Forum Discussion

LetoAtreidesII's avatar
7 years ago

Next Several Zetas Priority Discussion

I currently have mats for 2 Zetas saved up and am unsure where to put them. I would like a list of the next several zetas I should get and in what order. I would like advice from a large and diverse group of players with a range of well-argued opinions. I posted a megathread last week that included this question among too many other questions and only got a few responses. That was clearly too unwieldy and unfocused so I'm going to post several more focused threads instead, starting with this one.

This is what I have right now: https://swgoh.gg/u/letareus/collection/

I've been playing for about 8 months and am currently focusing on JTR prep. I've completed the legendary farms for every character except JTR and GMY. I'm very successful in squad and fleet arena and achieve #1 or #2 for my payout almost every day.

The Zetas I already have are:
1. Palpatine lead for arena and misc
2. Vader lead for soloing Heroic Rancor, HAAT p2, and tier 5 STR (not ideal as the debuffs are getting harder to apply but still does more damage than any other team I have)
3. Sion unique for arena and raids
4. Thrawn unique for my raids and a slight arena buff
5. Nihilus' unique for a slight arena buff.

I am considering several zetas but will consider any suggestions. What I'm looking for the most is raid utility/performance (I currently lack real raid teams except a variant of my arena team) with a secondary interest in more arena security and ensuring that I'm successful in getting JTR.

I'm going to wrap up this post here to prevent this from bloating like my megathread, but will add that if you recommend CLS's IBAT you'll have to make a strong case because so far, CLS has been a relatively useless character for me for all the hype around him. I predict CLS will only start to be useful when I farm up a real team around him, but I predict that by the time I do that (basically by the time I have BB8 and Ventress ready), I will have enough mats for a third Zeta.

Also, I have no plans to replace my current arena team (EP nightmare meta) because IMO EP>Bastila, EP>Traya, BH teams don't exist on my shard and there is nothing else except easily beaten trash like JTR/Rex teams. My EP team members also make up my current best raid teams with different comps so I wouldn't mind investing a bit more into it those characters.

If you would like more background info you can read the bloated megathread here: https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/179689/next-zeta-raid-team-and-general-advice-and-what-should-i-farm-next-with-certain-currencies/p1?new=1
  • "CoastalJames;c-1640642" wrote:
    You are a one-off. Talk like a pro but... :smiley:


    I've given you evidence, screenshots, and reasoned arguments to refute your claims, you've responded with nothing of substance and are resorting to personal attacks. Well, you went there. Let's compare your credentials with mine:
    I'm rank 1-2 in arena every day in my payout (would be rank 1 every day if I wasn't in a rotation with a friend in my payout), rank 1 in fleet arena every day: https://swgoh.gg/p/342639299/
    This is you, Rank 116-184: https://swgoh.gg/u/coastaljames/

    With such a poor average rank, I don't think you are qualified to give arena advice to me. At least, I believe my arena rank relative to yours makes me a much better judge of matters relating to arena. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't give good advice on other matters, like raids, so maybe you should stick to giving advice you are qualified to give.

    I'm not criticizing everyone here. Look at FailingCrab in the post just above this one: https://swgoh.gg/u/ionastarbound/ He is rank 1-2, same as me. He is qualified to give me arena advice, unlike you, and indeed he has given me good advice in addition to supporting some of the things I've said.

    "BrtStlnd;c-1640679" wrote:
    Yeah I don’t even know where to start with this guy. He doesn’t want advice.


    I don't want advice? Then explain why I took IBAT largely because of the advice on this thread, I took Ventress's unique because I was advised to build the Ackbar team, I will be taking EP's unique soon because of the advice on this thread, all the previous zetas I took were taken on the advice of people on other threads I've posted, and I only achieved my success in squad and fleet arena because I followed the advice of others in my other threads.

    It's true that I don't want bad advice from people who aren't qualified to give it, like CoastalJames. In contrast, there has been plenty of good advice on this thread, from qualified people like FailingCrab and VIR2L_One.

    And I asked you a reasonable question that you didn't answer: what is raid Han used for besides Chex Mix, TW/TB, and Ackbar HAAT team?

