LIVE CLASHHHH. It’s a love hate relationship. I love the rewards but hate the mechanics and grind.

NOV 2021 UPDATE: LC pre-ban after 1900 has changed – At the start both players will choose 1 unit each to ban through entire match (so total 2 units will be banned), then it goes to the normal ban phase.

TLDR for the casuals:
-Open free rune chest daily
-Complete all 3 daily live clash rewards
-The end

WHAT IS LIVE CLASH?

So what is live clash? I feel like it’s a weak attempt at trying to put in a “fair” PvP content, because you strip all the gear and buffs that you would normally have (like from talents, memories etc) to try and make it even. But yet at the same time, they still introduce things like “gear runes”, “ultra-ult/extreme-passive runes”, “spd runes”, AND you can only use what units you already have. So basically it’s still P2W. Whoever has more LSSRs, and better gear runes and goes first, will have a much higher chance of winning (not always the case though!)

However, fret not if you’re F2P, because as long as you make smart decisions during battle, as well as knowing what to ban during the drafting phase (Summit Elite and above), you can actually win a decent % of matches. To give you an idea, I grinded all 15 matches daily, and won maybe 5-7 matches on average. It took me about 23 days to hit Arena Master (2800). So if you’re aiming to hit Arena Masters, you absolutely cannot slack off as the timeline is very tight. Don’t forget it gets increasingly harder at the higher ranks when you start meeting more whales with LSSRs, and winning 5 matches for that day only means you rank up 20 points (50 for 5 wins and -30 for 10 losses).

You basically plan who you’re gonna use, equip them with the best runes, match up with someone “of similar MMR”, win, and climb the ranks.
If anyone in the match is 1900 and above, there will be a drafting ban phase (more on this later). Oh did I mention, only playable at specific times (lunchtime and evening), so very annoying.

You need to be lv52 + have more than 10 characters to do Live Clash.
It’s daily 12:30-1:30 and 8pm-9pm everyday EXCEPT Fri, Sat and Sun where it’s 1.5hrs long instead of 1hr. (don’t ask me why)

When a new season starts, you will be regressed partially and have to climb up the ranks again.

WHY BOTHER WITH LIVE CLASH?

Good question. If you’re like most players who can’t be bothered to spend a whole hour just to grind 15 matches, then please just do 6 battles (hopefully with 3 wins) and complete all your daily rewards. 100 free gems for just playing 6 battles (you don’t have to win) is motivation enough. I personally feel they should just leave it open the whole day, as forcing people to grind at lunch/dinner time can be hard for some, especially those with kids or work.

For the more competitive bunch, you can continue to climb for more goodies! Whenever you reach a new tier, you get these lovely rewards. Lotsa of live clash stuff and gems.

At the end of the season, you’ll also get these reward for your hard work. I think the core motivation for hitting Arena Master for this would be the DMG Sigil 5. If you get Sharp or Piercing, that’s a whole lot of BP right there. SACs are also always nice.

Don’t forget the exchange store as well, where some rewards are gated by your rank. Thankfully these are only aesthetics, which is the Arena Master frame (need to be Arena Master, not Summit Elite), and the Summit Elite Character Frame, both for 15k coins. I already got the frame so it’s not showing for me in the screenshot below.

I would recommend saving up to buy the monthly SPD30 rune always, and the daily SPD runes if you still lack them. Don’t buy any other runes unless you have an excess of coins.

Last but not least, there’s a more subtle reward tier bonus that not many people know about. The higher rank you are, the higher your stats will be. This bonus is active outside of Live Clash (as you can see in the sentence at the bottom of the screenshot). This means it’s active for EVERYTHING, things like Arena, Peak Arena, HxM, Tournament and more. That’s why when you rank up you can see your BP increase.

