What Will My Final Rank Be In My Current Gauntlet Bypassing Using 45% Crit Chance Mirror Picard?

Irial

Not long ago, I wrote Mirror Jean-Luc Picard is not considered useable by me when I am selecting my crew for The Gauntlet. In the Gauntlet I joined last night, Mirror Jean-Luc Picard has a 45% Crit Chance, and so I figured this would be a good example for demonstrating how one can be successful without using him. In addition to not selecting him for my crew, I also did not select any character with the Command Skill, because I also believe it is not necessary to have a so called ‘balanced’ crew in order to be successful in The Gauntlet. Perhaps seeing this foray into contrarian Gauntlet crew selection might inspire some other players to try something out of the ordinary as well …

… but first you will want to see whether it actually works. Below are screenshots showing the crew I did select to use. Tomorrow evening I will have the final result, but in the meantime I ask you to please communicate via this Poll your prediction of how well you think I will do. Of course please also feel free to post a comment explaining why you voted the way you did.

Regarding how I play The Gauntlet, please know I never use Dilithium to recover from fatigue, but I will on occasion use Merits to refresh my opponents.

Thank you to all for your participation in this Poll!

[ISA] Big McLargeHuge

11 to 15 – finishing with 7 Gauntlet Crates to open is a good result

Very interesting experiment! I'll be very curious to see the results.

Pol

6 to 10 – you can select contrarian characters for your Gauntlet crew and still be successful

Now this is a thread that i find really interesting! Thank you!

Dirk Gunderson

11 to 15 – finishing with 7 Gauntlet Crates to open is a good result

From the way your poll options are laid out, I’ll assume that you’re good about logging in again when the 4 hour recovery time is up and can rank highly on a consistent basis. My guess is that you will still do well.

I will say that I once experimented with completely abandoning one skill and it did not go well. Maybe it was just a case of confirmation bias, maybe it was legit...either way, I seemed to run into a lot of matchups witt that skill, maybe as many as the featured skill. I’m curious to see if you notice the same thing.

Webberoni

Dirk Gunderson wrote: »

From the way your poll options are laid out, I’ll assume that you’re good about logging in again when the 4 hour recovery time is up and can rank highly on a consistent basis. My guess is that you will still do well.

I will say that I once experimented with completely abandoning one skill and it did not go well. Maybe it was just a case of confirmation bias, maybe it was legit...either way, I seemed to run into a lot of matchups witt that skill, maybe as many as the featured skill. I’m curious to see if you notice the same thing.

Ditto. I've also seen refreshes that went the other way when I was loaded with 5 crew all having the featured skill, to the point that I had to back out and confirm what the featured skill actually was, since I had exhausted all my crew (after several merit refreshes) without seeing that particular skill even once!

Cool experiment though. It helps when you have a deep roster of quality gauntlet crew, like the OP clearly does.

[KM] WOLF 359

What does 'on occasion' mean? You've got a solid crew, and can win, if you're willing to spend merits (i.e. a deficit) to avoid Mirror Picard or any other strong CMD crew

Peachtree Rex

There are simply way too many variables. Yes, it's certainly possible to bring sub-optimal crew and be successful. All it takes is a little more refreshing, weaker opponents, or maybe even hitting an extra refresh or two.

I'm not really sure what you're actually trying to show with this.

Commander Sinclair

6 to 10 – you can select contrarian characters for your Gauntlet crew and still be successful

I am constantly selecting crew that go "against the grain". I always only select one of my Gauntlet Beasties (Locutus, Caretaker, Guinan, or Surak), then select appropriately different crew to beat those beasties that everyone else chooses. I consistently place top 5, and that doesn't even matter to me, since all I am after in Gauntlet anymore is my last 3000 rounds to get Locutus #3.

[ISA] Big McLargeHuge

11 to 15 – finishing with 7 Gauntlet Crates to open is a good result

Peachtree Rex wrote: »

I'm not really sure what you're actually trying to show with this.

What I would like to see is if punting a category in Gauntlet is a viable strategy. Impossible to calculate with a sample size of one, but it’s a start. It would also be nice to know how many refreshes were required, and how many merits OP finishes up or down by the end.

Peachtree Rex

Abandoning a stat isn't necessarily a bad decision, but something should be said about defense in gauntlet. The easier you are to be hit, the more points you'll lose over the course of the competition.

