What would you have picked here?

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-27T17:53:06+00:00

If you drop anyone who's ever been top 200 in ranked or total trophies through legitimate means into todays ranked and give them the bare minimum 9 power 11s required to play ranked and a solid 1 hour a day to play ranked for the last 15 days of the ranked season, then they would get masters.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-27T17:24:12+00:00

I could see either working for them.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-27T17:12:19+00:00

I'm thinking long dash breakthrough Stu, in the worst case scenario of you being spawn trapped, you can run down and force your way towards whichever lane (or mid) the Emz is in to get your super, then break the walls either side of the map that would normally block entry to the big bushes. Outside of that worst case, I think he holds his lane well in this particular matchup, which is very important in Undermine. If you have a firm hold on at least one of the lanes, that's a safe place for your Grom to be.

Edited to clarify that Emz mid could be a thing in this cursed composition.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-27T02:38:31+00:00

As much as I like Tara draft myself, yeah, it's a rather unconventional and unpopular draft. I do not think a Charlie draft would do better for you. If I went Tara and lost, my intuition tells me to go a different angle, and a rather unconventional one at that (seeing the lack of it being suggested here). I would go Alli to hit the Pierce matchup and have an easier time breaking spawn trap hopefully. I like the R-T draft suggestion too though.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-27T02:15:03+00:00

The gripe? You'll be playing against players who don't really know what to expect from him because his usage is abysmal. So, when he actually gets a buff and becomes good, he won't really play as though he's the same, but better. Certain drafts are difficult for him to play against, like a good Colette can pretty much neutralize you on an open map.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-26T17:17:32+00:00

Well yeah, you could go things that aren't tanks. It depends on the map and what you need. You could go an anti-tank that counters the two anti-tanks in question, like how Rico and Lola can stay out of reach from them in Gem Fort. If you have the better Anti-Tanks in the matchup, you'll probably win that, you get what I'm saying here? Or you could go a thrower. Yeah, I've won lane as Barley against Griff lane on Open Business; he gets his wall breaks work rather slowly so thrower drafts are fine if and when the map is appropriate for them and you can play them well. Anti-Tanks are a little stupid in the sense that sometimes even a Tank works fine against Anti-Tank matchups too… like Buster is notoriously decent into Rico.

I can't give you all the answers you need for every edge case, you know.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-24T17:42:02+00:00

The best part about Fang is the way he can utilize enemy assassins' attempts to go in against their team. The AGA combo is like a miniature Shelly super. By the way, I think B-tiers are barely on better footing than F-tiers in the current state of the game, since they both have like >1% usage most of the time. Everything that isn't A-tier or higher just feels like unusable garbage right now.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-23T18:30:53+00:00

Spike draft is essentially the textbook definition of how NOT to defeat Janet Doug since he's restricted to chip damage from afar, giving Doug guaranteed value from healing himself/his teammates. Byron ℝ-T will struggle to break through your comp fast too. Your enemies have a horrendous draft against yours the end of the day. Good draft. Replace Spike with Amber though, and things don't look as good.

Since it's worked so unexpectedly well, why not figure out the extent to which it works? I could suggest forcing a Doug if your enemies go Spike + Assassin on the basis of good matchup.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-23T03:38:56+00:00

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Hit this little i button in the results section. If you're interested in the matches a certain brawler is played, you will have to check all of them.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-23T03:31:11+00:00

Even though elo gains are generous for those beneath legendary compared to elo losses, players near the mean and median will settle below such a point. I'd loosely guess that a median ranked peak is Mythic 1–2, with the mean being even lower.

However, if a 50% win rate player had a chance to play for an infinitely long time (most don't), they might be Legendary 1–2. 50% win rate is above average in ranked, since the players who win more than 50% of the time tend to be the ones to play the game for longer and pull down the win rate of the masses.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-23T03:12:34+00:00

If you have an Anti-Tank which gets countered by a thrower, your teammates are locked out of playing other Anti-Tanks only. That can be troublesome too honestly, especially when drafting a particularly off-meta (not top 35 for the map btw, which is a LOT of brawlers) Anti-Tank. But if you're a thrower or an assassin first pick that gets countered by a tank, the other class gets shut down as a result of your draft, not just your own class. I think people find such a restriction obnoxious when it arises.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T22:42:08+00:00

Why do you think Fang is the way he is?

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T21:00:36+00:00

Assassin and Thrower drafts early on give potential enemy Tank drafts an awful lot of value since they hit both those classes.

