Defense is Back in a Big (Good) Way

[Edxu]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

Another question that I've been thinking about: Can a defensive robot be a first round pick? An early first round pick? Usually the alliance captain will be good at breaching, and in deeper events, the alliance captains will be good at breaching and scoring. There are a ton of teams that can breach effectively that could be picked up in round 2. So if there's an elite defender on the board are they worth a top pick? Let's assume this defender can climb and play spot offense (not highly effectively) as well.

I would say yes because an elite defender can prevent a capture, and a capture can be done by an elite robot being fed by a breaching 2nd pick. If you capture, and prevent a capture, you basically win.

I would respectfully disagree. If you are a great breacher/scorer, there is very little reason to not pick another great breacher/scorer that complements you. I think that a team's ability to win matches is first decided by how strong they are offensively, and second by how strong they are defensively.

From watching a few regionals via webcast, as well as my observations from our practice field that several teams came to, I observed that it's possible to disrupt a team for maybe 8 seconds if they're shooting high goal, but it's very difficult to disrupt a team that zones in on quick low goals.

Against an expert defender, I think that the best way to play around them would be to have your first pick robot score a low goal, then play counter-defense for you, pushing their solo defender back as the captain takes a shot, and then both robots cycle back. This presents a problem for the defender, as if they attack the high goal shooter, they lose the low goal and then are pushed away by that robot to make space for the high goal shooter. If they choose to attack the low goal shooter, they fail to defend against the high goal shooter, and it's very difficult to play defense on a low goal robot anyways.