Ok cool @MasterSeedy , I thought all you guys' chars were at 85. Next question:
Between the losses and victory, did you give Luke or Han any particular Ability upgrades that made a big difference? I can upgrade their base attacks at least twice each, not counting the omegas, which I don't have mats for right now..
Luke's special, I think it's called "Bullseye" - that one is important for the last battle in Tier6. Very important. It dispels taunt, and they have a double taunt that is terrible to try to fight through, but with Luke's dispel you only have to fight through one and dispel the other - much more doable.
The dispel might also help you in Tier3 as well, since taunts are a problem in Tier3 (though not quite as big a problem). It only has the dispel effect after you give it an Omega. You can get Omegas by battling Stage 8 Cantina Battles. Those are quite hard, but not impossible if your player-level qualifies you for them. If you've only just opened them, you'll need a great ally, but some allies can virtually solo the level.
I really, really don't have the most developed roster around, but if you need an ally that's got toons level 80s, full Omegas, no zetas, gear 10 - I have several toons like that and they are very powerful even if they aren't zeta Savage or zeta Kylo.
But that only helps with getting the Omegas, you'll still have to do Tier3 with no allies.
I think the best thing to do if you have **no hope** of getting an omega on Luke's special (which requires the toon to be level 78) is to give as many ability levels as possible to Han's Taunt to get greater TM increases from each hit. Next, using Han as leader, increase Han's Leadership ability as much as possible. Third, increase the basic attacks as much as possible.
But that all assumes there's no way to get 5 omega mats in the next 2 days. If you can get that many Omegas scraped together, then your best long term plan really is to get Luke's special up to Omega level so you can dispel taunts.
Don't get me wrong, i'd like to unlock CLS, but if the secret to unlocking CLS doesn't have anything to do with brains or game play, if it only has to do with, "Well, you should have a more powerful toon," then it's still bad game design.
I actually liked the fact, that I had to put a bit of fear and upgrade the skills of my farmboy Luke before completing the event.
So I think the Omegas are impossible before the event is over. I just hit 79 a few mins ago, so the 80 req for the Ability challenges is a couple days away at least. Cantina 8 is lvl 83 req, the the short a$$ event is over before the Omega battles start.
Good stuff on the Abilities, Luke's omega sounds very useful. Here's where I'm at with available abilities and mats:
- 29 mk3 ability mats. Probably not much more today as I blew through all 3 Cantina refreshes.
Han
- 2x Basic upgrades, adding 20% max dmg. 15x mk3s.
- 2x Taunt, adding 5% TM only when cast, not per hit. 12x
- 1x Leader, adding 5% offense if they're nearly dead. 5x
Besides upgrading some of these, I can send them both to 78ish, and spend very precious gear on sending them to gear 9 and 8 respectively, but all of this will be bankrupting me, essentially blowing my savings.
So I really need to be almost 100% sure it will work. I'll edit the post with my mod options in a bit.
Update:
- I can potentially get that Omega upgrade. Luke flash Event returned and I had yet to clear the last tier, for 3 Omegas, which would put me at 4 and within distance to buy one with Fleet credit. Not knowing it wasn't another loaner Luke or team, I went in with mine and got smashed, on the first wave even. Then after upgrading to gear 8 & 4/6, getting several ability upgrades, and moving up to lvl 74, I was about to last until the 3rd wave. Some mod tweaking and more mod tweaking, and some luck, I pulled it off and am wondering if getting him able to solo this is a good barometer for what's needed to support Han. @MasterSeedy @theanswer3 , thoughts?
Here's my updated situation with upgrade possibilities.
*Gear 9 is within reach for both of them, but only have one Furnace. I'm guessing Han will get more from it, like a ton of protection.
*8 mk3 ability mats. Probably not much more today as I blew through all 3 Cantina refreshes.
Han
- 2x Basic upgrades, adding 20% max dmg. 15x mk3s.
- 2x Taunt, adding 5% TM only when cast, not per hit. 12x
- 1x Leader, adding 5% offense if they're nearly dead. 5x
I was also in the position of having one Furnace to get either Han to g9 or Luke to g9, but not both.
I ended up going with Han and wasn't disappointed. I did eventually make it all the way through to get my CLS with my Luke still g8/5
...I think you're right that the Luke event is a decent barometer for getting through CLS tier3.
And, if you did it, I might be able to get through the bonus tier of the Luke Flash event myself (still haven't done it).
...
So, since you got those 3 Omegas, have you now already Omega'd Luke's Dispel? It sounds like you probably did based on the reduced number of purple mats you listed, but I'm not sure.
Of all the places left that you could put those Mk3 mats, I think Luke's basic would be most likely to make a difference, but it's hard to tell. You've got the taunt, you've got the dispel, I would think going for damage at this point is the thing (at least with ability mats).
I beat this at lvl 80 g8. Mods on Luke were the most important factor. I gave him a lot of speed and critical chance and he blew through it. His basic was more valuable than his special, because between han taunting, Luke's speed, and his 40 pct tm gain I could just repeatedly fire away. I did use his special when it made sense, but most of the time I saved it because I knew his basic would get me through before they could attack again.
