This post will strictly be about the goings on of the battlefield itself. The objective of this post is to give some guidance to players who are just starting out in Team Battle (or Friend Battle), so I will make a lot of generalizations. It will most likely be irrelevant to players who have already pounded their way into the top 1000 global ranking. The very nature of going head-to-head against other player teams is dynamic so there is no way to lay out flawless game plans. The only thing I can do is call attention to some general guidelines and ideas to help you formulate your own battle strategy.
By the way, for the people who are copying/translating my content (this post or any other post) for view somewhere else: I don't mind that you're sharing the knowledge to a wider community, but do me the courtesy of linking the info back to my page, please. I spend a lot of time writing this stuff and would appreciate the link back for acknowledgment. Thanks.
Rank
When the global ladder is reset, you will not have a rank and it will just show you as --. Your first battle game will determine your rank and your score (which always starts at 1000). If you started playing team battles very late after the ladder reset, you may be "--" rank for a long time before you fight your way into the top 50,000 ranks. You only get a number rank if you're in the top 50,000.Ranks update about once every 5 minutes so if you don't see your rank change right away, wait a few minutes and check again. Your rank will reset every Monday at 06:00 Japan Standard Time. You can see both the global rank on this screen and how you stack up against everyone on your Friends list. Your badge type/icon will change according to how many points you gain throughout the week (click on the ? button to see the ranking badges). Ranking matters a lot as it affects the opponent you will be up against.
The Opponent AI
The opponent player that you face is determined in part by your global ranking and in part by your score, though the exact algorithm I cannot say for sure. If you are just starting the week's ladder unranked, the server may put you up against some opponents of variable difficulty because they don't exactly know where you stack up yet. It's still very early in the game so I don't have any solid details to confirm this but in my own game play this appears to be the case.
From what I can tell so far, the difficulty of your opponent relies on 2 things: (1) the ranger team and the ranger's stats, which is obvious, and (2) the opponent's AI, or artificial intelligence. At low ranks, when you are going up against other low ranking players, the AI will be quite easy, simple and predictable. They'll use fewer items, upgrade slowly, and deploy rather slowly as well. I'll update when I know more definitively, but for now I will generalize that as you gain points and break through to new badge levels, the AI steps up its game. The AI seems to tune higher and sharper in terms of its decision making. You'll find that at higher ranks, the computer will make marked determinations on how to open the game based on the layout of the path and what you are doing. When it decides to upgrade minerals and when it determines is the time to rush in to attack you are active decisions, not predetermined steps. One of the things that will make or break the game is timing of item usage. At very high ranks, the AI will accurately determine when to unleash items on you to maximize utility and ruin your day. At lower ranks, the AI uses items pretty poorly, and you can turn that into an advantage.
As dinky as the game may seem at times, I must applaud the developers on their tuning of the AI for Team Battle Mode. It's really well done and it plays impressively. So far, I haven't noticed any glaringly obvious robot moves like "if this happens then the computer always does this."
Path Length
The battlefield length varies from battle to battle and the one you get is selected at random. The length of the path affects your entire strategy. In the long paths you will most likely be able to safely upgrade minerals 2 or 3 times before you have to deal with any serious onslaught of enemy units. In the short path, it's much more of a gamble. If you get units out first, you might be able to snipe the enemy tower before the opponent AI has a chance to react. If the enemy immediately deploys units but you are upgrading minerals, you could be dead before you know what's happened.
The long paths favor faster moving rangers as well as rangers with a very long attack range. You have the opportunity to spread out your team over a lot more space so that your back row units are less vulnerable to enemy splash damage.
On the other hand, short paths tends to allow slower moving power hitters to shine more. Long range units are still valuable, but the slow, hard hitting rangers get a chance to do some serious damage in the short path. It is important to keep this in mind because for short paths you'll most likely want to apply a lot of offensive pressure on the opponent so that they are forced to spend their minerals defending rather than building up a lot of minerals to deploy big hitters like KSM. By the way, you should always be wary of enemy splash rangers on ultra short paths. The splash radius can be bigger than you thought and your tower may be taking damage even if you're not standing right outside of it.
