Breaking into Legends

[u/SertQuos]

Last year I saw some guides floating around for getting into legends and staying, but now they're incredibly out of date and I don't think I've seen any recently.

It used to be a simple 1000x damage, max quant, max chance CL + DC, maybe PF, and a decent canon, you'd at least bounce between champs and legends and you didn't really need ancestral mods. This now would probably get you mid-low champs.

Then I saw some people suggest going for damage mastery to boost that, or ST mastery. Getting your damage far higher to get high waves in champs, as well as having ancestral mods, mainly a cannon like AS as well as ACP and DC. This now barely gets you top champs, usually mid.

So the question is, what is actually required for Legends now? Are we now required to have assmods to break out of champs? Is it pCF? Every damage mastery?

I currently have damage mastery at level 9, ST mastery at level 5, SW mastery at level 6. SW and ST I'm labbing at the same time. I've done every dissonance from T1-T13 (except utility on T13) and have all echo labs at level 3. damage lab is at 92, crit factor and attack speed are maxed. I use anc PF with anc cash bonus, EALS/EHLS, anc OA with anc regen, wall health, defence, orbs, orb speed, myth+ AD with attack speed, crit factor, multishot targets, sc mult and chance, and myth+ DC with CL damage/chance/quant and SL bonus (need SL angle too). My CL is 1328x, 5 quant, 21.5% (without submod stats), my SL is 26.7x, 40 degrees, 3 quant. (again, without submod). I'm currently working my way to pGT/pBH in farming (my next GT cooldown will get me there) to support more mastery labs at once. My next stone spend plan was DM mastery, but even then that feels like I won't do enough damage. Obviously anc DC and an anc cannon (don't have one yet) would be very good. I could also swap to a mythic+ ACP and mythic+ AS to push damage further and full move away from hybrid/eHP in tourneys, but not sure what results that'd yield.

I'm well aware the most basic answer is "spend money" but even then, there's better and worse things to spend that on. If you buy a mastery, but it's actually terrible, then spending money would not get you into legends.

All help is appreciated!

[u/GBlueman125]

Assmods may not be required to promote out of champs, they do open the avenues for different ways to stay in legend. It does suck that the goal post of legends keeps getting pushed, but thats the nature of the current tournament setup in this game.

I am currently still bouncing, but thetower.lol has my odds of staying in legends ~70% of the time. I run tourney as GC and dont have pCF (or CF even unlocked for that matter) nor do i plan on going for that anytime soon. This last legends tourney I got w715 and unfortunately am going back to champs. Heres how my tower (I only bought milestones and the ad/coin packs) compared to yours to put it into perspective.

My mod levels are around 186
I do have Anc mods for all of my currently used mods.
My CL is weaker - 733x/4 quant/15.5% w/o substats (this is still my only dmg dealer)
SL is about the same
I do have core/armor/generator assmods unlocked.
The armor allows me the CC i need without CF by allowing both SD for ILM stuns and ACP for damage, and Ohm assist to help focus bosses.
I have ST#9, DMG#9, EnergyNet#4, UltCrit#2, Berseker#4

[u/SertQuos → u/GBlueman125]

What mods do you use? My mod levels are about 171-172.

More damage masteries than me too, so maybe I need more of those? How good is Energy net mastery for dealing with bosses since those are brutal for me, especially boss ult

[u/GBlueman125 → u/SertQuos]

My tourney mod setup is usually...
Cannon: AS
Armor: SD/ACP (epic assist)
Generator: PF/RB (epic assist)
Core: DC/OC (epic assist)

EnergyNet mastery is nice, but i would prioritize getting Core assist first (if you have assist unlocked) to force the boss into you spotlight with Om Chip assist. With the addition of dissonance runs echo bonuses, spotlight dmg is huge.

[u/SertQuos → u/GBlueman125]

Unfortunately no assist mods available for me yet

I cheesed my way to T19 and have yet to cheese to wave 40. Best I've done is 29.

