Next Several Zetas Priority Discussion

"CoastalJames;c-1641316" wrote:
Sigh. You're aware that Arena shards are different, right?

You may be number 1 in your Arena shard...if you were in mine you wouldn't get much past a 1000 I doubt.

Obviously arena shards are different. I've been well aware of that for months. Honestly, you should keep that in mind when you give advice that pertains to your shard that may not pertain to mine. However, you haven't actually done that. It doesn't change the fact that CLS is currently qualitatively inferior to the other meta teams in arena, regardless of shard.

If I followed your advice, I would undoubtedly do worse in arena whether on my shard or yours. To be clear, what I believe your advice to be is to drop my EP team in arena and adopt a CLS team similar to yours in its place . It's not entirely clear that's what you advocated because all your posts are short, vague, hyperbolic, lacking in detail, lacking substance, and lacking supporting facts or evidence. As such, all your assertions hold no water until and unless you start backing them up.

You could make the most absurd or false claims, like saying a Jawa team is the best in arena (just a made up and obviously false example), and they would hold equal weight with anything you've said here because you don't support your statements. In contrast, I've backed up most of my assertions with facts, evidence, and/or testimony. You never address that evidence and provide none of your own.

I have little doubt that if I were in your arena shard, I would do better than you. Unlike you, I will back that assertion up. It's an older shard, so I have no doubt it would be tougher and more competitive than mine, and I probably would not achieve the same ranks I do as on mine (at least, not as easily).

But I can be sure I would be more successful than you because I can at the very least, easily beat your team on offense, which means I can fight you and take your rank. That's a low bar, however, and I can probably succeed well beyond that. I can say that with confidence because objectively, my gear is better, my mods are better, and in general EP nightmare is qualitatively better than CLS.

Gear. Both of our squads are G12+, so it comes down to how many G12+ pieces our respective teams have. I have 12 G12+ pieces. You have 7. Not only that, but 4 of mine are the super right side HSTR pieces that give substantial speed bonuses. You have none. Yeah, I paid money for mine, I'm a dolphin.

Mods. It is widely agreed that speed is king in arena. You may dispute that, but you'd be arguing against most of this forum, and that's too expansive a subject to get into here. The +speed (the bonus in parentheses) on my characters are: +111, +111, +105, +98, +93. Yours are: +93, +70, +62, +50, +25. That's honestly really bad by any objective measure. You'd probably do much better on your shard with the same exact team comp and gear if you got some better mods. Or even bothered to slice your existing mods. So many blues and greens there. Very sloppy. And I must add that on my shard, many of the others in my top 20, the ones I have to fight and beat every day, have far better mods than I do. There's one guy with a +140 Thrawn (who I can still beat, but it can be rough). Even the lone CLS in our top 50 who gets crushed by all the EP's and Bastilas has far better mods than you do (+99, +90, +86, +76, +75) . And you're insinuating that your shard is so much tougher than mine?

It's hard to be certain, because I can't see the top 50 on your shard. I provided screenshots of the top 20 on my shard. You could have done the same to support your arguments. Maybe you didn't because that evidence would contradict your statements and support mine, or maybe you're just too lazy to do it, or maybe you just never bothered to even look at your top 50.

Team quality/matchup. It's of course a bit tricker to say definitively that EP meta>CLS because of the number of variables involved (including shard differences). But generally, it is true and I will support that assertion. First, let's look at cold hard data: https://swgoh.gg/meta-report/

Rank 1 Leaders:
Darth Traya 57%
Emperor Palpatine 28%
Bastila Shan 9%
JTR 2%
Rex 1%
CLS 1%

Numbers don't lie. General trends will favor the most effective teams. And those numbers say it all.

Expert testimony from Moderator crzydroid:

"crzydroid;c-1566258" wrote:
Don't think CLS Rebels can stand up that well to current Palp meta. All those Rebels add speed to Vader, and they will all take extra damage at the beginning of their turn while Palp is alive. Not to mention reduced potency.

Next, there's the fact that my shard's top 50 used to be filled with lots of CLS and JTR teams (and others like Nightsisters and some First Order). Now there's nothing but EP and Bastila teams with a handful of JTR holdouts and 1 CLS team. As I posted before, this is the current state of affairs: https://i.imgur.com/F6JwvDk.jpg
If what you insinuate about CLS vs EP is true (once again, your posts are short and vague, so you never clearly state it), the opposite would have occurred or it would never have happened.

