Why the arena scores for Hercules don’t signal how broken the system is
SpideyFunko
Member Posts: 21,948 ★★★★★
Since people saw the high arena cutoff for six star Hercules, (170,280,131 to be exact) there have been some posts and comments about how the system is broken, and how this spells doom for the arena system going forward. These concerns are somewhat valid, as this score is on the high side and the general playerbase doesn’t want to grind out that much for a six star, with what the unit cost to refresh and the sheer roster depth required. Not to mention it’s an utter time sink and most of us have real life responsibilities. However, this score is at this point, incredibly rare and is not the norm, and therefore shouldn’t be fussed over. Now, those of you of the aforementioned “What’s next, 250 mil?” group may not simply take my word for it, so I have some data compiled from https://www.reddit.com/r/ContestOfChampsArena/ about the previous featured arena scores, along with some basic math for comparison.
The first round of the Black Widow Deadly Origin arena was run a week ago. She was the featured champion, and 95th place on the leaderboard netted a six star version of her with 79,229,316 points. Doing the math, that’s a gap of 91,050,815 points between 95th in the BWDO arena, and 100th in the Hercules arena. Now, you may be saying, “But Spidey! BWDO wasn’t a new champion, this comparison isn’t fair!” Well, let’s take the scores from the Overseer arena and compare with the ones from Hercules just like above. 95th place in the Overseer arena was given with a score of 140,500,125 points. Again doing the math, this time our gap is a much smaller 29,780,006 points. Still almost a gap of 30 million. But once again, I can hear your voice: “But Spidey! Overseer is a mediocre science champion unlike the hyped beast that is Hercules!” Alright, fine. Why not the scores from the Shang-Chi featured? This time, we can compare two number 100 scores. The last spot to get a six star in the Shang-Chi arena was achieved with a whopping score of 129,236,072. That equates to a gap of 41,044,059 points.
As the data and comparisons show, this first round of the Hercules arena was very high, even by the standards of the arena. And why is that? There’s a very simple answer to that question. The arena system isn’t broken. Hercules is. You don’t believe me? Let’s begin. First off, let’s hit the suicides angle. Is he friendly? Yes. He takes 50% less damage from bleeds, up to 80% if you run max coagulate. He takes 15% less damage from poison and reduces it’s healing reduction 20% less effective. He also has a synergy with himself that gives him +15% attack while suffering from the poison applied by Liquid Courage. Getting into his feats of strength, the main way he deals damage. He can get a feat in one of three ways: Intercepting the opponent, hitting a non stunned opponent with any hit of a heavy attack, and standing up after being knocked down. These can stack up to twelve and each feat of strength gives him 186.96 armor penetration and all attacks deal a burst of physical damage equal to 10% of the damage they dealt. When Herc completes a feat, he gains +50% buff duration and 1001.28 attack rating for 2 seconds. If Herc uses a special attack during that 2 second window, the bonus remains until the special attack is finished. Additionally, the first time a unique feat is completed in a fight, he gains a persistent charge. When Hercules starts a fight with persistent charges, he starts the fight with a number of strength equal to the number of persistent charges. Now this gives Hercules, when at 12 twelve strength, the ability to deal an additional 120% of damage on top of his basic attacks.
You’re thinking, so what, it’s just damage. Ghost has damage. Doom has damage. In addition to this damage, whenever Herc has a feat of strength, he becomes stun immune. Anytime he would be stunned, he just loses a feat instead. Encroaching stun, mesmerize, etc. As long as he has strength, he isn’t affected. If he dashes back after the first medium or light in a combo he inflicts a 7 second Infuriate debuff, which reduces the opponent’s offensive ability accuracy by 60% and makes them more aggressive, which allows for easier intercepts and helps to work around passive ai. Now, onto his specials. His special 1 gives a precision buff increasing his crit rate by 2150 for 25 seconds, but if you intercept the opponent with the special 1 you gain an additional two more. It also gives a true sense buff allowing him to ignore miss and auto block effects for 16 seconds. This makes him an option for Tunnel Vision or any pesky auto block/miss champions you may have problems with. His special 2 gives a 15 second cruelty buff increasing his critical damage rating by 1262.7. As with the special 1, if he intercepts the opponent with this attack, he gains two more. Also inflicts a three second stun debuff at the end. These two special attacks combined make him not only crit very often, but they also pack a real punch. Adding on his 120% damage from the feats of strength, and the opponents melt faster than ice in the sahara. His special 3 gives him a 4 second indestructible buff, and if the opponent has their special 3 afterwards he gets a power gain buff giving him a bar of power over 3 seconds.