Short paths lend themselves to really fast tower sniping. If you are quick and your team runs fast, you can also do it with long paths, but short makes this obviously easier. You can strategically plan to use your items in quick succession to overwhelm and obliterate your opponent on a short path.
Like in single player mode, in every PvP team battle you must make a decision on whether you want to battle near your tower, in the middle of near their tower. The length of the path and the composition of your team's rangers will help you determine that.
- If the opponent has slaughtered your front line and you need to regroup, you can use ice shot to buy you a few seconds, but only do this if your back row attackers are healthy and plentiful so you don't waste this precious item without doing any damage on the opponent.
- If you are desperate to get back in the game, you can use ice shot to try to tear down the opponent's tanking rangers, then when ice shot wears off, follow up with invincibility to buy yourself even more time to keep building up your army.
- When your opponent uses invincibility, you may want to consider using ice shot if your team is not looking healthy enough to survive through it. It will prevent the opponent from scoring kills while they're unkillable but it will also mean that you cannot maximize on damage. Use this time to rally more forces or upgrade your minerals to face them again once invincibility wears off. This is a sort of desperate measure, though.
On the other hand, short paths tends to allow slower moving power hitters to shine more. Long range units are still valuable, but the slow, hard hitting rangers get a chance to do some serious damage in the short path. It is important to keep this in mind because for short paths you'll most likely want to apply a lot of offensive pressure on the opponent so that they are forced to spend their minerals defending rather than building up a lot of minerals to deploy big hitters like KSM. By the way, you should always be wary of enemy splash rangers on ultra short paths. The splash radius can be bigger than you thought and your tower may be taking damage even if you're not standing right outside of it.
Short paths lend themselves to really fast tower sniping. If you are quick and your team runs fast, you can also do it with long paths, but short makes this obviously easier. You can strategically plan to use your items in quick succession to overwhelm and obliterate your opponent on a short path.
Like in single player mode, in every PvP team battle you must make a decision on whether you want to battle near your tower, in the middle of near their tower. The length of the path and the composition of your team's rangers will help you determine that.
Item Usage
Supposing all rangers, treasures, upgrades, and friends are equal, only 2 things set you apart from the opponent AI: the timing of your deployments and the timing of your items. Items can give you an upper hand if you use them carefully. If you have not read the quirks I found out about Ice shot and Meteor, check them out here. The kicker about items in team battle is that the opponent can use them, too, and now we will have to consider how they can be used both offensively and defensively.
Ice Shot
If you thought ice shot was strategically important in normal single player mode, it is even more critical in team battle mode. While the opponent is frozen, gauge your team's status. At its current state, will your forces be able to overtake their front line? When the thaw happens, will your front line be safe? Should you upgrade your minerals to prepare for a huge push after the thaw? Or do you want to continually deploy more units to directly push your way through? This is likely to be the only few seconds you have to reconsider your strategy and make big changes if necessary.
Offensive:
- Combine tornado with ice shot to freeze the opponent right at their tower to maximize on splash damage. This is a very strong combination to use when both teams are equally matched to push things in your favor. This is also a "rush" tactic you can try to use at the beginning of a match to stunt the opponent's army and try to snipe the tower. After you tornado and ice shot, your rangers will camp outside the foot of the enemy tower. Splash rangers will splash the tower down if you can hold that position.
- Used alone, you can optimize by deploying a lot of splash rangers to quickly clean out the opponent's front line defenses. Ice shot is great when the opponent has a lot of rangers sitting clumped up at the front, less ideal when their army is all spread out.
Defensive:- If the opponent has slaughtered your front line and you need to regroup, you can use ice shot to buy you a few seconds, but only do this if your back row attackers are healthy and plentiful so you don't waste this precious item without doing any damage on the opponent.
- If you are desperate to get back in the game, you can use ice shot to try to tear down the opponent's tanking rangers, then when ice shot wears off, follow up with invincibility to buy yourself even more time to keep building up your army.
- When your opponent uses invincibility, you may want to consider using ice shot if your team is not looking healthy enough to survive through it. It will prevent the opponent from scoring kills while they're unkillable but it will also mean that you cannot maximize on damage. Use this time to rally more forces or upgrade your minerals to face them again once invincibility wears off. This is a sort of desperate measure, though.
