must be reallyold data then (since it says per ffg forums)

must be reallyold data then (since it says per ffg forums)

Perhaps. but without any major changes in the meta since then, i honestly doubt the percentages are going to be any larger than +-5% difference at most.

At least 4 Regionals thus far have been won by Rebels. 2 by Dan Hars with his Corran/Biggs/Wes list, and 2 by separate players running A-wings. It's not like there's been a concerted effort by Rebel players to push those squads into a top place, either, both times they've shown up and won. The Rebels can't be in that bad of a state.

Rebels can and are in a terrible, awful state atm. The statistics showing as much have been passed around already.

Out of all pilots that have made the cut this tournament season, which has been 931 pilots, 183 of that has been Rebel, 286 have been Scum(164 of which have been Scouts), and the remaining 462 pilots have been Imperial. Percentage wise, Rebels have made the worst showing in the cut this season by far, and an abysmal victory rate. Rebels ARE in that bad of a state. Just the results show as much.

The fact that there will likely be no Rebels players at the Coruscant invitational says as much. I predict, based on the results we've seen, 2 scum players and 6 Imperial players at Coruscant invitational.

You're looking only at the top cut. How many rebels started the day at each of those tournaments? If only 183 rebel pilots have been played then 100% made the cut and they're in the best place of all. Your conclusion is based on an incomplete data set. And incorrect based on the parameters of the Coruscant Invitational.

Each player at the Coruscant Invitational will bring a list for each of the 3 factions and in those lists will be the top vote getting ship per faction (Scyk, Imperial Firespray, X-Wing).

TL;DR: You're wrong, He's correct.

100% of Rebel pilots dont make the top 4. Sorry to burst your bubble. Even then; If only 6 Poes make the cut, and 5 make top 4(which didnt happen, only 3 of the 6 made top 4), but 50 Inquisitors make the cut and only 25 make top 4, Poe isn't in a better place because no matter what the overall number of Poes that made the top 4 is still dwarfed by the number of Inquisitors that made the top 4, this isnt changed just because 83% of Poes make the top 4 and only 50% of inquisitors make the top 4. Similarly, just because in reality Poe has a 50% top 4 success rate which is identical to the Inquisitor, DOES NOT MEAN that Poe is as successful as the Inquisitor. Poe still has less pilots in the cut than Inquisitors by a margin of just under 10 times.

If 10 Green Squadron pilots makes the cut, and all 10 make top 4, it has a 100% cut-to-top-4 rate. That doesnt make it the best pilot in the game. At the end of the day, 10 GSPs AKA 2 swarm lists were all that were run, and all that made the cut to begin with.

The most used Rebel pilots, Dash and the Lothal Rebel, only made the cut 16 times each. Dash has a 31% top 4 cut rate, while the Lothal Rebel is at 44%. That's still only 5 and 7 top 4 successes respectively.

I create a business. I hire one person. My business has grown 100% over the last year as a result. My business is not as successful as a major corporation because even though my total growth is better than most given corporations, my gross profit doesnt even begin to compare with those corporations.

Now about that "What about people who don't make the cut" thing. People either don't make the cut because their list is bad, or they are. Understand when i say "bad list" that i really mean a list that is just not suited to the meta. Anyways. Lists that are bad are naturally going to see less representation in the cut, because they're bad AND because skilled players are generally not going to use a bad list. The reason why analyzing everything is a problem and generally isnt done is because there's so much variance, and it generally doesn't matter what doesn't win. Lots of players can show up with Rebel lists, but nobody cares about them because they're not seeing tournament success. No matter what, whatever makes the cut is the important data. If we see a significant difference between factions with regards to numbers of their pilots that make the cut, then we know that there is an imbalance. Well guess what, there is a significant difference between factions with regards to numbers of their pilots that are making the cut. Rebels are seeing far less than half the tournament success than Imperials are. This is a fact.

Here, have some graphs.

Percentage of Imperial pilots that have made the cut: 49.7%

Scum pilots: 30.6%

Rebel pilots: 19.7%

Percentage of Imperial Pilots that have made the top 4: 48.0%

Scum pilots: 33.2%

Rebel pilots: 18.9%

Theres a pretty obvious imbalance.

What does the pattern for overall attendance look like? I.e. how many of each faction are showing up on the day in total?

At least 4 Regionals thus far have been won by Rebels. 2 by Dan Hars with his Corran/Biggs/Wes list, and 2 by separate players running A-wings. It's not like there's been a concerted effort by Rebel players to push those squads into a top place, either, both times they've shown up and won. The Rebels can't be in that bad of a state.

