Maybe that's misleading. Countess and Vessery are still in the mid-20s at Metawing, and Delta/Glaive both come in in the 60s (with Maarek Stele a surprising 40ish). Ship type looks 14th or so, and 4th among Imperials, after TAP, SF, and Advanced.

Maybe folks just stopped talking about Defenders. But it felt like folks stopped flying them for a while. Were they that bad against Fairship Rebels?

I just did very well at Escalation (4-0) with a bunch of /x7 Defenders (and Palp in rounds 3/4), and they just felt so strong. A lot is luck (Defenders are certainly a ship which has a high luck upside), but I didn't lose a Defender until the 4th round facing 150 points of heavy Rebel stress and ion control. Predictable, sure, but they've got a lot going for them. Free evades, white K-turns, and enough dice to potentially thwart alpha strikes seem to be strong enough to power through predictability.

I'll never stop flying them!

More like stopped spamming them

i still see them all the time. Just not triple x7s

Fairship was a problem, but it wasn't the problem. Paratanni was the problem. Defenders just couldn't compete in a straight joust with it, particulary once the nerf hit and Asajj went from problematic to nightmarish, and once you tell Defenders that they can't joust, they don't really have a lot of tricks to fall back on. Then Paratanni got powercreeped out by Nym, which was even worse for Defenders.

Played them for a long time. Got bored. They aren't a ton of fun to fly.

Personally, I saw Defenders go out of favor after the changes to the X-7 Title. When they were no longer auto token stacking somewhat point and go ships anymore you saw the potential pitfalls. Mainly being Stress shut them off, blocking shut them off, and they were expensive and with the PS race, they were unable to keep up realistically.

Had the TIE/D title allowed for a cannon at a minus 3 to load you’d still see them and they could be terrorizing. Most people are wanting to go in with a 40ish point ship at PS6 or even 8 with not a lot of support.

yeah it was probably perceived at the time that they were pushed out of the meta, depowering of Palp, depowering of X7 Title, incremental up-powering of bombs in general making token stacking almost irrelevant and finally the rise of the Paratanni scourge for reasons described above mean players just moved away from it.

Just like after every FAQ, players drop the nerfed cards but eventually people realize they are still good, the problem is that before the latest FAQ "good" wasn't good enough and you needed something that was busted or obnoxious to even compete.

After the dust has settled from the latest FAQ some might still argue FFG still didn't cut deep enough into the J5K, but that's another discussion entirely.

Defenders did make top 8 at Aussie nats recently though so certainly not out of the picture entirely

My son never stopped, he just ventured into old school arc dodgers for the summer. He can still crush it with them, they're still really good. My son is one of a few who gave me trouble in testing parattani last year, even Fenn can't just blow one up quickly.

Most people moved on, seeking newness.

From a competitive point of view they are a solid balance between offense and defense. How they move makes the game feel to simple I guess. 99% of other ships are doing the exact same thing sure, they just do it with a little more style.

The gameplay of Tie Defenders is in the same category as Wookies, Dash, and Miranda in my opinion.

I immediately got bored with them during the very first game that I tried them out. Very few ships in the game fall into that category for me.

The Defenders looks amazing though.

PS: If anyone loves Defenders thats cool to. Every ship is like an Onion. Lots of layers.

because they're no longer easy mode (well. not relative to ye ole jumpmasters but still) and require very good flying given the limitations of their dial and of x7's speed restrictions

they're among my favorite ships, being difficult to use but not a complete "**** you" green dice crapshoot that'll penalize you even IF you flew well

but if it isn't a cakewalk to win with, it won't be very well represented competitively. That's just how it goes when you have to win several times over several grueling rounds of x-wing

@ficklegreendice

that play mat is amazing

Defenders are still popular around where I play, they're just not *absolutely everywhere* like they were for a while. They're still solid.

A triple tie/d PS1 defender list just won a 36-person tournament I was in on the weekend.

I think it's still an excellent ship, you just can't spam 2-3 X7s anymore and ping-pong to victory. Basically there's counter-play to the X7 title now, so you actually have to fly them well. Also the TIE/D hasn't suffered a nerf, and is chronically underrated IMO. They can be expensive, but they hit like a train and provide control too.

2 minutes ago, scumbuck said:

Defenders are still popular around where I play, they're just not *absolutely everywhere* like they were for a while. They're still solid.

A triple tie/d PS1 defender list just won a 36-person tournament I was in on the weekend.

That list is super fun. It's also more of a challenge to fly than people think.

They seem to still be fairly popular, like others have said the nerfs obviously hurt their spamability which I consider a good thing.

To add to that though, is the rest of the meta post-palp nerf. Triple jumps, paratanni, fairship etc were so menacing, and with the advent of RAClo showing it was the most effective method Imps had to counter those lists, its kind of hard to justify a 40pt defender as a wingman to a decked out Decimator.

I think they will come back out of the woodwork now that the meta is expanding, and the most broken of broken lists aren't really usable anymore.

there are more decent options now than just defenders for empire players.

Two triple X/7 Defender lists made the cut at Austin regional's. I lost in top 16 and the other lost in the top 8.

They aren't turrets.

Also, I think quickdraw takes the slot in a two or three ship list that a ryad or vessery might have earlier.

They never stopped at our location. Ryad had has been a constant thorn in my side...

Nerf Hearders Got Em Nerfed.

Nerf Said

3 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

From a competitive point of view they are a solid balance between offense and defense. How they move makes the game feel to simple I guess. 99% of other ships are doing the exact same thing sure, they just do it with a little more style.

The gameplay of Tie Defenders is in the same category as Wookies, Dash, and Miranda in my opinion.

I immediately got bored with them during the very first game that I tried them out. Very few ships in the game fall into that category for me.

The Defenders looks amazing though.

PS: If anyone loves Defenders thats cool to. Every ship is like an Onion. Lots of layers.

I really love Defenders, and I wouldn't say I got bored, just wanted something new. I discovered the TAP, and kinda fell in love with it. It feels like a more "traditional" TIE in that it's fragile, but not too fragile. I guess the TAP hits a sweet spot between the very practical TIE Defender and the Squint that I really wish I could fly (in Epic).

Like Boom Ogre Owl says, every ship is like an onion.

For example, the TIE Punisher just makes me cry no matter what I do.

Defenders are still good and news toys from the Gunboat give them more tools for the T/D

For some reasons with the new linked battery I want to try with missiles...

I´ve been flying Defender for quite some time and even won a store champ a while ago with HLC Rexlar and 3 Zeta FO´s. The Defender masses have disappeared but i still like to fly it, and actually i´m terrorising my community with my Vessery(Expertise, TIE/D, Tractorbeam, Mk.II), Backdraft(Adaptability, FCS, Title, LWF, Targeting Synchronizer), Sabacc(Crackshot, Title, LWF). The common sense for them is that nobody understands why Tractorbeam is so underrated... it reliably kills 1 ship in the first encounter if your not careful!

To quote them:

Lucky for us, tractorbeam doesn´t do any damage...

Simply put, they got predictable, and when you're predictable, you're dead. People got used to how they fly and how to block and dodge them, and they lost out.

They went from broken to merely powerful.

20 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

They went from broken to merely powerful.

And then they went back to being overpriced, due to all the auto-damage and broken Bombers (Nym).