Reactive:
- If the opponent uses ice shot on you, in most cases the appropriate response is to use invincibility. In fact, I personally use invincibility when the ice shot duration reaches about half (few seconds in). Your tanking rangers likely won't die just a couple of seconds into an ice shot, and then you gain the advantage of using the last few seconds of invincibility once you thaw. This way your rangers don't die and they will stick around to help return fire while reinforcements arrive after the thaw. Remember, a front line ranger even with 1 HP + invincibility is still unkillable for the duration of the item, so why waste it being frozen and unable to attack? In fact, you need those rangers post-thaw more than ever because the enemy army is bigger after the ice shot.
- When your opponent uses ice shot on you, should you use ice shot back on them? This makes for a few frozen seconds when no one is attacking anyone, and the only viable things you can do while you wait are deploy more units for later use, upgrade minerals, deploy friends, or use meteor. My opinion is that ice shot is better strategically used when you can deal damage. There are other ways to defend against being frozen, like tornado (for long paths) and invincibility. Or if you're feeling confident, just let them have at your front line for the few seconds and keep doing what you are doing without wasting any items to defend.
Meteor
Meteor does damage to all enemy units in an area-of-effect, so be sure that the enemy is in a position where the meteors will land on them. By the way, from max distance, meteor will completely miss Dancer King Boss, so that's pretty cool.
Offensive:
- Try and avoid using meteor early in the game because with fewer units on the field, you're kind of wasting the potential damage that meteor can do. Later on in the game when there are tons of enemies on the screen, meteor can really do enormous damage.
- About a second after the opponent uses tornado on you, meteor is performs amazingly as all 5 of the meteors that come screaming down are guaranteed to hit some of the enemy rangers passing by. After you are swept backward, the opponent's rangers will start to move forward and that's when you should unleash meteor to hit all of them.
- Don't use tornado on the opponent then unleash meteor. Doing so will likely result in the enemy only getting hit by 2 out of 5 meteors, wasting 3. If you hit tornado and then immediately hit meteor, your meteors will hit 0 units. :(
- Combining meteor with invincibility can make a very successful push because it would have weakened the opponent and make them ripe for taking with your unkillable army. If you are having a standoff in the middle of the road, a move like this can be decisive.
Defensive:
- Meteor isn't the most helpful for defensive plays, but if you combine it with a well-placed ice shot, you could weaken the opponent's rangers.
Reactive:
- When the opponent uses meteor on you, you have a split second to decide whether you want to use invincibility or not. If you do, you can save low health rangers in the back of your team. This is particularly helpful to players who use rangers like any of the Cony series (except maybe maxed SoCo), Opera James, Sindy, Ola Brown, etc. They're too scrawny to survive 1-2 meteor hits. If the bulk of your attackers are low HP and long range, you really should try to protect them with invincibility before the last couple meteors descend on them.
Tornado
Offensive:
- To truly use tornado offensively, you will likely use it in combination with another item. However, you can use tornado to "re-stack" the enemy rangers to maximize your offensive splash damage. This is particularly useful against opponents with a bunch of KSM, Abdula or Sol (heavy hitting, slow attack speed, short range). If your rangers are fast moving or the path is short, after you tornado they'll all be stacked up and you have the opportunity to hit them. If the enemy front line rangers are fast moving (like Hip Hop Brown) and it's a long path, then their front line will burst to the middle of the path with no backup support so you'll have the opportunity to snipe their front rangers and then deal with the heavy hitting back row alone. You must time it appropriately!
- As mentioned above, when the opponent uses tornado on you, it's a very good time to use meteor to hit the most number of enemy units. Resist the urge to tornado the opponent when they use it on you unless it is really absolutely necessary to survive.
- Using tornado and following up with invincibility right as the teams are about to meet again is a strong move that will take advantage of "re-stacking" the opponent team.
- You can do funny things that are a little bit offensive and defensive by timing it so that the tornado will blow them back at the same time as a big hit landing. If you're lucky, you'll hit them at half health and maybe buy another second of knock back.
