Congratz @tusker for winning the AT!

[Koz Katral]

Well, seeing as that sleipnir clicked his mods in the finals youd expect so... .



Also on the AT ships should be allowed due to OP and having to have them and the people claiming they didnt matter so much and werent needed, let me quote that reddit ama for you:

Not much here simple mirror but we had the malice advantage so we won.

Removing AT ships entirely from the the meta would be a very boring step both for the most serious teams as well as the spectators in my opinion. In the end I think the move to 1 unique per team was a very good one in the interest of levelling the playing field for newer and middle ground competititors (there is legit some hideous stuff you can do with multiple AT ships in 1 team that isn't a realistic possibility for most smaller alliances).

if you are super serious about the AT (like tuskers are) its not impossible for a smaller group to get hold of 2-3 uniques that you think will best support your setups - You don't need to multiples of every single AT ship, if you can't work out which ones benefit your setups the most you probably aren't gonna get very far in the tournament anyway.

Also something to consider, is that many AT ships this time around died vs comps that weren't fielding them (NC's cambion, our Adrestia, numerous Etanas). Uniques don't instantly result in a crushing victory for the team that fields them, and you can still be outpicked or outflown and lose.

On a final note with the exception of a few early round matches I'm fairly sure most teams that lost vs unique comps, also had uniques themselves which they chose not to field for x reason.

tl:dr 1 unique per team is good for the meta and the viewers.

[Tafkat]

Letting the Malice through was basically a brainfart on our part - we discussed banning it in the leadership/strategy group, then Sulei got distracted by something or other, Iddo's connection shat the bed, I was distracted hunting through my hangar for the right Oneiros fit, and we collectively managed to forget that there was such a ship as a Malice right up until we landed on grid. Welp, so it goes.

As for uniques, I kinda like the rules as they stand; the only change I'd make is that I'd add the flagships to the unique roster so if you field the flag you can't also field an Etana/Rabisu/Malice/whatever.

[W0lf Crendraven]

Well, seeing as that sleipnir clicked his mods in the finals youd expect so... .



Also on the AT ships should be allowed due to OP and having to have them and the people claiming they didnt matter so much and werent needed, let me quote that reddit ama for you:

Not much here simple mirror but we had the malice advantage so we won.

Removing AT ships entirely from the the meta would be a very boring step both for the most serious teams as well as the spectators in my opinion. In the end I think the move to 1 unique per team was a very good one in the interest of levelling the playing field for newer and middle ground competititors (there is legit some hideous stuff you can do with multiple AT ships in 1 team that isn't a realistic possibility for most smaller alliances).

if you are super serious about the AT (like tuskers are) its not impossible for a smaller group to get hold of 2-3 uniques that you think will best support your setups - You don't need to multiples of every single AT ship, if you can't work out which ones benefit your setups the most you probably aren't gonna get very far in the tournament anyway.

Also something to consider, is that many AT ships this time around died vs comps that weren't fielding them (NC's cambion, our Adrestia, numerous Etanas). Uniques don't instantly result in a crushing victory for the team that fields them, and you can still be outpicked or outflown and lose.

On a final note with the exception of a few early round matches I'm fairly sure most teams that lost vs unique comps, also had uniques themselves which they chose not to field for x reason.

tl:dr 1 unique per team is good for the meta and the viewers.

Sure its bad for the viewer, but the requirement to seriously(!) compete in the AT is to high imo. You need a serious isk/logistical backbone to do well in the AT, just to start with you need 100+ billion isk just to get ships and mods and implants, then you need all V pilots (for example, afaik everyone in the tusker team is more or less on an AT skill plan given out by the corp month before the AT starts, and i imgine its similar every group, pilots dont fly without all V) and that gets you the possibility to get top 4 with good seeding, or top 2 if you get very lucky but to have a shot at #1 you should have access to AT ships, multiple ones at that.

