As per what I have read in the pvp forums so far,
these were the advice I have followed
Panzar and Dog are as high as possible cos DPS is crucial in this healing meta
Heimlock have enough frags for 10 stars but is remaining at 9 cos it’s already tanky enough as it is… no point allocating more points to it
While Nightingale and Heimlock have decent Plats skills, these skills do not justify the extra 1000+ points added to it for Platting them
It might be that PvP at such a high level is competitive but I find myself losing 40 percent of my non AI matches with this team… It feels like I have better win margins when this exact team had lower power in the past
Was thinking of whether the experts can suggest any improvements to my current team comp with my current squad. Am thinking of experimenting with other team comps with Caine, Mauler, Drake, Sentry, Pheonix, Halo, Savage, Flatline, Artemis and Butter
Mate… Heim and Gale have two of the best plat skills in the game. Get them up asap. Caine is a great addition to any team and I’d argue that he’s the best support hero in the game. I’d swap him in for either dogface, panzer, or ifrit.
Yes, I will experiment with Caine once I get him to 9 Stars.
Well… the process of platting cannot be reversed. That’s why I won’t jump into Platting heroes… Already regretted my decision to have mandrake as my first plat.
Just quoting @Sogui from my post last month:
"It’s not like I’ve been saying for a long time that 99% of plats do not justify the >1,000 power they add for the skill and the >2,000 power they add in promotions (which tend to be a waste for supports/low DPS heroes).
Halo is an excellent candidate because her plat is very strong but its not like she is good in PVP with just silver or gold.
Panzer is my other top choice for your lineup because her plat is actually decent AND Panzer will benefit the most from all the weapon damage increases that come with the promotions (5k more weapon damage for panzer means a lot more than 15k more weapon damage for Nightingale). Since you have 8* Nightingale, Caine, and 9* Heimlock, its unlikely that a Plat 8* Panzer would unbalance your team too much.
Nightingale is a solid plat but its really risky dumping that much power onto a healer, especially if you’re not piloting her. I’m also skeptical about her plats utility when the entire PVP meta is focused on burst damage, it will do an excellent job of keeping everyone else topped off but it will do 0 healing for someone who is getting focus-fired, which is precisely the only person who actually needs healing in that situation. I could see the argument for platting her if you have her as your only healer but since that’s not really the meta either right now, its hard to justify."
Nightingale’s platinum ability is basically the best ability in the game for PVP right now.
She is so great because her power is so low in comparison to how much healing she dishes out. 100% worth it to plat.
Sorry I’m not going to give people info to help them beat the system to make sure they get easy wins against noobs or people who upgraded a hero to platinum.
I don’t want this to devolve into one of ‘those’ discussions but I will just say the following to the devs:
The opening in PvP that allows for so much exploitation is the delta between the nominal power values of heroes and skills and the actual benefit that a given increase in bars, stars, skill levelling, etc, provides.
As the above discussion shows, people make their decisions based not on whether they have the resources to perform an upgrade but whether the ‘upgrade’, in absolute terms, would actually be a relative downgrade.
The solution here really, truly, has to be that the quantitative value ascribed to heroes, skills, bars and stars, has to more accurately reflect the values of said upgrades. Until then, players, myself included, will manipulate the power values of their heroes to exploit the poor power ratings (eg I have no shortage of items or cash but my PvP team remains gold because the increased value gained from going plat, for almost any hero, is not enough to justify the associated increase in power level).
Fwiw, I know that this is not an easy or straight-forward job and, when you do change the power values, people will flip their lids, but it’s what needs to be done to put a stop to the blatant edging. I suspect that you are using data from the new PvPs to try and inform your decisions so I’ll wait and see but I think anything short of a system that actively rebalances power-values based on the performance of heroes and upgrades, will just be a stop-gap at best.
tl;dr
If you’re a player, don’t think of upgrades as ‘upgrades’ (unless you don’t intend to use that hero for PvP). If you do intend to use them in PvP, think carefully about whether the upgrade will actually provide an upgrade relative to the ‘penalty’ (increased power-level).
That said, if/when this becomes even more prevalent than it already is and the devs revise the power increases associated with upgrades, don’t bitch about it.
Draco, when I see your team I get the feeling that you missed the point about keeping Nightingale and Heimlock at gold. You’ve followed his advice literally without understanding they WHY and the RATIONALE behind his advice.
BTW Sogui didn’t mean… keep your heroes at Gold and promote them to GOLD 4… because that adds points too! He is saying, why promote Heimlock to plat because (according to him) it will add another 1000+ points to your loadout power (thus placing you in a higher bracket) when the advantage that you get by accessing Heimlock’s plat skill, is not worth the loadout bracket increase. It would be better to keep those with lousy plat skills (Heimlock included… according to him) at Gold, because if you are gonna increase your team power by 1000 points you’d really like to allocate them to Dogface or Panzer instead.
