Hello people! I miss the old item popularity snapshot threads. I don't blame people for not making them, because it's obviously a lot of work. This time though, I decided to do it myself. So here's the June 2018 edition!
I looked at the global top 50 for this. I'm in Ace I, so I could not see all of the Nightmare League (but it would be a gargantuan amount of effort to do this for the entire league anyway). So here's what the ship distribution in the top 50 looks like:
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/7on3ArA.png)
So there's a high amount of enforcers and shooters, but a low amount of fixers and defenders. That was to be expected though. And now that that's out of the way, the thing we're all here for: the weapon rankings!
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/qPY1rGc.png)
Here "sum" is the total amount of weapons present, which is different from the amount of users because people run 2 of the same weapon sometimes.
It cannot come as a surprise, given the high amount of enforcers, that Blast Cannon and Flare Gun are the leading weapons. What could come as a surprise, however, is that the dropoff to sniper is so big. Sniper Cannon is barely any more present than Mine and Explosive Cannon. Mine even has more unique users than the often complained about sniper!
The bottom of the list isn't very surprising. Launchers have never been popular at the top end of the game, where everyone's speed (and avoiding skill) is too high to reliably land them. To a lesser extent, this also goes for torpedos. If anything, I expected Missiles to be higher. I seem to recall them being near the top in the past, and they haven't been nerfed since that time. They've even been buffed, if you count the recent perk addition.
Now, let's go on to the yellow items:
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/DsKWtxr.png)
No surprises here. Frost was nerfed into obscurity, and since the "fixes" there have been few players who preferred Tesla Bolt over a speed item.
Next, blue items:
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/S0kl9Hv.png)
A few surprises here. First of all, the turbo count is not 50. There were 2 enforcers who chose to run Big Shield + Bandage, and among those was the #1 player (HXD Peterking). The second surprise is that the Rudder count is not zero. There was one defender who chose to use a rudder. It's safe to say that was a good decision, given that he's now one of only two defenders that managed to get into the top 50.
Lastly, the green items:
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/mh6YUfq.png)
There's not much to say about this. There were only 5 fixers, and their setups varied. Actually, one interesting point: there are no "selfish fixer" setups in the top 50
Now, let's look at some specifics for the most represented ships. What weapons do shooters like to use?
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/H8CkaIE.png)
The only remarkable thing here is that the Fire Bomb number is relatively high, considering the low placement in the weapon ranking. This is because all Fire Bombs in the top 50 were on shooters.
Next: what blue item setup do high ranked shooters prefer?
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/dgOYsLm.png)
One setup is clearly preferred, though the other remains high enough to be relevant.
Now, there aren't really enough fixers, defenders or speeders in the top 50 to look at setups, but there were many enforcers. So here's the weapon top 5 for enforcer:
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/eoVngXp.png)
As you can see, the dropoff from 4 to 5 is huge. There are only 4 weapons that see significant use by enforcer players, of which 2 are dominant.
Lastly, what yellow setups do enforcers use?
![[IMG]](https://i.imgur.com/efcApxp.png)
It's obvious that most enforcers run 2x Tesla Shield. What's less obvious is that 6 enforcers in the top 50 run a different setup. Half of those run the setup that's most popular among speeders (TS + OB + nitro), while the other half runs something funny involving the rare frost item or Tesla Bolt.
That was it! I hope you enjoyed reading this post. It's not likely I'll make another, because it's a lot of work, lol.
Click to expand...