This will be a long read, the OP is pretty much me explaining how the prediction model works, if you just want to see the predictions for Best Girl 7 then skip to my first post in the thread.

Updates

(Skip to the introduction if this is your first time reading.)

• Update 1 - using a Logit-normal model instead of a Normal model

This is a minor fix in the grand-scheme of things. Instead of assuming the vote share follows a normal distribution we instead assume it follows a Logit-normal distribution. Random variables that follow a L-N distribution have their support bounded to the range [0,1] which means it will never consider impossible probabilities outside of this range which is what was happening before. This is a minor change because the probability of a character receiving a negative vote share or a vote share >100% in the old Normal model was negligible since almost every matchup is in the 10-90% vote share range and the standard deviation is ~5%.
In the calculations below everything stays the same except we are now modelling the Logit of the vote share i.e. we assume logit(V) is a Normally distributed random variable with mean logit(p) and variance σ² (different σ, estimated analytically using past contest data as before: 0.25 in early rounds, 0.30 in later rounds).

• Update 2 - improving same-show matchup predictions.

The problem: two characters from the same popular show can dominate opponents in the early rounds and appear to be roughly equal in strength but when they match against eachother one character is the clear favourite and wins by a landslide. This causes the winning character to have an artificially inflated score and results in them being predicted to do better than they should do in later rounds. To explain the fix for this I will use an example.
Example:
In round 4 of Best Girl 5 we had Megumin of Konosuba go up against Wiz, also from Konosuba. Megumin is one of the leads of the show whereas Wiz is a side-character so it's pretty obvious that Megumin should be the favourite here and will probably win by a large margin. Megumin's score going into round 4 was 5080 compared to 2808 for Wiz so the traditional model predicts a vote share of 5080/(5080+2808) = 64.40% for Megumin and a win probability of 99.11%. What actually happened was Megumin won by a scoreline of 12744-2316 and a 84.62% vote share, a full 20% higher and approximately 4 standard deviations away from expected! This would result in Megumin's score rising from 5080 to 6675 making her the overwhelming favourite to win the contest. This is problematic as Megumin likely would not have beaten an opponent from a different show by the same margin so Megumin is rated "too strong" at this point in the contest.
To attempt to fix this (I say attempt because nothing is perfect in statistics) I gathered 39 same-show matchups from seven different contests (Best Character 4, Best Guy 5/6, Best Girl 4,5,6,7) and plotted the expected vote share for the higher seed against the difference in the logit of the actual vote share and the logit of the expected vote share and then centred it on 0.5 (50% vote share). The idea is that two characters from the same show with the exact same score are still expected to have a 50-50 vote share but as the score of one character gets bigger than the other the vote shares become more and more lopsided than what the model predicts. This is what the plot looks like and we can see a general positive trend supporting the idea. A simple linear regression yields a gradient of approximately 5.25 for the line. I should mention that a linear regression may not be perfect since the data does not seem to be perfectly linear. However it is reasonably close to linear as 36/39 (~92%) of the residuals lie within 2 standard errors of the fitted line.
To calculate the new expected vote share for Megumin vs. Wiz we do the following:

Vote Share = logit^-1(5.25 * (0.6440 - 0.5) + logit(0.6440)) = 0.7939 

Which means instead of a >20% overperformance Megumin overperformed by just ~5% or roughly 1 standard deviation away from expected, her new win probability is effectively 100.00% (to 5 sf). This was the distribution of the difference in expected vote share from actual vote share before the adjustment (mean = 8.12% overperformance) and this is the distribution after the adjustment (mean = 1.56% overperformance). The mean being slightly above zero shows that it still isn't perfect but it is in line with the distribution of unique-show matchups (1.24% overperformance for the higher seed) which is a good thing as it means characters won't be punished or rewarded for being in a same-show matchup versus other characters in the bracket.
That's all for now, in the future when the dataset of same-show matchups get larger I hope to refine the regression coefficient to be a little more accurate. If more evidence emerges suggesting a linear regression is not suitable I may look into changing the adjustment.

Introduction

For a while now I’ve wondered how one could predict the winner of the contests of anime by using the numbers behind each character. What I would like to produce is a table for each character in the contest with the probabilities of them reaching a certain round such as the finals bracket, winning the whole thing or even just making it to the last 256 for a lower-seeded fan favourite. This would be a bit like what FiveThirtyEight have created for the UEFA Champions League, and ideally one could look at past forecasts to see how well the model forecasted the future.
But how exactly do you assign a probability for one character to receive more votes than their opponent? You could make some complex formula involving the seeds based on previous contest data – indeed statistically the higher seeded character wins around 90% of all matchups, but seeds don’t tell the full story. The seeding of a character is based on the number of votes they receive in the elimination round. In the elimination round voters will vote for any number of characters that they deem worthy of entering the bracket proper. The top 512 get in with the one that received the most votes seeded as #1, the second most voted as #2 etc. Often the top seed isn’t necessarily the most feared character in the contest. Best Guy 6 had Mumen Rider seeded at number 1, yes the side character from One Punch Man outseeded not only the protagonist of the show but a further 510 male characters who were in the running this year! Unsurprisingly Mumen Rider didn’t last as long as his top seed would suggest as he bowed out in Round 4 to 65th seed Jotaro Kujo!
Moreover the actual numbers of the seeds mean nothing in a statistical sense. If seed #1 had 2000 votes, seed #2 had 1500 and seed #10 had 1400 votes in the elimination stage respectively then in terms of raw popularity seed #2 is closer to seed #10 than seed #1 despite the numbers saying otherwise. Thus it is important to consider the elimination votes instead of the seedings.
So it’s clear that while a model must take seedings into account, they aren’t the be-all-end-all of the story and how a character performs against other characters once the main contest gets going is much more important. There are a couple key things you can look out for to identify which characters are overperforming or underperforming their seeds; firstly the vote share which is simply the number of votes a character receives in a matchup divided by the total number of votes for both characters.

E.g. If character 1 beat character 2 by a scoreline of 1500 to 500 then the vote share for character 1 is 1500/(1500+500) = 0.75, or 75% compared to 25% for character 2.

If a character has consistently had a higher vote share in previous rounds than the opponent they are going up against then that signals that there is a good chance they will win the matchup, irrespective of the seeding because they are beating opponents in a more convincing manner. Another key thing to look at is the strength of the opponents faced so far – this is a bit vaguer to explain in words but you can often tell when a character has made it far into the contest by beating bums versus an opponent who has had to knock out several protagonists and pulled off a couple upsets to get where they are.
In summary a good predictive model should take into account three things:

1. The seeding of the characters, based on the number of votes received in the elimination rounds.
2. The vote shares achieved in the contest so far.
3. The strength of the opponents faced so far.

The Model

(There is a little bit of mathematical/statistical knowledge required to understand in this section, you can skip to the example further down if you do not wish to read it and still get a good idea of how the model works.)
I propose the following model, for which we can make predictions from:

For any particular first round matchup M between character 1 and character 2 let X1 and X2 represent the number of votes character 1 and character 2 receive respectively.
Let N := X1+X2 be the total number of votes in M. Define V1 := X1/N and V2 := X2/N to be the vote shares of character 1 and character 2 respectively (note that V1 and V2 are random variables).
Let s1 be the number of votes character 1 received in the elimination round and let s2 be the number of votes character 2 received in the elimination round (note that these values are constants and not random). We shall call these values the score for the characters.
Finally define t := s1+s2 to be the total number of votes for either character in the elimination round and let p1 := s1/t and p2 := s2/t be the proportion of votes for character 1 and character 2 in the elimination round respectively.
Then under this model we make the assumption than V1 and V2 are Normally distributed random variables with means p1 and p2 respectively and have the same variance σ^2.

These assumptions aren’t going to be 100% true for each matchup, to see why note that a voter can vote for both characters in the elimination round so s1 and s2 may contain the same voter whereas X1 and X2 cannot since a person can only vote for one of them in the contest proper. This is exacerbated when two characters from a very popular show that have been dominating opponents meet up in a later round – on paper it looks like it should be close to a 50-50 split but more often than not it is a very one-sided affair because the voter pool is virtually identical for both. The proportions observed in previous rounds are irrelevant because one character may be a more established fan-favourite than the other. In other words the more distinct the voter pool of the two characters is the stronger the assumption that the expected vote share follows the proportions from previous rounds.
The second assumption is that the vote shares follow a normal distribution with identical variance for each character. I will address this assumption later, though do note that empirical evidence suggests that the standard error (used to estimate the standard deviation) is approximately 0.05 in the early rounds and jumps up to 0.10 in round 6 and the finals bracket.

Computing Probabilities with this model

What we would like to predict is the probability that (w.l.o.g.) character 1 receives more votes than character 2 given the observed elimination round votes, that is to find Pr ( X1 > X2 | s1, s2 ). Then by using the model assumptions and the properties of the Normal distribution,

Pr( X1 > X2 | s1, s2 ) = Pr( X1 > X2 | p1, p2 ) = Pr( X1/N > X2/N | p1, p2 ) = Pr( V1 > V2 | p1, p2 ) = Pr( V1 – V2 > 0 | p1, p2 ) = Pr( 2V1 – 1 > 0 | p1, p2 ), since V2 = 1 – V1 = Pr( D > 0 ), where D := 2V1 - 1 ~ Normal(p1-p2, 4σ^2)) = Pr { [D – (p1 – p2)] / 2σ > [0 + (p2 – p1)] / 2σ } = 1 – Φ((p2 – p1)] / 2σ) 

Where Φ: ℝ → [0,1] is the Cumulative Distribution Function of a Standard Normal random variable.

Updating the score

So we have found the estimated probabilities that a character wins a particular matchup. Now suppose we observe what actually happened in round 1 and the winners progress to the next round, how do we make predictions for the future rounds? This is done by updating the score to match what we have observed.
Let x1 and x2 be the observed number of votes for characters 1 and 2 respectively and suppose (w.l.o.g.) that character 1 is the winner (so x1 > x2). We compute the observed score, s1*, for character 1 as s1* := t * x1/(x1+x2) and redefine the score of character 1 to be the observed score, that is set s1 <- s1*.
The above process can now be repeated in round 2 and beyond.

Justifying The Normal Assumption

For any particular character we assumed that V ~ Normal( p, σ² ), to test this assumption we can look at a sample distribution of (V – p) which should follow a Normal distribution with zero mean and variance σ² . I looked at data for two different contests: Best Guy 6 and Best Girl 6, both of which took place in the last year and aggregated the differences by round. I wanted to look at four things to test the assumption:

• The mean should be approximately zero.
  
• A histogram and a Normal quantile-quantile plot for a visual check to see if the data matches a Normal distribution. The histograms should follow a bell-shape curve and the Q-Q plots should follow a straight line if the data is Normally distributed.
  
• A Shapiro-Wilk test for normality. If the S-W test gives a p-value smaller than 0.05 then there is significant evidence that the data is not normally distributed.
  
• The standard error should be roughly the same in the early rounds and rise in the later rounds as the contest attracts more attention, introducing newer voters and making the finals bracket more volatile.
  

Sample distribution of (V-p) in Best Guy 6 by round
On visual inspection it seems that the data does follow a Normal distribution in each round and the S-W test agrees with this conclusion with the exception of round 2 when there was a big outlier in the matchup between Ainz ooal Gown and Cocytus. Based on the scores for both characters Ainz was expected to win with a vote share of ~65% but instead won with a massive 88% share for a difference of 23%. This is the downside of the model I was speaking about earlier, since both Ainz and Cocytus are in the same show the pool of voters voting for both characters is virtually identical and so we cannot make the normal assumption for this matchup. If you remove this matchup from the data then the S-W test gives a non-significant p-value of 0.3122.
Sample distribution of (V-p) in Best Girl 6 by round
Similarly the data from Best Girl 6 also seems to follow the Normal distribution with the exception of Round 1 which saw a massive upset between 406th seed Himari Takanashi and 107th seed Yui. This upset seems to be some form of SAO spite-voting (which is funny since Asuna would go on to win the contest) and highlights a second flaw of the model in that it can’t really predict spite-voters or strategic voters since they represent a different population to those that have voted in a characters’ matchups so far. Removing this outlier gives a non-significant S-W test p-value of 0.07224.
In both contests we see that the standard error stays relatively constant at around 0.05 until you reach round 6 (last 16) when it seems to double to around 0.10. The model will incorporate this by having the standard deviation be 0.05 until round 6 when it will change to 0.10. One reason for this increase in variance could be the large jump in people voting in later rounds as the contest gets bigger exposure. Finally the means for each round are slightly above zero suggesting that characters with higher scores (usually higher seeds) typically overperform relative to their expected vote share, this is because the differences for each round are taken with respect to the higher seed. There are a number of possible reasons for this, one being that the population of voters who have seen both characters may aggressively favour the higher seed over the lower seed, skewing their result. Still the mean is close enough to zero that the assumption seems valid.

Example

That all might seem like a lot to take in so I think an example will make things clearer. Let’s suppose we’re in a simple 4-girl contest and the matchups are Holo vs. Megumin and Kaguya vs. Mai with the winners facing off in the final. Each girl received the following number of votes in the elimination round to determine their seedings #1-#4:

Seed	Girl	Elimination Round Votes (score)
1	Kaguya	2600
2	Megumin	2400
3	Holo	2400
4	Mai	2400

By just eyeballing the numbers you can tell that Kaguya should be the favourite over Mai while Megumin and Holo should each have a 50% chance of advancing but what does the model say?
Kaguya vs. Mai
Consider Kaguya as character 1 and Mai as character 2 then p1 = 2600/(2600+2400) = 0.52 and p2 = 2400/(2600+2400) = 0.48. These are not the probabilities for each character to advance to the next round but instead are the expected vote shares for each character (52% for Kaguya and 48% for Mai). To find the probabilities that either character advances we use the equation derived above based on the model,

Pr(Kaguya wins) = 1 - Φ((0.48 – 0.52)/(2 * 0.1)) = 1 – Φ(-0.2) ≈ 0.579. 

Which implies

Pr(Mai wins) ≈ 0.421. 

