Arena grind FYI

djr17

Depending on how you get the infinite streak going, you may need to adjust, as R5s have changed the calculation.

For instance, I have been going with 2 5r5 and 1 5r4 for 12-15, and fought Thanos/Kang teams. Today, I got regular teams, with up to R5s included.

Feeney234

This usually happens when a new level is reached for champions. It screws up the algorithms. But we, as summoners, must adapt.

DNA3000

Technically, R5s haven't changed the arena algorithm. Rather, R5s have changed the ability for the arena to match us against R5s. It starts doing that when it starts seeing them, as it pulls your arena matches from other player accounts. If they don't have R5s, it obviously can't send them against you.

There are special cases, the so-called Kang and Thanos tteams, that complicate this a bit. But for the most part, the arena sees what we bring into the arena, remembers that, and then uses those champions - in fact, those exact teams - against other players. That's why we also see sandbag teams. Players use them, so the arena uses them. It isn't programmed to sandbag us. We are doing it to ourselves.

SummonerNR

During the buildup to the Infinite Streak (up to 15), because each additional 3 matches will look for an opponent team entirely 1 rank higher than what 3 matches prior gave (assuming you used the same team for yourself).

* at Streak=6, it will try to find team of all 1 rank higher than what you are bringing.
So, if there is no such “real summoner” team that high, it will give you what it has available as the highest potential team (being it's own Max’d, although NO Mastery, Thanos/Kang team).

So, before the advent of real 6* r5, bringing all 6* r4 would at that point start giving Thanos/Kang.
Now that there are real r5 available, you may get those as matchups instead.

Technically, at Streak=12, say your own team is all 6*r4, your opponent should be 6*r7 (which of course don’t even exist in the world of Thanos/Kang). So it does the best it can, formerly being T/K 6*r5. But now that real r5 exist, those real teams with r5 would be no different in the eyes of the matching system as what the T/K teams would be. So it could start matching you against the real teams with 6*r5 now.

————
But what actually *might* be a change in the algorithm now, is how high (or should say, how LOW) of a Team Rating you can still bring (after 15, well really after 20 or 22), and still get matchups that are the rough equivalent to those LOWER teams that you are now bringing during infinite streak.

Before, the lowest you could probably safely use would be teams of 5*r3. Who's 6* equivalent would be like a 6* Rank 0 (an imaginary rank below 6*r1 which is similar to 5*r4).

Maybe the algorithm is fixed to allow for as low as 4 ranks lower than what people have as best teams (so previously, 4 ranks below 6*r4 would be 5*r3).
And as such, now with 6*r5, maybe the fixed algorithm will only allow downwards as far as 5*r4 now (or 6*r1/25).

Or maybe such a coded algorithm never actually existed, but they just manually go into the code and bump that part up (“lowest minimum”) every now and then (when new ranks are possible) ?

But either way, I’d bet that “Minimum” will now start to be higher than it was before.

MrSakuragi

I’ve faced a bunch of r5 teams, but they have the same stats as they did previously.

Moosetiptronic

R1 6* until the 7th match, then r4 and r3 only to match 19, still works, then 1 r3 and any 2 r2+ onwards.

djr17

SummonerNR said:

During the buildup to the Infinite Streak (up to 15), because each additional 3 matches will look for an opponent team entirely 1 rank higher than what 3 matches prior gave (assuming you used the same team for yourself).

* at Streak=6, it will try to find team of all 1 rank higher than what you are bringing.
So, if there is no such “real summoner” team that high, it will give you what it has available as the highest potential team (being it's own Max’d, although NO Mastery, Thanos/Kang team).

So, before the advent of real 6* r5, bringing all 6* r4 would at that point start giving Thanos/Kang.
Now that there are real r5 available, you may get those as matchups instead.

Technically, at Streak=12, say your own team is all 6*r4, your opponent should be 6*r7 (which of course don’t even exist in the world of Thanos/Kang). So it does the best it can, formerly being T/K 6*r5. But now that real r5 exist, those real teams with r5 would be no different in the eyes of the matching system as what the T/K teams would be. So it could start matching you against the real teams with 6*r5 now.

————
But what actually *might* be a change in the algorithm now, is how high (or should say, how LOW) of a Team Rating you can still bring (after 15, well really after 20 or 22), and still get matchups that are the rough equivalent to those LOWER teams that you are now bringing during infinite streak.

