If you turn off the "magic" from widespread use, you can get a better sense of what is instead being used by good players.

If you also turn off the "magic" from large tournaments, you get a better sense of what is strong just by being strong.

Neither of those are exact, but it helps to look at the data from different viewpoints.

6 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

True, though I think that's a venn diagram with a huge amount of overlap.

• What ships at the top of the rankings are bad but being played by good players?
• What ships at the top of the rankings are bad but popular anyway?

You're drawing a false dichotomy. It's not just "good" ships and "bad" ships, but "good" ships and "okay" ships.

What ships are just okay but at the top because very good players take them?
What ships are at the top are just okay, but are at the top because a ton of people use them?

2 minutes ago, DerekT said:

You're drawing a false dichotomy. It's not just "good" ships and "bad" ships, but "good" ships and "okay" ships.

What ships are just okay but at the top because very good players take them?
What ships are at the top are just okay, but are at the top because a ton of people use them?

Ok, so now that you're reframed the question to your liking, do you have an answer?

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

...the two strongest TIE Fighter pilots are Rebel (Ahsoka and Rex) so arguably TIE Fighter should now be on the Rebel list not the Imperial list. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I don't think this tells us anything that we didn't really already know.

• Scum faction is 3 great ships
• Rebels are stronger than ever with most available options, 6 of the top 11 ships are Rebel.
• Imperials have lost pretty much everything.

This is the truest and saddest statement I have had to read on this forum to date. The designers at FFG should be most ashamed of creating such an anti-cannon thing as that; it cuts the very heart out of the Star Wars Universe. Sigh.

Great job again Stay On The Leader, thanks!! I edited your post down to the main points (and added a verb) that completely mirrors what I have seen over the past few months.

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

1. Rex
2. Ahsoka
3. Academy Pilot
4. Black Squadron Pilot
5. Howlrunner
6. Some floating coffins

Again, this is more evidence that the gruesome foreign object that is the stolen TIE has metastasized to the vital organs.

2 hours ago, CRCL said:

Imperials have some great ships and builds, but no one has 'figured them out' yet post 'The Great Crutch Purge'. It'll be interesting to see what people come up with.

This I don't agree with. If the Defender X7 title (a fix by FFG) and Palp (at 2 crew and 8 points) were crutches, then what is TLT? Sabine? Biggs? Jumpmaster Dials? Jumpmaster Generic EPT slot? MindLink?

That was a unintelligent use of not only "quote within a 'quote' marks" but it was, in my opinion, ignorant of the facts. The current meta as well as statements by previous vaunted users of the cards in question bear that fact out. I believe World's squads as well as the top 16, 8, 4 and top table will prove the Great Crutch was not that at all, but simply great abilities that balanced the factions.

1 hour ago, Tbetts94 said:

Or the ships that don't suck are 3-4 hit point aces that aren't viable because Satan and Advance Slam. Defenders and SF's are alright but even then are hurt by stress now which is now back in the meta big time.

This is soooooooooo funny!!!! Thanks!

1 hour ago, FTS Gecko said:

...wow. And you had the nerve to call my nerf thread a **** joke.

Honestly, it's sad little wholly inaccurate blanket statements like that which gives meta analysis a bad name. Sorry, a worse name.

I mean let's face it, this analysis is tragically flawed from the opening sentence, so drawing a conclusion which essentially scrubs an entire faction on the back of it is, well, laughable, to say the least.

But you posted a lot of words and a pretty (pretty useless) graphic, so no doubt it will go down really well amongst that portion of the community who wants to know what to buy so they can play the game on easy mode.

Although I disagree with your summation of Stay On The Leader's OP, I do agree that it exposes our game's easy mode.

22 minutes ago, DerekT said:

You're drawing a false dichotomy. It's not just "good" ships and "bad" ships, but "good" ships and "okay" ships.

Yup, textbook case of "Garbage in, garbage out".

I especially like the way the graphic is colour coded to contribute to a biased, circular, self-fulfilling prophecy of a meta. "BUY GREEN! THEY'RE GOOD! THEY WIN! DON'T BUY RED! THEY'RE BAD! YOU'LL LOSE!"

Were it so easy.

26 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Ok, so now that you're reframed the question to your liking, do you have an answer?

Of course not, because my point was that the data can't tell us any of that.

8 minutes ago, DerekT said:

Of course not, because my point was that the data can't tell us any of that.

So you've no reason to think it's unrepresentative? I would suggest your objection is technically correct but falls below a materiality level as if you COULD divide out those three things it wouldn't make much difference to what the table looked like. You've not been able to provide any suggestions for things you think are significantly out of place.