So Kaguya is the clear favourite and is expected to win around 58% of the time. Now suppose the actual results come in and big shock! Kaguya loses by a scoreline of 4500-5500, or a 45-55 voter share ratio. Since Mai has won and moved on to the next round we need to update her score, her new score is the value her score should have been to minimize the difference which is

Mai's new score = (2400 + 2600) * 0.55 = 2750. Kaguya's new score = (2600 + 2400) * 0.45 = 2250. 

Note that Kaguya’s observed score falls down to 2250 so that their new scores perfectly reflect the 55-45 observed ratio.
Holo vs. Megumin
With the same setup as above we have that p1=0.50 and p2=0.50 and the probability that Holo advances to the next round is:

Pr(Holo wins) = 1 - Φ((0.50 – 0.50) / (2 * 0.1)) = 1 – Φ(0) = 0.500 => Pr(Megumin wins) = 0.500. 

So there is a 50% chance that Holo wins and a 50% chance that Megumin wins. Now suppose the results come in and in classic anime fashion Holo also wins by a scoreline of 5500-4500. Note that based on the seeds this would be classed as a big upset since Holo is seeded lower than Megumin but in reality because their votes in the elimination round were identical it isn’t. Holo’s updated score is

Holo's new score = (2400 + 2400) * 0.55 = 2640. Megumin's new score = (2400 + 2400) * 0.45 = 2160. 

and we move on to the final!
Mai vs. Holo
Going into the final Mai (2750) has a higher score than Holo (2640) despite winning by the same victory margin in the previous round. This is because Mai defeated a stronger opponent than Holo did, which was the third thing we wanted our model to incorporate. With the same setup as above we have that p1 = 2750/5390 ≈ 0.51 and p2 = 2640/5390 ≈ 0.49 and so

Pr(Mai wins) = 1 - Φ((0.49 – 0.51) / (2 * 0.1)) = 1 – Φ(-0.1) ≈ 0.540. 

Which implies

Pr(Holo wins) ≈ 0.460. 

So we expect Mai to win the final against Holo approximately 54% of the time. This is nice to compute but we had to wait and see who would be in the final to find out what their chances of winning the contest was, how can we find out the probability that one of the girls would win the whole thing back in round 1? Let’s use Holo as an example.
Finding Holo’s chances of winning in round 1
The probability Holo wins the contest is the same as the probability of Holo reaching the final multiplied by the probability Holo wins in the final conditioned on her getting there. We already computed the first probability to be 0.500 and by the Law of total probability the second probability is

Pr(Holo wins the final | Holo reaches final) = Pr(Holo beats Mai) * Pr(Mai reaches final) + Pr(Holo beats Kaguya) * Pr(Kaguya reaches final) = (0.50 * 0.421) + (0.421 * 0.579) ≈ 0.454 

since her only possible opponents are Mai or Kaguya and we don’t yet know which one will reach the final. Thus the probability Holo wins the contest when all four girls are remaining is 0.500 * 0.454 ≈ 0.227. Note that this is not exactly one in four because Kaguya’s high score weighs the chances more in her favour. If we compute the probabilities for the other three girls we find that:

Girl	Win prob in round 1	Percentage
Kaguya	0.335	33.5%
Megumin	0.227	22.7%
Holo	0.227	22.7%
Mai	0.211	21.1%

So you would expect Kaguya to be a big favourite to win the whole thing out of the four, but more often than not someone other than her will win.

Generalising to bigger contests

If you’re savvy to how the above computations work, you’ll notice that as the number of rounds in the knockout contest increases (resulting in the number of participants increasing by a factor of 2 raised to the power of the number of rounds) the number of computations required to compute the overall win probabilities drastically increases. Finding the win probabilities of a 512-man contest in round 1 can only ever be done by a computer and so that’s what I set out to do. You can find my script (written in R) used to generate the output files in a folder in the Outputs section. I won't claim it’s optimised, indeed forecasting the winner from round 1 takes several minutes to compute on my old laptop but it gets the job done and later rounds fly by almost instantly. If you want a fun challenge try and write a script that computes the probabilities in a faster than exponential order of time.

Outputs

Below is a download link to a folder containing the probability forecasts for the recent Best Girl 6 and Best Guy 6 contests, which I used as a template to write my script. The script is also included along with a readme file to help you recreate the outputs. Please let me know if the link is broken!

Google Drive download link

Best Girl 6

Megumin was the clear favourite going into round 1 as she boasted a massive 3028 adjusted votes in the elimination rounds, which was significantly higher than second seed Aqua (2880) and third seed Holo (2663). This is reflected in the pre-contest probabilities as Megumin was given a 36% chance to win compared to 25% for Aqua and 15% for Holo. This probability increased further in round 2 after she won her round 1 matchup with a 91% vote share – the highest of the entire contest.
Megumin remained the strong favourite until round 4 at which point cracks began to show in her dominance – she was still doing well but so was Holo, who also had an easier ride to the finals as Mikasa, Mayuri and Saber were all still alive on Megumin’s side of the bracket. By the end of round 5 Holo took the lead as Jibril and Hachikuji had suddenly emerged as strong candidates in Megumin's half of the bracket. Mayuri was no longer looking like a pushover for Megumin and indeed Megumin would bow out in arguably the biggest upset of the contest to her in the next round leaving Holo as the clear favourite… Or so you would think, but Holo herself had a relatively poor round 6 as well, defeating the weak Yunyun by a smaller margin than expecting whilst Aqua and Mikasa posted dominant victories against tougher opposition. Mikasa would crush Mayuri in the quarter-finals to become the new favourite after Holo bowed out in a very surprising loss to Winry.
Also flying under the radar this whole time was Yuuki Asuna who in round 5 had under a 1% chance to win the title. Her stock had risen though after knocking out the dangerous Jibril in convincing fashion in round 6. With Mikasa as her quarter-final opponent she was given a 32% chance of winning, but she defied the odds and won in a dominant fashion to set up an unlikely final with Winry, who similarly defeated Aqua in equally convincing style!
The estimated probability that Asuna would make the final was 17% in the pre-contest and only 9% for Winry, at this point Asuna was deemed the favourite by the model, and was given a 59% chance of defeating Winry. The predicted vote share was 52-48 in Asuna’s favourite which she demolished by taking home the sixth crown with a whopping 63% of the vote!
Model Accuracy in Best Girl 6
Overall the model correctly favoured the winner in 466/511 matchups (91.2%) which was higher than the 460/511 matchups (90.0%) matchups won by the higher seed, suggesting evidence that the model predicts as good or better than just predicting the higher seed to advance. The success rate by round is broken down below:

Round	Correct Predictions (Model)	Correct Predictions (Seeds)
1	235/256 (91.8%)	234/256 (91.4%)
2	122/128 (95.3%)	120/128 (93.8%)
3	57/64 (89.1%)	55/64 (85.9%)
4	29/32 (90.7%)	27/32 (84.4%)
5	14/16 (87.5%)	14/16 (87.5%)
6	5/8 (62.5%)	5/8 (62.5%)
Finals	4/7 (57.1%)	5/7 (71.4%)
Overall	466/511 (91.2%)	460/511 (90.0%)

Best Guy 6

Best Guy 6 was a much more different affair to Best Girl 6 in that the elimination round votes for the top seeds were a lot closer together. This is reflected in the probabilities as seven characters were given a 5% probability or greater of winning the whole thing in the pre-contest (as opposed to four in Best Girl 6). Note that the number one seed, Mumen Rider is quickly identified as being seeded too high and is actually considered the underdog in his round 4 matchup against 65th seed Jotaro Kujo, who he lost to.
I remember in the early rounds the perceived “big three” were Reigen Arataka, Satou Kazuma and Edward Elric and indeed after round 2 these were the three favorites according to the model, though Shirogane Miyuki and Levi Ackerman were also identified as strong candidates.
Kazuma became the outright favourite next after crushing his round 3 opponent with a 86% vote share – a dominant showing that none of the other favourites could reply to. Second-favourite Edward Elric went a bit off the boil in rounds 4 and 5 – he still won handily but not by enough to keep pace with Reigen and Kazuma who shared the title of favourite for those rounds.
Everything changed in round 6 though – Kazuma survived a scare against Killua Zoldyck, winning by just a single vote whilst Reigen saw opponents in his half of the bracket grow stronger. Levi became the second favourite at this point whilst Edward Elric emerged as the most likely character to win after crushing Alphonse, though admittedly his stock may have rose a little too high since Alphonse is from the same show after all.
Levi proved his superiority over Reigen in the quarter-finals as he beat him by a margin pretty similar to what the model predicted. Interestingly Saitama beating Kazuma wasn’t so out of left field as I thought at the time; according to the data he had a 45% chance of making it to the semi-finals. It was in the semi-finals that one of the biggest upset of the contest occurred when Saitama defeated Edward Elric to book his place in the final against Levi who at this point was crushing opponents left and right. Saitama was given only a one in five shot of beating the titan-killing prodigy and he did not take it as Levi won by an even more comfortable margin than he was already predicted.
Model Accuracy in Best Guy 6
For Best Guy 6 the model correctly favoured the winner in 470/511 matchups (92.0%) which was higher than the 460/511 matchups (90.0%) matchups won by the higher seed, suggesting further evidence that the model predicts as good or better than just predicting the higher seed to advance. The success rate by round is broken down below:

Round	Correct Predictions (Model)	Correct Predictions (Seeds)
1	241/256 (94.1%)	241/256 (94.1%)
2	121/128 (94.5%)	118/128 (92.2%)
3	57/64 (89.1%)	56/64 (87.5%)
4	26/32 (81.3%)	23/32 (71.9%)
5	14/16 (87.5%)	12/16 (75.0%)
6	7/8 (87.5%)	6/8 (75.0%)
Finals	5/8 (62.5%)	5/8 (62.5%)
Overall	470/511 (92.0%)	460/511 (90.0%)

In summary over the two sample contests the model correctly favoured the winner in 936/1022 matchups compared to 920/1022 if you used a simple model that just favoured the higher seeds. This corresponds to an error rate of 8.4% for the Normal model versus an error rate (AKA the upset rate) of 10.0% for the simple model.

Final Words

The Normal Model seems to achieve the three things we set out to do and based on data from recent contests while also having good predictive power. With that said there are some improvements and adjustments that could be made to make it even better. The first thing would be to deal differently with matchups between characters from the same show; these are normally one-sided and can result in artificially inflated score values for the winner. A good example of this was Ainz ooal Gown’s dominant win over Cocytus in round 2 of Best Guy 6 giving him a much higher score than he should have had at that stage. He would lose to Gilgamesh (who was higher seeded) in the next round despite being predicted to be the strong favourite because of this higher score, whilst simultaneously passing on some of the inflated score points to Gilgamesh, creating a knock-on effect. One solution would be to freeze the scores for characters in same-show matchups. Secondly you could experiment with the value of the standard deviation and possibly vary it depending on the seed of the character. You could also introduce a weighting parameter to the score updating function so that earlier rounds are weighted a little heavier than they currently are. In the end I decided to stick with the vanilla model because the simplest is usually the best (and I didn’t fancy testing stuff for another couple days haha!)
I hope you found this to be an interesting read; I will be posting the updated probability forecasts for each girl every day in the Best Girl 7 contest threads along with the daily results post. If you have any feedback on the model please let me know, this was a very fun project to take on!

Previous Post: G1 Climax XXI (2011), Part 1: Block Competition
Next Post: G1 Climax Special 2011 & Destruction 2011
--------------------
--------------------
Hello njpw, and welcome to the second part of my G1 Climax XXI retrospective. It's finals day, where we will see the someone come out as the winner of 2011's G1 Climax tournament. We have many contenders with a shot at taking that title. Will our reigning champion Hiroshi Tanahashi take it? Will it be the veteran Yuji Nagata, or the young up-and-comer Tetsuya Naito? Can Togi Makabe climb the mountain one more time? Will our Intercontinental Champion MVP add another accomplishment to his rookie year? Could Satoshi Kojima or Hirooki Goto put themselves back in the title picture with a major victory? Could it be the King of Strong Style Shinsuke Nakamura, or will it be the most dangerous man in the world, Minoru Suzuki?
I guess we'll found out.
--------------------
--------------------

G1 Climax XXI, Finals Day (Aug 14, 2011, Ryougoku Kokugikan)

NJPW World Link / NJPW World Link for the full show video
IMG: G1 Climax Logo
Let's sum it up before we go into the matches. First off, La Sombra and Wataru Inoue are off the show, which is a bit of a shame. I would've liked to have seen a La Sombra singles match in NJPW. Looking ahead, there is one in particular that'll be nice to watch, but let's put that aside for now.
We have 6 men in contention in A Block, with Tanahashi at the top with 12 points, and Makabe, Takyama, Nagata, Yano, and Naito all just behind him with 10 points. Meanwhile, over in B Block, 5 men are still alive, with Nakamura, Suzuki, Goto, Kojima, and MVP all at 12 points.
For those still in contention, it's a must win situation. If they lose, they can't win their block. Moreover, every match on this day will feature at least one of these wrestlers, so even though not everyone can win their block, every match will have implications on who makes it to the finals.
However, 2 matches in particular today are of significant importance. A Block has a massive match with Tetsuya Naito facing block leader Hiroshi Tanahashi, in a match where, if Tanahashi wins, he wins the block, no questions asked. B Block, on the other hand, has two of its favorites going at it, with Shinsuke Nakamura facing Minoru Suzuki.
With that out of the way, we have a full show to go over, so let's not waste any time. For the first time, we have a complete show to view on NJPW World, though there are a few individual matches with their own links (I'll provide those as we go on). Let's kick things off with our opening match, Yuji Nagata vs Hideo Saito.
--------------------