Defensive:
- Used alone, tornado by itself is a stall tactic. You buy yourself a little bit of time while the enemy walks back over to you, but if they have you cornered at your tower and splash is hitting the tower, blowing them back is a good option.
Reactive:
- When the opponent uses tornado on you, should you use tornado on them? Maybe; it depends. If the opponent did it because you're getting close to their tower, you might be better off using tornado because you have the better army and you are pushing forward at that time. You don't have to, but it is a viable option if you think you can finish them off by doing so. If you are fighting a losing battle and the opponent pushes you back, then tornado against the opponent might save you. Whatever you do, don't tornado as soon as they use it unless you are purposely doing so for a reason. Especially if you are doing it to stall -- tornado the enemy when they are about to reach your front line to give yourself maximum time. If you both use tornado at the same time, all you have achieved is equalized both your positions to meet in the middle, which doesn't really gain you any advantage.
Invincibility
Offensive:
- The benefits are obvious for offensive moves. The few seconds that your troops are invincible can make it very easy to push through a tough front. The added bonus of invincibility besides retaining your army for a few seconds is that you will likely kill quite a few enemy rangers and you'll acquire a lot of minerals for the kills, which enables you to deploy more rangers :D
- Used at the beginning of a stage, you can quickly overwhelm and snipe the enemy tower
- Used near the end of the game when you have amassed a huge army, you can use it to attempt to overwhelm the opponent. The only thing I must urge players is to practice keeping track of which items the opponent has already used. If you are using invincibility as an overwhelming offensive tactic, make sure that the opponent has already used their ice shot and their invincibility otherwise you may shoot yourself in the foot by using yours early.
Defensive:
- As mentioned above, invincibility is fantastic to use when you are in trouble, or when meteor is going to rain on your scrawny back row, or when ice shot is used on you. Of the three situations, I think using it during ice shot is the best defense because the potential to break you is highest during ice shot.
Reactive:
- When the opponent uses invincibility, should you also use invincibility? I generally dislike using invincibility when they use it because I like to use invincibility to my advantage whenever possible. I also don't like to use ice shot as a defensive item because ice shot is also such a fantastic offensive item. When the opponent uses invincibility, I try to do one of two things instead: (1) use tornado if it's a very long path as a stall tactic. (2) Spam deployment of tanking rangers to hold the front. All invincibility means is that the opponent is unkillable for a few seconds. If you reinforce your front line, then there's nothing to fear. Once their invincibility is over, you can even retaliate with some items of your own to hit even harder.
Meteor does damage to all enemy units in an area-of-effect, so be sure that the enemy is in a position where the meteors will land on them. By the way, from max distance, meteor will completely miss Dancer King Boss, so that's pretty cool.
Offensive:
- Try and avoid using meteor early in the game because with fewer units on the field, you're kind of wasting the potential damage that meteor can do. Later on in the game when there are tons of enemies on the screen, meteor can really do enormous damage.
- About a second after the opponent uses tornado on you, meteor is performs amazingly as all 5 of the meteors that come screaming down are guaranteed to hit some of the enemy rangers passing by. After you are swept backward, the opponent's rangers will start to move forward and that's when you should unleash meteor to hit all of them.
- Don't use tornado on the opponent then unleash meteor. Doing so will likely result in the enemy only getting hit by 2 out of 5 meteors, wasting 3. If you hit tornado and then immediately hit meteor, your meteors will hit 0 units. :(
- Combining meteor with invincibility can make a very successful push because it would have weakened the opponent and make them ripe for taking with your unkillable army. If you are having a standoff in the middle of the road, a move like this can be decisive.
Defensive:
- Meteor isn't the most helpful for defensive plays, but if you combine it with a well-placed ice shot, you could weaken the opponent's rangers.
Reactive:
- When the opponent uses meteor on you, you have a split second to decide whether you want to use invincibility or not. If you do, you can save low health rangers in the back of your team. This is particularly helpful to players who use rangers like any of the Cony series (except maybe maxed SoCo), Opera James, Sindy, Ola Brown, etc. They're too scrawny to survive 1-2 meteor hits. If the bulk of your attackers are low HP and long range, you really should try to protect them with invincibility before the last couple meteors descend on them.