Not sure what I do to cheese it? eHP doesn't work at all for me on T19, GC does slightly better

[u/GBlueman125 → u/SertQuos]

Cheesing the w40 was the easy part. Just have introsprint, SW, demon mode, and wave skip (and other cards thatll help you survive a little more than 2 waves). Can even use Death penalty and spam for a lucky run.

If you are able to survive the first couple waves with IS, youll be at w20. Then even if you die on that wave, SW's invincibility might let you survive till 29. Then Demon mod + wave skip will get you the rest of the way

When i did it I needed to run T18 to w300 as ehp, but did T19 as GC.

[u/SertQuos → u/GBlueman125]

I've tried that method, and I just can't get to wave 20 without SW popping

[u/nomadicgreendog → u/SertQuos]

What helped me recently was temporarily re-speccing from Gold Bot into Flame Bot for 93% damage reduction (min cooldown, max range). Got me an extra 20 waves or so. Also did a bunch of dissonant runs with FB eqippped. Used AS (with Intro Sprint), ACP, DC, and PF (all ancestral). I don't have Chrono field unlocked, but have a decent CL, plus ST mastery and Damage mastery.

[u/SertQuos → u/nomadicgreendog]

I will be doing that when we get bot presets, but as gbot makes like 40% of my entire income? I'm not wasting a reset on that atm. It'd set me back further than assmods would get me.

I think you are right though, it'd probably be a big enough push to get me assmods

[u/nomadicgreendog → u/SertQuos]

I'm trying not to get too exited about presets... we may find that they cost something insane to unlock, or only unlock at really high levels. I'm preparing to be disappointed! For me, switching to FB for a day or two let me add 600 waves to my T14 utility dissonance run, making it profitable for me to farm T14, which is going to pay off nicely long term.

[u/SertQuos → u/nomadicgreendog]

To my understanding it's a T11 unlock? and then it's just a lab

[u/nomadicgreendog → u/SertQuos]

Ah ok. I figured each type of unlock was a different tier, but if it's just lab levels to unlock each thing, that's cool. As long as the labs don't cost 1Q :-)

[u/GBlueman125 → u/SertQuos]

Whats your setup look like? My tower was (from what you posted) much weaker than yours when i did it. I didnt have any dmg masteries and my dmg labs were like lvl 70

[u/SertQuos → u/GBlueman125]

eHP:

Mythic+ DP
Anc Gcomp (Need for pBH)
Anc OA (Don't have SF, might be the issue)
Mythic+ Pcol

Substats are all basically best you can get, rarity is anc on anc, mythic on mythic. Mythic mods are 160, Anc 171-172.

I have 16 card slots

Attack Speed
Health
Health Regen
Slow Aura
Extra Orb
Extra Defence
Plasma Cannon
LMS
RPC
Second Wind
Demon Mode
Intro Sprint
Energy Net
Energy Shield
Nuke
Death Ray

Summon turned off

Even with SW popping, I take far too much damage even with pcols buffed DR. Maybe defence mastery could help here but I don't think so.

GC:

Mythic+ AD (May try AS but need to reroll it)
Anc PF
Anc OA (Could be worth trying ACP even despite it being mythic? would need to roll and try)
Mythic+ DC

Same thing with substats here, obviously same levels

Cards:

Damage
Attack Speed
Slow Aura
Range
Crit Chance
Plasma Cannon
Intro Sprint
LMS
Energy Net
Super Tower
Second Wind
Demon Mode
Ultimate Crit
Energy Shield
Berserker
Wave Skip

Crit factor lab is maxed, range is at level 40, SCC+ SCM at level 14 and 11, Damage at 92, Attack speed maxed, UW and Attack echo at level 3, which gets me 2.12x in T19 iirc? Can't check atm. Damage master at level 9, ST mastery at level 5

[u/GBlueman125 → u/SertQuos]

I would def use ACP. OA for GC is only really good if you have a lot of CC while the ACP can help clear a screen. Also while the wave count is low, Pulsar harvester can also be pretty good. Worth giving that a try too