State of the Game - mid 2017

Edit: As a huge point, it seems like I have made a mistake regarding the Troq vs Rook matchup - even tho I have crossreferenced it around 30 times throughout the weekend I wrote this, I ended up seeing that Rook had 27 vs 26 as a score vs Troq, while it was actually the other way around. I still hold my conclusions about Rook being a solid pick against the carousel.

@mysticjuicer has been hard at work for many years, adding results into my favorite spreadsheet: The Historical Matchup Chat

I have been looking at the numbers a little, and there are some very cool stuff in there! I did do one of these topics a little while back with some hysterically wrong assumptions, but I think these ones are actually correct this time, and not wrong.

So mysticjuicer has already pointed this out before, that the historical matchup chart isn’t a representation of what a perfect player making perfect plays, but a collection of all players with different skill levels making all types of plays ranging from beginner level ones to perfect ones. So the chart doesn’t tell us necessarily what is the optimal matchups, but it can give us a pointer of some misconceptions we might have about the metagame.

So, what is the meta in Yomi in this day and age? The 20XX of Yomi shows that DeGrey, Geiger, Troq and Zane are concidered the best characters in the game, they see the most play, and has the highest winratings in the game. They all go to the same circus, and ride the carousel where, supposedly, Zane wins every matchup except against Troq, Troq wins every matchup except against Geiger and Geiger wins every matchup except against Zane? I don’t really know where DeGrey fits into all of this, but I think he is just concidered overall very good, with low risk plays and high damage in general.

I hope that throughout looking at these numbers fairly carefully I am able to challenge some conceptions about what characters are good and what characters are bad.

[details=Playrate numbers!]1. zane…2424
2. troq…1930
3. sets…1863
4. arg…1805
5. degrey…1769
6. grave…1768
7. rook…1633
8. geiger…1547
9. valerie…1365
10. oni…1293
11. gwen …1190
12. ven…1182
13. gloria…1157
14. lum…1109
15. quince…1045
16. menelker…1039
17. midori…981
18. perse…952
19. bbb…949
20. jaina…807
[/details]

And, indeed we see Zane and Troq dominate. Zane represents with 500 more matches recorded then Troq on a solid second place. The two other culprits are respectively on 5th and 8th place in representation. Setsuki is only 67 matches away from surpassing Troq, and Arargarg is sitting swell on fourth. But of course, representation is not everything, winrate is more important.

[details=Winrate numbers!]1. zane…5.6
2. troq…5.5
3. geiger…5.3
4. arg…5.3
5. lum…5.2
6. sets…5.1
7. degrey…5.1
8. bbb…5.1
9. midori…4.9
10. rook…4.9
11. oni…4.9
12. grave…4.8
13. quince…4.8
14. gloria…4.8
15. valerie…4.6
16. menelker…4.6
17. ven…4.6
18. perse…4.5
19. gwen…4.5
20… jaina…4.4
[/details]

Firstly, I’d like to point out that the balance of the game is pretty decent! Of course this doesn’t point out some numbers that we will get to later, where we will see that some matchups are pretty bad. But overall, having these numbers be so close as they are, is pretty good. You could easily see similar games end up with a higher spread of numbers, ranging into the 7-3 spectrum. It is true that only 8 out of 20 characters can sport an actual winrate - so we are 2 characters away from having a 50/50 spread, which would be ideal.

So, on the surface, does this challange or confirm our idea of the carousel meta?

  1. The 20XX: Zane and Troq are the most played characters, and they also have the highest winrates. Geiger shares the third place with Arargarg, but Arargarg has around 250 matches more played than Geiger. DeGrey has a positive winrate, but both Lum and Arargarg has a higher winrate - which to me is surprising. BBB also has a positive winrate, but is also considered one of the worst characters in Yomi, so how does that fit in? He has some of the fewest matches played, so possibly only used as a reactionary counterpick to Troq? Also a correlation between BBBs winrate and Rooks high playrate?