Oh and I screwed up and used Luke as leader, so I didn't even have the off/def boost from Han.
I am not bragging, just saying this event can be torn apart with the right setup, and it doesn't take a crazy amount of gear. Speed and critical chance on Luke, make Han tanky, and upgrade Luke's abilities as much as you can and you should be fine. I had some pretty good mods on Luke, but since I screwed up the leader choice and won with plenty of room to spare I would say there is some wiggle room there.
I actually liked the fact, that I had to put a bit of fear and upgrade the skills of my farmboy Luke before completing the event.
Yep, I also think that there should be entrance requirements. My complaint, if you read it, was that once you've qualified there's not much strategy required. It's about simply adding more levels, more gear and more ability mats to your toons, then going and doing the same exact thing again, but with more power.
I'd like it better if it was structured in such a way that once you qualified, even gear11 toons wouldn't be enough if you played badly, and even gear8 (or whatever is the minimum gear) would be enough if you paid attention to your environment and learned how to use it, paid attention to your enemy and learned how to counter them.
The best example, and maybe I should make a separate thread praising EA/CG for this in retrospect, is the Phoenix release event.
In that event, the Imperial Explosives Crate was actually key. When you set off the crate and sometimes even with which character (you might want to save Hera's expose to use on a toon, for example) made all the difference in completing that event. You go in, you fail, but you probably were able to blow up an Explosives Crate in the first encounter. If you didn't blow it up until the end of the battle, you could still see the animation where the crate explodes. You talk to people or you read the forums, or you just get lucky and hit the crate while some p1 enemies are still alive. Lo and behold! You find out that if the crate is detonated before all the enemy toons are dead, they take damage - a lot of it - while you take none. You go back through the event looking for crates with the word "explosives" in their name and you make a run where you hit those first ... but not with an AoE, because if they're set off at once, they only do damage one time. All this takes experimentation, investigation, thinking.
That makes for interesting and engaging (and fun!) gameplay.
I'm not saying that everyone should qualify for every event. I'm also not saying the events should be easy. What I'm saying is that if you qualify for the event, you should have a reasonable chance of succeeding at the event. If you barely qualified for CLS, there's only so far you could be expected to gear your last toon before the end of the event. But you qualified. So there should be some reasonable chance of success, even with r2 at g6 or g7.
Now the way to make that happen is to make sure that winning the last tier is not based solely on "Smash Hard! Smash Harder!" strategy. (If you can call it strategy.) Sure the tier can and should be hard enough that you will inevitably lose if you don't give your characters whatever gear you can in the time from the event announcement to event conclusion. Imagine if all the toons were opened on the day of the announcement b/c you didn't like them but did have their shards. You could still get all 5 to g7 and at least 3 up to g8 and at least 1 up to g9. But there are gear bottlenecks and opening all 5 characters on announcement day wouldn't allow you to have all 5 toons at g8 because of those bottlenecks (esp but not only Mk3 Holos). So now you have a minimum threshold of squad power for completing the event. 5 x gear11 is the maximum.
How do you challenge everyone in that range? Well, the Phoenix events used event toons and an unobtrusive background feature (the supply crates, some of which were useless so you had to pay attention to the ones that said they were "Imperial Explosive Supply Crate"s.
If you want this event to reward long-time players who took the time to invest in movie-important characters who haven't been particularly game-important (i.e. the players who are most likely to be die-hard StarWars fans), it makes sense to let people use their own toons which will make it easier for those with a gear 11 squad than my hypothetical minimum squad. But you don't want to simply give away CLS to them either. You want every single person with a CLS to feel like they've earned it. And you want every single person to enjoy the game play and the challenge. You can't have exactly the same difficulty for everyone if you want people to bring in their own toons, but a game designer **can** create problems that aren't solved by gear pieces.
In particular, you have two toons that aren't available as player characters yet. Nobody has them. Nobody has geared them. If they become event toons, they can play unique roles that allow for interesting challenges you can't solve by smashing harder.
On top of the potential to add an "Event C-3P0" or an "Event Rebel Chewbacca" that can even out the difficulty and permit g8 teams to have a chance to win while g11 teams aren't just handed a win automatically, you have two incredibly important characters that can still play a role: Old Ben and Vader.
Now, Old Ben is dead, right? But this is his big, "If you strike me down" moment - why not give "If You Strike Me Down" buffs to Farmboy, or to the whole escaping squad? For the purposes of the event, the buffs can even function slightly differently from how they work outside of the event. Imagine if instead of giving a % speed bonus, the SpeedUP buff gave a flat +40 to speed. That helps anyone, but it helps someone with +70 speed from mods less than it helps someone with +0 from mods, while a % bonus helps the person with the +70 mods **even more** than it helps the people with +0, despite the fact that the +0 folks need the help more.
Old Ben's death grants the perfect opportunity to even out the difficulty even more. Now, I'm not saying it should be this extreme, but as the speed buff goes higher, the original speed matters less. If Old Ben granted everyone +1000 speed, then whether you started with 120 or started with 220 matters relatively little. The same is true for flat buffs to offense and whatever else Ben buffs.