Match 1: G1 Climax Match

Singles Match, G1 Climax, A Block
Yuji Nagata [Seigigun] vs Hideo Saito [Chaos]
We kick off the show with a feud from Dominion. Yuji Nagata faces his former Seigigun stablemate, the former Mitsuhide Hirasawa, now named Hideo Saito.
If you recall, these two had a match at New Japan Soul, but it ended in DQ when Saito failed to break his Carribean Death Grip while Nagata was on the ropes. Now it's round two, and it's in the G1 Climax. Saito is 0-8 so far, while Nagata is in prime position to win the tournament, with wins over Takayama, Naito, and block leader Tanahashi.
However, the ill will between the two has been mounting, so while Saito's ruthlessness has yet to get him a win, his wrath is multiplied in this match by his opponent. Saito attack Nagata in the entranceway before they even enter the arena. He chokes Nagata with his belt, drags him to the ring, ties him to the post, and hits him with the bell. He then waits for Nagata to crawl into the ring, at which point the match finally begins.
It's a really quick match. Nagata does manage to get some offense in, though. He lands a Backdrop, a few quicks, and even locks in the Shirome. However, the opening beatdown proves to pay off for Saito. He is able to reverse the Shirome and lock in his Carribean Death Grip. With Nagata away from the ropes and unable to fight back, his shoulders are pinned to the mat and the referee counts the fall.
Result: Hideo Saito pins Yuji Nagata with a Carribean Death Grip
Rating: 5/10
This match is barely a match, really. The point was for Nagata to be eliminated on the last day in a meaningful way, and to continue the feud with Saito.
Saito continues his attack after the match as well, maintaining the hold even after the bell has rung, and then attacking Fale the same way when he tries to help Nagata. However, it's Nagata who gets the last laugh, because when Saito goes back to him after he's done with Fale, he attempts to lock in the grip again on Nagata. However, Nagata is able to counter this, spraying blue mist all over Saito's face.
Regardless, the results are still the same. Saito scores his first points in the tournament on the last day, and Nagata is eliminated from contention.
--------------------

Match 2: G1 Climax Match

Singles Match, G1 Climax, A Block
Giant Bernard vs Toru Yano [Chaos]
It's time for another A Block match, this time between Toru Yano and Giant Bernard.
Bernard was eliminated from the tournament just the previous night, which is quite unexpected for someone on top of the block for the first 5 days of competition. That being said, with Nagata out, Yano doesn't have a path to the finals anymore, so this match is just about pride and point totals.
Yano is being his typical self in this match, though without much on the line it doesn't have as much weight as, say, the Tanahashi match did. Still, you get all your shenanigans and such, and I like those shenanigans, so it was still great to me.
Also, this match features, as far as I know, the first instance of Toru Yano doing grievous harm against Hiromu's hair. If you watched this year's New Japan Cup, you got to see the 5-star classic between Hiromu and Yano. In this match, we see the origins of that story. This G1, Yano's been making threats with scissors (carrying over from the MVP feud). In this match, Yano manages to take those scissors to Hiromu's hair. He doesn't take much off, but we'll see the pay-off to this next post.
Result: Giant Bernard pins Toru Yano with the Bernard Driver
Rating: 6/10
Also, with Yano's loss here, Makabe has no chance to be the sole winner of A Block. He does still have one more out in a three-way draw, but that depends on the results of the next match.
--------------------

Match 3: G1 Climax Match

Singles Match, G1 Climax, A Block
Lance Archer [Suzuki-gun] vs Yoshihiro Takayama [Noah]
Our 3rd A Block match of the evening is the final giant match of the tournament as the Emperor Yoshihiro Takayama faces the American Psycho Lance Archer.
Again, Takayama has no chance to win the block. However, Makabe is watching this match very closely, because if Takayama wins here, Makabe too would have no avenue to win the block either.
The match itself starts of like a typical big hoss fight (tests of strength, non-sold shoulder blocks, etc.). It's a neat spectacle with the men involved, though the match slows down halfway through (after the first man falls down). It's a decent match, and an interesting one in hindsight if you're familiar with the future of Suzuki-gun.
Also, I just want to say Takayama with tights and gloves is a good look for him. Maybe it's not as iconic for him as just the plain black trunks, but I think it looks better.
Result: Lance Archer pins Yoshihiro Takayama with a Dark Days
Rating: 5/10
--------------------

Match 4: G1 Climax Match

Singles Match, G1 Climax, A Block
Togi Makabe [GBH] vs Yujiro Takahashi [Chaos]
Our penultimate A Block match sees Togi Makabe face Yujiro Takahashi.
As I mentioned earlier, Makabe lost his shot at outright winning the block with Yano's loss. However, with Takayama also losing, Makabe can cause a 3-way tie between him, Naito, and Tanahashi if he wins here and if Naito beats Tanahashi.
Yujiro comes to the ring flanked by his Complete Players cohorts Gedo and Jado. Then Makabe comes down and gets on the turnbuckle to pose for the crowd, but then Yujiro attacks him from behind.
The rest of the match is pretty standard. Makabe gets the upper hand, Gedo and Jado interfere, Yujiro has control, rinse, and repeat. Not much to say here.
Result: Yujiro Takahashi pins Togi Makabe with a Tokyo Pimps
Rating: 5/10
And thus, Togi Makabe is eliminated.
--------------------

Match 5: G1 Climax Match

NJPW World Link
Singles Match, G1 Climax, A Block
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Tetsuya Naito
With all the failed attempts to get to 12 points in the past 4 matches, it all comes down to this. The champion, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and the young up-and-comer Tetsuya Naito battle it out. The winner takes A Block and moves onto the finals.
This is a really cool match. Both men know that whoever wins this match is going to the finals, but also that that match will be later tonight. As such, the match is a sprint to see who can get the pinfall with as little effort as possible. It is a showcase of pinning combinations and quick pinfall attempts. It is an amazingly quick match, clocking in at just over 5 minutes. It's truly a sight to behold.
Result: Tetsuya Naito pins Hiroshi Tanahashi with a Polvo de Estrella
Rating: 7/10
And with that, A Block is decided. Both Tanahashi and Naito are at 12 points, but with Naito having beaten Tanahashi, he breaks the tie, and will move on into the finals!
--------------------

Match 6: G1 Climax Match

Singles Match, G1 Climax, B Block
Hirooki Goto vs Strong Man
With A Block settled, we kick off B Block action with our first B Block match, Hirooki Goto vs Strong Man.
Strong Man won. 0/10.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Okay, let's be objective here.
As I mentioned in the last post, Goto is in a tough spot here. His losses to Suzuki and MVP hurt his chances, and his win over Nakamura is hampered by the fact that Nakamura also lost to MVP. That means if Suzuki wins, he's he's out, and even if Nakamura wins, if MVP makes it to 14 as well, he's basically out as well. Thus, even if he beats Strong Man here, he still needs both men to lose their match in order to guarantee victory in his block.
That shouldn't be a problem, though, right? Strong Man is 1-7 in this tournament. It's basically a guaranteed victory. Right?
Ok, look. If you've seen G1 final days before, and if you've been watching the show up to this point, you know how things go. There wasn't anything really wrong with this match. If I had to criticize it, It'd just be that Strong Man didn't really sell his arm much. Apart from that, it was fine.
It's just ... ugh. I have my own personal biases, okay? Whatever. It's fine.
Result: Strong Man pins Hirooki Goto with a Blockbuster
Rating: 4/10
That hurt to type. I'm just gonna pretend this was supposed to be Nakanishi. Also, Blockbuster is the name of Strong Man's finisher where he puts you into the torture rack before falling backwards. He didn't do a forward flipping neckbreaker.
--------------------

Match 7: G1 Climax Match

Singles Match, G1 Climax, B Block
MVP vs Karl Anderson
Our next B Block match is an all-gaijin match, with MVP taking on Bad Intentions' Karl Anderson.
Before the Goto match, MVP was tied with Kojima in having the 2nd best chance of winning the block. As long as Nakamura won, he had little to worry about. However, with Goto losing, he lost his chip in the tie-breaking decisions. Aside from a three-way tie situation, his only path to victory relies on Nakamura winning and Kojima losing. Again, though, this all hinges on him winning his own match.
Speaking of the match, it was a solid match. It's nice to see good back and forth between the two foreigners, and they showed each other proper respect before and after the match. Can't say anything bad about the match.
Result: Karl Anderson pins MVP with a Gun Stun
Rating: 6/10
--------------------

Match 8: G1 Climax Match

NJPW World Link
Singles Match, G1 Climax, B Block
Satoshi Kojima vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan
In our penultimate B Block match, we see two former tag team partners clash as Satoshi Kojima faces Hiroyoshi Tenzan.
As I mentioned with MVP, Kojima was in the middle of the pack when it came to chances of winning B Block. With Kojima, Goto, and MVP in a three-way-1-win-1-loss situation, he needed either MVP to win or Goto to lose. Luckily for him, Goto did lose, so all he needs now to clinch victory is for him to win and for Suzuki to beat Nakamura. However, to do so, he needs to go through his old tag team partner Tenzan, and though Tenzan hasn't had a great showing in the G1 so far, it doesn't guarantee everything, and Tenzan might just be the guy to block Kojima's path.
For those of you unfamiliar with the two's past, TenCozy was a record-breaking tag team in the early 2000's, winning the IWGP Tag Team Championship twice, the G1 Tag League twice in 2001 and 2008, and even winning AJPW's Real World Tag League twice in 2006 and 2008. While they've been on and off partners over the years between promotion changes and injuries, this is the first proper meeting between the two since Kojima's return to NJPW in 2010.
Boy, I do love a match with history and context. Like, overall, it was another solid match, but with the history and the crowd, it helps make the match a lot more enjoyable.
Result: Hiroyoshi Tenzan pins Satoshi Kojima with an Original TTD
Rating: 7/10
--------------------

Match 9: G1 Climax Match

NJPW World Link
Singles Match, G1 Climax, B Block
Shinsuke Nakamura [Chaos] vs Minoru Suzuki [Suzuki-gun]
Finally, we arrive at the last block match. B-Block comes to a head here as faction leaders collide, as Chaos' Shinsuke Nakamura takes on Suzuki-gun's Minoru Suzuki.
These two were block leaders almost since the start of the tournament, having the highest point totals in their block since day 2. However, going into this final day, Suzuki had better odds of winning than Nakamura. Among the 5 men in contention, Suzuki had only lost to one of them (Kojima), while Nakamura lost to two (Goto & MVP). However, as the night went on, Nakamura started becoming more secure with Goto and MVP dropping out of the running, ensuring his taking of the block if he beats Suzuki. However, with Kojima following in falling out of the running, Suzuki is in the same position. Thus, we have this match. Whoever wins takes B-Block.
This match is the exact opposite of the Tanahashi-Naito block final match. It's slow and methodical at first with neither man getting a clear advantage, and then it turns brutal and hard-hitting, as one would expect in a match between these two. Hard strikes and brutal submissions aplenty, plus some early interference from Taichi that Nakamura wonderfully takes care of.
In the end, it's a frantic race to finish things off with counter after counter until Nakamura hits a Bomaye out of nowhere to get the pin and secure the block.
Result: Shinsuke Nakamura pins Minoru Suzuki with a Bomaye
Rating: 8/10
--------------------
And with that, our G1 finals is set, with Tetsuya Naito facing Shinsuke Nakamura. The winner will be the G1 Climax XXI winner. Naito gets to face the leader of the faction that discarded him.
Before that, though, we have an intermission and one more match before we get to the finals, one outside of the G1 tournament, to give our finalists, particularly Nakamura, a break before facing each other. It's a title match, the IWGP Jr. Tag Team Championships to be exact.
--------------------

Match 10: IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championship

NJPW World Link
Tag Team Match, IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championship
Apollo 55 (Prince Devitt & Ryusuke Taguchi) (c) vs Golden☆Lovers (Kota Ibushi & Kenny Omega) [DDT]
Our semi-main event sees Golden Lovers once again taking on Apollo 55 for the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championships.
These two teams have been fighting for months now, with the last two Jr. Tag title changes coming between these two teams, and with Ibushi as the current IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion, having won his last two title matches against Devitt and Taguchi, I guess he's not satisfied with taking just one of their titles, wanting to be a double IWGP Jr. champion himself. However, tag team wrestling is a whole other beast from singles wrestling.
These two put on a clinic of Jr. Tag wrestling, starting at a high gear and never letting up. It's an excellent match to cap of their trilogy.
Result: Prince Devitt pins Kenny Omega with a Black Sunday V2 - Champions Retain, 6th Defense
Rating: 8/10
--------------------

Match 11: G1 Climax Finals Match

NJPW World Link
Singles Match, G1 Climax, Finals
Tetsuya Naito vs Shinsuke Nakamura [Chaos]
It all comes down to this. the finals of a frantic G1 Climax. Two prodigies, the best of the New Japan Dojo, The Stardust Genius vs the King of Strong Style. It's Tetsuya Naito vs Shinsuke Nakamura.
Despite being the fresher of the two, Naito struggles with Nakamura early on, allowing Nakamura to dictate the pace and show off his brashness (which he wasn't able to do much in the intense match he had with Suzuki). However, Naito is quick and smart, so when he finds an opening in attacking Nakamura's knee, he takes full advantage.
The match really kicks into third gear after a second rope reverse exploder suplex, and the match carries that energy all the way to the end, with pin attempt after pin attempt, until finally, a winner is crowned.
Result: Shinsuke Nakamura pins Tetsuya Naito with a Bomaye
Rating: 9/10
Shinsuke Nakamura wins his first G1 Climax. Tetsuya Naito is seen crying as he's carried to the back, obviously disappointed in himself in getting so far only to come up short. Nakamura, on the other hand is left to celebrate in the ring, presented with flowers and trophies, as well as the G1 Climax flag. He gives a heartfelt speech about Pro-Wrestling, and he revels in the cheers of the crowd and the shower of golden confetti. Congratulations, Shinsuke Nakamura.
--------------------
--------------------
And there you have it. We close our G1 Climax tournament with an excellent match and a warm celebration. However, with an ending comes a beginning, and we must look ahead to the future with the results of this tournament. With this win, Nakamura is surely looking ahead to an IWGP Heavyweight title challenge, but he's not the only one. Tanahashi suffered 3 losses in this tournament: Yuji Nagata, Toru Yano, and Tetsuya Naito. Traditionally, these wins mean that these men will have their own title opportunities as well. For Nagata, it'll be a second chance this year, but for Naito and Yano, it will be the first time in their careers that they'll have such an opportunity.
Not to mention the other feuds coming out of this. Kojima and Tenzan had a momentous clash coming out of this tournament, and they'll soon clash again. Also, let's not forget MVP has a challenger to his Intercontinental Championship waiting in the wings in Masato Tanaka. All these and much more as we start heading into the final third of 2011.
In the meantime, though, I hope this makes everyone reading this excited for this year's G1 Climax, and has them looking forward to the possibilities that may come. It's 9 years later, and Naito has gone from a finalist coming just short of winning the tournament to being the champion going into the whole thing. So let's sit back and enjoy the 30th G1 Climax tour in the present. When it's done, our next stop on this journey will include the G1 Climax Special tour, a tour dealing with some of the fallout from the G1 Climax, as well as the next major show Destruction 2011.
Until then, thanks for reading! See you next post.
--------------------
--------------------
Previous Post: G1 Climax XXI (2011), Part 1: Block Competition
Next Post: G1 Climax Special 2011 & Destruction 2011

Being that it’s almost May and we have our anticipated playoff event started and will be here for a couple months, I felt that it’d be fun and interesting to breakdown each event from this year, not just to give my opinions and have other opinions in comments, but to also maybe provide some insight from the community for the active devs in this sub to better the events next year and going forward from here on out.
It’s a long read, and you can just read certain sections if you’d like. I’d love to hear additional input in the comments for the devs to see so we can potentially shape Hut content that would be more enjoyable for all!
Content was solid this year and the ability to gain plenty of packs to participate in these events was great and exciting. Personally I enjoyed the addition of squad battles because it helped me get extra packs for each event, which helped me build plenty of masters throughout the year. It felt like a grind but it was still nice to at least get packs and coins for just playing games I would anyways. Made me more active offline than just online.
Anyways, let’s get to reviewing events and content from this year. I’ll start with the icons and master icons, since they were a big part of this game all year and is kinda their own weekly event.

