Supercourses don't even offer that much more in rewards over the normal proper course. You get a lot of bronze gatorades from supercourses, which you don't even need for that last level break
hurdle. However, you do need Gym Leader's notes, which is a roughly 30% drop chance from finishing a Very Hard Supercourse (Strike, Tech or Support only).
It's a really good thing there is no stamina/energy meter in this game. At the same time, the amount of materials needed is exactly why there isn't one.
I DID NOT KNOW THIS! I did a set and just got the usual golds and skill shakes and thought "Why am I bothering with these when my (admittedly non-super-effective team) can't auto?"
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Its literally the ONLY reason to keep running supercourses after the initial successful run for the 30 gems.
These type training events let you get 2 more fairly easily with some farming of the co-op battle, but if you need more after trading for the available ones in the shop, clear the Strike/Tech/Support supercourse and you should get one or two.
They can still be a total bitch to clear, and I'm running Blue at 92 with Rosa and Kris at 85. They can't auto it, and I can still lose to stupid randomness if the main pokemon somehow gets their sync move up before I do.
Last night, I finally cleared Hard Co-op Blaine from the Rock Training Event three times with randos to get the last 50 gems from the missions.
This was a monumental effort for some reason, compared to doing that for the Grass Training event. Blaine's Ponyta has like 10k HP and Lycanroc can't take a hit. Beedril's Sludge Bomb is almost a OHKO on anyone and none of the randos ever target it, but theres no real good way to communicate that. And once Ponyta gets their sync up, its on rotation to do a buff, heatwave x2, flamethrower, repeat until sync again (if you survive all that somehow) and then it just Flare Blitzes.
I hope the next training event is for water, so I can just ruin it with Kris.
That's two support pokemon in a row. Lyra's a bit better than Oshawott in terms of full support coverage (atk/sp. atk/speed/crit vs. only atk/speed), but Oshawott's got better defense stats to Meganium's higher HP.
I don't know if I want to pull for either one while the banners are up. The nice thing about Oshawott is he doesn't lose buffs once a sync move happens (if you unlock his passive). You can have him tank a sync move, reduce his HP, then use his attack buff skill to bring everyone back up to +5 or +6 attack. This is great if you have an Olivia to take advantage of that.
EDIT: Okay, I do want Oshawott, but I'll wait for the next data mine dump. There should be new chapter unlocks and new events for October released soon, but nothing is known yet, but Oshawott will be available for another week after that news drops.
Best guess is the next month-long rate up will be Red/Charizard, with 3 more type training events happening with a focus on an existing or new sync pair introduced to the game. Also, new chapter free sync pairs.
I'm hoping it's Red. That would be the best case scenario I think. But there are a couple other high-profile pairs that would not surprise me if they dropped in October. Stephen and Metagross would be an easy pick, or Cynthia and Garchomp since she's literally already in the game.
Or they could pull a surprise on us and introduce something a bit spooky for Halloween. Maybe a sync pair with Punkaboo.
Right now my pull strategy is pretty simple. I'm holding those 6k free gems for whatever the big event banner is in October, and any excess gems I get over 6k have been going to single pulls. I actually got lucky and got Blue the other day off a single. So that's neat. And he's already my highest character. I dropped everything else I was working on to farm up all the mats to unlock him and break him as high as I could. He caps at 85 right now.
Sept 30 - Oct 17 - Hilda/Tepig
Oct 8- Oct 24 - Pending
Oct 17 - Oct 31 - Elesa/Zebstrika
Oct 24 - Nov 7 - Brendan/Treecko
Tepig looks pretty strong. Highest HP of all current Pokemon once she evolves fully into Emboar. Has Flame Charge to raise her speed, and a self-buff that doubles her attack by the amount of speed raised. Flare Blitz is a strong single target attack but she recoils for 25% of damage. However, she has 2 Potions and a passive that heals her when her HP drops to critical levels and she can never be poisoned.
Zebstrika doesn't look quite as good but is a 5* Electric and will probably be the best option to use when her training event is active, but I feel like Hau/Raichu can do a pretty decent job already if you need Electric coverage.
Oh, nice. Brendan+Treecko focus banner. I want that character cause I love Treecko. Also, without having seen the stats I'd imagine that Brendan is a lot more offensively inclined than Rosa. I like Rosa as a support character, but she's pretty limited in what she can do.
