Is Soontir Fel Undercosted?

By Boom Owl, in X-Wing

Price out soontir from trip aces and whisper fills that spot, or GI, or dutchess. Supernatty 7th sis can fill the spot at 59pts if you price out all i5 and i6s and will tear apart anything below i4 and everyone will be racing to i5 ships cuz playing i3 or i2 xwings and bwings vs Super Sis is about as fun as watching paint dry.

When 2.0 came out soontir, whisper, redline was everywhere. Redline got priced out, whisper loss his gunner. What happened? No vader gunner in the list means Vader can now be included in lists. Redlines points where now available to built out dutchess and pumping up soontir.

In my best Jeff Goldblum voice "Aces will, uh, find a way"

Soontir is fine. It takes good pilots to get his value back.

28 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Weird. Its the first thing I want to see. Can you elaborate?

I thought the previous post explained enough the reasons about my preferences.

More than three arcs to dodge, high firepower (specially if they bring Wedge or Braylen) and a lot of hull is scary.

It's a winnable matchup but I believe my opponents think the same and if they aren't stupid I have the hard work.

But is my opinion. Maybe I'm a bad ace player.

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Soontir is fine, costed pretty much perfectly I’d say.

12 minutes ago, unfassbarnathan said:

For and against, I’d say.

1 hour ago, DarkArk said:

This is the end result of the community complaining about everything that can stand up to Aces and getting them priced out of the game, or designed out when they redid things for 2e. The good bomb ships and upgrades are all gone. Control elements got nerfed or removed. Generic Phantom is gone. Proton torpedoes are mostly gone. Quadjumpers are gone. Every large base that was ever worth a **** in 2e has been systematically removed from the game (I'm not kidding on that one, FFG clearly doesn't want people using large bases competitively). Triple Ace wasn't dominating when it was less expensive. This is a result of clear design choices, and frankly I'm tired of FFGs hard handedness when it comes to balance. They remove archetypes shockingly fast and don't give them a slight nerf and then see how they develop. So I'm not really a fan of discussion that says "yes, do this again." The community has ways of figuring things out better than they think. I'll be very annoyed if they continue this balancing strategy.

If this was Reddit I would give you gold. We did this to ourselves.

34 minutes ago, wurms said:

Price out soontir from trip aces and whisper fills that spot, or GI, or dutchess. Supernatty 7th sis can fill the spot at 59pts if you price out all i5 and i6s and will tear apart anything below i4 and everyone will be racing to i5 ships cuz playing i3 or i2 xwings and bwings vs Super Sis is about as fun as watching paint dry.

When 2.0 came out soontir, whisper, redline was everywhere. Redline got priced out, whisper loss his gunner. What happened? No vader gunner in the list means Vader can now be included in lists. Redlines points where now available to built out dutchess and pumping up soontir.

In my best Jeff Goldblum voice "Aces will, uh, find a way"

Soontir is fine. It takes good pilots to get his value back.

Or you know. Increase price on all ace pilots. Across the board. Until there is no one left to fill the gap

3 minutes ago, Flurpy said:

Or you know. Increase price on all ace pilots. Across the board. Until there is no one left to fill the gap

In my best Jeff Goldblum voice "Aces will, uh, find a way "

Just now, wurms said:

In my best Jeff Goldblum voice "Aces will, uh, find a way "

Naturally and I don't mind Aces as an archetype but they have consistently dominated since 2.0.

Can anyone name a point in time since 2.0 started that one of Vader, Soontir or Whisper wasn't a top tier performing pilot?

1 minute ago, Flurpy said:

Or you know. Increase price on all ace pilots. Across the board. Until there is no one left to fill the gap

So you want to kill the archetype? I thought this game was fun because of positioning and the choices you could make, but most people here seem to be hurt that there's a ship your opponent can put on the field that does that better than theirs, even though there's always counterplay.

To me, Soontir might be underpriced, because in a lot of aspects he is perfect, and the ones where he isn't, player skill helps somewhat correct it. But he is not threatening the entire meta, he is no cancer that is destroying the game, he is just efficient!

4 minutes ago, LeMightyASP said:

So you want to kill the archetype? I thought this game was fun because of positioning and the choices you could make, but most people here seem to be hurt that there's a ship your opponent can put on the field that does that better than theirs, even though there's always counterplay.

To me, Soontir might be underpriced, because in a lot of aspects he is perfect, and the ones where he isn't, player skill helps somewhat correct it. But he is not threatening the entire meta, he is no cancer that is destroying the game, he is just efficient!