1. MASTER ICONS/ICONS:

So master icons were dropped in the very beginning and was a lot more obtainable than last years legends, which I thought was a great idea. I would’ve loved to use many legends last year early on, but their costs were way too much and not realistic for the majority of players. This year, however, was executed well.
The casuals who would only get a couple icon collects in the beginning could have the choice of a very useable legend in the mid 80’s range, while grinders could grab a high 80’s-90 overall legend. The addition of 66/99 being added to sets did cause an uproar in the beginning, but after a while it calmed down and I was personally happy with the choice to add them in being as obtainable as they were. 66 is my favorite player but last year was near impossible to ever grab him due to his high cost.
The option of 2 legends upped to 4 in a pack was also a good addition, but sometimes still felt frustrating if you spent many collects to get a player and still not have them in your choices. In retrospect this wasn’t a bad idea though since it allowed for more variety between teams. If we could pick any player from these sets, teams in the beginning would’ve all had lafleur, Coffey, pronger, etc.
As the year went on, these silver icons became less viable against faster cards being released, and the gold upgrades felt late and sluggish with each release. I didn’t want a mass release of every upgrade all at once, but some weeks it just felt disappointing not being able to use some of your icons that were just benched due to slow speed, bad shots, etc. The prices of the upgrades to an untradable card also felt very high for many players, which made it in turn very hard to upgrade multiple icons you wanted to without having to spend all your coins buying golds for collects or buying collects outright.
As for the 66/99 upgrades, it felt good and bad at the same time. It was good that they didn’t drop these op cards in the beginning, but at the same time they felt very late to the party as many other 99’s/98’s were released before them while they still had their 95’s from early on. Their builds helped them stay viable on top lines, but it felt wrong not having them be the best cards in the game earlier on. Having their upgrades drop in the beginning of the gold upgrades may have made the community happier.
As for regular icons, I’m not the only one that thinks majority of these cards are near useless on many teams due to their awful speed/shots/defense on many of the cards. This is a shame since there are players I’d love to use who aren’t all time legends, but are still great alumni. Since they’re too slow though, there’s no point in using them if you’re trying to build a competitive team.

1. CLASSIC NHL

The first event in Hut wasn’t the worst event, but felt like many cards were out of reach unless you got very lucky or spent money in the beginning to get a head start on sets/coins. The masters were great though. Yzerman was the go to from the legends and Rantanen was the go to for the current players. Mikko also held up very well all year as well due to his meta and great build all around. I enjoyed the retro card art as well, so I’d call this event a success. The cost for a master wasn’t too astronomical either, but wasn’t something very obtainable for many players. The cost for it returning an untradable master as well made it seem as if once you can’t use the card later on, you’d be stuck with a card you spent a lot on only to be inevitably benched.
I’m glad that masters are being used In discounted upgrades this year, but without knowing they would be earlier in the year when these cards were released made them undesirable for many including myself. I decided to avoid making many players for this reason.
Overall grade for CLASSIC NHL: B

1. FANTASY HOCKEY

Now this event was definitely an interesting and exciting event that got me watching many players I normally wouldn’t care about statistically. Being able to also grab a choice of 1 of 2 younger NHL/potential AHL players was also a nice and cheap gamble for pretty much any player that wanted to take it. And it definitely panned out for Necas owners. Zadina and Nylander owners also didn’t come away too bad, but for the gamble cost it wasn’t too harsh.
As for the normally released cards, they came out with a nice mix of players that would be very desirable at a high overall (ex Wheeler) and even had a shocker like Neal. The fact that this event didn’t really end after it was out of sets was also nice since it allowed these cards to still retain value and hype around them.
The masters were interesting with only Tkachuk and Kovi being released. The very high cost of them made them too much of a risk for many players, but regardless of who you made at this point in the year, they panned out to give you either a 99 Brady or a cheap trade in upgrade for a 98 NOH card, which are very well built cards.
Overall grade for FANTASY HOCKEY: A

1. LEADERS EVENT

I liked what they started to do with these first events by giving certain cards a boost in certain categories like awareness, speed, hitting etc. This event gave a player 99 for one random individual stat. This made cards like Pietrangelo and Stammer more desirable since they had an important stat at 99. It started a good trend for these early cards in an attempt to make them a lot more useable down the road. That should continue in the future for beginning events in the start of Hut and a couple months following.
As for the masters, they had a nice selection of players that had nice stats attached to them, and the art of the cards was nice on them as well. This event gave many players a long lasting d-man that could shoot the puck in Kukkonen and a center that could take draws and rip a fast wrister for you all year in Toews. It was also nice to see Nieds in Hut this year.
Overall grade for LEADERS: B

1. HEAVY HITTERS

This event disappointed many including myself who were expecting a Halloween event. The cards released weren’t entirely desirable either, especially the masters. Muzzin had the speed, Chelios had the shot, and Wilson wasn’t awful for this point in the year, but they all just felt lackluster for a master card. Yeah they had maxed checking and durability, but that didn’t entice many due to their builds that weren’t very viable long term. I see this event as an event to grab a physical d-man and have the chance at pulling a higher rated Ovi for the time this event was dropped. I’d count this event as a miss.
Overall grade for HEAVY HITTERS: D (for all the d-men)

1. YOUNG STARS EVENT

EA came back from the heavy hitters event with a great event in the young stars. This event added a plethora of speedy cards we needed to have at this point in the year that we didn’t see much of up to this point. It added the ability to also play with some cool young prospects and rookies like Olofsson, pool party, Mo Seider etc. The cards were build very well, had excellent skating and endurance ratings, and finally added the speedy element to your team.
The masters were also some of my favorites released this year. Petterson and Seider were the easy favorites and were on my team for much of the year, even after cards rated much higher than them were released. Their builds were very useable all year and almost all have been apart of great upgrade discount sets as well. EA knocked this one out of the park.
Overall grade for YOUNG STARS: A

1. DYNAMIC DUOS

This event minus the winternational event was easily my favorite, and it contained some amazing cards that could’ve stayed on your team all year. Not to mention 4/6 of the masters were used to upgrade to cards that will all have a 99 overall card on May 1st. No matter who you went with as a master, you made out very well. The ability to trade in collects for 2 masters at a discounted price than if you made 2 separately was also a great addition. Making the Ovi and Backstrom card from this event was a great investment as they both contributed to my team all year and eventually allowed me to upgrade to toty Ovi and NOH Kovi. The comic card art was also sick. The matching synergies on each card pairing was interesting. A great event that was very lucrative to invest in, even with ut’s.
Overall grade for DYNAMIC DUOS: A+

1. WINTERNATIONAL EVENT

The “Christmas” event this year was a very well made and executed event. With masters that have great upgrade sets, are viable even to this point of the year, and with great names like big Z, Datsyuk, and Crosby, you couldn’t go wrong with making any one of these cards (besides Mrazek, which I doubt anyone actually made).
The incorporation of the World Juniors was also very interesting, giving the player the ability to participate if they collected the amount of silver collects needed to trade in for a junior choice pack. The upgradeable nature of the cards was also very nice and kept me engaged in the tournament I would normally not watch for any other reason.
With many non master cards like Zetterberg and Jagr also being released made this event very well received and gave us solid content that lasted even up to this point in the year.
Overall grade for WINTERNATIONAL: A+

1. TEAM OF THE (calendar) YEAR

Oh the reception of this event when it was dropped. This event was HATED in the beginning, and without the elaboration and knowingness of what would happen if we picked the wrong player from a very expensive choice set pissed everyone off. If more info was given clearly in this event from the start, it wouldn’t have had its very rough start. I personally enjoyed this event though, as it got me thinking about who was the best in each position from the calendar year of 2019, considering stats and accolades. The choices of the winners was definitely controversial, but I’d still consider this event a success.
Why? These cards were easier to pull in packs due to their lower overall (before the winners), the losers didn’t have astronomically high upgrade costs if you happened to pull one or buy a cheap loser card, and they gave you the opportunity to also upgrade to the 3 most desirable Toty’s, them being Ovi, Mcdavid, and Burns by trading in their duo masters (why the duos event was so lucrative).
If they did this event again next year, more info on how the event worked would be needed in the beginning to keep everyone in the loop instead of giving them sets to do that they didn’t know how it would end up working out if their card wasn’t a winner.
Overall grade for TEAM OF THE YEAR: C+ when considering communication of the event, B- overall

1. ALL-STAR EVENT

This event was expected and it fell short in my opinion. The reason why was the cards started at a pretty low overall and they barely upgraded from the game seeing as how many players didn’t score too many to see drastic increases that made them viable cards for this point in the year. Some nice cards came from the game like Drai, Kane, Pasta and Weber. Other than that, the upgrades to these cards weren’t too exciting and disappointed me personally. I know it’s not EA’s fault the players didn’t light up the goalies, but the starting overall just seemed too low for this point of the year.
This event was revived fairly well with the introduction of 66’s upgrade with some nice card art alongside Gabby and Nolan. These msp’s were unexpected and were maybe there to make up for the poor player performances and upgrades from the game. If that’s the case, good show EA.
Overall grade for ALL-STARS: C+

1. FLASHBACKS

This event held my favorite card art for the masters and regular event cards personally. I liked the variation of the masters depending on their decade as well. Many of the masters were very well built and seemed like a higher overall than their 95 stated. Card art alone this event was a win, and the constant addition of new flashbacks each week is also very nice to see. Gives players a good outlet to request cards they’d like to see with a higher overall. I’d consider this event and it’s continuation of the flashback releases a success.
Overall grade for FLASHBACKS: B

1. TRADE DEADLINE

This event was much expected and delivered very well in my opinion. The masters were huge and that Jagr is a beauty in its own right. They were built well and had some nice card art referencing the team they were traded to. Gretz also received his upgrade to 95, but was disappointing since super Mario got card art while the great one just received the basic event card template and his headshot. Not a big concern though, just a nit pick.
I’d consider this event a success if they only released Jagr as the only card for the event. Good job following up last years TDL Foppa with Jags EA.
Overall grade for TRADE DEADLINE: B+

1. PLAYOFF PREDICTORS

I’m not sure if this event could be considered a fail or not considering what happened with the season and playoffs, but the event was expected. I like the idea of guessing who’s gonna get the wild card or not, but it felt odd they lowered the overall from 98 to 97. Not a big deal and was most likely done to keep from too many 98’s/99’s being released, which they did a pretty good job of this year for most of the year. Not much else to say about this event. It was good that it didn’t last too long since it’s basically more of a long term investment event rather than a “get good cards to use now” event. Glad they limited the time it was available for.
Overall grade for PLAYOFF PREDICTORS(not considering what happened with the playoffs): B-

1. TEAM OF THE SEASON

What was considered a hyped event fell very short with the overwhelming amount of non NHL players compared to NHL’ers being released each week. Since TOTY was abandoned from its original layout last year, we expected TOTS to be that event with a different name, but that was wrong. I’m okay with non NHL’ers being released with cards like this, but I think they went a little overboard this year with it. I think there should be at least 2 lines of forwards and defense with one goalie from the NHL for young players, North Americans, and international players and then save the rest of the team’s spots for prospects and European league players.
Community tots revived this event fairly well, but without that added in it would’ve been a flop event in my opinion.
Overall grade for TEAM OF THE SEASON: C+, B- after CTOTS

1. CHAMPIONS EVENT

This event to me just seemed very meh. The masters released had nice art, but they didn’t seem that desirable to me even them being 98 overall. They just had something about them that didn’t justify the cost of them. Price didn’t compare to the stats they had in my opinion. This event was great for Necas owners though. It had a few good base event cards, but overall this event was very forgetful and just felt like a weird filler event that held no interest for me. Can’t speak on other’s views of it. This wasn’t a bad event, just a bland one in my eyes.
Overall grade for CHAMPIONS: C+

1. NATIONS OF HOCKEY

This event had the best masters build-wise released in the past few months and satisfied a lot of the community by offering an upgrade for 6 different masters at varying costs and having the choice to choose any 1 of 6 released masters. That was the biggest thing for this event. That trend seems to be sticking as well with the newest event, which definitely helps justify upgrading a card of yours. Gives many a good incentive.
The selection of players in this event was excellent and satisfied a lot of desires by many players. These masters are all end game and fun cards to use. The base event cards were also very solid, such as Perry, Getzlaf, Oshie etc. Well done with the execution on set upgrades on this one EA.
Overall grade for NATIONS OF HOCKEY: A

1. STANLEY CUP EVENT

As we hit the latest event this year, we see a very interesting and enjoyable concept by EA after needing to adapt to the season pause from the pandemic. Seeing Bourque getting his 99 and having his card art of him holding his cup couldn’t be more fitting either. The way they are upgrading masters seems like it’ll hit on all the remaining old master items that are no longer viable for many teams at this stage of the game, which is a great sign.
The ability to play all 31 teams and get a 1 of 8 choice for a master item for free is also a great idea not only for the players with good teams, but also for those who may not have a great team and are coming into the game later in the year. We’ll see who these choices will be as the weeks progress.
I also like seeing EA ask us who we want to see for future “playoff moments” to be released in the form of player cards. Makes us remember great playoff moments and have cards of those player’s moments to use on our teams. Well done getting the community involved in this event EA.
Overall grade for STANLEY CUP EVENT: so far, a B+
To wrap up, content this year has overall been very solid and enjoyable. Packs are also more obtainable, although seems very grind-like to get the packs that give you an actual chance to pull something other than junk.
Untradeable event cards that you make also needs to be re-evaluated since it seems you’re always stuck with a card that you don’t know what the future holds for. You could always spend a few more collects for a tradeable version, but that seems pretty unnecessary all things considered. And if you’re upgrading a master card to a new higher overall master, you don’t have a choice to make it tradeable, which can suck if you get stuck with a card you can’t move at all.
There also should be an option to break down silvegold icons to UT icon collects to be used to grab other legends a player may want.
Appreciate the read if you’ve made it this far and I hope this evaluation stands true and helps the devs formulate content for next years Hut! Add to this discussion in the comments with any other opinions/changes you would’ve made or would like to see in the future.
Thanks all! And thanks EA for your active participation in our community, it’s appreciated by me as well as many other players!