Rebels can and are in a terrible, awful state atm. The statistics showing as much have been passed around already.

Out of all pilots that have made the cut this tournament season, which has been 931 pilots, 183 of that has been Rebel, 286 have been Scum(164 of which have been Scouts), and the remaining 462 pilots have been Imperial. Percentage wise, Rebels have made the worst showing in the cut this season by far, and an abysmal victory rate. Rebels ARE in that bad of a state. Just the results show as much.

The fact that there will likely be no Rebels players at the Coruscant invitational says as much. I predict, based on the results we've seen, 2 scum players and 6 Imperial players at Coruscant invitational.

You're looking only at the top cut. How many rebels started the day at each of those tournaments? If only 183 rebel pilots have been played then 100% made the cut and they're in the best place of all. Your conclusion is based on an incomplete data set. And incorrect based on the parameters of the Coruscant Invitational.

Each player at the Coruscant Invitational will bring a list for each of the 3 factions and in those lists will be the top vote getting ship per faction (Scyk, Imperial Firespray, X-Wing).

TL;DR: You're wrong, He's correct.

100% of Rebel pilots dont make the top 4. Sorry to burst your bubble. Even then; If only 6 Poes make the cut, and 5 make top 4(which didnt happen, only 3 of the 6 made top 4), but 50 Inquisitors make the cut and only 25 make top 4, Poe isn't in a better place because no matter what the overall number of Poes that made the top 4 is still dwarfed by the number of Inquisitors that made the top 4, this isnt changed just because 83% of Poes make the top 4 and only 50% of inquisitors make the top 4. Similarly, just because in reality Poe has a 50% top 4 success rate which is identical to the Inquisitor, DOES NOT MEAN that Poe is as successful as the Inquisitor. Poe still has less pilots in the cut than Inquisitors by a margin of just under 10 times.

If 10 Green Squadron pilots makes the cut, and all 10 make top 4, it has a 100% cut-to-top-4 rate. That doesnt make it the best pilot in the game. At the end of the day, 10 GSPs AKA 2 swarm lists were all that were run, and all that made the cut to begin with.

The most used Rebel pilots, Dash and the Lothal Rebel, only made the cut 16 times each. Dash has a 31% top 4 cut rate, while the Lothal Rebel is at 44%. That's still only 5 and 7 top 4 successes respectively.

I create a business. I hire one person. My business has grown 100% over the last year as a result. My business is not as successful as a major corporation because even though my total growth is better than most given corporations, my gross profit doesnt even begin to compare with those corporations.

Now about that "What about people who don't make the cut" thing. People either don't make the cut because their list is bad, or they are. Understand when i say "bad list" that i really mean a list that is just not suited to the meta. Anyways. Lists that are bad are naturally going to see less representation in the cut, because they're bad AND because skilled players are generally not going to use a bad list. The reason why analyzing everything is a problem and generally isnt done is because there's so much variance, and it generally doesn't matter what doesn't win. Lots of players can show up with Rebel lists, but nobody cares about them because they're not seeing tournament success. No matter what, whatever makes the cut is the important data. If we see a significant difference between factions with regards to numbers of their pilots that make the cut, then we know that there is an imbalance. Well guess what, there is a significant difference between factions with regards to numbers of their pilots that are making the cut. Rebels are seeing far less than half the tournament success than Imperials are. This is a fact.

Here, have some graphs.

Percentage of Imperial pilots that have made the cut: 49.7%

Scum pilots: 30.6%

Rebel pilots: 19.7%

It's a bit less so if you look at number of lists in the cut instead of numbre of pilots. Especially in the case of rebel, a LOT of their lists are 2 ships (such as the aforementioned dash/vcx). Imperial on the other hand the 2 main archetypes are 3 ships (aces) or 6 ships (crack swarm).

If you look at the number of actual lists int he cut, it's still unbalanced, but not as badly:

Scum is right where it should be, rebels are ~6-7% low, imps are ~7-8% high. And scum vs imperial is way closer than the ships graph shows. 25/33/40, while not ideal, really isn't a terrible set of numbers for faction balance. I wouldn't be surprised if it's more balanced than last season was (I would guess scum was lower than rebel is this year, but have no numbers to say either way)

What does the pattern for overall attendance look like? I.e. how many of each faction are showing up on the day in total?

I'd lvoe to see those numbers as well, but sadly there's no real way to get total attendance numbers by faction, since we only have the cut info readily available.

"Hear that? It's the galaxy's smallest lightsaber, and it's humming just for you."

