I like Mace WAY more than Ben. Way more. Ben has at best a one turn special on his mind trick which you can block or stun and hits like a wet noodle. Mace hits harder when he's healthy and self heals when he's not.

But Barriss is the absolute best Jedi for the challenge, although as P did it can be done with Lumi.

Week 11 Report:

Level: 70
GW Won: 55 (+7 GC)
Arena Won: 325 (+25 AW)

A Squad:

1) L68 Sid 7*/G8
2) L68 Lumi 7*/G8
3) L68 JC 6*/G8
4) L68 PTL 6*/G8 (+1*)
5) L68 QGJ 6*/G8 (46/100)
6) L68 GS 6*/G8 (66/100)
7) L68 Phasma 7*/G8 (+1*/+2L)

B Squad:

8) COUNT DOOKU!!! 5*/G8
9) L66 Yoda 6*/G8
10) L68 Barriss Offee 6*/G8 (+L2) (14/100)
11) L68 Daka 6*/G8 (+1*/+L2)
12) L42 IG-88 5*/G7 (26/85)
13) L68 IG-86 6*/G8 (+L2) (43/100)
14) L66 HK-47 5*/G8 (+1G) (21/85)
15) L68 Fives 5*/G8 (+1*/+L2)
16) L67 Mace 6*/G7

Bench:

10) L62 Poe 5*/G8
17) L60 Vader 4*/G7 (44/65)
18) L60 Luke 4*/G7
19) L64 Talia 5*/G7
20) L60 Chewie 4*/G6
21) L52 Jawa 4*/G6
22) L52 Greedo 2*/G7
23) L50 Ewok Elder 3*/G6 (+1*)
24) L50 Resistance Pilot 2*/G6

Not actively working on:

25) Stormtrooper Han
26) Grand Moff Tarkin
27) NS Initiate
28) NS Acolyte
29) Royal Guard
30) FOTP
31) Clone Sgt. (3* from bronze pulls alone, FML)

GW Burners:

32) Snowtrooper
33) Kit Fisto (for now, if he becomes farmable I'll build him up)
34) Ewok Scout
35) Teebo
36) Resistance Trooper
37) IG-100
38) Biggs Darklighter
39) Magmatrooper

Plans:

1) Continue farming Ventress.
2) Continue farming hard nodes/cantina for Count Dooku to 6* (next week)
3) Continue using cantina rewards to promote QGJ to 7* (next week)
4) Switch to STHan for arena rewards to promote to 5*
5) Alternate catina farming between GS and Dooku
6) Continue farming gear to get main players to purple and beyond (ongoing)
7) Get Chewie into Purple Gear/5* (long term)
8) Get Luke to 5* (long term)
9) Continue farming IV laptops (forever, and ever, and ever, and ever)
10) Continue farming Rey from hard nodes (36/80)

Seems like my PVP server "woke up" with the update imminent. Recently, I've been starting in the 30s-20s and finishing top 20, as far as #5 and twice vied for #1. Today it's only 2:00 and I've fallen to #75.

What's your current arena team?

Irrelevant because for almost a week I never fell below 30. All the other people woke up. I'm fine with top 100 or top 50 every day, but it was fun to contend. I would have fallen out of love with it quickly because I didn't want to devote 6:15-7:00 every day to just doing that.

But I'm still using QGJ, Yoda, Lumi, Phasma, and Sid.

Phasma is great because she steps in at the right time to give my whole team advantage and maxed turn meters before half the other team gets their first move.

I'm fairly certain they merge the older PVP "shards" that have less active players. I notice that whenever this arena drop happens to me, I see a bunch of new names in the top 10 list.

I imagine you are getting challenged by Dooku teams with 86/GS. Dooku is stunning your QGJ which wastes his turn. Then he's getting wiped out by GS with an assist. Now it's 4 vs. 5 and you are done shortly thereafter as you have no one else to call an assist. If you lose an RNG to Lumi vs. Lumi her special is probably getting blocked too.

If their team has even a 4* royal guard you are probably screwed too as your whole team is focusing on him while his team destroys yours.

The good news is that speed meta is probably closing soon.

they claim they do not server merge but they are lying.

I don't care about maintaining rank over days, I just want to win 4-5 each day to progress that achievement and keep beefing up the roster. That's really all this "game" is to me at this point. I keep hoping that once player guilds come online and other events/modes that it'll be awesome. v1.0 is a long way off still.

I agree I'm completely bored. Outside of 3-4 hard GW nodes a day there's nothing to do.

Holding onto 2700 arena tokens right now to decide whether to promote STHan to 5* or get Ventress to 7* first.

I was up about 10k of those before I decided to just unlock everyone I could since I've paused promotions. Stopped shy of Gunray, Ackbar, and Savage because the news of the update came out and I figure they may sneak some new character into the shop, but that's probably wishful thinking. I'll be back up to 4,700 after today's PVP rewards. I'll probably go with Ventress over STHan because I still haven't got all the stars out of DS Hard mode yet.