This is the stats for the OP's proposed crew (ignoring their specific starbase bonuses) as a percentage of the "best in slot" for each of the 2-stat pairs:


Replacing the weakest crew (Mambo Q) with Mirror Picard has the following effects:

• Improved CMD across the board (modest gains in all CMD combos and large gains in CMD/SEC)
• DIP/SEC is only a tiny bit worse (1063 vs 1086)

Irial

Dirk Gunderson wrote: »

I will say that I once experimented with completely abandoning one skill and it did not go well. Maybe it was just a case of confirmation bias, maybe it was legit...either way, I seemed to run into a lot of matchups with that skill, maybe as many as the featured skill. I’m curious to see if you notice the same thing.

I have definitely seen instances where the RNG appears to become "stuck" on giving you repeated matchups with a non-featured Skill. My bias tends especially towards noticing when I get numerous Medicine matchups and I am not using any characters with that skill.

[KM] WOLF 359 wrote: »

What does 'on occasion' mean?

Reasonable question. Overall, I come out well ahead with Merits through my Gauntlet play, earning many more than I spend. Yesterday morning I actually had over 14,000 of them, before I decided to spend some in the Time Portal (which is why I am now back down to just over 5,000 of them).
My general approach is to use Merits to refresh opponents if I get a low probability matchup when my crew is all at 100%, but will not do so when I have a fatigued character I can tank to get a refresh instead (although sometimes you unexpectedly win some of those battles too!). That is, I am not focused on maintaining a lengthy Win Streak.

Peachtree Rex wrote: »

There are simply way too many variables. Yes, it's certainly possible to bring sub-optimal crew and be successful. All it takes is a little more refreshing, weaker opponents, or maybe even hitting an extra refresh or two.

I'm not really sure what you're actually trying to show with this.

I think there are players who would assume you have to include Mirror Picard with a 45% Crit Chance in your crew, especially when the other large Command proficiency roll characters (e.g., Kahless) are at 5%. I think there are players who think not including any character with the Command Skill is a bad idea. Perhaps I am trying to encourage 'outside the box' thinking regarding Gauntlet crew selection and playing options, as I think it has the opportunity to make the game more interesting

Question: if a player is successful, then does it make sense to say their crew was "sub-optimal"?

By the way, thanks for the data/charts in your 2nd comment!! I had not analyzed it so precisely, but have just been using intuition and experience when selecting my Gauntlet crew; it is interesting to see this mathematical representation of how it turned out in this case.

Peachtree Rex

The only truly "sub-optimal" choice you've made is Mariachi Q (and I don't think it's close enough to even being debatable).

Top 25 overall gauntlet scores for those trait combos:


You are running 3 of the top 4 (Caretaker, Inquisitor Troi, Locutus) and Trelane is a hair outside the top 10. Mariachi Q comes in 45th, so he's a far cry from your other selections.

Looking at crew that's actually available in-game, I think the "strongest" 5 would be pretty similar to what you already have:
Mambo Picard
Mirror Picard
Locutus (LOL PICARDZZZZZ)
Caretaker
Mirror Troi

Average score is literally 2 points higher than running Trelene in place of Mambo Picard. Like any composition, it does have weaknesses (SCI/MED and SEC/SCI). Other than that, all sill pairs are above 80% which is pretty solid:

Ishmael Marx

16 to 35 – it is not possible to finish in the Top 15 without using 45% Crit Chance Mirror Picard

I voted before reading Peachtree's spreadsheet info, but I'm still comfortable saying I think you're in trouble. (Though I wish you no ill will, of course. ) I think you can safely get away with skipping Gunshow, but I fear skipping CMD altogether is going to hurt. As you approach the top ranks (which you will, since you have a strong crew), I expect the players between ranks 1-30 will have you in their line-up often enough with your "no matching skill" tag to keep knocking you down. It helps that the featured skill isn't one that Muscles has, so it should show up less often, but I guess we'll see.

One other point. As an experiment, you've potentially biased your opponents - at least the ones that read the forum. Anyone that is aware of what you're doing might try to seek you out to prove a point about your experiment (or the reverse, avoid you), rather than just playing you "normally". For example, if you are in a CMD matchup and are worth an guaranteed 20 trophies, but I could also attack a substantially weaker opponent for 180 trophies - I might normally ignore you in order to get the big score (if I'm not in the middle of a long streak). But now maybe I'll think "Hey, wasn't Irial trying to test something to do with gauntlet, maybe I should attack to help with the research", or whatever. (I'm in the same cycle as you, but I don't think I've seen your name, so I won't be the one knocking you around.)

