This low strength deck got into GC (here's how)
DNA3000
Member, Guardian Guardian › Posts: 19,841 Guardian
This season I got two accounts into the Gladiator Circuit. One of them was my main account. It took well over two hundred matches (I didn't count exactly, but I do know it took 339 matches to reach the 400k milestone mark well into GC). I ended up bouncing around between 60 and 140 rating, which in this season would be entirely within (the final range of) Uru 3.
Of course, my main roster is a monster, relatively speaking. My deck is nothing but R4s, R5s, and 7s, and I've done some pretty good rank ups for BG in general and the active metas in particular. I don't have one of those top tier crazy decks with 7* R2s all over the place, but at least in terms of deck I can pose a credible threat to anyone of equal or lesser skill. It was a struggle, but it was always just a matter of whether I was going to put in the effort or not.
But what about a much lower account? What's the experience like for someone of my skill level, and perhaps equally important my meta-knowledge of BG, but with a much lower account strength? I decided to try that experiment with my low Cav alt and see what it looked like to try to progress with something lower than average.
For context, my Cav alt is still slowly crawling through Act 6 (6.2.5 at the moment). I don't grind arena in it. It is 100% F2P (i.e. no cash offers ever). I don't even really play a lot of monthly stuff, except occasionally. I mostly do AQ (~ 3000 rank) and AW (~ tier 12) in my alliance, do an occasional path in story, and autofight through low monthly EQ. When a particularly interesting SQ comes along, I try to do that, and I am of course trying to complete the F2P summer event, because those rewards are good enough to spend the time. Its a very low activity, low grind, zero spend account in an alliance with only moderate rewards.
And here's the deck I used throughout season 9:
Its not a totally trash deck, but it is certainly not a banger deck and not really optimized for the meta. I don't have the luxury of doing BG focused rank ups in this account. The *one* BG focused rank up in this deck is Valk, and I barely had the stones to get her to sig 60 (to drop the pierce requirement to 3). That's it. So how did it go?
Well, there have been a lot of anecdotes surrounding BG and low progress accounts, but I was curious to figure out how to resolve an apparent contradiction. Everyone agrees accounts like this tend to match against similar strength accounts from Bronze to Gold. And then somewhere within Platinum they get dramatically exposed to higher strength accounts. But we have a lot of low progress accounts claiming to be seeing mostly high progress accounts, and high progress accounts claiming to see a large number of low progress accounts in that same range. That's actually impossible, if those anecdotes were representative. See, by Platinum 2 or so everyone should be seeing the average strength of that tier. Instead of matching against like accounts, you're just matching against everyone. So on average, you should see *the* average. If there are lots of strong accounts, then weak accounts should see them most of the time and strong accounts should *also* see them most of the time. Conversely if there are lots of weak accounts there, then strong accounts should see a lot of weak accounts but weak accounts should *also* see weak accounts most of the time. If there's an even number of both, both sides should see an equal spread of them. But how could all the weak accounts see nothing but strong accounts and all the strong accounts see nothing but the weak accounts?
From my experience, that's *not* what is happening, at least not exactly. Rather, the thing that makes both observations possible is the fact that the average strength of accounts within a tier changes over time, and does so in very pronounced waves. Although players play BG at all sorts of random times in random ways, and players join throughout the season, the bulk of the players do join relatively early, and then all begin climbing the same VT ladder at roughly the same time. This means players get sorted into batches, much like in a marathon or bicycle race. You end up with a bunch of fast runners, another group of medium speed runners, and a couple of groups of stragglers. This means the *day* you play can have a dramatic impact on how strong the competition is at that precise tier of VT.
From Bronze to Gold it was a cake walk for my Cav alt, because even though my deck is a mess, so is everyone else's at that strength level. My advantage is I have a better understanding of match ups, and better meta drafting strategy. I don't end up stuck with three mystic champs in round three, so if I place Torch on defense there's no feasible attacker option, for example (I won a couple matches that way). From Bronze to Gold, superior champion knowledge and a little bit of strategic deployment in the picks can win a lot.
