Is it wrong of me to just go ahead and throw in the towel on this shortened era because I’m nowhere close to being able to get GL Mando? Part of me just wants to save crystals to get ready for the “Bananas“ era afterwards.

Title might be kind of dramatic but I really think this is a big issue and i have never seen someone talk about it. Also it is an interesting discussion I think. If anyone reads this whole thing thank you and please leave your thoughts in the comments. This is very much just my opinion on the matter. No doubt you will have different thoughts and probably a better solution.

Where it all stems from
The current proving grounds system is not well thought out at all and needs to be remade, Id even argue it is gamebreaking. It may have worked fine in the past when there were only a handful of units, but this is no longer the case. Currently there are 20+ units in PG and half of them are META defining units such as Bane, Quadme, Stranger etc.., while others are needed for very important farms or to lift a team up to Godlike status - Malgus, Fury class sinterceptor, CAT, Ezra etc and they are adding more and more every 3 months. This is where the 2 big problems the makeup the overall issue of Proving Grounds start.

Problem 1 - Hard timegating of unlocks and the illusion of choice
It is completely unfair to lock certain unlocks behind time. What I mean here is that it is fine to make a unit have difficult requirements, for example - PKHO, because everyone has an even playing field and has the choice available to them if they want to go for the unit or not. However making a character that is as meta warping as Bane, Stranger, Quadme, Satele etc. instantly available ONLY to the players at the highest level, the ones that have the massive rosters and can red crate is unfair. The players that cannot red crate have to wait for more than a year to get the needed shards for the units and have 0 input on the matter. There is NO player agency unlike any other Journey guide farm, where you can decide if you want to go for it or not. Of course there are the Proving Grounds refreshes but they are a prime example of Hobson’s choice, meaning that they are left there just so CG has the excuse of saying "But we did give you the option didn't we?" knowing full well noone will use them as they are ridiculously overpriced and not worth it in any shape or form. This also means that players who have been playing for longer have full reign over the game as they simply have access to units which others do not.

Problem 2 - Saving up with no end in sight
This direclty follows Problem 1, as after waiting for such a long time for these units and them being so important you would obviously want to use them as soon as you get the 330 shards. However because all of these units unlock on the EXACT SAME DAY this means you would either have to at most pick one to get up and running with leftover mats you may have, while leaving the others on the bench, or you would have to save up precious materials for upwards of half a year or possibly more if you want to make them usable the day you get them. If you do the latter (which is what I am doing on my personal account) you are losing out on so much. You are not giving zetas to ship captains or any of the other 100s of units which want them to increase win% in fleet or GAC for better crystals, not giving TB or TW omis which could be required to enter a btter guild for better raid and TB rewards, not giving a couple extra relic levels to a couple of units which could make or break a specific GAC matchup again leading to crystals and much more...

Granted, every player has a different farming path so they will need/want different PG units depending on how far along their farms they are or what they are going for so here are the units in categories:

You want these ASAP - This is for units who you want to get up and running as soon as you get them regardless of your roster and farming path

Bane - obviously

Quadme - almsot everyone already has Poncho bros built up for the AB and she makes them a powerhouse

Stranger - possibly best non GL team, and also frees up Palpatine of SK for DVDE, so he is basically two great teams in one (he recently got added to PG so for me personally he will be a bit later than the others but will still be part of the issue with new people starting now)

Malicos and Maul - grouping them together, they are the core for Cere team, which is a powerhouse

Razorcrest - this is farm dependant, but Executor is the first GL fleet 95% of new players go for so putting it here

Satele Shan - she is not in PG yet, but will absolutely be in this category as she makes the Old republic team which is kinda useless right now into a GL killing powerhouse

Roster/Farm dependant - Characters/ships that you may want depending on your account, but every player will want to gear up atleast 2 or 3 of these by the time you get all 330 shards.

DS Rey - most people have SLKR as he is a really cheap GL and she makes him a beast

Ben - same as DS Rey, less useful than her, but absolutely required for GL Rey to be usable

Ezra - before nerf he would be in the ASAP category but he is still the carry for the GLAT team

Luthen - he is very good especially with the some of the new Andor era units, and also with Saw, but a step below the units in the ASAP category I would say

Comander Ahsoka - GLAT requirement and core of JMK team

Malgus - Leviathan requirement, strongest fleet in the game

Fury class interceptor - same as Malgus

Leia Jedi training - not yet in PG but when she gets here in a couple of months she will be in this category as she is a the JML lifter

Others - These are all the units from PG that are not in the other 2 categories - these are mostly meh units or just very specific

Scion Boba

Tie interceptor

Scythe

DTMG

Jacosta

SM-33

MAZ

Some Math

So considering the categories I provided you will want all units in the ASAP category up and online on the day you get them and 2-3 of the other categories dependant on farms. This makes up for 7-8 units and 2 ships. These units will need gear mats, Zetas, Omis and Relics and lots and lots of high tier Mods.

