Question and ask for advice about Rift

[Tsukiakari]

To be specify, I'm Tsukiakari lv67 and I start Rifting a week ago, I can smoothly do Rift and match with people with relative strength. But Today I met a opponent at lv63, I can clearly his every other nodes fairly easy (tbh a little bit too easy) until I got to his boss node. That's Wither Forecast and Block Busted node with fully upgrade Assassin Greed, Mew n Forever and Summer Salt with total pf of 60k. No matter what I do I can't clear his node quickly enough before one of them bb3 me. I'm so baffle and wonder why is he still in Silver 4 with a line up like that and why I have to match with him (I'm bronze 2 at the moment).
This is his base after I clear all his other nodes

After reading a bit about rift match making process, I realize it match me with people of similar rank and pf then everything become clear, I rank Bronze 2 and he Silver 4, my base total pf is 180.1k and his 190k. I don't know if he deliberately arrange his base like this: scatter around a bunch of low pf fighter and an unbeatable boss node (at least at my level) to bait people with lower pf not not because I don't want to unknowingly blame anyone. But with fighters like that I don't think his roster can be this low. But maybe he's a p2w dude who buy a bunch of coins and relic, and only play a few of his favorite fighters or something like that. Before asking question, this is my collection right now.

The questions I want to ask are:
1. Do you guys encounter this kind of Rift often in lower rank?
2. What should I do when I met opponent like this? Just clear all his other nodes and hope for a better opponents next time?
3. What is the idle time for rift match making?
4. What should I do with a boss node like that? I know the obvious answer is more power but I can't do that right now with my collection. Is there a way to play around it?
5. Maybe it's a noob questions that everybody see so often but what should I do right now in term of fighters? I'm still working on leveling some of them up and save up essences and gold fighters to evolve them to diamond.
6. Why am I at lv67 with so many little gold fighters I can't evolve my fav one to diamond? (nah just jk)

And again, I don't want to start a witch hunt or anything of the soft, I just want some debate and constructive advice. Thanks you.

 

[Dusty00]

Hi, welcome to rift. Keeping it brief for now:

1. Search for @Brother Null ’s post on rift strategies on the forum and study them.
2. Against stronger opponents with boss nodes you can’t clear, leave the boss node alone and clear what you can. If you also have a strong boss node then chances are they can’t clear yours either.
3. Watch some YouTube videos of other players clearing difficult setups. Search for @HeGunz and OddLegend.
4. Practice intercept. It’s a technique that will help you get around eating BB3s. There should be some videos around with it.

Good luck and remember to have fun. I always see fighting stronger opponents as an opportunity to practice and grow. Losing is inevitable when rifting so why not take a positive perspective about it, right?

 

[Lililira]

I don't know how much advice I have on the specific difficult node you faced as it seems quite difficult (I actually got walled by a marqueed Assasins Greed in my last match and lost), but here's some general answers to the listed questions. I'm Silver 1 rank right now, for reference.

1. No, this is not a typical rift at a lower rank. Most Bronze / Silver rifts I've faced have had an average fighter score of 4-8k per fighter, with higher ones on the boss nodes due to the boosted stats. This person probably only started using Rift recently, or decayed down to Silver due to not playing it often enough to rank. However, since you've got a strong collection you're going to be paired against players like these more often, since collection strength matters more than rank when it comes to matchmaking.

2. Yes, clear out as much as you can, and if you fail the boss node on the first try then just leave it alone for the time being, otherwise if you can't beat it you may just be giving them extra defense win points. Watch to see if your opponent can clear your boss node, and if they can't then you can stop there because they won't get the Boss Node or Full Map Clear bonuses either and your scores should be pretty even. If they do beat your boss, then try to fight their boss node again, since if they can beat your boss but you can't beat theirs then it's basically an automatic loss.

3. I'm not quite sure what you mean by idle time, so I can't answer this one, sorry.

4. Just doing some brainstorming here:
Doublicious with a special move based moveset (to avoid Assassins Greed's SA), a Chaos marquee, and a good support team (Trauma Center support Valentine, and maybe a Sheltered for the extra crits). You could steal Meow's buffs to prevent the stun, and transfer back the Wither Forecast and Blockbusted debuffs to prevent getting BB3'd. Could also steal Assassin's Greed's marquee buff. Chaos could also inflict Wither or disable their blockbusters to prevent BB3s, and inflict Heal Block Inverse Polarity on AG to prevent her from healing. Doublicious doesn't have that much health though so use with caution, and stay far away from Salt's tears so you don't lose your buffs.

