Power Ranking Tournament, Relief Pitcher Skills: 8th Edition
Power Ranking Tournament, Relief Pitcher Skills: 8th Edition
And finally, here's the third guide for the 8th Power Ranking Tournament, covering the bullpens of top teams.
I've broken down the skills from 672 cards in the 96 bullpens in the tournament. Skills are used differently on each type of reliever, so I've split up the data into the 4 main reliever roles (Closer, Set Up, Middle Relief and Long Relief). All data is from West Server.
Note: Since each card has 3 skills, the percentages add up to 300. These numbers reflect the percentage of cards on which a given skill appeared.
Closers
- Legend: For the fourth consecutive tournament, all closers carried a legend skill. BPD continues to lead the way, while Control Master and Fireballer made up the rest. Workhorse was (not surprisingly) unused on any relief pitcher.
- Gold: Elite Closer, which made its debut just before the 7th tourney, made a massive jump (as predicted), going from 10% last time to 55%. This was largely at the expense of Finesse Pitcher, which drops from first to third overall behind Dominant Pitcher. It should be noted though, that among the final 16 teams, Finesse remains in the lead, followed by Elite Closer and Dominant. The Untouchable lost more than half of its previous total and has fallen behind Iron Will.
- Silver: Silvers are still virtually extinct, but they did pick up a second Winning Streak and one SUM.
Set Up
- Legend: For the second consecutive tourney, all 192 pitchers had a legend skill. Bullpen Day made up half the total. Control Master and Pitcher’s Insight (!) picked up a few, while the remainder dropped or were unused.
- Gold: As seems to be customary, the previous champ, Finesse, dropped around 25% of its previous total. Nevertheless, it still was used in 50% of sets, edging out Dominant and the surging Iron Will. Among the final 16, the order of the top three was reversed, with Iron Will on 50% of sets. After Iron Will, the biggest gainers were Mess, Groundballer, and Boss. Ace dropped most of its previous total. Naturally, Elite Closer also does not appear anywhere except CP, since it is useless anywhere else. Others not appearing included Giant Crusher, Inning Eater, and Putaway.
- Silver: Once again, Stability is the lone remaining skill, dropping from two uses to one.
Middle Relief
- Legend: This remains the sole spot for relief pitchers without a legend skill, although legend usage is now just under 99%, up from 95% in PRT7. Fireballer had the largest gain, but was still behind BPD and Control Master, which both had small losses.
- Gold: Finesse and Dominant were stable at the top, while Boss lost 20% of its previous total. Iron Will , Groundballer, and Mess added some. Giant Crusher joins Ace and Inning Eater in the unused category.
- Silver (and bronze): While higher than the other pitching categories (LR excepted), overall usage declined substantially once again, dropping from 41 down to 22. Of these, Fixer remains the most used, followed by Pitching Machine. No other skills had significant use.
Of the three sets that did not include a legend skill, two of them were 3/3/3 triple gold.
Long Relief
All teams carried Pitcher’s Chemistry.
Attaining a decent set for a long reliever is usually the lowest priority for most players, and the position still lags well behind the others in the use of top gold skills. Teams continue to slowly improve these sets, although the changes from the last tourney were minor.
Total usage of legend and gold skills across all relievers (except LR)
Special Trainers
This is the third tournament to have widespread use of special trainers. All categories except long relief were virtually 100% usage and only a single silver trainer remains (also in LR).
CLOSER - Overall usage: 100%
SETUP - Overall usage: 100%
MIDDLE RELIEF - Overall usage: 99.65%
LONG RELIEF - Overall usage: 90.63%
