People judged the empire pass too quickly.

"danflorian1984;c-1148769" wrote:

"Bulldog1205;c-1148699" wrote:
Newer players will chase empire first now as much as they will chase rebels. It just needs time to balance out alittle bit.

Not really. Krennic and Shoretrooper are close to impossible to get for newer players using dark teams, I know from experience, besides buying overpriced shards compared with the Rogue 1 ones. For EP and Thrawn you need fully developed rebel teams. DT and RG are harder to farm than the rebels from cantina (higher nodes) . Veers is also too long of a farm for newer players.
Lastly the empire needs multiple zetas, hard to get by newer players, to be effective.

Baze is also impossible to farm for a beginner, Chirrut also since fleet store is not directly accessible. R2 is locked behind Empire and is key now for LS teams, from Jedis to Rebels and Resistance. It's just a matter of choice even if I agree that shards price must be the same now between Krennic, ShT and Baze (even if I never buy those shards).

"JohnnySteelAlpha;c-1148740" wrote:

"Bulldog1205;c-1148699" wrote:
But the question then is why is nobody using it? I think the answer is accessibility, not quality. I would rather be using an empire team right now. The reason I'm not is because I don't have one yet. The meta will slowly shift as people get these new characters (many of which are very difficult to acquire). Newer players will chase empire first now as much as they will chase rebels. It just needs time to balance out a little bit.

That's a huge part of it. Massive transitions in teams takes time. Except for maybe GK - and he's not optimal even - the move to a DS / Thrawn team from a LS GK / Chaze / R2 / Rex, etc squad takes time and resources due to being totally different heroes. Veteran shards where players have resources and can move fairly quick will see it and have been seeing the shift. Right now my top 20 consists of the following leads:

1. Jinn
2. Tarkin (prior: Rex)
3. DV (prior: Rex)
4. DV (prior: GK / DN in a Chaze / R2 comp)
5. DV (prior: GK / DN in a Chaze / R2 comp)
6. Rex
7. Tarkin (prior: GK / DN in a Chaze / R2 comp)
8. Rex
9. Thrawn
10. Rex (classic 3x cleanse no R2)
11. DV
12. Jinn
13. GK (Chaze / R2/ DN)
14. Rex (classic 3x cleanse no R2)
15. Rex (classic 3x cleanse no R2)
16. DN
17. Rex
18. GK
19. Rex (Chaze / R2 / DN)
20. Rex (classic 3x cleanse no R2)

Now, there's still a good number of Chaze and Rex leads there, but notice how they are pushed more to the 11-20 rather than in the top 10 and especially 5. There's actually only ONE Chaze combo currently being used in the top 10 at all and it's at 10. In the parenthesis above for the top 10 I put what some of players in the top 10 ran prior to the DS shift that started happening a bit before Thrawn was released. 3 Gk / Chaze / R2 teams switched and 2 other Rex led teams switched as well. In the 11-20 section the parenthesis note what the squad is currently for context.

The last shift this stark in contrast was when Rex / Cleanse pushed out Maul. I doubt most shards will get to this point ever though. You need multiple veteran players that have roster flexibility to move a shard like that. If only 1 or 2 guys switch and the rest camp on the same team, it's status quo - but when you get 4/5+ people radically changing team comp and it gives others problems, then they too have to look at switching in order to get results.

I'll also add, Thrawn is being used in the rank 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9 squads above (so he's in one Rex team even).

Really this is what good balance looks like. Light side v Dark side is darn near parity and you can use multiple versions of toons in those factions to get there.

Thrawn is a stud. Tarkin is a stud. DV / SA / DN are awesome. Jedi are great. Rex is still good. Chaze is still great. Shore is solid now. TFP and RG can even get some run. Have at it in arena folks.

I just want to point out you crafted an argument when you took a ranking that fits your argument. Really how many of those Rex teams move from 15 to 1 at their payout pushing the other teams down? Unless your are saying those teams cannot move up to rank at payout? Otherwise what's the point of taking this snap shot then crafting a large statement around the rank at that time? It's always changing hour to hour I am sure there's an hour where more Rex leads are in the top 10 pushing other down. IDK I don't understand the point of it this is why the meta report is useful it isn't a snap shot in 1 payout time. It would be nice to have our shards 24 hour pay out ranking the top 5 every hour that would provide some actual value.

Here is a valuable statistic for you Rex lead is down almost 4 percent since Thrawn came out and zaul is down 2%. Wedge has stayed flat.

Looks like people are staring to make the move.

"Olddumper;c-1148843" wrote:
Here is a valuable statistic for you Rex lead is down almost 4 percent since Thrawn came out and zaul is down 2%. Wedge has stayed flat.

