Warrior General Games

Originally posted by Merik
Haven't succeded myself in convincing Boss to go D heavy on S*

Hard to be convinced when Hawaii's D has been insane in past teams even without many S*.

Originally posted by o The Boss x
Hard to be convinced when Hawaii's D has been insane in past teams even without many S*.

All the more reason to enhance it! Haha. Strength on strength!!! Hawaii always does very well defensively though for sure.

Originally posted by Merik
wouldn't really say that, i think it's a huge waste with 4 DE's where one is S*, at least the 3rd DT has a huge impact on ST compared to wage

but you should go either 3 DE's with S* or 4

I disagree with that. DTs typically have almost nothing invested in sprinting, so they aren't really great ST players. Don't get me wrong, it's hard to scrape together 10 dots to cover kicks and punts anyway, so you will probably field the DTs regardless, but they wouldn't be my first choice.

Also, who said anything about 4 DEs including a S*? Obviously if you add a S*, you can think about dropping another regular player in that position group.

That said, I managed to get 4 DEs including a S* on Whoville this season, and we still have a place for all 4 in our rotation, rather than 1 of those guys basically being a permanent backup. We still only have 2 DTs (including one S*), because, quite frankly, we can never find enough snaps for a 3rd DT when we've had one in the past. We are much more likely to trot out a 3 man front than a 5 man front, and with the DE depth, 5 man front is not a problem anyway.

You realize that the OP question is severely dependent on the offense you're playing?

Originally posted by Xars
Bad advice.

Why?

There is something called Opportunity Cost and in a closed system - which is what a Roster limit/Salary Cap limit game is - you have to understand the relationship of value vs. cost compared to other values and costs.

Is having a 3rd DT valuable? Yes.
Is it more valuable relative to it's cost than a 4th DE in terms of value to his cost? No.

If you have 3 DTs, including a S* DT, you've basically already lost. That's 4.5 DT salaries on your roster. The incremental value of that much DT salary (above 3.5) is horrendous. GA did it best with an entire 5-2 Defense and they couldn't stop Vet Screens for shit.

If you don't have any S* DE, than you really need 4 DE in my view. A Run Stuffer, two Combos and a Pure Rusher. So normally, you'd allocate 4 DE salaries to a team and normally 3 DT salaries (Run, Combo, Pass).

Once you look at the question this way:

Which gives me more options - 4.5 DT Salaries or 5.5 DE Salaries?

The answer should be clear. There are many more opportunities to use an extra 1.5 DEs than 1.5 DTs even relative to the higher base cost. There just aren't enough (any?) good uses for the last 1.5 DT salary. So it's cost without much value. The extra 1.5 DE salary has cost but also a lot of value. The cost-value relationship is clearly in favor of an extra 1.5 in DE salary versus an extra 1.5 in DT salary.

This is why Cuivienen has a shitload better Ladder record than GE.

(And someone up voted GE but not Cuivienen, until I did.)



Just to extend Xars' analysis (which is spot on and how I think about it too) further, your salary multiples are really going to look like this (Xars made a simplifying assumption about S* salaries by ignoring traits).

2 DTs: 2.4 base DT salaries (if you are only running 2 regular DTs, these guys have to be expensive trait heavy to be competitive, at least +20% each)
3 DTs: 3.4 base DT salaries (with 3 regular DTs, you will probably be going with at least 1 +20% salary trait guy, and the other 2, let's call it +10%, even though it is really hard to avoid taking one of those +14% traits on every DT)
2 DTs incl S*: 3.8 base DT salaries (you are going to want your regular guy to be heavy on expensive traits, and you're also not going to want to gimp your S* to save a couple bucks when you've invested so much already)
3 DTS incl S*: 4.8 (since the 2 regular guys are very specific role players in this setup, going to assume they only take +10% worth of traits each)

I've made some assumptions too, but those are more accurate numbers in terms of salary you will be paying out in each setup.