5. Hard to say, there's a lot of things that matter in rift, but characters that remove buffs from the enemy and/or debuffs from themselves are super useful (Doublicious, Silent Kill, Summer Salt, Rogue Agent, etc), as well as ones that can prevent enemies from using their Blockbusters (Claw and Order, Love Crafted, any Robo with Circuit Breaker + Magnet Trap, and Cerebella with the Upper Hand marquee), as well as some support characters to help out with tough battles (Pea Shooter, most Valentines, etc). There's an old, but still useful, tier list out there that sums up how useful most characters are on offense / defense that's really good to look at.

6. I know this feeling lol, I've had to evolve a lot of silvers to gold just so I can use them to evolve my gold fighters to diamond.

 

[Tsukiakari]

I don't know how much advice I have on the specific difficult node you faced as it seems quite difficult (I actually got walled by a marqueed Assasins Greed in my last match and lost), but here's some general answers to the listed questions. I'm Silver 1 rank right now, for reference.

1. No, this is not a typical rift at a lower rank. Most Bronze / Silver rifts I've faced have had an average fighter score of 4-8k per fighter, with higher ones on the boss nodes due to the boosted stats. This person probably only started using Rift recently, or decayed down to Silver due to not playing it often enough to rank. However, since you've got a strong collection you're going to be paired against players like these more often, since collection strength matters more than rank when it comes to matchmaking.

2. Yes, clear out as much as you can, and if you fail the boss node on the first try then just leave it alone for the time being, otherwise if you can't beat it you may just be giving them extra defense win points. Watch to see if your opponent can clear your boss node, and if they can't then you can stop there because they won't get the Boss Node or Full Map Clear bonuses either and your scores should be pretty even. If they do beat your boss, then try to fight their boss node again, since if they can beat your boss but you can't beat theirs then it's basically an automatic loss.

3. I'm not quite sure what you mean by idle time, so I can't answer this one, sorry.

4. Just doing some brainstorming here:
Doublicious with a special move based moveset (to avoid Assassins Greed's SA), a Chaos marquee, and a good support team (Trauma Center support Valentine, and maybe a Sheltered for the extra crits). You could steal Meow's buffs to prevent the stun, and transfer back the Wither Forecast and Blockbusted debuffs to prevent getting BB3'd. Could also steal Assassin's Greed's marquee buff. Chaos could also inflict Wither or disable their blockbusters to prevent BB3s, and inflict Heal Block Inverse Polarity on AG to prevent her from healing. Doublicious doesn't have that much health though so use with caution, and stay far away from Salt's tears so you don't lose your buffs.

5. Hard to say, there's a lot of things that matter in rift, but characters that remove buffs from the enemy and/or debuffs from themselves are super useful (Doublicious, Silent Kill, Summer Salt, Rogue Agent, etc), as well as ones that can prevent enemies from using their Blockbusters (Claw and Order, Love Crafted, any Robo with Circuit Breaker + Magnet Trap, and Cerebella with the Upper Hand marquee), as well as some support characters to help out with tough battles (Pea Shooter, most Valentines, etc). There's an old, but still useful, tier list out there that sums up how useful most characters are on offense / defense that's really good to look at.

6. I know this feeling lol, I've had to evolve a lot of silvers to gold just so I can use them to evolve my gold fighters to diamond.

Thank you for your advice, I just want to specify something.

1. Every other node from his base were fighters with around 5k pf, with 2~3 moves, only his boss node was significantly stronger (60k pf out of the total 190k pf, basically 1/3 of his total base power). So there is a possibility that he got decay due to not playing and I was very unlucky matching with him.

2. With a boss node like that, I basically can't beat it, and by some miracle that I did, I would lose anyway due to giving him defense points. His fully upgrade Assasin Greed alone can clear out my boss node with ease so there 0 chance anyway.

3. I mean ideal time, sorry, I write this at midnight so I was just a little tired.

4. I think the problem here is I don't have enough attack power to beat him down before he can charge up his bb3. One solution I can think of is using Harley to control his meter and lock him in special loop without worrying about slow or wither but I have to practice with this loop more because I can't execute it perfectly like OddLegend, and beside, my Harley is not maxed out so I don't have her MA. I have Doublelicious but she is too squishy and if I slip up for a second I would die, so I would need to diamond her if I want to use her in a situation like this. And my luck is sh**, the only golds Valentine that I have are Silent Kill that I got from prize fight and Graveyard that I evolve.

5. I think I will hovering around low silver for now (I'm at 1136 rn so by the end of the week I could jump up to silver) until I have a solid roster for beating Rift node, my base barely has any catalyst so I can't count on it.

