ncw event

[sirhatter]

NCW: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Many people were probably involved in a competing site?s 2 player tournament. One of the great draws is that big guild tournaments tend to draw big names to the battle dome for rare 2 player fights, and this tournament was no exception.

NCW breaks their tournaments into divisions, which attempt with some degree of success to pit opponents against each other with roughly similar stats.

I was lucky to take part in division 19, which was, along with d20 and d21, probably the most exciting division to be in terms of sheer top-level battling. The higher divisions were largely empty, and even d20 had a spot missing, but most everyone at that level has invested serious time and effort into their pet, and is not just a casual battledomer. As a result I was going to get some great matchups.

Furthermore, most of my opponents were household names, including some people I?ve already battled. Nova is of course a well known rater at IDB, and then Renegade_Yoda and Yoshi are well known members of the IDB community. The remaining opponents aren?t as well known at IDB, but have names for themselves in other battledome communities.

Upon looking at the matchups, based on stats alone, I was middle or maybe upper middle in defense, I don?t even recall. I do know for a fact that in the most important stats, defense and strength, there was a very clear pecking order. At the top, LunaGangrel, with 943 hitpoints, and the 650 boost would be a beast. Just below, Yoshi and Pez, were virtually neck and neck, and only about 3% weaker than luna, and both had the 700 boost. From there Novachoek was 5% or so weaker than that 2nd tier. Either Nova or Yoshi or both also had the 700 defense boost, which was also going to be a cause for concern because Luna also had the 700 boost. I was behind nova, a full 14% weaker than that top tier, but still not totally out of the picture. The bottom two pets, Yoda and Braun_T_Saurus, were about 10% weaker than me, and were the decided underdogs in the group. I had the most hitpoints by far, in fact I was the only user over 1000 hitpoints, but I was going to be at least 1 strengthboost behind everyone, and as far back as 4 strengthboosts behind 3 of my 6 opponents. I prefer the defensive style of fighting, and I actually prefer having a lot of hitpoints over a lot of strength. At a low level it can hurt you due to drain life, but at this level, I?d like to have the option to make fights as long as necessary, and the high hitpoints can do that.

Based on stats alone, I figured then to be good for 2 wins and 4 losses. While you always want to be at the top end of that scale, someone has to be at the bottom, and 3rd weakest out of 7 really isn?t that bad of a spot. What I don?t like, and have NEVER liked in these divisions is that it encourages people to stagnate to an extent, especially lower down. If upgrading your set is roughly as cheap as upgrading your stats, it makes more sense from a 2 player standpoint to upgrade your set if you participate in these tournaments. That way the opponents are weaker, instead of you pushing into a higher level. NCW places complicated weapons restrictions on various levels, which confuse things more for my money, and you still see people hanging in the low levels with monster sets, which just isn?t a fun experience. For me it isn?t quite a problem, because all the people at my level have big stats and big sets, but I am quite sure that I will have the least expensive set by far. While I don?t know what my opponents have, I do know that the one area I may have them beat, either in a healer or freezer, that my opponents will surely use jade elixirs and freezing scrolls. The big tournaments no one is going to use anything less at this level, and I am past the point where you see too many people try to use species healers. As a result, if you count their one use weapons as their multi use equivalent, I?d be the odds on favorite to have the worst set.

I also was labbing, and sort of lucked into a pteri. I am typically a Nimmo, but the pteri wouldn?t be so bad for this tournament, due to the air resistance. Still, 3rd weakest pet, and probably the weakest weaponset, is usally a good combo for a last place finish or somewhere near there. Me? I wouldn?t be happy with anything less than 5-1. I know my tactical edge over other fighters starts to seriously diminish at this level, still. Anything less than 5-1 and I just feel that I have underachieved. It?s probably my ego more than anything else, but I always feel I can claim little edges here and there, and do enough to win fights.


In any event, NCW does do a good job of advertising their tournament, and spending a lot of time marketing it. When I ran the realtime tournament, I put in 2 hours a day marketing it. I thought that was a lot. More than I?d normally play. It clearly wasn?t enough. So credit to starry and inu for what they have built up.

