Timaeuss Cup – What we learned

Etheria: Restart is leading the charge when it comes to PvP, having a feature in-game ALREADY that allows players to create their own custom tournaments. This feature was taken advantage of by Timaeuss, who organized his own Tournament and was joined by Volkin as a co-caster. They invited a select number of top PvP players from specific Unions and content creators to make use of this feature in a showdown on the final weekend.

The reward?
$1000 USD for the winner, with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th receiving smaller cash prizes.
But arguably, the bigger prize was a one-time exhibition match with the Game Director himself, Jack.

The format was a Swiss-style tournament. For those not familiar, a Swiss tournament is a competition format where players are paired based on their current performance in each round, rather than being eliminated after a loss. Unlike a knockout tournament, everyone participates, and the player with the highest aggregate points at the end wins.

Although in this tournament, the top 4 players moved onto Day 2, rather than a winner being announced at the end of Day 1.

Although we didn’t have all the features in the final CBT, the players did get to experience the pre-ban and protected pick part of the Summit Arena. The players competed in best of 3 matchups, encouraging adaptations after each fight.

As mentioned earlier, the players chosen were a selection of players from different Unions and content creators. The Unions Represented were Scarlet, Oasis, BIG and CLS. The content creators were Deity, Hawky, SeanB, Seiishizo and AuronnJ. Although I do believe that one player was having internet difficulties, and as a result, some players got a Bye (free win)

If you have not taken part in Summit Arena, you won’t know what this pick phase is. This phase starts with Pre-bans — players select 2 Animus that they don’t want to see in the fight (one ban from each side) before moving to the actual picks.

In this tournament, the person who lost the previous match gets to pick first. They start by picking 1 Animus. The 2nd player then gets to choose 2 Animus (their first and second pick), and it then goes on to player one, who gets to choose their second and third choices. The third choice is particularly important as this pick is protected. This means that after the pick phase is over, this Animus cannot be banned.

This is an interesting feature because your team might revolve around one Animus that you really want to keep, but if you leave it until your third pick, you might miss out on it with your opponent choosing this character before you. So there is a lot to think about. The picks then move back and forth until both players have 5 Animus on their teams.

After all picks have been made, both players then get the opportunity to ban one final Animus from the enemy team before moving into the fight.

Like most games in this genre, PvP generally comes down to a speed race. Speed is king a lot of the time, but we started to see a change in this tournament and in the Summit Arena itself on the final weekend.

Speed is still important, but with the introduction of the Bulwark set (granting immunity for 1st turn), not being first isn’t the end of the world. Most damage dealers are the slowest on an opponent’s team, so if you could avoid the debuffs and control, you could mitigate a lot of the incoming pain. Especially if you were faster than the enemy DPS. As a result, we started to see more of a sustain/Bruiser type shift here. In this tournament, double support Animus were sometimes picked first, often being healers like Sania and Lingluo. Tiamat was also a very popular pick due to her Bruiser-type role. This meant that characters like Heinrich were hugely impactful, and if you just banned their main DPS, you could outlast the enemy team. It really was wonderful to see these players go into the think tank and look at units like Viper, who were forgotten about by the vast majority of the Beta Testers.

At the end of Day 1, all of the content creators were knocked out, leaving just Guild Members and PvP players. Kekker progressed through Day 1 without losing a single game and continued this stellar record into Day 2, ultimately winning the entire tournament.

Not only did Kekker get a cash prize sponsored by Etheria: Restart, but he also received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go up against the Game Director himself, Jack. Jack had been playing the game during this final beta, along with many other staff members, progressing under the alias “UncleNoName”.

This reveal was an incredible moment, as Jack had been actively competing in PvP arenas, even defeating Volkin himself a couple of times.

This tournament really showed the potential of Etheria Restart and the esports scene they are trying to build. It was super interesting to see what some of the best PvP minds are thinking when it comes to drafting and counter-picking.

It really opens the door to what is possible with the return of Hoyan in launch, as well as potential new additions. The future is bright for the PvP scene in Etheria Restart.