It's a small sample size, of course. Many of the Varuna players are brand new to PanO... They've never played PanO before, and Varuna reeled them in because they're competitive and thematically/aesthetically appealing (I know this because I asked the new guys what brought them to PanO, particularly two of the VIRD players in the Top 20.) I think Acon is completely viable in competition, but they weren't popular before. No reason they would be now, even with positive changes. NCA is simply too new for anyone to risk trying them in a huge event. Even Tohaa guys were hesitant to use the new tools, because they're still processing what they're capable of and haven't had a lot of time to practice. So it's a combination of factors that makes VIRD popular. They're competitive. They look good. They're easy to collect.
Unlike WH40k, you should put in the balance the skills behind each army. Barakiel, Cobraprime and a lot others are first tier US players and they all played Varuna. And what I am the first one to say i that MO require a lot of skill to perform well. In contradiction to every other PanO sectorial, MO has a very high skill cap. But with experience and skill, this sectorial is on par with the others. MO have tools but those tools need a good brain to make them work because no minelayer, no x3 Fugazi and no 10 pts cheerleaders put cheap TO infiltrator, Albedo MSV, camo huntress, cheap and effective TAGs, cheap HI with good CC and BS and so on. And how do you picture MRRF success, considering I hear a lot of voice saying this sectorial is, despite the update, a low tier army? It successed better than Ariadna.
Certainly. I speculated that Varuna may be pushing down representation and what you say seems to anecdotally support that possibility. I certainly wouldn't call either low tier, but perhaps more "old guard." And any faction that's been around for some time, it's tricks get known. The reverse may not be true. Old guard not knowing all the new kids on the block or having the tools to deal with them. How do you suggest there is a high skill cap? Where is it hiding? Most of what you say is MO is only vaguely defining it from other sectorials and vanilla. One competitor got to the top third and the rest were in the bottom third. Invincible army isnt doing much better but they got 20th so they must be hunky dory. So then how do we explain morats? We've had two other aggregate sets of data and they put MO and Morats near the bottom. How consistent do you need your aggregates to be before we can have the discussion of a problem? The question of Ariadna and MRRF could be a combination of TAK taking Ariadna players and MRRF being rather uncommon. If you forget about Margot and Duroc, you might experience an unpleasant sensation. If you cant deal with multitudes of chausers on the boards, you'll probably hate life. It's not exactly a powerhouse, no, but it does have some things to really twist some nipples of you arent prepared and given how low its representation had been, that's fairly likely.
You're wrong. You need skill for any army to perform well in a high skilled competition. In a level playing field. There isn't some magic, or faith, or "Deus Vult" that will bring a mythical MO player to come out on top in a serious competition. Don't think that CB knows why or how they designed MO and that no one just managed to "unlock" it. It's just an unfortunate design space that MO sits in and based on the current parameters of the game, it has no chance to perform well and keep its flavor. And the designers opted to go for the flavour vs game effectiveness.
Sad IA didn't payed off.. Maaaybe proxy issues? :( Anyway, looking forward for your fruitful batreps!
I do believe skill does matter, but a little bit of luck can go a long way. A random critical hit or failed button push can decide games, or at the very least the difference between a major and a minor.
Yeah, I think the phrase @Ayadan is meaning there is "high skill floor", because it takes a lot more skill to be major-tournament-competitive at MO than it does at most of the other armies in the game.
If I understand correctly, the term "high skill floor" refers to an easy army that is powerful in itself, thus raising the floor (or the lower skill player). I would say MO have a low skill ceiling, meaning even a high skilled player isn't able to take it as far as maybe some other more sophisticated (high ceiling) army.
Have you noticed that competetive players tend to take "good" factions to a tournaments ? (factions/sectorials which "click" for them). Thus if you claim that MO results were as they were due to lack of skilled players taking them... then I would take it as a ssign of a problem itself.
