excited to watch pu this year!
1st -
Drud always has a good handle of the meta, and put up a stellar record last year. He is always motivated to perform, and he has an 8-0 big tony to help support him. tony also has a good eye on the meta and has been cooking cool and fun stuff (and it works) all of PUPL and I can't imagine that he'll suddenly stop doing that now. I'm not that confident in Zugu's ability to prep the tier just in the sense that Slam is a very demanding tournament and Zugu won that by being a good clicker, I'm not sure as to if he's really gonna build/pitch in prep and tbh he doesn't really need to. Drud and tony are enough and have this on lock.
2nd -
MDB is here just based on playing. He is someone who plays a lot of PU but is generally pretty particular about his teams. DD Joe is known to have supported him to some success, but I do think they got pretty repetitive in PUCL when they worked together. From a prep standpoint I think etern will have to pitch in alongside DD Joe but I do wonder how this slot will shape up. I'm sure it will be fine given new meta and the old meta we had during PUCL was such a slog to build in and I'm sure Joe got bored of it. But as far as skill there's no doubting Michael.
3rd / 4th -
I rate MZ and Pix pretty evenly. MZ has been a longstanding TL and has put up great records in our tournaments, and SCL he didn't perform poorly afaik. Pix has always been consistent in PU to my knowledge and I don't think he'll have any issue with finding his groove. I do think they are both on the weaker ends of the spectrum when it comes to support, and I'm sure they'll be self sufficient anyway so it's not really a big concern at all. Both of them will just have to figure out how to manage being self sufficient and picking up on trends and what will win while balancing actually winning their games (if that makes sense?).
5th -
I think Kushalos despite his recent blunders in recent tournaments is still a good player if previous showings were just off-seasons. When he is in form, he will do well. Especially with xcx's support. Obviously I'm biased towards one of my best friends but xcx has always been known for being an extremely talented builder and picks up metas extremely fast and is able to figure out what is good before anyone else figures it out. All Kushalos really has to do is get fed teams and play. Ideally he's active in his team cord and learns the meta and takes notes on what xcx is doing weekly so he's not getting knowledge checked.
6th -
LpZ did great for me last year on the machines, is super easy to work with, and comes up with fresh ideas that win him games. He has good support behind him too. I'm struggling to find more things to say just because we all know LpZ. He's won slam, he's won SPL, he's been in the scene for a while. Whether or not he does well or flops or if this ranking is justified is just a test of time.
7th -
This is my hot take, but I've watched Trichotomy play Monotype for years, and he's one of the best players there. He's also been dabbling in the ZU scene where he's won some tours there and does well. I've always wanted to see him play in some other tiers and subforum tours so I'm looking quite forward to his games. He has no support but I'm not really that concerned because I'm sure he'll find some and figure it out / figure the tier out on his own regardless. He's a good player and I think he's quite talented at the game and will be able to translate that out of Monotype without much difficulty. Maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty in going from subforum tours to being thrown into SCL all of the sudden, but I can't see him doing horribly.
8th -
Mako is a good player and I think DugZa is gonna be great support for her given that he doesn't keep suggesting to use random ZU shitmons LOL. I mean, I'll give him his flowers because they tend to work, but they are pretty pilot dependent. Not to say Mako can't do it, because I know she can, but I do wonder how she'll perform when she's mainly been an OU mainstay (an old gen one at that, but I know she's had a lot of success in SV). I think 8 is not reflective of her skill as a player at all but this pool is pretty tenured in the tier and its hard to say for sure that she is better than XYZ player. Like I could probably say she's a better overall clicker than lets say, Kushalos in recent years, but Kushalos sort of knows how to maneuver around playing these tiers in these sorts of tournaments.
9th / 10th -
I also don't think that Xiri and Metallica are the worst "clearly" players in the pool. This pool is quite good and can literally go in any direction record-wise. However, its hard to put them above some of the other players reliably. Xiri has actually been doing pretty well in PU recently (SV at that) and has been around in the scene for years. Everyone knows him and that he is able to play, just a matter of again if this is one of these tours that works out well for him or not. Given that hes been on a roll recently, I'd say he'd do fine, contrary to my ranking here. Metallica I think has been building a lot of good stuff in SV, but is really prone to burning out and its not much of a secret that he tilts easily. Mons is a game where its honestly 80% mental. I feel like clicking isn't thaaaat hard, but making sure you can stay calm during a game in response to hax, or to be able to move onto the next week even if you're 0-3 or something, is the most important skill anyone can have. Anyway, both players are fine enough and will just have to really make sure they're on top of it, and both have good support in Esteb4n and Platum/Ruffles respectively.
This pool is fucking awesome though, lets have some good games
