Help ftp stay in top 500
January 26, 2016 12:44PM
edited January 2016
Hi all, first OP so please be gentle ;-)
Been playing for a little over a month now and loving the game (mostly). Cracked second toon to 7* today which felt great especially as a ftp player. I am just shy of level 65, will probably get there tomorrow.
I have been patiently plugging away at the arena leader board and have struggled to break into the top 500. I got through once but did not stay there long enough to reap the rewards.
My arena lineup is:
4* Bariss
7* Lumi
7* NS Initiate
5* JC
6* Sid
All are gear level 7 or 8.
I also have:
5* Chewie, Asajj, Phasma and Talia
4* Vader, Boba and Jawa
3* Dooku, Royal Guard and Asoka.
Gear levels for these guys range between 4 and 7.
Any thoughts or advice?
Been playing for a little over a month now and loving the game (mostly). Cracked second toon to 7* today which felt great especially as a ftp player. I am just shy of level 65, will probably get there tomorrow.
I have been patiently plugging away at the arena leader board and have struggled to break into the top 500. I got through once but did not stay there long enough to reap the rewards.
My arena lineup is:
4* Bariss
7* Lumi
7* NS Initiate
5* JC
6* Sid
All are gear level 7 or 8.
I also have:
5* Chewie, Asajj, Phasma and Talia
4* Vader, Boba and Jawa
3* Dooku, Royal Guard and Asoka.
Gear levels for these guys range between 4 and 7.
Any thoughts or advice?
Post edited by Giodude2000 on
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Replies
You're also painting a target on your back if you're putting a 4* toon as leader in Bariss (you didn't say either way but I'm guessing, based on your comp maybe you do, for the leadership jedi buff, plus you listed her first).
Remember, the leader is the only toon people can see in Arena matchup screen, make sure you have something that isn't going to act as an inducement to pick on you above anyone else. I know if I saw a Bariss leader, especially a 4*, I'm going after that guy.
Talia isn't that great (has her place in DS and GW) and neither is Chewie and Ahsoka, you hardly ever see them in teams at the top of the leaderboard. My Royal Guard and Jawa are still languishing at the bottom of my roster, not really worth gearing / leveling up at the moment. I don't have enough decent Empire guys to make RG really work and there simply aren't enough Jawas in the game yet for synergy, plus they're more of an anti-droid specialist anyway.
Vader can't be starred up, Boba Fett is apparently slow (I don't have him), though he has a high crit bonus leadership ability, you don't have the toons to take advantage.
Ventress is slow and her leadership speed bonus for Nightsisters is broken (she is great in the Oppress challenge for stuns and in GW, especially for dispelling Chewie taunts you face in early levels). Dooku is good but you only have him at 3* and he's hard to farm until level 69 when Cantina Level 6 is unlocked but stick with farming him.
Since you don't really have a crit based team, I would recommend swapping Phasma for Bariss as leader (after gearing Phasma up) and keep farming her up to 7* in GW shipments. You really only need Lumi, who is technically an attacker, and lose Bariss and JC for arena, a lot of guys don't run any healers at all (not even Lumi) in Arena but you only have 2x toons at 7* so I'd keep her and Initiate for the time being, as well as Sid (who you should continue to farm to 7* in Arena shipments). Maybe if they fix Ventress' leadership ability, try a Nightsister squad on DS missions with her or Ahsoka as leader? I've heard of some NS squads in Arena but haven't seen one and at least for the moment, I'm guessing they're not going to be that good.
Your team, apart from Sid is also fairly slow. You're going to need Daka to get through higher level DS PvE missions to be able to get the gear you need, so consider farming her in Cantina Shipments, she's fast and with a Phasma lead you get a lot of extra stuns on assists.
Poe is also there in Cantina shipments but, a) is probably going to get a nerf, and, b) really only shines in high dps /speed teams and you don't have anybody fast with high dps like Leia, QGJ or FOTP or Rey to complement him, so I'd recommend going with Daka.
