PvP Quick Review for last week - 7.29.17

[mjmxiii]

Was ranked 64th this week. Ratios went up about 10% once I benched WTroll and sent Wrath to the PVE farm. Dusted off my GCR and finished strong at 24% against some noteworthy opponents and longtime troopers and went up to 92% in the win column. Was actually able to enjoy another Saturday with family, without dropping out of the top 100 in a matter of hours this time. Arena store still locks up, kinda of annoying but whatchya gon do?

It helps to have two chars with the talisman combo of Energy/Explosive. These will not be nearly as effective once the BNW update comes out. I guess Strike talismans won't proc as much as they do now either so not too bothered by it, actually gonna welcome the change if it is truly across the board for all proc rates like Sparton mentioned.

Pumped with the news coming out regarding BNW and the speculated 3rd dungeon that is hopefully accompanying its release. Looks like we're gonna have some new chars, challenges and levels in the coming weeks and its about fuckin' time!!

Speaking of new chars, finally summoned CG this week and getting the news about his updates is just icing on the cake! Also pulled the Clairvoyant from my 3rd Eternal soul, so I'm a lucky 3-for-3 in that respect, but still looking for Beelzebub.

Anyway, digging the video dump thread (thanks ritchbe!) and things are looking good for LotB in general!

Cheers and see you all in the arena!

Edit: Actually finished in 63rd spot and forgot to give some well deserved props to this week's winners...

Top 10
1. GMAC - 7464 VP!
2. Kamuz - 5278
3. Carlos - 4578
4. Nicko
5. Blacksteel
6. FallenAngel
7. Cyburion
8. Drivenbyfate
9. zidar
10. LordSchmeb

[slauki]

attacks: 200ish
defenses 178:

anyway my def took a big hit last week, and many people i spoke with had the same experience. so i hope some of you guys will share your personal experience on this topic. i have my def for many weeks and it had always the same hold%. but this week was completly difference for some reason. which leads me into speculations:

possible factors for dropping defenses:

1. new guardians talismans are making fury generation faster, this could decide the game in your favour more often. in addition to this they can be considered as "poor mans shells", so people without the shells have a somewhat solid substitute. that could make a broader range of players dangerous and more successfull on offense.
2. the recent events gave us a lot of great chars, so the average roster could be stronger in general (yeah i'm talking about you blue COTD :P )
3. the video coaching might actually show people how to buid up some smart attack strategy, which is okay, but it could hurt our defense. at least it was pretty easy so see, how broken
some talismans are, which leads me to:
4. broken talisman combos are getting more popular. i'd say that enegry talismans and GCR are a nearly unbeatable combo. you have to be extreme unlucky to loose a fight with them in the most cases but it costs you a lot of speed.

another thing i would like to discuss:
90% of all good defenses have a specific combo of chars, mostly wrath/ssd combo. the red buzz is also getting very popular these days. all in all i feel the only char who can make a significant difference nowadays is wrath.
i think his powermove is somewhat out of line and his standard damage is a too high with the additional aoe buff removal (his fury sucks for sure). he is the char who makes your defense much more dangerous and who can make your life way easier on offense. the possible speed advantage is huge. all who use him to play LOL or knows how easy he cuts through the levels. if you compare this with other chars you will see a significant difference.
so he is still the toon of the moment, despite the reduced removal chances. that said, some adjustments would be necessary for him imo.

aside this one final note: let's hope for BNW this week, since there was no new event this could be an indicator, that something is cooking, man i really looking forward to this. it will completly change the meta again, but that doesn't matter, the patchnotes looked very reasonable to me. and if they fix what they said the game will become much better. so let's hope for a smooth start...

[ritchbe]

Anyway, digging the video dump thread (thanks ritchbe!) and things are looking good for LotB in general!

Really happy that the thread got so much attention and would like to point out that I only borrowed the idea from Nicko and gave it some time, so I also thank him

Was trying to push only the last day, but it seems that combining Wrath with WUR, in a strike talisman combo, took some speed out of my attack; coudn't keep up with Nicko who dropped in top 10 like warm knife through a butter and finished 4th with same playtime.

Copying Gmac's defense the last day helped some more def points than my usual. Will be exciting to come up with the usable teams after the BNW update changes.

Can't say much about my stats, because they're broken. Def held at 18% while attack shows 0.

Given the last few yards, was happy to see I finished in the top 10.

Congratulations to all!

[Nicko]

mjmxiii - thanks for keeping this thread alive - I think with a lot of the upcoming changes and tunings there will always be a place for it!

And Zidar - thanks for taking that video idea and running with it! Number of hits is huge and it will only continue to grow as new players come on board.

And yeah - I think I timed things well yesterday with my climb. However - those attacks started POURING in and the lack of Holds was working against me at the end. Combined with two back-to-back losses to GMAC (who I readily beat all week with a team I put together just for his team - should have changed back - lesson learned ) and a really fast Black Steel on my tail 4th place certainly wasn't easy.

With that being said - I just took myself OFF the video list to see if it makes a difference . My defense was at 18% last week - it's worst week ever. And man - do you feel that in the final hours. Of course you're being attacked by the best of the best on Saturday - but I also want to see if not showing my cards with a new defense I put together helps. This Eternal lottery is nutty - just got my third Wrath - so trying to make lemons out of lemonade. Of course I change defenses like a woman changes shoes so there may be a few variations...

