So, I start my slice of Hearts Of Darkness at 11:00 p.m. EST. I run through the first node with the plan of attacking the node the way I’ve been told is the best way to approach it: at least three full point clears plus as many points as possible in the last hour.
I ate too much at Thanksgiving and my stomach gave me crap about it so I’m only just about to fall asleep now (3:30 a.m. EST). I glance at the game quickly and notice that I’ve dropped from 97th place to 198th place. Just for giggles, I decide to see the point scores for the top 10 in my slice…
…and here’s where I get confused. I finished the node with just under 3500 points. That’s all individual points in the node (I have all the necessary characters) at full point value for each individual battle. The leader in my slice is standing at over 11000 points. That’s in a node with several battles that you can’t repeat and a 8 hour refresh for full point value. How, then, has my slice leader managed to accrue nearly 4 times my score in three hours? What am I not doing?
Because as it stands right now, I’m starting to think that going for top 100 is utterly pointless.
I have exactly the same issue in my slice. 2 optimum clears so far leaves me in 78th place, and the top players are sat on 15-16k. I’m thinking they’ve simply had an early mad grind, and they’ll struggle later?
I take comfort in the fact there are several players on exactly the same score as me, I think this will balance out after the 3rd clear later.
That, or we’ve both missed an entire set of nodes somewhere!
Early grinders (most of them are chasing the legendary token, and aren’t concerned about placement)… the healthiest approach to pve is to simply ignore this.
Do not check the leaderboard until the end of each sub (or until near the end- i.e. before starting the final grind - to check when your “real” competitors start their final grind).
As a pve specialist who has a 16 sub win (first place) streak going right now, I ignore the leaderboard until the last 1/2 hour. People will grind early for whatever reason. Doesn’t mean YOU have to follow the herd. And when scaling goes through the roof, it becomes a matter of luck if you’ll clear the nodes before your competition. Competitive pve is a marathon. Slow and steady.
Okay. I’ll just stick to my usual plan for now (three clears plus as much as possible in final hour). Thanks to everyone who answered, much appreciated!