Maybe farm a high dps like Geonosian Soldier or Luke in Cantina battles or even Kylo (if you have level 4 unlocked) who has great Phasma FO synergy (the assist rate is doubled) plus has Heal immunity in his basic, an AoE that triggers a counter and a serious damage 2nd special when below 50% health, not only that, his cooldowns can reset on taking damage.
I also disagree with @SilverSargeant (did you used to be Sargeant_Strategy?).
I don't think you need to necessarily spend the 50 crystals daily on Arena to be in the higher ranks, though maybe it would help in getting there faster by having twice as many fights or if it can push you into a higher bracket which you can hold. Any crystals spent on that is gear you're not farming.
I finished 5th yesterday in my hard launch server and only used my free 5 fights and have finished as high as first without spending the crystals though obviously, that's a lot harder and not usually going to work.
I'm almost never out of the top 10 and only spring for the extra crystals rarely, usually to help hold #1-2.
I usually get to about 130 with 5 battles and then pushed to maybe 230 overnight.
I do agree with the above though there is too many healers in your line-up atm
As stated, your team has too many healers and not enough punch. I'd not use Bariss and would throw in Dooku at least for the time being. A 3 star Dooku can still perform if you gear him up and I agree that you should keep farming him. Dooku is GREAT (I have a 4 star, lvl 64 gear 8 Dooku) and he can do well over 3k damage if he double hits, especially on counters where I saw an AI Dooku get 5k total on me today.
I'd look to get Poggle from the GW shipments as he is great with his offense up ability and can make every character better because of it
I'd probably also replace JC with Phasma and put Phasma as leader...at least see if you are getting a decent amount of bonus attacks. If you don't then slap Sid back in as leader.
I also agree about farming the Geno Soldier. I wish I did from the start but didn't and am now since he is very powerful. Oh and so is the Resistance Pilot from GW shipments. Faced that guy today in GW and wow, crazy damage. He's my next target after I get Phasma to 4 stars....I am building my roster mainly for GW now so my goal is to get a bunch of backups to 4 or 5 stars and then work from there to get everyone to 6/7 stars. Since I am f2p, I'll never be in the top 20 of my arena bracket (I'm surrounding by people who have clearly put in money right now) so no point in making that my main focus instead of GW which gives better rewards for the average player who can complete it and having the chance for 15 shards a day is great, especially since many great are from GW shipments.
The Bariss leader must be a magnet for punks as I dropped from 560 to like 1083 overnight!! So frustrating!! On the bright side I do get through GW pretty consistently every day.
I will give your suggestions a shot, will focus on Phasma shards in GW and farming Dooku shards on hard nodes and gearing them up. Just got to 6* with Sid so will focus my 5-10 Arena shipment shards on him and should crack 7* in the next 2 weeks.
I leveled up to 65 today but spend all the bonus energy farming Bariss shards and getting test tubes to gear up Sid.
Will let you know how I go after 6pm today.
As an aside, here are the rest of my toons from my roster in level order from about 61 down to 39ish:
FoTP
QGJ
Clone sergeant
Snow Trooper
FoST
Resistance trooper
Coruscant underworld police
IG86
Resistant pilot
Teebo
Ewok scout
Not sure if that changes the advice at all
I would also get your jawa up in stars/gear. If you ever go against a droid team...you'll thank me at that point.
did if you're QGJ is over 4* (well now he can be with cantina) i'd hands down use and level him out. He's probably #1 character in the game but not enough people have him.
He was a lucky drop from a Chromium but with no nodes to farm I did not prioritize his gear, abilities or training. Until now...
5* Phasma leader
5* Asajj
7* Lumi
6* Sid
7* NS Initiate
Power is about 22,700
Had pretty good results, first fight was straightforward, only lost Lumi. Was a fairly weak team with Chewie, Sid, JC and a few other toons that I cant remember.
Second fight I went down to a 22,800 team with Sid (L), Dooku, JC, Lumi and Tusken Raider. I lost Lumi and Asajj early due to Tusken assist crit attacks and never had enough punch or healing after that to stay in the fight.
