Week 4 Summary:
Another week done, another week closer to Division C finishing. And as the division furthest along in the season, 66.67% of games are completed, but about half of points up in the air the race for C has formed. About 92.2% of 1v1 games, 40% of 2v2 games, and 30% of 3v3 games have finished. At this pace, Division C should finish months ahead divisions A and B. I guess we will have more time to practice for next season?
But onto the update!
The only clan movers this week is BIA passing Hydra as both clan continue their wobble back and forth around each other. The race is tight, (Note: LEA is surrendering a Great Lakes game to Hydra which will raise Hydra to 65 points today) points, max points, win rate are all effectively tied. Now, you may ask why do I care about Hydra and BIA? Well no one else in this clan is making it interesting so I have absolutely nothing to work with here. Is it a flaw that the promotion and relegation spots were very obvious who would get them and that no one is challenging them? Perhaps. But I have nothing else to talk about right now then to be a little selfish and talk about Hydra for awhile.
So the gap between 2nd and 3rd widened this week as VS and M'Hunters continued to dominant the division. Division C clearly contains few clans that belong here. VS and M'Hunters are passing through, LEA should be Division E, CORP, Hydra and BIA all belong here. 3 out of 6 (its supposed to be 7), that is rather sad. And is why the CLOT ladder for Clan League can't come soon enough. Essentially the ladder will let VS and M'Hunters move away from clans that can't compete with them, and its allows LEA to sink to their rightful rank rather then this slow decline they have going on.
So maybe I should talk about the actual division results now. M'Hunters (3-1) and VS (4-1) this had the best results by far, followed by typical middling by positive results for BIA (6-4) and Hydra (3-2). CORP which continues a negative win rate (3-5) as the boots this season are wrapping up, and LEA (0-6) continues losing games for 12 straight days. Maybe LEA can get 25 points this season. That's a strong maybe.
Overall, the win rate graph below you can see trends have emerged that seem to suggest that how clans performed in 1v1s are largely holding up in team games. Clan are wobbling only a few percentage points up or down, back and forth. Instead of #Division B-oring, C has turned into the boring, predictable division.
Great Expanse's Ramblings:
Now, I'm going to end this talking about Hydra and not act as scorekeeper for a bit. There is legitimate criticism of Hydra that the clan isn't performing and that they should be stronger and competing more with other clans this season. I have defended Hydra to several people and I want to publicly explain things in one large post so everyone understands.
There has been questions about our lineup and why some people were included or not picked. The most frequent example used is why HotBeachBum isn't playing ME SR. This one I feel like I made the right call on. HotBeachBum never seemed interested in playing in Clan League. His focus is on the 1v1 ladder. A Hydra tournament he played in on MME SR, a template he knows how to play exceptionally well, was rather lackluster. So, people say I
had to put him on ME SR, but would he have put in the effort for Clan League like for the 1v1 ladder? Maybe not. The Clan League lineup is about putting players I can trust to win games. So ppface, a player I trusted to compete, seemed like the logical choice over HotBeachBum. Look at CORP, Quicksand, another good MME SR player, was put on ME SR and was booted in 2 games. You really only should put players you know and trust in Clan League. Other errors in the lineup like HankyPinky on Gurioma I accept that as my fault.
Next there is a view that with Hydra merging Illuminati and AWF that we should have been doubly strong as our D1 and D2 results. But the people are missing the point of the merger, Illuminati and AWF were exceptionally weak after Clan League ended, why else would we merge? It is because both clans were hemorrhaged talent towards the end and in between seasons. So, saying Illuminati + AWF = unstoppable force isn't correct. Months were needed to set up the clan and get things moving. If Clan League happened later, Hydra would have had the time to prepare better. If you want an analogy for this, look at 101st. If Clan League started when I predicted in March 101st was still rebuilding at that time and probably would be in a weaker state season 8 then they currently are. I'm only arguing that timing wasn't great this season for Hydra which sucks and we're living with the consequences.
Obviously there were errors in the Hydra lineup where people should go, getting them ready, and I own that problem. This is only my second time making a lineup and I'm still inexperienced with it. And it was only my first time making a lineup for Hydra. Consider Hydra a new clan, only we are Division C, not E. Growing pains are to be expected.
I hope I didn't bore you with my ramblings.
Edited 7/14/2016 21:31:39
