I just joined a shard, and was 10 700 behind the first.
With no rubberbanding, no need for me to play.
Moreover, I check the nodes, and the scaling is mad.
So for the first time, I will skip a PvE for a new character.
Star-Lord is useless, and I’m not willing to spend tons of HP and Iso plus 5 sleepless nights for that.
It’s probably the right thing to do. People are going absolutely bat-kitty crazy for this thing, and I just don’t understand why. I joined slice 3, and have hit EVERY single clear so far, and I’m over 4,000 points behind 1st place. I don’t know where they’re finding all their points. Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m with you, Starlord looks awful. All three powers relying on countdown tiles? Scaling above lvl 250 right from the word go? Yea, no thanks. I did manage to beat that Magneto/Iron Man/Don battle at lvl 300 though with Captain Marvel’s red power destroying 75% of the armor tile infested board, so that felt pretty good 
I’m throwing in effort for the alliance, but I won’t be disappointed if I miss the individual T50 this time. Or surprised.
Scaling has gone mad in PVE, and made these events all but unplayable as you increase your roster levels/size.
Length has always been crazy, and as this is the last 3 hour refresh it is another crazy grind.
To save peace of body (time-wise) and peace of mind (pulling out hair due to difficulty), I’ve just resigned myself to building my roster almost solely through PVP’s - is this the Dev’s plan, move the uppers into PVP only?
If so I see lots of complaints by lower rosters that they can’t play PVP (worse than ever MMR) and upper rosters that they can’t play PVE (worse than ever scaling) - this “solution” hasn’t made either side happy.
Starlord doesn’t look top tier PVP on the face of it, but we’ll see if people find any magic combination to use him in.
D3 has made a huge mistake by showing people 8 hour refreshes. Now people are already acclimatized to less effort for PVEs after only one run. The problem for d3 is that 8 hour refreshes are too slow to keep the attention of addicted players; you can’t even go to PVP for respite with shield cooldowns. I wouldn’t be surprised if this indirectly leads to a gradual decrease in players as the hard-core addicts and whales find other more hard-core games.
Here is my experience in the last couple of weeks (since cooldown started) :
I usually use ALL my daily medpacks from the time I wake up, till the time I go to sleep. So, that enables me to play quite a lot.
What can I do when I am shielded for such a long time ?
Either play PvE if there is one, or play LRs when they are available.
This season, I decided to get Iso from shield sim. Since I had so many unused medpacks, I went pretty high. Got attacked, and went up again. So I played sim quite a lot. Improved my gameplay with Gthor that I seldom use in PvP.
In the Hulk PvE, even though there were 8 hours refresh, the scaling was so high that I would not have enough medpacks to complete all nodes. So I slacked this one and played every once in awhile.
Now, in order to use the medpacks, I start the PvPs very early, stay unshielded quite long, go high, until I get attacked too much.
And that indeed works. I am not grinding as much Iso as before (before I play less overall), but it’s better than nothing.
Latest update on the PvE : even though I am not playing it, scaling goes even worse. The Mag node is at lvl 283 (was 275 when I opened the sub) and I haven’t played the node even ONCE…
Its not just that there are 2 subs open at once meaning for the next 2 days if you really want to grind you have to hit 17 nodes every 3 hours. NO THANK YOU at least it made up my mind on where I want to place this event.
I feel you. This is the first one I’m not grinding for a new character. Not only is my roster at 60 characters that half are barely used, I cannot find the energy for the grind. And with the 2x ISO on PVP right now, I’d much rather focus there.
I havent joined yet, and probably wont. I dont have a prayer of hitting T50 for Star-Lord and my current alliance is PVP centric so they wont (really) care if I dont score well. Seems to me that its a good move for my sanity.
Its a horrible, horrible thing for D3. With shield cool downs, bad PVEs and the 8 hour refreshes (which I like better than 3hr) Im playing less…and looking for another game to fill the in between time. Ive ended up playing the Simulator FAR more than I have ever done before. I dont think Ive gotten past 1400 before, with 900 or so being typical…Im at 2100 right now and pretty burnt out on it so I need another game.
The sleepless nights and spending money…this how you’ve treated other PVE release events? No wonder people get burned out on this game, they don’t treat it like a game.
Yea, slices are catered to end times. However, the truth is if you can’t join when the slice begins, you’re chances of joining a bracket and not already being out of contention are slim.
I don’t know any other way they could do it though, unless they have strong rb the first sub, then switch to weak afterwards. Hmmm, that actually might work.
The real problem is probably that pves are pvp s just in story mode form.
You must remember you were 1st for the Gthor and I was second.
So I’m quite glad someone like you thinks the same as I do…
Thanks for your message.
I noticed that for each new character I have to spend even more HP (boost) and Iso to place Top 5. 7K HP in boosts and Health Packs for Squirrel Girl. Never again.
Gthor was a complete nightmare. But even if I don’t play her much in PvP, I play her a lot in Sim and PvE, so that’s OK.