And like a lot of players have observed, I hit the wall in P2. I was matching against decks five times stronger than me. But this was still in week one. As soon as it became clear I had hit the wall, I took a break. For two whole weeks. The idea is that all those strong accounts I was facing were not going to be in P2 in two weeks. They would stomp on accounts like mine and climb out of Platinum into Diamond or GC in two weeks. That was my experience in Plat and Diamond last year on my main accounts. Plus, I was grinding milestones on my main like a mad man, and could use the time off BG in the alt.
With one week or so to go, I returned to this account. All those monster accounts? Gone. I was now getting match ups that were rather randomly distributed. I got a couple of super strong accounts - probably stragglers joining late. I got many - most - of my match ups roughly near me. Say, between slightly lower than me and about twice to three times as strong as me. Hard, but within the realm of possibility of still outplaying. And many of those had strong accounts but zero skill in drafting or picking match ups. Again: because if your deck is strong and your skill is high, what are you still doing in Platinum 2 in week three? And finally, I got maybe 25% of my matches even lower than this account. Some *incredibly* low. Like started yesterday low. 3* champs seriously placed, not just trying to play games with deck strength. I was able to return to winning at a reasonable rate, and managed to climb from P2 to Diamond 1 in just a couple days.
And then hit the wall again. I was getting a spread of match ups in D2, and then nothing but Paragon Legends with 7s all over the place in D1. My guess: milestone farmers. They *should* have been mostly gone by now, but there was a disproportionate number of them still hanging around in D1. There was probably some combination of the weaker of the stronger still working through Diamond, later starters only now reaching Diamond, and milestone farmers, all getting slowed down traffic-style by the fact that D1 has the five trophy requirement which exponentially slows down players progress creating a blockade.
So I took another break.
Yesterday, I returned to this account and tried to see if that blockade had dissipated. And it had. My match strength dropped from what it was to something closer to me. Not exactly me, on average I was seeing decks about twice as strong, and almost no one weaker. But twice as strong is manageable, and I was able to get the five trophies necessary in about ten matches. I did decide to use a couple victory shields at the end, because I was getting antsy and those tend to just build up and expire on this account anyway.
How many matches did it take? Honestly, I lost count (milestone grinding caused me to lose my mind in the middle of the season just a bit) but I can make a reasonable estimate from what I did record. It was on the order of about sixty or seventy matches. That's *dramatically* fewer than my main. I don't even have 250k of milestone points yet on that account.
This is just one anecdote, sure, but this is also a lot of matches spread out over the entire season in every tier. And I have the experience of my main in this season, and both accounts in prior seasons for context. I believe I can make some statements about this experience with some confidence.
First, is it possible for a Cavalier account to get to GC? Yes. Not just possible, but with reasonable effort and skill it is a realistic achievable goal. I'm pretty good, and I would say my knowledge and experience is exceptional, but overall I would say I'm just a B+ BG competitor. I do not represent the bleeding edge of what's possible. If I can do it, I would say the average player could do it, possibly with more effort, but still.
Second, yes, the current BG match maker *can* put low Cavs up against monster Paragons for crushing losses and yes, it can also put monster Paragons up against low Cavs for easy wins, but *in general* this is not just a function of the match maker no longer protecting players from strong rosters, it is also representative of the current state of the competition at that time. A single season is a relatively short amount of time for the players to "sort" themselves from strongest to weakest. During the season, the strong players and the weak players are like waves in the ocean. They are rolling through the ladder at different times and at different speeds. The surf is a lot rougher and more dangerous in week one than in week three. Knowing this, players with weaker rosters can still navigate the tides by carefully pacing themselves. Every day the competition within a tier will be different. Trying to blitz BG with a weak roster will have you getting washed up on the rocks somewhere. Riding the waves of competition will allow you to follow those waves up the VT ladder in a much more competitively neutral way.
