warning- long post. i’ll just let you know what my experience was last season. you can see my roster and other than my single 166, yours is much better, so I’m pretty sure you can get there, just need to commit enough hp to it. i made it to 1000 3 times of the 4 times i tried last season and most of the season i had mostly 120s and 104s to go along with thor/loki (recently brought a chunk up to 140).
what i did was join early and some time in the first 24 hours push up to 6-700. then get beat down. then win a match/get hit and find my ‘equilibrium’ point where i could just sit without worrying about losing hundreds of points. early in the season that number was around 600. as the season went along, it seemed to slowly get lower (level of the featured character plays a big role) - end of season my hover point was ~400. most of the season i ran thor/loki but sometimes later in the season after taking mags to 140 and when he was boosted, ran mags/loki (not necessarily the best hopping teams because they’re somewhat slow - especially thor and loki). Then at a time that made sense with shields, where i was point-wise, how much time i had, etc, I’d push as high as i could from my ‘hover/equilibrium point’. before the health packs increased, that was highly dependent on health pack management, so against boosted ** teams and lower *** teams I’d use a B team. after health packs increased i could push as high as i felt comfortable. you want to do this all in one sitting as time efficiently as possible, because the queues that you’re in that people are seeing are not updated real time and there is a lag before they update and see what you’re real point number is. so the theory is while they think you’re still at 550 pts, you’re actually pushing up to 800+ and while many, many guys will hit you at 800, not as many will hit you at 500 if you have a good team out there. then by the time they see your point value for the 800s, you’ve completed your push and you’re shielded.
so, depending on my schedule and time available sometimes i would make my push anywhere from 12 to 24 hrs from event end. i could only reasonably push up to the 700s early last season (combination of comfort level and health packs) and then later in the season into the 800s before i either 1) got hit or 2) felt exposed. once you make your initial climb you have to manage your shields and try and avoid at all costs the 24 hr - it is very expensive. i didn’t always successfully do that right - was learning on the fly. best way to shield hop is to do the 3/8/3… to the end of the event. if you have a night’s sleep before event end you have to make sure an 8hr is available when you go to sleep or you’ll be stuck with the 300 hp price tag on the 24 hr.
for hops more than 14 hrs out i went ahead and did 2 matches. for hops in the very early morning (i.e. ~5:30am), I’d do 2-3 matches, depending on how close i was. all hops within 12 hrs of event end i did one match only then immediately reshield. and i only broke shield at event end once because i was right there. if you can break at the ~4 minute mark and finish your match, you might be ok. you might not.
really what helps the most are events where there are a ton of players posting very high scores. the carnage event (where he was 1000pt) was the easiest of all of them because there were more points out there in general (everyone pushed up to 1000+ in that one). i did that one with 450 hp (i pushed the night before and then went 8 (overnight)/3/8/3 on shields to event end). for some reason the event that had px blue at the end of the season was not nearly as heavily played as i had hoped and many of the available matches out there were much lower points than ideal. i guess many were done with the season and playing with featured sentry was not fun, granted. however, the ones that were playing were sniping me pretty good. my last 2 hops i played one match and got hit by the time i got out of the match. which is funny because the 3rd to last hop i was sure i was going to be hit - had a grocket that healed itself twice. that match took forever, but i finished just knowing i was going to come out -100, but nothing. last 2 hops, quick efficient game, hit.
i spent anywhere from 450 hp up into the 600s. ideally, for 450, that is very efficient and should be the goal - you get 150 hp between progressions and rankings, so net spend is 300 and for a **** cover and most of the time a second *** for t25, it is totally worth it, my opinion. carnage was the only event i made 1000 that i didn’t hit t25. there was one other where i hit 1000 (for xf) and i had used my 3hr and 8hr and needed 2 matches to make 1000, so broke earlier than event end to give me a chance. i made it, but then the only shield left was a 24 hr and since that would have only netted me a grocket yellow that was coming up in ddq within a few days, i left it unshielded and ended up about 550 by event end.
hope this helps you or anyone else. I’m not consistently up there, so others might have better advice, but that was my experience. i plan on targeting certain characters/events again. would like to make it 5-6 times at least, depending on the awards. won’t be targeting starlord, Elektra or carnage, but imhb, px, xf, 4hor i want. nobody seems to be pushing high on this offseason event for 4hor with patch rewards - though that would be better played, but anyway. hope this helps.