Before, the lowest you could probably safely use would be teams of 5*r3. Who's 6* equivalent would be like a 6* Rank 0 (an imaginary rank below 6*r1 which is similar to 5*r4).

Maybe the algorithm is fixed to allow for as low as 4 ranks lower than what people have as best teams (so previously, 4 ranks below 6*r4 would be 5*r3).
And as such, now with 6*r5, maybe the fixed algorithm will only allow downwards as far as 5*r4 now (or 6*r1/25).

Or maybe such a coded algorithm never actually existed, but they just manually go into the code and bump that part up (“lowest minimum”) every now and then (when new ranks are possible) ?

But either way, I’d bet that “Minimum” will now start to be higher than it was before.

For now, my lowest PI 5r3 team still works, total PI a little over 20k.

Also, I did an experiment getting the streak going. I used all 5r1 teams for fights 1-12, then 2 5r5 and 1 5r4. No fights on 1-12 had opponents above 6r1, either not leveled, or only partially leveled. 13-15 were Thanos/Kang.

DNA3000

SummonerNR said:

During the buildup to the Infinite Streak (up to 15), because each additional 3 matches will look for an opponent team entirely 1 rank higher than what 3 matches prior gave (assuming you used the same team for yourself).

* at Streak=6, it will try to find team of all 1 rank higher than what you are bringing.
So, if there is no such “real summoner” team that high, it will give you what it has available as the highest potential team (being it's own Max’d, although NO Mastery, Thanos/Kang team).

So, before the advent of real 6* r5, bringing all 6* r4 would at that point start giving Thanos/Kang.
Now that there are real r5 available, you may get those as matchups instead.

Technically, at Streak=12, say your own team is all 6*r4, your opponent should be 6*r7 (which of course don’t even exist in the world of Thanos/Kang). So it does the best it can, formerly being T/K 6*r5. But now that real r5 exist, those real teams with r5 would be no different in the eyes of the matching system as what the T/K teams would be. So it could start matching you against the real teams with 6*r5 now.

————
But what actually *might* be a change in the algorithm now, is how high (or should say, how LOW) of a Team Rating you can still bring (after 15, well really after 20 or 22), and still get matchups that are the rough equivalent to those LOWER teams that you are now bringing during infinite streak.

Before, the lowest you could probably safely use would be teams of 5*r3. Who's 6* equivalent would be like a 6* Rank 0 (an imaginary rank below 6*r1 which is similar to 5*r4).

Maybe the algorithm is fixed to allow for as low as 4 ranks lower than what people have as best teams (so previously, 4 ranks below 6*r4 would be 5*r3).
And as such, now with 6*r5, maybe the fixed algorithm will only allow downwards as far as 5*r4 now (or 6*r1/25).

Or maybe such a coded algorithm never actually existed, but they just manually go into the code and bump that part up (“lowest minimum”) every now and then (when new ranks are possible) ?

But either way, I’d bet that “Minimum” will now start to be higher than it was before.

Actually, none of this is true (although it does echo a lot of the guess work that has been floating around for years). We actually know more or less precisely how the arena determines matches for us. See here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/268936/how-the-arena-works-part-one-what-is-a-deathmatch-anyway/p1

Note: my original post presented a theory, but you need to read the thread carefully to see the discussion between especially myself and Coathang3r, who had specific and accurate insight into what was going on. Short version: the arena calculates the power rating of our teams assuming they are not awakened (for reasons that are a bit involved). It then tries to find a matching team from a subset of all players that run the arena you're in, looking for a team that is some multiplier higher than you. The longer your streak, the higher the multiplier.

"Infinite streak" is when the whole thing breaks. At some point, your streak is so high the multiplier gets so high that the game literally cannot find an appropriate match. When that happens a fail safe kicks in and the game just finds an approximately equal rating match for you, until it can find a suitable match. We players call this fail safe "infinite streak."

But this means if your teams get too low, the game can suddenly find an appropriate match - this is a "death match." And also, when we players start acquiring and using higher rank champs, those champs become available for the arena to use, and teams that used to "break" the arena matcher because it couldn't find a suitable high-multiplier match can now find such a team, and it starts sending "deathmatches" against slightly higher teams.

Basically, once our streak gets going, the game is constantly trying to find a team to send against us that is about four times stronger in terms of "naked PI" (PI assuming unawakened). If we go too low, the arena finds such a team and we get a death match. If other players start using higher teams in the arena, then low teams that couldn't find a match can now find a match, and you get a death match again.