Introduction
Let me start by saying that when more players are able to climb higher, it benefits the community as a whole because there will be more points available. It’s a rising tide floats all boats scenario that reduces both the shielding cost and the frustration of reaching your goal. I also know that many players have good enough rosters to be reaching the 1k or even 1.3k progression rewards but the idea of having to coordinate couple with the risk of spending 
for nothing is a big turn off. I have been there. So here it is, reaching all progression rewards, explained:
Lingo
- Blacklisted: Characters that when not featured, will paint a big target on your back. They are not necessarily bad, but either the AI can’t play them, they have expensive powers coupled with low health, their powers can become useless (or even self-defeating) against certain teams, or they are just plain easy to get around by denying one color. In my opinion, these are
- Good 3: A good max level 3
character that accelerates your matches, is a hassle to play against because of guaranteed damage or dangerous ability, or hopefully both. These include
- Boosted 3: A non-Blacklisted 3
character boosted between level 210 and 240 (beware that anything less than 240 will paint a huge target on your back). - Decent 4: A 4
character who is mostly covered, at least level 200, and has at least one of his good abilities fully covered.
Boosted 4: A fully covered 4
character at least unboosted level 240 that is boosted that week. - Team Carries: Fully covered 4
characters (you should strive to collect these) that have great offensive abilities and can be scary to face. These include
- Juicy Queue: A team that is significantly easier to beat than other teams worth a similar amount of points. If you’re a juicy queue, players skipping matches looking for points will not skip you, might attack you immediately, and may even look for you again when they are done, so time spent unshielded should be kept to a minimum.
- Cornerstone: The character you want to build your team around. Support characters should be accelerating your cornerstone skills and so forth.
- Hover Spot: The point threshold where you can stay unshielded for a relatively long amount of time and won’t lose too many points. For 3
teams, this may be as low as the 500s, and for 4
teams this may be as high as 800s.
Expectations
First, let me set your expectations. This is what you need to reach each reward tier consistently. Anything less than this is still doable, but will cost you more shields as you will have to shield earlier and hop more. Anything significantly less than this would be a waste of your resources, as you will be a sitting duck any time you unshield.
To reach 1k progression without running the risk of throwing your phone out the window, you’ll need to meet a few prerequisites, starting with a decently covered featured character. Bring him up to level 120 if you haven’t already. It’s very cheap, makes him decently useful (boosted, he’s level 210), and to the 99% of players who won’t go digging through your roster to see how he’s covered, doesn’t scream badly covered push-over. You’ll need at least one Good 3
or 4
that is level 240 or higher as the cornerstone of your team. Your third character can be a Decent 4, Boosted 3, or Good 3 - you will want to keep team synergy in mind when choosing him.
To reach 1.3k progression, there’s no change to the featured character requirement. You can still do it with your level 120 (boosted to 210) character even if he’s not optimally covered. The cornerstone of your team should be either a Boosted 4 or a Team Carry. In some PvPs you may be able to reach this tier with a Good Boosted 3 coupled with a good accelerator, like
, but that will depend on your skill and luck. You will have to play your matches extremely fast during the shield hopping stage because you will be a Juicy Queue. Your third character should be picked based on how well he synergizes with your cornerstone, and can be as low as a Good 3 depending on who your cornerstone is (example:
).
Obviously, the better your team, the easier time you’ll have reaching these progressions. Your team strength will vary from week to week as the boosted characters change, and from PvP to PvP as the featured character changes. Sometimes you may have multiple buffed characters to choose from and a maxed featured character to boot, other times you will have a stock featured character and no boosted characters. Just because you reached a progression tier before, doesn’t mean you can every time.
Strategy
And now, the strategy. First you’ll have to pick a shard. Some shards have players trying harder than others. It may seem scary to go into a shard where you see so many fully leveled 4
characters and players going for 1800 points, but what this means is that when you’re at 1200 points trying to get to 1300, you’ll find 70 point queues instead of 20 point queues. Once you picked a shard, it’s time to fight. There are 3 stages to PvP: climb, push to first shield, and shield-hop.
The climb is the stage where you get all the easy matches out of the way and get to your Hover Spot. You will want to do your climb early, sometime between the 48h and 24h mark. You can do these matches at a leisurely pace and time it so you reach your hover spot about 30h before the PvP ends. Your last match should be done with your scariest defensive team, because this is what other teams will have to face while you take a break. Your goal is to stay there until your health packs regenerate to 10.
