Friday, December 14, 2012

Maximizing Points for X-Men

Players during the X-Men event can expect to gain points in one of three ways: Damage Bonus, Star Bonus, and Killing Blow.

Damage Bonus
Damage bonus pays out at roughly 1% of the damage you do. For every hundred thousand damage, you gain one thousand points. The points are slightly over one percent, but it's close to there.

Star Bonus
Star bonus pays out a large bonus as long as you did the most damage on the boss. I'm not sure if there's a specific percentage but for me it has been paying out quite a bit. This is an important bonus to hit if you want to maximize points. The star bonus is roughly 10% of the damage bonus.

Killing Blow
Killing blow bonus is paid out for dealing the final strike to a boss. This bonus appears to be set and increases based on the strength of the boss. It's about 50% of the star bonus.

Quick, inaccurate math
Because of the way the event distributes points it makes quite a bit of sense to never ask for help unless you absolutely need it. Lets say you have 100 attack power and lets say for arguments sake you can do five attacks totaling 500,500 damage with that 100 attack power.

Scenario 1:
500,000 HP Boss comes up. You use all 100 attack power to destroy the boss. Likely point reward goes something like 5000+ shards, 500+ star bonus, 250+ Finishing blow bonus.

Scenario 2:
Four 500,000 HP Bosses come up. You attack each boss once, and one boss twice. Your team members finish the bosses off. Likely points go something like 5000+ shards, no bonuses. You would actually be better off with only one boss in scenario one.

The two scenarios are rough examples so please don't jump out and say 'zomg Star bonus would be 2000 for that boss!' or something like that. It's just to illustrate the point that taking down one boss by yourself earns more points than taking down three bosses with your allies. It's a flaw in the system.

ISO-8 Shards
To equalize that flaw, the players will earn more ISO-8 Shards if they take down all three bosses, it is arguable that this would increase your chances of 1/2 Power Packs and therefor would yield higher points overall. This is absolutely true. Since ISO-8 Shards are payed out for defeating bosses it makes sense to eliminate as many as you can

A certain amount of theory could be done based on the idea that killing more bosses and gaining more shards will result in more power packs meaning there will be more overall points for the player. Unfortunately I don't think it would hold true. The amount of shards given out appears to be so small unless the boss is defeated very quickly that any bonus received wouldn't be worth it. When I attacked bosses that had over one million life for one attack (Roughly 130,000 damage using two cards), I only received two green shards. The destruction bonus pays decent amount of red shards, but the weakness of the other bonuses make it a bit pointless.

The best way to optimize
Because of the small amount of shards players get for attacking a boss once and the nature in which points work. I theorize that there is way to receive maximum payout in this event. The way to do this is to invite players to attack your current boss only after you have achieved over 50% damage. It also means that you should only contribute to a boss battle if you are either going to achieve over 50% damage or the finishing blow. You will then down more bosses, giving you more shards, and hit the maximum number of bonuses. Although you no longer get charged the +5 Attack power when you attack another persons boss, missing out on the 50% bonus kind of sucks.

Raider Cards:
Cosmic Energy Havoc: 200% base, 300% fused bonus. He is one of the unfortunate cards that loses effectiveness when fused. It is still recommended to fuse him since you will save attack power.

Precise shot Hawkeye: 200% base, 300% fused bonus. He is one of the unfortunate cards that loses effectiveness when fused. It is still recommended to fuse him since you will save attack power.

Wind-Rider Storm: 300% base, 700% fused bonus. Good buff overall when fused that is 200% more powerful than one base Psylocke

Lady Liberty She Hulk: 400% base, 600% fused bonus. The final of the unfortunate cards that loses effectiveness when fused. It is still recommended to fuse her since it wills ave on attack power.

Psychic Katana Psylocke: 500% base, 1200% fused. Great buff overall when fused it is 200% more powerful than one base cyclops.

Mind of Matter Xavier: 800% base, 1800% fused. Only being 200% shy of Cyclops makes this probably the most reasonable raid card for this event.

Genuine Leader Cyclops: 1000% base, 2000% fused. The best raider card for this event.

For a solid starting card into the event She-Hulk gives a pretty strong buff until you can gain two storms. After that I recommend running Storm and two she hulks in your attacks. There is no reason to use a full deck of cards in this event unless they are all at a high percentage boost.

Ideally based on price of cards and bonus offered, I would recommend ignoring cyclops. His price will be too high to be worth picking up. Instead focus on grabbing Xavier's and Psyclockes since their buffs are substantial.

Deck Set up:
The recommended decks are rarely the best for this event. Instead I recommend trying to max buffs since they only effect themselves. For example, if you use She-Hulk, she will buff herself 600% but the rest of the cards are ignored.

The deck power consumption in this event is calculated based on half your decks power +5. Because of this, if you attack using two Lady Liberty She-Hulk twice, it only costs 5 points more than if you had a deck of four she hulks. Ideally, you want a deck of five built raider cards, but early one when you only have two or three, it makes more sense to take your highest percentage cards and attack multiple times using them rather than one powerful deck that is missing raider cards.

Lets say I have a deck with 3 Final Form Storm Raider cards (700% boost) and two non raider wings. For this example lets say all cards cost 20 attack power each. What's better, attacking once for 55 attack power with 2100% worth of boost, or attacking twice for 70 attack power (3 storm twice) for 4200% worth of boost, but no normal wing damage. I consider this a no brainer.

So, try to use only boosted cards and its okay to use fewer boosted cards if you can't fill a deck.

 

2 comments:

  1. Hey- you're blog is great and i enjoy reading your opinions on everything since you have a lot of experience with this from rob. Just one question about maximizing points, I agree that that this time around it seems the payoff for going all in on one boss is more because it seems like the made the damage reward WAY higher. However doesn't the fact that attacking someone else's boss uses less attack power balance this? My alliances initial strategy going into the event was going to be to pass off bosses to each other to take advantage of the lower power req. I still think this would be the way to go, although the ask for support button seems to be giving the same people over and over again (highest raid rating maybe?) and they are mostly my team members instead of allies. But i would argue that because the damage bonus is so high, and the other bonuses are just ok, that anytime someone else's boss shows up its worth going in on. Just a thought.

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    1. I help whenever a boss is up and I have attack points to share. I myself don't share mine unless I've already done over 1/2 the damage.

      Points are points and you will gain more shards by attacking friends bosses, thus allowing you more chances at 1/2 power packs as well.

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