    "FailingCrab;c-1640685" wrote:
    On the contrary, everything he's saying is sensible and something that newer players like us NEED to consider. If you want to keep taking #1 in arena you need to be doing HSTR. TW/TB can wait, if you're not heroic sith your future is not bright...
    Currently, as it stands with Deathstorm NS, my opinion is that Chex Mix is dead....
    The devs have stated that the Asajj/Zombie loop is going to be nerfed by the end of September. Whether that drastically reduces their STR effectiveness remains to be seen, but I can't imaging they're happy that a relatively easy F2P farm is massively outperforming their shiny and expensive new bounty hunters.


    Thank you. And thank you for affirming my skepticism of Chex Mix. And I didn't realize the devs said they were going to nerf Ventress/Zombie, thanks for tipping me off on that.
  • "Letareus;c-1640792" wrote:

    Thank you. And thank you for affirming my skepticism of Chex Mix. And I didn't realize the devs said they were going to nerf Ventress/Zombie, thanks for tipping me off on that.


    It's not been announced as a nerf and CG are claiming players will be 'happy' with the changes, but at the same time will be refunding everyone who put a zeta on Old Daka. I went back and found the thread, here's the relevant quote re zombie in https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/176914/additional-changes-to-bonds-of-weakness-and-nightsister-zombie#latest:

    "We also want to let the player base know that we have been working on making changes to Nightsister Zombie to prevent the “Paper Zombie” strategy. Paper Zombie is a strategy in which players allow a Nightsister Zombie to remain underpowered so that she may more easily die. In allowing her to more easily die, they supercharge Asajj Ventress’ unique ability to gain spectacular amounts of offense. Our philosophy on this change is that in a game about progression and powering up your characters, wanting to move backwards is antithetical to the spirit of the game and it creates a significant disadvantage to people who leveled past this point without knowing of the strategy in advance. Progressing a character should always feel good. We are not ready to debut the change yet, as we are still considering some of the balance implications and other changes we may want to make. Since we were already discussing the Nightsisters, we wanted to let you know that the change is coming."

    And later, in https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/177939/preventing-critolyte-second-pass#latest

    "Finally, we’re still working through the Zombie changes and will be for a little bit. Expect any changes to Zombie to occur sometime before the end of September. Similarly, the plan is still to refund Old Daka Zetas at that time.:"

  • "CaptainFizz;c-1638710" wrote:



    I hear about R2 a lot but I don't have a specific team in mind that includes him. The next raid team I'm planning on is Nightsisters. Like you said yourself, I won't be gettng JTR anytime soon.

    "EdSolo;c-1638832" wrote:
    Not sure where your guild is in terms of the sith raid, so I can't recommend going for any of those zetas at this point. Honestly, CLS has always been more useful for me than JTR and have all three zetas on both.

    How is CLS used in STR, if that's what you were suggesting? Haven't seen a team with him on it, and have been wondering because I'm not having much success with him in that raid.



    R2 is just an overall useful toon since he works with multiple factions. If he doesn't fit your current needs, you can always zeta him later when you have a team for him.

    As for CLS, I only use him in run 5 of 5 on the sith raid since we are only on T6 at the moment. My comment was more as a toon overall. JTR is definitely the key toon for the sith raid, but in the game overall I have found CLS to be a better toon.
  • "Letareus;c-1640792" wrote:
    With such a poor average rank, I don't think you are qualified to give arena advice to me. At least, I believe my arena rank relative to yours makes me a much better judge of matters relating to arena.


    Sigh. You're aware that Arena shards are different, right?

    You may be number 1 in your Arena shard...if you were in mine you wouldn't get much past a 1000 I doubt.

  • I guess with your reactions to the advice given, you plan to just latch on to a guild and hopefully get carried. This isnt a solo-driven game. Top arena is cool and all, but not working towards helping a guild get you rewards through guild events....good luck.
  • "CoastalJames;c-1641316" wrote:
    Sigh. You're aware that Arena shards are different, right?

    You may be number 1 in your Arena shard...if you were in mine you wouldn't get much past a 1000 I doubt.


    Obviously arena shards are different. I've been well aware of that for months. Honestly, you should keep that in mind when you give advice that pertains to your shard that may not pertain to mine. However, you haven't actually done that. It doesn't change the fact that CLS is currently qualitatively inferior to the other meta teams in arena, regardless of shard.

