Ignithas

17 hours ago, Adran said:

If player x wins1 event with master Y, it doesn't mean that the master is automatically too strong, but a lot of people may copy them, especially if they go on popular podcasts explaining their list.  You might then get to the next event and you see that 3 of the top half used master Y and think there is something to this, and rarely do people look to see how many people actually picked master Y (it might have been 6 people and the other 3 are all in the bottom half of the table). More people then take this to show that Master Y is good, because it has a proven track record of doing well and can win events, so they practise and play with it. Y wins more events because a lot of people are now using it. People look to see which master wins, and rarely look to see how many of that master were used. Was this a meaningful Pattern to show Y is too strong?

One player winning one tournament with one master doesn't automatically too strong, but if the tournament is high profile it is an indicator, because the player basically played with a handicap.

3 players being in the top half of a tournament is usually meaningless information.

In games that are very skill intensive, if a list is too strong and popular, there are usually a lot of people that do well with it and a lot of people that aren't, because the worst players gravitate to lists that are pereceived to be the best. This is why % of the field and win rates across the board aren't the best tools to rate popular lists.

Having one master being a large part of the meta and winning tournaments after tournaments usually signifies balance problems, because the meta can't adjust to the master.

17 hours ago, Adran said:

Yes, and no. If a master is too weak (or too strong) then it is good to do something to change that. But answering the question of "Why Tara is too weak" is important to making sure you make the right change. She may be too weak at the moment, but if GG2 comes out and re-introduced Corrupted idols, or something similar, then all of a sudden she is strong again.  If that is the case, then you might not want to actually change the power of any of her models, because whilst she isn't doing very well in GG1, she will do well in GG2.

Balance should be always determined by the current GG. If Tara needs Corrupted Idols to be good, then she should be buffed if it isn't and nerfed if it is. Otherwise she is a balance problem in and on itself.

17 hours ago, Adran said:

If we rate every master out of 8 for 4 strategies (the estimated points scored in the game if you are playing an equally good opponent) we ought to get a ranking. If two masters both have a total ranking of 24 (out of 32) are they equally balanced?

What if the scores were 6,6,6,6 for master A and 8,8,8, 0 for master B. Are they still balanced?

I would say that from a tournament point of view if you could only use 1 master, and you are going to play 4 round events, you should use the first master, because they have a chance of winning 4 games (if you are actually a slightly better player than your opponents), whilst the second master is likely to win 3 and lose 1 (Because you need to be a significantly better player to make up the difference in game 4).  But if you are playing a faction (and you have the time to learn multiple crews), then you would want to be able to play them both, and end up with a "faction balance rating" of 30.

From a faction balance perspecitive the 8,8,8,0 would most likely be broken. Even if there isn't a master that completely shore up the weakness (for example x/x/x/4, it would still be really bad designed.

If I only play 1 master it depends on what my skill level, goal and the meta is. If I want to win the tournament and am not ahead of the competition, I take the list that gives me the most polarized results in the field. So for example if most people are taking lists that are extremly good at the 4th scheme, taking the 8,8,8,0 would probably be the better choice, even if I lose the one scheme 100% of the time. If I am confident that I will win against players even if I play a 6 list and my oponent an 8, then the 6,6,6,6 is the better choice.

So in short, better players usualls gravitate towards "balanced" lists, while worse towards polarised ones to have a chance against players that play better than them.

17 hours ago, Adran said:

If you then had master C that was rated 7,7,7,1 it only has a rating of 22, so that is worse than the previous 2 masters, but is actually likely to do better against master A 75% of the time even though it has a lower overall rating.And this is before you add in complications like gaining grounds changing the 4 strategies completely every year (aprox) so a crews power balance will be different from Season to season.

The overall rating is only important if you don't play another master that shores up the weakness. For the faction balance the 7,7,7,1 is meaningless if there is a 8,8,8,0 and a 6,6,6,6 in faction.

Balance should always be determined in relation to the current GG and balance changes should be made accordingly.

17 hours ago, Adran said:

It sounds like you want each master in a faction to be "best" choice 1/8th of the time, and second best choice 1/8th of the time and so forth to be perfectly balanced.

While this would be good if you want to balance the masters, faction balance most likely would suffer through such a design approach.

4 hours ago, Adran said:

Looking at tournament results is useful. but is not the be all and end all in this sort of circumstance. There is no central pool of results to look at, or was to know who picked what master for what game. (I don't know how much the app has changed it this edition in terms of Wyrd having more data to look at, but I don't play using the app.so its certainly not got any data from me).  Tournament lists are not created equally. People have biases. Even with the App data, it doesn't give a large enough picture to be statistically significant, and it doesn't tell you everything about the game (for example the terrain can make a huge difference and this isn't recorded). Many Malifaux players play the "hot" lists. Lots of the best players make the "hot" lists work because they devised them and know how to use them, and the average player doesn't use them with the same skill level, and understand the list as well as the player that devised it. You can Look at Nekima and Kharnmage. He had great success with his list, but very few people have been able to get similar success levels. I think that was because his understanding of the list, and how it dealt with a wide range of tactical issues, was much better than a lot of the people that tried his list. Is that a case of the list was a problem, or just that the player was a better player?  I've seen,  over 10 years of playing this game, top players winning regardless of the faction they choose, much more than I've seen poor players winning big events because they just happened to have the best list.

Tournament data doesn't give you the full picture, but a large part of it. Someone winning a high calibre tournament is the result of skill, luck and the power of the minis you are using. From one tournament it is often hard to pinpoint what the reason of the success is. But you usually get a meaningful patern very early. Who are the players that perform very consistently? What factions are they playing? What masters do they take into what schemes? What masters do they take into which factions? Are other people able to recreate the success?