I have 3* all but 7-D. I always lose Daka on the last battle. Cannot seem to protect her for the life of me.

DVD Josh - Love your weekly updates, thanks for posting!

The update is supposed to hit in the next 24 hours. You should stop spending Cantina energy now and regular energy 13 hours before the first bonus energy tomorrow. You want to maximize your energy stockpiles so that when the update hits you can splurge and have that XP apply to something. I plan to have 129 and 174, respectively, without spending any crystals to stockpile. Also, make sure you don't redeem any daily activities after the reset either.

Your goal should be to get to level 72 as quickly as possible so you can work on the next challenge tiers for, Maker-Willing, better gear drops. I would additionally recommend waiting until as late as possible to do those challenges each day before you're 72 just in case you unlock them before that day is over.

Let's go 80!

Thanks! I'm glad someone other than me is getting something out of it

Very sound advice, esp. on the Sunday L72 recommendation. The question though is what time the update will drop. Certainly not at midnight EST. If you are looking at around 5pm EST as it has been lately, than there is a whole day potentially wasted. Regardless, do not claim dailies until the update hits for sure.

I have 20M in credits saved up. Any estimate as to what it'll cost to take someone from 70 to 80? I also have well over 10k various training droids just sitting around.

5pm EDT is what I'm anticipating. I definitely remember these things hitting around the time people were making their PVP push. That's why I started out saying it was about 24 hours away which should be enough to bank a full Cantina stockpile.

I believe I read on the forums that the cost estimate for 70 to 80 was approximately $2M per toon. So you should be be more than fine with 20M credits.

I have 2M. Working on starring right now. Not really worried about incremental changes from training.

Nice!

Update Notes are out:

Greetings Heroes,

Here are the update notes for 3/31/2016. (NOTE: We are aiming to have this update go live on 3/31/2016 between 1pm and 6pm Pacific Time, but there is always the chance that the update may slip to 4/1/2016)

The level cap has increased to 80!

New Light/Dark Stages

stage 8 light normal unlocks at player level 74. All stage 7 light normal battles must be complete.
stage 8 light hard battles unlock upon completion of stage 8 light normal battles.
stage 8 dark normal unlocks at player level 76. All stage 7 dark normal battles must be complete.
stage 8 dark hard battles unlock upon completion of stage 8 dark normal battles.


Cantina Battles

Cantina Battles stage 7 unlocks at player level 77. All stage 6 battles must be complete.


Challenges

Challenges requiring player levels between 70-80 will unlock. There are no new challenges, but there are harder tiers for existing challenges which offer new pieces of gear.



General Changes
Max Level Player Daily Activity – The Max Level Player Daily Activity is only displayed to players at max level and rewards a new Ability Material.

Can only be completed after the “Claim All Daily Activity Rewards” daily activity is claimed.

Dispellable “Continuous Healing” Effects now Display an Icon – “Continuous Healing” effects, which are now susceptible to being dispelled, now display an icon and text when active.
Evasion Buff now correctly says “+10% Evasion Chance” instead of “+10% Dodge Chance”.
An extra surprise will also...



Gear Changes

Gear level 9 has been changed among the following units:

Ima-Gun Di
Jawa
Kylo Ren
Nightsister Initiate
Tusken Raider
CT-5555 "Fives"
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Old Ben)
Teebo
Plo Koon
First Order Stormtrooper
Magmatrooper
Hoth Rebel Scout


An additional ingredient has been added to the following gear crafting recipes:

Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller also requires 50 Mk 9 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars Salvage items
Mk 5 CEC Fusion Furnace also requires 50 Mk 10 TaggeCo Holo Lens Salvage items
Mk 7 Nubian Security Scanner also requires 50 Mk 11 BlasTech Weapon Mod Salvage items
Mk 6 Nubian Design Tech also requires 50 Mk 10 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars Salvage item


Some of these items are currently unavailable, but will become available in the next major update.



Character Changes

Qui-Gon Jinn’s rank 8 leader ability has been changed to “Jedi allies have +25 Speed and gain Potency Up for 1 turn at the beginning of each encounter.”
Geonosian Soldier’s rank 8 special upgrade has been changed to “Damage +15%”.


Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug that caused First Order Officer’s basic ability to gain less damage than intended at some upgrades.

"An extra surprise will also..."

Will also what? WILL ALSO WHAT?!?!!

Pretty nice to see a free material every day for maxed players. Sucks there's no announcement about new Arena character or new achievements. C'est la vie.

Gear is already a horrible grind, but now they're increasing the numbers required for some of them. There's a post on Reddit suggesting that you go in and craft any that you can before the update.

The funny thing is that even whales hate grinding. Grinding is what will make this game die an early death. I already feel like the user base is starting to erode.

More bullshit vaguery from EA Jessie:

Hey Everyone,

While I can't share exact details yet, know that there will be more ways to acquire gear in the near future.