forum workshop Champion Draft 101

[DvDivXXX]

12 hours ago, Kissmydick said:

i agree about not "leaving money on the table" but consider this, is the harem income going to make up for the bigger pool of lv 1 girls in champions?

i cant keep up with upgrading my harem and only picking up girls who i really like might help me get to a point where i can get through champions much easier

right now even with all my refreshes i cant get a good team most times since i have so many low power girls

champions also provide more than just ymens, equipment and kisses, so im just weighing my options since the girl isnt a must have for me

im curious if anyone else thinks like i do on this or has any suggestions for dealing with my ever growing army of neglected girls

  Ideally, you should discard anything below L5 (or in some cases lower rarity 5-star girls) in any champion draft regardless of levels. Your number of re-rolls for champion drafts grows proportionally with your harem (you get one more draft re-roll every 10 eligible girls added to your harem). Eligible girls are your harem size minus your total number of 1-star girls (the filler commons from Dark Lord and/or GP). So in my case for instance, I have 1480 girls in total now, including all of the 106 1-star girls, so as far as champions are concerned I have 1374 girls to pick from in any draft.

Having experienced this from all the way back when I barely had enough girls to fill the 10 slots (and like 1 or 2 re-rolls) to these days where I have 1374 eligible girls and I think 137 (free) re-rolls per draft, the concern you express was never a thing.

Right now, I have 24 maxed-out Mythics, 91 maxed-out L5s,  along with both of the 2 E5s and 8 of the R5s maxed out as well that I can potentially fall back on. That's 125 girls, of which only about a third is relevant for any given draft, due to the old-school 3-class system champions still go by. Actually it's often even less than that because the random selection of 5 poses to match for a champion run don't always neatly include all 4 poses that exist for that champion's class. So realistically, on average there are maybe 1/4 of my 125 top girls, so about 31 picks I'm aiming for to fill up those 5 slots the best I can in a given draft. Out of 1374 girls eligible for random selection. That's not a whole lot on paper, but with a proper drafting strategy I hardly ever need to use up more than about half of my 130+ re-rolls to land on a team of 5 (or possibly 6-7 if that's relevant, which it generally isn't).

It's hard to go more in-depth without knowing your own current numbers and this would go far beyond this event thread's topic (we could move this to its own Q&A thread and discuss strategies for champion drafts as much as you'd like if this helps, though). But no matter what it is, I'm very confident in telling you that you should be able to make a decent draft every single time regardless of how many girls you add to your harem that you will never want to pick in a champion draft.

Bottom line, if that's a legit concern for you, it really shouldn't. We can review this together in more details for your own situation if you want. But adding fodder to your total number of girls doesn't reduce your odds of making a decent champion draft, ever.

And you should always unlock and claim every girl you can regardless. It's a core pillar of progress in this game. It's not just about reaching the minimum of 100 girls of each of the 8 colors to max out your passive elemental bonuses, or slightly increasing your harem income in Ymens or even the tiny HP boost you get from your total harem levels. Collecting an extra girl or 10 or 100 will never hurt your harem even if you leave them at 0 stars and level 1 forever (more realistically level 250 over time, since that's the real base line in the long run for filler girls, because you don't need any gems for that and there are many tasks and contests that reward you for leveling up girls, and those first 250 levels are dirt cheap in terms of books).

Hope this helps.

[Horsting]

1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

I think 137 (free) re-rolls per draft

But it becomes surely time consuming to get a good team then 😄. And of course one can have bad luck. I have 18 free drafts now, and it happens that there just won't come any of the matching precious maxed L5* or M6* girls. And then when there is not a great team half way, but one that will somehow do it, always the decision whether to continue rolling to hope for the best (usually making it worse), or keeping it. However, champions are IMO not important enough to worry too much about this. You will get some Ymen more or less, or need some performances more or less, but after all tickets are not exactly a rare thing and often you fight champs only to get the fights counted for contests and e.g. now PoA, where it can be even better to not "win" too soon.

For CC is also upgrade and level girls to 250. The extra Ymen I get for the extra damage, e.g. during CbC day 3, can be more than you pay for the girls' upgrade. Although, I didn't count the value of the books and gifts, just the Ymen costs for the upgrade.

[Ravi-Sama]

12 hours ago, Kissmydick said:

...is the harem income going to make up for the bigger pool of lv 1 girls in champions?

...has any suggestions for dealing with my ever growing army of neglected girls

It's not really about harem income.  I get enough ymens from selling gear to get by carefree.

