Scientific proof that spending splinters on team ups is the worst decision you can make

The company running the Marvel Heroes video game banned me for no reason at all. I made a post on their forums explaining why it could be considered a bad idea to purchase one of their features. It was filled with math and I never said anything to provoke being banned.

You can find the hidden original post here but I can't guarantee it'll be up at the time of reading this post or if it's been tampered with. They already edited out the title and removed a few bits of info.

http://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/83459/scientific-proof-that-spending-splinters-on-a-team-up-is-the-worst-decision-you-can-make

I'm unable to contact their support so I figured I'd post this here to make sure people don't get ripped off in the future.

There's also a link to the spreadsheet with all of the math located here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i5AtB0vYiwfIzl1GI-q5WsLmpMi0hAofxkguZO-Ux6U

The numbers are different than the post because in the post I just rounded things off mentally. The spreadsheet has the exact math.

Here's a copy/paste from the forums:

This post assumes you are a f2p player and have intentions of purchasing heroes with splinters. Splinters are also used to purchase the team up assistants so a conflict begins...

Team up costs

400 splinters = 66 hours of grinding @ 6 splinters per hour
600 splinters = 100 hours of grinding @ 6 splinters per hour

Cosmic clear times

270 seconds normally
258 seconds with a team up passive

How much faster is that?
About 5% faster.

Why is only 5% faster if it adds more than 5% DPS to my hero?
Because a majority of your time is spent running around the map once you have high enough DPS.

What does that translate to?
For every 20 runs you get 1 extra run done with the team up.

How long does 20 runs take?
90 minutes in a vacuum, closer to 120 minutes with selling in town, load screens and short breaks.

Fun facts

2 hours of running cosmics results in?
1 extra run worth of loot or it saves you 4 minutes and 30 seconds of time.

Serious business
You couldn't have even gained 1 splinter in the 4 minutes and 30 seconds you saved over those 20 runs.

Breaking even and blowing your mind
If you did 20 cosmics a day then you would have to play for a certain period of time just to break even which is listed below. Breaking even means you gained the time back it took to buy the team up by completing runs faster.

400 splinter team up = about 1000 days of playing [2.7 years]
600 splinter team up = about 1500 days of playing [4.1 years]

This figure comes from doing 20 cosmics a day for X days. It then accounts for the time saved per run which is the difference between the run length with and without the team up. Then accumulate that saved time and save it until you reach the cost of the team up in splinters and finally tie it into the fixed rate at which splinters drop. That is the number you see.

What about other zones?

It has close to no value in typical solo grinding because things in the regular story mode die very fast.

In xdef you are lucky to make it to wave 20 in random pubs with or without team ups and I imagine coordinated groups are doing just fine without them.

Is it worth it?

I don't think so. Considering you can get full uniques at level 60 for a hero in 8-20 hours of game play then it's really pointless to min/max at this level because there's no goal at all. You can already max out your gear so fast and  grinding odin marks is mostly travel time and killing trivial monsters.