4 hours ago, Sekac said:

It sucks that the nerf knocked imperials off the tippy top tier, but it opened their entire faction up. It was shuttles, defenders, and interceptors before, and there's s lot more out there now. They just need a few more small boosts like Lightweight Frame and they'll be right back at the top.

"Shuttles, defenders and interceptors" sounds like such a small list of ships, when we had 2 Interceptors, 4 different defenders, one tap, one tie fighter, one TIE/FO, 2 lambda's and the TIE/Bomber shuttle all in action. The diversity within archetypes had always been amazing for imperial lists.

5 hours ago, Parable said:

I don't think the need was so much about whiners, but about acknowledging that Palp + X was pushing any other Imperial archetype out of the meta.

Every other Imperial archetype had been pushed out of the meta by the fact they were objectively terrible against everything else in the meta. Why on God's earth would you pay 30+ points for a ship that automatically dies the moment any of the hundred-and-one sources of automatic damage or stress generation enters its immediate vicinity?

People played Palp & X7s because they were the only things remaining in the Imperial arsenal that stood a fighting chance against the rest of the field. Now they don't, so people don't play them. And since the rest of the Imperial arsenal remains terrible in this environment that is purpose-built to make them unplayable, no one plays Imperial at all.

5 hours ago, SabineKey said:

For all but the most recent expansions, yes. Because Defenders and Palp were competitive at high levels of play, and the others proved not to be in the current meta. Interceptors have been around for a long time. Do you really think people just forgot about them when x7 came out? No, they became too risky to fly due to what Rebels and Scum were fielding, thus were shelved.

Someone would have tried the /sf out and worked out a good team even with Palp and Defenders around. If people liked it, it would have been more universally accepted. But even with the discovery of the /sf, the Empire isn't suddenly competitive again. They are a solid piece, but not fantastic like what it has to content with.

I think a disconnect between us is you seem to see the loss in standings acceptable in the quest to broaden the Imperial list type. I see it as the pieces that kept them in competition for top slots (which all three factions should be) were toned down to 2nd tier (a conclusion based on recent results), leaving nothing top tier for Imps. That, to me, is not worth the price. Once again, why are the Imps the ones who are expected to get on without their crutches when the other two factions still use theirs freely?

Exactly. We had for a short time, before the rise of Parattanni the balance of "everything is op", at least faction wise. Now the imperial "OP" lists have been reduced to tier 2, while scum and rebels kept most of their OP lists.
You either reduce everything to 2nd tier or try to elevate as many lists as possible to the tier 1 level. You are not supposed to do it incremental.

And this is btw different to the situation when rebel lists were suppressed by the meta. The rebels had still their "op" stuff, it just was not working against the common meta-lists, which allowed scum and empire to suppress the counters against their lists. This is vastly different to a situation when your general power level is below the curve and you are not just at a distinct disadvantage against the common lists, but simply not on pair to the most efficient tools of the other two factions.

And don't get me wrong, I am not overly attached to Palpatine in general, other tools in the imperial arsenal to elevate my beloved aces back into tier 1 would be most welcome. It is a shame in this regard that A-Wings, TAPs and TIE/ADs not getting access to something like unguided rockets … either way, something is missing now in the imperial arsenal or scum and rebels indeed need to get taken away their crutches too.

14 hours ago, Zazaa said:

Well give it a year and all imps can do tlt spamming. So you saying that we should go pre nerf times with X7 and Palp because they are the only thing that worked for this faction?

No, we should go back to pre-nerf times because the nerf was not needed as results have clearly shown. Why "fix" something that wasn´t broken? They are not the only thing that has worked, but had moderate succeess, compared now to nearly none.

And replacing something with tlt spamming is the worst idea ever. TLT´s are one of the most boring aspects of this game and they will not get Empire to the top.

7 hours ago, Parable said:

I don't think the need was so much about whiners, but about acknowledging that Palp + X was pushing any other Imperial archetype out of the meta.

Well some builds are always more used than the others, same goes for Rebels and Scum too.

Is it better to be pushed out of the meta than to have something at the competitive level?

2 hours ago, Kdubb said:

Here's a crazy thought-

Imperials are the only well balanced faction currently.

You open up the list builder and piece together an imperial list right now and you see a lot of ships that are fair in comparison to the other options. You feel like you are able to build a list without much deterrence from creativity coming from the knowledge that there are heavily undercosted ships (Jumpmasters, maybe Lancers) or game warping abilities (Rau, Biggs, Miranda) available.

