The best Arena and Galactic War teams will be ones that have synergy between characters. Themed teams are often the way to go.
For example, there are a couple guys in my guild who have incredibly strong droid teams, and they completely wreck house with them. I personally do not have any strong droids, and to make the droid team work, you need a full 5. It takes a very significant time and resource investment to get there. But once everything clicks into place, it is an absolute power house.
Usually the droid teams are going to have Poggle the Lesser, Genosian Solder, IG-86, IG-88, and a 5th of your choice. I see HK-47 a lot in the 5th slot. And anyway, the synergy created by Poggle as leader and everything else just results in crazy damage output for the two IG units.
A full First Order team is also incredibly powerful. Phasma as leader, with TIE Pilot, First Order Officer, Kylo, and First Order Storm Trooper will be incredibly devistating.
The night sister team is actually pretty weak. When I'm doing my daily arena battles, I will always target a full night sister team for my attack if one pops up. Even if their listed power level is 3k-4k higher than mine, I know I can easily beat them.
If you want to run a mix team, the best characters will be Royal Guard, Rey, Phasma, Luminara, Qui-gon, Princess Leia, Fives, Sidious, Kylo Ren, and IG-86. A combination using 5 of those characters will result in a very strong team.
Full ewok team + one random guy for me usually royal guard works disturbingly well for it being a bunch of ewoks. They have great synergies with each other and they wind up getting a lot of attacks per every move of their opponents. I can usually get 2-3 full waves of attacks to kill one guy off before the other team ever moves. Having a good tank like royal guard + the ewok elder who is probably the best rezer in the game that I have come across means even if you manage to lose an ewok here or there there is a better than average chance you can pop him right back up again.
Luke is not a terrible character, but he is out-shined by better characters. His snipe shot is strong. But Rey is stronger.
There's no reason to ever bring Luke to combat when Rey exists.
I used to run luke a lot and he does hit really nice and hard but he is just to slow. He is far to easy to focus fire and kill before he does anything at all. Rey does everything he does 100x harder and with her forsight if she gets a quick first attack she will generally ignore the next attack so she can at least murder a couple people and then add in a tank or two to keep people busy she will wreck most of the enemy team before they can do anything.
I should note, I'm not hyper competitive in the Arena; I've made it into the top 100 in the past, but it's enough timing/work (and getting fractions of a useful amount of points bugs me) that I usually just stay in the top 200. I was running a less conventional team (not a ton of synergy, just a good spread of abilities that happened to work well for me) but eventually gave into the dark side after getting my Rey/RG built up.
Currently I'm running with Phasma leading Luminara, Fives, Rey, and RG. They don't seem to lose too much on defense (sometimes I don't even fall out of my chosen band), and on offense as long as it's not some absurd 'full 4's and 5 dot mods' shit, I win far more than I lose when attacking.
Note that I'm not suggesting that people emulate this, and as a Magic and Netrunner player I *love* me some synergy, but it's not the end-all-be-all either. I've had fights where Fives went 1 vs 3 at the end and won (I've often lamented that he's the worst 'tank' in the game; the AI seems to actively avoid him, meaning he's often the last man standing with most of his protection left), the RG's stun/taunt is absurdly useful, and using my own Rey to evaporate an enemy in a single attack is not going to get old anytime soon.
Basically, don't be afraid to experiment, to work with what suits your playstyle and available characters. It's a long grind to max out more than a few, especially while being pulled in a dozen directions at once.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I've gone a whole month without losing a spot in the arena with Old Ben (L), Stormtrooper Han, Rey, Geo Soldier, and QGJ. Thanks to Emperor Palpatine teams, I've started to lose some ground. Now I'm trying Phasma (L), RG (my Han has high speed, though, so I'm tempted to move him back in), Rey, Geo Soldier, and QGJ.
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
Luke is not a terrible character, but he is out-shined by better characters. His snipe shot is strong. But Rey is stronger.
There's no reason to ever bring Luke to combat when Rey exists.
I used to run luke a lot and he does hit really nice and hard but he is just to slow. He is far to easy to focus fire and kill before he does anything at all. Rey does everything he does 100x harder and with her forsight if she gets a quick first attack she will generally ignore the next attack so she can at least murder a couple people and then add in a tank or two to keep people busy she will wreck most of the enemy team before they can do anything.
And that is why Rey is broken. Months ago, they made adjustments to character speed based on how hard they hit; high strength equals low speed. It seems like Rey was left alone, because she's faster than Sidious but can hit harder than 86. That is baaaaa-roken and quite honestly needs to be adjusted. Keep her speed if you want, but lower her strength; it's ridiculous to have both at the same time. Her defense is quite low, but foresight can help counter that a bit. And I don't even want to start talking about hiding her behind the Royal Guard. *shakes fist*
Rey is the only toon that I have a severe hatred for.
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
It's not that bad. If you enjoy RPG grind, then you'll enjoy this. You don't need money to enjoy this game. I've forked out a little bit because the game is free and I've played the pants off of this since... maybe January? That being said, I felt the devs deserved some of my money, so I tossed a bit out at them.
Once you get to 60, the grind gets real. Before that, it's a lot of leveling up, which replenishes your energy and such, allowing you to play a lot. End-game, like all good RPGs, involves a ton of grinding for a single piece of gear.
It really boils down to this: if you enjoy a extensive grind and maximizing your daily rewards by playing daily, then this game is fun. If you hate grinding, this is not the droid you're looking for.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Also, I guess my team defends for poops. When I have arena turns to burn, I can crawl up into the 150's. But soon after I'll get beat down into the 400's again.
I feel so very cheap using the Teebo + Ewoks combo on the raid. I get that it is effective, but I feel lame.
For Ewoks, I just have Teebo leveled and promoted. I've been using him as a leader with QGJ, Rey, GS, and Phasma. I can pull close to or just over a million damage in Heroic P1. I'm hoping once I get Teebo geared higher than 8 (those damn stun cuffs), my damage will increase further.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
I've been avoiding P1 for months, should probably give that a whirl tomorrow when my guild's next Heroic fires up. Don't have GS (well I do but he's like 4 stars, maybe 3), might replace him with Mace or someone else that can remove buffs, or perhaps the RG for attempts at stuns/speed down (I'm aware of the reduced likelihood of landing said abilities).
