Dealing with 3.2 Rifts - A Scumbag Suitcase Story

[Am_Suitcase]

Hello all! My name's Am_Suitcase, trustworthy individual and innocent at that! Never did anything wrong at all! And after seeing some feeling 3.2 is very unfair. Do not fret! Ol Suity is here to help! If anything, I think this is rift at it's best.

Spoiler: Some Context of Me First.

For context of the writer of this guide, in 3.0 I started as a Gold 2 and managed to hold my ground to achieve Diamond 4 and a little bit of Diamond 3. I've held that title until update 3.1 where I've felt the matchmaking had gone bad. Before 3.1, I was a player who'd often get a good share of 3-4s and 4-3s. Maybe every so often that occasional 5-2. But at 3.1, I considered it a miracle that I had 2-5. I had simply been completely bodied because of the better collection and I gave up on rifts for a long time. Keeping the diamond 4 for awhile until 5 weeks into the game where I dropped back to Gold 2. By update 3.2 however, the far better system has allowed me to finally reach into a chance. No longer had I had to suffer badly every single match. Now, I found myself consistently getting 6-1s and 5-2s. Now I don't feel like I am going to win no doubt or get curbstomped, now I actually do have the tension feeling of needing to strategize and not be forced to overtly spam a Xeno and that Hack n Splash. I could actually diversify on my strategies and realize where to go from there. With these methods, I was able to crawl back up to Diamond 4 and eventually I reached Diamond 3 once more. And I believe you can to!

Spoiler: The Guide:

KNOW YOUR OPPONENTS:

I cannot stress this enough. Know your opponent’s composition, the nodes, the modifiers and the catalysts. Knowing which fighter would fare better in a specific circumstance is great. For example:

An Armor Rating catalyst on Reactive Armor can easily be handled by the use of Sketchy, Silent Kill or Doublicious. Hell, a Harlequin with battle butt is also an excellent choice.

Alternatively, you may encounter nodes that do not have catalysts at all. These nodes should be pretty easily doable but never underestimate the fighters anyways.

Remember that as if 3.2, only three nodes actually do have stat boosts: Reactive Armor, Boss Node, and the incredibly fun and balanced node where Just Kitten is fun to fight in. Every other node lacks any kind of natural stat boost to the opponents. In short: those three nodes should be where you throw your best fighters in.

And speaking of throwing fighters in, look at the type of opponent and check their fighter score. You can tell when a fighter is maxed out or not fully leveled. This is where I would say: BE EFFICIENT.

You see that 5,321 fighter score Inkling, it has no marquee, by itself and has a pretty minor catalyst on it. DON’T waste a valuable fighter on that type of opponent! You’ll never know when you’ll need that Diamond Toad Warrior for something tougher! Instead opt for something relatively equal but still could handle the Inkling. Utilizing lower gold fighters or defensive diamonds is often more efficient for these situations as chances are you may not use them anyways later on.

YOU’RE NOT SUPERMAN:

You are not going to win every node! Be aware rift A.I is some of the roughest you’ll encounter so staying vigilant against them is key. Not every rift is going to end in your success and you may often lose a fair lot. However, take it as a learning experience. “Maybe I should reserve my fighters more and think up more carefully without taking too much of a risk.”

Being salty is almost always inevitable. I will admit myself that I can pretty ragey when I bring the wrong fighter against an Armor Rating Private Dick being backed by a Surgeon General. But I am here to say that being salty doesn’t mean you’re bad at the game. It is just the opponent did better and/or had a more solid base.

CATALYSTS:

Some catalysts are admittedly really cheap. Ones such as Scratching Post for example, can mean certain death if you are not prepared! But as dangerous many catalysts are, many do possess an Achilles’ heel.

DARKNUT /ARMOR RATING/ FROST ARMOR– Armor Break is an option, Harlequin with Battle Butt is a great example of this. If that isn’t an option, utilizing Doublicious, Silent Kill or even an outtake is great enough to handle this node. Props extra for Claw + Sketchy Combo

FUTILE RESISTANCE – With armor rating, this catalyst is admittedly broken. Without it however, the fighters to use here and ones that have strong individual hits which include Cerebellas and Beowulfs.

SCRATCHING POST – Doublicious is a good candidate if well invested in for this catalyst. Opting for defensive fighters if the node isn’t heavily invested in is an option to. Immunity excels here as you’ll be able to block freely. At the beginning of the match, back-dashing is advised and learning to intercept is crucial against a Fortune with this catalyst.

PLAN YOUR MATCHES AT GOOD TIMES:

It is highly ill-advised to start your match searching early. A schedule I found using for myself is the following:
Monday – Ignore

Tuesday – Que 2 matches (2)

Wednesday – Ignore

Thursday – Que 2 matches (4)

Friday – Ignore

Saturday – Que 2 matches (6)

Sunday – Que for 1 match (7)

I take breaks in between in order to have a clean fresh mind when I start rifting. It’s important to not be in a negative bad mood when matchmaking as you yourself are a factor in winning a rift match.

So that is my attempt of my input and guide for Rifts! If this is popular I'll see to it that I try to expand on this more.

If you've reached diamond tier, congrats! You've earned it! If you're still gold, do not panic and worry! Take it from me falling down from grace and getting back up.

And before I sign off here is quick note:
Ease your mind, keep calm, and stealth on!

