Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-12049489-20130822154840/@comment-11264457-20130823144135

Ally list building really depends on your goals and playing style. Assuming your not trying for T1 here are some guidelines:

If you trying for Tier 2 you need a healthy amount of high end allies to feed Lvl 8 bosses as the event moves into the latter stages. In reality this will be a very low percentage of your total  total allies list.

The question then is what to do with the mid and low level allies. The changes mobage has made has drastically changed the value of having mid and low level allies. More mid and low level players are seeding now trying to get rubies(or x4 from the last event) or MVPs. This means the more you have, the more sniping opportunities are presented to you and the more opportunities that you  can one cube a boss will become available. For this event any ally that sends seeds is a good ally, not just the T1 allies.

It's very important that all allies are active though, especially if you are seeding your own bosses. Ideally you would send the 25% of your help requests (75% go to anonymous users)  to all your high end allies that are active. It does not ever work that way. Since you have a much larger percentage of mid and low end allies, you at least want them to be active and participate in the seeds that you plant since they will be receiving most of your seeds. This of course relates back to the OP's dilemma.

Assuming you can build your ally list to a robust level, here was a discussion about how to trim your ally list:  Thread:27579#37