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I feel so very cheap using the Teebo + Ewoks combo on the raid. I get that it is effective, but I feel lame.
For Ewoks, I just have Teebo leveled and promoted. I've been using him as a leader with QGJ, Rey, GS, and Phasma. I can pull close to or just over a million damage in Heroic P1. I'm hoping once I get Teebo geared higher than 8 (those damn stun cuffs), my damage will increase further.
Teebo matched with Elder is pretty insane. Teebo provide stealth, TM increase to other Ewoks, and 100% TM reduction to target. Elder removes debuffs and gives 25% TM to other Ewoks when it procs 50% TM increase upon hit. Scout down significant TM reduction with both attacks and has TM increase when evading. Those together is pretty nasty, but cheap. Apparently Heroic enemies have significantly more tenacity, so that little TM game may not be too effective.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Man, money is just too scarce of a resource in this game. I've accumulated about 2 million credits so far today, and I've already blown it all, and honestly, it feels like nothing happened. Just a drop in a pond. And now I'm back to being broke-ass poor and I have not really anything to show for it.
The credit situation has improved considerably, but yeah, I'm still in a state where I get a couple million and it's generally gone. At least the rate of cash influx is exceeding my training droids considerably. For a while I was sitting on just piles of them, and broke as hell. Now I actually run out of droids and still have cash left over, which lets me justify increasing a few stars and some low to mid tier mods I've picked up.
I could still use a giant Jabba's Palace sized money pit, of course, but it's not nearly as painful as it was a few months ago. Now that I can semi-reliably complete the GW again, the Credit heist, finally clearing out an event on both tiers, cash is still a precious commodity, but it's no longer the penny pinching I used to do.
Though until we actually know what the next event will be, I probably should start building a nest egg again all the same.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Had no idea there was a thread about this game, I've been playing it since just after it came out. Usually hover around rank 100 in arena, I think the lowest I've been is 50ish. Doing Tier 7 raids with Teebo, QGJ, Rey, Yoda, and Phasma. I'll probably switch Yoda out with EE if I ever get him to 7 stars. Here are the rest of my toons:
Reading this thread led to me downloading and trying out the game; I enjoy games of this type for a few months at a time, and it really scratches the theme-element for me.
I do have a few n00b questions though, now that I've gotten my player level up to 25 with a dozen or so active characters. Hoping you're willing to answer a few of these:
Most of the game experience will be F2P for me; knowing this, are there stronger theme teams or individual characters I should prioritize as F2P-friendly, both to acquire and to collect shards for?
I can see occasionally buying the low-dollar char + crystals packs; are there any characters I should keep an eye out for?
How much time do you think is involved in farming the Assassin Droid bundle (4* HK-47, 3* IG-88, 2* IG-86) normally? $25 is steep, but if it's months of time and I know I'll keep playing...
What's the shard drop rate in light/dark side battles? If I wanted to farm Rey from light/dark battles knowing I need 80 shards to activate, how many attempts should I plan for? (Is farming for shards like this the most effective way of getting her?)
I'm assuming that the best "value" usage of crystals as a n00b is through energy purchases and not chromium cards?
Is there ever a reason to purposefully limit your growth in some aspect of the game? As an example, in another game of this type, their version of Galactic War matched you against other teams in the same 10-band in player level (10-19, 20-29, etc) instead of team power, so there was a sound strategy to stop gaining XP so quickly at, say lvl 29 and work on increasing gear lvl or stars instead.
Are ally points only used to buy Bronzium cards? Essentially should I spend them as soon as I can buy a card?
Is GS, Geonosian Spy or Geonosian Soldier? Or someone else?
Your best source for characters are going to be the two shard shops in the arena and galactic war.
Luminara is an excellent healer. I believe she's in the galactic war shop.
Time to farm any particular character is going to be measured in months. That's why those character packs are priced so high. I think it's ridiculous, but to each their own.
Shard drop rate for hard battles for me probably averaged 33%. So for the 3 battles you get per day you'll likely get one shard. Some days none, some two.
There's no real reason to limit your growth. Do all you can each day. My only real recommendation for early players is don't activate characters you've earned shards for unless you REALLY need them right now. (ie. A fifth dark side character to run battles with) You'll likely pull a 2-4* character from bronzium or chromium packs (if you redeem the 8 packs after earning the crystals) and they don't give you very many shards if you already have the character. If you instead wait, you might be able to save those shards to promote them after getting them.
Reading this thread led to me downloading and trying out the game; I enjoy games of this type for a few months at a time, and it really scratches the theme-element for me.
I do have a few n00b questions though, now that I've gotten my player level up to 25 with a dozen or so active characters. Hoping you're willing to answer a few of these:
Most of the game experience will be F2P for me; knowing this, are there stronger theme teams or individual characters I should prioritize as F2P-friendly, both to acquire and to collect shards for?
I can see occasionally buying the low-dollar char + crystals packs; are there any characters I should keep an eye out for?
How much time do you think is involved in farming the Assassin Droid bundle (4* HK-47, 3* IG-88, 2* IG-86) normally? $25 is steep, but if it's months of time and I know I'll keep playing...
What's the shard drop rate in light/dark side battles? If I wanted to farm Rey from light/dark battles knowing I need 80 shards to activate, how many attempts should I plan for? (Is farming for shards like this the most effective way of getting her?)
I'm assuming that the best "value" usage of crystals as a n00b is through energy purchases and not chromium cards?
Is there ever a reason to purposefully limit your growth in some aspect of the game? As an example, in another game of this type, their version of Galactic War matched you against other teams in the same 10-band in player level (10-19, 20-29, etc) instead of team power, so there was a sound strategy to stop gaining XP so quickly at, say lvl 29 and work on increasing gear lvl or stars instead.
Are ally points only used to buy Bronzium cards? Essentially should I spend them as soon as I can buy a card?