In other news, they dropped a small update today and among the list of changes is a pretty nice quality of life change. They added recommended power levels to all the battles.
Brendan/Treecko is pretty terrifying, but he's a real drain on your move gauge. You want to open up with his buff that uses 3 bars to raise his Atk/Sp.Atk to 6 right away, then a couple of Dire Hit +. You can then try using Bullet Seed or Leaf Storm for serious damage.
Compared to Rosa, he's extremely offensively capable, and compared to the rest of the known roster to date, he ranks 7th in physical attack and 5th in special attack. His main drawbacks are really needing a support like Rosa to fill out the move gauge when he empties it, and maybe an accuracy buff because Leaf Storm is only 90% to hit, and you don't want to miss with it.
I would like a strong 5* Fire pair, but I do not want Tepig because the recoil is very detrimental, especially when you do over 2K damage in the co-op battle and take damage for 500+. He can have over 700HP, but he's as bad as Roark/Cranidos.
Flint/Infernape will have to do as a main hitter in the very hard co-op, and I'm holding back to see what next week's trainer is. Or until November.
Single player sync pair isn't a problem, because you can queue up your moves to time it so your recoil striker can get a heal (if you have one on the side).
Co-op battles? Good luck surviving. Your mons are locked behind needing to not issue a move, and your low-HP striker is getting swapped out to get the heal anyway, and your teammates are probably not paying attention or recoiling themselves into hell and expecting you to have a healer on standby.
The head producer posted an in-game letter, which is basically a "first month retrospective." He gives no specific details, but he does say that they are taking player feedback to heart, and their priority list right now for the future of the game is A) Bug fixes/performance issues More/Better content and C) Looking at the battle system and making changes/revisions to make it more satisfactory.
+1
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I've honestly stopped learning recoil moves on characters. That way the AI doesn't kill itself during auto battle.
They need to massively tone down the recoil damage in this game. The sync pair combat system is just too unfavorable to that kind of move.
So, Dusclops actually has a use case for it in co-op. You buff everyone to the teeth and then double-edge people until you die, at which point your passive passes your buffs on to your #2.
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I've honestly stopped learning recoil moves on characters. That way the AI doesn't kill itself during auto battle.
They need to massively tone down the recoil damage in this game. The sync pair combat system is just too unfavorable to that kind of move.
So, Dusclops actually has a use case for it in co-op. You buff everyone to the teeth and then double-edge people until you die, at which point your passive passes your buffs on to your #2.
...just in time to get them all dispelled by enemy sync move
New event started. Evolution Rally. One mission today. I'm not sure if there will be a new mission each day or what. Today's mission was one of those multi-stage exploration missions where you walk from screen to screen and talk to people and click on stuff.
I got 3 of the big evolution materials and 6 of the small ones. Plus some other crap.
I'm much more interested in the free gems they handed out for bug resolutions and the promise of more to come because of the banners that included other 5* sync pairs that shouldn't have been there.
Sounds like they're also going to start revamping the balance and gameplay in November and December which is good.
I can reliably clear a Very Hard supercourse with little issue when it demands CP of 20,000, but the co-op story missions make mincemeat of some teams when you have more Pokemon divided between you and your teammates, and they have a lower CP requirement of 15,000.
There's either too much HP bulk on the central Pokemon for the fight, or the damage output from the enemy team is always excessive. "Tank" pokemon like Aegislash and Nosepass don't have enough defense and HP to handle it, and they have no support to heal. In co-op, there's no point bringing them unless your buddy teammates have potions, and even that is shit because it's so limited.
PSN: TheArcadeBear
Steam: TheArcadeBear
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
Nosepass isn't a tank, it's a bard. There's different subcategories of support mons.
That said, the way co-op usually plays out, it's often best just to bring your best attackers and any techs that specifically have useful abilities for the fight. I was able to auto the normal Hilda and manually do the Hard with a team of ~lvl 70 Kris (unevolved), Karen, & Olivia.
Edit: But also I can't do the very hard single player ones at all, so
I was super pumped for the game pre-release and I'm still fully ready to be on-board when they fix it. After several revamps.
