How to Keep Good Mentality When Playing Ranked Mode in CyberChess
Time flies! It’s already the seventh week of the second season in CyberChess.
Nice to see you again. This tutorial is for novice players who get stuck in playing CyberChess while masters/challengers can save your time.
If you are interested in this article, you must find it difficult to advance in the ranked game. Did you fall in love with CyberChess?
I will just share my thoughts with you about how to win the battle in the ranked mode as a challenger player for the whole season 1. I hope my sharing can help you develop your ways of playing the ranked mode.
Basic Concepts
Rules of Ranked Mode
When you open the interface of the ranked mode, you can find the icon of “📖” on the upper right corner. You can click it to check all rules about the ranked mode, including rules of winning or losing points, contents about promotion and corresponding distribution of rewards. I strongly recommend you to get familiar with these rules about the ranked mode so as to avoid making any common mistakes.
The Interface of the Ranked Mode
You can click the “?” on the upper right corner of the interface and check the detailed description of the functions. It is displayed in the above picture. The instruction is detailed enough to help you understand the ranked mode game.
Here is a tip for you. When you are in the preparation phase, you can check your opponents’ info through clicking their avatars. You can check their build-ups and heroes’ stances at the present round. In the match, if the heroes of both sides are of equal strength, a reasonable lineup of hero will help you enhance the ratio of victory.
What is in-game Gold?
In the matchmaking screen, there is a small blue flame icon above the shop button in the lower right corner. Click on it to view the description of the Gold system, including the bonus gold gain for losing streak and the interest income of Gold.
Opponent Matching Rule
- Players will not fight against the same opponent in 2 consecutive rounds.
- Suppose the total number of standing opponents is odd (7, 5, 3). In that case, an AI will be generated mirroring the team composition of a random player (dead or alive).
- For example, when only 5 players are standing, the AI will duplicate a random player and fight against one of the players alive.
- If the AI loses the battle, the mirrored player’s health points will not be affected.
- If the AI wins the battle, the opponent’s health points will be reduced.
- When only 3 players are standing, the top 1️ player will always fight against the AI.
（The above content is from CyberChess Wiki. It is recommended for players to read as there are many essentials to help you deepen your understanding of gameplay, even enhance your win rate in matchmaking. Contents about earning and spending Gold, phases of matchmaking, etc. are all included in CyberChess Wiki.)
Phases of a Game
In order to distinguish the period of battles in the match, there is a simple division by the number of rounds: 1–5 rounds are the early stage, 6–10 rounds are the mid stage, 11–15 rounds are the late stage, and 16 rounds and later are the ultimate late stage.
A Brief Analysis of Gameplay Ideas
How to Optimize Your Gold Spending?
Same with other TFT games, the economic base determines the upper limit of the game. Reasonable operation of the limited gold can allow you to have better performance in matchmaking. The comprehension of gameplay, paces of battling and the spending of gold vary from person to person. The appropriate idea of gold’s spending and the proportion of the hero pool make it easier to have an edge in battles and will make the transition of different stages in the game more smoothly.
The following is a brief analysis of some typical Gold spending methods, which might be helpful to novice players and players who find it hard to advance in the ranked mode.
Trade Your HP for GOLD
This way of accumulating gold is quite interesting, that is, a player deliberately loses for 2 to 4 consecutive matches in exchange for additional Gold , plus the income from Gold interest, to achieve the rapid snowballing of in-game economy. Although you are playing with “your HP”, you still need the confidence which comes from your heroes’ strength, your pace of battling, your luck and your speed of in-game operations to ensure the victories. Otherwise, it will be easier to get defeated in games. It’s clear that your speed of in-game operation is crucial to this method. When you want to spend the accumulated Gold, if you are not decisive enough, you may not have bought enough heroes to win the next fight and the preparation stage is already over. The method itself is risky. However, high stakes, high returns. You should be cautious when using this method.
I will elaborate more about the ‘Trade your HP for Gold’ method. I haven’t used it for a long time. I used it more frequently in beta tests and it may not adapt to the current pace of the game. Mostly I prefer to use this flow when I have a stronger beginning or a weaker beginning. The difference between these two is whether the trade is voluntary or not. And the two situations have their pros and cons as well.