Is GS, Geonosian Spy or Geonosian Soldier? Or someone else?
I have never opened a pack (money or crystals) and been satisfied with it. They are just too random and give very few shards. I would avoid them unless you don't mind throwing money around as you will likely have to buy several for it to make a difference.
The best places I found to get shards (at least the ones you want anyway) is the Cantina and Hard Mode PVE. You can also buy shards in the Store or the Shard Shop when certain heroes are available. Generally a good deal.
Do not forget to buy and grab gear whenever you can. Even one Gear level can make a big difference in how your heroes fight.
If you need credits:
Galactic War is the best bet early on and is still useful later as well. You can also get a lot of tokens to buy some good heroes with. There is some formula for the difficulty level. I would search the GOH forums for that. I've never really felt the need for that info though.
Have a team of Scoundrels around to take advantage of the Credit Heist. The game is changed a bit from when I started but early on I didn't need credits as much as I do in the late game where I'm always hard up for some.
For Raids:
You will want to get heroes that have Turn Meter Reduction and slow down abilities. So QGJ, Chewbacca, Old Ben, Teebo, Fives, Yoda, and the like.
Useful Heroes:
QGJ - Really good all around abilities that can be used a variety of ways. A good taunt breaker. A little soft on HPs so you will have to baby him a bit until you can slap some HP mods on him.
Luminara - Excellent early and mid game hero. Extremely versatile, doing some significant damage while also having a great healing ability. Does lose some luster late game but is really useful on GW.
Royal Guard - Has stun and an automatic taunt that will save your bacon. Pretty much the best tank late game but may not be that useful early on though until he gets his abilities leveled up.
Daka - Early healer (one of the few Dark side healers) that can also stun and resurrect. Really important for the Dark side missions.
Phasma - Great buffer that works well as a leader with all factions. The additional attack can really tear it up with the right team. IIRC also gears up relatively easy.
Rey - IMHO OP as hell. Works best in the late game. It seems almost everyone has her.
Anakin - If you are making a Jedi team he's a must have now. He's the only healing immunity ability Light Side I know of and he can break taunts pretty easily. Isn't really that farmable until late game though.
Dooku - Strong if kind of annoying. Can farm him relatively early in Cantina. I haven't really messed with him much but others clearly like him. His abilities are so random in their effects that he can be incredible one match and worthless the next.
Droids - Can be very good but if you go down this route go all in. Droids don't really work that well with others with the exception of the Jawas. They can be really strong but they are basically just damage engines with few hit points. You either win quick or you lose the fight. Not the best for things like GW.
Luke is not a terrible character, but he is out-shined by better characters. His snipe shot is strong. But Rey is stronger.
There's no reason to ever bring Luke to combat when Rey exists.
I used to run luke a lot and he does hit really nice and hard but he is just to slow. He is far to easy to focus fire and kill before he does anything at all. Rey does everything he does 100x harder and with her forsight if she gets a quick first attack she will generally ignore the next attack so she can at least murder a couple people and then add in a tank or two to keep people busy she will wreck most of the enemy team before they can do anything.
And that is why Rey is broken. Months ago, they made adjustments to character speed based on how hard they hit; high strength equals low speed. It seems like Rey was left alone, because she's faster than Sidious but can hit harder than 86. That is baaaaa-roken and quite honestly needs to be adjusted. Keep her speed if you want, but lower her strength; it's ridiculous to have both at the same time. Her defense is quite low, but foresight can help counter that a bit. And I don't even want to start talking about hiding her behind the Royal Guard. *shakes fist*
Rey is the only toon that I have a severe hatred for.
Yes her damage is just out of wack compared to any of the other damage dealers. Leia can get lucky and get the full three shot chain and hit pretty hard but rei can both do it on demand AND hits for about twice the damage. I have seen her one shot people with full shields and full health and no other damage dealer can really come close to that.
I feel so very cheap using the Teebo + Ewoks combo on the raid. I get that it is effective, but I feel lame.
They ewok the hell out of the rancor if you have all four of them. Their synergy of teebo when he uses invis basically gives them all an immediate attack + chirpa sending all of them to attack plus speed up means they get about three attacks per every enemy attack and if teebo is landing his basic attack he can keep murdering the ability of the rancor to even get a turn.
They are not a high damage team but they are attacking constantly combined with they have one of the best healers in the game with two rez abilities one guaranteed and one with a chance to do so.
It's not that bad. If you enjoy RPG grind, then you'll enjoy this. You don't need money to enjoy this game. I've forked out a little bit because the game is free and I've played the pants off of this since... maybe January? That being said, I felt the devs deserved some of my money, so I tossed a bit out at them.
Once you get to 60, the grind gets real. Before that, it's a lot of leveling up, which replenishes your energy and such, allowing you to play a lot. End-game, like all good RPGs, involves a ton of grinding for a single piece of gear.
It really boils down to this: if you enjoy a extensive grind and maximizing your daily rewards by playing daily, then this game is fun. If you hate grinding, this is not the droid you're looking for.
Honestly if you concentrate a bit on getting the free to play smugglers geared up and leveled up which is pretty easy getting your guys up to 70's is not hard any more. The smuggler training drone event that comes up pretty frequently and the credit heist are huge boosts to leveling up the minions.
The weirdest thing in this game is I did spend a like 40 bucks on buying some stuff early on but in reality this game unless you are going to go all in on being a whale does NOT reward you for plinking a couple bucks here and there. It is FAR better to spend your time just going after the free to play shard stuff because if you spend money and unlock chromium stuff chances are you won't be able to improve them and so they wind up being under powered and not very useful. There are a TON of characters that are pretty easily improvable for just about all types/sides for free without spending a time on it.
Man, money is just too scarce of a resource in this game. I've accumulated about 2 million credits so far today, and I've already blown it all, and honestly, it feels like nothing happened. Just a drop in a pond. And now I'm back to being broke-ass poor and I have not really anything to show for it.
I agree basically the best option at the moment is work hard on pimping out a smuggler team. The credit heist if you can do the higher level ones starts getting REALLY lucrative.