Kill the archetype? No. Of course not.

Bring it to the point where you have to choose between a bid and a third ace? Absolutely.

Three aces with a bid is a bad archetype.

Who ever flew Rebel Beef was made **** sure he had to choose after the points increase. Quad Phantoms as well. Some were quite literally made illegal (Handbrake Han and SuperDash) while aces weren't affected by it that much. Even in Ace of Legends it was Redline the least acey of the three that got clobbered by points.

Edited by Flurpy
53 minutes ago, wurms said:

Price out soontir from trip aces and whisper fills that spot, or GI, or dutchess. Supernatty 7th sis can fill the spot at 59pts if you price out all i5 and i6s and will tear apart anything below i4 and everyone will be racing to i5 ships cuz playing i3 or i2 xwings and bwings vs Super Sis is about as fun as watching paint dry.

Supernatural Sev or Fifth (he's coming soon) won't have the same offense as a 3-red dice Soontir, and Init 4 is going to be easier to deal with than Init 6.

Few folks are saying "Soontir and only Soontir alone needs a nerf." The entire Ace ecosystem should go up in cost, and Soontir is a part of that which also needs to go up.

56 minutes ago, wurms said:

When 2.0 came out soontir, whisper, redline was everywhere. Redline got priced out, whisper loss his gunner. What happened? No vader gunner in the list means Vader can now be included in lists.

Of course, it "helped" that Afterburners Vader got a 7 point price cut in the January adjustment, from 70+8 to 65+6. I mean, wow.

I bet a lot of folks are figuring that won't happen with this upcoming adjustment. A lot of folks are itching for Order 66, with fewer clear replacements for Soontir.

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It's turtles and nerfs all the way down.

I don't want a game where the best archetypes are the ones that go through the board against the enemy and throw a big amount of dice. The game needs Aces.

It doesn't need only high Initiative Aces but needs Aces. Against a pure efficience squadron, the low-mid Aces must shine but also this little ones must struggle against the tops like Soontir Fel.

I think the solution is more about a big change of the points metrics but I believe that the design team prefer a little unbalanced game where more players could win and enjoy because the advantages they provide us although the competitive scene will be always arguing.

Soontir is priced fine. To get back his value you actually need to put in some effort. If someone deserves to get a point increase its Anakin (I6) and Obi-Wan (I5)

10 minutes ago, S4ul0 said:

I don't want a game where the best archetypes are the ones that go through the board against the enemy and throw a big amount of dice. The game needs Aces.

It doesn't need only high Initiative Aces but needs Aces. Against a pure efficience squadron, the low-mid Aces must shine but also this little ones must struggle against the tops like Soontir Fel.

I think the solution is more about a big change of the points metrics but I believe that the design team prefer a little unbalanced game where more players could win and enjoy because the advantages they provide us although the competitive scene will be always arguing.

The game needs aces to be part of a balanced diet, but right now they really aren't.

  • Top 5 ships per ATC: Obi, Vader, Ric, Soontir, Trade Fed. 4/5 Aces.
  • Next 5 ships: Wedge, Anakin, 104th, Kylo, Quickdraw. 4/5 Aces.
  • Next 5 ships: Finn, Gold Torrent, Tallie, Boba, Braylen. 3-ish/5 Aces (depends on how folks count Braylen).
  • Next 5 ships: Sear, Duchess, Fenn Rau, Plo Koon, generic Inquisitor. 3 Aces (Sear isn't an ace) plus one of the acey-est generics.

Aces dominate the game, and the efficiency archetype barely exists. There should be more than, like, three viable non-ace lists. I love me my Palp Defenders and my Optics SFs, but they aren't really at that tier.

1 hour ago, Flurpy said:

Bring it to the point where you have to choose between a bid and a third ace? Absolutely.

Three aces with a bid is a bad archetype.

Who ever flew Rebel Beef was made **** sure he had to choose after the points increase.

I just want to quote this for emphasis. Aces are fun! But make us choose our poison.

15 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:
  • Next 5 ships: Wedge, Anakin, 104th, Kylo, Quickdraw. 4/5 Aces.
  • Next 5 ships: Finn, Gold Torrent, Tallie, Boba, Braylen. 3-ish/5 Aces (depends on how folks count Braylen).

I don't count Quickdraw or Braylen as Aces and I think Boba is a different archetype.

Elite pilot isn't the same as Ace for me but that's another discussion.

