I finished my first match a couple hours in. The guy at #1 used to be close to 1100 if not over. He’s lost a few hundred points since then.
Yep. I hit 1300 at one point.
I’m currently 2nd with that 777. Shikamaru is now first at 1120 and shielded.
Before when shields were introduced, they were cheap enough to be used. Now it’s made PVP pay-to-win.
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Me too, i hit 1365 and within 1 hr, i am back to 800 average and rank 4, lol.
There is no way forward without paying. The 300% hp/dmg boost on Ares is too much! The shield cost is even worst!
The only good thing is I finally got the green punisher cover! Yeah! 2/5/5 now. 1 more black cover to go then wolverine will be a passtime!
Shikamaru must have spent thousands of HP on this tourney. He was shielded at 1100, now he’s shielded at 1240.
I am in the same bracket. #33 with 346. No point in trying harder at this point. Right now Shikamaru is #1 at 1218 and shielded. Brave man to spend so much on shields. Good luck Shikamaru. I am rooting for you. 
I will make an effort to get to 500 for the HP and then leave since I am not willing to use a shield. The good news is that this ends at 7pm and not 7am, so I may play the last hour to increase my chances to place top 50 (again for the HP). I decided that the most efficient way to level 2-3 key heroes is by using HP to their abilities instead of playing for 3+ hours each day. I guess we’ll see if it is worth it or not.
I’m thinking in the long run it’d cost less than 2500 HP to simply upgrade a 4 star cover than the expected HP in shields you spend to get it, provided upgrade is an option.
Now, if you don’t have a certain 4 star cover, maybe it is worth it to spend thousands of HP to try for a #1 to get your first cover. I see nothing wrong with that.
I don’t think there’s a problem with the generally lower points, as long as the progression rewards are also revised to reflect that.
Except that they explicitly upped the progression rewards as part of this new system. They’re going in opposite directions.
Seems to me that people are using shields. Tmaine was at the mid 1500’s all night until I passed him up. Almost all were using shields this morning.
Well they removed the 2nd token. I’m sure they’ll adjust the top ones down once they get the data from where people are hitting from this set
I know. I do expect those rewards to be lowered after they’ve data on the kind of points people are able to reach. If not, then there’s definitely a problem.
It’s a struggle getting to 1600. I realize I get the benefit of sitting at 1600 with a shield. I might have been able to hit 1700 however again there were players at 600-700 slamming me for 45-50 points. I had to shield to keep my progress.
Sorry about that hit but I couldn’t find any matches over 20 at all but you got me over 1600 and I immediately shielded and put out team bag. Didn’t get to hit any tank teams at all going to 1600
We’ll I’ve been shielded for 4 hours with bag out at 1950. Finished my punisher off with that red cover il try to make a push to 2400 once my shield wears off as I only have 2 green wolves covers so far.
Since people are able to hit the high 1000s I’m not so sure there’s necessarily a need to change them. It’s really hard to say anything definitive with knowing the amount of HP spent involved, but if you had to spend 1500 HP to get a 2500 HP cover, that’s still a net positive gain, not to mention you have a very good shot at winning #1 too. I haven’t gotten past 900 in this tournament yet, but I haven’t had as much time to play as I planned.
Looks very different to me.
In the previous edition I was able to hit 2k effortlessly, only had to skip a couple of times to find a 40-50 points match every time.
Now I hit 1.2k and can’t find anything worth more than 20 points. Looks like to me people aren’t using shields anymore, so it’s back to the point where who will be able to push closest to the end will win.
I can’t play again before the end of the tournament, so I had to shield. Pretty sure I just wasted 400hp but whatever, it’s not like I care anymore 
As long as there are a moderate number of people willing to shield tank the top rewards are reachable I just played again up to 2250 but then my matchmaking was giving me matches worth no points so I shielded up again till tonight. One more push. I think I have spent about 800 hp so far but I’m winning my bracket by 1500 points and I needed the red punisher cover as well as the patch ones and both 4 stars.
I don’t understand why it’s necessary to raise the cost of the shields. I do have the benefit of sitting at 1600. Others seem to benefit from my shield more. Charge them hero points to attack me. 
Edit: Fixed Screenshot
So how is round 2 of R&R going? I actually haven’t even jumped in yet. Given the advent of all the changes. I’ve saved up 14 health packs and am going to experiment with a late initial push maybe 3.5 hours prior to close of tourney to see what I can do? I don’t need any progression rewards. Any thoughts on this approach from what you guys have observed so far?
This is prolly the worst tourney in recent times to do this strat, but you’ll still be fine imo. Good luck.
Now might actually be a decent time to enter (Euros making a push before going to sleep).
The change in the matchmaking hasn’t solved the chain of beating problem. I was working my way to 1000 while watching the game (so was not playing well), but what happened was I keep on beat on the guy who was at 1000 that was shielded, and then a guy was keep on beating on me as soon as I was getting those points, and looking at that guy’s point there was probably another guy that’s beating him up as soon as he got his points from me. Now, I understand that’s the intended effect of shields (points trickle down to everyone), but right now it’s literally just a chain of beatdowns, 1 person at a time. Eventually the guy beating the guy beating the guy beating the guy beating me stopped and that finally cut off the chain I think, so I was finaly able to get to 1000.