Someone linked this article on the games sub-reddit, and it's making me question whether I can, in good consious, continue playing the game.
Imagine a world where bars don’t charge for the first two drinks a day but charge crazy fees for subsequent drinks. This would be using a sickness, alcoholism, to subsidize moderate drinking for everyone else. Distributing the cost more equitably doesn’t cure alcoholism, but it does probably reduce it since less people would put themselves in a position to be exploited. Also, if they are afflicted, they are not also immediately financially crippled.
I mean, if whales are the reason the game is free for me, paying doesn't sound like the solution.
The very first time the Yoda event went live, and I saw the pricing that they were offering the Jedi pack at for people to "gear up" for Yoda, I decided that this game was not worth any money at all.
I'm just going from memory here, but that original pack was priced at $59.99, which is literally the cost of a brand new video game. An entire game. And what you got for that $59.99 was two characters unlocked, plus a random assortment of Jedi shards, up to a max of 30 additional shards or something. And I think maybe some purple crystals.
But come on now. Two characters and 30 shards for the price of an entire game? No thank you. Not at all. You don't get my money you greedy sons of bitches.
Someone linked this article on the games sub-reddit, and it's making me question whether I can, in good consious, continue playing the game.
Imagine a world where bars don’t charge for the first two drinks a day but charge crazy fees for subsequent drinks. This would be using a sickness, alcoholism, to subsidize moderate drinking for everyone else. Distributing the cost more equitably doesn’t cure alcoholism, but it does probably reduce it since less people would put themselves in a position to be exploited. Also, if they are afflicted, they are not also immediately financially crippled.
I mean, if whales are the reason the game is free for me, paying doesn't sound like the solution.
I'm sorry, but I don't have sympathy for the people paying huge money for this game. Like every single F2P game I've played, I'm the person who will try damn hard to prove you don't need to pay in order to enjoy and succeed at the game. If I play the game enough, I'll pay for some in-game-currency package because the devs deserve it.
Saying that they are feasting off of the addictive nature of games and making people who cannot control themselves a target is not fair nor realistic. Now if they went after those people by sending them flyers, emails, texts, etc., then yeah, they'd be targeting them. In some ways, I'm addicted to gaming. The first thing I do almost every morning is stare at the ceiling and wish that all I had to do today was sit on my couch and game. The thing is, I get up and go to work. Yeah, I play this game a bit while I'm at work, but I don't let it consume my time. And while I'm at work, all I want to do is get home and sit on my couch and game, but I can't because I have responsibilities. Those responsibilities allow me to game (among other things that require monetary gains).
Now there are those people out there who just don't care and will spend whatever in order to be successful at a game. I've read stories about people who pay others to farm their characters while they are doing other things in real life, just so that they can continue to succeed in the game. I personally think that is insane, but to each their own. The price structure is set up (for the most part) in the hopes that out of the (let's just use simple numbers) 200,000 people who are playing the game, at least half of them will buy a $10 package at some point. That's $1,000,000 right there. From those 100,000, maybe half of them will buy another $10 package. That's another $500,000. And then there are those that are insane and will go gung ho. For simplicity's sake, let's just focus on the normal folks. For a 200,000 player-base, they've made $1.5 million + whatever those insane fools spend. I'm not going to blame the game for that. I'm going to blame the people who did it.
If a bar offered me two free drinks and then was going to charge me $20 per drink afterwards, there is the chance that I may stay for one or two (depending on the drink and company). After that, I'm going home to have the drinks at my house. Alcoholics don't drink just in the bars. They'll drink wherever the hell they choose, and if it is costing them $100 a day to drink at the bar, they'll soon enough choose to drink for $40 a day by doing it at home, and they'll be able to have as much as they want without anyone saying they have to stop.
But yes, part of the reason this game is free to play is because there are people out there who don't care about spending $200+ on this game, simply because they want to be top dogs. Those people exist in almost every game that costs extra money for an edge.
At some point, people need to take responsibility for their actions and stop trying to find someone else to pin the blame on. FYI: I say this as someone who has fought addiction before, and I accept the fact that I alone was to blame for it.
Le_Goat on
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
[...] Saying that they are feasting off of the addictive nature of games and making people who cannot control themselves a target is not fair nor realistic. Now if they went after those people by sending them flyers, emails, texts, etc., then yeah, they'd be targeting them.
To be fair, we don't know at what level they do target "Whales", with messages, packs, adjusted difficulty, loot rolls, etc..
In some ways, I'm addicted to gaming. The first thing I do almost every morning is stare at the ceiling and wish that all I had to do today was sit on my couch and game. The thing is, I get up and go to work. Yeah, I play this game a bit while I'm at work, but I don't let it consume my time. And while I'm at work, all I want to do is get home and sit on my couch and game, but I can't because I have responsibilities. Those responsibilities allow me to game (among other things that require monetary gains).[...]
Yeah, that's not being addicted to gaming.
As for the rest of your post ... too much... I'll just agree to disagree.
[...] Saying that they are feasting off of the addictive nature of games and making people who cannot control themselves a target is not fair nor realistic. Now if they went after those people by sending them flyers, emails, texts, etc., then yeah, they'd be targeting them.
To be fair, we don't know at what level they do target "Whales", with messages, packs, adjusted difficulty, loot rolls, etc..
In some ways, I'm addicted to gaming. The first thing I do almost every morning is stare at the ceiling and wish that all I had to do today was sit on my couch and game. The thing is, I get up and go to work. Yeah, I play this game a bit while I'm at work, but I don't let it consume my time. And while I'm at work, all I want to do is get home and sit on my couch and game, but I can't because I have responsibilities. Those responsibilities allow me to game (among other things that require monetary gains).[...]
Yeah, that's not being addicted to gaming.
As for the rest of your post ... too much... I'll just agree to disagree.
Of the people who download a FTP game only around 3% ever spend any money. If you're not one of those people the game is not going to be tailored to you. There will be ways to try and keep you around to provide a community for that 3% but you aren't really the target audience. Some say lower the prices to get more buyers but there is a threshold where the purchases do go up some but not enough to equal the more expensive but fewer purchases.