Third fight went much better. Was facing 7* Sid (L), Phasma, Kylo, Lumi and Boba Fett. Got some handy assists with Asajj and Sid due to Phasma which produced a stun on their Sid and then the Lumi. Plus I got a heal off after nasty AoEs from the Sid and Kylo.
Fourth fight was also a good win and did not lose and toons. Faced a 6* Sid (L) with Lumi, JC, Kylo and Vader. Again a stun by Asajj on Sid bought enough time to get a heal off with Lumi and take them all down. Got lucky with AI too though, it went for my NS Initiate which has quite high health so absorbed the damage nicely.
Last fight was against 6* Sid (L)....again. this time with Savage Oppress, Lumi, Dooku and Dathcha. This one went right down to the wire. I thought I was done for when it came to my Asajj and Sid both on red against his Dooku with about 75% health. Asajj's stun due to an assist from Phasma leader ability saved me, it pinned Dooku in place (and more importantly prevented his counter attack) long enough for me to finish him off. Very close and very lucky.
Finished at 566th place. The real test will be how well I can maintain position overnight. 500 tokens will get me 10 more Sid shards which is good. After that there will be only 84 left to get to 7*.
I've done GW and gear challenges today and was able to finally finish crafting the test tube gear for Sid with one energy refresh. Will do a Cantina refresh when I get more crystals after my arena battles.
I am only 8 shards away from unlocking Daka in Cantina shipments, I really need her to help me get through the DS hard battles at 3 star. After that will need to decide whether I focus on her or QGJ.
Will post another update after my arena battles today.
Today was a mixed bag.
Won first battle pretty easy.
Lost my second battle against:
Phasma (L)
Sid
Lumi
Daka
JC
Was basically same power as me.
I focused on Daka and Sid first but was unable to heal due to ability block on my Lumi. I am really missing having a second healer, thinking of swapping out Asajj for JC just as a back up.
Third battle I swapped Asajj with JC and went well again 6* Phasma (L), Lumi, JC, IG86 and Dooku. It was great having that second heal, won without loosing a toon. Such a shame Asajj is so slow, I would love to keep her if only she hit sooner.
Fourth battle was a disaster. Went up against Phasma (L), poogle, Dooku, Kylo and Lumi. Lost in 2 minutes.
Last battle went right down to the wire. Went against 6* Sid (L), Dooku, Lumi, Phasma and Chewbacca. I swap my JC and Asajj again but it probably made zero difference. The winner for me this roubd was the high HP of the NS Initiate whi absorbed a lot of Dooku attacks, just enough for sid to take him out with red health and no other toons remaining.
I got to 597, let's see where I end up come award time. Was really hoping for a better day. Perhaps a little too much ambitious risk taking led to the two losses. I might need to be a bit more patient and get a few more bits of gear and another star or two to crack top 500.
As an aside I just realised that Asajj is only 5 shards away from 6*. Will put today's arena tokens on her before reverting back to Sid, maybe that will make a bit of a difference.
Any thoughts guys and girls??
Meanwhile make lumi your leader. Train her heal and leader skill.
I did originally have a NS team in mind when I started using arena shards to farm Asajj and Cantina shards to farm Asoka. I have since put that team on the back burner too. Lumi heal is level 6 and leader skill is at level 5, so might give her leadership duties for some matches today.
Looks like I have a bit of farming to do so the Poogle and Poe team might be a ways off. I would not have expected the high dps teams to be fighting add low as 500, I must just be on a very active competitive arena board. There can't be too many whales on it though as they're are only a handful of level 70 teams.
Second battle went much better. Was up against 7* Lumi (L), Sid, Dooku, Daka and Dathcha. Managed to get a heal off with Lumi before she died (was a critical decision as I was thinking of ability blocking the Lumi instead). Also got a lot more assist attacks than previous battle, and a good stun on Daka. Good solid win. Having said all this out might have been leveling up to 66 that made the difference
The third battle had me asking ****? Was fighting for 586th spot against 6* Sid ( L ) with Dooku, Lumi, Chewie and Savage Oppress. How did that team get to 586?? Ah well, I guess people were probably asking the same thing about my 4* Bariss team. Won pretty easily even though I lost a few toons at the end due to Dooku counter attacks.