In any case, I love the idea. Best of luck!

Hungry Dog DDM

4 to 5 – it is not necessary to use 45% Crit Chance Mirror Jean-Luc Picard

Honestly, you could pull off 1st, depending on the strength of your opponents, and how much dilithium they may or may not spend. Just by playing every 4 hours a top 10 spot is pretty easy to get with all 5% and strong enough crew.

Capt. Chaos

You can always refresh your way through any wall if you spend enough merits.

Ivanstone

36 to 200 – not including any CMD characters in one’s Gauntlet crew leads to failure

I chose 36-200 because I think you do need to be smote for not including any CMD crew*.





*Or spend merits well beyond your comfort zone.

[10F] Belle'Anna

Difficult to estimate at all. Every gauntlet is different, depends a lot on who your opponents are and where you are in the world. I have had experiences with unbalanced crew where the skill missing seems to crop up incessantly, so I just balance it out. I strongly suspect you'd make the top 30 easily with a strong crew like yours, top 5 or even top 10 might be difficult, depending upon circumstances.

What would be most interesting is to stack every crew with the featured skill and balance the other skills out and see how that goes. The Caretaker doesn't fit the bill!

DraftedMcCoy

I have a ton of what I would consider good gauntlet crew. Most of them never get uaed because beating walls of JLP and Surak is annoying.

With low drop rates on the Caretaker and continually bad traits that offer no variety, the gauntlet is wearing on me.

Admiral Skywalker (SECOND FLEET HQ)

Commander Sinclair wrote: »

I consistently place top 5, and that doesn't even matter to me, since all I am after in Gauntlet anymore is my last 3000 rounds to get Locutus #3.

I see people mentioning a very large number of gauntlet rounds like this all the time. Where can I find my own stats to tell me how many gauntlet rounds I need towards getting Locutus or the Caretaker? I know random drop and all that jazz.... but iwith so many of the top rankers in the gauntlet alluding to a high number of remaining rounds left such as you did, I can't help but wonder where do I see my own stats and how can I best use that to my advantage?

Peachtree Rex

Admiral Skywalker (SECOND FLEET HQ) wrote: »

Commander Sinclair wrote: »

I consistently place top 5, and that doesn't even matter to me, since all I am after in Gauntlet anymore is my last 3000 rounds to get Locutus #3.

I see people mentioning a very large number of gauntlet rounds like this all the time. Where can I find my own stats to tell me how many gauntlet rounds I need towards getting Locutus or the Caretaker? I know random drop and all that jazz.... but iwith so many of the top rankers in the gauntlet alluding to a high number of remaining rounds left such as you did, I can't help but wonder where do I see my own stats and how can I best use that to my advantage?

It's one of the tracked achievements. Once you hit 20k, though, you can't see your count anymore (since that's the last achievement reward).

Admiral Skywalker (SECOND FLEET HQ)

Peachtree Rex wrote: »

Admiral Skywalker (SECOND FLEET HQ) wrote: »

Commander Sinclair wrote: »

I consistently place top 5, and that doesn't even matter to me, since all I am after in Gauntlet anymore is my last 3000 rounds to get Locutus #3.

I see people mentioning a very large number of gauntlet rounds like this all the time. Where can I find my own stats to tell me how many gauntlet rounds I need towards getting Locutus or the Caretaker? I know random drop and all that jazz.... but iwith so many of the top rankers in the gauntlet alluding to a high number of remaining rounds left such as you did, I can't help but wonder where do I see my own stats and how can I best use that to my advantage?

It's one of the tracked achievements. Once you hit 20k, though, you can't see your count anymore (since that's the last achievement reward).

Thank you for the clarification. I've been overlooking that.

Irial

The final result is in, but before I share it with everyone, I would like to first clarify a few items related to what I have already posted in this thread.

1) Merits Use

Yes, I know that if a player accumulates a lot of Merits over time, and then spends many/all of them in a single Gauntlet, they can avoid a lot of poor matchups to try to increase their chances of achieving a high ranking one time (e.g., going for a 1st place finish). But in doing this demonstration, I wanted to show what could be achieved in a sustainable way, and not just as a one-off. And so it was never my intention to run some type of large “deficit” of Merits use during this particular Gauntlet.

