I think the answer to the OP question depends solely on what you want to fly. Palp Defenders were sooooooo unfun to fly against. Many lists simply could not do any damage against them. Jumpmasters? Well at least I can put damage in. Not enough. And they are just silly-undercosted and over-slotted. But I can at least hit them. So that's.... something?

I'm still a big fan of the nerfs and I have strong hopes for this season of Store Championships. I am also encouraged that FFG is willing to address problems with hard errata. I think they need to be more systematic with the process though.

12 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

That is purely your personal preference in speaking out of you. But understandable, personally ace dominance is the most healthy state of the game.

Some (maybe imagined, I try not to harbour illusions about that) objectivity in my opinion on that subject: Strong aces are bad for the game as they invalidate anything that is < PS8 and doesn't have an accurate turret. That is a massive portion of what the game contains! Strong bombers on the other hand put aces down, but not much beyond that. Here is why I agree that Sabine + CMs is over the top, though - that combo can get away with more than feels right. I have killed (badly flown to be fair, but still) TIE swarms using bombing K-Wings. They should not have the ammunition to go through 7 Soontir Fels. One, though? Has to be, just to keep him from shutting out massive portions of the game.

1 hour ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Here is why I agree that Sabine + CMs is over the top, though - that combo can get away with more than feels right. I have killed (badly flown to be fair, but still) TIE swarms using bombing K-Wings.

Can you elaborate on why you feel a (presumably) well-flown 100-point bombing list should not be able to defeat a badly-flown 100 point TIE swarm?

12 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Can you elaborate on why you feel a (presumably) well-flown 100-point bombing list should not be able to defeat a badly-flown 100 point TIE swarm?

Good point, it should. What I meant when typing that was that I felt like not having to do actual work against what on paper should be a relatively hard counter to me.

2 hours ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Some (maybe imagined, I try not to harbour illusions about that) objectivity in my opinion on that subject: Strong aces are bad for the game as they invalidate anything that is < PS8 and doesn't have an accurate turret. That is a massive portion of what the game contains! Strong bombers on the other hand put aces down, but not much beyond that. Here is why I agree that Sabine + CMs is over the top, though - that combo can get away with more than feels right. I have killed (badly flown to be fair, but still) TIE swarms using bombing K-Wings. They should not have the ammunition to go through 7 Soontir Fels. One, though? Has to be, just to keep him from shutting out massive portions of the game.

The issue is that sabine + advanced slam is pretty much shutting out the high agility/low health imperial aces.

4 hours ago, gamblertuba said:

Palp Defenders were sooooooo unfun to fly against.

But this is where things get murky. Some people didn't mind flying against them. Some liked going against them. Then you have the people who legitimately enjoyed flying the list, and not just because it was an "OP" list. Saying that things are better now because a list that some, but not all, people didn't like going against is a little one deminsional.

10 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

The issue is that sabine + advanced slam is pretty much shutting out the high agility/low health imperial aces.

There are 15 things interacting to shut out classic Imperial aces (including, not at the bottom, that Mindlinked Fenn backed up by a broken ship-class is a better ace). That it's just Sabine/AdvSLAM/Bombs is just not correct.

Classic Imperial aces were on their way out before bombs made a big splash (so to speak). Neo-Scum aces are doing just fine, and Sabine/AdvSLAM/Bombs work just as well on them.

If you want to rephrase and say that "anti-ace tech has gone too far," then we can probably agree.

22 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

But this is where things get murky. Some people didn't mind flying against them. Some liked going against them. Then you have the people who legitimately enjoyed flying the list, and not just because it was an "OP" list. Saying that things are better now because a list that some, but not all, people didn't like going against is a little one deminsional.

Which is why I wrote the rest of the paragraph. Defenders were simply immortal against a lot of lists. You either teched against them or simply watched your attacks bounce off doing nothing. That is a different kind of problem than the ultra-efficiency of Jumpmasters.

1 hour ago, Jeff Wilder said:

There are 15 things interacting to shut out classic Imperial aces (including, not at the bottom, that Mindlinked Fenn backed up by a broken ship-class is a better ace). That it's just Sabine/AdvSLAM/Bombs is just not correct.

Classic Imperial aces were on their way out before bombs made a big splash (so to speak). Neo-Scum aces are doing just fine, and Sabine/AdvSLAM/Bombs work just as well on them.

If you want to rephrase and say that "anti-ace tech has gone too far," then we can probably agree.

Classic imperial aces I would argue arne't really shut down by mindlinked fenn. As long as you take an inititive bid to move after him, you can arcdodge fenn just like any other ship. Asajj is a bigger problem than fenn is for that. And classic imperial aces were on their way out before bombs madea big splash because tey were overshadowed by the even better x7 defender.

3 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

Classic imperial aces I would argue arne't really shut down by mindlinked fenn. As long as you take an inititive bid to move after him, you can arcdodge fenn just like any other ship.

That's not what I meant.

Classic Imperial Ace fliers are simply choosing to fly Fenn. Thus another reason we're seeing so few classic Imperial aces.

Quote

And classic imperial aces were on their way out before bombs madea big splash because tey were overshadowed by the even better x7 defender.

Then why lay all the blame on Sabine/AdvSLAM/Bombs?

There were six lists in the Worlds' top 16 featuring both Fenn and Teroch. That's 2/3 of your squad comprised of aces with the same HP as the Inquisitor or interceptors with hull upgrade, and less than Vader . They didn't seem to have a problem with bombs.

