FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Apr 25, 2017 - 23:49

licker wrote:

So, why not Pro all menz then?

Why not essentialize all arguments?

You know the reason - the utility of Pro is conditional to the point you will absolutely not find optimal active or passive use of the skill relative to other options when taken en masse.

Like I said up thread, I've never regretted taking Pro on AG5 Vamps simply because they are the most active players on the pitch whenever I have them and if you go on a longish dice run, it's nice bit of leeway to have.

Why not take more RRs and just be more cognizant of how I use them and play a better turn order to mitigate risk? Cause that presupposes me upping my coaching ability far ahead of how Vamps skill.

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Apr 25, 2017 - 23:51

Quinn_Huck wrote:

I've seen kingvan play, and he seems to try to generate maximum pressure until the cage cracks without taking crazy risks. His pro rerolls help him do that. Every BL or Gaze roll that succeeds due to pro, simply adds a little bit extra pressure and opens up the opportunity to add some more with the next move. And on, and on, and on. The more pressure, the more likely the opponent is to fail something critical. I think that's what makes him such a successful vampire coach (and no, I certainly do not have the skills to play that way).

You can either embrace the dice or shun them. Neither way is correct, it's all in the coaching output of your approach.

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Apr 25, 2017 - 23:57

mrt1212 wrote:

licker wrote:

So, why not Pro all menz then?

Why not essentialize all arguments?

You know the reason - the utility of Pro is conditional to the point you will absolutely not find optimal active or passive use of the skill relative to other options when taken en masse.

But almost no player outside of Vampires and BGs ever take pro. By your own argument below, your most active player (be that a war dancer or a chaos warrior) should at least consider it because they are taking actions requiring dice every turn. And outside of dodge (but there is still tackle) you may want or need to reroll something they do anyway.

Yet no one seriously argues that pro is an important skill selection for any player other than Vampires. But the logic is ultimately not any different.

mrt1212 wrote:

Like I said up thread, I've never regretted taking Pro on AG5 Vamps simply because they are the most active players on the pitch whenever I have them and if you go on a longish dice run, it's nice bit of leeway to have.

Why not take more RRs and just be more cognizant of how I use them and play a better turn order to mitigate risk? Cause that presupposes me upping my coaching ability far ahead of how Vamps skill.

So the argument is that pro allows you to not have to improve your game?

Wink

Well yes, I've discussed this idea on other topics elsewhere, about how certain builds and play styles essentially limit certain players ability to improve. And there's nothing wrong with finding whatever level you are happy with and just sticking with that.

However, as goo noted elsewhere, if someone is asking for help (though this Pro talk is a tangent) then the idea is that they are trying to improve their game. So advice which says, 'you won't get any better, but here's a crutch which allows you to stay where you are' doesn't seem remotely helpful.

If someone doesn't care about improving their ability to win games then why ask for help (gathering opinions is the same as asking)? Why not just make a thread in General which says 'hey, I don't care about winning, but damn I'm having a lot of fun with my pass block slann team!'?

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 00:01

mrt1212 wrote:

Quinn_Huck wrote:

I've seen kingvan play, and he seems to try to generate maximum pressure until the cage cracks without taking crazy risks. His pro rerolls help him do that. Every BL or Gaze roll that succeeds due to pro, simply adds a little bit extra pressure and opens up the opportunity to add some more with the next move. And on, and on, and on. The more pressure, the more likely the opponent is to fail something critical. I think that's what makes him such a successful vampire coach (and no, I certainly do not have the skills to play that way).

You can either embrace the dice or shun them. Neither way is correct, it's all in the coaching output of your approach.

This is certainly true. Different coaches are better with different styles. Some elf coaches will try to leap and steal the ball every turn, mark you up and force you to make tackleless blocks onto blodgers.

Some will dodge out and screen and wait and wait. Neither tactic is defacto wrong (though sometimes one is better than the other depending on matchup and game state).

You can argue about the variance in either, and show that when you go for an aggressive marking strategy you will likely either get blown off the pitch due to suffering too many extra blocks, or your opponent will roll a lot of pushes, lose the position, and you will win a lot of 3-1 or 3-0 games.

Your comfort level and ability determine how well you can perform either though. But general advice to players who are new or inexperienced will usually lean towards the tactic which carries less variance. Because that one is 'easier' to understand and to execute.

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 00:23

licker wrote:

mrt1212 wrote:

licker wrote:

So, why not Pro all menz then?

Why not essentialize all arguments?

You know the reason - the utility of Pro is conditional to the point you will absolutely not find optimal active or passive use of the skill relative to other options when taken en masse.

But almost no player outside of Vampires and BGs ever take pro. By your own argument below, your most active player (be that a war dancer or a chaos warrior) should at least consider it because they are taking actions requiring dice every turn. And outside of dodge (but there is still tackle) you may want or need to reroll something they do anyway.