Looks like people are staring to make the move.

Have they replaced those guys with thrawn? Otherwise it doesn't mean much

"Shenanigans052;c-1148882" wrote:

"Olddumper;c-1148843" wrote:
Here is a valuable statistic for you Rex lead is down almost 4 percent since Thrawn came out and zaul is down 2%. Wedge has stayed flat.

Looks like people are staring to make the move.

Have they replaced those guys with thrawn? Otherwise it doesn't mean much

Zader seems to be the big one probably because they had him ready. I think Thrawn zader and Tarkin rose 7% collectively.

"leef;c-1148766" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148747" wrote:

"leef;c-1148713" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148617" wrote:

"leef;c-1148601" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148473" wrote:

"Olddumper;c-1147291" wrote:

"Polarice;c-1147286" wrote:
I think you will find it subjective to your shard/leaderboard. Im on the September 2015 shard and those that are running thrawn can punch up into top 10 just like most teams on offense. On defense those same teams still get dropped anywhere down into the 50s.

People need to stop acting like most of the shard are different now. Most shards everybody at the top has 100 plus toons unlocked and we all started mods at he same time. For all I care they could merge all the shards.

The only difference in my shard after the pass is that most of the Maul users switched to cleanse. There is only 1 empire team in top 50, soon(ish) to be 2 once I finish developing mine.
In my shard the pass is irrelevant, and judging by the meta report my shard is not the exception.

Also it doesn't matter how good of a product something is if almost nobody uses it!

can't really fault the product for not being used if it is actually good.

But you can blame the producer.

Why? it still a good product. I blame the consumer ;)

Simple, is their fault that they didn't make their product,no matter how good , attractive enough.
Like you acknowleged most people have no real incentive to change their teams so most of their work in this year was in vain.
Simple enough, while I will change my team to return to empire all my shardmates I am in contact plan to continue using the same team, so I will have to fight the same team as before, and that makes this pass in my eyes a failure. So from my point of view it was judged correctly.

how is it in vain if you're changing back to empire? That just doesn't make sence to me. The pass just adds another option to use in arena, wich is a win in my book. That players won't use empire is their own choice, it surely is beter than being "forced" to use a certain faction you don't like because you want to be competative isnt it?

So if a producer develops a more expensive and harder to get alternative to an existing product that is either slightly worse or slightly better, depending on who you ask, than that product, an alternative that is unavailable to many people and ignoted by most people that can actually get it then you would call that a succes?

"BulYwif;c-1148779" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148769" wrote:

"Bulldog1205;c-1148699" wrote:
Newer players will chase empire first now as much as they will chase rebels. It just needs time to balance out alittle bit.

Not really. Krennic and Shoretrooper are close to impossible to get for newer players using dark teams, I know from experience, besides buying overpriced shards compared with the Rogue 1 ones. For EP and Thrawn you need fully developed rebel teams. DT and RG are harder to farm than the rebels from cantina (higher nodes) . Veers is also too long of a farm for newer players.
Lastly the empire needs multiple zetas, hard to get by newer players, to be effective.

Baze is also impossible to farm for a beginner, Chirrut also since fleet store is not directly accessible. R2 is locked behind Empire and is key now for LS teams, from Jedis to Rebels and Resistance. It's just a matter of choice even if I agree that shards price must be the same now between Krennic, ShT and Baze (even if I never buy those shards).

Baze is hard to farm for a beginner using a LS team while Shore is impossible to farm for a beginner using an DS team. A guild mate, newer than me, started farming Baze using his own rebel arena team 2 months ago while I still can't farm Shore OR Krennic because I need a second arena worthy LS team, feat extremely difficult for a newer player who must build several teams.
Chirrut hard to farm? Most newer players will have Chirrut unlocked before even getting the opportunity of farming DT.
R2 is locked before empire but he is only one toon, and his importance is not comparable to Thrawn's or EP's importance to empire.
Also what you glossed over, the empire also need several zeta, months over months of farming, available for farming only after level 80.
Lastly, the most important argument against new players chasing empire: Empire is horse manure beginner and mid levels while rebels are the undisputed dominating faction.

"danflorian1984;c-1148919" wrote:

"leef;c-1148766" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148747" wrote:

"leef;c-1148713" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148617" wrote:

"leef;c-1148601" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148473" wrote:

"Olddumper;c-1147291" wrote:

"Polarice;c-1147286" wrote:
I think you will find it subjective to your shard/leaderboard. Im on the September 2015 shard and those that are running thrawn can punch up into top 10 just like most teams on offense. On defense those same teams still get dropped anywhere down into the 50s.