 

[evilgordo]

Another guide...I think guides of this nature gloss over one important assumption: Your collection of cards. If you have the collection to achieve and maintain Diamond Tier, yes, Rifts is worth the effort I guess, since you're an End Game player and you'll keep refining your collection with those Tier rewards. And guess what? Those End Game players keep raising the bar for those rewards, just look at the 10% scores for PFs. The stronk keep getting stronker. By the time I get my collection to current End Game levels, rewards will be further out of reach as the current End Game players collection will have grown that much more as well...there is no 'catch-up' mechanic for new/casual players.

I'm still not sold on Rifts even if the match-making was perfect. For Gold 4 and under, what's the point? 7, 2-hour sessions (minimum) for No character Experience. No player Experience. The rewards (at the end of the week) aren't worth the extra play time on top of grinding Dailies/MIssions/PF. For 1 Rift battle (2hours), I could spend that time training my cards instead. Until you have a large collection of Max golds and solid Diamonds, Rifts will be frustrating and annoying regardless of how calm you are or how you strategize a battle map.

 

[fanghoul]

Here's a piece of strategy I'm going to be trying out soon for cheesing my way through rifts: Stage Fright Squigly, with a maxed out Evil Dead MA.

Just let her eat a blockbuster at the beginning of the fight, and enjoy the fact that you now have a 20 second doom on one enemy, and the option to apply curse and wither on everyone else that comes up. So many hard nodes come down to either 1) there being too many damn buffs showing up on enemies or 2) people having invested so much in +meter gain moves that enemy blockbusters are just being shot off constantly. This handles those two problems while maybe also taking out an annoying Big Band.

Sure letting her die will cost you at least 350 points, but it's a lot better than leaving a node unbeaten.

 

[cappatacus]

Here's a piece of strategy I'm going to be trying out soon for cheesing my way through rifts: Stage Fright Squigly, with a maxed out Evil Dead MA.

Just let her eat a blockbuster at the beginning of the fight, and enjoy the fact that you now have a 20 second doom on one enemy, and the option to apply curse and wither on everyone else that comes up. So many hard nodes come down to either 1) there being too many damn buffs showing up on enemies or 2) people having invested so much in +meter gain moves that enemy blockbusters are just being shot off constantly. This handles those two problems while maybe also taking out an annoying Big Band.

Sure letting her die will cost you at least 350 points, but it's a lot better than leaving a node unbeaten.

Interesting strategy! I don't know if I would use that over a Xeno (if I had one) or a Doublicious/PD for curse, but I'm partial to Squigly so tell me how it goes.

Speaking of Doublicious, I love the attention she's getting here. Debuff removal has been key in most challenging nodes, and thanks to Chaos, she can not only take the buffs but also apply curse or hex to bleed those tricky Bloodbaths and ICUs. (Realistically any Double could do this, but Doublicious can make up for the gaps where curse doesn't land and remove the buffs).

 

[fanghoul]

Yeah, Double with chaos is very useful too, but has her own downsides: it can take forever to get to the right element, she's always super squishy and easy to kill if you make a mistake, and on the boss node can accidentally activate the House Advantage modifier, giving the enemy free blockbuster meter. Sometimes she just will not apply a bleed even with 10 other debuffs going.

All that said, my max Chaos Doublicious is still definitely one of my favorite tools for some of the tougher nodes, particularly when I have my Surgeon General with the final stand MA to keep Double on her... feet? I'm just looking to add another relatively cheap tool to my node cracking toolbox.

 

[educavalcantee]

Great guide! I think the best advice is to maintain a cool mind, and take a time to analyze what you're facing. I've often lost points because I've lost on another/the same node before, and tried to clear it right away. I'ts always important to take little breaks to relieve the pressure. Wel, the rifts are supposed to be competitive, so you have to treat them different!

Another guide...I think guides of this nature gloss over one important assumption: Your collection of cards. If you have the collection to achieve and maintain Diamond Tier, yes, Rifts is worth the effort I guess, since you're an End Game player and you'll keep refining your collection with those Tier rewards. And guess what? Those End Game players keep raising the bar for those rewards, just look at the 10% scores for PFs. The stronk keep getting stronker. By the time I get my collection to current End Game levels, rewards will be further out of reach as the current End Game players collection will have grown that much more as well...there is no 'catch-up' mechanic for new/casual players.

I'm still not sold on Rifts even if the match-making was perfect. For Gold 4 and under, what's the point? 7, 2-hour sessions (minimum) for No character Experience. No player Experience. The rewards (at the end of the week) aren't worth the extra play time on top of grinding Dailies/MIssions/PF. For 1 Rift battle (2hours), I could spend that time training my cards instead. Until you have a large collection of Max golds and solid Diamonds, Rifts will be frustrating and annoying regardless of how calm you are or how you strategize a battle map.

Well, I started playing SGM in october/2018, and have been playing rifts since the beggining. The rift rewards helped me a lot to expand my collection. Back then I used rift coin to buy gold shards, and that was a very good decision for me. I lacked the power to do well in the PF's, but was expanding my collection with gold characters, and now I have the tools to deal with everything (some are budget, but works). Right now I manage to reach the 10%, and consider myself a casual player. I only play the 7 rifts in the week, and now I play more PF's than the daylies. The question is always on what are your objective, and put focus on it.