It's likely the current prices were arrived at after lots of A/B testing. I remember early in the game (possibly in the beta) when the crystal subscription was only $8.99 but somewhere along the way it got raised to $10.99. They probably had data that showed that to be the sweet spot. Some of the prices may seem crazy to you (and me if I'm being honest) but there are people who don't blink an eye dropping several hundred on a FTP game. I've been on projects where people actually wrote in saying there wasn't enough stuff to buy in the game.
I find myself constantly wishing for more PVE content in this game. I don't really enjoy the Arena or Galactic Wars either one. It feels like the defender always has the advantage, and it feels like they have a much higher dodge/resist/deflect rate, plus it feels like they are always much more likely to land their shit and proc their bonus shit than the attacker is. I just don't enjoy the PVP in this game. It doesn't feel fair.
So then I start thinking about the PVE we have, and it isn't really fair either.
The rancor is a terribly designed encounter. Downright awful. The phase 1 Gamorean fight is easily the worst part, and at least in my guild, a lot of people skip that phase and just wait for phase 2 before they even participate. But Rancor phases cheat too, and it's so frustrating. Why does each phase of the fight (including the Gamoreans) have a hard-enrage point, where after so many turns they just start one-shotting your dudes? That doesn't feel good at all.
Good play and strong teams are punished because each time you make an attack, you are basically hard stopped after so many turns. So even good planning and bringing a well-designed team doesn't really pay off.
Ackbar is a strong asset in Phase 1 because he can clear the mark of death debuff and ensure that your dudes all live the max amount of time. But then once the Gamoreans hit that hard-enrage, Ackbar doesn't even matter and your whole team is just gonna drop anyway.
Likewise on the Rancor phases, he starts one-shotting dudes after a while, and his one-shots ignore dodge. So if I bring Rey and get her dodge buff, and the he swats her, she's gonna die even though she should avoid the attack.
Just... I dunno. I really just want to quit this game. It's hard to find anything positive to say about it. The combat isn't even that fun. PVP cheats in favor of the defender, and in PVE they put in these cheap kill mechanics that punish good players.
Basically, nothing is very well designed in this game and I don't really know why I continue to play.
I find myself constantly wishing for more PVE content in this game. I don't really enjoy the Arena or Galactic Wars either one. It feels like the defender always has the advantage, and it feels like they have a much higher dodge/resist/deflect rate, plus it feels like they are always much more likely to land their shit and proc their bonus shit than the attacker is. I just don't enjoy the PVP in this game. It doesn't feel fair.
So then I start thinking about the PVE we have, and it isn't really fair either.
The rancor is a terribly designed encounter. Downright awful. The phase 1 Gamorean fight is easily the worst part, and at least in my guild, a lot of people skip that phase and just wait for phase 2 before they even participate. But Rancor phases cheat too, and it's so frustrating. Why does each phase of the fight (including the Gamoreans) have a hard-enrage point, where after so many turns they just start one-shotting your dudes? That doesn't feel good at all.
Good play and strong teams are punished because each time you make an attack, you are basically hard stopped after so many turns. So even good planning and bringing a well-designed team doesn't really pay off.
Ackbar is a strong asset in Phase 1 because he can clear the mark of death debuff and ensure that your dudes all live the max amount of time. But then once the Gamoreans hit that hard-enrage, Ackbar doesn't even matter and your whole team is just gonna drop anyway.
Likewise on the Rancor phases, he starts one-shotting dudes after a while, and his one-shots ignore dodge. So if I bring Rey and get her dodge buff, and the he swats her, she's gonna die even though she should avoid the attack.
Just... I dunno. I really just want to quit this game. It's hard to find anything positive to say about it. The combat isn't even that fun. PVP cheats in favor of the defender, and in PVE they put in these cheap kill mechanics that punish good players.
Basically, nothing is very well designed in this game and I don't really know why I continue to play.
Because if you stop, even for one day, you'll miss out on something. You won't get the daily login shards, or the galactic war rewards, or something else and you know you can't ever make up for it.
It's crazy, but it's the same reason I played for a while even when all I did was sim until I did all the daily goals.
You have to have the enrage timer. Otherwise you'll end up with 1 squad going and going and going and going. It adds a dynamic to the encounter that forces players to attack while they have the chance to, before all hell breaks loose. The same thing happens in MMOs to keep people from dilly dallying about.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
In my guild Phase 1 is what everyone tries to go for, it's probably the easiest for TM reduction teams. From what I've tried at least, the Rancor is a lot harder to hit with TM abilities.
It will be interesting to see what the next raid is like, from what I've heard TM will not play as much a factor.
You have to have the enrage timer. Otherwise you'll end up with 1 squad going and going and going and going. It adds a dynamic to the encounter that forces players to attack while they have the chance to, before all hell breaks loose. The same thing happens in MMOs to keep people from dilly dallying about.
Except it is impossible to dilly dally in this game. There's no turn passing option, so at the very least, every turn your characters will be hitting with a basic attack if nothing else.
In MMO's the enrage timer serves as a difficulty measurement, where you have X seconds to do Y damage or you fail. It's what's called a DPS check.
But in this Star Wars game, the enrage doesn't serve as a DPS check or even anything other than a hard-stopping point for that attack. Like basically they're saying you only get 15 turns before you die. And that's kind of bullshit.
In my guild Phase 1 is what everyone tries to go for, it's probably the easiest for TM reduction teams. From what I've tried at least, the Rancor is a lot harder to hit with TM abilities.
It will be interesting to see what the next raid is like, from what I've heard TM will not play as much a factor.
Yep. The people that want to hit an easy million go for Phase 1. And Teebo is your main hero there. You don't need a debuffer like Ackbar when you can just stealth everyone (Teebo), lower TM (Teebo and to a degree QGJ), and inflict speed down so the big guy never gets a turn (Phasma). I got him down to 20% before he even managed to take out one of my characters. He almost never attacked. If I want to stay anywhere near the top 10 in my guild, I have to do P1.
