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Post by mikeEB on Jul 23, 2011 22:20:47 GMT -5
Loyus, I was keeping track of how games were being won during the 2009 tournament. Para-FoD ended 18 out of 77 finished games, with other FoD attacks ending 8 additional games. 47 games were lost due to damage; in about half of those, 23, was an unanswered monster decisive. A majority of games, 41/77, were not decided by either ParaFod or monsters. In summary, Para does not end all games. ( slarty.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=2009tourney&thread=689&page=15#10420 )
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loyus
Ronin Warlock
Posts: 20
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Post by loyus on Jul 24, 2011 9:34:53 GMT -5
In essence, your data confirmed what I just said:
- Finger of Death decided 37% of games. This is a huge percentage, which proves it is an uber dominating spell.
You can read your data this way : - there are about 39 unique spells in this game - 20 have the ability to kill an opponent (incl. permanency/magic mirror) - 17 if we remove magic missile/summon gob/dagger for the sake of the argument - conclusion: 1 spell among 17 directly decides 37% of the wins.
Toss in the shadowcasting that your stats don't include and you see that FoD has a disproportional impact. For a newbie this is counter-intuitive because FoD appears to be a very hard spell to pull, with too much gestures. If you put this statistic in the spellbook (37% of serious games are won with FoD), they would be surprised at first.
Indeed, FoD suggests it was designed to stretch this ratio to the maximum: difficulty to pull/harm potential. Instead, the spell is so adaptable and easy to pull that it is often threatening after 2 gestures. Not to talk about ladder games and the bets you just cannot take if you don't want to risk death.
According to your stats, 70% of the winning FoDs were teamed with paralysis. What does it mean?
Again, we can have a different conclusion looking at the same data: the most used attack to win games is ParaFoD. That's nearly a fact according to your data. Most games were won with FoD, among which the vast majority of them were won with ParaFoD (direct damage is only a broad category containing many spells, while FoD and para are single spells). It's fair to assume this is correct.
As for the Direct Damage category, I don't think your data is precise enough to draw conclusions. You didn't seem to take into account ParaMonster, which is a deadly strategy as well. It certainly seems that paralysis would be increasing its % as well. Your stats seem focused on the finisher, but what happened before?
Either way, I'd be interested to see the prevalence of DP/PSD-/PSF- gestures. This was the main point of my post, which doesn't seem to be refuted if I take a look at a couple of top games going on right now.
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Post by mikeEB on Jul 24, 2011 16:08:07 GMT -5
According to your stats, 70% of the winning FoDs were teamed with paralysis. What does it mean? In this case, it largely means that para-less FoD variations are/were out of style. So few people bother to learn TaliFoD properly that a lot of its setups as well as the best defenses seem to be 'lost'. (this goes for Permanency too) Bad math. Most games were won without FoD, a significant fraction of which weren't Para-FoD. Of the various Para-Fod wins, a number of them were para-monster-FoD attacks that would have been ineffective without the monster. It's impossible in general to figure out which single spell caused a direct-damage win because they require several spells. Even when a monster does all the damage, it takes several other threats to keep the monster alive and swinging. ParaMonster is a subset of Monster, which is a minority of direct damage kills. It's safe to say that 20 or fewer games were lost to para-monster independently of para-FoD.
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loyus
Ronin Warlock
Posts: 20
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Post by loyus on Jul 24, 2011 19:33:33 GMT -5
You're right. I am too. We're not talking about the same universe (to speak like a statistician). Overall, the majority of games aren't won with FoD. Overall, the most used attack is FoD. Both statements can be true (and usually are):
If FoD is used 37% of the time to win games and no other spell has a bigger share, it's still the most popular attack (that's my wording). You can argue that we don't have enough data to claim it like you just did by inserting some additional details, I'll tell you to do a better job next time ;D
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Post by saypin on Jul 24, 2011 23:22:28 GMT -5
Don't you think that more FoD's came because some warlocks cannot properly defend it?
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Post by salvor on Jul 25, 2011 6:57:30 GMT -5
Since I'm the person who won ALL HIS 8 SUCCESFULL GAMES by FoD(5paraFoD 1timestop 1Tali and one amnesia-FoD) I'll say several words)))
ParaFoD is used just as a finshing move or when your opponent has worse position(at least by me and most 1800+ players) and in second case there are other options instead of paraFoD but current players got used to playing FoD in such positions.
I mean that typicall game which ends with paraFoD looks like
Players are playing, playing, then one gets too defensive with WW/PP or clap-dispell and got punished by paraFoD (note that FoD is by design the "best" countermeasure to shotgun-counterspelling tactic).
18 of 77 is just a 23% of paraFoD. And don't forget that paraFoD is indead a FINISHING move after getting some advantage (just most players don't see that there WAS an advantage in that position and blame paraFoD for lose).
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Post by ellipsis on Jul 25, 2011 13:33:53 GMT -5
For Loyus, Nawglan's archive contains all the aggregated information about how often spells like amnesia, charm, and summon ogre get used compared to other spells, but I think the archive is down right now (and has been for a while), which is unfortunate. If I remember correctly, I actually turned out to cast paralysis slightly more often than average, which I considered ironic at the time. Presumably, since I have a "no-long-para-chains" personal rule, that meant that I was instead more prone to throw mini-chains of paralysis (one or two consecutive casts) than other players.
Anyway, I'm obviously onboard the "DP, PS, and FF weaves make the game more stale" train, but I don't think it comes through so obviously in the numbers, because they don't reflect the personality of how these weaves are used. They're the clear default for most players (and this does often include me, admittedly), but when push comes to shove and you get to a high-tension situation in a high level battle players suddenly start getting more creative, and in my experience in the tournament last year, they started using less predictable weaves.
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Post by Dubber on Jul 25, 2011 14:53:50 GMT -5
Instead of "choosing not to parachain" think in terms of "use every available spell effectively."
Open with non-standard (yet tactically sound) openings and look ahead for opportunities to bring in a spell you have rarely used. Early on in Nawglan's Archive there were only two or three players who had actually used every spell in the spellbook more than 10 times each.
(Taliesin & I used them all alot, then there were the Old Masters who experimented effectively with everything but had their "usual" subsets, then there was everyone who sort of stuck to their own favored spells)
For what it's worth, when a player gets in a rut and starts going to a standard subset of spells they get easier to beat. I think I'm going to start keeping the Spell Reference page open all the time again, like I used to, because that really helps (me) to use the less-frequently used spells.
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