What if I told you Odin Heavy Defense, the notorious “destroyer” of the Beyblade Burst metagame wasn’t actually that unstoppable? You probably don’t believe me and might even just follow up this post with a “Odin OP nothing you say actually matters” but hopefully that won’t be the case and we can all agree on this. To sum up the current issue some people argue that Odin Heavy Defense is to good and versatile for competitive play and the game would benefit to have it leave. Some will argue that Odin Heavy Defense doesn’t need to leave and the game would be perfectly fine to keep it or worse to ban it. Odin Heavy Defense is not the bane of the meta and it’s not impossible to KO/Outpsin/Burst it.
So first off let’s talk about the problem that most people have with Odin, they believe that it is to hard to outspin and it is also two challenging to KO/Burst. From what I have tested, seen and experienced in tournaments both of these statements are far from correct. First off Deathscyther outspins Odin Heavy Defense like nobodies business. Although everyone seems to believe that it’s a bit closer to 50-50 or Odin just blows it out of the water. The tournament I attended in January Deathscyther Heavy Defense demolished Odin Heavy Defense. In actual matches and freeplay. Even a younger player EthanQ42 was doing remarkable with Deathscythe even in the face of Odin. Stormscorpio1 and I both did some testings on it and they weren’t even worth wearing out our Deathscythe’s, they were creaming Odin Heavy Defense so hard it was ridiculous. Not to mention Attack seems to have a pretty high success rate against Odin Heavy Defense as well. We didn’t have any tournament matches, but when me and ZachBob were trying out Odin Heavy Defense vs Valkyrie ____ Extreme, Odin was getting it’s butt whooped. Also it appears there have been multiple times in tournaments that Extreme has done very successful against Odin Heavy Defense. By looking at the tournament that was supposedly dominated by Odin and the players could not defeat it I found this
(Feb. 01, 2016 7:09 AM)Kei Wrote: It is worth noting that @[Beyonomics] went undefeated in his block (5-0) using (almost?) exclusively Valkyrie Heavy Xtreme, winning several times against Odin Heavy Defense. And in the finals against LMAO, I defeated OHD using the same combo 3-2. LMAO also used it during block play and had success against OHD.
Beynomics, a player who has not played that frequently lately (or in years from what I’ve seen) was able to successfully defeat Odin on multiple occasions using attack. Attack is so powerful against Odin. Another tournament I’d like to point out is
this match. Extreme had just came out, Ginga did not have much testing but he still decimated geetster99. Heck I even was able to defeat Odin Heavy Defense with Spriggan Heavy Defense 3-0 by bursting it once and KOing it the other times. This was also in a tournament match against Dark_Mousy. Also I’d like to point out that a combo being “harder” to use isn’t a very valid excuse to why it isn’t reliable. Anyone truly serious at this game probably should be able to launch attack, otherwise I don’t really see how you could consider yourself good. So is Odin still so unbeatable?
Also these arguments about launch strength aren’t really that good. Most of the skill in beyblade is the launch at the beginning of the game. If you have a weaker launch and are afraid of a mirror match, either choose a different beyblade, if you aren’t winning I’m honestly not sure why you would choose to continuously choose to use the same beyblade. The other option would be to work on launching in the mirror match, sometimes straight launching might not be the way in a stamina match up if you know for sure you aren’t winning by outspin. Yes you might be thinking it's absurd, but I won a stamina matchup before by banking by beyblade a bit to knock my opponent’s off battle due to him having a better launch and I won off it. I’m personally not sure how well banking Odin v Odin would be (I have never tried it) but maybe that weaker launched player could win.
It would be nice to see some more videos from Beyblade Shogatsu, I want to see the attack vs Odin battles (if that even happened that much).
Now time to respond to some other relevant posts!
(Jan. 31, 2016 10:43 PM)1234beyblade Wrote: So basically the problem with people losing with OHD is just in their launch, it's either launched too hard or too light, there is just a slight margin in between where OHD is just unbeatable by any attack type. The only real counter to OHD was OHA, DHD did okay though OHD still had the upper hand. There is also one more problem I have with OHD, in my block, that's all people used and Lani was the only one to use VHA and she lost 2/3 of the matches she used it in (one of the matches she won was between a complete new comer), both me and ThermalG managed to win. Lastly... OHD is just a battle of launch power, super lame if you ask me, and honestly because of Odin still being a thing at shogatsu it kind of ruined the whole fun of the tourney, which was a real bummer.
How often is this “unbeatable” used? Are players able to consistently use it? Launch power has always been a factor of beyblade, it’s kinda annoying when people start acting like it’s a new subject.
(Feb. 01, 2016 7:09 AM)Kei Wrote: Acknowledging that Odin Heavy Defense does have an at least decently reliable counter in Xtreme combos when used by skilled players, this whole discussion then becomes in some ways a discussion about how much we value the competitive and skilled aspect of the game versus the approachability and "fun" factor of a metagame where new players can find some success. We could call it a day and say that "Xtreme combos can defeat OHD well enough, so why ban Odin or Heavy?", but in the end Beyblade isn't a professional sport where only the top end talent can play at the highest level with everyone else who has reached that level. So, we have to be concerned about approachability, drawing new players in, and making both the game and the community more diverse.
But this should be about skill, this game or website as a whole will never be truly competitive. Literally every other major game is like this. And if you new players want to play they can either A. Learn launch techniques and such or B. Just play mediocre/tier 2 combinations, because they might just be approaching the game and honestly don't care.
(Feb. 01, 2016 7:33 AM)cadney Wrote: So, of course, I started feeling hopeless. I came up against OHD in my block at Shogatsu 3 times and lost all 3 of those matches.
One might argue that I could just get better at shooting extreme, and I do eventually WANT to achieve that -- but the learning curve with that part is far rougher than I've experienced with other Beyblades I've picked up.
May I ask what combinations you used? Did you use anything that would have a chance of KOing Odin or did you just go in hopeless and used Stamina?
Well you can't just get handed an amazing part and expect it to be easy to pick up. If more people practiced with Extreme it would honestly dominate the meta. Learning curve isn't an excuse.
(Feb. 01, 2016 2:28 PM)ClaraM Wrote: It's also been proven to be beaten fairly consistently by attack types using Xtreme in the hands of those skilled enough to use it well.
The real question here is, do we ban OHD, just Odin or just Heavy in order to make the game easier for the unskilled players to find a more equal footing? Of course we shouldn't. That's like asking if we should ban Usain Bolt from running because no one can match him for speed. It's ridiculous to even think it.
I know this is going to come off as me being slightly elitist or whatever but that's just not true. Competitive play should be just that, competitive, it loses that when you start banning parts in order to make the game easier and this is coming from someone who's never beaten someone in an OHD mirror match. I'm not going to go around blaming the combos or the parts when really the issue lies with me just not being at that skill level yet.
Not gonna lie this was one of the best posts in this thread in a while. It hits so many of the good points. If you haven't looked through what ClaraM has said I advise you to because it's amazing.
If newcomers complain about launch and skill they should practice, if not accept it. If older members complain, I honestly don't see why. This is a competitive and skillful game. If you can't launch it's your problem, no one else's. I don't see why any of you are even attempting to play burst if you find Odin to be such a problem.