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You have to have the enrage timer. Otherwise you'll end up with 1 squad going and going and going and going. It adds a dynamic to the encounter that forces players to attack while they have the chance to, before all hell breaks loose. The same thing happens in MMOs to keep people from dilly dallying about.
Except it is impossible to dilly dally in this game. There's no turn passing option, so at the very least, every turn your characters will be hitting with a basic attack if nothing else.
In MMO's the enrage timer serves as a difficulty measurement, where you have X seconds to do Y damage or you fail. It's what's called a DPS check.
But in this Star Wars game, the enrage doesn't serve as a DPS check or even anything other than a hard-stopping point for that attack. Like basically they're saying you only get 15 turns before you die. And that's kind of bullshit.
I guess to each their own. I think the enrage time adds an interesting dynamic. It forces you to determine when (if at all) you are going to attempt escapes. If you fail, you know that toon risks being taken out of the raid. However, I can see why there is disdain for it.
I'm more pissed about being devoured. A full-health toon can be gone *snaps* just like that. And the slam can reduce the devour cooldown, which is crazy annoying.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
In my guild Phase 1 is what everyone tries to go for, it's probably the easiest for TM reduction teams. From what I've tried at least, the Rancor is a lot harder to hit with TM abilities.
It will be interesting to see what the next raid is like, from what I've heard TM will not play as much a factor.
Yep. The people that want to hit an easy million go for Phase 1. And Teebo is your main hero there. You don't need a debuffer like Ackbar when you can just stealth everyone (Teebo), lower TM (Teebo and to a degree QGJ), and inflict speed down so the big guy never gets a turn (Phasma). I got him down to 20% before he even managed to take out one of my characters. He almost never attacked. If I want to stay anywhere near the top 10 in my guild, I have to do P1.
We're at an interesting point in my new guild where we are limiting what people can do because we're downing T7 way too quickly. We're trying to ensure that all 50 plays get a chance at loot. It's just crazy that you go from "Can we do T7?" to "We're beating it too quickly; how can we get everyone to get a fair chance?"
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
So, I've got a squad of 5-7 star characters, all level 63.
The current guild I'm in is doing Tier 3 raid and it takes about two days to complete. I'm usually coming in rank 4-6. Should I look for a different guild, or is that a reasonable pace? If I should look for a different guild, is there a good place to do so?
So, I've got a squad of 5-7 star characters, all level 63.
The current guild I'm in is doing Tier 3 raid and it takes about two days to complete. I'm usually coming in rank 4-6. Should I look for a different guild, or is that a reasonable pace? If I should look for a different guild, is there a good place to do so?
That's pretty good. Ranking high is good for rewards, and many guilds are probably higher level than you could contribute to with lvl 63 toons. I'd say where you're at for now.
So, I've got a squad of 5-7 star characters, all level 63.
The current guild I'm in is doing Tier 3 raid and it takes about two days to complete. I'm usually coming in rank 4-6. Should I look for a different guild, or is that a reasonable pace? If I should look for a different guild, is there a good place to do so?
It depends. Are the rewards not offering you enough of a bump? Even at a lower rank in the raid, the next tier offers far superior rewards. I think sometimes people get so caught up on placing as high as possible that they overlook the rewards available. Take a peek through the rewards, because I'm pretty sure that the rewards from placing 21-30 in T4 are better than placing 1-3 in T3. Even if it isn't "better," they are at least comparable.
If you feel like you're in a rut, you may want to consider looking for a guild that is doing tier 4.
So through blind luck I suddenly have a Jedi team consisting of Ima-Gun (lead), Luminara, Ahsoka, QGJ, and an unimpressive Mace Windu who I keep replacing with Jedi Consular or sometimes RG. I kind of want to develop this further, because Jedi are cool, and because I love seeing I-G trigger a whole bunch of counterattacks in response to AoE. It feels like Luminara and Ahsoka work well with both I-G and QGJ due to their heavy hits and Ahsoka's attached self-heal. If I get Anakin to replace one of these (probably Mace), would this team be worth grinding to higher stars? I am not super interested in top Arena ranks, but I don't want to be the team that everyone instantly targets when looking for opponents either.
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Full ewok team + one random guy for me usually royal guard works disturbingly well for it being a bunch of ewoks. They have great synergies with each other and they wind up getting a lot of attacks per every move of their opponents. I can usually get 2-3 full waves of attacks to kill one guy off before the other team ever moves. Having a good tank like royal guard + the ewok elder who is probably the best rezer in the game that I have come across means even if you manage to lose an ewok here or there there is a better than average chance you can pop him right back up again.
I used to run luke a lot and he does hit really nice and hard but he is just to slow. He is far to easy to focus fire and kill before he does anything at all. Rey does everything he does 100x harder and with her forsight if she gets a quick first attack she will generally ignore the next attack so she can at least murder a couple people and then add in a tank or two to keep people busy she will wreck most of the enemy team before they can do anything.
Currently I'm running with Phasma leading Luminara, Fives, Rey, and RG. They don't seem to lose too much on defense (sometimes I don't even fall out of my chosen band), and on offense as long as it's not some absurd 'full 4's and 5 dot mods' shit, I win far more than I lose when attacking.
Note that I'm not suggesting that people emulate this, and as a Magic and Netrunner player I *love* me some synergy, but it's not the end-all-be-all either. I've had fights where Fives went 1 vs 3 at the end and won (I've often lamented that he's the worst 'tank' in the game; the AI seems to actively avoid him, meaning he's often the last man standing with most of his protection left), the RG's stun/taunt is absurdly useful, and using my own Rey to evaporate an enemy in a single attack is not going to get old anytime soon.
Basically, don't be afraid to experiment, to work with what suits your playstyle and available characters. It's a long grind to max out more than a few, especially while being pulled in a dozen directions at once.
Rey is the only toon that I have a severe hatred for.
Once you get to 60, the grind gets real. Before that, it's a lot of leveling up, which replenishes your energy and such, allowing you to play a lot. End-game, like all good RPGs, involves a ton of grinding for a single piece of gear.
It really boils down to this: if you enjoy a extensive grind and maximizing your daily rewards by playing daily, then this game is fun. If you hate grinding, this is not the droid you're looking for.
