top 5 competitive pilots:
1. Fiasco:
My co-pilot, but not only respected as such. He has an amazing ability to always manage to survive in harsh engagements, aswell as setting up flanks when needed. Fiasco is just top notch pilot. His inability to proper micromanage his crew is not a problem when either Mezhu or myself have been keeping an eye on it. Fiasco is maybe 50% of Thralls success in the past, whereas engineering, other pilot and gunners all hold the rest of the 50% together.
2. Lueosi:
Lueosi have been under severe critique from me for a long time now. one of the reasons for this is that he was both a competitor and a superior pilot than myself, but he is also a leader meaning that my mindset rarely will work with his flying together. That said he is an amazing pilot who have managed to pull off the best metamidion, one of the best goldfishes and the best galleon I have seen in this game. A lot of credit should go out to his crew for outstanding engineering and gunning, but they would not be able to function that well if it wasnt lueosi telling them what to do. His focus on his own ship often means that his focus on controlling the team is lacking, which have led to some disorganisation on the team as a whole, but when things run smoothly he is the best in the game.
3. Thomas:
Thomas is a newcomer on my list. For a long time I did not pay much attention to him or even SPQR as a team due to the double pyramidion picks. I feel like a pilot cannot be on a top 5 if all he does is fly one ship well. Thomas and the rest of SPQR have however gone to newer ships and are doing the very very very well. This is some of the best squid piloting I have seen, and he seems to have an overview of how to control enemy movement, or atleast follow it to his own advantage. I have crewed for him a couple of times, and he is a pilot with high expectations and knows exactly what he needs. SPQR engies must be very well disciplined to pull off the repair cycles on his ships.
4. Frogger:
I never had the chance to play vs Frogger properly, I was always away from home when Thralls faced off vs the notorious mandarins. However it cannot be ignored that the mandarins double junker is most likely the most impressive thing this game have seen competitive. add to that a sense of formation flying and map use, and you have an unbeatable team.
5. melon:
I will probaly have a lot of people disagree with me here, maybe even fox :p
The reason why is that melon is an uncontrollable pilot. as a co-captain it can often be frustrating to see him fly into an obvious trap. But there is a reason for him being on my list. Melon is a good pilot with good maneuverbility. He is still inexperienced as opposed to the others on my list, but with time he might rise higher on the list. He is super fun to fly with, and pulls off impressive things with mobility ships. Its a bit sad to see him on a pyramidion, but he can fly it proper.
That said, this is my all time list. you will see a lack of older pilots which is due to my opinion that the skill level is much much higher today, than it was a year ago. I would even have loved to put myself in, but truth be told I am horribly outskilled as a competitive pilot these days. I belong to an older school now and its going to be interesting to see what comes out of the next "generation".