LIVE CLASH TIPS AND TRICKS

Week Free/Bans

The most important thing to take note is the week free and week bans. Basically week free units are units that are available “for free” to all (even if you don’t have it), and week bans are the opposite, it’s banned for all. What this means is that the meta will shift slightly (and usually towards) these units. So if you have good gear runes and ultra ability runes to make them work, you can jump on the bandwagon. If you do not, or if you have a very effective counter to that meta, you can use that because everyone will probably be using the same units.

Week free/bans reset every Monday, so remember to check out what’s the ‘new meta’, unequip runes from banned units, and equip runes on your new team. Remember to run a few rounds of practice matches (especially if you’re >=1900 to plan your drafting units and order) on Mon before doing the real matches, so that you can see if your team works and tweak accordingly.

Stats that carry over to Live Clash

• 3* KS
• 5* passive
• 5P passive (5 pink stars)
• Costume equipped on characters

Runes

All the units in Live Clash have their base stats. The only way to increase stats and skill levels are runes. There are 3 types of runes:

1. Team Runes

These increase your team’s stats such as ATK, DEF, HP and others. If you feel overwhelmed or can’t be bothered, just click Quick Inlay and that’s good enough for you. If you’re building a team with certain synergy, you might want to manually swap and equip those stats (eg, if you’re doing DoT, make sure to prioritise DoT and Ex.DMG runes).

2. Gear Runes

This is basically the same as equipping a full set of said gear. When you’re sitting there wondering how did you die so fast after a loss, it’s probably because your opponent had gear runes.

I won’t run through in detail, but here’s a general guide:
AoE – Prisoner/Knight/Lightning
Debuffs/Stuns – Formal
DPS – Primal/Martial Arts
Tanks – Battle
Follow-ups – Gangster
SPD – Monks << useful for ensuring your unit go first

3. SPD/Stat% Runes

SPD Runes – These guys basically determine your speed order (including opponent) during the match, so it’s very important to have one spd rune on every unit you will be using. Even if it’s a crappy SPD+3 rune.

At the start when you have no runes, it’s important to check the Store daily for SPD runes – You want to get the SPD+9 rune if possible since they all cost the same 500 coins, but grab the +3 or +6 if you don’t have any SPD runes yet.

You’ll want to have a surplus of speed runes of all levels (3, 6, 9 and higher), to determine the spd order (give low spd to those you WANT to go last). And you need more than 6 runes, because when you reach Summit Elite and above, there will be a drafting ban phase, which means you need to prepare and gear for at least 8 units (3 + 3 + 2).

You should also aim to buy the SPD+30 rune every month – so far this is the best SPD rune that F2P can obtain. It costs 15k coins and you can only buy one per season, which means if you don’t religiously buy them monthly, you’re going to be a super speed disadvantage in the future when your opponent have maybe 5 SPD30 runes after 5 months.

The highest one in the game so far (correct me if I’m wrong) is SPD+39, which you can only get if you buy the backup stick AND hit level 195.

Another type of exclusive rune is the Stat% rune just increases your stats by a percentage (eg HP+8%), and only for a specific unit not the whole team, so it takes up one rune slot.

4. Ultra Ult/Extreme Passive Runes

Your Extreme Passive and Ultra Ults carry over to Live Clash if you already have them (due to having the Keepsake or 5* limit break). But at the same time, these unit-specific ultra-ults and extreme-passive runes also drop randomly (even if you don’t have the unit, or if you already have the same rune) so you can have fun using ultra ults that you never could use. These runes can make or break the game, as some ultra-ults are more overpowered than others. Eg, TTM, AS, Boros etc.

Do note that it takes up one slot, so if you have a SPD rune and both ultra-ult and extreme-passive, you won’t have space for a gear rune or stat% rune. Compare the benefits and equip accordingly.

Tip: Use the “Normal Ultra Ultimate” on Mumen Rider. That’s probably the only use for that rune.

Remember to open your free rune chest daily, you get one free everyday!!!

All the runes can be dismantled for a small amount of coins at the “Rune Bag”. Be careful as there are no warnings or prompts and it will immediately dismantle when you click the button. I suggest you using Batch Dismantle and just filtering and dismantling all the lv 1s and 2s once you are mostly using Lv3s and above.

