Board Thread:Debate of The Week/@comment-28112409-20181230235210/@comment-28112409-20190101110840

That's a nice Jally vs. Zed charade you all got there, but this is Vert vs. ZA WARUDO.

The Basic Attack point is easily negated by just running the math. BG and Crusader protect from the exact same number of lethal evils seeing how both of them provide Powerful defense. BG is capable of killing 10 evil roles, 12 if you include Coven possessing Necronomicon. Crusader is capable of killing 16 evil roles, 17 if you include Necronomicon.

Not only that, what BG kills and what he protects from are mostly within the same circle. What Crusader kills and protects from aren't that much within the same circle however. So if we were to count the absolute total of what BG and Crusader are capable of killing and/or protecting you from, BG would come out with 11 evil roles (13 with Necronomicon Coven included) while Crusader comes out with a whooping 23 evil roles (24 with Necronomicon Coven included). The conclusion is that the Basic Attack is not a downgrade from BG.

To those who say "it doesn't do anything to immune evils", you're a dumbass Joe Schmoe. Stopping killing evils from performing a kill is what Doctor does to save the Town time and it is considered a fine protective role despite having 0 capabilities aside from that, but Crusader is a shit role when it does the exact same thing to immune evils? That just screams hypocrisy to my ears. Paired along with the fact that Crusader can kill more evils than BG can and the fact that it doesn't get killed while doing so, the argument that "Crusader having a basic attack makes it a bad role" is a pretty crappy one.

The 2nd point's claim about the reliance on RNG is valid and agreeable, except for 2 fatal assumptions. The first assumption is that the Crusader is braindead and that every single visit he makes will always have 2 others coming with him. This is false, because a good player treats Crusader like he would a Vigilante, an Escort or an Ambusher. Mindblowing revelation for you, but you can just not visit people as any of these 4 roles whenever you don't want to take the risk of causing negative utility. A Crusader's priorities are different from a Doctor's or a Bodyguard's in order to be good, that doesn't mean he has no priorities at all. Players can also shape their odds of town visitors to evil visitors by simply paying attention to the game, communicating to the confirmed townies via whispers, and just not being a Joe Schmoe the entire game.

The second assumption in that point is that the Crusader has a higher chance of attacking a townie than he does an evil, a claim to which I say, bullshit. This is purely from a statistical point of view and takes 0 consideration of metas, skill and other factors. For the following explanation, since we are having a talk about how balanced and how valuable Crusader is, we will assume the Ranked Coven rolelist. If you're gonna argue that Crusader sucks in some other casual game mode, you can take yourself and the 2nd point of Jally's argument, and you can go fuck yourselves.

We will calculate Crusader's chances of hitting a townie vs hitting an evil on N1 by scoring the possibility of each role's ability to visit or not and considering the average probability of each slot on the rolelist, where the higher score in the end result means that the Crusader has a higher chance of hitting this side. This is a Ranked environment, and proper assumptions and/or considerations will be made accordingly. We will assume the Crusader is a good one skill-wise, as higher skill ceilings should be considered for any role before making judgments and declarations of how good it is.

There are 2 TI slots, each one offering 6 possible roles. Psychic is excluded since the role can't visit, and Lookout is excluded because of the Jailor + TP/LO metas occupying a Lookout's night activity. Good Crusaders will not visit Jailors or players that ask for protectives or lookouts since the possibility of protection that Jailor or player can possess will deter the evils from visiting and the chances of killing a townie are far too great for a good Crusader to risk. As a result, each TI slot has a 4/6 score, which total up 1.33 (3 significant figures) when added together.

The jailor cannot be attacked by Crusader and the TP is the Crusader himself, and he cannot attack himself in any way or form. Hence, both slots are given a score of 0. The TK is also given a score of 0 because Veterans can't visit, VHs don't exist in Ranked, and Vigilantes would not shoot the same target as a Crusader would. Decent Vigilantes will target suspicious people or confirmed evils, in which a good Crusader has very little reason to visit either since they will be taken care of and the chance of an evil visiting another evil or someone who's being suspected are very low, furthered by the possibility of investigatives who would like to verify whether the suspicious person is evil or not. Vigilantes also can't visit on N1. The total so far is still 1.33.

The TS offers 5 roles, 2 of them that can visit and 3 others that cannot. Yes, I know Ret and Mayor are unique, but making assumptions that an RT or a TS is either of them drops their score to an instant 0, which is inaccurate. In favor of Town, we will assume that the chances of Mayor and Ret are up in the air for all possible slots.

Escort, despite being able to visit, is excluded as a role that can be harmed by a good Crusader. This is because any decent Escort would not go randomly roleblocking people as there is a higher chance of significantly harming Town than evils. If they want to confirm themselves as a roleblocker, the Jailor meta allows that since Jailors can't execute N1 and they are revealed from D1 for the Escort to confirm themselves to. Decent Escorts will utilize their roleblocking on those suspicious or confirmed evil, which good Crusaders avoid anyway because once again, higher risk of hitting a townie and much lower chance of hitting an evil. Consequently, the Escort is excluded from this calculation.

However, Transporters visit 2 people per night, which doubles their chance of getting attacked by Crusader compared to a normal visiting town role. As a result, the TS slot is given a score of 0.4 instead of 0.2 since the Transporter's visiting score is doubled. Adding this up, we have a total of 1.73 so far.

The RT slot basically requires the total of all possible visiting roles that can be harmed by Crusader out of the total of all possible Town roles within this rolelist. We will still take the 4 out of 6 from the TIs to here, but the TPs will be given a 1.5 out of 4.