Third, at the moment meta gaming strategy is very important for low accounts in BG. BG is not a flat difficulty curve. It is groups of players pushing their way through VT. If you are slower than those groups you can have a strong group catch up to you and make your life miserable for a while until they flow past you. If you are faster than those groups you can catch up to a strong group and then get bullied by them. But these groups are all constantly moving. If you can "feel" where they are, a bit of meta gaming can allow you to pace yourself around them. When you're in the middle of a group of monsters, that's the time to take a break. Let them go by. When you catch up to the monsters, slow down and wait for them to move on, and follow in their wake. Competition is not just about beating up an opponent. It is also about understanding the competition as a whole, jockeying for position, picking your battles.
And lastly, what does this mean for future seasons where one of the goals (I think it was intended for Season ten, but I will believe it when I see it) is staggered starting? In other words, start stronger players higher, and weaker players lower, so that weaker players are less likely to be forced to match against them? I think it will help a bit, but this experience has also taught me that most of the low players that were running into monster accounts were "outracing the tide" so to speak. They were trying to blitz out wins fast, and catching up with the "slower monsters" ahead of them. Giving high progress players a head start will mitigate this, but not I think eliminate this. Especially because those head starts will also place those accounts against each other in those higher tiers, slowing their progress. So while the stagger will initially separate the players, the slow down in the higher tiers and the unmitigated acceleration in the lower tiers might cause a collision all the same, perhaps just in a slightly higher tier P1 or D3, perhaps). Something to watch for when this feature arrives.
The overall conclusion though, is that based on my experience, the match maker does not block VT progress for lower progress players. It *slows them down* and it prevents them from trying to overtake the bulk of the stronger players as they make their way upward. But a sufficiently knowledgeable, sufficiently skilled, and sufficiently situationally aware of the metagaming of the mode can progress through VT all the way up to GC. They have to be aware that when they run into the wall, the best strategy is to wait for the wall to move, not bash their head against it.
From there, they are on their own, as they should be.
Note: throughout I mention opponent deck strength as being "twice as strong" or "three times as strong". These are subjective descriptions for me, judging the overall quality and rank of the deck. It does not mean PI twice as high or three times as high. For reference, I would consider a deck that looked exactly like mine but one rank higher - R5s and R4s instead of R4s and R3s, for example - as being about twice as strong as my deck is. My own main's deck, full of 7s, R5s, and R4s, would be a deck I would consider to be four to five times stronger. A deck full of R2s and R5s and meta-optimal champs would be about ten times stronger than this deck, subjectively speaking. I just don't have an objectively precise way of describing deck strength at the moment, except by "feel."
Of course, my main roster is a monster, relatively speaking. My deck is nothing but R4s, R5s, and 7s, and I've done some pretty good rank ups for BG in general and the active metas in particular. I don't have one of those top tier crazy decks with 7* R2s all over the place, but at least in terms of deck I can pose a credible threat to anyone of equal or lesser skill. It was a struggle, but it was always just a matter of whether I was going to put in the effort or not.
But what about a much lower account? What's the experience like for someone of my skill level, and perhaps equally important my meta-knowledge of BG, but with a much lower account strength? I decided to try that experiment with my low Cav alt and see what it looked like to try to progress with something lower than average.
For context, my Cav alt is still slowly crawling through Act 6 (6.2.5 at the moment). I don't grind arena in it. It is 100% F2P (i.e. no cash offers ever). I don't even really play a lot of monthly stuff, except occasionally. I mostly do AQ (~ 3000 rank) and AW (~ tier 12) in my alliance, do an occasional path in story, and autofight through low monthly EQ. When a particularly interesting SQ comes along, I try to do that, and I am of course trying to complete the F2P summer event, because those rewards are good enough to spend the time. Its a very low activity, low grind, zero spend account in an alliance with only moderate rewards.
And here's the deck I used throughout season 9:
Its not a totally trash deck, but it is certainly not a banger deck and not really optimized for the meta. I don't have the luxury of doing BG focused rank ups in this account. The *one* BG focused rank up in this deck is Valk, and I barely had the stones to get her to sig 60 (to drop the pierce requirement to 3). That's it. So how did it go?