Couple this with the actual movie scene: remember that Ben isn't helping Luke (or anyone else) immediately after dying. There's a pause there are shots exchanged, then Ben's ghostly voice echoes: Run, Luke! Run!
So if you qualify for a Tier6 finish the first and second encounters, you still don't have to be buffed by If You Strike Me Down. Instead, imagine your squad entering that final, final battle of the final stage. There you see an endless swarm of Stormtroopers, you think, "I'm hosed." You fight for the first turn and take damage. Things look bad. But then the 2nd time your Farmboy take a turn in this ultimate fight, you hear Alec Guinesses' voice issuing from your iPad, saying "Run, Luke! Run!" Then, before you take your turn, everyone in your squad gets the IYSMD buffs, including the party heal.
In the middle of this mass of Stormtroopers is one commander coordinating the action. You kill him, and all the Stormtroopers lose 100% TM and are slowed for 1 turn. An extra ability button that was crossed out (as if by ability block) becomes available. It provides 100% chance of escape. If you don't use it, you could maybe still fight your way through all the stormtroopers...but you're going to die unless you're gear 11. No, your best chance to get away on the Falcon is to use that Escape function for each of your characters while the stormtroopers are slowed and can't take actions because their TM was zero'd out.
But even gear11 people have a real chance of failure, because Vader is forcing his way through the blast doors with his light saber. If you haven't won the fight or escaped before a countdown timer finishes, he bursts through the blast doors, AoEs everyone, then throws Culling Blade on Luke. Boom. You lose.
Now you have Chewie playing an important role. Now the best moment of the event - Ben's sacrifice - actually matters in Tier 6, it's not just over and done, but it's still affecting the plot and your chances of success.
Unless you read the forums where other people have figured it out, you won't know that killing one particular toon unlocks the escape function. You also won't know what the escape function does - just like you didn't know what the Sacrifice ability did in Tier5 until you used it.
Now you actually have to pay attention. Now the gamers can throw a fight at you that is challenging for g11 toons but allows g8 toons playing an optimal strategy to win. Now when you play the fight multiple times, it's not just because you're waiting for the best RNG. Now you're playing the fight multiple times to try and figure out how the heck you're supposed to win and what that countdown timer does. Maybe one time you just let the countdown timer hit zero by doing nothing with you toons when it's your turn, just because you want to see what the countdown timer does. Then you get this awesome animation of Vader stomping everyone - you lose, but you're rewarded, and you can still try again.
In this scenario, being a better player matters. It's not all about having a better character. Not only that, it's just more interesting and more fun, and it relies only on things the developers have already done - including event abilities which happens in raids and on Tier5 of CLS, including timers which we see everyday in the Arena, including an event toon alongside your own characters which has been done in at least one flash event, as well as in some other events, IIRC. It includes two different victory conditions (all toons escape or all toons survive the fight and all stormtroopers are defeated) that reward two different styles of gameplay (if you want to call "Hulk Smash!" a style of gameplay), and instead of merely using earlier tiers as hurdles that you jump over but then never consider again, it uses that great moment of Ben's sacrifice to grant you a completely unexpected, delayed bonus when you need it most, magnifying the emotional impact of an already great piece of gameplay from Tier5.
These are the kinds of things that can be done in a game that can make sure that everyone who gets CLS has actually earned CLS while also making sure that the event is fun, that players feel challenged, that the story is used to its maximum potential, that you cannot qualify for the event without having some reasonable chance of succeeding at the event, and that the event rewards those who have heavily invested in the qualifying toons from Episode4 by making things easier (even if it doesn't make them automatic).
Now THAT would be a great event.
========================================================================
*As an example, consider trying to get Luke if you opened r2 on the last day of the r2 event and then got him to 7* in the last few minutes of that event - I pick r2 because it takes a couple weeks from opening Ben to getting his 7th* which gives more time to gear
I actually liked the fact, that I had to put a bit of fear and upgrade the skills of my farmboy Luke before completing the event.
Yep, I also think that there should be entrance requirements. My complaint, if you read it, was that once you've qualified there's not much strategy required. It's about simply adding more levels, more gear and more ability mats to your toons, then going and doing the same exact thing again, but with more power.
I'd like it better if it was structured in such a way that once you qualified, even gear11 toons wouldn't be enough if you played badly, and even gear8 (or whatever is the minimum gear) would be enough if you paid attention to your environment and learned how to use it, paid attention to your enemy and learned how to counter them.
The best example, and maybe I should make a separate thread praising EA/CG for this in retrospect, is the Phoenix release event.
In that event, the Imperial Explosives Crate was actually key. When you set off the crate and sometimes even with which character (you might want to save Hera's expose to use on a toon, for example) made all the difference in completing that event. You go in, you fail, but you probably were able to blow up an Explosives Crate in the first encounter. If you didn't blow it up until the end of the battle, you could still see the animation where the crate explodes. You talk to people or you read the forums, or you just get lucky and hit the crate while some p1 enemies are still alive. Lo and behold! You find out that if the crate is detonated before all the enemy toons are dead, they take damage - a lot of it - while you take none. You go back through the event looking for crates with the word "explosives" in their name and you make a run where you hit those first ... but not with an AoE, because if they're set off at once, they only do damage one time. All this takes experimentation, investigation, thinking.