Promoting to Gold 4… you’ve unfortunately botched it up because now you are 75% towards your plat ceiling… and now you are worse off because you don’t even have access to the plat skill.\
And for the record, I would not necessarily agree with the proposition that Heimlock’s or Night’s plat skills are not good. I like them and seriously if you’re not gonna plat Night and Heimlock, who are you gonna plat, there are plenty worse plats out there.
You are now, as others have pointed out, better off platting Night and Heim becuase NOW, your access to their respective plat skills is WORTH the incremental point gain which is now marginal because you are at GOLD4 not GOLD 0.
Basically, your promotion of Heimlock and Night from Gold 0 to Gold 4, merely added loadout power points without any benefit to the team composition as a whole.
Apart from this I would think that there could be execution issues - 40% losses seem quite high. Are you getting outmaneuvred and overwhelmed in PVP or are most of your matches pretty close?
I see…thanks Sing, your comment explains alot! maybe I shld have just left them at gold 0. Had the bad idea of bringing them up to gold 4 cos I noticed the increment to plat from gold 4 is so much more than, say from gold 3 to 4… Guess I will plat them and continue to boost the 2 dps users
Actually 40 percent is just a conservative estimate… I know I’m winning matches probably more often than not, just not like in the past where it’s 15 to 20 matches in a row
Also, do u think I should star up heimlock? I’m still thinking that I should not cos usually he’s the last or 2nd last to go down in a losing match
For Nightingale and Heimlock, I would say it IS worth the power level increase for their plat skills. Nightingale at plat with legendary skin becomes a healing monster, and is a powerhouse whether you control her or not, and heimlock’s plat protection of others and himself is great too. Making the team even more rugged if you’re trying to run more fragile heroes.
Min/maxing to game the system is definitely questionable, but not technically cheating. What’s happening is that people are responding to the current incentive system. They did make it so that depending on the variance of your heroes, you might be facing even a 10K+ power team. But there sure are some skills that if you max would give you a big boost to power but not to actual value of the hero to increase your odds of winning PvP (like “Guest” referred to in their very insightful bolded statement). The power levels and the matchups needs some adjustments to be more fair. Once you get your pvp team to a higher level, like 60K plus, min/maxing plays less of a factor as there’s less wiggle room.
I find that many people who say PvP is broken or is too hard and they continue to lose, it’s not ONLY because of facing min/max (although it isn’t great when you face a Plat + 3 10* Panzer and 4 7* golds). It can also be related to:
Setup related:
Poor hero choice / upgrade level (like using Drake before he is gold for example)
Weak team synergy
Ignoring the meta
Skills related:
Incorrect kill order
Staying in one spot / not dodging
Not switching heroes enough to maximize elemental advantages and skills
Inaccurate aim
Practice playing - team setup is a big part of it, but there are skills you have to build and work on like anything else. Don’t expect to win even 50% of the time right away. Stick with it, and you can improve your game.
PS - out of the heroes you mentioned, definitely Caine and Mauler are being used a lot at higher levels. Odachi, Moss, Artemis and Butter can do well on the right team. Of course, when you face Plat +3 Panzer, some of this strategy goes out the window, but she will be adjusted once more to make her less dominant, I’m sure of it.
remember that promoting heroes to platinum doesn’t just give you a new skill, but it makes the heroes stats increase. the extra ability is just an extra gift, and a perk for getting stronger. also, to keep your power low on purpose so you face easier competition is literally saying one of two things:
1.) you suck too much to compete with the big boys
2.) or you enjoy winning very easily and don’t want to challenge yourself
both are cowardly in my opinion, and yes cowardly can be strategic but it’s still cowardly. night stays at a low power though, i have her 10 star platinum +3 and she’s 13.5k, which is low compared to say odachi at 17k at the same stage in development so to speak. and for whichever reason you don’t want to play at a higher power, i should try to add that i play from 70-83k power range in pvp, and while there’s a few really good players you might face, it’s not that hard and playing the better players only makes you stronger. so i’d advise you to max your pvp team.
and as far as team composition, it’s obviously an opinion issue about which heroes people prefer. however! it’s not an opinion who wins the most matches, and at my power level there are 6 heroes i always see, panzer, caine, night, drake, heim, ifrit. i will stand behind this too, if you think those heroes aren’t the best than i would love to see if it’s true. anyone can say a hero is good, but until i see it in a match i struggle to believe it. so if you have a different opinion and feel strong about it, please message me in the game and we can duel. my name is WH4LER in the game and we can set it to equal heroes so it’s 100% fair, and i’m not wanting to prove anyone wrong i honestly am just curious if i am missing a good hero and would love to learn.