    If I followed your advice, I would undoubtedly do worse in arena whether on my shard or yours. To be clear, what I believe your advice to be is to drop my EP team in arena and adopt a CLS team similar to yours in its place . It's not entirely clear that's what you advocated because all your posts are short, vague, hyperbolic, lacking in detail, lacking substance, and lacking supporting facts or evidence. As such, all your assertions hold no water until and unless you start backing them up.

    You could make the most absurd or false claims, like saying a Jawa team is the best in arena (just a made up and obviously false example), and they would hold equal weight with anything you've said here because you don't support your statements. In contrast, I've backed up most of my assertions with facts, evidence, and/or testimony. You never address that evidence and provide none of your own.

    I have little doubt that if I were in your arena shard, I would do better than you. Unlike you, I will back that assertion up. It's an older shard, so I have no doubt it would be tougher and more competitive than mine, and I probably would not achieve the same ranks I do as on mine (at least, not as easily).

    But I can be sure I would be more successful than you because I can at the very least, easily beat your team on offense, which means I can fight you and take your rank. That's a low bar, however, and I can probably succeed well beyond that. I can say that with confidence because objectively, my gear is better, my mods are better, and in general EP nightmare is qualitatively better than CLS.

    Gear. Both of our squads are G12+, so it comes down to how many G12+ pieces our respective teams have. I have 12 G12+ pieces. You have 7. Not only that, but 4 of mine are the super right side HSTR pieces that give substantial speed bonuses. You have none. Yeah, I paid money for mine, I'm a dolphin.

    Mods. It is widely agreed that speed is king in arena. You may dispute that, but you'd be arguing against most of this forum, and that's too expansive a subject to get into here. The +speed (the bonus in parentheses) on my characters are: +111, +111, +105, +98, +93. Yours are: +93, +70, +62, +50, +25. That's honestly really bad by any objective measure. You'd probably do much better on your shard with the same exact team comp and gear if you got some better mods. Or even bothered to slice your existing mods. So many blues and greens there. Very sloppy. And I must add that on my shard, many of the others in my top 20, the ones I have to fight and beat every day, have far better mods than I do. There's one guy with a +140 Thrawn (who I can still beat, but it can be rough). Even the lone CLS in our top 50 who gets crushed by all the EP's and Bastilas has far better mods than you do (+99, +90, +86, +76, +75) . And you're insinuating that your shard is so much tougher than mine?

    It's hard to be certain, because I can't see the top 50 on your shard. I provided screenshots of the top 20 on my shard. You could have done the same to support your arguments. Maybe you didn't because that evidence would contradict your statements and support mine, or maybe you're just too lazy to do it, or maybe you just never bothered to even look at your top 50.

    Team quality/matchup. It's of course a bit tricker to say definitively that EP meta>CLS because of the number of variables involved (including shard differences). But generally, it is true and I will support that assertion. First, let's look at cold hard data: https://swgoh.gg/meta-report/

    Rank 1 Leaders:
    Darth Traya 57%
    Emperor Palpatine 28%
    Bastila Shan 9%
    JTR 2%
    Rex 1%
    CLS 1%

    Numbers don't lie. General trends will favor the most effective teams. And those numbers say it all.

    Expert testimony from Moderator crzydroid:
    "crzydroid;c-1566258" wrote:
    Don't think CLS Rebels can stand up that well to current Palp meta. All those Rebels add speed to Vader, and they will all take extra damage at the beginning of their turn while Palp is alive. Not to mention reduced potency.


    Next, there's the fact that my shard's top 50 used to be filled with lots of CLS and JTR teams (and others like Nightsisters and some First Order). Now there's nothing but EP and Bastila teams with a handful of JTR holdouts and 1 CLS team. As I posted before, this is the current state of affairs: https://i.imgur.com/F6JwvDk.jpg
    If what you insinuate about CLS vs EP is true (once again, your posts are short and vague, so you never clearly state it), the opposite would have occurred or it would never have happened.

    Finally, I've seen you say in another thread that EP teams are the only teams you can beat easily, or something to that effect, which might explain your position on EP vs CLS. Have you considered that because you're only fighting at the 100+ ranks, that the EP teams you're facing are bad and not representative of the meta? I'm only guessing, but considering how bad your mods are, I'd say it's a reasonable guess. And although you can beat them easily on offense, they may be able to beat you easily as well on offense, probably more easily than you can beat them. Remember that the sole remaining CLS in my top 50 who has far better mods than you gets crushed by everyone else, including myself.

