Stuck...what to focus on for progression

[a holy terror]

Have recently hit the wall with my progression. I am at 100% with the campaigns, 93% or more with each of the patrons, cant make it further than torment level in Tiamat.
I have a party farming gems but dont get huge amounts, my highest levelled hero is about lvl 1600.
I occasionally do Azaka farming runs but the returns on these are becoming less and less.
Also I don't have any clue about jimothy, briv multi skipping (or whatever it is called?) or other methods to gain an advantage.
Despite my progress so far I haven't yet got the end End Game Gold achievement so figure there is still a way to go! Highest level achieved is 900.
So......should i just focus on gaining favour from events/time gates and slowly building that up and incrementally levelling my heroes, or is there a better option i could try?

[OldGamer]

Hi A Holy Terror,
Seems like you are at early end game.

I would assume you have all evergreen champions epic?
And I would assume you are Fully Epicing every new champ that comes out?

If not, get to this level next. For me that is farming until I have at least 400-600 gold chests per event, this gets me moreorless 90% of the time fully epic (FE) with a new champ. If I have to go more, I farm more during the event to gain that FE.

After this is all set up, I then focus on past champions which are not FE. Either through targeted timegates, or by their events in the same manner as the above.

Benchmark avg ilvls on champions become important after this. What is a benchmark?
A benchmark (or "floor") is where your lowest avg ilvl is. At first that could be as low as 10 on all champions, and then you raise it by 10 each time you can. This is now made easier by Electrum chests as now usually new champs are getting above 100 avg ilvls, at least for me. However, this is a good way to increase your power further and this extra power may squeeze out a few more favour % or levels to complete those hard variants.

I assume you have all Patron perks and unique items in the shop?
If not, get them.

All the above, leads to what you are searching for and that is 100% (by interpretation/inference of your forum message at least).

Just to note, your highest ilvl champ beats mine. But I can reach 1300s with relatively ease in events and 2,000 if I push and focus on strategies.

I would therefore, recommend searching up on Click dmg debuff strategy first. Usually you start off with the usual candidates/champs which have noticable debuffs for this. Grimm, Aila, Orkira, Gromma, Penelope, Freely, Warden/Strix etc...
But after awhile you get to advance stages of that strategy which is Jimothy, "Krydaling" and Artdestruction strategies. Many of these are qite investment heavy. Jimothy being the easiest though.

Simplified Jimothy:
Have:
Jim, Briv and Hew.
Briv needs to be at least 100% 1 skip, 4 skip is better.

Levels needed are:
Level of 4th piece of gear for Briv :
Normal epic :
1 area 100% - lvl 501
2 areas 100% - lvl 1501
3 areas 100% - lvl 3501
4 areas 100% - lvl 7501

Shiny :
1 area 100% - lvl 251
2 areas 100% - lvl 918
3 areas 100% - lvl 2251
4 areas 100% - lvl 4918

Golden :
1 area 100% - lvl 126
2 areas 100% - lvl 626
3 areas 100% - lvl 1626
4 areas 100% - lvl 3626

9 areas 100% - lvl 255501

Hew is also needed to be at least 5 / 3 but better at 1 / 0. (this means 5 kills with 3 adjacent etc). It's quite a lot of ilvls. You basically need their eggs at 1100% which is around 1,000 ilvls I think.

"Krydaling"
This strategy is rather like CDB but with a high dmg dealer. Krydale being a perfect candidate due to shenanigans with his ult.
Basically slot him in for Talin in your Click Debuff formation and beat those Tiamat Tiers with ease.

"Artdestruction"
Artemis is a heavy scaling character, with ilvls on his flute making you go to insane to cataclysmic levels in the game. A player tested an Arty formation with his ilvls at a modest 10k ilvls and went to 10,000 in levels in the game. (yes he did some background tech stuff to get to that point, and this was before the current " endwall" in the game of 2005.)

But this is very heavy investment and requires real money investment, as you really need the golden flute.

And Krond's strategy is pretty good too, as a sidenote. Both of these strategies (Arty and Krond) also require the Strong Core (costs gems 500k) as they both work well with that core.

Hope this helps.
OG

[MehZhure]

Originally posted by a holy terror:

I have a party farming gems but dont get huge amounts, my highest levelled hero is about lvl 1600. ... Highest level achieved is 900.

Clearly, you have not pushed with a proper debuff party. With radically less completed on patrons, and nowhere near those kind of ilvls, I have pushed into area 1200.

So, the primary champs you will be working with are: Orkira, Talin, Gromma, Briv, Krull, Freely/Jim, Beadle&Grimm, Aila, Yorven, Warden/Strix, and Penelope.

Yeah, that's too many champs to fit in a formation. There are conditions to when certain ones are used.

1) Yorven will be swapped out for Briv when you have pushed far enough that you are getting TPK'd (total party kill). Briv will be moved to the primary tank position at that point. The reason is to not waste his jumps early in the run.

2) Anytime you have a boss area with a lingering mob, FIRST try to kill it with penelope's ult. When that no longer works, you will temporarily swap Freely for Jim until it gets chicken'd...at which point, swap back to Freely.

3) During late game (close to absolute wall), you will start getting mobs stacking to 100 and gaining enrage stacks. It is at this point when you will need to additionally begin swapping Warden out for Strix. This doesn't generally work early on because her smelly debuff requires close proximity. Warden's debuff is sticky, so after it has built up (safe to say it is by the time there are enough mobs to become a danger to the tank), swapping Strix in will usually result in a quick wipe of all the enemies. Once the area is passed, of course, you will want to get Warden swapped back in.