That makes for interesting and engaging (and fun!) gameplay.
I'm not saying that everyone should qualify for every event. I'm also not saying the events should be easy. What I'm saying is that if you qualify for the event, you should have a reasonable chance of succeeding at the event. If you barely qualified for CLS, there's only so far you could be expected to gear your last toon before the end of the event. But you qualified. So there should be some reasonable chance of success, even with r2 at g6 or g7.
Now the way to make that happen is to make sure that winning the last tier is not based solely on "Smash Hard! Smash Harder!" strategy. (If you can call it strategy.) Sure the tier can and should be hard enough that you will inevitably lose if you don't give your characters whatever gear you can in the time from the event announcement to event conclusion. Imagine if all the toons were opened on the day of the announcement b/c you didn't like them but did have their shards. You could still get all 5 to g7 and at least 3 up to g8 and at least 1 up to g9. But there are gear bottlenecks and opening all 5 characters on announcement day wouldn't allow you to have all 5 toons at g8 because of those bottlenecks (esp but not only Mk3 Holos). So now you have a minimum threshold of squad power for completing the event. 5 x gear11 is the maximum.
How do you challenge everyone in that range? Well, the Phoenix events used event toons and an unobtrusive background feature (the supply crates, some of which were useless so you had to pay attention to the ones that said they were "Imperial Explosive Supply Crate"s.
If you want this event to reward long-time players who took the time to invest in movie-important characters who haven't been particularly game-important (i.e. the players who are most likely to be die-hard StarWars fans), it makes sense to let people use their own toons which will make it easier for those with a gear 11 squad than my hypothetical minimum squad. But you don't want to simply give away CLS to them either. You want every single person with a CLS to feel like they've earned it. And you want every single person to enjoy the game play and the challenge. You can't have exactly the same difficulty for everyone if you want people to bring in their own toons, but a game designer **can** create problems that aren't solved by gear pieces.
In particular, you have two toons that aren't available as player characters yet. Nobody has them. Nobody has geared them. If they become event toons, they can play unique roles that allow for interesting challenges you can't solve by smashing harder.
On top of the potential to add an "Event C-3P0" or an "Event Rebel Chewbacca" that can even out the difficulty and permit g8 teams to have a chance to win while g11 teams aren't just handed a win automatically, you have two incredibly important characters that can still play a role: Old Ben and Vader.
Now, Old Ben is dead, right? But this is his big, "If you strike me down" moment - why not give "If You Strike Me Down" buffs to Farmboy, or to the whole escaping squad? For the purposes of the event, the buffs can even function slightly differently from how they work outside of the event. Imagine if instead of giving a % speed bonus, the SpeedUP buff gave a flat +40 to speed. That helps anyone, but it helps someone with +70 speed from mods less than it helps someone with +0 from mods, while a % bonus helps the person with the +70 mods **even more** than it helps the people with +0, despite the fact that the +0 folks need the help more.
Old Ben's death grants the perfect opportunity to even out the difficulty even more. Now, I'm not saying it should be this extreme, but as the speed buff goes higher, the original speed matters less. If Old Ben granted everyone +1000 speed, then whether you started with 120 or started with 220 matters relatively little. The same is true for flat buffs to offense and whatever else Ben buffs.
Couple this with the actual movie scene: remember that Ben isn't helping Luke (or anyone else) immediately after dying. There's a pause there are shots exchanged, then Ben's ghostly voice echoes: Run, Luke! Run!
So if you qualify for a Tier6 finish the first and second encounters, you still don't have to be buffed by If You Strike Me Down. Instead, imagine your squad entering that final, final battle of the final stage. There you see an endless swarm of Stormtroopers, you think, "I'm hosed." You fight for the first turn and take damage. Things look bad. But then the 2nd time your Farmboy take a turn in this ultimate fight, you hear Alec Guinesses' voice issuing from your iPad, saying "Run, Luke! Run!" Then, before you take your turn, everyone in your squad gets the IYSMD buffs, including the party heal.
In the middle of this mass of Stormtroopers is one commander coordinating the action. You kill him, and all the Stormtroopers lose 100% TM and are slowed for 1 turn. An extra ability button that was crossed out (as if by ability block) becomes available. It provides 100% chance of escape. If you don't use it, you could maybe still fight your way through all the stormtroopers...but you're going to die unless you're gear 11. No, your best chance to get away on the Falcon is to use that Escape function for each of your characters while the stormtroopers are slowed and can't take actions because their TM was zero'd out.
But even gear11 people have a real chance of failure, because Vader is forcing his way through the blast doors with his light saber. If you haven't won the fight or escaped before a countdown timer finishes, he bursts through the blast doors, AoEs everyone, then throws Culling Blade on Luke. Boom. You lose.
Now you have Chewie playing an important role. Now the best moment of the event - Ben's sacrifice - actually matters in Tier 6, it's not just over and done, but it's still affecting the plot and your chances of success.
