UNAC Power Rankings Discussion

[Rhade]

Use this thread to discuss the Power Ranking thread and feel free to discuss, argue, quote, modify and go back-and-forth here regarding the how, why and when of your logic as to why you ranked what where and why you believe someone else's ranking was off. It is my hope that this thread can be moderated in the spirit of the BkS thread -- that of a very "light touch" moderation -- and that people will be able to discuss and even argue openly as I feel it does drive an element of the competitive scene to have that sort of outlet, giving fuel to matches and anticipation to results. But it is not a free for all and TW rules are going to need to be followed here.

 

[ClockWise]

So I did one of these bad boys. Someone disagree with me and lets get this debate going.

 

[KoA John]

I think CGC needs to be #1 on your list, bunch of raycist clocks

 

[Mad_Dawg]

I think CGC needs to be #1 on your list, bunch of raycist clocks

I put John @ #1 for not knowing the name of the teams. 

I disagree Clock, debate!



Good stuff Rhade, I'm loving the energy everyone is putting into this.

 

[Calamity]

I think CGC needs to be #1 on your list, bunch of raycist clocks

I put John @ #1 for not knowing the name of the teams. 

I disagree Clock, debate!



Good stuff Rhade, I'm loving the energy everyone is putting into this.

I agree. We have really put this child board to good use and it's great to see the community react so well.

Also, great post Rhade. It will be exciting how people view the teams week by week.

 

[POM_Zero]

4. Balions - Phenomenal coordination, phenomenal leading. Strangely enough, the flaws I've seen in Balion's play are based around their traditional strength - weak individual prowess. Despite being an ancient clan, with a great leader and some of the best team coordination I've seen, each player seems to fall quickly. Despite having phenomenal cav, extended fights are not ended as fast as they should, allowing archers of other teams to punish the Balions. Overall an extremely powerful team, but they play much in the traditional NA style, and they will need to adapt to either GA's or wK's style of play in order to attain higher positions. A stronger infantry roster would also be of great benefit.

I will admit it made me laugh, Eternal go home you're drunk.

 

[Mok the International]

4. Balions - Phenomenal coordination, phenomenal leading. Strangely enough, the flaws I've seen in Balion's play are based around their traditional strength - weak individual prowess. Despite being an ancient clan, with a great leader and some of the best team coordination I've seen, each player seems to fall quickly. Despite having phenomenal cav, extended fights are not ended as fast as they should, allowing archers of other teams to punish the Balions. Overall an extremely powerful team, but they play much in the traditional NA style, and they will need to adapt to either GA's or wK's style of play in order to attain higher positions. A stronger infantry roster would also be of great benefit.

I will admit it made me laugh, Eternal go home you're drunk.

Agree with Cath actually. Balions cohesion, teamwork, and communication, (and Scott Ray) is what leads them to victory, individually...well that's a different story.

 

[Catholic]

Not going to lie, when WMT faced up against you guys, the one thing that you did that I was surprised you did was drop like flies on Nord Town. Scott Ray got great bumps (and bloody 1v4'd), archers got good shots, but the amount of easy back hits we were able to score on your infantry was genuinely shocking. Your cohesion and strategy, as noted in my ranking, were great on FbtR. I don't think I'm unfair in that assessment, and you weren't even there for the first half.

I don't really get why - Mad Dawg and Juvenile are ordinarily very powerful players, but they weren't holding their own. And against GA in the 5-a-side, I saw about the same thing.

 

[Juve]

In my defense, I was having pretty awful ping spikes throughout the entire first map (Nord Town). It's tough to not die if you don't even see how it happens.

Other than just myself, the first set's 0-4 score seemed to me as partially a server problem (I wasn't the only Balion experiencing bad spikes), partially taking too long to adapt our strategy to WMT's (all inf + one cav), and partially an issue of not really warming up as a team. Little things like that can add up and have a very negative effect on a team's performance.

Not that I'm trying to make excuses or anything, or take away from WMT's performance on Nord Town, just wanted to offer a bit of insight in response to your post.

 

[Catholic]

Yeah, it's not a condemning sort of thing. All teams have bad matches, and it's not particularly wise of a pundit to base a generalization based on one match. I'm not analyzing just based on the WMT vs. Balions match, but also all practice matches TMW vs. Balions recently and the Rat Pack vs. Balions match.

I don't really think it warrants so much defensiveness (not really you, more Zero). Balions is definitely not a perfect team - no team is. When I mention fantastic calling, cohesion and support, I don't understand why you get uppity when I mention one weakness of poor individual skill on the infantry's part.

I don't enjoy patting everyone's backs. In my pundit opinions on Gelden's thread, I make sure to dedicate time to both a team's weakness and strength. On my power rankings, I'm similarly going to do both. What good is me saying that Balions has great cohesion without mentioning their weaknesses? Would that not, in itself, imply a perfect team? Or a system in which wK is superior simply because of better cohesion, as though Balion's individual skill doesn't matter? Even discounting that, that's a ****ty review. It's like making a review about a game without mentioning anything bad about it.

No. I'm rather fair, balanced, and blunt, and I'm sorry if you're on the team. I was hardly friendly in my review of WMT.

 

[Juve]

Best not to take Zero too seriously.

Most people (including me) seem to be on the same page in terms of thinking Balion's infantry work has been a bit off lately. I personally took no offense to it, and was more responding to

I don't really get why - Mad Dawg and Juvenile are ordinarily very powerful players, but they weren't holding their own.

this with my post.

 

[Catholic]

Best not to take Zero too seriously.

I will learn that someday.