The closest thing the Imperials have to that is still a Palp carrier, but after the nerf, I hardly think he is as heavy a presence on the imperials as the listed ships/pilots are for scum and Rebels.

I agree completely, and it also seems to me that the perspective holds when you look at it from the other direction: the Empire also has less terrible ships/pilots than the Rebels. Most Imperial stuff is at least worth looking at.

5 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

I agree completely, and it also seems to me that the perspective holds when you look at it from the other direction: the Empire also has less terrible ships/pilots than the Rebels. Most Imperial stuff is at least worth looking at.

It is a rather big stretch even when the perspective has some merits. It just does not hold true at all when compared to the other two factions. Sure, everything in the imperial arsenal is currently meh. But even when Palp Aces was the dominant tool of choice for imperials, you still had a great, great amount of options as the imperial ships were simply cheaper usually ... or at least cheap enough for 3 ship lists. Even the x7 fitted into this "we get at least 3 ships" theme for the empire which is the base for the imperial diversity in list building.

Now for the internal balance of the imperial faction it is certainly easier to remove Palpatine out of the equation and buff everything else a little with a few upgrade cards. But it is a real challenge to give rebels and scum the same treatment. Especially without just introducing an X-Wing 2.0 kit with a hundred cards all with errata.

3 hours ago, Kdubb said:

Here's a crazy thought-

Imperials are the only well balanced faction currently.

16 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

I agree completely, and it also seems to me that the perspective holds when you look at it from the other direction: the Empire also has less terrible ships/pilots than the Rebels. Most Imperial stuff is at least worth looking at.

2 hours ago, Johen Dood said:

Actually I totally agree. I basically decline all games from 'netlisted' players (or really anyone playing a toilet seat), and instead opt to play other Imperials. It's amazing. Suddenly everything is viable, you can have fun, and you can fly any Imp ship you want and still win. There's no overabundance of PWTs or TLTs or anything like that, it's like playing X-Wing back in the day.

At this point, I'm ready to just completely quit playing rebel and scum players- and form a league for Imps only. God that would be fun.

Oh, god. This IS 40k all over again

I basically agree with the sentiment that imperials right now are lagging behind, and my enjoyment of the game took somewhat of a dive since I play mainly aces/dodgers.

Still, when imperial veterans came out I dabbled in ryad-academy-2x bombers, and going from that to 2x scouts/fenn for competitive games isn't that bad

21 hours ago, Johen Dood said:

Wiped out with a single FAQ. Way to go FFG, bang up job there. You'll wipe a faction off the competitive tables entirely, but you STILL can't figure out that you need to increase the cost of Jumpmasters and remove Contracted Scouts' EPT. Just pathetic.

7 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

"Shuttles, defenders and interceptors" sounds like such a small list of ships, when we had 2 Interceptors, 4 different defenders, one tap, one tie fighter, one TIE/FO, 2 lambda's and the TIE/Bomber shuttle all in action. The diversity within archetypes had always been amazing for imperial lists.

More then that... we had Rac, Whisper, and the Upsilon all working as well.

8 hours ago, Kdubb said:

Here's a crazy thought-

Imperials are the only well balanced faction currently.

I said exactly this in another thread.

Now kick the crutches out from under the other 2 factions and we've got ourselves a game.

14 hours ago, Sekac said:

The problem with Imperials has always been they're most swingy with their power level. It's tricky to balance high agility and low hit points. Either you're dodging everything all the time, and you do well and your opponent is frustrated. Or if you ever don't dodge, you get one-shotted, and that sucks for you but your opponent is happy he finally killed the little bastard. Scum and rebels can take a bit of damage and pull through which gives the opponent a much more satisfying "almost gotcha", and you a "whew, that was close" feeling. Tricky to find a mechanical balance with such binary results.

So usually Imps fixes are much more heavy-handed than rebels. Compare the TIE/adv title and ATC, as well as x7, autothrusters (imps were the primary beneficiary), and Palpatine himself; to the likes of R2-D6 and B-wing/E2. Chardaan Refit and Integrated Astro were the best rebels got, and those were enough to make those ships fringe.

The flipside to that is when they get the balance wrong, their nerfs end up being way harsher. The phantom nerf, x7, and Palp.

Thanks @Sekac, you made some very eloquent points, that although obvious, are not readily remembered and grasped by players before they speak. I think the truth of the state of the weakest faction is rather simple, and perhaps the problem that caused this deflation is not only FFGs own doing, but it was because this is a horse that they simply no longer want to ride, and are putting it out to pasture. Many players don't understand that Imperial ships ability to not be shot at is the same as a Rebel ships ability to take shots on shields and even regenerate those shields, but I guess in a game of dice, we think if were not throwing them, something is dreadfully wrong.