I don’t believe this angle was necessarily badly booked, I just thought it was a bit short sighted. Angle had only been with the company little over a month and not only had TNA done the big money match of Angle versus Joe already but they had actually ended Joe’s undefeated streak. By the time the first pay-per-view of 2007 was in the books there had already been three Angle versus Joe matches and Angle only made his in-ring TNA debut in November. It seemed TNA realised they had struck on something brilliant and just splurged it all.
No Surrender 2006
Kurt Angle’s announcement from No Surrender 2006 remains the same with the addendum that he will make his TNA debut at Bound For Glory 2006.
Build to Bound For Glory 2006
In the build up to Bound For Glory Christian Cage fresh off his feud with Rhino (which was fast-tracked in this booking) says that if Kurt thinks he can just waltz into Christian’s company he’s got another thing coming. He wants Angle at Bound For Glory. The match is made.
Meanwhile Samoa Joe has begun feuding with Rhino over who is the toughest man in the company.
Bound For Glory 2006
Samoa Joe vs Rhino
Joe defeats Rhino clean in a match that goes about eight minutes with the Muscle Buster
Kurt Angle vs Christian Cage
Angle defeats Cage clean in a thrilling contest that pushes Angle to the limit and goes about sixteen minutes before Angle locks in the Anklelock and Cage is forced to tap.
Sting vs Jeff Jarrett(c) NWA World Heavyweight Championship
Sting defeats Jarrett in the exact same fashion as was actually booked at Bound For Glory 2006
Build to Turning Point 2006
Sting celebrates his World Championship win when Christian Cage comes out and says since Jeff Jarrett is taking some time away and won’t be able to invoke his rematch clause then Christian should get the next shot because he’s the best wrestler in the company. Angle comes out and reminds Christian that he beat him at Bound For Glory. Jim Cornette makes Christian versus Angle for the next PPV (which will be Turning Point rather than Genesis). There still needs to be a NWA World Heavyweight Championship match at the PPV though and Cornette announces that the winner of the ongoing Fight For The Right Tournament will get their shot at Turning Point (Result of the Fight For The Right Tournament remains the same with Abyss winning and earning a shot).
In the same time period Samoa Joe (still a tweener) calls out AJ Styles and calls his character into question outwardly stating that he’s not as squeaky clean as some make out (which would then be proved right when AJ started a rivalry with Rhino and turned heel at the next pay-per-view). This leads to Joe versus AJ being booked for Turning Point.
Turning Point 2006
Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles
Joe defeats Styles after a Muscle Buster. Styles does some questionable, but not outright heelish, things during the match but Joe eventually wins clean as a whistle after about sixteen minutes.
Post-match Daniels, with the X-Division Championship, and Rhino come out to commiserate AJ but he pushes them both away and leaves the ring in disgust.
Sting(c) vs Abyss NWA World Heavyweight Championship
Sting constantly tries to reason with Abyss during the match to no avail and eventually wins the match after botched James Mitchell interference cost Abyss after about 11 minutes.
Kurt Angle vs Christian Cage #1 Contenders match
Angle defeats Christian following an Olympic Slam. Clean win that comes at about the eighteenth minute of another tight match between these two.
Build to Final Resolution 2006
Jim Cornette comes out and announces that due to differing views on the professional wrestling landscape TNA is no longer a part of the NWA. He announces the creation of new Championship belts under the TNA name. And the lineage of all three (World, Tag Team and X-Division) will start at December’s Pay-Per-View Final Resolution 2006. And it changes nothing about the main event of that show Sting (who had been Champion) versus Kurt Angle (who had won the recent #1 Contenders Match).
Samoa Joe pushes (metaphorically, not physically) Cornette and wants to be added to the title match at Final Resolution pointing out his credentials of never being pinned or submitted since he debuted in the company but Cornette will not relent and instead fobs Joe off with a match against Abyss.
Final Resolution 2006
Samoa Joe vs Abyss
Joe wins in about thirteen minutes after James Mitchell once again tries to interfere on Abyss’ behalf and once again ends up costing Abyss the match. Post-match Joe facewashes Mitchell for good measure.
**Kurt Angle vs Sting TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Angle defeats Sting clean, by submission after a roughly seventeen minute long contest. Post-match Sting raises Angle’s hand and wraps the brand new TNA World Heavyweight Championship around his waist.
Build to Genesis 2007
Sting comes out and announces he is cashing in his rematch clause at Genesis. Samoa Joe comes out and claims that was for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, nothing to do with the current belt. Cornette comes out and grants Sting his rematch which leaves Joe absolutely furious. Cornette says that he has also made another rematch for Genesis, a Monsters Ball match between Abyss and Joe.
Genesis 2007:
Samoa Joe d. Abyss Monster’s Ball Match
Joe defeats Abyss following a Muscle Buster onto thumbtacks in a match that runs for about fifteen minutes.
Kurt Angle(c) vs Sting TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Angle defeats Sting after reversing the Scorpion Death Drop attempt from Sting into an Olympic Slam for the win, clean in about fifteen minutes. They once again shake hands after the match and Angle celebrates.
Build to Against All Odds 2007
Now that his rivalry with Sting has finished Angle wants some new blood. The reason he joined TNA was he had heard such good things about the young guys in TNA but for one reason or another he hasn’t had the chance to cross paths with many of them yet. He’d like that to change. Before he can make any challenges though Christian Cage interrupts with Tomko and Steiner in tow. Cage says that he wants another shot at Angle. He, like Angle, took TNA by storm when he first arrived and now he wants to prove that he is TNA’s best import. Angle has no interest stating he has already defeated Christian twice. However, Christian stoops to insulting Kurt’s family and Kurt grants him a match.
Samoa Joe continues trying to get a match for the World Heavyweight Championship and Cornette continues fobbing him off. This time Joe is set up to face Robert Roode, an up and comer in the TNA ranks who Cornette thinks will be the next big thing in the company. Joe is such a talented guy that Cornette wants to see if Roode has what it takes to hang with Joe. Joe is far from impressed.
Against All Odds 2007
Samoa Joe vs Robert Roode
Despite repeated interference from Ms. Brooks Roode is unable to pick up the win and eventually submits to the Coquina Clutch. The match goes about thirteen minutes.
**Kurt Angle(c) vs Christian Cage TNA World Heavyweight Championship
A good even match that is about sixteen minutes deep comes to an abrupt end when Tomko and Steiner interfere. Post-match the heels are stomping down Angle before Samoa Joe comes out to make the save. The faces clear the ring and Joe picks up the World Heavyweight Championship, stares at it for a while before shoving it back to Angle and leaving the ring.
Build to Victory Road 2007
Kurt Angle comes out and wants Christian right here, right now. No titles, no referees, no match. Just a fight. Christian comes to the top of the stage with Tomko and Steiner accompanying him. He won’t fight Angle tonight but he will fight him at Victory Road providing Angle will put up the World Heavyweight Championship. Angle agrees.
Joe again goes to Cornette and says he wants a title shot. Cornette says the title match is already fixed but he appreciates Joe trying to keep Christian and his coalition in order so at Victory Road it will be Samoa Joe vs. Scott Steiner. Joe is upset and tells Cornette “You can’t keep me away from that Championship forever”.
Victory Road 2007
Samoa Joe vs. Scott Steiner
The match is just over ten minutes old when the referee throws the hard hitting contest out with both men repeatedly ignoring referee instructions. They continue to fight even after the bell rings and the referee calls other referees and security out but Joe and Steiner just destroy them before continuing to brawl. Eventually Joe gets the upper hand and chokes Steiner out before security recovers and finally pulls Joe off Steiner.
Kurt Angle(c) vs. Christian Cage TNA World Heavyweight Championship
With no allies in the early goings Christian acts the coward in the early going and deliberately avoids Angle constantly. Eventually it evolves into a real match with lots of near falls. Midway through the match Tomko gets involved but Cornette sends security down to throw Tomko out. With less than thirty seconds left Angle locks in the anklelock but Christian gets to the ropes, Angle releases the hold after a five count but as he goes to attack again, Christian rolls out of the ring. The bell then rings revealing the time limit has expired. The crowd chants five more minutes and Angle suggests it. Christian gets back in the ring and looks ready to go but simply slaps Angle and then gets out of dodge.
Build to Lockdown 2007
Christian comes out with his entourage and says he had Kurt Angle beat when the time limit expired and he wants another shot at the belt. Cornette comes out and says he saw things a little differently, it seemed to him that Angle was going in for the kill. Christian says that’s a lie he had Angle beat and he wants Angle again at Lockdown. Angle comes out and wants Christian right here, right now. Cornette says that’s not going to happen but at Lockdown there is a tradition, a tradition of two teams going into a Steel Cage. He says Christian likes using his friends to help him win matches well now he’ll get a chance to do it legally when at Lockdown it is Team Angle vs. Team Cage. Christian is apoplectic while Angle just smiles.
Cornette approaches Samoa Joe backstage and says that if Joe really wants to prove himself to Cornette then he could do worse than making sure he’s a part of one of the teams in the main event at Lockdown. Joe nods.
Joe calls out Kurt Angle next week and says he wants to be on Kurt’s team and he won’t take no for an answer. Kurt obliges and goes to leave the ring but Joe pulls him back “But once I prove how dominant I am at Lockdown, I’m coming straight for your title”.
AJ Styles completes his slow burn heel turn by officially joining not only Team Cage but also Christian’s Coalition.
Lockdown 2007
Team Angle (Kurt Angle, Chris Harris, Rhino, Samoa Joe and Sting) vs Team Cage (Christian Cage, AJ Styles, James Storm, Scott Steiner and Tomko) in Lethal Lockdown
The match comes down to Angle vs. Christian with everyone else brawling or laid out on the outside. AJ sneaks in the ring though and low blows Angle allowing Christian to hit the Unprettier. On the outside though, Joe is destroying everyone. He gets in the ring and hits a huge lariat on Styles before breaking up the pinfall attempt by Cage. One Muscle Buster on Christian later and Joe wins Lethal Lockdown for Team Angle. The rest of Team Angle celebrate whilst Joe and Angle simply stare a hole through one another.
Build to Sacrifice 2007
Kurt Angle comes out and calls out Samoa Joe wanting to discuss what Joe proved to the world last night. A camera shows what is happening backstage though as Scott Steiner has levelled Joe with a pipe backstage and continues to lay in the punishment. Angle watches on in horror from the ring when Tomko, AJ and Christian attack him from behind.
Later in the show Angle goes to Cornette’s office and demands a match with Christian tonight. Cornette says that will not happen but he will allow Angle to defend his title one more time against Christian at Sacrifice. This time there will be no time limit and the entirety of Christian’s Coalition is banned from ringside, if they try and interfere they will be fired.
Next week Joe trashes the arena looking for Scott Steiner. Cornette makes a match between the two for Sacrifice but suspends Joe until the PPV for his actions.
Sacrifice 2007
Samoa Joe vs Scott Steiner in a No Disqualification Match
Joe and Steiner have a brutal No DQ match which comes to an end after about fourteen minutes when Joe hits the Muscle Buster on Steiner through four chairs. Post-match Joe continues the beating and hits several Muscle Buster’s on Steiner before leaving.
Steiner has to be removed from the arena via medical staff after suffering serious injuries during and post-match. He is out for an indefinite period.
Kurt Angle(c) vs Christian Cage TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Angle makes Christian submit to the Ankle Lock after twenty-three minutes or so of hard hitting action. The pair threw everything at each other and with all members of the Coalition either out of commission or not willing to risk their job Christian is forced to go it alone.
Build to Slammiversary 2007
Jim Cornette announces that it is well established how much he loves tradition and that means at the next pay-per-view ‘Slammiversary’ Kurt Angle will defend his Championship in a Five-Man King of the Mountain Match. Now the challengers will be decided in four King of the Mountain Qualifying Matches. Before Cornette can say a word Samoa Joe storms to the ring. He demands to be put in a qualifier match. Cornette hesitates and states that he had something different in mind for Joe. He didn’t want to stick him in some qualifier match that he may or may not win on Impact. He wanted to guarantee him a big match at one of TNA’s biggest events. He wants the hottest rising star in pro wrestling to take on a legend of pro wrestling, an icon, if you will. He wants Samoa Joe vs. Sting at Slammiversary. Joe agrees to the match but tells Cornette that he won’t be denied a Championship match again. He will take Cornette out if that’s what it takes to get his Championship match.
KotM Qualifiers: Christopher Daniels d. Robert Roode, Christian Cage d. Chris Harris (via James Storm distraction), Abyss d. James Storm (via Chris Harris distraction) and AJ Styles d. Frankie Kazarian (via Tomko distraction)
Slammiversary 2007
Samoa Joe vs Sting
Joe defeats Sting clean in about sixteen minutes by making him pass out in the Coquina Clutch. After the match Joe gets on the microphone and tells whoever is coming out of tonight’s main event with the Championship that he is coming for him.
Kurt Angle(c) vs Abyss, AJ Styles, Christian Cage and Christopher Daniels King of the Mountain match for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship
AJ and Christian work together throughout the match as per the agreement they had before the match. However, Christian has trouble getting legal to win the match. AJ becomes legal after pinning Daniels while Christian is in the penalty box following Abyss pinning him. AJ tries to win the Championship but is stopped by Angle. When Christian comes out of the penalty box he is furious with AJ and wants to know why AJ tried to win “his Championship”. He tells AJ to lie down so he can become legal. AJ does but then small packages Christian for the three (AJ turns face) sending Cage back to the penalty box. Christian is furious but can do nothing about it. AJ is halfway up the ladder when Angle pulls him down and Olympic Slams him. Angle grabs the belt off the floor where AJ dropped it, climbs the ladder and hangs it to win the match and retain his Championship.
Build to Destination X 2007
Jim Cornette comes out and wants to announce an exciting new concept... Joe comes out before Cornette can say another word. Joe says he is sick of not getting the Championship opportunities he deserves, he wants Kurt Angle at Destination X or else. Cornette says unfortunately that’s not going to happen. This infuriates Joe who grabs Cornette and threatens him. Cornette tries to calm Joe down and reveals the rest of the exciting new concept he discussed earlier “The Bound For Glory Series, it will consist of eight participants taking part in a total of thirty-one first round matches before the semi-finals and finals take place at No Surrender later this year. This will crown the Ultimate Number One Contender for Bound for Glory”. Joe is intrigued so Cornette carries on “Tonight there will be a Gauntlet Battle Royal worth ten points if you win, at Hard Justice there will be two four-way matches both worth ten points for a win. And the other matches will be each of the eight participants facing each other once: five points for a submission win, three for a pinfall victory, two for a count out or disqualification victory and one for a time limit draw. Each match will have a twenty minute time limit apart from the bonus matches and the subsequent finals of the tournament.” Cornette manages to convince Joe how good it would be to win the World Championship at Bound For Glory “if you truly believe you are capable of winning such a gruelling tournament that is. Joe accepts and is the first announced name in the inaugural Bound For Glory Series.
In the main event Joe defeats the seven other men (AJ Styles, Abyss, Chris Harris, Christian Cage, Frankie Kazarian, James Storm and Robert Roode) to win ten points in the opening match.
In his subsequent matches he wins all of them, most by submission. His match with AJ Styles in the Bound for Glory Series will take place at the Destination X pay-per-view.
Meanwhile Cornette tells Angle of his plan to make Destination X a special event for the men who helped build this company, the X-Division stars. So he tells Angle he will defend his title against the longest reigning X-Division Champion in company history – Christopher Daniels.
Destination X 2007
Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles
With the twenty minute time limit close to expiring Joe desperately locks in the Coquina Clutch seemingly out of nowhere when AJ was in a good position to make AJ tap and maintain his one hundred percent record in the tournament so far.
Kurt Angle(c) vs Christopher Daniels TNA World Heavyweight Championship
The match goes twenty plus minutes but Angle eventually wins when he plays a little possum, Daniels goes Best Moonsault Ever but Angle rolls out of the way and when Daniels’ ankle gives way under his weight. Angle locks in the ankle lock and forces Daniels to tap.
Build to Hard Justice 2007
Joe continues to dominate the BFG Series winning all of his matches heading into the last of the bonus matches at Hard Justice. It is announced it will be Abyss vs. Christian vs. Kazarian vs. Roode in a Ladder match while Joe will face AJ, Harris and Storm in a Tables match at the PPV.
Jim Cornette announces that after a brief spell out with injury Scott Steiner will be returning at Hard Justice ’07 and he will challenge Kurt Angle for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship.
Hard Justice 2007
Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles, Chris Harris and James Storm Table Match
Joe wins the match when he hits a Muscle Buster on AJ through the table. The match goes just over fifteen minutes.