Yet no one seriously argues that pro is an important skill selection for any player other than Vampires. But the logic is ultimately not any different.

mrt1212 wrote:

Like I said up thread, I've never regretted taking Pro on AG5 Vamps simply because they are the most active players on the pitch whenever I have them and if you go on a longish dice run, it's nice bit of leeway to have.

Why not take more RRs and just be more cognizant of how I use them and play a better turn order to mitigate risk? Cause that presupposes me upping my coaching ability far ahead of how Vamps skill.

So the argument is that pro allows you to not have to improve your game?

Wink

Well yes, I've discussed this idea on other topics elsewhere, about how certain builds and play styles essentially limit certain players ability to improve. And there's nothing wrong with finding whatever level you are happy with and just sticking with that.

However, as goo noted elsewhere, if someone is asking for help (though this Pro talk is a tangent) then the idea is that they are trying to improve their game. So advice which says, 'you won't get any better, but here's a crutch which allows you to stay where you are' doesn't seem remotely helpful.

If someone doesn't care about improving their ability to win games then why ask for help (gathering opinions is the same as asking)? Why not just make a thread in General which says 'hey, I don't care about winning, but damn I'm having a lot of fun with my pass block slann team!'?

For the most part I dont see enough concrete advice I would qualify as useful to neophytes to get them to play better. Certainly I dont think most skill selection advice nudges coaches to that end outside of providing a flexible enough framework for a coach to avoid having gaping holes on their roster.

I also have an alternative viewpoint on what sub-optimal or conditional utility skills can do for coaching improvement - mostly that you can to some degree improve your game playing with suboptimal skills en masse on a specific team type which get you thinking in more creative ways where you've previously leaned on 'optimal skills' to carry the load for you. When you insert those skills back into the team repitoire you are still thinking in terms of having to get creative and being patient but you have a larger safety net and more juice on the players to make things go.

But you have to understand some basics of the game before you start recursively tearing down everything to the studs and building a more fantastic house.

I also think you're still essentializing arguments. The utility of skill synergy on a CW and a Wardancer are different than that on a Vampire. It's not faulty logic to identify differences and similarities between player types and determine where potential skills can benefit or mitigate aspects of the player. You don't really believe that players are just really cosmetically different and that a CW and Wardancer and Vampire are way more similar than different in how they function individually and respective to their teams, do you?

Pro on Vampires boils down to making stick saves on players who can be sent off if they fail, can take another player off if they fail, and can consequently cause a turnover if they fail any dice integral action and don't feed after failing BL. You can't blithely ignore that CWs and Wardancers don't have this action on their teams and then come forth and say "well why not Pro on any player with high utility". Different things are sometimes different enough that a cross categorical analogy falls flat.

With that said, I don't think Pro on Vamps is one of those defining things that sorts you into successful or unsuccessful coaches. We see both approaches work but the question becomes "why does it function for him or her and not me?"

And nobody is going to like this but part of it is informed intuition, something you either have inherently or have to build through experience. There aren't shortcuts to becoming better as a coach even if there are to winning more games.

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 00:43

mrt1212 wrote:

For the most part I dont see enough concrete advice I would qualify as useful to neophytes to get them to play better. Certainly I dont think moat skill selection advice nudges coaches to that end outside of providing a flexible enough framework for a coach to avoid having gaping holes on their roster.

Pro is trash is pretty concrete though Wink

But the point you made about Pro and what it does for you is the issue I think. Clearly you don't just 'get better' from taking some poll on what skill to pick.

But taking a certain kind of build for a team can lead to certain kinds of play styles being preferred, and if you are not able to manage those play styles then the build is a 'bad' one for you. Or, as I think, a bad one from a general information point of view.

Legend coaches employing 'different' builds is not the starting point for improving play typically.

According to the coach rank lists I'm the best Nurgle coach on FUMBBL for example (even I don't think this is true), but I build my Nurgle teams differently than a lot of other successful Nurgle coaches I see. Do I recommend my preferences? Not really actually, but they work well for me because I don't always play Nurgle the way most people will probably have the most success with Nurgle.

My other favorite team, CD, is another example. I build them differently than a lot of advice goes. And I can be wildly successful with it, but I appreciate fully how for many people using the bull as your ball carrier is a bad idea. You have to reach a certain ability level (or experience level) to appreciate why that is advantageous, and even then, you still have to remember that you can't just 'always' use the bull because not all situations are the same (fricking rain...).

How does this relate back to Pro and Vampires? Again, legend coaches can do things a certain way that may not be ideal for everyone else, because they know all the other tricks already.

Trying to just copy their build without really understanding how it works isn't helpful at all. You see this all the time in CCGs, where some net deck takes off, but after a bit all the copycats wonder why they can't just zoom off dozens of wins in a row like the best players can.

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 00:45

Goddamnit licker, I posted that tidbit from my phone and then edited in a huge chunk that basically has us trading rephrases of the same thought.

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 00:51

lol...

I was wondering what happened.

