What Went Wrong?

So.... What Went Wrong? Higher level weapons would only increase MM. Win % is a minor factor in MM. Is it the Heavies, the weapons, or the bot levels that make me a fish in a barrel?

The problem with mm is that it's basically a free for all outside of the lower tiers. Once you go above low silver, you're prone to getting matched up with crappy maxed players and occasionally good top clans like cnti and vox.

Yup, your bot levels are pushing you up. Getting your weapon levels up, I'd say as high as level 9, would keep you where you are while giving you a better fighting chance. I don't see you getting bumped up further until you go 7/9 or 8/9.

Please, switch out that Natasha for anything that doesn't have a Zenit or Noricum. Your Griffin is pretty much your support bot already, all your other bots can be knifers. I suppose you don't intend to spend WSP for a Trident - Trident/PIN is probably the best support setup for Vityaz. Might be better to keep it as is.

Pinata on the Leo is kind of out of place, though, might be better to have another PIN there.

Kind of confused what your target hangar is - can you spell it out so I can get a better picture of how you plan to transition there?

Nope! This myth drives me nuts. Noricum users assume that their long-distance damage is at least SOME damage, but the reality is that the damage from a Noricum is irrelevant. Here's why:

The game is beacon-focused, not damage-focused. So to win you need to perform a mix of actions that either a) take the beacons or b) prevent the opponent from taking the beacons.
- Knife fighters can perform both of these tasks. They can move where they're needed and eliminate threats.
- Mid-range bots can do the same. They're less likely to walk up and grind it out with a beacon defender, but they can keep a high volume of damage going which can deter the opponent from trying to approach a specific beacon. And if someone DOES take the beacon being covered by the mid-range bot they typically have to retreat or have their armor melted off.
- A trident Fury seems, at first, like it does neither, but the reality is that the damage it can cause is a massive deterrent for bots that want to approach the covered area. Tridents cause enough damage that they are perfectly capable of preventing free movement of Reds.
- Zenits and Noricums, however, are crap. Neither does significant damage, so while it's a small disappointment to be hit by them there's no deterrent to the Red's course of action. In fact, in most cases the damage is completely AVOIDED. Additionally, the rate of damage is so slow that it doesn't even significantly increase the chances of meching out the Reds.

If you *insist* on using a nat, then for the love of all things holy please turn it into a mid-range bot. The artillery is NOT helping your team.

I believe you get offended when someone points out the truth and it's not what you thought it was. Either take it as an opportunity to learn or assume I have a vendetta. I don't care either way. All I care is that it's easy for new players to find accurate information.

Well, thanks, exteel. No one yet has said that I've got a solid grasp of the battle-tested and sound strategies of the wiki, nor that they recognized my tireless desire to provide that information to new players in the face of people who apparently have neither common sense nor the proclivities to pay attention to the wiki. I owe you my genuine gratitude. That made me proud to read.

Rest assured, it's not for your sake that I correct your misinformation. You've made it clear that you have both no inclination to listen to wisdom nor the inclination to pay attention to feedback that doesn't confirm your own (incorrect but hard-set) beliefs. It's for the poor new pilots who don't know better than to avoid Noricums, or to not run Nats, or who actually hope to get to Top play some day. I really do appreciate your recognition of that. Thank you. You made my day.

Okaaaayyy first flame war on the new forum! Congrats guys! Let's stay on topic, shall we?

Nori's are pretty much useless except when you use them to uppercut (i.e. put them on a light bot, get really close to a heavy and shoot it up its chin). Other than that they're pretty much ignored by everyone, not to mention you're defenseless when anyone gets closer than 400m to you. Zenits have an incredibly specific place in the game, which is to annoy beacon campers in the middle of Yamantau or Springfield, and for that purpose Tridents work a lot better (because it would actually kill them).

And going to your target hangar, if that's the case I would shelve your Leo as soon as possible, maybe put another Griffin in there since you plan to have two of them in the long run. Perhaps temporarily put RDB setup on it until you can put together DB or PDB. It's okay if you get the PDB together first, since you can just transition those weapons onto a Rhino, and you'll need time to level up a Rhino anyway. It's not worth using a Rhino below L5. The only bots there that would last are your Griffin and Boa, and the Boa would probably also transition out by the time you get to 8/10 (that's what I did - and this was before britbots).

