Original post: https://cafe.naver.com/warforum/112884 =====Translator’s note ===== This is a tier list by a Korean player, who won several small ITS tournaments between Korean players. Bear in mind that Korean Infinity scene is not very large and usually played on a fixed table set ups. Meta and play style can be a lot different from yours. ======================= Faction on the left is more powerful within a same tier (S) Perfectly strong (A) Overall strong (B) Small flaws (C) Major flaws (D) Hopeless Criteria for tiers 1. Highly rate armies that are universally strong across missions and against various opponents. 2. Highly rate armies that can easily utilize Strategos Lieutenant. 3. Highly rate armies that have pitchers and strong hacking capabilities. === Korean meta rates pitcher and hacking high === 4. Highly rate armies with a large number of markers and high quality troops. 5. Highly rate armies well-suited to the "healthy diet" meta — building rosters with 20–40 point units without relying on expensive pieces. 6. Highly rate armies that are not dependent on specific tactics and have a wide range of options. === The author left comments from vCA to Steel Phalanx. Going to translate one by one on this thread. === Combined Army : Many big tournaments results show the strength of vCA, but in short, vCA has every component to win Infinity without defects. Charontid for strong HMG shooter, high WIP Lt with pseudo CoC, Bit and Kiss to shoot many pitchers, Dartok for hacker all-in-one package, and so on. Also they have options that other S tiers lack, such as hidden deployment ARO Noctifier (which Bakunin lacks), Hacking Device Plus (which Yu Jing lacks), impersonator or MSV3. Nobody will argue the vCA on S tier. Yu Jing : People will ask “why Yu Jing over Bakunin? Bakunin has better results”. However, the author rate Yu Jing 2nd because they have more markers and more diverse tactical options. Current Yu Jing stole the King of Camouflage title from Ariadna. Pitcher was also only available to Dokkaebi in N4, but now Haidao and Zhanying also have access to pitcher. Easier access to pitcher synergizes with tinbot firewall(-6) (which is faction defining feature) and makes the hacking power of Yu Jing the best ever they had. Also, vanilla Yu Jing didn’t get hit a lot from N5 patch like other vanilla factions, such as Nomads and Aleph.
It is always interesting to see other group's Metas. My major surprise is that they rank Vanilla Haqqislam so high and Vanilla PanO so low. Vanilla PanO has so many tools now feels great. Joan v2 + Helots are awesome. BCA Magistrates are awesome. It seems weird for a Faction that can have linked Karhu, Zulu-Cobra, either Hetkari/Aquila Guard/Father-Knight/Joan v2, Banshees, and Black A.I.R. and Helots in the same list to be considered low end. Vanilla Haqqislam, on the other hand, feels like a struggle. N5 gutted our excellent Duos and decreased the range of models we have. The only unique and powerful model in Vanilla Haqqislam is Zuleyka. All of the Haqqislam sectorials, to me, feel more cohesive and more powerful. I feel that QK is better than Vanilla Haqqislam, especially with the new Iguana, Laxmee, Yuans Yuans, and Burkut.
