7 minutes ago, Dengar5 said:

Also, you forgot Expertise, it's auto-include on Rey & many other ships.

It's really only stapled to Rey right now, and it's not terribly unusual for a certain combo to work really well with a certain pilot. Expertise is currently the 31st ranked upgrade on meta-wing behind autoblaster turret (which I funny considering we are talking about TLT). It has a hard counter in stress, which actually returned to counter it when it started to be used more in hopes of getting around Fenn. TLT has no such counter that turns it off except for that Boba Fett guy.

It's true that TLT is great on some ships that would otherwise not see play, but I'll point out that if an upgrade is good enough to bring a really weak ship back and can be used elsewhere, it's very likely that it will break something that is already good.

Hmm, its a little tricky to answer the question of how many of the lists that made the cut had at least one TLT. I'm headed out into the real world, so if one of the other data dogs would like to take a crack at it, go for it. I suspect its somewhere in the 20-30% range.

2 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Seems fine.

That's a very high rate for an upgrade card to occur. There are only two that occur more frequently (in all squads and in the cut) are Harpoons and VI.

10 minutes ago, Dengar5 said:

Those limitless abilities seem like the major culprit. R2-D2, Miranda regen, Bomblet. Limit these to 4 activations, that's an idea. This would prevent final table final salvos. All the other cards listed are just lower priority & everyone has their subjective opinions about them. TLT is great on Y-wings, an iconic trilogy ship. It is trouble on Miranda, Nym, Ghost. Also, you forgot Expertise, it's auto-include on Rey & many other ships.

The "Four And No More" idea seems like a great targeted, non-text-changing nerf. FFG simply makes a list of 4-flagged cards, and those cards get marked with use counters during play.

I'm still partial to the ban hammer and rerelease idea, but that seems a wan hope.

Lastly, folks should just get used to the idea that Worlds is the ultimate real world playtest. FFG has consistently responded to the problems seen there and attempted to rebalance.

To go back to the OP, our heroes very snarkily pointed out a major gaff in the current game state. I'm sure FFG took note.

26 minutes ago, sozin said:

• 2016: 1056/6665 == 15.8%
• 2017: 1368/8421 == 16.2%
• 2018: 510/2914 == 17.5%

EDIT: actually I answered a different question: what percent of ships in the cut included at least one TLT? Give me a sec to run that Q.

So 17.5% of all ships, including all the ships that can't take a turret slot at all, have the TLT upgrade. That's pretty huge. Nearly 1/5 ships you see ever in a cut will have TLT, and if a ship can take it the number is 81% of those.

4 minutes ago, sozin said:

I guess the argument isn't "Don't nerf TLT because that isn't the perfect solution", its more like "There are so many crazy card combinations out there right now, that making non systematic changes is likely to uncover some other terrible thing that 80% of competitive players will flock too." And I agree with that point. FFG/developers have demonstrated an approach to "fixing" things by making tactical changes to individual cards; see the numerous JMK fixes, where each time their articles practically dripped with self-congratulatory "problem solved".

That's why I recommend:

• addressing all the problem cards at once
• making playtesting of these "FAQ" type changes public . Many hands make light work. (Note, I'm not asking that all playtesting be public, just the FAQ changes; since these cards have already been spoiled, LFL will not care

Or just *cough* 2.0 *cough*

My counter argument is that only 75% of the competitive players will flock to it since it's by definition not as strong as the current combo and so won't exert as much pressure to play it or lose. And the next time 70% and the next time 65% and so on. Also I don't necessarily feel like at this point competitive players are flocking to these lists, as that implies a positive association. Rather they're being corralled into them because everything else is lacking in viability against them. Which is a subtle but I think important difference in terms of motivation and how people are approaching this. They actively want to play other stuff, but feel like they can't and still remain competitive.

Agreed about FFG and their underwhelming responses in most cases. But less sure about trying to fix everything at once. I get their hesitation at making huge swathes of changes all at once since while we have a pretty good idea on the what and why of the environment as it currently stands it's not always totally clear what the combined effects of a given set of changes will be once they interact with each other. So I'm more in favor of incremental changes, though far far more frequent than we've been getting. They also at some point are just need to bite the bullet and change points costs, large mechanical changes to card text are actually more confusing since we're all using squad builders anyway. It also makes incremental changes easier and more palatable. We increased the cost on this card, but it's still doing well so we're going to increase it again sounds a whole lot better than we completely misunderstood why this card is fundamentally good and so nerfed the wrong thing multiple times. They're also easy to undo down the road if a new release significantly changes the field.

Completely agree about the public testing though.

17 minutes ago, Dengar5 said:

From my perspective, it HAS been like this before. You have little sense of history when you say this is the first visit to "Crazytown." R2D2 Poe won worlds years ago. Pre-nerf X7 Defenders were meta warping. Pre-nerf torp Jumpmasters were meta warping. Parattani was the most dominant list ever. Targeted nerfs have happened & generally they have worked well. But, they have exposed an old ugly beast, limitless regen.