2 hours ago, gamblertuba said:

Which is why I wrote the rest of the paragraph. Defenders were simply immortal against a lot of lists. You either teched against them or simply watched your attacks bounce off doing nothing. That is a different kind of problem than the ultra-efficiency of Jumpmasters.

True, but that doesn't mean they were a blanket "unfun" to play against.

44 minutes ago, Ladrillito said:

There were six lists in the Worlds' top 16 featuring both Fenn and Teroch. That's 2/3 of your squad comprised of aces with the same HP as the Inquisitor or interceptors with hull upgrade, and less than Vader . They didn't seem to have a problem with bombs.

Different play style plus better support ships.

and yet people are calling for more Nerfs.

It is like France during the revolution, "Off With Their Heads" for whoever is on top.

10 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

There are 15 things interacting to shut out classic Imperial aces (including, not at the bottom, that Mindlinked Fenn backed up by a broken ship-class is a better ace).

HWKs are now a broken ship-class?

4 hours ago, Ladrillito said:

There were six lists in the Worlds' top 16 featuring both Fenn and Teroch. That's 2/3 of your squad comprised of aces with the same HP as the Inquisitor or interceptors with hull upgrade, and less than Vader . They didn't seem to have a problem with bombs.

Imperials also don't have access to the best large base blocker in the game. In Duncan and Travis' lists, Manaroo with Rigged Cargo and Ion Projector was designed specifically to keep Miranda from being able to bomb Fenn and Teroch.

9 hours ago, Ladrillito said:

There were six lists in the Worlds' top 16 featuring both Fenn and Teroch. That's 2/3 of your squad comprised of aces with the same HP as the Inquisitor or interceptors with hull upgrade, and less than Vader . They didn't seem to have a problem with bombs.

They are much harder hitting ships, much less relying on double reposition and token stacking to avoid damage and slowly wear down their enemy, instead they can go into a joust just fine and annihilate their target with a frontal assault. And they have support ships worth their salt, Jumpmasters, HWKs and Lancers are all better than a Palp Lambda.

7 hours ago, defkhan1 said:

Imperials also don't have access to the best large base blocker in the game. In Duncan and Travis' lists, Manaroo with Rigged Cargo and Ion Projector was designed specifically to keep Miranda from being able to bomb Fenn and Teroch.

Fair point.

20 hours ago, Ladrillito said:

There were six lists in the Worlds' top 16 featuring both Fenn and Teroch. That's 2/3 of your squad comprised of aces with the same HP as the Inquisitor or interceptors with hull upgrade, and less than Vader . They didn't seem to have a problem with bombs.

11 hours ago, defkhan1 said:

Imperials also don't have access to the best large base blocker in the game. In Duncan and Travis' lists, Manaroo with Rigged Cargo and Ion Projector was designed specifically to keep Miranda from being able to bomb Fenn and Teroch.

There was a surprising lack of bombs at worlds.

The ion and rigged chute were definitely originally teched to stop Miranda, and it does a solid job.

All of that said, it's no slam dunk, it just [hopefully] stops us from auto-losing to Miranda with bombs. Rephrased, it takes a drastically bad matchup to closer to a 'push,' which is of course great.

Also, a surprising amount of k-wing players have never actually had to fly their ships with adversity, and are usually stumped when they can't just auto-bomb your aces.

10 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

There was a surprising lack of bombs at worlds.

Yeah it was strange. I only came across one Miranda in nine games. But I think that has more to do with the fact that most of the field was Scum. The threat of being matched up against Miranda is still enough to keep me from wanting to fly Soontir Fel.

Bombs peaked a few months back, before the torpedo scouts returned. Triple Ks isn't really a thing any more.

2 hours ago, SOTL said:

Bombs peaked a few months back, before the torpedo scouts returned. Triple Ks isn't really a thing any more.

They seemed on their way out by about January, but I'm not really sure why.

Heaver Naboo beats on paratanni though, and triple bombers still seem good.

Could it just be that 3xKs just arent as much fun for people to fly anymore so people just aren't flying them. They were never a super dominant list against the entire meta soit's not like with paratanni where people flew it just because it was powerful. so all the people that put in the work with triple k wings just moved on to other things because they got bored.

3 hours ago, SOTL said:

Bombs peaked a few months back, before the torpedo scouts returned. Triple Ks isn't really a thing any more.

Triple Ks haven't been seen much, but Miranda is still going strong, and she's usually enough on her own. Plus, sometimes the actual number of uses of a thing doesn't actually decrease its threat. Take back when the original u-boats were a thing. They weren't use too much in my local meta, but every Rebel player was on edge in case one did show up. When something can eat your lunch like U-boats did back when, or Bomber with aces, the simple fact that it can show up is a deterrent.

I'm coming around to thinking there is a fundamental underlying issue with the mechanics Imps have been given, I don't think it's necessarily a nerf-related issue though.

If the game continues to swing towards importance of combos and synergies there's not many imperial ships positioned to really take advantage of that because their whole theme is being stripped down and disposable cannon fodder ships. Even a lot of their Aces have very prescriptive builds you need to run as a base, so there's little room for synergies to be applied on top.

I'd be disappointed if the solution to this is just making Imperials as dependent on upgrades as the other two factions, I'd prefer to see other ways of improving efficiency to match but in different ways.