Kurt Angle(c) vs Scott Steiner TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Angle wins the match clean by making Steiner submit to the ankle lock in roughly thirteen minutes.
Build to No Surrender 2007
Kurt Angle comes out and says he can’t wait to see who will win the BFG Series tournament to see who he will defend the Championship against at the biggest show of the year, exactly twelve months after he made his debut in TNA. He says he’s been a dominant World Champion and he will prove it once again on the biggest stage in TNA’s history. Sting makes his return after a hiatus following his defeat to Samoa Joe. He says that Kurt is overlooking the fact that there is one more pay-per-view before Bound For Glory and Sting would love to take the Championship into Bound For Glory himself. He suggests Angle vs. Sting one more time at No Surrender. Angle accepts and the two men shake hands.
On the first Impact before No Surrender it is a special three hour edition of the show as the final four matches in the tournament take place to see who will move onto the semi-finals at No Surrender.
Samoa Joe defeats James Storm by submission to retain first place in the tournament and has done so with just shy of the maximum number of points. He won all bonus matches he was a part of and every single one-on-one match. He would have had maximum points but he only beat Kazarian by pinfall, everyone else he submitted.
The rest of the matches take place and Kazarian gets a big submission win over Chris Harris which is enough for him to leapfrog Robert Roode by one point and into fourth position meaning he will face Joe in the first semi-final. That leaves AJ Styles, who finished a distant second to Joe, to take on Christian, who finished third after beating AJ by pinfall in his final match of the series.
Christian talks trash over the next three weeks about how he beat AJ when they met in the league stage of the tournament and now it’s post season the ‘Instant Classic’ only gets more clutch.
AJ cuts promos about how when he was in Christian’s Coalition he was treated as a joke, just someone Christian could throw to the wolves to protect his own skin, but at No Surrender AJ will prove he is the better man.
No Surrender 2007
Samoa Joe vs Frankie Kazarian Bound For Glory Series Semi-Final
Joe defeats Kazarian in a gruelling seventeen plus minute encounter in the opening match of the pay-per-view.
Christian Cage vs AJ Styles Bound For Glory Series Semi-Final
Christian defeats AJ in another gruelling encounter this time that clocks in at just under sixteen minutes. AJ Styles has the match in hand when his former partner Daniels comes and distracts him allowing Christian to hit the Unprettier for the win.
Kurt Angle(c) vs Sting TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Kurt beats Sting in about fourteen minutes after a second Olympic Slam puts The Icon down for three. Post-match the two men embrace and Sting says the BFG Series winner will have a tough challenge because Kurt Angle is the best pro wrestler alive today, and a damn fine person too. He thanks Kurt and leaves the ring.
Samoa Joe vs Christian Cage Bound For Glory Series Final
Joe beats Christian clean after a match that went over twenty minutes and saw both men throw everything at one another. Eventually Joe locks in the Coquina Clutch, Christian grabs the referee and uses his leg to low blow Joe out of sight of the referee. Joe “hulks up” though and merely locks the Coquina Clutch back on, synching it in fully this time and causing Christian to tap.
Post-match Angle comes out stares at Joe and then raises his World Championship. Joe looks at him and just smiles.
Build to Bound For Glory 2007
Samoa Joe comes out and says despite everything that has been thrown at him, despite Jim Cornette denying him his rightful opportunity at the World Championship time after time there is no denying it now. Samoa Joe won the Bound For Glory series and tonight signs the contract for the match that everyone wants to see, Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe. The undefeated Samoan Submission Machine takes on the man that has dominated TNA since his arrival, and a man that also happens to be undefeated in TNA – Kurt Angle.
Jim Cornette comes out and says Joe should thank him. He didn’t throw roadblocks in front of Joe, he just made sure he was ready to be World Champion, and now Joe has went through Sting, he went through Steiner, he helped Angle fight off Christian’s Coalition and he won the Bound For Glory Series. Now, thanks to Jim Cornette’s careful guidance, now Samoa Joe is ready to face Kurt Angle for the World Heavyweight Championship. Joe smirks and tells Jim not to try and take credit for Joe’s path of destruction, that was all me. He tells Jim he’ll see him for the contract signing later tonight.
At the contract signing things get heated between the two but both sign the contract and Cornette reminds them that there is a clause in the contract that means if Joe touches Angle he will no longer be #1 contender and if Angle touches Joe he will no longer be World Champion. Cornette will not have his Bound For Glory main event ruined.
Over the final few weeks before Bound For Glory, Angle and Joe continue to cut promos generally saying that they are better than the other and at Bound For Glory they will prove that they are the greatest wrestler walking the face of the earth today. Both men seem to believe it, but only one can be true.
Bound For Glory 2007
Kurt Angle(c) vs Samoa Joe TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Joe and Angle have a hard hitting, fast paced match with neither man giving the other an inch. This continues in full flow until the nineteenth minute of the match when Angle reverse Joe’s enziuguri in the corner into the ankle lock. Jim Cornette comes out and all of a sudden the bell rings. The referee raises Angle’s hand and passes the World Heavyweight Championship to him. Joe is apoplectic and the pay-per-view goes off the air in utter confusion and turmoil. Cornette disappears almost as quickly as he appeared. Joe is tearing the ringside area up whilst a dazed and somewhat confused looking Kurt Angle makes his way backstage. Mike Tenay and Don West seemingly don’t know what to say but they manage to sign off with “Thanks for watching Bound For Glory folks, make sure to tune in to Spike TV on Thursday to see what will be an… interesting special live edition of Impact”.
Build to Turning Point 2007
Impact opens with a recap of the events of Bound For Glory. However, the recap is cut short as the camera quickly cuts to entranceway, with Samoa Joe storming to the ringside area. Joe is audibly heard saying ‘give me a damn mic’, staying outside of the ring. Joe says this isn’t what he wanted but he needed to do this in front of everyone, rather than have fans hear about it from TNA and Jim Cornette. Joe says he’s done. He’s been held down for too long and Bound For Glory was the final straw. Joe then goes on to say that if fans want to see him wrestle, they can go watch Ring of Honor, where he’ll continue to dominate professional wrestling, but TNA can go f**k themselves (which is bleeped out). Joe then hops over the barrier and leaves the arena through the back. The camera cuts back to Tenay and West, who look confused and stumble over their words before regaining their composure and promising a great night of wrestling on Impact.
Sting comes out and says he like everyone else is in shock about what happened on Sunday. He says the roster is under strict instruction from the board not to speak about this and most people are too afraid to. But he will say this, he thinks what Jim Cornette and Kurt Angle did at Bound For Glory was disgusting. Before Sting can say another word Angle’s music hits. He comes out and says he thinks Sting is disgusting. Sting has been coasting along on his reputation ever since Dubya-See-Dubya folded back in 2001. Now he just sits back and takes TNA’s money while becoming a joke, a shadow of his once great self. Kurt Angle will never tarnish his legacy like that. He will do whatever it takes to stay on top and on Sunday whether management or the board of directors or whoever liked it or not he did what he had to do. This infuriates Sting who calls Angle scum and challenges him to a match at Turning Point and he will prove that he doesn’t rest on his laurels. Cornette comes out and says no, Sting has had enough shots at the World Championship. Sting interrupts and tells Cornette he can make any stipulation he wants. Just bring the contract next week and Sting will sign it.
TNA announces through their website that Samoa Joe has been suspended indefinitely pending investigation into his actions on Thursday night. They also announce that Jim Cornette’s position as Management Director is under review following his actions at Bound For Glory.
Sting signs the contract, as does Angle. Sting then demands to know what crazy stipulation Cornette has picked. Cornette reveals that Kurt Angle vs. Sting at Turning Point will be a submission match. This confuses Sting who was expecting much worse, but still he accepts, tells Angle he will see him at Turning Point and goes to leave the ring. Cornette says “Oh, and one more thing. The Scorpion Death Lock is banned for this match”. Sting’s temper gets the better of him and he charges at Cornette but Angle gets to Sting first and proceeds to beat the living daylights out of Sting.
Cornette comes out and in the first on-air reference to Joe since his promo after Bound For Glory he officially re-instates Samoa Joe (Joe has been working ROH dates since then) and tells him that at Turning Point he has booked a two-on-one handicap match between Samoa Joe and two hungry young upstarts who have tagged together a couple of times recently: Robert Roode and James Storm. (ROH’s Glory By Honor VI: Night Two is scheduled to take place on the same night with Samoa Joe facing off against Naomichi Marufuji in an International Challenge match).
Turning Point 2007
Joe no shows so Roode and Storm are left with no-one to fight until the Motor City Machine Guns come out and challenge them to a match. Roode wins the match for his team when he pins Shelley.
The same night Joe defeats Marufuji at Glory By Honor VI: Night Two, after the match Joe leads the crowd in a chant of “F**k TNA!”
Kurt Angle(c) vs Sting World Heavyweight Championship
The match is about sixteen minutes old when Sting reverses Angle’s attempt at an Ankle Lock into an Ankle Lock of his own. Angle looks like he could tap at any moment when Cornette comes out and distracts the referee, Angle taps but the referee doesn’t see it. Sting moves the referee out of the way and punches Cornette but turns around into an Olympic Slam. Angle then locks on the Ankle Lock but Sting won’t submit. Eventually Angle grapevines the leg and breaks Sting’s ankle. The referee stops the match for Sting’s own safety. But Angle won’t break the hold. Eventually security comes out to break up the hold and Angle celebrates with Cornette.
Build to Final Resolution 2007
Angle and Cornette come out to celebrate Angle’s “dominant” victory at Turning Point. Before they can really get to it though a representative from the board of directors comes out and announces that Cornette has failed his job review and has had his position as Management Director terminated with immediate effect. He can continue to manage Kurt Angle but as that completely conflicts with the non-bias need for a Management Director the Board had no choice but to remove him from power. A new position of Executive Director has been created and they will be responsible for running all things regarding the wrestling part of TNA, that person will be unveiled at Final Resolution. Angle and Cornette are furious.
Later on in the night Mike Tenay informs us that the Board of Directors, impressed by his recent performances, have unanimously voted AJ Styles as the rightful number one contender to the TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Final Resolution 2007
Frankie Kazarian vs Christian Cage in a Ladder Match in the final of the Fight for the Right Tournament to earn a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship at Genesis
Kurt Angle(c) vs AJ Styles TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Twenty-three or so minutes into a thrilling encounter Styles rolls through an Olympic Slam attempt and picks Angle up for the Styles Clash. He hits it but Cornette comes out. Cornette spits in AJ’s face who chases him furiously around ringside. Eventually security gets between both men. The referee orders security to take Cornette away. AJ heads back to the ring as the referee is on the ramp instructing the security staff. All this has allowed Angle to recover though and when AJ rolls in the ring he is immediately Olympic Slammed onto a set up chair. Angle gets rid of the evidence and the referee comes back in to count to three.
Post-match Cornette returns, he and Angle roll AJ’s body out of the ring and celebrate. Cornette gets on the microphone and touts the outstanding achievement of Kurt Angle. He is the only man to ever hold the TNA World Heavyweight Championship, and he’s held it for an entire calendar year now. He won it in December of 2006 at Final Resolution and he has just retained it in December of 2007 at Final Resolution. Cornette says maybe they should rename this the Kurt Angle World Heavyweight Championship. All of a sudden the lights go out and Sting comes out minus face paint to reveal himself as the Executive Director.
Build to Genesis 2008
Angle and Cornette come out and continually run down Sting until Sting comes out. Sting is on crutches and says he doesn’t know when he’ll be returning to in-ring competition because Angle broke his ankle in two separate places. But for now he is ecstatic that the board had faith in him to run the show. He reminds Cornette that the rules have changed around here now and whilst – since Cornette has his official manager’s license – Sting cannot ban Cornette from managing Angle he can say if he gets involved in Angle’s match at Genesis with any kind of physical or mental distraction that Angle will be stripped of the World Heavyweight Championship
Genesis 2008
Kurt Angle(c) vs Frankie Kazarian TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Cornette is at ringside but does not get involved. After nearly eighteen minutes Angle hits his third Olympic Slam of the match and it is enough to put Kazarian away. Angle and Cornette celebrate as the pay-per-view goes off the air
Build to Against All Odds 2008
Christian, who turned face when he shook Kazarian’s hand as a sign of respect after losing to him in the ladder match at Final Resolution, wins a Three-Way Dance between himself, Robert Roode and Christopher Daniels when he pinned Daniels after nailing him with the Unprettier to become #1 contender.
Angle and Christian go back and forth on the microphone throughout the month with the main points being that Christian has never beaten Angle inside a TNA ring whilst Christian states that he is the only person on the roster that Angle cannot outfight, outwrestle and most importantly recently outcheat.
Against All Odds 2008
Kurt Angle(c) vs Christian Cage TNA World Heavyweight Championship
A gruelling match is over twenty-five minutes long when Angle locks on the Ankle Lock. Christian almost makes it to the ropes but Angle pulls him back to the centre of the ring and grapevines the leg. Christian taps but Angle refuses to relinquish the hold, eventually breaking Christian’s ankle.
Build to Victory Road 2008
Sting announces that Kurt Angle will once again fight AJ Styles, this time at Victory Road. AJ has fully recovered from the concussion he received at the hands of Angle and his steel chair in December and has demanded a rematch. Sting was only too happy to oblige. Angle and Cornette are fuming, shouting claims of bias, favouritism and a blatant disrespect of the “greatest frickin’ pro wrestler walking the earth today”.
Ring of Honor announce that Samoa Joe will face Roderick Strong in a #1 Contenders Match for the ROH World Championship at Take No Prisoners in Philadelphia on Sunday the 9th March. The same night that Victory Road is held in Norfolk, Virginia.
Victory Road 2008
At Take No Prisoners Samoa Joe defeats Roderick Strong to become the #1 Contender to Nigel McGuinness’ Ring of Honor World Championship.
Kurt Angle(c) vs AJ Styles TNA World Heavyweight Championship
Angle reverses an attempted pele kick from AJ into an ankle lock after about twenty-one minutes and AJ refuses to tap eventually passing out in the hold. Angle and Cornette celebrate another successful Championship defence. Angle then locks the hold back in on AJ who is still unconscious. Ragdolling his lifeless leg in an attempt to break his ankle. All of a sudden Angle is attacked by a man from the crowd, the man takes down his hood to reveal – SAMOA JOE! Joe attacks Angle and Cornette viciously. Eventually both men get out of dodge but Victory Road goes off the air with Joe hurling the TNA World Heavyweight Championship at Angle and screaming “I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” at the Olympic Gold Medalist.
Build to Lockdown 2008
A recap airs showcasing the return of Samoa Joe at Sunday’s PPV and pondering what will happen on Thursday Night Impact with regards to Joe and Angle.
Cornette and Angle come out and demand Sting’s presence. Sting obliges and Cornette berates him for allowing someone who is not a member of the roster to attack Kurt Angle, the World Champion, on Sunday’s PPV. Sting says that’s not quite true. Whilst Cornette did suspend Joe, and whilst the Board of Directors did re-suspend Joe following his refusal to show up at Turning Point, nobody actually fired Samoa Joe. Samoa Joe is still technically under TNA contract and after talking with Joe he has actually lifted the aforementioned suspension. Not only that but at Lockdown in the main event Sting has booked Kurt Angle defending his TNA Heavyweight Championship of the World inside a Steel Cage against… Samoa Joe!
Angle and Cornette are beside themselves but before they can complain Joe comes out and tries to assault both men once again.
The rest of the month long build is dominated by Angle and Cornette whining and complaining while Joe seemingly stops at nothing to get his hands on both men but is never quite able to do so.
Lockdown 2008
Samoa Joe vs Kurt Angle(c) Lethal Lockdown match for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship
The match is very similar to the actual match Angle and Joe had at Lockdown 2008 but this match ends with Joe locking in the Coquina Clutch and making Angle tap out.
So that concludes a rather long post. Eighteen months' worth of booking was there and I believe that this would have been a far more successful and lucrative way for TNA to book the Kurt Angle versus Samoa Joe feud. It still culminates in the same result with Joe winning his first World Championship in TNA over Angle at Lockdown 2008 but I believe the road I took to get there is one that would have benefitted TNA much more than the one they chose to take. The buyrates of Bound For Glory 2007 and Lockdown 2008 I believe would have been particularly high.

