Relic Delta

What do you mean, it's clearly stated in 10-years anniversary post about respect players ability to theorycraft
What you mean it was a lie? 😮

It's simply embarrassing...

A safe counter, with a full R3 Traya team, full 6-dot mods, with Traya 300 speed, Nihlus 280 speed, Savage 250s, Talon 270, Sion 260, completely blown away by a full R5 Gungan team with gray mods and a top speed of 280 on Boss and Jar.

It's simply the death knell for any type of strategy, combo, etc. And the hilarious thing is all the content creators who "should have" participated in the test, who passed it off as acceptable.

The update has been live for less than a day. I'm curious how confident you are in saying that any theorycrafting is dead because relic levels decide everything and fail to notice two things:

1)

This in fact opens some new avenues for theorycrafting and has a chance to breathe new life into old teams.

The Prepared Smuggler enthusiast with a cracked out R8 team which had no place in the meta until yesterday now has a chance to actually use an old team they put a lot of resources into by using Relic Delta to their advantage.

What can another old team like GG Droids do with a Relic Delta advantage? I have a Relic 8 GG and a Relic 8 STAP. My STAP has only been good for ROTE platoons for almost the entire time I've had it. Now... I might be able to actually use it for something in GAC.

I've been putting my R5 Zorii squad on defense because it's a team with very strong mechanics and a way to deal damage that doesn't depend on their offense stats (expose damage). Trench, on the other hand, is considered to be a weak defensive squad, even with its current FDC. But my Trench team is a mix of R7 and R8. I might be able to replace Zorii Resistance with Trench on defense and have Trench actually be a decent defensive team instead of a joke. I put 28mln datacache and 1000 mk3 upgrade mats into Trench's FDC. I don't want this team to only be useful in TW. 

Many a complaint has been posted on these forums about how trash JMMW is because he's not the most dominant in GAC. Well, guess what. My JMMW team is R8 (I built the high relics for the O66 raid). Maybe you can still roll up on it with R5 Traya and crush the Jedi... or maybe my JMMW wipes the floor with a low relic Traya team. 

The Gerbil is a SWGOH Youtuber who has maxed out R9 Ewoks and I look forward to seeing what his murderbears will be able to do now that this steep relic investment might actually pay off. 

2) 

Building higher relic levels just became a lot easier. 

For endgame accounts, two particular relic materials tend to become bottlenecks: Bronzium Wiring (BW) and Electrium Conductors (EC). BW features heavily in lower to mid relic levels (R2-7) while EC come in starting at R6. Every level then requires 20 EC. BW is most concentrated between R2 and R5. 

R2-5 -> 40 BW per relic level
R6-7 -> 30 BW per level
220 BW per character (stops featuring in relic upgrade recipes at R8)
160 BW required to go to R5, another 60 to go from R5 to R7

40 EC per R7 character (20 per level going from R5 to R7)

So, why do these materials become bottlenecks? Well, the gear to scrap for them at the Scavenger is either sparse (EC) or has a terrible conversion rate (BW). When I was getting another character to G13, I had to choose between upgrading two R5s to R7 or bringing one R1 to R5. Before Relic Delta, R5 characters held their ground. Even though I might have wanted to bump up my Gungans from R5 to R7, I had new G13s coming in that couldn't really be left at R1. R1 can't even access the full power of a datacron. 

Now, BW and EC are available for much cheaper using raid tokens mk1 (BW) and mk2 (EC), both downgraded a token level. The mk3 token trade for EC was decent and I bought a lot of them this way, but the mk2 trade for BW was atrociously bad. Like, it straight up looked like a scam. Now though, I can buy 220 BW (max required per character) for 8800 mk1 raid tokens. 

Already the 2nd raid loot box (14.5mln guild score) maxes out the mk1 token reward at 16.5k. You get 450 mk1 tokens for scoring 65k points in the raid. So that's 16.95k mk1 tokens per raid. Scrapping a little bit of gear at the Scavenger means that you can *easily* rake in enough BW in one week (one raid) for 2 R7s. And that's going from R0 to R7. R5 to R7 is just 60 BW. R3 to R7 is 140 BW. 

A big obstacle standing in the way of upgrading your Traya team from R5 to R7 hasn't just been lessened with this update--it has been obliterated. 

Yes, signal data will continue to be in demand as it always has been, that's nothing new. But every single old relic level, including R9, has been made more accessible. R9 even had some materials removed from the recipe entirely. 

R7 is now going to be the baseline sensible relic level and CG have, with this update, made it enormously easier to build R7s. R8 materials are more accessibe because mk3 raid tokens won't be spread so thin anymore. Electrium Conductors and Zinbiddle Cards have been downgraded from requiring mk3 tokens to purchase to now requiring mk2. Bronzium Wiring and Carbonite Circuit Boards (two big bottlenecks in early relic levels) are now cheaply available for mk1 raid tokens, lessening the demand for scrapping gear at the Scavenger. 

So, yeah. Your Traya needs an upgrade. And now this upgrade is a lot cheaper. Those key toons you were eyeing for R8 but could never spare the resources for? Now you will be able to. R9 is no longer relegated to only JG requirements for much of the playerbase. Now it's a still costly, but attainable and valuable upgrade for the key toons in your best teams. 

You can let yourself be crushed by Relic Delta, or you can take advantage of it. R7 is the new R5. 

Steamrolling with brute force from the extra advantage is not theorycrafting. It's just outspending your opponents.

Of course it's a lie🤣 CG lied so many times over the years, it's impossible to count them now. But if you prefer not to call it a lie, you can call it PR talk. They know what to say to make a lie sound reasonable. That's literally the only thing CG is good at.

ZanirN7S Okay, that is well thought out argument in favor of Relic Delta... But I counter you with why Relic Delta even needed to exist?

Yes, Relics are more accessible, but CG could have done without Relic Delta Entirely.

I counter that there would be infinitely more unique and fun gameplay when a G12 Character can take out a R9 Character under the right circumstances (See JKCK v. Malgus). There would be so much more theory crafting than just the narrowed perspective of "if you want this established counter to work you have to drop everything you were doing to re-build that counter up to the new standard (in your argument R7)".

So while you do present a fair argument, I counter that CG could have made Relics more accessible without Relic Delta and gotten a much more diverse meta that did not focus heavily on how much money/time/resources spent in the game.

Relic Delta essentially kills the enjoyment for the widest swath of players in SWGoH which are the casual players who maybe spend between $5 and $50 a month as well as the F2P Players using every match-up advantage they can find to win.

I wasn't necessarily defending relic delta (although I've taken the stance of being in favor of it out of sheer petty contrarianism 😆). I was trying to show that we needn't despair. Yes, RD is gonna require higher relics across the board to be competitive. However, those higher relics are now much more accessible.

I think that a year from now, it's quite possible that we'll have settled into a new equilibrium where mid and endgame players just bring every new character to R7 minimum, simply because they will have the relic materials to spare, so there won't be any point in stopping at R5. 

Most people who have high relic teams aren't whales. Upgrade your relics and your teams will keep winning. At RD=0, it'll be the same matchup it was before. 

"I think that a year from now, it's quite possible that we'll have settled into a new equilibrium"
==> I think that a year from now, It's quite (more) possible that the game no longer exists. May be couple months is enough.

The game is dying! Again! This time for realsies!

yawn