Tornado
Offensive:
- To truly use tornado offensively, you will likely use it in combination with another item. However, you can use tornado to "re-stack" the enemy rangers to maximize your offensive splash damage. This is particularly useful against opponents with a bunch of KSM, Abdula or Sol (heavy hitting, slow attack speed, short range). If your rangers are fast moving or the path is short, after you tornado they'll all be stacked up and you have the opportunity to hit them. If the enemy front line rangers are fast moving (like Hip Hop Brown) and it's a long path, then their front line will burst to the middle of the path with no backup support so you'll have the opportunity to snipe their front rangers and then deal with the heavy hitting back row alone. You must time it appropriately!
- As mentioned above, when the opponent uses tornado on you, it's a very good time to use meteor to hit the most number of enemy units. Resist the urge to tornado the opponent when they use it on you unless it is really absolutely necessary to survive.
- Using tornado and following up with invincibility right as the teams are about to meet again is a strong move that will take advantage of "re-stacking" the opponent team.
- You can do funny things that are a little bit offensive and defensive by timing it so that the tornado will blow them back at the same time as a big hit landing. If you're lucky, you'll hit them at half health and maybe buy another second of knock back.
- Used alone, tornado by itself is a stall tactic. You buy yourself a little bit of time while the enemy walks back over to you, but if they have you cornered at your tower and splash is hitting the tower, blowing them back is a good option.
Reactive:
- When the opponent uses tornado on you, should you use tornado on them? Maybe; it depends. If the opponent did it because you're getting close to their tower, you might be better off using tornado because you have the better army and you are pushing forward at that time. You don't have to, but it is a viable option if you think you can finish them off by doing so. If you are fighting a losing battle and the opponent pushes you back, then tornado against the opponent might save you. Whatever you do, don't tornado as soon as they use it unless you are purposely doing so for a reason. Especially if you are doing it to stall -- tornado the enemy when they are about to reach your front line to give yourself maximum time. If you both use tornado at the same time, all you have achieved is equalized both your positions to meet in the middle, which doesn't really gain you any advantage.
Invincibility
Offensive:
- The benefits are obvious for offensive moves. The few seconds that your troops are invincible can make it very easy to push through a tough front. The added bonus of invincibility besides retaining your army for a few seconds is that you will likely kill quite a few enemy rangers and you'll acquire a lot of minerals for the kills, which enables you to deploy more rangers :D
- Used at the beginning of a stage, you can quickly overwhelm and snipe the enemy tower
- Used near the end of the game when you have amassed a huge army, you can use it to attempt to overwhelm the opponent. The only thing I must urge players is to practice keeping track of which items the opponent has already used. If you are using invincibility as an overwhelming offensive tactic, make sure that the opponent has already used their ice shot and their invincibility otherwise you may shoot yourself in the foot by using yours early.
Defensive:
- As mentioned above, invincibility is fantastic to use when you are in trouble, or when meteor is going to rain on your scrawny back row, or when ice shot is used on you. Of the three situations, I think using it during ice shot is the best defense because the potential to break you is highest during ice shot.
Reactive:
- When the opponent uses invincibility, should you also use invincibility? I generally dislike using invincibility when they use it because I like to use invincibility to my advantage whenever possible. I also don't like to use ice shot as a defensive item because ice shot is also such a fantastic offensive item. When the opponent uses invincibility, I try to do one of two things instead: (1) use tornado if it's a very long path as a stall tactic. (2) Spam deployment of tanking rangers to hold the front. All invincibility means is that the opponent is unkillable for a few seconds. If you reinforce your front line, then there's nothing to fear. Once their invincibility is over, you can even retaliate with some items of your own to hit even harder.
Other Considerations
Should I upgrade minerals during a Team Battle?
This greatly depends on your production upgrade status. At level 80 and above, you can surely get by without upgrading minerals for many, many of the matches. For most of the lower AI matches, the computer is busy upgrading minerals and deploys nothing at the start. You can easily gain an advantage by deploying first. In the higher AI matches, the computer does not upgrade minerals and goes straight to deployment 9 out of 10 times in my experience. You are forced to defend if you upgrade minerals.