As your harem grows, so do your draft tries.  It's like your (girl count)/10 or something.

Here's a current example, where I made a badass team w/ 59 drafts leftover:

Regarding the neglected girls, they find some use for GXP contests, passives, including raising endurance via the harem level.  Also, they help in the PoP, even if it doesn't seem like it.  Just cuz you can't max them right now, doesn't mean you can't later.  Before the girl/hero levels went past 500, I was able to get ~100 L3s to lvl 400, and that helps massively w/ the PoP and occasionally w/ champions.  Two of those 89-93k girls in my example are L3s.  They can be blessed sometimes too.

[DvDivXXX]

42 minutes ago, Horsting said:

But it becomes surely time consuming to get a good team then 😄.

Not really. Given some comments in this thread I'm half-tempted to make a proper guide on how to make a champion draft, honestly.

42 minutes ago, Horsting said:

And of course one can have bad luck. I have 18 free drafts now, and it happens that there just won't come any of the matching precious maxed L5* or M6* girls.

Yeah, but this is a constant and doesn't get better or worse with your harem size, past a certain point (when you have almost no options and only a few re-rolls, luck will always be the main factor). Also, the exact same girl can show up time and time again. It's not like not picking a girl removed her from the pool for further re-rolls. The only thing that changes the pool is when you pick a girl.

42 minutes ago, Horsting said:

And then when there is not a great team half way, but one that will somehow do it, always the decision whether to continue rolling to hope for the best (usually making it worse), or keeping it.

This really sounds like poor technique to me, I can't sugarcoat it, sorry. If you follow the basic guidelines for a decent draft (that I have in my head but haven't written down as hinted at above; I wonder if Sly made one in the FAQ back in the day, if so it's probably still relevant), you should never be at risk of making your selection worse by doing more re-rolls. It's always either no change or a change for the better.

You guys know you can lock out up to 5 girls and only re-roll as few as 5 instead of 10 per re-roll as you progress through your draft, right? And that only the first 5 slots really matter (or against a HardCore champ specifically, only the first 3 or 4, even)?

Anyways. We're getting pretty off topic as it is. Might as well split this discussion to its own QA thread, maybe call it "Champion Draft 101" or something.

[Horsting]

52 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

Yeah, but this is a constant and doesn't get better or worse with your harem size

If one strictly avoids getting any 3 star girls, your chances will get better. But of course, not worth it, not even worth a thought.

52 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

you should never be at risk of making your selection worse by doing more re-rolls. It's always either no change or a change for the better.

You forget about the 5 girls you cannot pin, which is what I am talking about. It happens that I re-rolled half way and was not lucky to get really good girls, so have pinned e.g. 5 fitting 3 star girls at or little above level 250. Then, next re-roll, I get similarly non-great girls, at least with matching pose and/or charm (which is the by far strongest cast effect). So I can keep it, knowing that I could get a much better team, or I can keep re-rolling, with the risk that I end up with the same 5 pinned girls, but the other 5 being non-matching weak hardcore ones (which is the by far weakest cast effect). With an increasing share of 3* girls, the chance for this gets worse, but again, champs are way to unimportant to worry about this or be sad instead of happy when getting a 3* girl.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Horsting

[DvDivXXX]

Okay, here we go. @Ravi-Sama (I just realized I was proposing a forum game without pinging you, which is basically blasphemy ^^).

First of all, I was right in suspecting that Sly had already made a very good guide for champions in general, including a fairly comprehensive list of things to know and tips and tricks about Draft specifically. Go check it out if you haven't done so (or check it again if you're still unclear on some of that stuff or you need a reminder):

Almost everything is still relevant, as this routine task slash challenge (depending on where you are in the game) hardly changed since then. So this should still be more than enough guidance for most players to make decent to great drafts for every champion run.

Still, I'd like to go a bit further to help out a couple of players who seem to be doing it wrong and/or approaching it as way harder and more daunting than it actually is. I don't doubt more players might have similar issues and this might help them too.

Alright, so we've already clarified or debunked a lot of it broadly in previous posts that I've split from the PoA thread in which this started. The two main things being:

@Kissmydick's fear that adding more non-battlers to his harem makes his champion drafts harder was unfounded. The vast majority of girls in the game are not battle-team material, and the vast majority of ANY player's harem consists of girls you'd never want to pick for a champion run. And his secondary concern that these non-battlers would be even worse picks because he can't afford to level them up or upgrade them is also unfounded. No one would want to pick a 3-star girl even if she was fully maxed out anyway (unless she's temporarily boosted by Blessings maybe). Our number of re-rolls is proportional to our harem size, so our odds of making a decent draft are about the same as soon as we're reasonably past the early game. Whether you have 500 or 1500 girls, and whether 50 or 200 of them would be top picks in champion drafts doesn't really matter all that much.