Unless you read the forums where other people have figured it out, you won't know that killing one particular toon unlocks the escape function. You also won't know what the escape function does - just like you didn't know what the Sacrifice ability did in Tier5 until you used it.
Now you actually have to pay attention. Now the gamers can throw a fight at you that is challenging for g11 toons but allows g8 toons playing an optimal strategy to win. Now when you play the fight multiple times, it's not just because you're waiting for the best RNG. Now you're playing the fight multiple times to try and figure out how the heck you're supposed to win and what that countdown timer does. Maybe one time you just let the countdown timer hit zero by doing nothing with you toons when it's your turn, just because you want to see what the countdown timer does. Then you get this awesome animation of Vader stomping everyone - you lose, but you're rewarded, and you can still try again.
In this scenario, being a better player matters. It's not all about having a better character. Not only that, it's just more interesting and more fun, and it relies only on things the developers have already done - including event abilities which happens in raids and on Tier5 of CLS, including timers which we see everyday in the Arena, including an event toon alongside your own characters which has been done in at least one flash event, as well as in some other events, IIRC. It includes two different victory conditions (all toons escape or all toons survive the fight and all stormtroopers are defeated) that reward two different styles of gameplay (if you want to call "Hulk Smash!" a style of gameplay), and instead of merely using earlier tiers as hurdles that you jump over but then never consider again, it uses that great moment of Ben's sacrifice to grant you a completely unexpected, delayed bonus when you need it most, magnifying the emotional impact of an already great piece of gameplay from Tier5.
These are the kinds of things that can be done in a game that can make sure that everyone who gets CLS has actually earned CLS while also making sure that the event is fun, that players feel challenged, that the story is used to its maximum potential, that you cannot qualify for the event without having some reasonable chance of succeeding at the event, and that the event rewards those who have heavily invested in the qualifying toons from Episode4 by making things easier (even if it doesn't make them automatic).
Now THAT would be a great event.
========================================================================
*As an example, consider trying to get Luke if you opened r2 on the last day of the r2 event and then got him to 7* in the last few minutes of that event - I pick r2 because it takes a couple weeks from opening Ben to getting his 7th* which gives more time to gear
In this thread alone there are examples of folks losing on t3 with higher level/gl chars and winning with lower levels. There already is a lot of thinking involved. You can overpower if you want, or save the investment for other chars and use your brain to make up the gap. Just because you might CHOOSE to win the event by overpowering it doesn't mean that is the only way to go. Using gimmicks to make an event winnable by g6 and losable by g11 is cheesy and ridiculous. This isn't a puzzle game. Shield generators, support droids, and explosives crates are neat but that cat is out of the bag. They would have to be way OP to make up the gap between g6-7 and g10-11, and you would have to make the proper usage of them opaque and convoluted now that everyone is familiar with these non-toon targetable objects.
I like the setup of this event. You could win by overpowering it, but those who aren't interested in wasting gear on these toons could also experiment with mods and abilities and beat it at a very reasonable gear level. I didn't have to divert any raid gear from my resistance project to beat this event, and instead used mods and ability mats, which I have plenty of, to make a viable team. It was fun.
Awesome stuff @MasterSeedy.
And no, I haven't bought the 5th Omega from Fleet yet, but also it's his special that isn't maxed. His basic is maxed, but I still have that 7th rank to buy for his special before I can Omega it. But honestly I think that'll be my last resort, because I'd much rather use it on Biggs' special. Sucks that it only dispels if it doesn't crit.
So what about my mod options? Those stats are only the stats from the mods, not including the set bonuses or base char stats.
@Swordd
So you'd recommend my Speed set for Luke, even though it's mostly Speed set pieces instead of stats on mods? That's the weak part of that set, while the weak part of my crit dmg set is that there's more offense than crit dmg stats.
Replies
Between the losses and victory, did you give Luke or Han any particular Ability upgrades that made a big difference? I can upgrade their base attacks at least twice each, not counting the omegas, which I don't have mats for right now..
The dispel might also help you in Tier3 as well, since taunts are a problem in Tier3 (though not quite as big a problem). It only has the dispel effect after you give it an Omega. You can get Omegas by battling Stage 8 Cantina Battles. Those are quite hard, but not impossible if your player-level qualifies you for them. If you've only just opened them, you'll need a great ally, but some allies can virtually solo the level.
I really, really don't have the most developed roster around, but if you need an ally that's got toons level 80s, full Omegas, no zetas, gear 10 - I have several toons like that and they are very powerful even if they aren't zeta Savage or zeta Kylo.
But that only helps with getting the Omegas, you'll still have to do Tier3 with no allies.
I think the best thing to do if you have **no hope** of getting an omega on Luke's special (which requires the toon to be level 78) is to give as many ability levels as possible to Han's Taunt to get greater TM increases from each hit. Next, using Han as leader, increase Han's Leadership ability as much as possible. Third, increase the basic attacks as much as possible.
But that all assumes there's no way to get 5 omega mats in the next 2 days. If you can get that many Omegas scraped together, then your best long term plan really is to get Luke's special up to Omega level so you can dispel taunts.