As I wrote in my previous comment, I earn more Merits than I spend while playing the Gauntlet. I would describe my use of them as being selective and strategic, versus frequent or excessive. When I posted yesterday morning, I had 5,997 Merits (as shown in the screenshot). Even though a portion of yesterday’s were already collected prior to my post, to be conservative let’s assume I added 215 Merits to my total afterwards yesterday from completing all the Daily Missions, and then another 215 from today’s Daily Missions. This would bring my total to 6,427. I also completed the Threshold Rewards for the current Event yesterday, which gave me another 500 Merits (i.e., at 18,000 Victory Points). Therefore, outside of Gauntlet play, my expected total number of Merits at this time would be 6,927.

Below is a screenshot I took of my Daily Missions screen at the conclusion of my Gauntlet. I chose this screen because it shows the timing (i.e., a Gauntlet currently finishes 5 hours prior to the next refresh of Daily Missions), as well as my totals for the various game currencies. In addition to seeing that my Dilithium total remained the same (i.e., at 586), you can see I now have over 7,500 Merits. Therefore, when I will shortly post my final ranking for the just completed Gauntlet, know it was achieved without running any type of Merits deficit whatsoever.

Irial

2) Not Prioritizing Lengthy Win Streaks

As I also wrote earlier, part of my approach is to not focus on maintaining lengthy Win Streaks, and so it is reasonable to ask whether there is a significant disadvantage in doing so. For me this question ultimately comes down to the pursuit of the Gauntlet’s Rare Reward character – that is, currently The Caretaker. Obviously since you saw me using him, you already knew I had won him before. But what you were not aware of is that early this month I actually won my 5th copy of him, and therefore now have him Immortalized. And I think how the 5th copy came to me provides a good example of why I think my approach to Merits use and Win Streaks does not substantially jeopardize my attainment of the Gauntlet Rare Reward character.

I wrote how I will refresh when I get a poor matchup when my crew is at 100%. What this means is I typically get a good number of short Win Streaks of 3 or 6. And even though our chance of winning the Rare Reward from a Gauntlet Box is lower than from Chests and Crates from longer Win Streaks, it turns out the Boxes can in fact drop the Rare Rewards ‘frequently enough’ if you open a lot of them. My 5th copy of The Caretaker came after a Win Streak of 3, and as best as I can recall at this time, in total 3 of my 5 copies of him came from Boxes, versus the higher probability Win Streak Rewards (or Vaults).

This all being said, I believe when playing a game one should be open to evolving how they play, and be adaptable to the circumstances they are facing. When the Rare Reward is next updated, and we have a new prize to pursue instead of The Caretaker, I might try lengthening out some Win Streaks to open more Crates, if I am not equally fortunate in winning the new Rare Reward from a Box.

Irial

3) The Selection of Mariachi Q for My Gauntlet Crew

Let me begin by saying what I am going to write now is in no way intended to be any type of ‘argument’ with/against Peachtree Rex. I respect both Peachtree Rex and the data contributions Peachtree Rex has made (and is continuing to make) to the player community. I found the specific data Peachtree Rex posted in this thread enlightening.

I will try to illustrate how I selected my Gauntlet crew by using a sports analogy. In non-individual sports, sometimes a club will acquire a number of star players, but together they will not achieve as much as is expected of them. This is often because they do not fit together well as a true “team” towards the attainment of the ultimate goal. A good coach/manager understands the game being played, how to be successful, and specifically what roles need to be fulfilled by various team members, so that the whole can accomplish much together. This sometimes means that a player who is very good at a particular role is more valuable to the team than a more talented player would be who can do many other things much better.

I mentioned understanding the game, and knowing how to be successful. With respect to The Gauntlet and achieving a high ranking, I think a key piece is recognizing it has an ‘endgame’ component. What [10F] Belle'Anna wrote about “where you are in the world” is an excellent point, as if your particular time zone precludes you from participating during the final half hour of a Gauntlet, then you will miss out on the significant positive movement in rank that others are able to achieve during this time. Simply put, if you can win a good number of battles during the last half hour, then you can substantially increase your ranking.