Those limitless abilities seem like the major culprit. R2-D2, Miranda regen, Bomblet. Limit these to 4 activations, that's an idea. This would prevent final table final salvos. All the other cards listed are just lower priority & everyone has their subjective opinions about them. TLT is great on Y-wings, an iconic trilogy ship. It is trouble on Miranda, Nym, Ghost. Also, you forgot Expertise, it's auto-include on Rey & many other ships.

It guess it just feels different for me right now. There is such tremendous synergy available with the expanded card base. The combination of expanded card pool (especially bomb related upgrade)+ ships with 7+ upgrade slots (Scurgg/K-Wing+) + way better missile tech + reinforce + regen == Crazytown. The 2015, 2016 and 2017 meta cited above was definitely troublesome and annoying, but way less powerful, I guess?

Honestly, why not just bite the bullet and take away miranda's regen capability entirely? She's still a High-PS ordnance-carrying turreted bomber that can Slam. She'd likely still be very good.

26 minutes ago, AlexW said:

That's a very high rate for an upgrade card to occur. There are only two that occur more frequently (in all squads and in the cut) are Harpoons and VI.

Yep. Seems fine.

1 hour ago, sozin said:

Hmm, its a little tricky to answer the question of how many of the lists that made the cut had at least one TLT. I'm headed out into the real world, so if one of the other data dogs would like to take a crack at it, go for it. I suspect its somewhere in the 20-30% range.

Don't have historical data because it's a nightmare, but since the early february not including the past week or so it's in the mid 30%s.

59 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Yep. Seems fine.

So you don’t actually want to discuss it. Noted.

Christ, no, it's completely futile.

1 hour ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

Honestly, why not just bite the bullet and take away miranda's regen capability entirely? She's still a High-PS ordnance-carrying turreted bomber that can Slam. She'd likely still be very good.

Because without TLT her ability is balenced?

@Stay On The Leader I'm genuinely curious, if you don't want to discuss it, what is your motivation for responding to posts in this thread? (My motivation, FWIW, is to provide data-driven analysis on how we got to Crazytown, and constructive suggestions on how to get out of Crazytown.)

1 hour ago, sozin said:

It guess it just feels different for me right now. There is such tremendous synergy available with the expanded card base. The combination of expanded card pool (especially bomb related upgrade)+ ships with 7+ upgrade slots (Scurgg/K-Wing+) + way better missile tech + reinforce + regen == Crazytown. The 2015, 2016 and 2017 meta cited above was definitely troublesome and annoying, but way less powerful, I guess?

Yeah. the synergy is WAYYY different. PS10 R2D2 Poe with no Black one title (Against harpoons), is way different from todays beast, espeically with comboing with lowwrhh and dtf

7 hours ago, Giledhil said:

9hp ship with 1 green die, ok.
Now add 3PO, Lothwrick with Draw their fire (no way to let that harpoon condition trigger), and Fenn Rau. Then regen while fleeing, covering yourself with your TLT (and covering TLT blind spot with bomblets). Yeah, piece of cake.

Doesn't seem to be a miranda problem, seems like a list problem to me.

2 minutes ago, JediSamurai said:

Doesn't seem to be a miranda problem, seems like a list problem to me.

I'm pretty sure it's miranda...

It's a lot easier to deal with 100pt rebel ace when you don't need to worry about 5 dice harpoons, tlt's, and unlimited bombs... plus shes the only one that carries c3p0.

5 hours ago, RStan said:

Sir, I'd like to introduce you to Crimson Specialist Bob. Bob likes to place bombs wherever he wants with his friend Nym making sure they go off at the right time. Together they'd like you to ask other competitive players out there if they'd like to play a game against them. You'd be surprised how many people don't want to play with Bob and Nym. #PlayWithBob&Nym

Preach.

#PlayWithBob&Nym #NPE

//

I'm only partly joking.

I played at Adepticon, brought what I have fun with, got dumpstered in the System Open, did better in Hyperspace but not great, had the unfortunate luck of out of 300+ people to twice get paired with guys from my home game store in a round when the loser was then eliminated or no longer eligible for a prize, and still had fun ... mostly. And I took home all the swag I wanted to get, so I'm happy.

Though I noticed something: there were a number of people not having fun. Some were pounding tables. Some were complaining about broken mechanics (I admit to doing this, at times, especially after a game where I took 3 damage from lasers and 16 from bombs. I admit I suck at X-wing, but I'm not sure that game was X-wing. Anyway, I digress).