  2. Oddballs? Arargarg and Setsuki sports a high winrate and a high playrate, but they aren’t concidered as decent options in the carousel. Lum is the oddest oddball, which sports the 5th highest winrate, but the 14th lowest playrate - but back in the day, he was concidered a fairly good option against Troq, and due to his damage out of combat, could ride the carousel pretty good. He does have a fairly high difficulty rating of playing in general, so that might explain it a bit. Midori is also one of the few characters that has less than 1000 matches played, but is among the 10 highest winrates in the game.

  3. Profound sadness? Jaina has both the least representation and the lowest winrate. After that, Persephone and Menelker are the next on the list with the lowest numbers combined in both representation and winrate.


So, where to go next? My thinking is that we should delve into the individual matchups of the top 5 characters in both winrate and representation, and include Geiger and DeGrey, since they fall out of top 5 in one each - to see what is to find, if anything. Since it only includes 1 extra character, I’ll also include BBB into the mix.

10 Likes

Zane rules Yomi:

Zanes numbers are pretty bonkers. He has a 7.3 matchup against Jaina, and a 7.1 matchup against Menelker. Those numbers alone could be a reason enough to pick him, but it gets better. His matchups that are 6.0 or better are in decending order, Persephone, Vendetta, Gloria, Gwen, Valerie, BBB. Quince, Arargarg and Geiger all are very close to 6.0, while in, decending order, Lum, Setsuki, DeGrey, Grave and Midori are all in the 5.5 range.

So, who does he lose to?! Those who win are Onimaru, who turns the winrate of Zane into the sub 5 with 4.8, Rook who turns it into 4.3 and Troq turns it down into the 3s with 3.7.

What does these numbers tell us?

Comparing the carousel picks and the other top 4 most played characters he ends up getting only a 5.3 winrate - letting us know he is slightly more vulnerable than his overall stats tries to make us think.

[details=Zane numbers]Jaina - 7.3
Menelker - 7.1
Persephone - 6.5
Vendetta - 6.2
Gloria - 6.2
Gwen - 6.1
Valerie - 6.1
BBB - 6.0
Quince - 5.9
Arargarg - 5.9
Geiger - 5.8
Lum - 5.6
Setsuki - 5.6
DeGrey - 5.5
Grave - 5.6
Midori - 5.3
Onimaru - 4.8
Rook - 4.3
Troq - 3.7
[/details]


Which brings us to the next character on the list - Troq

With a overwhelming representation of Zane, which sports the highest playrate in the community, it is no wonder that Troq finds his way into the second place. But how is his matchups otherwise? His most decisive matchup is the second best matchup in the game (we’ll get to the best one later ;)) He wins against Gwen, 7.4. This is the only 7+ winrate Troq has however - compared to Zane.

Quince, Menelker, Gloria, Valerie, Zane and Setsuki is all within the 6+ range, but outside of Quince with 6.9, most of them are around 6.3.

After that, there is a small jump where his next matchups are only slight wins with Grave, DeGrey, Arargarg, Midori and Persephone all at 5.5 or less.

He does lose to 7 characters, compared to Zanes 3. His Rook number is 4.9, Lum numbers are 4.7, BBB at 4.6, Onimaru at 4.4, Geiger 4.3, Vendetta at 4.6 and possibly the biggest surprise with Jaina numbers at a whopping 4.1 in her favor.

Comparing carousel plus top 4 played characters he ends up at a winrate over Zane with 5.52, only losing to Geiger, and only losing as little as he does, is a big help here.

[details=Troq Numbers] Gwen - 7.4
Quince - 6.9
Menellker - 6.4
Gloria - 6.3
Valerie - 6.3
Zane - 6.3
Setsuki - 6.0
Grave - 5.5
DeGrey - 5.5
Arargarg - 5.5
Midori - 5.3
Persephone - 5.2
Rook - 4.9
Lum - 4.7
BBB - 4.6
Vendetta - 4.6
Onimaru - 4.4
Geiger - 4.3
Jaina - 4.1
[/details]


Geiger loses against Zane more than he wins against Troq. But how does he fare against the rest of the cast? Then we will check him against the carousel and the top 5 most popular ones.