Fourth battle for 507th position was also a good win. Beat a team with 7* Lumi, Tusken Raider, Sid, Daka and JC. Asist attacks were great and managed to keep Phasma alive to get both abilities off. Won without losing a toon.
Last battle gave me an opportunity to break into top 500 at 440th spot. Went up against 7* Lumi ( L ), Sid, Dooku, JC and Asajj. In short the battle went very well and I won with 4 toons on high health!! That's more like it!!
Most importantly, I maintained position at award time!! Yay!!! Thanks for the homes and tips everyone, greatly appreciated. Beat part is that the extra crystals mean another Cantina refresh which means I will unlock Daka and get the last two JC shards to promote to 6*.
Good day today! Now to aim for top 250...
Onwards and upwards! Great looking team you've got now, too!
I have learned a lot though and will keep plugging away. Only 2-3 days of GW to 6* Phasma and gear up the others. I am torn between Kylo and Luke for cantina farming, and now that Daka is unlocked not sure whether to star her up or go for Poe in Cantina shipments.
I only dropped to 606 when I started battling, but I lost one battle and must have been snipped between battles 3 and 4 and again between 4 and 5. So frustrating!! Only 5 Sid shards for me today...
The one good surprise was that I won one battle on auto when I got interrupted halfway through! Hopefully the AI can defend well for me overnight and keep me in a competitive spot.
Ah well, back to it tomorrow. Challenges day!!
Right now the meta is such that high damage characters protected by Poe's taunt/tm reduction/expose is the best team available. If your Poe goes first you can typically choose whatever 2 characters on the enemy team you want to die. There are a few problems with trying to puruse this build. 1. Poe needs gear 8 to reach tier 1 speed and really shine, a lot of arming. 2. Poe needs damage dealers behind him to take advantage of the build, characters like FOTP, GS, Res Trooper, etc as well. 3. They will most likely nerf Poe and possibly some high damage characters in the next couple of months. Leaving you with an awkward partially completed team without seeing the rewards from investing in it.
Sidious & Lumi are really your only 2 quality Arena characters in your lineup right now. Phasma is good as well, especially with some other FO character synergy, but honestly Phasma & Sid both kind of fill the leadership role and in my opinion you should choose one or the other to use.
IMO, Your biggest issue with your team right now is damage. Nothing in your lineup aside from Lumi's force blast has enough burst early to give you the advantage and Lumi's tier 3 speed doesn't really cut it for early burst damage. Even if you were to star and level Qui-Gon Jinn one of his biggest advantages is his +75% damage Ally Assist and ideally that gets used with a high damage character. The only way to solve that is to farm a damage char like GS.
I hear people recommending Dooku, that seems like a really bad idea to me using hard missions only. Yes eventually when you unlock him on Cantina you could star him up pretty fast, but right now he seems like a waste. Geo Soldier is one of the best characters in the game and easily farmable via Cantina 1A. But to star and gear him up quickly you're going to want to utilize the 100 crystal if not 200 crystal Cantina refresh daily. Also, you should always use the two 50 crystal refreshes on regular energy especially because you have to play catch up if you really want to improve your Arena ranking.
Stop unlocking Daka if you aren't having any trouble with GW, she's pretty RNG based in Arena and I don't like that you have to rely on luck with her to get any use out of her. Instead you should put your dragonballs towards Poe (if you want to risk it) or QGJ (a great character all around).
In my opinion your best squad right now is:
You should be moving towards a squad with something like this:
or....
If your FOTP is not a very high star level and you haven't been doing his hard missions daily it's probably better to just replace him with GS although you won't get the same Phasma synergy out of GS. Once you 7* Sidious you could also use Greedo as another good damage character although he is pretty unpopular because of his crappy 1st turn defense. GS & Greedo both benefit from Sidious leadership crit bonus.