4) Additionally, Grimm can be switched with Beadle to boost their debuff.

5) Finally, if you want to get aggressively interactive, save a standard DPS formation with Briv as the tank, and krull somewhere in the formation (because krull's stacks vanish if he is removed). When everything is stacked, but you still aren't breaking through, quickly swap formation to the DPS, and it *should* result in at least one enemy dying...which will cascade and kill them all (hopefully). Obviously, you then have to immediately swap back to the debuff formation.

If you are reaching into the 900's currently, with your ilvls, you can probably get to around area 1400-1500 reasonably easily...possibly further.

[kab_reg]

https://i.postimg.cc/NGxPnSZD/20220331171513-1.jpg

Nuking enemies with Penelope's ultimate can get you significantly farther than level 900.

https://i.postimg.cc/G2ynFj36/20220416062300-1.jpg

Grand Master difficulty in ToMT is also doable without CDB.
For reference, my highest ilvl (with the exception of Hew Maan) is around 1250.

[a holy terror]

Awesome, thanks for the replies. looks like i need to be a bit more strategic! Click debuff it is (and getting the missing epics!)
I would say Jimothy is out for now as its only really on the evergreens I have decent levels, and while i have paid for familiars i feel less inclined to do so for gear.

[OldGamer]

Originally posted by a holy terror:

Awesome, thanks for the replies. looks like i need to be a bit more strategic! Click debuff it is (and getting the missing epics!)
I would say Jimothy is out for now as its only really on the evergreens I have decent levels, and while i have paid for familiars i feel less inclined to do so for gear.

You can definitely start earlier with Jimothy, it just won't be that effective until 1 kill hew + 100% briv. Jim doesn't need any gear :)

I started around 5 kill hew doing Jimothy, that was when I broke 1,000 in an event. Since getting to 1 kill hew I can now easily break 1400 and if I try (note below) I can get to 1900+. Then if it's an easy event I can get past 2000. I have never been able to achieve the "idle to 2000" that some players can though.


Note: "trying", so hotswapping champs, bud spiking, protecting hew and mainly keeping an eye on briv. (due to him being 3 skip, sometimes an eye off a ball for even a second can cost me my whole run.)

[Hecate]

You can also build a strategy with legendaries or different choice of champions for more long term idle play. Alt strats (CDB, Jimothy, Spread damage shenanigans) will push you further but some of them are tedious to play.

Here is an example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797021450
This is not fully optimized as I didn't used Xerophon that run (and small other things).
Legendaries weight for around 8e36 there.
No silly ilvls (2500 for core/EG and 100-250 for event champions).
No djinn-tonic Baeloth, as I said, I don't like when it becomes tedious.
Basically they can go up to 1200 in campaigns and 1300+ in event/TG without monitoring. A few extra (50 areas, maybe) can be achieve with some sticky debuffs.

Another example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2786240208
It's a test I did to see if that formation can make Zariel's Lesson in Classes.
You can see that only 9 champions can do 900 with way less legendaries involved.
They have some margin as Xerophon only has 100 imitations at that time.

[kab_reg]

https://i.postimg.cc/k4Pgnhtn/20220420231515-1.jpg

My new record for Asharra in a regular campaign. Not true wall, but advancement was already unreliable.

[MehZhure]

Originally posted by Hecate:

You can also build a strategy with legendaries or different choice of champions for more long term idle play. Alt strats (CDB, Jimothy, Spread damage shenanigans) will push you further but some of them are tedious to play.

Here is an example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797021450
This is not fully optimized as I didn't used Xerophon that run (and small other things).
Legendaries weight for around 8e36 there.
No silly ilvls (2500 for core/EG and 100-250 for event champions).
No djinn-tonic Baeloth, as I said, I don't like when it becomes tedious.
Basically they can go up to 1200 in campaigns and 1300+ in event/TG without monitoring. A few extra (50 areas, maybe) can be achieve with some sticky debuffs.

Another example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2786240208
It's a test I did to see if that formation can make Zariel's Lesson in Classes.
You can see that only 9 champions can do 900 with way less legendaries involved.
They have some margin as Xerophon only has 100 imitations at that time.

Seems like it may be worth my time to start grinding for legendary gear...

[SRR Rig]

Originally posted by OldGamer:

For me that is farming until I have at least 400-600 gold chests per event

Wait, you're able to get 400-600 Event Gold Chests per Event? Don't those cost at least 2,500 favor per run with only a chance at getting a gold? Am I misunderstanding something?

[kab_reg]

IIRC, with a very good gem farming team, it is possible to get more than 3.5 million tokens for every event.

[SRR Rig]

Originally posted by kab_reg:

IIRC, with a very good gem farming team, it is possible to get more than 3.5 million tokens for every event.

...hoooooOw?!?!?!?! Do you know how? I've clearly been playing Events wrong.

I thought all you could do was just, open up a run, and collect the tokens every 22 seconds or whenever they drop, and, then use the 2500 to start a new run to 50, etc.

[Daggot]

One great thing about this game is that all of this is simply a function of time. You can do any of these active play swap out methods and get some good results. You're investing active time to make those gains. You can eventually make the same gains with more hands off play, but it will simply take longer. There's nothing wrong with that if you're having fun.

But, if you want to master the game, which isn't necessarily easy now that there are 100+ champions, you'll need to invest time understanding each champion and the various possible metas like the click debuff strategy, Azaka farming, speed formations, etc. It's all a question of how you invest your time in the game.

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by SRR Rig:

...hoooooOw?!?!?!?! Do you know how? I've clearly been playing Events wrong.

With nine-skipping Briv at Tall Tales.