So, I'd take out the Leo for a Griffin, and the Natasha for anything else (maybe an eCU Cossack - might help you get gold for beacons). If that's not your thing then keep the Leo but don't upgrade it any further except the Trident, trade the Natasha for a Griffin with PDB. Not sure if you're just about to buy a Rhino or you already have one. If you already do, it's better than the Natasha at any level, bring it in already.

Just a thought - if you can't swap out both the Tasha and the Leo at the same time, then keep the Leo but convert it to a knifer - Thunder + Pinatas or Magnums. At least you can upgrade those weapons because you can swap those over to other future bots e.g. Lancelot for the Thunder and Rhino or Griffin for the Pinatas or Magnums.

My main question wasn't so much about builds, but about MM. Max bot lvl6, average bot level 6, max weapon level 6, average weapon level 5.3. I looked at Tins MM numbers guide, and this shouldn't have shot me into 8/10-10/12 kinda battles. I was under the impression win % was NOT a huge factor, compared to your hangar score, and with 60+ people on you would actually have a general tier to be matched against, not a 'anything goes' as Strayed pointed out.

I'm quite convinced there are 3-4 subcategories of each of the 3 tiers. Silver may be silver, but you also have S1,S2,S3 - as an S1 hangar is a mix of high bronze/low silver, same as S3 being a mix of high silver/low gold.(As far as tiers go) that's just my 2 cents though.

MM itself, seems to run off a tit-for-tat system with win%.

To the point, i can either upgrade heavy weapons to 8-9 and still have a viable chance, or swap out to medium Bots to avoid the blender?

Concerning "tiers" - they are player constructs, Orukal is correct. They are basically horthand for us. Pix has never really revealed how thw matchmaking works so the community, especially a few, have reversed engineered it to the best of our ability and limited access to real data.

We do know that noobs are protected in a "rookie tier". Pix put that in place about six months ago. I believe that tier is badically as a new pilot does the tutorial. In that tier higher level pilots, i believe above 5 or so, cannot get in.

Then there is tier 1. There is no common name to my thinking for it. I have seen the title copper used.

Low bronze, as we refer to it, is what i consider tier 2. This is about the only tier which does have a recongized marker. In tier 1ans 2, the pilot never sees the snow. In other words, they never play the Yamantau map.

Once a bot or weapon as been leveled up to a certain point, and matchmaking puts a pilot in Yamantau, you are considered in tier 3.

Beyond tier 2, there are no definitive markers for tiers. We basically go by experience from here. There has been talk about rubber bands in which we are clustered by hanger weight or really, highest bot weight say all bots available within a 100 points of each other are matched. But pilot availablity stretches that to some interesting and brusing consequences.

What the wiser DT said.

On whether to upgrade weapons or bring in medium bots, I think it depends on how comfortable you are currently and what your long-term plans are for all your bots. I remember I was there before and I just powered through because I didn't have the mind to create a low silver hangar back then, but that was because the silver nerf wasn't in place yet. (In case you didn't know, there was a time earlier this year when it was actually possible to lose silver in a match if you get absolutely clobbered, but it was generally much easier to earn silver. Earning 400-500k silver in a match was pretty common for mid or high silver. It's not hard to imagine that gold pilots could earn 1M silver. Plus, upgrade costs were cheaper. I didn't know of anyone buying premium back then.)

So, if you think you're holding your own and don't see the need for a low silver/farming hangar, then just keep going with your current bots and upgrade weapons. You'll need to upgrade weapons as you go along, anyway. But if you feel you're not earning as much as you like, then bring in some medium or even light bots. Just make sure that, for simplicity's sake, you can swap weapons between your lower hangar and your main hangar. That was my mistake - I put together a silver hangar that had mostly its own weapons, which got in the way of upgrading my main hangar.

Lastly, I strongly recommend you don't farm in bronze - for the sake of the noobs.