I found much higher success in not upgrading minerals at the start, and instead doing it when it is safe and I have minerals to spare during the match. Just don't forget to upgrade because the longer the battle drags on, the more advantageous having faster minerals will be.
Should I mimic the opponent's actions?
No, you really shouldn't. By doing so you are doing everything it does except slower, and thus are at a disadvantage. Besides, the AI does not have to show you all 5 of its rangers. It is possible that (and I have personally seen) the AI deploys 4 rangers for most of the game, then later in the game suddenly deploy a 5th ranger to surprise you. You should go in with your own game plan, not follow the computer.
How is the opponent able to deploy so many rangers so fast?
If the computer does not upgrade minerals at the start, they will spend the initial set of minerals on 2-3 rangers right from the start. In addition, if they kill any of your units, they will gain minerals for the kills. And finally, the mineral max limit of the opponent player may be higher than yours and they might have started with more. The opponent may also have their rangers mastered, which means the ranger's cooldown is halved.
Ola Brown is killing everything. What can I do?
Ola Brown is very good and he tends to pop out super early in the fight because he's so cheap to deploy. But luckily, he's so scrawny that if the wind blows, he dies. You must take to the offense early against a team with Ola to prevent the opponent from forming a good defense for him. Tornado is also a great way to "re-stack" the enemy units so you can splash him to death. Also, from max distance, you can hit Ola Brown with the meteor item, so if you are planning on a big push, use meteor to weaken the Ola Brown troupe first, then push in. Not gonna lie, Ola Brown in any team makes things tougher. Ola Brown together with Hip-Hop Brown is a very rough combination to break, too. There's no silver bullet, I can only offer you strategy advice.
KSM is killing everything. What can I do?
KSM costs a lot of mineral to deploy and his cooldown is long, so the best defense against a team with KSM is a fast offense. Keep the opponent from deploying him at all by forcing it to defend as early as possible. If you let them deploy a whole stack of KSMs, then you're in trouble. If you have to fight your way through to him, remember that KSM has a rather wide hit radius but it's up in the front where your tanking rangers are. His hits will not be able to touch longer range units like Opera James, Sindy, Cony and Boss. If you must abandon your strongest short range attackers (like Dwight and Dumpy) in favor of long range attackers (like Cony, Opera, Alice, Lia, Boss, especially Dancer King) midway through the fight just to deal with KSM, do it. Strip your deployment down to only your tank ranger and your long range attackers and you will not have to fear KSM's frontal assault. Just like in single player mode, you can also stall with a couple of lowbies if you deploy them in a continuous steady stream while your long range attackers have a killing spree. Need to review which rangers have a long range? Check this post for details.
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This text-filled post has gone on long enough. I may add more as it comes to me, but as far as basics, I think that covers it!
Great insight as always. Thanks for your effort.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it is not easy to make split second decision.
I wouldn't deploy lowbies, teams with lowbies are the easiest to beat IMO because they give you so much mineral you can just pump out rangers and quickly overpower the enemy. A lot of people are still using red brown as their tank, I almost get cooldown locked in those cases because the crystal from killing them pours in so fast.
ReplyDeleteI am getting a little tired of versin the 'cash teams' (composed entirely of the ultimate 8), even at low rankings 20k - 50k th I still randomly run into cash teams.
So red brown shouldn't be used?
DeleteI dont have hiphopbrown, but I have bernard and dwight
What do you think the best team should I use?
Both Bernard and Dwight are both good choices imo. I'd use whoever is master, for sure. Otherwise if not mastered, I'd go with Dwight for the extra damage. Though I've seen plenty of people do fine with Bernard, he has slightly more hp, a lot less Dmg. Kind of depends on what your team is in need of.
DeleteRed Brown for all the hp he has still melts against teams that have very fast attack speed rangers, hardly worth the effort, if you were looking to hold back some Ksm's, I might go even lower, like Scott. Cheaper, returns less mineral to the enemy, will do what you need him to do which is to hold the line.
Thank you for the advice. But I don't have any mastered ranger for dwight/bernard.
DeleteI am struggling to defeat team with hiphopbrown. Do you have any tactics to use?
Sorry, I use Hip hop myself so I don't have any insight on killing him without.