People need to stop acting like most of the shard are different now. Most shards everybody at the top has 100 plus toons unlocked and we all started mods at he same time. For all I care they could merge all the shards.

The only difference in my shard after the pass is that most of the Maul users switched to cleanse. There is only 1 empire team in top 50, soon(ish) to be 2 once I finish developing mine.
In my shard the pass is irrelevant, and judging by the meta report my shard is not the exception.

Also it doesn't matter how good of a product something is if almost nobody uses it!

can't really fault the product for not being used if it is actually good.

But you can blame the producer.

Why? it still a good product. I blame the consumer ;)

Simple, is their fault that they didn't make their product,no matter how good , attractive enough.
Like you acknowleged most people have no real incentive to change their teams so most of their work in this year was in vain.
Simple enough, while I will change my team to return to empire all my shardmates I am in contact plan to continue using the same team, so I will have to fight the same team as before, and that makes this pass in my eyes a failure. So from my point of view it was judged correctly.

how is it in vain if you're changing back to empire? That just doesn't make sence to me. The pass just adds another option to use in arena, wich is a win in my book. That players won't use empire is their own choice, it surely is beter than being "forced" to use a certain faction you don't like because you want to be competative isnt it?

So if a producer develops a more expensive and harder to get alternative to an existing product that is either slightly worse or slightly better, depending on who you ask, than that product, an alternative that is unavailable to many people and ignoted by most people that can actually get it then you would call that a succes?

how is an empire team harder to farm than chaze though? The only reason i didn't/don't use chaze is because baze was/is a pita to farm. Pretty much the same reason why people who have chaze won't get an empire team now. Obviously chaze was on top of everything for a while where empire isn't (yet or won't be). But isn't that a good thing? Otherwise empire would be the subject of nerf threads for months (that could still happen once people figure out the best empire hybrid team). Wich you know i would have been fine with aswell, but it seems counter productive if your goal is to have a ballanced and diverse arena.
If anything, i should be the one who wants empire to be OP. I don't care about ballance and i've got an empire team.

I had one person using zader thrawn

but rex and co kicked his ass so it's back to 1-20 of just rex

"leef;c-1148983" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148919" wrote:

"leef;c-1148766" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148747" wrote:

"leef;c-1148713" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148617" wrote:

"leef;c-1148601" wrote:

"danflorian1984;c-1148473" wrote:

"Olddumper;c-1147291" wrote:

"Polarice;c-1147286" wrote:
I think you will find it subjective to your shard/leaderboard. Im on the September 2015 shard and those that are running thrawn can punch up into top 10 just like most teams on offense. On defense those same teams still get dropped anywhere down into the 50s.

People need to stop acting like most of the shard are different now. Most shards everybody at the top has 100 plus toons unlocked and we all started mods at he same time. For all I care they could merge all the shards.

The only difference in my shard after the pass is that most of the Maul users switched to cleanse. There is only 1 empire team in top 50, soon(ish) to be 2 once I finish developing mine.
In my shard the pass is irrelevant, and judging by the meta report my shard is not the exception.

Also it doesn't matter how good of a product something is if almost nobody uses it!

can't really fault the product for not being used if it is actually good.

But you can blame the producer.

Why? it still a good product. I blame the consumer ;)

Simple, is their fault that they didn't make their product,no matter how good , attractive enough.
Like you acknowleged most people have no real incentive to change their teams so most of their work in this year was in vain.
Simple enough, while I will change my team to return to empire all my shardmates I am in contact plan to continue using the same team, so I will have to fight the same team as before, and that makes this pass in my eyes a failure. So from my point of view it was judged correctly.

how is it in vain if you're changing back to empire? That just doesn't make sence to me. The pass just adds another option to use in arena, wich is a win in my book. That players won't use empire is their own choice, it surely is beter than being "forced" to use a certain faction you don't like because you want to be competative isnt it?

So if a producer develops a more expensive and harder to get alternative to an existing product that is either slightly worse or slightly better, depending on who you ask, than that product, an alternative that is unavailable to many people and ignoted by most people that can actually get it then you would call that a succes?

how is an empire team harder to farm than chaze though? The only reason i didn't/don't use chaze is because baze was/is a pita to farm. Pretty much the same reason why people who have chaze won't get an empire team now. Obviously chaze was on top of everything for a while where empire isn't (yet or won't be). But isn't that a good thing? Otherwise empire would be the subject of nerf threads for months (that could still happen once people figure out the best empire hybrid team). Wich you know i would have been fine with aswell, but it seems counter productive if your goal is to have a ballanced and diverse arena.
If anything, i should be the one who wants empire to be OP. I don't care about ballance and i've got an empire team.

The answer to your question (from a newer player POV) is above your comment.