13th Trials - Phase 3: Community Vote

[serprex]

Phase 3 - Community Vote

It's time to vote for your favorite Master candidate!  Every community member may vote on only one candidate. You can change your vote(s) at any time as long as there is still time on the clock.

Vote based on who you think would make the best Master of that element. Do not vote based on who is the best player or who you know personally. Try to pick someone who you think would help the community the most as THE representative for their element.  If you believe none of the Trialists should be Master, please select the "None Worthy" option. 

To help you make the best decision possible, feel free to ask the candidates questions.  Both challengers and defending Masters ought to answer the questions in this thread (and in the General questions thread) to help the voters make the best possible choice.  Please put all your answers in a single post (employing spoiler tags is recommended).  Also, challengers should include in that post a link to your Phase 1 submission post.


Questions and answers may begin now that this topic is posted.
Voting will begin when the polls are up at the official start of Phase 3.
Phase 3 ends when poll expires.

[dawn to dusk]

Answers will go here, if you ask me about balance I will go on a several paragraph rant

Spoiler for In-Element:

Spoiler for Joey:

For others : Do you think you would have fared better facing Root as STANDIN?

At this point in time, after having been master for a term, and knowing several different decks and archetypes to use, as well as the ability and knowledge of bans, I think I would be able to give it a fair shot. Even then, bans were something I could look at and identify how I would have changed. Looking at back then, I was defending Life for the first time, so I had had the Trials experience before. But I had no knowledge of Light whatsoever, and would maybe win 1 or 2 games due to luck and strange deck choices. I would have still had many gaping holes in my building, and I would most likely overvalue cards which needn't be valued as high, which is an issue I still probably have (cough Pegasus), but I think with luck, bans, and life-experienced deckbuilding, I might have been able to pull off a game or two.

Spoiler for Insig:

Serprex has mentioned multiple times that it's a good idea for Light to have two versions of RoL Hope in their vault: Fractal and Mitosis. Do you think this is true, and would you consider putting it into your team's vault? Why or why not?

Mito RoL Hope isn't a deck I'm terribly fond of, but I'll admit I haven't tested it to an extent that I would like. If it were by itself, I would hesitate slightly to putting Mitosis into the vault just for it, but considering Mitosis is valuable in other decks such as Rustler Mito Dragons and Mito Angels, Mitosis is splashable enough to warrant a place in the vault. Similarly, Druidic Staff is a card that "might as well" be put into a vault, despite being less splashable than Mitosis (in Mito Angels, MS is preferable for the rushiness of it, while in non-Merc Rustler Dragons, the off-element slots are already fighting for space without trying to add Druidic Staff into it). Considering it's only 3 cards to make a decent enough deck, it's still worth putting into the vault (6 copies of NT is easily splashable into a vault in the same sense, since it's a deck by itself). Beyond the decision to put it into a vault, there's the question of whether it's worth using or not, and that's a question which heavily depends on the scenario, and is far more difficult to answer, but the deck certainly has usages to be ran.

Note: The reason I am more hesitant to run it instead of Fractal, is that it's a lot more prone to single target CC than the Fractal variant is, but Mitosis will generally come out much sooner than Fractal will, which is a nice benefit to have.

Spoiler for All Elements:

Spoiler for Shockcannon:

Explain why you are more noob than your opposing trialists. If you convince me more than the others, I may give you pity vote for being so noob.

I'm so noob that I can't even identify why I'm a noob. All I know is that I'm a noob.
That being said I've only been in Light for this trials and last, and before that had never considered Trialling for Light. I'm still somewhat fresh to the element, and am still figuring out which decks I like using. Immorush comes to mind as one of these, which I had constantly dismissed until Phase 2 of this Trials, when I realised it was actually somewhat decent. I think there is a ways I can go still, as I try to find counters for popular decks, which we were able to do somewhat last war, but not enough towards the end. This may come with experience, but right now I'm too noob to find out how to beat Mono Air

Spoiler for Torb:

Is the element you have trialed for your favorite?

I am currently enjoying Light as an element the most, and feel there are still a number of decks left in it to refine, but despite this, it's hard to say it's my favourite. After several years of advocating Life, saying Light is my favourite element after 1 term of mastership is a bit rough.

If not, why have you chosen to trial for this particular element over your favorite?

I'll defend mastership whatever element I'm in, and I still want to be able to work with Light more, and see how next War can go

What does the element you trial for represent to you?

I don't have a special connection to Light, and I'm not going to deny it. I don't react with it on some deep spiritual level or anything like that, but I do think there is still more I can do with the element, and am thoroughly enjoying working with the "new" cardpool beyond splashing it into deckout stalls.

What does being a Master mean to you?

I've always viewed masters as people who are incredibly skilled or knowledgeable at their element of choice. A lot of the time I'd see the "Master of X" under someone's name and just know that it makes sense. But it's hard to look past what I thought of masters when I first saw them. I joined during the 7th term, seeing people like Shantu, Jenkar and 10men being masters, there was always that aura of "Wow, this person must be good at the game and well respected" or something along those lines. I'm not really sure what being a master means to me totally, but it's something I'll always have fun working towards.