Well, there have been a lot of anecdotes surrounding BG and low progress accounts, but I was curious to figure out how to resolve an apparent contradiction. Everyone agrees accounts like this tend to match against similar strength accounts from Bronze to Gold. And then somewhere within Platinum they get dramatically exposed to higher strength accounts. But we have a lot of low progress accounts claiming to be seeing mostly high progress accounts, and high progress accounts claiming to see a large number of low progress accounts in that same range. That's actually impossible, if those anecdotes were representative. See, by Platinum 2 or so everyone should be seeing the average strength of that tier. Instead of matching against like accounts, you're just matching against everyone. So on average, you should see *the* average. If there are lots of strong accounts, then weak accounts should see them most of the time and strong accounts should *also* see them most of the time. Conversely if there are lots of weak accounts there, then strong accounts should see a lot of weak accounts but weak accounts should *also* see weak accounts most of the time. If there's an even number of both, both sides should see an equal spread of them. But how could all the weak accounts see nothing but strong accounts and all the strong accounts see nothing but the weak accounts?
From my experience, that's *not* what is happening, at least not exactly. Rather, the thing that makes both observations possible is the fact that the average strength of accounts within a tier changes over time, and does so in very pronounced waves. Although players play BG at all sorts of random times in random ways, and players join throughout the season, the bulk of the players do join relatively early, and then all begin climbing the same VT ladder at roughly the same time. This means players get sorted into batches, much like in a marathon or bicycle race. You end up with a bunch of fast runners, another group of medium speed runners, and a couple of groups of stragglers. This means the *day* you play can have a dramatic impact on how strong the competition is at that precise tier of VT.
From Bronze to Gold it was a cake walk for my Cav alt, because even though my deck is a mess, so is everyone else's at that strength level. My advantage is I have a better understanding of match ups, and better meta drafting strategy. I don't end up stuck with three mystic champs in round three, so if I place Torch on defense there's no feasible attacker option, for example (I won a couple matches that way). From Bronze to Gold, superior champion knowledge and a little bit of strategic deployment in the picks can win a lot.
And like a lot of players have observed, I hit the wall in P2. I was matching against decks five times stronger than me. But this was still in week one. As soon as it became clear I had hit the wall, I took a break. For two whole weeks. The idea is that all those strong accounts I was facing were not going to be in P2 in two weeks. They would stomp on accounts like mine and climb out of Platinum into Diamond or GC in two weeks. That was my experience in Plat and Diamond last year on my main accounts. Plus, I was grinding milestones on my main like a mad man, and could use the time off BG in the alt.
With one week or so to go, I returned to this account. All those monster accounts? Gone. I was now getting match ups that were rather randomly distributed. I got a couple of super strong accounts - probably stragglers joining late. I got many - most - of my match ups roughly near me. Say, between slightly lower than me and about twice to three times as strong as me. Hard, but within the realm of possibility of still outplaying. And many of those had strong accounts but zero skill in drafting or picking match ups. Again: because if your deck is strong and your skill is high, what are you still doing in Platinum 2 in week three? And finally, I got maybe 25% of my matches even lower than this account. Some *incredibly* low. Like started yesterday low. 3* champs seriously placed, not just trying to play games with deck strength. I was able to return to winning at a reasonable rate, and managed to climb from P2 to Diamond 1 in just a couple days.
And then hit the wall again. I was getting a spread of match ups in D2, and then nothing but Paragon Legends with 7s all over the place in D1. My guess: milestone farmers. They *should* have been mostly gone by now, but there was a disproportionate number of them still hanging around in D1. There was probably some combination of the weaker of the stronger still working through Diamond, later starters only now reaching Diamond, and milestone farmers, all getting slowed down traffic-style by the fact that D1 has the five trophy requirement which exponentially slows down players progress creating a blockade.
So I took another break.