My first fight was against Nova. I have usually fared very well against him, and had never lost to him, till this fight. He had a sling, and it kept hitting, and hitting, and hitting. 4 out of the last 5 times to close out two fights. And some other times besides that. I wanted to vomit. Yeah he had the bigger pet and bigger set? I am insanely competitive, and would like to think, (and I have screenshots to prove it), that I have typically do out maneuver Nova, but when a sling hits that much, it just doesn?t matter. I had won the first fight when Nova ran out of power, but the 2nd time I tried a delayed freeze and failed when nova hit big on his sling. The third time I try again, and nova only hits on his sling once out of two times, so I survive, heal, and go to freeze, only to find nova also hit with diamond dust. He then hit two more times with the sling. So I start 0-1, and must win 5 in a row. Sadly, my next opponent, lunagangrel, had a very strong pet. One with over 900 hitpoints and also had a sling. I won the 2nd match, but in the decisive 3rd match, I somehow thought I used regen on medium with 22% power, but ended up using it on strong, in spite of only getting a medium heal. I go to 0% power, and lose. Now I?m absolutely pissed. 0-2.

Ickkk? The only consolation is that nova and luna were both ?supposed to win? against me, and did. I fight Renegade, and use my stats advantage to good effect. I don?t recall Yoda having a particularly strong set. This may well have been the fight where I realized that if I used both my G-Shield and Clawed Shield at the same time, I could not lose, as Yoda had a sos and kiln, and I think maybe a ring of the lost, meaning that Yoda had no other attacking options. Either way it was an awkward win, but one never really in doubt. The other possibility was that I stile something from Yoda, a g-sword maybe? I don?t know. It didn?t matter. I was supposed to win that fight.


I then drew yoshi, a much stronger pet than me, and one also with a g-sword. Yoshi has given me major trouble in the past, and is a clever fighter who was vowing to quit neopets after the tournament, I wish him happiness in whatever path he chooses to pursue. Both of us like to not freeze first round. As it turned out, we both chose that tactic, and were stuck in a very interesting game of brinksmanship, that ended only when I stole his g-sword after he used all his one use items, and left yoshi only with a SoS and gshield against my g-sword, cutlass and gshield. The gshield would be more than enough to win, as I was virtually never taking any real amount of damage, and could tag yoshi over and over with my G-Sword without fear of retribution. Between the gbomb, thick smoke bomb, freezer, healer, and the item I stole from him he had no real weapons left. That turned out to be great for me. The second round, he froze and berserked, and ended up I think wiping me out in 2 rounds. Round 3 was an epic battle. Yoshi was lucky to land a diamond dust, unlucky to not have it finish me. I then was majorly on the defensive, using pteri-evade quite liberally. Yoshi realized what was afoot, and realized I was milking my hitpoints as long as I could. He tried to sneak in a berserk attack, and took me down to 9 (NINE!) hitpoints. Even a medium strength hit on the g-sword and I surely croak. I luck out, heal, and escape with an undeserved win. Now im 2-2 and feeling momentum.

I crush bron-t-saurus, yet another sling user (that?s 3 in 6 fights)! And my record in individual battles improves to 8-5. However, it ended there with an ugly 2-1 loss against dudeperson41, who outsmarted me with a bigger pet and bigger weapons. No complaint about that loss then. I wish I had screenies, but they are illegal in the ncw tournament. They would have been great battles to go over in depth.

All in all, I finished 3-3, with a 9-7 record in individual fights. Not bad, but I would have hoped for more. I realize that when people fight me it?s an opportunity to make a name, and that just forces me to perform even better, but the plus side to it, is that pez and nova were both gracious in victory, and overall the spirit among the battlers was quite high. No tickytacky stuff that I?ve seen in the past in these events, no weapon lending I don?t think, or the other stuff that is illegal but tends to go on anyway.

Anyway, this was written in a rush, but hopefully the point gets across.

If anyone has any experiences, especially in league 21 that they want to share, feel free to post

[nov@choek]

Haha, the only battle I got lucky in was against you , I had a great battle with brown_t_saurus too, over 23 rounds =o, but it was clear Pez had the best pet, best set and was the clear favourite to win this league, I beat her on playoffs for CD but she gained another 100 hp that week! so it was basically impossible to win. I liked this tournament except for one issue with one of the battlers I don't really wanna go on about, since it was an obvious mistake by me but one with pride and battle honor would except differently, then again this might be something else than pride and honor, can I be more vague , anyway, good job you did well in the tournament hatter

Oh and feel free to reveal the screenies of our battle, I don't really mind

[rabbanmad]

I was a league 18 fighter, but i had only 2 opponents in this tournament.
I morphed into a pteri for the air resistance.Not much to say about my fights, i won quick 2 times against chemma19.He was actually a league 17 fighting only for the trophy, and had a weaker pet and a comparative set.
And i had another fight with tbdtw, who had a 650 str boost and 550 def boost(i have 600 str boost and 250 defence).We used the same strategy of bomb and freezer in the first round for the first match, and he won that match.The second one he tried fiery gaze behind gshield and tabard until he reached 0 power, and he was dead soon after.
And on the third match, he used the same strategy you used against yoda with clawed shield and Gshield, so i was out
So i have a 1-1 and 3wins and 2 loses, and i guess that puts me on second place in league.I wish i had more oponents tough.
Not much to tell, but i liked your post and decided to do the same.