Voluntary Trade often happens when we have a good hand of heroes from the start. At the very beginning, heroes of the in-game store are strong enough to ensure the victory of round 1 and round 2, hence the trade will happen after the first two rounds. Then you need to stop purchasing stances from the second round and resist the impulse of buying heroes. Keep your total Gold a multiple of 5 and use the extra to buy suitable heroes. For example, if you have 12 coins, you can spend 2 coins to buy a hero till you have 1–2 HP left. Try to observe the other players’ lineups in the match then you may know how much HP left will be enough to survive. Later you need to quickly buy heroes and stances to strengthen your lineup to have a firm foundation in the match. Then, you can check if your holding Gold achieves the standard of generating an extra interest. You can keep the pace of using the generated interests from your Gold to buy heroes in later rounds. You will find out that you earn more Gold than any other player in each round. It will help you create an edge for your economy and also create an economic gap with other players. In this way, the successful rate of trading HP to gain more Gold is relatively higher. However, the disadvantage is the economic gap will not be enough to ensure a victory when you are out of luck.
Bad hands at the beginning could also lead to the passive trade of HP for Gold. When luck is not on our side, we could just accept it and start to trade HP for Gold. Under this circumstance, you can do nothing in the first round. Starting from the second round, you can keep a stable pace of using the extra Gold to buy suitable heroes while keeping a multiple of 5 coins. You can also be more radical. You can take the part of the coin which exceeds the multiple of 5 to make another one 5-coin. It can accelerate the formation of the economic gap.
Last but least, when you are using this method, you should take the Gold you need for re-rolling the in-game store and the time in need for buying heroes into consideration. Otherwise, you may advance in the wrong direction.
Fight for you life
When you are at an absolute disadvantage in the match, fighting for your life is the only way to escape. You can quickly strengthen your heroes at the cost of the later stage through upgrading your heroes or putting more heroes on the field, so that you can survive at the early stage or the middle stage to deduct fewer ranking points or even win a few points. In fact, there are no essentials about this method. It is just to re-roll the in-game store frequently to get the heroes you want, and sell some heroes you have bought to improve the strength of your build-up in the next round. Surviving in more rounds is definitely much better than in one round. I guess no one will fight regardless of the cost unless he has to. Remember that each time you re-roll the shop, the economic gap between you and the other players in the match will be widened by 2 Gold.
Normal Way
High-quality games often require steady ways of gameplay and it is not ideal to choose to gamble in previous ways without considerable potential gains. Fighting for first place while not dropping out of the top four, is the way of gameplay for most people to steadily advance in the ranked mode. When you have obvious upper hand over your opponent, you can reduce your gold spending, even save some gold for a short-term investment to gain the interest. When you feel that it is hard to beat your all opponents, you should re-roll the in-game shop whenever in need but keep in mind that you still need to control the times for re-rolling.
The above is only a part of in-game economy and there are many different styles of gameplay be explored. Overall, CyberChess is a strategy game and the charm of the game lies in intellectual competition with your opponents. The gameplay is variable hence you need to adjust your strategy to different situations and different stages of the game.
Pace of Battles
Under the premise of the current limit of 27 heroes in the same class, the pace of the match is probably 1 round slower than before. The speed of synthesizing the first 3-star hero is only 1 round slower. If you are lucky enough, you can synthesize the first 3-star hero in the third round. If not, you should be able to synthesise your first 3-star hero in the fourth round. Generally speaking, if you can’t synthesize the first 3-star hero before the fifth round, you will be in a relatively disadvantaged position in the game.
The range of 3-star hero’s appearance in the rounds of the game:
- The first 3-star hero appears in the 3rd-5th round
- The second 3-star hero appears in the 5th-7th round
- The third 3-star hero appears in the 7th-11th round
- The forth 3-star hero appears in 9th-13th round
- The fifth 3-star hero appears before or after the 12th round
- The sixth 3-star hero appears before or after the 15th round
When the players you are battling with have better economic operations or have really back luck, the time of you getting the 3-star hero may alter. You should form the habit of judging when a 3-star hero will appear. It can help you take better control of your in-game pace and decide which strategies you will use. To some extent, it can help you enhance the ratio of victory.
Reduce Mistakes
In the ranked mode game, not only do you need to adjust your team composition, but you also need to control your error rate. You need to minimize the probability of faulty operations. The mistake made in the early stage will be amplified at the late stage, even leading to the failure of the game. Perhaps you need to experience as many matches as you can, then you will pay attention to this low-cost way which can help you enhance your ratio of victory.
So, how to reduce your mistakes?
First of all, you should have a clear understanding about your build-up: advantages, disadvantages, in which stage of the game it is strong and when it is weak. When facing different compositions of opponents, I don’t think it’s wise to just copy other players’ build-ups as you may not get the same payback.
Secondly, you should clarify the core of your build-up and the priority of heroes. After you figure it out, you will stop hesitating whether to buy one more heroes or one stance so as to improve the efficiency of decision-making in the match.
Lastly, you should make full use of Gold and control the times of re-rolling the shop list. You should try to spend gold wisely. When you can’t get good payback from spending coins, you can choose to sacrifice some HP to for a certain round. Once you make a wrong decision on using Gold, it’s easier to push the snowball in the opposite direction. In the middle and late stages, you may be defeated because you are only short of 1 or 2 gold.
