Best Of

I started writing this up for my alliance, but since players have been asking for more communication I decided why not share it more broadly? In this post I’m going to share what, for now, seems to be the best strategy we have uncovered in the Coliseum.

Solo Coliseum

This part is going to be very short because the Solo Coliseum design is very straightforward.

1. Pick a champion that meets the tag requirements
   
2. Spend energy to enter the fight
   
3. Clear as many health bars as possible
   
4. If you get knocked out and want to clear more health bars, go back to step 1.
   

There will be a champion-based leaderboard that players can look to in order to see which champions other players are using, and this is a good piece of intel if you are looking to optimize your time.

There are no consumables beyond energy and no boosts. Pick a champion, do the fight, repeat. That’s the Solo Coliseum.

Alliance Coliseum

The Alliance Coliseum has much more depth built into it, and doing well will require strategy, skill and coordination with your alliance.

Alliance Coliseum will replace Alliance Quest for the weeks it runs, but it is very different in a number of ways. One big difference is the reward distribution. Whereas AQ focuses mostly on ranked rewards and Glory milestones, most of the rewards in Alliance Coliseum, at least for now, are nested in two events: a solo peak milestone event and an alliance peak milestone event. For the vast majority of players and alliances, maximizing these events should be the focus, and the best strategy for doing so is the main topic of this post.

I should note that the advice here is based on internal test runs of the events. It’s possible that players will figure out a better strategy. But I found what I am going to describe to be a reliable way to achieve the top milestones.

There are a few key things to know to optimize your performance in the event:

1. The three day event is structured around three sets of tags that provide bonus points for your attackers. They change every 24 hours the event is live.
   
2. On day one, three of your five podiums are available. On day two, podium four becomes available, and on day three podium five becomes available.
   
3. You cannot use the same attacker on multiple podiums.
   

This setup means, if you want to take advantage of the bonuses for the tags on day one or day two, you must lock it in on that day. This is key to make sure you maximize your score. For this reason, I believe the best strategy is to focus on champions that meet as many of the tags as possible on the first two days, even if you believe you can set a better score with a champion that doesn’t meet the tag requirements.

I’ll illustrate this with an example. Let’s say the tags on day one are #HERO, #AVENGERS and #OFF: BURST. Quicksilver and Mantis fit all three of the tags, so I’d start by testing them out. Photon and Kate meet two of the tags, so I might try them as well. I’d go through the champions I have that meet at least a couple of the tags and see who I can set the best scores with on my three available podiums.

Now let’s say I set my three best scores and I realize I have someone that can do better. Yondu is going to be nuts in Coliseum, but he doesn’t meet any of the day one tags. Should I try to set a better score with him? I have found that I should not. The reason is that, if I stomp one of my day one scores, I can’t get it back. Let’s say on day two the tags are #MERCENARY, #2017 and #SIZE M. Now Yondu meets all three tags. If he is on one of my first three podiums, I can go back and set a new score for him with the tag bonuses. However, now I have an empty podium four, and I can’t get those day one tags back to set a score there.

That sounds complicated, but I will summarize simply. The best strategy to maximize your score will be to focus on the tags day one and day two. On day three, if you have an ace for the fight that hasn’t matched the tags, you can always use them to set a score before the event ends. Focusing on the tags the first two days keeps your options open.

Beyond that, here are a couple additional tips:

• Most players who aren’t insanely skilled will have to do a little bit of grinding or buy podium levels to hit the top milestones. While you are going to have some sweaty sessions trying to hit your best scores, if you are like me you might also want a more chill time for some of your sessions. The lower difficulties are great for this. You are unlikely to beat your best scores on Easy or Medium, but they can be great for farming some podium XP while you are watching football, on the train or waiting to pick your kids up from school. So kick back and crush some health bars.
  
• While the podiums go up to level 8, it’s tuned so that late-game players and alliances should be able to set high enough scores to collect the top milestones with a mix of level 2 and level 3 podiums. The more skilled you are, the lower your podium levels will need to be – for example Mike set a crazy Yondu score during our internal test that cleared all the milestones with a single podium. The higher levels are mostly there for mid-game players who want to grind for end-game rewards and to facilitate more ranked rewards chase if we decide to make the ranked rewards more attractive in the future.
  

That’s all for now. I hope you all enjoy the Coliseum as much as we did in our testing.