Initially FFG determined that the two factions were to be unique, slower costlier less-maneuverable Rebels with good weapons, shields, and hull, vs. cheaper, faster, more maneuverable Imperial ships with good weapons, but were very fragile. As Waves passed and these differences were designed into the foundations of each ship, the differences caused friction as frustrations grew (Sekac wonderfully illustrated above). Soontir backed by Palpatine and Whisper are the poster boys for such frustration. So, FFG nerfed Whisper quickly before she ruined the game completely, but allowed Soontir and other fragile aces to carry the mantle. But even with his finest ace cohorts, neither he nor Palpatine could ever get their hands on the trophy at Worlds, despite valiant attempts. During this time Scum gradually came to power as a shady Rebel group, but I'll leave them be as we all know their exploits.

Enter in the Defender fix. Due to the fact that the Defender was in cannon and designed by FFG to be the best Imperial fighter with a stat line better than and Imperial or Rebel ships, it was issued and thought to be the Imperial "ace in the hole" by the FFG designers; it was to quietly usher in the dawn of a new Imperial age, arc dodging was to be slowly removed as the Imperial play-style that caused such player frustration. But alas, she barely made a showing in small tournaments, save @Biophysical and a few (unknown to me) others. During this time many modifications and tactics were employed that greatly reduced arc dodger's prowess and the Empire was missing most of the top tables in response. The designers knew the new Imperial age had to survive as the old one was in hospice, so the X7 and D Titles were issued to correct their Defender mistake (and to boost terrible sales to get more jack of course) and there was much rejoicing. Defenders were now worth their costs and they were found being played all over and had great success. With the X7 auto-evade married to the ability for the Emperor to change one die if and when needed, the Defender won many tournaments and even threatened making it to the final table and possibly win a World Championship. This was the pinnacle of Imperial might and had a good chance against all other meta squads, regardless the faction.

Then, on march 6, 2017, FFG removes Palpatine and Defenders from their place along side the other faction's top meta lists in their now infamous FAQ 4.3.0, which was --in my humble opinion regarding the Imperial faction upon viewing tournament results from then to now-- ironically titled: Bringing Balance to the Force.

So, in a desperate attempt to bring a third faction back into the fold, FFG opens Imperials to TLT spam - the baseline for a faction with no competitive edge...

11 hours ago, VanderLegion said:

QuickDraw was being worked into lists, but mostly seemed to be baffle self-damage variants to get free activation phase shots, which really isn't the best way to fly him

List Juggler between wave 10 and the nerf: http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?ranking_start=2017-02-02&ranking_end=2017-03-17&

The gambit was in 12th position and had already seen some good results. Most (like almost all of them...) builds were already using FCS instead of baffle.

It's funny because Miranda was already before the triple defenders that were supposed to be soo overpowered...

20 minutes ago, Thormind said:

List Juggler between wave 10 and the nerf: http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?ranking_start=2017-02-02&ranking_end=2017-03-17& It's funny because Miranda was already before the triple defenders that were supposed to be soo overpowered...

Interesting @Thormind, that list looks quite Scum heavy at first glance as they held the top two squads, but when you look at the details: 1) Scum had 4 of the top 10, 2) Imperials were 3 of the top 10, 3) Rebels were 3 of the top 10.

Again, I may be stupid, and in many instances I am admittedly, but wasn't that more balanced than it is now??

11 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

Interesting @Thormind, that list looks quite Scum heavy at first glance as they held the top two squads, but when you look at the details: 1) Scum had 4 of the top 10, 2) Imperials were 3 of the top 10, 3) Rebels were 3 of the top 10.

Again, I may be stupid, and in many instances I am admittedly, but wasn't that more balanced than it is now??

A LOT more balanced! The FAQ just dumped all over the game. We were in GREAT shape before it hit. Imps, Scum, Rebs- everyone had some powerful stuff. Tournaments weren't just "Scumwing" wankfests, and Imps could actually threaten to win a game with a decent MOV. Now it's just terrible. It's all scum, all the time, with a couple powerful Reb lists mixed in. FFG should revert the FAQ IMMEDIATELY.

Imps went from this:

To this:

The imperial part of the FAQ was perhaps uncalled for. The FAQ as a whole was very much needed though. Paratanni got to a point where it wasn't even a question which list is gonna win the next big tournament, just which Paratanni player will do so. That wasn't fun at all and needed addressing.

