We all know the deal. You want to do well in PvP tournaments, but you don’t want to grind all day, you don’t want to spend a lot of money, and you definitely don’t want to do worse than people who grind all day or spend a lot of money. What’s a slacker to do?
Slack smarter.
1. Always fight UP.
So you may hear people talking about “defense”. I will tell you this right now: There is no such thing as defense. If someone with a remotely reasonable team wants to beat you, they can. They get three tries, and damage sticks per try. They get to use boosts (and you should) which the defender can’t use. They get the first move, they get to choose their targets manually, and the AI is simply not as good at making moves as a human can be.
The only real defense is getting someone to look at your team when it comes up as an option to fight, and convincing them to say “meh” and press “Skip”.
The first step is to only fight teams that have way more points than you do. First of all, you’ll get more points per win, which means you’ll rise higher with fewer fights; a slacker goal if ever there was one! Second, when you show up for retaliation, they’ll look at how many points they’ll get to beat you, and realize that it’s not worth it. And if they DO retaliate, so much the better! You’ve proven that you can beat that team, and you’ll get more points back than you lost. And lastly, the fewer fights you’re in, the fewer people that can later retaliate against you. A surefire recipe for getting stomped at the end of tournaments is trying to grind out an extra 50 points by stringing together 15-20 point wins. Those people will be retaliating back for more points than you earned, and with two minutes left, you’ll get a message saying you just lost 150 points, and you’ll cry bitter slacker tears. Also, all that frantic grinding sounds like a lot of effort. No thank you.
2. New event, shmew event.
“OMG, there’s a new event that just opened five seconds ago! Let’s jump in and start earning some points!” said no slacker, ever.
Good heavens. You know who starts playing events right away? People who just can’t wait to start earning rewards. People who, if they are in your bracket, will probably kick your butt. A new event opened up? Do the slacker thing. Take a nap. Heck, skip a day. This increases the likelihood that your bracket will contain more newbies and slackers - your preferred opponents! I did a late start on the Juggernaut tournament, and ended up winning my bracket with a score that was about 300 points shy of where folks like TheLadder ended up, and with a team that only a slacker could love. If I had joined a bracket with the sort of people who start playing ten seconds after the event started, I probably wouldn’t have made top 50.
3. Eat all the low-hanging fruit.
The biggest factor in getting people to look at your team and say “meh” is building a team that looks like it will be frustrating/time consuming to fight. One of your top priorities should be getting all the HP, covers and tokens you can from the PvE missions, and building up a couple of tough 2* characters. Thor, Daken, Wolverine, and Cap all have easily acquired covers, and if one or two of those guys is near-maxed or maxed, I’m more likely to just press “skip” and look for easier targets. This means you should really focus on a two-character combo that works well for you, and work on those. Often, tournaments will add a mandatory third, so you can slack off on leveling a third character. I actually don’t recommend C. Storm, because she’s a really easy character to beat - low HP, her passive is trivially avoided, and no cheap high-damage skills. I love fighting teams with L85 C. Storms and underleveled pals, and all good slackers should.
Some extra miscellaneous tips in no particular order:
- If you’re going to un-slack for anything, try to get 3* Spidey. His healing ability can drastically cut down on downtime for you.
- If I see a team of Wolverine, Daken and Bullseye, I am definitely skipping that team. It might not actually be that good, but there is no way I’m sitting through triggering those passives a million times.
- Never spend ISO for covers. You will get a bunch of cover tokens over time, and you will never have enough ISO.
- When the Lightning Rounds are going on, even if you don’t want to compete, jump in for a couple rounds to get the easy prizes. Those can add up to a lot of ISO with minimum effort.
There you have it. More snooze, less lose.
- Tesla
