All right, with the Day of the Deadpool thread going absolutely nuts over the fact that there were no gold offers this year, time to make a separate thread talking about why it would have been an atrociously bad idea to have gold offers.
Let's start with the obvious. It's a good thing there were no gold offers. (Attempt to hold your rage until I explain.)
How much does it cost to rank up a Champion? Great question, let's dive in.
6* Champions
- Level 1-25: 420,276
- Rank 1-2: 529,173
- Level 1-35: 635,778
- Rank 2-3: 705,565
- Level 1-45: 744,083
- Rank 3-4: 811,399
- Level 1-55: 862,904
Total Gold Cost to R4 a 6* Champion: 4.71 million gold (with same class ISO)
5* Champions
- Level 1-25: 41,339
- Rank 1-2: 135,642
- Level 1-35: 106,553
- Rank 2-3: 271,370
- Level 1-45: 212,840
- Rank 3-4: 407,056
- Level 1-55: 320,890
- Rank 4-5: 542,742
- Level 1-65: 507,125
Total Gold Cost to R5 a 5* Champion: 2.54 million gold (with same class ISO)
(I have data for 2/3/4* but they're not particularly relevant here.)
Now let's talk about ISO (assuming same class 5k bricks here). 6* Champions
- Level 1-25: 78 5k Bricks
- Level 1-35: 120 5k Bricks
- Level 1-45: 140 5k Bricks
- Level 1-55: 163 5k Bricks
Total: 501 Bricks = 21 Dupes of the class type you need
5* Champions
- Level 1-25: 8 5k Bricks
- Level 1-35: 20 5k Bricks
- Level 1-45: 40 5k Bricks
- Level 1-55: 61 5k Bricks
- Level 1-65: 96 5k Bricks
Total: 225 Bricks = 10 Dupes of the class type you need
Selling 100 of the 5k Bricks will net you precisely 250,000 gold.(Before someone says that we need to get more ISO per dupe - I gave Kabam these precise calculations a few months ago making that exact argument - I agree with you.)
(All of this data is stuff I personally collected, calculated, and put on a spreadsheet. The gold totals have a +/- of approximately 15k due to using bigger bricks than is necessary for the next rank, costing you more.)
Last year, in order to pick up all of the offers, you would need to have spent 10 million gold. The last offer was the best one, I remember picking it up myself, since, as a regular arena grinder, I could slow down my rank ups and make that back without a terrible amount of trouble. This year? I wouldn't have taken the offers, even if I could have afforded them - it's simply become too expensive to rank up champions. And I say that as an arena grinder who completes Master, Uncollected, and Cav EQ, does Battlegrounds, and does casual Incursions. You are NOT able to get enough gold to offset rank ups for the resources you have coming in if you're playing in say... a Map 6 alliance or higher, or in a Gold 2 alliance or higher.
In an ideal month? I'm gaining about 2.5-4 million gold. Maybe more if there's more in the side quest, or if I do a larger arena grind, or content like 8.1 or Gauntlet comes out and there's gold in that content. The gold in the Gauntlet? That's enough for a SINGLE Rank 4 6-Star, and ONLY if you are using the same class ISO.
While I do not doubt, for a second, that there were people who sold their ISO ahead of these offers (in my opinion, foolish - never count on offers until you've seen them), and ones who saved up gold to be able to spend (you have gold currently - stop complaining, at least about gold, lol), spending these on rank up resources or shards of ANY kind is a tremendously bad resource management call considering the rate at which we are gaining those materials and items compared to how fast you can gain gold right now.
I'm Paragon, with 9 R4's, and a regular arena grinder who picks up a lot, if not all of the Basic and Featured milestones, and many of the Trials arena milestones. I cannot keep up with gold spend. Even slowing down - I cannot keep up with gold spend. I cannot keep up with the resources I have coming in. It took stepping down to a lower tier alliance, stopping my rank ups for a couple of weeks, and grinding arena, to swing things in the other direction. For someone who does not grind arena or does not do EQ? It's almost impossible to swing the gold gain in the other direction unless you are already sitting on a surplus of gold.
Selling ISO to participate in a gold event has the potential to cripple your ability to rank up champions effectively for months. 250k for 100 bricks? Nowhere near worth it, horrible value in every possible way. Based on some napkin math - R4ing a 6* champion without using the same class ISO would cost you, at minimum, an additional 1 million gold, if not more. But if you've sold all your ISO - you're out of luck. Not only that, if you've sold all your ISO without a plan to get it back (or a roster that allows you to get it back quickly - which is far worse), you've likely destroyed any possibility of being able to effectively use those items you would have bought with the gold offers in the first place.
With all of that in mind - go ahead try and tell me gold offers were a good idea.
Because they weren't last year, and they still weren't this year. This year, at least, Kabam knew better.
