GDT Finals Judgements - fem vs. mik

Jesus fuck the scandumps on these.

I feel like much of, if not all the points being around here are the culmination of all the debates Mik and Fem have done before. Mik's critique of Edward's telepathy is a *far* more refined version of the argument that Ame put forward, fem similar to Kerd tears into Black Beetle's speed, and watching fem's nuanced steelmanning approach face off Mik's "let's look at literally every factor in this fight" approach was pretty fantastic.

I could post my usual massive dump of argument-by-argument analysis but I don't think I'd be posting much new in regards to "this character punches good, this character has this antifeats" since much of these arguments carried over from previous rounds. I'll try to exclusively tackle the new characters, proposed strategies, and overall team advantages.

Most characters are argued okay to good for speed besides Black Beetle. Fem definitely rode the wave Kerd started with deconstructing BB and I think the most consistent interpretation I can come up with him after reading fem/mik's arguments is that he's an effective damage sponge. Which isn't too bad for Mik's team considering the proposed strategies on either end, but I'll get into that in a bit.

I really liked Mik's deconstruction of Samus' speed, and "this standard but applied to both teams" seems like a very solid way to go about certain arguments. I definitely agree that many of Samus' "mach cones" seem vague, and, if are to be taken literally, gives BB, Mik's slowest character, good speed. I definitely don't think BB has good speed and fem argues that well, so I think this is a huge kick in the nuts for much of Samus' ranged game. While I don't think it makes Samus anywhere as slow as BB, she really needs *all* her projectiles to be consistently fast to work around Ben, Peter, and Strode.

Cannonball kind of falls into the same category of Black Beetle in that he'll distract Mik's team and, based on what fem put forward, has a solid chance of taking out one character before he gets beat down in melee. I don't think he'll do particularly much besides that from the arguments put forward, but if he's successful it does certainly tip the scales back into fem's favor. Which sucks, since Peter definitely adds a lot to Mik's team.

Ben and Peter make up the bread and butter for Mik's ranged game, and they both present excellent maneuverability, attack vectors that can incapacitate a good number of Fem's team on landing, and are strongly advantaged in the battle arena where many other characters will struggle to effectively navigate in comparison to them. Samus and WW are good defensive counters to them, but even if I take Samus' speed seriously I think their propensity to group together and try to protect other teammates as argued by fem will screw them over vs. webbing or stingers. And while BB definitely doesn't have speed, he'll be dividing attention at a range at the start of the fight. Overall I think Mik has a solid advantage for the ranged fight. Granted this can be nuked if Cannonball manages to off someone and topple this carefully constructed deck of cards, but even with just one Spider-Man in play it's closer to even than to advantaged in Fem's direction.

Edward definitely suffers from needing to get close to fight all of Mik's highly maneuverable characters. For his meme telepathy, while I don't think Ben outright counters it like he's argued to, I also agree with Mik's argument that he'd be overwhelmed with the amount of information characters like Strode are shown to process at a given moment, and would at least be blocked in Ben's case. He falls into a similar category to Strode being both consistently fast CQC fighters, but Strode can at least contribute somewhat to what will likely be a chaotic ranged fight after an explosive start.

Mik wins. Unless Cannonball manages to take Ben out of the fight right as it starts, Mik has an extreme advantage given the environment and the characters being used that was effectively an uphill climb for fem to argue. And while fem saw that hill and started marching up, I think he fell just shy of reaching the peak. GOOD debate.