Arena Infinite Streak Advice

Googan

Hi folks. I’m not the most ardent arena grinder in the world, and I’ve been using the same “technique” to get to infinite streak for quite some time (when I do decide to grind for a specific champ.)

Recently it seems as though the below method is becoming harder to do, so I was wondering if anyone has some more up-to-date advice on an easier way to reach the infinite streak.

Match 1-5: 5* Rank-3 champs
Match 6-10: 6* Rank-1 champs
Match 11-25: 6* Rank-3 & 5* Rank-5 champs
And from match 26 onwards I just keep my attackers above 10k PI.

What I’ve been finding recently is that:
- From +- match 9, I start facing defenders +- double my PI (this is not a major problem);
- From +- match 11 I face defenders +- triple my PI, and also start getting defenders like Maestro, Overseer, Onslaught etc who I don’t face at all in the early matches.

Any help and advice will be most appreciated.

Wolf911

i just get 3x multiplier with 6* r1

then start from my highest champs ( 7* r3s ) down

don't even use 6*s after that as I don't grind above the unit milestones

Furrymoosen

I have been running 6*R1 up until streak 11, then switching to 6*R3 until around 20, then going from top to bottom until I hit all the milestones. I get a couple annoying matches in there, but nothing impossible at least.

SummonerNR

Team differential keeps increasing up until 15.

So where you get to a team differential that would calculate out to an opponent that is higher than what real player's rosters have, that's when you get the Thanos/Kang (max rank, but no mastery) opponent.

So realize that as new “highest ranks” become available for players, that point keeps allowing higher opponents over time.

If your previous teams are not able to matchup against highest real teams (from like 11 thru 14), then you need to be increasing your own teams there.

Also once at Streak 15+, the “minimum to maintain streak” will similarly be increasing in “minimum” over time as real players have higher and higher ranked teams.

So need to occasionally adjust your “minimums” during streak.
(*note, initial streak range at 15 thru maybe 18, and up to potentially 20 or 21, need higher teams to maintain streak initially, versus once you get beyond that for the rest of the way)

Unyonface

Since I have a good roster this is what I do.
Fights 1-7 3-6* R1
Fight 8 2-6* R1, 1-5* R1
Fight 9 2-6* R1, 1-4* R1
Fight 10-14 6* R5
After I get to 15 I can use what I want to keep it going.

Googan

So I changed my approach a little based on the above advice and my roster, and was doing ok. I used:

Match 1-11: 6* Rank 1
Match 12-14: 7* Rank 1
Match 15-18: 6* Rank 3
Match 19-22: 6* Rank 2
Match 23-25: 5* Rank 5

Then in Match 28 I got the match-ups in the picture. Is it possibly because my attackers' PI were too low? How do I avoid matches like this after win streak 25?

@SummonerNR | @Furrymoosen | @Wolf911

DNA3000

IronAvenger said:

So I changed my approach a little based on the above advice and my roster, and was doing ok. I used:

Match 1-11: 6* Rank 1
Match 12-14: 7* Rank 1
Match 15-18: 6* Rank 3
Match 19-22: 6* Rank 2
Match 23-25: 5* Rank 5

Then in Match 28 I got the match-ups in the picture. Is it possibly because my attackers' PI were too low? How do I avoid matches like this after win streak 25?

@SummonerNR | @Furrymoosen | @Wolf911

There’s a mathematically answer to your question, and a rule of thumb answer that will, for most people, be more practical.

The mathematically precise answer is this. Every few arena cycles, the game picks a random subset of all players that do arena, and looks for your match ups based on the teams they use. This random subset is different for each arena player. It does this because it would be impractical for the game to search all of the thousands of players who play arena to find your matches. With some exceptions (I.e. the Kang and Thanos match ups) matches come from the teams those other players actually use.

The game looks for match up that meet a specific criteria. There is an invisible difficulty multiplier in the arena, that goes from 0.8 to 4.0. The higher your streak counter, the higher the multiplier goes. It maxes out around streak 19 or so. Beyond that point the multiplier remains capped at 4.0.

The arena looks for match up teams that are the multiplier higher than your team’s PI. So if your team has total PI of 30k, the game looks for a team with 120k total PI. But there’s a very complicated catch. The game doesn’t actually look at PI. It looks at something sometimes referred to as “naked PI.” Naked PI is the PI of your champion without masteries, synergies, or sig levels. More or less, it’s the PI listed in auntm.ai. So your 30k PI team might actually only have a naked PI of 25k or even 20k. The game looks for a match up with a 100k or 80k naked PI.