Yesterday, I returned to this account and tried to see if that blockade had dissipated. And it had. My match strength dropped from what it was to something closer to me. Not exactly me, on average I was seeing decks about twice as strong, and almost no one weaker. But twice as strong is manageable, and I was able to get the five trophies necessary in about ten matches. I did decide to use a couple victory shields at the end, because I was getting antsy and those tend to just build up and expire on this account anyway.
How many matches did it take? Honestly, I lost count (milestone grinding caused me to lose my mind in the middle of the season just a bit) but I can make a reasonable estimate from what I did record. It was on the order of about sixty or seventy matches. That's *dramatically* fewer than my main. I don't even have 250k of milestone points yet on that account.
This is just one anecdote, sure, but this is also a lot of matches spread out over the entire season in every tier. And I have the experience of my main in this season, and both accounts in prior seasons for context. I believe I can make some statements about this experience with some confidence.
First, is it possible for a Cavalier account to get to GC? Yes. Not just possible, but with reasonable effort and skill it is a realistic achievable goal. I'm pretty good, and I would say my knowledge and experience is exceptional, but overall I would say I'm just a B+ BG competitor. I do not represent the bleeding edge of what's possible. If I can do it, I would say the average player could do it, possibly with more effort, but still.
Second, yes, the current BG match maker *can* put low Cavs up against monster Paragons for crushing losses and yes, it can also put monster Paragons up against low Cavs for easy wins, but *in general* this is not just a function of the match maker no longer protecting players from strong rosters, it is also representative of the current state of the competition at that time. A single season is a relatively short amount of time for the players to "sort" themselves from strongest to weakest. During the season, the strong players and the weak players are like waves in the ocean. They are rolling through the ladder at different times and at different speeds. The surf is a lot rougher and more dangerous in week one than in week three. Knowing this, players with weaker rosters can still navigate the tides by carefully pacing themselves. Every day the competition within a tier will be different. Trying to blitz BG with a weak roster will have you getting washed up on the rocks somewhere. Riding the waves of competition will allow you to follow those waves up the VT ladder in a much more competitively neutral way.
Third, at the moment meta gaming strategy is very important for low accounts in BG. BG is not a flat difficulty curve. It is groups of players pushing their way through VT. If you are slower than those groups you can have a strong group catch up to you and make your life miserable for a while until they flow past you. If you are faster than those groups you can catch up to a strong group and then get bullied by them. But these groups are all constantly moving. If you can "feel" where they are, a bit of meta gaming can allow you to pace yourself around them. When you're in the middle of a group of monsters, that's the time to take a break. Let them go by. When you catch up to the monsters, slow down and wait for them to move on, and follow in their wake. Competition is not just about beating up an opponent. It is also about understanding the competition as a whole, jockeying for position, picking your battles.
And lastly, what does this mean for future seasons where one of the goals (I think it was intended for Season ten, but I will believe it when I see it) is staggered starting? In other words, start stronger players higher, and weaker players lower, so that weaker players are less likely to be forced to match against them? I think it will help a bit, but this experience has also taught me that most of the low players that were running into monster accounts were "outracing the tide" so to speak. They were trying to blitz out wins fast, and catching up with the "slower monsters" ahead of them. Giving high progress players a head start will mitigate this, but not I think eliminate this. Especially because those head starts will also place those accounts against each other in those higher tiers, slowing their progress. So while the stagger will initially separate the players, the slow down in the higher tiers and the unmitigated acceleration in the lower tiers might cause a collision all the same, perhaps just in a slightly higher tier P1 or D3, perhaps). Something to watch for when this feature arrives.
The overall conclusion though, is that based on my experience, the match maker does not block VT progress for lower progress players. It *slows them down* and it prevents them from trying to overtake the bulk of the stronger players as they make their way upward. But a sufficiently knowledgeable, sufficiently skilled, and sufficiently situationally aware of the metagaming of the mode can progress through VT all the way up to GC. They have to be aware that when they run into the wall, the best strategy is to wait for the wall to move, not bash their head against it.
