It's 6:30 AM here in the Windy, and possibly snowy, City. I've taken the day off from work and I see a lot of PVP ahead of me. I am sitting in bed, tapping my tablet when normally I'd be up and getting ready for work. Cats are taking up a lot of the bed and I have been away for an hour. What am I waiting for? Well, I'm looking at a 2PM deadline and getting up now means something like 7 hours of straight play. That seems crazy. Of course, six and a half hours seems way less crazy, right?
I think it's going to take something around 1700 to be in. Since I've had very little trouble getting over that number from wherever I've been, I'm pretty confidant that this is doable. Even with the bug in QJ (or the undocumented change). And the server lag. And everything else.
I got to it at about 9. Huge loss overnight, of course, back down to ~1450. Two hundred points out of Adamantium, which took two hours. More on that later, but once back in Adamantium, I kind of hit a wall. I described the walls in my Deadpool piece, but when you do large movements of points, the system SEEMS to say "No" to you at certain thresholds. For me, I was seeing one from 1600-1650 and from 1700-1750. I felt like I could get to 1800 and go take a break. I never got there. I got to 1756, and then hit a wall very very hard... the matching engine had my number, and matched me downscale quite a bit. When you're winning 5 and losting 25, you lose ground even when you win. The fight log of the end is in the comments. But I'd win a fight and see a 20 point loss. Or I'd win a 20 point fight and see a 2 point loss. Freaked me out and I lost my cool.
At any rate, I didn't get Cable. 1606, .7%. Sucked. I'm over it. I don't want to break it down in any real depth, but if I'm gonna get better, I gotta do that. And it starts with the fact that I won fewer than 90% of my offensive matches on the final day. A high 80% was not going to get it done, but factoring that reversing any individual fight result is a 30 point swing on your score (-25 becomes +5... 30 point swing), I was one or two fights away. In the last tournament, I was able to make up for any bad matchups with speed. This tournament, speed got nerfed. Odin Cane, Hoar Mace, Dr. Strange's modern costume, Ghost Rider, and changes to QJ and Power of 4, all nerfed speed. And with Valk getting wide spread, going forward, speed is going to be more nerfed. Less speed = fewer fights. I did ~800 fewer total fights in this tournament. And in the last tournament, on the last day, I never took 2 AFK losses during a fight.
My final numbers for the tournament reflect my insanity with this tournament (draws omitted):
- Attacking: 922 - 163 (85% in 1085 fights)
- Defending: 281 - 853 (25% in 1134 fights)
- Total: 1203 - 1016 (54% in 1219 fights)
I hope Speed makes a comeback. But if it doesn't, I'm gonna have to figure something else out. I don't really care for this metagame, but I'm going to have to go back to the woodshed to figure out how to beat it.
I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who has read my blogs over the past month. They've been walls of text that I enjoyed producing. I'm so happy that you all treked with me through this tournament. I am thrilled that so many of you have done better than you did in the last tournament and/or better than you thought you could do. I am warmed by the thought that I've helped you while I'm a bit jealous, because, damn, he looks interesting.
I'm not doing this again. I'm going to do the next tournament in a very lazy style that will not be conducive to walls of text. Since the bar is lowered, and I can go up about 150+ points on the last day, and a durable 100 points in any given day, I don't need to do much for the first three weeks except read what others are up to. But, I have some cool stuff planned, so keep a weather eye on this spot. As always, the blog is here to share my thoughts and help folks maximize their game. I'm off to power level and power farm. See you in the funnies.