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Competitive Ship Tier List 2016 (1.4.5)

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Urz:
With a balance patch on the horizon, I sought to take a snapshot of what the competitive metagame looks like today. Although I believe the ordering of this list falls in line with general consensus from the competitive community, it is opinion. Two years ago I posted my previous tier list, which I've included for comparison.

S-Tier

Mobula
The Mobula is an all-range threat which really has everything going for it. Forward-facing weaponry allow the ship to pressure a target while controlling engagement distance. An excellent movement profile built primarily on high vertical acceleration allow it to dodge incoming fire with ease. The turret spread combined with protected rear engines make it resistant to the disabling power of the artemis and hwacha. The Mobula has dominated the competitive field for the last year.

High Tier

Goldfish
The combination of Hwacha jitter reduction and introduction of gunner stamina in last year's balance patch turned that gun into a monster, and no ship was better positioned to capitalize than the Goldfish. Previously effective exclusively at close-range, the improved Hwacha extends the Goldfish's jurisdiction well into 500m range and beyond. Kept in check only by the Mobula's evasive options and ability to snipe out the front gun, the Goldfish has favorable matchups against every ship below it on the tier list.

Squid
The Squid gets major points for being the only ship on this list with a favorable matchup against King Mob. It can quickly get into the target's blind spot, focus the exposed hull, and do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. The Squid does however have a difficult time against the other ships on this list. The Goldfish's close-range disable power will stop the Squid in it's tracks, and the high armor of the Galleon and Junker can be tough to penetrate with only two light weapons.

Mid Tier

Galleon
The Galleon's strength hinges entirely on one gun: the lumberjack. Being the only viable ship with access to the powerful balloon popper, it's also the only ship which can truly contest the Mobula in a long-range fight. A skilled lumberjack gunner can be disruptive and quickly lock down any target, but a few missed shots will allow your extremely vulnerable weapons to be disabled by incoming artemis fire. The Galleon also struggles against the Goldfish, which can quickly close the distance and outmaneuver the sluggish tank.

Low Tier

Junker
At one point considered the best ship in the game - the Junker's fall from grace largely tracks with the rise of the Mobula. The Mobula's strengths are the Junker's weaknesses: low vertical acceleration and tightly packed components make it difficult for the Junker to protect it's guns and engines. Broadside turret placement and a slow forward charging speed means it can't dictate terms in a fight. The Junker struggles in open maps, but high armor and great close-range mobility gives it some success on Canyon Ambush.

Bad Tier

Spire
What do you do with a Spire? The eternal low-tier - Spire has the same weakness as the Galleon in being a slow ship reliant on a vulnerable heavy weapon, but lacks the tankiness to sustain through multiple waves of sniper fire. At close-range it gets eaten by the Goldfish, shut down by a quick hwacha or carronade round and then quickly detroyed. The Spire's best matchup is the Pyramidion, and with the latter falling out of competitive play, the fringe utility of the Spire is gone as well.

Pyramidion
A series of unfavorable balance patches has dropped the Pyramidion to the very bottom of this list. The ship's current interation is slow, fragile, and lacks the versatility of it's contemporaries. Having only two reliable gun slots prices the Pyramidion into being a close-range brawler, but having low numbers in all movement vectors makes it extremely difficult to corner a target. The Pyramidion has no good matchups and no place in a competitive game.

Kamoba:
I think you've hit the nail on the head again sir. *Salutes.*

Dementio:
Obligatory Mobula OP.

You forgot to mention that the Spire does have the firepower to get a kill on pretty much anything, if it gets the chance, making it rather effective on maps like Paritan Rumble and, to some extent, Canyon Ambush where it can get into decent position's without being seen in the process. But combined with its weaknesses and how hard it is to get into decent position against Flares in competitive, it wouldn't really put it into a better tier.

Maybe another thing to note for the Galleon is the pilot, but the same would go for other ships, so there is that.

Agreed with pretty much everything on the list.

DJ Logicalia:
I had some initial disagreements about junker at first, but you're right, especially with the Hwacha meta. I've tried experimenting with Junkers as Mobula counters, but with little success.