The best matchup in the game is hands down Geiver vs Jaina. Far and beyond the second place between Troq and Gwen at 7.3 in Troqs favor, Geiger beats Jaina 8.5. But then again. Jaina sees the lowest amount of play, and has the lowest winrate in the game. Outside of a sudden burst of Jaina vs Troq matches happening, you won’t end up in this matchup a lot of the time.

There are no 7+ matchups, but there are a few 6+ ones. BBB at 6.7, Gloria at 6.6, Midori at 6.4 and Quince at 6.0. Worth noting that some people say that Quinces hardest matchup is against Geiger, but the numbers don’t support it.

In the 5 range, there is Valerie at 5.8, Troq at 5.7, Onimaru at 5.7, Rook at 5.6, Lum at 5.4, DeGrey at 5.3, Arargarg and Menelker at 5.1

Then we have something as rare as 2 dead even matchups in Setsuki and Vendetta.

He loses to Gwen at 4.9, Persephone at 4.4, Grave at 4.3 and Zane at 4.2.

Geiger ends up with a 5.06 winrate within the carousel + top 5 played characters meta, losing almost as much of a winrate as Zane do.

[details=Geiger Numbers] Jaina - 8.5
BBB - 6.7
Gloria - 6.6
Midori - 6.4
Quince - 6.0
Valerie - 5.8
Troq - 5.7
Onimaru - 5.7
Rook - 5.6
Lum - 5.4
DeGrey - 5.3
Arargarg - 5.1
Menelker - 5.1
Setsuki - 5.0
Vendettal - 5.0
Gwen - 4.9
Persephone - 4.4
Grave - 4.3
Zane - 4.2
[/details]


DeGrey seems to be an odd coupling in the carousel seeing as he doesn’t win any of the carousel matchups. But lets look at the matchups!

He has 3 matchups in the 6+ range, two of which are 6.9, those are against Lum and against Onimaru. He also beats Valerie a flat 6.0.

Between 5 an 6 he has a few. BBB at 5.9, Menelker and Grave at 5.7, Persephone at 5.6, Jaina at 5.4, Gwen at 5.1.

He has the most losing matchups in the carousel at a whopping 10 losing matchups. They are all slight losing matchups outside of losing to Setsuki a straight 4.0.

So, to the carousel + the top 4 most played characters leaves DeGrey on a 4.5 disadvantage. Losing 6.0 to Setsuki is the most notably important one.

[details=DeGrey numbers]Lum - 6.9
Onimaru - 6.9
Valerie - 6.0
BBB - 5.9
Menelker - 5.7
Grave - 5.7
Persephone - 5.6
Jaina - 5.4
Gwen - 5.1
Midori - 4.9
Rook - 4.9
Arargarg - 4.8
Geiger 4.7
Gloria - 4.7
Vendetta - 4.6
Troq - 4.5
Zane - 4.5
Quince - 4.5
Setsuki - 4.0
[/details]

5 Likes

So, onto non-carousel characters: Setsuki and Arargarg. I’ll hop on Setsuki first since she has a higher playrate than Arargarg.

Setsuki has quite a few good matchups, she starts out with 3 6+ matchups, starting out with my waifu Persephone at 6.6, Gwen at 6.1 and DeGrey at 6.0.

Then most of her matches are within 6 and 5: Jaina at 5.8, Midori at 5.7, BBB at 5.7, Vendetta at 5.7, Valerie at 5.6, Rook at 5.6, Grave at 5.4, Arargarg at 5.4 and Menelker at 5.1.

At a flat 5.0 there is Geiger.

