CommentStreams:B5cef5d6ba3805c126bde9764aeea714

It depends on where you are in the game. If you're fairly new, and you insist on throwing money away on this trash fire of a game, buying a full set pack is better. They actually tend to get released right after an event. (Not for the event that just finished, but from earlier events.)

Under the old regime (which may pretty much be over with the new changes), veteran players really didn't need to spend cash to finish most of the set.

In week one, use rubies to buy extra energy, farm the best boss you can (27 or 33) for silvers, then keep opening silver coffers for gold event currency, and then open gold coffers. Keep doing this until your 5th and 6th cards (ones that only come in gold coffers in week 1) have enough dupes. What is "enough"? Remember, in week 2, you can only count on opening about 6 silver coffers, and there's no guarantee these cards will drop in the gold coffers. In week 3, these cards will come in the bronze coffer--bronze tokens will be surprisingly scarce by then, and you only get 3-5 dupes per coffer. Keeping all this in mind in week 1, make sure you set up for success by getting enough dupes while they're fairly easy to get.

In week two, you should have already have enough to five star cards 1-4. You should have enough to four-star cards 5-6, plus (depending on rarity) maybe 50% progress to five-star. This week, you want to get cards 5-6 to five-star, or very close to it. You also want to get as many gold coffers as you can through tournament wins. Farm silvers with any spare energy, but unlike week one, you don't really want to spend them yet.

Here's my reasoning:

The limiting factor is cards 7-8. These come in gold coffers in week 2, and silvers in week 3. A silver coffer costs 2500 silver tokens in week 2, and it takes about 5 or 6 to get enough gold tokens to open a gold coffer. (Let's call that 12500 to be conservative.) That single gold coffer will get you 9 to 15 copies of card 7 or card 8.

In week three, a silver coffer costs only 7500 silver tokens, but it also spits out 9 to 15 copies of card 7 or card 8, which are the cards you really care about. That means it makes more sense to wait until week three to spend those silver tokens. It also means that--if you absolutely insist on spending money--the best bang for your buck comes in week three. That's when the free silver chests for the event pack can really make a difference, and compared to us poor free players, it will save you a shit-ton of clicking (since the most efficient farming is still stage 33 at 75 tokens a run.)

To finish your set, you need two things in week three. First, you need enough copies of cards 9 and 10. You get that from the magical apparatus (or whatever the name changed to.) Second, you need enough marathon points to finish in the top 100. You get those from many sources, but they all hit a wall eventually--at that point, you can only get more from the apparatus. Sadly, the event pack is only slightly helpful at that point. The coffers you get for paying money are only worth a few thousand extra gears. To get enough card dupes, you'll need hundreds of thousands of gears--enough to open the max level (9000 gear) coffer dozens of times--and the most efficient way to do that is to have enough cash/gems saved up to cycle a shit-load of silver boxes.

This used to cost me a few million at the most, but Wanderer's estimate (in a comment elsewhere) is that it will now take about 18 million gold. This is about 6000 gems, which puts the price of buying your way to victory at well over the price of buying a set pack. So unless you really want the specific event set, or you want to do something (like clear dungeons/maps) while you have the event bonus, I'm not sure buying victory is the best way to spend cash on this game.