Now for his signature ability. Along with giving him up to 35% combat power rate for 2 seconds after completing a feat, he gets an immortality buff that lasts from 3.9 to 9 seconds depending on his sig level. Now, normally this is a neat little bonus that can save you. However, what’s unique about this immortality is that while Hercules is using his specials or landing his basic combo hits, this buff is paused. Meaning it can last a lot longer if you attack with Hercules. This is so so so incredibly handy and is yet another great piece of utility. For more on Herc and his wide range of uses, please check out this showcase by @Karatemike415
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFauAO4Q2BY&list=PL5r3auj5KC63oJawD6Fs-Q_Ppwyhzt--h&index=15 Plus, he’s top 5 prestige in game. That’s another big one.
This kinda deviated from an arena post to a here’s what hercules can do post, but I hope you found it informative. As a reminder, the arena scores are not all going to suddenly become close to the 200mil range like Hercules, only when an incredibly broken champion like Herc comes around. Thanks for reading, and have a splendiferous day
The first round of the Black Widow Deadly Origin arena was run a week ago. She was the featured champion, and 95th place on the leaderboard netted a six star version of her with 79,229,316 points. Doing the math, that’s a gap of 91,050,815 points between 95th in the BWDO arena, and 100th in the Hercules arena. Now, you may be saying, “But Spidey! BWDO wasn’t a new champion, this comparison isn’t fair!” Well, let’s take the scores from the Overseer arena and compare with the ones from Hercules just like above. 95th place in the Overseer arena was given with a score of 140,500,125 points. Again doing the math, this time our gap is a much smaller 29,780,006 points. Still almost a gap of 30 million. But once again, I can hear your voice: “But Spidey! Overseer is a mediocre science champion unlike the hyped beast that is Hercules!” Alright, fine. Why not the scores from the Shang-Chi featured? This time, we can compare two number 100 scores. The last spot to get a six star in the Shang-Chi arena was achieved with a whopping score of 129,236,072. That equates to a gap of 41,044,059 points.
As the data and comparisons show, this first round of the Hercules arena was very high, even by the standards of the arena. And why is that? There’s a very simple answer to that question. The arena system isn’t broken. Hercules is. You don’t believe me? Let’s begin. First off, let’s hit the suicides angle. Is he friendly? Yes. He takes 50% less damage from bleeds, up to 80% if you run max coagulate. He takes 15% less damage from poison and reduces it’s healing reduction 20% less effective. He also has a synergy with himself that gives him +15% attack while suffering from the poison applied by Liquid Courage. Getting into his feats of strength, the main way he deals damage. He can get a feat in one of three ways: Intercepting the opponent, hitting a non stunned opponent with any hit of a heavy attack, and standing up after being knocked down. These can stack up to twelve and each feat of strength gives him 186.96 armor penetration and all attacks deal a burst of physical damage equal to 10% of the damage they dealt. When Herc completes a feat, he gains +50% buff duration and 1001.28 attack rating for 2 seconds. If Herc uses a special attack during that 2 second window, the bonus remains until the special attack is finished. Additionally, the first time a unique feat is completed in a fight, he gains a persistent charge. When Hercules starts a fight with persistent charges, he starts the fight with a number of strength equal to the number of persistent charges. Now this gives Hercules, when at 12 twelve strength, the ability to deal an additional 120% of damage on top of his basic attacks.
You’re thinking, so what, it’s just damage. Ghost has damage. Doom has damage. In addition to this damage, whenever Herc has a feat of strength, he becomes stun immune. Anytime he would be stunned, he just loses a feat instead. Encroaching stun, mesmerize, etc. As long as he has strength, he isn’t affected. If he dashes back after the first medium or light in a combo he inflicts a 7 second Infuriate debuff, which reduces the opponent’s offensive ability accuracy by 60% and makes them more aggressive, which allows for easier intercepts and helps to work around passive ai. Now, onto his specials. His special 1 gives a precision buff increasing his crit rate by 2150 for 25 seconds, but if you intercept the opponent with the special 1 you gain an additional two more. It also gives a true sense buff allowing him to ignore miss and auto block effects for 16 seconds. This makes him an option for Tunnel Vision or any pesky auto block/miss champions you may have problems with. His special 2 gives a 15 second cruelty buff increasing his critical damage rating by 1262.7. As with the special 1, if he intercepts the opponent with this attack, he gains two more. Also inflicts a three second stun debuff at the end. These two special attacks combined make him not only crit very often, but they also pack a real punch. Adding on his 120% damage from the feats of strength, and the opponents melt faster than ice in the sahara. His special 3 gives him a 4 second indestructible buff, and if the opponent has their special 3 afterwards he gets a power gain buff giving him a bar of power over 3 seconds.