Losing matchups are only 6, which is 1 less than Troq. Gloria at 4.9, Quince at 4.7, Onimaru at 4.7, Zane at 4.4, Lum at 4.1 and Troq at 4.0

So, whats up with these numbers? Lets compare her with the carousel and Arargarg. She ends up with a 4.96 score, which is half a point more than DeGrey. She does, however, lose worse to Troq than DeGrey do, has a better matchup, but only very slightly, against Geiger, but wins more against Arargarg.

[details=Setsuki Numbers] Persephone - 6.6
Gwen - 6.1
DeGrey - 6.0
Jaina - 5.8
Midori - 5.7
BBB - 5.7
Vendetta - 5.7
Valerie - 5.6
Rook - 5.6
Grave - 5.4
Arargarg - 5.4
Menelker - 5.1
Geiger - 5.0
Gloria - 4.9
Quince - 4.7
Onimaru - 4.7
Zane - 4.4
Lum - 4.1
Troq - 4.0
[/details]


So, does Arargarg have a fighting chance of being relevant outside of being popular? He sports the 3rd highest winrate in the game, so surely that has to be the case?

Argagarg starts out strong, with a 6.9 against Jaina, 6.7 against Lum, 6.5 against Onimaru, 6.5 against Midori and 6.0 against Gwen.

Against the 5ers, there is 5.9 against Rook, 5.8 against Menelker, 5.8 against Persephone, 5.7 against Grave, 5…4 against Vendetta, 5.2 against DeGrey and 5.2 against Valerie.

Straight into the losses there is 4.9 against Geiger, 4.6 against Setsuki, 4.5 against BBB, 4.5 against Troq, 4.3 against Gloria, and 4.1 against Zane.

Emberrasingly enough, he is no match for Quince, at 3.6.

Carousel + Setsuki numbers are 4.66. Half a point more than DeGrey, again, mostly due to DeGrey losing the matchup against Arargarg.

[details=Arargarg Numbers]Jaina - 6.9
Lum - 6.7
Onimaru - 6.5
Midori - 6.5
Gwen - 6-0
Rook - 5.9
Menelker - 5.8
Persephone - 5.8
Grave - 5.7
Vendetta - 5.4
DeGrey - 5.2
Valerie - 5.2
Geiger - 4.9
Setsuki - 4.6
BBB - 4.5
Troq - 4.5
Gloria - 4.3
Zane - 4.1
Quince - 3.6
[/details]

4 Likes

So, if we only set up the carousel and the top 5 played characters against eachother we can see how well they fare against eachother.

To recap the winrate on the whole
zane…5.6
troq…5.5
geiger…5.3
arg…5.3
sets…5.1
degrey…5.1

So if we put them against eachother we get this

Their winrate within the carousel
troq…5.5
zane…5.3
geiger…5.06
sets…4.96
arg…4.66
degrey…4.5

So, does any of this change the way we look at the carousel? Both Sets and Arg have equally many bad matchups as DeGrey, but both of them beat DeGrey. DeGrey does better against Troq than Setsuki does, but Arargarg does equally as good, while dealing better with Setsuki and Geiger - and losing more to Zane. But Both Setsuki and Arargarg should fit snugly into the 20XX carousel meta, especially if DeGrey is considered to be a part of it, since they both beat him.

But, are there other characters out there that deals well with this closed loop of characters? What about the two other oddballs that have positive winrates, Lum and BBB? How can they have positive winrates, but so little representation? Do they fall off the carousel crowd?

Lets look at their numbers too!

Lum seems to have some problems with the extended carousel, including Arargarg and Setsuki. But the problems where already there before Arargarg and Setsuki was included. He does indeed win against Troq, he only loses slightly against Geiger and Zane, but his worst matchup in the game comes from DeGrey, at a whopping 3.1. Having Arargarg occupy the top 5 most played characters doesn’t help either, since he loses that one 3.3. If the metagame would shift, however, Lum stands a good chance of becoming relevant quickly.