Then comes the push to first shield. Before you start, think of what shield you’re going to want to use. Your mind might be racing at the end of this run and you might not make the best shield decisions at the end. If this is 3h before bed, you should put up a 3h shield and do a hop at bed time. If this is already bed time and you put up a 3h shield, then either you stay up at least another hour or your shield will expire and you’ll be hit back to your Hover Spot. It is inadvisable to break shields soon after shielding as your shield may not have endured all the hits from people that queued you while you were fighting. You will want to use your fastest team until you are 150 to 200 points above your hover spot (but no higher than 850), then switch to your scariest team with no regard for sustainability. At this stage, you’ll want to be using +AP boosts for 4 colors and a good team up. You will want to put up a shield as soon as you reach your goal or if you’re just shy of your goal but keep treading water because you are hit every time you win a match and are out of health packs. It’s not worth to try to switch to an inferior team to keep trying to reach your initial goal. For 3* teams trying to reach 1k progression (if you can’t typically reach 1k without shielding), aim for a 3h shield at 900 points. For teams trying to reach 1.3k progression, aim for first shield at 1k. If you are doing your push to first shield when not many people are playing, you may be able to push a little higher before shielding, but just like with gambling, you have to know when to stop.
Lastly, comes the shield hopping stage. Some alliances are very coordinated and so it is easy for their members to shield hop, but this is definitely not necessary. As soon as you finish your push to first shield, look at your queues. If you don’t already have 2 queues worth at least 50 points, preferably more, start skipping. You may have to do this a lot until you find a suitable opponent. If you start seeing the same names showing up and you still haven’t found a suitable queue, give it 20 minutes, then try again. When you have your 2 queues, plan on what time you want to do your hop and what shield you want to use next. The best strategy is to alternate between 3h and 8h shields until you reach your goal, but sometimes if you have had early success and want to keep your points for the season you might try to schedule two 8h shields back to back. When you shield hop, the sweet spot is 2 matches. If you do just one match per hop it will cost too much
and if you do 3, unless you are really lucky, you will be hit, possibly multiple times. Even with just 2 matches, you still run the risk of being hit. There are 2 factors you can’t control - luck and how much of a Juicy Queue you are, but there’s one that you can and should - speed. You’ll bring your A-team for the event and should be boosting +2 ap to 4 colors (maybe +all ap boosts against tougher teams). Bring your best team-up. You will need your skill as a puzzler here to not only identify cascade-generating matches quickly but to also reorganize your strategy on the fly when the AI gets a cascade. You should not be attempting to preserve health for the next battle, like trying not to use
or
to save on health packs. You’ll just heal your team to full before the second match anyway. For players trying for the 1k reward, one hop should do it. For players going for 1.3k, you may need 3 or more.
Etiquette
Keep in mind that there is always an element of risk, and you may be foiled at the last minute by an attack when you’re just shy of reaching your reward. To minimize this risk, there are a couple of rules of etiquette we as a community can adopt (and many already have). The more players follow these rules, the easier it is for all of us to reach our progression rewards because people will climb higher and there will be more points available in your shard.
- When you are above 850 points and you find a high points target, don’t attack them right away (sniping). Try to give them 10 minutes before attacking. Always do this when shield hopping, but this may be impractical during the frantic dash to first shield. So at least try to give them a match. Play another match before hitting them, and give them the chance to shield before your hit comes.
- Never hit the same target twice (double-tapping). To do this, try to get in the habit of reading the name of who you’re attacking. Do this not only because it’s the kind thing to do (you will know how much it sucks when it happens to you) but because you might end up on a list. When you reach this high end play, you will attack and be attacked by players who belong to very organized alliances. If your (and their) attacks are bouncing off shields, everyone is happy. But if you get a reputation as a sniper, or worse be put in a kill on sight list (yes these do exist), you will have a really hard time reaching those progression rewards again because when you are caught unshielded, it will be broadcast in a chatroom and people will be asked to attack you.
Anyways, I hope you find this guide helpful. it should be immediately useful to people with solid 3* rosters and up, but I hope players who are not there yet can also find usefulness in knowing what to expect in high end play and also in what types of characters to invest/prioritize.