The scouts were a mistake, and they took the game from the strongest and most variable place it's ever been, to almost it's weakest again.

The Phantom was also a mistake, but the context was very different - the game was a lot less mature.

The game isn't broken or anything, it's fine, but you went from a tournament circuit where you had no idea what you were going to fly against, to a meta consisting of pretty much three lists. The EPT slot on the Jumpmaster (or a non-unique deadeye, or any of the other things you could point to as a problem) are the reason for that. What's really frustrating is that you can see a ton of interactions and mechanics that the wave introduced, that you can't play competitively because Jumpmasters exist.

So... I don't think anyone is happy about them winning.

I don't think triple U-boats is as easy at high levels as people say.

I also think palp aces isn't as hard as people say.

I took Triple U-Boats to a Store championship recently and got scoffed at... Mostly by players that were all flying different variations of Palp Aces (so as far as i am concerned U-Boats are not more of a cheesy list than Palp at the moment that's why i don't understand this). I think it's plain wrong to say that Palp Aces need more skill. It's mostly the matchup that decides this.

I mean there are squads that you encounter where U-Boats just sealclub the enemy, but you can say the same for Palp Aces. Also It's really not as if arc-dodging would be such a difficult art, and compared to that lining up your shots correctly and planning in advance with U-Boats is just as difficult to do.

On the other hand, i do think U-Boats and Palp Aces are extremely powerful. The thing that makes U-Boats so much worse however is that they made the meta go from a diverse one to basically a 3-List meta just like Domfluff says. They eliminated most competitive Rebel builds from the meta from one day to another, and these were the squads keeping Aces somewhat in check unfortunately! So they single-handedly destroyed a very diverse and enjoyable meta to replace it with a pretty boring one.

Just to go a bit more into the detail of this meta shift, Rebel regen and stress lists were the bane of Palp Aces because Soontir and also Vader often just fall short on the damage side in order to kill a well-played regenerating Rebel ace list. Same thing goes for Omega Leader. Whisper was kept in check by VI PS8 ships and Stresshog (which was also really nice vs. the other aces). But as things stand, U-Boats take a huge number 2 on all of these lists (i took down a double Regen Rebel list so fast on last tournament, it's just not fair what you can do to them... 2-3 turns of fighting and there was nothing left!). That's why they are nearly gone from the meta.

So i don't think U-Boats are that unbeatable, nor do they need no skill to be flown and they are even pretty fun to play as far as far as i am concerned, but, they are to be blamed for a meta that is perhaps perceived as much more bland than before. And this is also why a lot of people dislike them and less respect is (wrongfully) given to players that win tournaments with them!

I really hope that the announced "hard counter" makes them entirely disappear from competitive tables. As i said i like flying them but then i would much prefer a diverse meta where some other lists were not made unplayable for the sheer existence of J5ks!

My gut feeling is that the hard counter to u boats will be the Action: torp from the ARC. Which limits it rather.

My gut feeling is that the hard counter to u boats will be the Action: torp from the ARC. Which limits it rather.

Given that the card for Seismic Torpedoes is the only unspoiled card seemingly related to counters, I'd say it is more of a safe bet.

My gut feeling is that the hard counter to u boats will be the Action: torp from the ARC. Which limits it rather.

Given that the card for Seismic Torpedoes is the only unspoiled card seemingly related to counters, I'd say it is more of a safe bet.

Sorry i don't get why you think this torp is the counter. There are many unspoiled cards left, and how is the torpedo related to counters?

I don't remember this utopia of a pre-Jumpmaster metagame that you talk about.

I remember a meta where you played Veteran Instincts or you lost. There were two flavours of aces instead of one, big whoop. I'm not missing Stressbots, TLTs and Red Ace one little bit - the Wave 8 metagame is much more interesting AND diverse than Wave 7.

My gut feeling is that the hard counter to u boats will be the Action: torp from the ARC. Which limits it rather.

Given that the card for Seismic Torpedoes is the only unspoiled card seemingly related to counters, I'd say it is more of a safe bet.

Sorry i don't get why you think this torp is the counter. There are many unspoiled cards left, and how is the torpedo related to counters?

Just gut feeling, and a vague eye on what is and isn't visible. The only new crew are unique Scum ones and the Tail Gunner which seems likely to relate to shooting out of aux arcs. (I hope) It wouldn't be an Astromech or an Illicit or anything only for a single faction.

It's neither of the upgrades in the Fang, since one we know has nothing to do with focus tokens or munitions and the other is probably an attacking version of the one we've already seen.