[details=Lum Numbers]Onimaru - 7.1
Gwen - 6.6
Grave - 6.3
Jaina - 6.3
Valerie - 6.2
Persephone - 6.1
Setsuki - 5.9
Quince - 5.8
BBB - 5.7
Rook - 5.6
Gloria - 5.5
Troq - 5.3
Midori - 5.0
Vendetta - 4.8
Geiger - 4.6
Zane - 4.4
Menelker - 4.0
Arargarg - 3.3
DeGrey - 3.1
[/details]

BBBs 4 worst matchups include Geiger, Zane and DeGrey, another losing matchup is Setsuki, which leaves only Troq and Arargarg at slight wins as carousel relevant characters to beat.

[details=BBB Numbers]Gloria - 6.5
Midori - 6.3
Quince - 6.0
Persephone - 5.9
Valerie - 5.8
Rook - 5.8
Gwen - 5.8
Arargarg - 5.5
Troq - 5.4
Vendetta - 5.4
Jaina - 4.8
Lum - 4.3
Onimaru - 4.3
Setsuki - 4.3
Menelker - 4.2
DeGrey - 4.1
Grave - 4.0
Zane - 4.0
Geiger - 3.3
[/details]

So, it seems like BBB and Lum doesn’t challenge the meta a lot. They both have an edge against Troq, but loses a lot to at least 1 other character in the carousel. Both of them have DeGrey as their weakest matchup, which might explain why he is considered to be among the carousel picks.

8 Likes

A new challenger appears?
For there to be a challenger to the carousel paradigm, the character needs to beat as many as possible of all of these characters. Most importantly, the character needs to be able to challenge a character and that characters counterpick. In the case of Troq, that needs to be both Troq and Geiger. In the case of Zane, that needs to be both both Zane and Troq. In the case of Geiger, that needs to be both Geiger and Zane. And wouldn’t you know it? There are a few characters that do exactly that.

I will say that there are 5 characters out there that might challange the paradigm. Two of whom should be considered carousel standard picks already, but arent - and then 3 others who might challenge the new challengers while also not having a to bad time with the existing cast.

Edit: As a huge point, it seems like I have made a mistake regarding the Troq vs Rook matchup - even tho I have crossreferenced it around 30 times throughout the weekend I wrote this, I ended up seeing that Rook had 27 vs 26 as a score vs Troq, while it was actually the other way around. I still hold my conclusions about Rook being a solid pick against the carousel.

Rook and Onimaru both have positive winrates against Zane and Troq, but they have slight losses against Geiger. Nothing to serious tho. Onimaru gets in serious trouble when he is faced with DeGrey or Arargarg, which is a problem. Rook on the other hand only has a problem with Arargarg - which is his hardest matchup in the game, outside of Gloria (BBB is his third hardest matchup). Rook deals slightly better with Geiger than Troq does, but loses to Setsuki.

Vendetta!? When I went through the list of the matchups, this is probably the most weird find that I got out of it. But having a dead even matchup against Geiger, an advantaged matchup against Troq, winning matchup against DeGrey, thats all you really need to be relevant. He loses pretty bad to Zane tho, but not as bad as Zane does to Troq.

Midori?! Am I off my rocker? Did I leave it squarely in the corner of the room? Midori doesn’t win against Troq or Zane, but he has a very close match with them, at 4.7 for each. He has a very similar spread against Troq, Zane, and Setsuki as DeGrey has, but wins against DeGrey himself. Geiger and Setsuki is more of a losing matchup than DeGrey on the other hand.

Persephone?! She is the biggest stretch out of them all, but she has the rare combination of winning against Geiger and having an even matchup against Troq - in contrast to characters mostly being good against either Troq and Zane or Zane and Geiger. This makes her a character that can deal with a spread different than most other in the carousel. She does have fairly bad matchups against Zane, Setsuki and Arargarg tho, so this one is a bit more of a risk.

I included BBB and Lum in this chart, which mostly had a negative effect on Onimaru, Midori and Persephone. - Also, the matches played are in the parenthesis.

