Arena Question

Anyone know why I stopped getting Thanos/Kang matches at this point?
I feel like if I use low rank 6s or even 7R1s now I will get death matches?
I don't play Arena much so please school me, thanks.

Comments

Furrymoosen

They somewhat don't exist anymore after the algorithm hits a certain difficulty multiplier. You pretty much won't see them ever after streak 14/15.

TotemCorruption

Ok, thanks. Any tips to keep the difficulty low moving forward from this point?

ahmynuts

This is just not true

Furrymoosen

As long as you don't use champs that are too weak (like 12k PI or lower), you should pretty much only see matchups at or right around your champ's level from here on out.

TotemCorruption

Makes sense. What about tanking the 3rd champ (like two 6R3s and one bottom tier 5 star)? Would that decrease the difficulty of matchups or just get ignored by the system?

Furrymoosen

Doing that in later streaks would probably increase the difficulty. Here's my routine:

0-10 - 3 6r1
11-19 - 3 6r3 (note, 11-13ish will be "death" matches against 7r3 champs. You can shift that by doing your strongest champs, but then you will get Kang/Thanos teams and it really just means less points)
20+ - top of roster down until I get back around 6r3/r2

My roster is big enough that I finish all the milestones just going to 7* from 11 on and just going from the bottom of my 7* up to the top. But of course not everyone can do that.

spidyjedi84

Ignored by the system, in my experience. It will still give you three tough competitors. So, you're gambling at that point on needing to win two wins and forfeiting a third. If the game wants to break your streak, it's going to break your streak.

TotemCorruption

Got it, thanks for the advice.

TotemCorruption

Makes sense, thanks.

Feuerschwer

yeah it’ll give you matchups based on the total/average PI-sandbagging gives a chance at easier matchups but a) you’re losing points from the guaranteed loss and b) there’s no safety net, you have to win your other two fights so you can get stuck with no good options

Java_Junkie

if you’re roster covers, from fights 9-20 are gonna be Kang? Thanos if you stay 7*r3, r2, r1, two r2 and a 3, or 3x r2.

that’s about the conversion point; higher champ rarities all over starts making 6* more problematic.

ALL roster dependent, and good luck with it @TotemCorruption !

TotemCorruption

Thanks!

DNA3000

What happens when you tank one team member depends on where in your streak you are.

As you build up your streak, the arena looks for stronger and stronger teams to face you. There's a multiplier (that is completely different from the points multiplier) that starts at 0.8 and increases to just under 4.0 as your streak increases from 1 to around 20 or so.. The arena is looking for a team that has a PI that much higher than you.

Because the arena records and samples the teams other players bring into the arena to use against you, there is a maximum possible team - the highest that exists that anyone is actually using in the arena. So it can happen if the multiplier climbs high enough that there is no such team high enough. If you're using a bunch of 7*R3s in the arena, obviously there are no teams four times higher than that. When that happens, the arena defaults to looking for a low multiplier team to ensure it can use something against you. That's what players see when they reach "infinite streak."

Now, if you're at a low streak count and the multiplier itself is relatively low, say 1.5, then sandbagging can help. Imagine you have three 10k PI champs, with a total of 30k PI. At 1.5x multiplier the arena will look for a team with 45k total PI. That's probably going to be something like three 15k PI opponents (although it could be different: we are talking about sandbagging and the game uses teams other players use). So you'd be facing three fights 10k vs 15k. That might be rough. But suppose you replace one of those champs with a very weak 1k champ. Your total PI is now 21k, and the arena will look for a team of about 31.5k to use against you. That's likely to be a team of three champs of about 10.5k PI. Now you have two even matches and one horribly lopsided one. If you win the two even matches, you win the round. This can help certain players.

But now let's consider the case where you are high in the streak, and the multiplier is 3.9x. Now a team of three 10k champs will have a PI of 30k, and the arena will look for an opponent team of 117k. That's something like a team of three 39k opponents. There might not be any such team, so you force the match maker to default to some low difficulty team. But if you now replace one champ with a 1k sandbag, your PI drops to 21k, the arena starts looking for a team with three 27.3k champs. That might be possible to find, and suddenly you've triggered a deathmatch.

So sandbagging can help build up streak, but it is usually a very bad thing to do once you've build up a high streak count.

Note: all of the numbers I've used as examples are simplified, as the arena uses special calculations to find matches that doesn't use champion PI directly, it uses something some refer to as "naked PI" which is the PI a champion has without synergies, class advantage or awakening signature levels. That's a whole different discussion.