Drafting Phase

This is the next most important factor in winning when it comes to Live Clash. I personally have won many high ranks just by predicting what they’re playing and banning their correct units, and throwing them off their game.

When you or your opponent is a Summit Elite (>=1900), you will have this extra mechanic. There will be 3 rounds of unit selection instead of the usual 2, and the enemy can ban one of your choices in the first 2 rounds.

Example:
Round 1: Both of you pick 3 units. You ban of the opponent’s, he bans one of yours.
Round 2: Repeat above
Round 3: Pick your last 2 units which will be guaranteed in your team

Hence, it’s important to note that for the units you must have, you want to pick them last. Examples of these would be units with core such as Zombieman. If you select him first, he’s definitely going to get banned, and then you’re screwed. If you want to play a DoT team, you can leave VM+Groribas for the last, etc.

One very important thing to note as well is to count your class types and make sure you have the requirements for your core. It’s easy to get carried away by picking your favourites, but if your opponent is smart and he’s counting, he will purposely ban your specific class type which may not make sense at the start until you realize you have no Hi-Tech in your team and your core doesn’t work, losing you the match.

Now that ZBM core is out, it’s much more flexible since you only need 3 grapplers. But if you’re still using other cores like CE and DSK, remember to count!

Example for CE core, the plan is to use CE core so we will pick him last for sure, and maybe TT too.
Round 1: CK / AS / TTM.
Let’s say your opponent bans your AS. Now you have 2 grapplers. Since we know we are picking CE and TT last, we have Hi-tech and Esper covered. What we are missing now is Duelist. So you want to pick at least 2 duelist to prevent yourself from getting locked out of core.

Round 2: STK/Sonic/Sky King
Now no matter what your opponent bans, you will still have at least 1 duelist.

Round 3: CE and TT

Depending on the week bans/free, the meta, and what your opponent bans, you need to be monitoring and checking the class types for every match.

Similarly, with this knowledge, you can also do the same to your opponent!

If he doesn’t seem to have ZBM core (like he’s not picking the usual grapplers), he might be going for CE or DSK. Start counting his types and ban the one he’s missing.

Sometimes your opponent will try to jebait you by putting seemingly useless units next to better units to get you to pick them, but in reality they actually want the lousier units.

Some examples:
-If you see Sky King – he’s only used for extra dmg increase, so high chance your enemy is going to use King. If you see Genus as well, it’s definitely King. (King + SK + Genus is basically death)
-If you see a ‘DoT meta unit’, like maybe VM in between some grapplers. He might be tricking you into banning VM so that he can get Alloy and TTM. This is NOT always the case as he may be also planning to use Groribas at the last pick, so it’s a gamble.
-If they pick AM and PPP and you can only ban one, your next ban should always be Genus or Mumen, chances are they’re going to Speed up AM/PPP for the one-shot back kill.

Another thing to note is that usually your opponent’s strongest unit (apart from core unit) will be picked last to prevent being banned. This means he has the best runes, so you’ll want to take note and prioritise killing that first.

Think smart and ban smart!

Positioning/Core

Once you have finalized your team comp, THAT’S NOT ALL. You still have work to do. Not only is your team finalized, so is your opponent. With the knowledge of what he has (his synergy, his counters etc), you’ll want to position your units correctly and choose the right core.

For eg if he has a lot of backline killers like AM/PPP with follow-up potential like TTM, BK etc. You may want to move your Alloy or TTM to the back to protect them etc.

Or if you know he’s going for a DoT (Grori/VM) team, and you have DSK4, switch your core from Dmg reflect to energy seal DSK lv4 to get a starting advantage.

Don’t put your core squishes behind tanks that will stay alive for a long time (eg ZBM, Alloy). So your opponent cannot indirectly hit your back with their ults (like TTM, Alloy, Silverfang etc).