No, that's be a low skill floor faction. "High skill floor" means it already takes more skill to get to basic decency than it would elsewhere. It's essentially how hard it is to get the general hang for a faction: MO would be a high skill floor faction, because it takes more effort to get up to a basic level with them. While let's say Nomads would be a low skill floor faction because, even though they might have some very high skill ( And thusly high skill ceiling ) strats, it also doesn't take nearly as much to get the basics down with them either. Essentially how sharp the initial learning curve is, I suppose...?
Yes. With 2 "identical" lists, in tournament designed for TAGs and with a list which was nuked by CB.
In my mind... And I could be off a bit.. But @RobertShepherd said something akin too it's not how good the faction is but rather the player playing it... I could see any/most factions winning as long as they had the right guy/gal running it. Some factions a very strong... But how many are very weak?
Here we are talking about tgt MO ehicw no longer exists, that had cheap order monkeys, incredibly powerful ARO and BS 17 HMG in a single link. Now you no longer can run the excellent link, giving birth to a lot of problems. The "fix" was half assed, without any thought put into it. Unfortunately, I don't think we will be seeing a real fix any time soon.
This is plain wrong. We've been at it since the update. Previosly MO had 1-2 good builds, and not much more. It was decent within its limitations, but also extremely limited and boring. Now we no longer can build uber Hospitaller link, field cheap Fusilier Lt, or use those Fusiliers as cheerleaders - but we've got many tools that were previously unavailable, have many more decent list options, and some of the old, annoying problems - like Seraph's Auxbot - got fixed. There are still problems - Teutons are still almost useless, Hospitallers losing access to Magisters is a bad move, Sergeant linking options are as clunky as ever, F-Ks are still unfocused, but overall the army got better. Some people seek new opportunities. Some look at those options and find them underwhelming - that's ok, this can be discussed, and we don't have to agree, it's just a game. And some are stuck at lamenting that their tried and tested method no longer works, which I find funny.
To answer "skill cap" is a MOBA term to determine the potential of a chararter and how difficult it is to reach it. In Infinity, the potential is also determined a lot by the player but I think this can still be used. But @Section9 saying MO has a high skill floor is valid too as there are very few things obvious in the new MO. What makes me say that MO has a high skill cap is because the sectorial has a lot of tools. TO, Auxbots, Drop Bears, HIs with decent CC and high tier BS and always have a specialist option, cheapest BS 15 TAG, MSV2 in any FT except one etc. The difficulty comes from the low order count and the difficulty to double your tools in a list. Though one list can gather a lot of toolboxes, meaning that one guy will do you a lot of work alone and have an order efficiency potential very high. So, the difficulty is really about list, deployment and decision making. To make an analogy, I would compare MO to a Genji in HotS or Lee Sin in LoL. Those characters are rather disappointing in the hand of an average player against players who know the classic plays with them. But those are still doom incarnated in the hands of a handful amount of pro players because those guys know exactly how and where to strike and combo. For example, Genji is at 40% winrate in ranked but still always first banned in top players confrontations. I won't talk for top players but I have the feeling that they favour lists that forces your opponent to make mistakes and forgive yours rather than focusing on doing the show. Which doesn't seem to be the MO thing. So, no wonder they don't get that much love from them. But, for having seen what can be done with a lone knight or Black Friar in the good hands (so not mine yet), I think we have what we need (but surely not what most of us want).
Ive said it before and will say it again. I very much think we got a sidegrade not a true upgrade. We traded raw strength for some actually useful flexibility and some wacky options that dont do a lot. If we've received wild card santiago and everything else had stayed exactly the same, i could definitely have called this an upgrade to the sectorial.
I had a lot of fun and meeting Barakiel in person was pretty cool too. Grats again dude! As far as "why Varuna" ... I ran Varuna because it was what I had been painting since November. I was just lucky that the mission selection was nice. Definitely enjoyed the 16" deployment putting Helots in good range on enemy deployment. I'm really glad to have played another Varuna player (two, in fact!) as I'm the sole one in our AZ meta. Wow, Varuna is super annoying to play against! I feel like apologizing to everyone back at the game shop... My opponents were amazing though so we got through it together. Good times!