The three crew from the Shadow Caster are scum only and unique most likely, so it won't be them. Black (Market) Slice(r Tools) are probably illicit, so it won't be them. Gyr... Tar... looks to be related to moving the mobile arc, so it probably won't be that, not to mention if it is mobile arc related, limiting the hard counter to one ship would be a terrible idea. And we know what Rigged Cargo Hold does, so it won't be that, and everything else from that box is old upgrades.

From the /sf it's unlikely to be a tech slot or sensor slot item because those are very limited in availability, but I guess it MIGHT be. And we know what all the other upgrades in that are.

From the arc there's a generc astromech - it shouldn't be that, on the basis of it being limited to one faction and not even all the ships of that faction. We know what Adrenaline Rush, RecSpec and Alliance Overhaul do. It seems likely that Vec(tor) Thru(sters) is a mod that adds barrel roll to the action bar, so it's not that. Tail Gunner - maybe, but it seems most likely that is related to aux arc shooting somehow, so probably not.

That only leaves the torpedo. I don't know how it's related, but my best guess is that it will strip tokens from enemy ships as an action, possibly with damage or possibly a number of tokens related to the number of [boom]s and [kaboom]s on the dice rolled.

The other possibility is that the entire wave is full of several counters to ordnance and that it's in the system slot in the sf, Black Market Slicer Tools, the generic astromech, EVERYwhere... but I doubt it.

That's all based on deduction from the preview by the by. I have no access to any kind of privileged information, nor would I say anything about it if I had.

I don't remember this utopia of a pre-Jumpmaster metagame that you talk about.

I remember a meta where you played Veteran Instincts or you lost. There were two flavours of aces instead of one, big whoop. I'm not missing Stressbots, TLTs and Red Ace one little bit - the Wave 8 metagame is much more interesting AND diverse than Wave 7.

TLTs were not that played after a while, Stressbot was the best tool you had against tese VI ship that you also despise, and i dont remember seeing Red ace on any competitive tables...

So what are you talking about?

But look at the Regional results. Rebels are making a fine entry. Are they winning it all, not necessarily. But there are a lot of VCX/Dash's making the cut. You are too focused on the very, very top, when your very argument requires a greater sampling then just what won. A healthy meta isn't determined by what is winning it all.

I AM looking at the regional results. Rebels are making an excessively poor entry. Their tournament success rate is less than half that of the Empire. There are NOT a lot of VCXs and Dashs making the cut. 16 Dashes and Lothal Rebels have made the cut after nearly 80 regionals. The Inquisitor single handedly outranks that, plus 1-2 more Rebel choices.

For instance; The Inquisitor, Omega Leader, and Whisper singlehandedly make up for every single pilot in "common" use by Rebels(not counting the miscellaneous pilots).

That's not healthy. That's dumb. We are in a meta where choosing to fly Rebel is the same thing as choosing to lose most of your games. The tournament data supports that opinion. One faction shouldn't make the cut only 20% of the time, while another makes the cut half the time. That's decisively unbalanced. Palpatine and U-Boats were one of the biggest mistakes this game has seen since the Phantom, and we know this is true because THOSE ARE THE LISTS THAT ARE WINNING THE MOST BY A HUGE MARGIN.

I think the mistake is the Uboat, I dont´ think Palpatine list is a mistake.

Seasonal Handicapping ftw

Nobody's really interested if you win with "Sand-Wing". People can take three Jumpmasters but they can't expect people to be falling over each other to congratule them on their successes if they do.

How? When you're nearly guaranteed 3-4 evades every single defense, i consider that pretty forgiving. The only thing that a Palp Aces list has to do is get their target in arc and not hit a rock, and considering that most Imp Aces end up with both boost and barrel roll, that's stupidly easy to do. Palp Aces list is by far one of the most forgiving in the game.

I think you mean resilient. Palp Aces can certainly shrug off a lot of damage because of their strong defenses, but that's not the same as being forgiving. Forgiving means you can make a mistake and not be punished severely for it. Landing a U-boat on a rock is usually not going to be as bad as landing Soontir on a rock.

Again, the Madrid regional final is a great (if extreme) example of what we mean by not forgiving. Palp Aces player has the inquisitor in arc of several TIEs in the Crackswarm. Soontir is flanking. Soontir barrel rolls and boosts around a rock and gets his free focus. He is in range one of a single Academy Pilot who barrel rolled instead of taking a focus. Soontir fires, spending his focus for a couple of hits on another TIE. The inquisitor dodged arcs and has no shot. A few TIEs shooting at the inquisitor cause the Palp Aces player to use Palp to save a damage. When the lone Academy pilot shoots his unmodified attack he gets a hit and crit. Soontir rolls evade, focus, focus, blank. He takes the crit. Major explosion. Die roll is another crit for Direct Hit. One mistake, spending that focus on the attack, and Soontir is gone. That is not forgiving.