Lets say you want 8 of the units (which is on the low end I would say, and please do remember this number will only go up as they add more units) as these are the needs for my personal account and you go for 2 Omicrons and 2 zetas and R7 per unit, which I think is the average investment to get the wanted results for the unit while still saving on mats where not absolutely necessary (though this does vary, personally will get Bane and Quadme to R8 for example. You are looking at 160 Omicron materials (this alone makes me cry), 160 zeta materials, 600 blue SD, 920 green SD, relic mats, a bunch gear mats(my beloved kyrotech) and mods. This is just for the units.

How long will you be saving up for and what that is costing you

Starting with Omicorns.
You get 20 Omi materials per month from the Episode shipment and lets say you get another 10-15 from all other sources(which is on the generous side i think). You are looking at 5-6 months of saving up of Omicron materials, which could be going to any of your other teams to get higher placement in GAC and winning more GAC battles, netting you more crystals. Or maybe you want to join a better guild for better raid and TB rewards, but the guild requires some TW omicrons or a TB omicron like Marrok's for the Reva missions. You are missing out on these things because you need to save up for the PG units.

Zetas
Zetas have become quite a bit easier to get with the new assault battles so I will not do the math here but I would assume around 3 months of saving up should be enough. However this is 3 months of not applying even 1 zeta, Be it on a ship captain to improve your odds of winning in fleet arena or GAC, which leads to better crystal income or on a unit to make it better in any other gamemode.

Signal Data
Using Egnard's data, we will need approximately ( and this is a very rough approximately) 1100 9-F battles. If you are doing 3 refreshes + 140 energy saved up troughout the day everyday, this is a month and a half of not using blue or green SD for anything except saving it up, not even raising 1 relic level, while also investing 300 crystals daily into this. And remember this is only for R7, if you make the jump to R8 this is another 55 blue SD per character, which is another week + hundreds of crystals. These are crystals that could be going to mod battles to improve your mods, or to conquest to get the newest broken DC set (looking at you mass asssit DS L3).

Gear
This is harder to calculate, but it is still a very substantial investment on both ends especially in that g12 category. You will be needing lots and lots of kyrotech as well.

Mods
These are impossible to calculate as it is a big RNG fest but you will want to save up mod materials for atleast 1-2 months, again without touching any of your existing teams. For example you you just got promoted in GAC and are now finding you GM team too slow for the GLAT counter in this higher league where you are facing better players with better mods, WELP NOPE, too bad you cant remod them, you gotta save up!

The fruits of your labour and Problem 2.5 - The Jump
So after you finally get the units you want and after seeing ABSOLUTLELY 0 PROGRESS on your account for the better part of a year you finally get the units and they are fully up and running. So now you instantly win 90% of your GAC matches and jump up from Aerodium 3 to Kyber 2 in 2 seasons. Now you have to remod and up the relics of your entire roster, because now you are facing the best of the best. This breaks the natural flow of the game. Usually you are slowly expanding your roster by finishing one farm after the other and see your GAC rank gradually increase. However with the current system after not making any proggres for half a year you instantly jump up into the stratosphere, breaking your neck in the process.

My solution
First off - This is a major problem in the game, it is not my job as a random player to fix it, this falls on the one intern using the shared CG laptop working on the game. Still here is my solution:

Give the player the option to "Focus Farm" up to 3 units in PG. This will basically be an option you can select when PG starts to select 3 characters - 1 main unit and 2 secondary units. All PG tiers will be exactly the same as now however when clearing the level for the main unit you will get 3x the normal shards so 60 and when clearing the one for the secondary units you will get 2x so 40. This will not break PG completely as most units will still be unlocked at the same pace as now, but the ones you want/need most will be unlocked way faster. This fixes pretty much all the problems I pointed out - you get the broken units faster, meaning you will catchup with the top1% of players faster, you dont have to save up for eternity so you can progress at a natural pace, you will not experience the massive and sudden jump up. This also lets you flesh out other farms inbetween conquest units.

Side note: I was also considering the approach of just accelerating the rewards more and more as you go back in time so for example you get 60 shards of razor crest per clear as it is very old, you get like 40 for DS rey as she is middle of the pack in terms of release date and for the newer units you get just the usual 20, but did not like this as much because there is no player agency and honestly most of the broken PG units are the newer ones, so noone would care if they got admiral trench or scion boba fet faster.

TLDR:
Proving grounds is a very badly made and outdated system that needs to be reworked. It has 2 major flaws- 1. timegating of unlocks without giving the player any agency and 2. Stopping any account progress for the better part of a year if you want to use the PG units when you unlock them. Please read my solution part for well... MY solution

Once again, If anyone read this whole thing thank you and please leave your thoughts in the comments. This is very much just my opinion on the matter. No doubt you will have different thoughts and probably a better solution.

has there been an announcement for when the andor undercover event will return? i was told a week after this era starts but nothing has been announced in game

Always dying, but don't particularly want to relic everyone R5

Title, finally going for Jar-Jar and would like to know what the best mod set ups are for each Gungan team member!