But right now I'm mostly just logging in and collecting my free goodies, because I've completed the solo content and I don't have time to sit around during co-op battles. Those just take way too long. And then if you wipe, it feels like a giant waste of time.
+1
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
The trick is to just do the normal ones on auto since you get basically as many tickets from it and you only have to look at it every few minutes while you do something else.
I'm definitely not going to defend them for a lack of content, but it is funny to me that people raced through this so quickly and raised a stink about it (the Super Effective podcast is extremely guilty of this). Like, this is a mobile game. Just logging in to do your dailies is the expected play pattern. The rest is dressing for when you need to kill a little more time.
I'm looking to be clearing the Co-op story battles because that's how you get gear. And then you need 5 dupes of the same piece of gear to upgrade it from 1* to 2*.
If you've farmed dailies for everything else, this is your top end farm at the moment, and right now, some of those co-ops are wildly imbalanced. I tried an EX and nope. That's not happening. Pretty much requires you and your teammates to be rolling a 5* super effective team, or at least 5* top tiers like Karen, Blue, Olivia or Brendan.
It doesn't help that Co-op battling is way less enjoyable to a lot of people, myself included.
That plus not being able to auto the hardest super courses kinda turned me off of even logging in most days. Why do the drudgery if all I have to look forward to are co-op battles that I don't particularly like.
I initially thought we'd get more actual event/end game solo content, not a snooze fest premade battle or two leading into a co-op fight you get to grind 30+ times.
No new story content for all of October, and nothing until December from the sounds of it. I hope that's wrong, but guess we'll see on the next datamine at the end of the month. At least rewards are going to be increased after this Electric event is done.
I downloaded a 500+mb patch today, but nothing appears different. I don't know if there's a big enough community for this game for there to be data mining, but I assume the patch has upcoming content in it since nothing was posted in the news and nothing appears to be different in the game right now.
Honestly... the game feels pretty dead right now. They already brought back the Brendan focus summon event. That baffles me. I know there's only like 6 or 7 five-star characters in the game right now, so they will surely be recycled. But like... they're recycling Brendan before they even shuffle through the rest of the available options. It feels like they're totally phoning it in already. Which is bad news for a 2 month old game.
In game news says scheduled update 11/6, I imagine that's what we already downloaded the bulk of.
I agree though, it's not looking good. However, I do expect given their investment they'll probably try another push after making their planned changes to try and salvage the game. Whether that will be enough to make it meaningfully better or bring people back...
I'm sitting on 15,000 gems (none paid, all stored up) for whatever new trainers drop in November or December, but I'm hesitant to say I'll be sticking with the game long enough to make it that far.
To be fair, Olivia was a "recycled" 5* also. She was in the pool during the pre-launch period and only got a spotlight and summon boost for her event. Phoebe/Dusclops will probably get a rate boost later too, but it feels like a missed opportunity not to have her event active during Hallowe'en instead of Brendan.
https://gamepress.gg/pokemonmasters/ is blocked at work for me, but this is probably the closest to a focused news page for the game (apart from Reddit) as you can get. If there's any datamining of the patch we downloaded, it'd be there.
EDIT: Checked it on my phone. Part of the app looks like Brendan's Treecko gets its evolutions, the "player" will get an option to use a Torchic instead of Pikachu, and new trainers are being added:
Calem and Espurr
Caitlin and Reuniclus
Glacia and Glalie/Mega Glalie
I understand that they want to save their "big hitters" for major events. Events bigger than just monthlies. But when they put characters like Cynthia, Stephen, Red, and Diantha front and center in all of their artwork and advertising for this game, they kinda need to get those characters into the game. Those are the fan favorites. Those are the characters that people want to play and collect.
So far the only "big name" characters we have are Brock and Misty, and given the fact that they are crappy 3 star characters makes them largely unusable. They need to get some series favorites into the game that will draw users into the game. Elesa and Zebstrika are not exactly tentpole characters. Right now while the game is young and user attention is already waning is when they need to be dropping some big names. Elesa is not gonna win them any new users.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
If y'all haven't looked in a bit be sure to get your daily logins for the next month or so, it's like 350 gems per day.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Can't play this on my phone, can't even play it on Bluestacks (android emulator).
I was planning on updating this thread a bit over lunch today. The devs released a new video of upcoming features. I haven't watched it yet. But I was gonna link it.