If the game cannot find such a match, it defaults to a standby match that is about 1.0x your own team’s PI. In effect, the arena match maker is “broken” and defaults to a low match up to find a match. So if you can build streak high enough, and make that invisible multiplier high enough, and then use teams that are high enough, no team that anyone uses will be high enough, you will break the match finder, and default to low matches. This is what players call “infinite streak.”

But if you keep using lower and lower teams, eventually the game will be able to find a 4x match (remember, it’s using naked PI). When that happens, it uses that match, and you get what you show in your picture.

So how do you avoid this? Just don’t use a team that is too low. What’s “too low?” That’s trickery. Too low is, for the specific subset of players you’re currently being matched against, find the strongest team those players ever use, calculate their naked PI, then only use teams whose naked PI is more than 25% of that naked PI.

Unfortunately, for every player that max PI is going to be slightly different, because they are matching against different players than you, and facing different teams than you. And this is a moving target, because the maximum PI that your opponents use increases over time.

Absent doing a lot of complex calculations, the best rule of thumb is to use trial and error. Go as low as you dare, but if streak ever breaks, don’t go that low ever again. And be wary when new ranks come out. When 7* Rank 4 becomes a possibility, be prepared for the lowest safe team to jump upward as a result.

If you have no idea where the floor is at all, then an extremely rough rule of thumb is that it’s about one third the PI of the highest team you can match against, if you are running recoil. Notice your team is slightly less than one third of the visible PI of the team you got matched against. If you run the naked PI calculations, you’ll probably find that the opponent team is about 4x your team’s naked PI, and that’s why the arena was able to find a proper multiplier match of about 4x, generating what people commonly refer to as a deathmatch.

Googan

DNA3000 said:

IronAvenger said:

So I changed my approach a little based on the above advice and my roster, and was doing ok. I used:

Match 1-11: 6* Rank 1
Match 12-14: 7* Rank 1
Match 15-18: 6* Rank 3
Match 19-22: 6* Rank 2
Match 23-25: 5* Rank 5

Then in Match 28 I got the match-ups in the picture. Is it possibly because my attackers' PI were too low? How do I avoid matches like this after win streak 25?

@SummonerNR | @Furrymoosen | @Wolf911

There’s a mathematically answer to your question, and a rule of thumb answer that will, for most people, be more practical.

The mathematically precise answer is this. Every few arena cycles, the game picks a random subset of all players that do arena, and looks for your match ups based on the teams they use. This random subset is different for each arena player. It does this because it would be impractical for the game to search all of the thousands of players who play arena to find your matches. With some exceptions (I.e. the Kang and Thanos match ups) matches come from the teams those other players actually use.

The game looks for match up that meet a specific criteria. There is an invisible difficulty multiplier in the arena, that goes from 0.8 to 4.0. The higher your streak counter, the higher the multiplier goes. It maxes out around streak 19 or so. Beyond that point the multiplier remains capped at 4.0.

The arena looks for match up teams that are the multiplier higher than your team’s PI. So if your team has total PI of 30k, the game looks for a team with 120k total PI. But there’s a very complicated catch. The game doesn’t actually look at PI. It looks at something sometimes referred to as “naked PI.” Naked PI is the PI of your champion without masteries, synergies, or sig levels. More or less, it’s the PI listed in auntm.ai. So your 30k PI team might actually only have a naked PI of 25k or even 20k. The game looks for a match up with a 100k or 80k naked PI.

If the game cannot find such a match, it defaults to a standby match that is about 1.0x your own team’s PI. In effect, the arena match maker is “broken” and defaults to a low match up to find a match. So if you can build streak high enough, and make that invisible multiplier high enough, and then use teams that are high enough, no team that anyone uses will be high enough, you will break the match finder, and default to low matches. This is what players call “infinite streak.”

But if you keep using lower and lower teams, eventually the game will be able to find a 4x match (remember, it’s using naked PI). When that happens, it uses that match, and you get what you show in your picture.

So how do you avoid this? Just don’t use a team that is too low. What’s “too low?” That’s trickery. Too low is, for the specific subset of players you’re currently being matched against, find the strongest team those players ever use, calculate their naked PI, then only use teams whose naked PI is more than 25% of that naked PI.