There's a summary at the bottom!
 
 

Introduction

As with my previous entries, this is a fairly relaxed and mathematically flaky look at the meta of Betrayal and how it compares to Delve. All data are sourced (with permission) from http://poe.ninja/builds, meaning that there is an unavoidable bias towards builds that are fast and/or preferred by dedicated, experienced players. Unfortunately, unless you're GGG this is the best data set we have. Only the softcore trade leagues are examined (it's all I have time to do with my current methodology).
It's also been a year (give or take) since I started doing these! Whoo...
 
 

Ascendancy Breakdown

As a refresher, Occultist and Champion were the two ascendancy classes updated in 3.5.0. Both received changes designed to tie into the new and reworked skills also contained in the patch.
 

Ascendancy	Delve %	Betrayal %	Diff ↓	Fold Change
Occultist	7.2%	15.6%	+8.39	2.16
Assassin	0.7%	6.8%	+6.15	9.87
Elementalist	11.5%	16.5%	+5.05	1.44
Saboteur	5.1%	7.7%	+2.60	1.51
Inquisitor	0.8%	1.4%	+.54	1.67
Ascendant	18.5%	18.9%	+.37	1.02
Raider	1.0%	1.2%	+.17	1.17
Berserker	0.2%	0.1%	-.03	0.83
Champion	2.4%	2.2%	-.26	0.89
Hierophant	3.3%	3.0%	-.28	0.91
Gladiator	1.5%	1.2%	-.34	0.78
Slayer	1.3%	0.5%	-.72	0.43
Chieftain	1.5%	0.5%	-.95	0.36
Trickster	1.9%	0.8%	-1.12	0.41
Necromancer	3.7%	1.7%	-1.99	0.46
Guardian	4.2%	1.6%	-2.56	0.38
Juggernaut	14.6%	11.5%	-3.05	0.79
Deadeye	8.9%	5.2%	-3.74	0.58
Pathfinder	11.8%	3.6%	-8.23	0.30

 
There's a lot going on here this time, so let's try and break it down. Occultist is doing great, clearly. There are many factors potentially contributing to this. The class itself got direct buffs, the reworked cold DoT skills are strong and a perfect fit for her, the class's nodes are applicable to a broad variety of skills and builds, and she cannibalised a lot of the enduring popularity of last league's new chaos skills. She was already doing much better than any post-3.0 league in Delve thanks to those chaos skills and the accessibility of ES gear with dense fossils, so she's now climbed to third place overall.
Ascendant retains the top spot, showing off her versatility with a dizzying range of different types of builds. That said, while the rest of the Ascendant ladder is indeed extremely varied, her top three skills (representing about 45% of characters) are bow attacks (Elemental Hit, Scourge Arrow, and Rain of Arrows). There's definitely a theme running through the Ascendant's popular builds — most people are picking her for Slayer leech and/or her jewel socket access (whether that's for Might of the Meek, the now horrifyingly expensive Unnatural Instinct, or just stacking more conventional jewels). As I mentioned last report, Ascendant can do almost any build well, but it does seem to usually be for the same reasons.
Elementalist has also bounced back to reach second in the popularity contest, her best showing to date despite being popular for a few leagues running. Tri-Herald Blade Vortex is still a popular build for her of course, but new skills Winter Orb and Storm Brand are responsible for the bulk of her resurgence. These skills are showing up on a few classes, but Elementalist is by far the most popular for now. I'm sure she's slipping Inpulsa's money under the table.
Finally in the big winners, Assassin has showed up big time this patch! This probably isn't a surprise to the thousands of people who gasped in awe of the huge Cast on Crit buff in 3.5.0, and variations of that build are pretty much single-handedly responsible for his resurrection from Berserker Tier™. Dude might only do one thing, but damn he does it well!
Most of the classes that lost popularity this league seem to just be making room for everything mentioned above rather than being a response to specific changes, so I don't have a huge amount to say about them. There is one quite funny thing though. Pathfinder and Guardian, the two "featured" ascendancies of 3.4, suffered popularity drops almost exactly equal to their gains last league. Pathfinder of course lost two incredibly strong builds (Indigon Poet's Pen and the Immortal Build) to nerfs this league, and the skills tailored for her in 3.4 seem to have found more of a home with Occultist and Trickster. Guardian didn't really change at all — I'm guessing his new builds just felt more like novelties than anything people particularly wanted to come back to. It's also noteworthy that Champion is continuing to slip despite being an already-strong class that received buffs and targeted skills in 3.5. The Steel skills didn't land strongly, and...something something melee? More on that later.
(As a side note, I mentioned last time that Inquisitor was slowly slipping from dominance to irrelevance, despite barely being touched by balance. Winter Orb and Storm Brand helped reverse that trend this league! And with the way 3.6 is shaping up, it looks like he won't need much help with popularity any longer...)
 
 

Primary Damage Skill Rankings — The Top 50 of Betrayal

"Rank" here is based on popularity alone, i.e. rank 1 means the skill used by the largest number of characters. This is also using poe.ninja's criterion of only counting 5- and 6-linked skills, which is imperfect but about as good as you can feasibly get. Note that this does include links granted by items.
 

Skill	Delve Rank	Betrayal Rank ↑	Rank Change
Winter Orb	N/A	1	New
Molten Strike	2	2	0
Arc	6	3	3
Cyclone	17	4	13
Ice Nova	Unranked	5	New
Blade Vortex	1	6	-5
Storm Brand	N/A	7	New
Vortex	106	8	98
Elemental Hit	3	9	-6
Tornado Shot	5	10	-5
Herald of Agony	13	11	2
Scourge Arrow	18	12	6
Rain of Arrows	22	13	9
Lightning Spire Trap	27	14	13
Barrage	9	15	-6
Righteous Fire	7	16	-9
Glacial Cascade	16	17	-1
Blade Flurry	15	18	-3
Cold Snap	83	19	64
Storm Call	57	20	37
Tectonic Slam	114	21	93
Ice Spear	Unranked	22	New
Consecrated Path	12	23	-11
Summon Ice Golem	29	24	5
Frenzy	4	25	-21
Raise Spectre	19	26	-7
Ancestral Warchief	24	27	-3
Toxic Rain	8	28	-20
Double Strike	20	29	-9
Herald of Ice	23	30	-7
Armageddon Brand	N/A	31	New
Caustic Arrow	14	32	-18
Frost Blades	39	33	6
Reave	10	34	-24
Flicker Strike	57	35	22
Ice Shot	65	35	30
Shield Charge	30	37	-7
Raise Zombie	21	38	-17
Summon Skeleton	28	39	-11
Projectile Weakness	99	40	59
Scorching Ray	11	41	-30
Shattering Steel	N/A	42	New
Blight	34	43	-9
Summon Flame Golem	26	43	-17
Spectral Throw	35	45	-10
Lightning Arrow	39	46	-7
Essence Drain	51	47	4
Orb of Storms	31	48	-17
Death Aura	37	49	-12
Kinetic Blast	32	50	-18

 
Most changes here are either a direct result of new skills coming in strong, a skill being buffed or nerfed, or stuff dropping a bit in order to make room for the new/buffed things. A few notes on the odd ones though:

• Cyclone is mostly being used as a trigger skill for Cast on Crit builds now. Sorry to disappoint the Ngamahu cohort and friends.
  
• Similarly, Frenzy's drop is tied directly to the strongest Poet's Pen builds being nerfed.
  
• Storm Call is apparently meta now? This is a trend I have personally missed completely until I was writing this up, but Storm Call Pathfinders are all over the place all of a sudden! Some of these are just using Vaal Storm Call as a boss-nuking skill, but most of them have no other damage skills and appear to be pure Storm Call! This is exciting. What have I missed? I know the skill is pretty good, but still. Could someone please fill me in? (Edit: there's some good discussion of this in the comments if people are interested.)
  
• Projectile Weakness is only showing up due to a legion of Herald of Agony Occultists using it in a Curse on Hit setup.
  