@Horsting's hmm I wouldn't call it fear or even concern, really. He's pretty chill about it and correctly identifies that champions hardly matter enough in the grand scheme of things to ever justify shooting one's self in the foot in other areas of the game (as KMD was contemplating by possibly passing up on girls he unlocks and deliberately not claiming them for fear of making his champion experience worse). BUT, Horsting's approach to drafting seems not only bad, but unnecessarily complicated for other reasons.

------------

EDIT: It seemed bad to me, but it's now clear that it's mostly because I was out of touch with what the champion experience is like for newer players these days. My advice below is solid for players deep into the mid-game or beyond. Not so much for players earlier on in their journey through this game. My bad!

------------

Primarily this:

23 hours ago, Horsting said:

On 7/27/2023 at 2:46 PM, DvDivXXX said:

you should never be at risk of making your selection worse by doing more re-rolls. It's always either no change or a change for the better.

You forget about the 5 girls you cannot pin, which is what I am talking about.

I wasn't forgetting about it, I was correctly ignoring that part because caring about it is just a bad play. Again, ONLY the first 5 girls to hit the champ really matter in a champion run. Your RPG min-max background is playing against you in this case, just like it was (or maybe even still is? I hope not) when you were seriously claiming that deliberately picking girls who don't match the pose selection is somehow worth it, and/or (it's intertwined) that lasting as many rounds as possible should be a goal instead of hitting the champ as hard as you possibly can in the early rounds (and considering anything beyond that as strictly optional bonuses). I hope you've changed your mind on the latter since our last talk on it, but since you seem to still be misguided into aiming for a  10-girl team rather than focusing on the 5-girl team that really counts, probably not.

----

Alright. So, I actually have a fresh untouched draft for the CC right now (I deliberately kept it and fine-tuned whatever the first 10 random girls happened to be to do as little damage as possible for yesterday's "hit the CC many times" CbC day). Now that I have no reason not to hit the CC as hard as I can, it's time for me to make a proper draft for this run anyway.

So I propose to make this draft "live" with you guys, if this can help. I'll just post the starting point for now, and maybe you guys can suggest what would be your respective moves for each roll, I can then say what my move will be and why (if it's different from your respective approaches) and we can take it from here?

(Don't worry, we definitely won't need even half of those 137 free drafts ^^).

If you like the concept, we could do this for one of you guys' own drafts too, and this might help in a more concrete manner than just exchanging general guidelines or tips and tricks.

Ready? So, what's the play here?

Edited July 28, 2023 by DvDivXXX
updated

[garadron]

that's a cool idea for a "forum workshop"

Do you want to go draft by draft? I'd personally move Venus to 2nd spot, Radka to 3rd, that blue haired 84k to 7th as a freebie and reroll the rest

I'm personally used to going for the first 5 spots to be the strongest (5* and 6*) and spots 6-7 to at least match the pose

[DvDivXXX]

2 minutes ago, garadron said:

Do you want to go draft by draft?

Yop. I think it would be fun this way. Thanks for playing! ❤️

I'll wait for others to share what they would do as well before revealing what I'll actually do and explaining why.

[bolitho76]

Venus to 2nd place, locking Venus, no other matching-poses girls with 100K+ so reroll.

[DvDivXXX]

Alright, not as many players as I'd hoped (or expected, honestly ^^). Should I summon more jolly good fellows? @holymolly, @Antimon, @Rylarth,  @Tom208, @jelom, @Der DinX, @Karxan, @Master-17, @OmerB, @madahmed, @Yamiray, @DuDeLoK, @EpicBacon, @mdnoria, @Bobick? at all? ^^ (Sorry if anyone in this list doesn't like getting pinged; you were just the first few names of still active regulars I thought of inviting to participate in this little forum game slash workshop slash tutorial for players struggling with champion draft). 🙏❤️ 

Anyways, we have a winner for Round 1 in Bolitho, and I'd actually like to finish this draft today (I'm at a "do a bunch of champion fights" task on PoA, plus my clubmates with shards left to grab could use my power output for this run), so:

Exactly.

