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I'm probably ascending the wrong champs (as an arena grinder)
DNA3000
Member, Guardian Guardian › Posts: 21,050 Guardian
A couple weeks ago I posted an article about how fast I was currently competing all the milestone rewards in the standard three-day cycle arenas (the two 4-7* arenas and the Summoner Trials). The bottom line is that on average I was taking about 34 rounds to do the basic arena, 44 rounds to do the featured, and about 116 rounds to do the summoner trials arenas, to hit all of the milestone rewards. I was estimating about 90 seconds per round, but more careful measurements showed I was averaging closer to 100 seconds. I can sustain 90 seconds per round often, but the occasional nastier defender pulls the average down quite a bit, and I had to record large number of rounds to see that.
Overall, that means I am taking, on average, about (34+44+116)*100 = 19400s ~= 5.4 hours total. That's every three days.
I was musing about how much faster I would get over time. After all, my roster keeps getting stronger. I continue to rank my 7r1s to R2, I keep ranking more 6* champs to R5. My speed slowly improves as I score more points. For fun I started calculating how much faster I would get, factoring in rank ups over time, and even stuff like opening new 7* ranks.
And then it hit me. The single biggest way I could save time grinding arena milestones was the one thing I wasn't doing. I should be ascending my four star champs..
We all get tier 1 dust, and I've been typically ascending 5* champs as I those overflow my inventory just to use them up. It costs 100 dust to ascend a 5* champ, and I've ascended six already. That's 600 dust. I did also ascend a couple 4* champs, but just to see what ascension did to them. I should have been thinking about the arena.
There's a formula for calculating points in the arena that depends on a few things: synergy bonuses, your own PI, your arena opponent PI, and the rarity of the champs you use. It isn't as simply as if your PI is 50% higher you score 50% more points. But you do score more points. By my estimates, if I were to ascend all the 4* champs I currently use in the summoner trials arena, my average PI would increase by about 30% and my points per round should increase by about 24%. That's significant. I am currently averaging 114 rounds or so to hit all the Summoner trials milestones. If I was scoring 24% more points per round, that number would drop from 114 to about 92. That's twenty two fewer rounds.
Since it currently takes me about 192 rounds total to clear all the milestones in all three arenas, this would reduce the total amount of time necessary to clear everything by about 11%. Or to put it another way, it would reduce the total time required from about five hours 23 minutes to about four hours 47 minutes.
I've already burned the equivalent of 12 4* champs worth of dust ascending 5* champs. I though the logical thing to do with that dust was ascend the strongest champs possible, which was the 5* champs. That stops now. I'm going to start devoting all my tier 1 dust to ascending 4* champs, and see if the predicted improvement actually arises. It'll be interesting to see how my arena speed improves over time. But given the relatively low opportunity cost here (what are you really getting from ascending 5* champs) *if* you are an arena grinder and *if* you grind the Summoner Trials arena, this seems to be the best possible return on investment for your tier 1 dust.
Is this return guaranteed to happen? No, its not, which is why I'm going to start testing it. There are many variables here, some of which are not easy to predict. In particular, when I ascend my 4* champs and increase their PI that won't guarantee that opponent PI will rise in proportion. I might be forced to turn off arena express to unlock the full potential of this, which would slow down my time per round and partially offset the time saved by doing fewer rounds. We'll have to see. Needless to say, its going to take a while to fully ascend enough 4* champs to make a measurable difference. So this will be a long term experiment.
Overall, that means I am taking, on average, about (34+44+116)*100 = 19400s ~= 5.4 hours total. That's every three days.
I was musing about how much faster I would get over time. After all, my roster keeps getting stronger. I continue to rank my 7r1s to R2, I keep ranking more 6* champs to R5. My speed slowly improves as I score more points. For fun I started calculating how much faster I would get, factoring in rank ups over time, and even stuff like opening new 7* ranks.
And then it hit me. The single biggest way I could save time grinding arena milestones was the one thing I wasn't doing. I should be ascending my four star champs..
We all get tier 1 dust, and I've been typically ascending 5* champs as I those overflow my inventory just to use them up. It costs 100 dust to ascend a 5* champ, and I've ascended six already. That's 600 dust. I did also ascend a couple 4* champs, but just to see what ascension did to them. I should have been thinking about the arena.
There's a formula for calculating points in the arena that depends on a few things: synergy bonuses, your own PI, your arena opponent PI, and the rarity of the champs you use. It isn't as simply as if your PI is 50% higher you score 50% more points. But you do score more points. By my estimates, if I were to ascend all the 4* champs I currently use in the summoner trials arena, my average PI would increase by about 30% and my points per round should increase by about 24%. That's significant. I am currently averaging 114 rounds or so to hit all the Summoner trials milestones. If I was scoring 24% more points per round, that number would drop from 114 to about 92. That's twenty two fewer rounds.