If you have one player dominating events with one faction or master it is important to talk to the community to understand if it is a probem. What counters have other factions against it? If both player have a similar understanding of the game, how can I have a positive matchup against the playing pattern? Usually succesfull players are eager to answer those questions.

Especially if a person is extremly strong with only one master, there are probably not enough counters in the game to deal with it.

4 hours ago, Adran said:

uch more than I've seen poor players winning big events because they just happened to have the best list.

 I don't have any data that isn't anecdotal, but Tara was often complained about as the Outcast pick for corrupted idols. Now at the same time as the errata happened, corrupted idols was removed from most tournaments. It is not easy to then look at the drop in Tara games played, and decide if this is because of the changes to Aionius, (or even the change to Hannah in some meta) or just the removal of her "best" game from the pool.

I don't think it matters if Tara is too weak because of the removal of corrupted idols, the direct nerfs or the indirect ones. Important is the end result.

4 hours ago, Adran said:

If she doesn't have a stand out game to use her for, do you still practise with her for any games? Personally I would go yes, but I don't think everyone is the same as me, and if she is just average in all the games and you know you are only going to play 2 or 3 masters there is less reason to select her as one of those masters. If you are only going to play 1 master you probably want that master to do ok/well in all games, but if you are going to play 2 or 3, then you want them to have games when they are very good, and don't mind games where they are poor, because you just won't pick them for those games.

I think it is important to understand her role within the faction. If you have access to all masters, what masters would I commit into what schemes/matchups/terrain. If the answer for Tara is that I only take her because I don't have time to learn more than one master, then game balance failed in my opinion. Especially in a tournament setting, one master that is ok in all games seem lackluster, if masters like dreamer are very strong in all games.

On 7/3/2020 at 3:05 PM, Adran said:

I don't know what the consensus on most efficient builds are, and I argue that there isn't such a thing really because it is dependent on Mission, and Opponent and Table. (I don't pre-build lists, I make up my list for every table fresh each time, but I know not everyone does this).

I know that the most efficient build is relative.  But from what I gathered using out of keyword characters was the only way to midigate the weaknes of having no good beater. This on paper should affect a lot of matchups.

On 7/3/2020 at 3:05 PM, Adran said:

You can view a change that makes Tara's potential worse is a nerf to Tara. Any change to any model that makes it worse then becomes a Nerf to all models that might hire it, which can be hard to explain. So this "nerf" to Hannah makes every single outcast master worse, because they all can hire Hannah, and she probably was considered for a lot of lists.

If Hannah was used that way by the most succesfull outcast players I would consider it as a nerf. If it wasn't used that way, then it was a clarification. If it was used by the most succesfull outcast players and was played out of keyword, then I would argue that it was a nerf to all masters that realistically fielded her.

On 7/3/2020 at 3:05 PM, Adran said:

As I said, there were 3 hits to Rising Phoenix on they way they played Tara. To many Tara players there were only 2, and if you're not playing at tournaments you might not play Gaining grounds 1 but rather than the rule book strategies and schemes, so not notice that. And the change to buffering is a big hit if you have focused on that style. If you play Tara differently, it might only be a minor change that rarely matters to you.

In my opinion you should look on tournament results to analyze this. To understand if it was a nerf you need to know if the tournament players played it that way or not. To understand if it was a big hit you look at how those tournament players played her. To understand if Tara is balanced you have to look at the matchups she was or wasn't picked in. And to understand if Outcast is balanced you look at the win rates.

I personally think that balanced factions are more important than balanced masters. So if Tara doesn't get picked often but Outcast is in a good spot, I think that this would be a good outcome to the gaining grounds changes.

On 6/18/2020 at 8:14 PM, Adran said:

Aionius lost a suit and added a target number to 1 action so it didn't automatically trigger.  That's not a huge change.

Its going from automatically succeeding to needing 7 crow on a henchman for that action.  Weaker, but not a total failure.

I assume the other nerf you are talking about was Hannah, who wasn't actually changed. You were just told that she couldn't do 1 thing you did with her. Plenty of people already thought she couldn't do that. 

Gaining grounds will change again, and the next set may well suit her more. It may have been three big hits to the way you played her all at once, but to a new player it's probably only 1 change. 

Wretches are rare 3, so you can never have more than 3 on the table. I've lost track of what us packaged with what, but I found the scion useful, as is Aionius.

I hope you enjoy the crew. 

If  the consensus on Hannah was that he could do the thing and the most efficient Tara builds used out of keywords characters that are now weaker, then I disagree with that. They are nerfs to Tara, because it directly impacts her power when fielding her competitivly.

I bought some stuff for Cult and Empire and I really like the rules and models.

On 6/14/2020 at 5:11 AM, Nagi21 said:

The problem is that there are very rarely models that are unarguably bad.  Hell I just had someone tell me the other day bloodwretches were fine 5ss models.  

I think the issue is that the balancing is all over the place.  For example have models in Rezzers which are insanely overtuned, but nothing is done about them, going up against models in other factions which are technically balanced, but aren't overturned, making the model look fine in a vacuum, but have real issues on the actual table vs a lot of things.  Follow that with "but it's really good against some things", and you get nothing happening.  Just because a model is really good against something, doesn't justify it being really bad against a lot of other things.

I highly disagree with that. Niche models are justified because you can bring your whole faction to a tournament and pick the crew that is best suited for a given task.