As for the imperial nerfs, I think the idea was to make something else viable for imperials, not just x7s and Palp all the time. If that was the case, the devs must have concluded that the reason x7s and Palp dominate is that they are simply better than the other imperial alternatives and nerfing those 2 cards will encourage the imperial players to bring something else to the tables. If that was their reasoning, they were wrong. X7s and Palp were indeed better than anything else in the current meta but other lists were not played simply because they were not competitive. Instead of giving imperials more options to choose from, the nerf resulted in imperials having no competitive options at all.

Now, if the FAQ, say, changed Sabine so that she adds extra damage on a roll of hit or crit instead of automatically, that would be a different story altogether. We might see interceptors or maybe the inquisitor again, and with x7 and Palp nerf, we might indeed see a much greater variety of successful imperial lists. For that matter, the resurgence of autothruster aces would significantly decrease the popularity of jumpmasters, resulting in an improved health of scum meta as well. Alas with Sabine unchanged, the FAQ just wiped imperials off the tables.

4 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

Thanks @Sekac, you made some very eloquent points, that although obvious, are not readily remembered and grasped by players before they speak. I think the truth of the state of the weakest faction is rather simple, and perhaps the problem that caused this deflation is not only FFGs own doing, but it was because this is a horse that they simply no longer want to ride, and are putting it out to pasture. Many players don't understand that Imperial ships ability to not be shot at is the same as a Rebel ships ability to take shots on shields and even regenerate those shields, but I guess in a game of dice, we think if were not throwing them, something is dreadfully wrong.

Initially FFG determined that the two factions were to be unique, slower costlier less-maneuverable Rebels with good weapons, shields, and hull, vs. cheaper, faster, more maneuverable Imperial ships with good weapons, but were very fragile. As Waves passed and these differences were designed into the foundations of each ship, the differences caused friction as frustrations grew (Sekac wonderfully illustrated above). Soontir backed by Palpatine and Whisper are the poster boys for such frustration. So, FFG nerfed Whisper quickly before she ruined the game completely, but allowed Soontir and other fragile aces to carry the mantle. But even with his finest ace cohorts, neither he nor Palpatine could ever get their hands on the trophy at Worlds, despite valiant attempts. During this time Scum gradually came to power as a shady Rebel group, but I'll leave them be as we all know their exploits.

Enter in the Defender fix. Due to the fact that the Defender was in cannon and designed by FFG to be the best Imperial fighter with a stat line better than and Imperial or Rebel ships, it was issued and thought to be the Imperial "ace in the hole" by the FFG designers; it was to quietly usher in the dawn of a new Imperial age, arc dodging was to be slowly removed as the Imperial play-style that caused such player frustration. But alas, she barely made a showing in small tournaments, save @Biophysical and a few (unknown to me) others. During this time many modifications and tactics were employed that greatly reduced arc dodger's prowess and the Empire was missing most of the top tables in response. The designers knew the new Imperial age had to survive as the old one was in hospice, so the X7 and D Titles were issued to correct their Defender mistake (and to boost terrible sales to get more jack of course) and there was much rejoicing. Defenders were now worth their costs and they were found being played all over and had great success. With the X7 auto-evade married to the ability for the Emperor to change one die if and when needed, the Defender won many tournaments and even threatened making it to the final table and possibly win a World Championship. This was the pinnacle of Imperial might and had a good chance against all other meta squads, regardless the faction.

Then, on march 6, 2017, FFG removes Palpatine and Defenders from their place along side the other faction's top meta lists in their now infamous FAQ 4.3.0, which was --in my humble opinion regarding the Imperial faction upon viewing tournament results from then to now-- ironically titled: Bringing Balance to the Force.

Dont forget that in Star Wars, balance is almost always defined as the light side winning over the dark side. In a way, they adhered to the Lore :-)

Unfortunatly your post contains many informations that seem to be false... This was the meta before imperial veterans: http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?ranking_start=2015-08-25&ranking_end=2016-06-30&large_tournament_multiplier=true&widespread_use_multiplier=true&use_ranking_data=all&tournament_type=&

The Imperials were doing just fine. The downfall of the Imperial "classic" formula did not happen before the defender fix. It happened much later. They are not related at all. What caused aces to be sent out of the meta is the proliferation of upgrades made to completely bypass agility. It started with Vader (crew) but snowballed with feedback array, slicer tool and most importantly Sabine.

This is the meta between Imp Veterans and the deadeye nerf: http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?ranking_start=2016-06-30&ranking_end=2016-10-17&large_tournament_multiplier=true&widespread_use_multiplier=true&use_ranking_data=all&tournament_type=& As you can see feedback array started to be used and the aces started to drop... The ratio defender/aces was almost even.