Since it currently takes me about 192 rounds total to clear all the milestones in all three arenas, this would reduce the total amount of time necessary to clear everything by about 11%. Or to put it another way, it would reduce the total time required from about five hours 23 minutes to about four hours 47 minutes.
I've already burned the equivalent of 12 4* champs worth of dust ascending 5* champs. I though the logical thing to do with that dust was ascend the strongest champs possible, which was the 5* champs. That stops now. I'm going to start devoting all my tier 1 dust to ascending 4* champs, and see if the predicted improvement actually arises. It'll be interesting to see how my arena speed improves over time. But given the relatively low opportunity cost here (what are you really getting from ascending 5* champs) *if* you are an arena grinder and *if* you grind the Summoner Trials arena, this seems to be the best possible return on investment for your tier 1 dust.
Is this return guaranteed to happen? No, its not, which is why I'm going to start testing it. There are many variables here, some of which are not easy to predict. In particular, when I ascend my 4* champs and increase their PI that won't guarantee that opponent PI will rise in proportion. I might be forced to turn off arena express to unlock the full potential of this, which would slow down my time per round and partially offset the time saved by doing fewer rounds. We'll have to see. Needless to say, its going to take a while to fully ascend enough 4* champs to make a measurable difference. So this will be a long term experiment.
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Comments
Then after the 15th round, boost up like crazy. Then cycle the top 5 groups more often then doing longer grinds.
I never use express mode, even when I'm doing feature grinds and putting up 150-160mil. Why? Well, based on my observations, there is little to no benefit to it, especially when you target a score relative to time invested to achieve that score.
I noticed this while running my entire roster of 6*s, 87 teams. Without express mode I can do 35 rounds in 1hour, compared to 40 rounds with express mode. That comes to 2.5h without express mode vs 2h10-15min with it. But I can pick the highest rated opponent and get more points, about 30k more points on average per round. Over 87 teams, thats over 2.5mil.
If I used arena express mode, how would I make up for that points deficit? By playing another 10-12 rounds, bringing the total time to around 2.5hours. So, 2.5hours with or without express mode to score the same amount of points, but with it on I had to do 10 extra rounds. That means more blisters for my thumbs.
Now, this thread is just about grinding milestones. So here are my numbers:
Summoner trials: 25 teams of only 4r5 (no ascensions) - 105 rounds - 3h appprox over 4 sessions
6* Basic - 11 teams of only 6rA and 6r5A, build streak to 5 using r4s - 27 rounds - 45min approx over 2 sessions
6* feature - 23 teams of 7*, build streak to 5 with 6r4 - 41 rounds - approx 1h15min over 2 sessions.
All in all, it takes me about 5hours over 3 days to hit all milestones.
I also use synergy teams to speed up fights. Easy ones are Nebula with Proxima, Apoc with Cable, Stark spidey with Blade. Other synergies just give a bit of attack or power gain. Most just give a PI boost for extra points.
Another thing I do in the 6* arenas, since this is about grinding units, I pick my opponent based on rarity, not PI. Meaning I try to fight 7* opponents because they give more battlechips than a 6*.
Now, everytime I play arena I'm doing something else, like watch a movie, tv show, sports game, youtube video. So the time investment is already there and not dictated by arena. That means I'd rather do 10 less rounds than save 15-20min with express mode.
I do 4 + 8 + 22ish mill every round of arena.
54 4R5, 39 x 7*s and 33 R5/4s gets me there.
I’ll put on a podcast on youtube or watch a football match, while I do arena.
Yes, you risk a few losses when things get intense in the match...attacker alone with the goalkeeper, and suddenly your attacker is dead in mcoc...but that's just how it is 🤭
My experience is that if you ascend a 5/65, you get this champ as 6* or 7* shortly afterwards 😜
With my account I have made sure to rank and ascend only the heaviest hitters first, such as hit monkey, storm, gamora and OG Thor etc.
I feel like my rounds are faster than 90 seconds but I am also running a pretty ridiculous damage setup which is probably unnecessary, with all points in the crit tree, even the lesser crit masteries as well as full pierce and courage for more damage, on top of full suicides.
When I get to 50 r5 and ascended 4 star champs I might go back to 5 stars.
🤭
A 4* rank 5 ascended champion takes 16 seconds to finish a fight
I'm giving a typical example, different champions can be faster or slower, not considering defenders like Nick Fury etc
So you save about 20% of time needed per fight
4 seconds isn't a lot but when you grind a few hundreds champions, it adds up to hours
T1 dust isn't widely available to ascend every 4* champion
I have 287 4* rank 5 champions and I don't think I will ever acquire enough T1 dust to ascend every single one of them
I also don't grind arena with about 62k arena wins over 9.5 years
But not every 4* champion is like Okoye so that's not normal timing
On my TODO list is to quantify this, but I haven't had time to do a complete quantitative analysis.