Posts
Gets real tiring watching those full animations on normal speed when you try to farm them 10-20 times for full rewards.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I DID NOT KNOW THIS! I did a set and just got the usual golds and skill shakes and thought "Why am I bothering with these when my (admittedly non-super-effective team) can't auto?"
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
These type training events let you get 2 more fairly easily with some farming of the co-op battle, but if you need more after trading for the available ones in the shop, clear the Strike/Tech/Support supercourse and you should get one or two.
They can still be a total bitch to clear, and I'm running Blue at 92 with Rosa and Kris at 85. They can't auto it, and I can still lose to stupid randomness if the main pokemon somehow gets their sync move up before I do.
Last night, I finally cleared Hard Co-op Blaine from the Rock Training Event three times with randos to get the last 50 gems from the missions.
This was a monumental effort for some reason, compared to doing that for the Grass Training event. Blaine's Ponyta has like 10k HP and Lycanroc can't take a hit. Beedril's Sludge Bomb is almost a OHKO on anyone and none of the randos ever target it, but theres no real good way to communicate that. And once Ponyta gets their sync up, its on rotation to do a buff, heatwave x2, flamethrower, repeat until sync again (if you survive all that somehow) and then it just Flare Blitzes.
I hope the next training event is for water, so I can just ruin it with Kris.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I don't know if I want to pull for either one while the banners are up. The nice thing about Oshawott is he doesn't lose buffs once a sync move happens (if you unlock his passive). You can have him tank a sync move, reduce his HP, then use his attack buff skill to bring everyone back up to +5 or +6 attack. This is great if you have an Olivia to take advantage of that.
EDIT: Okay, I do want Oshawott, but I'll wait for the next data mine dump. There should be new chapter unlocks and new events for October released soon, but nothing is known yet, but Oshawott will be available for another week after that news drops.
Best guess is the next month-long rate up will be Red/Charizard, with 3 more type training events happening with a focus on an existing or new sync pair introduced to the game. Also, new chapter free sync pairs.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Or they could pull a surprise on us and introduce something a bit spooky for Halloween. Maybe a sync pair with Punkaboo.
Right now my pull strategy is pretty simple. I'm holding those 6k free gems for whatever the big event banner is in October, and any excess gems I get over 6k have been going to single pulls. I actually got lucky and got Blue the other day off a single. So that's neat. And he's already my highest character. I dropped everything else I was working on to farm up all the mats to unlock him and break him as high as I could. He caps at 85 right now.
Sept 30 - Oct 17 - Hilda/Tepig
Oct 8- Oct 24 - Pending
Oct 17 - Oct 31 - Elesa/Zebstrika
Oct 24 - Nov 7 - Brendan/Treecko
Tepig looks pretty strong. Highest HP of all current Pokemon once she evolves fully into Emboar. Has Flame Charge to raise her speed, and a self-buff that doubles her attack by the amount of speed raised. Flare Blitz is a strong single target attack but she recoils for 25% of damage. However, she has 2 Potions and a passive that heals her when her HP drops to critical levels and she can never be poisoned.
Zebstrika doesn't look quite as good but is a 5* Electric and will probably be the best option to use when her training event is active, but I feel like Hau/Raichu can do a pretty decent job already if you need Electric coverage.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
In other news, they dropped a small update today and among the list of changes is a pretty nice quality of life change. They added recommended power levels to all the battles.
Compared to Rosa, he's extremely offensively capable, and compared to the rest of the known roster to date, he ranks 7th in physical attack and 5th in special attack. His main drawbacks are really needing a support like Rosa to fill out the move gauge when he empties it, and maybe an accuracy buff because Leaf Storm is only 90% to hit, and you don't want to miss with it.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I did get a few new sync pairs which is good I guess, but I was really hoping for Hilda.
Got a dupe of Blue.
Flint/Infernape will have to do as a main hitter in the very hard co-op, and I'm holding back to see what next week's trainer is. Or until November.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
They need to massively tone down the recoil damage in this game. The sync pair combat system is just too unfavorable to that kind of move.
