Hello! 4 years ago I stopped playing, and now I decided to return. It was also decided to start the game from the beginning, because my set of characters was no longer relevant. Therefore, I want to ask - is there a modern pumping guide? I would be very grateful if anyone would help with an informative post, or through personal messages. Thank! https://swgoh.gg/p/568787562/
They are not the things that most people like to think about all the time - there's so much more to do in the game, especially when starting from scratch. BUT they provide the income of purple crystals that you're going to use to do ... pretty much everything for the next year.
Two paths will get you an early Squad Arena team AND an early Fleet Arena team that are both viable.
One way to do this is to drive hard on the Phoenix toons + Kylo Ren Unmasked + Vader + TIE Fighter Pilot + Grand Moff Tarkin. Phoenix will also allow you to unlock Thrawn and Emperor Palpatine. This is a fairly decent strategy, but will require more investment in Phoenix than most people want to give.
The other way to do this is to drive hard on Separatists, especially the Geonosians, + Dooku, Ventress, Grievous, Jedi Knight Anakin and a couple other Jedi, usually the Phoenix Jedi Kanaan and Ezra, plus Bastila Shan & Jolee Bindo. This strategy gives you a quicker path to a longer-term Squad Arena champion (Padmé) and has a huge advantage in required gear, since the Phoenix squad uses 1.21 BAZILLION stun guns - a very difficult piece of gear to get in the quantity you need for all your worthwhile characters. It will be a LONG time before you've got all the Mk 5 Stun Guns you want (you'll get them mostly from the Rancor raid to start with, though there are other sources that you'll tap into eventually).
The game seems to want to funnel you into Phoenix, and you can get a decent enough Phoenix squad to help you through Galactic War every day fairly quickly. Padmé will take a bit longer to acquire, but Padmé is the better long-term Squad Arena contender. Also remember that it's easier to get to the top of the Fleet Arena leaderboard without spending money than it is to do the same with Squad Arena. The Geonosians do well under Grand Moff Tarkin as an early Fleet Commander, and they downright excel under General Grievous once you have the Malevolence capital ship. Thus they allow you to upgrade your fleet with a single capital ship, rather than building an entirely new fleet.
So... my advice, if you want it is this: when given a choice between two decent options like Phoenix => Thrawn or Separatists => Padmé, even where one is a bit better than the other, always choose the fun thing.
The advantage you get in the game from taking the mathematically optimal path isn't worth turning what was a game into a job. I play this game because I like it. There are plenty of things that I find fun in the game (which doesn't mean I don't also have fun complaining about the game on the forums), but I would quickly kill that fun if I always went after the same characters as everyone else in the same order as everyone else because I was afraid of losing my advantage in one of the Arenas or in GAC or something else.
I pick areas of the game that I like, and then try to get better at those. That requires certain characters more than others, and I usually farm those, but every once in a while I blow off the best character for a game mode I like just because I like another character more.
This means that I'm doing the things that I want to do. I've been playing the game for about 4 years. I started in January 2016, but I took a 6-month break in the 2nd half of that year. So I've never been at the tip of the spear like maybe I would have been (temporarily) if my break had come after a couple years of solid play.
But I've caught back up most of the way and I'm at the stage of the game where my concerns are the Galactic Legends and Jedi Knight Luke. I've spent 16 weeks just trying to gear up and relic up my Resistance squad for the GL Rey event. Literally no gear went to any characters except Resistance for 12+ weeks. That's a LONG time to focus on the requirements for a single character.
If I didn't want to go after Rey, this would definitely feel like work.
You're in a different position. You will be changing priorities faster than I do. Even so, you're going to have to decide now whether you want a job or a hobby.
Phoenix & Separatists are both valid ways to go, with important positives for each and a large number of people who will tell you that each one is the best and the other is crap. You've got to decide for yourself. I think the Geos have really fun ships and really great special missions in DS Geonosis Territory Battle. I think Thrawn is an amazing character you can only get with Phoenix, and although this isn't really a role playing game, I like the character of Thrawn from novels I read ages ago, so that's a plus in his direction (and thus in the direction of Phoenix) as well.
So it's complicated, but I know which excites me more. That's not what you need to know, though. You need to know which excites YOU more.
Once you've decided that you're going Separatists to Padmé or Phoenix to Thrawn, then other people can help you around the edges.
But always, always, always, when you're faced with two options that each have things to recommend them, choose the one that is more fun.
get 4 main teams. geonosians, padme, shaak ti clones and grievous droids then all set. only need to add assaj, ewok team for C3PO, bossk and hounds tooth.