What qualities do you expect from a Master, and do you aspire to live up to?

I feel like some amount of respect is something to always assume of a master. Be it the grudging respect of "This person is unlikable but damn good at the game" to the opposite of "This person may not be the best at PvP, but they've still earned the respect of everyone in the forums anyway". While the event is primarily PvP based, I would never look down on a trial winner if they've earned their respect in other ways.

Spoiler for Iancu:

Question for everyone: Why?

I'd really like to correct some mistakes I made last War, even if there is no guarantee that we (I?) would get that far again. I'll always defend an element I've gotten mastership for though, unless something happens and I'm not able to Trial at all.

Spoiler for Ginyu:

Do you plan to participate in War and/or Brawl if you have the time?

Yes and yes

Do you consider being a Master to be mostly PvP-related, or should they also represent their element in competitions?

In major events like War and Brawl, I would generally tend to be Light-based, but in an average PvP tournament, I would consider shying away from it in favour of playing what I want to play, and the same goes for competitions. If I have an idea for a submission that I genuinely like, I'm not going to disregard it because "It's not light themed". In mostly any team-based thing, even group competitions, I would consider leaning towards Light because that's what I would be known for.

Kind of up to date. Missing one question because I'm not totally sure how to answer it yet

[MyNameIsJoey]

For zso : Unfortunately, you have been in a sad part of history where rootranger destroyed you as a STANDIN. Why was that, and do you think you would fare better this time around?

For others : Do you think you would have fared better facing Root as STANDIN?

[Zso_Zso]

Let me try to answer Joey and Noobcannon both with a single stroke:

For zso : Unfortunately, you have been in a sad part of history where rootranger destroyed you as a STANDIN. Why was that, and do you think you would fare better this time around?

Explain why you are more noob than your opposing trialists. If you convince me more than the others, I may give you pity vote for being so noob.

I was destroyed by rootranger  as a STANDIN, because I am the biggest noob that has ever trialed for 
I did not expect him to keep re-using the same deck (firestall). Well after 2 uses of it, I played a counter to it in G3, when he used something else, so I lost again, then he used it again in G4 and G5, when I thought "surely now he expects me to counter firestall again, so I should not expect him to play that again".
Would I fare better this time around ? Of course, I would just outrush him with a single mono  rush deck that I would keep using for all games, 'cause I'm a noob that thinks history repeats exactly. 

[Zso_Zso]

Here we go, all the classics:

Is the element you have trialed for your favorite?

Yes.

What does the element you trial for represent to you?

I look at it more from game-play meta point of view rather than lore, so for me  represents resilience, survival, durability with all the various healing abilities it has as well as Sanc that provides protection for quanta and hand.

In elements history, many have coupled being a Master to being War general, but there was a time when it was considered much more than that to some people.
What does being a Master mean to you?

It is a symbol to represent the element in the community, comes with corresponding responsibilities, to advocate the use of the element to noobs, demonstrate its advantages in all events not just War.

What qualities do you expect from a Master, and do you aspire to live up to?

Honesty, integrity, accountability (typical leadership qualities) and passion for the element, all of which I aspire to demonstrate.

Question for everyone: Why?

My responses to the above questions by TorB also answer the 'why?' I believe.

[Zso_Zso]

Do you plan to participate in War and/or Brawl if you have the time?

Yes, to War, No to Brawl. I am not really good with art, so Brawl is not really my thing (I have participated couple of times in the past and did not like it).

Do you consider being a Master to be mostly PvP-related, or should they also represent their element in competitions?

Master should represent the element in all events.
Mind you, Brawl has not been element-timed for as long as I can remember simply because we never had enough participants for 12 teams.

[InsignificantWeeaboo]

Serprex has mentioned multiple times that it's a good idea for Light to have two versions of RoL Hope in their vault: Fractal and Mitosis. Do you think this is true, and would you consider putting it into your team's vault? Why or why not?

[Wyand]

Question for Zso: do you resemble Gandalf in any way?

[Zso_Zso]

Question for Zso: do you resemble Gandalf in any way?

Of course, when I let my beard (and hair) grow long enough, I look exactly like Gandalf 

[serprex]

Serprex has mentioned multiple times that it's a good idea for Light to have two versions of RoL Hope in their vault: Fractal and Mitosis. Do you think this is true, and would you consider putting it into your team's vault? Why or why not?

Whoa whoa whoa, I've only suggested that every team should have trollhope in their vault, & that Life does fine running mitosis in their trollhope. I wouldn't suggest mitohope to Light. In fact I'm going so far as to say mitohope is so bad that you're better off running a janky rolhope with Fractal rather than Mitosis duo

[Zso_Zso]

Serprex has mentioned multiple times that it's a good idea for Light to have two versions of RoL Hope in their vault: Fractal and Mitosis. Do you think this is true, and would you consider putting it into your team's vault? Why or why not?

mito-rol-hope ? Why not FFQ-hope if we are at it...
Nah, there are many better options to fill our vault with.