So it’s no secret the best free way to get gems is to top rank 27500 score in PVP.
1500 gems per week is practically guaranteed if you can manipulate your league level by force losing enough trophies to stay in the lowest bronze league, thus having the matchmaking algorithm more likely give you characters you can kill on turn 1 with your better gear
If you play normally by trying to beat everyone you fight against, getting 27500 is a lot harder against other high gear level people in the top PVP leagues.
Is this intended behaviour or is us playing like Wimp Lo from Kung Pow really what you guys intended PVP to be?
I questioned why there was no incentive to progress in PVP 9 months ago. Nothing has really changed in that regard.
If you want to get maximum prizes from PVP then keeping down in the lower leagues will give you an easy ride. You will be placed against mostly new players with weak gear and make it easier for turn 1 wins. 15 battles to secure max weekly points, leaving you plenty battles to knock your league score negative should you wish.
I think the only downside to this is the loss of potential honor, but that has limited good uses. If you are in a very active kingdom that can sustain the key deal that is arguably the best use for honor, but few kingdoms can sustain that, and are otherwise penalised for being a full active kingdom, but I’ll leave that argument for another thread!
But the PVP matchmaking has some other issues which can be abused.
It tries to match primarily on gear score with another recently active player.
Matching on gear score can be exploited by fighting like Conan the Barbarian. Take your biggest melee weapon, strip off your armour and charge in. Minimum gear score, greater chance of a weak opponent, hope for a good board and a round 1 melee kill. The lower your league the more likely this is to work because low leagues have a steady influx of new low gear score players.
It doesn’t work as effectively as your go up the leagues, mostly because they have so few active players in them, and those that are active tend to equip their best loadout. You fight opponents with higher armour, resistance and health, making it harder to deal enough damage in 1 round for max points. Victory is pretty much guaranteed in all PVP encounters, it’s just speed that separates players.
You would expect to only fight players within the same league as you, but as shown in the linked post I was in the top end of Silver matched against a player in Platinum - two leagues higher. That should never be possible, but big mismatches like that can occur soon after weekly reset. The pool of recent players to match against seems to get reset, so it tries to match on gear score even when the leagues are way out.
Then a further weakness affecting brand new players. It does not factor in player level. The entry requirement may have changed, but I think PVP used to unlock at L8, and so until you reach L50 you can enter battles and be on much lower health than your opponent simply for being a lower level.
