I’m a bit confused, after reading around on here I got the impression that the time you joined the tournament decided who was in your bracket, but then I heard people talk abut tanking events to get an easier bracket in the next tournament.
If it is time based, does anyone know what the trigger is? Is it when you open the event and get your selection of matches for the first time, or is it when you actually finish a match?
Don’t confuse bracket and matchmaking (rating):
Your bracket (who you compete with for placement awards) is determined by time of entry.
Matchmaking (the teams you see when choosing your next opponent) is determined by how well you did in past tournaments. People “tank their rating” by finishing low in tournaments with rewards they don’t care for, so the next tourney they participate in willgive them easier opponents - at least in the beginning. This works particularly well in Lightning Rounds because there are so many tournaments going on in a short time period.
When you finish your first match (or maybe when you start it?). You can skip through to try to set up the seed/easy teams for your first 3 battles whenever you want.
Your matchmaking rating is independent of your bracket, which is what people talk about tanking
Oh I get it, so the people you face aren’t the people in your bracket, but random people according to your MMR.
Your bracket is just the group of people your points total is scored against.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the explanation fellas. I’d assumed that the people I was fighting were all in my bracket.
Finally I get what tanking means … to lower your MMR by losing.
Totally different reference compared to WoW or other MUDs I’ve played in the past.
So must I rank horribly at tournaments (not matches) to lower my MMR or are a few retreats sufficient? Someone please advise 
Thanks!
Tanking can mean both. It’s all about context. 
As for the latter – we don’t know. Feel free to experiment and find out.
Over the weekend in the Doom Tourney and last night in the No Holds Barred I put out a Bag Man team to help me tank. I’ve been hit at least 30 times in that span and I can already see much ‘better’ opponents through the match making. But I only yielded three times (figured I might as well after putting that team in and retreating).
EDIT: Bag Man and tanking, no way anyone is going to mistake the context there!
Isn’t his secret ability amazing? Makes him tank better than IM40/Rag/Thor!
Does that actually help your MMR? I thought it was recalculated only after tourneys end. Or were you using the 3rd definition of tanking, to get your points out of the dangerous #1 boobie prize range
You definitely see an immediate change.
I don’t think it’s only at tourney end – otherwise SHIELD wouldn’t affect ranking ever, and you wouldn’t see changes to matchmaking opponents as you play in a longer tournament.
I’m thinking there might be a long-term MMR, and a short-term MMR… Or at least some longer-term factors that weigh heavier than recent short-term wins/losses…
What I mean is that after setting out a chump team and getting beat down at the end of an event, you’ll likely start the next event battling VERY low level opponents. But I find that lately, once I’ve had a steady stream of wins after beating easy opponents, I’m rocketed back up to the 100+lvl big dogs.
What this means is that you can’t undo weeks of success with a few hours of tanking. Once you get back into a winning streak, you’ll be shot back up to where you REALLY belong very quickly.
My guess would be that your finishing places in tournaments affects your long-term MMR. And I also suspect that that base level can only go up with success, not down with failure. So once you shake off the short-term effect of temporary tanking, you start getting paired up with people of similar levels of long-term success as you.
Brilliant. Bag Man is my favourite character 
Somebody with a L85 bag man answer this: Do you still get attacked?
No. The opponents die of laughter.
So here’s what I’m thinking to set up easier opponents longer beat the low lvl in one chance then as the lvls rise start taking more turns 2 maybe then beat one then 2 turn again and repeat I been trying it out I started the no holds tourney and made 600 point before it got really hard again
I would love to see just how much boosting they would need to give to bagman, loki, yelena, and classic hawkeye for people to actually use them in tournaments.
Hell, that would be a great tournament. Keep boosting the characters that nobody uses more and more until players actually start using them (could be fully dynamic). Would people still choose Thor if bagman is boosted 500%? 1,000%? The Bag Man All-Stars Tournament would be hilarious.
Too bad none of bag-man’s skills scale with level, so all he would become is a larger punching bag.
I actually don’t find loki too terrible during lightning rounds, with a color generator. You can usually get a good few matches with his purple. Of course that was before the crit nerf
True, but if you went high enough it wouldn’t matter. At 1,000% boost his health would be over 35,000 and he would hit for 1,500 on a purple match 3. I’d take him over Thor or rags then.