    "CDFrawg;c-1641323" wrote:
    I guess with your reactions to the advice given, you plan to just latch on to a guild and hopefully get carried. This isnt a solo-driven game. Top arena is cool and all, but not working towards helping a guild get you rewards through guild events....good luck.


    Perhaps you should look more carefully at all of my reactions to all of the advice given, because while I responded negatively to the bad advice of a few, I responded postively to the plethora of good advice given by others. My reactions to the advice given were to: take IBAT as suggested, take Ventress's zeta as suggested, plan to take Palpatine's Zeta imminently as suggested, focus on raids as suggested, disregard TW/TB for now as suggested.

    And no, I do not plan to latch onto a guild and get carried. I joined a decent casual guild farily early on and I'm sticking with them even though I could probably get into a much better guild. I've been given multiple offers to join better guilds but refused out of loyalty. My guild has been good to me and it is getting better/stronger. At some point I may need to switch guilds if their progress is unsatisfactory, but I have no current plans to do so.

    When I first joined my guild, yes, I was getting carried through raids, TW, and TB. But as I got stronger, I was increasingly able to pull my weight in all departments. My guild is or was (not sure now) an open join guild and virtually every new member gets carried.

    It is my philosophy that whatever increases my account's power the most overall will also benefit the guild the most in the long run. Not only do the arenas - currency and crystals - provide a massive contribution - possibly the biggest contribution to any account's overall progress, but the characters and ships that I actually use (or used, in the case of my old Phoenix team) in the two arenas provide substantial contributions to TW, TB, and raids.

    The crystals I earn every day determine my overall rate of farming/progression - the number of refreshes I can do per day and occasionally direct gear/character shard purchases - and thus the rate at which I acquire characters, gear, and skill upgrades. This rate of growth determines how quickly my ability to contribute to the guild increases. The higher this rate, the sooner I can get new things that can help my guild even more - the sooner I can get to TW/TB specific things.

    My overall strategy seems pretty logical: secure the initial legendary farms to gain the ability to dominate the arena, then focus on securing arena dominance, finish legendary farms and focus on raids, and finally focus on special events and TW/TB. Arenas affect rate of gain the most, so I secured that first. Raids affect it the next most, so I'm securing that second. While TW/TB is significant, you don't need things that are specific to TW/TB to make a sizeable contribution to them, so those things that are only useful for TW/TB are IMO the last part of my plan.

    Imagine if I followed the advice of some (others wisely advise against it) to get sidetracked and farm and gear characters like Snowtrooper and a Rogue One team early on as suggested by stupid video guides like Warrior's. This is what would have happened. I would have missed several legendary character events because instead of focusing hard on farming the characters needed to unlock them, I'd be splitting my focus between them and these unnecessary side projects for TW/TB only.

    So instead of getting Thrawn and EP when I did, I would have gotten them 3-6 months later. So I wouldn't have had a chance to lock down squad arena. Which means my ability to get anything in the game would have been much slower. So I probably wouldn't have been able to unlock R2, CLS and BB8 when I did - most likely it would have taken an extra year to get them. I'm currently finishing off Vets for JTR, but if I had gotten sidetracked it probably would have taken an extra two years after getting CLS to get JTR. And all those things are useful or even necessary to help my guild. Should I add 1-2 years to the time it takes me to unlock and gear CLS and JTR in exchange for having a TW/TB-specific character or team earlier on? Which do you think helps my guild more in the long run? Doing things my way, I would finish my legendary farm AND farm all my raid teams AND finish all the TW/TB specific teams/characters much sooner, possibly years sooner, than if I split my focus early on.

    And this is where I stand now with my guild in terms of STR contribution:
    https://i.imgur.com/ZUHCYLN.jpg

    If that gives you an idea of how much I'm contributing vs. leeching. My TW/TB contributions are substantial as well - I wish I had screenshotted my contribution to the last TB. My arena team can pretty much take out any one team in TW guaranteed. That's not nothing. Someone advised me early on to not get sidetracked and not to lose focus - I'm glad I took that advice to heart.