I'd personally argue that the mistake was actually in spending Palp to save the Inquisitor. He has shields, Soontir doesn't.

When the lone Academy pilot shoots his unmodified attack he gets a hit and crit. Soontir rolls evade, focus, focus, blank. He takes the crit. Major explosion. Die roll is another crit for Direct Hit. One mistake, spending that focus on the attack, and Soontir is gone. That is not forgiving.

Calculate the probability of that.

Non-Palp interceptors are unforgiving: you get them caught in arc and they're going to have a bad time. Palp Aces is all about making them forgiving. That's why it's so unpopular: when you finally catch the interceptor it shrugs off four hits.

So of the order of a 1 in 10 000 chance. Ish. If I've done my maths correctly. If not, actually much less likely than that.

So of the order of a 1 in 10 000 chance. Ish. If I've done my maths correctly. If not, actually much less likely than that.

I reckon it's 1 in 21,000 chance.

Your chance of pushing a crit through aren't completely terrible (about 1%), but the specific odds of Major Explosion -> Direct Hit are where it goes astronomical.

My gut feeling is that the hard counter to u boats will be the Action: torp from the ARC. Which limits it rather.

Given that the card for Seismic Torpedoes is the only unspoiled card seemingly related to counters, I'd say it is more of a safe bet.

Sorry i don't get why you think this torp is the counter. There are many unspoiled cards left, and how is the torpedo related to counters?

I think the specific counter they were talking about is Black One. I think they said there was a specific counter to Ordnance, not to Jumpmasters, and Black One removing a Target Lock would fit that description.

So of the order of a 1 in 10 000 chance. Ish. If I've done my maths correctly. If not, actually much less likely than that.

Well, no. That exact sequence is very unlikely. However, there are zounds of mistakes you can make with palp aces that cost you a ship, and if you're looking for common examples, they are: bumping, getting blocked, landing on rocks, moving the shuttle too quickly or in the wrong direction and using Palp on the incorrect die (which is actually a more general description of what happened here).

When the lone Academy pilot shoots his unmodified attack he gets a hit and crit. Soontir rolls evade, focus, focus, blank. He takes the crit. Major explosion. Die roll is another crit for Direct Hit. One mistake, spending that focus on the attack, and Soontir is gone. That is not forgiving.

Calculate the probability of that.

Non-Palp interceptors are unforgiving: you get them caught in arc and they're going to have a bad time. Palp Aces is all about making them forgiving. That's why it's so unpopular: when you finally catch the interceptor it shrugs off four hits.

Before Autothrusters it used to be, "Don't give up, I killed a one health Interceptor at range 3 through an obstruction with Stealth Device with a HWK primary. Soontir isn't invincible. Anything can happen!"

Then those stories seemed to disappear once Autothrusters came out.

Now they're coming back out again in order to defend Palp Aces players and promote the idea that it isn't broken. "After it took 3-4 TIE Fighters to strip all of the tokens and Palpatine off the Inquisitor, I lucked out with an unmodified shot at range 2 into unmodified green dice that blanked and chained together 2 crits that ended up doing 3 damage to Soontir, which killed him. See, Palp Aces takes skill to fly, ONE mistake and you're dead!"

My gut feeling is that the hard counter to u boats will be the Action: torp from the ARC. Which limits it rather.

Given that the card for Seismic Torpedoes is the only unspoiled card seemingly related to counters, I'd say it is more of a safe bet.

Sorry i don't get why you think this torp is the counter. There are many unspoiled cards left, and how is the torpedo related to counters?

I think the specific counter they were talking about is Black One. I think they said there was a specific counter to Ordnance, not to Jumpmasters, and Black One removing a Target Lock would fit that description.

Black One is not in Wave 9 though. And does nothing to counter JMs at all. And only works for one ship in one faction and then only for a few specific pilots for that ship.

If that's what they mean as a hard counter, then they're at best exaggerating it.

So of the order of a 1 in 10 000 chance. Ish. If I've done my maths correctly. If not, actually much less likely than that.

I reckon it's 1 in 21,000 chance.

Your chance of pushing a crit through aren't completely terrible (about 1%), but the specific odds of Major Explosion -> Direct Hit are where it goes astronomical.

You're probably right, I think I missed a die off in my calculation for the likelihood of precisely one evade.