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For this year's power rankings, we decided to keep it relatively simple. Each manager chose a single non-manager player from their team, who then ranked the 56 players not on their team who were starting in week 1. (This means that my and tazz's rankings were not included.) The individual rankings for each starter were averaged and ranked, and then these rankings were summed up for each team.
Here are how the starters ranked, along with their averages:
I will be using the first list (highest and lowest scores for each player removed before averaging) for the remainder of these rankings.
For reference, here are the power rankings of the starters compared to the order that the starters were drafted in:
Red indicates that a player's power ranking was much better (+10) than their draft order, meaning the power rankers valued a player much more highly than the managers did. Blue indicates that a player's draft order was much better (-10) than their power ranking, meaning the managers valued a player much more highly than the power rankings did.
With strong and experienced LC players across the board, the Wooloo Crew are the 1st ranked team, vindicating LilyAC spending over a third of the Ekans draft's time. BurntZebra and London13 come off disappointing snake records, but have proven themselves among the top LC players in prior tournaments, and will be backed by two top builders in Lily and zf; Toadow, KingKdot, and Bebo have also had impressive performances in prior LC tours, and are among the bigger steals of the tournament. However, the star of the Wooloo Crew is undoubtedly their last ranked member, Babyboyblues; the 'next starmaster' finds himself ranked at a lowly 49, but he can be expected to cruise to an undefeated record as he uses this tournament to establish himself in LC's pantheon.
Tying Luthier for the highest ranked player on the list, Star is well known for his multi-tier skill, and LC is no exception; his latest results include winning the most recent seasonal. His reasonably good building skills are backed by Serene Grace, who has been among the most successful players across 2019, including a decent Snake, and Ninja, who many believe should have been drafted into Snake. The rest of the line consists of TDK, HT, KratosMana, Nat, and Chaitanya, solid tour players who will take advantage of their capable supports to make up for their lack of LC experience.
Boasting both the strongest builder of late USM in tazz, as well as the most influential builder of early USM in trash, the Pimpidimps enter Ekans with arguably the single strongest building core of the tour. They will not only be supporting their own highly capable play, but also a formidable roster of general tour players in robjr, Lycans, Insult, ima, and Evan who may not have the experience to build for themselves. Above all, the team is headlined by the single strongest player of gen 7 LC; Luthier ties Star for the highest ranked player, and all eyes are on the Luthier-tazz core - as well as perhaps the ggggd-trash core later down the road - to see how they will try and maintain their dominance in a brand new metagame.
The skskskwovets have managed to assemble an eclectic blend of LC mains and tour players who are looking like one of the stronger teams. Levi and Madoka provide a strong building core, whereas Kingler and Gareth are among the upper echelon of LC players. Jyt, Gondra, Rozes, and Chill Shadow (currently on the bench) are all strong tour players, though Splashbrutha is unproven.
Sword and Shield marks a radically different metagame from previous iterations of LC, and jake has forgone the established builders that many other teams carry in favour of extensive tour experience and raw battling talent. Osh and jake both rank among the strongest LCers in Ekans, having finished the most recent Snake season with the two best LC records. In conjunction with fellow LC main fran17, they will look to support Eternally, frisoeva, TonyFlygon, Xiri, and idiotfrommars, all of which, while not particularly involved in the LC community, are highly capable Pokemon players who will adapt quickly if motivated.
Coconut has decided to draft a more top heavy lineup this time around, with the higher ranked half the team in Shrug, Plas, FLCL, and trace having been staples of LC team tours for years. Shrug in particular is coming off some fantastic performances as both a builder and player during Snake, and Plas will hopefully be motivated to return to his prime during the new gen. On the other hand, Coconut, Bouff, and Spl4sh are all less proven in LC tours, and vooper, though a fairly strong LCer during early SM, seemed to lose interest during USM; perhaps Ekans will be their breakout tour into modern LC.
Merritt has taken an interesting approach by placing very little emphasis on recently successful top stars or high caliber non-LC tour players, instead drafting a variety of solid LC mains who are known for their building prowess to prop each other up. Heysup is a highly touted innovator that helped to define both ORAS and SM as we know them, on top of being a reasonably strong builder; Wabane and fatty's resumes aren't quite as impressive, but they have nevertheless established themselves as solid players and builders. The rest of the lineup is much less proven, outside of fitzy, who unfortunately consistently boasts middling records; boulicrok, czim, and EviGaro each only have their sub status in the last LCPL to show, with boulicrok, czim, and Yami being more established in side tours like LPL.
