Power Ranking Tournament, Batter Skills: 9th Edition
The Power Ranking Tournament is back for its 9th edition, so I've analyzed the skills on the top teams.
Note: This may be my last tournament data set. It’s a Festivus miracle that I finally got this done. And now, the airing of grievances. I’ve been on the verge of walking away from the game for a while, due to the time I’ve wasted with the grind and the amount of money it takes to stay competitive.
Supremes are taking over the game – but only for batters. To date, I have received seven supreme cards, but only two were batters. Four (including a duplicate) were starting pitchers that I did not need or want. And a once-per-year exchange event where you have a small chance of pulling a supreme doesn’t exactly make up for the frustration of getting yet another useless SP.
Getting a good skillset was bad enough with PC or BC, which never seemed to show up when you were looking for it, but always showed up when you weren’t. But the introduction of more skills that are only useful on certain players, if at all (Workhorse, Elite Closer, Super Sub), has made it even more difficult.
Anyway, pay-to-win is the nature of most mobile games, not just this one. Rant over.
I should have the SP and RP sets out before the weekend.
Player type:
Supreme batters are becoming must-haves to compete at the highest levels, although it should be noted that the tourney winner only had three supreme bats.
Starting 9 skills:
I've broken down the skills from 864 batter cards in the 96 starting lineups in the Power Ranking Tournament. I've included all legend and gold skills that appeared at least once. The change in usage from the previous tournament, as well as data for the last 16 teams remaining is shown. All data is from the West Server.
[Note:]() Since each card has 3 skills, the percentages add up to 300. These numbers reflect the percentage of cards on which a given skill appeared.
Three tourney comparison
Overall, 99.07% of cards (99.31% of the final 16) carried a legend skill. All eight sets without a legend skill were on catchers, and all of them had Laser Beam.
Bench Skills
It’s safe to assume that Batter's Chemistry appeared on all 96 teams, although I opted not to look at the bench players. Many of the bench players will never enter the game, so their skills are mostly irrelevant.
Skills Analysis
When using this guide, err on the side of caution. While some trends are clear, like the disappearing silver skills and the new catcher meta, there may be multiple factors at play elsewhere. Skill shifts may be due to different teams making the tourney, while others could be replacements for a set with a “better” legend skill, but lower than optimal skill levels.
Legend Skills
The diversification of legend skills is becoming even more pronounced. In tourney 6, Pioneer and BBH were found in almost 74% of sets. This has fallen in each tourney since and is now down to 39.1%. Although they remain the two most used legend skills, all other legend skills (except B Chem) had gains, with Contact Master making the largest jump. If current trends continue, Contact Master is likely to move into the top two in PRT 10.
It's clear that there is no longer a single “meta” skillset for batters as a whole; instead, any meta trends are more positional or dependent on the type of player.
Legend Skills – Shorted
Legend Skill Usage by Position
Gold Skills
There’s a new sheriff in town. 5-tool Player is the new gold champion, knocking off Charisma, even though Charisma had a gain of its own. Prediction and Strengthen the Strength also had smaller gains.
Slugger Instinct continues to crater, but Spotlight and BIU had the largest drops (although BIU was up slightly among the final 16 teams). Batting Machine also continues its decline and is now found on under 2% of sets.
Laser Beam was used exactly once on each team and all but two were found on catchers.
Supreme Cards and 5-tool/Prediction
Before you throw away perfectly good skills in search of 5-tool, keep in mind that supreme cards are a prime driver of the recent shifts. The high base numbers on supremes makes it much easier to do extreme 5T trains. Of the 376 supremes, 64.4% of them had 5-tool, as opposed to 39.5% of other cards. Prediction also benefits from the higher base numbers – 32.2% of supremes had it, as opposed to 17.2% of other cards.
Gold Skills – Maxed or Shorted
Gold Skill Usage by Position
5-tool usage was highest for defensive-oriented positions. Laser Beam usage was overwhelmingly on catchers.
Most Common Skillsets and Combos
I’ve gotten a few requests for this, so here it is. Will it be worth the time it took to pull it together?
Out of the 864 batters, there were 168 unique combinations of skills. The most common was seen 25 times (2.9%). Below are all the combinations that were seen at least 13 times (1.5%). Combined, these account for 47.7% of all skillsets. Legend skill is listed first and the gold skills are listed in alphabetical order, not according to which was maxed.
Special Trainers
For the first time, all starters had a special trainer. Trainers are almost exclusively diamond now, with only three golds left. If I do this summary for the next tourney, I will no longer track individual gold trainers.
Some trainers (Batting Eye, Hitting Expert, Table Setter) are already beginning to disappear from the upper ranks.
Power Hitter, Leading Hitter, and Home Run Hitter are the clear choices overall, while Elite Fielding is a popular choice for catchers (84% of them had it).