This is the meta when Sabine (and Kwings) started to raise in popularity: http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?ranking_start=2016-12-15&ranking_end=2017-02-02&large_tournament_multiplier=true&widespread_use_multiplier=true&use_ranking_data=all&tournament_type=& That's exactly when the Aces started to drop and the defenders took their place.

Feedback array or Vader (crew) were balanced by the fact that you were damaging/ionizing your own ship to use them and Slicer tool by needing a way to apply stress. There was some risk/effort involved. With kwing bombs are just too eazy to apply and Sabine becomes free dmg with no drawback at a very low cost.

If they wanted to bring balance back to the force, all you had to do was the scum nerf and adding randomness (dice rolls) to sabine abilities and all bombs.

For Palp, if something really had to be done, just changing his ability to be used before rerolls would have done the job. They went overboard with the nerf. Same thing with defenders. Make them lose their evades if they overlap any obstacle and they would have been just fine.

14 hours ago, Pretty Green said:

No, we should go back to pre-nerf times because the nerf was not needed as results have clearly shown. Why "fix" something that wasn´t broken? They are not the only thing that has worked, but had moderate succeess, compared now to nearly none.

And replacing something with tlt spamming is the worst idea ever. TLT´s are one of the most boring aspects of this game and they will not get Empire to the top.

Well can't stop that to spamming anymore. New ship is coming up with turret slot so it will bring tlt's for Empire. It is awesome turret, but I agree with you that it is boring, at least when spammed.

22 hours ago, Johen Dood said:

Actually I totally agree. I basically decline all games from 'netlisted' players (or really anyone playing a toilet seat), and instead opt to play other Imperials. It's amazing. Suddenly everything is viable, you can have fun, and you can fly any Imp ship you want and still win. There's no overabundance of PWTs or TLTs or anything like that, it's like playing X-Wing back in the day.

At this point, I'm ready to just completely quit playing rebel and scum players- and form a league for Imps only. God that would be fun.

Careful. As right as you are about Imperials having great options, that's MLG-Halo 2 level of "Only this way to play is balanced."

Who wants to play in an arena that only supports Battle Rifles / TIE Fighters?

7 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Careful. As right as you are about Imperials having great options, that's MLG-Halo 2 level of "Only this way to play is balanced."

Who wants to play in an arena that only supports Battle Rifles / TIE Fighters?

Team BRs is my favorite slayer mode

10 hours ago, Lightrock said:

The imperial part of the FAQ was perhaps uncalled for. The FAQ as a whole was very much needed though. Paratanni got to a point where it wasn't even a question which list is gonna win the next big tournament, just which Paratanni player will do so. That wasn't fun at all and needed addressing.

The Zuckuss part of the FAQ was also likely uncalled for in that regard. Dengaroo would have likely been killed by Manaroo change alone. Zuckuss nerf only served to push YV-666 down.

Just now, LordBlades said:

The Zuckuss part of the FAQ was also likely uncalled for in that regard. Dengaroo would have likely been killed by Manaroo change alone. Zuckuss nerf only served to push YV-666 down.

I dunno. Him being one point for what he did...I use to think the Zuckess nerf was too much, but I kept using him on a Palob build, and while not nearly as useful as he use to be, I do feel a get a point's worth of use out of him.

12 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

I dunno. Him being one point for what he did...I use to think the Zuckess nerf was too much, but I kept using him on a Palob build, and while not nearly as useful as he use to be, I do feel a get a point's worth of use out of him.

I was mainly referring to the meta impact of Zuckuss. I feel that was the main drive behind the great nerfing.

When you can't ignore the stress, Zuckuss was not a great card, and seldom seen.

When you can ignore the stress, Zuckuss was great, but mainly 2 builds did that: Dengaroo and the Party Bus. Now Dengaroo was an issue, but the build was killed by the Manaroo change already. The Party Bus was, IMO at least, a fun but not meta-defining build. Why kill that?

Just now, LordBlades said:

I was mainly referring to the meta impact of Zuckuss. I feel that was the main drive behind the great nerfing.

When you can't ignore the stress, Zuckuss was not a great card, and seldom seen.

When you can ignore the stress, Zuckuss was great, but mainly 2 builds did that: Dengaroo and the Party Bus. Now Dengaroo was an issue, but the build was killed by the Manaroo change already. The Party Bus was, IMO at least, a fun but not meta-defining build. Why kill that?

Fair.