Also, I guess my team defends for poops. When I have arena turns to burn, I can crawl up into the 150's. But soon after I'll get beat down into the 400's again.
For Ewoks, I just have Teebo leveled and promoted. I've been using him as a leader with QGJ, Rey, GS, and Phasma. I can pull close to or just over a million damage in Heroic P1. I'm hoping once I get Teebo geared higher than 8 (those damn stun cuffs), my damage will increase further.
I could still use a giant Jabba's Palace sized money pit, of course, but it's not nearly as painful as it was a few months ago. Now that I can semi-reliably complete the GW again, the Credit heist, finally clearing out an event on both tiers, cash is still a precious commodity, but it's no longer the penny pinching I used to do.
Though until we actually know what the next event will be, I probably should start building a nest egg again all the same.
https://swgoh.gg/u/sym7/collection/
Reading this thread led to me downloading and trying out the game; I enjoy games of this type for a few months at a time, and it really scratches the theme-element for me.
I do have a few n00b questions though, now that I've gotten my player level up to 25 with a dozen or so active characters. Hoping you're willing to answer a few of these:
Luminara is an excellent healer. I believe she's in the galactic war shop.
Time to farm any particular character is going to be measured in months. That's why those character packs are priced so high. I think it's ridiculous, but to each their own.
Shard drop rate for hard battles for me probably averaged 33%. So for the 3 battles you get per day you'll likely get one shard. Some days none, some two.
There's no real reason to limit your growth. Do all you can each day. My only real recommendation for early players is don't activate characters you've earned shards for unless you REALLY need them right now. (ie. A fifth dark side character to run battles with) You'll likely pull a 2-4* character from bronzium or chromium packs (if you redeem the 8 packs after earning the crystals) and they don't give you very many shards if you already have the character. If you instead wait, you might be able to save those shards to promote them after getting them.
Yes, that's all ally points are used for.
The best places I found to get shards (at least the ones you want anyway) is the Cantina and Hard Mode PVE. You can also buy shards in the Store or the Shard Shop when certain heroes are available. Generally a good deal.
Do not forget to buy and grab gear whenever you can. Even one Gear level can make a big difference in how your heroes fight.
If you need credits:
Galactic War is the best bet early on and is still useful later as well. You can also get a lot of tokens to buy some good heroes with. There is some formula for the difficulty level. I would search the GOH forums for that. I've never really felt the need for that info though.
Have a team of Scoundrels around to take advantage of the Credit Heist. The game is changed a bit from when I started but early on I didn't need credits as much as I do in the late game where I'm always hard up for some.
For Raids:
You will want to get heroes that have Turn Meter Reduction and slow down abilities. So QGJ, Chewbacca, Old Ben, Teebo, Fives, Yoda, and the like.
Useful Heroes:
QGJ - Really good all around abilities that can be used a variety of ways. A good taunt breaker. A little soft on HPs so you will have to baby him a bit until you can slap some HP mods on him.
Luminara - Excellent early and mid game hero. Extremely versatile, doing some significant damage while also having a great healing ability. Does lose some luster late game but is really useful on GW.
Royal Guard - Has stun and an automatic taunt that will save your bacon. Pretty much the best tank late game but may not be that useful early on though until he gets his abilities leveled up.
Daka - Early healer (one of the few Dark side healers) that can also stun and resurrect. Really important for the Dark side missions.
Phasma - Great buffer that works well as a leader with all factions. The additional attack can really tear it up with the right team. IIRC also gears up relatively easy.
Rey - IMHO OP as hell. Works best in the late game. It seems almost everyone has her.
Anakin - If you are making a Jedi team he's a must have now. He's the only healing immunity ability Light Side I know of and he can break taunts pretty easily. Isn't really that farmable until late game though.
Dooku - Strong if kind of annoying. Can farm him relatively early in Cantina. I haven't really messed with him much but others clearly like him. His abilities are so random in their effects that he can be incredible one match and worthless the next.
Droids - Can be very good but if you go down this route go all in. Droids don't really work that well with others with the exception of the Jawas. They can be really strong but they are basically just damage engines with few hit points. You either win quick or you lose the fight. Not the best for things like GW.
GS is Geonosian Soldier as far as I know.
Yes her damage is just out of wack compared to any of the other damage dealers. Leia can get lucky and get the full three shot chain and hit pretty hard but rei can both do it on demand AND hits for about twice the damage. I have seen her one shot people with full shields and full health and no other damage dealer can really come close to that.
They ewok the hell out of the rancor if you have all four of them. Their synergy of teebo when he uses invis basically gives them all an immediate attack + chirpa sending all of them to attack plus speed up means they get about three attacks per every enemy attack and if teebo is landing his basic attack he can keep murdering the ability of the rancor to even get a turn.
They are not a high damage team but they are attacking constantly combined with they have one of the best healers in the game with two rez abilities one guaranteed and one with a chance to do so.
Honestly if you concentrate a bit on getting the free to play smugglers geared up and leveled up which is pretty easy getting your guys up to 70's is not hard any more. The smuggler training drone event that comes up pretty frequently and the credit heist are huge boosts to leveling up the minions.
The weirdest thing in this game is I did spend a like 40 bucks on buying some stuff early on but in reality this game unless you are going to go all in on being a whale does NOT reward you for plinking a couple bucks here and there. It is FAR better to spend your time just going after the free to play shard stuff because if you spend money and unlock chromium stuff chances are you won't be able to improve them and so they wind up being under powered and not very useful. There are a TON of characters that are pretty easily improvable for just about all types/sides for free without spending a time on it.
I agree basically the best option at the moment is work hard on pimping out a smuggler team. The credit heist if you can do the higher level ones starts getting REALLY lucrative.
I'm just going from memory here, but that original pack was priced at $59.99, which is literally the cost of a brand new video game. An entire game. And what you got for that $59.99 was two characters unlocked, plus a random assortment of Jedi shards, up to a max of 30 additional shards or something. And I think maybe some purple crystals.
