Shatter meta is NOT focusing ice

[Guesswhat]

Topic

Just for fun. Hopefully shatter will die soon lol.

There is this meta going about, kinda like a mantra, that says focusing ice = more likely to win.

You know, peeps in chat saying "ice > kills"

In my experience, this is not true at all. When I examine the scoreboard after a match, it's usually -not always- the team with most kills that won (most points received from enemy).

In other words, the "ice > kills" mantra =/= more likely to win.

[Miss_Jane]

This has been known for a while but pugs still only care about ice.

In fact if your alliance's DPS isn't great, it's usually a better strategy to just go hit ice anyway..

[Mirch]

only garo boyos say ice > kills, garo boyos everywhere

[Cidel]

Just gonna quote ThirdChild from a much older thread that pretty much sums up Shatter:

...The thing is, there's no one way to win Shatter. That is both a good and bad thing about it. If you have a team strong enough to win through kills alone, go for it. If you can't get to large ice before the other teams do, you steal bases and pick off stragglers. You can even play a hit and run strategy against really aggressive teams and manage to win. Thing is, none of these will guarantee you can win, and only by being ready to switch up tactics when your enemy does can you stay ahead.

Simply put, Shatter is Chess, but most people just want to play Checkers.

As an addendum, please consider these useful, Shatter-specific tips:

NINs truly shine as a "Scouting" job here. Make use of that.
There are MANY blind spots. Make use of that.
Casters do 50% less damage to ice, so at large ice spawns, have your casters cc/attack the enemy team
Fight all you want, but make sure you have an escape route to pull out if necessary, or when ice spawns.
Between each base and the middle is a choke point. Use that on both offense and defense when necessary.
Keep your map open and watch enemy movement. When you know where they are, you know where they aren't.
Play the objectives in Shatter. No seriously. Play Shatter. All your damage/kills mean nothing if you don't win.

So the short answer is "yes and no..."

[Praesul]

Going for ice is usually the safer strategy, and with a group of randoms it seems to be the most effective. Most groups are kill happy (despite lacking the skill to consistently get kills...) so they'll ignore ice, and ice is guaranteed points.

If you're with a coordinated group you can ignore ice almost completely and just win the match off steamrolling people though.

[finders]

wtb 8v8 ctf

[yukkan]

"people die when they are killed"
if people die, no point form ice