I think Slauki brings up a lot of valid points. It seems in this environment - with all the weapons we have available - it's tough to lose if you play smart - and that the way most defenses win is by taking the control away from the player. Crowd control or forcing their hand. It's why SSDs with Strikes are everywhere - and Red Buzz as well - cause he controls who you attack. He's a pesky bugger and that steal-back is maddening when he has a set of strikes. I have a friend who's a Top 10 player and had a defense of 30% last week - and I'm sure my defensive nemesis (but also great Trooper) Kamuz had a solid percentage (finally beat you a couple times yesterday bud ) - and 24% is awesome mjmxiii - but I also know many great players who are struggling to top 20%. I think someone on the video thread mentioned theirs was 9%, and EZZ had mentioned he had over 6 pages of attacks without a single Hold - and his defense in my opinion is as solid as anyones.

I look forward to reading additional thoughts...

Finally - speaking of Kamuz - when he had 3rd place in the bag he borrowed a page from Black Steel and put in a lone SoL Eddie. Very cool!

[Blacksteel]

Def took a big hit here too, made more changes than usual trying to make up for the perceived meta, ended up screwing big friday night and woke up to 41 straight defense losses, anyway.
I agree with what Slauki mentions and would comment that it was surprising to see so many teams using GCR(Lucy) with energy steal + prisoner, these are already kind of OP characters by themselves (especially Lucy) and can be way too effective/costly/flexible against most teams.

I would venture to say that having these characters included would likely make for the best defense possible nowadays.
These characters/combos are not invincible, just unbalanced and to some point annoying, lets hope that the soon to come adjustments to Lucy and other characters along with BNW makes for a more level playing field.

Also it's worth to comment that the most effective defense I had happened when I went 'back to basics' an started to include SSD and/or Mummy Eddie, a team back from the deepest abyss, ye olde good times, just as Nicko mentions, which BTW had a great comeback, great job Nicko.

It was a very close competition this week everyone fighting to the very end so well done.
Special thanks go to Kamuz for making the last fight of the day a relief, you really did put a smile on my face with that Speed of light Eddie \m/.

[R1ck]

Congrats Gmac for eternal once again.

Something different I could notice is the less points needed to get top 25, I finished 22 with the same amount of points I finished the week before, around rank 40. It may be because people is loosing interest in PVP.
IMO energy talismans proc is helping more attackers and making defense's holds rate go down, everything will change again with the next update.

Edit: thanks to Kamuz as well, helped me to reach 22.

[Askora]

Congrats to everyone at the top! Some of you could have given me a little break. Haha It's all good though, I appreciate the competition.

I stuck with free SoW until the very end and had to fight a few extra battles to get back in the top 100. Posted 95, with 24 attacks and 187 defends. Sounds pretty impressive that way. Probably closer to 200 attacks.

Might have played a little harder, but was trying to make the most of the double rare souls deals. I managed 3 tier 6 sacrifices (including sacrificing a couple of rare non-dupes). Think I'm only missing one of the ones I sacrificed now, so all good. For my trouble I got 4 skill shards and 15 rare g/a. Not really what I was hoping for as I was wanting to get more legendary souls. The few I managed didn't pan out, but I did get Aces High from one of the rare g/a and Pharaoh from one of the rares so it wasn't all bad. I think I'm only missing Eternity (3rd eternal was a dupe Clairvoyant, was hoping for Eddie or Beelzebub) and Mystic for the full Eddies collection, until BNW which will probably bring another Eddie (Trooper?) into the mix.

I somewhat agree with Slauki that Wrath can be a bit OP, but with the upcoming change to fix the talismans I think it will balance out. I personally think all the eternals are a bit OP. They should be powerful, but the way things stand there are few top defenses that don't have at least one so they've killed some of the variety in pvp. Beelzebub with counter attack and energy can be quite lethal when paired with a buff remover. There's also SSD, but he's pretty much nerf proof and has remained a staple on a lot of defenses since open pvp began.

Defensively I don't know how much the videos hurt me, not too worried about it as I'm good with posting in the top 100. My defense is getting a bit stale and probably a bit of the reason for a slight drop in holds this week. Working on a new defense, but still a lot of kinks to work out. On offense I usually don't have too much issue, other than when I lose the coin toss and I face a team that manages to get nearly all perfect attacks (the videos of my defensive losses don't seem to show that same effectiveness with my team). I personally think that defensive teams should be at least 90% on perfect attacks, it might mean more losses but it would be at least closer to what a human player can do. I'm looking forward to BNW and the changes that will accompany it, maybe I'll manage to get some of the explosive talismans that have defeated me on occasion. The flip side is that, I expect they won't be nearly as effective on defense if they proc correctly with the changes. It would be nice if they'd fix it so the harpy doesn't get stunned by them as well, since technically she shouldn't be. I think that would help balance them out.

[Tridimensionale]

Glad to see you are ok Askora!

Rank 98 here.. i barely played this week so thats good..

[Kamuz24z]

Last week it felt like not many were fighting for the top spots i stop playing 2 1/2 hours before reset and i was around 1500 points away from third place and still finished second i hope the next update brings different teams and players fighting for Eternal and thanks to mjmxiii to keep this thread alive.

Stats
Attack 445
Defense 283

[Browno]

I got place 222 and usually get in top 250 each week without any extra sow spent.
I had a hold rate of 24% vs 32% the week before this. I do not believe it got worse from videos since nobody seem to encounter me here
I did change def team however. I do not have gcr or wrath so a decent def is still managable without those toons.