I can assure you that the average intelligence level of the tournament definitely increased after you died to the same strategy the same way again and again. Jeez how much of a ****ing ego do you need to type this absolute bullshit about stupid players performing well in the tournament.After seeing so much hatred and idiocy on the forums of moa5 and dropping out of the tournament myself I lost all will to post anything but seeing Melkor's posts and agreeing 100% with them I feel like I atleast owe him some support here amongst all these deceived viewers/ignorant haters of arena map and its players.
First of all: trush is not a "troll strat" or a "yolo strat" if there are stil some idiots left who might think that. It's been done for years long before wk but it's never been as powerful and as dangerous before the wall hp nerf. (not to mention towers are abit better on wk in general) We arena players have been trushing alot aswell because trush is the best possible strategy in alot of cases (depending on civs and map ofc) before the tournament but obviously top tier random map players who trushed all their life and invest time and practise into developing a great trush for arena are gonna be better at that it than us (if you checked Vinchester's 1v1 history weeks before moa5 he played about half of his 1v1 on arena and they were pretty much all trushes). I loved arena so much because I personally really dislike feudal wars but unfortunately the only map where there used to be no feudal wars developed into just another boring tower/archer/scout map like all the rest. But that's fine because it's only my opinion.
Next: brackets. Pretty much exactly what Melkor wrote. After i dropped out I couldnt even watch some of the later rounds because there was so much dumb **** happening with clueless people doing clueless strategies and getting away with them because smarter players were already out of the tournament due to being matched-up with eacher other or trushed. Even in the grand finals I watch Viper's stream and I see he did absolutely zero civ preparation beforehand and there he is wondering if maybe he should pick Khmer because "they counter Malay well with their elephants and scorps" or maybe he should pick Portugese. It's really sad someone can win a tournament purely by having such superior macro/micro. My suggestion for seeding for any future moa tournaments: deduct 100-200 points from rating of everybody who didnt play atleast 30 arena 1v1 games in the last 3 months before the start of the tournament. It's easy to see it in map distribution of 1v1 rating history. That single improvement would pretty much fix everything about the seeding.
Next: the myth that "arena players got destroyed by ara players in this tournament". Lets go in order considering only the knock-out matches: I lost to Vincester who played about half of his 1v1 on ara and half on arena before the start of tournament while having 2k4 rating and being a successful participant of previous moa tourneys. Stefan lost to Stark for whom it's true he doesn't practise arena in random games but I doubt anyone would consider him inexperienced on the map having great results in all previous moa tournaments. Terror lost to ACCM who was also rated 2k4 at the time and yes, he's doesn't play arena at all. Edie lost to Ruben, that is actually the only real surprise and a shocker and also the only instance in which an arena player lost to a lower rated opponent. Metal lost to Melkor and Melkor lost to Keif, all 3 of them being arena players. Keif and Timotheus both lost to Tatoh, arguably a top 5 overall player in the game atm and grand finalist. And Dracont lost to CL.
Again: none of people here who knocked out arena players are pure ara players like Hera, Laaan or Classicpro. They are all either other arena players or top tier random map players.
Now lets see some of the players who got knocked out by these very same arena players: Slam, Bact, ACCM and Laaan. These are all 2k3+ top tier players while the only arena player with rating comparable to theirs is Edie. So much for arena players being overrated. If anyone else actually studied the brackets for a minute instead of just repeating the same old lie over and over again he would come to these same conclusions.
And besides: it's not like any ara specialist ever won a big 1v1 ara tournament over top RM players or island specialist won 1v1 island tournament etc. In fact arena is the only map where arena specialists can compete with the best random map players and even win the whole tourney (Edie in moa4) exactly because the map is so much different (or atleast it used to be) from other maps having such a beautiful strategic aspect to it with dozens of unique strats that you don't see on other generic maps where the more skilled player with better macro/micro almost always wins and there is very little "outsmarting your opponent" being seen. However it seems all this changed now with the changes to wall hp and all the people who hate this map to death (for whatever reason) can enjoy some more towers, more flushes, more pure booms for generic imp wars and more "the player with better macro/micro" always wins scenarios. Great!
And no, arena is not some paragon of thinking and strategy, neither before nor after WK. In aoc arena, there isn't even such thing as counter attacking. The amount of strategic decisions you need to make are far fewer compared to other maps. Aoc arena just becomes go imp->treb almost every game