Co-op battles? Good luck surviving. Your mons are locked behind needing to not issue a move, and your low-HP striker is getting swapped out to get the heal anyway, and your teammates are probably not paying attention or recoiling themselves into hell and expecting you to have a healer on standby.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
So, Dusclops actually has a use case for it in co-op. You buff everyone to the teeth and then double-edge people until you die, at which point your passive passes your buffs on to your #2.
--Mark Twain
Got a dup Karen, and then Hilda. Alright then!
...just in time to get them all dispelled by enemy sync move
I got 3 of the big evolution materials and 6 of the small ones. Plus some other crap.
Sounds like they're also going to start revamping the balance and gameplay in November and December which is good.
I can reliably clear a Very Hard supercourse with little issue when it demands CP of 20,000, but the co-op story missions make mincemeat of some teams when you have more Pokemon divided between you and your teammates, and they have a lower CP requirement of 15,000.
There's either too much HP bulk on the central Pokemon for the fight, or the damage output from the enemy team is always excessive. "Tank" pokemon like Aegislash and Nosepass don't have enough defense and HP to handle it, and they have no support to heal. In co-op, there's no point bringing them unless your buddy teammates have potions, and even that is shit because it's so limited.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
That said, the way co-op usually plays out, it's often best just to bring your best attackers and any techs that specifically have useful abilities for the fight. I was able to auto the normal Hilda and manually do the Hard with a team of ~lvl 70 Kris (unevolved), Karen, & Olivia.
Edit: But also I can't do the very hard single player ones at all, so
But right now I'm mostly just logging in and collecting my free goodies, because I've completed the solo content and I don't have time to sit around during co-op battles. Those just take way too long. And then if you wipe, it feels like a giant waste of time.
I'm definitely not going to defend them for a lack of content, but it is funny to me that people raced through this so quickly and raised a stink about it (the Super Effective podcast is extremely guilty of this). Like, this is a mobile game. Just logging in to do your dailies is the expected play pattern. The rest is dressing for when you need to kill a little more time.
If you've farmed dailies for everything else, this is your top end farm at the moment, and right now, some of those co-ops are wildly imbalanced. I tried an EX and nope. That's not happening. Pretty much requires you and your teammates to be rolling a 5* super effective team, or at least 5* top tiers like Karen, Blue, Olivia or Brendan.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
That plus not being able to auto the hardest super courses kinda turned me off of even logging in most days. Why do the drudgery if all I have to look forward to are co-op battles that I don't particularly like.
I initially thought we'd get more actual event/end game solo content, not a snooze fest premade battle or two leading into a co-op fight you get to grind 30+ times.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
They will be adding 3 and 4* upgrade items soon though, so you can get to work collecting 20 of those to upgrade your lower-tier teams.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Honestly... the game feels pretty dead right now. They already brought back the Brendan focus summon event. That baffles me. I know there's only like 6 or 7 five-star characters in the game right now, so they will surely be recycled. But like... they're recycling Brendan before they even shuffle through the rest of the available options. It feels like they're totally phoning it in already. Which is bad news for a 2 month old game.
I agree though, it's not looking good. However, I do expect given their investment they'll probably try another push after making their planned changes to try and salvage the game. Whether that will be enough to make it meaningfully better or bring people back...
To be fair, Olivia was a "recycled" 5* also. She was in the pool during the pre-launch period and only got a spotlight and summon boost for her event. Phoebe/Dusclops will probably get a rate boost later too, but it feels like a missed opportunity not to have her event active during Hallowe'en instead of Brendan.
https://gamepress.gg/pokemonmasters/ is blocked at work for me, but this is probably the closest to a focused news page for the game (apart from Reddit) as you can get. If there's any datamining of the patch we downloaded, it'd be there.
EDIT: Checked it on my phone. Part of the app looks like Brendan's Treecko gets its evolutions, the "player" will get an option to use a Torchic instead of Pikachu, and new trainers are being added:
Calem and Espurr
Caitlin and Reuniclus
Glacia and Glalie/Mega Glalie
Steam: TheArcadeBear
So far the only "big name" characters we have are Brock and Misty, and given the fact that they are crappy 3 star characters makes them largely unusable. They need to get some series favorites into the game that will draw users into the game. Elesa and Zebstrika are not exactly tentpole characters. Right now while the game is young and user attention is already waning is when they need to be dropping some big names. Elesa is not gonna win them any new users.
Damn.
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin