Nodes 11 and 12 I am facing all zeta'd teams. Its ridiculous. I have one toon that is zeta'd.
What is your issue with Zetas actually? You can have multiple relevant teams without having a single Zeta. Not even one piece out of twenty.
"What's your issue with Zetas"... really? Do you play this game or just troll forums?
You can stay relevant without a single Zeta. I have no Zeta on my Arena team and wouldn't need another for GW. Currently, one of the best team compositions for mentioned part of the game require no Zetas at all.
Use EP lead with Siths/Empire and the GW is a cakewalk. Obviously you need some suicide squads here and there too.
I run a sith/empire team. All lvl 85 and gear 10-11 with Zader, EP, CD, DN and Boba. I save this team for the last three nodes. Haven't finished GW in days. Always run into Chaze, GK, DN combos or extremely fast Zaul teams.
If you switch out Palps for 5* Thrawn, this is the exact team I use nodes 1-12 and rarely have to sub anyone out.
If you want to trivialize GW without replacing most of your squad: TFP for EP, or zeta Fett and use R2 to soft-taunt him, or Thrawn.
My point is that GW never had these extremely difficult teams to face. Especially on four of the nodes. Not trolling. GW has definitely changed and not for the better imo.
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GW has always had extremely difficult teams. But the matchmaking is based on the power level of your top 5 toons. So if you are suddenly seeing multi zeta squads at the end of GW with no hope of beating them, it means the top of your roster has gotten strong enough to draw those squads in matchmaking, but you've not balanced the rest of your roster to compensate. As an earlier comment pointed out, you've most likely fell victim to overspecialization and it's gonna require some effort to fix it. The same thing happened to me about a month or so ago and I just got back to a point where I can consistently beat GW again.
Hopefully the new power rating system will fix it as it adequately reflects the power of your toons,, taking into consideration their abilities...
So teams with zetas would as i assume have a higher power rating than teams that dont have zetas... Which means that change is on the way for the better i hope...
I'll add a sixth or tenth "GW has not changed", but also add that "players' rosters change". If you see more zetaed/omegaed squads, it's mainly because your top 5 has become stronger, but also because all the players, old or new, pay more attention on omegas and zetas. When I look on the Arena competitors of my younger guildmates or mentees, I see squads that I didn't face when I was at the same point ; but my mates also field far smarter teams than I could back in the days.
People check the forum, check reddit, get advice from their guildmates through chat apps, so that their team comps are better thought out than 18 months ago, or even 12. At the same power, a Wiggdo/JKA/STH team will be much stronger than a Chewie/JC/Talia/TuskenRaider/Greedo.
Also, more and more players manage to get a lot of zetas by now, so that they can have their sixth, seventh or tenth toon with a zeta - so not everyone has zetas only on their top squad. This brings more variety on the zetas we may face. And you should follow the movement if you want to be competitive.
It's the same as what happened last year when Wedge became farmable, or early this year when Emperor's Demise came back - while those characters were known to be powerful and game-changer at the time of their introduction, few players could field them. But as soon as most players got their hands on them, they became ubiquitous, and GW looks harder and "changed" - but it's not, it's just that knowledge spreads, best practices are discovered and learned. The same happens now with Nihilus, GK, Chaze, etc - if you did not anticipate their ubiquitousness (must have been pretty short-sighted to miss that) and prepare counter-teams for GW (if not Arena), it's your problem.
As has been said above, GW is not meant to be beaten on auto everyday, it's meant to test the mettle of your roster, and your skill at picking the right squad to beat any given node (and it has been said so numerous times by devs). If you manage to beat it with one squad on auto, fine for you, enjoy - it won't last ! If you don't understand that, it's not the fault of the dev's.
tl/dr: don't expect the other players won't improve their squads ; improve your roster to deal with them
The developers massively screwed up GW. There was nothing wrong with it before and I don't know why they feel they needed to change it to make it impossible. The gear grind is ridiculous in this game but at least you had GW for ship and toon shards. So done with this game.
It was Zetas that really changed gw. Once you get over the hump it's still very finish-able.
Do you really think anyone (except a few whales) built a roster overnight ? It takes planning, it takes reflection, it takes dedication. You need 30 characters at most, around the same power, you don't need them to be maxed. You already need three different squads for HAAT, plus Zylo or a fourth squad. Between Empire (for R2), Jedi (for Yoda), Rebels (for Palpatine), Phoenix (for Thrawn), you already need four squads (or at least three if Phoenix are used for Palps) for unlocking the legendary characters.
Add to that a team of Scoundrels for Credit Heist and Smuggling Droids.
So, off course, if you try to max a team for Arena, to the detriment of all other squads, you'll face Crippling Overspecialization.
You have to understand SWGoH is not an arcade game, but a strategy and logistics game (perhaps 90% on logistics). You allocate your ressources to unlock the most assets, that you use in the most efficient way to maximize the collected ressources. You can't even hope to beat all aspects of the game with a handful of toons.
If you don't want to develop a full roster and prefer to rush the progression of a few, it's your choice - but it'll hurt your performance in many parts of the game, be it GW or events. And it's your choice, not the Dev's fault.
@ObiJuanPollo. I agree. Not having any luck on Node 12 yet. Nodes 6, 10 and 11 are wiping out my other teams as they are not geared high enough. Most of my other teams are stuck at gear 8. My arena team is the only team with gear 10-11. This post went off the rails. I was just pointing out (and not just me) that GW has seemed to be alot harder lately.
I think it is normal that you can not beat GW during a specific phase of the game - mainly when you are close to 85 or fresh 85. You have put most effort in your arena team, got your first zeta and no backup. Just accept that you cant beat GW during this stage of the game.
There were 1-2 months were I almost never finished GW. After that, my rooster had improved and I had invested in the right toons to beat the unbeatable squads (mostly Nihilus, Zylo and Zarris). Then there was the time where I had the most fun in GW - I got all the current meta Trawn-Nihilus-Kenobi squads in node 12 that were really, really hard to beat. I only had six good toons and tried a lot to get the right composition and strategy to beat these teams.
Now my node 12 is broken and the fun is gone. It has become too easy.
Moreover, don't expect to beat GW with a pure damage squad (like Wiggs, Lando, Boba). GW is all about control.
@ObiJuanPollo. I agree. Not having any luck on Node 12 yet. Nodes 6, 10 and 11 are wiping out my other teams as they are not geared high enough. Most of my other teams are stuck at gear 8. My arena team is the only team with gear 10-11. This post went off the rails. I was just pointing out (and not just me) that GW has seemed to be alot harder lately.
I highlighted the important fact @johnnysocks71 .
GW's difficulty is keyed to the power of your top 5. In your case, it clearly is your top 5, since they have the high gear level, but also probably your best mods.
In general, with any given, well functioning squad, you can beat opponents with a gear level one higher than yours, nearly never two higher. I would say that a character's dangerousness doubles with each gear level.
So in fact, in such a situation, nodes 6, 9, 11 and 12 can only be beaten by your top squad - and I would guess that your next best team of g8 is still not sufficient for nodes 7, 8 or 10 (let alone all three of them). In all, your top squad would have four Arena-grade fights, meeting enemies with full protection/health and no cooldown, while being slowly depleted of protection, if not health, and a hard time to fix cooldowns between battles #11 and #12.
GW has been harder to you, because you've pushed your Arena team so high compared to the next two or three squads in your roster. Push two or three squads to g9-10, and you'll beat GW again.
@Ambassador. Thank you for your thoughts. I have been working on other squads. Biggest problem right now is gear and credits. A lot of my other toons are stuck at gear 8. I average about 5 million in credit heist every time its available but the credits are spent quickly on mods or leveling up characters. I recently started reading swgoh forums which has helped tremendously with my game play. I was so focused on one team that the other squads suffered. I'm finally doing better in Tier 6 rancor raids now that I have zader. But my teams are awful on AAT raids. No good jedi, clones, resistance or droid squads yet. A lot of the advice I see on the forum is to focus on one team or character, which I have done with my empire/sith arena team. But it is hard when the developers are constantly pushing new events and new toons. It's easy to lose focus. I am currently working on a first order and resistance squad. It's taking a lot of time. FOTP and FOST are slow grinds. Eventually things will even out. I lose my patience at times because the game can be incredibly frustrating.
Push two or three squads to g9-10, and you'll beat GW again.
I strongly disagree. For example, if your node 12 is something like GK (L), Zarriss, Trawn, DN and R2, most of your squads will do absolutely nothing. Even fully geared and modded Rebels, Droids and Clones will do nothing. You need some of the best toons of the game to have a chance against such squads, otherwise there will be another post in this forum which goes like "I sent 40 toons against this squad and not even a scratch, nerf!". Your B-squads are for the easier nodes, not the last one.
@johnnysocks71 People who advise to focus on one team are mistaken. It's the wrong way to play this game. Well, maybe not "wrong" per se, as people can maybe find some fun that way, but it's a thoroughly inefficient way to play it.
Those advice are on the basis that a good spot on Arena will give lots of crystals, which is true, but the spots where lots of crystals can be obtained are, in newer shards, quickly filled by players who spend a good lot of money on the game. And so, they can afford to develop several teams at the same time, without sacrificing any part of the game. And for a F2P, it's very hard to compete for the top spots, even while focusing on one team, so the trade-off is huge, for maybe minimal gains.
Also, the more players focus on one squad for Arena, the more competition there are, and so it draws the whole shard to a useless stand-off.
But, by taking the wide, slow and steady approach, with patience you get to a point where you gather more ressources from different sources than you would from a top-100 spot on Arena, then more than from a top-50. Once you factor in the gains you make on GW, Rancor, AAT, events, etc, it really outshines what you get from Arena (and when being too narrowly focused, you risk far more to be left adrift when, not if, the meta changes).
Even if you spend money on the game, you're better off assuring the six basic energy refills, and buy some gear, than using all on one toon and Arena refreshes.
Well, top 20 will give you 100 crystals more a day than top 100. Thats more than the crystals from two whole GWs. I don't know how you can get additional100 crystals a day from other parts of the game than arena with a large rooster instead of a small one.
I am in the top 5 as a 100% FTP in a Jan 2017 shard because I put my efforts on only a few toons. But these are very good toons, I am sure I can build other teams with my Zylo, Nihilus, Rex and Kenobi. Same goes for Trawn, Chaze or R2D2 and to a lesser extend Palp, Boba, B2, Wiggs or Zarriss. These toons are so versatile that a new meta usually involves three of these toons.
Sure, its different when you prepare for hAAT, but even than the superteam approach (one gear 11 team per guildmate instead of four bad ones) is more effective.
And as I said, eventually you will face teams in GW where quality beats quantity.
@JaminSpace You only see crystals. GW gives you more credits than 600 crystals can buy. Gives you more ship currency than 100 crystals can buy. Gives you 15 character shards (of your choice, plus half-a-dozen random more), more than 100 crystals can buy. Gives you several purple ability mats, that your crystals can't buy. See the whole, don't get fooled by the shiny. You are also on a very young shard, you'll soon find if you can hold on there.
Replies
If you switch out Palps for 5* Thrawn, this is the exact team I use nodes 1-12 and rarely have to sub anyone out.
If you want to trivialize GW without replacing most of your squad: TFP for EP, or zeta Fett and use R2 to soft-taunt him, or Thrawn.
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GW has always had extremely difficult teams. But the matchmaking is based on the power level of your top 5 toons. So if you are suddenly seeing multi zeta squads at the end of GW with no hope of beating them, it means the top of your roster has gotten strong enough to draw those squads in matchmaking, but you've not balanced the rest of your roster to compensate. As an earlier comment pointed out, you've most likely fell victim to overspecialization and it's gonna require some effort to fix it. The same thing happened to me about a month or so ago and I just got back to a point where I can consistently beat GW again.
So teams with zetas would as i assume have a higher power rating than teams that dont have zetas... Which means that change is on the way for the better i hope...
People check the forum, check reddit, get advice from their guildmates through chat apps, so that their team comps are better thought out than 18 months ago, or even 12. At the same power, a Wiggdo/JKA/STH team will be much stronger than a Chewie/JC/Talia/TuskenRaider/Greedo.
Also, more and more players manage to get a lot of zetas by now, so that they can have their sixth, seventh or tenth toon with a zeta - so not everyone has zetas only on their top squad. This brings more variety on the zetas we may face. And you should follow the movement if you want to be competitive.
It's the same as what happened last year when Wedge became farmable, or early this year when Emperor's Demise came back - while those characters were known to be powerful and game-changer at the time of their introduction, few players could field them. But as soon as most players got their hands on them, they became ubiquitous, and GW looks harder and "changed" - but it's not, it's just that knowledge spreads, best practices are discovered and learned. The same happens now with Nihilus, GK, Chaze, etc - if you did not anticipate their ubiquitousness (must have been pretty short-sighted to miss that) and prepare counter-teams for GW (if not Arena), it's your problem.
As has been said above, GW is not meant to be beaten on auto everyday, it's meant to test the mettle of your roster, and your skill at picking the right squad to beat any given node (and it has been said so numerous times by devs). If you manage to beat it with one squad on auto, fine for you, enjoy - it won't last ! If you don't understand that, it's not the fault of the dev's.
tl/dr: don't expect the other players won't improve their squads ; improve your roster to deal with them
It was Zetas that really changed gw. Once you get over the hump it's still very finish-able.
Very interesting and useful comment, thank you.
There were 1-2 months were I almost never finished GW. After that, my rooster had improved and I had invested in the right toons to beat the unbeatable squads (mostly Nihilus, Zylo and Zarris). Then there was the time where I had the most fun in GW - I got all the current meta Trawn-Nihilus-Kenobi squads in node 12 that were really, really hard to beat. I only had six good toons and tried a lot to get the right composition and strategy to beat these teams.
Now my node 12 is broken and the fun is gone. It has become too easy.
Moreover, don't expect to beat GW with a pure damage squad (like Wiggs, Lando, Boba). GW is all about control.
GW's difficulty is keyed to the power of your top 5. In your case, it clearly is your top 5, since they have the high gear level, but also probably your best mods.
In general, with any given, well functioning squad, you can beat opponents with a gear level one higher than yours, nearly never two higher. I would say that a character's dangerousness doubles with each gear level.
So in fact, in such a situation, nodes 6, 9, 11 and 12 can only be beaten by your top squad - and I would guess that your next best team of g8 is still not sufficient for nodes 7, 8 or 10 (let alone all three of them). In all, your top squad would have four Arena-grade fights, meeting enemies with full protection/health and no cooldown, while being slowly depleted of protection, if not health, and a hard time to fix cooldowns between battles #11 and #12.
GW has been harder to you, because you've pushed your Arena team so high compared to the next two or three squads in your roster. Push two or three squads to g9-10, and you'll beat GW again.
I strongly disagree. For example, if your node 12 is something like GK (L), Zarriss, Trawn, DN and R2, most of your squads will do absolutely nothing. Even fully geared and modded Rebels, Droids and Clones will do nothing. You need some of the best toons of the game to have a chance against such squads, otherwise there will be another post in this forum which goes like "I sent 40 toons against this squad and not even a scratch, nerf!". Your B-squads are for the easier nodes, not the last one.
Those advice are on the basis that a good spot on Arena will give lots of crystals, which is true, but the spots where lots of crystals can be obtained are, in newer shards, quickly filled by players who spend a good lot of money on the game. And so, they can afford to develop several teams at the same time, without sacrificing any part of the game. And for a F2P, it's very hard to compete for the top spots, even while focusing on one team, so the trade-off is huge, for maybe minimal gains.
Also, the more players focus on one squad for Arena, the more competition there are, and so it draws the whole shard to a useless stand-off.
But, by taking the wide, slow and steady approach, with patience you get to a point where you gather more ressources from different sources than you would from a top-100 spot on Arena, then more than from a top-50. Once you factor in the gains you make on GW, Rancor, AAT, events, etc, it really outshines what you get from Arena (and when being too narrowly focused, you risk far more to be left adrift when, not if, the meta changes).
Even if you spend money on the game, you're better off assuring the six basic energy refills, and buy some gear, than using all on one toon and Arena refreshes.
I am in the top 5 as a 100% FTP in a Jan 2017 shard because I put my efforts on only a few toons. But these are very good toons, I am sure I can build other teams with my Zylo, Nihilus, Rex and Kenobi. Same goes for Trawn, Chaze or R2D2 and to a lesser extend Palp, Boba, B2, Wiggs or Zarriss. These toons are so versatile that a new meta usually involves three of these toons.
Sure, its different when you prepare for hAAT, but even than the superteam approach (one gear 11 team per guildmate instead of four bad ones) is more effective.
And as I said, eventually you will face teams in GW where quality beats quantity.