Unfortunately, for every player that max PI is going to be slightly different, because they are matching against different players than you, and facing different teams than you. And this is a moving target, because the maximum PI that your opponents use increases over time.

Absent doing a lot of complex calculations, the best rule of thumb is to use trial and error. Go as low as you dare, but if streak ever breaks, don’t go that low ever again. And be wary when new ranks come out. When 7* Rank 4 becomes a possibility, be prepared for the lowest safe team to jump upward as a result.

If you have no idea where the floor is at all, then an extremely rough rule of thumb is that it’s about one third the PI of the highest team you can match against, if you are running recoil. Notice your team is slightly less than one third of the visible PI of the team you got matched against. If you run the naked PI calculations, you’ll probably find that the opponent team is about 4x your team’s naked PI, and that’s why the arena was able to find a proper multiplier match of about 4x, generating what people commonly refer to as a deathmatch.

Thank you @DNA3000 !! This is the best explanation of Arena that I've EVER come across!

Furrymoosen

DNA3000 said:

IronAvenger said:

So I changed my approach a little based on the above advice and my roster, and was doing ok. I used:

Match 1-11: 6* Rank 1
Match 12-14: 7* Rank 1
Match 15-18: 6* Rank 3
Match 19-22: 6* Rank 2
Match 23-25: 5* Rank 5

Then in Match 28 I got the match-ups in the picture. Is it possibly because my attackers' PI were too low? How do I avoid matches like this after win streak 25?

@SummonerNR | @Furrymoosen | @Wolf911

There’s a mathematically answer to your question, and a rule of thumb answer that will, for most people, be more practical.

The mathematically precise answer is this. Every few arena cycles, the game picks a random subset of all players that do arena, and looks for your match ups based on the teams they use. This random subset is different for each arena player. It does this because it would be impractical for the game to search all of the thousands of players who play arena to find your matches. With some exceptions (I.e. the Kang and Thanos match ups) matches come from the teams those other players actually use.

The game looks for match up that meet a specific criteria. There is an invisible difficulty multiplier in the arena, that goes from 0.8 to 4.0. The higher your streak counter, the higher the multiplier goes. It maxes out around streak 19 or so. Beyond that point the multiplier remains capped at 4.0.

The arena looks for match up teams that are the multiplier higher than your team’s PI. So if your team has total PI of 30k, the game looks for a team with 120k total PI. But there’s a very complicated catch. The game doesn’t actually look at PI. It looks at something sometimes referred to as “naked PI.” Naked PI is the PI of your champion without masteries, synergies, or sig levels. More or less, it’s the PI listed in auntm.ai. So your 30k PI team might actually only have a naked PI of 25k or even 20k. The game looks for a match up with a 100k or 80k naked PI.

If the game cannot find such a match, it defaults to a standby match that is about 1.0x your own team’s PI. In effect, the arena match maker is “broken” and defaults to a low match up to find a match. So if you can build streak high enough, and make that invisible multiplier high enough, and then use teams that are high enough, no team that anyone uses will be high enough, you will break the match finder, and default to low matches. This is what players call “infinite streak.”

But if you keep using lower and lower teams, eventually the game will be able to find a 4x match (remember, it’s using naked PI). When that happens, it uses that match, and you get what you show in your picture.

So how do you avoid this? Just don’t use a team that is too low. What’s “too low?” That’s trickery. Too low is, for the specific subset of players you’re currently being matched against, find the strongest team those players ever use, calculate their naked PI, then only use teams whose naked PI is more than 25% of that naked PI.

Unfortunately, for every player that max PI is going to be slightly different, because they are matching against different players than you, and facing different teams than you. And this is a moving target, because the maximum PI that your opponents use increases over time.

Absent doing a lot of complex calculations, the best rule of thumb is to use trial and error. Go as low as you dare, but if streak ever breaks, don’t go that low ever again. And be wary when new ranks come out. When 7* Rank 4 becomes a possibility, be prepared for the lowest safe team to jump upward as a result.

If you have no idea where the floor is at all, then an extremely rough rule of thumb is that it’s about one third the PI of the highest team you can match against, if you are running recoil. Notice your team is slightly less than one third of the visible PI of the team you got matched against. If you run the naked PI calculations, you’ll probably find that the opponent team is about 4x your team’s naked PI, and that’s why the arena was able to find a proper multiplier match of about 4x, generating what people commonly refer to as a deathmatch.

This is why we keep you around. Always ready with the details no one ever thought they would need, but are extremely helpful.