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 00:54

licker wrote:

mrt1212 wrote:

Quinn_Huck wrote:

I've seen kingvan play, and he seems to try to generate maximum pressure until the cage cracks without taking crazy risks. His pro rerolls help him do that. Every BL or Gaze roll that succeeds due to pro, simply adds a little bit extra pressure and opens up the opportunity to add some more with the next move. And on, and on, and on. The more pressure, the more likely the opponent is to fail something critical. I think that's what makes him such a successful vampire coach (and no, I certainly do not have the skills to play that way).

You can either embrace the dice or shun them. Neither way is correct, it's all in the coaching output of your approach.

This is certainly true. Different coaches are better with different styles. Some elf coaches will try to leap and steal the ball every turn, mark you up and force you to make tackleless blocks onto blodgers.

Some will dodge out and screen and wait and wait. Neither tactic is defacto wrong (though sometimes one is better than the other depending on matchup and game state).

You can argue about the variance in either, and show that when you go for an aggressive marking strategy you will likely either get blown off the pitch due to suffering too many extra blocks, or your opponent will roll a lot of pushes, lose the position, and you will win a lot of 3-1 or 3-0 games.

Your comfort level and ability determine how well you can perform either though. But general advice to players who are new or inexperienced will usually lean towards the tactic which carries less variance. Because that one is 'easier' to understand and to execute.

And now that licker has let the secret to better BB out of the bag, our work is done here.

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 01:05

mrt1212 wrote:

I also think you're still essentializing arguments. The utility of skill synergy on a CW and a Wardancer are different than that on a Vampire. It's not faulty logic to identify differences and similarities between player types and determine where potential skills can benefit or mitigate aspects of the player. You don't really believe that players are just really cosmetically different and that a CW and Wardancer and Vampire are way more similar than different in how they function individually and respective to their teams, do you?

My answer may surprise you, but the point wasn't to compare all three to each other, but rather the Vampire (since he's the guy doing all the work) to each other heavy lifter for any other team. You can build a Vampire similarly to either a CW or a Wardancer afterall, as they have G/A/S access. Of course they are not 'the same', but the functions they perform are ultimately critical to the success of each of their teams.

So while the Vampire has the additional malus of blood lust, the point made initially was that Pro allows you to use THAT Vampire more freely after someone else on the team has already used the team reroll for some other failed action.

In that case, there really is not much difference, you took some preliminary action to assist with your main action which required you to reroll. Now what? As I asked Zakatan earlier, do you not take this action now because of no reroll? Obviously not, but others have challenged that Vampires are so different that Pro is worth it on them but not on any other player.

This seems nonsensical to me. Either Pro is a valuable skill when it allows you to reroll actions after your reroll is gone, or it isn't. The actual player in question is immaterial really (other than that we are talking about the 'main player' for any team, not random linemen).

Sure I understand that BL and hypnogaze are great things to get a 'free' 50% chance to do over, but so is literally any other action you want to take which didn't provide the result you wanted initially. Do you want to reroll leap? Do you want to reroll pushes? Do you want to reroll a dodge or gfi? The fact that (some of) those actions cause turnovers is immaterial, indeed, it seems that should make Pro that much better for those players instead! Failing a BL or a hypno gaze is NOT a turnover (if you can go bite a thrall anyway). It's less important. Unless you actually NEED it to pass, but if that's the case YOU DON'T WANT PRO ANYWAY. You use your normal reroll. And if you already used it? You bemoan the fact that you rolled snakes or skulls or whatever it is. Nuffle. You know the drill.

So really, why is it that only Vampires get the 'special' pro treatment and not other players? Or have I convinced you that you should be taking pro on your other players?

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 01:39

Cause the stakes (har har) for Vamps are sufficiently ramped up enough that having that stick save for their unique actions might warrant it. That's how I see it. They're unique because they are in fact unique.

Just had a thought that how you percieve downside risk might be the most influential factor in whether you take Pro or not. If you evaluate losing players as the ultimate bad thing you might raise Pro up in the profile for Vamps. If you evaluate failing key blocks or dodges as thr ultimate bad thing you might go with more skills and RRs

Last edited by mrt1212 on %b %26, %2017 - %01:%Apr; edited 1 time in total

MattDakka

Joined: Oct 09, 2007

Posted: Apr 26, 2017 - 01:41

licker wrote:

According to the coach rank lists I'm the best Nurgle coach on FUMBBL for example (even I don't think this is true), but I build my Nurgle teams differently than a lot of other successful Nurgle coaches I see. Do I recommend my preferences? Not really actually, but they work well for me because I don't always play Nurgle the way most people will probably have the most success with Nurgle.

I look only at the Black Box division to check rankings, Ranked/All Divisions are not meaningful for me (Santo would be the top Vampire coach if I looked at Ranked/All Divisions, see his Vampire team's match history to get what I mean Very Happy

).
Anyway, we were talking about Vampires, not Nurgle, and Pro seems to work well for kingvan, judging by his performance.
Generally there is correlation between good skill picks and good coaching.
Tricktickler too takes Pro: https://fumbbl.com/p/team?team_id=721096