DeleteIn my opinion, it is almost impossible to beat master-hhb without hhb itself (assuming no items use for both parties).
DeleteHowever, the timing of items is very crucial and could determine win or lose, even if the enemy is hhb-master. The items must be used as reactive and wait for the enemy to use their items first.
True, I usually try to save mine until I have seen the opponent play their hand already. The only time I use items first is when I am 95% confident I'll break them if I do xyz and finish them off.
DeleteYou should not use lowbies- I once won someone who used four lowbies: Glenn, Scott, Bella, Rei. In team battle, lowbies are not very useful.
Deletegood blog, great insight.
ReplyDeletebut yea "cash teams" beats all.
Not really the point of the post... But yeah, better rangers are better. It's not really a surprise. Among the highest ranks it's mostly super rangers all mastered. I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. After all, these players probably paid to gacha these rangers and they are paying with rubies all day long to continuously climb higher and higher in ranking. Try as I might, without paying for feathers at all I'm only getting as high as about rank 300, so they're definitely buying special feathers by the dozens!
DeleteWith half super and half free rangers, I managed to basically hover at the 900-1000 mark and it was about as far as I could reasonably get. The pvp game is a different experience at every rank tier. I can appreciate that.
So true. I didn't pay a single dollar for the game and I don't have any KSM or Dwight, so I kept losing every single game even though I am at level 79.
Deletewow.. with free rangers, i ain't getting anywhere that high 900-1000 range. hip hop brown is basically crushing me...
Deleteyep, I also think Hip-Hop brown is the strongest ranger in PvP (especially when he is mastered). He has speed, short generation time, high health, and arguably cheaper than other 5-star tanks. Most of the time when I see Hip-hop brown in a long distance map I know Im gonna lose haha.
DeleteI take it back actually. I yoyo'ed around the ranks a lot the first week and I tried a lot of different rangers and strategies to try to compensate for various issues I was having. It's not accurate to say I got to the 900s with a team of free/super rangers alone.
DeleteI agree hip hop is one of the hardest defenses to break. Other than a straight up rush push strategy to knock them down in the first 30 seconds, I don't have anything to add yet. On the last day of the recent event I played gacha and got all the overpowered rangers I needed so this week I am ready for battle. I've been putting my best foot forward with my best team to compete in the ladder. I don't have any tips for you using free rangers cuz I haven't been using them at all this time lol Sorry, can't help you guys.
Just saw the LINE Rangers notice, they have updated the AI such that low score players won't be matched with high score ones.
DeleteBy the way, I have recommended your blog in my recent blog post.
Ya totally agree that cash teams are blowing the competition out of the water. The top ranks all have mastered KSM, Bernard, Hip Hop, Ola brown, and Dumpy.
DeleteThe strategy is initial tank and gain area with Hip hop. Then fortify with Bernard. Then splash with ola and ksm, while deploying dumpy.
Some rush with dumpy too.
How are we "ruby poor" players supposed to win against that?
Someone said, if we use lowbies (max 2) to the team, we may get a lower difficult enemies...
ReplyDeleteIs that true??
If isn't can you explain to me how to get lower enemies??
Btw, thanks for the article, and i like the explaining about the items (offense, defense, reactive)
Your points determine your opponent ai.
DeleteOh okay... so i must put off the lowbies, and put my real rangers. Right?
DeleteYes
DeleteRead the comments below. Gonna try it out and see. It might not be just lowbie/not lowbie.
DeleteHey panic, i don't know what is mean of 'straight wins'
ReplyDeleteIt is just remind me how many i won (without lose) or something that will give me some extra bonuses??
Haven't noticed it do anything cool for me at all other than letting me know how many wins I've had in a row. I wish it did but so far, nothing. 94 wins was my highest, and I got nothing for it lol
DeleteI hope I get 5star ranger for my best score. 34 wins in a row
DeleteXD LOL
I've been experimenting a bit and I've found that (for myself at least, and for the time being at least) if I use a slightly weaker team, the AI is toned down alot. Also, even if I run into super rangers, their stats are also toned down alot.
ReplyDeleteThe other day I tested team battle against my friend's team. He has only just begun playing LR - his player level is 2, and his team is 2x one-star & 1x two-star ranger. I was using my strongest team I had at the time, and when the battle begun, what came out of his tower? Thunder Brown and KSM...