2 hours ago, CRCL said:

Very interesting analysis. My two cents are, that the data's a bit skewed at the moment. The Imperial faction has just had two incredibly powerful cards that featured in many of their lists changed from stupidly good to merely good (rightly so). This has weakened pretty much all the perceived top tier Imperial lists, causing an exodus of players from the Imperial faction, especially the competitive players who prefer to play lists others have perfected, rather than spending all the time and effort to design a list from the ground up. I think this is contributed to the Imperial factions lower representation (both in overall numbers and wins). That's just my take on it though.

Imperials have some great ships and builds, but no one has 'figured them out' yet post 'The Great Crutch Purge'. It'll be interesting to see what people come up with.

This argument was made when the nerf was fresh, but it's wearing a bit thin now. We've had 2 months since the nerf, 3 opens, and all the practice/runup to worlds- and no one's come up with a reliable list to tackle the meta. This isn't a case of Imperial players being dumb and un-creative, it's a case of Imperial players having cards/ships that are markedly below the power curve of the other factions. More specifically, all the strengths of Imperials are countered too heavily by certain ships from the other factions. A perfect example of this is Miranda: she single-handedly pushes ALL aces archetypes out of the meta. In a competitive setting, putting a aces list up against a Miranda list is a near 100% auto-lose scissors-cuts-paper scenario. One ship from Rebels invalidates nearly half of Imperial competitive options, and so Imperials are left with shockingly few ships to try and fill the gap with.

I think the meta would be MUCH more approachable by Imps if it weren't for Miranda/Sabine/Adv Slam. The others: Kanan/Biggs, Triple Jumps, Parattanni, etc.; these lists could be built around by an Imp player- but there's the huge risk that you'll play a game against a Miranda list and you'll lose before dice ever hit the table.

I hate to rag on Miranda so much, but seriously, when I build an Imperial list there's just too many ships I totally rule out because "Meh, can't take that because it will instantly die to a Miranda SLAM'd Sabine bomb."

I'm not sure it's a 'below' the power curve thing as much as that there's been a paradigm shift in X-Wing that has left them out in the cold. I agree that is primarily the result of the bombing lists, which ignore the green dice these ships rely on.

1 hour ago, FTS Gecko said:

...wow. And you had the nerve to call my nerf thread a **** joke.

Honestly, it's sad little wholly inaccurate blanket statements like that which gives meta analysis a bad name. Sorry, a worse name.

What exactly do you disagree with in his statements about Scum?

As a Scum player I tend to agree with his conclusions: we have a couple of really good things (JM5k, Lancer, Protectorate), some OK things (YV-666, TLT Y-wings, Palob) but the rest is pretty bad and/or very situational.

7 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

So you've no reason to think it's unrepresentative? I would suggest your objection is technically correct but falls below a materiality level as if you COULD divide out those three things it wouldn't make much difference to what the table looked like. You've not been able to provide any suggestions for things you think are significantly out of place.

I have no reason to think the chart represents the "best" ships since there are multiple reasons why a ship would produce the data you've looked at. It may be the best, it may be popular among the best players, and it may just be widely popular. Without further evidence, we can't know which cause explains it. Of course it's like that all three causes are at work, but we (including you) don't know which causes are the most pronounced.

And I'm fully capable of providing suggestions for which ships are significantly out of place. I'm just not going to. Your level of analysis is basically "I tried nothing, and now I'm all out of ideas." You have to put in a little more work than that before I'm going to spend my time helping you tweak the analysis.

45 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Yup, textbook case of "Garbage in, garbage out".

My hunch is that "the garbage will do" in that this will mirror results we see at World's pretty closely.

I think it's really easy to point out that there are flaws in the data but what I don't see from people that continue to point those flaws out is either a better method or actual evidence that would prove it useless. I mean, it's also a false dichotomy to say that "If this isn't perfect data, it's useless."

To be fair pretty

2 minutes ago, DerekT said:

I have no reason to think the chart represents the "best" ships since there are multiple reasons why a ship would produce the data you've looked at. It may be the best, it may be popular among the best players, and it may just be widely popular. Without further evidence, we can't know which cause explains it. Of course it's like that all three causes are at work, but we (including you) don't know which causes are the most pronounced.

And I'm fully capable of providing suggestions for which ships are significantly out of place. I'm just not going to. Your level of analysis is basically "I tried nothing, and now I'm all out of ideas." You have to put in a little more work than that before I'm going to spend my time helping you tweak the analysis.

To be fair pretty much everything I do is knowingly aimed below the top tier of players as my readership as I assume they know better and I've nothing to tell them that they don't already know.

If some people who don't have that level of insight into the game find this ranking helpful or interesting then that's all I was shooting for.