Not sure how to post screenshot from my mobile, so current top toon stats are:
Level 66
Lumi 7* gear 7 (16 laptops away from 8)
NS Initiate 7* gear 7 ( 20 frisbees from 8)
Asajj 6* gear 8
Sid 6* gear 8
JC 6* gear 8
Phasma 5* (30 shards from 6*) gear 7
Level 65
Bariss 4* gear 8 (former team leader)
Level 64
Dooku 4* gear 6
Vader 4* gear 7
Asohka 3* gear 6
My FoTP is level 61 2* gear 6. I am three shards away from 3*, farming is hard. This is why I have been farming Daka to help clear DSB 6B (**** invincible ewoks!!) to 3 star.
My QGJ is level 57 gear 4. He was a lucky pull from a Chromium and helped me with LSB and AGI challenges but have pretty much ignored him since I got Asohka and Dooku. Now that he is farmable though I do want to build him up.
Right now Dooku is probably your best 5th, moreso than Asajj if you can gear him up a bit... Asajj is too slow and doesn't really benefit you unless you're battling a team that uses a team buff (ie Phasma teams). Dooku is tier 1 speed with a turn one potential double stun that gives you a huge advantage in Arena.
The issue is if you choose the Dooku route is you want to pick one cantina character at a time to farm and that will prevent you from farming GS. Dooku doesn't unlock until late though so technically you could get a decently leveled GS before unlocking Dooku farm.
I would go Phasma lead, Sidious, Lumi, NS Initiate, Dooku. When you get QGJ to 4* you could consider swapping him in, however you want at least a lvl 6 dispel so that you get the offense up buff. Then you want to swap NS Initiate out for a better DMG character when you can. GS most likely. Res trooper is really good too but he's a hard mission farm just like FOTP so that doesn't help very much in getting them leveled fast.
So, summary of new strategy:
Cantina battles : farm GS shards
Cantina shipments : farm QGJ shards
LSB / DSB : Farm Dooku shards and gear
GW shipments : farm Phasma shards
Arena shipments: farm Sid shards
Gear priority will be Dooku and Phasma for now until QGJ/GS get to 4*
Will also keep plugging away at DSB 6B so I can sim two nodes for FoTP.
Might take a few days to get Dooku ready then a week or so for GS and then QGJ after that. Watch this space
I would finish what I started. I like daka too. QGJ will be a long farm. May as well have Daka on your roster and good to win Gal War in the meantime. QGJ will be there and we'll be playng this for a year or two. so no rush
One of the losses was a silly mistake on my part, i used Lumi's force blast on the enemy JC instead of the enemy Lumi. The return blast took out Asajj just before her next turn.
The other loss was against one of the toughest teams I have faced so far. It had Phasma ( L ), Dooku, Lumi, Poggle and GS. So much damage!
Competition is definitely feeling tougher, i even dabbed a low star Leia, QGJ, Dooku Lumi JC team. Was pretty careful with action and target selection though and got some great assists and stuns which went my way.
I unlocked a GS today so now starts the long starring, trading and gearing process. Got my first shards for QGJ to which was great.
I must admit I have similar doubts @DarkWingGlee . However I don't typically have any issues completing GW every day, it is the DSBs that I am struggling with. Will train and gear her at 4* and see how I go. I can always star up later if it does not work out.
And as a ftp I totally get the "no rush"!
Gotta keep plugging away, hoping to get enough frisbees tomorrow to upgrade gear level for Phasma or NS Initiate.
Bright note to end for today: cleared DSB 6B with 3 stars! FoTP here I come (in about 4-5 weeks...)
My F2P team is Sidious, GS, Lumi, JC, Daka and I will switch Daka out for Poe when he gets to 4* but I'm struggling to win in top 10 without a Poe right now.
Farming QGJ like you are doing is the safer route for the long term, although I will be honest you will probably never get near the top 50 without Poe on your team in the current meta.