Meta History (help me older players)

DarkLord7

I've been here for over 2.5 years. When I started, Wedge was the monthly login. I think Droids with Engineer were the top arena team, but my arena was young so it was mostly Phasma and Luminara lead generic teams using the same mainstream characters who lacked real synergy but dealt damage.
Then Wiggs became the meta (for us anyways), and then Palpatine came along. Because Empire/Sith were so bad, lots of us just ran him with our Wiggs team, although a few big fish had a full solid Empire team to use which crushed it.
CLS dropped, I got him, he tore it up, then I quit for a few months and came back to see this JTR chick all over top 50.
zEP rework came out, and that was probably the most diverse meta I remember. zEP dominant, with a strong presence of JTR and CLS and NS because they could all beat each other and let's just say zEP vs zEP mirror match was... A Nightmare.
zBastila had to come along and eliminate zEP and CLS, and brought down JTR a fair bit too.
Traya came and slapped Bastila. Almost nothing except super specific counter teams could beat her. That was imo the most broken and uniform meta. The game changers can say what they want, Chewie did not really do much for CLS players against Traya. Still almost impossible to win and defense was laughable.
Then C-3PO came out. Instantly I could walk on Traya (and just unlocked her myself). This was better, as both teams could win pretty well on offense.
Revan drops. He blocked CLS, who still got along by climbing over the Trayas. Traya was still the majority, but Revan was supreme.
Since Revan's return he absolutely dominates arena. Strong Trayas can beat him, zFinn can although he's about to get nerfed, and a few other 3PO variants are able to with considerable difficulty. NS in the same boat there. So while this is a very uniform meta, I think the Traya one was longer and worse because there were even fewer effective counters to it.
I don't know for sure what's coming next, and I don't know what was around before I started. Who here can trace the meta back to its earliest days?

Zombie961

(Don't remember order);
Dooku/Old Ben evasion meta
Qui gon-scav Rey-storm han
Poggle + Poe
Darth Sidious lead

miketo

CLS lead, raid han, chewie, r2 and thrawn. Beats every variation of Traya teams in 90 seconds. Chewie will die, but the other 4 survive.

Just disagreeing with OP's comment that chewie did nothing for CLS teams against Traya. Also, should point out I am not saying this team holds on defence against Traya, but climbing on offense was fun and easy.

GreenGoblin96

I started during the poe+droids coin flip meta, which was around 2 months after lunch. Then we went with sidious and ventress lead with generic toons. After that it was phasma lead with stick rey (who was being called OP every day). After that we got mods and the first evasion meta of old ben and dooku

Jarvind

The earliest team I can remember doing decently well with (top 50 with occasional top 20 finish) was Phasma, Scav Rey, Princess Leia, Qui-Gon, and Royal Guard. The whole strategy was "pop Phasma's TM special and hope for assists or multi-attacks from Leia." Leia wasn't farmable yet so she was an absolute monster.

Times sure have changed.

DarkLord7

Jarvind wrote: »

The earliest team I can remember doing decently well with (top 50 with occasional top 20 finish) was Phasma, Scav Rey, Princess Leia, Qui-Gon, and Royal Guard. The whole strategy was "pop Phasma's TM special and hope for assists or multi-attacks from Leia." Leia wasn't farmable yet so she was an absolute monster.

Times sure have changed.

I ran her for many months in arena. She was in arena shipments when I joined. Didn't replace her until I had a g11 zHan.

Ryzak620

Sidious was a popular leader way back when too. He was fast, his leader ability was generic to all members of a team.
Phasma was also a favorite
LOL...I forgot how everyone complained about Scav Rey!!
Dooku/Old Ben evasion squads were really annoying.
I remember Poggle too. Think it was Poggle, Poe, Geo Soldier, and I can't remember other two.
Roughly after that was the Jawa/Droid meta, which was hard to beat, unless you had a Jedi IGD lead.
I'm not sure if Chaze was before or after Wiggs. The Wiggs/Lando squad was a huge pain unless you had a good counter squad.
Then came zetas. And it was all about GK/Zarriss (which is why to this day I still refuse to put a zeta on her). I want to say that Nihilus came before zetas, but I'm not 100% sure
Rex was also a good leader for a long time during this era too.
After that began the true power creep (with spikes), starting with Thrawn, then JTR, CLS, Traya, and now everyone's favorite, Revan.

jejuzang

You hit the main ones but there were a bunch of small ones here amd there.

Pretty much every rework/zeta has resulted in a meta change in the past. And when Zetas were firs5 brought in, it was just who was hot at the time. You have zFinn, zQGJ, zMaul, heck even zBarris changing the meta, even if just for a very short time until the next zeta was discovered. It was fun because Zetas were so new that you had to actually research and hop you picked the right one, and if you did no one had an idea how to beat you because I it was the first time they had seen it.

Baze and Chuirrit(name spelled worng) were also a meta for a bit. R2D2 was really good for a time. And Thrawn and Nest have always been good, not necessarily metas, but they are the two best toons in the game imo.

Before protection was brought in Savage was a meta for is insta kill at under 50%

Oh and dont forget Nightsisters after their rework too. Im still missing some im sure...

Ryzak620

There were a lot of short term metas, like zMaul (which lasted until R2 came out), zEmp/Vader (to counter JTR), and yes, NS. Heck, before Revan became the thing, I loved destroying Traya teams with Jango BH squad. That was fun! Even FO had a very small meta that if you blinked, you missed it.

AhsokaInTheSheets

zMaul was by far the worst meta. Nothing like dodge RNG to ruin a potentially decent match. Mods didn't even matter.

Coin flip Poe was pure ****. Zero mods meant zero creativity.