Counter Build-up
Even if there is a minimum gap in strength of heroes, the counter build-up can make it easier to win a game or get beaten badly. Each build-up has its own disadvantages and most of them can be found in one stage of the game. If not, that is you have not found that build-up’s disadvantage or the strength of your heroes is not powerful enough to make use of the disadvantage.
For example, when you encounter an opponent whose build-up counter yours, you should try your best to make use of your strengths to attack his weaknesses. Assuming that his build-up performs the best in the late stage, you can focus on suppressing his growth or depleting his HP at the early stage so as to decrease the probability of battling with him at the late stage.
What you should keep in mind is that CyberChess is a game that needs investment. Once the gap of heroes’ strength is wide enough, it can diminish or eliminate the counter relationships among build-ups.
The Stages of the Game
I am going to talk about the features and reasoning of the build-ups that perform best at the early stage and build-ups that perform the best at the late stage. As different people hold different views on it, only typical team compositions will be discussed here.
Players who choose build-ups that are strongest in the early stage generally have a team dominated by Warriors or Rogues while ratio of Warriors is usually higher. This build-up includes heroes which have a strong endurance or the capability of long-range attack and most players will only select these 2 occupations for the 50 heroes’ deck. Some players will add one more functional hero so as to fasten molding their build-ups at the early stage and accelerate the pace of early stage rounds. The type of build-up can play to its strength at the early stage and players can save their HP while depleting opponents’ HP in the match. As this type of build-up needs to spend a lot of gold in the early stage, the build-up is weakened at the late stage which leads to a decrease in the ratio of getting the first place in the game. This type of build-up does not have a high requirement of heroes’ strength. However, a higher strength of heroes will help you win more rounds.
For build-ups that are strongest in the late stage, usually there are 3 occupations of heroes selected to form the team. It’s relatively slower to fully accomplish your build-up so that players might have to sacrifice HP in the early stage to gain interest so as to support its growth till the late stage. Rogue, Mage and Priest, the composition of these three occupation is the typical build-up which is strongest in late stage. It needs relatively high heroes’ strength to make it to the late stage. Otherwise, it might not be able to make it to the late stage given other compositions are strongest in the early stage. When this type of build-up successfully makes it to the middle and late stage, it is much easier to suppress other build-ups and it has relatively higher rate of winning the first place compared with those build-ups that are strongest in the early stage.
There is also no advice on whether to play the build up that is strongest in the early stage or the late stage. It can be throughly considered based on your heroes’ strength and your target rank.
Techniques of Line-Up
Please remember that CyberChess is a strategy game. Making a good use of techniques of the heroes’ lineup can help your heroes to perform better. Some examples are as below: How to protect your back-row attacking and reviving heroes’ through adjusting their lineup in game; How to make your heroes resist the attack of the front opponent heroes through the collision of the heroes lineup while quietly sneaking to attack the opponent’s heroes in the back row; How to prevent opponents’ Rogue with assassination skills from sneaking up on the heroes in the back row…… These useful techniques can make the game more interesting. You can feel the charm of CyberChess.
As for how to effectively improve the techniques of lineup, perhaps this requires you to pay more attention to where different heroes go in-game. Besides, it would be better if you form a habit of observing the heroes’ lineup of other players during the preparation phase in the match. It will help you adjust the strategy of your heroes’ lineup to purposefully counter your opponents.
Advantages of Skills
I strongly recommend that you should learn more about the effects and uses of different skills. There are 28 skills in total for 7 heroes’ classes. Sometimes it may have a surprising effect when using different skills at a specific stage or on a specific hero. Let’s take the assassination skill of Rogue as an example. At the early stage of the match, the damage is considerable. But at the later stage, assassination skill is not as strong as before because everyone starts to guard their back row now.
If you are curious about the effects of other skills, you need to experience and explore them in the match by yourselves.
- Assassination: Teleport to the back of the opponent, the first normal attack after teleportation deals 250% [normal attack damage]
Last but not the least – Luck
The charm of CyberChess is that you need to be lucky enough to get whatever you want in the in-game shop. In this case you might need to do more kind stuff to be luckier. Whenever you have a bad luck, you might get a neat in-game shop list at the beginning of the match: a concise list heroes with the attributes of ATK 30, HP300, P.DEF30 and M.DEF30. At this time, you might want to know ways of being luckier for the next game.
In the End
So that’s all. If I miss anything, I might write an article to elaborate more later.
If you find this article useful, click here to follow the author.
If you have any good suggestions or ideas, please share with me.
Enjoy yourselves in CyberChess！
*End of Tutorial*
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