After reading through all of the news posts from yesterday, as well as a lot of the forum posts, there's one thing that keeps sticking in the back of my mind.
I've seen a handful of replies that Miike has given that say that the amount of 5* shards will not be changing with the introduction of 6*'s, and I'm curious to understand the why of that. (The existing reasoning being given that more 5* shards will be introduced to the game.)
Bear with me, this might get a little long, but I want to point out a few things.
Current sources of 5* Shards -
- Event quests * - 1,000 shards for Heroic, 500 Shards for Master
- Story quests * - 1,000 shards for Act 4 run-through, 3,000 shards for Act 4 completion, 400 shards for 5.1 run through, 600 shards for 5.1 complete, 700 shards for 5.2 run through, 1,200 shards for 5.2 completion
- Alliance War (Tier 1) - 605 shards
- Alliance Quest Event (Assuming all BGs complete) - 500 Shards
- SA (Top 3%-5%) - 500 Shards
- 4* Dupe - 275 shards (Can be achieved once a week in my current alliance)
- Arena - 1%-10% Basic - 350 shards, Arena 1%-10% Featured - 400 Shards
- Labryinth of Legends * - 20,000 shards (one time only, first run)
- Road to the Labryinth * - 1,000 shards
Other than selling 4* champs, those are the primary existing ways to pick up 5* shards. (Yes, I know we get them via calendar too, but that's never been a guaranteed amount per month, and therefore very hard to calculate.)
I'm in a pretty fortunate alliance. But I did the math for us, and here's what the landscape looks like in the current form in a given month that does not include story completion or LoL completion.
- 1,500 shards a month for event quests
- 605 x 6 = 3,650 shards (this assumes we hold 3 wars a week, over the course of a month, and win 50% of our wars)
- 2,000 shards a month for alliance quest completion
- 2,000 shards a month for SA, if we maintain that level
- 550 shards from dupes (assuming you pull at least 2 duped 4* over the course of a month)
- 0 - 7,500 potential shards (assuming 10 character arenas in August, and assuming you achieve at least the top 1-10% in both featured and basic arenas)
Now while I love this game to absolute pieces, I end up (after I calculate my arena contributions which are nowhere near 7,500), right around 12,000 (ish) shards a month. Sometimes more, if there are more arenas I'm doing, sometimes much closer to the 9,500 mark.
Assuming I'm not saving for features (which I am at present), that's 1 5* pull a month. Even if the shard amounts for every, single event, are doubled (which I find unlikely) that's still only going to give me 2 5* a month.
That might make total sense, considering I'm getting 4 4*'s a month (natural progression, etc), however the 5*'s in my roster have to play a pretty massive game to catch up with my 4*.
There are 48 5* heroes in the base pool in August, so this doesn't include anything in the featured hero pool. I own 12 5* heroes, two of which are duped through awakening gems. In order to achieve a 6* hero, I need to dupe a 5* hero 36 (I believe that is correct) times.
Even if I were to pull nothing but basics with the shards I have, it would still take me a minimum (assuming a doubled amount of 5* shards received) of a year and a half, with a TON of luck in dupes, to get anywhere near a single 6* hero. (18 months, two dupes a month = 36 dupes)
With all of that said, and the length of time it's going to continue to take to build up my 5* roster, I'm wondering two things (which may or may not have answers as yet):
1. By how much is the team planning to increase the amount of 5* shards? If it's not at least tripling or more, we're going to continue to have the same glass ceiling.
2. Why has the team not wanted to decrease the amount of shards a 5* costs? If a 4* is 2,000, and a 6* is 10,000, why would a 5* not be 5,000 or 7,500?
