League Week 2

The ladder's second week has come and gone, and with it a slew of votes concerning play formats.

If team captains are unhappy with certain items in the league, they can propose a captain's vote to the PvPEC representative (Criticalkat), who will them submit the proposal to each captain for a secret ballot, majority making the motion pass.

Last week's issues involved map selections and the amount of healers each team can carry.

The first vote, on map selections, eliminated Monkey Cage (a small, wire-enclosed area with a series of ramps and narrow floors surrounding it), Troll Caves (low-ceiling tunnels), Office (wide lower area with a tiered second area dominated by an enclosed room with staircases leading there) and Eden (extremely large map with many peaks and valleys and a few map holes). The maps could have been used in an egregious manner by spawn camping, loading in with several Masterminds (a pet class that summons tiered minions; the Thugs one also summons a multitude of lower-power minions for a short period, to confuse targeting) or simply by being too close to each other's spawn points for comfortable play.

Eden is simply too wide for 3 v 3 play, making the decision an easy one.

Healers have become a contentious issue for several reasons. The current Arena settings eliminating Heal Decay (heals are always delivered at full strength) and the innate damage resistance characters are granted make defeating characters an arduous task. Thus, teams bring attack sets which reduce resistance, such as Sonic Blast and other tools as well. Concern had arisen that teams could simply load multiple healers and play for draws, thus hindering advancement for other teams in the standings. 

Which leads us to the meta aspects of the current ladder...

The new point system awards 4 points for a win or 2 for loss or tie. With most teams being four to five points from each other, squads may find themselves playing Kingmaker down the road, as was the case in the Freedom ladder which ended a short while ago. Essentially, playing for a tie might give the opponents six less points in the standings, while limiting your own squad to a similar amount. However, if you are running interference or are out of the top seed picture, such shenanigans, while unlikely, are indeed possible.

The voting aspect is another good idea which is rife with potential for abuse. Because of its hidden aspect and necessary approval from the PvPEC rep, the league could potentially get bogged down in votes on all sorts of topics. Criticalkat having final say on the matter does limit this to a greater degree though. This party does expect votes to be used in a political fashion once the standings become clearer.

Onto the matches...

Matches were indeed played last Saturday! Our own squad had some close games against GDHRT, including a 2-1 squeaker on Graveyard and a great turnaround win by GDHRT on cargo ship. Their squad featured an Electric Blast/Kinetics Corruptor, Dominator and a Sonic/Pain Corruptor. The Kin was especially valuable as a slower set-up ally, draining a target of endurance, thus making them a sitting duck for the rest of the team.

0utcazt and Single Target Assassins played to a three-game draw, with 0utcazt playing a fairly defensive position with two Thermal Radiation and an Empathy in two matches, switching out the Empathy for a Blaster in the last match. All scores ended up 0-0, not granting many openings for kills with the supercharged healing and buffs flying around.

dUmb and Exile had some enthralling matches, with Exile taking the first match by a 3-1 win, dUmb recovering with a 5-4 win and finally closing the door with a 10-2 victory in the Troll Caves. dUmb is playing an especially attractive hybrid lineup with several Sonic Blast Corruptors mixing in Thermal Radiation, Pain Domination and Cold Domination, severe debuffs making their targets extremely vulnerable for a short period. Exile were last seen bringing a mix of Thermal Radiation and Empathy buffs.

The last match proved to be quieter, becoming a duel between a Spines Scrapper and Thermal Corruptor as the teams seemed to have some difficulties.

The League continues unabated this Saturday. While it might be easy to pick dUmb, Exile or Single Target Assassins as front runners at this point, regardless of standings, that would be a fool's bet. As pointed out last night in game, each team has the talent and ability to win at least two out of three matches. Thus, momentum and points gained early on are paramount to get a cushion for later on in the season, where your team might hit a speed bump or two for various reasons.

Best of luck to everyone this weekend!