Now for his signature ability. Along with giving him up to 35% combat power rate for 2 seconds after completing a feat, he gets an immortality buff that lasts from 3.9 to 9 seconds depending on his sig level. Now, normally this is a neat little bonus that can save you. However, what’s unique about this immortality is that while Hercules is using his specials or landing his basic combo hits, this buff is paused. Meaning it can last a lot longer if you attack with Hercules. This is so so so incredibly handy and is yet another great piece of utility. For more on Herc and his wide range of uses, please check out this showcase by @Karatemike415
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFauAO4Q2BY&list=PL5r3auj5KC63oJawD6Fs-Q_Ppwyhzt--h&index=15 Plus, he’s top 5 prestige in game. That’s another big one. This kinda deviated from an arena post to a here’s what hercules can do post, but I hope you found it informative. As a reminder, the arena scores are not all going to suddenly become close to the 200mil range like Hercules, only when an incredibly broken champion like Herc comes around. Thanks for reading, and have a splendiferous day
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Comments
Edit: You already said this 😔
Spidey is slowly but surely becoming the next D.N.A 3000
Jk jk, thx for the welcoming
Guess we'll never know 😂
1) the game is too broken for most people to jump into difficult content like Abyss or Act 6/7 exploration
and
2) many are sitting on tons of units from July 4th deals
So people are bored without content, stacked with units, and a top tier champ with high prestige came out. I'm not the least bit surprised this set records
I dont mind that they only reward the feature champ to the top 100, but they really should change the basic 6* arena to the top 5 or 10% to get the reward. I think a lot more people would be compelled to push the basic arena, thus potentially lowering the insane scores that the feature champ goes for.
170m score, assuming no boosts/starting streak already at 5 (3x multiplier) and lets say ONLY using 6* champs averaging 64k per win... thats roughly 2,656.25 fights. and that 170m isnt even the cutoff, it was 172 something.
Thats a total of 885.4 rounds, assuming every fight was won.
Lets take it a step further, if you experienced no latency, connection issues, or crashes (all while playing as effeciently and like a pro every fight)
on apple devices average round take around 70 seconds including load screens, on an android itll be about 90 seconds.
885.4 rounds x average time = total time (approximately)
apple = 17.216 hours
android = 22.135 hours
and that's being absolutely optimal & perfect conditions.
I personally have 90 something, and I wouldn't even consider putting myself through this torment. Moreso, don't think the wife and kids would appreciate it much.
The odds of pulling the 6* featured champ from a featured Cav crystal is 0.92%. That means we'd expect to pull that champ on average once out of every 108.7 crystals, which translates to about 32609 units. That's a rough estimate of how many units it would be reasonable to spend to get the champ: if you're spending a lot more than that, you might as well buy featured Cavs (of course, things aren't perfectly straight forward: you could still miss buying that many crystals due to random chance, but over the long haul if you target enough champs this way things will average out: in any case this is the statistical average value). 32609 units translates roughly into 543 rounds of refreshes with 6* champs.
If you're spending units on refreshes to grind for a featured champ, you should be boosting. Using 1.3x boosts on rank 3 6* champs you should be earning about 300k per round. So those refreshes should generate something like 163 million points under optimal conditions, just from those units refreshes, if you spent the maximum you would reasonably ever want to spend.
How much total points you would score would then depend on how much time you want to spend. Let's say a player was willing to spend a thousand rounds total. That would mean an additional 457 rounds. If you did seven complete rounds during a three day arena event (this is theoretically possible with help requests) it would take 195 6* champs to exclusively use 6* champs for 65 rounds and seven cycles or 455 rounds total, which would get us to 998 total rounds. There aren't that many 6* champs yet, but we're getting there. If we assume averaging something like 190k points per round for those rounds (this assumes the entire roster isn't ranked to r3, which would be impossible for the foreseeable future) we'd get 86,450,000 points. That would mean the theoretical "reasonable" maximum grind for a thousand rounds of time is about 250 million points. I should stress this is currently unachievable (the part about only using 6* champs, not the raw points), but top player rosters are gravitating towards this amount. This is also not the theoretical maximum, because players could decide to spend more than 1000 rounds on a featured grind (and do). But this is one data point when trying to determine how high scores can go. They can go at least this high without expending more effort than people are already doing now, with some roster growth and assuming throwing the maximum amount of units that is economically reasonable.
A thousand rounds is probably on the order of fourteen hours a day, and you'd have to eat and sleep on your champion recharge cycle, which means grinding into the night as that cycle drifts relative to the sun. But I've had harder work weeks, it is not a super human amount of effort. It probably does mean pausing most of the rest of your life for 72 hours though.
Throw in 5* champs and releasing the 1000 round limit, and you get all kinds of combinations of effort and units that can equal or surpass the 250 million point limit. But I think it is unlikely we will see cutoffs cross that point any time soon, because while it is possible some extremely dedicated people will shoot for scores above that to get warbound one day, I think that score is approaching the practical economic limits of grinding for a 6* champ even before it reaches the human limits.