When I was selecting my team, I thought about what battles I was most likely to face during the Gauntlet’s endgame phase, and how I could maximize my wins. The featured skill was Diplomacy, and so I focused on its combos. Precisely because Mirror Jean-Luc Picard had a 45% Crit Chance, I wrote off the DIP-CMD combo, and planned on refreshing past it. I figured since she is not as widely owned, Mirror Inquisitor Troi with 25% Crit Chance would give me a good chance of winning a DIP-MED battle. Next I considered what role Locutus of Borg would play. He has 3 strong Gauntlet combos, but when selecting my team I recognized due to the element of ‘fatigue’, he could not actually be used for all 3 during the endgame. Fortunately I had a strong Trelane available, and so that covered off the secondary SEC-SCI combo that Locutus frequently battles for me. With respect to the DIP-SCI combo, I knew Locutus would be facing either a 5% Surak or a 25% Mirror T’Pol, since both are widely owned by players. In order to give me my best chance of winning this DIP-SCI matchup, Locutus needed to be at 100% strength. Similarly, I needed Troi to be at 100% against a 5% Bartender Guinan (or possibly a 25% Mirror Phlox) to give me my best chance of winning a DIP-MED battle.

What the above meant was, even though they both had the potential of being competitive in a DIP-SEC battle, I did not want to use up either Locutus or Troi on such a matchup – on my team, they each had a different role assigned to them. In order to strengthen my endgame offense, what worked best for my team was to add someone else who could deliver a DIP-SEC win for me. And since in this case he had a 45% Crit Chance, Mariachi Q was in fact the perfect complimentary role player for me to add to this particular Gauntlet crew. Ironically what made him so valuable to me was the fact other players where looking upon him as a lesser choice than other options they had, and thus did not include him on their teams, allowing me to have the competitive advantage I sought.

Clearly in making this selection, and going with an unbalanced team, I valued offense much more than defense. Why did I make this choice? Because of how Trophy counts change when players win battles. If I initiate and win a battle worth 100 Trophies, then my total goes up 100. When the opposite occurs and an opponent defeats me, my total only goes down 30. The reward for winning is substantially higher than the penalty for losing. And unless they are spending Dilithium, your opponents’ fatigued crews can only do so much damage to you when your crew is always defending at 100% strength.

I recognize there can be more than one path leading to a successful outcome, and if others wish to continue seeing my choice of Mariachi Q as not being ideal, we can respectfully ‘agree to disagree’.

Irial

At the time of posting this comment with my final result, there are a total of 39 players who have voted in the Poll, and again I would like to thank all of you for your participation in this exercise.
The choice that received the fewest amount of votes turned out to be the correct one, and so I would like to now acknowledge AviTrek, Captain_Who, and Jim Raynor for being as insightful as they were!

I hope many of you have enjoyed seeing this example of what is possible in The Gauntlet. I wish everyone well, and hopefully I will see you in my future Gauntlets.

Dirk Gunderson

11 to 15 – finishing with 7 Gauntlet Crates to open is a good result

Very insightful, Irial! From observing my own gauntlet rewards and those posted by others, I fully agree with the strategy of getting large numbers of small streaks rather than chasing a few long streaks. It would be easier to determine which is best if we knew the exact drop percentages for each kind of reward box, of course, but that’s not going to happen.

Sisko's Self-Sealing Stembolaya [FF]

11 to 15 – finishing with 7 Gauntlet Crates to open is a good result

You got your fifth copy? Man I don’t know how that happens for some and not others. The admiral of my fleet got like 3 Caretakers this past month.

I’ve been playing the game since March of this year and I got one copy of Caretaker back in April. I haven’t gotten any more so far. I can’t even remember what I placed. I think it was pretty low, because this was only a month in for me and I didn’t have good Gauntlet crew yet.

I would love to get more copies of him, but it’s not looking good right now. I wish we knew certain things we could do to make it more possible

[SJ] Admiral Aki

Awesome post.

The main point to take away from it is that it is possible to play the Gauntlet with strategy and tactics, so long as you put some thought and effort into it.

I enjoy the Gauntlet, I know a lot of us don't. This post has given me some ideas on some new strategies to try out on it.

Hungry Dog DDM

4 to 5 – it is not necessary to use 45% Crit Chance Mirror Jean-Luc Picard

Not bad, not bad at all. Well thought out. I appreciate the results and the commentary on methods.

Ishmael Marx

16 to 35 – it is not possible to finish in the Top 15 without using 45% Crit Chance Mirror Picard

Congrats Irial. Excellent review of the strategy considerations you used in picking your crew. Happy to see you exceeded my prediction.

Bylo Band

Today I won the best prize I have ever won in The Gauntlet, a 4* database. This was an interesting thread but not really relatable.