1 minute ago, AlexW said:

My hunch is that "the garbage will do" in that this will mirror results we see at World's pretty closely.

I think it's really easy to point out that there are flaw in the data but what I don't see from people that continue to point those flaws out is either a better method or actual evidence that would prove it useless. I mean, it's also a false dichotomy to say that "If this isn't perfect data, it's useless."

I don't think the data is useless. But, I don't think the data support any sort of ranking scheme of the ships.

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

There's some fantastic pilots down there at the bottom - enough untapped potential I would expect at least one big surprise success at Worlds.

Maybe it's Redline's time to shine!*

* It's not Redline's time to shine.

Stop crushing my dreams!

Yep...Thats a Punisher

Corran needs a big buff. Can't you all see it?

I like. Big. Buffs and I cannot lie... I'll see myself out

2 hours ago, Johen Dood said:

This argument was made when the nerf was fresh, but it's wearing a bit thin now. We've had 2 months since the nerf, 3 opens, and all the practice/runup to worlds- and no one's come up with a reliable list to tackle the meta. This isn't a case of Imperial players being dumb and un-creative, it's a case of Imperial players having cards/ships that are markedly below the power curve of the other factions. More specifically, all the strengths of Imperials are countered too heavily by certain ships from the other factions. A perfect example of this is Miranda: she single-handedly pushes ALL aces archetypes out of the meta. In a competitive setting, putting a aces list up against a Miranda list is a near 100% auto-lose scissors-cuts-paper scenario. One ship from Rebels invalidates nearly half of Imperial competitive options, and so Imperials are left with shockingly few ships to try and fill the gap with.

I think the meta would be MUCH more approachable by Imps if it weren't for Miranda/Sabine/Adv Slam. The others: Kanan/Biggs, Triple Jumps, Parattanni, etc.; these lists could be built around by an Imp player- but there's the huge risk that you'll play a game against a Miranda list and you'll lose before dice ever hit the table.

I hate to rag on Miranda so much, but seriously, when I build an Imperial list there's just too many ships I totally rule out because "Meh, can't take that because it will instantly die to a Miranda SLAM'd Sabine bomb."

How long did it take for Whisper to show back up in the meta regularly after the decloak nerf? From my recollection, its as WELL over 2 months. And I've been quite happy with my current imperial list.

With the scyk fix you'd think that ship and the kfighter would be flipped in rankings.

Also some ships at the bottom are surprising. Aggressors and phantoms are no where near that bad. I can attest from some recent games that whisper is still a pain in the a** to fly against.

The reason Imperials are in a rough spot right now is that everyone has been teching their lists to beat them. With Palp, X7, Fel, Inq, or whatever other invincible combination imperials used to run, you HAD to tech to beat them. If your list didn't have the right tech to deal with Imps it was almost a certain loss. Imperials are the main reason 2 attack ships left the meta. Imperials are the reason bombs became so popular. The truth was that if your list could deal with the nearly unkillable imperial ships, you could deal with anything else. So, all the lists had to follow that path. The Palp and X7 nerf tried to relieve some of that pressure, but the meta was still on the anti imperial path.

Who didn't build there list primarily to be able to beat X7s and Palp 4 months ago? If you didn't seriously consider that matchup, your list would under perform. But, whatever you came up with to beat X7s and Palp could also beat just about any Rebel or Scum list.

Imperials will bounce back once the meta is no longer gunning for them. That will just take a little while. And frankly, Palp and X7s are still good enough that you still need to have something in your list to handle them.

Imperials are the faction of variance. If you are flying them, you need to embrace that. Imperials are also the faction that tends to be hard countered by lists, but can also easily beat things that don't hard counter them.

Most Imperial lists now seem to be shifting to Tie/SFs, which are less countered by bombs and frankly feel more like a Rebel jouster. Tie/SFs aren't countered by the same things that the numerous Imperial aces are countered by.

FFG seriously should have included some buffs with those nerfs that they threw out. They are partly responsible for all the nerf threads.

1 hour ago, VanderLegion said:

How long did it take for Whisper to show back up in the meta regularly after the decloak nerf? From my recollection, its as WELL over 2 months. And I've been quite happy with my current imperial list.

Whisper was overly awesome because she could see what was what, then decide, but she was still on a knifes edge before nerf (less so) and after nerf (certainly so) with her low HP, as she couldn't take Worlds from Fat Han, nor break the top Worlds tables at all sense that time, with TLTs and Stress running rampant. In contrast, Jumps were awesome, nerf, then win Worlds which is awesome, nerf, then awesome, then win possibly another Worlds supporting what the Empire use to be....in the Ace Protectorates. Your excitement over your current Imperial list is wonderful, but your point pre-that-positive-outlook, has missed its target badly.

