratz to the rest of the runners and best of luck next time mj.

PvAI is unplayable at the moment. Freezes, tauntfest and hundreds of bugs. Things are completely out of control.
We are a bit messed up that we keep playing this..

I have to agree with don regarding Explosive Talis, i am not a fan of nerfs but a single hit have 4 toons stunned for 2 rounds is just for laughs.

[T-Man]

Congrats to Kamuz, and the rest of the other top players of the week.

I came in at 11 for the second week in a row. It took over 100 more attacks to get to 11 compared to last week.

My D was slightly up, but this was the worst week offensively I've had since being a newbie at it. Part of this was great teams and new talisman, bugs and crashes, and RNG acting all f'd up.

The game is back to the taunt fest with SSD taunting 75-100% of the time. Usually taunts most or all of the team too. With strike he counters near 75-100% as well. Using AAD or immunity talisman doesn't help much, Wrath and other stealing toon just rips it away, and let the taut fest begin.

On RNG, i noticed things working normally or even favorably for me, then it just goes away and every possible thing procs for the puter AI. Sort of an all or nothing instead of a good balance per match.

One other thing that seems to happen to me on a regular basis, I seem to go 1st most of the time against lower ranked players, and 2nd against top players. I'd estimate 75% for and then against. I realize it's RNG, but I wish this would flip, or at least balance out to 50/50. Lol

Honestly I had a miserable time playing this week, but had the free time and ironite to burn. I don't see myself chasing the top 10 for a while. This coupled with the BNW experience being a disappointment, added to the frustration. High cost, low drop rate, and crashes are no fun.

The one saving grace for me was dropping my 1 rare GA soul won from the arena into the pit and landing Navagator Eddie! Been chasing him since he arrived, and was way up high on the want list.

[Ezz]

Those with VHE and Wrath will dominate pvp from this week forward. Those with these 2 toons and immortality will be unstoppable. I foresee win rates of 98% and defense rates of 50% plus easily.

Fine with me I'll just avoid those teams and keep cranking out my top 50 finish each week.

For those shooting for top 10 that don't have these toons? My advice - save your time and your ironite, you don't have a chance.

[Kamuz24z]

Well I didn't expect it to turn out like this, saturday I work all day i can play some battles while working but from 4pm to 6pm EST (8:00 pm reset time)I play nonstop for me taking Eternal this week means that mjmxiii and shaolin stop playing before me thanks it was a fun race I didn't experience many bugs seems that apple devices suffered less from them I had just 1 freeze against Mkultra I've noticed a bug from teams with a warrior when troll attacks he lower a random stat to his own team, Nicko's defense is still very good🤘🏼but I was able to defeat it every single time finally, Im glad that more Vampire Hunters made it to pvp a very decent Eddie it happened with cyborg now is vampire time it sucks that mjmxiii didn't make it to the podium but I will change my champ to Corrupt General I hope you try next week 🤘🏼Up the irons , last night I was opening souls hoping for the new Warrior Lucy but no luck to form a duo with Beelzebub is going to be very dangerous is like having death marks all over.
Thanks again I can't share all stats it shows attacks 0/0, defense 321

[Shaolin85london]

Well I didn't expect it to turn out like this, saturday I work all day i can play some battles while working but from 4pm to 6pm EST (8:00 pm reset time)I play nonstop for me taking Eternal this week means that mjmxiii and shaolin stop playing before me thanks it was a fun race I didn't experience many bugs seems that apple devices suffered less from them I had just 1 freeze against Mkultra I've noticed a bug from teams with a warrior when troll attacks he lower a random stat to his own team, Nicko's defense is still very good🤘🏼but I was able to defeat it every single time finally, Im glad that more Vampire Hunters made it to pvp a very decent Eddie it happened with cyborg now is vampire time it sucks that mjmxiii didn't make it to the podium but I will change my champ to Corrupt General I hope you try next week 🤘🏼Up the irons , last night I was opening souls hoping for the new Warrior Lucy but no luck to form a duo with Beelzebub is going to be very dangerous is like having death marks all over.
Thanks again I can't share all stats it shows attacks 0/0, defense 321

Kamuz, great run! U are right, I stopped myself to play around 10pm, got back to the game around midnight. U were already far away from me, so even a one hour rush d be enough to catch u. So well deserved and grats for your speed. I enjoyed the run with u and mjmxii.

Again congratulations to the eternal and to all the others top players!

See you in arena, cheers!

[gmac]

Mjm

You described to perfection how it feels going for Eternal.

And you did a great job on your first run

Congrats Kamuz, this was due! And very nice of you to put CG out there. (Shaolin, btw congrats for last week!)

Cheers
gmac

[Nicko]

Thanks Mjmxiii for the great write-up! I really enjoy reading them.

I didn't have time to play on Saturday so just here and there - finished 13 probably with help from a strong defense.

But glad to see Kamuz at the top! I still think his defense is one of the best in the game. I usually beat it now - still the occasional loss - but get those jitters every time I face it.

Congrats to all the top 10!

[Silentknight]

GRATS KAMUZ!!! U been top 5 for months, glad 2 c u take eternal! Also nice 2 c a race for #1...guess we can thank Gmac for allowing it,lmao! & yes, Transformers is a game...Forged to Fight. Give it a try & if u like feel free to pm any of us to join alliance.

Sry for the holds mjm! Least u know I don't revenge em! 10× worse when they're freezes!!! & yeah it may be worse on android but funny thing is ALL my other games seem to work??? U definitely had the right approach 4 eternal, just need a bigger lead! With Gmac's guidance u'll get there in no time!

Grats again to Kamuz & the rest!!!