Some were complaining about broken mechanics while flying the same. This I don't get. If you think it's broken, and it's an NPE for you, and you recognize it's an NPE for your opponent ... why are you playing it? If your fun is winning at all costs, own it: say you're playing something broken and unfun because winning is more important to you than either your or your opponent's enjoyment. But don't pretend to whine about it while simultaneously using it to crush your opponent's soul.

7 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

Preach.

#PlayWithBob&Nym #NPE

//

I'm only partly joking.

I played at Adepticon, brought what I have fun with, got dumpstered in the System Open, did better in Hyperspace but not great, had the unfortunate luck of out of 300+ people to twice get paired with guys from my home game store in a round when the loser was then eliminated or no longer eligible for a prize, and still had fun ... mostly. And I took home all the swag I wanted to get, so I'm happy.

Though I noticed something: there were a number of people not having fun. Some were pounding tables. Some were complaining about broken mechanics (I admit to doing this, at times, especially after a game where I took 3 damage from lasers and 16 from bombs. I admit I suck at X-wing, but I'm not sure that game was X-wing. Anyway, I digress).

Some were complaining about broken mechanics while flying the same. This I don't get. If you think it's broken, and it's an NPE for you, and you recognize it's an NPE for your opponent ... why are you playing it? If your fun is winning at all costs, own it: say you're playing something broken and unfun because winning is more important to you than either your or your opponent's enjoyment. But don't pretend to whine about it while simultaneously using it to crush your opponent's soul.

Its even worse when the person flying it defends it and refuses to admit that its blatantly over the power curve and NPE. (Which they might truly believe.)

9 minutes ago, hawk32 said:

I'm pretty sure it's miranda...

It's a lot easier to deal with 100pt rebel ace when you don't need to worry about 5 dice harpoons, tlt's, and unlimited bombs... plus shes the only one that carries c3p0.

I run 30-40hp lists, while slinging 12-16 primary dice, that doesn't really scare me...

If it helps, guys...

Id have been in the final of the "Hoth Open" with an arc dependant Imperial list with A) some better guesses on my part B) a little more variance to make up for wrong guesses C) the final shot of the match finishing off a 1 hull Lowhrick at range 3 or D) 1 more round lol. So, it IS possible to beat those Rebel lists at their own game (winning at time).

Not that I won't look forward to some changes, though. Pretty much all the Rebel lists are hard to overcome in 75 minutes. You have to come up with a game plan to kill that Lowhrick fast, and if it rolls above average evades, you've probably lost more than you've killed and will run out of time.

8 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

What if they had fun except for that specific mirror match? I know I’ve played games with the same list and had a blast, but then another game been miserable. I was miserable day 1 of that System Open but Thursday’s Hyperspace and then even Saturday’s Hyperspace I was having a ball.

(Was flying a take on Kylo + 2x Rho gunboats).

Deal with it. Mirror matches are bound to happen, sooner or later.

I don't know who started this idea that every match is going to be some sort of cake walk. There's matches you make to many mistakes and can't win. There's matches like this where it's a mirror and on the surface it seems un-winnable. There are hard match ups, they exist, and there not as fun as flying against a more balanced match up, but it's part of the game.

49 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Christ, no, it's completely futile.

And yet here you are.

3 minutes ago, phild0 said:

If it helps, guys...

Id have been in the final of the "Hoth Open" with an arc dependant Imperial list with A) some better guesses on my part B) a little more variance to make up for wrong guesses C) the final shot of the match finishing off a 1 hull Lowhrick at range 3 or D) 1 more round lol. So, it IS possible to beat those Rebel lists at their own game (winning at time).

Not that I won't look forward to some changes, though. Pretty much all the Rebel lists are hard to overcome in 75 minutes. You have to come up with a game plan to kill that Lowhrick fast, and if it rolls above average evades, you've probably lost more than you've killed and will run out of time.

This is why you're the best, @phild0 . You compete at the highest levels with squads that require constant correct decisions to win against squads that require a handful of correct decisions to win.

21 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

Some were complaining about broken mechanics while flying the same. This I don't get. If you think it's broken, and it's an NPE for you, and you recognize it's an NPE for your opponent ... why are you playing it?

Because for the vast majority of people, they are the protagonist, and every else are the supporting cast and extras.

(This isn't just in X-Wing. It's everywhere, and it's getting worse. When's the last time some idiot stopped at the bottom of an escalator in front of you to take a vitally important look at his phone? If the answer is "Friday," yeah, me, too. It's the exact same thing: "it's okay when I do it, because nobody else really matters in my story.")

It doesn't help when high-profile X-Wingers express extreme distaste for the bull@#$%, but are absolutely terrified of genuinely calling people out for playing the bull@#$%. FFG is slow to respond, and when they do respond, they're amazingly terrible at actually hitting what they're targeting. Convincing people that it's a game , and the fun of both players matter, and if you don't believe that, you're a "bottom-of-the-escalator douchebag," well, that's our recourse.