If you only add either one of the challangers into the carousel, the numbers end up differently. If you add in only Onimaru and Rook, the Troq and Zane numbers drop, but the Arargarg and DeGrey numbers get a boost, and so forth.

So, what conclusions have been made? Well, Zane is controlling the metagame, he has the least amount of losing matchups in the game with only 3 characters winning over him. Troq controls Zane, by beating him pretty decisively, but he has 7 losing matchups, opening up a carousel to which characters that beat him can ride. I think this is the interesting part, because outside of Geiger, they include some lesser used characters in Onimaru, Rook and Vendetta. Onimaru and Rook have the advantage that they also beat Zane, but lose to Geiger. Vendetta goes even with Geiger, but lose to Zane. If the carousel is thought to “only” include Zane, Troq and Geiger, I will say that this has been refuted by the numbers.

My own inclusion of Persephone and Midori are stretches, but I do feel they have some very specific counterplay, together with both Lum and BBB. Lum has the best matchup in my suggested paradigm carousel, winning 7-3 against Onimaru, and Onimaru has the largest weaknesses within the carousel, having 2 matchups worse than 4-6 within the established carousel, and it gets even worse if Lum is part of it.

Maybe the biggest part I want people to focus on here, is that almost every character in almost every matchup has a better matchup than 4-6 against every other character. To spell it out - in a best of 7 tournament match, every character here is fully capeable of getting to 4 wins before your opponent - outside of possibly Zane vs Troq, as the most popular example.

So! I hope that the read was at least interesting, even if you don’t necessarily agree with my conclusions ^^ Feel free to expand or continue specific parts of the discussion here! :smiley:

Edit: As a huge point, it seems like I have made a mistake regarding the Troq vs Rook matchup - even tho I have crossreferenced it around 30 times throughout the weekend I wrote this, I ended up seeing that Rook had 27 vs 26 as a score vs Troq, while it was actually the other way around. I still hold my conclusions about Rook being a solid pick against the carousel.

11 Likes

I made a graph of the playrates

You can see quite the spike for Zane compared to the rest

6 Likes

First off, great posts, and I’m impressed as hell by all the work that went into putting them together. I’m super pleased that you were able to use my spreadsheet to put this together - I love this kind of digging into data and stuff.

I’ve got to take a bit of an issue with this bit here. I don’t think anyone would say that every 20XX set follows the canonical carousel. I think it’s more accurate to say that the power level of Zane, Troq, and Geiger compared to the rest of cast, the rock-paper-scissors relationship between the three of them, and the ease with which Zane and Troq can be learned are meta-defining. It’s for this reason that you see Geiger played way less often and to less overall success in the overall stats: he is simply harder to play (or say, easier to make mistakes with) than either Troq or Zane.

Relatively few players were proficient in all three characters at a tournament level of play in the Old Forums era and also played them primarily or exclusively. Still, when you know your opponent is a strong Zane player, given a variety of options with which to counterpick them, Troq is both an extremely powerful pick and one of, if not the easiest to play. Likewise against an opponent you know is good with Geiger, given a variety of options, Zane is both an extremely powerful pick and one of, if not the easiest to play.

Having “a better Zane counterpick than Troq” is probably possible for a given player, and the same goes for “a better Troq counterpick than Geiger” and “a better Geiger counterpick than Zane.” But another extremely important consideration in a standard counterpick format is the addendum of “that isn’t absolutely dumpstered by Troq/Geiger/Zane.” That second consideration is at least a material part of why you don’t see tons of switches to Jaina to beat Troq. Even if she had a 6-4 match-up against him, if your opponent has a Zane then you’re staring down the barrel of a 3-7 match-up if you win…

4 Likes

This is all true, but within the the first layer of the carousel itself, any of the Zane/Troq/Geiger picks do get “dumpstered” by eachother anyway. Zane gets the worst hand of them all, losing the most at 3.7, Geiger losing worse to Zane (4.2) than Troq to Geiger at 4.3, but if we add Rook into that mix, he only loses to Geiger at 4.4, making him the safest choice within that closed carousel, as he becomes the only character that wins 3 matchups and the 1 matchup he loses is the least bad matchup within the group.