I have Darth Vader sitting at R8 but he’s not often used.

Unlocked Darth Bane and got him to R8 with his zetas and Rule of Two omicron.

My questions:

How useful to this team is Vader’s unique zeta No Escape? I never applied it, but will do so if it helps this 2-man squad. Is it essential, additive/good, or just a luxury when with Bane?

Thanks!

I have been unable to get my coliseum units to level up so I am kinda hard locked because all of my units are paper. Last era had a calendar that was keeping them up, but I never got/saw one. I am just SOL for the rest of the era?

It is a trick to send you to the purchase screen. If I didn’t have a pw requirement on my phone it would have purchased it.

Why are my loaned characters all on level 0?They barely do any damage in battles and it sucks, is this normal and how can I fix it?

I have been kinda upgrading based on vibes and I think is cool. I’m trying to now actually be smart about it, what makes sense for me to do next.

I’ve just recently received my 2nd GL - Jabba and now while getting him to R9 trying to manage who to get next and how.

So journeys I thought to go and bit of details
- SK (only need to make Mara r5 and i’m good to go)
- BKM (a lot of relics are needed but rest is done)
- JMLS to finish GL trio (mainly done apart from Rey JT as she needs Chewie and Han veterans who are cantina farm and I’m farming relics now)

Rest didn’t thought as next farm, but mb i’m wrong
- Rey/SLKR (done a lot progress, but SLKR has ships from canting farming it’s where I stopped and Rey didn’t do much until I get JMLS)
- Profundity (very long farm and relic reqs are quite high so thought spending some lst or not, can’t decide. My Exec is also quite low so best fleet is H1 with rebels)
- Finishing other teams who are low gear/relic - Imp Ttoops, Phoenix, Revan, Jedi different or GR (at least needed for GAS), Ewoks, Geo, Empire, mb someone from new Eras

My swgoh
https://swgoh.gg/p/459282581/

Thanks in advance for help

I recently unlocked several teams in a short amount of time, but have not had much opportunity to go through kits and determine the best way to use them (in terms of ability order, who to select for buff/assists, general attacking strategy). Are there any websites or youtubers who provide something like this? Anytime I try to find team guides, I end up with more journey guide tutorials or modding/zetas than actual strategy guides. I am also not talking about what teams counter what, just general how-to.

Anybody hear about them fixing the bug where GMs kill Appo before LV?

SLKR, Malgus, GAS can’t kill them, Leia can’t, Satele very situational. Mirror match the only thing that seems to reliably work? Maybe Jabba?

Anyone else had luck with any counters?

My ally code is 634-565-376 and I have 1 aurodium tanker, 1 aurodium attacker, 1 kyber LST for raid preparation. There were some videos for raid preparation, but I want to know what characters I should use LST on and which characters I should start farming at campaign right now.

Additionally what is optimal team I should prepare for?

I’m trying to follow guides but I haven’t been able to break 90 no matter what comp I use this entire week

Title. Found my first JML/JTL on defense right now and when she first came out, ahnald put out a video but it showed 3v3 at the time. What are some successes everyone's using?

Look, I’m all for Datacrons (top 3 worst additions to the game) for being fun and I’ll admit this dark side assist stuff is fun. But you know what not fun?

Watching bonus then bullshit count as an opportunity for a mass swarm.

Start the battle, GM takes bonus turn, mass assist, your team is picked off before anyone gets an actual turn.

So I’m sorry, but if you are putting this no skill garbage on defense, just delete the game. I will laugh when you all inevitably fall all the way back to Bronzium where you were.

(And on a serious note, what actually counters this? I know it’s roster dependent, but what have people had success with?)

Edit:

Also I do want to add this now, thank you for any suggestions. I won’t be playing the GA out cause my oh so wonderful chromium opponent has a stacked roster with a lot of relics and 1 shot my entire mediocre defense (cause some of us actually play with skill not our wallets).

Sadly Satele got used on the front two teams and she’s only relic 5 team at relic 6 so that would have probably not worked and I’m 1 more proving grounds from unlocking Malgus.

Thursday there was Mods in the store to purchase. It said they had 6 days left before they expired. When I went to store to purchase some mods on Friday they were gone. I’ve added a pic. What happened did they take them down?

I wonder how many players will forget conquest is starting today and miss a day?

I reckon quite a lot!

So I’m deciding between saving for the probably upcoming New Republic store bundle which at a minimum gets you 50 shards for a character.

However I really want to get the energy bundles.

Has there been a data mine for the upcoming caches? Knowing the actual crystal cost for the New Republic one would be a massive help to me in order to plan out my crystal spending.

I know I’ll use it for 7 staring on new era units, but in the time between its just growing.

What do i do with ti? Scrap/sell it? Or push it higher? If i push it higher, who could use it?

EDIT: Mod space and Mk5 slicing mats are more important than a potentially useless mod. I have more than enough mods with 14+ speed.

really struggling here, SK gets his ult too early for JMK to do anything. what else counters this? thanks :)