GDI Top 50 – May 2019 – Doctor Liang's amazing versatility

• The same analysis for Nod
• Previous analysis for GDI (also see for info on methodology)

It's time for our monthly check-in with the GDI meta. What do the Top 50 GDI players in the ladder play?

First, some base info:

• The average deck fields 2.2 infantry, 1.7 vehicles, 1.4 air and 0.7 tech units;  this is nearly identical to a month ago, just a shift of 0.2 from air to vehicles
• Average deck level in the Top 50 is 12.7 vs 12.6 a month ago (a bit lower than the 13.0 seen for Nod Top 50), 
• There's 6 decks below L12. I want to highlight two with high winrates:
• Lex[Xen] with a 77% winrate on a L10.5 deck with Grenadiers, Slingshot, Mammoth and Liang
• Russo Mau with 70% winrate on an "oldschool" L11.5 aggro deck (Missile, Shock – Dogs, Pitbull, Tank – Talon – Jackson)
• You can check out the decks of all of the Top50 in this spreadsheet

Frequencies of units in May 2019:

How to read the table:

• "Frequency All Decks" is the share of Decks that run this unit/commander
• "ppt Δ vs Apr 19" is the change in frequency to the last analysis
• "Δ vs average winrate" is how the winrate decks utilizing this unit/commander deviates from the average 
• "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average 

Units that got more popular:

• Liang +12 ppt – this commander sees use in a wide variety of decks, e.g. Bikerush's MG deck, Alicia's impressive Aggro deck, odd decks like that of Lex[Xen] (see above) and of course Tech decks
• Pitbull +10 ppt – basically, the Pitbull made back the losses from last month, and is still the 2nd most used unit after Missile Troopers
• Droneswarm +8 ppt – but overall usage is still at just 31%, which seems not too much for a cheap infantry option; I wonder if usage will further grow, or if talk about it being too strong is exaggerated
• Honorable mention, as they have similar roles as anti-vehicle infantry and are both up: Jumpjets & Grenadiers +6 ppt each

Units that got less popular:

• Talon -22 ppt – it's still at a strong 33% usage, but probably players who like Drones struggle to find a slot for it, as Pitbulls cover the anti-air well enough
• Jackson -22 ppt – people discovered that both Liang and Strongarm are very allround, so even more Tank decks (who often like Jackson for the speed boost on the Tank) switched to other commanders; but it's still at 24% usage, so far from unviable
• Hammerhead -10 ppt – the HH users still left seem to mostly put it into their deck to really have a strong counter in all situations. These players either afford the slot by means of their strong micro (e.g. Alicia doesn't have Missile Squads in her deck), or by means of high levels (easier to play on 5 cards outside the Hammerhead if you usually have a level advantage)

Popular decks:

• the APC deck didn't grow much in popularity, but still goes strong. From personal experience, I think people adapted and got better at dealing with the APC itself. Still a strong deck, but 4-6 weeks ago, it definitely also benefited from people not reacting ideally to it
• Orca Bomber usage went a bit down; I feel this because of the Stealth Tank. Before StealthTank got so popular, Nod struggled more vs Borcas than GDI, as Bikes both die faster and are harder to micro against Borcas than Pitbulls
• Outside of these two, there seem to be no clear patterns in the decks. Rather, there seems to 

Decks I recommend watching (you can find the players in the top player rankings in the app):

• ZeroHour, as he plays an interesting GDI zero-harvester deck
• AliciaDestiny, as her Liang Aggro deck is very strong, but only in very capable hands (I bet my winrate would drop 20 points if I tried to play her deck)
• Lex[Xen], as he successfully uses Grenadiers and Slingshot, which you might not often see in C&C TV replays otherwise

On the first view, you can see that 2-2-2 is a pretty common type of GDI deck; but there's also some decks with 4 infantry, or 4 air units, and even 4 tech units!

13lade's & Excoundrel's Unit Tiers

Like yesterday for Nod, I also put the data against the unit tiering exercise from 13lade and Excoundrel (I highly recommend to watch their video).

Here, I'm a tiny bit less aligned with them compared to their Nod tiering. Some thoughts:

• I'd see the MG squad clearly in Tier B, as there's some successful decks built around it (e.g. Bikerush), so I'd see it rather as a role player than a "would not recommend to use" unit. 
• I'm not sure if Slingshot yet deserves Tier B. Are there really proven decks that run it successfully? For me, Tier B is e.g. "working niche decks" like Jade, and I don't see it there, yet.
• Grenadier might deserve Tier B as a role player in certain decks, but I admit that I cannot fully judge this.
• I'm not fully sure if I'd really prefer to play Solomon than playing MLRS. Yes, MLRS isn't great, but I feel Solomon ruins a deck's competitiveness more. But well, maybe Tier C vs. Tier D anyways don't matter that much, after all.