 
 

Skill Diversity by Ascendancy

 

Ascendancy ↓	Number of Skills >1% Usage	% Usage of Most Popular Skill	Most Popular Skill	…vs in Delve
Ascendant	15	19.1	Elemental Hit	Elemental Hit
Assassin	6	41.4	Cyclone	Molten Strike
Berserker	18	24.2	Ancestral Warchief	Ancestral Warchief
Champion	16	18.1	Double Strike	Double Strike
Chieftain	10	35.0	Blade Vortex	Blade Vortex
Deadeye	10	47.9	Tornado Shot	Tornado Shot
Elementalist	8	41.4	Winter Orb	Blade Vortex
Gladiator	8	35.3	Herald of Agony	Herald of Agony
Guardian	10	29.9	Righteous Fire	Righteous Fire
Hierophant	10	46.3	Arc	Arc
Inquisitor	17	20.7	Winter Orb	Molten Strike
Juggernaut	10	56.4	Molten Strike	Molten Strike
Necromancer	9	38.6	Raise Spectre	Raise Spectre
Occultist	17	30.0	Vortex	Blade Vortex
Pathfinder	18	18.7	Storm Call	Frenzy
Raider	17	18.8	Tornado Shot	Tornado Shot
Saboteur	4	64.6	Arc	Arc
Slayer	15	37.3	Cyclone	Cyclone
Trickster	22	15.4	Caustic Arrow	Toxic Rain

 
Most of this has stayed static or has already been discussed above. The overall number of skills used per class has increased vs Delve though, which is a good sign. Also Trickster is suddently a hive of diversity, going from sub 10 last league to 22 and first place this league. I wouldn't read too much into this as the class as a whole is pretty unpopular at the moment. At the other end, Saboteur is pretty much permanently at the bottom end of diversity, just using whatever few spells fit best with traps and mines. Slightly better than the 90% GC days at least. Finally, I've mentioned it already but wow, Storm Call is the most popular Pathfinder skill! I can't help but laugh.
 
 

Unique Item Rankings — The Top 100 of Betrayal

By my count, there are currently 908 unique items in PoE. Even in a thread of this size that's too many to show, especially since 250-odd of them don't show up on a single character in this dataset. So here's how the 100 most popular are doing!
 

Unique Item	Delve Rank	Betrayal Rank ↑	Rank Change
Watcher's Eye	1	1	0
The Wise Oak	2	2	0
Atziri's Promise	5	3	+2
Dying Sun	4	4	0
Loreweave	9	5	+4
Mark of the Shaper	34	6	+28
Tombfist	3	7	-4
Might of the Meek	12	8	+4
Unnatural Instinct	22	9	+13
Headhunter	7	10	-3
Taste of Hate	6	11	-5
Kaom's Heart	8	12	-4
Bubonic Trail	17	13	+4
Wildfire	13	14	-1
The Pandemonius	139	15	+124
Starkonja's Head	21	16	+5
Inpulsa's Broken Heart	16	17	-1
Cinderswallow Urn	N/A	18	New
Shaper's Touch	29	19	+10
Energy From Within	46	20	+26
Solstice Vigil	N/A	21	New
Shavronne's Wrappings	24	22	+2
Blood of the Karui	52	23	+29
Xoph's Blood	11	24	-13
Essence Worm	44	25	+19
Devoto's Devotion	24	26	-2
Lycosidae	104	27	+77
Kaom's Roots	14	28	-14
Yoke of Suffering	28	29	-1
Presence of Chayula	40	30	+10
Cospri's Malice	238	31	+207
Lavianga's Spirit	63	32	+31
Dream Fragments	51	33	+18
Frozen Trail	324	34	+290
Sin Trek	32	35	-3
Rumi's Concoction	26	36	-10
Combat Focus	20	37	-17
Lioneye's Fall	30	38	-8
Goldwyrm	31	39	-8
Queen of the Forest	19	40	-21
Vessel of Vinktar	82	41	+41
Lion's Roar	27	42	-15
Kaom's Way	43	43	0
Cyclopean Coil	64	44	+20
Conqueror's Efficiency	48	45	+3
Mark of the Elder	88	46	+42
Ventor's Gamble	18	47	-29
Hand of Wisdom and Action	85	47	+38
Conqueror's Potency	14	49	-35
Sadima's Touch	36	50	-14
Incandescent Heart	53	51	+2
Pyre	35	52	-17
Rigwald's Quills	38	53	-15
The Green Nightmare	191	54	+137
The Pariah	83	55	+28
Clear Mind	86	56	+30
Intuitive Leap	73	57	+16
Windripper	39	58	-19
Witchfire Brew	33	59	-26
Pure Talent	71	60	+11
Nebuloch	76	61	+15
The Golden Rule	109	62	+47
Fertile Mind	93	63	+30
Grelwood Shank	54	64	-10
Prism Guardian	41	65	-24
The Vigil	94	66	+28
Soul Strike	162	67	+95
Soul Catcher	176	68	+108
Farrul's Fur	171	69	+102
Bisco's Leash	79	70	+9
Esh's Mirror	127	71	+56
Bated Breath	89	72	+17
The Poet's Pen	10	73	-63
Alpha's Howl	59	74	-15
Lightpoacher	57	75	-18
Atziri's Acuity	115	76	+39
Forbidden Taste	50	77	-27
Carcass Jack	253	78	+175
Atziri's Reflection	95	79	+16
Astramentis	65	80	-15
Command of the Pit	81	81	0
Shroud of the Lightless	101	82	+19
The Taming	96	83	+13
Hopeshredder	142	84	+58
Atziri's Step	69	85	-16
Call of the Brotherhood	75	86	-11
Void Battery	180	87	+93
Inspired Learning	49	88	-39
Sin's Rebirth	66	89	-23
Aul's Uprising	60	90	-30
Ephemeral Edge	70	90	-20
Bisco's Collar	74	92	-18
Victario's Influence	97	92	+5
Lioneye's Remorse	68	94	-26
Magna Eclipsis	231	95	+136
Victario's Charity	122	96	+26
Hale Negator	169	97	+72
The Overflowing Chalice	61	98	-37
Brute Force Solution	144	98	+46
Healthy Mind	42	100	-58

 
I won't parrot the last couple of these talking again about the usual versatile, popular items topping the list. Instead, let's go right ahead and zoom in on the biggest changes in popularity between Delve and Betrayal. For clarity, I'm sticking to items that were in the top 100 in either league. Shoutouts to Rime Gaze, Arakaali's Fang, Shade of Solaris and Gifts from Above, which all rose 4-500 places but still didn't break into the top 100!
 

The Biggest Unique Movers and Shakers of Delve

 

Unique Item	Delve Rank	Betrayal Rank	Rank Change ↓
Cinderswallow Urn	N/A	18	New
Solstice Vigil	N/A	21	New
Frozen Trail	324	34	+290
Cospri's Malice	238	31	+207
Carcass Jack	253	78	+175
The Green Nightmare	191	54	+137
Magna Eclipsis	231	95	+136
The Pandemonius	139	15	+124
Soul Catcher	176	68	+108
Farrul's Fur	171	69	+102

 
Two of 3.4's fourteen new uniques are doing well, which is about the usual ratio. Both are strong and versatile, so no surprises there. It's cool to see The Pandemonius shooting up to the top (and overtaking Breach-mate Xoph's Blood in price) thanks to the huge amount of new cold-based builds popping up. Cospri's Malice and Frozen Trail have ridden the Cast on Crit buffs to the top. Soul Catcher and Farrul's Fur are showing up again thanks to increased availability, as they've never been anything but insanely strong. Green Nightmare is mostly being used in speed-clearing Winter Orb builds where it can really shine. And Magna Eclipsis is a really interesting one — it's being picked up by Brand builds to abuse its +2 to socketed gems (with Empower on top), making for lightning-fast Brand Recall cooldowns.
 

Unique Item	Delve Rank	Betrayal Rank	Rank Change ↑
Zerphi's Last Breath	37	463	-426
Fevered Mind	45	252	-207
Lightning Coil	67	216	-149
Cloak of Defiance	99	246	-147
Indigon	47	178	-131
Divination Distillate	23	126	-103
Atziri's Foible	72	173	-101
Quill Rain	58	157	-99
Doon Cuebiyari	91	190	-99
Hrimburn	100	195	-95

 
On the losing side, most of these are easy to categorise. Zerphi's, Indigon, Divination Distillate and Quill Rain got slaughtered by nerfs. All the mana items fell alongside Zerphi's and Indigon. Lightning Coil is no longer popular for deep delving, although version 2.0 of the Immortal Build still uses it. Doon and Hrimburn are less clear. I guess the natural drops in popularity of RF and Tri-Herald BV are enough to explain these? (Edit: a couple of people have pointed out that Hrmburn is dropping off because it's now possible to make rare gloves with 50% conversion. Thank you.)
 
 

Spotlight on...

 

...Class Popularity Over Time

Just for fun as an anniversary retrospective, I thought it would be cool to present class popularity in every league since these data became available. Please forgive me for the crappy Abyss data — my methods were not very sophisticated back then. I'm not going to comment on these, as I'm not sure there's much to be said. Mostly just interesting.
 

Class ↓	Abyss	Bestiary	Incursion	Delve	Betrayal
Ascendant	5%	7.71%	10.35%	18.50%	18.88%
Assassin	2%	2.00%	0.73%	0.69%	6.85%
Berserker	4%	0.52%	0.19%	0.16%	0.13%
Champion	1%	6.06%	3.38%	2.45%	2.19%
Chieftain	0.70%	1.60%	0.72%	1.47%	0.53%
Deadeye	0.20%	14.46%	17.53%	8.91%	5.17%
Elementalist	0.50%	2.44%	16.71%	11.47%	16.52%
Gladiator	6%	1.58%	1.84%	1.54%	1.20%
Guardian	5%	6.16%	1.98%	4.16%	1.60%
Hierophant	0.20%	4.53%	5.27%	3.28%	3.00%
Inquisitor	11%	2.95%	1.45%	0.81%	1.36%
Juggernaut	2%	18.54%	7.76%	14.58%	11.53%
Necromancer	16%	7.63%	2.86%	3.67%	1.68%
Occultist	0.80%	2.87%	2.53%	7.24%	15.63%
Pathfinder	8%	5.71%	3.15%	11.81%	3.58%
Raider	16%	4.76%	1.25%	0.98%	1.15%
Saboteur	2%	3.39%	17.70%	5.11%	7.72%
Slayer	17%	4.92%	2.35%	1.26%	0.55%
Trickster	2%	2.15%	2.26%	1.89%	0.77%

 

...Melee

Since melee balance is the focus of a lot of community discussion at the moment, here is the popularity of all the primary melee skills in the game since I started keeping records.
 

Skill ↓	Bestiary	Incursion	Delve	Betrayal
Blade Flurry	5.23%	1.35%	1.90%	1.86%
Charged Dash	0.00%	0.06%	0.13%	0.09%
Cleave	1.04%	0.12%	0.14%	0.10%
Consecrated Path	0.00%	0.00%	2.33%	0.93%
Cyclone	5.37%	2.38%	1.75%	7.79%
Double Strike	0.01%	2.73%	1.45%	0.69%
Dual Strike	0.25%	0.03%	0.00%	0.05%
Earthquake	0.02%	0.16%	0.06%	0.05%
Flicker Strike	0.50%	0.37%	0.14%	0.41%
Frost Blades	2.16%	0.40%	0.29%	0.54%
Glacial Hammer	0.09%	0.01%	0.02%	0.01%
Ground Slam	0.00%	0.14%	0.08%	0.01%
Heavy Strike	0.23%	0.03%	0.01%	0.01%
Ice Crash	0.09%	0.03%	0.09%	0.04%
Infernal Blow	0.05%	0.04%	0.02%	0.01%
Lacerate	0.17%	0.38%	0.20%	0.05%
Molten Strike	5.26%	3.79%	10.37%	10.78%
Reave	5.51%	2.35%	3.24%	0.50%
Smite	0.00%	0.00%	0.21%	0.07%
Sunder	2.19%	1.59%	0.34%	0.05%
Sweep	0.01%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Tectonic Slam	0.55%	0.02%	0.02%	0.97%
Wild Strike	0.37%	0.08%	0.18%	0.09%
TOTAL	29.07%	16.06%	22.94%	25.03%

 
The more observant among you will immediately notice that this table is cheeky at best and outright misleading at worst. I definitely don't mean to be a melee apologist here. Very importantly, Cyclone in its current use case is not something anyone is likely to call a melee build, since it's overwhelmingly being used to trigger Cast on Crit. That leaves Molten Strike pretty much the sole standard-bearer for melee builds, as you might expect. You can definitely argue that the diversity of melee skill usage has dropped in recent patches, but 3.7 is already slated to be "the melee patch", so I might revisit this table in a few months' time!
 

...Sources of eHP

Finally, at the request of Discord user Bomars, here is one more set of trends over time — the proportion of builds using pure life to build their ehP pool vs other methods. Unfortunately, I don't have the means to detect hybrid builds (they will just be counted as pure life).
 

eHP Type	Bestiary	Incursion	Delve	Betrayal
Pure life	64.23%	63.95%	59.32%	59.69%
Mind over Matter	20.83%	27.52%	23.38%	16.00%
Chaos Inoculation	3.36%	2.06%	7.66%	15.77%
Low life	11.59%	6.46%	9.64%	8.56%

 
Well, it's not much of a shock that CI is doing great. However, it's quite tough to untangle exactly why. What proportion of that rapid rise is due to dense fossils, for example? What about the fact that Occultist is a natural fit for both the new cold DoT skills and CI builds? And so on. For me, the most interesting thing is that MoM is losing popularity. I sort of figured that the increasing popularity of CI would come at the expense of regular life builds (presumably non-casters). Evidently not! Based on everything above, the caster meta is also not quite as entrenched as you might expect, so that ties into this.
 
 

Summary

• A fairly build-agnostic league (compared to Incursion favouring ranged speed clear and Delve rewarding tanky builds) has lead to a fairly stable meta. Most changes in the meta appear to be direct results of buffs and nerfs to core parts of builds in 3.5.0.
  
• Of GGG's promoted archetypes for 3.5, cold casters have been enthusiastically embraced and impale-focused champions mostly ignored.
  
• Melee builds are stagnant and lacking diversity, but casters aren't dominating in the numbers as much as you might expect.
  
• The number of people hyped about the CoC buff seems to be reflected by the large numbers following through and actually playing it.
  
• Storm Call Pathfinders!!! Sorry, I'm still hung up on this...
  

 
As always, thank you for reading these huge lumps of text, and please let me know if there's anything you think could be improved or that you would like to see in future threads. See you in three months to pick apart what a patch packed with caster buffs has done to the meta!