PvE scaling vs temporary healing

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Does anyone know if PvE scaling is affected by temporary healing?

Data on PvE scaling is naturally difficult to collect, but let me share an anecdotal experience.

My roster has no characters with a base level higher than 80. The boosted characters I have are:

  • Level 40+70 1/1/0 Daredevil
  • Level 45+30 1/1/1 Punisher
  • Level 40+30 1/0/0 Hood
  • Level 60+40 4/5/3 Torch
  • Level 40+40 5/2/5 Cap

After getting wiped out a half dozen times on the Gauntlet’s Essential 16 node (level 118 OBW/Luke/Hulk), I decided to try my luck with the Essential 14 node instead (level 109 Squirrel/Doom/3*Marvel). Although the normal Gauntlet advice is to always fight the hardest battles first, I thought for sure that my personal scaling would be minimal, if not negative, given the many times that I had been crushed. Each node that I had fought before this in the Global Domination subevent, starting from roughly Simulation 36 (R&G/4Thor/Blade), had all involved one or more wipes too.

I went into Essential 14 with this team:

Level 130 1/1/0 Daredevil
Level 80 5/2/5 Thor (2*)
Level 60 3/5/2 OBW (3rd black in screenshot was gained in PvP later)

With a starting max health of 12,953 for the team, my true health level was ~5k at the end of the battle, but ~9k with temporary healing. There is probably another ~3k of temporary healing that was applied but got used up during the fight. Despite these numbers, the battle was actually extraordinarily difficult. Doom was always one match away from wiping me out, and I had to endure one Furry Friends and slog through two Bigger They Are’s. I will skip the details except to say that the 50 HP progression reward I earned from winning this very tough battle was especially sweet, and a reminder of what a great game that MPQ can be.

Then I looked at Essential 16 again and saw that it has now jumped from level 118 to level 132.

@^%!@$%^*%$!!!

At the moment I can think of two plausible explanations for this big jump in levels. Either the personal scaling algorithm is greatly underestimating the difficulty of this battle, possibly due to the temporary healing, or the community scaling just went crazy in the 20 minutes it took me to finish that battle. The latter seems very unlikely since I had been tracking node levels throughout the event and saw no change in Essential 16 for an whole day.

So has anyone else experienced wild PvE scaling after using temporary healing?

2

More likely a result of community scaling. My nodes all went way up in value overnight. I don’t think I was playing in my sleep, but anything’s possible.

3

In the past their has been no community scaling in pve. Nodes only go up as you progress through the gauntlet. That’s why it’s better to go through the mainline nodes before doing the essentials.

Beating mode 14 again probably raised the level of 16 op.

4

Temporary healing (aka fake healing or untrue healing) like OBW blue, Shulkie green, and Beast yellow (people besides me use Beast?) does not affect your scaling.

5

I think what you meant to say was that in the past there hasn’t been community scaling in other Gauntlet events. There’s been community scaling in other PVE’s for a long time.

6

Correct! No community scaling the gauntlet. Definitely is community scaling in the “stabdard” pve events, although the strength of scaling has varied quite a bit over time.

7

The placement rewards might’ve been the balance for introducing community scaling to the Gauntlet. It seems logical, but I don’t know if that is actually the case. If it is true, I’d rather them remove both, and this is coming from someone who actually is getting a 10 pack for Alpine Tactics.

When updating my PVEs ran post, I actually saw that this was the 4th Gauntlet. I thought it was the 3rd. This one by far has been the roughest, I’d say mostly due to Luke Cage.

Maybe they introduced the rewards so that you’d race thru the Gauntlet and avoid the community scaling, instead of waiting for a fresh bracket to get the placement rewards. I definitely don’t know the answers, but I don’t look forward to future Gauntlets, if they have community scaling.

8

Not entirely true, kind of half true but complicated.

Lets say I go into a mission full health, all my guys lose half their health, I refill the bar with temp healing and win THEN the game still realises I lost half health and doesn’t hammer me.

Conversely lets say I go in with all my guys down 2k health. I get a lucky early cascade and use web bandages topping everyone up. I then win before the temp healing is used up. The game sees I lost almost no health at all and punishes me for winning too easily…

As far as we can tell the game looks at health going in minus health going out and uses that to decide if you deserve to be punished for doing well… temp healing can impact that if it’s stopping you taking much, if any real damage in a fight.

Whilst this was true before as far as I can remember it was not true in THIS gauntlet. I had sub 2 unlocked and left it overnight before entering. In that time, having played zero PvE at all, the level of the first node went up by 19 levels. So there HAS to have been a degree of community scaling to explain me getting a scaling boost without having played. (I hadn’t levelled any heroes at all in that time)

9

I saw something similar in the first or second run of the gauntlet. I would take a peek at the next node to figure out who to run against it but wouldn’t play it for a while. That node would increase by a couple of levels while I was waiting. There are definite advantages to beating the gauntlet quickly.

10

Maybe there is a cap to community scaling. All I know is that I finished alpine tactics in 187th, so I’ve been done for a long time, and node 42 hasnt changed at all. Still the same level as it was after beating it.

11

My levels definitely moved when I wasn’t playing that first night the event was up, though they haven’t moved at all the last couple days since I finished and began picking at it for node rewards. Now either it was some kind of initial community scaling based on a much higher volume of play in the early going or a really delayed result of my own play that only kicked in some number of hours after I closed the client and went to sleep.