2.4x, 3.4x, 3.8x or 4.8x. You can save quite a bit going with just 2 regular DT, and as Detroit has already mentioned, that is a very viable option. There isn't a huge difference between 3 regular and 2 including a S*. You are going to spend a lot going to 3 including a S*.

Is that last turn of DT salary really worth it? What do you really get, as Xars already said, above and beyond 3 regular DTs or 2 including a S*? Not a whole hell of a lot, especially since it is tough to find snaps for a 3rd DT in a decent defense, especially when 1 is a S* and will be on the field basically always.

Your reasonable choices are the first three options. I fail to see how the last option is ever going to be worth it outside of a gimmick defense like GA's old defense.

The last thing to consider is how many S* slots you have available to use. They don't grow on trees. You have to recruit agents that have them available and will commit them to your team. If you have a 50 tier S* available, you might want to skip the DT and consider using it on a G that can pull or a K that is good at both FG and KO since you can't carry 2 any more.

Originally posted by o The Boss x
You realize that the OP question is severely dependent on the offense you're playing?

If we could choose that, then defense would be a hell of a lot easier.

In the mean time, when you are designing a roster, it's not dependent on the offense you're playing in the next game at all, because you have to attempt to stop every kind of offense.

Originally posted by Cuivienen
I disagree with that. DTs typically have almost nothing invested in sprinting, so they aren't really great ST players. Don't get me wrong, it's hard to scrape together 10 dots to cover kicks and punts anyway, so you will probably field the DTs regardless, but they wouldn't be my first choice.

Also, who said anything about 4 DEs including a S*? Obviously if you add a S*, you can think about dropping another regular player in that position group.

That said, I managed to get 4 DEs including a S* on Whoville this season, and we still have a place for all 4 in our rotation, rather than 1 of those guys basically being a permanent backup. We still only have 2 DTs (including one S*), because, quite frankly, we can never find enough snaps for a 3rd DT when we've had one in the past. We are much more likely to trot out a 3 man front than a 5 man front, and with the DE depth, 5 man front is not a problem anyway.

Not all ST players need sprinting some can serve another purpose like not dying against pure run teams ST

also why do you think anyone would spend ekstra wage traits on DTs or DE's? unless you run too few of course...... if you take the question if i would run 2.4 wage or 3.0 and get another DT i would always choose other DT..with DE's wage i would probally go other way though

i guess my short answer is that i disagree with this part in xars post

Is having a 3rd DT valuable? Yes.
Is it more valuable relative to it's cost than a 4th DE in terms of value to his cost? no

mostly cause i value the DT the same as DE so the cheaper is better

Originally posted by Merik
Not all ST players need sprinting some can serve another purpose like not dying against pure run teams ST

also why do you think anyone would spend ekstra wage traits on DTs or DE's? unless you run too few of course...... if you take the question if i would run 2.4 wage or 3.0 and get another DT i would always choose other DT..with DE's wage i would probally go other way though

Nobody needs anything and anybody can serve a purpose.

In the mean time, sprinting is a nice skill to have on ST, especially in the punt game.

Otherwise, I don't understand the rest of your post.

well basically i would rather have 3 DT's then 2 with 20% traits

You'd rather have 3 with no traits that cost salary than 2 with some traits that cost extra salary?

The extra salary traits are usually the best ones though. I'm not sure 3 DTs with no extra salary traits will do a better job playing DT than 2 with extra salary traits. You'd almost certainly need at least 1 for the combo slot. You could maybe get away with zero extra salary traits on the two specialists, but I'd still say you are better off against a balanced offense with the 2 better DTs.

I'd rather have 2 S* DE's built like this...
http://www.glb2scout.com/vpimages/239_NEW_1459388456.png

Then 3 normal DE's and 1 S* DE.

the 2 S* De's are cheaper than the 4 DE setup anyways.