[+kittenz]

I read sirhatter's post with great interest even tho i'm just a lower league battler (will get there some day)

I once heard from a neofriend, that in the battledome, altho stats do matter a lot, the objective should be to outplay your opponent (my friend triumped his opponent who had about 3 times his hp)

While I only entered the NCW in league 2 (my league 8 pet won't pass the playoffs) , i realized that it can be very very very tactical... and me lacking tactical knowledge, caused me to had a really bad defeat with my first opponent...

With weapons restriction in league 2 (grr@rotl ) and all of us having a max hp of 19, initially i thought surviving first round + freezing is the key... but it seems that we don't deal much dmg at all in the first round... Still, it's very very tactical, and I must say, i pretty enjoyed my battle against muslimarab... seems the key to this league is the ultranova, and in one battle against him, i was lucky that it didn't break... all my opponents healed about 3 times, and i only did once, until i smarten up and got one myself (is terrible) but with such a low str and def boost, even 1-2 dmg difference makes a lot of difference, as we cancelled out a lot of each others icons...

I'm sorry it wasn't high league battling, but i thought it was very very very tactical all the same

[sirhatter]

edit: the chart looked better on excel honest

yoshi: i didnt keep screenies, but i will next time. i still have an old battle when i was doing the analysis series that i thought i do a writeup on.

where did you finish? talked to pez today, and pez in fact went 6-0.

im thinking im probably ended up 4th or 5th, depending on how many people yoshi lost to.


so that chart, shows, on he left, how many icons s (sirhatter) would take to kill, in order, myself, then killer, then luna, nova, yoda, braun_t, and yoshi

the next column is killer... and so on an so forth. this column is useful. anytime youre above a 60, youre immune againt a sos + pcc + berserk pretty much. anytime youre above a 70, youre immune against g+bomb plus one of those weapons.

Anytime youre above a 96, youre immune to dual suap + berserk, assuming you have full hitpoints. Its a great chart for telling you when it might be worth trying the no-freeze first turn strategy.

it also tells you how much power you have. notice, my best weapons are a pcc and sos, and i cant rate better than a 60 against a single opponent, of course not all my opponents know my set, but if they did they could not freeze first round with some level of confidence.

sirhat killer luna gonga jahjah braun fastrip
s 96.5 78.8 85.7 73.2 81.5 78.4 78.4
k 70.7 57.8 62.9 53.7 59.7 57.5 57.5
l 75.8 61.9 67.4 57.5 64.0 61.6 61.6
g 70.7 57.8 62.9 53.7 59.7 57.5 57.5
j 88.4 72.3 78.6 67.1 74.7 71.8 71.8
b 88.4 72.3 78.6 67.1 74.7 71.8 71.8
f 70.7 57.8 62.9 53.7 59.7 57.5 57.5

[nov@choek]

I only got 3-3 aswell

Winning against you, brown, yoshi and losing against pez (I deserved that ), bunny (outright stupidity) and against yoda (yet again outright stupidity by me to burrow twice in a deciding battle)

Oh and hatter you should post the battle of ours back then, I wanna see can't remember only thing I know is I lost

[Bunnylover]

nov@choek Wrote:I only got 3-3 aswell

Winning against you, brown, yoshi and losing against pez (I deserved that ), bunny (outright stupidity) and against yoda (yet again outright stupidity by me to burrow twice in a deciding battle)

Oh and hatter you should post the battle of ours back then, I wanna see can't remember only thing I know is I lost

not me bunny right....I haven't won in an NCW tournament in awhile, even 1 player tournaments I don't do so hot in. But yes, starry/inu runs their events very good, but hatter your forgetting, they don't do it alone, they have an entire war staff to make banners, trophies, and help keep stats. So while starry/inu usually start the tournaments, organize things and manage things, their war staff does a good amount too.

[nov@choek]

NCW does a great job in encouraging people to battle two player, I don't usually compete in their one player ones as it doesn't interest me, but the two player ones are great and not you silly =P bunnybunnypet

[rabbanmad]

Nova means bunnybunnypet,not you

[chicken]

NCW does cause what most people would think of as problems, I recently read some topic of there where Inu and Starry were talking about the various people who take advantage of the calculator relatively undervaluing defense by training it way, way higher than their strength and HP. I think in a way Inu's calculator has too much influence for it's own good.

[sirhatter]

people choosing to do that, for what its worth, ruin their pet as to training in the future efficiently. for those of you who follow me, efficient training is a big part of what i practice.