6. I think leveling a bunch of thing from bronze to gold is the bane of my existence, it makes my level go up too much without any decent fighters =)).

7. Also do you think have a high streak make your chances of meeting stronger opponent higher? I was wining nonstop since I start Rifting so this lose let me down a bit.

 

[Lililira]

Ah, I see. After giving it some more thought, it could also be possible that they spent real money to get diamond keys, coins, and relics, as that's the only way I could imagine them getting a fully upgraded diamond when the rest of their base is much lower leveled. Probably bought a Royal pack or three and invested it in their diamonds pretty recently. Maybe they got one of the Black Friday deals, who knows. That sort of base is tough to beat, since strategy can only help so much when they're just way overleveled like that.

Ideally, I find myself completing my enemy's base in 20-35 minutes. This includes the time the fights take, and the time I spend figuring out which fighters I plan to use on what nodes before i even start the battle. Could take a little longer if I have to retry a few fights though.

I don't know if streak affects matchmaking, but I think it might? I feel like I tend to encounter enemies I can beat more often when I just lost a match and have a zero streak.

 

[Dusty00]

Important: Streaks does not affect matchmaking. Matchmaking isn’t perfect right now. If you tend to end up fighting the same people, simply try a different time to queue up. People tend to rift around the same time of the day.

The guy you match basically was just using a very effective strategy for lower ranks, which is stacking up his strongest players in the boss node since he doesn’t have enough strong characters to fill up his base. The best counter is to focus on one attacker that can clear most boss nodes. Good candidates are, from easiest to obtain to hardest:

Doublicious (requires skills to play, and not strong until fully built with good moves, but is probably the best in rift offense)
Silent Kill
Harlequin
Primed
Buzzkill
Bio-exorcist
FlyTrap
Summer Salt

if you have one or two of the above, consider just taking them to at least lv50 diamond and you should be able to clear most boss nodes until Gold rank.

Anyway, stacking a strong boss node is a common defensive strategy so get used to seeing that more as you climb up the rank. It’s not until G2 and Diamond where you start to face people like me with all Diamond defenders and tricky catalysts.

 

[Tsukiakari]

I don't know if people like smurfing or there're many whales out there but I just match with a silver 2 today with base full of annoying catalyst like final fight or block busted, not only that, he got 4 full upgrade evolved diamonds (include NecroBreaker) and 4 full upgrade nat diamonds, the rest of his base are fully upgrade golds. And he's at level 64. Don't know why a guys like that still at lower rank with a roster like that. I match with a few silver guys but no one have that kind of base. Although i can clear his base with a bit of struggle, I still lose due to one timed out in his boss node (Love Crafted, FireFly, Kill Joy).

I know the match making is not perfect but the gap in power are too much, in term of rank or even fighter strength. A bronze 2 like me match with high silver is one thing (and I only match with high silver from the start of the week), his diamonds alone have much more fighter strength than mine. I know I sound kind of salty but after fighting a few guys that too overpower for their rank, I just few a little down, it's kind of kill my motivation to rift. Maybe I should queue at a different time.

I'm still on the process of upgrading and find enough golds for my fighter, I have a bunch of lv50 golds with no mat to evolve.

Anyway, thanks for the advice guys, appreciate it a lot.

 

[GreatTiny]

You been at level 67 mean you should be able to get to 10% in most PFs, so I'll assume you have access to those gold fighters.
For a boss node like that, the first thing that comes to mind is playing Harle/SK(With ICU). The third party member is up to you. When playing against AG I usually just battle but her (I set two, so I always have it charged) and lock her in the corner. Then it's just alterning between that and grabs. You do need a marqueed Harle for that (Highly recomend you do that). For MNF, you can just keep that up and once you are about to reach the last portion of the health bar, switch to SK. She's outstanding against MNF, and a lot easier to use than Doublicious.
Personally, I think those 2 fighters are a must in Rift. Xeno, too. But that one can't be acquired so easily. Also remember, at your level you should stop buying relics with the Theo. Save for the big canopy offer and upgrade your fighters.

 

[GreatTiny]

And yeah, you will face a lot of teams with Boss nodes that are on a whole different level that the rest. Light nodes are generally harder because you can't use your dark fighters (you will just get BB3), which are generally better at getting things killed.

Last advice. Clear as many nodes as you can, even if you can't beat the boss. Rift coins are precious. You can use them to buy the cool catalysts directly from the CoC (NEVER buy the relic pack of catalysts).

Let me know if that helps.