TP is given a 1.5 out of 4 because of Jailor and TP/LO metas attracting all doctors and bodyguards to the confirmed jailor, meaning neither of them count. Trappers can visit only once every 2 nights maximum, meaning their rate of visits is halved from 1 per night to 0.5 per night. Trappers also can't visit N1. Another Crusader would still be capable of being harmed by the initial one, regardless of how good they are, so they count in this.

TK is given 0 out of 2, for reasons previously discussed. The 0.4 or 2 out of 5 roles from the TS is carried from there to here as well.

The overall total of possible visiting roles coming from the RT becomes 7.5 out of 17. This means each RT is given a 0.44 (rounded to 3 significant figures) score. Multiplied by 3, the number of RT slots, the total visiting score coming from them is 1.32.

Adding 1.32 and the previously calculated 1.73, the total score for townies that can get harmed by Crusader in the average Coven Ranked game is '''3.05. '''An average of 3.05 Town roles can be attacked by a good Crusader in a game of Coven Ranked.

Now we turn to the evils. CL is given a score of 1 since it is fully capable of visiting and Medusa is given a score of 0 since it isn't capable of visiting. Yes, Medusa with Necronomicon exists and all but I don't know how to factor that in. In favor of Town, we will just take it as a 0. Total of 1 so far.

There are 2 Random Coven, each one offering 3 roles that can visit and 1 that cannot. Necromancer cannot visit but HM, PM and Poisoner can. This means that each Random Coven is worth 0.75 score for visit capability and being harmed by Crusader, forming 1.5 combined and making the total 2.5. I can sense the greasy fingers of someone wanting to write "HM with Necronomicon". I have already assumed Medusa as a 0 despite the Necronomicon possibility and despite her being a guaranteed role, so you can shut it before you embarrass yourself.

The NE roles are Jester and Executioner, neither of which can visit and this gives the NE slot a 0 score.

The NK has roles that can all visit on a daily basis, all of them except Juggernaut on N1 and WW. The reduction in value from missing a single night is negligible from Juggernaut, but WW's full moon night visits are still significant. As a result, WW's score is halved from 0.25 into 0.125 and hence lowering the score of NK from 1 to 0.875.

Adding the NK's 0.875 with the previously calculated 2.5 from the Coven leads to a total of '''3.375. '''An average of 3.375 evil roles can be attacked by Crusader in a Coven Ranked game.

Evils' 3.375 > Town's 3.05. A reminder that these scores/numbers are the average number of roles per game that can be attacked by a good Crusader. So yeah, higher chance of harming Town? BULLSHIT!

Also bear in mind that these are the scores for N1 only. Afterwards, the chances will tilt even more in favor of the Crusader hitting evils since town members will slowly start getting eliminated, people get confirmed, etc. There's also the fact that metas are not designed but discovered, and just like people have discovered that tp/lo requests worked, they will discover that Crusader requests also work. Given enough time and Coven Ranked actually being alive, you will see a townie asking for tp/lo and another townie asking for Crusader after that to separate the two together and give a Crusader a guarantee for his abilities to be used without harming any townies. A directed Crusader has a much less chance of hitting townies on average compared to a Crusader left going around and about, and it's not impossible to direct Crusaders.

Aaaaall of that aside, the point regarding Crusader's RNG between multiple visitors is still a valid one. However, the skill ceiling for Crusader and his interactions with other town roles outweigh such an issue in the role.

Next point, the 3rd one, it's too busy ramming a stick up its own ass for the 2nd half of the paragraph without properly elaborating. The Crusader can't protect itself for that one night, so? BG and Doctor are greatly preferred as a guaranteed protection layer rather than trying to risk self protection with no solid leads on when the attack is coming, and their self protection has an extremely low rate of usefulness due to how specific the conditions of a situation need to be and how costly the ramifications of screwing up the timing of your self protection is, but boo fucking hoo when Crusader doesn't have it. Crusader lacking self protection isn't a deal breaker in any way, because the main attraction and the unpredictability still makes it a formidable protective to handle for any evil that approaches.

The 4th point, go fuck yourself. I'm getting more and more comedically tilted with every paragraph I'm writing and you throw this garbage here. You just throw the assumption that Crusader is totally useless after a set of weak, support-lacking points and pass this off as a legit point. An actual example of a role wasting a slot is Forger for Mafia, who is essentially a worse Janitor and needs to rely on a 2nd specific RM role to be useful in its own way. After what I've argued against the 2nd point, and once again considering the skill ceiling + town interactions that make Crusader far better than you give it credit for, this point simply does not stand. The argument of "it's a waste of a slot" only applies to roles that are truly completely useless or there is truly another role that does the first role's job better in every single way. This does not apply here, because Crusader and his implications are significantly different to BG and Doctor.

The 5th point, screw you for making this Jally and screw you Wolf for bringing this here. You've broken the camel's back, you've triggered the volcano the fuck out of its eruption, you've committed a blood pressure war crime, wtf is this. You know how much I bloody despise anyone who complains by saying this is just another role but with this. There is an endless amount of examples that I can use to show you just how retarded this point is, but the length of this post would double if I did. Calling a role a ripoff of another while dismissing the actual differences as slight changes to the ripoff, is so unbelievably braindead to say. What next? Bodyguard is a Doctor ripoff because they both provide powerful defense? Hex Master is an Arsonist ripoff because both of them can stack their attacks? Is Coven Leader a Crusader ripoff because they both start with the letter C? Are we really stooping this mother-of-fucking low?

Summary: Wolf is still a pussy, Jally sucks at the game, and I think I popped the blood veins in my head. That's enough reading Joe Schmoe posts for today.