Is this reproducible behavior? Happens every day? Also I assume you are encountering your brother by friend battle, not ranked ladder battle. I've been battling my friends in lower levels with lower rangers, some lowbies in their teams and they pop out as-is. No surprise heroes to come at my all mastered team....
DeleteI've been having much easier team battles since yesterday afternoon after I made the team member switch, and the good run is still happening today as well. If I switch to all 5-star team, I get demolished. If I substitute one 4-star ranger into the team, then the AI is much more forgiving. I've had 26 consecutive wins so far, in comparison to yesterday where I would lose 9/10 matches because every team I encountered were maxed out super rangers.
DeleteAs for the PvP against my friend (friend, not ranked), it's gone back to normal - no surprises today. But yeah, it was no joke when I saw that oddity a couple of days ago.
Very interesting finding. I'll poke around and experiment some as well. Thanks! BTW I don't know why I thought you said it was your brother before. lol Sorry about that.
DeleteThat *WOULD* explain how some low level players with free rangers that aren't even mastered are climbing very high on the ladder...
DeleteYeah in the first week of rankings, there was a player with a considerably weaker team than the other similarly ranked players, yet he was at the top of the ladder. Eventually he was overtaken, but he still was within the top 20-30 or so. My consecutive streak is still going - 33 now :)
DeleteStarting to run into 5-star Honeys, Hip-Hop Browns, Thunder Browns, Dumpys, Dwights etc, but they are heavily toned down versions.
Could it be that the surprise ranger happens when your friend's team has less than 5 rangers? And AI adds other rangers to fill in the remaining? Perhaps he now has 5 rangers in the team so no more surprise?
DeleteNah he only has 3 rangers. He has already quit the game due to disinterest haha.
DeleteThe dream run has ended. It's starting to get difficult now. If it gets any tougher I will switch in another weaker ranger to bring the average team level down, and see if that does anything.
The tactic now is to wait at the start of battle and see what enemies come out. If it looks like it'll be a tough match, I'll wait for the enemies to arrive just before the doorstep and start attacking from there. This way my rangers can begin attacking immediately, instead spending time travelling and dying one by one. I find this method can also 'bait' the AI into using its items prematurely.
I've been trying to understand about getting low-lvl enemies.
ReplyDeleteIn my region (GMT +7) From 7pm - 10am, 97% (lol measurement)
I always get a low-lvl enemies. And the rest, 98% (lol again) I always get high-lvl enemies.
So the conclusion is more advantage from the time (5 : 3)
do you guys have a line group for line ranger players, I really need more friends playing the game and help me win some matches on the pvp?
ReplyDeleteFYI Stage 104 has a new 4 star ranger
ReplyDeleteI got two Shu after playing 30 times.
ReplyDeleteSorry i'm a newbie and i'm so curious, actually how can i trigger thomas to come out? i still don't understand it, thanks
ReplyDeleteThomas comes after a certain amount of "worth" of rangers have died in single player stage mode. He is triggered at different qualifications depending on the stage. I'll have to put some time and effort to find out exactly; haven't had time recently.
DeleteCan you give me something about how to gain high points after winning a team battle?
ReplyDeleteEverytime I win I always get 9 points.
it's all depends on your points. Usually people who starts early in competition (by the time it resets) got enemies with same points. I found it that by starting late (on mid-week) i'll hardly find enemies with same points, usually lower. lower points mean smaller point gained.
DeleteIn large part depends on who the game matches you up against. If your opponent's score is much higher than yours and you win, you will gain more points than if your opponent's score is equal or less than yours. Unfortunately you have no control over this matchmaking process. You can get an extra point or 2 if you have a winning streak going, so having a winning streak does help a little bit.
DeleteHi panic...
ReplyDeleteI have a level 41 hip hop brown and a mastered red brown (level 60). Which brown should I use for battle right now?
I thought that you must choose red brown because he's level is higher than hiphop. and by the way, your red brown is not mastered yet
ReplyDeleteHi panic
ReplyDeletecan i have your line id? just for Line Ranger. are you in stage 120 now?