Early on in the drafting process, I actively want NOT to lock anyone, unless I happen to already have a great pick available. The more slots I re-roll, the better the odds at drafting good picks. Locking mediocre girls (compared to what I know I have available, ofc) this early would be counterproductive (even more so for the 7th spot as suggested by Garadron, since I'll only start even considering anything beyond the 5th spot once I already have at least 5 solid picks for the first 5 spots).

Done.

Now, what's the play? ^^

PS: My boosters have expired since the first screenshot and I don't need to renew them just yet, hence the ~-20k power per girl.

Edited July 27, 2023 by DvDivXXX
PS

[garadron]

Interesting. So instead of securing okay girls in as much slots as possible you suggest aiming only for the perfect/great girls, and everything below that (be it good, okayish or bad) goes out to increase the number of rerolls?

With this logic we add... Izumi? to 4th slot, keep Venus in 2nd and reroll the other 8 girls

[mdnoria]

Move 9 to 4 and lock her.

As to who to lock, having unlocked lvl 750 girls and having 980 girls, I don't lock anyone with lower power than 100k if pose is present only once, 90k for twice, 85k for thrice, 80k for four/five times.

I was planning to answer after dinner.
Also the strategy can be quite different for the last stage of champions fights than for the other fights.

In last stages you should deplete your rolls to have max power on the 4~5 first girls whereas in the other stages, it is possible to have your 10 girls hit the champion and it can rollover a second time when you have 8 or more matching poses.

Edited July 27, 2023 by mdnoria
Added locking strategy I use

[DvDivXXX]

Yes! Exactly. Garadron and Mdnoria (MD Noria?) both have the best move for Round 2! 👍

Hmm... There's obviously nothing new to consider here, so I'm thinking I'd rather fast-forward until the next choice presents itself (it would be a bit tedious otherwise; plus this particular draft happens to be real easy: all 4 possible poses and only one dupe). Okay, so... Next Next Next until... Aha!

Now, what's the play? ^^

Edited July 27, 2023 by DvDivXXX
I've added the pose selection to make it easier

[bolitho76]

29 minutes ago, mdnoria said:

Move 9 to 4 and lock her.

Same.

Hey, you were to fast for me to answer 😠 so my post is below your newest one and sounds weird. 😁

 

For the new: 2 and 4 locked, reroll again.

Nubia could make 7th, but the max slot you should log is the 6th (if you get two meaningfull girls for 1st and 6th before 2nd-5th are fullfilled)

Edited July 27, 2023 by bolitho76

[garadron]

I'd have 2, 4 and 7 locked here

[EpicBacon]

Replace Venus with Nubia; as Venus are far to busy with more important stuff then take place in these petty human squabbles 

[EpicBacon]

2 and 4 seems the best for now, I usually try to get the first row done first, unless I have a really powerful girl that I might not get back on a reroll.

Against club champions this does not come up, as one should be able to make it past 10 rounds, but against some champions at stage 5,
especially if they get matching poses early, you might not make it thru all 10 girls.
I've had some instance where i got a perfect 10 girl match, only to find out that Visor does not care about that at all when you have 0 defence, and kills you on the 3rd girl

[mdnoria]

I would not lock 7 here. I prefer to have one more re-rolled slot and starting to fill the 2nd row when the first is missing 3 girls doesn't feel right to me.

So simple reroll.

Edited July 27, 2023 by mdnoria

[DvDivXXX]

Awesome.

Bolitho on point again, avoiding and pointing out the trap that would have been locking Azana Nubia in the 7th spot even though we're still missing 3 out of 5 from the first and most important row.

Bacon also shows perfect taste and understanding of the lore by correctly suggesting we swap out our Holy Goddess Venus so she can go back to making more jaw-dropping art instead of beating up poor Chayotte. ^^ (On top of that, whenever I have two equivalent picks in terms of power output, I always tend to favor the girl whose appearance enjoys the less representation. So I'd pick the dark-skinned girl over the redhead here, even though I have a thing for redheads).

Sadly, Garadron fails this Round, falling again into the trap of locking a girl into a second row spot before securing a strong line-up for the first row. You'll have plenty of opportunities to make up for it, don't worry. ^^

And another good answer from Noria (MD Noria -> Noria? or should I simply address you as "Doctor?"; please let me know, I don't want to butcher your nickname, but the more I type it, the more I feel its meaning and perhaps pronunciation escapes me ^^)

--- (We briefly interrupt the drafting game to discuss wider strategy) ---

30 minutes ago, mdnoria said:

In last stages you should deplete your rolls to have max power on the 4~5 first girls whereas in the other stages, it is possible to have your 10 girls hit the champion and it can rollover a second time when you have 8 or more matching poses.