Finally, I've seen you say in another thread that EP teams are the only teams you can beat easily, or something to that effect, which might explain your position on EP vs CLS. Have you considered that because you're only fighting at the 100+ ranks, that the EP teams you're facing are bad and not representative of the meta? I'm only guessing, but considering how bad your mods are, I'd say it's a reasonable guess. And although you can beat them easily on offense, they may be able to beat you easily as well on offense, probably more easily than you can beat them. Remember that the sole remaining CLS in my top 50 who has far better mods than you gets crushed by everyone else, including myself.

"CDFrawg;c-1641323" wrote:
I guess with your reactions to the advice given, you plan to just latch on to a guild and hopefully get carried. This isnt a solo-driven game. Top arena is cool and all, but not working towards helping a guild get you rewards through guild events....good luck.

Perhaps you should look more carefully at all of my reactions to all of the advice given, because while I responded negatively to the bad advice of a few, I responded postively to the plethora of good advice given by others. My reactions to the advice given were to: take IBAT as suggested, take Ventress's zeta as suggested, plan to take Palpatine's Zeta imminently as suggested, focus on raids as suggested, disregard TW/TB for now as suggested.

And no, I do not plan to latch onto a guild and get carried. I joined a decent casual guild farily early on and I'm sticking with them even though I could probably get into a much better guild. I've been given multiple offers to join better guilds but refused out of loyalty. My guild has been good to me and it is getting better/stronger. At some point I may need to switch guilds if their progress is unsatisfactory, but I have no current plans to do so.

When I first joined my guild, yes, I was getting carried through raids, TW, and TB. But as I got stronger, I was increasingly able to pull my weight in all departments. My guild is or was (not sure now) an open join guild and virtually every new member gets carried.

It is my philosophy that whatever increases my account's power the most overall will also benefit the guild the most in the long run. Not only do the arenas - currency and crystals - provide a massive contribution - possibly the biggest contribution to any account's overall progress, but the characters and ships that I actually use (or used, in the case of my old Phoenix team) in the two arenas provide substantial contributions to TW, TB, and raids.

The crystals I earn every day determine my overall rate of farming/progression - the number of refreshes I can do per day and occasionally direct gear/character shard purchases - and thus the rate at which I acquire characters, gear, and skill upgrades. This rate of growth determines how quickly my ability to contribute to the guild increases. The higher this rate, the sooner I can get new things that can help my guild even more - the sooner I can get to TW/TB specific things.

My overall strategy seems pretty logical: secure the initial legendary farms to gain the ability to dominate the arena, then focus on securing arena dominance, finish legendary farms and focus on raids, and finally focus on special events and TW/TB. Arenas affect rate of gain the most, so I secured that first. Raids affect it the next most, so I'm securing that second. While TW/TB is significant, you don't need things that are specific to TW/TB to make a sizeable contribution to them, so those things that are only useful for TW/TB are IMO the last part of my plan.

Imagine if I followed the advice of some (others wisely advise against it) to get sidetracked and farm and gear characters like Snowtrooper and a Rogue One team early on as suggested by stupid video guides like Warrior's. This is what would have happened. I would have missed several legendary character events because instead of focusing hard on farming the characters needed to unlock them, I'd be splitting my focus between them and these unnecessary side projects for TW/TB only.

So instead of getting Thrawn and EP when I did, I would have gotten them 3-6 months later. So I wouldn't have had a chance to lock down squad arena. Which means my ability to get anything in the game would have been much slower. So I probably wouldn't have been able to unlock R2, CLS and BB8 when I did - most likely it would have taken an extra year to get them. I'm currently finishing off Vets for JTR, but if I had gotten sidetracked it probably would have taken an extra two years after getting CLS to get JTR. And all those things are useful or even necessary to help my guild. Should I add 1-2 years to the time it takes me to unlock and gear CLS and JTR in exchange for having a TW/TB-specific character or team earlier on? Which do you think helps my guild more in the long run? Doing things my way, I would finish my legendary farm AND farm all my raid teams AND finish all the TW/TB specific teams/characters much sooner, possibly years sooner, than if I split my focus early on.

And this is where I stand now with my guild in terms of STR contribution:
https://i.imgur.com/ZUHCYLN.jpg

If that gives you an idea of how much I'm contributing vs. leeching. My TW/TB contributions are substantial as well - I wish I had screenshotted my contribution to the last TB. My arena team can pretty much take out any one team in TW guaranteed. That's not nothing. Someone advised me early on to not get sidetracked and not to lose focus - I'm glad I took that advice to heart.