I actually liked the fact, that I had to put a bit of fear and upgrade the skills of my farmboy Luke before completing the event.
Good stuff on the Abilities, Luke's omega sounds very useful. Here's where I'm at with available abilities and mats:
- 29 mk3 ability mats. Probably not much more today as I blew through all 3 Cantina refreshes.
Han
- 2x Basic upgrades, adding 20% max dmg. 15x mk3s.
- 2x Taunt, adding 5% TM only when cast, not per hit. 12x
- 1x Leader, adding 5% offense if they're nearly dead. 5x
Luke
- 2x Basic upgrades, adding 15% dmg. 15x mk3s.
- 3x bullseye special, adding 25% dmg. 16x
- 2x passive, adding 5% crit chance. 9x
Besides upgrading some of these, I can send them both to 78ish, and spend very precious gear on sending them to gear 9 and 8 respectively, but all of this will be bankrupting me, essentially blowing my savings.
So I really need to be almost 100% sure it will work. I'll edit the post with my mod options in a bit.
Thanks in advance!
- I can potentially get that Omega upgrade. Luke flash Event returned and I had yet to clear the last tier, for 3 Omegas, which would put me at 4 and within distance to buy one with Fleet credit. Not knowing it wasn't another loaner Luke or team, I went in with mine and got smashed, on the first wave even. Then after upgrading to gear 8 & 4/6, getting several ability upgrades, and moving up to lvl 74, I was about to last until the 3rd wave. Some mod tweaking and more mod tweaking, and some luck, I pulled it off and am wondering if getting him able to solo this is a good barometer for what's needed to support Han. @MasterSeedy
@theanswer3 , thoughts?
Here's my updated situation with upgrade possibilities.
*Gear 9 is within reach for both of them, but only have one Furnace. I'm guessing Han will get more from it, like a ton of protection.
*8 mk3 ability mats. Probably not much more today as I blew through all 3 Cantina refreshes.
Han
- 2x Basic upgrades, adding 20% max dmg. 15x mk3s.
- 2x Taunt, adding 5% TM only when cast, not per hit. 12x
- 1x Leader, adding 5% offense if they're nearly dead. 5x
Luke
- 1x bullseye special, adding 5% dmg.7x
*Mod options
Han Tank, w/ 6x Health mods:
Speed : +4
Potency : +5.73%
Tenacity : +10.72%
Offense : +43
Offense % : +6.81%
Protection : +6271
Protection % : +64.25%
Critical Chance : +2.18%
Critical Damage : +0%
Defense : +6
Defense % : +12.84%
Health : +2027
Health % : +6.77%
Han Speed, 4x speed, 2x Health (fast but frail)
Speed : +43
Potency : +5.48%
Tenacity : +29.18%
Offense : +84
Offense % : +6.15%
Protection : +371
Protection % : +41.53%
Critical Chance : +9.91%
Critical Damage : +0%
Defense : +18
Defense % : +13.15%
Health : +0
Health % : +1.82%
Luke crit dmg. 4x CD, 2x CC. Sadly no CD triangle but one with very high offense.
Speed : +30
Potency : +6.12%
Tenacity : +26.49%
Offense : +167
Offense % : +12.4%
Protection : +2300
Protection % : +6.13%
Critical Chance : +1.71%
Critical Damage : +0%
Defense : +20
Defense % : +7.72%
Health : +0
Health % : +2%
Luke Speed. 4x speed, 2x crit chance
Speed : +32
Potency : +9.76%
Tenacity : +3.54%
Offense : +69
Offense % : +10.23%
Protection : +2526
Protection % : +42.96%
Critical Chance : +2.09%
Critical Damage : +0%
Defense : +23
Defense % : +12.93%
Health : +334
Health % : +2.97%
I ended up going with Han and wasn't disappointed. I did eventually make it all the way through to get my CLS with my Luke still g8/5
...I think you're right that the Luke event is a decent barometer for getting through CLS tier3.
And, if you did it, I might be able to get through the bonus tier of the Luke Flash event myself (still haven't done it).
...
So, since you got those 3 Omegas, have you now already Omega'd Luke's Dispel? It sounds like you probably did based on the reduced number of purple mats you listed, but I'm not sure.
Of all the places left that you could put those Mk3 mats, I think Luke's basic would be most likely to make a difference, but it's hard to tell. You've got the taunt, you've got the dispel, I would think going for damage at this point is the thing (at least with ability mats).
Oh and I screwed up and used Luke as leader, so I didn't even have the off/def boost from Han.
I am not bragging, just saying this event can be torn apart with the right setup, and it doesn't take a crazy amount of gear. Speed and critical chance on Luke, make Han tanky, and upgrade Luke's abilities as much as you can and you should be fine. I had some pretty good mods on Luke, but since I screwed up the leader choice and won with plenty of room to spare I would say there is some wiggle room there.
Yep, I also think that there should be entrance requirements. My complaint, if you read it, was that once you've qualified there's not much strategy required. It's about simply adding more levels, more gear and more ability mats to your toons, then going and doing the same exact thing again, but with more power.