5 minutes ago, EpicBacon said:

Against club champions this does not come up, as one should be able to make it past 10 rounds, but against some champions at stage 5,
especially if they get matching poses early, you might not make it thru all 10 girls.

You both make good points. However, I'd add that "mdnoria" (pending their preferred nickname) is only right when facing Charm or KnowHow champs. A Hardcore champ will rarely let you survive beyond Round 5-6 unless it's a weakling like Whaty, and even then: your top selection being HC girls, who have no means to mitigate damage at all, you just can't go the distance against a HC champ.

As for going multiple rounds in normal circumstances versus a non-HC champ, for sure. I actually watched the show a few days ago in a previous run versus Chayotte (after discussing the odds of triggering special hits with Horsting) and the fight ended at Round 63. So yeah, we can definitely last much, muuuuch longer than 5 rounds. I typically accomplish that by having the 5 strongest possible girls in the first row and the least bad second row I can, but without too much focus on it. If my first row is full of KH or CH girls who hit like a truck, they'll either heal or mitigate so much damage that it doesn't necessarily matter too much if the second row takes a bit of beating, as long as it goes back to the first row, they'll fix me up just right again.

But again, lasting very long doesn't necessarily mean scoring higher than a 5-Round fight if it's at the cost of dishing out a lot less damage. So I'll always prioritize the first row no matter what. Once I have a solid first row locked in, I can safely re-roll as much as I want, until I get upgrades to my first row, especially the first two spots (because I can then move the second-best options in 6th and 7th place, which is just about perfect as far as I'm concerned).

---Back to the game!---

Ah! This one looks almost tailor-made for @Horsting for one of the choices, and Garadron again for another choice. ^^

What's the play now?

[garadron]

this time I'd reroll keeping our 2 established girls.

I think my habit of locking anything I can get as long as it matches the pose comes from the time when I had 10 rerolls tops and it somehow stayed with me even though now I have 90+ of them XD

So one lesson you won for sure is to ignore the okayish girls, but I'm still not sold on that 7th spot  

 

[mdnoria]

Il y a 1 heure, DvDivXXX a dit :

MD Noria -> Noria? or should I simply address you as "Doctor?"; please let me know, I don't want to butcher your nickname, but the more I type it, the more I feel its meaning and perhaps pronunciation escapes me ^^

It's just mdnoria, no meaning behind this pseudo 😛 and I'm not a doctor.

I took the name of an anime character I like "Izuku Midoriya" from My Hero Academia and I juggled a bit with the letters, removing one here, adding another, that's all.

Il y a 1 heure, DvDivXXX a dit :

What's the play now?

With 124 drafts left, It's no use to start locking high attack power girls which do not match to fill empty starting slots (1-4 slot). Only go for this if you have like less than 10 drafts left and a bad lineup or it's the last stage of a champion.
Continue rolling.

Edited July 27, 2023 by mdnoria

[bolitho76]

For the new: 2 and 4 locked, reroll again.

No new strong girl (without booster I would say 85K+, with booster 100K+) with matching pose.

[EpicBacon]

28 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

Sadly, Garadron fails this Round, falling again into the trap of locking a girl into a second row spot before securing a strong line-up for the first row. You'll have plenty of opportunities to make up for it, don't worry. ^^

Well, I usually seem to lock in a full first row, regardless of their power, so I am really not efficient there, as I roll 5 girls instead of 7-8.
As for the board, I'd keep rerolling till a first row of 100k (or close) matching poses

[DvDivXXX]

Sweet! You're on a roll, folks! ^^

I'll fast-forward a bit more. I stumbled upon a clear upgrade over Nubia with Caroline, who's currently blessed, otherwise nothing interesting until...

My Elphiba is level 450 and I don't plan on maxing her out anytime soon.

Now, what's the play?

[bolitho76]

For the new: 2 and 4 locked, reroll again.

In generall could Elphibia lockable for 6th position but with the 3 open slots in the first line and with the ca. 82K she is a little bit to weak to be locked for sure. We have more than 100 trys to get two better girls with this pose so only if you would uplevel her (with the matching contest at .com +50 lvls could make her worth if she is awaken and waits only for level up) it can be an option to let her stay.

Edited July 27, 2023 by bolitho76