And that is what I mean with the statement you quote. The carousel is larger than just those three characters, Onimaru fits the same bill as Rook - but has an even larger counterplay, but both Rook and Onimarus counterplay lies outside of the carousel. So if we force Rook and Onimaru into the carousel, we force the carousel to expand. Unfortunately, both Rook and Onimaru lose Arargarg, and the fact that Arargargs second worst matchup is Zane, it sort of closes the loop again (even tho Quince does better, but Quinces bad numbers against Troq, Zane and Geiger hurts him, even tho he seems pretty good against the “second stringer” characters)

I guess I am not saying you are wrong or that I disagree, but that is my explanation of the previous statement.

2 Likes

This is amazing analysis of the carousel. Thanks for taking the time to do this. What would be cool is an analysis of the percentage of their total games a given character faces other specific characters. It could illuminate how people pick a character when counter picking. Basically which match-ups are the most common played and how that ties into the carousel.

I also don’t know if it is possible, as I don’t think it’s recorded, but it would be interesting to see what match-ups are prevalent in the first round (double blind pick) compared to subsequent rounds. Who are the most popular blind pick characters? However, I don’t think @mysticjuicer’s sheet records that data.

1 Like

Kind of correct - I record matches in the spreadsheet in the order they’re reported, so the first recorded match-up in a set will be the first line I put in the spreadsheet, but there’s no way to automatically pull only those matches out of the data. Someone would have to pull that together manually.

See analysis below.

1 Like

Here are the top match-ups which are in the top 10% of frequency of match-ups played across all recorded tournament events since I started the spreadsheet, including the 19XX tournaments.

Here they are in order of popularity, and with the MU numbers shown.

265 - Troq v Zane (63-37)
214 - Setsuki v Troq (40-60)
208 - DeGrey v Zane (45-55)
202 - Grave v Zane (44-56)
195 - Setsuki v Zane (44-56)
185 - Geiger v Troq (57-43)
173 - Geiger v Zane (42-58)
173 - Grave v Argagarg (43-57)
169 - Gloria v Zane (38-62)
154 - Rook v BBB (42-58)
142 - Setsuki v DeGrey (60-40)
142 - Argagarg v Gloria (43-57)
139 - DeGrey v Troq (45-55)
127 - Rook v Geiger (44-56)
126 - Grave v DeGrey (43-57)
126 - Menelker v Zane (29-71)
125 - Onimaru v Troq (56-44)
124 - Onimaru v Zane (52-48)
123 - Rook v Argagarg (41-59)
123 - Rook v Zane (57-43)

Characters ranked by their frequency of appearance in the MUs above:

9 Zane
5 Troq
4 DeGrey / Rook
3 Setsuki / Grave / Geiger / Argagarg
2 Gloria / Onimaru
1 BBB / Menelker

3 Likes

Here are the same numbers for 19XX.

And the top 10% MUs in order of popularity. Note, I’ve taken MU% from the “all tournaments” chart, as the overall percentage of the match-up doesn’t care whether it comes from 20XX or 19XX, and the 19XX numbers are smaller, and more prone to small sample size issues.

52 - Setsuki v Quince (47-53)
21 - Onimaru v Menelker (62-38)
21 - Setsuki v Gloria (49-51)
21 - Grave v Setsuki (46-54)
18 - Grave v Argagarg (43-57)
17 - Valerie v Argargarg (48-52)
17 - Midori v Gloria (67-33)
16 - Valerie v Gwen (52-48)
16 - Grave v Menelker (48-52)
15 - Argagarg v Gloria (43-57)
13 - Setsuki v Rook (56-44)
13 - Setsuki v Argagarg (54-46)
13 - Rook v Gloria (40-60)
13 - Argagarg v Onimaru (65-35)
13 - Argargarg v Persephone (58-42)
12 - Setsuki v Valerie (56-44)
12 - Midori v Setsuki (43-57)
12 - Grave v Midori (48-52)
11 - Midori v Menelker (51-49)
11 - Midori v Persephone (62-38)
11- Argagarg v Vendetta (54-46)