Starlord ? Where on earth will I be using him when I can use Xforce and Gthor ?
Let’s be funny for a minute : use bagman against Starlord to screw your countdowns… 
Yes I do. Gthor event was by far the most effort I put into any event. Since then I been taking it much easier. I have just flopped into top 10 in the last few months for the new characters instead of going for top spots by using the rubber band.
Was gonna post earlier in this thread, but got caught up trying to clear my subs, 1 of which was ran prematurely, and has now been pulled. So slice 1 has a problem because of this. Some gained extra points that others will not be able to, and they’re allowing you to keep points that you got out of the sub that was ran prematurely. I almost cleared it, but didn’t finish an Essential and a Trivial.
I was going to say, this will be the first PVE I don’t go for all 3 covers with. And this is coming off of a #1 finish in my bracket for the last PVE. Thor, I was in contention for T5, all 3 covers, until the final day, where I brought my extra phone batteries, but forgot my phone while I went to church. I settled for a T10 there, got 2 covers. Was kinda relieved to not have to grind it out too much and possibly still miss T5, but I got over it, since I made the mistake of leaving my phone in the first place. Elektra, I think I managed to score T5 and get all 3 covers.
I was slowing down for Starlord, partly because I was done with competitve PVE, made a thread about it on the forums and everything. That was until the 8h refresh. I got #1 in that, and was looking forward and still kinda am, to playing for T2 in PVE when they come back. It is the only way I’ll be able to cover my 4*s, other than Fury, who I had covered, then with token pulls, got optimally covered.
Another reason I was slowing down for Starlord, is because I looked at my 4* roster. Softcapped 4s Xforce 147, 2/2/3, Dino 131 0/1/4. Underleveled 4s Fury 156 5/5/3, Thor 106 3/0/2, IW 104 1/4/2, and Elektra 104 3/1/1. I would probably pull Starlord from tokens for before he is usable. I have recently pulled a Fury, Thor and Elektra from various tokens. Then I looked at my 3*s, that I am trying to level since I have the covers to do decently in PVP, with my ISO stack, that makes me feel like I am living paycheck to paycheck, or LR to LR.
All of that combined made me decide I would be fine with T10 finish, or just 2 covers. After typing this and reading it, I don’t even know if I want to go for the 2 covers anymore. 1 cover may be fine, or I might just go for the Mohawk green.
I never was 1st in a PvE, so I wanted to know what it took to get there. What were the others doing that I did not do ?
When I found out that they were not sleeping, I was pretty mad, hence my ragequit early December…
I think many of us struggled a lot, paid a lot for this game, and the most important things that have to be changed in PvEs (scaling and rewards) are just being ignored. I shouldn’t have to spend 30K Iso in a PvE to get the 3 covers. Nor spend more HP that I would spend if I just bought the extra covers I needed.
I will celebrate my 365th day in 5 days.
I have put so much time and efforts, dedication into this game, I feel completely drained. I have no energy for Starlord. Even if the nodes were trivial, I couldn’t grind every 3 hours anymore for 6 days, day and night.
I’m playing the LRs today, enjoying them. I also enjoy the Blade PvP, because Blade is fun. That’s it.
And for once, I will experiment what it takes to level a 4*, winning covers from PvPs (that’s what I did with my 2nd XForce). I’m spending less and less money into this game, because I think they should reward the loyalty of the ones who’ve spent so much into this game.
If they indeed give us less seed teams, so that I am not able to max characters anymore because I don’t have enough Iso, I will just quit.
I’m with you… I am only putting in the bare minimum for the alliance.. I’ll play the refreshes every so often. I’m sure not going to set a timer for every 3 hours so I can cycle thru them. I also don’t understand this PVE scaling, nor the people going ape-kitty for StarLord. I am still ages from finishing my 4Thor, and with the limited number of people even getting him, it just seems like a big waste of time. I’ll be glad after this when refreshes are 8hrs. PVE is like GroundHog’s Day.. it’s the same crap.. over.. and over.. and over.. and over..
I was even surprised they did not use “Meet Groot” PvE format for Starlord.
Thick as Thieves is known to be the hardest PvE format to deal with…
I think a 4* means already a lot of effort to level/max/cover once we have the 1st covers, no need to add to the burden in the PvE…
With the 7k HP you spent on SG, you could have just bought 5 of her covers haha.
I’ve never spent a dime on PVE.
I understand why you’re burned out if that was your norm in PVE.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise PVE. But spending 7k HP is just a whole other level of PVE play that I didn’t even know existed.
I know, but had I known I would end up spending 7K, I wouldn’t have done it.
Once you are stuck, you don’t stop, do you ?, or you end up with nothing.
I’ve also burnt a lot of Iso, that I could use to max characters.
So, in the end, a PvE is not worth the trouble.
I’ll spend a bit more on shield hopping when Starlord can be won.