"Advantage against lower Initiative pilots and good end game ships that can close a match without lose points."

Shoot first and hard is not enough.

1 minute ago, S4ul0 said:

I don't count Quickdraw or Braylen as Aces and I think Boba is a different archetype.

Elite pilot isn't the same as Ace for me but that's another discussion.

"Advantage against lower Initiative pilots and good end game ships that can close a match without lose points."

Shoot first and hard is not enough.

I tend to agree with this here. Wedge and Quickdraw, for example, aren't aces. They're high initiative, obviously, and can arc dodge, but they don't expect to arc dodge, they cant do it twice, and they cant do it without losing some offense. They're high initiative jousters.

Touche... I'll usually call Wedge and Quickdraw Ace-Hunters, rather than Aces.

But I think my base point mostly stands. Efficiency squads which just fly at people is actually a much more rare archetype. Mostly, I think a fear of losing aces entirely due to nerfs is rather unrealistic.

4 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Touche... I'll usually call Wedge and Quickdraw Ace-Hunters, rather than Aces.

But I think my base point mostly stands. Efficiency squads which just fly at people is actually a much more rare archetype. Mostly, I think a fear of losing aces entirely due to nerfs is rather unrealistic.

I agree that aces aren't close to being nerfed out of competitive play. They could sustain a modest hit and still be excellent choices.

The pitchforks really come out when new points are nigh, eh?

He's basically everywhere and a near auto-include at his current price, so he's clearly undercosted.

Nothing about what he is and how he does it matters. Godsbedammit, he bloody is frail. Touch him, he breaks. That's frail.

And is there really an debate that he's easy to play ace with?

Of course he is! That's the point! It's what he totally is.

He's hard to touch.

It's really not easy to have him earn more than he costs though, without putting him alongside other, more egregiously undercosted things. You can afford to wager a lot more with him, more than you can if his mates are also risky. That inflates the overall picture of him quite a bit.

Whether he is too cheap and by how much is obvious in the squad choices, rather than on the table though. You have 60pt spare in a list, you judge the points that ship can potentially trade, in comparison to others. Soontir wins too many of those choices atm. He has a higher minimum return than a lot of his friends in that range. A continuously bailed out Soontir can tie up a lot and still remain a big threat. The other ships that can do this as well as him cost much closer to 60, even kitted lightly.

This in faction comparison is how the points were intended to balance out, so he's clearly over by a bit.

Possibly it takes someone with a history of Imperial squad building to see it clearly..... But it is pretty clear. It's more about how things fit together.

Add 2 or 3pts to him and you'll see some different decisions. He could probably soak 5 and still be great in the hands of those who know him.

Surely ships being really good in the hands of really good players should be allowed?

The undertow to this.... Triple high aces has to be an archetype. To remove it, prices would need to rise so dramatically across the board that it would twist all sorts of other things out of balance. There are a lot of options. So, massive holes in the meta, ultimately leaving us with something nobody wants. More pitchforks next update.

I actually like playing against triple ace. I find it interesting and fairly decently balanced. Certain of my lesser trip ace squads have had to take a back seat recently, but I've not felt any need to fight fire with fire.

Fire extinguishers exist.

Certain elements are currently too dominant though, the squads get boring to see again and again, therefore they're obviously too easy a choice. The answer is in the bids, as always. Make them count to as near 200 as possible, force squad decisions. There are not actually that many guilty parties, it needn't be too hard or too much in the way of hikes. If trips have to count high or step 1 or 2 pilots down to I4, you get a lot more viable squads and much more even match ups. It'll be enough.

There will always be the best ace squads, who can still find a bid and outdo their peers, but they should be stripped down and sufficiently vulnerable to other archetypes. Like at certain points in the past.

The ways that certain ace squads and pilots circumvent the need for a bid probably needs a look too.....

But let's not go mad, it's really not that bad.

4 hours ago, beardxofxdeath said:

Soontir is priced fine. To get back his value you actually need to put in some effort. If someone deserves to get a point increase its Anakin (I6) and Obi-Wan (I5)

We're not talking about jedi, but I'll bite. Anakin in no way shape or form needs to go up in price. 82 points for the 7b Anakin is overcosted. Regen is what makes Anakin a pita.

67 points for CLT Anakin is borderline overcosted.

The I5 jedi are the only jedi that are undercosted.

Edited by SavouryRain
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47 minutes ago, SavouryRain said:

The I5 jedi are the only jedi that are undercosted.

*cough* Mace Windu *cough*

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Edited by miguelj

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