Always check the Speed Order and Energy

When the match starts, you’ll want to check the speed order bar and see what units goes first, including your opponent, and then you’ll want to see if you’ll have enough energy to pull off your combo. A lot of common mistakes players make are not checking the speed order, not counting their energy, poor decision making and poor choice of ult use (I’ve seen Groribas ult my frontline with only one tank alive), poor enemy prioritisation, making decisions only when it’s their unit’s turn and not thinking 5 steps ahead etc.

Examples of things to ask:
-Does he have a King? Is he going first and am I going to be energy sealed?
-If I want a certain unit to ult, will I have enough energy later?
-If I have an AoE going next or soon (TT/AS etc), do I really need to kill the low life enemy? Or can I hit other tanks first since it will die to the AoE anyways
-Who should I kill first, or who will kill me first? (Does his TTM have KS? Which of the enemy units have the most runes? You can see it during the load screen)
-Should I heal first or DPS?
-Don’t forget to count the energy you will gain at the next round

Don’t use LSSR profile pics

If I see a ZBM avatar, I obviously know you have ZBM. Not that it makes much of a difference now that almost everyone uses ZBM, but every little bit of advantage helps. You don’t want to reveal the units you have, especially if you’re a whale. For example, I fought a whale with a KING avatar and I knew he had KING obviously. I banned his Sky King and Genus and won the match.

You win some you lose some

Sometimes no matter how much you plan, you still will lose simply because of luck (enemy CE crit despite being energy locked, or their DSK core got a block on your very first turn etc), or your opponent simply has better runes than you. Don’t worry, just move on.

Stay calm and ignore the trash talk

There’s this group of annoying players that like to spam emotes when they know they’re winning. Too bad there’s no squelch function, but I truly believe in sportsmanship, and I always do a “Well Fought” if the opponent does a comeback, or wins by a small margin.

Ignore, don’t respond.

And if you’re one of them, don’t be so childish. Let’s make the OPM community a nice and friendly place.

Timing

Some people believe they have better luck playing in the evening, with the reasoning that the more competitive players will have already played their 15 matches at lunch time, but I found no significant difference in that. You can test it out and see what works best for you.

Lower your MMR

Some people believe you can lower your MMR by purposely losing all practice matches, and post-15 rank matches (play to win for your first 15), which will supposedly match you up with lousier opponents the next day. I’m not sure how true this is, no harm trying it out for yourself, but personally I don’t have the time to bother to do this.

Watch Replays

At the left side of the Live Clash hall there is the “One-Punch TV”, where you can rewatch all of your previous matches (excluding surrenders). It’s important to watch your losses and analyze what you did wrong, what could have been done better etc so you don’t make the same mistakes twice.

You can also watch other player’s matches and get some inspiration on team meta and synergies.

What’s the best Line-up?

Because everyone has different units, and there is the week free/ban, it’s very hard to focus on a single meta like Arena.

Some synergies include:
-DoT: VM + Groribas/Konbu/MotS. You can go with DSK4 or CE core, and even ZBM works but it usually gets banned because I put VM/Grori last. Note for Konbu/MotS you need their ultra ult to work
-ZBM: The usual ZBM with either AoE dps (TT/AS/MK/King), or single damage focus (AM/BK/PPP) with follow-up like AS/Sub, or even TTM and Alloy to complement damage and trigger BK follow-up. Just make sure ZBM is picked last.
-CE-AoE: This can work but you need good runes and high speed to burst the opponent ZBM team asap
-Follow-up: Consists of follow-up units such as Garou and Flashy Flash, and even AS/Sub Brute sometimes.
-If you need to absolutely go first, you can throw your highest spd rune on mumen rider and JUSTICE CRASH your other units (like King or Grori), and he will almost always go first (He has super fast base speed due to his bicycle. Seriously).

Check out BosAyam’s vid on Rune Selection and Ban Strategy

That’s all and I wish you all the best in Live Clash! Say Hi if you meet me in Live Clash.

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