(you probably know this but im just typing it out anyways for those that dont)
The malice alone is a gamechanger due to it totally changing the flow of a match - a malice on a logi allows you too actually break ships without having to otherwise deal with a logi - its absurdly tanky so it can be left alone quite easily - logis have died with rhml ships on grid which chew through frigs easily, yet just a few rep bots easily keep a malice afloat.
The etana and the new armor logi are extremely important on just a meta basis, they allow you to bypass bans. You saw that quite a lot in the tourney, you can ban specific logi sets to force the enemy into either armor or shield and you also weaken the enemy quite severely should they stay with the banned means of defence. This allows you to dictate the enemy comps quite a bit. The avaiability of those logis make that totally unviable, you cant ban armor or shield anymore.

This alone is such a giant tactical advantage that its almost a must to have the ships, even if you dont field them as they get you around the some of the most powerfull bans in the game. This creates a strain on non top 4 finishers of the last few years (which have absurd amounts of isk due to that, just coming 4rth will fund your next 2 at runs including multiple AT ships).



I would either like to see a deciated tournament server where everyone has all V, every mod and every ship - and to lose the 1 at ship only rule cause they are amazing ships that offer really good games. This would totally kill the wow what an expensive explosion factor and would be bad for the viewers, but on a pure E-sports basis this is by far the best. It creates an equal ground where only the best at theorycrafting and piloting win.

Otherwise either a flat unique ban + flagships only skip bans but arent fit in any different way or lastly, a more drastic change of tournament payouts, instead of top 4 getting ships and the rest getting plex and skins (which are nothing to scoff at, the AT pays out very well to everyone who won a few games) a system were ships are handed out from top 16 onwards (with #1 getting the most and on and forth). This would not only massively increase the payout of the AT for most normal teams and thus booster the interest it would also give more teams (over time) the means to compete at the highest level. Finish top 16 or top 8 and you can compete with top 1 or 2 for the next year.



But the 1 unique only rule is a good and very much needed start, from a esports pov the cambion etana rush vs the moracha arty setup was the most disgusting tournament showing of all times (was awesome to watch, sure, but theres no way any of the other top teams of that year bar the other part of hydramel could field such setups and thus compete with that). The 1 only rule does tone it down a lot, by themselves only few AT ships offer truely gamechanging abilites - the cambion for example is awesome but it doesnt completely change a match.

[roigon]

The poorest alliance in game could get their hands on a AT ship to field if they are already at the point where they are guerenteed to win AT ships.

Sent from my XT1068 using Tapatalk

[Casper24]

Thanks for the kind words. Honestly, I feel that the PL team this year was much stronger than previous years, with much less mistakes in terms of execution. Honestly, it felt like fighting Warlords all over again

,
Thank you Sule - this is a bigger compliment than you know. PL pilots had to put up with the WL influence asking them to see things from a different perspective, and the WL guys had to learn how to work in a PL system. Near the end i think we came to a very good understanding, and it was a pleasure working with all the new faces and personalities on the PL team. As for the match, both teams are rooting for themselves ofcourse, and both have their opinions, and the results say we lost. So that is that and lets move on and congratulate Tuskers on their win, and having to do it through the loosers finals, cannot be understated how stressfull this is on a whole team.

Hope to see you in next years finals for a rematch.

Also GRR CCP and GRR Volta for not killing ur flagship

[Eli Stan]

Yeah, the last day matches are stressfull. Especially for people in charge. Respect to them.

Imagine the first match stress for an alliance full of folks in their first ever AT, and with a new captain.
Day One was a disaster for us but we learned from it and had a good time winning two matches Day Two, despite not going any further.

I like the idea of a flagship counting the same as an AT ship for purposes of the one-unique rule.

[W0lf Crendraven]

Also tl:dr from some thinking i did about the dced match,


the super lightly tanked scimi took all the dps from the tusker team, given its ehp of 14k vs the ammo types, the local rep of 1.4k vs that ammo and the speed by which it died and thus the tuskers applied dps, it was fairly irrelevant if he could boost or not, he would have died in seconds anyways. Thus seing as the tusker scimi survived a lot longer and with general team comps id say tuskers most likely would have won that match in a regular fashion.