But yeah, cool. ^^

 

[POM_Zero]

Will respond to you tomorrow when I am on a pc

 

[KoA John]

Will respond to you tomorrow when I am on a pc

隐藏

The plot thickens

 

[Erminas]

9. DoF - I've undervalued them constantly, and that's probably because they lacked every part of a good team - they had terrible lack of coordination, little individual skill, ancient calling techniques, and rarely practiced. However, with their recent return to the competitive scene and constant practices with TMW and Rebels, they've successfully built up every part that used to be weak and are constantly getting better. Their coordination is now competent, the strategies aren't bad, and individual skill is stronger as more competent players join the roster. However, they still suffer from some very novice players that threaten to bring the entire team down - something DoF will have to work on if they intend to increase in ranking.

Rarely practiced?
Personally i find that very disrespectful to read because i have organized and led most of our 60+ practices we had this year.
Add to that 110 scrims(official,friendly,pickups on US or EU servers) we played this year and yeah... we rarely practiced


However I actually agree on something here and that is this " they still suffer from some very novice players that threaten to bring the entire team down".
Reason we have been doing not so well recently is because we rarely had the best DoF lineup in scrims.So if one of us(Darin,Will,me)have to improvise with new and inexperienced DoF players outcome usually isn't good.

...they had terrible lack of coordination, little individual skill, ancient calling techniques...?
We usually have no problems at all when our best guys play.Yes we can lose even with best but usually its the other team that is simply better at time and not us failing in one of the categories you mentioned.I mean we have been playing a LOT on EU scene and when we have best players there(as PaD)we do pretty well(30 wins,9 draws in past 12 or so months) despite higher pings.Actually you are yet to win map against us on EU server if i recall correctly

 

[Snoop]

Will respond to you tomorrow when I am on a pc

He's currently on a unicycle.

 

[Lagstro]

our 60+ practices we had this year.
Add to that 110 scrims(official,friendly,pickups on US or EU servers) we played this year and yeah... we rarely practiced

  More than one practice a week. More than 1 scrim every 3 days. Exaggeration or real dedication?

 

[Erminas]

our 60+ practices we had this year.
Add to that 110 scrims(official,friendly,pickups on US or EU servers) we played this year and yeah... we rarely practiced

  More than one practice a week. More than 1 scrim every 3 days. Exaggeration or real dedication?

Not an exaggeration at all.
On our forum i have thread called Dedication Table where i keep track of how many practs(official,unofficial),scrims(NA,EU,pickups)we had this year.It also shows how many of these events every member has attended.
So to answer your question we have 3 practices per week(usually 3).One on Tuesday,second on Saturday and third on Sunday with PRT chaps.During WNL we had at at least 3-4 EU scrims a week.Actually i remember that one week we played 7(both NA and EU) scrims(although 3 of them were played on same day).

If you are interested here are the numbers:
Total scrims:110
Official US scrims:25
EU scrims(both official and unofficial):64
Pickups(US pickups only):21

Total practices:60(add few more that i missed and wasn't informed of who attended it)
Official practices(Tuesday and Saturday):36
Unofficial practices(Sunday):24

 

[Nord Champion]

9. DoF - I've undervalued them constantly, and that's probably because they lacked every part of a good team - they had terrible lack of coordination, little individual skill, ancient calling techniques, and rarely practiced. However, with their recent return to the competitive scene and constant practices with TMW and Rebels, they've successfully built up every part that used to be weak and are constantly getting better. Their coordination is now competent, the strategies aren't bad, and individual skill is stronger as more competent players join the roster. However, they still suffer from some very novice players that threaten to bring the entire team down - something DoF will have to work on if they intend to increase in ranking.

Rarely practiced?
Personally i find that very disrespectful to read because i have organized and led most of our 60+ practices we had this year.
Add to that 110 scrims(official,friendly,pickups on US or EU servers) we played this year and yeah... we rarely practiced


However I actually agree on something here and that is this " they still suffer from some very novice players that threaten to bring the entire team down".
Reason we have been doing not so well recently is because we rarely had the best DoF lineup in scrims.So if one of us(Darin,Will,me)have to improvise with new and inexperienced DoF players outcome usually isn't good.

...they had terrible lack of coordination, little individual skill, ancient calling techniques...?
We usually have no problems at all when our best guys play.Yes we can lose even with best but usually its the other team that is simply better at time and not us failing in one of the categories you mentioned.I mean we have been playing a LOT on EU scene and when we have best players there(as PaD)we do pretty well(30 wins,9 draws in past 12 or so months) despite higher pings.Actually you are yet to win map against us on EU server if i recall correctly

Erminas, I wouldn't take what he said as a negative comment. Its his opinion from what he's observed, nothing more. I do agree, that the "rarely practice" was a misinformed comment, but yet again, its his opinion from what he observed. In fact, I think the only thing he got wrong was the "rarely practice", other than that I completely agree. We did have a terrible lack of coordination, we had good individual skill, though, but we didn't really use it well in scrims, and we didn't have the most updated calling techniques. We've improved a lot since the last tournament, and that's all Eternal is trying to say.

our 60+ practices we had this year.
Add to that 110 scrims(official,friendly,pickups on US or EU servers) we played this year and yeah... we rarely practiced

  More than one practice a week. More than 1 scrim every 3 days. Exaggeration or real dedication?

We try to have two practices a week. We also try to have 2 scrims every week, most of the time we get 3, but most of them are EU. Regardless, we do a lot of Warbanding :3



Anyways, if we wanna talk more about DoF's performance specifically, I suggest we move to DoF's thread so we don't get this thread off track.

EDIT: Ninja'd

 

[Kherven]

You can say a lot about DoF, but you definately cannot say they don't practice. I'm not sure where Eternal got that idea from.