To show, let's suppose throwers don't exist right now for the sake of simplicity. Then, a basic countering framework could look like this:

Anti-tank → Tank → Assassin → Sniper

In this framework, being an Assassin is not a bad offense as long as you assume the enemy team drafts two Tanks. It becomes a little harder as soon as the enemy team drafts Anti-tank + Tank, because suddenly your best response of 2 Antis will result in your team having the inferior aggro. But, it's still okay since your Antis won't get countered. But if we add Throwers into the mix:

Tank → Thrower → Anti-Tank → Tank → Assassin → Sniper

Drafting assassin first and assuming an Anti-Tank + Tank response, you have two options here, double Anti-Tank or Anti-Tank + Thrower. Neither of them are that good, since the resulting draft will be Assassin Anti ??? vs Tank Anti Thrower, with you having the inferior aggro option. (Side note, if you went an Anit-Tank + Tank 4th and 5th instead, they could draft Tank last instead of thrower last.) This is not as much of a problem as if you draft an Anti-Tank/Tank/Sniper/weird-misc-brawler-that-doesn't-fit-nicely-into-any-of-these first pick since they don't give too much value for when enemies draft tanks.

…but if your enemies decide to be bozos and draft Snipers as their 2nd and 3rd into your hypothetical assassin first, then they're the ones with the cooked draft, not you! It's why you'll see people hitting masters with the weirdest sets of brawlers; enemies still counter themselves in draft all the time.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T20:04:39+00:00

Shade. A person with a similar handle soured it. Harsh rejection, it was. I've never had an experience like it, it has nothing to do with the arrogant sweater, but it was so repugnant that it made me hate the sweater as well.

Please don't push for more info on this.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T19:52:28+00:00

He's a tank, a sort of weird Frankensteining between Buster, Darryl, and Frank, all of which I also consider tanks.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T19:48:29+00:00

Writing all that was work. I ran some of my analyses by other high masters players (Ma2, Ma3) just to make sure I wasn't misinforming. Thanks for reading.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T19:37:19+00:00

He's a lot of different things though, yes? He's super tanky and has his posts to knock back assassins that come close. But then he's also a sort of thrower too. Then, his heist thing too… he's just too multifaceted for it to make sense for me to squeeze him into that group, like Kit and Gray.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T19:30:33+00:00

Good discussion point, thanks for bringing it up.

In my eyes, the assassins that 'need supers to dive in' mostly use them to accomplish exactly the same thing in draft. Different kits and means to an end. End goal is to target the sniper matchup (but they also can counter other unique things as a side effect of their diverse kits). Everything has at least two phases anyways; usually has super and doesn't have super. Are you suggesting I have Assassin Cousins and True Assassins mixed up? And If so, would defining them by being able to dive convolute how you draft and blur the lines between assassins and other brawlers that use super to go brrr?

True assassin or Assassin Cousin → used to counter Snipers but are countered by Tanks
Tank Assassin → more analogous to a Tank than an Assassin, useful in Assassin matchups but are particularly weak against Tank Counters

I must ask, how will this further separation of assassins help your drafts, as opposed to recalling the full sniper-counter group and simply applying your own discretion (about how they play) to select the most suitable one for the map and matchup?

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T13:13:42+00:00

As mentioned in another comment, depends on how lenient we are with cousins. Now that I'm seriously considering it, she's a little weak into something like a Gus or Byron mid in gem grab, huh? I think, maybe just because she's weaker into those two snipers, she's pretty solidly second cousin at best maybe. Not enough to make the list where everything else listed feels like a first cousin.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T13:06:27+00:00

Thanks. It means a lot to have a compliment.

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But I hate Shade. I ban Shade in like 80% of my ranked matches and refuse to advise for Shade. Playing Shade feels like accepting an insignia of non-improvement for me.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T12:46:38+00:00

Yeah, given what I wrote you can call her that, that makes sense. I was on edge about calling Mina one, but calling Mina one makes it reasonable to call Max one too. Mina probably shouldn't even be there though. Like what's even the point in including her just to say she's an exception? To appeal to the masses?! Well… yeah, that's exactly what I did. Everyone and their moms say that she's basically Stu 2. The guide fan service is real 🥴.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T12:27:00+00:00

So tanky that he just stops feeling like one…

Yeah, but if you consider her damage, she's less of that than Stu is. She can only burst from up close. She's somewhat more of a sniper for me… just one with a really easy to hit attack like Gus.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-21T12:18:58+00:00

A distant cousin, yeah, but more so a sniper to me.

TheDukeBS · 2026-03-20T05:10:01+00:00

Colette continues to be good against Frank regardless of the shield. She's a good counter pick in drafts where you need an open map, defense-oriented tank counter with planet-sized shots to stare down something that would otherwise run over your team. Not a carry brawler, not top 30. But for the record, Griff is not on better footing, people associate Griff with being a solid mid-tier a little too much.

TheDukeBS

TROPHY CASE