From there, they are on their own, as they should be.
Note: throughout I mention opponent deck strength as being "twice as strong" or "three times as strong". These are subjective descriptions for me, judging the overall quality and rank of the deck. It does not mean PI twice as high or three times as high. For reference, I would consider a deck that looked exactly like mine but one rank higher - R5s and R4s instead of R4s and R3s, for example - as being about twice as strong as my deck is. My own main's deck, full of 7s, R5s, and R4s, would be a deck I would consider to be four to five times stronger. A deck full of R2s and R5s and meta-optimal champs would be about ten times stronger than this deck, subjectively speaking. I just don't have an objectively precise way of describing deck strength at the moment, except by "feel."
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Comments
I’d say low account daily objective farmers should stay at plat 3 or below while higher player farmers should stay at plat 2.
Insightful
I still maintain that it would be another incursions, if it wasn't benefiting from laughably over-tuned rewards.
The optimal point to farm milestones for high roster players would be between P2 and D2. At P2 you have the most advantage, but you still have to deal with two for one. At D2 you have stronger matches but you are now at one for one and can trade wins and losses. One of those two would make the most sense.
"Tanking at low levels" is more a description of GC, not VT. For players capable of being competitive in GC at all, there is such a thing as tanking at low levels of GC before making your final push at the end. But tanking at low levels is less of a thing in VT, because the tanking that is happening is happening at the higher tiers of VT (but at advantageous tiers for high roster players).
The higher prizes meant a lot more people played to GC than ever before. In my alliance alone, we did a battlegrounds push for the stragglers and people in the last week made a bronze to platinum run just for alliance milestones. All of them were good thronebreaker accounts but low interest in battlegrounds
My intention is to try this again next season and compare the results, to see how the shift in participation affects match making. If S10 has staggered starts, this would also be the last time I could collect data from a full restart season to compare. So in a sense while this season is distorted a bit by the war milestone inserts, this was also likely a now or never opportunity to collect data before things changed.
Plus, people have been complaining this season as much as last season, and this is as much about addressing the complaints as conducting a science experiment. To the extent that this season might be easier to progress in for lower accounts, people don't seem to be commenting as if it is.
Also, the trapping the opponent with no counters thing was something that seemed to work in Season 5 just as well as in Season 9. So that isn't just inexperience due to the flood of participants.
Also props for doing it, almost as impressive as the wall of text you posted here.
I made many people progress to GC
I'm such a noble human being right?!
When there are, say, 15,000 players that make it to GC, you just need to outperform about half of them. But when there's 25,000 players entering GC, you need to beat two thirds of them.
There's 8500 players in Uru 2 and higher. And everyone in Uru 3 is trying to snag one of those seats. The more people trying, the more people you have to beat.
Incidentally, more people in GC usually means higher ratings required due to ratings inflation. Normally, whenever two players meet, one gains rating and one loses rating. So the total amount of rating in GC is identical (more or less) and thus you wouldn't expect overall ratings to climb. But when you add a ton of players to GC, the one source of positive net ratings comes from the players at the bottom. If you beat a player with zero rating, your rating goes up but theirs doesn't go down (because it can't). That match adds rating to the GC. The more players in GC, the more players at the bottom, the more ratings get injected into GC, and that source of ratings points gets spread out among all the competitors, raising overall ratings across the board.
Basically, the players at the bottom are the bottom layer of a ratings pyramid that support the higher ratings above. The wider the base, the taller the pyramid.
That's actually pretty far, considering the competition.
Second of all, how far did you think you would get in a PvP competition with that roster? What is the reasonable expectation for a roster of that size? A dedicated player who started today could have a deck as strong as that or stronger in just a few months. Tell me, relative to your progress arrow above, how far do you get in monthly EQ with your roster? How far have you gotten in Story arc content? Is it that far?
I fought this guy with my TB account in diamond 2 and still trying to wrap my head around how he got there.
How many shields would you have to buy to never lose a medal to get that high with 4 stars.