8. Sinistea Dynasty (339)
13. ZoroDark
20. Fille
22. tko
51. Ampha
52. tcr
57. Alkione
61. Wail Wailord
63. MK007
From the the creator of some of LC's strangest innovations comes the Sinistea Dynasty, demonstrating once more that Fille operates on a higher level than his competition; though this ranking may imply a follow-up to his somewhat underwhelming LCWC season, he did more recently help Lily draft a powerhouse in the Skitty Committee. He has clearly taken the ultimate goal of the tournament - metagame development - to heart, having drafted a group of players who will not only avoid questioning his innovations, but, in the case of tko and tcr, will even aid him in developing the innovations that will truly change the face of LC, be it as something we use or something we avoid. ZoroDark may be the only LCer on the team who has already established himself as top notch, but while the likes of Ampha, Alkione, Wail Wailord and MK007 are less proven, they have shown clear signs of talent that perhaps Fille has latched onto.
Glad I'm being considered in the upper echelon of players Levi, your post inspired me to do a breakdown on what some of our top considerations were right after snake; this is mostly levi's, but I concur almost wholly with his (in my mind, expert) opinion. I'll be going down some of the players Levi considers to be among "the best" in the community right now.
Quick note that I intended to publish this 3 weeks ago, but was too lazy to do so. My bad.
Tier 1:
We start off with a decorated LC veteran in myself. I've been playing since SPL 7, which is why it seems odd that Levi would call me "not good" at first glance. However, deeper inspection reveals that I went 2-7 in Snake 3; recent investigations by my former manager TDK show that my performance rating in Snake 1, despite my record of 5-4, was somewhere close to 2-7 as well (research pending). I think I've come a good way from week 8 of snake, though, where I had to try losing with foongus to Bulk Up Timburr somehow. I ended up beating jake reusing one of his previous team, which led to a very large boost in my morale and a slight boost in our team's (Jytcampbell's game that week perhaps may be attributed to being overjoyed at my win).
Luthier has won a ring, which probably automatically makes him better than 99% of the LC community. The 1% is fading out of relevance, too; who associates Star with LC anymore? Off the top of my head, I'd only really associate him with suddenly elevating teams to great new heights through semi-legal means (though his teams haven't been doing so hot, so maybe not so much recently) and like OU? I'm crust at this tier (and apply this to jake, heysup, whoever has a signup date before 2016) and Levi was too scared to even play for Snake OR SPL. This leaves Luthier with the title of best player in the tier (and solidifies Osh as a Luthier slayer). Levi notes that Luthier is a "good builder"; this is true, although some games may show otherwise. Maybe the ability to build teams that lose to Fighting-type + Diglett in 2019 is Luthier's "style," though, and it clearly seems to have worked out for him. Not in that game, of course; he got smashed LOL
Levi notes that Luthier is "overall a good/active team presence"; this is incredibly important to a team, because in LCPLs past nobody really cares until finals, and even then some games in the finals really make you wonder. However, all of Luthier's upsides come with a marked downside; Levi considers him "emotionally unstable"; getting angry at losing games in the prestigious SmogTours community is an ABSOLUTE no-go, and Luthier will have to certainly be whipped into shape by a competent SPL manager such as myself. Our rising star faces challenges from the establishment while trying to cement himself as the best player in this generation from LC. Will he succeed? Subscribe to his YouTube channel to find out!
mad0ka (referred to as hongli in here) is a veteran of the game, old as Bulk Up Timburr itself. Having played in SPL 7 after decent success in honestly god knows what (2015-16 smogon was a dark place), mad0ka is now characterized as a "budget kingler"; this isn't very accurate, as d0ka still cost a R2 pick. Still an entrenched official LC elite, we wait to see d0ka's performance in these playoffs. Funnily enough, if we lose semis, this is one of the first full tournaments she'll have made it through; whether this is the case after this post remains to be seen.
BurntZebra is an interesting one. An old graduate of the school of Levi and my LCPL academy, he quickly presented himself as above-average within the LCPL pool and reached a snake level this year. His reputation is generally solid, farming off noobs such as myself quite often. However, he does have a choking problem--choking more than Luthier, in fact--which could be problematic. In the high pressure steam room that is these playoffs, there is little room for error, let alone chokes of any kind. Maybe this lack of high-stakes primetime gameplay will be Zebra's undoing.
Tier 2: can't write about these players until they become tier 1 Tier 3 and below: see tier 2