Characters ranked by their frequency of appearance in the MUs above:

7 Setsuki / Argagarg
5 Midori
4 Gloria / Grave
3 Menelker / Valerie
2 Onimaru / Rook / Persephone
1 Quince / Gwen / Vendetta

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Thanks for that, @mysticjuicer!

It definitely seems that carousel confirmed! The top match-up is Troq and Zane, and Geiger’s two most common opponents are Troq and Zane. Setsuki and DeGrey appear in some of the top slots as well, but mostly against the three carousel characters.

Does this mean, however, that Zane is not that great a pick, if his most common match up is his worst? Or is it offset by having advantage on his other most common match-ups. Maybe when I get home I’ll spend some time with that table working out percentages of common opponents for a given character.

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It’s a counterpick world out there.

Depends entirely on how likely a given opponent is to play Troq (or another counterpick) in the blind-pick stage. It’s important to distinguish between “what is likely, historically” and “what is likely against a specific opponent with limited time to play and learn the game.” If you’re playing me in a 20XX format, Zane is a terrible pick because your highest odds are I’ll pick either Troq or Onimaru against you. If you’re playing some new player, Zane is a very safe pick, because he will kill you if you don’t know what you’re doing, and also the new player might not have a good Troq (or a Troq at all). If you’re playing someone who never plays Troq, then Zane is probably fine.

Given the success of Zane players at the tournament level at the time that deluks/ratxt and other extremely strong Troq players were entering tournaments, Zane is still very much a great pick.

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So much truth in that post.

I, however, still want to infer or project that if you are playing against someone who rutinely plays the carousel, which is a fair amount of tournament players - having a Rook or an Onimaru is a fairly strong counterplay to that type of player. Onimaru has the strongest counterplay, but Arargarg has a strong matchup against both Rook and Onimaru.

But then, counterpick Arargarg with Quince for the 3rd and final set! (If you are playing a Best of 3 that is)

I think that within the posts in this topic there are a few arguments that shorter sets are healthy for the competative game, due to the fact that the bottom line is that every character absolutely can win 3 matches in a best of 10, having shorter sets makes it more likely that you can stick with a character to win a losing matchup.

Edit: The idea being that we could end up seeing a larger variety of characters, since you don’t have to win a Bo7 with a character that has a losing matchup.

I am sure I cross-referenced the Rook Troq matchup 30 times over the weekend, but now the chart say Troq wins it 27/26. So I have been strictly incorrect in my analysis. It is still a winnable matchup tho, as it is only 2 games off being winnable.

I’d love to believe that Rook has a better MU against Geiger than Troq but I’m not convinced. So take the above with an extreme grain of salt. That said, I also think Onimaru is a legitimate Geiger counterpick, and the historical results just don’t reflect that either. Oni is definitely an excellent pick against a Troq/Zane/Geiger player.

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I doubt that too, but I believe he is a solid pick against Troq and Zane, and as you say, there are fewer Geiger players out there. Rook also has a lot better matchup against DeGrey and Arargarg as Onimaru counterplay. So I’d only argue that Rook can step in as a substitute for Geiger, where the trade off is that you are better off against Zane, and slightly worse off against Troq.

I emphatically disagree that Rook is a good pick against Argagarg, especially compared to Troq. And Troq does very well against DeGrey too. Maybe maybe slightly worse than Rook.

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Anyway, at this point I think we’re arguing personal carousels. I think your original point stands: there are picks outside the top 3 that play an important role and do well in the meta. I just think there is a valid response that says “but the top 2 are the top 2 and you had better have a response if you want to do well in 20XX standard CP tournaments.”

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