I'd like it better if it was structured in such a way that once you qualified, even gear11 toons wouldn't be enough if you played badly, and even gear8 (or whatever is the minimum gear) would be enough if you paid attention to your environment and learned how to use it, paid attention to your enemy and learned how to counter them.
The best example, and maybe I should make a separate thread praising EA/CG for this in retrospect, is the Phoenix release event.
In that event, the Imperial Explosives Crate was actually key. When you set off the crate and sometimes even with which character (you might want to save Hera's expose to use on a toon, for example) made all the difference in completing that event. You go in, you fail, but you probably were able to blow up an Explosives Crate in the first encounter. If you didn't blow it up until the end of the battle, you could still see the animation where the crate explodes. You talk to people or you read the forums, or you just get lucky and hit the crate while some p1 enemies are still alive. Lo and behold! You find out that if the crate is detonated before all the enemy toons are dead, they take damage - a lot of it - while you take none. You go back through the event looking for crates with the word "explosives" in their name and you make a run where you hit those first ... but not with an AoE, because if they're set off at once, they only do damage one time. All this takes experimentation, investigation, thinking.
That makes for interesting and engaging (and fun!) gameplay.
I'm not saying that everyone should qualify for every event. I'm also not saying the events should be easy. What I'm saying is that if you qualify for the event, you should have a reasonable chance of succeeding at the event. If you barely qualified for CLS, there's only so far you could be expected to gear your last toon before the end of the event. But you qualified. So there should be some reasonable chance of success, even with r2 at g6 or g7.
Now the way to make that happen is to make sure that winning the last tier is not based solely on "Smash Hard! Smash Harder!" strategy. (If you can call it strategy.) Sure the tier can and should be hard enough that you will inevitably lose if you don't give your characters whatever gear you can in the time from the event announcement to event conclusion. Imagine if all the toons were opened on the day of the announcement b/c you didn't like them but did have their shards. You could still get all 5 to g7 and at least 3 up to g8 and at least 1 up to g9. But there are gear bottlenecks and opening all 5 characters on announcement day wouldn't allow you to have all 5 toons at g8 because of those bottlenecks (esp but not only Mk3 Holos). So now you have a minimum threshold of squad power for completing the event. 5 x gear11 is the maximum.
How do you challenge everyone in that range? Well, the Phoenix events used event toons and an unobtrusive background feature (the supply crates, some of which were useless so you had to pay attention to the ones that said they were "Imperial Explosive Supply Crate"s.
If you want this event to reward long-time players who took the time to invest in movie-important characters who haven't been particularly game-important (i.e. the players who are most likely to be die-hard StarWars fans), it makes sense to let people use their own toons which will make it easier for those with a gear 11 squad than my hypothetical minimum squad. But you don't want to simply give away CLS to them either. You want every single person with a CLS to feel like they've earned it. And you want every single person to enjoy the game play and the challenge. You can't have exactly the same difficulty for everyone if you want people to bring in their own toons, but a game designer **can** create problems that aren't solved by gear pieces.
In particular, you have two toons that aren't available as player characters yet. Nobody has them. Nobody has geared them. If they become event toons, they can play unique roles that allow for interesting challenges you can't solve by smashing harder.
On top of the potential to add an "Event C-3P0" or an "Event Rebel Chewbacca" that can even out the difficulty and permit g8 teams to have a chance to win while g11 teams aren't just handed a win automatically, you have two incredibly important characters that can still play a role: Old Ben and Vader.
Now, Old Ben is dead, right? But this is his big, "If you strike me down" moment - why not give "If You Strike Me Down" buffs to Farmboy, or to the whole escaping squad? For the purposes of the event, the buffs can even function slightly differently from how they work outside of the event. Imagine if instead of giving a % speed bonus, the SpeedUP buff gave a flat +40 to speed. That helps anyone, but it helps someone with +70 speed from mods less than it helps someone with +0 from mods, while a % bonus helps the person with the +70 mods **even more** than it helps the people with +0, despite the fact that the +0 folks need the help more.
Old Ben's death grants the perfect opportunity to even out the difficulty even more. Now, I'm not saying it should be this extreme, but as the speed buff goes higher, the original speed matters less. If Old Ben granted everyone +1000 speed, then whether you started with 120 or started with 220 matters relatively little. The same is true for flat buffs to offense and whatever else Ben buffs.
Couple this with the actual movie scene: remember that Ben isn't helping Luke (or anyone else) immediately after dying. There's a pause there are shots exchanged, then Ben's ghostly voice echoes: Run, Luke! Run!
So if you qualify for a Tier6 finish the first and second encounters, you still don't have to be buffed by If You Strike Me Down. Instead, imagine your squad entering that final, final battle of the final stage. There you see an endless swarm of Stormtroopers, you think, "I'm hosed." You fight for the first turn and take damage. Things look bad. But then the 2nd time your Farmboy take a turn in this ultimate fight, you hear Alec Guinesses' voice issuing from your iPad, saying "Run, Luke! Run!" Then, before you take your turn, everyone in your squad gets the IYSMD buffs, including the party heal.