But come on now. Two characters and 30 shards for the price of an entire game? No thank you. Not at all. You don't get my money you greedy sons of bitches.
Saying that they are feasting off of the addictive nature of games and making people who cannot control themselves a target is not fair nor realistic. Now if they went after those people by sending them flyers, emails, texts, etc., then yeah, they'd be targeting them. In some ways, I'm addicted to gaming. The first thing I do almost every morning is stare at the ceiling and wish that all I had to do today was sit on my couch and game. The thing is, I get up and go to work. Yeah, I play this game a bit while I'm at work, but I don't let it consume my time. And while I'm at work, all I want to do is get home and sit on my couch and game, but I can't because I have responsibilities. Those responsibilities allow me to game (among other things that require monetary gains).
Now there are those people out there who just don't care and will spend whatever in order to be successful at a game. I've read stories about people who pay others to farm their characters while they are doing other things in real life, just so that they can continue to succeed in the game. I personally think that is insane, but to each their own. The price structure is set up (for the most part) in the hopes that out of the (let's just use simple numbers) 200,000 people who are playing the game, at least half of them will buy a $10 package at some point. That's $1,000,000 right there. From those 100,000, maybe half of them will buy another $10 package. That's another $500,000. And then there are those that are insane and will go gung ho. For simplicity's sake, let's just focus on the normal folks. For a 200,000 player-base, they've made $1.5 million + whatever those insane fools spend. I'm not going to blame the game for that. I'm going to blame the people who did it.
If a bar offered me two free drinks and then was going to charge me $20 per drink afterwards, there is the chance that I may stay for one or two (depending on the drink and company). After that, I'm going home to have the drinks at my house. Alcoholics don't drink just in the bars. They'll drink wherever the hell they choose, and if it is costing them $100 a day to drink at the bar, they'll soon enough choose to drink for $40 a day by doing it at home, and they'll be able to have as much as they want without anyone saying they have to stop.
But yes, part of the reason this game is free to play is because there are people out there who don't care about spending $200+ on this game, simply because they want to be top dogs. Those people exist in almost every game that costs extra money for an edge.
At some point, people need to take responsibility for their actions and stop trying to find someone else to pin the blame on. FYI: I say this as someone who has fought addiction before, and I accept the fact that I alone was to blame for it.
Yeah, that's not being addicted to gaming.
As for the rest of your post ... too much... I'll just agree to disagree.
It's likely the current prices were arrived at after lots of A/B testing. I remember early in the game (possibly in the beta) when the crystal subscription was only $8.99 but somewhere along the way it got raised to $10.99. They probably had data that showed that to be the sweet spot. Some of the prices may seem crazy to you (and me if I'm being honest) but there are people who don't blink an eye dropping several hundred on a FTP game. I've been on projects where people actually wrote in saying there wasn't enough stuff to buy in the game.
So then I start thinking about the PVE we have, and it isn't really fair either.
The rancor is a terribly designed encounter. Downright awful. The phase 1 Gamorean fight is easily the worst part, and at least in my guild, a lot of people skip that phase and just wait for phase 2 before they even participate. But Rancor phases cheat too, and it's so frustrating. Why does each phase of the fight (including the Gamoreans) have a hard-enrage point, where after so many turns they just start one-shotting your dudes? That doesn't feel good at all.
Good play and strong teams are punished because each time you make an attack, you are basically hard stopped after so many turns. So even good planning and bringing a well-designed team doesn't really pay off.
Ackbar is a strong asset in Phase 1 because he can clear the mark of death debuff and ensure that your dudes all live the max amount of time. But then once the Gamoreans hit that hard-enrage, Ackbar doesn't even matter and your whole team is just gonna drop anyway.
Likewise on the Rancor phases, he starts one-shotting dudes after a while, and his one-shots ignore dodge. So if I bring Rey and get her dodge buff, and the he swats her, she's gonna die even though she should avoid the attack.
Just... I dunno. I really just want to quit this game. It's hard to find anything positive to say about it. The combat isn't even that fun. PVP cheats in favor of the defender, and in PVE they put in these cheap kill mechanics that punish good players.
Basically, nothing is very well designed in this game and I don't really know why I continue to play.
Because if you stop, even for one day, you'll miss out on something. You won't get the daily login shards, or the galactic war rewards, or something else and you know you can't ever make up for it.
It's crazy, but it's the same reason I played for a while even when all I did was sim until I did all the daily goals.
It will be interesting to see what the next raid is like, from what I've heard TM will not play as much a factor.
Except it is impossible to dilly dally in this game. There's no turn passing option, so at the very least, every turn your characters will be hitting with a basic attack if nothing else.
In MMO's the enrage timer serves as a difficulty measurement, where you have X seconds to do Y damage or you fail. It's what's called a DPS check.
But in this Star Wars game, the enrage doesn't serve as a DPS check or even anything other than a hard-stopping point for that attack. Like basically they're saying you only get 15 turns before you die. And that's kind of bullshit.
Yep. The people that want to hit an easy million go for Phase 1. And Teebo is your main hero there. You don't need a debuffer like Ackbar when you can just stealth everyone (Teebo), lower TM (Teebo and to a degree QGJ), and inflict speed down so the big guy never gets a turn (Phasma). I got him down to 20% before he even managed to take out one of my characters. He almost never attacked. If I want to stay anywhere near the top 10 in my guild, I have to do P1.
I'm more pissed about being devoured. A full-health toon can be gone *snaps* just like that. And the slam can reduce the devour cooldown, which is crazy annoying.
This is a mighty victory for the rebellion.
The current guild I'm in is doing Tier 3 raid and it takes about two days to complete. I'm usually coming in rank 4-6. Should I look for a different guild, or is that a reasonable pace? If I should look for a different guild, is there a good place to do so?
That's pretty good. Ranking high is good for rewards, and many guilds are probably higher level than you could contribute to with lvl 63 toons. I'd say where you're at for now.
If you feel like you're in a rut, you may want to consider looking for a guild that is doing tier 4.
EDIT: I should have given you a link to easily view the rewards: https://swgoh.gg/db/raids/the-pit/rewards/