Against S* OT's, or pure pass/pure rush teams the DE's will be taken out of the play more often and their numbers will drop, but they still have high value in the game. Even if I couldn't do S* De's, I'd rather just have two combo DE's built like this.

http://www.glb2scout.com/vpimages/239_NEW_1459388938.png

Or 3 Normal DE's with one combo, one run stuffer, and one pass rusher, and then simply using custom depth charts to set up a proper snap count depending on the offense that is faced. I guess it'd depend on the Rest of the roster, but I'd never have more than 3 DE's, they are simply too expensive to justify 4 DE's. And considering what can be done with the, you could even get away with 1 S* DE, and 1 combo DE if conditioning is managed right. Hell even 2 non S* Combo DE's could still be good. Honestly, I think I'm more inclined to 2 DE's than I am to 3 or 4.

One of the biggest problems with team building is agents undervaluing certain skills in their builds, if you get 3-4 DE's but no one has conditioning past 45 or so at end build, then you NEED that heavy of a rotation to maintain energy, but you could have guys on the field for 100% of the snaps if conditioning is 70-75, and what that allows you to do with the rest of your roster is worth it in my opinion if you can get the agents together for the S*'s.

Freeing up salary for S* LB's, S* Cb's, and a S* SS is more important because I think they can offer more to a team than a S* DE. I mean S* De's are great and all, but a S* LB, or S* SS is greater.

Well it also depends on how much 5-2 you run and if you run a zone defense. Those little WR screens don't work as well vs a fast zone defense. I can tell you that all 3 of my DTs will get plenty of PT. My S* will play every down and if I play a pure running team, my run stuffing DT will get most plays and if I play a passing team, my combo DT will get most plays and if I play a balance team, they will split snaps. The only time I ever run 3 D-Line is on blitzing plays and that is 3rd and long and 20% of the time on 1st and 2nd down, vs passing or balanced teams. So most of my plays have 2 or 3 DTs on the field. And my combo DT will have max pass rush tech and break run block.

GE -

You're making a classic mistake at only looking at benefits. You're not focused on costs - in this case, opportunity cost.

I just looked at your Defensive roster. A DT costs about the same as a SS.

You have 3 DTs (including the S*) costing $6.684 million: $3.73, $1.67, $1.284 (1 tier lower)

You have 1 SS (non-S*) costing $1.73 million.

Most of the top owners/co-ord/recruiters would much rather trade the 3rd DT for a 2nd SS. The equivalent tier price is $1.67 compared to $1.73. That's virtually a wash in terms of cost.

2nd SS > 3rd DT. It's not even close.

Originally posted by MileHighShoes
I'd rather have 2 S* DE's built like this...
http://www.glb2scout.com/vpimages/239_NEW_1459388456.png

Then 3 normal DE's and 1 S* DE.

the 2 S* De's are cheaper than the 4 DE setup anyways.

Against S* OT's, or pure pass/pure rush teams the DE's will be taken out of the play more often and their numbers will drop, but they still have high value in the game. Even if I couldn't do S* De's, I'd rather just have two combo DE's built like this.

http://www.glb2scout.com/vpimages/239_NEW_1459388938.png

Or 3 Normal DE's with one combo, one run stuffer, and one pass rusher, and then simply using custom depth charts to set up a proper snap count depending on the offense that is faced. I guess it'd depend on the Rest of the roster, but I'd never have more than 3 DE's, they are simply too expensive to justify 4 DE's. And considering what can be done with the, you could even get away with 1 S* DE, and 1 combo DE if conditioning is managed right. Hell even 2 non S* Combo DE's could still be good. Honestly, I think I'm more inclined to 2 DE's than I am to 3 or 4.

One of the biggest problems with team building is agents undervaluing certain skills in their builds, if you get 3-4 DE's but no one has conditioning past 45 or so at end build, then you NEED that heavy of a rotation to maintain energy, but you could have guys on the field for 100% of the snaps if conditioning is 70-75, and what that allows you to do with the rest of your roster is worth it in my opinion if you can get the agents together for the S*'s.

Freeing up salary for S* LB's, S* Cb's, and a S* SS is more important because I think they can offer more to a team than a S* DE. I mean S* De's are great and all, but a S* LB, or S* SS is greater.

I think 2 S* DE is definitely the way to go. The ability to get sacks and blow up running plays in the backfield is crucial.