In the middle of this mass of Stormtroopers is one commander coordinating the action. You kill him, and all the Stormtroopers lose 100% TM and are slowed for 1 turn. An extra ability button that was crossed out (as if by ability block) becomes available. It provides 100% chance of escape. If you don't use it, you could maybe still fight your way through all the stormtroopers...but you're going to die unless you're gear 11. No, your best chance to get away on the Falcon is to use that Escape function for each of your characters while the stormtroopers are slowed and can't take actions because their TM was zero'd out.
But even gear11 people have a real chance of failure, because Vader is forcing his way through the blast doors with his light saber. If you haven't won the fight or escaped before a countdown timer finishes, he bursts through the blast doors, AoEs everyone, then throws Culling Blade on Luke. Boom. You lose.
Now you have Chewie playing an important role. Now the best moment of the event - Ben's sacrifice - actually matters in Tier 6, it's not just over and done, but it's still affecting the plot and your chances of success.
Unless you read the forums where other people have figured it out, you won't know that killing one particular toon unlocks the escape function. You also won't know what the escape function does - just like you didn't know what the Sacrifice ability did in Tier5 until you used it.
Now you actually have to pay attention. Now the gamers can throw a fight at you that is challenging for g11 toons but allows g8 toons playing an optimal strategy to win. Now when you play the fight multiple times, it's not just because you're waiting for the best RNG. Now you're playing the fight multiple times to try and figure out how the heck you're supposed to win and what that countdown timer does. Maybe one time you just let the countdown timer hit zero by doing nothing with you toons when it's your turn, just because you want to see what the countdown timer does. Then you get this awesome animation of Vader stomping everyone - you lose, but you're rewarded, and you can still try again.
In this scenario, being a better player matters. It's not all about having a better character. Not only that, it's just more interesting and more fun, and it relies only on things the developers have already done - including event abilities which happens in raids and on Tier5 of CLS, including timers which we see everyday in the Arena, including an event toon alongside your own characters which has been done in at least one flash event, as well as in some other events, IIRC. It includes two different victory conditions (all toons escape or all toons survive the fight and all stormtroopers are defeated) that reward two different styles of gameplay (if you want to call "Hulk Smash!" a style of gameplay), and instead of merely using earlier tiers as hurdles that you jump over but then never consider again, it uses that great moment of Ben's sacrifice to grant you a completely unexpected, delayed bonus when you need it most, magnifying the emotional impact of an already great piece of gameplay from Tier5.
These are the kinds of things that can be done in a game that can make sure that everyone who gets CLS has actually earned CLS while also making sure that the event is fun, that players feel challenged, that the story is used to its maximum potential, that you cannot qualify for the event without having some reasonable chance of succeeding at the event, and that the event rewards those who have heavily invested in the qualifying toons from Episode4 by making things easier (even if it doesn't make them automatic).
Now THAT would be a great event.
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*As an example, consider trying to get Luke if you opened r2 on the last day of the r2 event and then got him to 7* in the last few minutes of that event - I pick r2 because it takes a couple weeks from opening Ben to getting his 7th* which gives more time to gear
In this thread alone there are examples of folks losing on t3 with higher level/gl chars and winning with lower levels. There already is a lot of thinking involved. You can overpower if you want, or save the investment for other chars and use your brain to make up the gap. Just because you might CHOOSE to win the event by overpowering it doesn't mean that is the only way to go. Using gimmicks to make an event winnable by g6 and losable by g11 is cheesy and ridiculous. This isn't a puzzle game. Shield generators, support droids, and explosives crates are neat but that cat is out of the bag. They would have to be way OP to make up the gap between g6-7 and g10-11, and you would have to make the proper usage of them opaque and convoluted now that everyone is familiar with these non-toon targetable objects.
I like the setup of this event. You could win by overpowering it, but those who aren't interested in wasting gear on these toons could also experiment with mods and abilities and beat it at a very reasonable gear level. I didn't have to divert any raid gear from my resistance project to beat this event, and instead used mods and ability mats, which I have plenty of, to make a viable team. It was fun.
And no, I haven't bought the 5th Omega from Fleet yet, but also it's his special that isn't maxed. His basic is maxed, but I still have that 7th rank to buy for his special before I can Omega it. But honestly I think that'll be my last resort, because I'd much rather use it on Biggs' special. Sucks that it only dispels if it doesn't crit.
So what about my mod options? Those stats are only the stats from the mods, not including the set bonuses or base char stats.
@Swordd
So you'd recommend my Speed set for Luke, even though it's mostly Speed set pieces instead of stats on mods? That's the weak part of that set, while the weak part of my crit dmg set is that there's more offense than crit dmg stats.
Won with:
Han with HP mods aimed at speed over Prot. Luke with CritDmg and Crit chance with Speed stats. Gear8 for lvl 77 Han. Gear7 for lvl 74 Luke.
Kill order for both rounds:
Scout first, before any taunts (or reset), ST taunts, Snow, Magma, Boss (basic attacks, save Bullseye and Taunt for r2i).
Now, how hard is t4? I'd have to buy Leia's pack for the req, but only have the 8x mk3 materials or gear to toss on her.