Great, wonderfully detailed list

Also (in relation to the old teir list), with so much time gone by, I'd love to see someone do a synopsis on why the old goldfish was derp teir and what changes made it the monster it is today. I only just got the game 2 years ago, and didn't start playing seriously for a while after that, so I missed all of that period

Dementio:
People flew headfirst into double, or even triple Artemis, even after the Artemis nerf, which only made the gun and projectiles a bit slower, making it harder to hit with while the damage was the same. They also used the Blenderfish almost non-stop, which didn't stop Gat/Mortars from killing, especially when there was a second ship around with the same killing power, and Pyramidion's had the armor around the balloon to make it harder to hit it.

The probably biggest argument against the Goldfish was, and I quote a few too many people to name, "Why disable, when you can just kill them instead?" #DoubleJunkers (Ducks), #DoublePyra (Ryders) #SpirePyra (Thralls, but I admit, I am sure they flew other stuff too, but as far as I am aware, this was their primary ship combination back at that time; And their Pyra/Blenderfish failed against the Mandarian's double Junker). So the Goldfish was essentially thought to be quite useless. Why disable one ship, while the other is killing your ally and what if you fail because your heavy gun gets disabled in two seconds? Get two kill ships, focus your fire and they drop faster than you!

Btw, similar reason why the Squid was barely taken, on top of that it was slower than today after it was nerfed, because it was too fast in the beginning. People used it to disable and the only gun combination that was thought to be able to kill anything was Gat/Mortar, which the Squid was not particularly good at, because of gun arcs, so they stuck to disable on it. And the Banshee was different back then, I don't remember if it actually did more or less or even the same amount of hull damage as today. A disable Squid in the killing Meta wouldn't work so well.

The changes that made the Goldfish more viable was a different playstyle and the fact that a lot of people don't take double long range ships anymore, such as double Junker. With enemies having to close the distance themselves, they were doing half the work for the Goldfish, the Goldfish could then afford to wait in an ambush position or had much less distance to close before disabling the enemy. When was the last time you saw a double Mobula fight against a Goldfish with a long range ally, much less see the team with the Goldfish win that match?

Everything in the Meta was a reaction to the previous Meta and the people who flew it. With the Mandarians gone and the super long range sniping Gents deceasing, nobody was left to, well, snipe, at least with both ships on the same team. You can watch the Hephaestus Challenge, which came after the Sky League and then the R&D Invational, which came after that. You will see bits and pieces of the old mindset appear here and there "Let's sit and snipe for 2 hours, because fun!", but ultimately the Pyramidion was the most taken ship, so the Meta evolved around it, ships that synergize well with it, ships with forward facing guns like the Spire, Mobula and the Goldfish, all of them capable of brawling to some extent, shifting the game to close range. Out of those three, however, the Mobula had the same capabilities had as the Junker: Multirange combat, locking its position in the Meta, while the Spire got pushed out even further as it could do nothing against the long range fire and didn't have the Goldfish's speed to close the distance without dying or the ability to get in cover as easily, now that people actually flew it correctly. But the Pyramidion was still dominant, so people took the Goldfish to synergize with it in brawl maps, like Paritan and the Mobula for long range, like Fjords and Dunes.
After a nerf to the Pyramidion, people refused to take it back into competitive, leaving the skies to the Mobula and Goldfish. However, to the Goldfish dismay, double Mobula was popular and the Goldfish would have a place in that Meta, only surviving in various alleys of the remains from empty cities. People then experimented with the Squid, I think mostly after its buff, abusing its horizontal manouverbility to combat the Mobula that way, the one thing it wasn't good at. To synergize with the Squid, people went to the only fast forward facing ship that remains playable: The Goldfish, which was also used to counter the Squid's mobility as the Mobula didn't have that. And now we are here.

You may notice something missing in my ramblings, which I wrote without checking for corrections, so apologize if it isn't good or even wrong. The Galleon is not explained. The Galleon, in reality, has no place in the Meta and never will have, as Urz already mentioned it's competitive survival depends a great deal on the Lumberjack. That ship gets easily disabled from long range, close range and outmanouvered from all sides from everything! Yet, it is the living embodiment of "the one shot that matters", as each Artemis disable can influence an engagement a great deal and shift the advantage back and forth, the same goes for the Lumberjack, countering every ship in the game. The Galleon itself shifts the game away from the counters and tiers and more towards raw pilot and gunner skill, putting it into a weird spot. Not able to win anything at all, but proving again and again that it can kill anything it wants to.

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