I don't have, but wish I did, your optimism in any Imp builds I set on the mat across from meta-runners post nerf. I'm not alone. I believe expert Imperial pilots (like Duncan Howard) have moved factions not due to the lack of their intelligence, laziness, nor attempts to figure a way to hold the banner, but due to the fact that those two "crutches" (that one person to remain nameless deemed them) in Palp and the X7 buff, are exactly what allowed the Imperial squads to hold up against the Scum power and Rebel synergies. Now, on paper and on averages on the mats, they cannot.

1 hour ago, VanderLegion said:

How long did it take for Whisper to show back up in the meta regularly after the decloak nerf?

This is my impression, as well. I haven't seen anybody trying to fly Palpatine and failing, or trying to fly Defenders and failing.

Instead, what I have seen is people saying, "Well, they're weaker now. Must be useless." And then they don't show up in the data.

We actually saw the exact same effect with JM5Ks after the Deadeye nerf. It's just that JM5Ks are so crazy-powerful that the "welp, useless now" phase simply didn't last long enough to show up in the data.

I think the data is useful, but I do think it has to be examined with its limitations in mind.

6 hours ago, CRCL said:

Very interesting analysis. My two cents are, that the data's a bit skewed at the moment. The Imperial faction has just had two incredibly powerful cards that featured in many of their lists changed from stupidly good to merely good (rightly so). This has weakened pretty much all the perceived top tier Imperial lists, causing an exodus of players from the Imperial faction, especially the competitive players who prefer to play lists others have perfected, rather than spending all the time and effort to design a list from the ground up. I think this is contributed to the Imperial factions lower representation (both in overall numbers and wins). That's just my take on it though.

Imperials have some great ships and builds, but no one has 'figured them out' yet post 'The Great Crutch Purge'. It'll be interesting to see what people come up with.

How much longer do we have to wait? It's been almost two months since the nerf happened. You'd think somebody would've come up with something groundbreaking by now. I know I've been trying to.

8 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

This is my impression, as well. I haven't seen anybody trying to fly Palpatine and failing, or trying to fly Defenders and failing.

Instead, what I have seen is people saying, "Well, they're weaker now. Must be useless." And then they don't show up in the data.

We actually saw the exact same effect with JM5Ks after the Deadeye nerf. It's just that JM5Ks are so crazy-powerful that the "welp, useless now" phase simply didn't last long enough to show up in the data.

I think the data is useful, but I do think it has to be examined with its limitations in mind.

This is definitely true. The deadeye nerf was back in November and it's not until relatively recently that mind linked U-boats really became a meta staple (there were a couple people flying non-deadeye U-boats, but not many for a while). Other jump master builds were around, but U-boats took a while to come back in force.

14 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

Whisper was overly awesome because she could see what was what, then decide, but she was still on a knifes edge before nerf (less so) and after nerf (certainly so) with her low HP, as she couldn't take Worlds from Fat Han, nor break the top Worlds tables at all sense that time, with TLTs and Stress running rampant. In contrast, Jumps were awesome, nerf, then win Worlds which is awesome, nerf, then awesome, then win possibly another Worlds supporting what the Empire use to be....in the Ace Protectorates. Your excitement over your current Imperial list is wonderful, but your point pre-that-positive-outlook, has missed its target badly.

I don't have, but wish I did, your optimism in any Imp builds I set on the mat across from meta-runners post nerf. I'm not alone. I believe expert Imperial pilots (like Duncan Howard) have moved factions not due to the lack of their intelligence, laziness, nor attempts to figure a way to hold the banner, but due to the fact that those two "crutches" (that one person to remain nameless deemed them) in Palp and the X7 buff, are exactly what allowed the Imperial squads to hold up against the Scum power and Rebel synergies. Now, on paper and on averages on the mats, they cannot.

Sure, she didn't take worlds from fat Han and there's been various things she's weaker too, but she disappeared overnight with the nerf, when she WAS still quite playable at the time. And she didn't really come back as a noticeable ship in the meta until the Mynock Special last season.

My point is just that for a lot of people, they see a big nerf, decide those are now useless (and the rest of the imperial faction as a side effect, since people weren't playing anything but palp and/or x7 defenders pretty much because they were so much better), so they don't bother to look at the fact that other ships actually ARE viable, and are actually worth looking at now that they aren't completely outshone by x7 defenders. I fully expect imperials to come back as a presence int eh meta, just takes time.

Also, the x7 and palp nerfs (and nail in the coffin of dengaroo) were a huge buff to the tie swarm